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Is it just me or no one seems to get the point of a Universal Basic Income. Universal, everyone has it, same amount, no condition. Be a genius or an idiot, act

• Ekaros 4y ago
  I think the budget management could be solved. Just allow setting a schedule. You can be paid weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. With something like CBDC that would be pretty simple to solve.
• rbanffy 4y ago
  A lot of people to resist to the Universal part is because of some moral judgement about a person "deserving" it or not. > No more fraud Some people will find a way to take it away from someone else, or to appear to the government as multiple people. > what if you overspend you UBI and have nothing left to eat? The same if you overspend your salary - you get another job. UBI does not prevent people from working or finding jobs - it just gives workers more flexibility and freedom to pursue better options. Let's say you want to move to the middle of the country. You need to consider a lot of things, including leaving your current job and how long it'd take to find a new one at the destination. With UBI the risk decreases and people will make such moves. What UBI makes it harder is underemployment and labor exploitation - people won't work in terrible jobs unless they need to and UBI removes that need.
  • kraquepype 4y ago
    > With UBI the risk decreases and people will make such moves. > What UBI makes it harder is underemployment and labor exploitation - people won't work in terrible jobs unless they need to and UBI removes that need. This is my argument for it as well. There should be universal programs available to help with social mobility, help for those that want to make a change in their lives, in any direction. There is no need to tie someone down working full time just to pay for the basics, when they could be obtaining an education. Career changes should be easier to do as well, for example someone who would want to go from IT to Construction or another trade. It might pay well eventually, but the ramp up can take a while and there may not be another breadwinner in the house. There should be assistance for those who want to do something new and contribute to society in the way that works best for them, without burdening their family.
    • rbanffy 4y ago
      > There is no need to tie someone down working full time just to pay for the basics, when they could be obtaining an education. Brazil has a conditional cash transfer program called Bolsa Família, and this is one of the things pointed out in a couple studies - that the family used the extra cash to look for better jobs and training instead of working every day just to feed themselves.
• BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >"Making it universal has the added bonus of simplifying welfare programs. Subsidized housing and transport, food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc... no need, it is all UBI now. No more fraud because there is no need to: you always qualify, and as a result, no need to fight it. No more rewarding optimization since there is nothing to optimize." In theory, yes. But I do not believe specialized welfare will ever go away. There are people on Social Security / Disability that absolutely require more than the most basic amount of money a typical non-handicapped citizen needs. I do not believe UBI supporters, and even society at large, would be so heartless as to tell a paraplegic to make-do because the UBI is all they are going to get. So, accommodating them would require some additional administration on top of the UBI to make sure the people with special needs get enough additional money and access to medical care. At which point we would still need to evaluate eligibility, make adjustments, and have a bureaucracy to administer it.
• rhino369 4y ago
  The biggest flaw is that every election would have at least one party, if not both, pushing for increasing the base income regardless of whether or not it makes sense.
  • DharmaPolice 4y ago
    How is that different from offering tax cuts whether or not they make sense?
    • rhino369 4y ago
      Because you can tax the minority (higher income) and because people see the benefits of taxation. If taxes were per-head we'd probably see people voting them as low as possible. You can also tax things indirectly or in a more abstract way like a VAT or corporate taxes. Voters keeping taxes too low is a problem for us too though.
  • Taywee 4y ago
    So it's just another face of the current campaigning for minimum wage changes and tax cuts. Doesn't sound like a massive flaw to me.
    • rhino369 4y ago
      The vast majority of people aren't affected by minimum wage. A lot of middle class people are against it because it hurts their expenses. Calibrating the base income is tricky.
• flavius29663 4y ago
  As someone on the right spectrum of fiscal policies, I wholly support UBI for the potential to reduce spending overall. No more fat cats in the government, you don't need managers upon managers to decide who gets what. On average, the US federal government spends at least 1 trillion on welfare each year, and state and local another 1.4 Trillions in hundreds (maybe thousands) of programs. 2.4 trillions each year means 7500 per person. Double up that number (it will be a wash for richer people) and you're mostly done. All the state needs to do is take care of special disabilities, which require significantly more money. But most everyone else can make due with 15k a year.
• Animats 4y ago
  Been there, done that. The US once had a huge welfare program and government built-housing.[1] It was a failure. "...problems included drug dealing, drug abuse, gang violence, and the perpetuation of poverty. ... Six of the poorest US census areas with populations above 2,500 were found there.[7] Including children who are not of working age, at one point 95 percent of the housing development's 27,000 residents were unemployed and listed public assistance as their only income source, and 40 percent of the households were single-parent, female-headed households earning less than $5,000 per year. About 96 percent were African-American." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
  • slowhand09 4y ago
    3rd and 4th generations living where they started. With less education.
