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Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

nytimes.com

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Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#151

Post by dionidium »

drabiega wrote: post #148
dionidium wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent's POV is a pretty common one. Just about anybody can get a job making minimum wage, which will bring home at least (7.25 × 40) × 4 = $1,160 each month (more in some places). That is enough money in most places to rent a basic apartment and buy plenty of food to eat. Plenty of people in that bracket also have cable TV and a car and a smart phone. It's not easy and it's not all that much fun , but you'r…

> Just about anybody can get a job making minimum wage It can be hard to see because the problem is so unevenly distributed through the social fabric, but this is just objectively not true.

You should read "anybody" here in the same way as if I'd said, "Just about anybody can walk across a room."

That's also just objectively not true, but when we're talking about the population as a whole, then it's an OK proxy for the complete truth.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#152

Post by drabiega »

dionidium wrote: post #151
drabiega wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just about anybody can get a job making minimum wage It can be hard to see because the problem is so unevenly distributed through the social fabric, but this is just objectively not true.

You should read "anybody" here in the same way as if I'd said, "Just about anybody can walk across a room." That's also just objectively not true, but when we're talking about the population as a whole, then it's an OK proxy for the complete truth.

I agree in general, I just don't think it's a good enough proxy in this case.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#153

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #121
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if it's more than 100% of their income :) are YOU prepared to pay let's say an 80% income tax and a 25% sales tax for example ?

I'm prepared to pay whatever is necessary, while also contributing to whatever tech is needed to drive costs down to reduce the monthly government-wide nut needed to pay for entitlements. Food too expensive? Robotics farming. More energy needed? Scale up solar, wind, and utility scale battery storage installations. Moar cheap transportation? Scale up bicycle and electric self-driving car manufacturing. It _can_ be do…

I can buy the tech side of things and if you think about this - just about everyone's standard of living today, including the poor, is way higher than in the past which can in part be attributed to technological advances.

On the monetary side of things - it's very easy to 'proclaim' that you're willing to sacrifice your standard of living for the benefit of the others. When it comes to concrete implementations however, things typically don't work that way, ppl tend to bust their asses when there's concrete material compensation involved, otherwise - not so much. And if you take any material incentive to work away by providing free money you get multi-generation welfare families which we have in abundance as is. One can argue that these folks would be better off without the free money killing their will to work - to 'organize atoms and electrons' for ANYONE's benefit, yours included.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#154

Post by skybrian »

1123581321 wrote: post #46
skybrian wrote: post #21

This article is yet another example of binary thinking. Basic income could be started at any amount. It won't pay the rent, but an extra $100 a month makes a difference for people living on the edge. The first $100/month will make a bigger difference than anything added on top of that.

The problem is that a very small number of people are on that $100/month edge, a percentage of them will increase their expenses until they are as desperate as they used to be, and the increased taxes to pay this money will put others on the edge. When considering BI, or any large money transfer program, you must consider the entire system, not just the beneficial effects on a small number of people for the first few…

I agree with you that a proper study would have to take all that into account.

But since we're just hand-waving here, I'll argue that the point where you're paying, say, $50/month more in taxes than you get in benefits is likely to be at a high enough income that $50/month doesn't make nearly as big a difference to your life.

Also, there is an insurance effect. A guaranteed $100 a month (even if you lose your job or have to move) provides more financial security than a larger amount that you can't necessarily rely on. And folks who aren't good at saving money (for whatever reason) will benefit more from having a bit more financial security during bad times, even if increased taxes means you don't make quite as much money in a good year.

Sometimes when people talk about this, it sounds like they think any amount of financial security is bad for poor people - it provides the wrong incentives. But that seems backwards to me; when you're desperate, you're more likely to make decisions you regret later.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#155

Post by vec »

dctoedt wrote: post #116
funkysquid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He couldn't hold down a job and regularly missed appointments." I think this is part of the problem - right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment.

