10 ms·

Unemployment was and still is a mistake because it creates perverse incentives. It should be UBI instead. The government has spent $10,000 per US resident prop

Unemployment was and still is a mistake because it creates perverse incentives. It should be UBI instead. The government has spent $10,000 per US resident propping up banks, hedge funds, dog-shit junk-grade corporate debt, etc. Do you think that money was well spent propping up braindead investment funds, or would you have used it better?

eloff 6y ago
Why is it that whenever the government does something, it takes me about ten minutes to come up with a better plan? I've considered that I could be wrong that my plan is actually better, or that I'm missing something (I surely am) but I don't find that compelling. I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre. What's the alternative though?
- cheschire 6y ago
  If you're a software developer, consider how the first 90% of any project is the easiest.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Why is it that whenever the government does something, it takes me about ten minutes to come up with a better plan? Because the edge cases often take more than ten minutes to reveal themselves? See: "Tough on crime/drugs" policies, lead in gasoline and paint, etc.
  - eloff 6y ago
    I understand edge cases and hidden complexity very well as software engineer, see my comment above for why I don't accept this take.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      You don't have to accept it for it to be true. The point of "hidden complexity" is that it's hidden. Talking to an expert in public policy in the specific area in question might well reveal the "glaring flaw" is actually a known thing, with a good but counter-intuitive reason behind it. I've seen precisely that in software; big precautionary comments in code that say "this seems weird, but here's why it exists; you can try and fix it, but you'll just increment the 'leave this code alone' counter again".
      - eloff 6y ago
        I understand that well, and it surely applies in some cases. In others, I think the government did such a bad job that it is not only possible, but quite way to come up with better alternatives, that are actually better considering the full complexity of the problem.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Well, assuming you are competent, the answer is obvious. Unless your outcome preference vector and mine are the same, any decision for policy made by both of us will be less optimal for one of us than a decision made by that person. Simply put, you can make better decisions because you don't have to negotiate.
  - eloff 6y ago
    Yes, it's very clear that my solution would be better liked by me because it fits my preferences. However, it also appears to me to be objectively better for society at large, in as much as I'm able to be objective.
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  >I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre. Yes.
- adamsea 6y ago
  ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947 https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
- doorstar 6y ago
  Have you ever worked at a company where they bring in a brand-new CTO or Lead Architect and they decide after a week or so that the entire dev org has been Doing it Wrong and it's only them, with their clear outsider's view, that can see the true way forward. I certainly have. It usually leads to 3-4 wasted years of dev time on the brand new architecture that will never match all the features of the old stack, and during that time the old stack has fewer and fewer resources and the tech debt piles up. It is absurdly easy to come up with a better plan in 10 minutes if you have absolutely no idea how it really works or how complicated it really is.
  - eloff 6y ago
    Yes, I agree that the fair default assumption is I just don't understand the true complexity of the problem. And this is certainly true. However, I don't accept this answer. I think most of the time the government's plan is so bad, so glaringly flawed, that even from my position of ignorance, I'm confident I can beat it without hardly trying.
    - ModernMech 6y ago
      The plans Congress comes up with look like shit from your perspective because to you, a good plan is one that solves problems for regular Americans. Congress does not work for regular Americans. The plans they come up with are great plans for the people they work for. They are highly effective and channeling money to the rich and their corporations. Just look at the trend lines of the past 40 years - consistently increasing inequality between rich and poor. That kind of consistent performance is by design. As always, the purpose of a system is is what it does.
