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A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

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Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#111

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

mistermann wrote: post #30
kazagistar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You might enjoy this proposal https://www.stjornarradid.is/media/forsaetisraduneyti-media/...

It’s not directly about UBI but rather money as such. But the analysis do touch on some of your ideas

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#112

Post by Gibbon1 »

zanny wrote: post #109
ralusek wrote: post #76

I am a free market advocate, libertarian-lite, that believes that UBI is the correct social safety net. I am clearly not unique in this regard, as this actually seems to be the most common type of UBI advocate I've encountered. That being said, the one lingering question I have comes down to a variant of inflation. I think most people think of inflation as something that only happens as a result of monetary policy, b…

In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely finite supply like land. TVs keep getting cheaper because economies of scale keep growing and the industrialization of billions of people in the last 40 years has produced enough supply to more than meet rising…

> In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely finite supply like land.

It's felt to me like we've gone from

Pre 1800: A world where material inputs were very expensive. Complex manufactured goods ditto. And labor cheap.

1800-1980: Where where materials were cheap but complex manufactured goods were still expensive and labor not cheap.

Post 2000: Where materials are moderately expensive but complex manufacturing is dirt dirt cheap. AKA this is a micro controller with a million transistors. And this is a power transistor. The latter costs more because it requires more metal, silicon and packaging.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#113

Post by zanny »

jariel wrote: post #87
devit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that UBI should not be about giving an amount of money, but rather about giving essentials like housing and food or the equivalent in money, and "doubling" essentials doesn't make as much sense, since you don't have much use for two beds or twice the food.

What constitutes 'basic necessity' changes every year. Is a car a basic necessity? What about a mobile? Broadband? Netflix/Cable wouldn't be an obvious choice but many will argue it is. Washing machine? What about food delivery for those over 55? You know those 3-wheel motorized chairs, between scooters and wheelchairs for the elderly ... they are definitely a 'necessity' for some but really quite 'in between' for ot…

> The next generations' youth will make arguments about the 'inhumanity' of such and such. They may have a point, but we will be the 'old timers' thinking they are mostly ridiculous and actually voting.

For one, we are likely to hit post-scarcity singularity on our current technological trajectory before generations of UBI queens can cripple capitalism with washing machine demands.

For two, there is no real "wrong" amount of UBI. Not in an objective sense. 100% GDP UBI would simply imply all wealth transfers are 100% taxed by the government and then universally redistributed evenly by said government. It totally breaks capitalism and removes the profit incentive from everything, but that is basically libertarian communism. Someone would probably argue for it. Likewise, where we are now with 0 redistribution we see the fruits of innovation disproportionately benefiting the rich economically for decades. The consequences of that transfer from the poor to the rich encompass a loss of political and economic influence by the poor and an upward trend in poor health and mental illness.

In the same way people will argue how much free speech, or guns rights, or monopolism, etc is "enough" or "right" is subjective and ideologically polarizing, the "right" amount of UBI will have to be decided by the socities that adopt it. If you have a functioning democracy you should be fine. Though for many nations of the Earth that might be an important first step to consider today.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#114

Post by Ididntdothis »

dantheman wrote: post #102
chongli wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation isn’t the reason those sectors aren’t free markets. On the contrary, regulation exists because they can’t be free markets. Both lead to market failures due to information disparities, principal-agent problems, massive externalities, and a lack of free choice (in the case of health care).

Most health care is not emergency care so there is a lot of choice. Same with education. They could easily be freed from massive amounts of regulation.

I would prefer more regulation to make sure prices are transparent. The current system is set up to make prices as opaque as possible. The employer has a lot of information, the provider has information, the insurance has information, but the patient is being kept in the dark. That is, until the big bill comes in the mail.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#115

Post by zanny »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #112
zanny wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely finite supply like land. TVs keep getting cheaper because economies of scale keep growing and the industrialization of billions of people in the last 40 years has produced enough supply to more than meet rising…

> In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely finite supply like land. It's felt to me like we've gone from Pre 1800: A world where material inputs were very expensive. Complex manufactured goods ditto. And labor cheap. 1800-1980: Where where materials we…

While we keep pipe dreaming about full AI or home automation the number of people required to extract a ton of lumber, iron, oil, etc has dropped an order of magnitude in the span of decades. Likewise the number of people required to participate in the refinement of materials into, say, TVs has fallen by a similar order. And it keeps falling. More industrialized automation begets more as the pipelines scale up and justify the investments in maximal "dumb" automation.

