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I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic

• sekai 6y ago
  > Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't Already happens, with welfare. > Predators - individuals and companies will find a way to take your UBI check from you as fast as possible Already happens, with welfare. > Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. Already happens, with welfare. Notice a pattern? People who are likely to mess up with their finances / welfare, etc. will likely mess up with UBI. UBI covers a way larger group of people and gives them opportunities and flexibility, I only see that as win.
  • 7leafer 6y ago
    Already happens, why not make it even worse, right? Just for the alreadist heck of it.
    • sekai 6y ago
      Purpose of UBI isn't to improve your finance/risk management, that's an issue of education. Let's be real, there won't ever be a system that's perfect and has no minority of population that suffers.
      • elmo2you 6y ago
        I think you are touching upon an important point there. Because from the little I know, it appears that experiments with UBI have been largely more successful in places where people appeared to me smarter. Smarter, as in capable to make less ignorant/unwise decisions. Which indeed is largely proportional to education (although not grade or level), but can also in part come through culture and unwritten social habits and norms. However, this is also why I believe that there is nothing that could still save the USA. For starters, the changes it would need to prevent it from cannibalizing itself (as most crumbling empires), would require dismantling existing power structures and interests that will not hesitate to destroy everything (civil peace, country, world, everything) to "defend" themselves. Those powers are almost nowhere as powerful as the are in the USA, and I am everything but positive about reining those in. As long as those run the show, good luck with anything else.
        • devonkim 6y ago
          UBI experiments in countries like Kenya and India in poor rural areas with little education show few problems. Non-mainstream ideas like UBI and RCV are simply suggestions exasperated that things aren't working to avoid a complete disaster and dissolution of the US. Should we keep trying to yell and scream for the same solutions tried for decades and ultimately lost as the GOP has stomped on the fragmented left in the US? To me, the worst of all solutions is to KEEP doing the same damn things and continuing to lose like what Dems did with Russiagate. We might get gay marriage rights, perhaps some civil rights 2.0, and some semblance of Roe v Wade but to me that won't matter if we're in a full blown Civil War a few years from now. Pulling conservatives / regressives back to the middle and into something resembling good faith dialogue again is possible with UBI discussions at least that I haven't found with almost any other political topic in... decades. Granted, that'll be until Fox News gets their hands on it, but beating mainstream media narratives (both left and right) to the punch has been productive.
  • bsder 6y ago
    References, please. "Welfare" has a really big downside that it "phases out" (because of a "means" test) which locks people on one side of a "qualification" line. UBI wipes that perverse incentive out.
    • thu2111 6y ago
      That's a downside if you're on it. For everyone else who is working to pay for it, that's a rather big and fundamental upside. UBI proponents have an unfortunate habit of engaging in a form of sophistry: by saying everyone gets UBI, they try to pretend the policy has no losers. They forget about the feelings and needs of the huge numbers of people who would be paying for UBI instead of receiving it, regardless of how the government chose to manipulatively print the numbers on your final paperwork. Almost all people, almost all of the time, will just be paying more in tax in order to make the UBI work, so it'll all cancel out for them. Money will come in via UBI and immediately go out again in the form of higher taxes. It must be so because the resources to pay for UBI don't come from nowhere. They come from people. The reason welfare is means tested is because it's corrosive to society for workers to feel like they're being punished for working. People must work. That is fundamental. UBI makes the fraudulent claim that in theory nobody has to work, because everyone will receive UBI no matter what. This is obviously untrue and would be obviously untrue even to small children. What happens if everyone decides UBI is enough for them and just check out? Who works in the fields? Who builds the buildings? UBI has no answer for this. The dishonesty it would require from government and society would corrode away the pillars on which it sits.
      • leoedin 6y ago
        I think there's 2 fundamental questions here: 1. Does the current system encourage work? When you require means testing for benefits and have sharp discontinuities, the incentive to work isn't very strong. If a full time job pays $x/month and your benefits are $0.8x/month, then taking that full time job and losing the benefits only puts $0.2x in your pocket. That seems like a pretty poor deal for 40+ hours a week away from home. A UBI system which always paid the same amount would mean that any income from work would immediately go in your pocket. That's a very strong incentive to work - working would double or triple your income. 2. The type of work that people _must_ do for society to function is actually quite small. People must grow crops, run the water treatment systems, maintain roads, generate electricity, sure. But there's also a huge class of pointless jobs - pointless admin due to wasteful bureaucracy, entire divisions of defence contractors working on things which will never be used, a huge number of startups spending VC money on things which they have no hope of succeeding at, wasteful processes and systems at state telecom companies the world over. The only thing we can say about work in our economy is that it is done because someone wants to pay for it to be done. Not that it's necessary. Things become profitable because incentives exist to do them, but often these incentives are artificial or completely crazy. If UBI significantly alters the economic incentives, maybe that's not a bad thing. Does it really make a difference to society if someone spends their days pushing paper in a state telecom company, or creating art? There will of course be scroungers and lazy people. There's a lot of people who work right now who do the bare minimum as it is. They might drop out completely. There will also be people who are given a stable safety net from which to pursue a new career, return to education, care for their parents, build a house in the woods, build a business. I don't think we can say for sure which group will be larger. We don't have UBI right now, but we do have people who inherit money. And in my experience with people I've known who've inherited enough money to live for a few years, they've almost entirely continued working. The inheritance has given them a safety net from which to pursue a risky career or retrain. It's been a huge positive for them. In inheritance we already have an entrenched intergenerational BI for a group of society - UBI in many ways is recreating that for everyone.
  • millstone 6y ago
    I wonder if this post was transported from 1996? The 2020 USA welfare state is bonkers stingy and punitive: prove you have these dependents and have been looking for work for this long and have not received benefits for this period... UBI would be an absolute sea change. It is not some mild extension of "welfare" which isn't really a thing. Go in clear-eyed!
    • JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
      Where would the money for UBI come from though?
      • DrAwdeOccarim 6y ago
        At first I scoffed at your question as typical nay-saying, but the rough math puts the price tag at $6T ($30k/y * 210mm adults). Where would we come up with the money to do this? Well, just getting rid of all government services both Federally and State would only generate $4T (can't get rid of defence, so this is a non-starter) How about getting rid of all taxes and just taxing transactions--like VAT, but more, so anytime money changes hands? 2019 was $21T, if you put a transaction tax of 30% in place, you would cover the cost of UBI. I am normally against flat taxes because they hurt poor people, but if you're giving them UBI would this the negative impact of a non-progressive tax? You'd simplify so much but getting rid of most accountants and the IRS, drop in the bucket but nice to see. They would certainly kick and scream. You'd also collapse real estate prices because cities would lose their need, but would kickstart rural economies like woah. This would help alleviate the rural/urban friction we're currently seeing. I'm just arm chairing, I have zero background in economics.
        • JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
          The more I think about it the more the UBI system starts to makes sense. Essentially I think taxing the ultra rich could redistribute wealth to the rest of society which would give them more buying power to stimulate the economy. Those that don't want to work can live on a minimum UBI monthly check but they wouldn't be living great which gives them incentive to look for a job so that they can raise their living standards. Even a McDonald's job could taken by someone looking to earn extra cash for whatever goal they have, probably wages would have to rise a bit so encourage people to go work there instead of just living on UBI but that's in general a good thing.
• infogulch 6y ago
  > some governments give poor people vouchers for rent ... targeted by slumlords who find a way to give you as little as possible for them This seems to be a problem because the vouchers are only redeemable by government-granted monopolies, and thus neither tenant nor landlord are participating an open market. If the tenant could go anywhere else with their money a la UBI nobody would choose those terrible living quarters / they would be priced appropriately.
  • sergers 6y ago
    You dont need UBI for this though (not throwing my support for either side, I am sitting on the fence). My govt doesnt restrict people to only rent from certain approved places. If you have a rental agreement, and abiding by the rental agreement policies, then u can rent from anyone under govt assistance. I had rented my basement out to a family under rental assistance. The govt wrote the checks with my name on it that the renter would provide to me.
  • TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    An open market will always favour the landlord, so you'd end up with more homelessness, or more slum housing and ten-people-to-a-room at the very best. We've been trying these approaches for centuries now, and they always end the same way. There has never been a "free" market which hasn't vastly increased inequality of opportunity across the population as a whole. Why is it so hard for proponents of "free" markets to accept this fact? UBI simply highlights that money is a proxy for political power, and there's no way - short of violence - that those with limited power can access personal or political leverage in any system which over-rewards concentrations of power. UBI will improve nothing, and may make some problems much worse. The real solution is improved public education at all levels, limits to advertising that promotes selfish greed and consumption, regulation of the press to eliminate the deliberate dissemination of obvious fake news, good public healthcare, higher taxation for giant monopolies and their owners, improved regulation to end the financialisation of everything, much improved public infrastructure, stronger unionisation and other forms of collaborative politics, and easier and cheaper access to capital for small business of all kinds.
• AdamHede 6y ago
  I especially buy into your third concern. Where I live, if the introduction of a UBI was followed by a drastic reduction (or complete elimination) of the means-tested system we know today, hunger would potentially become a problem for people blowing their money early in the month (or getting robbed?). This tells me the utopian ideas of replacing the entire complex system with a simple UBI isn't feasible. You'll end up in dreadful ethical choices and moral hazard. This is indeed already happening, but the bureaucracy of it makes abuse less attractive.
  • onion2k 6y ago
    Where I live, if the introduction of a UBI was followed by a drastic reduction (or complete elimination) of the means-tested system we know today, hunger would potentially become a problem for people blowing their money early in the month (or getting robbed?). If that happened regularly the charities would be started up again, except next time far more people would have a little extra money to give so they could be much better funded.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • frobozz 6y ago
    > if the introduction of a UBI was followed by a drastic reduction (or complete elimination) of the means-tested system we know today, As I understand it, that elimination is part of the point of UBI. The MTBs are no longer needed. Why do you think hunger would be caused by UBI? At worst, I would expects those who already depend on MTBs would be in the same position they are in today.
  • belorn 6y ago
    I suspect I know what my society will do to people who repeatable demonstrate the inability to take care of themselves and manage basic living aspects of food and rent. They loose the right to do it themselves and get appointed a guardian.
  • jpindar 6y ago
• onion2k 6y ago
  Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. If you're a poor person now you absolutely have to try to keep your horrible job else you'll lost the ability to pay rent and buy food. You have to take all the crap your employer gives you. With UBI, assuming it's enough to live on, you could walk away from that job and still survive. That shifts a lot of power from employers to employees. It's one of the most appealing aspects.
  • mamon 6y ago
    That's a typical fallacy: that governments are always "good guys" and never have any bad intentions. UBI will be a step towards totalitarism, that's a given.
    • mpweiher 6y ago
      The government, unlike corporations for example, is accountable to the public in elections.
      • manigandham 6y ago
        True, but there remains the question of how people will vote when UBI is on the line. People aren't perfectly rational and it's entirely possible they'll vote for more payments regardless of what other changes that brings, including loss of accountability.
        • dantheman 6y ago
          It's hard to imagine people won't bore to get themselves more free shit. If you look at is history and hell Ubi itself, it seems there is no limit to how much p people 'deserve' to take from others.
      • thu2111 6y ago
        Ah yes, and people are famously satisfied with e.g. US federal elections. Companies are accountable to customers in the continuous rolling election of the market. You can vote them out of your life at any time. It is the ultimate form of accountability. This is especially good because bankruptcy as a form of accountability can ultimately affect everyone in the company, whereas in reality almost all decisions made by governments are handled by unelected officials who persist across party elections and for which there's no systematic removal mechanism. They can't go bankrupt. In some countries they can't even be removed, as the civil service isn't directly controlled by the elected politicians. Mostly they fly under the radar, screwing things up for their entire lives. At least with companies there's some sort of limit to how dysfunctional they can get before they lose influence and power.
• zpeti 6y ago
  Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be eliminated in a few years. The very things poorer people would buy from it would get more expensive by the UBI proportion, it will just be inflated away. When everyone has an extra $1000 do you really think landlords won’t increase rent? The price of food and clothing won’t increase? When literally an entire country is richer by this amount? UBI does not create more wealth. It does not mean all the people receiving it will put more value into the economy. It just means everyone gets X+$1000 more tokens for the same wealth/goods. Poor people will still be in just as difficult a situation as they will be competing for the same goods against the same people as before.
  • 3131s 6y ago
    Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be eliminated in a few years. The very things poorer people would buy from it would get more expensive by the UBI proportion, it will just be inflated away. Someone brings this up in literally every UBI discussion ever.
    • glogla 6y ago
      Because it makes sense. Why wouldn't rent seekers - both landlords and more abstract rent-seekers - just raise prices? Maybe competition takes care of that? But that doesn't seem to work very well in the current housing market.
      • archi42 6y ago
        Housing is the largest issue here, and probably needs gov correction. OTOH, basic goods becoming more expensive means producing them becomes more attractive which leads to lower prices or better wages (because less people will be willing to work shit jobs with crap pay like in the meat industry today).
