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The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

mises.org

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Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#11

Post by aminok »

lightbyte wrote: post #4

What a mess. >"The progressive taxation that is necessary to finance a UBI means that the more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from them. The work disincentives are therefore still very much present in the tax system." I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take ho…

>I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise.

And that's not what the article says.

Here, read it again:

>the more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from them

It goes on to say:

>The work disincentives are therefore still very much present in the tax system."

Which is true. In fact, any forcible income redistribution, even with a flat tax, disincentives work.

>What a huge leap to make from struggling to struggling because nobody wants to buy their product. They could easily be struggling purely because they left their old job to pursue this and now have no steady income. The article even suggests this initially, so I have no idea how they just ignored it.

But you're ignoring the fact that "they have no steady income" because no one (or very few people) want to buy their products.

>Not everything needs to be about generating more wealth for yourself.

And in a free society, you are free to pursue less economically rewarding endeavors. What you can't do is get the state to force other people to subsidize you.

>This is just about generating wealth and screwing over everyone in the process for them

They said nothing about "screwing over everyone in the process". Keeping the income you earn is not screwing anyone else over. You do not owe anyone your income and no one owes you income. You're promoting a dysfunctional and incoherent moral system.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#12

Post by tdb7893 »

k_lander wrote: post #7

My only qualm with UBI is that it needs to be Universal in the non-discriminating sense. I don't see how that could perform better than a system that at least attempts to discriminate between good and bad actors. Not to underestimate the difficulty of that task, but I feel as long as we are testing out Unconditional BI in the real world, which is great - we shouldn't miss out on experimenting with Conditional Basic I…

The point is that if everyone is equal you can't have "bad actors" without explicit fraud. I'm not sure what a bad actor is in the context of UBI

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#13

Post by m3talsmith »

Spivak wrote: post #2

I don't care where anyone stands on the UBI proposal but we should demand a higher quality from a supposedly scholarly news source. This article reads like a first year econ class paper. Nobody who reads this piece who supports UBI will be convinced in any way by these arguments and the comments seem to suggest that this site is entirely an extremely libertarian echo chamber. The author makes matter-of-fact claims th…

Mises is one of the core Libertarian sites for economic theory.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#14

Post by harrumph »

aminok wrote: post #9
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mises is a Koch-funded propaganda outlet. Its not scholarly. It will never publish anything remotely counter to its agenda. Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. I find it depressing that we will always be fighting this fight.

Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. >Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. What are you referring to? Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread…

>Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit.

When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition.

>Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist demagoguery

And the bread and butter of right-wing pro-business "think tanks" is the prompting of voluntary red-baiting such as you just offered.

Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that always finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms.

That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#15

Post by rvdavis »

harrumph wrote: post #14
aminok wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. >Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. What are you referring to? Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread…

>Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. >Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical supp…

> When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces...

> That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain.

I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#16

Post by aminok »

harrumph wrote: post #14
aminok wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. >Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. What are you referring to? Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical support provided, is the bread…

>Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. >Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical supp…

>When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition.

Only a mental child would believe in this caricature.

And authoritarian prohibitions against consenting adults engaging in voluntary interactions, like buying an experimental drug not approved by the FDA, or working a job that doesn't provide some mandated benefit like statutory holidays, do not "protect" consumers or workers. It restricts their rights and forces them to follow government preferences over their own.

Only a child would buy the socialist propaganda and believe that violating people's human rights by punishing those who don't abide by some intrusive mandate, is "protecting" them.

>Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that always finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms.

How delusional you are. There are a ton of statist and/or left wing think tanks and public policy research institutions.

The Economic Policy Institute, the Center for American Progress, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are a few of many organizations that promote highly anti-libertarian policies.

The Hamilton Project, heavily funded by banks, supports a government backed central banking cartel that violates essential rights to free exchange, and numerous leftist programs designed to buy votes.

