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Basic Income Research Proposal

basicincome.ycr.org

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Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#171

Post by zanny »

bduerst wrote: post #124
billmalarky wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Housing prices and rent will assuredly rise proportionally to the basic income amount if this were to be implemented nationally, so wouldn't pumping all this money in basically just have the effect of increasing inequality? Unlikely. UBI removes the connection between location and income. As a result you can move to somewhere incredibly cheap to live since there's no need to be in an in demand market in order to hav…

If people in every location have their income increased, then the housing prices inflate in every location. Saying, "People can just move" is missing the point. It isn't that they can't afford to live where they are now, it's that BI will be absorbed by price inflation everywhere .

Figures put 14-20 million unoccupied houses in the US. A lot of those are just rich people buying valuable real estate and hoarding it as a store of value, but a lot of them are also in locations where nobody who would want to buy them can afford to live because there is no work available. There are thousands of ghost towns in rural America which depopulated for a wide variety of reasons since the 70s but all could be cheaply renewed if people could survive living there without guaranteed constant employment.

So its not that the whole housing market just moves up the value of UBI and nothing changes. UBI introduces a new market of houses that currently are unsellable and rotting.

Those are obviously not a long term solution, but the existence of UBI and the economic pressure it produces will incentivize builders to develop the cheapest possible living conditions to supply to people living on UBI. That almost certainly would be an entirely new model of building - constructing for density, but without the limitations of building in already densely populated areas.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#172

Post by jaggederest »

laser wrote: post #106
Jedi72 wrote: post #57

Basic Income is often proposed in conjunction with cutting basic social services & welfare payments, thus achieving a net gain for the government. This seems to make it attractive to both the neoliberals and the neosocialismés, but I believe this is a terrible mistake that will have the exact opposite effect to what its supporters intend - there will be more poverty and debt slavery, not less. (Methodology debates as…

"it could occur slower and over a few generations but sooner or later poverty is back." But, if the UBI is set to a percentage of GDP, then as overall wealth increases, the wealth of those depending on UBI increase. In the past few generations, ex. since the 1950's, real GDP has grown 6x [1] while the population has only doubled [2], meaning the real wealth of our society has grown three-fold in "a few generations".…

I'm not sure that it gives good incentives to have it directly linked to GDP. I think it would make more sense to have a circuit-breaker type provision where if GDP increases by more than x% the amount increases by y%, but I doubt we would want to decrease it immediately when GDP decreases, since that has the potential to cause a runaway feedback loop.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#173

Post by adventured »

laser wrote: post #106
Jedi72 wrote: post #57

Basic Income is often proposed in conjunction with cutting basic social services & welfare payments, thus achieving a net gain for the government. This seems to make it attractive to both the neoliberals and the neosocialismés, but I believe this is a terrible mistake that will have the exact opposite effect to what its supporters intend - there will be more poverty and debt slavery, not less. (Methodology debates as…

"it could occur slower and over a few generations but sooner or later poverty is back." But, if the UBI is set to a percentage of GDP, then as overall wealth increases, the wealth of those depending on UBI increase. In the past few generations, ex. since the 1950's, real GDP has grown 6x [1] while the population has only doubled [2], meaning the real wealth of our society has grown three-fold in "a few generations".…

> But, if the UBI is set to a percentage of GDP, then as overall wealth increases

That's an extraordinary assumption. The majority of nations in fact do not see routine, much less significant, overall wealth increases. Major economies as varied as Germany, Mexico, Russia, Britain, Japan, Brazil - have seen near zero economic growth for the last decade. The US appears in fact to be starting a protracted stagnation of growth, due to its extreme debt (in most every regard from public to consumer to corporate), resulting in problems similar to those experienced by Japan due to its egregious debt problems (low productivity gains, weak or negative income growth, weak or negative real wealth gains, low GDP growth, etc).

UBI can't be implemented in a nation in which population growth is falling rapidly (fewer workers to carry the tax burden), while debt is already sky high, incomes are stagnant, and existing entitlement system IOU's are already set to bankrupt (either directly via default or indirectly by currency debasement) the government (with already dire perpetual half trillion plus dollar deficits with the public debt soaring toward $30 trillion next and annual deficits set to climb toward a trillion dollars).

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#174

Post by Helmet »

billmalarky wrote: post #141
bduerst wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one cause of inflation. Another cause is raising the income for everyone (i.e. minimum wage, etc.). There exist goods and services with prices that are a function of income-elasticity, meaning that they inflate with the more money that people make (e.g. housing). This is one of the reasons that many welfare programs are targeted spending, like food stamps or medicaid.

Arbitrarily raising wages for everyone is the same as increasing the money supply without increasing the underlying value it represents (which causes inflation). UBI does not do this. It doesn't "increase" the amount of money floating around, it simply redistributes a portion of the created wealth from one population (the rich) to the total population. UBI money isn't pulled out of thin air, it's taken from one group…

Sure, what you're describing is the quantity theory of money, but there are other reasons why you could see inflation given a universal income, depending on the circumstances.

