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A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

134 points by prostoalex 7y ago

williesleg 7y ago
If everyone gets free money that will just cause inflation. Get with the program, do something the world needs. Get off your ass and make something. And by something not something the needful. Something well architected.
burlesona 7y ago
I don’t know what’s wrong with that website, but visiting it heats up my phone to the point of being uncomfortable to hold.
- luckylion 7y ago
  1.2 Megabytes of JavaScript and 900 kilobytes of css will probably do that. They have more JS and stylesheet to present their website about books ... than actual books have letters.
- daenz 7y ago
  Based on the load time, they must be proxying all requests through your phone.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
franciscop 7y ago
Spaniard here since this article[1] about Spain was prominently noted in the linked article, there isn't a basic income plan here and nothing like that has happened, please stop with making up this kind of stuff about other countries. There is regular unemployment insurance and an unemployment plan targeted to temporary job freezes (ERTE) that has always existed, nothing to do with basic income. I would also like to see BI even if it's just a test, but what we have here has nothing to do with it. The government has just made the rules for these pre-existing unemployment plans a bit more flexible (or arguably not). Also the rent situation has become a lot better. [1] https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4?international=true&r=US https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-... Edit: removed references to the future since I cannot predict it and moved those to the present. Edit 2: it's also interesting to see the original headline was "Spain is moving to" (already false, there's no specific plan now) but in this article the mention was "Spain decided to institute the program" (ridiculous).
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments. There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something to clickbait/fakenews.
  - craigsmansion 7y ago
    I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in various European countries. These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about repercussions and side-effects. I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a simple answer to the various social wrongs within your country, and focus on your healthcare; that's where various European models could be used as a partial model, and it's a very good and achievable first step towards a fairer and healthier society.
    - daenz 7y ago
      We never hear about the downsides of other countries models either. It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. That kind of disingenuous promotion doesn't do any favors when it comes to convincing people.
      - voldacar 7y ago
        > It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. Well it's not like UBI is the exception here. This is normal in all forms of political discourse.
      - franciscop 7y ago
        Interestingly enough, 5-10 years ago in Spain you could hear some proponents of private healthcare to compare it with the US. Now I think there's enough understanding that the US model doesn't work that the proponents instead talk about Singapore or other private models, no one compares them to the US anymore. Some arguments against universal health care I have heard in Spain: • Not enough choice, since you cannot e.g. pay more to get better treatment. • It's more expensive, since there's no free market to move prices down. • It's more efficient, since people are not paid to do nothing and impossible to fire (common complain about gvmt jobs here). No beef here, just relaying what I've commonly heard
killIdeas 7y ago
A few points of annoyances- >AOC Why anyone listens to a populist demagogue blows my mind. She has 0 policy experience. Why not quote any random Congressperson? >UBI This usually comes in the form of getting rid of food stamps, ending housing subsidies, removing welfare... None of which are being discussed. The nature of United States politics is getting on wreckless. Free money and demagogry.
- deleted 7y ago
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tgv 7y ago
< the Netherlands ... experienced a wave of “basic grant” militancy in the 1980s and ’90s Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a wave of basic grant militancy? > Pilot programs have been set up in several cities and countries — Utrecht There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs. Doesn't bode well for the article.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a wave of basic grant militancy I know nothing about these events, but it's not hard to believe a large number of people came to support UBI during a period of frequent strikes. With huge groups working together for a common goal, you'd expect some of them would start supporting more radical ideas >There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs. The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program, also here https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-experiment/ https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-expe...
  - tgv 7y ago
    > The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program That's what I commented on. The link is nearly 5 years old, and the policy is nowhere near UBI.
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  Base assumption, we just print the money. It's how we pay for everything else like wars and subsidies and whatnot. Then, as a courtesy to those people who benefit from a society without excessive inflation (mostly, people with lots of money who are clearly benefiting the most) we take and burn that money, to remove it from circulation.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    I was thinking about this idea, if we print money and distribute it "wisely" among the lower income classes, this would debase the currency proportional to the amount printed, harming primarily those who are wealthy, proportional to their wealth, and the money will eventually flow upwards through the financial system, primarily through consumer spending, but ultimately back into the pockets of the wealthy. Of course, inflation in certain categories would need to be taken into consideration, and other factors, but is this idea a non-starter for some reasons I'm overlooking? Excluding politics of course, for the purposes of this mental experiment. There was also an article posted here in the last two weeks or so about a massive global short situation with the USD, I have it in my mind that the particulars of that situation were conveniently complementary to this idea, although I may have that aspect completely backwards.
    - kazagistar 7y ago
      Of course. You don't even have to be all that wise about it: just a flat handout disproportionately affects the wealthy. To get around capital flight (people reinvesting in non inflatory currency, sinking the international buying power of said currency), though, it probably needs to be able to economically isolate, or be universal enough that there is nowhere to flee. And when you do that, you might realize just how much everything is built on the ongoing suffering of the global poor.
Causality1 7y ago
What always seems to happen with UBI studies is the proponents point to results that say "the people we gave free money to are happier" but never try to quantify whether that money would have done more good used in a different way.
- wjmao88 7y ago
  I don't think that's the right question to ask. It should be "Would they be happier if the tax to fund UBI was not levied"
  - gonational 7y ago
    This question is insufficient, because, in most large economies, taxation is insufficient to fund a UBI have any reasonable size. Therefore, new money creation (a.k.a. inflation) is the means, and the timeframe for its ruinous effects are too long to study within a single generation.
    - bsanr2 7y ago
      That's a false premise. One of the intended effects of UBI is to universalize the kind of stability of cash flow that the wealthy tend to benefit from under Capitalism. This effectively shifts the balance of both economic and political leverage. In the same way that universal healthcare is less expensive than a balkanized insurance system because the people who want lower prices suddenly have a larger say in the marketplace, UBI would lower the amount of capital wealthy individuals and entities have to put towards assets, and raise the amount that, collectively, a much larger number of UBI recipients have. Under these conditions, it makes a lot less sense to, say, build luxury housing units that are bid up and up by the demand of wealthy investors, compared to seeing that that demand has now been broken up and distributed among lower income would-be buyers and renters and realizing that a lot of money could be made expanding the housing base. It's all about who has the money. Asset prices will fall as wealth is diffused among people who don't stockpile capital, making the amount of income necessary to survive lower. Taxation is a cornerstone of making UBI work. Of course it has a higher chance of failure if it's predicated on grabbing money out of thin air.
