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UBI as a productivity dividend

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Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#151

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

Inflation is a common red herring that people arguing in bad faith throw at policies they don't like, because most people don't know enough to reject it.

The monetary side of the economy deals with money volumes orders of magnitude larger than the real side, and reacts to change also orders of magnitude faster. Because of that, inflation is almost always completely determined by monetary policy. A real shock that can out-impact monetary policy looks like the end of the world.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#152

Post by LightBug1 »

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!

Did you just imply that landlords are incentivised to build housing for a growing population?! * scream laughs *

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#154

Post by marcosdumay »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #56

instead of UBI, we could just reduce working hours, while keeping the same pay. Easier to manage shifts than to upend the whole economy. Something like 3 days a week, with a german approach to sundays (everything closed).

Those are two completely different things, with completely independent results.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#155

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

jmyeet wrote: post #48
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…

So there are two basic versions of UBI: 1. The right-wing UBI is a tool to dismantle the social safety net. The idea of the likes of Milton Friedman is to replace all social safety programs with UBI. This doesn't make sense because, for example, being disabled in today's society makes everything more expensive; and 2. Left-wing UBI would seek to have everyone share in the wealth they create by supplementing social sa…

It's worth noting that Left-wing UBI can still be seen as a mechanism to replace social safety programs. It just requires that disability payments, etc be merged with the UBI system such that added disability needs can be treated like additional tax credits that get applied to the fixed-interval interest-free loan disbursement from the government based on your taxes that UBI effectively is.

In such a system you get your base UBI tax credit which pushes your tax burden into the negative. Additional UBI-elligible tax credits can push that tax burden even further negative. You can file the paperwork to adjust this at any point in the year and if it's for the current year the tax credit is prorated relative to the date of the next disbursement date (and the full amount for the next year).

Then your UBI disbursement updates and you get it. It works the same way as updating your W-4 tax withholding for a standard W-2 position.

At the end of the year of course your taxes all need to zero out still and if not you either get a bill or a refund.

And this also moves all of the social safety program fraud prevention together into the same system within your tax agency (IRS for the US, or state/local agency, or whatever else).

So instead of a bunch of different agencies and systems for avoiding and finding fraud it all rolls together into the responsibility of the IRS tax assessors, auditors, and the IRS Criminal Investigation unit. And while the rich hate the IRS and common media frames them as incompetent, the people at the IRS are in general extremely competent and more than willing to help and accommodate your average person (less so for the rich who get caught systematically trying to defraud the IRS).

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#156

Post by rickydroll »

estearum wrote: post #77
EGG_CREAM wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, so un-complicated that we're now talking about state-built housing just to make UBI do anything other than enrich landlords. UBI is a bad idea. State-built housing is not necessarily a bad idea. You can just do the latter and skip the former.

https://www.kuntarahoitus.fi/en/news/affordable-social-housi...

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#157

Post by physPop »

cogman10 wrote: post #138
mattlondon wrote: post #128

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…

> Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups I'd be really opposed to this. It'd only be ok if we nationalized the industries where we set these rules and rates. Otherwise, this ends up being a simple handout to private industries. For example, let's say we say x liters of water. Well who's deciding how much x liters cost? If it's a private company a…

Aren't utilities, by definition, state owned? Or is that also backwards in america?

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#158

Post by righthand »

physPop wrote: post #157
cogman10 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups I'd be really opposed to this. It'd only be ok if we nationalized the industries where we set these rules and rates. Otherwise, this ends up being a simple handout to private industries. For example, let's say we say x liters of water. Well who's deciding how much x liters cost? If it's a private company a…

Aren't utilities, by definition, state owned? Or is that also backwards in america?

Utilities in America refers to the service relative to ideas of basic needs for survival in the US so they are often public infrastructure with private operators but in the case of some things like the internet, it’s purely privatized.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#159

Post by xixixao »

MrDrDr wrote: post #59
xixixao wrote: post #42

If you believe UBI can work, why do you think communism failed?

I'm not sure UBI would work. But what's that got to do with communism? Communism failed (IMO), because it was incompatible with human nature. People form social hierarchies and like to own property. Would UBI prevent that?

You are answering my question - you posit that communism failed because people like to own property (and form social hierarchies) - and UBI doesn’t prevent those.

I’m not sure this is the case. Especially since people did form social hierarchies and did own propety in communist/socialist regimes of the Eastern block.

One might argue that UBI is incompatible with human nature, because most humans require a sense of worth, which paid work provides (to most). Take away the motivation, will the self-worthiness remain? (especially when thinking about _most_ people, not the struggling artists who wished they could pursue art without the burden of bills).

I’m not sure about this at all. I just think drawing the parallels and discussing communism failure modes is interesting for the discussion of UBI.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#160

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jacquesm wrote: post #142
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory capture requires that laws (or regulations) are drafted that favor your interests. The only ways I am aware of for that to happen are: (a) sufficient political donations/bribes to get lawmakers to draft suitable language themselves (or via their staff) (b) a combination of political donations and a worldview on the part of lawmakers in which it is "just normal" for those affected by regulations to draft th…

True, but the USA has institutionalized the power of money in politics to the point that this is now a reality: what would be called outright bribery elsewhere is called campaign donations, there are lobbyists who get to write the laws that favor their paymasters and in fact it has been argued that 'money is speech' (it doesn't get much more bizarre than that to me). What Musk did during the last elections would get…

If you can manage to believe in a system of 1 person 1 vote for just a bit longer, or maybe even 3 poor people 1 vote, then I think there is still plenty of space for "lesser levels of wealth" to overcome "greater levels of wealth". There are simpler more of us than there are of them.
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