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Yeah how many of these have we had now? Literally every test and study about UBI comes back with similar data: it improves lives, reduces stress, and nobody bec

Yeah how many of these have we had now? Literally every test and study about UBI comes back with similar data: it improves lives, reduces stress, and nobody becomes a drain on the system. It doesn’t matter. The people who oppose it aren’t looking at the data, they just don’t want "my tax dollars" going to support people struggling to get by.

jagged-chisel 1y ago
> … people struggling to get by. Rather, people who “didn’t earn it.”
- interstice 1y ago
  Is this \s?
  - zzrrt 1y ago
    Probably portraying the attitude of the people complaining about "my tax dollars" as referenced in the preceding post.
  - throaway955 1y ago
    that's the attitude. "You need to work, even if it's at McDonalds!" "You can't ask other people to carry your weight!"
    - kbelder 1y ago
      You can certainly ask other people to carry your weight. The problem is when you start to force other people to.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  In a world with so much surplus, the fact that we still demand people earn a living under penalty of death is the most psychotic shit I've ever seen.
  - 76izutdgutdr 1y ago
    [flagged]
reactordev 1y ago
It’s funny because it’s such a small amount for those who oppose it. I mean, capital gains doesn’t kick in until $48,350 in the US and you can survive off of that if you needed to. The issue is pulling that consistently for an income requires a bit of capital the average American doesn’t have.
SR2Z 1y ago
We already have the EITC, which is frankly a better version of UBI (it incentivizes working more and literally goes up as you increase your earnings). Expand the EITC and tax capital gains as regular, inflation-adjusted income to pay for it and we've basically done it - a single Democratic administration could. In fact, during COVID, an increase to the child tax portion of the EITC reduced childhood poverty by _70%_ at a relatively low cost. Guess why we don't do that anymore? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#/media/File:Crs_eitc_2020.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#/medi... https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expiration-of-pandemic-relief-led-to-record-increases-in-poverty https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expirat... (US focused even though the article is Canada lol)
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  A large EITC is trivially converted into a UBI. Otherwise-unemployed people pay each other a salary to do whatever they were each going to do anyway and then the salaries cancel but they both get the EITC. Attempts to prevent this largely don't work against people who want to do the scam and just find a different way to structure it, but tend to be used as an excuse to e.g. screw legitimate self-employed workers out of the credit. The only reason this doesn't happen at scale right now is that the existing EITC is smaller than the amount of payroll tax you'd pay by making a given amount of money, i.e. it's not a negative income tax at all. If you're going to make it larger than that you might as well make it a UBI.
programjames 1y ago
I think the issue is there are a lot of welfare programs that haven't seen the same success. If you subscribe to the "taxes are to solve public goods problems" model, then welfare that doesn't come back around to help you isn't taxation, it's theft! When people talk about UBI, they're wary it's just a relabelling of the same-old "steal from the rich, give to the poor" Robinhood scheme. I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic (or, worst of all, "what would Jesus do?"). That's the wrong way of framing it (and this holds for most welfare initiatives too). People are always going to care about different things. Some really care that everyone has clean water, others a good education, others freedom of expression. Some care more about their families, while others apply equal empathy to every stranger, cow, and tree. When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy. The proper way to fund your projects is to get everyone on board. Frame it so they see how it helps them achieve their goals, not just yours. (Now, I know I'm ignoring that some people are just incredibly selfish; more accurately, some people's hearts are bleeding out on the floor, some are calcified into stone, and most are somewhere in between. I'm ignoring this discrepancy because 1. even very selfish people can get on board with welfare (like primary/secondary education), as long as it's framed properly, and 2. if a system relies on self-sacrifice, it's too easy to hijack that sacrifice into someone else's pet project.) For example, with education, you can point out how much more economic activity is available when everyone knows how to read and write. I think the argument that actually worked, though, was "how can we avoid roving bands of teenagers in our city once we enact some child-labor laws?" (that's probably the reason highschool is compulsory, not just free to enroll in). For a universal basic income, you probably need to approach it from an entropy argument. The capitalist system tries to maximize GDP, but physical systems actually maximize the free energy (GDP - temperature * Theil index [entropy]). The capitalist system avoids this by artificially restricting free trade: for example, your boss makes a dollar, while you make a dime. There's fewer trades that could happen than if, say, you both made 55 cents (unless your boss is just reallly good at doing things with money). Or, more fundamental, your boss needs you much less than you need a salary. You have less freedom of movement than he has to remove you. A universal basic income fixes this entropy problem, which makes trades more frequent and the market more competitive. In the end, it can come around to help even a seflish centimillionaire.
CoastalCoder 1y ago
> MUH TAX DOLERS Please don't use regional accents as an epithet.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please cut out swipes and fulmination like this in comments. It's clearly against the guidelines, and we've asked you before to avoid using HN for ideological battle. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Aurornis 1y ago
> and nobody becomes a drain on the system That’s a generous interpretation of the results. This was a short term pilot and over one quarter of respondents stopped working, despite knowing it was a temporary program.
- luisfmh 1y ago
  Did you read the article? Because it says that about half of the ones that stopped working stopped working because they were going back to school. That doesn't seem like a drain on the system...