lostlogin 7y ago
Below is an article arguing that New Zealand has been testing a UBI for decades with its pension scheme which is available to everyone aged over 65. Be warned - Gareth Morgan has some interesting politics. http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-super/ http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-super/
- mikedilger 7y ago
  UBI to people outside of the workforce is entirely different. My argument against UBI is that it erodes the desire to work, and we still need nearly everybody of working age to work... until the robots catch up (they still have a lot of catching up to do).
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    The whole point of UBI is that it has lower disincentives against work than other kinds of social insurance. When you say that UBI discourages working, that's perhaps true compared w/ no social insurance at all but it's not a very meaningful comparison.
    - mikedilger 7y ago
      I've not heard this. Can you explain how? And are you also suggesting that UBI proponents support abolition of other kinds of social insurance, replacing them with (not augmenting them with) UBI?
      - astura 7y ago
        Yeah, the whole idea of ubi is you replace the patchwork of various social programs (and the overhead of each program) with a basic ubi for everyone. It's supposed to be much more efficient and there's no disincentives to self improvement (because you never lose your benefits). I personally don't actually think it disincentives working very much because people who want to work for more than just the minimum always will and people who really, really don't wanna work find a way to get out of working within the current system. Since my family is full of degenerates, I've seen every trick in the book used. Out of my dad's family (8 kids) only one (1) has meaningfully participated in paid employment.
danesparza 7y ago
I'm glad to see Thomas Paine referenced in this article. So many Americans don't realize that one of America's founding fathers championed the idea of universal basic income back when the USA was just being created. This was something that Andrew Yang pointed out, but was largely ignored.
- dependenttypes 7y ago
  This is a very one-sided and unsupported (I don't see links to articles) argument. You can do better.
- innocentoldguy 7y ago
  I hear this a lot but in reading Paine’s writings, I can only find ideas somewhat similar to Social Security payments for elderly people. I have not been able to find anything in Paine’s writings that is synonymous with the concept of UBI. I’m not saying it isn’t in there somewhere, just that I haven’t found it. Would you mind citing specifically where you found this information?
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    I'm not familiar with his writings to cite more detail, but it seems to me if he supported a sort of Social Security, then he was advocating for a targeted UBI. Maybe that's just semantics though.
  - CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
    In Agrarian Justice he proposes to “ create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property” He also makes it very clear that this isn’t some form of charity to help people. But rather about justice
    - danesparza 7y ago
      Wait -- so did I misunderstand? Is this more like reparations to native americans or slaves? I'm confused.
rriepe 7y ago
Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?
- jedberg 7y ago
  Diminishing returns. The same argument against making the minimum wage $100/hr. At some point the graph crosses.
  - jandrewrogers 7y ago
    The dynamics aren't the same, the UBI case has a much weaker negative feedback loop than minimum wage. The percentage of the population that benefits from ratcheting minimum wage is much smaller -- they are intrinsically a permanent minority. Ratcheting UBI, on the other hand benefits a much larger population whose growth as a percentage of the population is effectively unbounded by negative feedback. It would be very easy to arrive at a pathological equilibrium where the majority of the population has a strong incentive to vote for short-sighted expansion of UBI at the expense of the minority. Once in that mode, addressing the pathological consequences of that politically would be very difficult unless mitigations were designed in from the beginning. It is possible to design negative feedback loops for the UBI case to greatly mitigate this issue, but it tends to be avoided by UBI proponents because most solutions have varying degrees of unpalatability.
- devit 7y ago
  The fact that UBI should not be about giving an amount of money, but rather about giving essentials like housing and food or the equivalent in money, and "doubling" essentials doesn't make as much sense, since you don't have much use for two beds or twice the food.
  - jariel 7y ago
    What constitutes 'basic necessity' changes every year. Is a car a basic necessity? What about a mobile? Broadband? Netflix/Cable wouldn't be an obvious choice but many will argue it is. Washing machine? What about food delivery for those over 55? You know those 3-wheel motorized chairs, between scooters and wheelchairs for the elderly ... they are definitely a 'necessity' for some but really quite 'in between' for others. Once UBI is initiated, the arguments to increase UBI will be unyielding. The next generations' youth will make arguments about the 'inhumanity' of such and such. They may have a point, but we will be the 'old timers' thinking they are mostly ridiculous and actually voting.
gonational 7y ago
“Universal basic income” of any reasonable size in, e.g., the US, requires the creation of new money, because taxation is insufficient for its funding. New money derives its value, subtractively, from the value of existing money (“WEALTH”), which is held by individuals who earned that money (“WORKERS“). Some individuals decide not to work because of reasons OTHER THAN retirement, inheritance, disability, and child bearing; these individuals do not contribute directly to production (for convenience, we’ll call this group “LAZYS”). Therefore, giving UBI to LAZYS intrinsically takes WEALTH from WORKERS, regardless of whether not WORKERS also get UBI. In other words, universal basic income can be correctly defined as “transfer payments from WORKERS to LAZYS“.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > ...from the value of existing money (“WEALTH”), which is held by individuals who earned that money (“WORKERS“). "Earned" and "workers" seem like rather tricky words in this context. This theory sounds like somewhat of the typical strawman (innacurate) understanding of Randian laissez faire economics.
- geddy 7y ago
  Sounds about right. Like everything in the US, some group is trying to figure out a way to siphon money from those to earn to those who “need it more”. I don’t care to support this, I want all the money I make, thank you very much. I’ll decide who to help with it. Or, I’ll help no one at all with the money I worked for, which according to college students and other people who have no skills and have paid no taxes, makes me “greedy”. Now if you want to fix the screwed up healthcare system, I’m all ears.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    So you'd pay for your own private guards, private fire department, pave the roads you use to drive to work out of your own pocket, and countless other things that are currently tax-payer funded resources? You'd need to be exceptionally wealthy indeed. Or maybe you still think there's some basic things the government should do, and therefore needs to collect taxes for them. In which case we're not arguing over whether or not money gets siphoned, we're just arguing over where you draw the line.
pryce 7y ago
This article might have been more informative if it had placed these ideas in context - the rise Marxism and Communism, which tie the state's mandate to preserving the interests of labour rather than those of capital, provoking in the west the rise of social democracy, which proposes that a balance can be achieved between workers and capital while still preserving capitalism.
- mistermann 7y ago
  Mark Blyth is an economist who focuses quite a bit on this topic (labor vs capital). Also Thomas Frank (journalist and). Both have good videos on YouTube.
