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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?

#141

Post by claudeganon »

sokoloff wrote: post #107
pinkfoot wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? My guess is the now-incredibly-rich rentiers (with guaranteed income) will start lobbying the government for concessions (e.g. restriction on new housing, tax-breaks) that further distort the very inequality UBI is trying to solve. No one loves UBI and its noble objectives more than I: but I'm worried about this inherent failure mode.

What's the failure mode? That broad swaths of society get provided a fundamental service (shelter) in a way that is profitable to the people most efficiently and effectively providing that service? I think when people approach this problem as "how do we best punish the rich ?" rather than "how do we best help the poor ?", it's very easy to get stuck spinning in circles. (IMO) No one should care that there are very ri…

The failure mode is that rentiers and middlemen will eat up all of the UBI income, leaving most people’s material standard unchanged. Given the state of healthcare and housing in the US, this doesn’t seem an improbable outcome.

I’m sure, by contrast, you could do UBI in a country with robust state housing and healthcare programs, like for example Austria, and avoid these concerns.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#142

Post by ksec »

Let us forget about whether UBI or Negative Income Tax works or not. Let's just say we will implement it by 2025.

Who is to decide the amount of that? How will it be decided when living cost is greatly ( or literally ) dependent on property pricing? Hence different location will have different living cost. Food, as in raw material assuming you cook yourself which is the cheapest option, could varies from state or even countries, but even if there is a 50% difference between the same items, the total amount spent on food will still be minimal. If you are allowed $4 per day and a 50% increase is only $2 increase, or $60 per month difference.

Where as housing prices, rent will differ. Does UBI assumes I am going to live in remotely in small village? I dont have to live in a Citi, but I need somewhere to live while having the opportunities to find a job. And the future is heading towards megacities.

Basically what I am suggesting is, it is sort of pointless to discuss UBI or basic income guarantee without discussing housing. Which is not only the biggest expenses for living, but also the biggest asset class in our economy, and also the biggest problem.

I dont have an answer to those questions, but it just seems every time people discuss UBI or NIT ( Negative Income Tax ) or other BIG ( basic income guarantee ), we tends to ignore housing, or suggest hosting is not what BIG is hoping to solve. That is on the assumption with BIG people could basically live with sufficient food and water without dying if they are without jobs.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#143

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #46
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…

Demotivated to work like retirees, spouses in single income households, and people who can live off the fruits of their investments like the wealthy? Perhaps they’d produce art, or seek out experiences and education that wouldn’t otherwise be afforded to them. Maybe they’d take on risk and start that business they’d always dreamed of if they weren’t taking of their parent with dementia or having to work fewer days to…

UBI will be useless unless rent seeking is eliminated with it, because the price of any good or service that profits rent seekers will be inflated almost instantly to maintain differentials.

Income inequality is a problem of massively unequal political and economic power, and of insider knowledge and class-cultural arbitrage - not a problem of income.

If - hypothetically - all the jobs required to provide food, shelter, and other basics were taken over by robots, there would be no reason at all not to provide them for free, and give everyone the political and economic freedom to do whatever they wanted.

It's a fair bet that while most people would do nothing much of interest - including most of those who are currently rent seekers - there would still be enough competitive drive to inspire a decent chunk of the population to excel in art, music, science, math, and other productive activities.

That would be real freedom as a birthright - not as the freedom from economic slavery that can only be earned by contributing to that slavery, as now, but as a true inalienable right.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#144

Post by lixtra »

brockmuellers wrote: post #136
lixtra wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without UBI, there is a small number of people who die every year due to not having (sufficient) income If workers spend a few days per year to pay for your ubi that takes away that time of their life. If they spend 1% of their life working for ubi it’s 1% of workers life lost. That’s asking quite a lot.

One could instead think of social programs, such as UBI, as insurance. People gladly pay >1% of income for insurance. I believe that nearly everyone has the potential to end up in the financial dumps (no one is above drug addiction, serious health problems, mental disorders, lawsuits etc). If a worker ends up there, they'll be glad to have the "insurance coverage" of UBI.