        • Chris2048 6y ago
          Housing is rarely the issue on its own, because it is what it is due to related factor. Why live in one particular location? That's the motivator towards housing, and it relates many different things. e.g in my city, I am positive the rent is high because of issues with transport i.e. poor transport means you need to live closer to work for a reasonable commute.
• harg 6y ago
  All of those seem like valid criticisms against UBI, but is it an argument not to do it? Are those issues non-existant without UBI? Take your third point - what do we do with people who spend all their UBI on drugs and gambling? Even though the “you’ve had your UBI the rest is on you” approach seems morally wrong the current situation is that they get even less or zero help anyway so UBI would only be an improvement for those people.
  • Chris2048 6y ago
    > spend all their UBI on drugs and gambling Maybe add more restrictions to gambling (and reclassify things like trading/investing as partially gambling), and keep policing drugs as usual. Also, mandatory warning attention-abusive mediums, such as casinos and mobile apps; and stricter regulation against misleading advertisement. And greater scrutiny of lobbying..
• isolli 6y ago
  I'm also wondering about how the amount will be set in practice. Assume UBI is introduced now and set at $1000 per month. In 20 years, $1000 per month will probably not be enough for a basic income, so the amount would have to be raised somehow. Will it be rules-based? Or will it be subject to the same political fights as the minimum wage currently?
  • inflagranti 6y ago
    This can very easily be solved by making it inflation adjusted (i.e. the value increases with inflation every year). This happens for instance with many social contributions in Switzerland and is IMHO the only reasonably way to set such value.
    • millstone 6y ago
      If you set UBI as inflation-adjusted, then there is no viable political mechanism to reduce it. "Cut everyone's income!" is a losing political message, forever ever. Inflation is the pressure release valve that allows quietly cutting real costs. Every employer, business, government relies on this. It's why the Fed targets low but positive inflation.
      • apexalpha 6y ago
        I don't know. In Europe almost all of these things (welfare, social security, minimum wage) have been tied to inflation since forever. Sometimes they get cut, sometimes they get raised.
      • account42 6y ago
        You "reduce" UBI by increasing income taxes - that way the reduction only affects thos who can afford it.
      • fvdessen 6y ago
        In Belgium a lot of stuff (salaries, rents, social welfare) is tied to inflation, and sometimes we do 'Index Jumps', where we simply don't index for a year.
• hyko 6y ago
  I’m not really concerned about the first two, because they all apply to any low income. UBI will not–and is not intended to–remove relative poverty. The third is a potential issue, but the question is whether it will be an improvement over what happens now; i.e. many don’t get the chance to administer their own funds or even have them administered on their behalf, we just skip straight to “it’s all on you”. A credible UBI would likely require a massive expansion of redistribution, because we spend so little on poverty relief today. True poverty relief would require giving people a lot of money, and that is by definition very expensive. The fundamental issue I see with UBI in 2020 is that it must ultimately be paid for with massive productivity gains (in the face of many hard structural challenges), with no real evidence of where they will come from.
• sascha_sl 6y ago
  The US already has lacking support systems. I'm still baffled how people can simultaneously complain about tent encampments and not be outraged at the lack of homeless shelters. I'm not sure if there's much to destroy left. Elsewhere, neoliberal UBI would definitely cut into these systems.
• stiray 6y ago
  Even if I like the idea of UBI idealistically, I am worried about potential inflation. Once there is more money in the system (that before the UBI just wasnt there) the prices of basic things might rise and at the end the money you get from UBI will be a "new zero". I am not saying that this will happen but I think this is serious concern.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    UBI doesn't actually create money. It redistributes it. I would expect the effect you describe in the short-term, but in the longer term supply of basic goods should increase to match increased demand.
    • stiray 6y ago
      > in the longer term supply of basic goods should increase to match increased demand Why? What would be the reasoning?
  • phantom0308 6y ago
    The entire world is stuck in a liquidity trap and we have negative real interest rates. No advanced economy has had north of the 2% target for a meaningful amount of time prior to the pandemic. Inflation is something to watch out for. IMO, deflation is the bigger concern. Source: former deficit hawk convinced hyper-inflation was just around the corner for half a decade.
    • imtringued 6y ago
      I'm the opposite. I've thought about deflation for half a decade. Interestingly the conclusion is always the same but with a different coat of paint. The central bank stimulus doesn't reach the real economy and by "real economy" I mean the parts of the economy that are being used to measure inflation. Inflation happens when lots of money chases too few goods or workers. We see it in housing, stocks, perhaps also education and healthcare. The money does go somewhere but not to where it is most effective. Why is there no inflation in salaries? Because of underemployment. Companies can always fill their open positions and pick among the cheapest applicants. Why is there no inflation in other consumer goods? Production is happening primarily in developing countries with an even larger surplus of labor. The answer is probably a little boring and obvious. Give money to people that will spend it immediately, rather than to people who will try to convert it into inflation proof assets. The coronavirus related economic stimulus packages are pretty much the only policies that even attempt to do this. If they overdo it can easily result in hyperinflation but I think inflation is overdue.
• ekianjo 6y ago
  > Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. The main point is that it makes people dependent of the State if they entirely live on the UBI, which is a pretty poor behavior to encourage - the larger the UBI-reliant population becomes, the more they will extract value from non-UBI reliant people through elections and majority.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    People are dependent on the state anyway. Wealthy people are the most dependent on the state. Because they rely on it to defend their property rigts. Without which they would not be able to keep their wealth.
    • ekianjo 6y ago
      > People are dependent on the state anyway. I'm not advocating for no state at all. But there's a difference between a state that protects your rights and defends your country and one that provides everything for all. That's not at all the same level of dependency we are talking about.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• felipelemos 6y ago
  > I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. > 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. The world is already divided like this.
• scotty79 6y ago
  I have another concern. What will stop landlords from increasing the rent by high percentage of basic income? Suppliers always price their goods as high as they can for the specific values of supply, demand and competition, and none of those things will change. The customers will just have more money to pay for the right to live under a roof.
  • mcv 6y ago
    There are two options here: rent control, and the free market. If enough houses can be built, and basic income is high enough to pay free market prices, then any landlord who asks too high a price, will price themselves out of the market because there will be other cheaper houses. But for this it's vital that the supply of houses is unrestricted. Of course a landlord might bait and switch with low rent as you move in, and rapidly increasing rent once you get settled. That's simply something that needs to be banned. After you've moved in, landlords should only be allowed to increase rent by either inflation, or the average increase in new rent in the area. But preferably just inflation.
