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UBI as a productivity dividend

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Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#121

Post by bequanna »

EGG_CREAM wrote: post #73
estearum wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Excellent work. Now there is no incentive for anyone to build housing for our growing population!

I am a progressive government. The free market has failed to provide a necessary service. So now I pass a law that creates a not for profit contractor that builds houses. It’s not that complicated. We do it with fire departments, police, and many other services already. Free market might have been more efficient theoretically, but when it fails in practice we find another solution.

So in this version of the future, everyone lives in government housing?

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#122

Post by bryanlarsen »

lyu07282 wrote: post #51
randerson wrote: post #8

I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (uncondit…

This is kind of like social security, medicare or the 5 day work week, if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it.

And UBI would give people the freedom to move to a place with cheap rent and groceries. Rent is high in places with jobs and low in places without.

Supply and demand will work better, lowering prices.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#123

Post by keeda »

My take is that UBI is the most obvious solution but not one we should count on happening. There is just too much political resistance and a population-level mental block against it, at least in the US. Not to mention, Capitalism doesn't like if it can't push labor around. (Which is largely why the mindset exists, but I digress.)

I say that we need to realize that by the same token(s) that AI reduces the need for labor, it also reduces the need for capital. A single motivated, disciplined individual can now do, using AI and public elastic clouds, what used to require an entire team. So companies can decimate teams, but companies are largely a source of capital. If you don't need so many people, you don't that much capital either! You could potentially parlay an insight or domain expertise into a viable business. Your moat could be the obscurity of your niche, or relationships, or IP (yes, patents. Suck it up and use every leverage you can.)

Easier said than done, of course. This essentially means everyone becomes an entrepreneur. Most people are not cut out for that because (besides hard-to-acquire domain expertise) that requires being immersed in an ocean of uncertainty at all times. None of our education systems prepare people for that, or for what is coming.

I expect a time of disruption, but we need to realize that AI not only a tool for the Capital class. It's a tool for us too, if only we can adapt.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#124

Post by UncleMeat »

estearum wrote: post #67
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a progessive state government. I am considering legislation for the next fiscal year. I have come to learn that 100% of private landlords have increased their rents by the full amount of the UBI we introduced last year. I ban private rentals and/or private ownership of homes and/or introduce strict rent control policies (depending on precisely how progressive we're feeling this year). Congrats, mission accomplis…

Yes! Excellent work. Now there is no incentive for anyone to build housing for our growing population!

Of course there is an incentive to build housing. Developers build homes and then sell them to people who live in those homes.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#125

Post by rybosworld »

estearum wrote: post #67
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a progessive state government. I am considering legislation for the next fiscal year. I have come to learn that 100% of private landlords have increased their rents by the full amount of the UBI we introduced last year. I ban private rentals and/or private ownership of homes and/or introduce strict rent control policies (depending on precisely how progressive we're feeling this year). Congrats, mission accomplis…

Yes! Excellent work. Now there is no incentive for anyone to build housing for our growing population!

Are you implying that landlords are naturally incentivized to build homes? Because in most circumstances, the exact opposite is true. In the U.S., the government has a number of programs that offer landlords vouchers in order to encourage them to build out more homes.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#126

Post by estearum »

rybosworld wrote: post #125
estearum wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Excellent work. Now there is no incentive for anyone to build housing for our growing population!

Are you implying that landlords are naturally incentivized to build homes? Because in most circumstances, the exact opposite is true. In the U.S., the government has a number of programs that offer landlords vouchers in order to encourage them to build out more homes.

Landlords are different things from developers.

Sometimes (more rarely than people think) a single entity plays both roles, but it's impossible to reason about this space if you conflate the two

Yes, developers build homes to make money. This is how approximately 100% of the housing supply in the US was created.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#127

Post by skybrian »

randerson wrote: post #8

I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (uncondit…

UBI is not luxury communism, or at least not any of the proposals I've seen. A guaranteed $1000 a month would help a lot of people, but $12000 a year is not a high income and many people will want to keep working to earn more money than that. Maybe they'd be able to retire sooner, though?

As for inflation, a lot depends on how gradually it's adopted. As we saw in the pandemic, supply chains need time to adjust and bad things happen after sudden changes.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#128

Post by mattlondon »

A think a more workable and politically palatable version of UBI would be some form of universal utility allowance.

E.g. the first x kWh electric you use, or the first X litres of water, or the first x GB of data you use is entirely free, for everyone (where X is some reasonable number that someone could just conceivably survive on). Then as you use more and more the prices start to gradually increase across a series of bands so that the heaviest users are subsidising those using the least.

It would promote efficiency, would be progressive, and would allow people to live without quite so much "bill fear" for essential utilities.

Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups. People would still need to work but there would be some element of safety net.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#129

Post by sc68cal »

zer00eyz wrote: post #58
K0balt wrote: post #37

UBI is the actual solution, and is well understood enough now to know that most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods. Unfortunately, with regulatory capture at near 100 percent and electoral capture almost as bad, there is no incentive structure with sufficient influence to make it happen. Wealth will continue to be funneled to the top, and taxation schemes that act as a de-facto sales tax…

> Unions the actual solution No, they are not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co . Changing the table stakes is what needs to happen: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation for a counter example. Unions just create an us vs them mentality. The fact that the NUMMI plant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI ) was not reproducible is a pretty strong indicator of that.

Imagine posting how unions are bad on a Saturday in your leisure time

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#130

Post by randerson »

Anon1096 wrote: post #70
estimator7292 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because tenants are not scarce. If you cut your prices, you lose $200/mo forever. If you simply follow the maximum market price and wait, someone will fill your room eventually and you have them locked into a higher rate forever. Competition doesn't work for necessities. Someone will rent your room at any price because it's necessary for survival. One of the major crises of our time is the fact that there are more pe…

You're failing to explain what dictates the price the market will bear. > Why don't landlords undercut one another? They literally don't have to. The only outcome is less profit. You'll find a tenant eventually, at any price. is very obviously not true, otherwise prices right now would be effectively infinite. Why are prices for an apartment in SF only 3k/mo instead of 30k? Surely under your reasoning a landlord coul…

> You're failing to explain what dictates the price the market will bear.

Most people like to live in the nicest place they can afford. This is a force pulling prices upward when many people with excess cash are competing for a limited supply of homes. Its why you'll pay more for the same size property in a wealthy neighborhood.

> Why are prices for an apartment in SF only 3k/mo instead of 30k?

Because some people in SF can only afford 3K/month. But if you added 3k/month to literally everyone's income, that number would increase.

(In case you're wondering why the many people with more than 3k/month don't crowd those people out: the wealthy depend on those 3k/month people for labor. At least for now.)

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