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A Guaranteed Income for Every American

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Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#191

Post by leepowers »

nugget wrote: post #167
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…

We can have either basic income or open borders/mass immigration -- but I don't see how we can have both.

Any UBI plan would need to require some form of citizenship verification. E-verify to get your 13k. We could then dial up or dial down the number of naturalized citizens per year to make the UBI program sustainable.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#192

Post by zanny »

harryf wrote: post #130
zanny wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get there by talking about it, and persuading people about it. There is no magical easy to way to bring about social change unless its profitable. And I'm not sure there are enough landlords foaming at the mouth for the legitimately juicy prospect of tenants with guaranteed paychecks to pay rent to push the issue against the tide of establishment profiteering resistance. But rather than talk about it on HN (like…

The consequences of making this change are huge and IMHO hard to fully predict - or at least it's hard to have a meaningful debate about what the impact could be. Walmart for example could have a disaster on their hands - a whole swath of jobs no one really wants to do could quickly find themselves lacking staff. And that's just one example

The Walmart example is a great one of why UBI is a good idea, though. Today they only have employees exclusively due to the "work or die" negotiation position of the workers there. With a UBI, Walmart will only have people filling positions when they offer wages that, at market value, justify the work being done.

Which would also coincidentally mean treating your employees better lets you pay them less, which sounds like a desirable natural motivating force in an economy.

I do not think anyone would argue UBI would not cause a dramatic shift in everything, and as a result the only way to really implement it is slowly - IE, you start people on small cash payments per month, and scale it up to (by most examples) the poverty level over the course of years or even a decade. That way, everyone has plenty of time to react to the economic consequences without a panic, in much the same way states are raising the minimum wage to $15 over 5 years.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#193

Post by newjersey »

wildmusings wrote: post #186
fzeroracer wrote: post #164

I am all for Basic Income but the way the author wants to implement it would be a disaster. My mother is fully disabled and unable to work as a result of her stroke and she relies on Medicaid, Food Stamps and SSI to live. $13000 per person would be lower than what she gets right now and that's without considering the insurance issues. These changes would quite literally kill or leave homeless a large amount of Americ…

> If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area. There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the…

> There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the natural ebb and flow that keeps the cost of living reasonable. And can you imagine what a CoL adjusted UBI for San Francisco would look like? A massive ripoff of the rest of the country.

I don't know what the solution is here but if in this hypothetical reality, the garden state didn't supplement but California did then I'd move to California in a heartbeat. I am sure I'd be broke even with any supplement in San Diego but at least I'll be broke in San Diego.

Edit: I cannot support any discrimination in basic income based on "ability to work". I'd rather the whole thing fail. I'd rather we never have basic income implemented at all than this bastardization go through. Personally, I'm all for death panels. We should not try to keep everyone alive at all costs. If I get in a freak accident and it'd cost me $10M+ to keep me alive with little to no chance of a full recovery, please let me die.

Something we need to discuss separately from universal basic income is the need to reduce cost in healthcare. I'd gladly support expanding Medicare to everyone without having to qualify. We would need significantly greater penalties for Medicare fraud and add incentives for whistleblowers and make it easier to report fraud. I'm OK with "lite" Medicare that drops expensive procedures and lets patients suffering from rare cases fending for themselves in order to cut costs especially if there is little chance that the patient will ever recover fully.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#194

Post by sokoloff »

danbruc wrote: post #169
sokoloff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with letting the work be done at a market rate lower than the current (ideally abolished) minimum wage? I'd pay someone $5/hr to pull weeds, but I won't pay them $10 or $15/hr. Now, in which system can a neighbor earn an extra $20 a week for a morning of work? In which system does my front garden look nicer from the sidewalk? Someone (probably a teen) gets some walking around money, the whole neighborhoo…

I mentioned that in another comment, there are certainly a lot of cases like your example where it makes no or not much sense to apply a minimum wage. I want the minimum wage to target specifically normal (full time) employment. An employer should not be able to pocket most of the money for say selling relatively expensive cloths but pay shitty wages to its sewers. You might argue that employees are free to negotiate…

I think that devolves into "I can hire Matt, the neighbor kid and pay him $5/hr, but I can't hire Matt Inc, the landscape company, because they aren't allowed to pay Matt [the neighbor kid] $5/hr"

All of which perpetuates the cash/grey economy (and the off-shoring of garment-making jobs in your example).

