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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
by 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 agoUS 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 agoSeems 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 agoThis 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.
- chrisseaton 6y agoBut you can’t prove anything about universal income without the universal part. As without it it’s not the same thing and we don’t know if it’ll have the same effects.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoYou can approximate. Close enough. It's going to be impossible to implement without testing the concept. I'm not here to convince you, and if you're not a policymaker or the Fed, I don't have to.
- chrisseaton 6y agoBut the 'universal' part is the main thing people including policy makers have an issue with, and that's the bit not being tested.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoEhh, India is dipping their toes in without going full monty. It can be done progressively. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23258277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23258277 (HN: Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits)
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAnd now in Spain. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23351708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23351708 (HN: Spain approves national minimum income scheme)
- renewiltord 6y agoSo your posterior probabilities on most things will shift zero post intervention? Interesting. I'm a UBI opponent, a short term HM proponent, but I think my posterior probabilities would shift depending on the size of the effect and the duration over which the experiment was performed.
- bhupy 6y agoA small nit: "Original Medicare" isn't really a UBI because you don't really get to choose your healthcare. A key benefit of a UBI is that the government provides cash to buy goods & services, rather than providing the goods & services themselves. Medicare is a government-run service, where the service is a combination of catastrophic insurance, cost-sharing, and general payment. Medicare Part C, or Medicare Advantage, is much closer to a UBI than "Original Medicare". Nearly 40% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoFair context to provide. In a previous comment [1], I argue the case for keeping both UBI and single payer healthcare. Cash alone makes a poor safety net, because humans are humans. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23246811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23246811
- bhupy 6y agoAgree, but I'd push back on the "single payer healthcare" bit and say that "Single payer" is not the only way to deliver universal healthcare. Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore all have thriving multi-payer systems. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, ALL insurance is private. In Singapore, while the government covers catastrophic care, 70% of total health expenditures are private. The common theme is that there is some degree of government intervention and regulation, but having the government be the sole payer is definitely an approach, but it's by no means the only approach, nor even the best approach.
- Proven 6y agoReally? Just like Krugman's QE! How am I going to get back my devalued savings once we find out it doesn't work, all savers have been ruined and fiat money has no value? There's no need to test it on any scale, including small, because it can't work.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoSavers aren't entitled to a return. No one is entitled to fiat holding or increasing in value. The utility value of capital is declining, plain and simply. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/700-year-decline-of-interest-rates/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/700-year-decline-of-interes... https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/key_ecb_interest_rates/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/ke... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INTDSRJPM193N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INTDSRJPM193N http://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/marketinfo/official_interestrates/Pages/Default.aspx http://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/marketinfo/official_interest... https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/statistics/search-interest--exchange-rates/repo-rate-deposit-and-lending-rate/ https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/statistics/search-interest--ex...
- beamatronic 6y agoIt almost seems like the best use of cash is to use it as a down payment for a loan on an appreciating asset (like a house)
- toomuchtodo 6y agoWhat happens if the house no longer appreciates?
- alexmingoia 6y agoYeah, they’re entitled to a loss through inflation-based monetary policy and debasement.
- MiroF 6y agoThe central bank exists to ensure that your fears here are misplaced.
- Descartes1 6y agoExactly If any subgroup is given extra capital, the test will appear to work. This is patently obvious to anyone with half a brain. Wealth is always and everywhere a measure of disparity.
- twic 6y agoWhat if you did it in some moderately isolated place, like Alaska? Alaska already has almost-universal not-quite-basic income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
- luckylion 6y agoHow do you handle people wanting to move to Alaska? And how do you get Alaskans on board for paying higher taxes to fund it? If you're not asking them to fund it, you're not testing UBI, you're testing "if an external entity provides money to a community without asking for anything in return, will that be cool?"
- RockIslandLine 6y ago"And how do you get Alaskans on board for paying higher taxes to fund it?" The APF is funded by severance taxes on oil & mining. I suspect that most people are entirely fine with that tax model. The problem is that it only supports a small benefit.
- luckylion 6y agoYeah, and to increase it 5 or 10 times would certainly require new taxes. I don't know whether oil and mining will still be profitable with a ten-fold increase in royalties, taxes and fees, but I have a feeling that it won't.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoThe annual dividend is around $1000. I wouldn’t call this UBI exactly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toohotatopic 6y agoWhy do you need a critical mass? Everybody with an income can try it at any given moment: Find one or more persons who _you_ want to support and support them with a basic income. If UBI works, they will also start supporting other people. Sooner or later, you have an economy of people who support each other with UBI. Chances are that you are unlucky and your choice of seeding persons wasn't good. But for science, that doesn't matter. If others copy that approach, sooner or later, a working economy will emerge - if UBI works. There is no need to establish UBI in an area even though it helps. Thanks to the internet, the economic connections can all be organized online. *edit: marked the _you_
- sokoloff 6y agoUBI is no good if it's not durable and reliable to the recipient. If you imagine that UBI would allow people to live with a lower level of stress around starvation, you have to imagine that they would want to rely on that income a decade from now. Saying "find a rich benefactor to decide to give money away" doesn't reasonably test anything meaningful about UBI. I can tell you that people will generally be happier if you give them money one time. Don't need much experimentation to validate that hypothesis...