- paulmd 6y ago
  > I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre. the problem is that one of the political parties has it as an ideological point that government doesn't and can't work, and sets out to sabotage everything to prove that they're right. Like how florida deliberately makes it impossible to get your unemployment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast There is, unfortunately, not a good fix for this, as similar parties exist worldwide. But banning Murdoch media and de-consolidating media control in general (returning local stations to local management, etc) would be a good start. Cause right now this is your local news station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI
  - eloff 6y ago
    I don't accept your leftist explanation that the problem is the right. It's much more nuanced than that.
    - paulmd 6y ago
      If you went to work for a company that you didn't like and you sandbagged all your work you would be fired. Somehow this is considered acceptable when your employer is the taxpayer. A large part of the problem of "why doesn't government produce good outcomes" is exactly this - people who have a vested personal interest in producing bad outcomes, because that's what they run on. How do you fix it? Not easy obviously, but certain propaganda networks are a large chunk of the problem. Murdoch's networks specifically, and Sinclair's network controlling local broadcasting.
      - eloff 6y ago
        I'm not saying that behavior is ok, but neither is it the exclusive domain of the right. Both parties engage in this kind of nonsense.
- smileysteve 6y ago
  > it takes me about ten minutes to come up with a better plan? Because your plan doesn't please campaign funds, interest groups, and voters in a bicameral legislature and a long electoral college selected President .... and skate past 200 years of federal and state laws. There's a reason why Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin were able to achieve things quickly.
  - eloff 6y ago
    Yeah, this is a big part of it.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Democracy is slow and average, because ‘everyone’ gets a voice. Authoritarianism is fast and exceptional, because only everyone that matters gets a voice. Problem is that fast ‘large decisions’ can be catastrophic, and those without a voice eventually rise up...
  - eloff 6y ago
    I've heard it said that a benevolent dictatorship is a better government than democracy for that reason (e.g. Singapore) until it stood being benevolent because the leadership changed or the leader grew corrupt. There's some truth there. That's not an argument in favor of authoritarianism, of course.
cowmoo728 6y ago
A financial collapse on top of a demand shock wouldn't have helped. This is speculation but Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank were probably at risk of collapsing, thereby tanking the market for CLOs and sparking a wave of corporate bankruptcies and bank failures. In order to prevent this and restore confidence, the fed went all out. There's always waste involved but I'm hesitant to call the whole thing a waste without knowing what the Fed knows. Do agree on unemployment though. The overhead of administering the program is nonsensical. Florida purposefully designed its systems to deny as many claims as possible. The idea of designing government systems as terribly as possible so that people hate the government is holding us back in times of crisis. UBI payments simplify the whole thing.
- t0mbstone 6y ago
  They wouldn't have needed to bail out the banks if they had just bailed out the people. Trickle up economics!
  - bravo22 6y ago
    They're both real problems. Most of growth in the last decade has been from leveraging. A lot of people have BS jobs as a result of leveraging. Giving people money to avoid starvation (which is good), isn't going to change your leverage problem when it comes to businesses and banks.
epistasis 6y ago
What perverse incentive is that? We are at ridiculously high unemployment numbers, so whether people are "incentivized" to work or not doesn't mean much.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  There seem to be perverse incentives at play in several states, pushing them to re-open even as cases and weekly deaths rise, seemingly with the primary purpose to getting people off state unemployment rolls. Not sure it's the right term to use for people, since as you say, the jobs aren't there. But for state governments, for sure.
  - slg 6y ago
