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

UBI as a productivity dividend

scottsantens.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 278 posts

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#111

Post by bryanlarsen »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #107
bryanlarsen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. It's straightforward to make it revenue neutral. You make it revenue neutral for the average tacpayer. If you want UBI to be $1000/month, you increase the average tax by $1000. The average taxpayer still benefit because even though they don't get more money, they have a safety net. People making less than average get more UBI than the tax increase, and those making more pay more. Most people get more…

Is it straightforward to get Congress to make it revenue neutral? And to keep it revenue neutral? I don't think so. Politicians find "free money for everybody" to be too easy a way of getting votes.

Straightforward? Yes. Easy? heck no.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#112

Post by lyu07282 »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #62

The goal we all seek - liberation - is a distant one. That said I’m skeptical that UBI is the right way. UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. But as we’ve seen, such class members will organize to penetrate the state and contort it for their own ends. Thus any successful UBI will be a compromise or it will be dismantled by the powerful class that…

[flagged]

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#113

Post by gruez »

davyAdewoyin wrote: post #74
SoftTalker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you control what other landlords do? Why won't any undercut you by $200 and get your tenants?

It doesn't matter, because land is scarce resource

Land might be scarce in the technical sense, but not in the practical sense. Housing is only expensive because people want to live in superstar cities, which in turn is because that's where all the jobs are. If UBI eliminates the imperative to live in superstar cities, that makes scarcity a non-issue.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#114

Post by gruez »

ciwchris wrote: post #20

I recently came across the idea of Universal Basic Capital (UBC): "granting every person a meaningful ownership stake in productive assets from birth." UBC would be enormously difficult to implement, as well as have its own weaknesses. It doesn't seem realistic, but introduces a new idea into the conversation. https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=...

How do you prevent people from being swindled and selling their stake off? If it can't be sold off, how's that any different than a corporation tax?

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#115

Post by gruez »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #57
advael wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police unions aren't the same thing as other unions. Most unions exist to equalize labor negotiation through collective bargaining, and police unions tend to include and align with the leadership in the organization that a union would traditionally be negotiating with. In practice they're a lot more like a military contractor than a union (in that their role is to prevent public accountability)

This is correct and the proof is that police do not strike with labor they fight labor on behalf of capital The core premise of a union is that you have solidarity primarily across unions which is actually how you get collective-bargaining at larger scales

>This is correct and the proof is that police do not strike with labor they fight labor on behalf of capital

I thought it was because they couldn't strike because they were "essential"?

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#116

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

estearum wrote: post #87
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because UBI is largely orthogonal to those things. It's a way of taking productivity gains and ensuring that the entire population benefits from them.

But... without those other changes... UBI doesn't benefit the entire population, as we've just established. It benefits landlords.

The broader claim that you're making is that any increase in after-tax income benefits only the rent-seeking classes (since the same argument you've made for landlords would apply to all other rent seekers, including netflix, airlines and more).

I don't know enough about economics these days to know if anyone who knows a lot about thus stuff thinks this is true, but it seems on the face of it to be absurd, since it would mean that pay raises are substantially diminished by rents paid for anything where demand is not elastic. I mean, I'm not insisting that cannot possibly be true, but it seems unlikely ...

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#117

Post by estearum »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #116
estearum wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... without those other changes... UBI doesn't benefit the entire population, as we've just established. It benefits landlords.

The broader claim that you're making is that any increase in after-tax income benefits only the rent-seeking classes (since the same argument you've made for landlords would apply to all other rent seekers, including netflix, airlines and more). I don't know enough about economics these days to know if anyone who knows a lot about thus stuff thinks this is true, but it seems on the face of it to be absurd, since it w…

No, this argument does not apply to rent-seeking classes. I am describing land ownership specifically. Land is a totally n-of-one asset in that it is completely inelastic. It is not created nor destroyed by any human intervention whatsoever, and so its supply is not affected by prices whatsoever.

The relevance of this is amplified by the fact that land is a required input for all forms of production. People and machines must exist in space, and therefore demand land.

This does not apply to any other asset that we care about.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#118

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. It makes no assumption about an elite ownership class at all. It merely assumes profits, and rearranges how those profits are distributed (away from shareholders, towards labor). There is no need for community ownership of the means of production (though that might have some different benefits, along with so…

Community ownership does share across sectors if the community owns both sectors. Why would it not? Also, you haven't really answered the point. You may be able to get this established. But how do you keep it established? How do you keep the elite ownership class from dismantling it? (Based on historically observed behavior, the default assumption is that they will try.) If you don't have a plan that accounts for tha…

I didn't say that tackling the elite class wasn't important.

But saying that the existence of an elite class implies regulatory capture is a step beyond that.

Regulatory capture is absolutely a problem. While one could advocate for eliminating the elite class (e.g. wealth taxes, confiscation, execution ... as you wish), I'd probably go for tightly controlled political donations & spending, combined with a strong anti-corruption culture (which has been severely damaged by, ahem, recent administrations).

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#119

Post by estearum »

gruez wrote: post #113
davyAdewoyin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter, because land is scarce resource

Land might be scarce in the technical sense, but not in the practical sense. Housing is only expensive because people want to live in superstar cities, which in turn is because that's where all the jobs are. If UBI eliminates the imperative to live in superstar cities, that makes scarcity a non-issue.

Just need UBI, unlike all other forms of marginal increases in income, to spur people to move away from cities rather than towards them.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#120

Post by jacquesm »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #118
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community ownership does share across sectors if the community owns both sectors. Why would it not? Also, you haven't really answered the point. You may be able to get this established. But how do you keep it established? How do you keep the elite ownership class from dismantling it? (Based on historically observed behavior, the default assumption is that they will try.) If you don't have a plan that accounts for tha…

I didn't say that tackling the elite class wasn't important. But saying that the existence of an elite class implies regulatory capture is a step beyond that. Regulatory capture is absolutely a problem. While one could advocate for eliminating the elite class (e.g. wealth taxes, confiscation, execution ... as you wish), I'd probably go for tightly controlled political donations & spending, combined with a strong anti…

I don't think anybody but those that are really close to the halls of power and have sufficient capital to engage in large scale lobbying is going to be able to achieve regulatory capture. So I suspect there is significant, maybe even perfect over lap between the groups that could achieve regulatory capture and the ones that actually do, and that outside of that group it is pointless to even try. You can get into the club by lucky accident, you stay in the club through regulatory capture.
Post reply on HN