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Why we should all have a basic income

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Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#141

Post by AnthonyMouse »

funkyy wrote: post #100
pikzen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaah, yes, automating the job of 2000 workers on a car construction line will certainly be replaced by 2000 service jobs. And those jobs will not be requiring higher education that these workers don't have, right. Also, basic income is a concept coming straight from liberalism. The comparison to communism isn't even remotely accurate.

It was same with industrialisation. All the crying that factories will destroy economies and cause massive unemployment which didn't do. It did a lot of good instead. Well, there was basic income in some communist countries and it failed on a social level.

Communism is not a basic income.

Communism is the government telling you what your job is and giving you a minimal amount of resources and prohibiting you from earning a single extra dollar, and your choices are either take it or escape to West Germany.

A basic income is the government unconditionally giving you enough money that you don't starve. Then if you want to e.g. own a car or send your kids to college or live in a city, you have to go out and get a job, which you can do however you like.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#142

Post by jbmorgado »

jganetsk wrote: post #70
Qantourisc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put: I _want_ a new car but I _need_ to eat.

What's the difference, from an economic standpoint? The original poster is saying that some people want cheese and other people need cheese, therefore the people who need cheese will not get what they don't need? There's something absurd in this argument. No one's going to double their cheese consumption, just because they got money "they don't need", and no one is going to starve because the price of cheese went up.…

To clarify my point (although from what you wrote I think you got it right):

The argument that "basic needs" prices will rise (which was what my OP gave) because of UBI must be false, since being "basic needs", they already must be provided to anyone anyway.

In any case, even if a big part of the population didn't had access to "basic needs" the argument would be that: "we can't allow them to have those basic needs or else their price will increase to the rest of us". Than that, is morally wrong.

I hope now it is totally clear what I meant above.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#143

Post by gaius »

Balgair wrote: post #74
omilu wrote: post #30

Here is the same author in 2014 attempting to explain how basic income won't lead to massive inflation: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-... >>> It would not be new money, just money shifted from one location to another. This means that the value of each dollar has not changed. The dollar itself has only changed hands.* There is no sure fire way to reduce the value of a dollar then to redis…

"The fact that you have to work for the dollar is the thing that gives the dollar value." Wait, so then how does inheritance work? Like, your grandmother worked for it, but you just snowboard all year long. What am I missing here?

The fact that dollars are exchanged for work and vice versa.

The guy or gal snowboarding all year is renting a chalet, buying a ski pass, buying gear and food and generally spending money in the local economy.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#144

Post by lend000 »

I'm glad basic income is getting a lot of discussion, but it's important to realize we are still pretty early in the process of automation taking over more jobs than people can innovate. Technology has been making entire industries/classes of workers obsolete for centuries, and the economy has always adjusted.

In this next push, it looks like it will be different because AI/machine labor is so 'general,' but in reality, the pressure it will first exert on physical labor sectors will create more opportunity for a human economy based on social value and services (i.e. waiters in nice restaurants, artists, musicians, writers, inventors, chiropractors, etc.), as well as those requiring a combination of intelligence/education/creativity, like most of HN. There will likely be an increased prevalence of security guards, managers, and techs overseeing machines, and it will force people to take on skills (which they are fully capable of) that do not involve pure manual labor/doing what they're told. And of course, it's a longer time frame between 'pretty general' physical automation and 'sentient super-intelligence' replacing scientists, engineers, business leaders, and of course, the politicians who will never let themselves be replaced.

But when we do start to have the impetus for a basic income, say ten years from now, let's make sure it starts off basic, because there will always be jobs of some sort that you can get to supplement your income, and they will probably be increasingly social in value. Not enough to rent out a nice one bedroom apartment in Manhattan, but enough to get by if you're willing to go without nice amenities, get roommates and not live in an expensive downtown area. Until virtually every job can be automated and we are all servants to a mechanical society, there needs to be incentive/reward to working.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#145

Post by spork12 »

jjawssd wrote: post #125
spork12 wrote: post #98

It would work for a certain period of time until inflation catches up. You could keep raising the basic income to keep pace, but it would require raising it more every time and sooner than the last time (exponential). Inflation can be quite damaging because not everything inflates at the same rate. For example salaries are pretty slow to inflate compared to the prices for things like gas or food. This is why a mason…

Only if new money was introduced into the closed loop system instead of being redistributed within the system

New money would most definitely have to be introduced. In the US we introduce new money into the system every year by having a fed govt budget deficit.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#146

Post by drewrv »

funkyy wrote: post #94

Automation will not reduce overall jobs same way industrialization did not do that. Automation will create more jobs in services instead. Basic income is crazy socialist dream that was tested in communism already and it failed.