The thing about UBI is that it allows employees to turn down bad economic deals without starving. Sure, you can't live in a 2000 ft^2 house, drive a new car, eat and party out all the time, but you probably don't have to take a job with ridiculously bad conditions just so you can buy a can of beans or Ramen.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#195

Post by jdavis703 »

mentos wrote: post #113
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…

Can anyone explain what planets would have to align for a UBI to replace all of these programs?

States will probably have to be allowed to opt-out of the current system, and then implement their own version.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#196

Post by apo »

Maybe a silly question, but why $13,000? Why not $5,000? Why not $20,000?

How does the risk/reward tradeoff of this proposal change as that magic number changes?

Also:

> 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.

What about education funding? What does corporate welfare entail? Defense spending, for example?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#197

Post by gnaritas »

danbruc wrote: post #105
trothamel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If there is a job that does not pay for a living, then there are two possible reasons. Customers actually value the work enough and pay enough for the product but the business owners take the money. In this case there should be a minimum wage cutting into the profits of the business owners making it a viable job. On the other hand customers may not value the work enough and the job is just not viable, there is no mar…

> If we are in a situation where a part of the population is plainly unable to perform any work that pays for a living and we are unable to improve their skills, then we are really is some kind of trouble.

And that's exactly the situation UBI is intended to solve because that's where automation is taking us. In the near future, only the very intelligent or machines will work because the machines will put most people out of work leaving only room for the very skilled.

> The obvious solution would be to not get into this situation in the first place, to heavily invest into education and training.

That is not a solution because it assumes wrongly that everyone is capable of performing knowledge work; they aren't. A very large minority of people simply won't be able to do anything worth paying them for, they won't have the capacity to do anything we can't get machines to do for far cheaper. When the machines take over blue collar work, and they will, the economy will have to change to something like UBI for it to continue working.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#198

Post by Consultant32452 »

azernik wrote: post #124
arbre wrote: post #73

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

The price of everything would rise proportionally to the amount of consumption added to the economy - for example, if you funded this entirely by printing money, you'd get a combination of inflation and an equal amount of money going to everyone, causing a redistribution effect on its own. e.g. if you gave everyone $10,000 of newly-printed money, inflation would be very high, but unless it's 100% or more (doubtful) a…

If you funded this with taxes (presumably on the wealthy) wouldn't you likewise see a deflationary affect on luxury goods?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#199

Post by fzeroracer »

wildmusings wrote: post #186
fzeroracer wrote: post #164

I am all for Basic Income but the way the author wants to implement it would be a disaster. My mother is fully disabled and unable to work as a result of her stroke and she relies on Medicaid, Food Stamps and SSI to live. $13000 per person would be lower than what she gets right now and that's without considering the insurance issues. These changes would quite literally kill or leave homeless a large amount of Americ…

> If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area. There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the…

The problem of course with that argument is that people also need to move into higher-cost areas in order to find jobs for certain industries. If there was no regional adjustment that encourages individuals to stay put. Poor people congregate in low-cost areas with low job opportunities.

A CoL adjustment for San Francisco isn't the problem, but rather the fact that San Francisco costs so much to begin with.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#200

Post by maxerickson »

chimeracoder wrote: post #140
maxerickson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I think if there were more doctors more of them would end up working outside of hospitals. It's certainly the case around here that doctors are moving under the hospital umbrella. This means that providers have to make up the difference in their contracts with private insurers, which is why they can't tell you how much a particular procedure will cost you - they really don't know, because it has nothing to d…

> It's certainly the case around here that doctors are moving under the hospital umbrella. That's part of a trend that's a few decades old, and which has accelerated in the last 5-10 years. It's not a function of the number of physicians; physicians are selling their practices to hospitals because they can no longer sustain themselves in private practice. > I don't think the hospitals are forced to keep their prices…

From what I understand, they often have no idea what services cost. This is different than not having an internal price. And there shouldn't be external factors that prevent them from measuring it.

Or are you saying that they are contractually bound to avoid tracking costs?

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