5 ms·

Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?

by seydor 2y ago

_heimdall 2y ago
UBI equates to an assumption that the government can predict and control markets completely, effectively destroying markets that resemble anything like a free market. Even considering an alternative to UBI like forcing all prices lower, i.e. price deflation, requires first taking that assumption as true. The government never could allow prices to lower anyway though. Price deflation would make our national debt that much worse.
- Retric 2y ago
  It’s the opposite. Currently governments subsidize housing, food, internet access, etc for the poor through various programs. There’s no free market interaction when government bureaucrats are deciding where to build affordable housing etc. UBI toss those programs away saying hand people money and let the free market allocate resources. Hypothetically you hand money to everyone, but as far as the middle class is concerned there is zero difference to lower tax brackets for the first 10,000$/year of income vs 1 tax bracket + a lump sum. So estimates of how expensive UBI would be really come down to how many subsidies you remove. Further if you believe in free markets then UBI should actually be cheaper for the same social benefit.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    If you don't like how the government subsidized certain markets today, I'm not quite sure why a good solution would be to subsidize the entire economy. Such a program is way too complex to model out and reliably predict what the impact will be. We simply don't know how much UBI is the "right" amount for specific outcomes, and we definitely don't know what the impact will be on any subset of the economy. According to the OP author, we can't even test UBI programs before a full rollout. If we can't reliably model or predict the outcome, and we can test it, how are we supposed to actually implement it?
    - Retric 2y ago
      Subsidizing the economy is a meaningless idea, it reallocates resources. As to being impossible to model, there’s a great number of countries in the world eventually one will likely try the experiment on its entire economy without impacting 99.9% of the global population. That said, you can turn individual safety nets into UBI lockstep with changing the tax code and see what happens. The fear is people would spend ‘food’ money on drugs, or people in subsidized housing would move, or all the things which created these programs instead of handing out cash. That’s a political question not an economic one, are we trying to act as a parent or do we want people to have freedom to make their own choices.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Literally any economic decision is reallocated resources, that term is much too broad to be meaningful. Are you arguing that a UBI is wealth redistribution specifically? Someone will try it, totally agree there. I don't see any problem with that either, countries should be able to do what they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. I wouldn't tell France they shouldn't try it, but I am absolutely saying I don't want to try it here in the US.
        Retric 2y ago
        > Are you arguing that a UBI is wealth redistribution specifically? I’m saying social safety nets are already wealth redistribution. Changing the form of that safety net to UBI is an allocation of resources based on individual decisions and thus free markets where Food Stamps/Housing Subsidies/etc is allocating money based on bureaucratic decisions. Basically nothing says UBI needs to cost more than existing social safety nets.
        HPsquared 2y ago
        If the current spending on safety nets is spread evenly over the whole society, won't the current recipients not have enough to live?
- diffeomorphism 2y ago
  It sounds like you are talking about some very different thing also abbreviated "UBI"? Here it stands for universal basic income.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    No that's also what I'm talking about. If implemented, a UBI will subsidize every single market in the economy with federal dollars. For every dollar a consumer spends on any product, a portion of that money is directly from the government. For a government to build and maintain a UBI program they will have to be able to predict where prices will be and how much money everyone needs or deserves to cover the basics. Assuming the country runs on a fiat currency and partskes in monetary policies meant to control the cost of money, a UBI adds another complex layer onto that puzzle making it even more challenging to predict and control markets.
    - diffeomorphism 2y ago
      No
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Helpful, thanks. I'm happy to be proven wrong if you have anything worth sharing. I'd be particularly interested how you would see a program on the scale of a UBI working sustainably if the government can't predict the outcomes. Or, alternstively, if you think the government can predivt the outcomes I'd be curious if you disagree with the OP author that a UBI can't be tested before a full rollout.
zepton 2y ago
The US doesn't have a centrally planned economy, so the government can't lower the prices of everything. UBI is much more feasible to implement than communism.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Not centrally planned, except the humongous federal government, the central bank, the interstate highway system, even things like corn subsidies. There are a lot of centrally-planned areas.
