8 ms·

I frankly really hate how these buzzwords get through around. It isn't guaranteed and it isn't a program. We'll all go farther if we just be honest about what i

I frankly really hate how these buzzwords get through around. It isn't guaranteed and it isn't a program. We'll all go farther if we just be honest about what it is. You can't get any real learnings when you know it is going to stop in a year. To be clear, I completely support this kind of pilot. It is essentially needs-based free $500/month for 5000 families. They need the help, so give them the money. But the only way we are going to afford a UBI-like program is to remove all the bureaucracy currently wasted to administer these programs. All so that someone doesn't accidentally get an extra $100 or is eligible despite making $1K/year more than some nonsense restriction. Instead, take those billions (across the US) and start helping people instead of paying people to make sure those who need it don't get help. We can just use previous year's taxes to figure out thresholds if it isn't truly universal with minimal overhead.

ChrisLomont 5y ago
>But the only way we are going to afford a UBI-like program is to remove all the bureaucracy currently wasted to administer these programs. The overhead compared to money given to people in such programs is minimal.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  UBI style "got a pulse get a check" programs sure. Current means tested programs are full of waste.
  - ChrisLomont 5y ago
    The biggest means tested program, SSA, has less than 1% overhead [1]. Care to cite one with waste by providing the budget numbers? Care to show any of the UBI "experiments" had less overhead than this? I cannot find any, and I checked a few. In fact, here [2] is a peer reviewed article demonstrating that the efficiency UBI proponents imagine is a myth in practice. [1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html [2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.835.2632&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.83...
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Citation?
  - ChrisLomont 5y ago
    It's easy to check - pick the biggest program, Social Security. Look at Social Security outlay, say for 2019 (pick any year) [1] and you get $1,091,345M, number of people getting benefits (71,322,000), and operating budget (13,083M). This means expenses to provide 1.091 trillion in assistance is 0.013 trillion, so the overhead is around 1%. In fact, they do all this for you, finding administration costs well under 1% [2] when all benefits and costs are accounted for. Pick any program you want, do the same. Medicare, SNAP, TANF, SNAP... go ahead and show me the excessive overhead to manage these programs. Have a citation to the contrary? [1] https://www.ssa.gov/budget/ https://www.ssa.gov/budget/ [2] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html
jdhn 5y ago
>But the only way we are going to afford a UBI-like program is to remove all the bureaucracy currently wasted to administer these programs. This is why I believe that UBI will never actually be implemented. That bureaucracy consists of a lot of unionized jobs, and those workers vote.
- cyber_kinetist 5y ago
  Related hilarious (and depressing) quote from Obama (which is in the book Bullshit Jobs): “Everybody who supports single-payer health care says, ‘Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents one million, two million, three million jobs [filled by] people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”
  - jmercouris 5y ago
    So unfortunate that some things move forward simply due to inertia. Eventually this inertia will be transferred as energy to other things, but it can be frustrating waiting for the ball to stop rolling!
  - mbrodersen 5y ago
    It seems to have worked out just fine in most of Europe where everybody has access to healthcare.
cyber_kinetist 5y ago
This is precisely what Graeber said at the end of his book Bullshit Jobs, and it's a solid argument. Quoting from the book: "Basic income might seem like it is a vast expansion of state power, since presumably its the government (or some quasi-state institution like a central bank) that would be creating and distributing the money, but, in fact, its the exactly the reverse. Huge sections of government and precisely, the most intrusive and obnoxious ones, since they are most deeply involved in the moral surveillance of ordinary citizens would be instantly made unnecessary and could be simply closed down. Yes, millions of minor government officials and benefit advisors like Leslie would be thrown out of their current jobs, but theyd all receive basic income too. Maybe some of them will come up with something genuinely important to do, like installing solar panels, as Leslie suggests, or discovering the cure for cancer. But it wouldn't matter if they instead formed jug bands, devoted themselves to restoring antique furniture, spelunking, translating mayan hieroglyphics, or trying to set the world record for having sex at an advanced age. Let them do what they like! Whatever they end up doing, they will almost certainly be happier than they are now, imposing sanctions on the unemployed for arriving late at cv-building seminars or checking to see if the homeless are in possession of three forms of id; and everybody else will be better off for their newfound happiness."
- wahern 5y ago
  > But it wouldn't matter if they instead formed jug bands, devoted themselves to restoring antique furniture, spelunking, translating mayan hieroglyphics, or trying to set the world record for having sex at an advanced age. How optimistic. You don't think some of them are going to prepare for the next January 6th insurrection? What happened to the near universal assessments of various conflict theories (mostly recently, those purporting to explain the emergence of Islamic extremism, 1980s-2000s) that pinned the emergence and expansion of violence on the idle hands of young men (and increasingly, as with ISIS, young women), mostly from working- and middle-class backgrounds that weren't threatened with starvation or homelessness. Are we going to recapitulate Facebook and general techno-anarchy optimism all over again, where we deliberately ignore pathologies in contemporary human culture in favor of narratives that fit the peculiar desires and anxieties of the technocratic elite?

