6 ms·

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

by rriepe 7y ago

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.
  - rafd 7y ago
    If we could afford to live in a world where everyone was given $5000/mth, would we want such a world? (where work was optional) I think yes. ...can we afford that? At this point, probably not. But is it something to strive for? I think it is eventually possible to get the costs of providing basic needs to everyone (say, through automation) to the point where they can be easily covered by taxes on those who choose to work. I fear though, that housing is an obstacle to this vision, because in many countries, people rely on housing to be an investment (ex. my parents house is the majority of their retirement), and so the politicians protect it as such, and developers have weird incentives... and so the prices don't go down.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      I do not think such a world is desirable. It would just distort markets. Everyone will charge more for everything, starting with rent. If you cover the basic needs of "everyone", the number of everyone will just go up and up and up until you can't cover the basic needs anymore. Do you think earth can sustain infinite people? There has to be a mechanism preventing people to increase their number to unsustainable levels. The current world already does a really bad job at that, I don't think we have to make this worse. I think the most desirable world is one with a build-in pruning process, where only the most adapted people survive, thus preventing the number of humans to reach unsustainable levels, while still progressing to greater heights. After all, if you just put a cap on the number of children people are allowed to have you're just going to stagnate. It's better to have a large pool to select the fittest and prune the rest, resulting in the same number at the end, only with much better quality. Historically, war was such a pruning process. But I don't think it was an especially good one.
  - zanny 7y ago
    > 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. For one, we are likely to hit post-scarcity singularity on our current technological trajectory before generations of UBI queens can cripple capitalism with washing machine demands. For two, there is no real "wrong" amount of UBI. Not in an objective sense. 100% GDP UBI would simply imply all wealth transfers are 100% taxed by the government and then universally redistributed evenly by said government. It totally breaks capitalism and removes the profit incentive from everything, but that is basically libertarian communism. Someone would probably argue for it. Likewise, where we are now with 0 redistribution we see the fruits of innovation disproportionately benefiting the rich economically for decades. The consequences of that transfer from the poor to the rich encompass a loss of political and economic influence by the poor and an upward trend in poor health and mental illness. In the same way people will argue how much free speech, or guns rights, or monopolism, etc is "enough" or "right" is subjective and ideologically polarizing, the "right" amount of UBI will have to be decided by the socities that adopt it. If you have a functioning democracy you should be fine. Though for many nations of the Earth that might be an important first step to consider today.
CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
An UBI based on dividends such as from a land value tax, or a carbon trading, would follow GDP more or less. No reason not to double it if possible in a sustainable way.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  LVT is great. You could go even further and nationalize all natural resources (oil) and sell/rent them at market rates.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?" Nothing. There's a reason the US Social Security program is one of the so-called the "third rail(s) of politics" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_of_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_of_politics). Once a UBI program is started, the UBI receiving population will just keep voting for politicians that keep raising it and raising it ... until the system collapses. Already, most young people entering the workforce today expect to get nothing from the Social Security program when they reach retirement age despite paying quite a bit into it. And yet we want to repeat this with UBI?

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

by 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.
- rafd 7y ago
  If we could afford to live in a world where everyone was given $5000/mth, would we want such a world? (where work was optional) I think yes. ...can we afford that? At this point, probably not. But is it something to strive for? I think it is eventually possible to get the costs of providing basic needs to everyone (say, through automation) to the point where they can be easily covered by taxes on those who choose to work. I fear though, that housing is an obstacle to this vision, because in many countries, people rely on housing to be an investment (ex. my parents house is the majority of their retirement), and so the politicians protect it as such, and developers have weird incentives... and so the prices don't go down.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    I do not think such a world is desirable. It would just distort markets. Everyone will charge more for everything, starting with rent. If you cover the basic needs of "everyone", the number of everyone will just go up and up and up until you can't cover the basic needs anymore. Do you think earth can sustain infinite people? There has to be a mechanism preventing people to increase their number to unsustainable levels. The current world already does a really bad job at that, I don't think we have to make this worse. I think the most desirable world is one with a build-in pruning process, where only the most adapted people survive, thus preventing the number of humans to reach unsustainable levels, while still progressing to greater heights. After all, if you just put a cap on the number of children people are allowed to have you're just going to stagnate. It's better to have a large pool to select the fittest and prune the rest, resulting in the same number at the end, only with much better quality. Historically, war was such a pruning process. But I don't think it was an especially good one.
- zanny 7y ago
  > 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. For one, we are likely to hit post-scarcity singularity on our current technological trajectory before generations of UBI queens can cripple capitalism with washing machine demands. For two, there is no real "wrong" amount of UBI. Not in an objective sense. 100% GDP UBI would simply imply all wealth transfers are 100% taxed by the government and then universally redistributed evenly by said government. It totally breaks capitalism and removes the profit incentive from everything, but that is basically libertarian communism. Someone would probably argue for it. Likewise, where we are now with 0 redistribution we see the fruits of innovation disproportionately benefiting the rich economically for decades. The consequences of that transfer from the poor to the rich encompass a loss of political and economic influence by the poor and an upward trend in poor health and mental illness. In the same way people will argue how much free speech, or guns rights, or monopolism, etc is "enough" or "right" is subjective and ideologically polarizing, the "right" amount of UBI will have to be decided by the socities that adopt it. If you have a functioning democracy you should be fine. Though for many nations of the Earth that might be an important first step to consider today.

CuriousSkeptic 7y ago

An UBI based on dividends such as from a land value tax, or a carbon trading, would follow GDP more or less. No reason not to double it if possible in a sustainable way.

akvadrako 7y ago
LVT is great. You could go even further and nationalize all natural resources (oil) and sell/rent them at market rates.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

> "Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?" Nothing. There's a reason the US Social Security program is one of the so-called the "third rail(s) of politics" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_of_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail_of_politics). Once a UBI program is started, the UBI receiving population will just keep voting for politicians that keep raising it and raising it ... until the system collapses. Already, most young people entering the workforce today expect to get nothing from the Social Security program when they reach retirement age despite paying quite a bit into it. And yet we want to repeat this with UBI?