- vinyl7 2y ago
  It's centrally planned by all the monopolies we have
Apreche 2y ago
We want to guarantee for every human on the planet the right to food, water, shelter, health care, and education. Giving everyone enough money to buy all those things themselves is one way to do it. Raising funds (taxes) and then providing those services for free is another way. It doesn’t really matter which way. What matters is that we agree on that goal and find some way to achieve it. Right now we have a system where people must do a job, even a meaningless one, to get those things. People who are unable to do work or find work, through no fault of their own, are doomed to suffer in poverty. It’s cruel and inhumane, especially when there isn’t enough work to go around. With our advanced technology we can sustain everyone’s lives with only a portion of the population actually doing labor. What portion, I don’t know. But we don’t expect children or the elderly to work. They are often unable, and we don’t need them to. Well, if there is a surplus in the labor supply, and there are capable adults who could work, but we don’t need them to, why put them through the indignity? Don’t force them to do a meaningless job and waste their lives. Don’t doom them to suffer and die. As long as the resources are available, let them live a decent life.
- blfr 2y ago
  We want to guarantee for every human on the planet the right to food, water, shelter, health care, and education. ... What matters is that we agree on that goal and find some way to achieve it. Honestly, I don't. First, perhaps it's small minded but I don't really feel responsible for every human on the planet, or even a significant percentage. Second, the value, even to the end recipient, of vast majority of education and healthcare is dubious at best. Similarly to the study on which OP is commenting, there was a famous Oregon Medicaid health experiment and the benefits of healthcare services expansion were minimal. Same for education with various headstart initiatives.
  - simoncion 2y ago
    > ...I don't really feel responsible for every human on the planet, or even a significant percentage. That's fair and totally 1000% reasonable. However: What if (whether through sudden injury or the accumulated injuries of aging) you become utterly unable to work, you've burned through your savings, all your family is dead, and you're an unlikable cunt [0] so those around you are supremely disinclined to provide assistance? Should you be cast out into the wilderness to starve? What if you were born permanently unable to work and utterly unsympathetic? Should your fate be to die of exposure? [0] I cannot stress hard enough that if you think I'm making comment about your character, please do remember that I absolutely am not. I don't know shit about you, so I cannot comment on your character. However, injury, illness, and prolonged bad periods can absolutely turn someone into an unlikable cunt... driving away a predicated-on-tolerability material-and-emotional support network just when one needs it most.
Jedd 2y ago
I don't think you can usefully equate 'UBI' to a single outcome of UBI. One of the goals of UBI, as I interpret it, is to reduce the cost of living closer to zero. And that's the literal cost of living - not the macroeconomist's use of the term. That phrase, once you contemplate it, is a ludicrous reflection of how our society has gone wrong. Why should it cost to live? (You can consider the answer in terms of > 11kya anthropology, or in terms of our current, advanced food production capabilities + other technologies - take your pick.)
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Surely cost of living, expressed as hours of labour, remains the same regardless. Anyone can reduce their cost of living by reducing the standard of living.
  - Jedd 2y ago
    Your premise is patently not true.
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  > Why should it cost to live? Because that's how life works. With sufficient energy input into a system, the system can sustain complexity. Sun -> single-celled life -> plants -> animals. The food chain is an economy of energy. Money is a proxy for many different kinds of energy. It will never be cost-free to live, not for single-celled life, not for us. A Universal Basic Income absent substantial other changes in our economy, would be a disaster because we no longer have a closed economy. It would simply flow out to other nations. UBI + open borders + bureaucratic dictatorship sends us right back into serfdom... There used to be restrictions on the number of serfs allowed for a single geography, because the lord was expected to provide for them (schools and hospitals... etc.). We're replacing an oligarch with a bureaucracy which is just a transitive oligarchy as the bureaucracies ultimately get captured (Big Tech, Big Oil, Big you-name-it). All good intentions erode over time to neglect and malice, especially in systems where nepotism and dynasty rule instead of merit. "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."
marcosdumay 2y ago
No it doesn't, you can't multiply a zero income by any number and put people out of poverty. You can't redistribute wealth by multiplying everybody's income either. But also, not it's not more feasible either. One is the government taxing money and distributing it by law, the other is a deep and complete intervention on the economy in ways that people don't even can't predict completely.

Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?

by seydor 2y ago

Doesn't UBI equate to lowering the prices for everything? Isn't it more feasible to pursue the latter?

UBI equates to an assumption that the government can predict and control markets completely, effectively destroying markets that resemble anything like a free market. Even considering an alternative to UBI like forcing all prices lower, i.e. price deflation, requires first taking that assumption as true. The government never could allow prices to lower anyway though. Price deflation would make our national debt that much worse.

Retric 2y ago
It’s the opposite. Currently governments subsidize housing, food, internet access, etc for the poor through various programs. There’s no free market interaction when government bureaucrats are deciding where to build affordable housing etc. UBI toss those programs away saying hand people money and let the free market allocate resources. Hypothetically you hand money to everyone, but as far as the middle class is concerned there is zero difference to lower tax brackets for the first 10,000$/year of income vs 1 tax bracket + a lump sum. So estimates of how expensive UBI would be really come down to how many subsidies you remove. Further if you believe in free markets then UBI should actually be cheaper for the same social benefit.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  If you don't like how the government subsidized certain markets today, I'm not quite sure why a good solution would be to subsidize the entire economy. Such a program is way too complex to model out and reliably predict what the impact will be. We simply don't know how much UBI is the "right" amount for specific outcomes, and we definitely don't know what the impact will be on any subset of the economy. According to the OP author, we can't even test UBI programs before a full rollout. If we can't reliably model or predict the outcome, and we can test it, how are we supposed to actually implement it?
  - Retric 2y ago
    Subsidizing the economy is a meaningless idea, it reallocates resources. As to being impossible to model, there’s a great number of countries in the world eventually one will likely try the experiment on its entire economy without impacting 99.9% of the global population. That said, you can turn individual safety nets into UBI lockstep with changing the tax code and see what happens. The fear is people would spend ‘food’ money on drugs, or people in subsidized housing would move, or all the things which created these programs instead of handing out cash. That’s a political question not an economic one, are we trying to act as a parent or do we want people to have freedom to make their own choices.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Literally any economic decision is reallocated resources, that term is much too broad to be meaningful. Are you arguing that a UBI is wealth redistribution specifically? Someone will try it, totally agree there. I don't see any problem with that either, countries should be able to do what they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. I wouldn't tell France they shouldn't try it, but I am absolutely saying I don't want to try it here in the US.
      - Retric 2y ago
        > Are you arguing that a UBI is wealth redistribution specifically? I’m saying social safety nets are already wealth redistribution. Changing the form of that safety net to UBI is an allocation of resources based on individual decisions and thus free markets where Food Stamps/Housing Subsidies/etc is allocating money based on bureaucratic decisions. Basically nothing says UBI needs to cost more than existing social safety nets.
        HPsquared 2y ago
        If the current spending on safety nets is spread evenly over the whole society, won't the current recipients not have enough to live?
diffeomorphism 2y ago
It sounds like you are talking about some very different thing also abbreviated "UBI"? Here it stands for universal basic income.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  No that's also what I'm talking about. If implemented, a UBI will subsidize every single market in the economy with federal dollars. For every dollar a consumer spends on any product, a portion of that money is directly from the government. For a government to build and maintain a UBI program they will have to be able to predict where prices will be and how much money everyone needs or deserves to cover the basics. Assuming the country runs on a fiat currency and partskes in monetary policies meant to control the cost of money, a UBI adds another complex layer onto that puzzle making it even more challenging to predict and control markets.
  - diffeomorphism 2y ago
    No
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Helpful, thanks. I'm happy to be proven wrong if you have anything worth sharing. I'd be particularly interested how you would see a program on the scale of a UBI working sustainably if the government can't predict the outcomes. Or, alternstively, if you think the government can predivt the outcomes I'd be curious if you disagree with the OP author that a UBI can't be tested before a full rollout.

zepton 2y ago

The US doesn't have a centrally planned economy, so the government can't lower the prices of everything. UBI is much more feasible to implement than communism.

