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Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

• rocketpastsix 6y ago
  Given everything that is going on, the case should be fairly straight forward to build. In fact, Yang has bene on top of it since Covid19 took hold in America. I truly hope UBI gains more popularity and strength going forward.
  • Ididntdothis 6y ago
    UBI has a lot of practical problems. Why not start at universal health care or wider affordability of affordable housing and education? Without that any UBI will immediately be eaten up by rising prices in these areas.
    • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      That's a common urban legend. The free market drives prices down, when demand goes up for flexible markets. It's easy to throw one or two economic terms around, but its a lot more complicated than 'people have more money == prices rise'.
      • ketanmaheshwari 6y ago
        I am really curious to learn more about why UBI will not drive the prices up. Could you indicate any articles that elaborate on this?
        • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
          Better question: why would it? Economics is complicated. In a free market there's no way to distinguish 'UBI money' from any other kind. Try jacking your price up - somebody else will have a sale and eat your lunch.
          • MiroF 6y ago
            But if everyone has more liquidity access, that drives prices up. You don't have to do something like distinguish UBI money for this to be true.
            • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
              Again, more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. Driving prices down. This happens too. As well a a dozen other things. Economics is complicated. Playing dot-to-dot across the space with cherry-picked examples is not very useful.
              • deleted 6y ago
                [deleted]
              • Ididntdothis 6y ago
                “more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. “ Not in housing, not in health care and not in education. In other sectors, yes.
                • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
                  Not clear. They build new houses. Health care hires and expands. New schools open all the time. And volume decreases cost in those areas too. Now they may be over-regulated and broken; no argument there.
                  • Ididntdothis 6y ago
                    Are you saying that housing, education and health care haven’t seen massive price increases over the last few decades?
                    • drunkonpappy 6y ago
                      He didn't say that at all He alluded to how those systems being over-regulated and broken prevent the usual economic factors from working. E.g. if you don't allow people to build new houses in certain places then that makes it quite easy for housing prices to go up in those areas
        • ImprobableTruth 6y ago
          It's not directly UBI, but strong welfare programs don't seem to drive up rent prices. Since UBI with a corresponding progressive tax is equivalent to welfare, I'd assume it'd have similar results.
      • MiroF 6y ago
        > That's a common urban legend. Try foundational macroeconomic principle. But it wouldn't even get that far, the Fed would just raise rates to offset the would-be increase in aggregate demand.
        • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
          What principle? Mistaking "money supply vs interest rates" for something else?
      • Ididntdothis 6y ago
        “people have more money == prices rise'.” I believe in markets with scarce goods and no alternatives this is the case. In healthcare you have no alternatives. And as long as housing supply is short, you have no alternatives there either. So people end up paying whatever is being asked for. In other markets more money won’t raise prices because the purchase is optional and there are competing alternatives.
    • happytoexplain 6y ago
      It seems to me that many people are trying desperately to push all of these proposals, and it's been a borderline immobile uphill battle on all fronts. If any of these gain traction, we should celebrate, rather than accusing people of not yet achieving the others. It also makes sense that UBI would be the first to reach the staging phase, since it's the easiest to explain and the easiest to implement. Of course, your concern is still totally valid if UBI will indeed be pointless without the other problems solved. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to say "start with universal health care and affordability of housing and education". That's a huge thing to "start with", and in fact we're already deep into the fight for them.
      • pessimizer 6y ago
        > It also makes sense that UBI would be the first to reach the staging phase, since it's the easiest to explain and the easiest to implement. As opposed to socialized healthcare, which has a long track record and a variety of implementations in every industrialized nation to use as inspiration? We would literally just have to expand programs that we already have (such as the VA or Medicare/Medicaid) to start. Healthcare free at the point of service also takes no effort to explain - the "Medicare For All" marketing is actually designed to explain how easy it would be to implement.
      • Ididntdothis 6y ago
        "Of course, your concern is still totally valid if UBI will indeed be pointless without the other problems solved. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to say "start with universal health care and affordability of housing and education". That's a huge thing to "start with", and in fact we're already deep into the fight for them. " If you can't solve these issues, UBI simply can't work. It's basically a distraction from urgent problems that should and could be solved now but may cost money. Considering that UBI is often pushed by billionaires I wonder if that's the secret plan.
    • yboris 6y ago
      A response to what happens to markets when people have more money: More people enter and participate in markets, which makes markets work better. Markets behave better with more participants than with fewer participants. UBI is a net positive on this point.
      • MiroF 6y ago
        Basic macro says this policy would increase AD, which would increase inflation in a vacuum. What would really happen is that the Fed would raise rates, which would increase the barrier to market participation and we would be back to where we started.
    • LAMike 6y ago
      Health is a spectrum. Mental health & physical health are problems easier solved with money. Most major cities have rent control of some sort, if not, it's not that hard to start new towns with nation wide UBI. There are other places in this country other than SF, LA and NY
    • alexashka 6y ago
      Because Andrew Yang is a people pleasing demagogue, who operates under 'everyone deserves the same number of basic goodies' and 'I am here for the under-privileged' as his core messages. Facing reality without cherry-picking problems the rich create while ignoring the problems the poor create would undermine his ability to people please the poor and get elected. It's all bullshit - I don't know how many Obamas and Yangs it'll take for people to realize that there is no benevolent politician that can make the problems of the poor go away without having the poor change their ways, the same way there is no trainer that can make you get in shape without you working your ass off. UBI or not - smart/creative people would rather not live among or deal with self destructive, dangerous dummies. Self destructive, dangerous dummies are being very actively replaced by robots who don't have the downsides of human beings. The only bargaining chip the dummies have, is that they are still necessary for the infrastructure to function. This power will be eroded away, until one day, the dummies' only argument will be that of a street beggar - won't you spare some change? And the smart/creative class will throw some change their way, they'll call it UBI.
  • LAMike 6y ago
    "the case should be fairly straight forward to build" Jack built an app for this exact use case.
• paulcole 6y ago
  Why can’t we outsource basic income to the private sector? Like VCs who give money to people who want to sit at home instead of lighting money on fire to exploit taxi drivers?
  • Infinitesimus 6y ago
    VCs primarily care about outsized monetary returns and you don't get that from giving money to people. Tax-deductible charitable donations are probably the closest way to incentivize the private sector but VCs was more, not just to stay flat and most businesses don't make decisions for "the greater good" over more $$. Can you think of a way to incentivize private experiments in UBI?
