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It’s unfortunate that we can’t seriously consider universal basic income in the United States. If we provided every adult citizen with $13K annually during thei

by cebert 1y ago

It’s unfortunate that we can’t seriously consider universal basic income in the United States. If we provided every adult citizen with $13K annually during their working years, it could offer support to those unable to find meaningful employment without forcing them to declare themselves disabled just to survive. That label can take a real toll on a person’s psyche and limit their belief in their ability to grow or find better opportunities. We also have to be realistic and realize AI is positioned to replace a significant number of jobs in the next decade. A safety net like UBI will only become more essential moving forward.

vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
That would require a total rethinking of our economic system. I doubt this will happen without any catalyst like war or revolution.
- olalonde 1y ago
  Not necessarily. The US government already spends >2000$ per adult per month. It would require a total rethinking of the role of government.
  - paxys 1y ago
    Spends on what? It's not like you can disband the military, not build roads and bridges and eliminate medicaid just because you send out a $1000/mo UBI payment. If you want to consider just social assistance then the US government spends about $950B annually, and that works out to $2800 per year per citizen. To make it a livable amount you'd have to at minimum 5x that expenditure (and a lot more than that in urban areas).
    - olalonde 1y ago
      The comment I was replying to proposed a UBI of $13,000/year or roughly what many people on disability currently live on. That would cost around $3.4 trillion annually, leaving over $3 trillion for everything else, including roads and the military. Of course, you'd still need to make cuts somewhere - likely from existing entitlement programs.
      - paxys 1y ago
        I just posted the number that entitlement programs currently use, and it is under $1T. So you're basically saying "it's easy to implement UBI, we just need an extra 2.4T/yr lying around somewhere" (which is equivalent to 1/3 our total budget). Scale it up to realistic numbers (no one is surviving on just $13K/yr, plenty of people need more than just average support e.g. for medical conditions) and you're easily talking $5T+.
        olalonde 1y ago
        It wouldn't be very comfortable, but yes - it's possible to live on that amount. Many people on disability do so today. If it's not enough and you're unable to work, you'd have to rely on savings, family, or charity. And yes, the idea would for UBI to account for over 50% of current government spending and to get rid of most existing government programs (except core functions like military and law enforcement). That’s why I ended my original comment with "it would require a total rethinking of the role of government." By the way, I think you're overlooking the strongest criticism of my UBI proposal: that it would reduce the incentive to work, potentially lowering labor participation and, in turn, government tax revenue, which could make the system unsustainable. It's hard to predict whether that would be a real problem or not.
        rxtexit 1y ago
        How can you not see that if everyone gets X amount of UBI, the cost of everything goes up until you can no longer live on X. It is such basic economics I just can't believe we even have these debates. It is something I would have thought of when I lived with my parents as a clueless teenager.
        olalonde 1y ago
        That's not how it works - inflation is a function of money supply, not of how it is distributed. Do you consider Milton Friedman a "clueless teenager"? I admire your self-assurance by the way...
        1y ago
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      > and a lot more than that in urban areas Or, if the UBI is insufficient, you could work or move someplace less expensive. Most anything else would feel unfair (as a result of being so) and tend to drive a cycle of inflation in the expensive urban areas rather than working against it.
    - II2II 1y ago
