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Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

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Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#271

Post by grzm »

claudiawerner wrote: post #265
grzm wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this perspective problematic. I understand it feels like a lack of freedom—indeed you are constrained from doing whatever you want. As an example, imagine you are on your own, completely outside of society, out of contact with others. You’d need to build and maintain shelter. You’d need to forage or grow food. You’re not free to do whatever you want, until you have accumulated enough resources to not need to d…

>As an example, imagine you are on your own, completely outside of society, out of contact with others. You’d need to build and maintain shelter. You’d need to forage or grow food. You’re not free to do whatever you want, until you have accumulated enough resources to not need to do the work to provide what you need for everyday survival. This is true, but it's not the only perspective, and it misses out on a lot of…

Certainly. I believe we largely agree.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#272

Post by andreilys »

kyledrake wrote: post #50

"Altman, who favors UBI, said in exchange for a floor, he’d like to see no ceiling on earnings, as some, like presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have suggested. And like Friedman, Altman suggested tying the amount of the basic income to a fixed percentage of GDP. “Right now, because people are rightly angry that there's no floor, and that most people have no real chance to be super successful, we sort…

“A system that will concentrate that much power will be inherently evil”

It’s always puzzling to me when people equate wealth with evil. Why the unnecessary moralizing? Just say “concentrated wealth in the hands of the few has the potential to cause systemic societal harm”

No need to paint it as a battle of good vs evil, it severely diminishes the substance of your point.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#273

Post by paulddraper »

ianai wrote: post #250
paulddraper wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private sector is simply never going to find a job for everyone who needs to survive. You're technically correct that unemployment will never be 0%. But it's been < 4% for almost all of 2019.

I should expand that the private economy simply isn’t going to provide everyone everything they need-including work but also things work can’t or doesn’t provide. Plenty of full time employees have substandard health care because their employer contracts with an option of that leaves them hanging. Some employers schedule people for exactly less than what would require them to provide benefits, too. They also count to…

> substandard health care

Yang proposes nationalized health insurance, outside UBI.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#274

Post by zpallin »

pascoej wrote: post #162

Yang does have an interesting idea for campaign finance reform too. 100$ a year for any citizen to spend on political campaigns. In some ways I think this is bigger than the UBI. If everybody spent this voucher it would be ~23B, almost 4x what was spent on federal races in 2016. I think it will be more likely that our elected officials make better policy for normal people if their campaign funding also comes from the…

As you pointed out, special interests will just raise the value of a politician so the $100 disappears in value. That or buy out ads to convince people to spend on their corporate sponsored candidates rather than the ones seeking direct support from voters. Both of these already happen, so why wouldn't they happen more? Solving this issue of corruption in campaign finance requires a solution that only publicly financed campaigns can give. Make it so that voting is all that matters in deciding an elected official and sterilize campaign funding so it's not easy to corrupt.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#275

Post by carapace »

j8014 wrote: post #47

I find the concept of UBI and redistribution of wealth terrible to a free society. If wealth redistribution is what the rich and common both "want", why allow the wealthy to set the rules? It seems easier to string them all up by the neck and take it all so we have fair redistribution of wealth, why half ass it?

First, FWIW: "These 14 billionaires just promised to give away more than half of their money like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett" https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/14-billionaires-signed-bill-...

Second, "eat the rich" is very different from "Please don't let me starve", eh?

Third, UBI doesn't have to be Zero-Sum. "Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay."

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#276

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gonational wrote: post #226
anovikov wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there will be less injection that now right, in case UBI is implemented? No "new" money will appear (unless you suggest printing more and more trillions). This is the same money taken away as taxes. Except now it goes to those in need, instead it will go to everyone: now almost all of that money is consumed and so is indeed a "cash injection", instead the portion of the money - that goes to those already doing OK…

> No "new" money will appear... ... except that part where $1,000 per month per person in the US comes out to about $4 trillion, which is 100% of all taxes collected. There is no universe in which this much money can be given to every citizen in the US without creating new money.

The pretty obvious solution would be for more nominal taxes to be collected. It would also replace a very large fraction of existing government spending. Or you might have a one-time election between receiving the UBI and receiving social security, and a lot of people in or near retirement would choose social security and then not have to be provided with a UBI, and everyone else wouldn't have to be provided with social security.