• nobodyandproud 4y ago
  While I like the idea of universal income, something I don’t quite understand: How would it prevent inflation such that the bar for survival isn’t just adjusted to be higher?
  • zie 4y ago
    Like Social Security, it could be tied to inflation.
    • nobodyandproud 4y ago
      Social security is generally restricted to a certain age or older. It also scales to how much you “put in”. Therefore wouldn’t have the same inflationary impact that a truly universal income would have.
      • zie 4y ago
        True, but that wasn't remotely my point. If you link the UBI to inflation(CPI-U or the like) it doesn't really matter if inflation goes up, so does the UBI payments. Some things are already linked to inflation like Taxes, Social Security, etc.
        • nobodyandproud 4y ago
          Yes, but you’re not answering my original question: How does UBI avoid contributing significantly to inflation? Your response of inflation adjustment doesn’t address the concern of high, unchecked inflation caused by injecting more money into the economy: If everyone has more money, then prices will creep up as businesses realize they can ask for more. My primary concern is that program like these makes everyone (especially workers) other than the very wealthiest, extremely poor. We already see the effects of this from Trump’s Covid payments.
          • zie 4y ago
            tldr; We don't know anything about inflation, we know less how UBI will or won't affect it and it doesn't matter anyways, because UBI will not become a thing anytime soon. People thought the same thing would happen with Social Security, which is tied to inflation. It didn't happen. Though it of course generally only applies to a portion of the population, where a UBI would apply to everyone. Let's assume your doom and gloom is true, that everyone gets a UBI that is linked to inflation and inflation goes up by 5%/yr instead of the target 2%/yr. The UBI payment will also go up 5% yr, so it can't possibly make people worse off, since the UBI payment will go up along with the inflation, just like social security. So this inflation would ruin the low-income is ridiculous on it's face. Of course it could become a death spiral, and we have ever increasing inflation, and ever increasing UBI payments. Eventually we would have to hit an equilibrium somehow. Despite common opinion, we really know very, very little about inflation. So far we only know the broad strokes: large demand and low supply. We think high interest rates stop inflation(as it has worked historically, by supposedly drying up demand). We also think people's perception of inflation is also very important somehow. We also just sort of assume 2%/yr inflation is a great thing(a number that was mostly invented out of thin air it turns out). That's about all we really know, but there are lots and lots of possible theories out there, like the covid payments somehow caused inflation. It's possible, but the evidence is hardly rock solid. So many other things also happened that could be the cause or part of the cause as well. So called experts will crow on and on about their knowledge of inflation and common lay-people assume they know it all as well, but honest academics will mostly shrug and say, we don't really understand it at all, because it's a weird mix of behavioural and traditional economics that is very hard to test, so all we have are some historical data points, each one different than the last enough that it's hard to say much with certainty anything about inflation. Personally, if we stop all the other systems we have to help out the less well off, and replace it all with what is essentially an expansion of SSI, then chances are we would be better off, if only because of the savings the govt would have in not having to run and staff all of the current programs and simplifying all the rules around SSI we already have. Of course all of this is a moot point, since there is zero chance the current political parties will ever come together thinking UBI is a good idea.
• Aunche 4y ago
  Universal Basic Income would only work if it were truly universal, as in everyone in the world would get $2/day rather than Americans getting $40/day. The alternative is that a small in-group outsource all their real work to an out-group that doesn't receive UBI, so they are incentivized to stagnate and keep working conditions low for this out-group to make the most out of their UBI. This is exactly what is happening in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The government employs people who have zero-accountability (often not even requiring attendance at work), so it resembles UBI much more than a bullshit job. Saudi Arabia has actually recently been transitioning to true UBI with their Citizens Account program
  • sgjohnson 4y ago
    > This is exactly what is happening in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The government employs people who have zero-accountability (often not even requiring attendance at work), so it resembles UBI much more than a bullshit job. Saudi Arabia has actually recently been transitioning to true UBI with their Citizens Account program Citing Qatar and Saudi Arabia is not an endorsement of any kind, as both of those countries are quite extensive exploiters of what is essentially slave labour.
    • Aunche 4y ago
      That's my point?
• drewcoo 4y ago
  Giving away money universally won't work in the US. One political party doesn't want to give money away. The other one will gladly pass out cash but only if the program is means-tested.
• lr1970 4y ago
  In the absence of price controls UBI will be quickly absorbed by resetting the prices of food, housing, etc. The inflation kicks in and negates most of the UBI benefits. Income (basic or otherwise) is the reflection of person's productivity. UBI breaks relationship between productivity and income.