- toohotatopic 6y agoI haven't said 'find a rich benefactor', but 'be the benefactor'. There is no need to be rich. Spouses stay at home and are not worried if their partner has a regular job. It doesn't have to work for everybody. For starters, find somebody who can handle the risk of you losing your job. Of course people are happier if they get rich. But that's not what UBI is about. The question is: do people need a monetary buffer to get on in life and become more profitable so that society benefits as a whole? If that theory is true, then supporting one or two persons will lead to them making more money and being able to support one or two persons in return by themselves. That's a system that can grow, if UBI works. So, whoever believes in UBI: start supporting one person, and see what will happen.
- sokoloff 6y ago
- hhs 6y agoIt’s possible, Y Combinator Research seems to be doing just this with a randomized controlled trial study in two states: https://basicincome.ycr.org/our-plan https://basicincome.ycr.org/our-plan
- gamegoblin 6y agoI believe what OP is getting at is you need a significant portion of a community to be receiving UBI to truly transform the local economy. To use an example the Yang often uses: It may not be economically viable to set up a bakery in some small dying town. But if everyone in that town were receiving UBI, it might become viable, due to a change in the town's spending habits.
- burrows 6y ago> But if everyone in that town were receiving UBI, it might become viable, due to a change in the town's spending habits. The change being that everyone is now spending money earned by someone else.
- mc32 6y agoMaybe a small economy somewhere. There are small city-sized nation-states here and there around the world --both in industrialized areas and not so industrialized areas. They could try it in both and see what's what. $5MM isn't enough though.
- gpm 6y agoSo... let's say 500k people, 10k a year, 10 years, that's 50 billion dollars. That's... not a small test. That's a small city deciding to go all in on trying it.
- jimbob45 6y agoWere the US Coronavirus payouts not a small-scale test of UBI in themselves?
- tomjakubowski 6y agoNo more so than the 2008 stimulus checks. Both programs were non-universal and under both the number of dollars sent to eligible recipients depended on their incomes.
- jimbob45 6y agoOh maybe I'm mistaken. I was under the impression that the COVID payouts were universal.
- karatestomp 6y agoThe cutoffs before payments started to taper off—not even get cut off entirely yet, but drop—were pretty damn high. Much higher than I expected when they started talking about it. Not by SV or NY professional-class wage earner standards, but very high for normal people. It wasn't universal but it wasn't too far off, either.
- wonderwonder 6y agoNot really, the central premise of UBI is that its recurring allowing you to plan for and adapt to the income. This was just a bandaid for a financial disaster. What is interesting about the payouts is that we magically made the money for them while also magically making the money for a ton of other stuff. Obviously the scale of one time vs recurring is vastly different but I feel like this does go a ways towards proving its possible.
- eplanit 6y agoTrue that it was a band-aid, but the Magic was a massive increase in the national debt[1]. Be careful wishing for any more. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/05/08/national-debt-how-much-could-coronavirus-cost-america/3051559001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/05/08/national-d...
- Ericson2314 6y agoYou cannot test it at small scale, but it also works at small scale, so that's a nice bonus to dupe naysayers with.
- kitotik 6y agoI think the idea that it needs to be tested before just jumping in and trying it somewhere is just a way to state that you don’t support it. Which is fine, but just say that. If there had been the same testing requirements around say Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism we’d never have seen any of them rolled out. At some point you have to buy in to the ethos and goals and be prepared to adapt along the way.
- asdff 6y agoWe are currently with unemployment doing a great UBI experiment. Lots of people are earning more with unemployment than before. The benefits are only a year, but I'm willing to bet these people take their time finding work if it means a pay cut. California is a perfect place to test these sorts of public welfare and social safety net initiatives. It's the 5th largest economy in the world, and medi-Cal already covers a third of the population, it only need be expanded.
- st1ck 6y agoIsn't the whole point about UBI that you don't lose it if employed?
- osdiab 6y agoThe GiveDirectly trial in progress now (been a few years) is the closest to what you're talking about - 20k people in 197 villages in Kenya getting a basic income covered fully for 12 years. https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi-study/ https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi-study/
- st1ck 6y agoEven something like $1000/year for every citizen will be significant enough to affect lives of some people. Assuming over 20% of Americans have near-zero amount of savings, this can be just enough money to avoid eviction, or pay off credit card debt, have home internet, or travel to other city for job interview etc.