Doing the accounting in a naive way is also misleading with a UBI, because it's effectively a tax credit. If you paid $15,000 in taxes and received a $12,000 UBI, you're really in the same situation as if you paid $3000 in taxes and had no UBI. The fact that you're nominally paying $12,000 more in taxes doesn't actually affect you because you get all that back.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#277

Post by devonkim »

kingkawn wrote: post #178
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how exactly is a ubi not solving rampant poverty? Maybe someone's implementation is flawed but to make an extraordinary claim like UBI can't solve poverty will require extraordinary proof. Likewise, how is ubi regressive? What would a progressive solution to poverty be?

If the introduction of UBI is coupled with the dismantling of existing social safety net it is effectively the privatization of public welfare, and will result in all the related pitfalls.

In a survey done by a social worker of n somewhere around 80 nearly all people on public assistance programs preferred the cash instead of public assistance.

Arbitrarily set and legislated into oblivion means testing thresholds and the administrative overhead of checking in constantly plus the shame of assistance appears to be a serious problem. Similar happens with EITC which most people eligible for do not claim.

See also how awful state-run TANF has been in Mississippi. UBI nationwide could be thought of as taking back control of programs from states that have dismantled the nets already.

This is a tough issue that has a lot of dimensions of discussion that won’t be covered respectfully in an HN thread exactly for the gravity of the problem

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#278

Post by maccam94 »

gonational wrote: post #249
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, if only people in Austin got a $1000 UBI then many people would want to move there for the UBI and rents there would go up by supply and demand. But if everybody in the country gets the same UBI then people are going to move from where to where exactly? If the answer is from places with higher housing costs to places with lower housing costs, I think you're going to find that there's more than enough empty spac…

You’ve misunderstood. I’m not suggesting that the rent would go up because of the increased demand for a living in Austin. I am suggesting that the rent would go up because everybody has at least $1,000 per month of free money, on top of whatever income they earned.

Rent prices are still governed by supply and demand (modulo some rent control), not by how much money the tenants have.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#279

Post by Reedx »

nixpulvis wrote: post #223

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Welfare is a tax, and a much needed one since the alternative costs even more. I don't really see how a universal basic income (UBI) solves much of anything that other welfare programs couldn't solve more effectively. If the argument is that it's easier to just give everyone $1,000, then I think you're a lazy policymaker.

Giving people the money directly, for them to use where it's needed in their particular case, is far more efficient than any program could ever possibly be. It's just the math and physics of it. Programs have all sorts of overhead and need to be generalized. They introduce inefficiency by default. And the larger it is, the more inefficient it becomes. That's just how it works with any organization. Even in the private sector (startup vs corporation).

With UBI, are they a citizen and 18+? Send check. Not much overhead there.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#280

Post by devonkim »

barrkel wrote: post #96
tells wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the presupposition that the VAT is flat across all goods. look at Yang's plan. this is not the case. https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/

VAT is a tax on goods and services. Wealth inequality comes from people owning future streams of income, not stuff; rentiers, in other words. To the degree that VAT decreases wealth inequality, it's only by harming the net present value of those future income streams. It would be better to have a more equitable distribution of ownership without harming wealth production.

Sharing the gains in some manner is the right goal, no question. The question is what approach will be most effective. Bernie’s corporate accountability plan is thus the perhaps more direct set of proposals instead of something like the FJG and climate plan. Oddly enough, the CAP is not talked about much yet and there’s already dozens of holes in it. Maybe in 1975 it would work but corporations have moved far beyond what Bernie’s plan could accomplish. Admittedly better than nothing but the administrative overhead of this should be pushed with a massive overhaul of our federal regulatory agencies including improving the career paths of those in federal service.

Yang’s got the dynamic of federal bureaucrats down correctly. It’s the same ones I went through and why I left federal service a decade ago. Bernie’s commitment to service is incredibly inspiring but relying upon other people to be more like Bernie is not a plan, nor is relying upon more executives to be like Yang is not a plan either.

I’m not an either/or kind of person and see Bernie and Yang working together on legislation as a real, material step forward.

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