Automation has already replaced some service jobs, for example at grocery store self checkouts. Expect more to come (taxi/uber driver for example).

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#147

Post by spork12 »

skybrian wrote: post #133
spork12 wrote: post #98

It would work for a certain period of time until inflation catches up. You could keep raising the basic income to keep pace, but it would require raising it more every time and sooner than the last time (exponential). Inflation can be quite damaging because not everything inflates at the same rate. For example salaries are pretty slow to inflate compared to the prices for things like gas or food. This is why a mason…

Inflation comes from too much money chasing too few goods. How it works is different in each market. Real estate in big cities is supply-constrained but many other goods and services aren't, given time to adjust. In particular, there's little reason to believe that basic income would be bad for Walmart. They'd sell more and their workers would be better off. There's no reason for price controls and they wouldn't help…

Having an artificial force in a market economy almost always leads to unintended side effects. The inequity has to resolve itself somewhere.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#148

Post by tomp »

tvelichkov wrote: post #97
tomp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inflation is always a monetary phenomenon I don't understand this reasoning. Look, only one of the following can be true: (1) everyone can buy basic necessities of life, in which case nobody is poor and we don't need UBI, or (2) not everyone can buy the basic necessities of life. If (2) is true and we introduce UBI, then there will be more demand for the basic necessities of life (coming from all the people who wer…

>> If you combine that with the decreased motivation of people to work (resulting in lower supply) You won't get lower supply because of the automation, because that's the reason you are giving basic income in the first place. John no longer needs to drive it's truck, the truck is gonna drive itself.

Then (presumably) costs will fall, stuff will get cheaper (free-ish?), UBI won't be needed.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#149

Post by thephyber »

spork12 wrote: post #98

It would work for a certain period of time until inflation catches up. You could keep raising the basic income to keep pace, but it would require raising it more every time and sooner than the last time (exponential). Inflation can be quite damaging because not everything inflates at the same rate. For example salaries are pretty slow to inflate compared to the prices for things like gas or food. This is why a mason…

While I don't disagree that inflation would affect the purchasing power of a UBI, I think you discount the fact that a fairly significant percentage of the US is already on some form of safety net or welfare program.

Whether it be "food stamps" (vouchers for food, reimbursed as governments like a UBI), SSDI disability (fixed payments due to work disability or structural changes in an industry), unemployment insurance payments (temporary fixed payments), Social Security (long-term fixed payments), Section 8 housing (vouchers for housing), etc, there are plenty of examples where the issues you raise are already affecting the recipients. I've heard anecdotally that many doctors have ceased accepting MedicAid (suggesting that medical inflation has already outpaced the government's ability to reimburse).

I think your argument should focus more on why the UBI is not any better than the morass of existing programs, some of which have disincentives for people getting off of the program. I'm not yet convinced is is either better or worse, but I don't think inflation is a deal-killer for UBI because it's already an existing issue in currently running programs.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#150

Post by skybrian »

0xfaded wrote: post #123
spork12 wrote: post #98

It would work for a certain period of time until inflation catches up. You could keep raising the basic income to keep pace, but it would require raising it more every time and sooner than the last time (exponential). Inflation can be quite damaging because not everything inflates at the same rate. For example salaries are pretty slow to inflate compared to the prices for things like gas or food. This is why a mason…

My hunch is that costs of services will increase while consumables remain flat. Australia has a complex minimum wage system, but 20 AUD is typical and on the order of 15 USD. The result is that services such house cleaners, laundromats and car detailing are order 3 times expensive as in the US, however produce and imported goods (Australia continues to systematically kill off its domestic manufacturing capability) ar…

I think that depends on how unpleasant the job is. Doubling your income sounds pretty good, actually.

On the margin, basic income gives people a bit more freedom to make their own choices. I think the price for services in Silicon Valley would go up, but I suspect more because people can take basic income with them when moving somewhere cheaper. With the extra money, low wage/low cost places are likely to become more popular.

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