    • luckylion 6y ago
      > Can you think of a way to incentivize private experiments in UBI? Contracts that guarantee the recipient will pay X% of their income to the UBI source over the next Y years. Claims are that people's creative and productive power will be unleashed. If true, their income will rise dramatically, and they'll pay lots of "taxes" back to the UBI source.
      • MiroF 6y ago
        So.. loans, but with way shittier terms for the borrower?
        • luckylion 6y ago
          Loans that automatically disappear after X years with interest payments that only apply if you make more than $Y (Y = UBI paid out). It wouldn't be the person asking for a loan that speculates on them earning enough to pay it back. It would be the entity giving the loan speculating on the person earning so much more in the next few years that the income-percentage makes them lots of money. Of course, for it to test UBI, the giving entity must not be allowed to decide whether they accept someone or not, that would lead to them picking and choosing, like insurance companies with pre-existing conditions. However, if the claims about UBI are true, they won't need to, as even the odd slacker will be more than offset by the exploding productivity of the overwhelming majority. I'm sure Dorsey could fund it, the question is whether he actually believes in the claims of giant benefits and virtually no slackers.
• throwaway_jobs 6y ago
  I don’t think there is any good way to test UBI at any small scale, I think there needs to be a critical mass of people who can pay their housing and food costs how society and economic activity would be reshaped under such a system.
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    US centric opinion: Social Security and Medicare are already UBI at large scale, but age tested (62 is the minimum age, 70 the max for social security benefits, age 65 qualified you for Medicare, US universal healthcare for seniors). Caveat: you needed to have worked and earned certain amounts to qualify for Medicare and your benefits level. To test at small scale, you'd need an endowment that would use the investment returns to pay folks their UBI, and then payroll taxes that would include OSDI so they'd gracefully land onto Social Security and Medicare when they reach the age that qualified them. Pick small cohorts: students in their early 20s, some middle age folks mid career, and folks near the end of their career in dead end industries (ie coal). Observe and report. If you can "cross the chasm" (see: companies going remote first after being forced to see if it can be done with COVID), it then becomes PR getting an audience with the Fed and Congress to rejigger monetary and fiscal policy to print and distribute accordingly. Can't see we can't print, money printer is running exceedingly fast right now [1], but can we put that money in the pockets of average citizens instead of simply inflating asset values of the richest Americans? That's the question. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      Seems like nonsense to me to say 'this is universal income just except it's not universal.' If you take away the 'universal' then you're missing the entire point.
      • toomuchtodo 6y ago
        This is policy and PR hacking in lieu of having incredibly deep pockets. Sorry to tell you that real life is messy. Think of it as growth hacking. This is a sales endeavor. You must sell that the current form of capitalism is fundamentally broken. This is no different than contributing to the "right" Congressional candidates with few dollars so they control hundreds of billions of dollars of policy (or in this case, trillions of dollars). This isn't anything new or weird. NGOs face this issue all the time, having to prove out models before they'll get gov or foundation funding.
• bigbob2 6y ago
  Maybe he can use it to endorse another moderate Democrat who would never dream of enacting such a policy.
  • monadic2 6y ago
    > moderate Democrat What the fuck is this bullshit? Edit: apparently people like politician dick served up by the media.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• exabrial 6y ago
  Which is incredibly charitable! Opponents to UBI only oppose the income source being tax; which is a forced wealth transfer (opposite of my money my choice).
  • MiroF 6y ago
    > opposite of my money my choice you cite this as if it's some commonly accepted moral principle
    • luckylion 6y ago
      Money is just a placeholder for value produced. You usually produce value by doing something with your brain and body. "My money = my choice" is essentially "my body = my choice".
      • MiroF 6y ago
        I don't feel like spending my time debating libertarians, but just know that the little old "my body is my own means I have complete control over all wealth and taxation is never justified" syllogism is far from unassailable or widely accepted.
        • luckylion 6y ago
          I'm not a libertarian, but I generally agree with "my body = my choice". I don't mind taxes in general (if fair and reasonable, which I don't think the taxes in my country are), but the general principle still applies and coming out against it does sound weird to me. Taxes are a necessary evil to have a society, but I don't think starting from a position of "you should not have control over your body" is going to lead to models of societies that I'd like to live in. And again, you can remove the money part completely, it's just easier to use money than barter for everything.
          • MiroF 6y ago
            > "you should not have control over your body" That's not the part of the syllogism most people take issue with, you're being disingenuous. If fair and reasonable taxes are okay, then it seems like you aren't intrinsically entitled to all wealth that flows from your body, so then it seems like if the reasons for UBI are compelling enough, a taxation system to fund it would be justified. It also seems unclear why you should be naturally entitled to all your wealth, because you don't produce wealth in a vacuum, but rather as part of a system of social cooperation - that is what determines what you are entitled to. Then, it seems like we should start with what the rules of a reasonable system of social cooperation ought to be, rather than starting from self-ownership. That's a sketch of a potential response to your syllogism. It seems equally silly to me to structure society so that just because you happened to be born into poverty, your life choices are substantially constrained due to no choice of your own.
• macspoofing 6y ago
  What is the actual case for Basic Income? I hear that it 'solves' the problem of automation ... except that it doesn't actually solve it AT ALL. If automation will lead to high unemployment, basic income will do nothing for that. It will send cash to people who aren't working so they can provide for basic necessities, but our welfare state already does that. And we know that segments of society that are wholly dependent on government suffer despair, drug/alcohol abuse and crime - UBI does nothing to solve that either. And of course, UBI in rich nations does nothing for the third world, which will be hit HARDER by automation and doesn't have the wealth to give every citizen cash. There are also major structural ambiguities with Basic Income that are glossed over by supporters, namely the libertarian-types think that it will replace the welfare state, and progressives/leftists AT BEST think that it will complement the welfare state (i.e. that segment will NOT allow UBI to replace any of their cherished social programs). So if UBI has any chance of broad support, it will not save a dime, but rather add a tremendous amount to government spending. In the end, UBI solves nothings and comes with its own set of baggage.
