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What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

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Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#61

Post by knowtheory »

It's very strange to call a proposal (negative income tax) made by economists as orthodox and central to 20th century conservative politics as Milton Freedman as _utopian_.

But even beyond the aspirations of a UBI/negative income tax, the real problem with any such proposal will be implementation and policy details which most UBI proponents don't talk about much if at all.

Will UBI be counted as income? How will this interact with other programs such as SNAP, healthcare subsidies, HUD housing subsidies, or any number of state operated programs? Will they be mutually exclusive?

Will existing policies or laws need to be modified in order to accommodate such a proposal?

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#62

Post by pjc50 »

To me, it's the other way up: without UBI, there is a small number of people who die every year due to not having (sufficient) income. Usually not direct starvation, but exposure-related due to homelessness, or issues such as not being able to afford insulin. There are basically three kinds of response to this:

a) they deserve it, all of them

b) it's sad, but it's not our problem

c) this is not acceptable and something should be done about it by the state

People who believe (a) and (b) are not going to support UBI. Once people accept (c), only then can we start talking about how to deal with it, and the disadvantages and distortions of the current means-tested system. Liberating the system from means-testing means completely giving up on (a) and accepting that trying to sort the poor into deserving and undeserving is both intractable and hostile to human dignity. But it's a very long way to get there.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#63

Post by Pfhreak »

peteradio wrote: post #54
adambyrtek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Rent control. Keeping other social programs like food stamps. There are ways to protect these dollars. They might not be popular, but they aren't inconceivable.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#64

Post by anticensor »

peteradio wrote: post #54
adambyrtek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some of those services would be so abundant that they would be free by nature of economics, not by subsidies. Others might get more expensive.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#65

Post by ZhuanXia »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #51
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.

In my experience automating tasks many highly educated workers are easier to replace than low-skill workers. Many a university grad has been made redundant by a Python script; 0 plumbers have. AI people have a term for this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#66

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

When you automate production, prices go down. That's something that can be verified empirically, and hardly anybody will disagree. But when you automate the entire economy, prices should go down towards zero nearly everywhere¹ - that's because when capital freely creates capital, all restrictions on production and competition become meaningless.

When you automate the entire economy, salaries also go down toward zero. That's even part of what allows prices to go down.

So, did workers become richer or poorer on the process? It's a 0/0 situation, and the answer to that question will depend entirely on the path both curves take into 0. But UBI makes that all irrelevant by adding a minimum bound on the numerator. For the purpose of fighting the problems of automation any reasonable amount will do, it doesn't matter that it looks too low today.

But of course, there are other goals that one can reach by UBI, and none of the above apply to those ones.

1 - There are obvious exceptions, some things are truly limited, and some things are limited by the government, culture, or other such forces. The cost of those are the real limit that will say whether the UBI value is too low, not today's cost of living.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#67

Post by seibelj »

jrockway wrote: post #44
seibelj wrote: post #8

Is this AI revolution ever going to happen? Siri and Alexa still hear the wrong thing half the time, even when I speak and enunciate very clearly. What jobs have been eliminated by this revolution that I’ve been hearing about for the past decade? The self driving cars are not picking me up and not delivering my packages. I have a better solution than airdropping everyone welfare money so we can laze around all day -…

An AI revolution is not required to eliminate jobs. Robots are already doing the work of millions. You can see it everywhere you look. Was your laptop hand milled out of aluminum? Nope, a CNC machine did it. Do you see 12 cashiers manning 12 checkout lanes at the grocery store? Nope, 1 cashier is manning 12 self-checkout lanes. Do you have a secretary that schedules your meetings? No, you just use Google Calendar. Th…

Yes, technology enhancements (which are not “AI”) have increased productivity, allowing less people to create more value. Where is the widespread unemployment?

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#68

Post by damon_c »

meddlepal wrote: post #52
stouset wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His point is that given that half of the population makes less than $60k/year, $10k/year would be a 16% or more income boost for those people.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#70

Post by paulgb »

iso947 wrote: post #45
mdorazio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your last statement, most proponents of UBI emphasize the "Basic" part of it. As in, it's meant to provide a subsistence level of income that a person could survive on, but not in comfort. I'm personally in favor of that level explicitly not being location-specific so that if you want to live solely on UBI, you have to live in a low cost of living area to do so.

So those in cheap areas with no jobs can never move to the areas with jobs?

I don't think it's a static system. Guaranteeing an income to everyone in those cheap areas could also have the effect of creating jobs in those areas because people would have money to spend.
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