      If someone is saving money to make a downpayment on a house, they don't stop spending money on food. They will likely eat out less, buy less expensive foods, watch for sales, cut down on food waste, or find other means to reallocate some of their budget for food to savings for that downpayment. Yet they will not stop eating. I'm not the type of person who blindly supports UBI. I think that it would be disasterous to implement it without rethinking how the economy should work and how UBI is going to address social woes. That said, I do think that it will be necessary in the long run. Money, may it be earned or granted, is a tool for people to make decisions. Traditional social programs pretty much does the opposite. It removes autonomy. It removes accountability. It doesn't much matter whether it is social housing (something physical) or conditional grants of money (which is a major focus of this article).
- okanat 1y ago
  I agree. Some libertarian economists noticed that endless growth demands slavery-like conditions and the economic collapse one way or another. They are trying to back away without using the s-word and invent half-baked solutions like UBI. UBI by itself will not solve the problems. It will only drive exorbitant inflation. Implementing UBI requires socializing many institutions and nationalizing big companies. People who control the biggest portions of the economy will not give their power up without a war.
  - olalonde 1y ago
    > Some libertarian economists noticed that endless growth demands slavery-like conditions and the economic collapse one way or another. Which economists? That doesn't sound libertarian at all. Libertarians who support UBI typically do so because they see it as a pragmatic alternative to inefficient welfare systems. They certainly wouldn't support abandoning market based economics.
- trod1234 1y ago
  Not just a total rethinking, but rather a total redevelopment to find an economic system that is just as stable as capitalism in a free market (without fiat). Socialism fails 100% of the time given sufficient time, UBI is tied to socialism. If your food production yield is dependent on maintaining your supply chain which fails under socialism, you basically run into a hysteresis trap under socialism where this fails, and everyone starves to death. Its like the ending of Daybreakers, where blood becomes increasingly scarce, and the dynamics of it all force some unwilling sacrifices which start a chain reaction. Just an FYI, Money-printing/non-reserve debt issuance is a catalyst for war/ revolution.
mouse_ 1y ago
More safety equates to less people willing to work slave jobs for slave wages. They're just gonna make disability bucks harder to access.
whatever1 1y ago
Even with 100k / month basic income, the landlords would simply raise their rents to 200k / month. Because why would they give up their generational wealth?
- qgin 1y ago
  In this model, does the current existence of people in poverty basically serve as a ballast that gives everyone else's "above poverty" money a higher, stable value? Would it ever be possible to not have poverty without making everyone's money worthless?
  - whatever1 1y ago
    You can always increase the labor by making more people and making more of them participate in the market. That is good because you can then start flattening the differences in income by taxation, so everyone gets richer (can afford more services) and you can also control the economic disparities. The assets story is a different beast. They tend to be finite and the worse the economic disparities curve is the higher their price becomes. How many condos are there andjacent to upper east side of Central Park? Let’s say 100. That number is fixed, and 1 million people on this planet want one. If they all had the same salary the rental price of the condos would be close their (same) monthly salary. Now because the economic disparity is huge there is a super low number of people that have super high income, but they are still more than 100. So these lets say 1,000 /1,000,000. These thousand folks can drive the rental of these condos to almost infinity.
userbinator 1y ago
those unable to find meaningful employment I don't want to pay to feed freeloaders. If you want to, that's what charities are for.
- Yeul 1y ago
  If you hate the handicapped at least have the decency to kill them not let them starve on the streets. And afterwards introduce genetic screening so that only Ubermensch are born.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    What they do or not do is none of my business.

