4 ms·

I imagine for most people, and I’m talking about the ones that would continue keep at their their existing job, if there was an extra $2000/month spare cash com

by jonkho 6y ago

I imagine for most people, and I’m talking about the ones that would continue keep at their their existing job, if there was an extra $2000/month spare cash coming in or $4000 for a couple, it wouldn’t be a difficult stretch of imagination to say they would spend the money on the two most immediately obvious things: 1) upgrade their car 2) upgrade their shelter. If everyone is now affording a new $1000/month car payment and a $2000/month in extra rent budget, how would this ultimately not lead to people trying to outbid each other and cause inflation, especially rent? Wouldn’t rent or mortgage payments essentially rise to absorb this new quantity of money? Would this be essentially a transfer of wealth to landlords?

andarleen 6y ago
A transfer of wealth would indeed be an issue. But I am wondering, would UBI give more people the option to live outside large cities, given that the scarcity of income is no longer an issue? And as such the demand for rent would go down? Will try and comment less, because debate on HN gets heavily penalised unless it conforms to certain patterns. But yeah UBI and inflation / transfers of wealth are an interesting topic.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Germany might be an example to look at this. We have welfare that's paid out wherever you live. It's conditional in so far that it's expected that you look for a job and aren't rich, but that's about it. It has a fixed money component (~400€/month) and covers rent (up to some amount that's set locally, depending on the local rent prices), utilities, health insurance etc directly. Therefore, if you're okay with the amount of money you'd get, you'd probably be better off if you're not living in a large city, because, rent aside, city living is a bit more expensive. Also, considering that you're supposed to look for work, living in a city (where the jobs are, if they are anywhere) would increase the chances of you being expected to take a job, which you wouldn't have to in more rural areas. People still move to the cities, even though the job market isn't promising for low-skill workers there either. There are certainly many reasons, but some I believe to be involved: it's harder to get an apartment when you're on social benefits (even more so if not in the community you're currently living in), it's harder to live in a rural area if you don't have a car (which you'll likely not be able to buy while on benefits), few people have the means to move when money is tight.
  - andarleen 6y ago
    I have to read more on how this works in Germany, but the idea of UBI would be that everyone would get 400 eur. I know that is not possible right now without taxing individual income even more, and as such my view is we should come up with tech we can tax. I dont have the specific silver bullet for how it could work, but would it be possible to tax every robot that replaces a human worker? Or tax anything that 10x’s productivity in any field, but at a level where it still is very motivating for an investor to make that 10x investment by letting them keep 8x of the output?
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Or tax anything that 10x’s productivity in any field, but at a level where it still is very motivating for an investor to make that 10x investment by letting them keep 8x of the output? That'd only work on monopolies where the company would actually have a 1000% margin. For most things, you'll invest in some great new automation, but so will your competition. Now you've both increased productivity and if you try to cash in your 10x profits, your competitor will simply take 5x profits, massively undercut your prices and you'll be gone very soon. Productivity gains will typically lead to lower prices, that's why meat, milk etc is dirt cheap these days, if we still had food prices like in the 50ies but with today's productivity, any secret illuminati meetings of the 1% would see a lot more people arriving on tractors ;)
ajsnigrutin 6y ago
First of all, if ~50% of people work in a country (from age 0 to pensioners), they continued to work, and got 2k extra 'free money', they'd have to pay more than those 2k back in taxes, to cover the 2k for people who don't work at all. If we somehow took 2k/person/month from some nonexisting trillionaire, who has the money to finance it for everyone, then probably yes, prices would go up, because everybody has now 2k/month more to spend.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- andarleen 6y ago
  Not if the extra “free” money are covered by increased productivity due to automation, as it happened over the past decades. Typically the main beneficiaries from increased productivity are shareholders or company founders, and that is why money gets clogged in a few hands. Workers should also benefit more from from it as it is also their productivity that grew 10x along with that of the company. So we are not really talking about free money, we are talking about money you are entitled to anyway. Sure it is your company that invested in new tech to grow productivity, but it is the society as a whole that enabled it - try making robots or new tech in a society ridden by unemployment, inequality, civil unrest and so on. Furthermore, UBI would reduce corporate socialism and get us back to a free flow of capital, as the wealth would be fairly spread across society.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    The issue is that we all already benefit from increased automation and new technologies. We all carry computers with us with powerful batteries and access to the internet. It's the (much rarer) high-skill workers whose productivity has shot through the roof by using technology as leverage. The individual low-skill worker's productivity hasn't really increased by a lot, unless you say "we've built a robot that does 95% of the work, but let's attribute all of the output to the remaining 3 humans". > Furthermore, UBI would reduce corporate socialism and get us back to a free flow of capital, as the wealth would be fairly spread across society. The issue with "fair" is that it's very subjective. Some may say "it's fair when everyone has the same", others may argue that it's unfair when somebody who works hard gets the same as someone who chooses not to work at all.