jagged-chisel 1y ago

> … people struggling to get by. Rather, people who “didn’t earn it.”

interstice 1y ago
Is this \s?
- zzrrt 1y ago
  Probably portraying the attitude of the people complaining about "my tax dollars" as referenced in the preceding post.
- throaway955 1y ago
  that's the attitude. "You need to work, even if it's at McDonalds!" "You can't ask other people to carry your weight!"
  - kbelder 1y ago
    You can certainly ask other people to carry your weight. The problem is when you start to force other people to.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
In a world with so much surplus, the fact that we still demand people earn a living under penalty of death is the most psychotic shit I've ever seen.
- 76izutdgutdr 1y ago
  [flagged]

reactordev 1y ago

It’s funny because it’s such a small amount for those who oppose it. I mean, capital gains doesn’t kick in until $48,350 in the US and you can survive off of that if you needed to. The issue is pulling that consistently for an income requires a bit of capital the average American doesn’t have.

SR2Z 1y ago

We already have the EITC, which is frankly a better version of UBI (it incentivizes working more and literally goes up as you increase your earnings). Expand the EITC and tax capital gains as regular, inflation-adjusted income to pay for it and we've basically done it - a single Democratic administration could. In fact, during COVID, an increase to the child tax portion of the EITC reduced childhood poverty by _70%_ at a relatively low cost. Guess why we don't do that anymore? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#/media/File:Crs_eitc_2020.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#/medi... https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expiration-of-pandemic-relief-led-to-record-increases-in-poverty https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expirat... (US focused even though the article is Canada lol)

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
A large EITC is trivially converted into a UBI. Otherwise-unemployed people pay each other a salary to do whatever they were each going to do anyway and then the salaries cancel but they both get the EITC. Attempts to prevent this largely don't work against people who want to do the scam and just find a different way to structure it, but tend to be used as an excuse to e.g. screw legitimate self-employed workers out of the credit. The only reason this doesn't happen at scale right now is that the existing EITC is smaller than the amount of payroll tax you'd pay by making a given amount of money, i.e. it's not a negative income tax at all. If you're going to make it larger than that you might as well make it a UBI.

programjames 1y ago

I think the issue is there are a lot of welfare programs that haven't seen the same success. If you subscribe to the "taxes are to solve public goods problems" model, then welfare that doesn't come back around to help you isn't taxation, it's theft! When people talk about UBI, they're wary it's just a relabelling of the same-old "steal from the rich, give to the poor" Robinhood scheme. I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic (or, worst of all, "what would Jesus do?"). That's the wrong way of framing it (and this holds for most welfare initiatives too). People are always going to care about different things. Some really care that everyone has clean water, others a good education, others freedom of expression. Some care more about their families, while others apply equal empathy to every stranger, cow, and tree. When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy. The proper way to fund your projects is to get everyone on board. Frame it so they see how it helps them achieve their goals, not just yours. (Now, I know I'm ignoring that some people are just incredibly selfish; more accurately, some people's hearts are bleeding out on the floor, some are calcified into stone, and most are somewhere in between. I'm ignoring this discrepancy because 1. even very selfish people can get on board with welfare (like primary/secondary education), as long as it's framed properly, and 2. if a system relies on self-sacrifice, it's too easy to hijack that sacrifice into someone else's pet project.) For example, with education, you can point out how much more economic activity is available when everyone knows how to read and write. I think the argument that actually worked, though, was "how can we avoid roving bands of teenagers in our city once we enact some child-labor laws?" (that's probably the reason highschool is compulsory, not just free to enroll in). For a universal basic income, you probably need to approach it from an entropy argument. The capitalist system tries to maximize GDP, but physical systems actually maximize the free energy (GDP - temperature * Theil index [entropy]). The capitalist system avoids this by artificially restricting free trade: for example, your boss makes a dollar, while you make a dime. There's fewer trades that could happen than if, say, you both made 55 cents (unless your boss is just reallly good at doing things with money). Or, more fundamental, your boss needs you much less than you need a salary. You have less freedom of movement than he has to remove you. A universal basic income fixes this entropy problem, which makes trades more frequent and the market more competitive. In the end, it can come around to help even a seflish centimillionaire.

CoastalCoder 1y ago

> MUH TAX DOLERS Please don't use regional accents as an epithet.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please cut out swipes and fulmination like this in comments. It's clearly against the guidelines, and we've asked you before to avoid using HN for ideological battle. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Aurornis 1y ago

> and nobody becomes a drain on the system That’s a generous interpretation of the results. This was a short term pilot and over one quarter of respondents stopped working, despite knowing it was a temporary program.

luisfmh 1y ago
Did you read the article? Because it says that about half of the ones that stopped working stopped working because they were going back to school. That doesn't seem like a drain on the system...