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A Guaranteed Income for Every American

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Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#151

Post by sokoloff »

AJ007 wrote: post #141
arbre wrote: post #73

Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically can't afford anything with the basic income?

At some level definitely. The whole concept of countries creating way too much currency to pay their bills is a good reflection of this -- Zimbabwe and Venezuela being two recent and current examples. The irony is that all of that "extra" money actually means the recipients become substantially poorer as the supply chains get fucked up. If it is just a little extra injection, the outcome would not be as extreme. In t…

If UBI seems possible to pass within 5 years, that will be signal to ramp up investments in low-end rental properties. You have to do it before it's certain to pass (else the purchase price runs up), but I can't see anything happening to rents other than a sharp move up.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#152

Post by dgacmu »

gozur88 wrote: post #114
Mz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article, the BI being proposed would drop off after you began earning more than $30k and the drop would stop at $60k in earned income. I imagine a rather high percentage of people living in San Francisco already earn well above $60k annually.

That's not a UBI scheme. That's just welfare.

It's all the same. Otherwise, you're going to increase taxes even more for people making more than the UBI to compensate. This is simply pushing numbers around on the page - either you're getting the UBI and paying it all back in taxes, or you're not getting the UBI and not paying it back in taxes.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#153

Post by danbruc »

avatarlite wrote: post #142
gizmo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's poli…

From the article: >Or consider the unemployed young man who fathers a child. Today, society is unable to make him shoulder responsibility. Under a UBI, a judge could order part of his monthly grant to be extracted for child support before he ever sees it. The lesson wouldn’t be lost on his male friends. > Or consider teenage girls from poor neighborhoods who have friends turning 21. They watch—and learn—as some of th…

That is certainly correct in many cases but I don't think you can get around gizmo's argument in the general case. The father could not simply leave the mother but for example die in an accident. A one size fits all solution seems really problematic considering the huge differences between personal circumstances.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#154

Post by sokoloff »

danbruc wrote: post #119
mac01021 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I meant to let no viable jobs die or automate. Are you saying you'd outlaw self-service gas pumps and checkout stations? Robotic assembly lines and autonomous vehicles? A large fraction of the population has no distinguishing skills. That segment of the population is going to find itself with ever fewer ways to earn a living.

That was meant to read »non-viable«, i.e. if customers are not willing to pay enough for a product or service so that a full time worker can live on the salary, then efficiency must improve, the job must be automate away entirely or the business must go out of business. I consider neither simply exploiting the employees nor subsidizing the business and customers by giving benefits to the employees a good solution. Be…

What's wrong with letting the work be done at a market rate lower than the current (ideally abolished) minimum wage? I'd pay someone $5/hr to pull weeds, but I won't pay them $10 or $15/hr.

Now, in which system can a neighbor earn an extra $20 a week for a morning of work? In which system does my front garden look nicer from the sidewalk? Someone (probably a teen) gets some walking around money, the whole neighborhood gets a nicer sidewalk view, and I don't have to do an optional job that I dislike. Sounds like a winner all around to me, but no way is "pulling weeds" a full-time, live alone and without additional support career.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#155

Post by greedo »

galdosdi wrote: post #100
riskable wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is the assumption that everyone on Medicaid, Social Security, etc is capable of spending money responsibly. Take away their benefits and hand them some cash. This will result in millions of vulnerable seniors and mentally disabled individuals being scammed out of their money each month. Whether it be "tech support" scammers or local fraudsters or even simply not being able to budget money (at a basic…

This is a solved problem (at least, it's solved about as well as you could expect we could do). Social Security has the notion of a REPY or "Representative Payee" for recipients deemed unable to spend their own money, a trustee who manages it on their behalf. It's similar to (but not the same as) the concept of a legal guardian. All in all, the Social Security Administration has a huge amount of experience with all t…

And if you retain the SSA, one of the biggest arguments for UBI (dismantling wasteful government agencies) gets defenestrated.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#156

Post by chimeracoder »

brador wrote: post #148
chimeracoder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation. This is... not really correct. It's true that expansionary monetary policy is often practiced in times of economic recession, but that's not really because there's 'less income to spread around'. And the reason expansionary monetary policy is practiced isn't to give peop…

Under UBI the payment and coverage of UBI would be one of, if not the, largest expenditures of government. Vital to getting votes will be keeping the amount received steady and high. And that might mean printing money if necessary. With land tax the system is self correcting and balanced. With the taxes you mentioned you'd eventually get the inflationary spiral as a market correction.

