Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#801

Post by zimbatm » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

thatguyagain wrote: post #751

zimbatm wrote: post #740

Where does that money come from? The US population has 199M adults[1]. Let's say a decent basic income is $40k. That's 8 Trillion that the government has to find every year. The US federal tax revenue was of 3.86 Trillion last year[2]. Half of which comes from individual income, and another third from payroll taxes. This is before the effects that UBI will have on the economy. Maybe my 10 minute research is wrong? It…

Wait, why would every single adult be on basic income?

The U in UBI is for Universal, so I assume that every adult, at minimum, would get it. Or did I miss something?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#802

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

codeisawesome wrote: post #550

gfxgirl wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really curious how many of the jobs no one wants to do would still get done. I get that the B in UBI is "basic" but still, so many necessary jobs are jobs no one really wants to do but they do because they need money. If they didn't need money would those jobs still get done. Trash collection? Construction work? Hotel cleaners? Janitors? Farmers, Grocery Store stockers, truckers, nurses, sales clerks, .... Sure the…

So the solution is to continue using suffering and historic injustice to force people into doing stuff they don’t want to do - “or else”? I don’t think so. In India, even middle class families can afford a part time house maid because the latter’s salaries are insanely low thanks to cruel supply/demand dynamics and poverty; the same family, after moving to a developed country, would just do the chores themselves. It…

[deleted]

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#803

Post by MH15 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

Noting that "I’m a huge fan of capitalism and free trade" in the modern world seems questionable. If it was capitalism that lifted the world out of poverty, what is it that is pulling the US (and others) back into poverty through massive inequality?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#804

Post by thrownaway954 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

maybe i'm an idiot, but i really don't get the whole UBI argument... we already have it, it's called welfare and you see and how that has been taken advantage of and what a sh*t storm it is.

we don't a UBI, we need the government to stop dipping their hands in everyone's pockets and free up money.

1) stop taxing social security checks. these people have worked their entire lives and now you're taxing them on money THEY put in. 2) stop taxing disability checks. these people DEPEND on that money cause they can't work. 3) speaking of SS. we need to end it at some point. a good way of doing it would be to automatically put 25% of their SS contribution into a ROTH IRA. 4) you should be allowed to contribute an additional 20% of your salary to a ROTH IRA instead of the 6K it is now. 5) stop taxing people who make less than 40K per year.

these are just some of the ways i can think of to put more money into people's pocket without killing the economy, but that's just me talking out loud. maybe i'm wrong.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#805

Post by MH15 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

The author seems to assume that people make the most efficient decisions under capitalism, and idea that is provably false. There is simply too much information for a consumer to make the "right" purchase in markets where capitalism has failed, e.g. healthcare.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#806

Post by throw7 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

So what is each person's UBI amount?

I see people here saying $1k or even $2k a month. How should you calculate that amount and why? Will it be adjusted year to year? How so?

One practical problem right _now_, some conservatives are going bonkers that we're basically paying some part of workforce to NOT work as they're making more now not working. Pretty sure you're not going to convince them to vote for UBI.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#807

Post by AtHeartEngineer » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #526

I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…

The only way to find out is to try

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#808

Post by blamestross » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

mojzu wrote: post #790

sdunwoody wrote: post #761

I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…

I'm not entirely convinced by UBI yet either, however I think there are arguments that could made against your headline cost calculation. It could eliminate/save other huge portions of the budget. It would also probably have to be adjusted based on location, or as you said it wouldn't do much good in expensive cities, which might reduce that cost further. And a huge chunk of that money is going to people who will imm…

UBI would force them to move away from cities. UBI would inflate housing costs, but more in urban areas and much less in suburban and rural areas. This would allow us to use land more efficiently. Right now poor people have to crowd into cities in hopes of work. It should not be "cost of living" adjusted. We want it to cause a massive re-organization of our society.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#809

Post by YoungWeb » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

This is an interesting argument. I would like to see this broken down from a economic perspective.

My concerns:

1. Inflation - A UBI would touch into an increased money supply and higher wages which I think could push us towards demand-pull inflation. Possibly completely negating or at least partially negating the money earned through the program.

2. Funds - How would a successful UBI be funded? Would taxes increase? Maybe we just tax captial markets and use those funds? Could this somehow be a new role of the fed?

3. Social Programs - Currently, there are many unemployed making more then those working part-time and at minimum wage full time work. (This having to do specifically with the COVID relief added on top of original amount for unemployment). How would this effect incentive to work? Could it potentially impact GDP growth? (and by no means am I arguing that this is the only metric that matters. I am interested in the long term effects this could have. Obviously, "What are the long term affects of not having a home, to be able to afford education and food?" is the relevant counter question.)

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#810

Post by blitmap » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #652

onion2k wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. If you're a poor person now you absolutely have to try to keep your horrible job else you'll lost the ability to pay rent and buy food. You have to take all the cra…

> One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. That is a very strong statement that I don't think can be claimed at this point. In my opinion, I feel things will simply shift under UBI. People will receive UBI, but then other things, like rent, food, etc. will all just magically get more expensive. I cannot see any implementation of UBI working any better than things now unless the pr…

To me it seems like we're just trying to navigate a way to a post-scarcity society with the least amount of backlash/damage.

We could give people money, or we could say "up to so many kilowatt/hours this is free" or "you are entitled to this set-amount of groceries for free". Or to combat prices that inflate for UBI, the government could be reporting what is a reasonable price.

Man I wish I had taken economics. I truly don't know all the ways this could harm us.