    • ohgodplsno 6y ago
      Housing cannot and will not be efficiently handled by the free market. It is a basic need. Noone will wait for a year before prices go down because landlord are now trying to outprice eachother. The response to overpriced housing is not "Eh, I'll guess I'll be homeless for a while", its "have no choice but to pay". Especially for something controlled by such a small portion of the population
      • mcv 6y ago
        You're right. I'm just imagining a world where there is sufficient supply of houses, and property owners will need the income that renting it out provides. It should never be profitable for them to sit on empty houses. Too often it still is.
      • marcus_holmes 6y ago
        I've moved from Australia (no rent control, laws heavily biased towards property owners) to Berlin (renter's paradise). Renting property definitely should be treated as a business, done by companies, and heavily controlled by regulation to favour the tenants. This is how it's done in Berlin, and it works really well. Treating property as an investment vehicle is actively harming society.
• conjectures 6y ago
  1. It's hard to see how guaranteed income would put the less well off more at the mercy of the well off. And you don't provide a causal explanation of how this effect would arise. 2. Surely UBI is cash, not vouchers. At which point the particular lower-than-face-value scenario is moot. 3. This is a valid point. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but it does seem likely to entail some morality shake-up.
• MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Point 1 already applies to existing welfare programmes. It seems to me that if anything, the divide will be reduced by switching to the UBI model, as everyone gets it, not just those who fulfil certain criteria. Point 2: I'm not convinced that UBI worsens the opportunity for predators, compared to how things stand today. Why would it? Point 3: I'm not convinced this is likely to be a real problem. Today, different countries have different levels of welfare. I doubt people are less charitable in high-welfare countries (although this is just a guess), and overall, you're certainly better off being down-and-out in a high-welfare country.
  • simonklitj 6y ago
    Primarily anecdotal, but my experience (as a Dane married to an American) is that Americans are more likely to both give to charitable organizations and volunteer their time, whereas Danes are less likely to do so. Seems to be slightly backed up by this article (at least the volunteering part): https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charitable-giving-country https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/08/charit... Also, I will add that when people on cash assistance in Denmark (kontanthjælp) do stupid things like spend all their money on alcohol, the general response seems not to be an offer of support but a "pull yourself together, you've got the means to do so". It definitely might just be the the circle I'm in, but thought I'd offer up my experience. I think point 3 will be a real problem with UBI.
• frobozz 6y ago
  > 3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. This is why it should be a regular and frequent income, rather than giving people a lifetime's worth of money when they turn 18. As it is a regular income that resets every week/month/whatever, it's harder to mess up to that extent. Addiction or unwise Hire Purchase agreements might do it, but with the latter, lenders are likely to be even more aware of affordability than they currently are. That aside, I would imagine that UBI could make people more charitable towards those who are thoroughly down on their luck. Partly because if someone is destitute under that system, something must be really wrong in their lives. One problem with poverty at the moment is that it is so big. When problems are really big (see also climate change), people feel that effects of their own efforts would be trivial, and so are dissuaded from doing anything at all. If fewer people would be made destitute by bad decisions made out of desperation, donors might feel they can actually do something about it. Another problem with poverty now is that there are so many diverse causes that it is much easier to aim relief efforts at the symptoms - e.g. shelters for the homeless, food for the hungry etc. If UBI covers that for most people, then we can put more effort into fixing the causes - abuse/addiction/mental illness/predatory lenders/discrimination etc. Thereby removing the need for charity.
• gerash 6y ago
  The problems I see with UBI are: * It won't take into account the differences in the cost of living for different cities. * If it is paid based on the household size there'll be an incentive for lower income families have more kids in order to cash larger UBI checks.
• bakuninsbart 6y ago
  > 3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. I think it should be pretty clear today to any scientifically-minded person that addiction is a mental health problem. Here In Germany, the vast majority of homeless people are addicts or people with major mental health problems. You have a small minority hiding from the law, and an even smaller portion of healthy people choosing the lifestyle. Instead of relying on the charity of wealthy people, good public mental healthcare, public addiction centres and social workers engaged with the homeless community are the ways forward.
  • barbs 6y ago
    Agreed. I also think that in a lot of cases having a stable income will help people the help they need to properly address these mental health issues.
  • luckylion 6y ago
    The parent comment said "spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment". What do we do with the person that gets e.g. their 1000€, spends it on a night with champagne and then has nothing to eat or pay their rent? Too outlandish for you? How about if they spend it on a new TV instead of rent, a new smartphone or a couch? There's a reason why some people get into debt because of consumption: they don't plan reasonably. What do we do? Do we not pay them UBI but give them pocket money and keep the programs in place to cover their rent etc because they can't be trusted to take care of that with money we give them? Do we just ignore their fate and watch them go hungry and eventually homeless? Do we keep the programs in place, give them UBI and then pay their rent when they spend the UBI but didn't include the rent?
    • bakuninsbart 6y ago
      If a person consistently chooses to buy TVs instead of food, I think that strongly speaks for mental problems. I don't think it is really expedient to micromanage people, so if they spend their money unwisely and don't see a problem, that's tough luck. At the same time, having infrastructure to help them get back on their feet is important. Again, I'm not sure about the situation in the US, but here we have public services that can help people go through debt restructuring or private insolvency in the worst cases, as well as offering classes for money management and centres for addictive behavior. This isn't done purely out of humanitarian concerns either, addiction and lack of education are problems that keep people from being productive citizens - and this is expensive for society at large.
• hanspeter 6y ago
  > They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. In countries with a tradition to have full government care for all citizens, those cases are solved by having the payments managed for you (usually by the city). So you would have weekly smaller payments rather than a monthly payment, and you may even have the city pay your rent for you rather than giving you cash in hand. And if you still mess up and are in a temporary urgent need for money, you can apply for an additional extraordinary amount to cover your critical expenses. I'm aware that such a "nanny state" is not attractive to a lot of Americans, however this is an approach that solves most of the potential problems and it also relieves other citizens from being concerned about having to give out charities.
  • makomk 6y ago
    The "nanny state" is only part of what would make this unattractive. I'm pretty sure that a lot of other Americans would see this not as UBI but as the government funding landlords and making them richer.
    • Aachen 6y ago
      Because addicts, when given the choice, might choose not to have a roof over their heads and thereby collectively pay landlords less, it would make landlords richer to give them reasonable living conditions standard? It's not as if the government will rent you a penthouse. If there are no cheap apartments available in a certain place, you just don't get to live there. I've lived in a building with a fair number of government-paid apartments and the people there are very, um, shall we say "poor" in the non-monetary sense (though that too). The rents were low (that's why I was there as a student) and while I'm sure they turned a reasonable profit just like they did from the students renting there, the rents were below those of neighbouring buildings. What's more, in the Netherlands many landlords price their apartments just above the limit for government support so that even if you could easily afford a place €10 cheaper, you now can't because you are losing out on up to 350 euros a month of support. Landlords don't want government-supported renters much of the time. It's not that lucrative.
