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India floats the idea of a universal basic income

economist.com

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Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#101

Post by lend000 »

felipeccastro wrote: post #38

I used to think a universal basic income would make sense, especially in developed countries, only for the near future scenario of machines taking ever more jobs. We know that this has always happened in history, and new jobs were always created, but that doesn't mean that the rate of job creation vs destruction will remain the same, forever. What made me change my mind about UBI was to realize that a) human desires…

It's an implementation problem -- UBI just has to be very basic to incentivize productivity. Contrary to what many think, there will always be jobs in a fully automated world (until robots can be indistinguishable from humans, that is, both physically and mentally) -- we will shift from a labor-intensive economy to one based on social value and experience.

The more concerning problem which comes up in this article is that you cannot have both UBI and lax immigration/easy freedom of movement. The first country to institute a UBI would be quite appealing to the billions of people living in destitute poverty, and they would all want to emigrate, making it almost impossible to get into the country. How do you decide who gets in? Do you require the person was a citizen for 18 years before qualifying? You certainly can't have open borders or the welfare system would quickly be overrun.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#102

Post by parennoob »

harigov wrote: post #17

In other developed countries, I think universal basic income makes sense, but not in the case of India. India has several systemic problems and a significant portion of the population has little to no education. Any income that can sustain a household without any pressure to grow as people will probably hinder their progress more so than help them. For a country with no lack of problems to solve, they are much better…

> ...they are much better off to incentivize people to learn, teach or do charity than to just hand over some money for being citizens.

A lot of money does get earmarked for this purpose, and then gets funneled into the pockets of corrupt officials and politicians. I think that's what this income is supposed to help prevent. It's not the only way -- tracking money flow in general helps.

(The previous demonetization move was also supposed to help accomplish something similar, i.e. track if money is going to corrupt politicians instead of the impoverished people it is meant for.)

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#103

Post by ploxiln »

bitJericho wrote: post #92
jeffdavis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are ignoring some bad things that could come out of UBI. The greatest danger is that people may be comfortable near the BI level until they are about 30, and not really work or educate themselves much (lacking motivation). Then, they want to have a family, and all of a sudden their desires for consumption skyrocket. They can't just join the workforce then, because it will be 10 years before they advance e…

Ubi should never be about owning anything. It should be about providing housing, food, healthcare, clothes, and nothing more. It should be for all citizens, including children. This way you can have a family. But if you want a tv, phone, car, you're going to have to work. Since people are living to their 70s plus, lounging around isn't a big deal. I think you'll find people become very creative too, or focus on high…

Adding children is pushing it - because the parent controls the child's money, so there is a conflict of interest.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#104

Post by closeparen »

bitJericho wrote: post #92
jeffdavis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are ignoring some bad things that could come out of UBI. The greatest danger is that people may be comfortable near the BI level until they are about 30, and not really work or educate themselves much (lacking motivation). Then, they want to have a family, and all of a sudden their desires for consumption skyrocket. They can't just join the workforce then, because it will be 10 years before they advance e…

Ubi should never be about owning anything. It should be about providing housing, food, healthcare, clothes, and nothing more. It should be for all citizens, including children. This way you can have a family. But if you want a tv, phone, car, you're going to have to work. Since people are living to their 70s plus, lounging around isn't a big deal. I think you'll find people become very creative too, or focus on high…

You can drive many TVs (~$250), phones (~$150), and sometimes even cars (~$3000) through the regional, situational, quality level, and market timing variations in the prices of housing and healthcare (I've lived in a $600/mo sublet and a $2500/mo 1-bedroom in the same 6-month window; I've gone for years without seeing a doctor, and then had emergency surgery).

A direct, fixed cash transfer will never, ever have the properties you suggest. It's sort of the point of money that people can allocate it according to their priorities. You'll have a hard time stopping someone from taking a 100 fewer sqft apartment in exchange for a smartphone. Or colluding with the landlord to kick back part of the rent reimbursement in exchange for a smaller apartment.

To get what you're talking about, the government would have to directly issue housing, food, and clothes, or run another one of its extremely complicated and unintended-consequence-laden means-testing systems to tailor the amount of cash transferred for your exact situation a moment-to-moment basis, if it wishes to give you exactly enough cash to buy the things on your list and no others.

Once it's playing this game, you've lost the small government/simplicity/low overhead aspect which caused many to favor UBI over the existing welfare state. A UBI like you suggest is really not UBI, it's just government-issued basic necessities, an idea with substantially less traction.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#105

Post by clock_tower »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #30
clock_tower wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting idea, but sumptuary laws have a history of being widely evaded and hard to enforce; I'd refer you to Fernand Braudel's Structures of Everyday Life , dealing with European life in the 1500s-1700s.

You are probably right about enforceability. As a thought experiment one could imagine other enforceable variations, however - displaying on Facebook/Twitter/Tinder/etc whether you are a social benefactor or parasite, for example.

I'm sorry I'm being so relentlessly negative, but I'm skeptical of this approach too. There's the obvious Orwellian angle -- it sounds like you might be legally required to have an online presence tied to your real name and identity -- and if you stigmatize basic-income recipients as parasites, you'd risk generating the political will to repeal basic income entirely. (See also Bill Clinton, in a memorable only-China-can-go-to-Nixon moment, promising to "end welfare as we know it" in the 1990s.)

