7 ms·

Universal Basic Income is the best post-labor system I've read of. Everything is still based on the same capitalism we have now, and the ~20% of people who wor

Universal Basic Income is the best post-labor system I've read of. Everything is still based on the same capitalism we have now, and the ~20% of people who work will still be able to make income (meaning there will still be incentive for enterprise).

ctdonath 11y ago
Except you'll have increasing encroachment on motivation of the productive. When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns. Same for plenty of us motivated ones: if 80% are living off the 20%, that will require taking so much from the 20% that most of those will opt for doing something interesting and untaxable. The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so. Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living. That's actually not a harm, and its exactly why you aren't tearing out the incentive for productive activity; when you devote more of your time to that because you've hit a high-enough marginal tax rate that the marginal benefit post-tax from additional gain through taxable activity is not sufficient to meet your marginal opportunity cost from that activity, simple supply and demand increases the incentive for others for whom that balance works out differently -- perhaps because they are lower on the progressive tax scale so that the marginal realized net monetary return is greater, or perhaps because they are at a similar place to where you are but weigh the costs differently -- to engage in the activity you are forgoing. In fact, a net upward (on the wealth/income) scale shift in tax burden increases the incentive for productive activity at the lower end of the scale.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I think the point (in the context of this discussion) is that we don't need everyone to be maximally productive - machines and automation can do so much that we could all enjoy a very nice standard of living if everyone worked ~2 hours/day. I'm a little skeptical of basic income as well, just like I'd be skeptical of any untested widespread social policy, but the orthodox reasons why it doesn't work are based on a model of reality that's ~3 generations and 70+ years old. I suspect that if it doesn't work, it'll be because of some problem we haven't thought of yet, not the old "tax on the productive". The top candidate, IMHO, is that we're outcompeted by some other society that doesn't have basic income.
- random28345 11y ago
  > Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns. Sounds good to me. More actors, more variety. Maybe we wouldn't see every single sci-fi/action movie star Tom Cruise.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but your example seems to imply the existence of a marginal propensity to consume. I don't think this is commonly accepted in light of work by Friedman and others on the permanent income hypothesis, which puts to question relatively simplistic supply-side and "Going Galt" scenarios.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living. You're assuming what you do can't be automated. I want to automate what you do so you can live "off the grid" if you want. Capitalism only entitles you to profits on your labor capital until it has no value.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    The problem is, labor capital is the only thing that everyone has. And most people don't have the other form of capital. So if their labor capital has no value, then they're probably going to starve.
- mason240 11y ago
  >The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so. The situation UBI applies to is in a more post-labor world. One where a McDonald's only needs 2 people working instead of 16. At this point it's not going to be taxing those 2 workers but the company itself. If you want to earn more money than your UBI check (which you would still get if you work), you will still have an incentive to earn more money.
- russell 11y ago
  I understand this issue of maintaining motivation under conditions of artificial full employment was a problem under the Soviet system, but I'm not sure it is necessarily a problem in a post-scarcity economy. For one thing employment can be increased by reducing the work week. After all we went from 60 hour work weeks to 40 hour, even less in Europe where there are longer vacations than in the US. Education over the past century has gone from mostly primary only to mostly college, absorbing excess labor capacity. I think the idea of 80% leeches living off the 20% productive is just wrong headed. What we will see is the general quality of life improved for everyone. Sure there will some that need to be entirely supported by the rest of us: the homeless, the mentally ill, the infirm, the elderly. The real danger is that the increases in productivity are being siphoned off by the rich and not being equitably distributed. Capitalism is inherently an unstable system tending towards monopoly and the destruction of the commons (pollution and the like) and must be reasonably constrained.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I understand this issue of maintaining motivation under conditions of artificial full employment was a problem under the Soviet system, but I'm not sure it is necessarily a problem in a post-scarcity economy. Post-scarcity economy is a contradiction in terms, and if post-scarcity conditions existed, one wouldn't have any need to worry about economy -- which is, after all, nothing but the system by which scarce resources are allocated. But we're not really discussing post-scarcity conditions, we're talking about managing conditions where the rewards from production are increasingly concentrated in the holders of capital and the returns to labor are mostly extremely low with a (proportionally) very small set of high-value labor positions available.