• marcus_holmes 6y ago
  The question I can't answer is "what stops a nation voting itself more income?" If every unscrupulous politician can promise to raise the base UBI rate to get elected, what stops that? Obviously, inflation will fix it in the relatively short term, but that's not a good result. And there's an unscrupulous politician in power.
  • imtringued 6y ago
    There's a more general problem. What's the right amount of UBI? Even with the best intentions someone will be unhappy.
    • marcus_holmes 6y ago
      True. But you can never please all the people all the time ;)
    • jopsen 6y ago
      I guess the amount that will generate GDP growth.. In the end, it probably doesn't have to be perfect, just better than status quo.
  • account42 6y ago
    What's stopping a nation for voting itself more than 0 UBI now?
  • growse 6y ago
    What stops a nation voting itself lower taxes? If every unscrupulous politician can promise to lower taxes to get elected, what stops that?
    • marcus_holmes 6y ago
      Politicians tend to promise to spend more taxes on projects that will benefit some segment of the population. In the UK "more money for the NHS" is a definite vote-winner.
    • deleted 6y ago
• dgzl 6y ago
  3. Assuming UBI has any negative impact on the value of the dollar, the fall in financial mobility you have from constantly, let's say "messing up" and losing your benefit every month would be greatly devastating. This wouldn't be a new group of people though, this would be the same homeless people we see today.
• londons_explore 6y ago
  > Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. The solution to this is easy... Low friction bankruptcy. If your UBI is paid daily, and one day you mess up and gamble it all away and get big debts, that should not stop you spending tomorrow's UBI on food. Today, debts chase people for years or decades, and keep the poor poor. The fix is to let bankruptcy be something you can sign up for online in an hour. Then, if a debt shows up, you simply show them the bankruptcy certificate and walk away. The creditor then has to do all the work of finding any assets you owned at the moment you got the bankruptcy certificate and using them to pay off any debts.
• dwg 6y ago
  1. power divide How is this different than welfare, except that with UBI people are able to get a job without fear of losing benefits? 2. predators Again, how does UBI makes this problem worse than it already is? I've never heard of _any_ idea which makes this problem disappear. 3. charity In my opinion this is actually an argument in favor of UBI, rather than against it. Maybe the charity mindset would change, but I don't see it completely going away. On the other hand, many excuses will. We would benefit from a system that gives people a better chance at demonstrating personal responsibility.
• apexalpha 6y ago
  In my country everyone who is older than 65 (or so) gets AOW, a state pension. Which is €1200 per month. There are no conditions except for having lived (not worked) in the country for at least 40 years of the 65. This is basically UBI for elderly and it has been in place since the 1960s. None of the (theoretical) issues you named have been a problem. Do some elderly spend all their AOW on a slot machine as soon as it comes in? Sure. Do some people try to scam elderly because all elderly get AOW? Sure. But overall the program has resulted in <3% of all elderly living below the poverty line. In other countries without this, such as Germany, you can find older people still having to work well into their 70s to get by.
  • luckylion 6y ago
    > In other countries without this, such as Germany, you can find older people still having to work well into their 70s to get by. If they weren't getting any pension (aka not having worked their entire life), they'd get welfare, which is about 1000€/month. They'd only have to work if they wanted e.g. a larger flat, or more luxuries. I assume the same is true in the Netherlands: if you get AOW and you want two cars, they don't double your pension but you're free to work and earn money to afford those cars. The trouble of course is in expanding those programs unconditionally to everyone. If you can get by well enough with 1200€ in the Netherlands, why would a 20yo not opt to live off of the expanded AOW instead of working?
    • apexalpha 6y ago
      The AOW is only one of two pillars in the Dutch pension system. The other one is a mandatory investment scheme. The AOW is a baseline, to keep you from being homeless or starving to death or having to beg for money. For your last question: there are also people who are content with whatever welfare they get now and don't even try to work to better their lives. Even though everyone could do this it seems almost no one does.
      • saiya-jin 6y ago
        This comes from mentality of a given country I believe. In my own east european country, we have a stable Roma population (about 10%), of which cca 98% never work. They already rely completely on welfare system, to the point of making enough children to have large support payments (families with 10 kids are common, 15 is not unheard of, although kids are sometimes running around bare naked in the snow). I can imagine quite a few countries would literally stop if given the option to just now work
• collyw 6y ago
  I would imagine that in most cases there is the opportunity to move from one group to the other.
• Shivetya 6y ago
  1. We have always had that but it isn't the poor at the mercy of the rich it is the poor always at the mercy of exploitation by the politicians. Government gives with one hand then takes back through fees, penalties, and taxes. 2. The primary predator are relatives and common thugs usually wrapped up into a gang environment. 3. We cannot always protect people from being stupid. The idea we can is a no win situation. All you can do is try. America can handle a UBI but the two political parties cannot. To them it will be a means of control and a weapon. Unless #1 is solved, where the government buries people under fees, penalties, and taxes, UBI will only become a transfer of money from the right hand of government to the left hand. UBI will require rewriting the whole structure of how the government collects money. UBI must include providing all services for individuals for free or heavily discounted.
• onetimemanytime 6y ago
  I think the world is/will be automated enough so everyone has their most basic needs met. So if a company makes robots that make robots to do the work, that company will not be making trillions, due to high enough taxes to support everyone. The time will come so even Google-like companies will be taxed to the wazoo
• jostylr 6y ago
  Read this article: https://www.marieclaire.com/career-advice/a32827211/universal-basic-income/ https://www.marieclaire.com/career-advice/a32827211/universa... A book to read, though older, is Tyranny of Kindness and it expands on the plight in vivid detail of our current system. The article is an anecdote, but it tells the narrative of how the current setup is pretty difficult for people, particularly single mothers with children. They are already at the mercy of people and find no help for charity. In the article, it even mentions how the family that gets supported moves out of their subsidized apartment. It also mentions how brutal the current system is in terms of cutting off benefits.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  These are red herrings. The problems exist now. How does more income make poor people more at the mercy of wealthier people? How does more income make poor people more susceptible to predators and scams? UBI helps mitigate these problems, it doesn't create or make them worse. Even charity... I expect some people will increase their donations, because the UBI is free money and they don't necessarily need it.