  • myvoiceismypass 6y ago
    "And we know that segments of society that are wholly dependent on government suffer despair, drug/alcohol abuse and crime." Citations please.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    > segments of society that are wholly dependent on government suffer despair, drug/alcohol abuse and crime Is there a causal relationship in the direction implied by this sentence? There's a correlation among unemployment, drug/alcohol abuse, depression, crime, homelessness, suicide, and probably several other negative things in society. It's hard to tease out the causal linkages, meaning that if something like UBI allows some people to quit their jobs, it's not clear that that quitting would have the same correlation to depression/abuse/suicide as today's sources of joblessness do.
  • ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    UBI with a progressive tax is just welfare without the bureaucratic overhead. Even in countries where there already is a strong welfare state, I'd bet that UBI would be an improvement due to reducing the stress of applying for unemployment benefits.
• monadic2 6y ago
  Who gives a shit? Edit: apparently you can just buy the approval of people on this site. Plz advertise going rate of values in profile.
• ravenstine 6y ago
  I don't understand the optimism around UBI. UBI is a band-aid and a sign that a system is actually failing. I get why some people, especially intellectuals, want UBI, but they seem to believe that UBI is free of consequence. If society "needs" UBI, that means that not enough people can build wealth or that the welfare system isn't effective. Handing people money isn't going to change the fact that too much of the economy is bolstered by massive amounts of debt. UBI may just perpetuate the problem and encourage more debt to be taken out. One argument for UBI I've heard is that places like Alaska give their residents a "dividend" of something between a few hundred to a few thousand bucks. But the reason Alaska can do this is because they effectively own their oil industry, and their GDP far exceeds their debt, whereas the United States federal government(as well as many states) have debt that exceeds their GDP. UBI will be needed when automation actually destroys enough jobs where it makes sense. I don't know that we're quite there yet, but it will happen soon. Wanting UBI before its time seems like an admission of failure oh the system.
  • LarryDarrell 6y ago
    The optimism comes from a desperate desire not to confront the need for universal healthcare or land reform. As long as real estate is an investment and health care has a middle man, UBI is just a subsidy for those sectors.
    • Tiktaalik 6y ago
      Yep UBI is more guaranteed money into the hands of rent seeking landlords and co.
      • ravenstine 6y ago
        Much like how government backed student loans turned into guaranteed money for tuition seeking educational institutions. People don't take into account that the value of money largely comes from the confidence that said money will have value in the future. If cash flow becomes guaranteed, the confidence that the business can demand more money from its customers goes up, ultimately lowering the value of said money for the customer while allowing the business to have greater investment opportunities. There's a bit of irony in that, since the value of the US dollar largely comes from the confidence in the guarantee that the government will honor the value of treasury notes. The Chinese Yuan is comparatively worth much less than the US dollar, not just because of the dominance of the US, but because the perception of China is that it is far more corrupt and not as reliable than the US in terms of paying back its lenders, lowering the confidence that exists for its currency. So I guess it comes down to this: Business confidence > Customer confidence = monetary value decreases Customer confidence > Business confidence = monetary value increases
• troughway 6y ago
  What is stopping companies that make money (to pay for UBI through tax increases) from leaving the country to elsewhere with lower taxation? Where would this money come from then? If things do get automated it means labor is no longer needed to be sourced locally, making it much easier to uproot and go elsewhere.
  • cool-guy-69 6y ago
    Where would they go? Every other country has a VAT tax and to pay for the version of UBI that Yang proposes would be a VAT tax at half the European rate.
  • chillacy 6y ago
    Even if companies uproot, selling to US consumers means paying US VAT taxes. US companies pay european VATs too, they all complain about it but don't leave the market as long as profits are positive.
• bt1a 6y ago
  Trickle up, baby. Man I love Andrew Yang and what his mission is with Humanity Forward. Good move, Jack.
  • hadtodoit 6y ago
    Same here but I really wish he wouldn't kowtow every time some wackjob group is screaming at him. He took a very moderate and reasonable stance on a lot of contentious topics during his campaign then rolled them back within a day of getting lit up by twitter trolls. I think he lost a large section of centrist voters by appearing spineless. He took the best policies from the left and right, but also seemed obligated to tow party lines a lot of the time rather than offer up better alternatives. I wish he would have run third party, he could have taken a lot of moderate votes from President Trump. The democrats didn't stand a chance of winning this election, at the very least he would have sent a message to the next generation that there are other options.
    • bt1a 6y ago
      Yang definitely waffled on MFA and appeared to not support it towards the end. That was something of him that I was disappointed - I couldn't understand why he didn't realize that MFA is the way to go. I do wonder if he waffled on it to retain support from people further to the right. That said, I actually think Yang's ideas are going to reverberate throughout political discourse over the next decade. Similar to how Bernie pushed the base range of the Democratic party to the left, Yang shed light on some great issues that will plague us. For example, what are going to do about the massive loss of employment due to automation? Are we going to attempt to retrain these people? That's historically not been very successful.
      • ycombinete 6y ago
        What is MFA?
        • eachro 6y ago
          Medicare For All I'm assuming
• mberning 6y ago
  I seriously don’t know why people believe this will work and unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe. As far as I have read most experiments have had mixed results, and we don’t really know what the full impact will be if implemented in a nation of 350MM people. My suspicion is in a couple years people will notice that housing, food, and transportation has gone up commensurate with their “basic income”. Then we will find ourselves in a vicious battle to justify raising or lowering it every couple years. And forget about ever putting the genie back into the bottle. The risks are huge.
  • snarf21 6y ago
    I agree, there is just no way for it to work. We'd be better off with less overhead versions of existing programs and higher tax breaks for the poor, maybe no federal taxes under 200% of poverty. Add in Medicare for all in the same bracket and we meet most of the "upside" in a simpler and sustainable plan. I've spent some time trying to envision the goals of UBI from the other side. Could you supplement volunteers and artists using a closed loop rewards program? My thinking caused me to create The Good Loop, http://thegoodloop.org http://thegoodloop.org, it isn't implemented yet but hopefully someday.
    • jason5543 6y ago
      I think Medicare for all people under 200% of poverty could easily be achieved if we hiked up the corporate tax rate to what it used to be 50-100 years ago. But you have to stop the birth tourism, stop handing out citizenship to anyone not in America for 4+ generations, and deport all of your illegal aliens. Coastal, liberal americans want to have it both ways - expensive government services for the poor, and the continuous importation of a serf class from the 3rd world.