raincom 7y ago
UBI works well in developed countries, whose currency others desire. Developing countries who spend more on imports, can't afford that.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  Given the results in developing countries I’m not sure you can say that. It could very well be that the increase in GDP more then makes up for any costs of such policies. https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changing-debate-giving-cash-poor https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changin...
rodolphoarruda 7y ago
Quick conceptual question from a noob in the subject: does the UBI entirely replace social security for elderly individuals or is it added on top of it?
- evolve2k 7y ago
  UBI sets an income ‘watermark’ of basic income for all. I would say they interact. It would eliminate the pension where desired/planned pension funds were at a similar watermark.. if the pension needed to be more then it would supplement towards this.
  - akvadrako 7y ago
    What you are describing sounds like guaranteed income. UBI doesn’t phase out quickly so it would stack with similarly sized pensions. Larger pensions would see little extra money.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  That seems more like an implementation detail. It certainly could replace social security, but then again in the US social security payouts are tied to how much you've paid into it over the years. Then again, UBI would be paid for, albeit less directly, but tax payments as well so it might not be an important distinction. And of course it would be important to peg the UBI to different costs of living for different regions.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    I'd do the opposite. Peg UBI to the lowest cost of living, and have separate short-term insurance-only programs (on top of UBI) for folks living in higher-cost areas. That way, those who are unwilling or unable to work in the longer term will be incented to move to low-cost areas and relieve pressure elsewhere.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      I'm not sure I agree... literally not sure. It's an interesting idea though.
mikedilger 7y ago
I don't think there is any sort of unanimity regarding UBI. Being compensated for staying home is not UBI, because it is not ongoing. I'm against UBI for reasons that became apparent while playing MMORPGs. Stay with me here and I'll explain. Players of an RPG want a fun game. But they also want to succeed/win. These goals partially conflict. If they prioritize winning too highly, and pester customer support to make the game easier (nerf), the game loses it's fun. Even (in my estimation) to the people who pestered customer support. Because some people aren't self aware enough (kids) to realize that the challenge is what makes it fun. In life, we want to be lazy. I certainly do. And that desire makes me think a UBI would be quite nice. But I also realize that I most certainly would be lazy. I'm already working less than 20 hours per week (pre-COVID) because my mortgage is paid and I don't really need the money anymore. With a UBI I might stop work completely. But as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real economy will suffer. Less hours will be worked, prices will go up, and the economy will be more depressed and sluggish. Robots could save us but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Maybe we are there in very specific manufacturing industries, but no robot is going to install a new roof on my house (for example). So I think we should wait until after all the jobs are taken by robots (rather than thinking it's imminent when it's most certainly not) to institute UBI. Eventually. But not any time soon. OTOH I'm perfectly okay with a means-tested payout to people who really need it.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  If you downvote me because you disagree, PLEASE share your thoughts on this. I cannot understand why you disagree if you simply downvote.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    There are too many ideas in your post. Some of which make sense, some do not. > Players of an RPG want a fun game. I don't think you understand game theory and design well enough to be commenting. Generally, games are about learning about the world and performing pattern recognition to optimize in a constrained environment. MMORPGs have LOTS of games within them, some of which are completely player driven. > as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real economy will suffer Slack off? Real economy? Suffer? Soft terms that are composed into an unqualified statement. There is sentiment, but no meaning. > Robots could save us but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Now meandering on to robots for some reason, which is not related to previous points. Some forums (like this one) prefer smaller assertions with arguments and typically reward those who track down supporting documentation or revealing technical support (equations, papers, historical references, active research, etc). Ironically, HN posts are preferred when people put work into them :)
habanany 7y ago
Imagine having your own restaurant and someone pass by and places a sign outside that reads “ come in and eat all you want for free “
habanany 7y ago
Imagine having your own restaurant and someone comes and places a sign outside that reads “ come in and eat all you want for free “
ineedasername 7y ago
I think UBI as a single monolithic program for providing minimum resources to provide the basics of food/shelter etc can be much improved on by other means: [0]Instead, I think a constellation of smaller, targeted programs (think best-of-breed) might be more effective and provide a more robust effect: If a society provides universal healthcare, comprehensive unemployment benefits that don't have absurdly low caps, housing & food subsidies for those close to the poverty level, comprehensive disability benefits, and probably a few other things I'm missing, then the need for a "universal" UBI is diminished: That too can be targeted towards people not otherwise covered by the above. The advantage is that each program can be highly tailored to the specific needs & nuances of those seeking that specific benefit, rather than just throwing a larger block of money at people. [0]Note: I'm not particularly attached to this idea. I think is has merit, but my goal is to start a conversation about the idea, sort of pressure-test it, not proclaim it as the way to do things.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  A patchwork of "targeted" programs is unsatisfactory for many reasons. It lets people fall through the cracks, and it results in unintended effects as the programs are not designed or managed in a consistent way. The need for some sort of minimal income floor is universal, and it should be addressed in a universally-applicable way.
  - zhoujianfu 7y ago
    Exactly.. my personal genealogy for discovering UBI was: The government should provide for a base level of food, medicine, housing, and education. But let private industry compete for it, so just provide vouchers for each of those things. But, how to efficiently allocate the amounts for each individual? How much health care voucher vs. food voucher vs. housing voucher vs. education voucher? Ah, just have a universal “health or food or housing or education” voucher! Oh, but what about transportation! Okay, a universal “housing, food, medicine, transportation, and education” voucher. Oh wait, we have one of those already! The dollar.
    - 7y ago
zhoujianfu 7y ago
There are two questions to answer first. 1. Do you think people can best decide what’s best for themselves? 2. Do you care about other people? The Democratic Party answers no and yes. The Republican Party answers no and no. The Libertarian Party answers yes and no. A UBI is the solution to yes and yes.
lazyant 7y ago
No mention of the UBI initiatives in Canada https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot (scrapped by the new Conservative government) and the older https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome (also "free money for surfers"? wtf)
- rasalas 7y ago
  > (also "free money for surfers"? wtf) I was curious about the surfers as well. It's a reference to something John Rawls wrote in 1988: "[...] those who surf all day off Malibu must find a way to support themselves and would not be entitled to public funds." [1] provides context. In 1991, Philippe van Parijs wrote "Why surfers should be fed: The liberal case for an Unconditional Basic Income", which instead supports Rawls's surfers. [2] [1] https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-two/ https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-tw... [2] https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Surfers.pdf https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Su...