If you consider the velocity of money, you will almost certainly see inflation on consumer goods if the money to be redistributed would have otherwise just sat in some rich guys's savings account.

There are also inflation expectation to consider, liquidity traps, the actual demand for money, etc.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#175

Post by chimeracoder »

NickLamp wrote: post #153
chimeracoder wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is everyone currently clamoring to elect politicians that want to increase welfare and other "Great Society" programs? People aren't clamoring to increase welfare because the people whom it's perceived to benefit aren't the ones who actually have the largest voting power. People absolutely do reward politicians for securing funding for their constituents, usually in the form of earmarks, targeted tax breaks (e.g. d…

I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. And I don't disagree with those last two points.

> I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all.

Huh? No, the point isn't what the richest people would think - they have an incentive to oppose either welfare or cash handouts. The point is that currently, welfare only targets the people with the lowest voting power, because they're both a very small bloc and also a bloc that doesn't vote very consistently in the first place. So there isn't a huge political incentive to increasing welfare.

As soon as you make that a handout that targets everyone (or appears to target everyone), you've suddenly put the largest voting bloc - those who are neither very wealthy nor on welfare - in a position where they will start to clamor to increase it more and more, because they'll see that as money flowing towards themselves.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#176

Post by staunch »

laser wrote: post #37
vasco wrote: post #28

I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you nee…

If the government guarantees a basic income, you're really only guaranteed (at best) until the next election cycle. Just recently, seven years after its passing, the ACA was nearly reverted, which would have kicked millions of people off government-subsidized health insurance plans.

Pensions are a great use-case for smart contracts. I would feel much safer having my retirement assured by a blockchain than a bureaucrat.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#177

Post by cisanti »

atiffany wrote: post #81
vasco wrote: post #28

I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you nee…

I think you're right at least to the extent that this complicates drawing conclusions. Another issue I see is that in this study we're talking about a single household in a likely poor community getting a basic income. This is totally different from a scenario where the recipient knows that everyone else in their community is receiving a basic income too. Imagine this: a woman in a poor community who works a low-payi…

And what about border policy? You can't have open border policy + UBI together... I mean why not try to come to America then. I would I come if I had a chance to get UBI and live there, and millions, millions of others. Would the system still work?

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#178

Post by zanny »

moxious wrote: post #145
eduren wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whereas the reality of people receiving free money might be somewhat different. There's the drip, drip welfare payments of just enough money to survive without being motivated to find a job. That's why I always clarify that an essential piece of Basic Income is that it is unconditional . Whether you're on the bottom rung of society or the top, employed or unemployed, basic income should be the same amount. When the…

The same amount? No adjustment for San Francisco vs. nowheresville, Idaho?

Certainly not. Any UBI policy has to be set for a universal basic standard of living in a contiguous zone of free movement. US citizens can live anywhere in the US - UBI reverses the current bubble of housing prices that is concentrating people in cities that then resist increasing density and thus just drives property values to infinity. It lets people who don't want to live there the option to move elsewhere that is much cheaper and thus lets them live off the UBI.

Trying to peg UBI to regional cost of living costs an incredible amount of money (the cost of living in the Bay Area has to be at least 10x the rural Rust Belt) and has practically no benefit (because all it means is people get the privilege of living wherever they want on redistributed money, rather than choosing to either live where they want and seek the means to afford it or living where its cheapest and costing society less in macrospect.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#179

Post by zanny »

canjobear wrote: post #82

A huge part of what makes basic income appealing is that it is unconditional and guaranteed. Otherwise it seems like it would create unsafe levels of government control. For many people, BI would end up being a large portion of their income, such that losing it would be catastrophic. Now those people would become beholden to any government demand made on penalty of revoking BI. If a government enacts unconditional BI…

They could make it a constitutional amendment or whatever your countries mechanism for codifying founding documents is that requires more than a simple majority to make law.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#180

Post by gwatch »

CapsAdmin wrote: post #88
vasco wrote: post #28

I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you nee…

This assumes people will enjoy a 5 year vacation though. In Norway if you're chronically disabled you can apply for something that seems very similar to basic income. I'm in that system and in my experience most of the people I know in this system are bored. It could be because all their friends are working so it's difficult to meet new people, there's also that this system is for disabled people and people with ment…

This goes on to prove that man needs a purpose to be happy. A job gives a purpose. Universal basic income is nothing new. Saudi Arabia already has universal basic income, and people are not happy, and after a long period of laziness, they are unwilling and unable to go back to work, and worse -- they are prone to be attracted to terrorism. Free money, by and large, in a majority of cases, will kill a man's soul.
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