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The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

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Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#31

Post by gshulegaard »

golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

For me, I don't see this as being a problem.

First, I am a believer in economic momentum and money multiplier dynamics (perhaps irrationally so). But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. Our current welfare system places too much restriction and I feel leaves too many welfare recipients with non-optimal purchasing decision...not to mention there is an overhead to our (America's) current welfare system as far as administration and what-else.

Another thing is that there have been studies done which show that giving cash to the poor has better outcomes than expected: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-...

There are also deeper things we can theorize about regarding poor behavior, but at the end of the day I can't help but feel like a UBI would be a more efficient welfare distribution (more money spent actually issued as monetary welfare benefits) which would have a stronger economic impact than our current welfare system.

Disclaimer: The above is just my opinion, not claiming it to be right or wrong.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#32

Post by chrisco255 »

beat wrote: post #11
ThomPete wrote: post #8

What most of these cases get wrong is that they confuse UBI as yet another way to deal with unemployment as the market corrects itself and new jobs are created. I.e. it's seen as this temporary state that we might or might not be in for a limited amount of time. The truth is that UBI is meant to deal with the fact that we will more or less all be unemployed and have no jobs and thus no income. It's not meant to solve…

It's not so much that there won't be a labor market, but rather than radical changes to the labor market are accelerating. Two centuries ago, well over 90% of income earners were farmers. Today, it's like 2% and dropping. But unemployment didn't become a more massive problem than it was then. Labor became available for other purposes, enabling the industrial revolution.

We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently. Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services. There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs to replace the ones that are automated, but it remains speculative.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#33

Post by infogulch »

hermannj314 wrote: post #10
jupiterrising wrote: post #5

[deleted]

The current system in America provides a disincentive to work. Social programs generally are not considered as income and do not preclude you from being eligible for other social programs (i.e. the benefits stack). This creates the unfortunate situation that some people that don't work at all receive more annual income (in kind) from the government than their working neighbors. It works out to nearly $60k per year in…

The solution to beat this problem is to reduce the benefits in a gradient as people make more of their own income. Here's the key: Benefits must be reduced more slowly than the increase in income. I.e. at all possible incomes, it must always be the case that if an individual were to make $1 more income, benefit reduction is significantly less than $1.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#34

Post by Lawtonfogle »

beat wrote: post #9
jupiterrising wrote: post #5

[deleted]

"Breeding for welfare" is a myth. Children are a major economic burden, even with welfare subsidies. That said, there's no reason offhand to provide basic income to minors. Parents can choose to have as many children as they want, at their own expense. One of the key advantages of basic income is getting rid of the complexities and irregularities of the current welfare model. Subsidies for children are one of those c…

One solution would be to not give basic income for children, but to give it to children once they are working age (~16) or when they become an independent adult (18). Everyone gets a certain amount to provide a very basic life on, where they get to decide how their money is spent. If they rather spend their BI on children instead of some other area of life, then that is their choice. If they want both, then they should continue getting a job to acquire funds beyond the BI amount.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#35

Post by ThomPete »

chrisco255 wrote: post #32
beat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much that there won't be a labor market, but rather than radical changes to the labor market are accelerating. Two centuries ago, well over 90% of income earners were farmers. Today, it's like 2% and dropping. But unemployment didn't become a more massive problem than it was then. Labor became available for other purposes, enabling the industrial revolution.

We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently. Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services. There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs…

What you and others get wrong in that analysis is that you don't take into account that just one algorithm have to learn something then all the others can do the same.

Point machine learning towards a problem and things that normally was cumbersome and took several people to do is suddenly done in the fraction of a second.

It's like claiming that if an alien race landed on planet earth with superior skills and superior technology it wouldn't effect the human ability to survive because we endured battles with other species before. We can't use history to teach us much since the opponent is different.

This is not speculation anymore. This is unfolding right in front of us and we better take it serious.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#36

Post by chrisco255 »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #27
hermannj314 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current system in America provides a disincentive to work. Social programs generally are not considered as income and do not preclude you from being eligible for other social programs (i.e. the benefits stack). This creates the unfortunate situation that some people that don't work at all receive more annual income (in kind) from the government than their working neighbors. It works out to nearly $60k per year in…

Absolutely - and UBI would free people who want to work from having to find dead-end jobs. They would have the financial freedom to pursue education, volunteering or educational unpaid internships.

This idea of a "dead-end job" is foreign to me. Only privileged, spoiled people talk like this. All job experience is valuable and will teach you lessons if you let it. If you can't look at even an entry-level job as a chance to gather experience and use it as a stepping stone to something better, and you'd rather sit back and be idle and privileged with some welfare check over working then you're the problem, not the economy.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#38

Post by notahacker »

ThomPete wrote: post #28
nightski wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that ever happens (which I highly doubt, there is little to no evidence) it is a very long ways off. Hundreds of years at a minimum.

There is a lot of evidence that this is how things are moving. What most people get wrong about a job is that they confuse the human doing them with the job they human is doing. Most if not all jobs only require you to be a subset of a human to actually be useful. And so there is a general misconception that computers would need a general intelligence to take over a job when in fact most of the jobs we do require onl…

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters!

Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an awful lot better than the cost of hiring unskilled labour. I mean, the core role of the average fast food service employee in exchanging cash for heated product was rendered obsolete by the heated coin-operated dispensing machine more than a century ago, but it turns out that they're also quite good at upselling to larger items, dealing with unusual requests, getting rid of unruly customers and removing stains from locations you'd need a robot with really impressive articulated limbs and computer vision to adequately deal with. And they don't cost very much per month compared with specialist business process software licenses, never mind hardware. So fast food vendors, with some of the most obsessive attention to process optimization imaginable and some of the least highly-regarded employees, continue to be huge employers

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#39

Post by stormbrew »

chrisco255 wrote: post #32
beat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much that there won't be a labor market, but rather than radical changes to the labor market are accelerating. Two centuries ago, well over 90% of income earners were farmers. Today, it's like 2% and dropping. But unemployment didn't become a more massive problem than it was then. Labor became available for other purposes, enabling the industrial revolution.

We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently. Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services. There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs…

It should probably be noted that unemployment rates then are not necessarily comparable to unemployment rates now. They were collected differently and less perfectly, as the entire concept was quite new as of the 30s afaik.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#40

Post by throwaway2048 »

golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.
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