- jakejnichols 11y ago
  Movie stars aren't a very good example. Ronald Reagan was not 100X times better actor than the next guy. He could command a big salary because he won a tournament market based on name recognition. If he works less, someone just as good gets a chance and there is the same output. Where a 90% tax really hurts is entrepreneurship and risk taking. If that 90% tax includes taxes on capital gains, then I have no incentive to start a business or invest in a business. If it fails I lose my money and sweat equity. If it succeeds, I get taxed so much I barely make more money than if I had just worked. One of the reasons the economy was good in the 50's despite the high taxes was that those high taxes only applied to salaries, not capital gains. Also, there were lots and lots of loopholes so a lot of people didn't end up paying that 90%. That all said. Americans already pay a ton of taxes. There is plenty of money for UBI already. It just needs to be reallocated from failed programs and bureaucracies - such as 90% of the educational system.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    "If he works less, someone just as good gets a chance and there is the same output." Given the pay disparity, if he works less there's probably more output. (... note that this is considering his decision to work less, in isolation - not the effect of the tax level that purportedly motivated that as a whole, which would take a much deeper analysis...)
- s73v3r 11y ago
  "When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns." Is that what happened? Or did he simply realize that he had enough, and he didn't need to work himself to death to have all the money? Seriously, what's wrong with people realizing they have enough, and don't need to overwork themselves just to have more?
s73v3r 11y ago
Given the political landscape today, we need a different solution. That's basically socialism (something I don't have a problem with), and I'm sure you've seen how well things with even the hint of socialism have gone over in the US. Most Tea Partiers would be completely happy to have things turn out Hunger Games style, as they're assuming that they'd be on top, rather than having to send their child in to fight.
- mason240 11y ago
  This isn't socialism at all. The main tenants of socialism are ending profit and private property. UBI embraces the same kind of capitalism we have now with private property and profit. In order to say that UBI is socialist, you also have to be calling Social Security socialism, and you have to think that President Obama is a socialist. I think you would find a lot more support among conservatives than you think (it seems like you have quite the caricature of them). It seems like there would opposition from left, and UBI would require a complete dismantling of all non-healthcare entitlement programs, a serious reduction of the tax code, and heavily clamping down on all immigration.
  - chadgeidel 11y ago
    "In order to say that UBI is socialist, you also have to be calling Social Security socialism, and you have to think that President Obama is a socialist." And that's exactly what the Tea Party types are saying.
    - mason240 11y ago
      So you agree with them?
      - s73v3r 11y ago
        You don't have to agree with them to know that's what they'll say, and that they do have a number of people following them.
  - 11y ago
anigbrowl 11y ago
I'm getting really tired of hearing Basic Income cited to handwave away the real problems of economic dislocation. Look, I support the idea of a basic income, but when your simple solution is a radical top-to-bottom change in the entire economic system then I can't take you any more seriously than someone who thinks that communism would make all our problems go away if only every country would adopt it at once. I mean we can't get single-payer healthcare going in this country, despite the numerous models of it working quite well (and at lower cost than our system) in a number of other developed countries that are glad to share their experience with us. UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic. Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age. No handwaving, that's the general idea. The devil is in the details, and there are many details to work out.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age. That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI. Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouse's) past contributions, as such its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI. Single-payer healthcare removes a HUGE problem with providing basic income. I don't see how providing universal healthcare interferes with UBI. > Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouss) past contributions, its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI. And.....? The SSA is already extremely efficient at distributing funds. Allow them to issue no-fee debit cards they issue, remove age/disability testing, ignore contributions, and then get funding from the general fund. I'm not saying its easy. I'm saying its how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

