Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

perell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 238 posts

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#51

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #15

If automation will truly do all jobs, then by definition we have human-level AI. As labour supply enormously limits economic growth, we would have economic growth that is unimaginably large in this scenario. Imagine how quickly a startup could scale if they could clone their best engineer. Now imagine that applied to the economy as a whole. We would get economic doubling times on the order of months. If we truly get…

You say that as long as there are tasks that only humans can do, "we will have jobs". True, but if and when only highly qualified/specialized jobs (doctors, researchers, engineers, etc.) need humans, most of the population will not have a realistic chance to get a job.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#52

Post by meddlepal »

stouset wrote: post #39
meddlepal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the current proposals for UBI seem to be talking about relatively modest anounts of income... between 10-15K a year... that's not going to go very far unless the cost of rent, essentials, and services drops dramatically. The reality is if we end up with a large amount of people that are not working then our economy is going to be totally hosed because it runs on consumption. If people don't have the money to cons…

Are you kidding? Median household income in the US is ~$60,000/yr. $10,000/yr/household would be enormous to over half the population.

If nobody has a job because they've all been automated away and you're just getting 10K/yr from the Government then your median income is.... 10K/yr not 60K + 10K.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#53

Post by DennisP »

meddlepal wrote: post #32
RivieraKid wrote: post #12

The prevailing view seems to be: robots will take our jobs, therefore we will need UBI, which allows people to live without work. The way I see it, the main problem that UBI is solving is inequality, it's a rich to poor transfer. Excessive inequality is bad because the aggregate utility goes down (rich people don't gain much from an additional dollar, so it's more effectively used by a poor person). Transfering cash…

All the current proposals for UBI seem to be talking about relatively modest anounts of income... between 10-15K a year... that's not going to go very far unless the cost of rent, essentials, and services drops dramatically. The reality is if we end up with a large amount of people that are not working then our economy is going to be totally hosed because it runs on consumption. If people don't have the money to cons…

On the one hand you're saying 15K/yr isn't enough to live on, and on the other you're worried it will prompt people to quit their jobs.

Unemployment isn't our major problem right now. The problem is that the jobs available for many people pay very little. Back when I made $18K/year, that extra 10-15K/mo would have been enormously helpful. I certainly wouldn't have stopped working; I would have paid down my credit cards and had an easier time training myself to write software.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#54

Post by peteradio »

adambyrtek wrote: post #23
Kaiyou wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've pointed out why UBI makes no sense. As the saying goes, if everyone is a millionaire, nobody is. Likewise, if you give everyone $X that amount becomes the new baseline. This is also the reason why it makes no sense to fight wealth inequality. Without wealth inequality, there wouldn't be wealth, only a baseline. What UBI tries to solve isn't a bug, but a feature.

Sure, but it's a very different baseline when you can afford basic needs instead of being homeless and hungry. The fact that some other people might feel "less rich" as a result shouldn't really be considered an issue.

I think maybe OPs point is that current prices for basics are based on some sort baseline ability to pay. If you increase that baseline then whats to stop basic prices to rise leaving everyone at that same point or maybe worse since other social services would get turned off?

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#55

Post by meddlepal »

DennisP wrote: post #53
meddlepal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the current proposals for UBI seem to be talking about relatively modest anounts of income... between 10-15K a year... that's not going to go very far unless the cost of rent, essentials, and services drops dramatically. The reality is if we end up with a large amount of people that are not working then our economy is going to be totally hosed because it runs on consumption. If people don't have the money to cons…

On the one hand you're saying 15K/yr isn't enough to live on, and on the other you're worried it will prompt people to quit their jobs. Unemployment isn't our major problem right now. The problem is that the jobs available for many people pay very little. Back when I made $18K/year, that extra 10-15K/mo would have been enormously helpful. I certainly wouldn't have stopped working; I would have paid down my credit car…

I think you misunderstood... I don't think it will cause people to quit their jobs. I didn't say that in my post. I assume UBI goes hand in hand with automation straight up eliminating jobs. There are no jobs for people.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#56

Post by developerdylan »

nightski wrote: post #36
sokoloff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way will the direct transfer of money from people who have more to people who have less not be effective at reducing economic inequality?

Because of how they utilize that money. The poor will spend it, because they need to. The rich invest their money since they do not need it all. Those investments are continuing to grow. Even if you transfer some of that money to the poor, they are spending it where? At Amazon etc...

Money being spent causes the economy to grow. How is that a bad thing? The investments of rich people often never see the consumer economy.

It doesn't matter how they utilize it, UBI is still reducing inequality. You are allowing families to purchase things they wouldn't have had the money for otherwise. Quality of life purchases that the well-off take for granted.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#57

Post by Ididntdothis »

I simply don’t think UBI can survive long term even if it ever gets introduced. The same people who advocate for tax cuts now will also be advocating against UBI and the “lazy parasites” the “job creators” have to feed. People are already complaining about welfare recipients and in the eyes of the people who work full time people who live on UBI will be exactly the same. Unless we totally restructure society this won’t work long term.

Also all proposals I have seen are way too low. They will create slums where people will barely survive.

How about doing some pragmatic stuff like universal health care and increasing the supply of low cost housing dramatically? They are pretty much prerequisites for UBI. If we can’t pull that off forget UBI.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#58

Post by _qwfv »

Kaiyou wrote: post #14
Pfhreak wrote: post #4

I'm glad we are having this conversation about ubi, but I see a lot of proposals that are basically "just give everyone $X,000 a month and turn off other social services". My big concern with that approach is that we'd see landlords immediately bump rents, or we'd cut medical support for people (when medical bills can clearly be many multiples of ubi). But I'm very pro ubi if we can figure out how to protect the peop…

You've pointed out why UBI makes no sense. As the saying goes, if everyone is a millionaire, nobody is. Likewise, if you give everyone $X that amount becomes the new baseline. This is also the reason why it makes no sense to fight wealth inequality. Without wealth inequality, there wouldn't be wealth, only a baseline. What UBI tries to solve isn't a bug, but a feature.

> What UBI tries to solve isn't a bug, but a feature.

You can't possibly believe this...

There are millions of children who don't have enough food in America. There are millions more people who cannot afford to keep their heat on, or are evicted because of a small unplanned repair bill.

To say that millions of people should be starving, homeless, poorly clothed, dealing with crippling anxiety over keeping a roof over their heads, etc. is a feature is borderline sociopathic.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#59

Post by iso947 »

crdrost wrote: post #31

Oh goodness, this thing has only been up for 40 minutes and it's already got 20 comments... I will say that the basic thrust of the article seems to resonate for me, in that I did come to hear of UBI first because of a utopian ideal. In my case, it was tax policy. I was very interested in what sort of tax policy would be agnostic about your family structure, imagining a utopia where the government does not need to kn…

Tax in the Uk pays no attention to your marriage or other domestic situation*

A house with a £55k earner and a £5k earner will pay more in tax than a house with two £30k earners (about £2400 a year more, even without student loan repayments)

*(There is an odd £200 tax break for people on lower tax brackets who can apply for a transfer from one person to another, but I think it’s going away)

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#60

Post by DennisP »

nightski wrote: post #36
sokoloff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way will the direct transfer of money from people who have more to people who have less not be effective at reducing economic inequality?

Because of how they utilize that money. The poor will spend it, because they need to. The rich invest their money since they do not need it all. Those investments are continuing to grow. Even if you transfer some of that money to the poor, they are spending it where? At Amazon etc...

The money has to come from somewhere. Assuming we're not completely stupid about it, the rich will pay more in new taxes than they'll get back from UBI.
Post reply on HN