> right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment. Historically, that would be an incredible luxury. (I'm interpreting "make an appointment" as a figure of speech that encompasses, e.g., sowing crops at the right time of year, harvesting when t…

Historically speaking, it's an incredible luxury to expect all of your children to survive past infancy. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a basic expectation for citizens of an advanced modern nation.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#156

Post by mason240 »

drabiega wrote: post #144
mason240 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So the "cost of UBI" is clearly not $10k times (number of humans in the USA), but more like $10k times (number of eligible people making under $10k). It is "$10k times (number of humans in the USA)," because the "number of eligible people" IS the number of humans in the USA.

You left out the "making under $10k" part, which is the whole point.

I didn't leave it out because UBI isn't means tested or income based.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#157

Post by vehementi »

mason240 wrote: post #156
drabiega wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out the "making under $10k" part, which is the whole point.

I didn't leave it out because UBI isn't means tested or income based.

They're not explicitly eligible, but rather implicitly eligible, because of the tax increase on the top end to cancel out the $10k they don't need and to pay for any gap that still needs closing after we redirect money from existing systems.

The people who as a result of this policy and the taxes net money is small, and that is the real cost. Not $3T which is a bald faced lie.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#158

Post by 1123581321 »

skybrian wrote: post #154
1123581321 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a very small number of people are on that $100/month edge, a percentage of them will increase their expenses until they are as desperate as they used to be, and the increased taxes to pay this money will put others on the edge. When considering BI, or any large money transfer program, you must consider the entire system, not just the beneficial effects on a small number of people for the first few…

I agree with you that a proper study would have to take all that into account. But since we're just hand-waving here, I'll argue that the point where you're paying, say, $50/month more in taxes than you get in benefits is likely to be at a high enough income that $50/month doesn't make nearly as big a difference to your life. Also, there is an insurance effect. A guaranteed $100 a month (even if you lose your job or…

I am totally in favor of financial stability for low-income people; I just am not in favor of initiatives that have bad unintended effects like harming people and reducing the wealth that makes long-term cash transfers possible.

Theoretically, you can only tax people in such a way that they never fall below the $75,000 a year happiness threshold and use the money to bring people closer to $75,000 a year. In practice (and this is not hand-waving, it is the history of the United States) it's so much easier to pay for social programs with regressive consumption taxes (food, fuel) that they end up high enough to cause hardships. $100/month for, say, half the adults in the United States would be $144 billion, about the size of the federal education budget. Re-arranging the tax structure to accommodate this would not be easy, and I think you have to assume that at least some of the additional tax burden would fall on people who need all the money they currently earn, and on the people who receive the benefit. Likely, a high percentage of it would. I don't think an assumption that political capital would be spent to keep the tax progressive, since there are higher-priority proposals in existence that do this for Social Security/FICA/Medicare, and even those have side-effects most don't care to recognize.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#159

Post by cousin_it »

robotresearcher wrote: post #81
cousin_it wrote: post #42

At a minimum, we need free universal healthcare that shouldn't be replaced with basic income, because poor sick people often need more expensive healthcare than a reasonable basic income can pay for. Similar for education, the current system of loans just sucks compared to universal free education which was achieved by the frigging USSR. Also it seems pointless to give basic income to well-off people. On top of free…

> On top of free healthcare and education, why don't we just top up everyone's income to the equivalent of the minimum wage? That strongly incentivizes under-reporting income. One of the strong points of universal income is that it is relatively easy to administer. And well-off people would be taxed more so as to return all or most of their payments. It's not pointless, since it serves as a safety net the instant the…

Yes, fair point.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#160

Post by russelluresti »

In every debate, there are people on the wrong side of history. Mr. Porter, welcome to that list. Granted, the point that it won't happen today is true enough, but it is an inevitability (assuming we don't blow ourselves up beforehand), so it's important to start thinking about it now.

What frustrates me the most with these articles is that they don't base any of their information on actual fact. Take, for example, the argument of disincentivizing work. This is one of things that seems "logical" if you're a pessimist or an asshole, but past experiments with basic income have proven it to be untrue (look at the "Mincome" experiment in Manitoba for proof).

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