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We're officially launching UBI

givedirectly.org

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#121

Post by gremlinsinc »

ythn wrote: post #112
GuB-42 wrote: 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.

> 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.

Have one stipulation: To collect UBI you must have a physical address for the check to be mailed to. You must have a residence. This at the very least ensures that they cover their rent and would allow us to redirect money for homeless shelters back into the UBI system somehow.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#122

Post by ttoinou »

shkkmo wrote: post #110
ttoinou wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you did not understand the quote. It's not about an objective morality (what is shameful, wasteful etc. to spend on). Spend the money you successfully exchanged with someone else the way you want it. The morale case with the argument is that citizen should have their say in how their taxes are spend, and that each of one us have different goals so "living in dignity" cannot be accomplished by UBI.

> Then you did not understand the quote. Perhaps you picked a bad quote then. That quote pretty explicitly contradicts your claim.

  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
Dignity is subjective ofc. If you think otherwise I can understand how you can interpret the quote in another way :)

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#123

Post by ttoinou »

matt4077 wrote: post #87
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

Every single proposal of UBI has included it replacing all other welfare benefits. That simplification, and the resulting reduction in administrative overhead, is among the top arguments for UBI. Also: spaces before question marks look strange.

  Every single proposal of UBI has included it replacing all other welfare benefits
Only so that their cost calculations don't go crazy and seem sustainable. No one in the UBI side is even remotely interested in deleting previous welfare

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#124

Post by ttoinou »

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.

If only we had politicians with good intentions, every issues would be solved !

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#125

Post by burkaman »

ttoinou wrote: post #104
burkaman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

France. How are politicians incentivized to reduce welfare ?

Voters and donors, same as everything else. Even if there's no voter resistance to increased spending, implementing UBI without raising taxes or decreasing welfare would destroy the economy before your next election, so there's a clear incentive to not do it.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#126

Post by fareesh »

The results from this experiment will likely be used to influence government policy at some point or another. Whoever is funding this effort is probably going to do that in phase 2, once the results are sufficiently in their favor. Isn't this a convoluted implementation of the Wal-Mart model? Keep minimum wages low and influence policy to be as such, so that people use food stamps, which are mostly spent at Wal-Mart. I remember Bernie Sanders talking about this during the 2016 campaign.

I can't help but think that some corporate research department has already done a study on Universal Basic Income in terms of how it will affect the bottom line of the donors, and this is part of a plan to influence government policy in various parts of the world, with the ultimate end goal of lining their own pockets.

I find this to be far more believable than the idea that people are genuinely altruistic and charitable in 2017, perhaps the most vain, narcissistic, virtue signalling self-obsessed period in history, which is a period that directly follows the most egregious example of corporate greed and fraud that led to the housing crisis and wall street collapse.

I would be very skeptical of any and all data that is generated from such experiments until we know who the donors are. I think it's only fair to ask.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#127

Post by gremlinsinc »

balfirevic wrote: post #21
wavefunction wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It requires whatever bureaucracy you already have for managing taxes. If you are going to have taxes in your country, there should be no additional bureaucratic requirements. With UBI, it is possible to have it paid by entity other than government, but that's a different story.

That's part of the problem. Bureaucracy. If we can streamline all handouts to UBI, replace the IRS and income taxes with a flat sales tax on all money out including business expenses, groceries, investments, etc.

Replace ACA with single-payer or something similar, with government bidding on drugs and forcing drug companies to lower their prices.

We could save a shit ton of money. We need to run government like a lean business, and we need some framework for bills that make them more like git branches, where you can't just push everything to master (i.e. an omnibus) but you need to break everything out into smaller removable parts. No more grouping things together.

Make Congress work 40 hours per week ON voting and writing new bills, make them so busy doing their job they don't have time to go out and work on getting re-elected, the people will vote on them because they do a good job and like their voting history.

Government is broken and bleeds money. $8 per ounce for a cup of coffee and $15 bagels from a caterer at a DoD outing is insane. How about we just make it bring your own coffee, or use a Keurig?

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#128

Post by zacharycohn »

fareesh wrote: post #126

The results from this experiment will likely be used to influence government policy at some point or another. Whoever is funding this effort is probably going to do that in phase 2, once the results are sufficiently in their favor. Isn't this a convoluted implementation of the Wal-Mart model? Keep minimum wages low and influence policy to be as such, so that people use food stamps, which are mostly spent at Wal-Mart.…

It's very much the opposite of "Walmart wants to keep people on food stamps so they spend their food stamps at Walmart" because they're getting cash they can spend anywhere.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#129

Post by supermdguy »

skybrian wrote: post #103
moduspol wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting theory, but they already started a pilot study in one village, and the results were nothing like that, so far. There seems to to be lots of local small business investment. I also don't see anything about people moving in or out. https://givedirectly.org/blog-post?id=1423924916713458127

Thanks for the link.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#130

Post by LesZedCB »

monkseal wrote: post #92
Romanulus wrote: post #54

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 poli…

> UBI in America would calcify a class system where one group of people works and another lives off their work

Turns out this already exists, it's just that most people, presumably you as well by the tone of your post, thinks that the people who are parasites on the working class is the poor and needy instead of the rich and powerful.

need proof? read the paradise papers or panama papers. the rich are making off like bandits without paying their fair share orders of magnitude beyond what the impoverished are consuming.

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