One thing people miss out on is transport - the cost to transport goods has also dropped astronomically thanks to computerized and networked navigation systems for rail and naval lines. You would never reliably insure the traffic volume of many docks, shipping lanes, and rail lines globally without computers controlling and often operating them. Thats how you get ludicrous quantities of goods crossing oceans for a few percent of its overall cost to consumers.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#116

Post by limomium »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #59
zozbot234 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patchwork of "targeted" programs is unsatisfactory for many reasons. It lets people fall through the cracks, and it results in unintended effects as the programs are not designed or managed in a consistent way. The need for some sort of minimal income floor is universal, and it should be addressed in a universally-applicable way.

Exactly.. my personal genealogy for discovering UBI was: The government should provide for a base level of food, medicine, housing, and education. But let private industry compete for it, so just provide vouchers for each of those things. But, how to efficiently allocate the amounts for each individual? How much health care voucher vs. food voucher vs. housing voucher vs. education voucher? Ah, just have a universal…

Yes. And the "universal" part makes it UNCONDITIONAL on receive, which is the important part. It removes the necessity for a government institution to decide per individual how much they are eligible for. Much money is saved. Since the government already has an institution for checking taxes, the conditionality is merely moved to the end - they check not whether you get UBI, but just how much taxes you owe.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#117

Post by limomium »

ineedasername wrote: post #72
zozbot234 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patchwork of "targeted" programs is unsatisfactory for many reasons. It lets people fall through the cracks, and it results in unintended effects as the programs are not designed or managed in a consistent way. The need for some sort of minimal income floor is universal, and it should be addressed in a universally-applicable way.

But then people need to go out and shop for those things using UBI, for example compete for housing in markets that may offer no affordable housing, but housing subsidies would help resolve that. If targeted programs can be poorly designed or mismanaged inconsistently, then so could UBI. The whole idea is to thoughtfully design a program. If that is possible, there's no reason we can't thoughtfully design targeted pr…

Far too low for what, exactly? Buying real estate, cars, expensive clothing, huge TVs and investments?

If you suddenly lose a well-paying job, food and housing still cost the same for everyone, which you can afford on UBI, by design.

You'll have to give up the expensive lifestyle afforded by the lost job, of course. Maybe move to cheaper housing. So what?

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#119

Post by dantheman »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #114
dantheman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most health care is not emergency care so there is a lot of choice. Same with education. They could easily be freed from massive amounts of regulation.

I would prefer more regulation to make sure prices are transparent. The current system is set up to make prices as opaque as possible. The employer has a lot of information, the provider has information, the insurance has information, but the patient is being kept in the dark. That is, until the big bill comes in the mail.

Completely agree. Prices are required. What hospitals are doing now basically amounts to fraud.

In no other 'market', since it's not a market, do customers have no idea if what the price of goods and services are.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#120

Post by Supermancho »

mikedilger wrote: post #90
Supermancho wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are too many ideas in your post. Some of which make sense, some do not. > Players of an RPG want a fun game. I don't think you understand game theory and design well enough to be commenting. Generally, games are about learning about the world and performing pattern recognition to optimize in a constrained environment. MMORPGs have LOTS of games within them, some of which are completely player driven. > as a soc…

The reason I asked was to learn more about UBI and other people's perspectives on it. Not to be chastized and offended. None of this comment was helpful. I'd explain why sentence by sentence but I doubt that would be a fruitful exercise.

> Not to be chastized and offended.

I didn't mean to offend you, but to help you understand why you were downvoted. This is from my own experiences as you can see from my post history. I'm not popular. This forum has a very specific...expectation (as well as some strong biases) for even the most casual comments.

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