• Proziam 6y ago
  My biggest UBI fear is this. UBI becomes the single biggest election issue. Politicians promising increases to get elected, and all the bad policy that stems from such motivations. This is then followed by an inevitable pullback at some point in the future, causing immense harm to everyone relying on every cent of their UBI (most people).
  • TOGoS 6y ago
    Yup. This kind of gets at why us socialists are generally against UBI. It doesn't actually put any power in the hands of ordinary people, and the ruling class can just as easily take it away again as they gave it. Much better to have basic services (food, housing, healthcare) provided directly, with the workers in control, as that both makes it harder to take away (when healthcare workers go on strike, even the rich notice), and harder for landlords to just absorb the difference.
    • Proziam 6y ago
      I think this is one area where pretty much everyone who has had some exposure to government can agree. I've often tried to liken it to the ACA. Yeah, we can probably get it passed, and it may help for a while. However, you're one election cycle away from potentially losing it. I have a very hard time conceiving of long-term solutions to such large problems that don't basically boil down to 'if the government is in charge of it, it will end poorly'
  • jopsen 6y ago
    > UBI becomes the single biggest election issue. Politicians promising increases to get elected. I'm still unsure about UBI, but isn't this already a problem with taxes today? Politicians promise lower taxes.
    • Proziam 6y ago
      Yes, absolutely. The key difference is in the incentives/outcomes of the policy. UBI involves lessening incentive to participate in the labor market, lower taxes increases the incentive (because you keep more of your earnings). At some level of 'passive' income it becomes very difficult for a rational person to make the decision to go to work every day. UBI is one of those ideas that is theoretically awesome but doesn't survive contact with reality, or rather the inevitable flawed humans that administer it.
• bpatel576 6y ago
  Here are some of my counter points: 1. People in the comments below have addressed this. Not really sure how this creates a greater power divide than the current system. Having money allows individuals choices. 2. Again, providing people with money will allow them to have more choices. If housing becomes too expensive in my county, I now have a greater degree of freedom to move and this creates more competition for rental rates. 3. This is one that I feel like most people miss the forest for the tree. You're right, it's going to happen. I just don't think that a portion of bad actors in the system should prevent that massive benefits it can create for the people in society that will spend it in more productive ways. I've heard arguments of how it will create disincentives in society. That people will choose to no longer work. But when I ask the exact same people that pose that question if they would stop working if they had $14,400 provided to them every year, the answer is unequivocally, no. If you're looking for policies that solve all problems, you're not going to find any.
• jchanimal 6y ago
  It would give more buying power to the poor. Right now Dollar Store is a niche. With an income floor, it can become a real industry and support a wider variety of goods. Eg, UBI is a market maker for subsistence goods.
• AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
  The only way to find out is to try
• rapind 6y ago
  I think UBI only works as a replacement and simplification of existing programs. As a way to replace progressive tax with a flat tax and eliminating other food and welfare programs, but essentially ending up in the same place without all the corruption and loopholes. If UBI is pasted in without cleaning out the existing cruft then it'll just be another mess on the pile. However if done correctly, and not as a form of welfare, then it will be a vast improvement (in terms of fairness) with no effect on inflation.
• bzudo 6y ago
  As for 1, I view it as a mutualistic relationship. Those who don't depend on UBI to live, depend on those who do to spend.
• wonderwonder 6y ago
  They could absolutely spend it all / get an addiction etc. The beauty of a UBI though is that next month they get it again and can start over. There is always the ability to start again, every month is a renewal. These setbacks that currently force people into the streets and doom them for a lifetime would now have the potential to only be setbacks. Of course there will still be homeless people and addicts, but at least every month they will have money for food magically appear in their bank accounts. The current system results in widespread homelessness, despair and inequality. To say we are going to stick with what we have instead of giving everyone the basics to live a decent life makes no sense. We are sticking with a known flawed system that punishes the poor because a few people may not play by the rules in the new one. Why would charity drop off, if someone is charitable, now they have more to donate. People are also easier to help because they are starting from a solid base instead of nothing. As far as being at the mercy of the rich, we are already there. If everyone had an income, they could actually band together if they wanted and use it on projects causes that are important to them instead of just the constant struggle to survive.
  • fragmede 6y ago
    For those who won't ever be homeless, another thing to consider about UBI going to homeless addicts, is that the destitute no longer have to break into cars, steal from stores, or beg for change on the side of the street, just to survive. It sucks when an addict steals the catalytic converter off your car. They cost a pretty penny to replace! (~$3000) Meanwhile the addict is getting $50, maybe a couple hundred dollars for it? UBI means surviving until the next UBI check (be it monthly or weekly or hourly) allows you to spend it on whatever they need. Be it drugs or alcohol or food.
• snarf21 6y ago
  We really need to stop calling it Universal. There is literally no way it could ever be so. I'm all in favor of a less bureaucratic welfare system. However, the main savings comes from all the people who make up that bureaucracy. So the savings come from firing a whole lot of people. Even taxing the richest households and extra 5% would only give the poorest households an approximate extra $1000 per year. This isn't life changing and isn't even much of a supplement. This is a very non trivial problem to solve. We need a much larger source of money.
  • baq 6y ago
    money is fake^Wfiat. it's just points in the game of capitalism. we have designed money so we can most importantly pay taxes with it, but also buy food and shelter and receive it for something or indeed anything, but we can also design a slightly different system where we receive it for no reason at all.
• UnpossibleJim 6y ago
  Speaking of points 2 and 3 (and I apologize for being a bit tangential), how are they not teaching home economics in school. I'm solidly GenX, and they didn't teach me Home Econ (luckily my parents took up that role). This is a point of education that has been sorely lacking in school for decades and it is truly confusing. Young men and women are coming out of school without the basic knowledge of how to set basic budgets and balance checkbooks. How to understand interest and how that will effect their payments in the future. Understanding that principal comes out last unless you make extra payments, so that it behooves a person to spend a little less on amenities and pay down the principal now .... things like this don't seem to be offered in basic education. Not to mention basic life skill classes, as well (again, these also weren't offered when I was in school either). School seems to be ONLY college prep but, even then, not very well suited for the skills one needs to transition to living a life there. Anyway, like I said... Tangential conversation. But, basic home econ would seem to address to a degree, points 2 and 3 if UBI were offered. Though, I will admit, I am a major proponent of "education will set you free".
• JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Pt 2: I don't get how UBI is supposed to be different from any other cash. It's all green.
