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AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

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Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#111

Post by jerf »

_2d30 wrote: post #103
oDot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. You say the poor tenant will transfer wealth to the wealthy landlord as if the tenant is losing. However -- they are both gaining. Say the rent is $1000. Obviously, the property usage right is worth to the landlord less than $1000, otherwise he would've just used the property himself. He gains. The property usage right is worth more tha…

Redistribution is zero-sum by definition.

It's worth modeling it as negative, because administration consumes non-trivial amounts of it, and in practice, often quite significant amounts of it.

Part of the UBI idea is to reduce that overhead, though I'm at a loss as to how to ensure it stays low. The same politicians that turn our current system into a haphazard mess of special carveouts and regulations will still be in power and will have all the motivations (if not more) to add more carveouts and regulations to the new UBI.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#112

Post by orthecreedence »

exabrial wrote: post #36

Nothing that requires the labors of other is a "right". UBI funded by private equity is fine. UBI funded by taxes is theft and extortion.

> Nothing that requires the labors of other is a "right".

Nothing is a "right". FTFY.

Rights are subjective human ideas and are defined by the systems humans create and perpetuate. Rights/natural rights as a concept are an exercise in semantic and philisophical masturbation.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#113

Post by dev_hacker »

There is no hope of something like this passing in the US. If it doesn't disenfranchise at least a few hated social groups its flat out un-American and the people won't stand for it. Fuck over felons, recent immigrants, black people, or someone like this and you might have a chance of getting it through. I'll grant you that California is its own weird little world, so yeah maybe its possible there, but for sure this won't fly in the US.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#114

Post by occamrazor »

carlisle_ wrote: post #31
Aloha wrote: post #22

Perhaps the authors of the bill are unaware that the U in UBI means Universal. If your unemployment benefits are less that UBI, you should get the difference in UBI, similarly excluding Medicaid recipients seems well, plain stupid.

It doesn't exclude medicaid, that's a federal program. These are the programs it excludes: > Medi-Cal program, the County Medical Services Program, the CalFresh program, the CalWORKs program, or Unemployment Insurance I'm not entirely sure why, though.

Probably because those benefits already have a value higher than the UBI.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#115

Post by [deleted] »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #68
rmah wrote: post #24

Can they not do basic math? There are around 30 mil adults in California. Even if provision 18992.1 (b) is 5 mil people, that's still 25 mil people. That's 25 mil * $12,000 = $300 bil a year. The ENTIRE California state budget for 2020 is only $220 bil. They would have to more than double the tax revenue for a state with already very high taxes. Now, assuming the most generous interpretation of their 10% VAT proposal…

If you double taxes, but the money is literally just going back into people's pockets, less administration fees of the UBI program, it's just income redistribution and can completely work.

[deleted]

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#116

Post by oDot »

orthecreedence wrote: post #106
oDot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. You say the poor tenant will transfer wealth to the wealthy landlord as if the tenant is losing. However -- they are both gaining. Say the rent is $1000. Obviously, the property usage right is worth to the landlord less than $1000, otherwise he would've just used the property himself. He gains. The property usage right is worth more tha…

> You write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. People who say this are only ever looking at the node level, not the network level. Sure, new wealth is added to the network, but at a miniscule trickle compared to the everyday activities of the economic network. "Wealth is not zero sum" essentially, if taken to its logical conclusion, means "everyone can be a billionaire!" No, they…

I have supplied a very specific example demonstrating this.

"Not a zero sum game" means "both parties profit". That profit may not be money, therefore does not imply anything about billionaires.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#117

Post by reaperducer »

burlesona wrote: post #62

I’d be a lot more interested if they’d fund it via property tax instead of VAT. Since California has such severe restrictions on housing construction, anything that puts more money in people pockets just gets absorbed by higher rent. The entire CA game is the fixed supply of housing eating up most of the economic output of individuals who aren’t grandfathered in. So if you’re going to fix it, collecting against the p…

I’d be a lot more interested if they’d fund it via property tax instead of VAT. Since California has such severe restrictions on housing construction

If you increase property taxes, doesn't that make housing developers less likely to build high-value, high-density housing? And don't the property tax increases on existing housing just get passed on to the renters?

I've never rented in California, but I've rented in 13 other states, and in the handful of cities where I've lived during a property tax increase, the rent went up quite a bit (especially Chicago). One place even itemized it on the rent statement.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#118

Post by oDot »

michaelt wrote: post #105
oDot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. You say the poor tenant will transfer wealth to the wealthy landlord as if the tenant is losing. However -- they are both gaining. Say the rent is $1000. Obviously, the property usage right is worth to the landlord less than $1000, otherwise he would've just used the property himself. He gains. The property usage right is worth more tha…

Housing markets are a zero-sum game if you refuse to build more housing when demand exceeds supply If ten families want houses and there are only nine on the market, one family will go without whether you have auctions, price caps, land taxes, means testing, subsidies, or any other economic intervention, because nine is less than ten

The transaction itself, however, is not zero sum.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#119

Post by reaperducer »

zentiggr wrote: post #2

Good - let's have a real world test and see whether there is something behind UBI as a concept. And perhaps this'll be the first program to survive the trolls and nay-sayers who will find the smallest niche failures and sspout the "If ANYONE falls through the cracks it's a FAILURE!"

Good - let's have a real world test and see whether there is something behind UBI as a concept.

Finland did a real world UBI test. Unless you don't consider Finland part of the "real world."

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#120

Post by oDot »

burlesona wrote: post #87
oDot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. You say the poor tenant will transfer wealth to the wealthy landlord as if the tenant is losing. However -- they are both gaining. Say the rent is $1000. Obviously, the property usage right is worth to the landlord less than $1000, otherwise he would've just used the property himself. He gains. The property usage right is worth more tha…

I wrote a long answer to your post but a shorter one is this: the housing market in California is absolutely a zero sum game due to policies that essentially hold the supply as fixed.

There is only one Mona Lisa. A voluntary transaction where one party buys it from another is not zero sum, both parties gain.
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