> Vital to getting votes will be keeping the amount received steady and high. And that might mean printing money if necessary.

Maybe, but that's very different from what you said, which is that '[difficult times] means less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation'.

> With land tax the system is self correcting and balanced.

Er, no - if anything, a property tax would reinforce inflation.

> With the taxes you mentioned you'd eventually get the inflationary spiral as a market correction.

Maybe you meant to respond to someone else? I didn't talk about any taxes. I only mentioned tax cuts as an actual example of expansionary fiscal policy to address the 'less income to spread around' problem, not as a proposal for funding income redistribution.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#158

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

VonGuard wrote: post #23
throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare." How the hell does that happen politically? I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs in the stat…

The thing is, I don't think it can happen politically. What is going on now is just the research stage so that we have some sort of data point for UBI supporters to latch onto. There are all sorts of groups inside the UBI tent, and many of them disagree with each other violently, but we're so far from a UBI that for now, everyone can agree on it in the broadest possible way. I, personally, have a completely different…

I fear the question will be answered with some very dark times. Indeed what will people do, when most of them aren't actually "necessary", and what will they agree to, given that most of them will also be driven by fear of becoming one of those unnecessary ones?

As things stands, politically, and culturally, it's more likely to become som dystopian story of cleansing. Walled communities of elites keeping the poor outside of civilized society, and perhaps even death camps.

So I really do hope that we, along the way, not only get data on the economics of it, but also a new ethical mainstream regarding entitlement. Capitalism will be a rather dangerous as framework of ethics in a world where economic value is derived entirely from capital. Only the elite can justify their existance on that framework.

I'm currently aligned with the geo-libertarian view of things, as an example of a dissenting UBI-proponent. It seems the "mainstream" UBI thinking at the moment is rather socialistic in nature. Don't really see how that can fare much better than the capitalistic views when faced with the proposition that 10% is supposed to pay for the other 90%

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#159

Post by dclowd9901 »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #136
Roritharr wrote: post #3

Once again no answer to the main Question: What to do with people that blow their UBI by the 2nd of each month on SAAS Startups? Let them starve? Go without Shelter?

You could have a special program for those who can be shown to be mentally incapable of managing their ubi. If you don't pass the test, but accidentally waste your ubi and have no other income, there can be a loan program to be repaid at reasonably high interest rates out of your future ubi

More realistically than administering some kind of test would be to force people to opt out of basic necessities care. So a person's UBI would be portioned off for food, health, state living facilities etc. so they would always have the bare minimum to survive. If I happened upon a person in need I would merely need to simply bring them to the nearest grocery store and their food needs would be taken care of. Since its opt out, they likely won't have the facilities to opt out.

My biggest concern is how you logistically provide money to people. What do you use to distribute it? Some sort of state owned bank? What about identification?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#160

Post by nickbauman »

maxaf wrote: post #139
roymurdock wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If UBI was carried out as a series of one-time cash injections (such as QE), then yes it would simply lead to inflation as a large proportion of UBI recipients would have the propensity to spend that money immediately on rent, food, debt, releasing the cash into circulation and ramping up inflation. Spending would probably remain unchanged for middle/upper class folk who would view UBI income as negligible. If UBI wa…

I'm upper middle class, and I can already barely afford to live in this country. What we need isn't more taxes but a more judicious use of taxes that are already being levied. An effective and workable UBI scheme would replace all other forms of means-tested social support payments, foreign aid, and expenditures on meaningless warfare overseas. In such a perfect-world version of the United States UBI suddenly becomes…

I'm going to guess you either bought a house you can't afford or have more than 2 kids or have a lot of student loan debt. (Not judging at all) Correct?
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