• aglavine 6y ago
  >>>1. society will be easily divided into two groups: those >>>who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The >>>former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. I feel the opposite is more likely to be true. An scenario of populist leaders capturing UBI individuals and controlling centralized UBI distribution, promising them benefits and at same time menacing them of cuts, and in the meantime dividing the non-UBI crowd with single issues like abortion. Non-UBI people at the mercy of UBI people is the real danger. 3. I could see part of this as a good outcome. Charity is too many times a fraud. And people would not have any excuse to have their children begging on the streets.
• corpMaverick 6y ago
  My main worry is housing. If we don't increase significantly the availability of housing, prices will just increase. Similarly with college education and health care that have had significant price increases in the last 30 years.
• dkarl 6y ago
  3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. Sadly, this will be important for selling UBI to moderates and conservatives. We have to be prepared for UBI to set us back in a big way when it comes to behaving compassionately towards people who can't solve their own problems. I still see it as a positive idea overall, though. Two steps forward, one step back.
• ihm 6y ago
  > They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. So could you with your salary (assuming that’s how you get money). It stands to reason your employer shouldn’t be trusting you with that money they give you.
• leafboi 6y ago
  4. Coasting. Plenty of people just want to live and not do any work. This has obvious detriment to the economy as they are just parasites.
• timwaagh 6y ago
  The first thing will be forced by economic factors, not just landlords doing their job. everyone just takes a permanent vacation because work sucks. At the very least a lot of them will work less. This is an intended outcome. Supply hence falls through the floor because full automation doesn't exist. As supply is constrained and demand is just as high (if not higher) this in turn starts triggering higher prices which is to say (hyper)inflation. Now your UBI is worth nothing and you will be joining the nearest sweatshop soon. If the government tries to inflation correct UBI it will just make it worse.
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    Paying people 1200 a month isn't going to inspire them to take a permanent vacation because while it might be enough to survive on its not enough to live well on and people want to be needed and purposeful. Supply might tighten but it wont fall "through the floor". Furthermore demand right now in the US isn't just as high if not higher its crap and its going to be crap through 2020. Instead of basing it on bad armchair psych how about provide a credible analysis from an actual economist that shows the conclusions you are suggesting.
    • timwaagh 6y ago
      If you want serious economical analysis by an actual economist, I'd suggest maybe not going on hacker news, for example you could go here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_19_04_02_henderson.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj8mcWa3_XqAhXNsaQKHcwZA9IQFjAHegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw11SbJ_GTh7IEI9ZA6eYIUr&cshid=1596138550537 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... . Its a different argument, but the first part before it gets overly political is especially a good, by-the-numbers approach to basic income. I would point out though that the original blog is not much of an economical analysis so I don't see why my comment not being a scholarly article can be held against it.
• njharman 6y ago
  1 this exists and is way worse with wages. People are forced to work, and at mercy of their employers. UBI frees people from wage slavery. 2. This is no different than now. Endless scams- advertising, etc all the time to extract peoples money. Regardless of source. 3. Duck ups aren't going away. Under UBI they at least won't be at the mercy of beauracy and changing political will re funding social services. And people who want to volunteer to help them will be free to do so not having to spend a 1\3 or more of their waking life just to survive. UBI won't fix all problems. But its advantages outweigh.
  • hanniabu 6y ago
    3. It also gives you an unlimited ability to "reset". If you fuck up, you're not stuck with working your way back from scratch. When the next UBI check comes in it'll give you a recurring bump to help you get back on track.
• mdavis6890 6y ago
  If you want to do UBI, the correct implementation is: - Give the same amount to everybody* , with no means testing to avoid it become a political football. Bill Gates gets it too. This also removes any dis-incentive to work while also collecting UBI. Otherwise congress with write up a 9000 page law about who gets how much and when, which they then hold everybody hostage to. - Pay for it with a flat tax on all income from all sources, including capital gains, dividends and carried interest. All the money goes into a separate off-budget pool for immediate monthly distribution. Like SSI, but with no 'investing' in treasuries or anything else. Don't let the politicians get their hands on it. Money comes in and immediately goes out. This makes it self-balancing. As people reduce their work, the pool shrinks, causing some people at the margins to re-enter the workforce. As we become more productive the pool will increase, allowing more people at the margins to reduce work if they want to. The tax rate can be adjusted as necessary as we see how it's working out. * "Everybody" certainly has nuance to it that has to be defined. Children? Green card holders? Illegal Aliens? Felons? Inmates? Citizens living abroad? This is certainly an important definition, but less important than the overall idea.
  • SamPatt 6y ago
    A 9000 page law from Congress is inevitable. They literally survive by using their power to placate whoever they need to, voters in their district broadly or special interests specifically. They will never not choose to carve out as much benefit for their supporters as possible. Look at every piece of legislation in the past generation. Why would this be any different? Given the vast amount of resources UBI would be directing it is absolutely inevitable.
    • mdavis6890 6y ago
      I don't think I disagree with you (is that the same as agreeing?). I wasn't describing what I think would realistically happen, I was describing what I think would be best. I just wish we could find a way to give people money with no judgement of any kind, political or otherwise. That's probably asking too much....
• ankurpatel 6y ago
  I agree with your third point. People will take the money and make bad decisions and then ask for more. In US we have food stamp program to grant free food to people who cant afford it then why do people still beg for money. I have heard of people using food stamps program and sell them to store for cash and these types of fraud exist because people easily do them without getting caught. I guess we can apply technology to reduce this fraud as much as possible. Another thing happening in US is the unemployment program and the Coronavirus relief program which pays unemployed extra $600/week on top of unemployment. This way they make more money than they used to when they were working. In this case their incentive is to just stay home and not work which is also not right as without essential workers in the service industry we cannot get work done and if we start paying them higher than they get with the extra $600 we won't be able to afford them to be hired full time or temporary basis. For example someone even earning the lowest minimum wage can make $800/week and that is about $42,000 annually so we sort of do have UBI currently happening and worth learning from that.
• Legogris 6y ago
  I’ve been a hardcore pro-UBI for years from the perspective of moving (part of) the distribution of newly minted money from private banks to spread out over individuals. Gradually I have recently been feeling doubt for another reason: it makes everyone dependent on the government in the sense that if the government completely controls the demand side of the consumer economy (in the frame of the article). A majority of the population will (either due to unemployment or committed spending over non-UBI income) be unable to make ends meet without UBI. It actually puts a lot of power in the hands of government and central banks.
