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We're officially launching UBI

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#91
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is just a special case of a negative income tax where numbers cancel out. The biggest advantage of UBI is its simplicity. You just get your UBI, done, much easier for people to understand and for the government to manage.

Yup. In my guess, UBI is more overhead to run since there are literally more line items on people's tax documents (there's the UBI as well as the progressive tax that is used to pay for it). But UBI's have the perceived simplicity of "I always get this", which might help encourage more people to pay in, even though the higher earners are losing money.

Alternatively we can use UBI to remove special income grants, if UBI is sufficient for a modest survival we might be able to drop social security and the non-medical portions of government disability payments in favor of a flat income grant. This would reduce the bureaucracy involved in these systems.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#92

This is a poor implementation of Welfare 2.0 and it will fail just like the first iteration.

At its heart, UBI sounds like a good thing but it ignore basic human nature and particularly in-group and out-group conflicts. UBI in America would calcify a class system where one group of people works and another lives off their work. The working group will come to resent the non-working group and it will further divide the society. People are living a bubble if they don’t think this would be a major source of political and social friction.

Also, I don’t think the proponents of UBI can account for how many people would simply not work if they had the option. I love programming but there are some days where I don’t like my boss and my co-workers. I endure some discomfort but at the end of the day, I’m compensated for that. If you told me I would get 50k per year and free housing, I would probably spend most of my time snowboarding and playing video games rather sit in 1 hour planning meeting. I would probably be much more likely to do this if all my friends were snowboarding and playing video games ….

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#93
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) How do you mean it isn't "universal"? My understand is that this initiative is universal within these communities? Are you saying that there is no meaningful way to test UBI without jumping immediately into a global program? 2) 6000 is a pretty good sample size. Given that this will be universal within these communities, we can certainly look for any evidence of local price changes.

That would be true if every economic good were produced within the community. I don’t know how isolated these experimental communities are, but I doubt they source 100% of supplies from the same group that’s getting the basic income.

Why? Even if a whole country would have UBI they still need to import stuff...

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#94

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.

Step 1: Distribute 2 L of clean, potable drinking water to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them.

Step 2: Distribute 2200 kcal of nutritionally adequate food to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them.

Step 3: Allocate 20 m^3 of private, secure shelter to every person, with right-of-occupation intervals lasting no less than 4 years, at no additional cost to them.

Step 4: Allocate ~350 L/day for treated water and sewer lines--sufficient for cooking, cleaning, hygiene, and sanitation--to every person, at no additional cost to them.

Step 5: Distribute 800 W of electrical power to every person, at no additional cost to them.

Step 6: Allocate 50 Mb/s data network bandwidth to every person, at no additional cost to them.

Step 7: Build sufficient additional public infrastructure for transportation, healthcare, business, and recreation, such that a reasonable amount of use of those commons is available to every person at no additional cost.

Step 8: Distribute a quantity of spendable currency to every person, with no requirements for eligibility or restrictions on its use.

Starting at step 8 is, in my opinion, a recipe for inflation and rent-seeking.

UBI is, in essence, an attempt to create a mixed economic system that is communist at the bottom end and capitalist at the top end. If you do not establish the minimum quality-of-life boundary by producing or taxing-in-kind the required goods and services as an inherently governmental (+ non-profit NGO) function, the rent-seekers in the upper class can and will capture some of the benefit intended for the lower class, and possibly enough of it that the lower class can no longer solely subsist upon it.

If the subsistence-level of existence is guaranteed, there is no longer any leverage provided to a person with more resources by virtue of the poorer person needing to accept a bad deal in order to live, while the richer person can walk away from the table without meaningful consequence. Workers cannot be as easily exploited if everyone can afford to quit their jobs. Renters can always fall back to their sleeping cubicle.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#95
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact opposite of that. When you send free goods into an economy, you inhibit demand which in turn inhibits economic growth. When you send money into an economy, in increase demand and it will have the opposite effect.

Not necessarily. Increased demand solely from cash injections in an economy will increase prices without an increase in investments, since those investing can't know if the cash injections will continue or not. So it will lead to short-term inflation, and without the long-term investments in production, that inflation will continue for as long as the injections continue. As the cash injections aren't universal, those…

Well cash injection by definition create inflation. However it could be a neutral effect if, for instance, you get rid of unemployment benefits at the same time.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#96
post #88
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US at least all the rates are marginal. The only "disincentive to work" is completely psychological and made up. If you make more money, you get more money. There is no financial scenario where you make $1 more and lose anything close to $1 in government benefits, tax credits, etc. I was on unemployment for approximately 6 months in 2008 and every $100 I made only decreased my unemployment benefit by $15-20. A…

>In the US at least all the rates are marginal. The only "disincentive to work" is completely psychological and made up. If you make more money, you get more money. There is no financial scenario where you make $1 more and lose anything close to $1 in government benefits, tax credits, etc. Well there's at least one , though you're generally right that welfare cliffs have been all but eliminated in the US. That said,…

You are right about the ACA subsidy, I completely forgot about that because I was only thinking about income taxes.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#97
I would be extremely interested to see the social/psychological effects of UBI on how people treat the homeless. This is a bit divergent but if UBI was introduced without any increase in mental care I am curious if the portion of the population remaining homeless would be exploited for their earnings or supported into stable life settings. I do believe it's a good idea to try UBI but this particular point has always interested me.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#98
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Increased demand solely from cash injections in an economy will increase prices without an increase in investments, since those investing can't know if the cash injections will continue or not. So it will lead to short-term inflation, and without the long-term investments in production, that inflation will continue for as long as the injections continue. As the cash injections aren't universal, those…

Well cash injection by definition create inflation. However it could be a neutral effect if, for instance, you get rid of unemployment benefits at the same time.

Indeed, but the issue is that without predictability in the cash injections, nobody will be willing to invest in production.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#99
From the linked article about previous results with one-time cash grants:

As it turns out, that assumption was wrong. Across many contexts and continents, experimental tests show that the poor don’t stop trying when they are given money, and they don’t get drunk. Instead, they make productive use of the funds, feeding their families, sending their children to school, and investing in businesses and their own futures. Even a short-term infusion of capital has been shown to significantly improve long-term living standards, improve psychological well-being, and even add one year of life.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#100

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…

One interpretation of "universal" is that it is income independent of other income, so if you get a job you still get UBI too.

This could be a huge help people who can't find stable employment, but still want e.g. a loan to buy a home.

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