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One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US. Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In

One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US. Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In many places (though not everywhere), there are shelters where a person can sleep inside. There are food stamps and a patchwork of welfare programs. However meager they may seem, things like this amount to a form of universal basic income. Does it prevent people from working? In some cases, you could say it does--there are populations in every city that survive off this safety net, though they don't live well. But in most cases, it doesn't prevent people from working. The vast majority of people are willing to work for a better life than what the US "basic income" can provide. What makes you think this would be any less true if the basic income was, say, $30k per year instead of whatever the equivalent is now to provide the meager safety net we have? It's certainly possible to survive on a $30k basic income in many places in the US, but for most, it won't be an easy or especially pleasant life. Most people will want better. With a basic income that's a bit more substantial (and has no strings or stigma attached), people will have more freedom to make choices that can truly improve their circumstances, rather than being stuck on a treadmill of barely making ends meet with no space to come up for air and consider education or career changes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
barbazoo 5y ago
Nicely written. I like to think of UBI as a tool to get out of a local minimum which isn't easily possible if you're a slave to your minimum wage job.
wonderwonder 5y ago
I am not trying to disagree at all, in fact I think we very much need to do more for the poorest among us, especially the kids. Where does that 30k come from though? For 300 million people, that's 9 trillion dollars a year, ~half of GDP. Inflation would be out of control, essentially Venezuela / Zimbabwe levels.
- loceng 5y ago
  Automation technology has allowed a machine to create 100,000s to millions of a product with very little input from a human to put in the raw resources into it. GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example. Etc. Andrew Yang has looked into this a lot - his last two books: “The War On Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future”, and “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy”
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    "GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example" That really does not track though, sure GDP will go up if the money is spent, but its just spending money that we either borrowed or just printed. Not to mention a ton of that money would be saved, essentially removing it from circulation. Inflation would go out of control. If not, then why not just print 100,000 for each person? 12k a year for 300 million people is ~3.6 trillion. ~20% of gdp a year being printed.
    - loceng 5y ago
      It's too complex to rehash here in a comment - there are people like Andrew Yang who "have done the MATH" and it works out; you tie UBI to inflation also, so people only with UBI don't get priced out of the market, at the same time people can move to towns where things like housing inflation isn't running wild, etc. Yang also has said you make up most of the difference with a Value Added Tax (consumption tax) - and you can say make Facebook ads have an 80% tax, and diapers - necessities having 0% tax, that way poorer people aren't impacted by the tax; if everyone's receiving $12,000 / year in UBI then you can design it so only people spending more than $200,000 per year are actually paying back into the system - otherwise the taxes you pay is just putting that $12k UBI back into the system. What Yang points out is with the UBI tied to inflation + VAT you can have many levers to pull on if you need to to increase/decrease tax. Another chunk of covering that UBI comes from cash and cash-like social assistance programs that people will have to decide for themselves if the $1,000/month is better for them or if their current social assistance programs (for cash and cash-like things) is better for them; and no, it's not a Trojan Horse, Yang doesn't want to cut social assistance programs - but if people choose the cash because that's better for their specific circumstances (and they get to decide that, not a bureaucratic government) then that program's spending is going down - the cost of what's provided goes down (turned into the UBI) but then also the management/bureaucracy cost of managing different programs will go down as well depending on how many people chose the UBI over the cash/cash-like options. And then there's even more that ties into this that reduces costs; stress going down, crime going down, emergency services costs (fire/ambulance/police) go down, etc.
slingnow 5y ago
I think you're being disingenuous if you believe receiving a no-shit check from the government for $30k per year is the same as scraping by through food banks, homeless shelters, and one-time medical care in the emergency room. I would say all of those things absolutely prevent people from not working. No one would willingly want to live their life that way.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  $30k is neither here nor there, but how many people manage to get hired for useful work while they're staying at homeless shelters? The simplest story is that the prospect of homelessness only makes it harder to engage in productive work.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  There are a lot of other programs at work. Access is a mess, but 0 earners with children qualify for about 50k in benefits between SNAP, childcare assistance, housing assistance, medicaid, and CHIP.
hellotomyrars 5y ago
Let’s not say nobody starves death in America because people do. Emergency room healthcare is also a poor substitute for most health issues beyond acute illness and trauma. The working poor do get a lot out of social services that are available if they take advantage of those programs, though some states make it as hard as possible. But I’m on the same page that UBI is a good thing and better for everybody. People have basic needs and they should be provided for. I still don’t see how we get there in the US, sadly. The fact that the childcare tax credit was enough to lift so many families out of poverty speaks volumes and yet it seems to be politically ignored by conservatives/republican voters despite the fact that these programs and other social services benefit those communities in red states more than blue states. The best trick the wealthy pulled was convincing the working poor that all the people they don’t like are abusing the system and living like kings while the working stiff is just getting by.
giantg2 5y ago
If it's $30k per year, that's not very far off from the median salary in the US. So I think many people would be a fairly pleasant life, particularly for a couple making $60k. I think the dynamics of who would work or not changes considerably from your example of food stamps and homeless shelters (unless substantial inflation happens, which I think would be likely in that scenario).
seaourfreed 5y ago
This doesn't say where the money comes from.
- GameOfFrowns 5y ago
  > This doesn't say where the money comes from. Taxing the middle class.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    Surely there would be some limitations to that. Eventually you would run out of other people's money
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    The middle class has been decimated by various economic policies.
GameOfFrowns 5y ago
I like the general idea of UBI but I don't see it work without price fixing which is often the first step in an economical downward spiral. Also I don't understand how any low-trust society like ours would survive the transition phase into UBI when people (even though they like working) might take an extended holiday if the UBI pays for all living costs. Suddenly millions of critical positions would be left unoccupied.
- aeternum 5y ago
  Why would it need price-fixing? We basically provided a UBI of 5k as part of the pandemic and it seems to have worked relatively well. If a position is critical enough it should probably be a higher paid position.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Inflation and the national debt are way up. It might feel nice to have an extra $5K today but we increased the burden on our descendants and have nothing of lasting value to show for it. Shame on us. No one is going to raise wages for a particular position just because it was arbitrarily classified as "critical".
    - aeternum 5y ago
      The benefit of a market economy is that if people really do consider something critical, they will pay more for it. The increase profit margins will attract competitive companies or existing companies will be forced to pay workers more for overtime to satisfy the demand. The negative of this is that the poor or unemployed have very few dollars with which to vote. A UBI solves this by giving them at least some small percentage of the vote.
- bmhin 5y ago
  The inflation argument is one I don't know enough to be able to square myself. Don't fully understand how whatever the UBI is eventually reduces to being below the bare minimum of basic. But, putting that part aside, the idea is that it's just the barest of basics. So if you have a decent salary now, the UBI that is 1/5th or less than that is not gonna help you pay your rent/mortgage that has gone from 30% of your salary to 150% of your UBI. People could likely realign their life though over time which would be massively impactful. Perhaps some would prefer having their basic needs met + working a very part amount of time for some spending money + engaging in a different core life pursuit. But, with that part taking time the market could presumably correct. That's just for high earners though who can't currently just drop out / transition overnight due to present obligations. The folks who are closer to where a UBI would be putting them anyway it gets way more difficult. A negative income tax might work there, so that keeping the job is still more regardless of what that currently salary is. That flat UBI tends to have some problems in that regard. Then again, those same folks might be over night doubling their take home cash or being able to have no change in cash for a complete reduction in work and the temptation to just go to zero hours would be high (assuming they aren't in financial pain already where the current amount is still not enough). A flat UBI would probably need to be slowly rolled out. Basically get folks used to being more well off so that the flat UBI only can be appropriately viewed as less ideal than their (new) current situation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