  • jason5543 6y ago
    >I don't know why people believe this will unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe. Great perspective. Before the industrial revolution, most people were serfs. Speaking broadly, our genetics and our blood have not risen above our essential serfdom. I haven't done my homework on UBI; that said, I distrust the concept of radical economic schemes to help poor people, because poor people can't be helped, they are born slaves and they will die slaves, and the current amount of social mobility that the nations of the world provide is probably enough to help out those of the slave class destined for greater things.
• based2 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Pilot_programs_and_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Pilot_programs_an...
• lukemichals 6y ago
  Announced on https://open.spotify.com/episode/1xb2GYUPxoGAprDj3G4Idz?si=Ay6Nl12GRqWjLs6mLXx-ig https://open.spotify.com/episode/1xb2GYUPxoGAprDj3G4Idz?si=A... I've got to say, I've moved almost entirely to consuming information via podcasts and Yang Speaks is one of my top ones. 1. Find some smart people/organizations you trust 2. Listen to them daily
  • MikeKusold 6y ago
    You can also directly listen or subscribe to his podcast here: https://yangspeaks.com/ https://yangspeaks.com/ I refuse to support what Spotify is trying to do to the podcast market.
    • lukemichals 6y ago
      > I refuse to support what Spotify is trying to do to the podcast market. What are they trying to do?
      • karatestomp 6y ago
        Replace a standard you can use with any client with... Spotify. [EDIT] incidentally, I'm about 90% sure they're gonna succeed and open podcasts are doomed to decline, though they'll not go away immediately. Though I do have non-computer-nerd friends who are refusing to follow their podcasts as they move, one by one, to closed platforms, usually Spotify. Still, I don't think it'll be enough to stop it.
• WC3w6pXxgGd 6y ago
  Giving †free money to people is exactly the opposite of what money exists to do. Money is a representation of value that you produce. It makes no sense when given for nothing. † The money isn't free. By stealing money from productive people, you're laying claim to someone else's labor, which is literally the definition of slavery. If the solution is to print the money, then you're imposing a tax on everybody through inflation (and future taxation).
• Press2forEN 6y ago
  Years ago, proponents of UBI claimed that it was a replacement for all other forms of social welfare. Now it appears by most proposals to be yet another means-tested add-on. What happened?
  • jdc 6y ago
    Yep and as a replacement, it was supposed to drastically cut administrative costs.
    • frogpelt 6y ago
      It definitely should. But one real problem with bureaucracy is that it tends to go to great lengths to justify itself. It also self-replicates like a virus. So, in practice, I imagine there would be lots of offices and agencies, services and interdependent liaison offices and agencies along with the requisite inspector general offices and agencies and the necessary committees, subcommittees, and working groups that would have to be created. In the land of government bureaucracy, the rapidly increasing fixed-pie of current and (hopefully) future taxpayer revenue gets divided up into more and more slices every day.
    • gota 6y ago
      I think that was a major point, too, because a significant portion of the money available for social assistance is spent on deciding who can get it and fighting 'fraud'. A blanket universal give is a lot easier. However - I've always been puzzled by how each person in the US doesn't have a public, singularly identifying number assigned. Doesn't that make even an 'universal' basic income hard to define? How do you guarantee that every person gets one, and only one, BI check every month? How do you find out who is dead and should stop getting one...? From what I know, SSN are used for stuff like that, but there's all this weird stuff about it (althoug I admit my knowledge of it comes from a half forgotten CGP Grey video, and that the impression that stuck)
      • HideousKojima 6y ago
        Social Security's admin costs are ~.7% of the program's budget, eliminating admin overhead, means-testing, and fraud fighting won't get you many gains: https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-top-ten-facts-about-social-security https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-...
• hhs 6y ago
  If interested, this provides a brief historical perspective, with the pros and cons of UBI: https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/24/moment-universal-basic-income/ https://news.stanford.edu/2020/03/24/moment-universal-basic-...
  • actualanswer 6y ago
    This doesn't provide any view into pros/cons tho. Mostly statements about what happened and is happening. Not very useful from that perspective.
    • hhs 6y ago
      Please note that there’s a box down on the left of that page, which is called “Stanford scholar explores pros, cons of ‘basic income’”, with the info and may be useful. This is the box link: https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/08/stanford-scholar-explores-pros-cons-basic-income/ https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/08/stanford-scholar-explor...
• ck2 6y ago
  how about access to health care first no, we can't do both at the same time, we can't even get half the population to wear a simple mask in the middle of a pandemic
  • lancesells 6y ago
    This is what has me not liking UBI. It makes zero sense to figure out how to pay a monthly stipend that comes at an astronomical cost but not healthcare. Free healthcare would make the country smarter, more productive, healthier, better economy, etc. UBI looks to me like a very bad idea that takes away power from citizens over the long term. I think it would be very ugly 50 years later. Get convicted of a felony? Lose your UBI. Born in an enemy country? Lose your UBI. Late on your credit card payment? We'll just take it out of your UBI.
• cheeseomlit 6y ago
  If the government starts giving me enough money each month to subsist while drastically raising taxes on my earnings from employment then I'll simply stop working. I would imagine most people would do the same.
  • hartator 6y ago
    Yes, it’s that simple. It’s already super expensive as is, it’s gonna to be even more when half of the population stop working. We just not rich enough yet.
  • Angostura 6y ago
    You’d imagine that’s what will happen, but you might be surprised.
  • tomconroy 6y ago
    What will you do with your new free time?
    • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > What will you do with your new free time? I'd focus on accumulating non-monetary assets. Board seats, political connections, et cetera.
    • cheeseomlit 6y ago
      Smoke pot and play video games while the fed prints me a paycheck. The American dream
  • graham_paul 6y ago
    > I'll simply stop working For a few months maybe. Soon, you will realise that to keep your previous lifestyle (or to simply fill your time with something other than browsing text-heavy sites) you need to work. So you will go back to work. And so will everyone else.
    • donw 6y ago
• zelly 6y ago
  UBI only makes sense in the science fiction world that Andrew Yang and other non-technical journalists think is somehow imminent. We still need people to make things. There are still guys hanging off the side of garbage trucks every day and people still pick fruits by hand. If no one does these things, you will starve and die. We cannot survive forever on financial engineering by bureaucrats and importing all our necessities from other countries that actually make things.
  • xwdv 6y ago
    This is anecdotal but I haven’t seen guys hanging off garbage trucks in a long time. Around here it’s just one guy with a hydraulic arm on the truck that picks up the cans and dumps out garbage, and he does it very very efficiently. Pretty soon it should be possible to even replace the driver with a self driving truck that goes around pre determined paths in the neighborhood.
