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Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

sociable.co

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Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#41

Post by Nasrudith »

40acres wrote: post #32

UBI is not politically feasible in America, realistically I can only see it working in a very homogeneous country (religious, ethnic, language, etc.). Those who want UBI in America should redirect their focus on an expansion of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits. I think eliminating the phase in period of EITC and increasing the benefits (by absorbing other forms of welfare) is the way to go.

I hear this suggested often - why would homogeneity make a difference? Being too stupid bigotted to benefit yourself if it might help "the other"?

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#42

Post by xcklo »

tomschlick wrote: post #33
viklove wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah that says it all right there. This guy feels entitled to someone else's money. Yeah, and that guy is Bezos (and you, it seems). Where did that $150 billion come from? Are you really suggesting one man created it?

> Are you really suggesting one man created it? No of course not. The company he built from the ground up did. Those workers are paid as per their employment contract. That's it. That doesn't give them rights to take pieces of ownership in that company.

Incorporation is granted by the state. While it wouldn't be popular the government could very likely give people the right to take ownership in a corporation without too much technical problems. It is a matter of how you want to structure employment. There is nothing really saying that salary has to be the only required compensation.

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#43

Post by tomschlick »

mathgladiator wrote: post #36
tomschlick wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you really suggesting one man created it? No of course not. The company he built from the ground up did. Those workers are paid as per their employment contract. That's it. That doesn't give them rights to take pieces of ownership in that company.

The way we value ownership may be something to think about. I'm very capitalistic, but I'm not happy. I'm reading "tribe: homecomings and belonging" (subtitle paraphrased due to poor memory). I am a millionaire and I am thinking about how to use it to build a community, and while I dont think we should use force to take wealth, I did believe we need a new leadership class to inspire and influence how ownership is sha…

I believe that in the context of small communities, programs for the less fortunate can work very well. Mostly because the resources are attached to something/someone they know and they would feel to social pressure not to abuse those resources.

For instance, I'm not a religious person but that's one of the true virtues of a religious community. Giving to the less fortunate but you feel the pressure to do good with it, and you're expected to give back when you have the means to. If you abused that generosity, it would become apparent fast and your community would cut you off.

When you do this at a national level though, the tragedy of the commons come into play and no one cares who the money is coming from so long as they get it. There is very little social pressure not to game the system at that point.

I don't pretend to have a complete solution for all of these problems, I just think giving everyone a blank check each month is just adding more fuel to the fire.

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#45

Post by peterangular »

egusa wrote: post #19

Andrew Yang is getting a lot of traction with UBI in the Presidential race. It'll be interesting to see if more candidates run on this platform for the Senate & Congress.

I absolutely love Andrew Yang's calm, "common-sense" demeanor. I got into him thanks to the Sam Harris podcast. His platform is hard to ignore for someone who's been around the block both in the bay tech communities and rural America.

I really hope this is the start of a long and vibrant career in politics for him!

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#46

Post by thatswrong0 »

zackmorris wrote: post #21

I'm against the agism in the article but the rest of it is sound. Right now we means test shareholders on the basis of whether they have capital to invest in a company, which is discriminatory in a society like ours where wealth inequality is the highest it's been in the history of the world. If half the country has no upward mobility and an impoverished quality of life that takes everything they got just to survive,…

> I think it's time to question the rationality of people who are against UBI

This sounds like a thinly veiled ad hominem against skeptics.

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#47

Post by danaris »

tomschlick wrote: post #5

Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things. How about 5 years after when someone introduces another entitlement program to help single mothers/seniors/etc and then criticizes everyone else as heartless for not supporting it? Will we just end up where we are now with even mor…

> Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things.

This seems to be a strawman to me. I've never seen it argued that UBI should come with any kind of requirement that it be spent in certain ways, or that further monitoring would be required to ensure that people didn't do stupid things with it.

Yeah, some people will do with UBI what they do with their wages now: spend it on booze, gambling, video games, whatever their addiction of choice is.

But...that's not a problem that should be solved with strings on UBI, or anything like that. It's a problem that should be solved by trying destigmatize addiction, treat it as a disease, not a personal moral failing, and address the root causes that lead to it. Those things aren't easy, but that doesn't really matter for whether we should enact a UBI, because they're out of its scope.

However, if you reason through to some logical conclusions, it seems likely that, over time, a UBI that genuinely provides enough for people to live on, not in luxury but not in squalor, will tend to lead to these people having more opportunity to get themselves out of the negative spirals of addiction. It can give them hope. It can prevent many others from ending up in that situation to begin with.

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#48

Post by slowmovintarget »

basch wrote: post #16
tomschlick wrote: post #5

Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things. How about 5 years after when someone introduces another entitlement program to help single mothers/seniors/etc and then criticizes everyone else as heartless for not supporting it? Will we just end up where we are now with even mor…

I've asked this elsewhere recently but here it goes again. Im sure Im wrong, but wouldnt it make sense to start with like "all rice, bean, potatoes, and broccoli consumption at the personal level is free" and start with a food stamp / ebt that buys unlimited of something very specific? It wouldnt be a currency thats worth trading to other people, landlords couldnt collect ebt credits in lieu of rent, because everyone…

Destroying the value of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli would signal to producers that they should grow something more valuable.

The next inclination would naturally be to say "Well, you just force the growing of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli." You have now landed on a planned economy, which doesn't work very well.

So healthy staples can't actually be "free for all". I do think that providing the food directly for people who need it would be a better idea, but you get associated issues of government price-fixing and dumping of lower quality food-stuffs.

Federalism is all about experimentation. One of the features is to permit the autonomy for local governments to attempt local solutions to the specifics of the problem as it is faced locally. There may be something to be said for a central (federal) facilitation of local programs, but this almost always takes the form of funding.

Re: Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity stake in productivity’

#49

Post by tomschlick »

undersuit wrote: post #40
tomschlick wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be people who either fall through the cracks or just simply people who are bad at managing their resources. I don't know if there is any real solution to fix that.

Then why would you attack UBI over this issue?

Because I don't think UBI will help in the long term. It will lead to inflation of commodities (rent, food, cars, etc) and will lead to us having a bigger entitlement burden in the long run.
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