barbazoo 5y ago

Nicely written. I like to think of UBI as a tool to get out of a local minimum which isn't easily possible if you're a slave to your minimum wage job.

wonderwonder 5y ago

I am not trying to disagree at all, in fact I think we very much need to do more for the poorest among us, especially the kids. Where does that 30k come from though? For 300 million people, that's 9 trillion dollars a year, ~half of GDP. Inflation would be out of control, essentially Venezuela / Zimbabwe levels.

loceng 5y ago
Automation technology has allowed a machine to create 100,000s to millions of a product with very little input from a human to put in the raw resources into it. GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example. Etc. Andrew Yang has looked into this a lot - his last two books: “The War On Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future”, and “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy”
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  "GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example" That really does not track though, sure GDP will go up if the money is spent, but its just spending money that we either borrowed or just printed. Not to mention a ton of that money would be saved, essentially removing it from circulation. Inflation would go out of control. If not, then why not just print 100,000 for each person? 12k a year for 300 million people is ~3.6 trillion. ~20% of gdp a year being printed.
  - loceng 5y ago
    It's too complex to rehash here in a comment - there are people like Andrew Yang who "have done the MATH" and it works out; you tie UBI to inflation also, so people only with UBI don't get priced out of the market, at the same time people can move to towns where things like housing inflation isn't running wild, etc. Yang also has said you make up most of the difference with a Value Added Tax (consumption tax) - and you can say make Facebook ads have an 80% tax, and diapers - necessities having 0% tax, that way poorer people aren't impacted by the tax; if everyone's receiving $12,000 / year in UBI then you can design it so only people spending more than $200,000 per year are actually paying back into the system - otherwise the taxes you pay is just putting that $12k UBI back into the system. What Yang points out is with the UBI tied to inflation + VAT you can have many levers to pull on if you need to to increase/decrease tax. Another chunk of covering that UBI comes from cash and cash-like social assistance programs that people will have to decide for themselves if the $1,000/month is better for them or if their current social assistance programs (for cash and cash-like things) is better for them; and no, it's not a Trojan Horse, Yang doesn't want to cut social assistance programs - but if people choose the cash because that's better for their specific circumstances (and they get to decide that, not a bureaucratic government) then that program's spending is going down - the cost of what's provided goes down (turned into the UBI) but then also the management/bureaucracy cost of managing different programs will go down as well depending on how many people chose the UBI over the cash/cash-like options. And then there's even more that ties into this that reduces costs; stress going down, crime going down, emergency services costs (fire/ambulance/police) go down, etc.

