I don't think UBI will fix any current welfare systems. It doesn't fix anything. It changes everything.
I believe it can be done gradually. But no one should expect to preserve the status quo in long term. Any attempt to implement it should consider this: UBI will change our society forever. Hopefully for the better, but not necessarily.
Enough with Basic Income
161–170 of 214 posts
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
What gets me about your article is your utter lack of willingness to allow people to attempt to improve something. Maybe BI won't work, and any money invested in it will be wasted. Maybe BI will work, and it will eventually solve many problems with today's Western societies. Who are you to tell the rest of us we're not even allowed to try? Is it your money being invested in the attempt? Will it negatively impact you?…
I sincerely regret that the US is currently missing critical opportunities such as that to deploy a state-of-the-art universal health insurance, while most of the energy of those who could support that effort is dedicated to discussing basic income. Also I point out that real-life enactments such as the French RMI, even though they succeeded at providing critical resources to those in need, are under extraordinary fi…
Universal healthcare is probably a good idea. And while it is a form of basic income, it feels fairly orthogonal to it politically.
I'm not really sure why an "old age and unemployment" security net is intrinsically more politically stable than a "basic income" social security net. You need some deal of political cleverness to implement both.
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#163He is spot on with those "ad hominim attacks". Based on what is written on HN people in that group haven't got a clue about politics. So tell me again why that shouldn't be taken into account when judging their position?
Please don't comment like this here. Coming to this community just to diss your fellow community members adds no information and is in bad taste. If you know more than others, a good way to comment is to respectfully teach them some of what you know. If you can't or don't want to do that, it might be better not to comment; certainly not to call names.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473341 and marked it off-topic.
Edit: Actually, since your account has a pattern of breaking the rules here, and we've warned you multiple times before, we've banned it.
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#164> but I don't think things could get much worse than where we are now. I suggest reading books and history to understand how stupid what you've said is. Take that as an insult if you wish.
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines, despite multiple warnings. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com with a promise to remain scrupulously civil in the future.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473529 and marked it off-topic.
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI doesn't disincentivize work. If I told you that I would give you $10k/year unconditionally, would you quit your day job? What if you were currently unemployed, would you stop looking for a job? There is no reason to as my payment to you doesn't depend on if you get a job or not.
If you give everyone $1000 a month (to round the numbers) now the work of someone who makes $1200 a month is only worth $200 (as one can make $1000 just by idling). Would this person want to work for $200 a month? This is a major disincentive of work.
What tasks do you consider "work"?
Child care? Elder care? Volunteering?
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#166"there’s a libertarian ideological bias in Silicon Valley that seems to turn people into ignorant morons when it comes to social state-related issues. As engineers, some don’t even get the political stakes." "So enough already. Grow up now, study history..." Regardless of the actual content of the article, I found the style of so many unnecessary ad hominim attacks offputing. The actual content of the article isn't r…
I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I'm certainly not the first to point out that Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that? I didn't write that basic income won't work as a solution designed to fix a problem. My point is that I don't see a political path to enacting it, and even though it was enacted,…
> Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that?
Yes, for two reasons. First, the meaning of the label 'Silicon Valley' is unclear, but whatever it means, it shouldn't be anthropomorphized. Doing that is usually just a rhetorical device, and that dilutes arguments.
Second, the people I know in Silicon Valley are acutely interested in those things, so I'd say your claim is way off base.
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps I missed it but one large advantage of badic income is 1: not means tested—losing benefits because you found a better job is a huge problem with current systems. I know from first hand experience as I went through school. 2: Universal and free market oriented. You are not told how to spend that income and you can then use it to support small business/entrepreneurial endeavors.
It's true, but those two arguments exist only on paper. In practice, my guess is that it wouldn't be long before UBI is converted a means-tested benefit, for both financial and political reasons. As for advantage number 2, yes you're not told how to spend that income but chances are that income is far from enough to pay for proper healthcare / childcare / elderly care or well-located housing. The history of the socia…
Means testing is how you would LOSE political support.
There has not been UBI so history tells you little. By supplement the market you mean
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI doesn't disincentivize work. If I told you that I would give you $10k/year unconditionally, would you quit your day job? What if you were currently unemployed, would you stop looking for a job? There is no reason to as my payment to you doesn't depend on if you get a job or not.
If you give everyone $1000 a month (to round the numbers) now the work of someone who makes $1200 a month is only worth $200 (as one can make $1000 just by idling). Would this person want to work for $200 a month? This is a major disincentive of work.
That's not how basic income is supposed to work. The person who worked would get $1000 basic income PLUS their $1200 wages = $2400.
Sure, above a certain level people's taxes would go up, so they pay back some of their basic income as tax. But that wouldn't kick in until people are earning rather more than $1200 a month.
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#169I wrote a longer rebuttal to this (it's in the responses section of Colin's original piece), but here's an excerpt on the issue of political vulnerability which is his main line of attack.
"It is broadly true that the more people who benefit from a government program, the more popular the program usually is. Social insurance programs that benefit the middle-class and the poor are usually politically durable.
American social security, for example, is less politically vulnerable than food stamps, in part because food stamps will never benefit most middle-class people. UBI, however, is more like social security than it is like food stamps. The middle-class may not need UBI, but UBI would still benefit them.
A comparable case is the status of single-payer health insurance programs in countries that have them. Most middle-class and rich people in these countries don’t need single payer healthcare — nearly all of them would have employer coverage if single payer didn’t exist. And yet there is broad support across classes for single-payer in these countries, in part because it (like UBI) benefits the middle-class. Universal healthcare is in these countries what conservatives would malign as “a sacred cow”.
None of this is to say that UBI would be politically invulnerable. Even the most durable social insurance programs are often put at risk.
[...]
But Colin appears to think UBI would inevitably become means-tested to only benefit the poor. Financial pressures, he says, would cause voters to limit the program. But Colin doesn’t make it clear why middle-class voters would react in this way, stripping themselves of a direct cash benefit. This is certainly not typical voter behaviour, and I am skeptical that a popular turn against UBI is inevitable or likely."
Re: Enough with Basic Income
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you give everyone $1000 a month (to round the numbers) now the work of someone who makes $1200 a month is only worth $200 (as one can make $1000 just by idling). Would this person want to work for $200 a month? This is a major disincentive of work.
What tasks do you consider "work"? Child care? Elder care? Volunteering?
I think what you're trying to say is something like "people won't work anymore but they will be able to stay home and take care of their elders". Which I think is a valid point, but also one that is only true for a really small minority of the population, certainly not enough to justify putting the whole population on welfare.
Consider this scenario: you're taking care of you elders and you need to go out and buy some medicine. But the drugstores have all closed, since nobody wants to work there anymore (why would they? They're at home taking care of their elders too). Do you think this is not a realistic scenario in the long run? Why not?