11 ms·

Pandemic speeds largest test yet of universal basic income

114 points by MindGods 6y ago

interactivecode 6y ago
As I understand it, the basic income idea is based on that realistically almost everyone at some point uses government aid or finances (directly or indirectly). basic income is just making sure that when you need to make use of that aid, you don't have to jump through hoops, requirements and paperwork. By giving everyone enough to live and not starve, you can do that. Without needing bureaucracy. It goes together with other great ideas like a minimum livable wage[0], pensions, public education and public healthcare. If we are the rich west, why can't we just take care of everyone? we'll still be plenty productive. And if you want more go work, go study, go for competitive jobs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage
- eru 6y ago
  > As I understand it, the basic income idea is based on that realistically almost everyone at some point uses government aid or finances (directly or indirectly). basic income is just making sure that when you need to make use of that aid, you don't have to jump through hoops, requirements and paperwork. That points at an alternative way to conceptualize a basic income: at the end of the day, it's the net transfer that matters. Ie all the money and welfare services you get from the government minus all the taxes you pay. On average over all of society that net transfer has to be zero. (Modulo complications to do with souvereign wealth funds and government debt.) Now, most people around the world want rich people to pay and poorer people to receive on net. The usual way to achieve that is via means testing in both the welfare and the tax system. Basic income can be seen as a way to simplify government bureaucracies by shifting all the means testing out of the welfare system and into the tax system. > By giving everyone enough to live and not starve, you can do that. Without needing bureaucracy. It goes together with other great ideas like a minimum livable wage[0], pensions, public education and public healthcare. These other things don't sound like good ideas to me. Especially outlawing poor people's jobs seems cruel and a bad case of 'Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics' to me. See https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
- snarf21 6y ago
  It is a very complicated issue. I'm all for needs based aid from the government without all the bureaucracy. It would even allow us to help more people on the fringe. However, one thing that no one ever talks about or thinks through is that a lot of that "waste" is someone else's job and pension. If you cut 90% of the staff at all welfare and other programs offices, those people need other jobs or have to go on the same programs. Additionally, it is the universal part of UBI that people struggle with. If everyone gets it, do prices just rise to meet that reality and soak up the "free" money. We'll need regulations (and people to enforce them) to make sure housing prices stay reasonable for lower income people. This is why government housing exists today, the cost can be locked. All said, I think UBI doesn't work because it can't be universal, but we should be helping more people and the well off can afford to pay 1% more of their largess to do so.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I don't think we have enough data to say anything. For example, it might as well be that housing prices decrease, because people can now choose where they live independently from having a job. Cities might become much less attractive.
  - algo646464 6y ago
    > Additionally, it is the universal part of UBI that people struggle with. If everyone gets it, do prices just rise to meet that reality and soak up the "free" money. Think about this another way: if it is true that the prices are going to rise because of UBI, i.e. because everyone can afford the "basics"(the B of UBI), then it means that the lower prices of today require that some people do without these basics.
  - raisedbyninjas 6y ago
    Keeping a hulking bureaucracy around as a jobs program is the last thing we need. So far, whenever a disruptive technology or policy change has happened people have found other work to do. Let's not worry about the oncologist jobs as we search for the cure for cancer.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Furthermore, a lot of that overhead are people like social workers and so forth. Even if one accepts the principle of reducing means testing and so forth, is it really the proposal that everyone gets sent a check once a month along with a note that basically says "You'll get another one next month. Until then you're on your own. Enjoy."
- Aerroon 6y ago
  >If we are the rich west, why can't we just take care of everyone? What does it mean to "take care of everyone"? That their "basic needs" are met? What do you define as basic needs? I will assume that this will include at least food, housing, and clothing. Is it acceptable to provide everyone with rice? Potatoes? Do we have to provide them meat? Is it acceptable to offer them housing somewhere in the country or does it have to be near where they currently are? If the latter then how do you determine who gets displaced further away? Now the answer is likely going to be "we give them money, so they can decide". The problem with this answer is that life doesn't cost the same everywhere in the US. $1,000 a month is enough to live on in some areas, whereas others $1,000 will barely get you a living space and nothing else. Obviously you can't give people in more expensive areas more money, because then everyone would want to be in the expensive areas. So, how much should we give people? When answering that question keep in mind that there are 330 million people living in the US. If you give everyone $1,000 a month it will cost you $4 trillion. US tax revenues in 2019 amounted to $3.5 trillion.[0] To put this into perspective: US mandatory spending in 2019 was $2.7 trillion.[1] This is stuff like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans programs etc. You can't just renege on all of these obligations, because the government gave people guarantees on them - that's what they paid taxes for. It's unlikely people would accept less money than what they were promised. Not to mention that you probably couldn't cut Medicare and Medicaid anyway. That's already a trillion gone from the budget. You probably also can't cut much from discretionary spending. You'd be cutting the military and basically every other non-social service the government does. Stuff like NASA and environmental research etc. Ultimately, just $1,000 a month per person would require an enormous budget increase to the tune of >$2 trillion a year. Keep in mind that the US budget deficit is already at $1 trillion a year. You'd have a deficit of $3 trillion or require an enormous tax increase (almost doubling tax revenue). And it still hinges on there being no reduction in productivity. If you then want public healthcare too, then it gets even more expensive. Medicaid covers 64.1 million people[2] at the cost of $409 billion.[1] Getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid and replacing it with healthcare for everyone would add up to an extra cost of ~$1.3 trillion, assuming that the healthcare costs for everyone else is about the same per person as it is for people on Medicaid. "A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." [0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324 [1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56325 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56325 [2] https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica...
- jimbokun 6y ago
  > It goes together with other great ideas like a minimum livable wage[0] Isn't that redundant with UBI? If UBI is already providing a minimum standard of living, then it's mathematically impossible for any wage combined with UBI to be below that standard.
  - derefr 6y ago
