Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#201

Post by ardit33 »

alex_young wrote: post #114

A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…

A carbon tax is essentially a sales tax... for high carbon products.

i.e. polluting cars, red meat, airplane travel, etc... etc...

The problem with 'sales tax' is that are regressive. You are essentially taxing the millionaire and the homeless guy with the same rate.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#202

Post by smallnamespace »

petermcneeley wrote: post #174
alex_young wrote: post #114

A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…

Carbon taxes tend to be regressive. Using a regressive tax to fund "ubi" sounds cunningly evil. Are you familiar with the yellow jacket protests in France?

Since any UBI schedule can be adjusted to be more or less progressive, you simply sum the impact of carbon tax + UBI as a package and tweak until you get the desired net result.

By the way, this is already a very standard analysis that economists do, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is well-funded, non-partisan, and is probably the best institution in the world for doing this sort of work.

Obamacare, the Trump tax cuts, tweaks to Social Security, all these proposals get evaluated over a long time frame by the CBO and the results are public (for example https://www.cbo.gov/publication/45447).

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#203

Post by nickff »

aahhahahaaa wrote: post #137
alexmingoia wrote: post #82

Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income approaches zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax I do think people radically…

Why give free school to everyone, libraries? Clearly a rich person doesn't need those either? Public services should be public. There's extreme social value in equal access and you reduce an extreme amount of bureaucracy and debate in the process. >If I got free money I wouldn’t increase spending, I would reduce work. WE SHOULD ALL REDUCE WORK. Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We'…

We have a lot to show for our increased productivity, though the 'things' may not be what you care about. Fancy televisions, nice food, great cars, and a lot more travel are the current 'mindset'. If you think people should be happy with less, you shoud try to convince them; if that fails, you can also lead a less consumption-driven lifestyle on your own!

Why do you want to force me to follow your priorities?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#204

Post by ddbb33 »

drummer wrote: post #62

UBI is extremely dangerous as long as governments exist. Take what China is doing with their citizen score and it's not hard to imagine what could go wrong. "...imagine how easy it would be for such a government that was also providing a basic income to its citizens to manipulate their citizens based on that basic income that they depended on. If they can deny citizens access to things like public transportation base…

That’s equating all governments and forms of governance with China’s government. To be able to say that, you have to also say why you think this has a non-negligible chance of happening in a democratic society for example.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#205

Post by fazed »

> Instead of continually trying to optimize supply, with diminishing returns, we need to optimize demand by giving consumers more money to spend on things they desire.

> If we can give companies overwhelming demand so they have to scale up production instead of spending all their money on advertising, we can have both happy companies making profit hand over fist, and happy consumers who get everything they desire.

> everything they desire.

This seems very bad for the environment? The article seemed to make some interesting points, but I got concerned here. These paragraphs seem awfully gung-ho about runaway hyperconsumption

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#206

Post by Ericson2314 »

petermcneeley wrote: post #174
alex_young wrote: post #114

A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…

Carbon taxes tend to be regressive. Using a regressive tax to fund "ubi" sounds cunningly evil. Are you familiar with the yellow jacket protests in France?

Using a regressive tax to fund a UBI makes it....not regressive. What's evil is the rich people distorting this plain mathematics.

Was the French gas tax redistributed such that below x (where x > 50%) percentile consumers would come out ahead? The Canadian carbon dividend is the ideal example.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#207

Post by christiansakai »

I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix and play games all day.

Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and online videos/articles/courses at their fingertips do not make people more educated but instead chose to believe what they believe. Having money and time alone do not motivate people to study or create.

UBI will probably benefit most to those who already have inner desire to succeed. But for majority of people, I have my doubts.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#208

Post by kortilla »

aahhahahaaa wrote: post #137
alexmingoia wrote: post #82

Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income approaches zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax I do think people radically…

Why give free school to everyone, libraries? Clearly a rich person doesn't need those either? Public services should be public. There's extreme social value in equal access and you reduce an extreme amount of bureaucracy and debate in the process. >If I got free money I wouldn’t increase spending, I would reduce work. WE SHOULD ALL REDUCE WORK. Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We'…

People prefer the better quality of life than what was had even in the fifties. That’s why they work more. Houses are bigger, multiple cars are had, people travel, people have elective surgeries, dental cleanings, the Internet, college educations, etc.

You’re proposing that people should be happy with what we had back then by reducing output. I’d rather work full time and have the better quality of life, thanks.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#209

Post by thephyber »

alexmingoia wrote: post #156
thephyber wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely implementation in the existing US federal government is a negative income tax. > I definitely would choose not to work or work less if that money came free from government. You aren't alone, so your $1200 would not go as far in that future as it does now. There would be some inflation (perhaps only localized increased costs to some industries), but I'd suspect that people working less would be a featu…

“There would be some inflation” Which serves as a reason to regularly increase the amount. “UBI doesn't make people not want to work at all“ Speak for yourself. Work is a means to an end. I have no desire to work if basic income takes care of my basic necessities. I have no intrinsic desire to get up every day at the same time and do what my employer tells me to do. And to be clear, when I say work I mean the necessi…

I definitely don't want to feel like I'm in a rat race while on the job, but I enjoy lots of parts of work. After taking ~18 months off work, I realized I enjoyed the first 3-4 months of unstructured self-directed activities, but I think I'd prefer more daily structure (whether job or otherwise). If I get the place where I can retire, I'm probably volunteer for part of my time.

Most of the proposals I've heard of UBI / negative income tax are good supplements but don't completely replace work-based income. $1000/month per adult is among the largest benefit I've heard.

Post reply on HN