4 ms·

Studies of UBI never fail to indicate the lives of people given UBI are better than before. What they don't seem to ever do is try to compare the improvement ca

Studies of UBI never fail to indicate the lives of people given UBI are better than before. What they don't seem to ever do is try to compare the improvement caused by UBI to alternative ways of spending the same money. Personally I find it unlikely that non-targeted financial assistance is or can ever be as efficient a way to spend funds as targeted assistance.

biophysboy 4y ago
Is that likelihood accounting for the money it takes to target (aka means test)? Not attacking, seems like you’ve thought about this more than me
least 4y ago
By this do you mean you think money is better spent by giving people food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like as opposed to simply giving someone cash? UBI is not only more humane but also creates less overhead than the alternative of the government having to figure out not only how to allocate the funds, but how to actually distribute it to people that need it. Welfare is a complex system and there's a lot of available funding to different "targeted programs" but the burden of knowledge is placed on the people who need the assistance to seek those out. I find that burden unreasonable.
- mjn 4y ago
  This is the reason UBI was historically popular among (some) libertarians, even though most current proponents in the U.S. probably come from some variety of left-liberalism or market socialism. Milton Friedman supported a version of UBI as a replacement for the welfare state, for example. His view was that if you think it's the role of the state to provide some minimum floor for standard of living, fine. But instead of trying to administer a dozen different programs with complex eligibility requirements and a whole bureaucracy behind them (food stamps, public housing, housing vouchers, Medicaid, etc.), it would be more efficient, less economically distorting, and less invasive into the lives of the recipients, to just pick whatever level of spending you're willing to put towards this goal, and give it out as unrestricted cash.
  - least 4y ago
    I am a big fan of Friedman and I think the negative income tax is probably the best form of UBI since it doesn't create much disincentive to find work. The numbers would have to be just so which can be tricky, which does make it a bit more complicated. There is of course some concern about how you'd implement a negative income tax and how that kind of thing could reach the homeless.
    - millimeterman 4y ago
      A negative income tax is equivalent to UBI combined with increased taxes on mid to top bracket earners. There are some practical concerns such as potential administrative waste from having to distribute and then immediately tax away UBI money or ensuring that NIT is set up to not strain the already extremely tight liquidity/cashflow of low income households (also a problem with the EITC). > There is of course some concern about how you'd implement a negative income tax The machinery for this already exists due to the EITC. Expanding it to people without employment is a valid concern, but tax rebates based on income are not a totally foreign idea.
lmm 4y ago
Targeted programs end up with a lot of overhead, and the people doing the targeting tend to have quite different backgrounds and experiences from the people most in need of assistance.
Hermitian909 4y ago
> Personally I find it unlikely that non-targeted financial assistance is or can ever be as efficient a way to spend funds as targeted assistance. So this may be true, but I think there's good reason to think UBI is more efficient than most aid programs for much the same reason free markets are usually more efficient than planned economies. Targeted systems tend to suffer from a few inefficiencies: 1. The bureaucracy consumes a large amount of money employing people and maintaining infrastructure 2. The burden placed on recipients of the money to ensure they meet the requirements lowers the efficiency of the aid. Even a few hours of appointments a month can end up being very costly in practical terms when you're poor. 3. The more the aid is constrained (e.g. a special card etc.) the higher the likelihood that it doesn't meet the need of the recipient as well as cash would. The attentive reader may not all three of these inefficiencies are coming from the state's desire to more information about people's needs and wants. I can speak from firsthand experience that each of this issues can drop efficiency substantially. We must also consider that many targeted programs are... not well considered, shall we say. We've known for decades that putting hard cliffs on benefit based on eligibility criteria is disastrous and yet it keeps happening. I have more than one disabled friends stuck in poverty wage they'll lose medicaid and instantly go bankrupt. This is wildly inefficient. This is even assuming the eligibility criteria make sense in the first place, which is not a given. All that said, you could still be right, but I think there's enough possible upside it's still worth looking at very seriously.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
The biggest expert on one's needs is oneself. Giving a person money and then telling them to invest it wisely is not necessarily the worst idea ever. The risky part is that you're giving the money to random people; as opposed to smart, promising entrepreneurs. The question becomes what's the risk of free riding & unwise investment, versus indifferent investment, versus people who indeed invest wisely. Personally I think that -in most of the OECD- the average/net risk already lies somewhat on the wise investment side. (slightly out on a limb: else how could the economy grow to begin with?)

