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We're officially launching UBI

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#151

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> And what about the people that waste their UBI and can't afford to pay the rent or for food?

What do you do with people that waste their welfare benefits and can't afford to pay their subsidized (but non-zero) rent, or who sell their food stamps and can't afford food? The present programs, despite their high overhead of administration, don't solve this problem either.

> The existing social safety nets can't go away, otherwise people who are irresponsible with their UBI will be left to starve, etc.

Except that existing social safety net programs do not actually address this problem effectively. (Food banks and homeless shelters provide some mitigation and would certainly still be needed, but those aren't the kinds of programs UBI is usually promoted as replacing.)

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#152

Post by shkkmo »

jerf wrote: post #84
moduspol wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's tough to measure "success," but at least it would be presumably easy to measure failure. If we see exactly what opponents claim will happen, it would suggest a more strict implementation might be worse. My concern is that with this we're likely looking at an even worse version of the problems seen with sending shoes to Africa [1]. Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll crea…

"Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them." That would be a valid result of the experiment though, in light of the fact it is completely impossible to implement UBI everywhere…

> I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly

There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI. While there are many problems with those studies preventing their use as any sort of conclusive proof, they have been predominantly neutral or positive. Yet I don't see that accounted for in the predictions of doom and gloom any of the UBI skeptics. If this experiment goes well, you need to do more than just admit you were wrong about the experiment, you and other skeptics need to lower your confidence in your overall skepticism of UBI.

> while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)

It sounds to me like you have not eaten any crow. If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated. Based on that, I am now less skeptical (or less confident of my skepticism) of the future crypto currencies. (I share your skepticism of the future of BitCoin, but I am far less certain of that skepticism than I used to be for these exact reasons)

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#153

Post by moduspol »

virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #116
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…

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

Well, the honest answer is "sometimes." People obviously don't simply pack up and move when the taxes are 0.1% lower on the other side of the country even if it is rational. But that doesn't justify ignoring common sense when crafting economic policy.

When the federal government started subsidizing higher ed loans, it is not some unimaginable outcome that higher ed prices will increase. Banks, colleges, students, and parents are all operating in their own self-interest, but by artificially making more money available to consumers, they are naturally willing to spend more.

It's just a sign of really bad policy when nobody is cheating the system and everyone is following the rules, but it results in really bad outcomes. And it's even worse when that happens and blame is passed to those rational actors (banks, colleges, etc.) because that further justifies bad policy.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#154

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

The “U” in “UBI” usually stands for “Unconditional” (not behavior- or means-tested), not “Universal”.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#155

Post by moduspol »

shkkmo wrote: post #107
moduspol wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've provided subsidies and guarantees to try to help poor people and manipulated markets with predictable results countless times. In the US, higher education loans and urban housing are modern day examples of this. UBI isn't inherently different. It's trying to pretend you can manipulate a market with no detrimental side effects, but it's been tried many, many times.

The whole point of UBI is that markets are being manipulated as INDIRECTLY as possible. You aren't subsidizing people to not work (unemployment benefits), subsidizing people to work (minimum wage), subsidizing particular goods (housing, education loans) or inflating demand for a specific set of goods (food stamps). You seem to be of the opinion that nothing can be done to eliminate poverty, so why even try?

I disagree. It may not be targeted to an industry, but it is a colossal subsidy that will greatly affect markets in a lot of ways.

Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty. I'm confused why you would think large-scale involuntary wealth redistribution is the only way.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#156

Post by shkkmo »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #61

Congrats, and good luck. I'm personally against the idea of UBI because I don't believe it works at a large scale because all it will do is create inflation, but I'm genuinely curious to see me proven wrong. That's the whole point of experimentation, so I fully support this.

> I don't believe it works at a large scale because all it will do is create inflation.

Inflation is not necessarily a bad thing, high inflation and low inflation (or deflation) are both bad. (Specifically, it is expectations of high or low inflation are bad as they tend to compound into further increases or decreases in inflation.)

