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Well that's a poorly written and terrible analogy. "You want to even give basic income to the rich?! That doesn't make any sense at all because they don't need

Well that's a poorly written and terrible analogy. "You want to even give basic income to the rich?! That doesn't make any sense at all because they don't need it, it'll cost more, and you'll be taxing them only to give it back to them." He doesn't even address his own premise. His example is entirely inadequate because it doesn't address economics at all (inflation? redistribution? recurring costs? administrative costs?).

Drakim 12y ago
He does somewhat address his own premise. He is basically saying that figuring out who to exclude is simply not worth it. Maintaining a system for deciding "who is worthy of help" is more costy than just giving everybody help.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  No, he never says that. He says that the current system is handing out Oculus Rifts and water-jetpacks to everyone. Which means... any number of things. I understand why people are supportive of the idea of basic income. But I dunno how to interpret his description of the current system. Is the current system wasteful? What is the analogy to Oculus Rifts actually mean? Are we really trying to teach people how to swim with virtual reality headsets? Maybe if we stopped handing out Oculus Rifts and Water Jetpacks, we'd have a good system? Is his argument that we should improve our current welfare system? Somehow, I don't think so. By the end of the blog post, it becomes clear that he's a supporter of basic income. But it takes _far_ too long to get to that point. His thesis needs to be earlier, and he needs fewer analogies and more facts. Anyway, I think it is clear we need to reform our welfare system. But the blog post is almost the perfect textbook example of how to NOT make an argument. So much analogy, so little substance...
  - pmontra 12y ago
    The analogy is somewhat clumsy but he really gets to the point eventually. His words: "Does it make more sense to spend a lot of time and resources making sure that only those that absolutely require help get it? Or does it make more sense to just guarantee everyone gets help and make adjustments after the fact? What's more efficient? All the interviewers, interview equipment, calculations, personal judgments, and spending of resources on stuff we don't even need? Or is it more efficient to just skip all of that, and cover everyone, no questions asked?" Again, more verbose than the post you're replying to but the point is the same.
    - dragontamer 12y ago
      And the answer to that question is... I don't know? Do you have any facts or data that actually compares the cost of those two? And the answer is: no, he doesn't. He just has a broken analogy. I've posted an article in a post (somewhere else...) which actually details _real_ costs and _real_ expenses of some welfare programs, and then compares it with a basic income. But the blog-post linked does not.
      - Drakim 12y ago
        There is no hard data for the "invisible hand of the market" but people still promote it. It's just how things work, people have ideals, and they push them into the spotlight to be discussed and talked about, which leads to studies being made and people finding pros and cons.
        dragontamer 12y ago
        Sigh. Here's the difference: https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spar... There is hard data out there for this very subject. Its called look at the costs. Our government is relatively transparent, we know the costs of food stamps. We know the cost of every single social worker on the government. We know their pay, their salary, their qualifications (these sorts of things are standardized upon the GS-levels) http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance... If you refuse to discuss data that is readily available about various programs, that makes you a lazy writer. The blog post is terrible. There are much better articles out there that discuss the pros and cons of basic income.
      - 2noame 12y ago
        Author of OP's link here. Hi. I've previously written about our present welfare system in this article here: https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spar... Additionally, I've written about how much money we could be saving with UBI and why/how: https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073 https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-th... And here's an article that includes just how much we are spending on a whole lot of things as a society, and how UBI would reduce these costs: https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-bro... This particular blog post of mine was purely an analogy made to make a single point.
  - drostie 12y ago
    I think the point of the Oculus Rifts and Water Jetpack and Martian Terrorist Proofing is that once you've said, "oh, we'll try to help out only those people who need it," you've invited a political process into the system. That's dangerous because the politicians who are making the decision are not, in fact, experts in the matter. (See also: NASA explosions. They happen when the people who make decisions are managers, not the engineers who know the most about the systems.) Politicians will divert tons of your funds to programs which address "related problems" that are not actually current problems (Martian terrorists), monolithic solutions that are not known to work (jetpacks), and to other programs which get nerfed. A good example of a program getting nerfed: there's a nice free-and-reduced-cost lunch program for kids in the US: poor kids should be able to get a good meal at school. Unfortunately, this program has completely lost its ability to provide poor kids with a high-calorie meal, because of Mrs. Obama's crusade against obesity. It's not that the First Lady's plan is unilaterally bad, but rather that it is bad if this meal is the only substantial meal that you're going to get, so that fighting malnutrition is the same as providing lots of calories.
JulianMorrison 12y ago
It's an effective answer to a question he didn't ask (why is it less fuss and more effective?). The simplest clear answer to "why give it to the rich?" is: you're giving back part of what you taxed, that's a fairly cheap no-op, it only went through two levels of bureaucracy (tax, distribute). Really it only looks like generosity to the rich if you ignore tax; otherwise, simply subtract it from their nominal tax bill to get their actual tax bill. What reacts against giving money to the rich is ape-mind fairness instinct; humans should be able to do basic arithmetic and rise above this.