    I imagine, in a country with UBI, people wouldn't talk about "minimum livable wage", but rather "minimum livable all-source income." Also, UBI provides a minimum standard of living, but I believe the idea there is that you'd have to make several potentially-drastic changes in your life to truly be living the sort of "minimum" life that it pays for. For example, I believe that UBI isn't supposed to pay out more for people who live in areas of a country with higher costs of living; so part of "living minimally" would be moving to the lowest cost-of-living part of the country. Remember, UBI is usually spoken of as a federal program; whereas "minimum livable wage" is usually modelled by state or even by city. So it'd make sense to talk about needing a certain level of wages, above-and-beyond your UBI, to survive in a high cost-of-living area. (What would happen if UBI was based on regional cost-of-living? Well, for one thing, we'd see a lot of people who either don't "live where they live", but instead consistently renew their IDs within the highest cost-of-living areas; or, if the controls are tighter, we'd see people migrating to high cost-of-living areas to live out of their cars in the middle of them, to save up the most money.)
    - RunningDroid 6y ago
      > (What would happen if UBI was based on regional cost-of-living? Well, for one thing, we'd see a lot of people who either don't "live where they live", but instead consistently renew their IDs within the highest cost-of-living areas; or, if the controls are tighter, we'd see people migrating to high cost-of-living areas to live out of their cars in the middle of them, to save up the most money.) IMO those would be exploited infrequently enough that it would be worth it to base it on regional cost-of-living and tighten the controls until exploitation falls below an acceptable level.
      - 6y ago
- ouid 6y ago
  My understanding of basic income is a bit different. The average American adult needs to make 1500/month to meet the basic requirements of life. This is equivalent to paying off a mortgage over the term of your life of about $500,000, or student loans to the tune of $250,000. (I used an annuity calculator for these figures https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calculator.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calcu...). Basic income can be distilled to notion that, if student loans are bad for humanity, then it is reasonable to suggest that this intrinsic debt might also be bad.
allsystemsgo 6y ago
Has UBI ever worked? What does success look like with a UBI program?
- aww_dang 6y ago
  A cynic might suggest that success would be the politician who promised UBI being reelected.
- lacksconfidence 6y ago
  To me success looks like canceling the mountain of other welfare programs and removing vast inefficiencies of bureaucracy.
dfxm12 6y ago
I think it's disingenuous to call this a "test". How do you control for the pandemic? Surely, spending habits and measures of "livelihood" are affected by COVID-19. How UBI works or doesn't work during a global crisis isn't really indicative of how it might work out under normal circumstances, right?
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Doesn’t mean nothing can be learned from doing it. Not every test need be a double blind placebo controlled trial.
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    The big factor with covid is, people know it's temporary and still need to keep their careers going. Behaviour would probably be very different for a permanent scheme.
    - kwhitefoot 6y ago
      > The big factor with covid is, people know it's temporary Do we? Some people might believe it but there doesn't seem to a lot of evidence for it yet. If anything it seems that it might behave like other seasonal viruses such as the flu and especially like other coronaviruses such as the common cold. That is it might mutate so rapidly that immunity will not last. So we might have to live with it or something like it for ever.
- ttonkytonk 6y ago
  It's not true UBI either, it's a "guaranteed minimum income" of about the equivalent of $1000 for households, $500 for individuals, specifically for the "poorest". Personally I favor a UBI but I think it needs an intellectual basis, i.e. I am not for "stealing from the rich". Perhaps part of this intellectual basis could consist of an appreciation that natural resources are not distributed equally.
  - gerbal 6y ago
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
"monthly payments ... to the nation’s poorest families ... the largest test yet of an idea called universal basic income" You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chooseaname 6y ago
  "test" It's just a test.
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    Yeah... though not a test of UBI, but rather yet another means-tested welfare program.
    - nostrebored 6y ago
      To make this more clear, the negative repercussions of UBI really center on the 'U' a lot of the time. What happens when everyone has more money for essentials?
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > What happens when everyone has more money for essentials? Everyone doesn't have more money with UBI unless it is funded by printing money. If it's funded by taxes, or borrowing, or a combination, there is equal money being extracted as being injected.
        undersuit 6y ago
        The proponents still fear inflation. And some goods may become inflated if everyone starts consistently receiving UBI payments. I'd see media increasing in price since those that are currently buying it are not necessarily destitute for food. There'd be plenty of payments towards debt... which I'm not an economist so I can't say what exactly that liquidity in the credit markets would do. You'd see an uptick in food purchases as EBT, food pantries, etc. decrease in capacity and food is purchased directly from stores without limitation on purchased items. Plenty of consumer crap would be consumed too. Magic cards, Funko Pop figurines, Alco-pops and Big Macs. What I don't see happening is the cost of housing skyrocketing. That assumes we have a limited supply, we do not we have a excess. We could house every person in the US today... well tomorrow with realistic travel times.
TomMarius 6y ago
The minimal financial support to the most unfortunate during the quarantine (3 months) has cost my country half of its usual annual budget. I don't see how that shows UBI in a positive light.
- BolexNOLA 6y ago
  Well it went to basically everyone (in many countries, obviously don’t know yours) and was rushed out the door with no sustainability in mind. I’m sure it can be retooled and refined. You can’t toss it out completely already.
  - jkinudsjknds 6y ago
    > I’m sure it can be retooled and refined Why, exactly? And what do you do if this doesn't work and capitalism finds a way to just reroute economic gains to the wealthy as they usually do? Take UBI away from people once they're entitled and there will be rioting.
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    In Czechia it went only to those severely affected by Covid and was one time payment around a quarter less than monthly average wage. Only selected firms have received some, also very small support.
tkeAmarktinClss 6y ago
Universal basic income requires elimination of food stamps, rent subsidies, welfare, unemployment, etc.... None of these places are doing that. The entire argument is that you can get rid of administration and people can spend money on what they need. That said, after seeing how many people listen to Dave Ramsey's Snowball method + anti vaxxers, I'm personally convinced UBI will not work. The people that need it the most cannot make rational decisions.
- balefrost 6y ago
  I think part of the goal too is to remove the stigma associated with those programs. I know some people look down on those who use food stamps, or suspect that people use food stamps to buy lobster and filet mignon, or barter their food stamp purchases for things that you can't buy with food stamps. With UBI, everybody's using cash.
  - chooseaname 6y ago
    "...or suspect that people use food stamps to buy lobster and filet mignon, or barter their food stamp purchases for things that you can't buy with food stamps." Rare, but it happens. The people who think this is more than a rare occurrence are not well educated on the needs of the poor.
    - sethammons 6y ago
      Having grown up with and around welfare recipients, back when it was not an EBT card but paper bills, it was exceptionally common to see it traded at a loss for real money.
- wenc 6y ago
  Why do you think the snowball method is irrational? Like any method it has its flaws, but studies from Northwestern and Harvard indicate positive results [1] which moves the argument closer to evidence than pure assertion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-snowball_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-snowball_method
- 6y ago
gavman 6y ago