HPsquared 2y ago
Not centrally planned, except the humongous federal government, the central bank, the interstate highway system, even things like corn subsidies. There are a lot of centrally-planned areas.
vinyl7 2y ago
It's centrally planned by all the monopolies we have

Apreche 2y ago

We want to guarantee for every human on the planet the right to food, water, shelter, health care, and education. Giving everyone enough money to buy all those things themselves is one way to do it. Raising funds (taxes) and then providing those services for free is another way. It doesn’t really matter which way. What matters is that we agree on that goal and find some way to achieve it. Right now we have a system where people must do a job, even a meaningless one, to get those things. People who are unable to do work or find work, through no fault of their own, are doomed to suffer in poverty. It’s cruel and inhumane, especially when there isn’t enough work to go around. With our advanced technology we can sustain everyone’s lives with only a portion of the population actually doing labor. What portion, I don’t know. But we don’t expect children or the elderly to work. They are often unable, and we don’t need them to. Well, if there is a surplus in the labor supply, and there are capable adults who could work, but we don’t need them to, why put them through the indignity? Don’t force them to do a meaningless job and waste their lives. Don’t doom them to suffer and die. As long as the resources are available, let them live a decent life.

blfr 2y ago
We want to guarantee for every human on the planet the right to food, water, shelter, health care, and education. ... What matters is that we agree on that goal and find some way to achieve it. Honestly, I don't. First, perhaps it's small minded but I don't really feel responsible for every human on the planet, or even a significant percentage. Second, the value, even to the end recipient, of vast majority of education and healthcare is dubious at best. Similarly to the study on which OP is commenting, there was a famous Oregon Medicaid health experiment and the benefits of healthcare services expansion were minimal. Same for education with various headstart initiatives.
- simoncion 2y ago
  > ...I don't really feel responsible for every human on the planet, or even a significant percentage. That's fair and totally 1000% reasonable. However: What if (whether through sudden injury or the accumulated injuries of aging) you become utterly unable to work, you've burned through your savings, all your family is dead, and you're an unlikable cunt [0] so those around you are supremely disinclined to provide assistance? Should you be cast out into the wilderness to starve? What if you were born permanently unable to work and utterly unsympathetic? Should your fate be to die of exposure? [0] I cannot stress hard enough that if you think I'm making comment about your character, please do remember that I absolutely am not. I don't know shit about you, so I cannot comment on your character. However, injury, illness, and prolonged bad periods can absolutely turn someone into an unlikable cunt... driving away a predicated-on-tolerability material-and-emotional support network just when one needs it most.

Jedd 2y ago

I don't think you can usefully equate 'UBI' to a single outcome of UBI. One of the goals of UBI, as I interpret it, is to reduce the cost of living closer to zero. And that's the literal cost of living - not the macroeconomist's use of the term. That phrase, once you contemplate it, is a ludicrous reflection of how our society has gone wrong. Why should it cost to live? (You can consider the answer in terms of > 11kya anthropology, or in terms of our current, advanced food production capabilities + other technologies - take your pick.)

HPsquared 2y ago
Surely cost of living, expressed as hours of labour, remains the same regardless. Anyone can reduce their cost of living by reducing the standard of living.
- Jedd 2y ago
  Your premise is patently not true.
slowmovintarget 2y ago
> Why should it cost to live? Because that's how life works. With sufficient energy input into a system, the system can sustain complexity. Sun -> single-celled life -> plants -> animals. The food chain is an economy of energy. Money is a proxy for many different kinds of energy. It will never be cost-free to live, not for single-celled life, not for us. A Universal Basic Income absent substantial other changes in our economy, would be a disaster because we no longer have a closed economy. It would simply flow out to other nations. UBI + open borders + bureaucratic dictatorship sends us right back into serfdom... There used to be restrictions on the number of serfs allowed for a single geography, because the lord was expected to provide for them (schools and hospitals... etc.). We're replacing an oligarch with a bureaucracy which is just a transitive oligarchy as the bureaucracies ultimately get captured (Big Tech, Big Oil, Big you-name-it). All good intentions erode over time to neglect and malice, especially in systems where nepotism and dynasty rule instead of merit. "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."

marcosdumay 2y ago

No it doesn't, you can't multiply a zero income by any number and put people out of poverty. You can't redistribute wealth by multiplying everybody's income either. But also, not it's not more feasible either. One is the government taxing money and distributing it by law, the other is a deep and complete intervention on the economy in ways that people don't even can't predict completely.