Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#901

Post by miltondts » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #785

miltondts wrote: post #775

I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms. Money was invented in a time of scarcity and it was a very useful tool then. In some situations it still is today, but for many things we have more than enough for everyone, so maybe those should be provided without the need to go through the money system. Anyway, I don't know what would work, b…

I don't think there is any good or service for which we have transcended "scarcity". Even with food production, actually manufacturing food is dirt cheap now, but it's the transportation and logistics that's the hard part — I.e. the scarcity is in the supply chain. The pricing system works remarkably well at addressing this scarcity, provided the buyer has money to pay for things. Per the OP, the diminishing returns…

When you have manufacturing moving almost to the other side of the globe in order to increase profits I think it is hard to see how there is a transportation and logistics scarcity. Most of the scarcity I see is artificially induced by the people that want more profits. Removing money from the equation and just leaving the resources, I don't see much scarcity.. maybe in some battery components and such, but certainly not in housing, electricity, food and water. It's just that under the current system, if there is no profit to be made, then it doesn't happen. Same reason we haven't colonized the moon and mars.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#902

Post by ardy42 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #140

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 money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... The answer is that it's much simpler to send everyone a check. The rich person will pay more in taxes than the amount of their check, so it doesn't matter. Indeed, the arguments that we should do otherwise are to the benefit of the rich, because the proposed cutoff invariably comes somewhere in the middle income r…

>> Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government...

> The answer is that it's much simpler to send everyone a check. The rich person will pay more in taxes than the amount of their check, so it doesn't matter.

There's a more subtle reason: if everyone gets a check, the program is more politically popular, making it harder for the rich to build a political coalition to kill it. That means the people who really need it will continue to get it.

IIRC, FDR opposed mean-testing social security for this reason. Almost everyone gets it, and the middle class gets enough to make some kind of difference in their lives, even if they could get by without it. Compared to other welfare programs, it's been unkillable.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#903

Post by carabiner » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

lvs wrote: post #339

Let's say I'm a landlord. If you give my tenant $1000/month, I'll just take it. Their rent is now R+1000 next year. You could tax the $1000 back away from me, but that doesn't stop the price from rising. It actually just boosts my incentive to take every last cent of the $1000 that I can extract. I think you all need to think more about the economics. You have to be willing, on rational grounds, to step away from fre…

Let's say I'm a different landlord. If the other landlords are raising their rents, I know that by not raising mine, I can attract more tenants and increase my occupancy rate. Maybe I'm at 70%, and I need 80% to cover my costs. I know that if I raised my rents by $1,000/month, I would lose tenants to the landlords who didn't.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#904

Post by loceng » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:54 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…

Re: 1 - That's a huge market segment for companies to cater products and services to. The former isn't at mercy to the later - they are both benefitting as they're all receiving UBI. If you're making $50,000 a year are you going to be unhappy with getting $62,000 a year because of UBI - along with your partner and any adult children?

Re: 2 - Yup, people will have to learn to develop trusted networks and oversight to enforce and prevent, limit that behaviour. That's an organizational related problem.

Re: 3 - UBI on its own vacuum doesn't really work, it's why you also need social services, at least basic health care covered, etc - including rehabilitation programs to funnel people through.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#905

Post by loceng » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

Ma8ee wrote: post #620

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…

In the US, just not having to depend on your employer for your and your family’s healthcare would be a big step in that direction.

That is part of Andrew Yang's understanding, to take that burden off of employers as well, it's positive for every party.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#906

Post by Proziam » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #875

Proziam wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest UBI fear is this. UBI becomes the single biggest election issue. Politicians promising increases to get elected, and all the bad policy that stems from such motivations. This is then followed by an inevitable pullback at some point in the future, causing immense harm to everyone relying on every cent of their UBI (most people).

> UBI becomes the single biggest election issue. Politicians promising increases to get elected. I'm still unsure about UBI, but isn't this already a problem with taxes today? Politicians promise lower taxes.

Yes, absolutely. The key difference is in the incentives/outcomes of the policy. UBI involves lessening incentive to participate in the labor market, lower taxes increases the incentive (because you keep more of your earnings). At some level of 'passive' income it becomes very difficult for a rational person to make the decision to go to work every day.

UBI is one of those ideas that is theoretically awesome but doesn't survive contact with reality, or rather the inevitable flawed humans that administer it.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#907

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #759

bakuninsbart wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. I think it should be p…

>In Germany, the vast majority of homeless people are addicts or people with major mental health problems. That's true in Canada and United States. The problem is that there are major legal barriers pushed through by activists to prevent forced institutionalization. Apparently it is a fundamental human right to live in a tent city off the freeway without basic sanitation.

I believe it is more like half at any given time in the US if you would like to support the term "vast majority" feel free.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#908

Post by jopsen » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

jonstaab wrote: post #313

treyfitty wrote: post #272

There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life. I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panickin…

The problem I see with that is that if a huge number of people take that route and happily (let's assume) live their lives without working, they lose access to the ability to participate in a meaningful way in the economy by producing something of value; if they're not producing value, no one is going to value them, and they'll eventually be locked out of the new, smaller elite group that controls the means of produc…

Hmm, maybe it's more gradual.. with UBI maybe some people will choose to work less, rather than giving up work entirely.

At the bottom of the pay scale, UBI might not affect how much people work. Because most people have goals beyond mere survival :)

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#909

Post by beervirus » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

mbrock wrote: post #773

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…

The government just credits accounts. The money doesn’t have to come from anywhere other than the government’s decision—that’s why it’s called fiat currency!

Great point. Why does the government bother taxing anyone at all? Money printer go brrrr.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#910

Post by kurthr » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:07 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…

Exactly, unless you make the UBI ungarnishable and useless for loans the payday predators will just find a way to drive those dependent into debt until they take all the UBI they can from as many as they can. What % of current homeless will that be?

Still, I hear UBI proponents say that you have to allow loan payments, because otherwise it's not fungible basic income. I disagree and think BI doesn't need financial engineering on top.