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Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

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Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#71

Post by Ididntdothis »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #63
MiroF wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if everyone has more liquidity access, that drives prices up. You don't have to do something like distinguish UBI money for this to be true.

Again, more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. Driving prices down. This happens too. As well a a dozen other things. Economics is complicated. Playing dot-to-dot across the space with cherry-picked examples is not very useful.

“more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. “

Not in housing, not in health care and not in education. In other sectors, yes.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#72

Post by Pfhreak »

macspoofing wrote: post #42
Pfhreak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a leftist person who isn't an opponent of ubi, but is an opponent of Yang's ubi. I have no problem with raising taxes, but I do have other concerns. Namely, if everyone got $x,xxx a month, how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount or wages don't go down by that amount? I worry that without a well thought out plan, UBI just ends up funneling money directly back to the wealthy (eg, landlords and b…

>how do we ensure that rents don't just go up by that amount or wages don't go down by that amount? Two ways to answer this: 1) If you're printing money, then yes, prices will rise, and if price controls are implemented it will lead to shortages (e.g. Venezuela) 2) If you're not printing money, then competition will simply lower the cost. It's the same as today - outside of terrible policies like rent-control, why do…

You have a lot more faith in markets than I do. I don't believe that we've been particularly well served by the housing or health care markets. It's been demonstrated, again and again, that 'more supply will come in' just isn't working for housing.

I think we fundamentally disagree, though, which is ok. I see rent control as one mechanism to attempt to decommodify housing (which I'm strongly in favor of). I'm not sure we're going to find much common ground via internet forum.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#73

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #71
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. Driving prices down. This happens too. As well a a dozen other things. Economics is complicated. Playing dot-to-dot across the space with cherry-picked examples is not very useful.

“more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. “ Not in housing, not in health care and not in education. In other sectors, yes.

Not clear. They build new houses. Health care hires and expands. New schools open all the time. And volume decreases cost in those areas too.

Now they may be over-regulated and broken; no argument there.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#74

Post by MiroF »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #71
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. Driving prices down. This happens too. As well a a dozen other things. Economics is complicated. Playing dot-to-dot across the space with cherry-picked examples is not very useful.

“more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. “ Not in housing, not in health care and not in education. In other sectors, yes.

> In other sectors, yes.

Not even. But it's not worth arguing about this, it's basic macro and if s/he doesn't want to educate themselves, that's up to them.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#75

Post by toomuchtodo »

chrisseaton wrote: post #56
toomuchtodo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can approximate. Close enough. It's going to be impossible to implement without testing the concept. I'm not here to convince you, and if you're not a policymaker or the Fed, I don't have to.

But the 'universal' part is the main thing people including policy makers have an issue with, and that's the bit not being tested.

Ehh, India is dipping their toes in without going full monty. It can be done progressively.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23258277 (HN: Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits)

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#76

Post by Ididntdothis »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #73
Ididntdothis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“more buying means more production and reduced costs due to volume. “ Not in housing, not in health care and not in education. In other sectors, yes.

Not clear. They build new houses. Health care hires and expands. New schools open all the time. And volume decreases cost in those areas too. Now they may be over-regulated and broken; no argument there.

Are you saying that housing, education and health care haven’t seen massive price increases over the last few decades?

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#77

Post by sokoloff »

toohotatopic wrote: post #58
sokoloff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is no good if it's not durable and reliable to the recipient. If you imagine that UBI would allow people to live with a lower level of stress around starvation, you have to imagine that they would want to rely on that income a decade from now. Saying "find a rich benefactor to decide to give money away" doesn't reasonably test anything meaningful about UBI. I can tell you that people will generally be happier if…

I haven't said 'find a rich benefactor', but 'be the benefactor'. There is no need to be rich. Spouses stay at home and are not worried if their partner has a regular job. It doesn't have to work for everybody. For starters, find somebody who can handle the risk of you losing your job. Of course people are happier if they get rich. But that's not what UBI is about. The question is: do people need a monetary buffer to…

Anyone who is contemplating durably changing their life predicated on the receipt of basic income is in the situation of “find a benefactor”.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#78

Post by luckylion »

MiroF wrote: post #59
luckylion wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a libertarian, but I generally agree with "my body = my choice". I don't mind taxes in general (if fair and reasonable, which I don't think the taxes in my country are), but the general principle still applies and coming out against it does sound weird to me. Taxes are a necessary evil to have a society, but I don't think starting from a position of "you should not have control over your body" is going to lea…

> "you should not have control over your body" That's not the part of the syllogism most people take issue with, you're being disingenuous. If fair and reasonable taxes are okay, then it seems like you aren't intrinsically entitled to all wealth that flows from your body, so then it seems like if the reasons for UBI are compelling enough, a taxation system to fund it would be justified. It also seems unclear why you…

As I said, I'm not a libertarian. I'm fine with fair and reasonable taxes, you pay those in return for something else, but I'm generally against approaching it the other way round, as in "you might be allowed to keep some of the fruits of your labor, but they actually belong to the state/tribe/party/volk".

You're not getting "all your wealth", the market prices in a difference in what you make and what it's worth for others. But generally in that line of thinking, you could just as easily ask why you should be entitled to any of your wealth, since you're not in a vacuum and you wouldn't have any of it if you weren't part of the system.

I think it's primarily a question of whether you consider the individual as an agent or a cog in the agent that is society. I prefer the idea of individual agency, with all the issues it carries.

> rather than starting from self-ownership

Without being free, you cannot agree to any rules. And you can also not be allowed to leave if you don't want to live in that specific system of social cooperation.

> It seems equally silly to me to structure society so that just because you happened to be born into poverty, your life choices are substantially constrained due to no choice of your own.

Oh, sure, the luck of the draw is a major issue. I don't think making everyone a slave is the answer though. And I do believe there's a good reason to organize society so nobody is born into poverty: it's more efficient. Having millions of people sit around and not contribute is a waste, both of their time, energy and mind, and of the resources they need. I don't think just increasingly overtaxing those that do contribute is the answer though.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#79

Post by twic »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #70
twic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you did it in some moderately isolated place, like Alaska? Alaska already has almost-universal not-quite-basic income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

The annual dividend is around $1000. I wouldn’t call this UBI exactly.

Hence "not-quite-basic"!

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#80

Post by JoeAltmaier »

MiroF wrote: post #25
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common urban legend. The free market drives prices down, when demand goes up for flexible markets. It's easy to throw one or two economic terms around, but its a lot more complicated than 'people have more money == prices rise'.

> That's a common urban legend. Try foundational macroeconomic principle. But it wouldn't even get that far, the Fed would just raise rates to offset the would-be increase in aggregate demand.

What principle? Mistaking "money supply vs interest rates" for something else?
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