The one question about UBI I haven't seen a satisfactory answer for is what's stopping landlords from raising rents to match the UBI? If everyone suddenly has an extra $1000/month, what's stopping my landlord (together with every other landlord in my city) from raising my rent next year by $1000/month? It's very plausible this would not show up in small scale pilots where only a small percent of a population received income, but would show up at scale when everyone does. Unless UBI comes with a massive overhaul of zoning restrictions and a shift of the housing supply, I don't see how this doesn't end up as an indirect way of increasing income inequality by routing the UBI from poorer tenants to wealthier landlords.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Optimistically, or pragmatically? An optimist would predict that some people will spend the extra $$$ on a car and a move to the suburbs; others will choose not to work at all, moving to cheap areas to live frugally; and others will find house building much more profitable as rents rise, motivating them to build more. A pragmatist would say you're completely right, based on my country's many failed attempts to lower house prices by handing out money to house buyers.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  It encourages people to get out of the damn cities! There's a reason why it costs a king's ransom to rent a hovel in a city: finite space. Nothing you do -- not density, not UBI, not anything -- can create unlimited space out of thin air. Fortunately, we've got plenty of space, just not in urban centers. We need to learn how to use space rather than let it use us.
  - nostrebored 6y ago
    Cities are economically efficient. If your praise for UBI is that it reduces economic efficiency (reducing your ability to pay for UBI) then I think you're going off course.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
Pxtl 6y ago
The problem is that governments don't seem to be doing the other half of universal basic income 1) Realistically, you're going to have to raise taxes to fund it, not just deepen deficits 2) You're going to have to cut many social programs as well that overlap with basic income. For some people this isn't really a good trade-off. I saw one blog-post proposing a long list of social programs such as disability support and wheelchair funds, and a local activist parent of a severely disabled child pointed out that this would devastate his family financially. I get the appeal of an anti-bureaucratic one-size fits all solution to the social safety net, but I'm skeptical.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Policymaking is hard, it's never quite fair, but those seem like awfully addressable problems to me. I mean, you don't "have" to cut disability entitlements if that's not politically feasible. Cut what you can, and adjust as needed. It's not a reason to Refuse To Get Started On The Problem, which is what nitpicky criticism like this gets used for in practice. I mean, the core idea of the article is that direct cash benefits reduces poverty directly, in a quantifiable way (there are some numbers already!). That takes a sword directly to the Gordian knot of the policymaking kerfufflery, and that evidence and its attendent simplicity is far more (FAR more) important to achieving a solution than "getting the right solution". Better vs. Perfect, basically.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    Government never gets smaller So lets see what bigger & better gets us. 1)stock market back to precovid levels... even though job and economic losses are widespread. That is not normal, but it is logical given the cash flooding all assets now. 2) sticky unemployment largely affecting minorities and the youngest. 3) the conversation has shifted from... where can we reduce the govt footprint?. To, should this new thing be done? In effect - Leaders today are leaving a legacy of destruction and misery that will be reaped by our grandchildren. Our leaders are perpetrating the largest ever robbery of future generations. Its inmoral and it is not "better"
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
astura 6y ago
So this isn't universal basic income, as it's means based, but this article keeps calling it that for some reason. I really don't understand how a temporary traditional welfare program can give us insight into what would happen if everyone was guaranteed a monthly income - even if the richest didn't have a net increase in income, for example, my behavior might be different if I had a guaranteed income of $1,000/month but paid an extra $12,000 in taxes at the end of the year (because I am high income) than if I didn't have that monthly check and paid $12,000 less in taxes at the end of the year. Beyond that this is unprecedented times/circumstances so it's really difficult to make general conclusions about this "experiment."
- class4behavior 6y ago
  >Although Standing says that the buzz generated by the Spanish proposal is a boon for UBI advocates, he is “disappointed” by the details. Because not everyone in Spain will receive the payment, it is arguably not truly universal. He adds that if the trial doesn’t work, people might see it as a failure of the whole UBI concept.
  - vageli 6y ago
    My cynical take is that this is precisely the point: parade this about as a test of UBI, when it fails, discount the notion of UBI in full.
    - mardifoufs 6y ago
      The opposite is also true though. A lot of "UBI" studies show positive results and are touted as proof of it's potential success. Yet they almost always only test for a short period of time with a very small group of people. So as it stands there's no reason not to discount UBI. It's not only a fringe theory discounted by the vast majority experts and academia[0], but it also never has had any supporting evidence. It's okay to discount a fringe theory especially when it's never been tried but the only way to actually try it is to fully implement it nationwide and just not care about the potential disastrous effects it could have. [0] People love to dismiss economics as a field and disregard it's consensus, and that's their choice, but it's weird to then believe the few economists who promote UBI are right without any proof.
bobthechef 6y ago
"The US economist Milton Friedman proposed an idea related to UBI called a negative income tax in 1962, in which those earning under a certain amount would receive supplemental funds from the government rather than paying tax." The whole point of UBI is that it's universal. What Friedman is describing is essentially a social safety net, i.e., one that only those below a certain level of income receive. "'If you can only qualify if your income is below this threshold, it creates a very strong disincentive for anybody to earn above that threshold because they would be losing their benefits,” she says. 'We call it a poverty trap.'" Yes, and that's a major reason why poor Americans, perhaps especially the black community, is stuck in the poverty trap. Marriage rates among blacks were higher than rates among whites in the 1940s and we know that children with a father in the home tend to grow up to be better adjusted and less likely to engage in crime or remain/land in poverty. Twenty years later, government programs coupled with the social upheaval of the sexual revolution destroyed the black family. Now three quarters of black children are born out of wedlock (we see something similar among poor whites, but poverty afflicts blacks more than whites). Poor black women are discouraged from marrying because doing so could or would cause them to lose whatever benefits they receive.
- eru 6y ago
  You are misunderstanding the negative income tax. Negative income tax is exactly equivalent to a UBI plus regular income tax. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax for an explanation.
- chillacy 6y ago
  The NIT ends up acting similarly to UBI + increased taxes, but it has to be phased out perfectly linearly to remove these incentive gaps. UBI seems more simple to administer and being universal would likely make it more resilient to cuts (as we know from other universal services).
  - eru 6y ago
