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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?

#201

Post by Kaiyou »

_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…

Still better than everyone starving.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#202

Post by Kaiyou »

philipkglass wrote: post #133
Kaiyou wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very nice of them. If I had the means towards that end, I wouldn't hand out welfare like that. In fact, I would probably tend towards the future scenario that was painted in Terminator, only with me controlling the AI, while pretending towards humanity that the AI went out of control. More profits that way. Seriously, if you have that kind of power, what's the incentive to let everyone else live?

An army of Terminators can't keep you safe from retaliation. Anyone who tries to take over the world with killer robots will be fought by other people. You might be able to provoke World War III by unleashing killer robots against all the world's governments and their militaries, but you won't be able to prosper or even (probably) survive.

You use the Terminators to pretend to be real people and than vote for other Terminators. You take over every country in the world without anyone noticing it even happened.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#203

Post by chopin »

ryandvm wrote: post #170
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…

> Perhaps they’d produce art, or seek out experiences and education that wouldn’t otherwise be afforded to them. Honestly, I find this idea laughable. If the last 10 years have taught me anything, it's that people will spend every spare minute they have staring at their phones or streaming TV.

I could do this in my spare time yet I play piano.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#204

Post by tsukikage »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #200
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Universal Basic Housing just sounds like ghettos with extra steps.

So don't build ghettos. A modest proposal: make every builder donate a proportion of the flats/houses they build to local government, but decide which ones are to be donated by random lot after building work is complete.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#205

Post by GoToRO »

UBI is a must as long as printing your own money is illegal. I mean having your own currency. If you are forced to participate in an unique economy, then that economy is responsible to give everybody a job and an income. If there are not enough jobs, then you just have the income anyway.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#206

Post by alibrarydweller »

bhl wrote: post #176
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I've heard this concern before, but what's the assumption that is being made? That UBI will drive more people to cities and increase demand? That landlords would simply increase rent knowing renters have a larger income? That p…

The term "rent seeking" as economists and the parent poster use it isn't about leases on apartments and offices per se, but rather capturing surplus- an example could be if you live in a house which requires leaves to be raked, your having more income might incentivize "big lawncare" to get laws passed saying you can only use a particular brand of rake in the city limits, one which can't be bought outright and has a monthly license fee attached.

The notion being put forward here is that the more money Joe Sixpack has, the more things will crop up to extract some.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#207

Post by gremlinsinc »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #78
silvestrov wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is not enough. People also want a purpose with their life where they are important for other people. Denmark has kind of an UBI: a single mom + one kid, no work for past 20 years, gets more than $2300 per month. Such a person has enough money for food, good apartment, etc. All what UBI wants to provide. But many of these people end up depressed, inactive, feels like a failure, etc. Many just give completely up.…

They may feel less depressed if there wasn’t a stigma associated with this. On the other hand a lot of people wouldn’t be working if there wasn’t societal pressure on them.

Why does everybody need to work? Less workers ALSO drives up pay because supply/demand. It also could propel the U.S. to a 30 hour work week or even 25 which would be more in tune with our ancestors (Middle Ages averaged 18 hour weeks).

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#208

Post by lixtra »

pjc50 wrote: post #175
lixtra wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except someone spend labor to amass that capital. If I considered saving no longer worthwhile, I wouldn’t consume more. I would work less and enjoy more free time. Of course this leads to over proportional less taxes for the state or ubi. I don’t see why you couldn’t try ubi in small scale by the fans. The most obvious reason why it wouldn’t work on small scale and only on state or global level is because supporters…

> is because supporters want someone else to pay for it. Yes, obviously? Preferably the people with more than one megayacht?

So if you distribute 1000 USD/month to 300 Mio Americans, do you mind to explain where you want to take the money from?

According to [1] the top 3% (>250k USD household income per year) earn in total per month

    127,300,000,000 = 3,800,000 * 402,000 / 12  USD
    vs 
    300,000,000,000 = 300,000,000 * 1,000 USD
needed to fund your ubi. Maybe it's not enough to take from people with more than one megayacht?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#209

Post by gremlinsinc »

danaris wrote: post #124
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " ...is that really an issue people would have? " Hell, yes. There are a vast number of low-education people with what the HN crowd would call "old fashioned attitudes". From https://archive.is/CCTXs#selection-1205.100-1205.363 : " 'Being a man means supporting your family,' says Mr Davis. 'You’ve got to do whatever it takes so they eat, [or] you’re no man at all.' Being a man, says Mr Redden, means you 'work hard,…

I think the problem with this is that UBI is being given within the existing system of work-for-hire, rather than as part of a transition to a post-scarcity economy. In the current system, if you want to do X, you have to prove to the people who are willing to pay you a living wage/market rate to do X that you are worth hiring to do it. Under a (hypothetical) post-scarcity system, if you want to do X, you find a grou…

I'd love this scenario. I'd love to maybe spend some years working on bio/disease research even though I know nothing about diseases. (I'm a developer), or work on Climate Change... Imagine if we put a ton of pressure for people ot just go into science regardless of career 'outlook' just to help save the world before it's too late ? Imagine handing out free college esp. to STEM students going into climate change tech?

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#210

Post by pjc50 »

lixtra wrote: post #208
pjc50 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is because supporters want someone else to pay for it. Yes, obviously? Preferably the people with more than one megayacht?

So if you distribute 1000 USD/month to 300 Mio Americans, do you mind to explain where you want to take the money from? According to [1] the top 3% (>250k USD household income per year) earn in total per month 127,300,000,000 = 3,800,000 * 402,000 / 12 USD vs 300,000,000,000 = 300,000,000 * 1,000 USD needed to fund your ubi. Maybe it's not enough to take from people with more than one megayacht? [1] https://en.wikipe…

While I was being slightly flippant in that, I note that your example of $300Bn as being a completely unreasonable, unachievable number for UBI is less than half the US military budget, and in fact represents about the increase from the pre-9/11 post-cold-war low point. Also that most UBI proposals involve fiddling with the tax bands so that above-average earners see much less or no net increase.

"Do you want $1000 each for twenty years or a war for twenty years" was of course a question that was never on the table in 2002.

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