    I think a lot of people envision workers being given a choice to go back to work or stay on unemployment, but that is seldom a choice. You can't legally turn down your old job and stay on unemployment (at least in every state of which I'm aware, but every state's unemployment system is slightly different). Certainly there will be some people who do it, but you would basically have to commit fraud to do it. This causes the states' perverse incentives that you mentioned. Many people believe a big push to reopen has been motivated by states trying to get people off unemployment as they know some workers would rather stay safe at home and lose unemployment benefits than return to work in an unsafe environment.
    - abfan1127 6y ago
      I know a ton of employees who have declined employment because of unemployment paying better. If Employers rat out these employees, then they come back angry. its a nasty spot to be in.
      - slg 6y ago
        Like I said: >Certainly there will be some people who do it, but you would basically have to commit fraud to do it. Also the extra unemployment benefits expired so anyone still doing this is not making more than they would at their job. Their only incentive to continue this fraud is for their own personal safety. You can't call a preference for one's own personal safety "perverse".
ideals 6y ago
But then people would have no incentive to work anymore so people would abuse the system. This is why the government has to give the money to corporations, they will spend that money wisely to keep good jobs around and not abuse this money. There's way too much accountability in corporations for it to ever get abused unlike regular people collecting Ubi forever.
- MegaButts 6y ago
  Is this satire? You can't honestly believe there's meaningful accountability amongst US corporations. And if you do, well why do you think that?
  - doopy-loopy2 6y ago
    I'm just a single data point, but I'm a "high income" earner who would immediately quit there job if UBI was ever offered.
    - fifnir 6y ago
      That will just incentivize companies to pay better salaries. Let the market decide what job positions are worth existing
    - nend 6y ago
      I feel like that depends on the UBI amount. Unless you're currently living well below your means, it's likely you couldn't support your current life style on just a UBI. I'm an advocate for a UBI, and I'd use it to shift from working 5 days/week to 4 or 3 days/week. A move that many argue wouldn't effect the economy's output much at all, considering other countries economies do fine with less average working hours. Additionally, a UBI would let more people participate in the economy and increase purchasing power of the less wealthy, which would help the economy.
    - anonAndOn 6y ago
      You'd be willing to trade your high income for basic (poverty) level income just so you didn't have to work?
calvinbhai 6y ago
If UBI is the way, do you agree or disagree that there should be no minimum wage? Decide minimum wage, then give UBI to adults based on that. If $15 per hr is minimum wage, UBI should be $2600 per month. Once someone is getting this UBI, it should be legal to have jobs that pay $1 per hr or $0.5 per hr.
- AbrahamParangi 6y ago
  Maybe. States and municipalities should figure it out. Diversity is good, and allows us to experiment & learn ethically and inexpensively.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Have you thought about the psychological impact of what you’re describing? Why would someone work 40 hours a week to earn $2680 a month when they can earn $2600 a month sitting on their couch and playing video games?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    They wouldn't. They might work 40 hours a week because they believe in the cause; I know people who are independently wealthy or otherwise not in need of paid employment who put that time in for volunteer projects.
  - Drakim 6y ago
    Isn't that part of the point? Right now there is an incredible power imbalance between employers and employees, where for the employer it's an inconvenience if they lose the employee, while for the employee it's loss of access to food, shelter and medicine if they lose their employer. This means that the employer can squeeze the employee, allowing them to pile on with abusive working conditions, bad pay, and poor compensation. Lots of workplaces outright steal out of the paychecks for the employees in plain daylight and get away with it because the employee knows that if they raise a fuss they might get fired. Nobody would work for 1 dollar an hour, as you say. So companies will have to offer more to attract workers. And the workers have the option of saying "no" if what they offer just isn't good enough. So they would be two equal parties, bargaining over what the labor is worth, without neither having a gun pushed against their head if they say "no". Weirdly, a lot of people seem to think things are as they should be. People should starve and be homeless if they aren't willing to work under unsafe condition, or being blackmailed into working for bottom wages just to have food to eat tomorrow. I'm not a fan of that sort of Social Darwinism though.