Massively funded academic institutions lean heavily leftist as well.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#17

Post by harrumph »

rvdavis wrote: post #15
harrumph wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. >Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical supp…

> When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces... > That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science -- all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that never comes to different conclu…

>I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem.

Fair enough. I hope that everybody involved will survive the encounter.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#18

Post by harrumph »

aminok wrote: post #16
harrumph wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch propaganda outfit. When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. >Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical supp…

>When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. Only a mental child would believe in this caricature. And authoritarian prohibitions against consenting adults engaging in voluntary interactions, like buying an experi…

> [Consumer and worker protections] restrict their rights and forces them to follow government preferences over their own.

The problem is this adorable libertarian dedication to freedom and voluntary interactions naturally ends the second any employer or commercial neighbor says it ends. Such an arrangement produces freedom for the boardroom and nobody else.

No thanks - we can all see through this horseshit by now.

>How delusional you are. There are a ton of statist and/or left wing think tanks and public policy research institutions.

And on the basis of influence over public policy, your argument is that these think tanks you name are somehow responsible for the really existing world under late capitalism: its skyrocketing levels of privatization, plummeting protections for workers, employees and neighbors, all-time lows in union membership, increasing latitude for business interests, monumental struggles to merely obtain wages that match the heightened productivity of modern workers, etc.

That's a, uh, novel argument you've got there. Might even be delusional.

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#19

Post by aminok »

harrumph wrote: post #18
aminok wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-grade ammunition. Only a mental child would believe in this caricature. And authoritarian prohibitions against consenting adults engaging in voluntary interactions, like buying an experi…

> [Consumer and worker protections] restrict their rights and forces them to follow government preferences over their own. The problem is this adorable libertarian dedication to freedom and voluntary interactions naturally ends the second any employer or commercial neighbor says it ends. Such an arrangement produces freedom for the boardroom and nobody else. No thanks - we can all see through this horseshit by now. >…

>The problem is this adorable libertarian dedication to freedom and voluntary interactions naturally ends the second any employer or commercial neighbor says it ends. Such an arrangement produces freedom for the boardroom and nobody else.

First, your little "adorable" quip:

It's so adorable that I don't want people's human rights to be violated, and them to be imprisoned for engaging in a voluntary interaction with another consenting adult, or refusing to hand over a share of the currency they received in private trade!

So adorable that you've justified brute authoritarian infringements of other people's human rights!

Second the substance of your counterargument:

Nothing "ends" when the employer wants to end the relationship. A voluntary relationship means either party is free at any time to end that relationship. A free society doesn't mean you get whatever you want, even a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be in one with you.

The problem is emotionally fragile mental children can't accept this fact, and consequently appeal to government for authoritarian mandates to violate others human rights and force them to give into their illegitimate demands.

>And on the basis of influence over public policy, your argument is that these think tanks you name are somehow responsible for the really existing world under late capitalism: its skyrocketing levels of privatization, plummeting protections for workers, employees and neighbors, all-time lows in union membership, increasing latitude for business interests, monumental struggles to merely obtain wages that match the heightened productivity of modern workers, etc.

What "late stage capitalism"?

Social welfare spending has massively increased over the last 40 years. The last 40 years have seen the largest experiment in social democracy in human history.

Here are the raw statistics for all of the edgy teenagers who think we're in "late stage capitalism":

https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is...

Annual inflation-adjusted spending growth on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):

>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%

>Healthcare: 5.7%

>Welfare: 4.1%

Annual inflation-adjusted economic growth over the time frame:

>2.7%

By every broad-based objective measure, the scale of forcible income redistribution has massively increased in relative and absolute terms. The only thing the US has to show for it is slower productivity growth, lower wage growth, huge trade deficits, and I would argue, an explosion in single parenthood:

http://pinetreewatchdog.org/500-rise-in-single-parenthood-fu...