twblalock 7y ago
The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we have now. Let's say we pass a truly universal basic income bill -- every person gets the same amount of money from the government, every month. It wouldn't take long before politicians propose giving more money to teachers and single mothers, or taking benefits away from convicted felons and sex offenders. Over time, bit by bit, we will entitle certain groups of people to more or less money than others. That will happen for the same reason our existing welfare system is the way it is - the voters believe that some people are more deserving of help than others. UBI would not remain universal, or basic, for very long. Given that we can't actually end up with a universal or basic income system, and that we will end up largely re-creating the same kinds of entitlements that characterize our current welfare systems, we might as well just improve and extend our current systems.
- YinLuck- 7y ago
  While this is always a threat, it does not mean it is inevitable. 1 person, 1 vote is a universal principle that seems to be holding across the [democratic] world. If anything, the momentum seems to be towards giving the vote back to the few who lose it (felons, etc)
- Jedd 7y ago
  > The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we have now. That's not a problem with UBI. IMO that scenario is not likely, let alone guaranteed. I appreciate a pessimistic outlook as much as the next guy, but I don't think we should abandon UBI because you think it may change in the future.
  - xsdklfsdfklj 7y ago
    the argument against it [1] is practically that if it is being pushed by the current system it is to benefit the current system. As in, "uber needs a safety net for their drivers" kinda of vision, which given the track record in the US is very likely. [1] https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/universal-basic-income-inequality-work https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/universal-basic-income-inequa...
ralusek 7y ago
I am a free market advocate, libertarian-lite, that believes that UBI is the correct social safety net. I am clearly not unique in this regard, as this actually seems to be the most common type of UBI advocate I've encountered. That being said, the one lingering question I have comes down to a variant of inflation. I think most people think of inflation as something that only happens as a result of monetary policy, but that's not entirely true. Let's say that UBI could be entirely funded through taxation, no new money is introduced into the system. There is still a form of inflation on certain goods. For example, let's take an extreme example of redistribution: we take all of the money from a billionaire and redistribute it. One billionaire doesn't buy 100,000,000 TVs for their house, but 1,000,000 people with $1,000 might each buy a TV. 1,000,000 people with an extra $1,000 has a much larger impact on demand for typical consumer goods than having that wealth be more concentrated. Of course stricter taxation of the uber-wealthy would have impacts lessening demand for large investments, so it's not a blanket inflation in the same way that just printing money would be, but it still has all of the same characteristics of inflation within certain consumer markets. It's all very complicated, and I would like to see it modeled. If I'm a landlord, and I know that my tenants now have an extra $12,000 a year, do I raise rents? I think the natural argument is that because the scarcity or value of my real estate didn't actually change, I open myself to being undercut by competition if I try to arbitrarily raise the value of my property to reflect increased demand. But the problem is that it might not be entirely true that the value of my real estate didn't change. When I have to call a plumber, or gardener, or construction worker for a remodel, are their rates going to be the same? Are rates going to go up or down? It's very hard for me to know for sure. It reminds me a bit of debt. Debt shouldn't necessarily produce inflation, but it definitely does. Do you think houses would cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars if the average person didn't have access to debt? Would it cost 50k+ in order to attend college? No. Access to debt dramatically increases the prices on the things purchased by the available debt, regardless of whether or not this theoretically is meant to produce inflation. My concern is that, as with access to debt, the increase in wealth will be met with an increase in cost across the board, and not due to exploitation, but because the effects are that most consumer products and services actually just end up costing as a natural reflection of increased demand.
- rafd 7y ago
jillesvangurp 7y ago
Most countries already have programs to prevent people from starving or freezing to death and those countries also tend to have elaborate health care programs, and provisions for those not able to work. Even the US has programs like this in most states though you could argue that compared to other countries they are a combination of expensive, inefficient, and ineffective. Basic income is formalizing the status quo that there's a minimum standard for all that basically translates into everybody receiving those same guarantees but simply with less bureaucracy & moralistic BS around it. Basically it gets rid off or vastly simplifies the business of collecting and handing out social security insurances and different types of benefits. The cost for this in some countries actually rivals the benefits handed out. E.g. unemployment benefit programs have amazing amounts of bureaucracy associated in many countries. For those who work, what changes is that part of their income now comes from basic income and they pay taxes over the rest. For their employers, they pay less salary and have less bureaucracy around things like insurance programs and social security (all taken care off). Also things like minimum incomes go away: they pay market prices for what somebody does for them. State pensions, unemployment benefits, sick leave compensation, etc. all basically fold into this basic income. If you want more, you work and pay for extra insurances yourself. If you don't, basic income is there for you. For those that are not part of the labor market, i.e. approaching (or already over) 50% of the population in many countries, what changes is that their life becomes a lot simpler. Either they are happy enough to get by on basic income or they secure some additional source of income. Either way, we're already paying for their health care, housing, and food as as society. It's a much less radical change than people think. IMHO this could actually unlock the labor market in lots of countries. There are a lot of weird rules around unemployment that actually make it unattractive or hard for people to work. E.g. people close to their retirement age are expensive to fire and therefore unattractive to hire in lots of countries. People on benefits are actually would risk losing their benefits if they take some job on the side. So, they don't work until they find something "proper", which for some never happens. Of course this kind of debate always raises the question "who pays for this?". The people that ask this never look at the other side of the debate: how much do we save by eliminating and dismantling the byzantine bureaucracy responsible for the current system. Nobody has actually run that experiment. Also, we have plenty of taxes left and plenty of wiggle room with things like VAT, fuel tax, profit tax and income tax. It boils down to a quite simple formula: total cost = X*#people. If you have say 17M+ people (NL, my home country) and assume 500 EURO per person, the total cost would be about 100 billion/year for absolutely everyone. Sounds like a lot but as part of the GDP (around 900 billion) it's not that bad and the that's completely ignoring the fact that this would make hiring people lower risk and lower cost for all companies; which tends to do wonders for their profitability (and thus profit taxes). The cumulative budget for existing programs in NL is actually similar to this. Sadly, doing this is not feasible not for economical reasons but for political/moralistic reasons and ingrained (wrong/naieve) assumptions that many people have about how economies work (e.g. that they are balanced and circular). It's simply too radical for a majority. Even socialist/communist countries never went there and in fact had a lot of moralism and ideals around the notion of labor with the state actively trying to control who was allowed to do what and for how much.