ctdonath 11y ago

Except you'll have increasing encroachment on motivation of the productive. When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns. Same for plenty of us motivated ones: if 80% are living off the 20%, that will require taking so much from the 20% that most of those will opt for doing something interesting and untaxable. The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so. Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living. That's actually not a harm, and its exactly why you aren't tearing out the incentive for productive activity; when you devote more of your time to that because you've hit a high-enough marginal tax rate that the marginal benefit post-tax from additional gain through taxable activity is not sufficient to meet your marginal opportunity cost from that activity, simple supply and demand increases the incentive for others for whom that balance works out differently -- perhaps because they are lower on the progressive tax scale so that the marginal realized net monetary return is greater, or perhaps because they are at a similar place to where you are but weigh the costs differently -- to engage in the activity you are forgoing. In fact, a net upward (on the wealth/income) scale shift in tax burden increases the incentive for productive activity at the lower end of the scale.
nostrademons 11y ago
I think the point (in the context of this discussion) is that we don't need everyone to be maximally productive - machines and automation can do so much that we could all enjoy a very nice standard of living if everyone worked ~2 hours/day. I'm a little skeptical of basic income as well, just like I'd be skeptical of any untested widespread social policy, but the orthodox reasons why it doesn't work are based on a model of reality that's ~3 generations and 70+ years old. I suspect that if it doesn't work, it'll be because of some problem we haven't thought of yet, not the old "tax on the productive". The top candidate, IMHO, is that we're outcompeted by some other society that doesn't have basic income.
random28345 11y ago
> Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns. Sounds good to me. More actors, more variety. Maybe we wouldn't see every single sci-fi/action movie star Tom Cruise.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your example seems to imply the existence of a marginal propensity to consume. I don't think this is commonly accepted in light of work by Friedman and others on the permanent income hypothesis, which puts to question relatively simplistic supply-side and "Going Galt" scenarios.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
> Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living. You're assuming what you do can't be automated. I want to automate what you do so you can live "off the grid" if you want. Capitalism only entitles you to profits on your labor capital until it has no value.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  The problem is, labor capital is the only thing that everyone has. And most people don't have the other form of capital. So if their labor capital has no value, then they're probably going to starve.
mason240 11y ago
>The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so. The situation UBI applies to is in a more post-labor world. One where a McDonald's only needs 2 people working instead of 16. At this point it's not going to be taxing those 2 workers but the company itself. If you want to earn more money than your UBI check (which you would still get if you work), you will still have an incentive to earn more money.
russell 11y ago
I understand this issue of maintaining motivation under conditions of artificial full employment was a problem under the Soviet system, but I'm not sure it is necessarily a problem in a post-scarcity economy. For one thing employment can be increased by reducing the work week. After all we went from 60 hour work weeks to 40 hour, even less in Europe where there are longer vacations than in the US. Education over the past century has gone from mostly primary only to mostly college, absorbing excess labor capacity. I think the idea of 80% leeches living off the 20% productive is just wrong headed. What we will see is the general quality of life improved for everyone. Sure there will some that need to be entirely supported by the rest of us: the homeless, the mentally ill, the infirm, the elderly. The real danger is that the increases in productivity are being siphoned off by the rich and not being equitably distributed. Capitalism is inherently an unstable system tending towards monopoly and the destruction of the commons (pollution and the like) and must be reasonably constrained.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I understand this issue of maintaining motivation under conditions of artificial full employment was a problem under the Soviet system, but I'm not sure it is necessarily a problem in a post-scarcity economy. Post-scarcity economy is a contradiction in terms, and if post-scarcity conditions existed, one wouldn't have any need to worry about economy -- which is, after all, nothing but the system by which scarce resources are allocated. But we're not really discussing post-scarcity conditions, we're talking about managing conditions where the rewards from production are increasingly concentrated in the holders of capital and the returns to labor are mostly extremely low with a (proportionally) very small set of high-value labor positions available.
jakejnichols 11y ago
Movie stars aren't a very good example. Ronald Reagan was not 100X times better actor than the next guy. He could command a big salary because he won a tournament market based on name recognition. If he works less, someone just as good gets a chance and there is the same output. Where a 90% tax really hurts is entrepreneurship and risk taking. If that 90% tax includes taxes on capital gains, then I have no incentive to start a business or invest in a business. If it fails I lose my money and sweat equity. If it succeeds, I get taxed so much I barely make more money than if I had just worked. One of the reasons the economy was good in the 50's despite the high taxes was that those high taxes only applied to salaries, not capital gains. Also, there were lots and lots of loopholes so a lot of people didn't end up paying that 90%. That all said. Americans already pay a ton of taxes. There is plenty of money for UBI already. It just needs to be reallocated from failed programs and bureaucracies - such as 90% of the educational system.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  "If he works less, someone just as good gets a chance and there is the same output." Given the pay disparity, if he works less there's probably more output. (... note that this is considering his decision to work less, in isolation - not the effect of the tax level that purportedly motivated that as a whole, which would take a much deeper analysis...)
s73v3r 11y ago
"When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns." Is that what happened? Or did he simply realize that he had enough, and he didn't need to work himself to death to have all the money? Seriously, what's wrong with people realizing they have enough, and don't need to overwork themselves just to have more?

s73v3r 11y ago

Given the political landscape today, we need a different solution. That's basically socialism (something I don't have a problem with), and I'm sure you've seen how well things with even the hint of socialism have gone over in the US. Most Tea Partiers would be completely happy to have things turn out Hunger Games style, as they're assuming that they'd be on top, rather than having to send their child in to fight.

mason240 11y ago
This isn't socialism at all. The main tenants of socialism are ending profit and private property. UBI embraces the same kind of capitalism we have now with private property and profit. In order to say that UBI is socialist, you also have to be calling Social Security socialism, and you have to think that President Obama is a socialist. I think you would find a lot more support among conservatives than you think (it seems like you have quite the caricature of them). It seems like there would opposition from left, and UBI would require a complete dismantling of all non-healthcare entitlement programs, a serious reduction of the tax code, and heavily clamping down on all immigration.
- chadgeidel 11y ago
  "In order to say that UBI is socialist, you also have to be calling Social Security socialism, and you have to think that President Obama is a socialist." And that's exactly what the Tea Party types are saying.
  - mason240 11y ago
    So you agree with them?
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      You don't have to agree with them to know that's what they'll say, and that they do have a number of people following them.
- 11y ago

anigbrowl 11y ago

I'm getting really tired of hearing Basic Income cited to handwave away the real problems of economic dislocation. Look, I support the idea of a basic income, but when your simple solution is a radical top-to-bottom change in the entire economic system then I can't take you any more seriously than someone who thinks that communism would make all our problems go away if only every country would adopt it at once. I mean we can't get single-payer healthcare going in this country, despite the numerous models of it working quite well (and at lower cost than our system) in a number of other developed countries that are glad to share their experience with us. UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic. Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age. No handwaving, that's the general idea. The devil is in the details, and there are many details to work out.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age. That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI. Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouse's) past contributions, as such its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI. Single-payer healthcare removes a HUGE problem with providing basic income. I don't see how providing universal healthcare interferes with UBI. > Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouss) past contributions, its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI. And.....? The SSA is already extremely efficient at distributing funds. Allow them to issue no-fee debit cards they issue, remove age/disability testing, ignore contributions, and then get funding from the general fund. I'm not saying its easy. I'm saying its how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.