Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?
A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
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Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#22“Universal basic income” of any reasonable size in, e.g., the US, requires the creation of new money, because taxation is insufficient for its funding.
New money derives its value, subtractively, from the value of existing money (“WEALTH”), which is held by individuals who earned that money (“WORKERS“).
Some individuals decide not to work because of reasons OTHER THAN retirement, inheritance, disability, and child bearing; these individuals do not contribute directly to production (for convenience, we’ll call this group “LAZYS”).
Therefore, giving UBI to LAZYS intrinsically takes WEALTH from WORKERS, regardless of whether not WORKERS also get UBI.
In other words, universal basic income can be correctly defined as “transfer payments from WORKERS to LAZYS“.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#23What always seems to happen with UBI studies is the proponents point to results that say "the people we gave free money to are happier" but never try to quantify whether that money would have done more good used in a different way.
I don't think that's the right question to ask. It should be "Would they be happier if the tax to fund UBI was not levied"
This question is insufficient, because, in most large economies, taxation is insufficient to fund a UBI have any reasonable size. Therefore, new money creation (a.k.a. inflation) is the means, and the timeframe for its ruinous effects are too long to study within a single generation.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#24Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?
Diminishing returns. The same argument against making the minimum wage $100/hr. At some point the graph crosses.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#25This article might have been more informative if it had placed these ideas in context - the rise Marxism and Communism, which tie the state's mandate to preserving the interests of labour rather than those of capital, provoking in the west the rise of social democracy, which proposes that a balance can be achieved between workers and capital while still preserving capitalism.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#26I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.
Most reasonable UBI proposals draw the funding primarily from a VAT and a reduction of benefits that it replaces (like food stamps and welfare).
The beauty of a VAT is that while normally regressive, by redistributing the funds as a UBI, you essentially make it a tax on only upper-middle-class/rich people.
For example if the VAT is 10% and you give people $1,000 a month, they would have to spend over $10,000 a month on VAT taxed items (ie. not rent and probably not a lot of food) before they were paying more than they were getting back.
Generally people who can afford to spend $10,000 a month on non rent items are usually making over $180,000 a year.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments. There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something to clickbait/fakenews.
I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in various European countries. These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about repercussions and side-effects. I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a s…
"focus on your healthcare"
Very true. No UBI without health care for all.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#28This article might have been more informative if it had placed these ideas in context - the rise Marxism and Communism, which tie the state's mandate to preserving the interests of labour rather than those of capital, provoking in the west the rise of social democracy, which proposes that a balance can be achieved between workers and capital while still preserving capitalism.
Mark Blyth is an economist who focuses quite a bit on this topic (labor vs capital).
Also Thomas Frank (journalist and).
Both have good videos on YouTube.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#29Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?
Diminishing returns. The same argument against making the minimum wage $100/hr. At some point the graph crosses.
The dynamics aren't the same, the UBI case has a much weaker negative feedback loop than minimum wage. The percentage of the population that benefits from ratcheting minimum wage is much smaller -- they are intrinsically a permanent minority.
Ratcheting UBI, on the other hand benefits a much larger population whose growth as a percentage of the population is effectively unbounded by negative feedback. It would be very easy to arrive at a pathological equilibrium where the majority of the population has a strong incentive to vote for short-sighted expansion of UBI at the expense of the minority. Once in that mode, addressing the pathological consequences of that politically would be very difficult unless mitigations were designed in from the beginning.
It is possible to design negative feedback loops for the UBI case to greatly mitigate this issue, but it tends to be avoided by UBI proponents because most solutions have varying degrees of unpalatability.
Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income
#30I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.
Base assumption, we just print the money. It's how we pay for everything else like wars and subsidies and whatnot. Then, as a courtesy to those people who benefit from a society without excessive inflation (mostly, people with lots of money who are clearly benefiting the most) we take and burn that money, to remove it from circulation.
I was thinking about this idea, if we print money and distribute it "wisely" among the lower income classes, this would debase the currency proportional to the amount printed, harming primarily those who are wealthy, proportional to their wealth, and the money will eventually flow upwards through the financial system, primarily through consumer spending, but ultimately back into the pockets of the wealthy.
Of course, inflation in certain categories would need to be taken into consideration, and other factors, but is this idea a non-starter for some reasons I'm overlooking? Excluding politics of course, for the purposes of this mental experiment.
There was also an article posted here in the last two weeks or so about a massive global short situation with the USD, I have it in my mind that the particulars of that situation were conveniently complementary to this idea, although I may have that aspect completely backwards.