What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#211

Post by lixtra » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #210

lixtra wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> I note that your example of $300Bn as being a completely unreasonable, unachievable number for UBI is less than half the US military budget

Check your numbers: US military budget 2019 [1] is $686Bn or $60 Bn per month vs $300 Bn per month for ubi.

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

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#212

Post by claudeganon » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

erik_seaberg wrote: post #195

claudeganon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Landlords need to compete for tenants. High rents are only tenable in hot employment markets with bad policies imposing shortages. Everywhere else, high rents lead to more construction which leads to lower rents, and the landlord who refuses the going rate sees his units go empty.

Ok, show me the real world place in the US where this actually holds true. This hypothetical gets touted around, but I’ve never seen it play out this way anywhere I’ve lived.

For example, I currently live in a second-tier Midwestern city in the midst of a housing crisis. Wages aren’t great relative to their respective industries, but rents and home prices are still skyrocketing. There’s no influx of new construction outside of the luxury sector in a few neighborhoods, a lot of which sits empty. Meanwhile, existing landlords just collect ever larger checks from their properties without meaningful continued investment.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#213

Post by davrosthedalek » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #194

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…

> The way I see it, the main problem that UBI is solving is inequality, it's a rich to poor transfer. The main problem UBI is solving is expensive duplication of function between status quo means tested social safety net programs and the tax system. A secondary problem that it can solve if benefits are tied to revenues and the right dedicated revenue stream is chosen has to do with calibration of benefits in status q…

Yeah, but there is always the next election, and raising UBI would be such an easy way to buy votes.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#214

Post by CryptoBanker » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

lixtra wrote: post #144

brockmuellers wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When the people vote for UBI one day you'll have your society...

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#215

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

davrosthedalek wrote: post #213

dragonwriter wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I see it, the main problem that UBI is solving is inequality, it's a rich to poor transfer. The main problem UBI is solving is expensive duplication of function between status quo means tested social safety net programs and the tax system. A secondary problem that it can solve if benefits are tied to revenues and the right dedicated revenue stream is chosen has to do with calibration of benefits in status q…

Yeah, but there is always the next election, and raising UBI would be such an easy way to buy votes.

> raising UBI would be such an easy way to buy votes.

No easier than general tax cuts—or implementing a UBI—are now.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#216

Post by Kaiyou » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

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.

If everyone gets $2000 per month instead of 0$ per month just for existing, $2000 becomes the new zero. They won't suddenly be able to afford things. Instead, their rent may magically raise by $2000. In the end, scarcity will still exist for lots of things and if you give everyone more money, prices will just adjust.

Also, if you are starving or homeless in a first world country the fault lies with you. There's so many social security in place, you just have to make use of it.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#217

Post by sullyj3 » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

kian wrote: post #165

pjc50 wrote: post #62

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 somethi…

What ever happened to d) this is not acceptable, and something should be done about it by individuals directly? Why do we need to abdicate responsibility for our local problems to a larger authority? Mutual Aid Societies and religions used to fill this gap - perhaps we can jointly invent a new modern substitute.

It's debatable whether the amount you could get by taxation would be enough. Why would you expect people to be generous enough voluntarily to solve the problem?

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#218

Post by mnowicki » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #183

robotresearcher wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That landlords would simply increase rent knowing renters have a larger income? This one seems a serious problem. Home sales too, since sellers know people could make larger mortgage payments. Is there a good argument for why this will not inevitably transfer much of the money to landowners?

>>Is there a good argument for why this will not inevitably transfer much of the money to landowners? I regularly rent out the guest bedroom in my house. When I do so, I do not run complex formulas to figure out what a particular tenant might be able to afford. I simply look at rents for similar units in the area, and bump it up or down slightly based on the various features and amenities the room has. I don't charge…

What about this type of scenario, is this something you could see playing out:

People receive UBI, more people are able to move out and buy/rent an apartment or house, landlords are getting more applicants and apartment buildings start filling up, some landlords increase price to compensate for increased demand, average rent for an area goes up, the rest of the landlords increase their prices to match the market

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#219

Post by foxyv » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

patja wrote: post #91

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 U…

A common way to seek social security money is to get a bogus diagnosis of autism for your children. This makes life a living hell for people with children that actually have autism and depend on SSA to allow them to act as caretakers.

I think the current system in the US is designed to degrade and abuse people for being poor. People who depend on welfare and disability payments are constantly treated with suspicion as grifters and fraudsters because so many others actually are. They spend most of their time fighting with the government to keep their benefits while having little to no hope of replacing them.

A UBI would allow them to go out and get a job without being afraid they will just have their other benefits cut. There is no means testing or degrading requirements to "Prove" you or your dependent is disabled. The government has no reason to investigate you or pry into your personal life.

Re: What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?

#220

Post by homonculus1 » Mon, Feb 03, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

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…

"Cultural shift"?

What if men providing resources to their families is a drive that runs deeper than some kind of vestigial macho chauvinism? We already have mass depression, isolation, falling educational outcomes, suicide, and even radicalization of men who are unable to find purpose to attach themselves to in the modern economy.

Are we to gloss over the function and instincts of half the population as an attitude problem? Social engineering is way too easy inside a theoretical bubble, where expecting billions of people to fundamentally reconstruct their entire identities can be handwaved in two words. Progressivism is supposed to meet people’s social needs, not dictate them.