    • aintnoprophet 6y ago
      That may be true in populated areas. But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. I see people hanging off garbage trucks all the time in the midwestern low pop and rural areas.
      • kerkeslager 6y ago
        > But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that operate the non-robot trucks, so your argument doesn't make much sense here.
        • z0r 6y ago
          Need some evidence for that.
          • kerkeslager 6y ago
• admn2 6y ago
  This is totally unrelated to the article but I keep thinking about this lately: does anyone know what happened to Noah Glass who was a part of the original founding team?
  • radiantmonk 6y ago
    I watched an interesting, somewhat, kind of related video on this today. Although it doesn't quite answer your question about what happened to him, interesting watch nonetheless and quite informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8N0xN0ihMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8N0xN0ihMA
• mattbeckman 6y ago
  UBI (in the U.S.) would be like printing more shares of a publicly-traded stock and giving all of the new stock to the employees of the company. USD is the reserve currency, so foreign interests (or large corps) w/ stockpiles of USD will be the losers due to inflation. Foreign interests can change which reserve currency they use at-will, so wouldn't this be like a direct-fee/dividend U.S. citizens (or any UBI-country citizens) could charge those that use the currency of the country but don't live there?
  • seph-reed 6y ago
    Think of machines and robots as workers that earn pay for their work. Then imagine that pay is spread back into the economy (like payed workers do), rather than just sitting in the robot owners account to "trickle down." Another way of putting this: Slavery (or automation) are really great for the upper class who owns, but destroys the livelihoods of everyone below who has to compete. Follow up question: How many inventors created their world changing machine in dreams of making more money for the upper class, vs how many dreamed to help all of humanity?
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    > foreign interests will be the losers due to inflation. Along with anybody with stocks or bonds (including everybody with a retirement fund).
  • eanzenberg 6y ago
    So overall dilution of the currency. Then, increase UBI some more to make up for it. Then, dilute the currency some more. Over a few cycles become the new Venezuela as most entrepreneurs leave for greener fields.
    • viklove 6y ago
      Easy solution -- we stop the process of QE and replace it with a UBI. Why is dilution OK in the name of big corps but the next incarnation of Hitler when it's for you and I?
• tgv 6y ago
  So literally a solution in search of a problem. A living income guarantee has my blessing, but UBI doesn't. It's either too low, and there's still need for welfare, unemployment benefit, etc., or so high that the (unpredictable) consequences can completely overwhelm the advantages.
  • robotresearcher 6y ago
    That's a strong claim. What makes you think so?
    • tgv 6y ago
      I suppose the "too low" bit is obvious. If UBI becomes too high, people will stop working, inflation will rise, and there won't be a safety net of subsidies and welfare left to help. So if e.g. the price of housing rises, the UBI will be eaten up more and more by rent and mortgage, and people with only UBI will be as poor as before, and people will be forced into very low paying jobs. Furthermore, I've never seen a convincing source of funding for UBI; at the first sight of an economic crisis, UBI will be lowered. At that point, there's no way to revert the UBI, leading to a new poverty trap. And reality is going to be wilder than my imagination. If the problem you're fighting is poverty, then provide welfare for poor people, stimulate work for them, make schools accessible (in backwards countries where that isn't the case), etc., but don't try to restructure society. That's just ego.
  • birdyrooster 6y ago
    The problem part we got down: We all need a living income and the current system cannot employ all with a living income. There are many people who are fully employed and cannot make ends meet. Many others still cannot leave their employer to improve or change their skills without losing their housing, healthcare, or food security -- short of being crucified on higher education debt. This hurts everyone.
• clairity 6y ago
  UBI is meant to be a gambit to distract us from seeing that the playing field is so heavily tilted against everyone but the very rich and fortunate. the rich buy this diversion by periodically sliding some pennies down to the rest of us on the other end, while patting themselves on the back for doing such a magnanimous thing. what we really need to do is bring transparency and fairness to labor markets, and squeeze rentiers and financiers, so that we can start to tilt that playing field back to where innovators can innovate in all sorts of directions, not just in the ones deigned to make the rich even richer.
  • delfinom 6y ago
    Yea I really fail to see how UBI addresses the real elephants in the room. Mega landlords, investor firms hoarding real estate, and generally "unspoken collusion" where prices will only go up and they'll let rentals sit empty for years. Just throwing UBI money at people now just sits the minimum they can jack rental prices up. And we are back to square one with the rich being richer.
  • 3131s 6y ago
    This argument gets made over and over, never with any logic attached to it.
• smalltalks 6y ago
  Technically speaking , many European countries already have "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...) They are reserved for individuals "Not Active" though ( Unemployed and not looking for a Job ) over a certain age. Those "BI" massively lower poverty , which usually massively reduce crime-rate , drugs related usage etc... With 700€/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh for food and rent , and that's it... For America it's different, America cannot technically afford "BI" because the entirety of the US economy has been built on having 20% of the population living under the poverty line in order for good & services to be cheap and consumed in mass. Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at home and do something that is more profitable for them. Hence , the American culture revolve almost entirely around production of good and services for happiness. In France few workers drop off the "Industrial" economy , they buy a Farm and live of "BI" and their own agriculture and go back to the city to buy commodities ( Gas , Cosmetic etc... ), it's common in Italy and Spain as well IIRC.
  • jedberg 6y ago
    People keep forgetting that a UBI won't cover immigrants. Immigrants would end up doing all the jobs that citizens don't want to do. That's the biggest problem with UBI. It creates a default class system.
    • burrows 6y ago
      If only one country provides UBI to immigrants, that country will see a rise in immigration. At what point do taxes raised from the new residents exceed the money paid out? Or maybe you're talking about UBI to immigrants, but not actually allowing any immigration.
    • anonAndOn 6y ago
      Doesn't that happen in the US already? Farm work, hotel cleaning, groundskeeping... all heavily reliant upon immigrant labor.