claydavisss 6y ago
UBI combines your paymaster with your legislator. That sounds like a great idea until UBI is treated like a driver's license...something that can be taken away...if you, for example, are seen at a "riot", or "interfere" with law enforcement, or stay out past 10pm.
- jpindar 6y ago
  I'm in favor of UBI, but I agree, it's not likely to stay universal for long. It won't start with protestors though, but with people who owe child support, or who are convicted of drunk driving or drug offenses.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Isn't that what the universal part is for? That they can't pick and choose?
  - claydavisss 6y ago
    If it's not a Right, it can be taken away....and if UBI ever appears, it will definitely never be elevated to a Right. Practically speaking, if UBI ever appears, there are some basic assumptions that seem straightforward: 1. There will be a level at which your income means you won't get it. This makes sense, there's no practical value in sending someone making $750k a year a check for $1k a month. Indeed these people will decline UBI to avoid the strings attached. 2. Behavioral strings will be attached just like a Driver's License. I mean, why wouldn't a government do this? No President will be re-elected offering to send $1k/month to a newly-convicted rapist, the public will cast outrage votes. 3. Recipients will be crash-test-dummies for new government digital currency initiatives which will include insane levels of tracking. In short, with UBI you will sell your freedom for a check and the recipients will be a new underclass that is clearly identified.
dustingetz 6y ago
Source on "spent" $10k/resident or is that in repayable loans? Huge difference
- patentatt 6y ago
  The whole point of the 'loans' though is that they don't need to be paid back if used for the purposes they are supposed to be used for.
  - dustingetz 6y ago
    $10k per 330M residents is $3.3T which is too big to be the SBA loans, those are bailout size numbers but the bailouts get repaid
adamsea 6y ago
Agreed, but is this really the right time? A discussion about the benefits of UBI seems like an excellent discussion to have after making sure all the folks who will be in serious trouble once the $600 payments stop get some help from their government ...
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  I think it is the right time. The problem I have with the $600 weekly unemployment bump is that while it helped some people, a ridiculous amount of people slipped through the cracks. We look at it and think "17M unemployed, we are helping 17M people!" but that is just not true. Even if it was, that is overall a very small portion of the population who (likely) needs assistance. A big argument _against_ UBI is that "people wont work, and won't do productive things". This unemployment is actually worse than that; the fact that it "all goes away" when you exceed your state weekly income cap means that people can't do safe, productive "work", even if they want to. If your passion is selling art, and you sell a painting for $200, you most likely just excluded yourself from ~800$ in unemployment that week. This isn't even touching on the difference in social-economic situation impacting ones ability to even apply/qualify for unemployment benefits in the first place, and fact that many state unemployment systems are designed to prevent people from actually being able to collect. The way that the $600/week is talked about it completely ignores everyone (a substantial amount) of people who fell through the cracks. The unemployment system is not designed for distributing catastrophe-relief, and it's a disservice to literally everyone involve by pretending it is.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    > The way that the $600/week is talked about it completely ignores everyone (a substantial amount) of people who fell through the cracks. The unemployment system is not designed for distributing catastrophe-relief, and it's a disservice to literally everyone involve by pretending it is. I see. On that I agree with you. Replacing the $600/week with something better - yes!

