4 ms·

I don't think it is a hit piece. A while ago I was surprised to hear Charles Murray supportd UBI and so I looked into it - and the author is basically right. Th

I don't think it is a hit piece. A while ago I was surprised to hear Charles Murray supportd UBI and so I looked into it - and the author is basically right. There is a right wing case for UBI - you can swap out all these big expensive government programmes that provide for needs with a single check. That check may not even come close to covering all these costs it's proponents claim it should. This is most obvious in Murray's proposal. It's just a way of taking $Nk of government benefits and replacing it with a tenth of that along with a bunch of right wing talking points about those who can't cope must be wasting the money on frivolous things - such as being a parent or having cancer. I'm not saying that that is as true for Yang's proposal, but the risk is that you're incentivizing people to forgoe entitlement to government benefits they don't currently receive to gain the $1000 - but should their circumstances change, that'll have a huge impact. The truth is that if you need to make an argument for UBI, you need to content with the fact that those who are in need often may need more than the UBI, and often the actual argument being made around UBI is to provide less to those who are receiving needs-based benefits. For example, if I can give everyone $1000 but that doens't reflect that some people are going to pay $10,000 for health care (just as an exampe, not specifically in Yang's case).

beaconstudios 6y ago
There's also a right wing case in that if the welfare system is simplified then even if the amount paid out stays the same, a simple system has less room for the government corruption and incompetence that libertarians hate. So the overhead cost of the distribution would be much less, saving taxpayer money while still providing a safety net. Also that people should be trusted to spend the money the way they see fit because applying myriad rule systems to how someone lives their life is dehumanising.
- hntrader 6y ago
  Another right wing argument for UBI is that it reduces the possibility of being trapped in welfare by being disincentivized to earn more, since earning more in a traditional means-tested welfare system means that entitlements get removed. The UBI has no such inbuilt disincentive for work.
- Traster 6y ago
  What you're describing as a "simple" system is simply a system that doesn't meet the demands of the public. It's not simpler, it just provides less. Either you provide everyone with enough - in which case you're masssively over-spending since you're giving everyone the amount that's required by the most needy, or you're saying that you're going to save money by cutting benefits from those that need them. You can't have it both ways.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    This is not necessarily true because it's forgetting the potential countervailing impact of progressive taxation. With basic arithmetic we can show that UBI+more progressive taxation can create the identical first-order outcome as traditional welfare+less progressive taxation. The function marginal_tax_rate(income) can be optimized to make the outcomes the same. [EDIT - What I'm describing here is just the negative income tax, as another poster mentioned]
    - Traster 6y ago
      Yes, what you're doing is creating the exact same benefits system but calling it "negative taxation" in order to have the same ability to target you by definition recreate the same complexity.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        It's not the same system, they're quite different. It is non-prescriptive, so it has less potential for bureaucratic waste than a means-tested system that is prescriptive about where the funds go, or worse yet explicitly spends the funds on specific publicly run programs that may or may not be efficiently ran and may or may not be what poor people need. Also, the marginal tax rate gradient under negative tax is gradual instead of a cliff (which is usually the case in means tested systems) which helps to avoid the disincentive problem.
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    You should look into negative income tax which should clear things up for you. You can provide a minimum income for everybody without spending a totally ludicrous amount. And reverse income tax is equivalent to UBI under a progressive taxation model.

beaconstudios 6y ago

There's also a right wing case in that if the welfare system is simplified then even if the amount paid out stays the same, a simple system has less room for the government corruption and incompetence that libertarians hate. So the overhead cost of the distribution would be much less, saving taxpayer money while still providing a safety net. Also that people should be trusted to spend the money the way they see fit because applying myriad rule systems to how someone lives their life is dehumanising.

hntrader 6y ago
Another right wing argument for UBI is that it reduces the possibility of being trapped in welfare by being disincentivized to earn more, since earning more in a traditional means-tested welfare system means that entitlements get removed. The UBI has no such inbuilt disincentive for work.
Traster 6y ago
What you're describing as a "simple" system is simply a system that doesn't meet the demands of the public. It's not simpler, it just provides less. Either you provide everyone with enough - in which case you're masssively over-spending since you're giving everyone the amount that's required by the most needy, or you're saying that you're going to save money by cutting benefits from those that need them. You can't have it both ways.
- hntrader 6y ago
  This is not necessarily true because it's forgetting the potential countervailing impact of progressive taxation. With basic arithmetic we can show that UBI+more progressive taxation can create the identical first-order outcome as traditional welfare+less progressive taxation. The function marginal_tax_rate(income) can be optimized to make the outcomes the same. [EDIT - What I'm describing here is just the negative income tax, as another poster mentioned]
  - Traster 6y ago
    Yes, what you're doing is creating the exact same benefits system but calling it "negative taxation" in order to have the same ability to target you by definition recreate the same complexity.
    - hntrader 6y ago
      It's not the same system, they're quite different. It is non-prescriptive, so it has less potential for bureaucratic waste than a means-tested system that is prescriptive about where the funds go, or worse yet explicitly spends the funds on specific publicly run programs that may or may not be efficiently ran and may or may not be what poor people need. Also, the marginal tax rate gradient under negative tax is gradual instead of a cliff (which is usually the case in means tested systems) which helps to avoid the disincentive problem.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  You should look into negative income tax which should clear things up for you. You can provide a minimum income for everybody without spending a totally ludicrous amount. And reverse income tax is equivalent to UBI under a progressive taxation model.