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We're officially launching UBI

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#41

Post by ttoinou »

vinceguidry wrote: post #19

UBI desperately needs to be tried out on a semi-large scale as a social experiment. We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects. Will it start shaping local and regional policy or is it just going to quietly get discarded as a idea before its time?

   We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects
Of course we can. It's ok for people to donate their money and time for this kind of experiment. It's not ok for governments to tax citizens for a new social giveaway unless others social benefits are reduced accordingly (which will never happen).

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#43

Post by eksu »

quaunaut wrote: post #16
eksu wrote: post #4

Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

From what I've understood, it solves multiple problems that the negative income tax didn't, because it didn't apply to everyone. To clarify for those coming later: The negative income tax is the idea that beneath a certain amount of income, you actually are given money by the government. If you're over the amount, you get nothing, and in fact are taxed a portion of your income. Depending on how far beneath the amount…

Those are some great points - I didn’t think much about sporadic work. UBI is probably easier to implement administratively than trying to change check sizes every week.

I think though politically it’s easier to stomach if you’re of a leaning that sees government giving as a good thing.

I think politicaly you have a hard case saying we’re also giving sama and bill gates these checks (even if their effective rate still puts them under at the end of the year!)

I would hope the incentives problem would be solved with a very gradual tax curve rather than brackets for NIT.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#44

Post by pc86 »

ttoinou wrote: post #41
vinceguidry wrote: post #19

UBI desperately needs to be tried out on a semi-large scale as a social experiment. We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects. Will it start shaping local and regional policy or is it just going to quietly get discarded as a idea before its time?

We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects Of course we can. It's ok for people to donate their money and time for this kind of experiment. It's not ok for governments to tax citizens for a new social giveaway unless others social benefits are reduced accordingly (which will never happen).

The most popular UBI proposals that I've seen all contain some level of social safety net reduction (some more than others). None of the proposals I've seen suggest that social services remain at their current level and we give everyone $N on top of that.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#45

Post by rory096 »

mbil wrote: post #36

Here's more info about the program https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income We will assess the impact of a basic income against a broad set of metrics, including: - economic status (income, assets, standard of living) - time use (work, education, leisure, community involvement) - risk-taking (migrating, starting businesses) - gender relations (especially female empowerment) - aspirations and outlook on life

And here's what they're paying out:

    Long-term basic income: 40 villages with recipients receiving roughly $0.75 (nominal) per adult per day, delivered monthly for 12 years

    Short-term basic income: 80 villages with recipients receiving the same monthly amount, but only for 2 years

    Lump sum payments: 80 villages with recipients receiving a lump sum payment equivalent to the total value of payments of the short-term stream

    Control group: 100 villages not receiving cash transfers

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#46

Post by dsfyu404ed »

wavefunction wrote: post #18
stocktech wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too think a negative income tax is a better method, but UBI is at least testable in some form. I think we'll see UBI tested and if successful, a negative income tax will be more politically feasible than UBI.

A negative income tax requires the same sort of bureaucracy from our current means-tested welfare systems, whereas a simple UBI paid to all does not.

>whereas a simple UBI paid to all does not.

Well in that case before I die I will appear sufficiently senile/disabled to allow someone else to collect UBI on my behalf and tell my next of kin to dump me in a hole without telling anyone. I have plenty of time to iron out the details.

See the problem.

You'll still need a bureaucracy. It might be smaller depending on the implementation details of UBI. I expect the amount of welfare fraud to remain constant. Given X opportunity, Y risk and Z reward there's always some subset of the population that will have no problem stealing from the government.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#47

Post by pc86 »

Gargoyle wrote: post #34

I'd rather see someone work on the Universal part first. Get distributions, however small, into the hands of every individual. Scaling up the distributions isn't a difficult problem to solve, the universal part is.

A dollar a day to every US citizen is $114 billion a year. At that expense I would think scaling it at all once it reaches universality is nearly impossible. Even if we're theoretically giving every $10k/yr, upping that to $10,365/yr still costs well over $100 billion.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#48

Post by mehrdadn »

skybrian wrote: post #29
chatmasta wrote: post #22

How can you meaningfully experiment with UBI if the “BI” is not even universal ? My understanding is that many of the criticisms of UBI are based on externalities that would only become manifest in a meaningfully large population. For example, price increases and inflation might arise from everyone having extra money. If you’re only testing UBI on a small population, then 1) it’s not even universal, and 2) there will…

It doesn't answer all questions. For another example, we won't know how much the results will transfer to other countries. But it's meaningful to see what people will spend the money on, its effect on the local economy (village level), and how this compares to other ways of reducing poverty. There are still a lot of people who think that people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way, and this will…

> It doesn't answer all questions. For another example, we won't know how much the results will transfer to other countries.

We won't even be confident the results will transfer to the same country at some later time. Lots of things can change over time alone, let alone across populations.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#49

Post by ttoinou »

skybrian wrote: post #29
chatmasta wrote: post #22

How can you meaningfully experiment with UBI if the “BI” is not even universal ? My understanding is that many of the criticisms of UBI are based on externalities that would only become manifest in a meaningfully large population. For example, price increases and inflation might arise from everyone having extra money. If you’re only testing UBI on a small population, then 1) it’s not even universal, and 2) there will…

It doesn't answer all questions. For another example, we won't know how much the results will transfer to other countries. But it's meaningful to see what people will spend the money on, its effect on the local economy (village level), and how this compares to other ways of reducing poverty. There are still a lot of people who think that people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way, and this will…

   people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way
That's not really the argument. What does matter is where does the money come from. Cf

  These hand­out incomes are to be given as "an absolute 
  constitutional right," and not to be withheld "under any  
  circumstances." This means that the  
  recipi­ents are to continue to get this in­come not only if  
  they absolutely re­fuse to seek or take a job, but if they 
   throw the handout money away at the races, or spend it on 
   prostitutes, on whiskey, cigarettes, marijuana, heroin, or  
  what not. They are to be given "sufficient to live in  
  dignity," and it is appar­ently to be no business of the 
   tax­payers if a recipient chooses none the less to live  
  without dignity, and to devote his guaranteed leisure to 
   gambling, dissipation, drunken­ness, debauchery, dope 
   addiction, or a life of crime
https://fee.org/articles/income-without-work/

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#50

Post by WorldMaker »

mbesto wrote: post #33
eksu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Universal Basic Income is ‘Universal’, meaning there’s no qualification to receive it. Basically it’s flat and it goes to everyone equally, rich and poor. A negative income tax is a progressive tax system that starts off in the negatives and works itself up as you move up in brackets or (ideally) on a smooth curve or line.

> A negative income tax is a progressive tax system that starts off in the negatives and works itself up as you move up in brackets or (ideally) on a smooth curve or line. But if UBI says you get $30k/year in gross income and then if you choose not to do UBI, then you pay taxes on your income, isn't that essentially the same thing? Because if you get $30k/year in income from UBI, it wouldn't make any sense to tax an…

Some theories of UBI believe UBI may only work if it is taxable income. Those theories include some sort of assumption that the defining characteristic of a fiat currency is it's value to pay taxes, so the way to control (hyper-)inflation is continue to set the value of the currency in tax policy. From that perspective the taxable portion of the income becomes a "year long loan" and that loan amount is useful to set expectations (versus interest/inflation) on the value of the overall UBI.
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