7 ms·

Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments. There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe some

• craigsmansion 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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
      • mcv 6y ago
        My impression is, if you compare health care costs across various wealthy countries, it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised health care. Netherland has universal but privatised healthcare, and has one of the most expensive health care systems in Europe, costing more than half that of the American health care system. And it's not particularly better than the more socialised healthcare systems of the surrounding countries, as far as I can tell. And the only place in health care where you can have a free market at all, is in elective treatments. Treatments that you can choose not to use when they are too expensive. For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes, and that's a situation that's easily abused by profit-seeking companies.
        • zozbot234 6y ago
          > it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised health care Causation goes the other way. If your healthcare is cheap, you might as well socialize it, and it will mostly be OKish; if it's too expensive (as in the U.S.) you have no chance of running a satisfactory socialized system. Switzerland has largely private healthcare and mandatory ("universal") health insurance, but its costs are not too high despite it being a comparatively small country with inherently higher costs of providing such services. > For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes This is not really true. There is such a thing as pointless overtreatment, and the right balance of benefits vs. costs can only be reached with increased price transparency on the part of providers.
          • laurencerowe 6y ago
            Aneurin Bevan, The Minister of Health under which the NHS was created, said that to win support of the doctors, "I stuffed their mouths with gold".
          • erpellan 6y ago
            The mistake we all make is thinking the market includes us, the patients. If there is anything resembling a 'normal' (price discovery) market, it's between hospitals and other care providers and the government. The entity with the funds can foster healthy competition between the entities with the product/service. If you need medical attention, you need medical attention. A treated patient is not the customer, they are the output.
  • Ididntdothis 6y ago
    "focus on your healthcare" Very true. No UBI without health care for all.
    • craigsmansion 6y ago
      Yes. I'd say: No UBI without good affordable health care for all. No UBI without good affordable education for all. No UBI without humane unemployment benefits for all. No UBI for all, because you already managed it.
      • zhoujianfu 6y ago
        Wouldn’t a (high enough) UBI mean the free market would create “affordable” education and “affordable” health care and obviate the need for unemployment benefits?
        • zozbot234 6y ago
          There is no free market in education credentials or in healthcare. Both sectors are heavily regulated by the government.
          • chongli 6y ago
            Regulation isn’t the reason those sectors aren’t free markets. On the contrary, regulation exists because they can’t be free markets. Both lead to market failures due to information disparities, principal-agent problems, massive externalities, and a lack of free choice (in the case of health care).
            • zozbot234 6y ago
              The issue is the amount of regulation, of course. Regulatory capture can have worse effects than most market failures, and healthcare is one of the most obviously "captured" sectors.
            • dantheman 6y ago