    A negative income tax is not phased out at all. You are probably familiar with income tax brackets. So for example in the US, your first $0 – $9,525 of income per year are taxed at 10%, the next $9,526 – $38,700 are taxed at 12%. And so on. That applies to billionaires just as much as it applies to dishwashers. The low brackets never get phased out. The billionaire just has most of her income fall into the higher taxed brackets. So her average tax rate is higher than the dishwasher's tax rate, but their first dollars are taxed exactly the same. A (refundable) negative income tax is just another somewhat special tax bracket placed in front of the normal progression. It never gets phased out. It just nets out at higher incomes. And because nothing is ever simple in taxes, here's a weird real life example to the contrary: The British have a weird system where they DO phase out their lowest tax bracket, called the 'Personal Allowance' at higher income. I don't know why they do that, instead of just raising the marginal rates. > On 22 April 2009, the then Chancellor Alistair Darling announced in the 2009 Budget statement that starting in April 2010, those with annual incomes over £100,000 would see their Personal allowance reduced by £1 for every £2 earned over £100,000, until the Personal allowance was reduced to zero, which (in 2010-11) would occur at an income of £112,950. This had the effect of creating an anomalous effective 60% marginal tax rate in the income band between £100,000 and £112,950, with the marginal tax rate returning to 40% above £112,950. As the Personal allowance has grown over the years, this has resulted in a corresponding increase in the size of the effective marginal 60% tax band. As of 2019-20, the effective 60% marginal tax rate now arises for incomes between £100,000 and £125,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_allowance#Personal_allowance_tapering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_allowance#Personal_al...
eric1293 6y ago
UBI would never work. It ignores basics of how humans operate. We have it in some sense in France. The problems it tries to address are only amplified after UBI.
- gerbal 6y ago
  Do you mean RSA[1]? My french is quite bad, but as I understand it, the RSA is tied closely to employment and has complicated work obligation and subsidizes employers for keeping employees at low hours. RSA appears to be extensively means tested as well (which UBI is not supposed to be). [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarité_activ https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarité_activ
  - eric1293 6y ago
    There are numerous independent social programs in France. RSA is one. People could receive input from up to 3-4 social programs. Consider CDI contracts at universities. It has become a sort of UBI. People show up once every few weeks. Never publish papers; never teach properly; never go to any conference; etc. Totally detached from academic life. And they can't be fired. You know what they do with the UBI? -- Become members of unions. Unions were supposed to protect workers in 80s. Now the least productive members of the institutions join unions to protect themselves. They kill reform policies and maintain status quo. -- Work is associated dignity. You can't have two classes: workers and suckers. So UBI recipients, holding into administrative roles and unable to do meaningful work, try to fail non-UBI takers. -- Fail those who actually do their jobs. Otherwise, the gap is going to be problematic. At the end of the day, UBI would only shift the baseline. The same problems it tries to address exist after the administration of UBI. You would be surprised if I go over details. America's left does not understand what it's getting into. France's system has really been an eye opening experience for me. I highly recommend people spending time in Europe.
    - jostylr 6y ago
      That sounds more like a jobs guarantee than a UBI. Many UBI proponents are against a jobs guarantee for fear of these kinds of outcomes. UBI is untethered to any conditions on people. So there are no bad incentives created by the system (no good ones created either, of course) nor is anyone part of some group that they try to homogenize into something unproductive.
rufusroflpunch 6y ago
Why bother testing it? We all know where this is going. UBI is going to happen, whether the tests are successful or not, and it's not going to look anything like the UBI we were promised; instead of repealing social safety net programs in favor of one payment, it's going to be just another program on top of the pile.
marcinzm 6y ago
My biggest observation is the large scale social impact of people not needing to work. In the US many people got unemployment benefits and were unable to work. We also had nationwide protests by both liberals and conservatives for various causes. Some looting in there, aggressive police response and crazy people waving guns. It seems to me that given UBI people will spend their time championing their causes at the expense of those who are working (blocking areas with protests is just that). Seems a very unstable dynamic as I'd imagine both conservatives and liberals would escalate until mass violence breaks out.
LatteLazy 6y ago
I really wish somewhere would run an actual trial on this. We've had dozens of sub-trials (not universal, not instead of other benefits, not very long or cancelled before end date etc). Then we would KNOW. Until then, everything is just speculation.
linuxftw 6y ago
People that champion UBI don't understand market incentives. It won't work without price controls, and we know that price controls don't work. Let's go crazy though, and say price controls will work. How universal is universal? Is it $600 for every person alive, including children? How is that going to incentivize people's behavior? If it's not for children, how is that going to incentivize people's behavior? Are you expected to pay housing costs out of this amount, or is that granted separately? Would a family of 5 splitting a single family residence be building wealth faster than a someone living in an apartment? If you want to wreck the economy, UBI is the best way to do it.
- chillacy 6y ago
  The answers to those questions vary by UBI proposal. Here's a proposal from a conservative economist who might understand market incentives and how the existing welfare programs completely distort them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-a...
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    If you support UBI or welfare, then by definition, you do not qualify as a 'conservative economist.'
    - chillacy 6y ago
      Well, feel free to edit his wikipedia page to correct this terrible misunderstanding...
tux1968 6y ago
Even though he was talking about minimum wage, Walter Williams line is apropos: "People think minimum wage is an anti-poverty measure, but this doesn't pass the smell test. If it did, our state department could stop all foreign aid, they could instead say to all those countries, if you want to be as rich as us, simply set a minimum wage for all your workers!" Edit: He repeated this line in a documentary about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGvQcxoAPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGvQcxoAPg
- karpierz 6y ago
  I'm confused, how does that show minimum wage is not an anti-poverty measure? Doesn't that just indicate it's an anti-poverty measure for wealthier nation's?
  - tux1968 6y ago
    I suppose it's not an ironclad refutation of the idea, but I think it does suggest minimum wage isn't the magic bullet one might hope. If it doesn't work for a poor country, you had better be able to explain very convincingly why it will work for a rich one, and not turn it into a poor one instead. And also explain, why the techniques used to go from a poor country to a rich one... must then be abandoned at some point.
SirensOfTitan 6y ago
I really like the idea of scaling basic-income through a series of stages, starting with negative income tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax) and moving to more encompassing strategies like guaranteed income or a social dividend as automation makes up a larger portion of economic output. Negative income tax has a couple advantages, namely: * It benefits those who actually need the help the most * Shortfall checks will come from tax agencies. People who need real help can save their dignity, they're just getting a tax refund.
collyw 6y ago
As usual there seems to be nothing "universal" about these.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neilwilson 6y ago
We already have a widespread incomplete test of basic income. It’s called “a state pension”.
- snidane 6y ago
  Which is also unsustainable in the current form because it is a ponzi scheme that works only when each next generation has more children than the previous one.