eloff 6y ago

Why is it that whenever the government does something, it takes me about ten minutes to come up with a better plan? I've considered that I could be wrong that my plan is actually better, or that I'm missing something (I surely am) but I don't find that compelling. I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre. What's the alternative though?

cheschire 6y ago
If you're a software developer, consider how the first 90% of any project is the easiest.
ceejayoz 6y ago
> Why is it that whenever the government does something, it takes me about ten minutes to come up with a better plan? Because the edge cases often take more than ten minutes to reveal themselves? See: "Tough on crime/drugs" policies, lead in gasoline and paint, etc.
- eloff 6y ago
  I understand edge cases and hidden complexity very well as software engineer, see my comment above for why I don't accept this take.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    You don't have to accept it for it to be true. The point of "hidden complexity" is that it's hidden. Talking to an expert in public policy in the specific area in question might well reveal the "glaring flaw" is actually a known thing, with a good but counter-intuitive reason behind it. I've seen precisely that in software; big precautionary comments in code that say "this seems weird, but here's why it exists; you can try and fix it, but you'll just increment the 'leave this code alone' counter again".
    - eloff 6y ago
      I understand that well, and it surely applies in some cases. In others, I think the government did such a bad job that it is not only possible, but quite way to come up with better alternatives, that are actually better considering the full complexity of the problem.
renewiltord 6y ago
Well, assuming you are competent, the answer is obvious. Unless your outcome preference vector and mine are the same, any decision for policy made by both of us will be less optimal for one of us than a decision made by that person. Simply put, you can make better decisions because you don't have to negotiate.
- eloff 6y ago
  Yes, it's very clear that my solution would be better liked by me because it fits my preferences. However, it also appears to me to be objectively better for society at large, in as much as I'm able to be objective.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
>I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre. Yes.
adamsea 6y ago
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947 https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
doorstar 6y ago
Have you ever worked at a company where they bring in a brand-new CTO or Lead Architect and they decide after a week or so that the entire dev org has been Doing it Wrong and it's only them, with their clear outsider's view, that can see the true way forward. I certainly have. It usually leads to 3-4 wasted years of dev time on the brand new architecture that will never match all the features of the old stack, and during that time the old stack has fewer and fewer resources and the tech debt piles up. It is absurdly easy to come up with a better plan in 10 minutes if you have absolutely no idea how it really works or how complicated it really is.
- eloff 6y ago
  Yes, I agree that the fair default assumption is I just don't understand the true complexity of the problem. And this is certainly true. However, I don't accept this answer. I think most of the time the government's plan is so bad, so glaringly flawed, that even from my position of ignorance, I'm confident I can beat it without hardly trying.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    The plans Congress comes up with look like shit from your perspective because to you, a good plan is one that solves problems for regular Americans. Congress does not work for regular Americans. The plans they come up with are great plans for the people they work for. They are highly effective and channeling money to the rich and their corporations. Just look at the trend lines of the past 40 years - consistently increasing inequality between rich and poor. That kind of consistent performance is by design. As always, the purpose of a system is is what it does.
paulmd 6y ago
> I'm starting to think that the outcome of our political systems in the West produces suboptimal compromises engineered by politicians who are quite frankly ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and really just not good specimens of the species. It's like the system is designed to be mediocre. the problem is that one of the political parties has it as an ideological point that government doesn't and can't work, and sets out to sabotage everything to prove that they're right. Like how florida deliberately makes it impossible to get your unemployment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast There is, unfortunately, not a good fix for this, as similar parties exist worldwide. But banning Murdoch media and de-consolidating media control in general (returning local stations to local management, etc) would be a good start. Cause right now this is your local news station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI
- eloff 6y ago
  I don't accept your leftist explanation that the problem is the right. It's much more nuanced than that.
  - paulmd 6y ago
    If you went to work for a company that you didn't like and you sandbagged all your work you would be fired. Somehow this is considered acceptable when your employer is the taxpayer. A large part of the problem of "why doesn't government produce good outcomes" is exactly this - people who have a vested personal interest in producing bad outcomes, because that's what they run on. How do you fix it? Not easy obviously, but certain propaganda networks are a large chunk of the problem. Murdoch's networks specifically, and Sinclair's network controlling local broadcasting.
    - eloff 6y ago
      I'm not saying that behavior is ok, but neither is it the exclusive domain of the right. Both parties engage in this kind of nonsense.
smileysteve 6y ago
> it takes me about ten minutes to come up with a better plan? Because your plan doesn't please campaign funds, interest groups, and voters in a bicameral legislature and a long electoral college selected President .... and skate past 200 years of federal and state laws. There's a reason why Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin were able to achieve things quickly.
- eloff 6y ago
  Yeah, this is a big part of it.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Democracy is slow and average, because ‘everyone’ gets a voice. Authoritarianism is fast and exceptional, because only everyone that matters gets a voice. Problem is that fast ‘large decisions’ can be catastrophic, and those without a voice eventually rise up...
- eloff 6y ago
  I've heard it said that a benevolent dictatorship is a better government than democracy for that reason (e.g. Singapore) until it stood being benevolent because the leadership changed or the leader grew corrupt. There's some truth there. That's not an argument in favor of authoritarianism, of course.

cowmoo728 6y ago

A financial collapse on top of a demand shock wouldn't have helped. This is speculation but Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank were probably at risk of collapsing, thereby tanking the market for CLOs and sparking a wave of corporate bankruptcies and bank failures. In order to prevent this and restore confidence, the fed went all out. There's always waste involved but I'm hesitant to call the whole thing a waste without knowing what the Fed knows. Do agree on unemployment though. The overhead of administering the program is nonsensical. Florida purposefully designed its systems to deny as many claims as possible. The idea of designing government systems as terribly as possible so that people hate the government is holding us back in times of crisis. UBI payments simplify the whole thing.

