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A Guaranteed Income for Every American

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Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#61

Post by sambe »

brians wrote: post #31
throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare." How the hell does that happen politically? I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs in the stat…

UBI isn't a plausible replacement for those, because extreme medical care, and care for the disabled, is priced so far out of range with the rest. I expect part of the steps towards UBI to involve further evolution of our systems for allocating those resources.

But insurance for those isn't.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#62

Post by gizmo »

danbruc wrote: post #41

Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then ha…

I think these are exactly the right observations. It's no coincidence that a lot of advocacy for the UBI comes from the far right who want to use it as a pretext to dismantle the welfare state. Conventional social programs are not perfect, but they exist to address specific issues and mostly do their job well. The efficiency gains to be made here are minimal. The real cost savings are made by simply paying the needy less.

Just look at Murray's proposal. All social programs get eliminated and now a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Impossible; a cruel joke. An elderly person on disability? They get half the money a healthy 22yo couple gets. This isn't a serious proposal.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#63

Post by gizmo686 »

danbruc wrote: post #41

Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then ha…

>Well then cut down working hours.

This introduces inefficiency. One worker working 8 hours is more useful than 2 workers working 4 hours. While this might end up being a good trade off (as workers might be willing to sell 4 hours of work for less than half the price of 8 hours), attempting to legislate this would be a market distortion.

>Then have sufficient minimum wages. Minimum wages distort the market.

>Also universality, what is the point?

The "universality" has two components. One is that there are no strings attached (eg. you are not required to be seeking employment). The other one is that it is not dependent on your income. As I explained in another comment, making a BI decrease as ones income increases is equivalent to a progressive tax. As we already have a progressive tax system, we can achieve the same result by modify our tax brackets, which is mathematically equivalent but easier to understand.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#64

Post by leereeves »

Tycho wrote: post #53
leereeves wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good reasons to think it won't. People continue to work after they have enough money not to; people making $40K per year go to night school to try to increase their income. Most people continue to want more after their basic needs are met. And beyond money, work can give a sense of purpose and a connection to other people.

But we're not talking about 'most' people. We're talking about all people. What about the people who think to themselves, I don't want to work, I want to live off welfare. Now there will be more of those people (especially since technology satisfies more and more leisure needs for just the price of an internet connection). Also as people grow up in such a society, they don't have that driving motive in the back of th…

> But if you think of the need to be productive (for survival) as a force/pressure that has shaped...

That's why UBI is only now becoming a possibility.

The need for everyone to be productive is diminishing. The labor force participation rate has dropped enormously since 2000.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#65

Post by dwc »

danbruc wrote: post #41

Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then ha…

You're overthinking it a bit. What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough.

Whether this "solves" anything depends. Initial experiments are very limited, but fairly positive. Giving money to people in rural India may not translate too well to giving money to people in New Delhi, much less people in Cleveland. But I think it's worth a try to see how things work out.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#66

Post by sambe »

Tycho wrote: post #53
leereeves wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good reasons to think it won't. People continue to work after they have enough money not to; people making $40K per year go to night school to try to increase their income. Most people continue to want more after their basic needs are met. And beyond money, work can give a sense of purpose and a connection to other people.

But we're not talking about 'most' people. We're talking about all people. What about the people who think to themselves, I don't want to work, I want to live off welfare. Now there will be more of those people (especially since technology satisfies more and more leisure needs for just the price of an internet connection). Also as people grow up in such a society, they don't have that driving motive in the back of th…

I would expect them to get bored and find something interesting to do. Could be quite a positive. Regardless, most existing small studies and surveys show few people behave like this or intend to.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#67

Post by dcosson »

yulaow wrote: post #11
Roritharr wrote: post #3

Once again no answer to the main Question: What to do with people that blow their UBI by the 2nd of each month on SAAS Startups? Let them starve? Go without Shelter?

I have another (hope not stupid) fundamental question: do we have to give people a different UBI based on their location (aka cost-of-life)? If no, it will be pretty hard to find a right value. If yes, should we also change it as soon as they relocate?

I think this is a critical problem to solve with UBI. If you give people in expensive areas more money, more people might crowd into cities, intensifying the affordability crises in places like SF and NYC. Plus there are strong incentives to cheat the system and lie about your address, or even to live homeless in the most expensive cities to collect the higher UBI payments, etc.

So ideally we'd avoid this and everyone would get the same amount of money. But, if we continue to let city prices shoot up, we might end up in a place where people want a job but can't get one because they live somewhere cheap and can't afford to move to the city where all the jobs are on their smaller basic income payment.

With or without basic income, we're clearly on an unsustainable path of letting cities get so much more expensive so quickly.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#68

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

danbruc wrote: post #41

Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then ha…

>there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living

Artwork, open source software, charity work...

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#69

Post by trothamel »

danbruc wrote: post #41

Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then ha…

The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. The argument is that at some point, the skill level required to justify an income becomes so high, large portions of the populace become unable to meet that bar.

You can't simply cut down working hours, since the problem isn't that there aren't enough jobs for people - it's that there are people who are unable to be productive enough to fill a job.

The UBI gradually transfers responsibility for someone from the government to an employer, as opposed to a minimum wage + welfare system, where the transfer is a lot more sharp.

(I haven't decided if I agree with this, and how plausible it actually is - but I think this is the argument for why UBIs are necessary, and necessary now.)

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#70

Post by maxerickson »

gizmo686 wrote: post #57
dclowd9901 wrote: post #35

Not a fan of the decreasing benefits at $60k. That creates a huge donut hole for those making 59k and then get a 3% promotion. All of a sudden they've take a paycut. Make it a flat income. (Also, should be closer to $15 or $18k a year).

This proposal decreases benefits between $30k and $60k. The total delta in benefits would be $6.5k. Assuming this decrease occurs linearly, this comes out to a marginal tax of 21%. The current marginal tax rate for someone (unmarried) making between 37k and 91k is 25% [0] This means that over this $30k interval, people would be facing about a 46% effective marginal tax [1]. The current top bracket is only 39.6% and d…

It would be really dumb to stack the taper on top of existing tax rates.

Which I guess doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.

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