134 points by prostoalex 7y ago

If everyone gets free money that will just cause inflation. Get with the program, do something the world needs. Get off your ass and make something. And by something not something the needful. Something well architected.

burlesona 7y ago

I don’t know what’s wrong with that website, but visiting it heats up my phone to the point of being uncomfortable to hold.

luckylion 7y ago
1.2 Megabytes of JavaScript and 900 kilobytes of css will probably do that. They have more JS and stylesheet to present their website about books ... than actual books have letters.
daenz 7y ago
Based on the load time, they must be proxying all requests through your phone.
deleted 7y ago
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franciscop 7y ago

Spaniard here since this article[1] about Spain was prominently noted in the linked article, there isn't a basic income plan here and nothing like that has happened, please stop with making up this kind of stuff about other countries. There is regular unemployment insurance and an unemployment plan targeted to temporary job freezes (ERTE) that has always existed, nothing to do with basic income. I would also like to see BI even if it's just a test, but what we have here has nothing to do with it. The government has just made the rules for these pre-existing unemployment plans a bit more flexible (or arguably not). Also the rent situation has become a lot better. [1] https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4?international=true&r=US https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-... Edit: removed references to the future since I cannot predict it and moved those to the present. Edit 2: it's also interesting to see the original headline was "Spain is moving to" (already false, there's no specific plan now) but in this article the mention was "Spain decided to institute the program" (ridiculous).

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments. There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something to clickbait/fakenews.
- craigsmansion 7y ago
  I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in various European countries. These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about repercussions and side-effects. I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a simple answer to the various social wrongs within your country, and focus on your healthcare; that's where various European models could be used as a partial model, and it's a very good and achievable first step towards a fairer and healthier society.
  - daenz 7y ago
    We never hear about the downsides of other countries models either. It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. That kind of disingenuous promotion doesn't do any favors when it comes to convincing people.
    - voldacar 7y ago
      > It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. Well it's not like UBI is the exception here. This is normal in all forms of political discourse.
    - franciscop 7y ago
      Interestingly enough, 5-10 years ago in Spain you could hear some proponents of private healthcare to compare it with the US. Now I think there's enough understanding that the US model doesn't work that the proponents instead talk about Singapore or other private models, no one compares them to the US anymore. Some arguments against universal health care I have heard in Spain: • Not enough choice, since you cannot e.g. pay more to get better treatment. • It's more expensive, since there's no free market to move prices down. • It's more efficient, since people are not paid to do nothing and impossible to fire (common complain about gvmt jobs here). No beef here, just relaying what I've commonly heard

killIdeas 7y ago

A few points of annoyances- >AOC Why anyone listens to a populist demagogue blows my mind. She has 0 policy experience. Why not quote any random Congressperson? >UBI This usually comes in the form of getting rid of food stamps, ending housing subsidies, removing welfare... None of which are being discussed. The nature of United States politics is getting on wreckless. Free money and demagogry.

deleted 7y ago
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tgv 7y ago

< the Netherlands ... experienced a wave of “basic grant” militancy in the 1980s and ’90s Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a wave of basic grant militancy? > Pilot programs have been set up in several cities and countries — Utrecht There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs. Doesn't bode well for the article.

boomboomsubban 7y ago
>Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a wave of basic grant militancy I know nothing about these events, but it's not hard to believe a large number of people came to support UBI during a period of frequent strikes. With huge groups working together for a common goal, you'd expect some of them would start supporting more radical ideas >There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs. The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program, also here https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-experiment/ https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-expe...
- tgv 7y ago
  > The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program That's what I commented on. The link is nearly 5 years old, and the policy is nowhere near UBI.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.

kazagistar 7y ago
Base assumption, we just print the money. It's how we pay for everything else like wars and subsidies and whatnot. Then, as a courtesy to those people who benefit from a society without excessive inflation (mostly, people with lots of money who are clearly benefiting the most) we take and burn that money, to remove it from circulation.
- mistermann 7y ago
  I was thinking about this idea, if we print money and distribute it "wisely" among the lower income classes, this would debase the currency proportional to the amount printed, harming primarily those who are wealthy, proportional to their wealth, and the money will eventually flow upwards through the financial system, primarily through consumer spending, but ultimately back into the pockets of the wealthy. Of course, inflation in certain categories would need to be taken into consideration, and other factors, but is this idea a non-starter for some reasons I'm overlooking? Excluding politics of course, for the purposes of this mental experiment. There was also an article posted here in the last two weeks or so about a massive global short situation with the USD, I have it in my mind that the particulars of that situation were conveniently complementary to this idea, although I may have that aspect completely backwards.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    Of course. You don't even have to be all that wise about it: just a flat handout disproportionately affects the wealthy. To get around capital flight (people reinvesting in non inflatory currency, sinking the international buying power of said currency), though, it probably needs to be able to economically isolate, or be universal enough that there is nowhere to flee. And when you do that, you might realize just how much everything is built on the ongoing suffering of the global poor.

Causality1 7y ago

What always seems to happen with UBI studies is the proponents point to results that say "the people we gave free money to are happier" but never try to quantify whether that money would have done more good used in a different way.

wjmao88 7y ago
I don't think that's the right question to ask. It should be "Would they be happier if the tax to fund UBI was not levied"
- gonational 7y ago
  This question is insufficient, because, in most large economies, taxation is insufficient to fund a UBI have any reasonable size. Therefore, new money creation (a.k.a. inflation) is the means, and the timeframe for its ruinous effects are too long to study within a single generation.
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    That's a false premise. One of the intended effects of UBI is to universalize the kind of stability of cash flow that the wealthy tend to benefit from under Capitalism. This effectively shifts the balance of both economic and political leverage. In the same way that universal healthcare is less expensive than a balkanized insurance system because the people who want lower prices suddenly have a larger say in the marketplace, UBI would lower the amount of capital wealthy individuals and entities have to put towards assets, and raise the amount that, collectively, a much larger number of UBI recipients have. Under these conditions, it makes a lot less sense to, say, build luxury housing units that are bid up and up by the demand of wealthy investors, compared to seeing that that demand has now been broken up and distributed among lower income would-be buyers and renters and realizing that a lot of money could be made expanding the housing base. It's all about who has the money. Asset prices will fall as wealth is diffused among people who don't stockpile capital, making the amount of income necessary to survive lower. Taxation is a cornerstone of making UBI work. Of course it has a higher chance of failure if it's predicated on grabbing money out of thin air.