Drakim 12y ago

He does somewhat address his own premise. He is basically saying that figuring out who to exclude is simply not worth it. Maintaining a system for deciding "who is worthy of help" is more costy than just giving everybody help.

dragontamer 12y ago
No, he never says that. He says that the current system is handing out Oculus Rifts and water-jetpacks to everyone. Which means... any number of things. I understand why people are supportive of the idea of basic income. But I dunno how to interpret his description of the current system. Is the current system wasteful? What is the analogy to Oculus Rifts actually mean? Are we really trying to teach people how to swim with virtual reality headsets? Maybe if we stopped handing out Oculus Rifts and Water Jetpacks, we'd have a good system? Is his argument that we should improve our current welfare system? Somehow, I don't think so. By the end of the blog post, it becomes clear that he's a supporter of basic income. But it takes _far_ too long to get to that point. His thesis needs to be earlier, and he needs fewer analogies and more facts. Anyway, I think it is clear we need to reform our welfare system. But the blog post is almost the perfect textbook example of how to NOT make an argument. So much analogy, so little substance...
- pmontra 12y ago
  The analogy is somewhat clumsy but he really gets to the point eventually. His words: "Does it make more sense to spend a lot of time and resources making sure that only those that absolutely require help get it? Or does it make more sense to just guarantee everyone gets help and make adjustments after the fact? What's more efficient? All the interviewers, interview equipment, calculations, personal judgments, and spending of resources on stuff we don't even need? Or is it more efficient to just skip all of that, and cover everyone, no questions asked?" Again, more verbose than the post you're replying to but the point is the same.
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    And the answer to that question is... I don't know? Do you have any facts or data that actually compares the cost of those two? And the answer is: no, he doesn't. He just has a broken analogy. I've posted an article in a post (somewhere else...) which actually details _real_ costs and _real_ expenses of some welfare programs, and then compares it with a basic income. But the blog-post linked does not.
    - Drakim 12y ago
      There is no hard data for the "invisible hand of the market" but people still promote it. It's just how things work, people have ideals, and they push them into the spotlight to be discussed and talked about, which leads to studies being made and people finding pros and cons.
      - dragontamer 12y ago
        Sigh. Here's the difference: https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spar... There is hard data out there for this very subject. Its called look at the costs. Our government is relatively transparent, we know the costs of food stamps. We know the cost of every single social worker on the government. We know their pay, their salary, their qualifications (these sorts of things are standardized upon the GS-levels) http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance... If you refuse to discuss data that is readily available about various programs, that makes you a lazy writer. The blog post is terrible. There are much better articles out there that discuss the pros and cons of basic income.
    - 2noame 12y ago
      Author of OP's link here. Hi. I've previously written about our present welfare system in this article here: https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spare-a271a6ef6f7e https://medium.com/basic-income/breaking-down-without-a-spar... Additionally, I've written about how much money we could be saving with UBI and why/how: https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-the-social-vaccine-of-the-21st-century-d66dff39073 https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-as-th... And here's an article that includes just how much we are spending on a whole lot of things as a society, and how UBI would reduce these costs: https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-broken-economic-system-to-work-for-everyone-ddba38fc328a https://medium.com/@2noame/how-we-can-transform-americas-bro... This particular blog post of mine was purely an analogy made to make a single point.
- drostie 12y ago
  I think the point of the Oculus Rifts and Water Jetpack and Martian Terrorist Proofing is that once you've said, "oh, we'll try to help out only those people who need it," you've invited a political process into the system. That's dangerous because the politicians who are making the decision are not, in fact, experts in the matter. (See also: NASA explosions. They happen when the people who make decisions are managers, not the engineers who know the most about the systems.) Politicians will divert tons of your funds to programs which address "related problems" that are not actually current problems (Martian terrorists), monolithic solutions that are not known to work (jetpacks), and to other programs which get nerfed. A good example of a program getting nerfed: there's a nice free-and-reduced-cost lunch program for kids in the US: poor kids should be able to get a good meal at school. Unfortunately, this program has completely lost its ability to provide poor kids with a high-calorie meal, because of Mrs. Obama's crusade against obesity. It's not that the First Lady's plan is unilaterally bad, but rather that it is bad if this meal is the only substantial meal that you're going to get, so that fighting malnutrition is the same as providing lots of calories.

JulianMorrison 12y ago

It's an effective answer to a question he didn't ask (why is it less fuss and more effective?). The simplest clear answer to "why give it to the rich?" is: you're giving back part of what you taxed, that's a fairly cheap no-op, it only went through two levels of bureaucracy (tax, distribute). Really it only looks like generosity to the rich if you ignore tax; otherwise, simply subtract it from their nominal tax bill to get their actual tax bill. What reacts against giving money to the rich is ape-mind fairness instinct; humans should be able to do basic arithmetic and rise above this.