biophysboy 4y ago

Is that likelihood accounting for the money it takes to target (aka means test)? Not attacking, seems like you’ve thought about this more than me

least 4y ago

By this do you mean you think money is better spent by giving people food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like as opposed to simply giving someone cash? UBI is not only more humane but also creates less overhead than the alternative of the government having to figure out not only how to allocate the funds, but how to actually distribute it to people that need it. Welfare is a complex system and there's a lot of available funding to different "targeted programs" but the burden of knowledge is placed on the people who need the assistance to seek those out. I find that burden unreasonable.

mjn 4y ago
This is the reason UBI was historically popular among (some) libertarians, even though most current proponents in the U.S. probably come from some variety of left-liberalism or market socialism. Milton Friedman supported a version of UBI as a replacement for the welfare state, for example. His view was that if you think it's the role of the state to provide some minimum floor for standard of living, fine. But instead of trying to administer a dozen different programs with complex eligibility requirements and a whole bureaucracy behind them (food stamps, public housing, housing vouchers, Medicaid, etc.), it would be more efficient, less economically distorting, and less invasive into the lives of the recipients, to just pick whatever level of spending you're willing to put towards this goal, and give it out as unrestricted cash.
- least 4y ago
  I am a big fan of Friedman and I think the negative income tax is probably the best form of UBI since it doesn't create much disincentive to find work. The numbers would have to be just so which can be tricky, which does make it a bit more complicated. There is of course some concern about how you'd implement a negative income tax and how that kind of thing could reach the homeless.
  - millimeterman 4y ago
    A negative income tax is equivalent to UBI combined with increased taxes on mid to top bracket earners. There are some practical concerns such as potential administrative waste from having to distribute and then immediately tax away UBI money or ensuring that NIT is set up to not strain the already extremely tight liquidity/cashflow of low income households (also a problem with the EITC). > There is of course some concern about how you'd implement a negative income tax The machinery for this already exists due to the EITC. Expanding it to people without employment is a valid concern, but tax rebates based on income are not a totally foreign idea.

lmm 4y ago

Targeted programs end up with a lot of overhead, and the people doing the targeting tend to have quite different backgrounds and experiences from the people most in need of assistance.

Hermitian909 4y ago

> Personally I find it unlikely that non-targeted financial assistance is or can ever be as efficient a way to spend funds as targeted assistance. So this may be true, but I think there's good reason to think UBI is more efficient than most aid programs for much the same reason free markets are usually more efficient than planned economies. Targeted systems tend to suffer from a few inefficiencies: 1. The bureaucracy consumes a large amount of money employing people and maintaining infrastructure 2. The burden placed on recipients of the money to ensure they meet the requirements lowers the efficiency of the aid. Even a few hours of appointments a month can end up being very costly in practical terms when you're poor. 3. The more the aid is constrained (e.g. a special card etc.) the higher the likelihood that it doesn't meet the need of the recipient as well as cash would. The attentive reader may not all three of these inefficiencies are coming from the state's desire to more information about people's needs and wants. I can speak from firsthand experience that each of this issues can drop efficiency substantially. We must also consider that many targeted programs are... not well considered, shall we say. We've known for decades that putting hard cliffs on benefit based on eligibility criteria is disastrous and yet it keeps happening. I have more than one disabled friends stuck in poverty wage they'll lose medicaid and instantly go bankrupt. This is wildly inefficient. This is even assuming the eligibility criteria make sense in the first place, which is not a given. All that said, you could still be right, but I think there's enough possible upside it's still worth looking at very seriously.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

The biggest expert on one's needs is oneself. Giving a person money and then telling them to invest it wisely is not necessarily the worst idea ever. The risky part is that you're giving the money to random people; as opposed to smart, promising entrepreneurs. The question becomes what's the risk of free riding & unwise investment, versus indifferent investment, versus people who indeed invest wisely. Personally I think that -in most of the OECD- the average/net risk already lies somewhat on the wise investment side. (slightly out on a limb: else how could the economy grow to begin with?)