by cebert 1y ago

vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago

That would require a total rethinking of our economic system. I doubt this will happen without any catalyst like war or revolution.

olalonde 1y ago
Not necessarily. The US government already spends >2000$ per adult per month. It would require a total rethinking of the role of government.
- paxys 1y ago
  Spends on what? It's not like you can disband the military, not build roads and bridges and eliminate medicaid just because you send out a $1000/mo UBI payment. If you want to consider just social assistance then the US government spends about $950B annually, and that works out to $2800 per year per citizen. To make it a livable amount you'd have to at minimum 5x that expenditure (and a lot more than that in urban areas).
  - olalonde 1y ago
    The comment I was replying to proposed a UBI of $13,000/year or roughly what many people on disability currently live on. That would cost around $3.4 trillion annually, leaving over $3 trillion for everything else, including roads and the military. Of course, you'd still need to make cuts somewhere - likely from existing entitlement programs.
    - paxys 1y ago
      I just posted the number that entitlement programs currently use, and it is under $1T. So you're basically saying "it's easy to implement UBI, we just need an extra 2.4T/yr lying around somewhere" (which is equivalent to 1/3 our total budget). Scale it up to realistic numbers (no one is surviving on just $13K/yr, plenty of people need more than just average support e.g. for medical conditions) and you're easily talking $5T+.
      - olalonde 1y ago
        It wouldn't be very comfortable, but yes - it's possible to live on that amount. Many people on disability do so today. If it's not enough and you're unable to work, you'd have to rely on savings, family, or charity. And yes, the idea would for UBI to account for over 50% of current government spending and to get rid of most existing government programs (except core functions like military and law enforcement). That’s why I ended my original comment with "it would require a total rethinking of the role of government." By the way, I think you're overlooking the strongest criticism of my UBI proposal: that it would reduce the incentive to work, potentially lowering labor participation and, in turn, government tax revenue, which could make the system unsustainable. It's hard to predict whether that would be a real problem or not.
        rxtexit 1y ago
        How can you not see that if everyone gets X amount of UBI, the cost of everything goes up until you can no longer live on X. It is such basic economics I just can't believe we even have these debates. It is something I would have thought of when I lived with my parents as a clueless teenager.
        olalonde 1y ago
        That's not how it works - inflation is a function of money supply, not of how it is distributed. Do you consider Milton Friedman a "clueless teenager"? I admire your self-assurance by the way...
      - 1y ago
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    > and a lot more than that in urban areas Or, if the UBI is insufficient, you could work or move someplace less expensive. Most anything else would feel unfair (as a result of being so) and tend to drive a cycle of inflation in the expensive urban areas rather than working against it.
  - II2II 1y ago
    If someone is saving money to make a downpayment on a house, they don't stop spending money on food. They will likely eat out less, buy less expensive foods, watch for sales, cut down on food waste, or find other means to reallocate some of their budget for food to savings for that downpayment. Yet they will not stop eating. I'm not the type of person who blindly supports UBI. I think that it would be disasterous to implement it without rethinking how the economy should work and how UBI is going to address social woes. That said, I do think that it will be necessary in the long run. Money, may it be earned or granted, is a tool for people to make decisions. Traditional social programs pretty much does the opposite. It removes autonomy. It removes accountability. It doesn't much matter whether it is social housing (something physical) or conditional grants of money (which is a major focus of this article).
okanat 1y ago
I agree. Some libertarian economists noticed that endless growth demands slavery-like conditions and the economic collapse one way or another. They are trying to back away without using the s-word and invent half-baked solutions like UBI. UBI by itself will not solve the problems. It will only drive exorbitant inflation. Implementing UBI requires socializing many institutions and nationalizing big companies. People who control the biggest portions of the economy will not give their power up without a war.
- olalonde 1y ago
  > Some libertarian economists noticed that endless growth demands slavery-like conditions and the economic collapse one way or another. Which economists? That doesn't sound libertarian at all. Libertarians who support UBI typically do so because they see it as a pragmatic alternative to inefficient welfare systems. They certainly wouldn't support abandoning market based economics.
trod1234 1y ago
Not just a total rethinking, but rather a total redevelopment to find an economic system that is just as stable as capitalism in a free market (without fiat). Socialism fails 100% of the time given sufficient time, UBI is tied to socialism. If your food production yield is dependent on maintaining your supply chain which fails under socialism, you basically run into a hysteresis trap under socialism where this fails, and everyone starves to death. Its like the ending of Daybreakers, where blood becomes increasingly scarce, and the dynamics of it all force some unwilling sacrifices which start a chain reaction. Just an FYI, Money-printing/non-reserve debt issuance is a catalyst for war/ revolution.

mouse_ 1y ago

More safety equates to less people willing to work slave jobs for slave wages. They're just gonna make disability bucks harder to access.

whatever1 1y ago

Even with 100k / month basic income, the landlords would simply raise their rents to 200k / month. Because why would they give up their generational wealth?

qgin 1y ago
In this model, does the current existence of people in poverty basically serve as a ballast that gives everyone else's "above poverty" money a higher, stable value? Would it ever be possible to not have poverty without making everyone's money worthless?
- whatever1 1y ago
  You can always increase the labor by making more people and making more of them participate in the market. That is good because you can then start flattening the differences in income by taxation, so everyone gets richer (can afford more services) and you can also control the economic disparities. The assets story is a different beast. They tend to be finite and the worse the economic disparities curve is the higher their price becomes. How many condos are there andjacent to upper east side of Central Park? Let’s say 100. That number is fixed, and 1 million people on this planet want one. If they all had the same salary the rental price of the condos would be close their (same) monthly salary. Now because the economic disparity is huge there is a super low number of people that have super high income, but they are still more than 100. So these lets say 1,000 /1,000,000. These thousand folks can drive the rental of these condos to almost infinity.

userbinator 1y ago

those unable to find meaningful employment I don't want to pay to feed freeloaders. If you want to, that's what charities are for.

Yeul 1y ago
If you hate the handicapped at least have the decency to kill them not let them starve on the streets. And afterwards introduce genetic screening so that only Ubermensch are born.
- userbinator 1y ago
  What they do or not do is none of my business.