      • 6y ago
• blackrock 6y ago
  I have difficulty believing that UBI will ever work, unless you get the basic problems solved first. Namely, housing. The problem actually boils down to democracy itself, where people vote for laws that favors themselves, and excludes outsiders, specifically the NIMBY crowd. These are the people that vote in housing regulations, environmental review injunctions to prevent construction, etc. Regardless of whether UBI is given freely like welfare, these NIMBYs will continue to exist, and they will act as a corruption on society. They got theirs already, and they will prevent others from getting it too. For all other things, technology should be able to help make things plentiful. Food can come from mechanized and automated mass farming. Medicine can come from mechanized and automated mass production. Clothing, cars, consumer goods, well, I guess there are factories in China that can mass produce that. But either way, unless you solve the core problems first, then UBI is dead in the water. Otherwise, with the low interest rates, and massive corporate stock buybacks, then this will just continue to inflate the stock market, and property bubble, and other asset prices. Then, what is the end result? The rents will continue to rise, and it will just eat away at your UBI. Now, we’re back at square one.
  • chillacy 6y ago
    Agreed that housing needs to be fixed. In the short term it would eat away at any income but it won't be 100% of it, and it will also vary by location. Some housing markets are more supply constrained than others. Also a portable source of income would reduce demand for housing in cities too.
• jdmoreira 6y ago
  I certainly don't want to be mean and I don't think that money should be how we measure people's value but I find it a bit odd that Andrew Yang claim to fame is being some kind of successful entrepreneur and yet his net worth is around 1 million USD. Much less than Obama for example. I'm also talking as a non-us resident that doesn't know much about him except I've googled him a few times.
  • ativzzz 6y ago
    Looks like he made his million on his successful startup (making him a successful entrepreneur) and then proceeded to start a non-profit, which by definition should not make him exponentially richer.
• nogabebop23 6y ago
  >> Yang says Humanity Forward plans to immediately distribute Dorsey’s contribution in the form of small cash grants of $250 to nearly 20,000 people who’ve lost their jobs or taken an economic hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic So money based on certain non-universal conditions? Isn't this one of the root problems? People cannot accept a truly universal system - you've already got too much; that guy lives in the wrong part of the country; you have too much education; they're not citizens... Bill Gates has stated he doesn't have enough money to tackle all major areas and make significant advances; then guys like Yang want to use far less money for even bigger mandates. This just looks like a way for rich guys to pick very specific winners. UBI seems like it would be the most powerful vote-buying weapon ever created in the hands of any government given the opportunity to implement it.
  • bananabreakfast 6y ago
    So... basically people who lost their jobs to COVID are winners in your mind?
    • arcticfox 6y ago
      It's not bad, it just misses a lot of the benefit of 'basic' income. For example, my wife had just finished her education and was looking for a job when COVID hit. She's randomly just as hosed as everyone that actually lost an existing job, but qualifies for none of the same relief. The benefit of the 'universal basic' part of UBI is that it just washes away all edge cases, and it's pretty hard to feel like you've been wronged by it.
      • cableshaft 6y ago
        Andrew Yang's Humanity Forward organization is not the nation's government. They don't have the resources to make something universal. That's one of the reasons he ran for president, was so he could do that. The people weren't ready this time, but maybe in 4 years, when he's probably going to run again, they'll be more willing to give him a shot. But right now he is doing what he can and working with much, much more limited resources, so it only makes sense to target people who are in immediate need because of the crisis. There are a lot more people than even that 20,000 that are struggling right now (40 million people have lost their job since the start of the pandemic, in the US), but if he divided $5,000,000 by 40 million people, it'd only give each person 12 cents, which doesn't help any single individual enough to make any difference, while simultaneously turning into a much more of a logistical nightmare. For example he had Sam Harris on his Yang Speaks podcast recently, and Yang said that to a certain extent he sympathizes on how long the stimulus checks are getting out to people because he's been giving money out himself and it's been difficult to pin down current addresses for the people most in need. So what is it you're expecting him to do with that $5 million instead, that would make it more universal?
• kerkeslager 6y ago
  While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality. One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It's pretty hard to argue against this: if you really believe that wealth trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting but verifying that.
  • burrows 6y ago
    > While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality. Please define the "poverty problem" in the US. How is an increase in the money supply related to income inequality?
    • claudeganon 6y ago
      > How is an increase in the money supply related to income inequality? Go read about whose asses were saved with printed the money during the 2008 financial crisis. Or the 7 trillion bailout fund for corporations that just passed.
      • burrows 6y ago
        Corporate bailouts are bullshit, I agree. But even without bailouts there would still be massive inequality (which I think is fine). Cut spending and abolish the Fed.
    • kerkeslager 6y ago
      > Please define the "poverty problem" in the US. Ugh. That's way too complex, and you know it. But I'll try to give you some bullet points: 1. Homelessness 2. Inability to afford healthcare 3. Home ownership being inaccessible to most people 4. Inability to afford childcare 5. Inability to afford education Note how 1, 4, and 5 aren't solvable by providing jobs--these are problems that prevent you from entering the workforce even when jobs are available. Frankly, I don't think you're asking this question in good faith. > How is an increase in the money supply related to income inequality? If you implement UBI, you're essentially also implementing a minimum wage, since companies will have to pay significantly more than UBI. Rather than accept a cut in their own pay to pay workers more, executives will raise the price of goods and services. This effect, across the economy causes inflation. So if you don't find a way to prevent executives raising their own pay to maintain inequality, you get inflation any time you give money to the poor. Economic conservatives tend to overstate this problem, in my opinion--there's nothing preventing you from just raising the UBI proportional to inflation. But historically, minimum wage hasn't tracked inflation, and I worry that UBI would suffer the same problem.
• palisade 6y ago
  When the pipes in your house malfunction causing gallons of water and feces to spray out of the toilet onto the nice wood floor you just installed in your newly government granted free time. But, you can't call a plumber because they're all on UBI watching Bob Ross howto videos and painting beautiful landscapes, remember the name Andrew Yang.
  • bananabreakfast 6y ago
    Man, you're so right! Plumbers are all lazy pieces of shit that would all stop working immediately if they could feed their family.
    • palisade 6y ago
      It's not about lazyness. It is a matter of having all your needs and wants fulfilled and not needing to work. Where you can finally simply pursue hobbies. Why do any kind of labor if everything is met. Especially janitorial, plumbing, heavy lifting, dredging in miserable conditions, or any other number of difficult thankless jobs. Go watch dirty jobs the tv show, it's an eye opener. There are even people who climb down in sewers and scrap our feces off the walls in big cities. Who would want to do that if they could just get on UBI and build gokarts in their spare time instead. You know those wind turbines the power grid relies on? Dirty jobs had an episode that showed how they have to climb up inside them, crawl into really tight spaces, and clean out debris to keep the turbines functioning. It's a tough, harrowing, frightening and claustrophobic experience.