slingnow 5y ago

I think you're being disingenuous if you believe receiving a no-shit check from the government for $30k per year is the same as scraping by through food banks, homeless shelters, and one-time medical care in the emergency room. I would say all of those things absolutely prevent people from not working. No one would willingly want to live their life that way.

zozbot234 5y ago
$30k is neither here nor there, but how many people manage to get hired for useful work while they're staying at homeless shelters? The simplest story is that the prospect of homelessness only makes it harder to engage in productive work.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
There are a lot of other programs at work. Access is a mess, but 0 earners with children qualify for about 50k in benefits between SNAP, childcare assistance, housing assistance, medicaid, and CHIP.

hellotomyrars 5y ago

Let’s not say nobody starves death in America because people do. Emergency room healthcare is also a poor substitute for most health issues beyond acute illness and trauma. The working poor do get a lot out of social services that are available if they take advantage of those programs, though some states make it as hard as possible. But I’m on the same page that UBI is a good thing and better for everybody. People have basic needs and they should be provided for. I still don’t see how we get there in the US, sadly. The fact that the childcare tax credit was enough to lift so many families out of poverty speaks volumes and yet it seems to be politically ignored by conservatives/republican voters despite the fact that these programs and other social services benefit those communities in red states more than blue states. The best trick the wealthy pulled was convincing the working poor that all the people they don’t like are abusing the system and living like kings while the working stiff is just getting by.

giantg2 5y ago

If it's $30k per year, that's not very far off from the median salary in the US. So I think many people would be a fairly pleasant life, particularly for a couple making $60k. I think the dynamics of who would work or not changes considerably from your example of food stamps and homeless shelters (unless substantial inflation happens, which I think would be likely in that scenario).

seaourfreed 5y ago

This doesn't say where the money comes from.

GameOfFrowns 5y ago
> This doesn't say where the money comes from. Taxing the middle class.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Surely there would be some limitations to that. Eventually you would run out of other people's money
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  The middle class has been decimated by various economic policies.

GameOfFrowns 5y ago

I like the general idea of UBI but I don't see it work without price fixing which is often the first step in an economical downward spiral. Also I don't understand how any low-trust society like ours would survive the transition phase into UBI when people (even though they like working) might take an extended holiday if the UBI pays for all living costs. Suddenly millions of critical positions would be left unoccupied.

aeternum 5y ago
Why would it need price-fixing? We basically provided a UBI of 5k as part of the pandemic and it seems to have worked relatively well. If a position is critical enough it should probably be a higher paid position.
- nradov 5y ago
  Inflation and the national debt are way up. It might feel nice to have an extra $5K today but we increased the burden on our descendants and have nothing of lasting value to show for it. Shame on us. No one is going to raise wages for a particular position just because it was arbitrarily classified as "critical".
  - aeternum 5y ago
    The benefit of a market economy is that if people really do consider something critical, they will pay more for it. The increase profit margins will attract competitive companies or existing companies will be forced to pay workers more for overtime to satisfy the demand. The negative of this is that the poor or unemployed have very few dollars with which to vote. A UBI solves this by giving them at least some small percentage of the vote.
bmhin 5y ago
The inflation argument is one I don't know enough to be able to square myself. Don't fully understand how whatever the UBI is eventually reduces to being below the bare minimum of basic. But, putting that part aside, the idea is that it's just the barest of basics. So if you have a decent salary now, the UBI that is 1/5th or less than that is not gonna help you pay your rent/mortgage that has gone from 30% of your salary to 150% of your UBI. People could likely realign their life though over time which would be massively impactful. Perhaps some would prefer having their basic needs met + working a very part amount of time for some spending money + engaging in a different core life pursuit. But, with that part taking time the market could presumably correct. That's just for high earners though who can't currently just drop out / transition overnight due to present obligations. The folks who are closer to where a UBI would be putting them anyway it gets way more difficult. A negative income tax might work there, so that keeping the job is still more regardless of what that currently salary is. That flat UBI tends to have some problems in that regard. Then again, those same folks might be over night doubling their take home cash or being able to have no change in cash for a complete reduction in work and the temptation to just go to zero hours would be high (assuming they aren't in financial pain already where the current amount is still not enough). A flat UBI would probably need to be slowly rolled out. Basically get folks used to being more well off so that the flat UBI only can be appropriately viewed as less ideal than their (new) current situation.