This is why the Fed in the US targets a base inflation rate of 2%, the expectation of a stable rate of inflation help keep that inflation rate stable and support economic activity.

While limiting inflation used to be the primary concern of monetary policy, we have seen more and more effort being put into limiting deflation and maintaining a healthy level of inflation.

Any increase in inflation due to UBI would be caused by UBI causing demand growth to outstrip supply growth. Yet boosting demand is exactly the tool we need to deal with economic downturns.

I think the path to introducing UBI is to legally couple UBI increases with slightly lesser minimum wage, unemployment and welfare decreases. We then give the Fed the power to trigger this as needed to stimulate the economy when needed and avoid deflation.

I think it is a positive sign that the anti-UBI skeptics seem to be shifting away from the "but people will be lazy" argument to the "but it will cause inflation" argument.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#157

Post by shkkmo »

moduspol wrote: post #155
shkkmo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of UBI is that markets are being manipulated as INDIRECTLY as possible. You aren't subsidizing people to not work (unemployment benefits), subsidizing people to work (minimum wage), subsidizing particular goods (housing, education loans) or inflating demand for a specific set of goods (food stamps). You seem to be of the opinion that nothing can be done to eliminate poverty, so why even try?

I disagree. It may not be targeted to an industry, but it is a colossal subsidy that will greatly affect markets in a lot of ways. Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty. I'm confused why you would think large-scale involuntary wealth redistribution is the only way.

> it is a colossal subsidy that will greatly affect markets in a lot of ways

It is, by definition, not a subsidy since it does not target a subset of economic sectors.

> Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty.

Name one means of eliminating poverty without wealth re-distribution or subsidies. The only ones I know of involve sterilizing, deporting, killing or otherwise demographically elminating poor people.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#158

Post by moduspol »

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

That link says they started "last October" and is dated February 2017. It covers 95 people. That's a very short period of time, quite sparse on details, and a small group of people in an isolated environment. They're also not taking money from people in the community to redistribute.

Put plainly: It's not surprising at all that one can take a lot of voluntarily-given money and distribute it to an impoverished village in Africa, resulting in them being happy and saying they're seeking work (in the short term). Normally, though, that's called "charity" rather than a UBI experiment, and even UBI opponents will acknowledge the likelihood of that happening.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#159

Post by NeuNeurosis »

moduspol wrote: post #155
shkkmo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of UBI is that markets are being manipulated as INDIRECTLY as possible. You aren't subsidizing people to not work (unemployment benefits), subsidizing people to work (minimum wage), subsidizing particular goods (housing, education loans) or inflating demand for a specific set of goods (food stamps). You seem to be of the opinion that nothing can be done to eliminate poverty, so why even try?

I disagree. It may not be targeted to an industry, but it is a colossal subsidy that will greatly affect markets in a lot of ways. Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty. I'm confused why you would think large-scale involuntary wealth redistribution is the only way.

Just to point out this program is not involuntary. All the funds so far as I understand it, have been generated voluntarily.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#160

Post by jerf »

shkkmo wrote: post #152
jerf wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them." That would be a valid result of the experiment though, in light of the fact it is completely impossible to implement UBI everywhere…

> I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI. While there are many problems with those studies preventing their use as any sort of conclusive proof, they have been predominantly neutral or positive. Yet I don't see that accounted for in the predictions of doom and gloom any of the UBI skeptics. If…

"There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI."

I don't think any of them have even raised to the level of "interesting" compared to the scale of what is being proposed ("rework the entire global economy"). I am aware of them. UBI experiments need to be about UBI, not about things that vaguely resemble it. In particular they need to be large enough that the hypothesized bad effects could even be witnessed, as most of them revolve what will happen once people are habituated to it. For them to be useful, you need to not be referring to them in the past tense because they should still be ongoing, and indeed, really just at the beginning of their run. Most of them are the equivalent of claiming free college works because they went into a single small community and promised anyone who wanted to that they could attend the first three weeks of college for free if they liked; the results hardly matter.

"If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated."

I did say that. I just used fewer words.

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