• umvi 6y ago
  I fundamentally don't like UBI because, like other forms of welfare, it makes the poor ever more reliant on the government without incentive to become self-reliant. I'm a strong believer in self-reliance. I think solutions that tackle poverty should have a path to self-reliance in there. Current welfare programs reward continued reliance and punish self-reliance (i.e. government benefits yanked if you try to supplement income too much with self-reliant sources, etc.). The ideal program helps people work their way to a state where they are no longer reliant on the government to survive. UBI locks the poorest into government reliance permanently. You might say "yeah, UBI will help people be more self-reliant because now it's unconditional and you can supplement however you want". And maybe that's partially true. But I still think without an incentive, indeed a culture shift that values self-reliance, the poorest UBI recipients will still be stuck in rut, because they don't just lack money, but fundamental financial education that middle/upper class receive as intellectual inheritance from their parents. Just like today, it doesn't matter how many government subsidies you get, the poor's standard of living will scale to their income until every penny is gone. Someone needs to teach the poorest how to live below means so you can save, invest, avoid expensive addictions and health problems, etc. and an unconditional check in the mail won't automatically bestow that knowledge. I predict if UBI becomes a thing it will actually increase the divide between lower and middle classes, because the middle class will use it more effectively (i.e. saving, investments, etc.) while the poor will use it less effectively (as a consequence of lacking financial education).
  • charwalker 6y ago
    What about those unable to work, are disabled, stay at home parents, or otherwise unable to be self reliant?
    • umvi 6y ago
      They should be the rare exceptions for when all else has failed, not the rule. For everyone else, including the majority of stay at home parents, they should work toward self reliance (again, just my opinion. I think not being reliant on the government for your survival is a great boon to both the individual and society).
  • 6y ago
• loceng 6y ago
  Re: 1 - That's a huge market segment for companies to cater products and services to. The former isn't at mercy to the later - they are both benefitting as they're all receiving UBI. If you're making $50,000 a year are you going to be unhappy with getting $62,000 a year because of UBI - along with your partner and any adult children? Re: 2 - Yup, people will have to learn to develop trusted networks and oversight to enforce and prevent, limit that behaviour. That's an organizational related problem. Re: 3 - UBI on its own vacuum doesn't really work, it's why you also need social services, at least basic health care covered, etc - including rehabilitation programs to funnel people through.
• kurthr 6y ago
  Exactly, unless you make the UBI ungarnishable and useless for loans the payday predators will just find a way to drive those dependent into debt until they take all the UBI they can from as many as they can. What % of current homeless will that be? Still, I hear UBI proponents say that you have to allow loan payments, because otherwise it's not fungible basic income. I disagree and think BI doesn't need financial engineering on top.
• heavyset_go 6y ago
  > Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't There's already a power divide between those who can live off of their assets and those who can't. Those who can't are at the mercy of those with significant assets when it comes to providing themselves with housing, healthcare, food, etc. > Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. Look at the standard UBI proposal of $12k a year. That is not even enough to cover health insurance premiums, deductibles and copays for a single person on the individual health insurance market, let alone a family. If UBI were to replace social programs, people would necessarily have to choose between paying for healthcare, or going without it but being better able to feed and house themselves. UBI must be a supplemental income on top of programs that address our societal and economic shortcomings.
• bArray 6y ago
  I would add the following points: 4. Funding - How are you going to fund UBI today? How are you going to fund UBI through a global recession, war or global pandemic? Given the hard choice of continuing to pay UBI or keeping a key economic contributor from collapsing, which will you pick? What will you do if people generally take the option to not work? In the UK, I believe we now have some fifth generation families that have never worked a day in their lives, and it's not clear how to motivate them to work with the safety net providing enough money for the small number of luxury items they enjoy. 5. Protection - Social wealth-fare systems need to be protected from outside influences. It's not feasible to import all the poor people from across the globe and pay them all a decent living allowance, the economy simply cannot support it. This will in turn have some knock-on effect for immigration policies. 6. Acceptance - When social systems such as the NHS (socialist healthcare) and a form of basic income (for those not working) were introduced in the UK, people were ashamed to use them. Gradually attitudes towards these systems changed, from shame, to general acceptance to expecting. Where people originally begrudgingly took money from the government to see them through hard times, but now consider it as a viable income to replace working. I would imagine the same to be true of UBI. As social attitudes towards UBI relax, I would expect to see unemployment increase. 7. Tax - You're going to fund this through taxes, which will mean increasing taxes on the rich. This will provide a higher incentive for them to avoid paying taxes. The result of implementing UBI could be to drive your 1% away. Also, as with the current tax-brackets (taxes based on incomes), people are dis-incentivized to work towards a promotion as the work-load increase doesn't increase linearly with income after tax. I think Europe will have to think very hard about some of these questions, I would consider the coronavirus to have provided an unintentional opportunity to observe how such a situation may unfold.
• pdonis 6y ago
  > I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. If you mean this... "Instead of continually trying to optimize supply, with diminishing returns, we need to optimize demand by giving consumers more money to spend on things they desire." ...then unfortunately it has a critical flaw: redistribution does not create wealth. If the problem is that growth is stagnating, you can't fix it by redistribution. You can only fix it by increasing wealth creation. That's not to say that there might not be a decent argument in favor of UBI helping to increase wealth creation, by enabling more people to pursue innovations because they don't have to spend as much time and effort on basic subsistence. Such an argument might be worth discussing. But that is not the argument this article is making.
• habosa 6y ago
  (replying to myself) Wow ... a comment about UBI I typed out on my phone now has 600+ replies. I sort of regret posting this since I assume others have much more insightful things to say than I do! Many great points were made in the replies so I want to be clear about something: I do believe that UBI would be better than what we have now. However I don't think that's the appropriate standard of judgement. To move forward with what would be the biggest government program ever (in terms of cost) we can't only look for marginal improvement. We need to be sure it will be a radical improvement. Free-market capitalism has mostly failed the lower and middle class of America. UBI gives money to everyone and lets this same market system sort out the rest. I don't have faith in that system to do much besides find new ways to crush those who are currently suffering.
• mlang23 6y ago
  There should be no mercy for those that spend their free money on addictions. My father spent almost all the money he received for my disability on alcohol and god know swhat. 100k gone down the drain. That money could have kickstarted my life just perfectly. But hey, why safe the money you get for your children for those children? Nah, better spend it on your own live, because. If UBI ever becomes a thing, I hope that also means that people are on their own if they overspend it.
• kgwxd 6y ago
  If there were some guarantee UBI money couldn't be garnished, could that help the situation?
• qwerty456127 6y ago
  3 - we should also invest in educating people (so they make less bad investments) and fraudsters busting. These 2 measures together with the UBI itself probably have chances to minimize the number of broke people (nobody actually wants to loose money and be homeless, right? most of them will do their best to use the UBI to avoid that) to the the point when it's very small and only consists of really sick people. Then yes, we help them by putting them in appropriate mental health care institutions until they are ready to take care of themselves.