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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

#231

Post by jedberg »

smalltalks wrote: post #217

Technically speaking , many European countries already have "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...) They are reserved for individuals "Not Active" though ( Unemployed and not looking for a Job ) over a certain age. Those "BI" massively lower poverty , which usually massively reduce crime-rate , drugs related usage etc... With 700€/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh for food and rent , and that'…

People keep forgetting that a UBI won't cover immigrants. Immigrants would end up doing all the jobs that citizens don't want to do.

That's the biggest problem with UBI. It creates a default class system.

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

#232

Post by chris_va »

uoaei wrote: post #216
Tiktaalik wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People studied the UBI idea and recognized the costs of giving money to everyone are so enormous that it's unworkable. That's there the means testing has come in to try to limit that. Something more like a "guaranteed minimum income" where you can't have less money than what is required to have a good standard of living is a cheaper and more effective idea that accomplishes the same goals of ending poverty.

If the rhetoric is solely around "government spending" then the perspective will always be that UBI is "too expensive". But the money doesn't just vanish when it enters people's bank accounts. All of a sudden, banks have a lot more collateral against which to borrow and invest, by virtue of the fact that the bank accounts which store the UBI have money in them. People spend that money and it enters and moves through…

A higher velocity of capital ~= larger economy, which is good.

However, a higher velocity of capital without commensurate economic value being created ~= massive inflation.

This is a potential risk for UBI, and one that small-scale studies do not cover. Ideally, the additional economic value would be greater than the face value of the capital transferred every year, but there is no guarantee that is correct (nor is there any reason they should even be on the same order of magnitude).

Implementing UBI on a national scale would be a grand experiment. Most grand experiments tend to fail with massive upheaval. I think for UBI to be adopted, you would need a plausible incremental strategy with a lot of safety checks.

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

#233

Post by kerkeslager »

z0r wrote: post #213
kerkeslager wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that operate the non-robot trucks, so your argument doesn't make much sense here.

Need some evidence for that.

[1] https://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Garbage/trucks-for-sal...

[2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector...

Keep in mind a truck lasts for years, while a truck driver has to be paid yearly. I'm not figuring in maintenance costs for the truck here--if you'd like to argue that yearly maintenance costs for the truck are the same as the cost of the truck, I can look that up too, but I'm hoping you are a reasonable person.

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

#234

Post by karatestomp »

jimbob45 wrote: post #129
tomjakubowski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No more so than the 2008 stimulus checks. Both programs were non-universal and under both the number of dollars sent to eligible recipients depended on their incomes.

Oh maybe I'm mistaken. I was under the impression that the COVID payouts were universal.

The cutoffs before payments started to taper off—not even get cut off entirely yet, but drop—were pretty damn high. Much higher than I expected when they started talking about it. Not by SV or NY professional-class wage earner standards, but very high for normal people. It wasn't universal but it wasn't too far off, either.

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

#235

Post by burrows »

smalltalks wrote: post #217

Technically speaking , many European countries already have "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...) They are reserved for individuals "Not Active" though ( Unemployed and not looking for a Job ) over a certain age. Those "BI" massively lower poverty , which usually massively reduce crime-rate , drugs related usage etc... With 700€/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh for food and rent , and that'…

> With 700€/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh for food and rent , and that's it...

Contingent benefits disincentivize people from participating in the economy. People paid to do nothing... do nothing.

> For America it's different, America cannot technically afford "BI" because the entirety of the US economy has been built on having 20% of the population living under the poverty line in order for good & services to be cheap and consumed in mass.

Under any economic regime there will be a poorest 20% at any given time.

> Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at home and do something that is more profitable for them.

It causes inflation because more cash is chasing the same number of goods.

> Hence , the American culture revolve almost entirely around production of good and services for happiness.

Propaganda.

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

#236

Post by nogabebop23 »

kerkeslager wrote: post #199
aintnoprophet wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in populated areas. But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. I see people hanging off garbage trucks all the time in the midwestern low pop and rural areas.

> But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that operate the non-robot trucks, so your argument doesn't make much sense here.

>> The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that operate the non-robot trucks

not if you understand accounting. I can hire a guy today at <$20/hr operating cost to do it manually. That robot truck is a much more significant capital investment that will amortize over 10+ years.

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

#237

Post by matz1 »

bzb3 wrote: post #196
jedberg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every experiment in UBI says otherwise. Direct cash grants usually lead people to do more work, because now they can do the work they enjoy. Also, look around groups of wealthy people. The ones who don't have to work anymore. Sure, some of them live a life of leisure, but many of them still work, because they get bored otherwise.

There are lots of jobs people don't enjoy. Who's going to do those? If they raise the salaries and start getting applicants, who's going to buy the much more expensive produce? They'd have to increase the amount of ubi, and there you have inflation.

Automation, immigrant, increase pay.

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

#238

Post by Reedx »

zelly wrote: post #157

UBI only makes sense in the science fiction world that Andrew Yang and other non-technical journalists think is somehow imminent. We still need people to make things. There are still guys hanging off the side of garbage trucks every day and people still pick fruits by hand. If no one does these things, you will starve and die. We cannot survive forever on financial engineering by bureaucrats and importing all our nec…

It doesn't replace people making things, though. You'd still want to work and create value to improve your situation. It'd just function as a floor and provide some stability.

Bearing in mind the increasing rate of job destruction and creation. We're no longer in a world where you can rely on being able to have the same profession your whole life.

Having that floor would be useful to smooth those transitions out, and a boon to entrepreneurship if it's easier for people to take risks.

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

#239

Post by [deleted] »

LAMike wrote: post #85
ravenstine wrote: post #44

I don't understand the optimism around UBI. UBI is a band-aid and a sign that a system is actually failing. I get why some people, especially intellectuals, want UBI, but they seem to believe that UBI is free of consequence. If society "needs" UBI, that means that not enough people can build wealth or that the welfare system isn't effective. Handing people money isn't going to change the fact that too much of the eco…

> because they effectively own their oil industry Why can't we, as a society, come together and take ownership of our data, and sell it back to the companies using our data for profit?

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by matz1 »

WalterBright wrote: post #215
seph-reed wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for them. The point of work is to not have to anymore so you can follow your passions. We've invented machines that can do basically everything it takes to support human life. Seems like there should be a lot more people following passions now.

> The point of work is to not have to anymore so you can follow your passions. So Bob needs to work so Fred can follow his passion for surfing and video games?

The point is Bob doesn't need to work.
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