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

91–100 of 238 posts

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#91

Post by patja »

I think this misses one of the social benefits of UBI, or maybe glosses over it in the umbrella of "addressing poverty and income inequality", which is that it gives people on the margin the safety net to reboot their career/job into something more productive rather than destructive behavior they might otherwise fall into.

I got this insight from the end chapters of the book "Ghettoside", where the author describes US social security payments to those who are "disabled" as the closest the US has today to a non-universal basic income. Coal miners who are no longer able to work because the coal mine shut down and they have no other skills get this "disability" income, and in Ghettoside the author describes former gang members also qualifying under the rationale that they are unsuited to the formal workforce and are therefore "disabled" as well. But what it can serve to do is break the cycle of criminal behavior: when the former drug dealer gets out of jail, absent other opportunities or a safety net source of funding to cover life's basics, they quickly fall into the path of least resistance and return to their criminal behavior. The social security disability payments give them another option to turn things around. Now, if they transform themselves into a legal entrepreneur or productive employee, they sure don't seem disabled any longer, which is part of the problem with this being a non-universal BI. It is akin to the downsides of a negative income tax: it gives only to some, and when you do that you have opportunities to abuse the system, and you have more process costs/friction and barriers to entry which keep some who should get it from getting it.

Social security disability is an abused program, with attorneys advertising their ability to get you qualified, which is the irksome aspect of this being a non-universal basic income: it is only available to the savvy or those willing to engage an unscrupulous attorney to qualify. So it is a flawed comparison to UBI, but I think the social benefits described in Ghettoside deserve more attention.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#92

Post by [deleted] »

nightski wrote: post #20
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…

I find it hard to believe that it would be effective at reducing inequality. It would make the lives of the poor better for sure, but it will not reduce inequality. When Jeff Bezos' net worth can swing $9B in a day as it did this past Friday, giving the poor enough money to purchase food and bare essentials isn't going to make much of a dent in their net worth. I'm not saying it won't help them out, just that it real…

[deleted]

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#93

Post by iso947 »

deepsun wrote: post #13
foolzcrow wrote: post #2

Fact: The plan is about replacing you with robots at work so they can rake in more profits. In return you get to go on welfare rebranded as UBI. Look it up UBI is about automation AI replacing humans for profit. (see geordie rose) So your 40k job becomes 10k to 15k welfare. MegaCorps pocket the rest of your wage as reward for selling you out to UBI and AI.

Well MegaCorps still need customers who can pay. Otherwise we have Great Depression again, when there was a lot of production, but public simply didn't have any money to buy it. The solution last time was to basically distribute money to poor, e.g. fund mega-projects with tax money. I feel like UBI sounds pretty much like that as well.

There were major benefits of things like the new deal - massive road systems, parks, etc which allowed America to prosper for the next century.

Mass infrastructure investment would be great, trouble is we need educated workers now, not day labourers, so we need to combine the infrastructure building with education both formal and on the job, ideally at a part time rate, say 3 days a week

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#94

Post by ebg13 »

damon_c wrote: post #68
meddlepal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The statement was about the people who are no longer earning other income because their labor is not needed.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#95

Post by sokoloff »

pinkfoot wrote: post #71
DennisP wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the rich will pay more in new taxes than they'll get back from UBI. Except the fortunate rich who own the housing that the UBI beneficiaries will pay for. I can see UBI making a few people very, very, wealthy.

So what? If those few people provide services to a great number of people who freely choose to spend their (now increased) income on housing, those people have improved the lot of a large number of people and have earned that wealth (upon which they'll be taxed).

Indeed, if UBI becomes a significant possibility (but before it's a certainty), I think that buying low-end rental properties would be a good idea as I'd expect UBI to result in a net increase in household formation. This is literally giving people freedom and agency with which to live their lives in the way they choose.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#96

Post by falcolas »

paulgb wrote: post #84
Ididntdothis wrote: post #57

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…

> [...] increasing the supply of low cost housing dramatically? They are pretty much prerequisites for UBI. Yes, I'm sort of surprised that fixing housing costs is not the first priority of people who want UBI ASAP. As I see it, if you don't start adding supply to the housing market quickly, a UBI would actually become a regressive policy where a tax on consumption (VAT) is effectively transferred to land owners. On…

Supply exists. Surplus exists. It’s just reserved for the wealthy, since homebuilders can make more profit off one luxury home than a hundred affordable homes, even if they have to leave the luxury home vacant for years before finding a buyer.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#97

Post by Ididntdothis »

paulgb wrote: post #84
Ididntdothis wrote: post #57

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…

> [...] increasing the supply of low cost housing dramatically? They are pretty much prerequisites for UBI. Yes, I'm sort of surprised that fixing housing costs is not the first priority of people who want UBI ASAP. As I see it, if you don't start adding supply to the housing market quickly, a UBI would actually become a regressive policy where a tax on consumption (VAT) is effectively transferred to land owners. On…

“a UBI would actually become a regressive policy where a tax on consumption (VAT) is effectively transferred to land owners.”

Since UBI is mainly pushed by wealthy people I wouldn’t be surprised if this was intended.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#98

Post by gumby »

Absurdly so many supposedly “capitalistic” essays on this topic misunderstand macroeconomics. At the macro level money functions more as a signalling mechanism than anything else (which is why there is such a struggle to match the money supply to aggregate “size of the economy”). UBI allows otherwise non-participants to signal demand for t-shirts vs phones.

At The micro level sure, money has other roles like reservoir of wealth, but as the marginal cost of production drops precipitously “wealth” becomes less and less useful.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#99

Post by true_religion »

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?

Right now those in cheap areas get 0 dollars. Getting 15k per year would be a vast improvement in terms of government sponsorship.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#100

Post by ebg13 »

_qwfv wrote: post #58
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.

> 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…

Why borderline? Call a spade a spade.
Post reply on HN