ChrisLomont 5y ago

>But the only way we are going to afford a UBI-like program is to remove all the bureaucracy currently wasted to administer these programs. The overhead compared to money given to people in such programs is minimal.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
UBI style "got a pulse get a check" programs sure. Current means tested programs are full of waste.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  The biggest means tested program, SSA, has less than 1% overhead [1]. Care to cite one with waste by providing the budget numbers? Care to show any of the UBI "experiments" had less overhead than this? I cannot find any, and I checked a few. In fact, here [2] is a peer reviewed article demonstrating that the efficiency UBI proponents imagine is a myth in practice. [1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html [2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.835.2632&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.83...
vineyardmike 5y ago
Citation?
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  It's easy to check - pick the biggest program, Social Security. Look at Social Security outlay, say for 2019 (pick any year) [1] and you get $1,091,345M, number of people getting benefits (71,322,000), and operating budget (13,083M). This means expenses to provide 1.091 trillion in assistance is 0.013 trillion, so the overhead is around 1%. In fact, they do all this for you, finding administration costs well under 1% [2] when all benefits and costs are accounted for. Pick any program you want, do the same. Medicare, SNAP, TANF, SNAP... go ahead and show me the excessive overhead to manage these programs. Have a citation to the contrary? [1] https://www.ssa.gov/budget/ https://www.ssa.gov/budget/ [2] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html

jdhn 5y ago

>But the only way we are going to afford a UBI-like program is to remove all the bureaucracy currently wasted to administer these programs. This is why I believe that UBI will never actually be implemented. That bureaucracy consists of a lot of unionized jobs, and those workers vote.

cyber_kinetist 5y ago
Related hilarious (and depressing) quote from Obama (which is in the book Bullshit Jobs): “Everybody who supports single-payer health care says, ‘Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents one million, two million, three million jobs [filled by] people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”
- jmercouris 5y ago
  So unfortunate that some things move forward simply due to inertia. Eventually this inertia will be transferred as energy to other things, but it can be frustrating waiting for the ball to stop rolling!
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  It seems to have worked out just fine in most of Europe where everybody has access to healthcare.

cyber_kinetist 5y ago

This is precisely what Graeber said at the end of his book Bullshit Jobs, and it's a solid argument. Quoting from the book: "Basic income might seem like it is a vast expansion of state power, since presumably its the government (or some quasi-state institution like a central bank) that would be creating and distributing the money, but, in fact, its the exactly the reverse. Huge sections of government and precisely, the most intrusive and obnoxious ones, since they are most deeply involved in the moral surveillance of ordinary citizens would be instantly made unnecessary and could be simply closed down. Yes, millions of minor government officials and benefit advisors like Leslie would be thrown out of their current jobs, but theyd all receive basic income too. Maybe some of them will come up with something genuinely important to do, like installing solar panels, as Leslie suggests, or discovering the cure for cancer. But it wouldn't matter if they instead formed jug bands, devoted themselves to restoring antique furniture, spelunking, translating mayan hieroglyphics, or trying to set the world record for having sex at an advanced age. Let them do what they like! Whatever they end up doing, they will almost certainly be happier than they are now, imposing sanctions on the unemployed for arriving late at cv-building seminars or checking to see if the homeless are in possession of three forms of id; and everybody else will be better off for their newfound happiness."

wahern 5y ago
> But it wouldn't matter if they instead formed jug bands, devoted themselves to restoring antique furniture, spelunking, translating mayan hieroglyphics, or trying to set the world record for having sex at an advanced age. How optimistic. You don't think some of them are going to prepare for the next January 6th insurrection? What happened to the near universal assessments of various conflict theories (mostly recently, those purporting to explain the emergence of Islamic extremism, 1980s-2000s) that pinned the emergence and expansion of violence on the idle hands of young men (and increasingly, as with ISIS, young women), mostly from working- and middle-class backgrounds that weren't threatened with starvation or homelessness. Are we going to recapitulate Facebook and general techno-anarchy optimism all over again, where we deliberately ignore pathologies in contemporary human culture in favor of narratives that fit the peculiar desires and anxieties of the technocratic elite?