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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

#151
post #150
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post-scarcity doesn't solve the fundamental problem of earth being unable to sustain infinite humans. Even with infinite resources, there will still be finite space. Historically, human populations that did grow beyond sustainable had to starve to death back to sustainable. If you prevent this by giving everyone free food, that's not really a good thing.

Yes, but this is solvable by limiting the number of children per person.

That's how you get stagnation. It's also rather unfair.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Agrarian Justice he proposes to “ create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property” He also makes it very clear that this isn’t some form of charity to help people. But rather about j…

Wait -- so did I misunderstand? Is this more like reparations to native americans or slaves? I'm confused.

You can read it in full here https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice

But no he argues that “Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent.”

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#153
post #151
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this is solvable by limiting the number of children per person.

That's how you get stagnation. It's also rather unfair.

Population stagnation is the point, no other form of stagnation can be predicted from population stagnation because it has never happened.

It’s also more fair than dying of starvation because your parents gave you too many siblings.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#154
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t a (high enough) UBI mean the free market would create “affordable” education and “affordable” health care and obviate the need for unemployment benefits?

Money is a representation of wealth, if you print more of it, the money loses it's value to match the wealth. We call this inflation. You cannot give away wealth that you do not have. If we truly had a free market, we'd have none of these issues, since wealth aggregation wouldn't be prevented through regulations. For example, you can already get free education of mostly everything from the Internet, but without getti…

... so you know... obesity isn’t usually from eating to excess because you can. It’s from eating high calorie low nutrition foods. Poor people in the US aren’t obese because they have excess it’s because it is cheapest to buy high calorie foods. Obviously I’m not talking 400lbs, that still takes effort and money, but 250lbs is easy to hit when poor.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#155
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's your opinion on ubi given your observations with your wife's family finding ways to get out of employment, if you don't mind me asking. Personally, I don't think that you're ever going to get rid of those sorts of people, so someone ends up "paying for them" anyway.

Who ends up paying for them and why?

Depends on the person, and how they avoid working.

I can only speak to my personal observations.

There's the people who never get a job as an adult and so they never move out of mom and dad's house. Mom and/or dad end up supporting them until their deaths. I asked a guy I know whose son is 37, living with him, and doesn't have a job and hasn't had one in decades (and never worked full time) why he allows that sort of arrangement. He said "because I know he's got a safe place to sleep and something to eat."

There's people who have a kid or two and live off child support. In some states having a one night stand that produces a child with someone who has a salary of ~$120,000 is more lucrative than going to college and working the median salary for a college graduate. Even rape victims owe child support. There's two victims here, the person paying and the child(ren) who exist solely as a paycheck.

There's the related "bait and switch spouse," that's when someone, upon marriage (or cohabitation), just quits their job (or gets fired) and unilaterally decides they don't want to get another. This, of course, was their plan from the start. They may make the motions of trying to get a job to make it look like they are trying to work to their spouse, but the goal is to not work. They will ride this out as long as the spouse will put up with it, which can be decades. This is what my dad did, he basically worked for a couple weeks of my parents marriage and my mom has been footing the bill for him in the 4 decades since (and, no, he never took care of the housework or childrearing or anything like that).

Then, finally, we have the fake disability people. Claim you can't work due to pain, depression, anxiety, migraines, etc. Anything that's a subjective diagnosis. Establish a paper trail, then apply for disability. It really helps if you are in one of the above categories while doing this, because you have a history of "not being able to work" for the disability claim.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"focus on your healthcare" Very true. No UBI without health care for all.

Yes. I'd say: No UBI without good affordable health care for all. No UBI without good affordable education for all. No UBI without humane unemployment benefits for all. No UBI for all, because you already managed it.

With that read, most European countries have UBI and then some. I assure you, the proponents of UBI in Europe will violently disagree.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#157
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we have now. That's not a problem with UBI. IMO that scenario is not likely, let alone guaranteed. I appreciate a pessimistic outlook as much as the next guy, but I don't think we should abandon UBI because you think it may change in the future.

It is actually a problem with UBI: UBI does not line up with most people's beliefs about who deserves help, those beliefs are so powerful that they resulted in the creation of our existing welfare systems, and they aren't going to go away overnight.

Even if your claim is true, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem with UBI -- it could be a problem with 'most people's beliefs'.

Consider that 'most people', in the west at least, consider it normal to work ~8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with 1-4 weeks holiday per year, and do this for ~45 years.

Where did all those numbers come from, and how long have we (as either a culture, or better yet as a species) thought this is normal?

I don't think anyone's suggesting that most people are inclined or capable of changing their beliefs, or rather habits, overnight -- but that's also not a reason to abandon the consideration of UBI.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#158
post #153
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how you get stagnation. It's also rather unfair.

Population stagnation is the point, no other form of stagnation can be predicted from population stagnation because it has never happened. It’s also more fair than dying of starvation because your parents gave you too many siblings.

If there was a fair competition over who gets to live, it can hardly be characterized as unfair. Also, did you already forget that China had a one-child policy? You can look up how that turned out.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#159
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is a representation of wealth, if you print more of it, the money loses it's value to match the wealth. We call this inflation. You cannot give away wealth that you do not have. If we truly had a free market, we'd have none of these issues, since wealth aggregation wouldn't be prevented through regulations. For example, you can already get free education of mostly everything from the Internet, but without getti…

... so you know... obesity isn’t usually from eating to excess because you can. It’s from eating high calorie low nutrition foods. Poor people in the US aren’t obese because they have excess it’s because it is cheapest to buy high calorie foods. Obviously I’m not talking 400lbs, that still takes effort and money, but 250lbs is easy to hit when poor.

It's easy to hit because the incentives work out that way. If the incentives were adjusted through higher tax for higher weight, I wonder if this trend could be reverted.

Re: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income

#160
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a false premise. One of the intended effects of UBI is to universalize the kind of stability of cash flow that the wealthy tend to benefit from under Capitalism. This effectively shifts the balance of both economic and political leverage. In the same way that universal healthcare is less expensive than a balkanized insurance system because the people who want lower prices suddenly have a larger say in the marketplace, UBI would lower the amount of capital wealthy individuals and entities have to put towards assets, and raise the amount that, collectively, a much larger number of UBI recipients have.

Under these conditions, it makes a lot less sense to, say, build luxury housing units that are bid up and up by the demand of wealthy investors, compared to seeing that that demand has now been broken up and distributed among lower income would-be buyers and renters and realizing that a lot of money could be made expanding the housing base.

It's all about who has the money. Asset prices will fall as wealth is diffused among people who don't stockpile capital, making the amount of income necessary to survive lower.

Taxation is a cornerstone of making UBI work. Of course it has a higher chance of failure if it's predicated on grabbing money out of thin air.

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