114 points by MindGods 6y ago

As I understand it, the basic income idea is based on that realistically almost everyone at some point uses government aid or finances (directly or indirectly). basic income is just making sure that when you need to make use of that aid, you don't have to jump through hoops, requirements and paperwork. By giving everyone enough to live and not starve, you can do that. Without needing bureaucracy. It goes together with other great ideas like a minimum livable wage[0], pensions, public education and public healthcare. If we are the rich west, why can't we just take care of everyone? we'll still be plenty productive. And if you want more go work, go study, go for competitive jobs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage

eru 6y ago
> As I understand it, the basic income idea is based on that realistically almost everyone at some point uses government aid or finances (directly or indirectly). basic income is just making sure that when you need to make use of that aid, you don't have to jump through hoops, requirements and paperwork. That points at an alternative way to conceptualize a basic income: at the end of the day, it's the net transfer that matters. Ie all the money and welfare services you get from the government minus all the taxes you pay. On average over all of society that net transfer has to be zero. (Modulo complications to do with souvereign wealth funds and government debt.) Now, most people around the world want rich people to pay and poorer people to receive on net. The usual way to achieve that is via means testing in both the welfare and the tax system. Basic income can be seen as a way to simplify government bureaucracies by shifting all the means testing out of the welfare system and into the tax system. > By giving everyone enough to live and not starve, you can do that. Without needing bureaucracy. It goes together with other great ideas like a minimum livable wage[0], pensions, public education and public healthcare. These other things don't sound like good ideas to me. Especially outlawing poor people's jobs seems cruel and a bad case of 'Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics' to me. See https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
snarf21 6y ago
It is a very complicated issue. I'm all for needs based aid from the government without all the bureaucracy. It would even allow us to help more people on the fringe. However, one thing that no one ever talks about or thinks through is that a lot of that "waste" is someone else's job and pension. If you cut 90% of the staff at all welfare and other programs offices, those people need other jobs or have to go on the same programs. Additionally, it is the universal part of UBI that people struggle with. If everyone gets it, do prices just rise to meet that reality and soak up the "free" money. We'll need regulations (and people to enforce them) to make sure housing prices stay reasonable for lower income people. This is why government housing exists today, the cost can be locked. All said, I think UBI doesn't work because it can't be universal, but we should be helping more people and the well off can afford to pay 1% more of their largess to do so.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I don't think we have enough data to say anything. For example, it might as well be that housing prices decrease, because people can now choose where they live independently from having a job. Cities might become much less attractive.
- algo646464 6y ago
  > Additionally, it is the universal part of UBI that people struggle with. If everyone gets it, do prices just rise to meet that reality and soak up the "free" money. Think about this another way: if it is true that the prices are going to rise because of UBI, i.e. because everyone can afford the "basics"(the B of UBI), then it means that the lower prices of today require that some people do without these basics.
- raisedbyninjas 6y ago
  Keeping a hulking bureaucracy around as a jobs program is the last thing we need. So far, whenever a disruptive technology or policy change has happened people have found other work to do. Let's not worry about the oncologist jobs as we search for the cure for cancer.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Furthermore, a lot of that overhead are people like social workers and so forth. Even if one accepts the principle of reducing means testing and so forth, is it really the proposal that everyone gets sent a check once a month along with a note that basically says "You'll get another one next month. Until then you're on your own. Enjoy."
Aerroon 6y ago
>If we are the rich west, why can't we just take care of everyone? What does it mean to "take care of everyone"? That their "basic needs" are met? What do you define as basic needs? I will assume that this will include at least food, housing, and clothing. Is it acceptable to provide everyone with rice? Potatoes? Do we have to provide them meat? Is it acceptable to offer them housing somewhere in the country or does it have to be near where they currently are? If the latter then how do you determine who gets displaced further away? Now the answer is likely going to be "we give them money, so they can decide". The problem with this answer is that life doesn't cost the same everywhere in the US. $1,000 a month is enough to live on in some areas, whereas others $1,000 will barely get you a living space and nothing else. Obviously you can't give people in more expensive areas more money, because then everyone would want to be in the expensive areas. So, how much should we give people? When answering that question keep in mind that there are 330 million people living in the US. If you give everyone $1,000 a month it will cost you $4 trillion. US tax revenues in 2019 amounted to $3.5 trillion.[0] To put this into perspective: US mandatory spending in 2019 was $2.7 trillion.[1] This is stuff like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans programs etc. You can't just renege on all of these obligations, because the government gave people guarantees on them - that's what they paid taxes for. It's unlikely people would accept less money than what they were promised. Not to mention that you probably couldn't cut Medicare and Medicaid anyway. That's already a trillion gone from the budget. You probably also can't cut much from discretionary spending. You'd be cutting the military and basically every other non-social service the government does. Stuff like NASA and environmental research etc. Ultimately, just $1,000 a month per person would require an enormous budget increase to the tune of >$2 trillion a year. Keep in mind that the US budget deficit is already at $1 trillion a year. You'd have a deficit of $3 trillion or require an enormous tax increase (almost doubling tax revenue). And it still hinges on there being no reduction in productivity. If you then want public healthcare too, then it gets even more expensive. Medicaid covers 64.1 million people[2] at the cost of $409 billion.[1] Getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid and replacing it with healthcare for everyone would add up to an extra cost of ~$1.3 trillion, assuming that the healthcare costs for everyone else is about the same per person as it is for people on Medicaid. "A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." [0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324 [1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56325 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56325 [2] https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica...
jimbokun 6y ago
> It goes together with other great ideas like a minimum livable wage[0] Isn't that redundant with UBI? If UBI is already providing a minimum standard of living, then it's mathematically impossible for any wage combined with UBI to be below that standard.
- derefr 6y ago
  I imagine, in a country with UBI, people wouldn't talk about "minimum livable wage", but rather "minimum livable all-source income." Also, UBI provides a minimum standard of living, but I believe the idea there is that you'd have to make several potentially-drastic changes in your life to truly be living the sort of "minimum" life that it pays for. For example, I believe that UBI isn't supposed to pay out more for people who live in areas of a country with higher costs of living; so part of "living minimally" would be moving to the lowest cost-of-living part of the country. Remember, UBI is usually spoken of as a federal program; whereas "minimum livable wage" is usually modelled by state or even by city. So it'd make sense to talk about needing a certain level of wages, above-and-beyond your UBI, to survive in a high cost-of-living area. (What would happen if UBI was based on regional cost-of-living? Well, for one thing, we'd see a lot of people who either don't "live where they live", but instead consistently renew their IDs within the highest cost-of-living areas; or, if the controls are tighter, we'd see people migrating to high cost-of-living areas to live out of their cars in the middle of them, to save up the most money.)
  - RunningDroid 6y ago
    > (What would happen if UBI was based on regional cost-of-living? Well, for one thing, we'd see a lot of people who either don't "live where they live", but instead consistently renew their IDs within the highest cost-of-living areas; or, if the controls are tighter, we'd see people migrating to high cost-of-living areas to live out of their cars in the middle of them, to save up the most money.) IMO those would be exploited infrequently enough that it would be worth it to base it on regional cost-of-living and tighten the controls until exploitation falls below an acceptable level.
    - 6y ago
ouid 6y ago
My understanding of basic income is a bit different. The average American adult needs to make 1500/month to meet the basic requirements of life. This is equivalent to paying off a mortgage over the term of your life of about $500,000, or student loans to the tune of $250,000. (I used an annuity calculator for these figures https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calculator.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calcu...). Basic income can be distilled to notion that, if student loans are bad for humanity, then it is reasonable to suggest that this intrinsic debt might also be bad.

