Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#21

Post by mszcz »

leto_ii wrote: post #13
p2detar wrote: post #11

With EU’s declining population growth, UBI may very well be the way out of impossible retirement plans in the future. Something that IMO millennials in the EU will face sooner or later. I don’t claim to know all the economic implications of UBI, but I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least.

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.

I'm from Poland and I'm not concerned at all. I _know_ that the goverment will not be able to provide my retirement.

I think that it's better to think about goverment-provided retirement as something that _might_ happend, and would be nice, but not as something that you can relay on in your golden years. Unfortunately, that will leave some underpriviledged people screwed. I also understand that I'm very lucky, with my skillset and bringing up, to be able to plan for it myself.

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#22

Post by xutopia »

HideousKojima wrote: post #15

Every single UBI proposal I've seen has failed to work even with back of the envelope math, even when using generous assumptions and estimates. They end up either 1) Gutting existing entitlements by a huge amount (and current receipients of those entitlements get far less under UBI than they did before) 2) Raise taxes by an obscene amount that destroys most if not all of the benefit of a UBI for the middle class and…

I hear the same argument made about "free healthcare is too expensive" but it doesn't stop the vast majority of countries doing it.

You get amazing benefits from a government handling healthcare and I think you would get many of those with UBI.

UBI could work.

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#23

Post by HideousKojima »

dangus wrote: post #20
HideousKojima wrote: post #15

Every single UBI proposal I've seen has failed to work even with back of the envelope math, even when using generous assumptions and estimates. They end up either 1) Gutting existing entitlements by a huge amount (and current receipients of those entitlements get far less under UBI than they did before) 2) Raise taxes by an obscene amount that destroys most if not all of the benefit of a UBI for the middle class and…

Which proposals don’t work? What math are you speaking of? Do you have any data to back up your claim? I only mean to push back on this because your comment seems to be dismissive of the entire concept while seeming to closely align with the interests of the kinds of people who don’t want it (the wealthy). I find the idea of just not bothering to tax wealth because they’ll just find a tax haven elsewhere to be defeat…

Show me a proposal for the US (since I'm most familiar with tax rates, existing benefits, etc. there) and I'll show you how the math doesn't add up.

Edit: As far as the three wealthiest in the US owning that much, it still amounts to very little per capita if redistributed to the entire population. You could give every individual in the US a one-time payment of about $3,000, after which there'd be no more money to take from them. The top 1% only have about $25 trillion in combined wealth, which would be enough to fund a UBI of ~$3,000 a month for two years, after which you'd run out of money. And that's pretending that a massive looting of the holdings of the nation's wealthiest wouldn't have any significant economic side effects (and that they wouldn't all just flee to tax havens). And that's ignoring that a good chunk of that wealth is not held in liquid assets.

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#25

Post by mercer »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
leto_ii wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.

US citizen here. Can y'all go into detail? If you have universal healthcare, and you've paid off a residence, what shortfall and outsized expenses do you project in retirement?

I'm also interested to hear more, but FWIW as an EU-resident and millennial with a bunch of millennial and lots of 'zoomer' friends:

1) out of everyone I know, working- to middle-class, only three people 'own' a house. One of them inherited it from their father, and the other recently bought one with a mortgage and has an unusually stable job. Of the rest of us/them, I'd say a good 70% live in a flatshare (regardless of whether they're in their twenties of thirties), 20% live in a small apartment with their partner, and the remaining 10% or so have some kind of studio apartment because they make decent money or because their student organization provided them with cheap housing.

2) with the exception of those who have jobs where a pension is built up automatically, none have bothered. Which is probably about 80% of them (100+ people). And in conversation the general assumption is that any kind of pension will probably not exist by the time we need them, so why bother (not saying I agree, btw).

That said, I'd say my social network skews toward working class and educated-but-not-STEM. And urban, which favors the precariat.

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#26

Post by HideousKojima »

xutopia wrote: post #22
HideousKojima wrote: post #15

Every single UBI proposal I've seen has failed to work even with back of the envelope math, even when using generous assumptions and estimates. They end up either 1) Gutting existing entitlements by a huge amount (and current receipients of those entitlements get far less under UBI than they did before) 2) Raise taxes by an obscene amount that destroys most if not all of the benefit of a UBI for the middle class and…

I hear the same argument made about "free healthcare is too expensive" but it doesn't stop the vast majority of countries doing it. You get amazing benefits from a government handling healthcare and I think you would get many of those with UBI. UBI could work.

Link me the UBI proposal you find most compelling and I'll explain why the math doesn't work. Preferably a proposal for the US since I'm most familiar with existing benefits and entitlements in the US

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#27

Post by leto_ii »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
leto_ii wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.

US citizen here. Can y'all go into detail? If you have universal healthcare, and you've paid off a residence, what shortfall and outsized expenses do you project in retirement?

I'm also aiming for a fully-owned house + enough incoming money to afford a decent life, probably back in my native country (one of the former communist ones).

However I currently live in Amsterdam, where the 47 m2 apartment I inhabit costs around 350k euros to buy, which is quite a bit for a matchbox in a 120 yr old house.

On top of that, I suspect that in NL the age of retirement for me will be around 72, which is ridiculously late; plus, whatever pension I get will almost certainly not be enough for me to have a decent life on. The state pension here is minuscule and the private ones are a racket, like everywhere else.

My point is that you can't really rely on a pension and you should act as if you won't get one (even though that's what's owed to you).

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#28

Post by machiaweliczny »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
leto_ii wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.

US citizen here. Can y'all go into detail? If you have universal healthcare, and you've paid off a residence, what shortfall and outsized expenses do you project in retirement?

There is severe population decline and retirement payment is based on taxing working population. This issue will affect Spain and Poland the most AFAIK.

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#29

Post by mercer »

mszcz wrote: post #21
leto_ii wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m really convinced that as an EU citizen and millennial my retirement is questionable to say the least. Hear, hear! :D I share your condition and concerns.

I'm from Poland and I'm not concerned at all. I _know_ that the goverment will not be able to provide my retirement. I think that it's better to think about goverment-provided retirement as something that _might_ happend, and would be nice, but not as something that you can relay on in your golden years. Unfortunately, that will leave some underpriviledged people screwed. I also understand that I'm very lucky, with m…

I'm from The Netherlands, and while I'd expect people here to expect or hope for more, millennials and under are generally pessimistic too.

As a self-employed programmer with a decent breadth of experience and as an autodidact with low needs, I consider myself very lucky too, but I worry for a lot of my friends.

Re: Spain is moving to permanently establish universal basic income

#30

Post by [deleted] »

HideousKojima wrote: post #26
xutopia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear the same argument made about "free healthcare is too expensive" but it doesn't stop the vast majority of countries doing it. You get amazing benefits from a government handling healthcare and I think you would get many of those with UBI. UBI could work.

Link me the UBI proposal you find most compelling and I'll explain why the math doesn't work. Preferably a proposal for the US since I'm most familiar with existing benefits and entitlements in the US

[deleted]
Post reply on HN