t0mbstone 6y ago
They wouldn't have needed to bail out the banks if they had just bailed out the people. Trickle up economics!
- bravo22 6y ago
  They're both real problems. Most of growth in the last decade has been from leveraging. A lot of people have BS jobs as a result of leveraging. Giving people money to avoid starvation (which is good), isn't going to change your leverage problem when it comes to businesses and banks.

epistasis 6y ago

What perverse incentive is that? We are at ridiculously high unemployment numbers, so whether people are "incentivized" to work or not doesn't mean much.

pwinnski 6y ago
There seem to be perverse incentives at play in several states, pushing them to re-open even as cases and weekly deaths rise, seemingly with the primary purpose to getting people off state unemployment rolls. Not sure it's the right term to use for people, since as you say, the jobs aren't there. But for state governments, for sure.
- slg 6y ago
  I think a lot of people envision workers being given a choice to go back to work or stay on unemployment, but that is seldom a choice. You can't legally turn down your old job and stay on unemployment (at least in every state of which I'm aware, but every state's unemployment system is slightly different). Certainly there will be some people who do it, but you would basically have to commit fraud to do it. This causes the states' perverse incentives that you mentioned. Many people believe a big push to reopen has been motivated by states trying to get people off unemployment as they know some workers would rather stay safe at home and lose unemployment benefits than return to work in an unsafe environment.
  - abfan1127 6y ago
    I know a ton of employees who have declined employment because of unemployment paying better. If Employers rat out these employees, then they come back angry. its a nasty spot to be in.
    - slg 6y ago
      Like I said: >Certainly there will be some people who do it, but you would basically have to commit fraud to do it. Also the extra unemployment benefits expired so anyone still doing this is not making more than they would at their job. Their only incentive to continue this fraud is for their own personal safety. You can't call a preference for one's own personal safety "perverse".

ideals 6y ago

But then people would have no incentive to work anymore so people would abuse the system. This is why the government has to give the money to corporations, they will spend that money wisely to keep good jobs around and not abuse this money. There's way too much accountability in corporations for it to ever get abused unlike regular people collecting Ubi forever.

MegaButts 6y ago
Is this satire? You can't honestly believe there's meaningful accountability amongst US corporations. And if you do, well why do you think that?
- doopy-loopy2 6y ago
  I'm just a single data point, but I'm a "high income" earner who would immediately quit there job if UBI was ever offered.
  - fifnir 6y ago
    That will just incentivize companies to pay better salaries. Let the market decide what job positions are worth existing
  - nend 6y ago
    I feel like that depends on the UBI amount. Unless you're currently living well below your means, it's likely you couldn't support your current life style on just a UBI. I'm an advocate for a UBI, and I'd use it to shift from working 5 days/week to 4 or 3 days/week. A move that many argue wouldn't effect the economy's output much at all, considering other countries economies do fine with less average working hours. Additionally, a UBI would let more people participate in the economy and increase purchasing power of the less wealthy, which would help the economy.
  - anonAndOn 6y ago
    You'd be willing to trade your high income for basic (poverty) level income just so you didn't have to work?

calvinbhai 6y ago

If UBI is the way, do you agree or disagree that there should be no minimum wage? Decide minimum wage, then give UBI to adults based on that. If $15 per hr is minimum wage, UBI should be $2600 per month. Once someone is getting this UBI, it should be legal to have jobs that pay $1 per hr or $0.5 per hr.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago
Maybe. States and municipalities should figure it out. Diversity is good, and allows us to experiment & learn ethically and inexpensively.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Have you thought about the psychological impact of what you’re describing? Why would someone work 40 hours a week to earn $2680 a month when they can earn $2600 a month sitting on their couch and playing video games?
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  They wouldn't. They might work 40 hours a week because they believe in the cause; I know people who are independently wealthy or otherwise not in need of paid employment who put that time in for volunteer projects.
- Drakim 6y ago
  Isn't that part of the point? Right now there is an incredible power imbalance between employers and employees, where for the employer it's an inconvenience if they lose the employee, while for the employee it's loss of access to food, shelter and medicine if they lose their employer. This means that the employer can squeeze the employee, allowing them to pile on with abusive working conditions, bad pay, and poor compensation. Lots of workplaces outright steal out of the paychecks for the employees in plain daylight and get away with it because the employee knows that if they raise a fuss they might get fired. Nobody would work for 1 dollar an hour, as you say. So companies will have to offer more to attract workers. And the workers have the option of saying "no" if what they offer just isn't good enough. So they would be two equal parties, bargaining over what the labor is worth, without neither having a gun pushed against their head if they say "no". Weirdly, a lot of people seem to think things are as they should be. People should starve and be homeless if they aren't willing to work under unsafe condition, or being blackmailed into working for bottom wages just to have food to eat tomorrow. I'm not a fan of that sort of Social Darwinism though.