allsystemsgo 6y ago

Has UBI ever worked? What does success look like with a UBI program?

aww_dang 6y ago
A cynic might suggest that success would be the politician who promised UBI being reelected.
lacksconfidence 6y ago
To me success looks like canceling the mountain of other welfare programs and removing vast inefficiencies of bureaucracy.

dfxm12 6y ago

I think it's disingenuous to call this a "test". How do you control for the pandemic? Surely, spending habits and measures of "livelihood" are affected by COVID-19. How UBI works or doesn't work during a global crisis isn't really indicative of how it might work out under normal circumstances, right?

Robotbeat 6y ago
Doesn’t mean nothing can be learned from doing it. Not every test need be a double blind placebo controlled trial.
- HPsquared 6y ago
  The big factor with covid is, people know it's temporary and still need to keep their careers going. Behaviour would probably be very different for a permanent scheme.
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    > The big factor with covid is, people know it's temporary Do we? Some people might believe it but there doesn't seem to a lot of evidence for it yet. If anything it seems that it might behave like other seasonal viruses such as the flu and especially like other coronaviruses such as the common cold. That is it might mutate so rapidly that immunity will not last. So we might have to live with it or something like it for ever.
ttonkytonk 6y ago
It's not true UBI either, it's a "guaranteed minimum income" of about the equivalent of $1000 for households, $500 for individuals, specifically for the "poorest". Personally I favor a UBI but I think it needs an intellectual basis, i.e. I am not for "stealing from the rich". Perhaps part of this intellectual basis could consist of an appreciation that natural resources are not distributed equally.
- gerbal 6y ago

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

"monthly payments ... to the nation’s poorest families ... the largest test yet of an idea called universal basic income" You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chooseaname 6y ago
"test" It's just a test.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Yeah... though not a test of UBI, but rather yet another means-tested welfare program.
  - nostrebored 6y ago
    To make this more clear, the negative repercussions of UBI really center on the 'U' a lot of the time. What happens when everyone has more money for essentials?
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > What happens when everyone has more money for essentials? Everyone doesn't have more money with UBI unless it is funded by printing money. If it's funded by taxes, or borrowing, or a combination, there is equal money being extracted as being injected.
      - undersuit 6y ago
        The proponents still fear inflation. And some goods may become inflated if everyone starts consistently receiving UBI payments. I'd see media increasing in price since those that are currently buying it are not necessarily destitute for food. There'd be plenty of payments towards debt... which I'm not an economist so I can't say what exactly that liquidity in the credit markets would do. You'd see an uptick in food purchases as EBT, food pantries, etc. decrease in capacity and food is purchased directly from stores without limitation on purchased items. Plenty of consumer crap would be consumed too. Magic cards, Funko Pop figurines, Alco-pops and Big Macs. What I don't see happening is the cost of housing skyrocketing. That assumes we have a limited supply, we do not we have a excess. We could house every person in the US today... well tomorrow with realistic travel times.

TomMarius 6y ago

The minimal financial support to the most unfortunate during the quarantine (3 months) has cost my country half of its usual annual budget. I don't see how that shows UBI in a positive light.

BolexNOLA 6y ago
Well it went to basically everyone (in many countries, obviously don’t know yours) and was rushed out the door with no sustainability in mind. I’m sure it can be retooled and refined. You can’t toss it out completely already.
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  > I’m sure it can be retooled and refined Why, exactly? And what do you do if this doesn't work and capitalism finds a way to just reroute economic gains to the wealthy as they usually do? Take UBI away from people once they're entitled and there will be rioting.
- TomMarius 6y ago
  In Czechia it went only to those severely affected by Covid and was one time payment around a quarter less than monthly average wage. Only selected firms have received some, also very small support.

tkeAmarktinClss 6y ago

Universal basic income requires elimination of food stamps, rent subsidies, welfare, unemployment, etc.... None of these places are doing that. The entire argument is that you can get rid of administration and people can spend money on what they need. That said, after seeing how many people listen to Dave Ramsey's Snowball method + anti vaxxers, I'm personally convinced UBI will not work. The people that need it the most cannot make rational decisions.

balefrost 6y ago
I think part of the goal too is to remove the stigma associated with those programs. I know some people look down on those who use food stamps, or suspect that people use food stamps to buy lobster and filet mignon, or barter their food stamp purchases for things that you can't buy with food stamps. With UBI, everybody's using cash.
- chooseaname 6y ago
  "...or suspect that people use food stamps to buy lobster and filet mignon, or barter their food stamp purchases for things that you can't buy with food stamps." Rare, but it happens. The people who think this is more than a rare occurrence are not well educated on the needs of the poor.
  - sethammons 6y ago
    Having grown up with and around welfare recipients, back when it was not an EBT card but paper bills, it was exceptionally common to see it traded at a loss for real money.
wenc 6y ago
Why do you think the snowball method is irrational? Like any method it has its flaws, but studies from Northwestern and Harvard indicate positive results [1] which moves the argument closer to evidence than pure assertion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-snowball_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-snowball_method
6y ago

gavman 6y ago

The one question about UBI I haven't seen a satisfactory answer for is what's stopping landlords from raising rents to match the UBI? If everyone suddenly has an extra $1000/month, what's stopping my landlord (together with every other landlord in my city) from raising my rent next year by $1000/month? It's very plausible this would not show up in small scale pilots where only a small percent of a population received income, but would show up at scale when everyone does. Unless UBI comes with a massive overhaul of zoning restrictions and a shift of the housing supply, I don't see how this doesn't end up as an indirect way of increasing income inequality by routing the UBI from poorer tenants to wealthier landlords.