I think it's better to just push through with the idea and accept the inefficiencies of everyone getting it -- once a given country has the tax base to pull it off.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#106

Post by sokoloff »

xedrac wrote: post #89
jeffdavis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are ignoring some bad things that could come out of UBI. The greatest danger is that people may be comfortable near the BI level until they are about 30, and not really work or educate themselves much (lacking motivation). Then, they want to have a family, and all of a sudden their desires for consumption skyrocket. They can't just join the workforce then, because it will be 10 years before they advance e…

I think you hit on one of the biggest risks in my opinion. Right now there is a strong motive to educate yourself, because it will likely result in a more comfortable future. Having a highly educated population is hugely beneficial. I suppose if UBI provided just enough to keep you alive, then it might not be so bad.

Mathematically, I can't imagine we could fund a UBI scheme that would even barely keep you housed and fed.

At $1500/mo for everyone in the US, that comes to just shy of 6 trillion USD. For comparison, the total federal tax revenues for 2016 are going to be approximately 3.5 trillion USD, including payroll taxes.

At $1500/mo/person, this one program would present 5/3rds of all federal tax revenues.

A more realistic figure is probably much closer to $650/mo, assuming you take ALL of the current federal spending on healthcare, social security, veteran's benefits, pensions, and welfare and direct it into UBI. This says nothing of the legality of cancelling existing or contractually promised federal pensions, nor the morality/practicality of changing the existing social security and Medicare systems, of course.

$650/mo/person still leaves us with a deficit (as today) and is a pretty meager existence for sure!

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#107

Post by eli_gottlieb »

aminok wrote: post #93
jjoonathan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently government is redistributing income upward by economic prohibitions (regulatory barriers) Forgive me for the double post, but part of a sibling comment of mine is especially relevant here: > I'm regularly floored by people's ability to talk about network effects, economies of scale, information asymmetries, moats, winner-takes-all games, and mergers/acquisitions with one breath -- all of which are non-reg…

All regulations, except on natural resources like land, should be eliminated in my opinion, as they are forceful interventions against people exercising their legitimate right to freely contract and utilise their own private property. In industries where network effects emerge, the government should fund open-source protocols that can compete with privately owned options. For example, applications built on a distribu…

>All regulations, except on natural resources like land, should be eliminated in my opinion, as they are forceful interventions against people exercising their legitimate right to freely contract and utilise their own private property.

That's a sickening utopian vision, but luckily we live in the real world.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#108

Post by 3825 »

ploxiln wrote: post #103
bitJericho wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubi should never be about owning anything. It should be about providing housing, food, healthcare, clothes, and nothing more. It should be for all citizens, including children. This way you can have a family. But if you want a tv, phone, car, you're going to have to work. Since people are living to their 70s plus, lounging around isn't a big deal. I think you'll find people become very creative too, or focus on high…

Adding children is pushing it - because the parent controls the child's money, so there is a conflict of interest.

> Adding children is pushing it - because the parent controls the child's money, so there is a conflict of interest.

I absolutely agree. I'd push it further though. Not just children but anyone who is not in a capacity to freely spend the money. To make a contrived example, someone may not simply kidnap a person and take their universal basic income.

I go farther to say that local/state/federal government may not take the money for people in their custody. There ought to be some way to protect it from being garnished as well.

I think we should not oversell this. There might be a lot of people who are perfectly content with being able to survive and get by. If they do not want to participate further in the economy, I think we should say that's fine. The ax I have to grind in this is that maybe if people are not scared of starving to death after leaving a job they don't like doing, maybe we will have more people doing jobs they do like doing and maybe just maybe me and others will have a better shot at doing what we love doing even if it is at a slightly lower (after taxes) pay than before.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#109

Post by eli_gottlieb »

huh333i wrote: post #95
whack wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasoning you're using is very flawed. Yes, we'll never get to a state where a small number end up with 100% of the wealth. Yes, there will be an equilibrium reached between the wealthy and the middle class. But this equilibrium point can shift more and more towards the wealthy. In fact, this has already been happening in the past few decades, as illustrated in books such as Capital. And as this equilibrium shift…

You want to thwart communism using UBI? That's like thwarting floodwater by calling your basement a swimming pool.

Well, we could bring about communism using UBI. Could be great!

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#110

Post by reddytowns »

foxylad wrote: post #58
felipeccastro wrote: post #38

I used to think a universal basic income would make sense, especially in developed countries, only for the near future scenario of machines taking ever more jobs. We know that this has always happened in history, and new jobs were always created, but that doesn't mean that the rate of job creation vs destruction will remain the same, forever. What made me change my mind about UBI was to realize that a) human desires…

> b) the more work is done by machines, the richer the population as a whole will be True - as a whole . But as things stand now, the owners of the machines get richer, and the displaced workers get significantly poorer. My concern is this. In ten years time, trucks and taxis will be automated, and vanishingly few truck drivers will be able to retrain as truck computer techs. Truck and taxi driving is the last bastio…

> Sadly I think it's very unlikely to happen, unless the rich figure out that their wealth is going to be redistributed violently if they don't do voluntarily.

Do you really think this will be possible in a decade? With the advances in technology such as the military robots, you yourself describe, it seems increasingly unlikely.

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