As a city who has been on the verge of bankruptcy, I'd say this is a welcome life line to some of its residents.
The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
31–40 of 120 posts
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#32One of the things about UBI is that these pilot programs aren't UBI, because they aren't universal. Giving a segment of the population free money is going to benefit that segment, no question. Welfare and Quantitative Easing are both examples of that. But when you make it universal, my economics intuition says that the effect will be washed out by a commensurate rise in prices. Or put another way, you can subsidize t…
If I am understanding your argument, it is a sort of 'thermodynamics' argument against UBI. It argues that there exists a fixed supply of capital and that transfer payments funded by taxes are always counter balanced by an increases in prices to keep capital supplies in balance.
If that isn't a correct interpretation of your argument, then the rest of this won't make a lot of sense.
The reason this sort of thermodynamics arguments fails for me is that the economy isn't really the amount of cash flowing through it, rather cash is a proxy for GDP not the economy itself. GDP is a function of productivity and effort. In simpler terms we can have our fictional worker 'Bob' who is anxious and fearful so he scrapes along with a minimum wage job that he hates, versus 'Alt-Bob' who is engaged and excited about his career and is building a future retirement nest egg. With the same 'worker population' of '1' we get two very different GDPs.
One theory is that UBI will make the anxious Bob less anxious and fearful and able to make better choices about their future. If you look at some of the work on how people who are anxious about the amount of money they have a hard time making good choices I refer you to the book 'Scarcity: Why having so little means so much.' it is a good read in general because it applies to anything, even 'free time' as a resource.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#33I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter
These services have real costs, and at least in the case of food, water, and shelter, risk (and its side effects) is a minor part of consumption, and so doesn't introduce distortions. Ensuring income adequate for access to these necessities is a fundamental and long-established principle of economics. "A man must always live by his work" comes straight from Adam Smith. The problems are multiple. Wages tend to (or bel…
>Wages tend to (or below) subsistence. //
In a pure capitalist system wages [for jobs where there are a surfeit of capable people] should surely tend to zero until enough proles have died to introduce scarcity and buoy the labour price.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#34One of the things about UBI is that these pilot programs aren't UBI, because they aren't universal. Giving a segment of the population free money is going to benefit that segment, no question. Welfare and Quantitative Easing are both examples of that. But when you make it universal, my economics intuition says that the effect will be washed out by a commensurate rise in prices. Or put another way, you can subsidize t…
You actually can subsidize the many at the expense of the few.
This is because wealth is becoming more and more centralized. So those "few" people are becoming bigger and bigger pots of gold that can be taken from.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#35I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter
Why do you wish that?
Either way, it is one of the basic premises of UBI: People can spend their money more efficiently at helping themselves than bureaucracies can.
Thus, in theory with UBI, giving money is better than attempting to give another limited set of items based on the value the bureaucracy places on them.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you can't subsidize the many at their own expense and have it result in a positive effect. You can if it changes local incentives to cause a better overall outcome. For example, a tragedy-of-the-commons situation can be improved by having each over-user give up their share of use to a monopolist whose subsidies replace the lost income. This is explicitly one of the goals of replacing the current social safety nets w…
Sorry to be annoying on this topic, but: This is explicitly one of the goals of replacing the current social safety nets with UBI. UBI can't replace social safety nets. It's impossible. 12k for every adult is 3 trillion dollars, which almost always assumes cutting other programs. What about healthcare? I bet most would rather have comprehensive health coverage instead of 12k every year, but you can't have both. In th…
No serious plan for UBI comes without progressive tax increases, so that at some income threshold you start paying more in additional taxes than you receive in UBI.
3 trillion isn't anywhere close to the actual cost when you consider this.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to be annoying on this topic, but: This is explicitly one of the goals of replacing the current social safety nets with UBI. UBI can't replace social safety nets. It's impossible. 12k for every adult is 3 trillion dollars, which almost always assumes cutting other programs. What about healthcare? I bet most would rather have comprehensive health coverage instead of 12k every year, but you can't have both. In th…
part of our high healthcare costs are from not using a universal system. Other Western countries are achieving same or better outcomes with far less costs. I do agree that UBI will not work if we leave some of the things we consider basics now, such as food, housing, or(in my opinion) basic healthcare to be provided by competitive corporations, then we are essentially just going to be putting the money in their pocke…
I really wish critiques would go birdseye. We're talking about radically restructuring our economy. Don't hold back.
UBI burden assumes current costs. That's short sighted.
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Transitioning to single payer (medicare for all) would 1/2 our costs, at least. This is a no brainer, comparing Canada & USA's per capita spending.
I believe, but cannot prove, that adopting capitation model (incentivize wellness vs fee for service, treating disease) would knockoff another 1/2.
I think we'll still pay more than other countries, because we fund so much research, use some much more new tech. Which I wholeheartedly support.
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Food costs can be brought way down thru better logistics, incentives, thereby reducing food waste. Ending subsidies for corn, wheat, soya, diary would reduce food waste and improve public health. A double win.
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The USA has more housing than people. If people didn't need to relocate for jobs, allowing people to go to the available housing, per capita spending would also plummet.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#38I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter
A network of free services will always have gaps. Food, water, shelter... what about power, internet, clothes? Something equally important that not everyone needs?
Basic income guarantees that the gaps are filled. It even makes markets more likely to try to fill them. But basic income can't get basic services to people who can't control their own money. Getting food to children of alcoholics requires that the system doesn't pass through an intermediate step that can be exchanged for alcohol.
So both a thorough network of social services and basic income are required for a society that aims to raise the standard of living for everyone. Both individually have blind spots.
Basic income can serve as a substitution for other services though, so if you're going to add things one at a time instead of magically willing it all into existence, it makes sense to start there.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#39One of the things about UBI is that these pilot programs aren't UBI, because they aren't universal. Giving a segment of the population free money is going to benefit that segment, no question. Welfare and Quantitative Easing are both examples of that. But when you make it universal, my economics intuition says that the effect will be washed out by a commensurate rise in prices. Or put another way, you can subsidize t…
If you think it through with a simple model, you might challenge your intuition.
Let's say the entire economy consists of three people: #1, #10 and #100. #1 earns $1,000 per month, #10 earns $10,000 a month, and #100 earns $100,000 a month.
Raising #1's salary to $1,500 a month might have a small effect on prices in the economy at large, but prices certainly wouldn't go up 50%.
That's because #1's share of the entire economy is very small.
In the US, 14.5% of the population are #1s, and 85.5% are #2s and #3s. And that 14.5% of people represents a minuscule portion of the economy, maybe something like 5% or less, since their incomes are so low.
Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California
#40The problem with UBI is that it doesn't promote social behavior. In fact it promotes anti-social behavior, since a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition of this benefit.
Charity is not a legitimate role for government.