michaelt 6y ago
Optimistically, or pragmatically? An optimist would predict that some people will spend the extra $$$ on a car and a move to the suburbs; others will choose not to work at all, moving to cheap areas to live frugally; and others will find house building much more profitable as rents rise, motivating them to build more. A pragmatist would say you're completely right, based on my country's many failed attempts to lower house prices by handing out money to house buyers.
jjoonathan 6y ago
It encourages people to get out of the damn cities! There's a reason why it costs a king's ransom to rent a hovel in a city: finite space. Nothing you do -- not density, not UBI, not anything -- can create unlimited space out of thin air. Fortunately, we've got plenty of space, just not in urban centers. We need to learn how to use space rather than let it use us.
- nostrebored 6y ago
  Cities are economically efficient. If your praise for UBI is that it reduces economic efficiency (reducing your ability to pay for UBI) then I think you're going off course.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago

Pxtl 6y ago

The problem is that governments don't seem to be doing the other half of universal basic income 1) Realistically, you're going to have to raise taxes to fund it, not just deepen deficits 2) You're going to have to cut many social programs as well that overlap with basic income. For some people this isn't really a good trade-off. I saw one blog-post proposing a long list of social programs such as disability support and wheelchair funds, and a local activist parent of a severely disabled child pointed out that this would devastate his family financially. I get the appeal of an anti-bureaucratic one-size fits all solution to the social safety net, but I'm skeptical.

newacct583 6y ago
Policymaking is hard, it's never quite fair, but those seem like awfully addressable problems to me. I mean, you don't "have" to cut disability entitlements if that's not politically feasible. Cut what you can, and adjust as needed. It's not a reason to Refuse To Get Started On The Problem, which is what nitpicky criticism like this gets used for in practice. I mean, the core idea of the article is that direct cash benefits reduces poverty directly, in a quantifiable way (there are some numbers already!). That takes a sword directly to the Gordian knot of the policymaking kerfufflery, and that evidence and its attendent simplicity is far more (FAR more) important to achieving a solution than "getting the right solution". Better vs. Perfect, basically.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  Government never gets smaller So lets see what bigger & better gets us. 1)stock market back to precovid levels... even though job and economic losses are widespread. That is not normal, but it is logical given the cash flooding all assets now. 2) sticky unemployment largely affecting minorities and the youngest. 3) the conversation has shifted from... where can we reduce the govt footprint?. To, should this new thing be done? In effect - Leaders today are leaving a legacy of destruction and misery that will be reaped by our grandchildren. Our leaders are perpetrating the largest ever robbery of future generations. Its inmoral and it is not "better"
- mikepurvis 6y ago

astura 6y ago

So this isn't universal basic income, as it's means based, but this article keeps calling it that for some reason. I really don't understand how a temporary traditional welfare program can give us insight into what would happen if everyone was guaranteed a monthly income - even if the richest didn't have a net increase in income, for example, my behavior might be different if I had a guaranteed income of $1,000/month but paid an extra $12,000 in taxes at the end of the year (because I am high income) than if I didn't have that monthly check and paid $12,000 less in taxes at the end of the year. Beyond that this is unprecedented times/circumstances so it's really difficult to make general conclusions about this "experiment."

class4behavior 6y ago
>Although Standing says that the buzz generated by the Spanish proposal is a boon for UBI advocates, he is “disappointed” by the details. Because not everyone in Spain will receive the payment, it is arguably not truly universal. He adds that if the trial doesn’t work, people might see it as a failure of the whole UBI concept.
- vageli 6y ago
  My cynical take is that this is precisely the point: parade this about as a test of UBI, when it fails, discount the notion of UBI in full.
  - mardifoufs 6y ago
    The opposite is also true though. A lot of "UBI" studies show positive results and are touted as proof of it's potential success. Yet they almost always only test for a short period of time with a very small group of people. So as it stands there's no reason not to discount UBI. It's not only a fringe theory discounted by the vast majority experts and academia[0], but it also never has had any supporting evidence. It's okay to discount a fringe theory especially when it's never been tried but the only way to actually try it is to fully implement it nationwide and just not care about the potential disastrous effects it could have. [0] People love to dismiss economics as a field and disregard it's consensus, and that's their choice, but it's weird to then believe the few economists who promote UBI are right without any proof.

bobthechef 6y ago

"The US economist Milton Friedman proposed an idea related to UBI called a negative income tax in 1962, in which those earning under a certain amount would receive supplemental funds from the government rather than paying tax." The whole point of UBI is that it's universal. What Friedman is describing is essentially a social safety net, i.e., one that only those below a certain level of income receive. "'If you can only qualify if your income is below this threshold, it creates a very strong disincentive for anybody to earn above that threshold because they would be losing their benefits,” she says. 'We call it a poverty trap.'" Yes, and that's a major reason why poor Americans, perhaps especially the black community, is stuck in the poverty trap. Marriage rates among blacks were higher than rates among whites in the 1940s and we know that children with a father in the home tend to grow up to be better adjusted and less likely to engage in crime or remain/land in poverty. Twenty years later, government programs coupled with the social upheaval of the sexual revolution destroyed the black family. Now three quarters of black children are born out of wedlock (we see something similar among poor whites, but poverty afflicts blacks more than whites). Poor black women are discouraged from marrying because doing so could or would cause them to lose whatever benefits they receive.