lostlogin 7y ago

Below is an article arguing that New Zealand has been testing a UBI for decades with its pension scheme which is available to everyone aged over 65. Be warned - Gareth Morgan has some interesting politics. http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-super/ http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-super/

mikedilger 7y ago
UBI to people outside of the workforce is entirely different. My argument against UBI is that it erodes the desire to work, and we still need nearly everybody of working age to work... until the robots catch up (they still have a lot of catching up to do).
- zozbot234 7y ago
  The whole point of UBI is that it has lower disincentives against work than other kinds of social insurance. When you say that UBI discourages working, that's perhaps true compared w/ no social insurance at all but it's not a very meaningful comparison.
  - mikedilger 7y ago
    I've not heard this. Can you explain how? And are you also suggesting that UBI proponents support abolition of other kinds of social insurance, replacing them with (not augmenting them with) UBI?
    - astura 7y ago
      Yeah, the whole idea of ubi is you replace the patchwork of various social programs (and the overhead of each program) with a basic ubi for everyone. It's supposed to be much more efficient and there's no disincentives to self improvement (because you never lose your benefits). I personally don't actually think it disincentives working very much because people who want to work for more than just the minimum always will and people who really, really don't wanna work find a way to get out of working within the current system. Since my family is full of degenerates, I've seen every trick in the book used. Out of my dad's family (8 kids) only one (1) has meaningfully participated in paid employment.

danesparza 7y ago

I'm glad to see Thomas Paine referenced in this article. So many Americans don't realize that one of America's founding fathers championed the idea of universal basic income back when the USA was just being created. This was something that Andrew Yang pointed out, but was largely ignored.

dependenttypes 7y ago
This is a very one-sided and unsupported (I don't see links to articles) argument. You can do better.
innocentoldguy 7y ago
I hear this a lot but in reading Paine’s writings, I can only find ideas somewhat similar to Social Security payments for elderly people. I have not been able to find anything in Paine’s writings that is synonymous with the concept of UBI. I’m not saying it isn’t in there somewhere, just that I haven’t found it. Would you mind citing specifically where you found this information?
- ineedasername 7y ago
  I'm not familiar with his writings to cite more detail, but it seems to me if he supported a sort of Social Security, then he was advocating for a targeted UBI. Maybe that's just semantics though.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  In Agrarian Justice he proposes to “ create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property” He also makes it very clear that this isn’t some form of charity to help people. But rather about justice
  - danesparza 7y ago
    Wait -- so did I misunderstand? Is this more like reparations to native americans or slaves? I'm confused.

rriepe 7y ago

Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?

jedberg 7y ago
Diminishing returns. The same argument against making the minimum wage $100/hr. At some point the graph crosses.
- jandrewrogers 7y ago
  The dynamics aren't the same, the UBI case has a much weaker negative feedback loop than minimum wage. The percentage of the population that benefits from ratcheting minimum wage is much smaller -- they are intrinsically a permanent minority. Ratcheting UBI, on the other hand benefits a much larger population whose growth as a percentage of the population is effectively unbounded by negative feedback. It would be very easy to arrive at a pathological equilibrium where the majority of the population has a strong incentive to vote for short-sighted expansion of UBI at the expense of the minority. Once in that mode, addressing the pathological consequences of that politically would be very difficult unless mitigations were designed in from the beginning. It is possible to design negative feedback loops for the UBI case to greatly mitigate this issue, but it tends to be avoided by UBI proponents because most solutions have varying degrees of unpalatability.
devit 7y ago
The fact that UBI should not be about giving an amount of money, but rather about giving essentials like housing and food or the equivalent in money, and "doubling" essentials doesn't make as much sense, since you don't have much use for two beds or twice the food.
- jariel 7y ago
  What constitutes 'basic necessity' changes every year. Is a car a basic necessity? What about a mobile? Broadband? Netflix/Cable wouldn't be an obvious choice but many will argue it is. Washing machine? What about food delivery for those over 55? You know those 3-wheel motorized chairs, between scooters and wheelchairs for the elderly ... they are definitely a 'necessity' for some but really quite 'in between' for others. Once UBI is initiated, the arguments to increase UBI will be unyielding. The next generations' youth will make arguments about the 'inhumanity' of such and such. They may have a point, but we will be the 'old timers' thinking they are mostly ridiculous and actually voting.

gonational 7y ago

“Universal basic income” of any reasonable size in, e.g., the US, requires the creation of new money, because taxation is insufficient for its funding. New money derives its value, subtractively, from the value of existing money (“WEALTH”), which is held by individuals who earned that money (“WORKERS“). Some individuals decide not to work because of reasons OTHER THAN retirement, inheritance, disability, and child bearing; these individuals do not contribute directly to production (for convenience, we’ll call this group “LAZYS”). Therefore, giving UBI to LAZYS intrinsically takes WEALTH from WORKERS, regardless of whether not WORKERS also get UBI. In other words, universal basic income can be correctly defined as “transfer payments from WORKERS to LAZYS“.

mistermann 7y ago
> ...from the value of existing money (“WEALTH”), which is held by individuals who earned that money (“WORKERS“). "Earned" and "workers" seem like rather tricky words in this context. This theory sounds like somewhat of the typical strawman (innacurate) understanding of Randian laissez faire economics.
geddy 7y ago
Sounds about right. Like everything in the US, some group is trying to figure out a way to siphon money from those to earn to those who “need it more”. I don’t care to support this, I want all the money I make, thank you very much. I’ll decide who to help with it. Or, I’ll help no one at all with the money I worked for, which according to college students and other people who have no skills and have paid no taxes, makes me “greedy”. Now if you want to fix the screwed up healthcare system, I’m all ears.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  So you'd pay for your own private guards, private fire department, pave the roads you use to drive to work out of your own pocket, and countless other things that are currently tax-payer funded resources? You'd need to be exceptionally wealthy indeed. Or maybe you still think there's some basic things the government should do, and therefore needs to collect taxes for them. In which case we're not arguing over whether or not money gets siphoned, we're just arguing over where you draw the line.

pryce 7y ago

This article might have been more informative if it had placed these ideas in context - the rise Marxism and Communism, which tie the state's mandate to preserving the interests of labour rather than those of capital, provoking in the west the rise of social democracy, which proposes that a balance can be achieved between workers and capital while still preserving capitalism.

mistermann 7y ago
Mark Blyth is an economist who focuses quite a bit on this topic (labor vs capital). Also Thomas Frank (journalist and). Both have good videos on YouTube.

raincom 7y ago

UBI works well in developed countries, whose currency others desire. Developing countries who spend more on imports, can't afford that.

CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
Given the results in developing countries I’m not sure you can say that. It could very well be that the increase in GDP more then makes up for any costs of such policies. https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changing-debate-giving-cash-poor https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changin...

rodolphoarruda 7y ago

Quick conceptual question from a noob in the subject: does the UBI entirely replace social security for elderly individuals or is it added on top of it?

evolve2k 7y ago
UBI sets an income ‘watermark’ of basic income for all. I would say they interact. It would eliminate the pension where desired/planned pension funds were at a similar watermark.. if the pension needed to be more then it would supplement towards this.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  What you are describing sounds like guaranteed income. UBI doesn’t phase out quickly so it would stack with similarly sized pensions. Larger pensions would see little extra money.
ineedasername 7y ago
That seems more like an implementation detail. It certainly could replace social security, but then again in the US social security payouts are tied to how much you've paid into it over the years. Then again, UBI would be paid for, albeit less directly, but tax payments as well so it might not be an important distinction. And of course it would be important to peg the UBI to different costs of living for different regions.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  I'd do the opposite. Peg UBI to the lowest cost of living, and have separate short-term insurance-only programs (on top of UBI) for folks living in higher-cost areas. That way, those who are unwilling or unable to work in the longer term will be incented to move to low-cost areas and relieve pressure elsewhere.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    I'm not sure I agree... literally not sure. It's an interesting idea though.

mikedilger 7y ago

I don't think there is any sort of unanimity regarding UBI. Being compensated for staying home is not UBI, because it is not ongoing. I'm against UBI for reasons that became apparent while playing MMORPGs. Stay with me here and I'll explain. Players of an RPG want a fun game. But they also want to succeed/win. These goals partially conflict. If they prioritize winning too highly, and pester customer support to make the game easier (nerf), the game loses it's fun. Even (in my estimation) to the people who pestered customer support. Because some people aren't self aware enough (kids) to realize that the challenge is what makes it fun. In life, we want to be lazy. I certainly do. And that desire makes me think a UBI would be quite nice. But I also realize that I most certainly would be lazy. I'm already working less than 20 hours per week (pre-COVID) because my mortgage is paid and I don't really need the money anymore. With a UBI I might stop work completely. But as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real economy will suffer. Less hours will be worked, prices will go up, and the economy will be more depressed and sluggish. Robots could save us but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Maybe we are there in very specific manufacturing industries, but no robot is going to install a new roof on my house (for example). So I think we should wait until after all the jobs are taken by robots (rather than thinking it's imminent when it's most certainly not) to institute UBI. Eventually. But not any time soon. OTOH I'm perfectly okay with a means-tested payout to people who really need it.

mikedilger 7y ago
If you downvote me because you disagree, PLEASE share your thoughts on this. I cannot understand why you disagree if you simply downvote.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  There are too many ideas in your post. Some of which make sense, some do not. > Players of an RPG want a fun game. I don't think you understand game theory and design well enough to be commenting. Generally, games are about learning about the world and performing pattern recognition to optimize in a constrained environment. MMORPGs have LOTS of games within them, some of which are completely player driven. > as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real economy will suffer Slack off? Real economy? Suffer? Soft terms that are composed into an unqualified statement. There is sentiment, but no meaning. > Robots could save us but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Now meandering on to robots for some reason, which is not related to previous points. Some forums (like this one) prefer smaller assertions with arguments and typically reward those who track down supporting documentation or revealing technical support (equations, papers, historical references, active research, etc). Ironically, HN posts are preferred when people put work into them :)

habanany 7y ago

Imagine having your own restaurant and someone pass by and places a sign outside that reads “ come in and eat all you want for free “

habanany 7y ago

Imagine having your own restaurant and someone comes and places a sign outside that reads “ come in and eat all you want for free “

ineedasername 7y ago

I think UBI as a single monolithic program for providing minimum resources to provide the basics of food/shelter etc can be much improved on by other means: [0]Instead, I think a constellation of smaller, targeted programs (think best-of-breed) might be more effective and provide a more robust effect: If a society provides universal healthcare, comprehensive unemployment benefits that don't have absurdly low caps, housing & food subsidies for those close to the poverty level, comprehensive disability benefits, and probably a few other things I'm missing, then the need for a "universal" UBI is diminished: That too can be targeted towards people not otherwise covered by the above. The advantage is that each program can be highly tailored to the specific needs & nuances of those seeking that specific benefit, rather than just throwing a larger block of money at people. [0]Note: I'm not particularly attached to this idea. I think is has merit, but my goal is to start a conversation about the idea, sort of pressure-test it, not proclaim it as the way to do things.

zozbot234 7y ago
A patchwork of "targeted" programs is unsatisfactory for many reasons. It lets people fall through the cracks, and it results in unintended effects as the programs are not designed or managed in a consistent way. The need for some sort of minimal income floor is universal, and it should be addressed in a universally-applicable way.
- zhoujianfu 7y ago
  Exactly.. my personal genealogy for discovering UBI was: The government should provide for a base level of food, medicine, housing, and education. But let private industry compete for it, so just provide vouchers for each of those things. But, how to efficiently allocate the amounts for each individual? How much health care voucher vs. food voucher vs. housing voucher vs. education voucher? Ah, just have a universal “health or food or housing or education” voucher! Oh, but what about transportation! Okay, a universal “housing, food, medicine, transportation, and education” voucher. Oh wait, we have one of those already! The dollar.
  - 7y ago

zhoujianfu 7y ago

There are two questions to answer first. 1. Do you think people can best decide what’s best for themselves? 2. Do you care about other people? The Democratic Party answers no and yes. The Republican Party answers no and no. The Libertarian Party answers yes and no. A UBI is the solution to yes and yes.

lazyant 7y ago

No mention of the UBI initiatives in Canada https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot (scrapped by the new Conservative government) and the older https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome (also "free money for surfers"? wtf)

rasalas 7y ago
> (also "free money for surfers"? wtf) I was curious about the surfers as well. It's a reference to something John Rawls wrote in 1988: "[...] those who surf all day off Malibu must find a way to support themselves and would not be entitled to public funds." [1] provides context. In 1991, Philippe van Parijs wrote "Why surfers should be fed: The liberal case for an Unconditional Basic Income", which instead supports Rawls's surfers. [2] [1] https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-two/ https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-tw... [2] https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Surfers.pdf https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Su...

twblalock 7y ago

The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we have now. Let's say we pass a truly universal basic income bill -- every person gets the same amount of money from the government, every month. It wouldn't take long before politicians propose giving more money to teachers and single mothers, or taking benefits away from convicted felons and sex offenders. Over time, bit by bit, we will entitle certain groups of people to more or less money than others. That will happen for the same reason our existing welfare system is the way it is - the voters believe that some people are more deserving of help than others. UBI would not remain universal, or basic, for very long. Given that we can't actually end up with a universal or basic income system, and that we will end up largely re-creating the same kinds of entitlements that characterize our current welfare systems, we might as well just improve and extend our current systems.

