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We're officially launching UBI

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#111

Post by ythn »

munk-a wrote: post #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…

This may be slightly on a tangent, but how would UBI be distributed to the homeless - esp. people who have no address or documents or identification of any kind?

Is step one everyone needs a national ID in order to receive UBI?

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#112

Post by ythn »

GuB-42 wrote: post #31
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.

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.

> You just get your UBI, done

And what about the people that waste their UBI and can't afford to pay the rent or for food? The existing social safety nets can't go away, otherwise people who are irresponsible with their UBI will be left to starve, etc.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#113

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

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…

Also, another point that this "experiment" doesn't really generalize beyond charity, is that the population of people who get the money, are not the ones supporting the program. The funding for doing this comes from outside donors. Thus, the people who receive money, have no downside of using that money to increase their earning potential.

However, if it were implemented at the government level, people who used their money to increase their earning potential would have to pay increased taxes to support the UBI. The cost/benefit to extra earning changes if you keeping all your extra money, or a significant portion is going towards funding UBI. Once you do that, you may see a lot more people decide that the extra effort is not worth it.

So, this is a great experiment in directly providing money as charity. It does not really address UBI as would be implemented by governments.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#114

Post by monkseal »

burkaman wrote: post #76
ttoinou wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, will it happen ? Are laws implemented according to the proposals ? Of course the most urgent thing will be to implement UBI. And then to raise it. No one will think about deleting previous welfare benefits

Where do you live that politicians aren't constantly trying to remove welfare benefits?

This is why UBI will never become law. Once you start talking about taking away benefits (Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, Food Stamps, HUD Housing Subsidies), people will freak out. The backlash will be very loud.

Look at the tax reform debate now: When they proposed taking away deductibility of mortgage interest or state and local taxes deductions, I started seeing headlines from the New York Times and Washington Post about how this a “Middle Class Tax Hike”...

I would compare UBI to the "second system syndrome" with software developers: If only we can start over with an entirely new platform rather than addressing the technical debt in the current system, all would be well.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#115

Post by gremlinsinc »

dawnbreez wrote: post #2

I suspect that UBI, or something similar, will be necessary when automation/AI/whatever-you-like is good enough to replace "front-end", customer-facing jobs. At that point, it'll be hard to break into the job market without having a degree in something, and there'll be a sharp spike of unemployment in the lower class.

Replace that 'degree in something' with 'degree in an IT field'. There will come a day, where programming and creative arts are the only things not fully automated. Doctors, Surgeons, Lawyers, even Architects will probably be automated by 2040.

Hopefully, that brings hospital care costs down, but I'm betting their still greedy and just make 10x as much on 10x less staff.

I'm anxious for the ai revolution to just get on with already. UBI will be needed eventually, I want us to hurry and get to the breaking point where unemployment is 40% or greater across the globe because of automation so policymakers start to see that without some safety net for people there will be an uprising. I'm optimistic we can come together as a human race and solve poverty someday.

But I'm not naive, it could become a dystopian world where the rich live in lavish cities with closed walls, and everyone else lives outside those walls.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#116

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

moduspol wrote: post #63
skybrian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're sending money then people will spend it (such as on shoes) and increased spending and investment will tend to help local businesses much more than sending goods that compete with them. So I'm not seeing why you think skills will atrophy? It seems like there's more danger of that when people are poorer? (For one thing, education becomes less affordable.)

The shoes don't have to come from Bomet County. Nor does the food, or the electricity, or much of anything else. The poverty rate is just under 50%, per Wikipedia at least. If all the money is coming from the county (presumably it is), then it's going to be coming from the other 50%, and at a rate higher than neighboring (non-UBI) counties. It will be in the rational self-interest of that non-impoverished 50% to leav…

> rational self-interest

Isn't assuming this the basic failing of economics as a science? Not trying to be provocative, sincerely asking.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#117

Post by shkkmo »

logfromblammo wrote: post #94
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.

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…

We do not know which of 1-7 are needed by which people, so giving them to everyone is wasteful.

In addition, providing those basic necessities for free destroys the paid market for those goods and harms economic growth.

> 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.

I think you do not know what "communism" means. There is nothing in UBI about public ownership of the means of production.

> 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.

This is exactly why UBI is a good thing. Workers are freed to find the most effective use of their skills (rather than relying on capitalists to do it for them) which will hopefully lead to higher economic efficiency.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#118

Post by H99189 »

grasshopperpurp wrote: post #60
maxxxxx wrote: post #39

When I look at the US and see how difficult it is to get universal health care I don't think that UBI has a chance. The people in power would rather see people starve on the streets.

No idea why this is being downvoted. It's plain as day.

Not sure but maybe because it's not that politicians of all stripes want people to starve but that there is disagreement on how to bring that about. It's a painfully true reality that there are people who when given every opportunity, trust funds, etc, they are still immense drags on their community and economy as a whole with the destruction they leave behind in their wake. How will UBI deal with it's empowerment of such people or such tendencies in people? Until you do, you don't have workable system but an absolutely disaster in the making that will amplify suffering rather than decrease it.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#119

Post by jpindar »

balfirevic wrote: post #14
mbesto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, aren't they essentially the same thing?

They are usually very similar, depending on how your you set up your tax brackets. There might be operational differences, depending on concrete proposal (dispensing cash yearly vs. monthly, etc.)

>dispensing cash yearly vs. monthly

Which is not at all similar if you're poor.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#120

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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…

> everyone having extra money

No. UBI redistributes income (slightly differently than welfare). It does not create new money.

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