11–20 of 214 posts
Whether this happens 20 years from now or 100 years or 1000 years from now is beside the point. It will happen. And therefore thinking about and preparing for this future is worthwhile.
There are some good points in here. However, what I think the author misses is that we are within reach of a post-scarcity economy, at which point all of those historical economic references go out the window (since nearly all economic theory assumes scarcity). That possibility makes a UBI experiment very worthwhile to me. I don't think we're there today or anything like that, but it may be within our lifetimes that…
People like to trade stuff. This means there will always be things people want to trade. This means money, commerce, and scarcity aren't going anywhere.
The post-scarcity folks seem to assume that there is some basic set of things: food, shelter, healthcare ... that once we have, we'll be "done"
It's never going to work that way.
Let me put this another way. We live in a world with millions, perhaps tens of millions of millionaires. Folks that if they wanted would never have to work again.
Do these people stop working? Do they stop accumulating and trading things? Is their participation in the economy so drastically different than others?
The poorest person in the U.S. is living a better life than the richest person alive 1,000 years ago. Do they live in any fashion similar to those folks? Would those folks, if they could see 1,000 years into the future, guess at how the common many would behave, given all the things he has?
Post scarcity is a nice sentiment, it just doesn't work.
Right now SF is not even capable to host 450 homeless arriving every year. What would you do if that number of people arrived every day or every hour?
I struggled with this example on the RMI/RSA in France.
>So you could argue that the “RMI/RSA” is basic income, except maybe for the paperware frictions that it inflicts on those who are eligible and that could be removed thanks to technology. Accordingly, those in favor of basic income should pay attention to the “RMI/RSA” and draw appropriate lessons: it’s not simple (at all); it has adverse economic effects; and it is widely denounced, notably on the right, as “assistance” (assistanat) that deprives those who claim the benefit from any incentive to look for a job, thus making them live off the middle class taxpayers.
The author holds this example up as why UBI might fail. But the reasons listed why the RMI/RSA failed are all either driving forces for UBI or solved by UBI.
1) RMI/RSA is complicated to administer due to high burden of proof for the individual to demonstrate no income. UBI solves this by allowing everyone to have an income, not just those without a salary.
2) RMI/RSA has adverse economic effects because it disincentivizes people to seek jobs. Part of why people are thinking UBI could be a good idea is there will be fewer jobs in the future and so disincentivization to look for a job for a subset of the population is partially a good thing.
3) RMI/RSA is politically difficult. That's why people involved in the UBI movement are running private, small scale experiments. They want to prove/disprove their hypotheses to provide evidence in favor of or against UBI.
> You have to fill in many papers, prove that you don’t have sufficient income or any valuable property, go through many humiliating and intrusive controls. If you want to earn (a small amount of) money without working, then you must endure it all. In most cases it is necessary to seek the help of a social worker to carry out the procedure in its entirety. Funny how the article zeroes in on this as a criticism of bas…
This is exactly the reason I want basic income. I want nobody to feel like someone else is cheating the system. I hear a bunch of people (even old people who are on medicare and social security!) who will talk trash about "welfare queens".
It is not like we can't afford it. There will be short term pain, of course but I think we will have greater solidarity. This is good for the 0.01% as well because if you are doing really well, you want to keep the ship steady. (Well to be cynical, you could try to keep everyone else fighting amongst themselves but any arsonist will tell you that a fire once started won't spare the people who started it.)
Entrepreneurship is at about 14% working age adults in the US (1). I would say that the number of people who would be entrepreneurs is higher, but limited by risk. Entrepreneurship is very high risk. Reducing that risk would enable more people to become entrepreneurs (a good thing). Removing the risk that being an entrepreneur will make you loose the shirt off your back, will allow more people to start companies.
It is not limited to entrepreneurship. How many more amazing painters would there be? Writers? How much more creative common good would there be in the world if basic needs (via UBI) was taken care of?
None of the current social risk insurance, are directly reducing this loss to us all.
(1) http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reache...
>> "The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as professionals."
The only reason this is a problem is political. We have the NHS but we also have private options - get rid of those. Then there would be more staff available for the NHS, a huge some of money would not be wasted on locum staff, and therefore more money would be available to the NHS. Some of that could be used for funding and some could be used to pay staff a fairer wage. The fiscal austerity argument is nonsense. We have plenty of money - it's just spent poorly. We don't need to spend £30bn on nuclear missiles we'll never use (and if we ever do need to use them it'll be too late anyway). We don't need to spend £30-40bn on the military. Of course defunding these things is political suicide but you can't tell me we can't afford decent healthcare when we're wasting money on missiles we don't need, a huge military we don't need, and locum staff which shouldn't be a thing in the first place when you have a public health care system.
How about immigration? Once Basic Income is introduced in one area, people from all over the world will start moving there. Right now SF is not even capable to host 450 homeless arriving every year. What would you do if that number of people arrived every day or every hour?
I don't think immigration laws would permit that. For one, you couldn't "just move" to the US like that.
Within the EU it could become an interesting problem if some countries did this and others didn't. I suspect that if anyone were to try this there'll be some limitations at first, like you have to have citizenship, or prove legal residency for longer than "since the past few minutes".
There is a lot in this article I disagree with but let me focus on the NHS argument. >> "The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious cir…
How about immigration? Once Basic Income is introduced in one area, people from all over the world will start moving there. Right now SF is not even capable to host 450 homeless arriving every year. What would you do if that number of people arrived every day or every hour?
> people from all over the world will start moving there. I don't think immigration laws would permit that. For one, you couldn't "just move" to the US like that. Within the EU it could become an interesting problem if some countries did this and others didn't. I suspect that if anyone were to try this there'll be some limitations at first, like you have to have citizenship, or prove legal residency for longer than "…