      • sketchyj 6y ago
        I think it's very likely that a UBI would make salaries for those types of jobs go up quite a bit. People wouldn't feel like they "had" to do them just to make rent. I don't have a problem with those people making more money for the jobs they do. I think they've earned that.
• gnicholas 6y ago
  If you're trying to build a case for UBI in general, it seems odd to do your experiment during a very non-standard time. What works or doesn't work in a pandemic may yield very different results in more normal times.
• rsync 6y ago
  Why doesn't he just fund this experiment himself ? From wikipedia: "Originally a corporate lawyer, Yang began working in various startups and early stage growth companies as a founder or executive from 2000 to 2009." Maybe this a matching donation from Dorsey ?
  • bermanoid 6y ago
    Never fund yourself what someone with 100x the money will fund for you.
  • nemothekid 6y ago
    He probably spent a ton of his own money running for president.
  • chillacy 6y ago
    Yang cashed out and ran a nonprofit for the past decade, his net worth is nothing like Dorsey's. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2019/11/19/andrew-yang-is-not-nearly-as-rich-as-youd-think/#124d22d04fdd https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2019/11/19/andrew-...
• fasteddie31003 6y ago
  My biggest concern with UBI is the massive inflation that it will cause.
• artsyca 6y ago
  Even if there is a case for universal basic income these are not the droids you seek when it comes to endorsing it as a concept in fact my instinct tells me they'll fumble it and end up causing it to fall out of favour even if it could've been implemented The reason is these two lead with their egos rather than engendering true community belonging
• JoshTko 6y ago
  A one time payment of $250 is not UBI. I don't understand how anything will be learned about UBI from this.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  I could see UBI as an alternative to federal government spend. E.g. every time I hear about the U.S. sending billions to the middle east, I wonder how much more effectively it could be spent in the hands of thousands upon thousands of americans. It’s almost like implementing something closer to direct democracy instead of representative republic democracy in regards to spending...
  • wlesieutre 6y ago
    As Eisenhower put it Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
    • stevens32 6y ago
      Beautiful quote. Thanks for sharing.
      • wlesieutre 6y ago
        It's a heck of a speech, made after Stalin died https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/april-16-1953-chance-peace https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeche...
  • zhoujianfu 6y ago
    Yeah, I think UBI should/would/could actually be very popular from a small government perspective as well. What if a republican ran on the platform that “if elected, I will make it a law that 10% of all federal revenue must be directly distributed equally to all citizens. Then is grows 5% a year until it hits 80% in 2036!”?
    • 6y ago
• barrenko 6y ago
  UBI is inevitable. Like software development, whoever makes it first will win and bring us closer to our Star Trekian furute.
  • foobar_ 6y ago
    Are you sure were are not heading towards The Expanse ;P Here's one counter argument for UBI. Who will do all the boring work needed for building a dam / apartment ? If we are honest about it, most of this boring, physically harmful and repetitive infrastructure work is only done by the working class that chooses to do it because the alternative is begging. It's because of the threat of extreme poverty and unemployment that the working class works. If they are able to sustain themselves with UBI why would they work ? Who will do the boring data entry work in our industry ?
    • chillacy 6y ago
      The author of the expanse himself clarified that Basic is not UBI http://www.scottsantens.com/the-expanse-basic-support-basic-income http://www.scottsantens.com/the-expanse-basic-support-basic-...
    • joppy 6y ago
      Perhaps it's time that this kind of work is recognised as being more valuable than it is today, precisely because not many people want to do it.
      • foobar_ 6y ago
        Because people will be paid well to do it, they might as well put more effort into it. You get what you pay for in that way!
    • d0100 6y ago
      UBI shouldn't cover the American Dream. That should only be a reality throught work. UBI should cover a room to live, bread to eat, healthcare and internet access (to participate in the democracy, voting, etc). Wanna buy a car? Go out? Eat some candy? Build that dam / apartment.
• aSplash0fDerp 6y ago
  I think developed countries will adopt a "Work on Demand" model that allows workers to order work and have it delivered and picked up (anywhere in their state, county or city) using the advancements of self driving vehicles. It compliments the trends currently underway with WFH/WHA and the same-day delivery aspirations of a few e-tailers. UBI might be a transition to WoD, but the infrastructure, education and political models should go ahead and calibrate to the flexibility of the labor market(s). The COL argument should revolve around someone only having to work 20 hours a week to maintain their lifestyle vs someone who has to work 40 hours for the same thing.
• cynusx 6y ago
  UBI can have a place if the payout is controlled by the federal reserve as a means to enact inflation. Taking it from other people's earnings and spending it through a committee of politicians sounds pretty dystopian to me though.
  • sangnoir 6y ago
    >Taking it from other people's earnings and spending it through a committee of politicians sounds pretty dystopian to me though. Assuming you're American: you do know that the House and Senate have Appropriations Committees who do literally just that, right? If you're not American, I bet you a dollar your government has a similar grouping of politicians.
  • chillacy 6y ago
    > Taking it from other people's earnings and spending it through a committee of politicians sounds pretty dystopian to me though. That sounds exactly like how social services work today, with the extra bonus of high administration costs. At least with cash, the government can't decide for you what to spend it on. In effect you end up relying on businesses to spring up to provide the things you want (which may be different than what I want). This is either a feature or a drawback depending on who you talk to.
• ozten 6y ago
  Article is light on details, I hope this is an ongoing $250 to the same individuals, otherwise I don't think it is a good UBI experiment. You could give 66 people $250 a month forever[1]. 20,000 individuals spends all of the endowment immediately. [1] Assuming 3% inflation, 7% investment returns, and the foundation is spending 4% on payouts.
• wturner 6y ago
  Stephanie Kelton and MMT should be part of the basic income discussion so that Yang doesn't create an ideologically tinted version that kills social security making it politically appealing to libertarian free market wing nuts.