claydavisss 6y ago

UBI combines your paymaster with your legislator. That sounds like a great idea until UBI is treated like a driver's license...something that can be taken away...if you, for example, are seen at a "riot", or "interfere" with law enforcement, or stay out past 10pm.

jpindar 6y ago
I'm in favor of UBI, but I agree, it's not likely to stay universal for long. It won't start with protestors though, but with people who owe child support, or who are convicted of drunk driving or drug offenses.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Isn't that what the universal part is for? That they can't pick and choose?
- claydavisss 6y ago
  If it's not a Right, it can be taken away....and if UBI ever appears, it will definitely never be elevated to a Right. Practically speaking, if UBI ever appears, there are some basic assumptions that seem straightforward: 1. There will be a level at which your income means you won't get it. This makes sense, there's no practical value in sending someone making $750k a year a check for $1k a month. Indeed these people will decline UBI to avoid the strings attached. 2. Behavioral strings will be attached just like a Driver's License. I mean, why wouldn't a government do this? No President will be re-elected offering to send $1k/month to a newly-convicted rapist, the public will cast outrage votes. 3. Recipients will be crash-test-dummies for new government digital currency initiatives which will include insane levels of tracking. In short, with UBI you will sell your freedom for a check and the recipients will be a new underclass that is clearly identified.

dustingetz 6y ago

Source on "spent" $10k/resident or is that in repayable loans? Huge difference

patentatt 6y ago
The whole point of the 'loans' though is that they don't need to be paid back if used for the purposes they are supposed to be used for.
- dustingetz 6y ago
  $10k per 330M residents is $3.3T which is too big to be the SBA loans, those are bailout size numbers but the bailouts get repaid

adamsea 6y ago

Agreed, but is this really the right time? A discussion about the benefits of UBI seems like an excellent discussion to have after making sure all the folks who will be in serious trouble once the $600 payments stop get some help from their government ...

nrmitchi 6y ago
I think it is the right time. The problem I have with the $600 weekly unemployment bump is that while it helped some people, a ridiculous amount of people slipped through the cracks. We look at it and think "17M unemployed, we are helping 17M people!" but that is just not true. Even if it was, that is overall a very small portion of the population who (likely) needs assistance. A big argument _against_ UBI is that "people wont work, and won't do productive things". This unemployment is actually worse than that; the fact that it "all goes away" when you exceed your state weekly income cap means that people can't do safe, productive "work", even if they want to. If your passion is selling art, and you sell a painting for $200, you most likely just excluded yourself from ~800$ in unemployment that week. This isn't even touching on the difference in social-economic situation impacting ones ability to even apply/qualify for unemployment benefits in the first place, and fact that many state unemployment systems are designed to prevent people from actually being able to collect. The way that the $600/week is talked about it completely ignores everyone (a substantial amount) of people who fell through the cracks. The unemployment system is not designed for distributing catastrophe-relief, and it's a disservice to literally everyone involve by pretending it is.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > The way that the $600/week is talked about it completely ignores everyone (a substantial amount) of people who fell through the cracks. The unemployment system is not designed for distributing catastrophe-relief, and it's a disservice to literally everyone involve by pretending it is. I see. On that I agree with you. Replacing the $600/week with something better - yes!