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The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

theatlantic.com

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Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#81

Post by truxus »

krapp wrote: post #68
truxus wrote: post #40

The 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.

> a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition of this benefit A person working for a paycheck doesn't provide value to a community, only to their employer. Chronic unemployment, however, does harm a community. The explicit physical need for food, shelter and access to medical care outweighs the implicit value in the dignity of labor. > Charity is not a legitimate role for government. Do…

Police, insurance, and fire department are paid services to protect property. UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#82

Post by krapp »

truxus wrote: post #81
krapp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition of this benefit A person working for a paycheck doesn't provide value to a community, only to their employer. Chronic unemployment, however, does harm a community. The explicit physical need for food, shelter and access to medical care outweighs the implicit value in the dignity of labor. > Charity is not a legitimate role for government. Do…

Police, insurance, and fire department are paid services to protect property. UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property.

>UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property.

What property does UBI destroy, and why don't increases in consumption through other means also destroy property?

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#83

Post by ThrustVectoring »

plushpuffin wrote: post #79
aaron-lebo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is it is no way those targeted programs can be replaced with UBI. If someone is getting 30k of value from an existing or existing welfare programs, cutting it back to 12k removes their social safety net, regardless of the straight cash they get. Worse, if they run out of that, they really have no safety net remaining.

How does UBI take into account mental incompetence, addictions, poor decision-making, bad luck, and bad investments, and where do you draw the line? Don't a lot of welfare payments have strings attached, with regard to what you can spend it on? UBI explicitly does not, so you can use it for anything you want. If UBI did completely replace the social safety net, and someone gambles/fritters away their basic income and…

Same way Social Security works - with the exception of federal taxes and criminal judgements, SS payments are largely exempt from garnishment or other actions to seize assets to repay debts. You can't lose your UBI by taking a loan and gambling the proceeds away, because the debtor cannot force you to use UBI to repay the loan.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#84

Post by truxus »

whytaka wrote: post #59
truxus wrote: post #40

The 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.

That's funny. The proponents of UBI would say that it in fact is the key to maximizing productive social behaviour. Of course, it's a matter of worldviews. You might think innate human behaviour is laziness and only forceful contracts can get productivity out of them. I can certainly see evidence of that, but I don't think it's innate for everyone. I think many people would be eager for a sense of belonging and purpo…

Having lived around people all my life, I will tell you that if you give someone something free, it is rare that they give more of themselves to their community.

I will not remind you that utopian experiments are not new.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#85

Post by truxus »

krapp wrote: post #82
truxus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police, insurance, and fire department are paid services to protect property. UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property.

>UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property. What property does UBI destroy, and why don't increases in consumption through other means also destroy property?

A simple example:

10 people make widgets. Annual production is 10 widgets. Mean annual standard of living is 1 widget.

9 people make widgets, 1 person is on UBI. Annual production is 9 widgets. Mean annual standard of living is 0.9 widgets.

In the second example one widget was destroyed, and everyone was affected.

We are all counting on one another to to create value. At my business, in my community, and our country as a whole, I'm counting on you to take a job and work, because if you don't we will both have a lower standard of living.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#86

Post by whytaka »

truxus wrote: post #84
whytaka wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny. The proponents of UBI would say that it in fact is the key to maximizing productive social behaviour. Of course, it's a matter of worldviews. You might think innate human behaviour is laziness and only forceful contracts can get productivity out of them. I can certainly see evidence of that, but I don't think it's innate for everyone. I think many people would be eager for a sense of belonging and purpo…

Having lived around people all my life, I will tell you that if you give someone something free, it is rare that they give more of themselves to their community. I will not remind you that utopian experiments are not new.

Your experience isn’t a reliable setting to make the call about human nature because a different setting may produce different outcomes.

UBI isn’t utopian. No one lives large for free. People simply get the basic support.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#87

Post by plushpuffin »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #83
plushpuffin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does UBI take into account mental incompetence, addictions, poor decision-making, bad luck, and bad investments, and where do you draw the line? Don't a lot of welfare payments have strings attached, with regard to what you can spend it on? UBI explicitly does not, so you can use it for anything you want. If UBI did completely replace the social safety net, and someone gambles/fritters away their basic income and…

Same way Social Security works - with the exception of federal taxes and criminal judgements, SS payments are largely exempt from garnishment or other actions to seize assets to repay debts. You can't lose your UBI by taking a loan and gambling the proceeds away, because the debtor cannot force you to use UBI to repay the loan.

That makes sense for debts, but how do you handle people who immediately blow their monthly UBI payment and don't have anything left over for food or rent? At least with food stamps, you kind of have to use it on food.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#88

Post by freshhawk »

mechagodzilla wrote: post #25
yellowstuff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you simply gave everyone $1 for every dollar they already have, all you do is double prices and change nothing of substance. But I think the pro-UBI argument would be that you don't need to increase the money supply to do it. About 60% of Federal spending is on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Reducing the spending on these programs, and other inefficient transfers such as welfare and disability will…

I disagree with your premise that doubling the number of dollars everyone has would simply double prices. If you take someone that has $1 million in the bank, and magically make that $2 million, they almost certainly won't double all of their expenditures (they probably wouldn't change what they spend at all on a wide variety of categories - food or clothing, for instance). Rising inequality means that lack of demand…

But that wasn't covered in the macro 101 class all this HN comment logic is based on!

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#89

Post by krapp »

truxus wrote: post #85
krapp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>UBI is a scheme intended to increase consumption, that is, destroy property. What property does UBI destroy, and why don't increases in consumption through other means also destroy property?

A simple example: 10 people make widgets. Annual production is 10 widgets. Mean annual standard of living is 1 widget. 9 people make widgets, 1 person is on UBI. Annual production is 9 widgets. Mean annual standard of living is 0.9 widgets. In the second example one widget was destroyed, and everyone was affected. We are all counting on one another to to create value. At my business, in my community, and our country…

That example seems so contrived that it's difficult for me to see it representing reality in a meaningful way. It may be too simple to be useful.

In reality, that tenth widget still gets produced. They hire someone else to replace the "UBI recipient" or else run the production line slightly faster so nine people make ten widgets, or else automate and fire all ten employees, and make twenty widgets a year. Nothing in a real economy is that zero-sum. Value which only exists in potentia and which may as well be created by other means cannot reasonably be said to be "destroyed." Something which never existed can't be destroyed.

UBI just decouples a person's ability to work with their ability to live at a subsistence level, it doesn't prevent them from working.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#90

Post by dredmorbius »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #33
dredmorbius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not zero, but you might care to look up David Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages.

The basic problem is that labour (as with several other inputs) can for a time operate below its long-term subsistence costs, by effectively drawing down its accrued capital. Doing so results in a net degredation of total productive output.

In conditions in which there is a ready supply of replacement labour, this is not a concern of the employer, unless those costs are somehow internalised.

Gregory Clarke (and many others) note that in the 19th century, cities such as London had natural reproduction rates below the replacement rate. Cities sustained (and indeed increased) their populations through net in-migration. Excpected life expectancy of a newly-arrived labourer was often only a few years, but wages were higher than could be commanded in the surrounding countryside.

See also: Backward-S bending supply curves.

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