• d0100 6y ago
  UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. Ex.: * Government housing: $500 * Government basic food package - daily (1500kcal): $300 * x kJ electricity, x m3 water, x m3 gas, x bps internet connection: $500 * Clothing, hygiene, cleaning supplies: $50 * Universal healthcare: free (and free condoms) * Free education (from abc to PHD) This is not a comprehensive list, or even the right values, however you can guarantee a base-level of what is "living with dignity" and apt to participate in the democracy. I doubt you'd have too many people deciding to live without a job. It's not the best life, but you can survive with some human dignity. Many around the world live with much less. UBI isn't the American Dream, it's the safety net.
  • somethoughts 6y ago
    I tend to agree - it should be Universal Basic Stuff (UBS). Particularly if housing is in a low cost of living area, then everything should get cheaper through automation. High End Manufactured housing [1], MOOCs, Telemedicine, Consumer Products will all get cheaper. Entrepreneurs in SV can create robots to automate the production of these things so even more UBS categories can be added. UBS assurances will avoid the inflationary effects of UBI. [1] Factory OS is revolutionizing home construction. https://factoryos.com https://factoryos.com
    • foolinaround 6y ago
      who gets to live in more attractive areas? How different will it be from the current 'projects' living which subsidizes as well?
      • Czarcasm 6y ago
        Nobody is advocating for the removal of free markets in the existing housing market. They are advocating for the increase in the supply through removal in the artificial scarcity created by bad policy.
      • somethoughts 6y ago
        The idea would be to spread people out and build new attractive areas.
• WorkingDead 6y ago
  Maybe the could just not take the money out of my paycheck in the first place? Why do I need management fees and inefficiencies to get money that was already coming to me?
• nkkollaw 6y ago
  I see why a government would want to to make as many people as possible dependent on them. I fail to see why any normal people would argue for it, though--and perhaps even why Jack Dorsey would. I hope it won't happen while I'm still alive, but I definitely see a lot of countries becoming totalitarian nightmares in the next decades, with these genius ideas being dreamed up more and more often.
• cl0rkster 6y ago
  i'll help. can i get paid too?
• fuzzieozzie 6y ago
  Covering for the impact of Twitter on society?
• dingo_bat 6y ago
  UBI is abhorrent to me in principle, no matter the practical effects. If by killing a baby I could end climate change right now, I still wouldn't do it. Because the act itself is bad, the consequences are irrelevant. Forcibly taking money from some people according to a progressive income tax system, and giving it unconditionally to others is unacceptable. Even if it would improve the life of a million people it should not be done. An alternative: people who want UBI to be real, why don't you sign an agreement amongst yourself to contribute to a fund that will pay out UBI to your group? Why involve the government and all the coercion that entails?
• jackfoxy 6y ago
  Is this a solution in search of a problem? I'm not trolling, but asking this honestly. This is actually the article's tldr: Exactly what is the problem? Precisely how does UBI solve this specific problem? There are examples of focused government programs achieving specific goals, and there are examples of programs with non-specific goals which merely become self-perpetuating. I think from the shear scale of the federal government's power, it should be turning a profit and paying dividends to citizens. That would be UBI. But that is a way bigger issue and off topic.
• spyckie2 6y ago
  The narrative for UBI is strong enough, the details on its policy and implementation isn't. I think there's a couple of major initiatives that people need to take: 1) Give UBI to a small county / city for 1 year and study its economic and social impact. Do the full 12k, $1000 a year grant to a small city. With a 30k population, that's around $500m dollars with research overhead? One goal (among others) is to show how the money improves the local economy and gets earned back by the government / taxes, since that is a significant part of UBI's way of paying for itself. 2) Create a more robust policy for paying for it. I want a document that is 50-300 pages long and covers EVERYTHING I can think of, like, 1) what exactly is excluded in the VAT tax? 2) Charts of consumption levels and how much you'll end up paying, with examples of actors at each level. 3) How much does Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc, actually pay for UBI? 4) What is the breakdown of where UBI money comes from in the economy? 5) What are contingency plans for if we have a deficit? Print money? Loan? 6) What are the contingency plans for if we have a permanent deficit, year over year? Inflation? 3) Find out the answer to the harder questions truthfully. The easy questions are things like, "will poor people be grateful for extra money?" The answer is obviously yes. The harder questions are things like "What % of people will spend their UBI on drugs and alcohol?" You don't want to just brush aside the hard questions and treat them like roadblocks. If it turns out that UBI becomes people's weed stash, you have to look yourself in the eye and say "did we mess up". Of course, we could create policy to limit that behavior, but that comes from addressing the hard questions. 4) I would love personas that detail what the "average" US citizen's economic situation looks like with the population representation. Even if this is more fiction than fact, I think knowing about a Bob Smith who makes X amount of money, spends X on the following, has the following monetary problems, and by the way, is emblematic of another 2-5 million people in the US, would be really helpful for me to understand what the point of UBI is, since I'm not one of the primary users. 15+ of these kinds of profiles would be really cool to read especially if they cover the 70% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
• EGreg 6y ago
  Oh boy. No this is not what we need to prove UBI. A lot can be done with $5M besides just giving a one time payment to some random folks.
• sovren_ 6y ago
  And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
• scared2 6y ago
  I really don't understand the hype behind ubi as a new concept. If one wants to explore it's effect or anything like so - it is just enough to see Arab countries and other places who have been doing it already. Other than that it should be obvious to anyone that this is not scalable and it doesn't work. in the end basic income will translate into an artificially induced inflation.
  • fastball 6y ago
    > in the end basic income will translate into an artificially induced inflation. Citation needed. Presumably this has been happening in the Arab countries that you claim have already instituted UBI, so I'm assuming you have sources...
• dlkf 6y ago
  As soon as I read the headline my first thought was "what can $5M tell you about the efficacy of UBI?" and the article quickly confirmed my suspicions: "nothing." From the article: > Yang says Humanity Forward plans to immediately distribute Dorsey’s contribution in the form of small cash grants of $250 to nearly 20,000 people who’ve lost their jobs or taken an economic hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. What is this supposed to prove? People who are in a terrible economic position will benefit from getting $250? We don't need to run an "experiment" to know that the answer is "yes." And this isn't even "experiment," as there is neither a response variable being measured, nor a control group. What's happening right now is terrible, and it is good that Dorsey and Yang for making this donation. It is bad, however, that they are trying to spin this as a scientific investigation into the efficacy of UBI. I think that we need to start experimenting with UBI sooner rather than later. But when I see stuff like this, I worry that a lot of UBI advocates are less interested in raising the poverty line than they are in creating excuses to gut the welfare state.