But thanks to the mass delusion that afflicts people like you, the popular wisdom says that we've increasingly adopted capitalism, and this is the source of all economic maladies, and that the solution is the ever elusive social democracy that we've allegedly been starved of.

>plummeting protections for workers, employees and neighbors, all-time lows in union membership, increasing latitude for business interests, monumental struggles to merely obtain wages that match the heightened productivity of modern workers, etc.

Again with the socialist double speak about authoritarian prohibitions that limit contracting rights being "protections".

There has been no reduction in the scope of laws that restrict the right of workers and employers to freely enter into contracts.

Unions succeeded in getting the public on their side, and the result was a vast number of new laws being passed that restrict the right of the majority of workers and employers, for the benefit of the lucky few in unions.

Unions still exist, but thanks to the laws they passed, and their exorbitant demands, they bankrupted or severely damaged all of the American manufacturers who didn't outsource to countries that still have a free market in employment (e.g. countries where an employer is allowed to fire workers who unionize or strike, and workers need to actually compete and perform to get and maintain a job), so you don't have many large private sector unions anymore, but unions in the government-sector are larger than ever, and sucking from the public teat like there's no tomorrow.

As for the supposed decoupling between wages and productivity, this is not true, and claims to the contrary are an artefact of misleading statistics. The following article explains both the problem with the statistics, and the source of the real problem, which is growing income disparity (hint: it has nothing to do with an over abundance of liberty):

https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why-t...

Re: The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

#20

Post by harrumph »

aminok wrote: post #19
harrumph wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Consumer and worker protections] restrict their rights and forces them to follow government preferences over their own. The problem is this adorable libertarian dedication to freedom and voluntary interactions naturally ends the second any employer or commercial neighbor says it ends. Such an arrangement produces freedom for the boardroom and nobody else. No thanks - we can all see through this horseshit by now. >…

>The problem is this adorable libertarian dedication to freedom and voluntary interactions naturally ends the second any employer or commercial neighbor says it ends. Such an arrangement produces freedom for the boardroom and nobody else. First, your little "adorable" quip: It's so adorable that I don't want people's human rights to be violated, and them to be imprisoned for engaging in a voluntary interaction with a…

>It's so adorable that I don't want people's human rights to be violated

...except when the boardroom does it, and boardrooms do it all day every day, in far, far greater measure than the governments in our business-run society. That reality is what makes the word "freedom" in your mouth SO adorable.

For example, here's a very small sampling of daily, real authoritarian tyranny that libertarians are perfectly fine with, along with the commonly given justifications: employers drug testing employees (just get another job!), making and selling military equipment for cops to use (herp derp markets!), private profit in markets with inelastic demand such as health insurance (all people are islands with no interest in the health of neighbors nor in their bankruptcies!), industrial pollution (just move somewhere else!), racial, gender or age discrimination at a place of business (freedom of association!), heightened tax burden for communities thanks to tax dodging by the communities' businesses (taxation is theft!) and on and on and on.

>Nothing "ends" when the employer wants to end the relationship.

And with this awesome nugget of sterling wrongness, we learn that the bubble in which you live apparently excludes the hundreds and hundreds of towns across this country that have become chained-shut, fentanyl-addicted hellholes precisely because the town's main employer and tax base ended the relationship -- usually in order to hire overseas children for pennies instead.

Imagine living in a bubble so tiny that anyone could miss that.

>Unions succeeded in getting the public on their side, and the result was a vast number of new laws being passed that restrict the right of the majority of workers and employers, for the benefit of the lucky few in unions. Unions still exist, but thanks to the laws they passed

Yes, yes, we know the weekend, the eight-hour day, overtime, workplace safety and the end of child labor infringe on your freedom. That's exactly the point of the laws: to stop tyranny from people like you whose tiny bubble-worlds enable you to overlook the roasted corpses of workers trapped in fires engulfing factories run as shoddily as your freedom has allowed. Unlimited freedom for you means limited freedom for me, and you can bet we won't allow it.

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