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A Guaranteed Income for Every American

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Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#71

Post by danbruc »

blazespin wrote: post #60
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 instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half" That doesn't work. The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. Increasing minimum wages will only just accelerate automation and exacerbate the problem. My concern ab…

The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way.

That is only a real problem if the population does not keep up with this development. I can not tell whether requirements are (now) growing faster then capabilities but both certainly grew ever since. The other thing is that it seems to me that - at least to some extend - the capabilities are the controlling factor here. The economy can demand whatever it needs, if it is not available the economy will have to adopt.

Increasing minimum wages will only just accelerate automation and exacerbate the problem.

I did not mean to increase minimum wages more and more just to make any job viable, this of course only leads to inflation. I meant to let non-viable [EDIT: This read »no viable« before.] jobs die or automate. If people are not willing to pay enough for getting their lawn mowed - not sure if that is a good example - to make a living from it, then there never was a market for lawn mowing. Subsidizing it by the rest of the population with government benefits of any kind is not a solution.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#72

Post by crdoconnor »

trothamel wrote: post #69
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 t…

>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.

"We'll just automate your job away" is one of the biggest empty threats along with "we'll just fire everybody, causing mass unemployment".

Employers fear a rising minimum wage because it eats into their profits. That fear translates into histrionics, threats and utopianistic predictions about the near future state of robot technology.

In the end when it happens they just deal with it and end up posting lower profits. As is the case in Seattle.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#74

Post by danbruc »

gizmo686 wrote: post #63
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 uni…

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.

What does inefficiency matter if there is not enough work for everyone anyway? It may be a problem during the transition but I am not sure about that. But in the end two people working five hours each seems a better and fairer solution to me than one working eight hours and giving half of what he produced to the other guy for free.

Minimum wages distort the market.

Why? I am not arguing for arbitrarily high minimum wages, just high enough to be able to make a living. Working for less makes no sense - if you work full time and can not live from the income, what is the point? It's exploitation, slavery if you like. If the state provides benefits to make it a livable income, then the tax payers are just subsidizing your employer or customer. I am here not worrying about all the edge case, being frech out of school with little experience, already having enough money and voluntarily working for little or no money and whatnot.

The "universality" has two components. One is that there are no strings attached (eg. you are not required to be seeking employment).

This is feature and bug. It will for example remove incentives to get a job but it will also allow you to take time to develop a new product or something like that. I am neutral on that.

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.

I am not sure what you want to say here, seems like it does no harm and provides no benefits.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#75

Post by mac01021 »

ericd wrote: post #46
mac01021 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this adds up. Here ( https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... ) is federal spending for 2015. It shows a total federal spending of 3.8 trillion dollars. This is all spending, including 0.5 trillion on the military, 0.2 trillion in interest on debt, and tons of other spending on things that are not welfare or social-safety-net programs. Meanwhile, $13k * 300m people, results in an…

He did specify certain caveats that would reduce the cost vs your estimate - adults over 21, and it would reduce as you made more, to a floor of 6500/yr. But yeah, probably still missing some piece.

I agree. (see my edit). I would love to be even more wrong - to the point where the proposal outlined in the article is clearly viable. So, if anyone has solid numbers demonstrating that, please do share.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#76

Post by hkmurakami »

maxerickson wrote: post #33
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…

Yeah, it won't. The $10,000 left after the mandatory health payments would be a cut for many social security recipients, and many of those same people are also probably getting more than $3,000 a year in health care out of Medicare. Similar problems with Medicaid, it's worth a lot more than $3,000 to the people that are getting it (mostly because children). This is basically taking the desire to cut entitlement progr…

Not only will the voting public oppose many of these cuts, corporations (and lobbying groups representing professionals such as doctors, or AARP) will oppose them. And the latter is more ominous to me since they have the lobbying muscle in place.

>create/fund residency programs

Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice? I am not optimistic about this given the lobbying groups' strong track record of protecting and furthering their self interest.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#77

Post by maxerickson »

hkmurakami wrote: post #76
maxerickson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it won't. The $10,000 left after the mandatory health payments would be a cut for many social security recipients, and many of those same people are also probably getting more than $3,000 a year in health care out of Medicare. Similar problems with Medicaid, it's worth a lot more than $3,000 to the people that are getting it (mostly because children). This is basically taking the desire to cut entitlement progr…

Not only will the voting public oppose many of these cuts, corporations (and lobbying groups representing professionals such as doctors, or AARP) will oppose them. And the latter is more ominous to me since they have the lobbying muscle in place. >create/fund residency programs Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and…

If the public at large tells those lobbies to go screw, Congress will listen.

So start talking about how we need more doctors in the US.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#78

Post by charlieflowers »

arbre wrote: post #73

Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically can't afford anything with the basic income?

Not sure why this person is being downvoted. It seems like a perfectly logical question. If there's a good answer for it, people should be posting that here instead of downvoting.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#79

Post by Cozumel »

Something I haven't seen anyone else mention, if UBI is introduced won't that cause prices to increase? For example, supermarket 'own brands' are usually cheaper than branded products, but if everyone is getting a minimum income then those prices won't need to be as cheap, just cheaper than alternatives.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#80

Post by danbruc »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #68
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...

That is of course valuable to other people or the society and it may also be valuable to you because you enjoy doing it. But that is not what I meant. When you do some work to make a living, then you have to earn enough to live on the income. What is the point of working full time and then starving anyway? What you can do voluntarily is not affected in any way, you can make paintings and write open source software for no money as long as you want.
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