Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no self contained economies anymore.
Can I apply for gov benefits from a neighboring staate I don’t have permanent resident status?
That doesn't make it a "self contained economy"
Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
321–330 of 746 posts
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
The annual dividend is around $1000. I wouldn’t call this UBI exactly.
Many people actually survive on that one check. Alaskans are fiercely independent for the most part, and those living outside the main cities are typically self-sustainable. They own their land, hunt for their meat, grow their veggies, trade for what they don't have, and spend whatever money they do have on the essential tools to sustain that.
You need a lot of available land to live off the land. This may work in Alaska but in other states this can’t be done on a large scale.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
> However, a higher velocity of capital without commensurate economic value being created ~= massive inflation.
This is a good point. Money maps to stuff and services. But there is ample surplus production (and unused capacity) in our economy.
Every year 40bn+ pounds of food is wasted at the retail level (on top of all the waste that happens before retail in production), while ~11% of the American population is food insecure.
Nearly every clothing company — H&M, Nike, Burberry, Eddie Bauer, and so on — destroys billions of dollars of unsold clothing every year in order to preserve their brand.
We have material abundance thanks to highly optimised mechanisation and more recently automation in agriculture and manufacturing. UBI can allow the poorest parts of society access the surplus that we would otherwise destroy.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I agree completely. No, you don't. See below. > People work more than they currently need to because they don't have a trust fund. No, people work more than they currently need to because they are exercising prudence, common sense, and planning for the future. Which every adult human being is supposed to take responsibility for doing for themselves, and not expect a "trust fund" to magically take care of for them.…
UBI feels like a way of addressing the incoming loss of jobs due to automation. > No, people work more than they currently need to because they are exercising prudence, common sense, and planning for the future. Which every adult human being is supposed to take responsibility for doing for themselves, and not expect a "trust fund" to magically take care of for them. It may not be materially possible for everyone to a…
> UBI feels like a way of addressing the incoming loss of jobs due to automation.
A better way of doing that would be to allow automation to make the necessities of life drastically cheaper, so that the amount of work required to obtain them is drastically reduced. In the limit, if automation can produce all the necessities of life for everyone at essentially zero cost, then those necessities should simply be free, the way air is free now.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#325Technically speaking , many European countries already have "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...) They are reserved for individuals "Not Active" though ( Unemployed and not looking for a Job ) over a certain age. Those "BI" massively lower poverty , which usually massively reduce crime-rate , drugs related usage etc... With 700€/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh for food and rent , and that'…
>Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at home and do something that is more profitable for them.
Unless you have some hard data, your argument doesn't seem very convincing. The numbers could easily work out in any way, and it would probably depend on the actual amount of UBI you use, because the effect on the workforce and the spending power of consumers would be important for determining the amount of inflation. Studies are useful in situations like this.
Also, I mean, this subtly doubles as an argument against a minimum wage increase. In the same sense that a UBI might slightly decrease the workforce and lead to higher wages for those remaining (and inflation), a minimum wage increase would also. Do you have a proposed tool to increase the wages of an immiserated 20% of the population that doesn't also have the potential to cause inflation?
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#326My biggest concern with UBI is the massive inflation that it will cause.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#327While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality. One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It's pretty hard to argue against this: if you really believe that wealth trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting but verifying that.
> One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It's pretty hard to argue against this: if you really believe that wealth trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting but verifying that. That's not what trickle-down economics was ever about, to my understanding. But more importantly, a plan like you suggest would surely increase the user of contractors, rendering these the proposed pay ratio impotent.
Yes, there are loopholes that need to be closed. The same as any short description of a complex economic policy. I'm not sure why you think this problem is insurmountable: states already have regulations around who may be considered contractors.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I apply for gov benefits from a neighboring staate I don’t have permanent resident status?
That doesn't make it a "self contained economy"
I think for the purposes of UBI it’s enough of a criterion.
Implicitly I was contesting it against say trying it for a county or other political subdivision like state/province/canton. By state I meant sovereign state/nation.
Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#329>> Yang says Humanity Forward plans to immediately distribute Dorsey’s contribution in the form of small cash grants of $250 to nearly 20,000 people who’ve lost their jobs or taken an economic hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic So money based on certain non-universal conditions? Isn't this one of the root problems? People cannot accept a truly universal system - you've already got too much; that guy lives in th…
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Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI is indirectly means-tested; if you make too much money, you end up giving back as much or more in taxes and/or partial UBI clawbacks than what you would get via UBI. This actually ends up working better and being cheaper than most alternatives (including the "guaranteed minimum"), because it's comparatively easy to structure a comprehensive tax system so that it minimizes distortions on people's behavior, and har…
It's actually a big bureaucratic problem to give people several thousand dollars and then demand most of it back later. Most people don't notice income taxes since it comes out of their paycheque. It would genuinely be tough problem to educate people to not spend their basic income, or to design a system where it's clawed back through paycheques.
That's why it's often formulated as a negative income tax