by jonkho 6y ago

andarleen 6y ago

A transfer of wealth would indeed be an issue. But I am wondering, would UBI give more people the option to live outside large cities, given that the scarcity of income is no longer an issue? And as such the demand for rent would go down? Will try and comment less, because debate on HN gets heavily penalised unless it conforms to certain patterns. But yeah UBI and inflation / transfers of wealth are an interesting topic.

luckylion 6y ago
Germany might be an example to look at this. We have welfare that's paid out wherever you live. It's conditional in so far that it's expected that you look for a job and aren't rich, but that's about it. It has a fixed money component (~400€/month) and covers rent (up to some amount that's set locally, depending on the local rent prices), utilities, health insurance etc directly. Therefore, if you're okay with the amount of money you'd get, you'd probably be better off if you're not living in a large city, because, rent aside, city living is a bit more expensive. Also, considering that you're supposed to look for work, living in a city (where the jobs are, if they are anywhere) would increase the chances of you being expected to take a job, which you wouldn't have to in more rural areas. People still move to the cities, even though the job market isn't promising for low-skill workers there either. There are certainly many reasons, but some I believe to be involved: it's harder to get an apartment when you're on social benefits (even more so if not in the community you're currently living in), it's harder to live in a rural area if you don't have a car (which you'll likely not be able to buy while on benefits), few people have the means to move when money is tight.
- andarleen 6y ago
  I have to read more on how this works in Germany, but the idea of UBI would be that everyone would get 400 eur. I know that is not possible right now without taxing individual income even more, and as such my view is we should come up with tech we can tax. I dont have the specific silver bullet for how it could work, but would it be possible to tax every robot that replaces a human worker? Or tax anything that 10x’s productivity in any field, but at a level where it still is very motivating for an investor to make that 10x investment by letting them keep 8x of the output?
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Or tax anything that 10x’s productivity in any field, but at a level where it still is very motivating for an investor to make that 10x investment by letting them keep 8x of the output? That'd only work on monopolies where the company would actually have a 1000% margin. For most things, you'll invest in some great new automation, but so will your competition. Now you've both increased productivity and if you try to cash in your 10x profits, your competitor will simply take 5x profits, massively undercut your prices and you'll be gone very soon. Productivity gains will typically lead to lower prices, that's why meat, milk etc is dirt cheap these days, if we still had food prices like in the 50ies but with today's productivity, any secret illuminati meetings of the 1% would see a lot more people arriving on tractors ;)

ajsnigrutin 6y ago

First of all, if ~50% of people work in a country (from age 0 to pensioners), they continued to work, and got 2k extra 'free money', they'd have to pay more than those 2k back in taxes, to cover the 2k for people who don't work at all. If we somehow took 2k/person/month from some nonexisting trillionaire, who has the money to finance it for everyone, then probably yes, prices would go up, because everybody has now 2k/month more to spend.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
andarleen 6y ago
Not if the extra “free” money are covered by increased productivity due to automation, as it happened over the past decades. Typically the main beneficiaries from increased productivity are shareholders or company founders, and that is why money gets clogged in a few hands. Workers should also benefit more from from it as it is also their productivity that grew 10x along with that of the company. So we are not really talking about free money, we are talking about money you are entitled to anyway. Sure it is your company that invested in new tech to grow productivity, but it is the society as a whole that enabled it - try making robots or new tech in a society ridden by unemployment, inequality, civil unrest and so on. Furthermore, UBI would reduce corporate socialism and get us back to a free flow of capital, as the wealth would be fairly spread across society.
- luckylion 6y ago
  The issue is that we all already benefit from increased automation and new technologies. We all carry computers with us with powerful batteries and access to the internet. It's the (much rarer) high-skill workers whose productivity has shot through the roof by using technology as leverage. The individual low-skill worker's productivity hasn't really increased by a lot, unless you say "we've built a robot that does 95% of the work, but let's attribute all of the output to the remaining 3 humans". > Furthermore, UBI would reduce corporate socialism and get us back to a free flow of capital, as the wealth would be fairly spread across society. The issue with "fair" is that it's very subjective. Some may say "it's fair when everyone has the same", others may argue that it's unfair when somebody who works hard gets the same as someone who chooses not to work at all.