eru 6y ago
You are misunderstanding the negative income tax. Negative income tax is exactly equivalent to a UBI plus regular income tax. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax for an explanation.
chillacy 6y ago
The NIT ends up acting similarly to UBI + increased taxes, but it has to be phased out perfectly linearly to remove these incentive gaps. UBI seems more simple to administer and being universal would likely make it more resilient to cuts (as we know from other universal services).
- eru 6y ago
  A negative income tax is not phased out at all. You are probably familiar with income tax brackets. So for example in the US, your first $0 – $9,525 of income per year are taxed at 10%, the next $9,526 – $38,700 are taxed at 12%. And so on. That applies to billionaires just as much as it applies to dishwashers. The low brackets never get phased out. The billionaire just has most of her income fall into the higher taxed brackets. So her average tax rate is higher than the dishwasher's tax rate, but their first dollars are taxed exactly the same. A (refundable) negative income tax is just another somewhat special tax bracket placed in front of the normal progression. It never gets phased out. It just nets out at higher incomes. And because nothing is ever simple in taxes, here's a weird real life example to the contrary: The British have a weird system where they DO phase out their lowest tax bracket, called the 'Personal Allowance' at higher income. I don't know why they do that, instead of just raising the marginal rates. > On 22 April 2009, the then Chancellor Alistair Darling announced in the 2009 Budget statement that starting in April 2010, those with annual incomes over £100,000 would see their Personal allowance reduced by £1 for every £2 earned over £100,000, until the Personal allowance was reduced to zero, which (in 2010-11) would occur at an income of £112,950. This had the effect of creating an anomalous effective 60% marginal tax rate in the income band between £100,000 and £112,950, with the marginal tax rate returning to 40% above £112,950. As the Personal allowance has grown over the years, this has resulted in a corresponding increase in the size of the effective marginal 60% tax band. As of 2019-20, the effective 60% marginal tax rate now arises for incomes between £100,000 and £125,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_allowance#Personal_allowance_tapering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_allowance#Personal_al...

eric1293 6y ago

UBI would never work. It ignores basics of how humans operate. We have it in some sense in France. The problems it tries to address are only amplified after UBI.

gerbal 6y ago
Do you mean RSA[1]? My french is quite bad, but as I understand it, the RSA is tied closely to employment and has complicated work obligation and subsidizes employers for keeping employees at low hours. RSA appears to be extensively means tested as well (which UBI is not supposed to be). [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarité_activ https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarité_activ
- eric1293 6y ago
  There are numerous independent social programs in France. RSA is one. People could receive input from up to 3-4 social programs. Consider CDI contracts at universities. It has become a sort of UBI. People show up once every few weeks. Never publish papers; never teach properly; never go to any conference; etc. Totally detached from academic life. And they can't be fired. You know what they do with the UBI? -- Become members of unions. Unions were supposed to protect workers in 80s. Now the least productive members of the institutions join unions to protect themselves. They kill reform policies and maintain status quo. -- Work is associated dignity. You can't have two classes: workers and suckers. So UBI recipients, holding into administrative roles and unable to do meaningful work, try to fail non-UBI takers. -- Fail those who actually do their jobs. Otherwise, the gap is going to be problematic. At the end of the day, UBI would only shift the baseline. The same problems it tries to address exist after the administration of UBI. You would be surprised if I go over details. America's left does not understand what it's getting into. France's system has really been an eye opening experience for me. I highly recommend people spending time in Europe.
  - jostylr 6y ago
    That sounds more like a jobs guarantee than a UBI. Many UBI proponents are against a jobs guarantee for fear of these kinds of outcomes. UBI is untethered to any conditions on people. So there are no bad incentives created by the system (no good ones created either, of course) nor is anyone part of some group that they try to homogenize into something unproductive.

rufusroflpunch 6y ago

Why bother testing it? We all know where this is going. UBI is going to happen, whether the tests are successful or not, and it's not going to look anything like the UBI we were promised; instead of repealing social safety net programs in favor of one payment, it's going to be just another program on top of the pile.

marcinzm 6y ago

My biggest observation is the large scale social impact of people not needing to work. In the US many people got unemployment benefits and were unable to work. We also had nationwide protests by both liberals and conservatives for various causes. Some looting in there, aggressive police response and crazy people waving guns. It seems to me that given UBI people will spend their time championing their causes at the expense of those who are working (blocking areas with protests is just that). Seems a very unstable dynamic as I'd imagine both conservatives and liberals would escalate until mass violence breaks out.

LatteLazy 6y ago

I really wish somewhere would run an actual trial on this. We've had dozens of sub-trials (not universal, not instead of other benefits, not very long or cancelled before end date etc). Then we would KNOW. Until then, everything is just speculation.

linuxftw 6y ago

People that champion UBI don't understand market incentives. It won't work without price controls, and we know that price controls don't work. Let's go crazy though, and say price controls will work. How universal is universal? Is it $600 for every person alive, including children? How is that going to incentivize people's behavior? If it's not for children, how is that going to incentivize people's behavior? Are you expected to pay housing costs out of this amount, or is that granted separately? Would a family of 5 splitting a single family residence be building wealth faster than a someone living in an apartment? If you want to wreck the economy, UBI is the best way to do it.

chillacy 6y ago
The answers to those questions vary by UBI proposal. Here's a proposal from a conservative economist who might understand market incentives and how the existing welfare programs completely distort them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-a...
- linuxftw 6y ago
  If you support UBI or welfare, then by definition, you do not qualify as a 'conservative economist.'
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Well, feel free to edit his wikipedia page to correct this terrible misunderstanding...

tux1968 6y ago

Even though he was talking about minimum wage, Walter Williams line is apropos: "People think minimum wage is an anti-poverty measure, but this doesn't pass the smell test. If it did, our state department could stop all foreign aid, they could instead say to all those countries, if you want to be as rich as us, simply set a minimum wage for all your workers!" Edit: He repeated this line in a documentary about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGvQcxoAPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGvQcxoAPg

karpierz 6y ago
I'm confused, how does that show minimum wage is not an anti-poverty measure? Doesn't that just indicate it's an anti-poverty measure for wealthier nation's?
- tux1968 6y ago
  I suppose it's not an ironclad refutation of the idea, but I think it does suggest minimum wage isn't the magic bullet one might hope. If it doesn't work for a poor country, you had better be able to explain very convincingly why it will work for a rich one, and not turn it into a poor one instead. And also explain, why the techniques used to go from a poor country to a rich one... must then be abandoned at some point.

SirensOfTitan 6y ago

I really like the idea of scaling basic-income through a series of stages, starting with negative income tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax) and moving to more encompassing strategies like guaranteed income or a social dividend as automation makes up a larger portion of economic output. Negative income tax has a couple advantages, namely: * It benefits those who actually need the help the most * Shortfall checks will come from tax agencies. People who need real help can save their dignity, they're just getting a tax refund.

collyw 6y ago

As usual there seems to be nothing "universal" about these.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

neilwilson 6y ago

We already have a widespread incomplete test of basic income. It’s called “a state pension”.

snidane 6y ago
Which is also unsustainable in the current form because it is a ponzi scheme that works only when each next generation has more children than the previous one.