3 ms·

UBI is great on an individual level, but as we saw with the Covid Stimulus payments in the US, they cannot help but be quite inflationary. That's my biggest wor

by bentt 2y ago

UBI is great on an individual level, but as we saw with the Covid Stimulus payments in the US, they cannot help but be quite inflationary. That's my biggest worry about injecting huge amounts of money into a system that is truly universal. And if it's not truly universal, then it's a bad idea. Means tested money is just an incentive to fit the criteria.

aeternum 2y ago
Yes, the problem is you have more money chasing that same quantity of goods and thus you get inflation. IMO a better way to achieve the UBI goal is to instead focus on universal basic goods. We're already nearly there with staple foods. For example bulk rice is now so cheap it's basically free. We could do the same with housing via prefab high density similar to Japan (mostly not done because it is illegal in the US). Internet and water is also near zero cost. You would achieve the goals of UBI good-by-good without the inflation.
- bentt 2y ago
  Sure, a true safety net. The "worst case scenario" would be that you're eating government rice and beans, living in a dorm, safe and able to get the basics including internet so you can get back on your feet. This type of thing shouldn't even be means tested. If you want to just live in such a place, then ok. Everything beyond that is what people can strive for, but you can always count on it. I don't know enough about the reality of it, but I want to say the Nordic nations have something like this in place? I had a friend in Copenhagen who fell out the bottom of society due to an addiction and he was placed in an apartment, given support, and got back on his feet. That's what we should be aiming for in the US. People end up costing us a lot more money when they have zero help.
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    >If you want to just live in such a place, then ok. Even if you're the sort of person who will light your dorm on fire? Or stuff clothes into the toilet and flood the whole building? Or turn their dorm into a smelly orgy of sex and meth? Not even prisons have found perfect solutions to preventing issues like these, making everything out of concrete and metal helps but they still have guards 24/7 to step in when a prisoner acts up. The visibly homeless are generally people with severe mental illness and/or hard drug addiction, and they are the ones most likely to destroy such places. This is to the detriment of the sorts of homeless that are just temporarily down on their luck and need help getting back on their feet who could actually make good use of such a thing.
    - bentt 2y ago
      Sure, my post was not expansive enough to account for criminals and the mentally ill. The bottom I referred to is for people without means, but with capacity to care for themselves. The hard part of that conversation is that we consider criminal offenses as the only grounds for forcibly incarcerating a person. Mentally ill people need policies that will better protect them fron themselves and their neighbors BEFORE they commit crimes and end up in prison. We likely need new models of mental institutions and new laws which allow people to be committed when it is in everyone’s best interest… yet somehow avoid the abuses and horrors of the past. A very hard problem indeed.

by bentt 2y ago

aeternum 2y ago

Yes, the problem is you have more money chasing that same quantity of goods and thus you get inflation. IMO a better way to achieve the UBI goal is to instead focus on universal basic goods. We're already nearly there with staple foods. For example bulk rice is now so cheap it's basically free. We could do the same with housing via prefab high density similar to Japan (mostly not done because it is illegal in the US). Internet and water is also near zero cost. You would achieve the goals of UBI good-by-good without the inflation.

bentt 2y ago
Sure, a true safety net. The "worst case scenario" would be that you're eating government rice and beans, living in a dorm, safe and able to get the basics including internet so you can get back on your feet. This type of thing shouldn't even be means tested. If you want to just live in such a place, then ok. Everything beyond that is what people can strive for, but you can always count on it. I don't know enough about the reality of it, but I want to say the Nordic nations have something like this in place? I had a friend in Copenhagen who fell out the bottom of society due to an addiction and he was placed in an apartment, given support, and got back on his feet. That's what we should be aiming for in the US. People end up costing us a lot more money when they have zero help.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  >If you want to just live in such a place, then ok. Even if you're the sort of person who will light your dorm on fire? Or stuff clothes into the toilet and flood the whole building? Or turn their dorm into a smelly orgy of sex and meth? Not even prisons have found perfect solutions to preventing issues like these, making everything out of concrete and metal helps but they still have guards 24/7 to step in when a prisoner acts up. The visibly homeless are generally people with severe mental illness and/or hard drug addiction, and they are the ones most likely to destroy such places. This is to the detriment of the sorts of homeless that are just temporarily down on their luck and need help getting back on their feet who could actually make good use of such a thing.
  - bentt 2y ago
    Sure, my post was not expansive enough to account for criminals and the mentally ill. The bottom I referred to is for people without means, but with capacity to care for themselves. The hard part of that conversation is that we consider criminal offenses as the only grounds for forcibly incarcerating a person. Mentally ill people need policies that will better protect them fron themselves and their neighbors BEFORE they commit crimes and end up in prison. We likely need new models of mental institutions and new laws which allow people to be committed when it is in everyone’s best interest… yet somehow avoid the abuses and horrors of the past. A very hard problem indeed.