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It will be paid for in inflation. I’m a fiscal conservative but I don’t think the inflation caused by UBI will be any worse than the inflation caused by massiv

It will be paid for in inflation. I’m a fiscal conservative but I don’t think the inflation caused by UBI will be any worse than the inflation caused by massive deficits due to military spending and other misallocations of resources. In fact UBI might be better, given it’s spent on actual human needs rather than military hardware that is 90% useless in our present world. But UBI is still stupid. Paying people for not working is a method of producing less, ie making us poorer. I always wonder why the dorks who go around promoting UBI always seem to ignore the earned income credit, which is our best tool to reduce poverty. Why don’t they ever march to massively increase that?

bryanlarsen 6y ago
Saying UBI is causing the inflation is disingenuous. It's the deficits that cause inflation. If UBI is fully paid for with new taxes, it won't cause inflation.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  I think it would be fair to say that UBI causes inflation and to also say that taxation lowers inflation.
  - danans 6y ago
    Any government spending (whether for UBI or missile systems) not paid for with taxes increases inflation, but there are lots of countervailing forces that mitigate it, not just taxation, the largest factor perhaps being downward wage pressure on workers.
- Proven 6y ago
  Maybe you missed the fact that government spending has made the government insolvent on all levels - from Federal to Stockton. Promises (a form of vote buying) have been much greater than taxes collected. Government budgets are almost never balanced (deficit) do that spending has been inflationary because it’s financed by debt.
danans 6y ago
> I’m a fiscal conservative but I don’t think the inflation caused by UBI will be any worse than the inflation caused by massive deficits due to military spending and other misallocations of resources. It's sincerely good to see a fiscal conservative acknowledge this. That said, I'll take a contrarian position (to my own beliefs) and question whether that military hardware is really so useless. > I always wonder why the dorks who go around promoting UBI always seem to ignore the earned income credit, which is our best tool to reduce poverty. UBI is also intended to deal with the emerging reality of routine jobs being lost to automation, and to increase the leverage of workers who would be able to be choosier in the job they take (a good thing), thus putting upward pressure on wages at the lower end of the income scale. When there is no job, there is no earned income to take the EITC on.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Automation has always created better new jobs to replace the ones it’s eliminated for 10,000 years straight. Why would that change now?
  - danans 6y ago
    To re-quote the adage about the automobile replacing the horse-and-buggy - the workers today (especially those lower/ more automatable skills) are what the horses were then.
    - opo 6y ago
      I see this analogy quite often, but I think it isn't very useful. Horses didn't have agency - horses weren't able to apply for other work, couldn't retrain themselves, weren't able to move to somewhere where they might be employed, etc. Saying workers are like horses and are helpless to do anything to help themselves isn't accurate. This isn't to say that all (or even most) workers will be able to adapt to losing their job to automation or what can/should be done to help them.
      - danans 6y ago

bryanlarsen 6y ago

Saying UBI is causing the inflation is disingenuous. It's the deficits that cause inflation. If UBI is fully paid for with new taxes, it won't cause inflation.

whatshisface 6y ago
I think it would be fair to say that UBI causes inflation and to also say that taxation lowers inflation.
- danans 6y ago
  Any government spending (whether for UBI or missile systems) not paid for with taxes increases inflation, but there are lots of countervailing forces that mitigate it, not just taxation, the largest factor perhaps being downward wage pressure on workers.
Proven 6y ago
Maybe you missed the fact that government spending has made the government insolvent on all levels - from Federal to Stockton. Promises (a form of vote buying) have been much greater than taxes collected. Government budgets are almost never balanced (deficit) do that spending has been inflationary because it’s financed by debt.

danans 6y ago

> I’m a fiscal conservative but I don’t think the inflation caused by UBI will be any worse than the inflation caused by massive deficits due to military spending and other misallocations of resources. It's sincerely good to see a fiscal conservative acknowledge this. That said, I'll take a contrarian position (to my own beliefs) and question whether that military hardware is really so useless. > I always wonder why the dorks who go around promoting UBI always seem to ignore the earned income credit, which is our best tool to reduce poverty. UBI is also intended to deal with the emerging reality of routine jobs being lost to automation, and to increase the leverage of workers who would be able to be choosier in the job they take (a good thing), thus putting upward pressure on wages at the lower end of the income scale. When there is no job, there is no earned income to take the EITC on.

valuearb 6y ago
Automation has always created better new jobs to replace the ones it’s eliminated for 10,000 years straight. Why would that change now?
- danans 6y ago
  To re-quote the adage about the automobile replacing the horse-and-buggy - the workers today (especially those lower/ more automatable skills) are what the horses were then.
  - opo 6y ago
    I see this analogy quite often, but I think it isn't very useful. Horses didn't have agency - horses weren't able to apply for other work, couldn't retrain themselves, weren't able to move to somewhere where they might be employed, etc. Saying workers are like horses and are helpless to do anything to help themselves isn't accurate. This isn't to say that all (or even most) workers will be able to adapt to losing their job to automation or what can/should be done to help them.
    - danans 6y ago