YinLuck- 7y ago
While this is always a threat, it does not mean it is inevitable. 1 person, 1 vote is a universal principle that seems to be holding across the [democratic] world. If anything, the momentum seems to be towards giving the vote back to the few who lose it (felons, etc)
Jedd 7y ago
> The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we have now. That's not a problem with UBI. IMO that scenario is not likely, let alone guaranteed. I appreciate a pessimistic outlook as much as the next guy, but I don't think we should abandon UBI because you think it may change in the future.
- xsdklfsdfklj 7y ago
  the argument against it [1] is practically that if it is being pushed by the current system it is to benefit the current system. As in, "uber needs a safety net for their drivers" kinda of vision, which given the track record in the US is very likely. [1] https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/universal-basic-income-inequality-work https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/universal-basic-income-inequa...

ralusek 7y ago

I am a free market advocate, libertarian-lite, that believes that UBI is the correct social safety net. I am clearly not unique in this regard, as this actually seems to be the most common type of UBI advocate I've encountered. That being said, the one lingering question I have comes down to a variant of inflation. I think most people think of inflation as something that only happens as a result of monetary policy, but that's not entirely true. Let's say that UBI could be entirely funded through taxation, no new money is introduced into the system. There is still a form of inflation on certain goods. For example, let's take an extreme example of redistribution: we take all of the money from a billionaire and redistribute it. One billionaire doesn't buy 100,000,000 TVs for their house, but 1,000,000 people with $1,000 might each buy a TV. 1,000,000 people with an extra $1,000 has a much larger impact on demand for typical consumer goods than having that wealth be more concentrated. Of course stricter taxation of the uber-wealthy would have impacts lessening demand for large investments, so it's not a blanket inflation in the same way that just printing money would be, but it still has all of the same characteristics of inflation within certain consumer markets. It's all very complicated, and I would like to see it modeled. If I'm a landlord, and I know that my tenants now have an extra $12,000 a year, do I raise rents? I think the natural argument is that because the scarcity or value of my real estate didn't actually change, I open myself to being undercut by competition if I try to arbitrarily raise the value of my property to reflect increased demand. But the problem is that it might not be entirely true that the value of my real estate didn't change. When I have to call a plumber, or gardener, or construction worker for a remodel, are their rates going to be the same? Are rates going to go up or down? It's very hard for me to know for sure. It reminds me a bit of debt. Debt shouldn't necessarily produce inflation, but it definitely does. Do you think houses would cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars if the average person didn't have access to debt? Would it cost 50k+ in order to attend college? No. Access to debt dramatically increases the prices on the things purchased by the available debt, regardless of whether or not this theoretically is meant to produce inflation. My concern is that, as with access to debt, the increase in wealth will be met with an increase in cost across the board, and not due to exploitation, but because the effects are that most consumer products and services actually just end up costing as a natural reflection of increased demand.

rafd 7y ago

jillesvangurp 7y ago

Most countries already have programs to prevent people from starving or freezing to death and those countries also tend to have elaborate health care programs, and provisions for those not able to work. Even the US has programs like this in most states though you could argue that compared to other countries they are a combination of expensive, inefficient, and ineffective. Basic income is formalizing the status quo that there's a minimum standard for all that basically translates into everybody receiving those same guarantees but simply with less bureaucracy & moralistic BS around it. Basically it gets rid off or vastly simplifies the business of collecting and handing out social security insurances and different types of benefits. The cost for this in some countries actually rivals the benefits handed out. E.g. unemployment benefit programs have amazing amounts of bureaucracy associated in many countries. For those who work, what changes is that part of their income now comes from basic income and they pay taxes over the rest. For their employers, they pay less salary and have less bureaucracy around things like insurance programs and social security (all taken care off). Also things like minimum incomes go away: they pay market prices for what somebody does for them. State pensions, unemployment benefits, sick leave compensation, etc. all basically fold into this basic income. If you want more, you work and pay for extra insurances yourself. If you don't, basic income is there for you. For those that are not part of the labor market, i.e. approaching (or already over) 50% of the population in many countries, what changes is that their life becomes a lot simpler. Either they are happy enough to get by on basic income or they secure some additional source of income. Either way, we're already paying for their health care, housing, and food as as society. It's a much less radical change than people think. IMHO this could actually unlock the labor market in lots of countries. There are a lot of weird rules around unemployment that actually make it unattractive or hard for people to work. E.g. people close to their retirement age are expensive to fire and therefore unattractive to hire in lots of countries. People on benefits are actually would risk losing their benefits if they take some job on the side. So, they don't work until they find something "proper", which for some never happens. Of course this kind of debate always raises the question "who pays for this?". The people that ask this never look at the other side of the debate: how much do we save by eliminating and dismantling the byzantine bureaucracy responsible for the current system. Nobody has actually run that experiment. Also, we have plenty of taxes left and plenty of wiggle room with things like VAT, fuel tax, profit tax and income tax. It boils down to a quite simple formula: total cost = X*#people. If you have say 17M+ people (NL, my home country) and assume 500 EURO per person, the total cost would be about 100 billion/year for absolutely everyone. Sounds like a lot but as part of the GDP (around 900 billion) it's not that bad and the that's completely ignoring the fact that this would make hiring people lower risk and lower cost for all companies; which tends to do wonders for their profitability (and thus profit taxes). The cumulative budget for existing programs in NL is actually similar to this. Sadly, doing this is not feasible not for economical reasons but for political/moralistic reasons and ingrained (wrong/naieve) assumptions that many people have about how economies work (e.g. that they are balanced and circular). It's simply too radical for a majority. Even socialist/communist countries never went there and in fact had a lot of moralism and ideals around the notion of labor with the state actively trying to control who was allowed to do what and for how much.