If that is so, why don’t you form an ubi society, whose members pay an ubi for everyone that wants to join (and net pay). According to you it won’t be difficult to find people that are glad to join.

To the downvoters of my initial comment: I don’t want people to die on the street. But I doubt ubi is an adequate cure either.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#146

Post by sornaensis »

mwkaufma wrote: post #73

The "why not UBI" section misses the most salient critique: what will landlords do when they learn all their tenants have an extra 2k in the pocket a month?

Despair, as people are now able to move freely to areas with cheaper land values and buy houses for themselves instead of remaining rent slaves.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#147

Post by justanotherc »

developerdylan wrote: post #56
nightski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The investments of rich people often never see the consumer economy.

That's not true at all. Investments from the rich contribute greatly to the economy -- otherwise they would not be investments. Let's say that I had a billion dollars, and all I did was stick it into a savings account. The bank uses that to fund mortgages, LoCs, provide business loans, etc. Those all have a direct effect on the economy.

More likely the rich are investing in a combination of VC, real estate, and the stock market. Those are ALL job creators.

Really the only thing you can do with money that DOESN'T contribute to economic growth is bury it in the ground or spend it overseas.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#148

Post by mindslight »

ww520 wrote: post #128

Currently new money is injected into the economy via the banks. The hope is that banks lend out the money to create new jobs. But that route is increasingly difficult because more money goes into assets to inflate them instead of creating jobs and services. UBI is another way to inject money into the system, giving it to the people who would most likely spend it, creating demand and this spurring the economy.

Exactly! I do agree that UBI is a step up from only giving handouts to the financial industry.

However, they're both from the same vein of continually creating new money to sustain ever-growing price inflation. A policy which is utterly nonsensical in the face of rapid technological progress where most prices should be continually trending downwards like we see for computing technology itself. Insistence on continual inflation is precisely what has created the current rent treadmill most everybody is on, via only being able to pay interest-rent on skyrocketing assets.

A real alternative would be to simply stop printing all that money in the first place, let interest rates actually rise, curtail much of this speculative waste-investment (eg the VC's paying to put electric scooters in rivers), and let workers actually get ahead by saving and not having their wages erode. Ideally workers could save up enough to demand lower working hours, but inflationism has gone on for so long its disastrous results need to be addressed directly - eg redefine "full time" employment to be 25 hours a week, with overtime after that (it should have been directly halved to 20 after dual-income households became the norm).

Of course this itself would do nothing immediate to help the poorest members of society. Some balanced-budget UBI would still certainly help them, and should not be ruled out. But we need to untangle the problems of the poor (which can be solved by direct help), with the problems of the working class (who actually have income, but it's being vacuumed up by rent-seekers).

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#149

Post by tonyedgecombe »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #143
washadjeffmad wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demotivated to work like retirees, spouses in single income households, and people who can live off the fruits of their investments like the wealthy? Perhaps they’d produce art, or seek out experiences and education that wouldn’t otherwise be afforded to them. Maybe they’d take on risk and start that business they’d always dreamed of if they weren’t taking of their parent with dementia or having to work fewer days to…

UBI will be useless unless rent seeking is eliminated with it, because the price of any good or service that profits rent seekers will be inflated almost instantly to maintain differentials. Income inequality is a problem of massively unequal political and economic power, and of insider knowledge and class-cultural arbitrage - not a problem of income. If - hypothetically - all the jobs required to provide food, shelt…

because the price of any good or service that profits rent seekers will be inflated almost instantly to maintain differentials.

Which is why I'd prefer to see UBH (Universal Basic Housing).

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#150

Post by tonyedgecombe »

iso947 wrote: post #105
paulgb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They could. Or those areas could dissolve in a spiral of depression and alcoholism

That's happening right now, to a large extent because anybody with any get up and go has got up and gone.
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