UBI as a productivity dividend • Hacker News Board

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#171

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #160

jacquesm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope you're right, but I fear you are not. I guess we'll know by November this year.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#172

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #163

zozbot234 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a landlord. > I am setting prices for renewal. Landlords do not really set prices arbitrarily, especially not in HCOL areas where most of the cost is land rent. The rent is set by the market, and if there's a new UBI only a negligible fraction of it will go towards rent. Rents might even decrease since any given UBI amount will go a lot further in a lower-COL area, which incents people to move out (reversing g…

You’re making an argument for my point of view. Rents are set by local wages (via mechanism of land rents) > Rents might even decrease since any given UBI amount will go a lot further in a lower-COL area, which incents people to move out (reversing gentrification dynamics) Can you identify any historical analogy to this claim? History shows — across the board — people move toward higher COL areas as their ability to…

> Can you identify any historical analogy to this claim?

It's difficult because the main driver is clearly towards increased urbanization, driven by the high productivity of urban jobs. But if you're planning to live mostly on your UBI and work less if at all, you won't care as much about that. There were several "back to the land" movements in the history of modern developed countries, and the early stages of succesful gentrification - often involving comparatively marginalized folks and highly mobile groups, such as artists and youths - demonstrate a similar dynamic that can ultimately lead to the flourishing of new urban areas as the stages of gentrification progress.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#173

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #168

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defining "good" and "bad" in this context requires lots of other answers first. When NYC had a housing surplus in the late 1970s, many people considered it to be a bad place. But even as they did so, a new generation of artists were moving into it. So was it a bad place at a bad time? Or a good place at a good time? When Seattle had a housing surplus in the late 1970s ("Will the last person to leave Seattle please tu…

You’ve described a set of bad places that then became undersupplied exactly in lock-step with them becoming desirable…?

I think you missed my point. The places were "bad" for some and "good" for others.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#174

Post by idle_zealot » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

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?

We don't even own all of our roads here. Sometimes we sell city streets to parking companies.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#175

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #135

UncleMeat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Did you miss the part where GP was proposing price controls?

In response to what is deemed to be unreasonable and/or undesirable landlord behavior ... such controls would not stop landlords from continuing to earn from their properties.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#176

Post by asdff » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

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…

I think you make perfect sense. And given that one has to take a cynical take to the writings on UBI knowing the voice of the elite establishment will overwhelm any grassroots thinking since it is actually supported by a financial sponsor to ensure the message is received the world over, unlike say you and I blogging to 7 people. So one can expect most points on it in the public discourse to be biased and in favor of elite-benefitting outcomes. Indeed, when you consider most topics in the media, no one has unique perspectives, they regurgitate the same couple perspectives everyone else does, which are probably crafted by PR firms.

The more I think about UBI though the more I come to the sad conclusion that you can't eliminate money. We can't just give everyone everything they could want for free; I don't think the planet can sustain everyone living like elon musk. So there has to be some forcing factor, some hand on top of the cookie jar that tells your monkey brain that just wants to be high, fat, and orgasming all day that it needs to endure a delayed reward or face some physical exertion to keep the party going. And for better or worse, that forcing factor is by making you have to do something to get credits, that you return for your portion of the produced abundance. This mechanism is able to tolerate the fact that someone might work on efforts not directly tied to any one thing and reap a generalized benefit from all the diversity of that which is produced. Whatever comes next, has to get through that hurdle and the more I think about money the more I find reasons why it is actually a great tool for this sort of distribution of resources and incentivizing labor.

I guess the challenge is that there is a lot of lopsided compensation, where people like say elon musk are paid handsomely even though there is realistically only so much a single human can do. When Elon musk does something that say moves billions in real world dollars on his decision, again this isn't because he is a unique superhuman, just that we have set up power on this planet such where one single person can make a decision to move billions in real world dollars, and if it wasn't musk it would have been someone else in that seat because the seat exists at all. So much power shouldn't be accumulated in one position, because again, we aren't superhumans.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#177

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #136

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…

Is that what UBI has become these days? That everyone is supposed to get some extra money on top of whatever they already have? ~20 years ago, when UBI was a popular idea in my country, it was understood as a technical fix to the welfare and tax systems. It was supposed to simplify the systems and make them easier to understand. It was supposed to fix the perverse incentives people with low wages face, such as the ex…

That's exactly what it's supposed to be, but then opponents (or just people who are confused) will often characterize it as something else which is easier to find fault with.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#178

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #151

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…

[deleted]

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#179

Post by BJones12 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #151

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…

> 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.

That's very dismissive. Since you know so much, why don't you try to reject it?

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#180

Post by lejalv » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

bequanna wrote: post #121

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.

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

You might be interested to check out the Viennese model - Approximately 220,000 municipal flats and 200,000 subsidized dwellings form the backbone of Vienna's housing system, housing about 50% of the population.

Prices in Vienna are so much more affordable than in comparable European cities - Munich, Hamburg, Berlin to speak of Germany, not to say Madrid, Paris, Barcelone, Milano.