181–190 of 236 posts
I could post about inflation or hobbling the prime mover class but mostly when I think about people getting money it just sort of feels icky so I make sure to be vocal about my opposition to it on the grounds of my lived experience whenever it gets brought up
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[citation needed]
Look at Poland since 2015. We don't have UBI per se, but we have uncoditional handouts of free money to families with children, which goes to about 4 millions of families (so, like half of them).
Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…
> Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to take it is via the money printer and the second is from the rich. This is not actually that hard because they're only expensive on paper. Right now you have a slew of means tested programs with phase outs that amount to high marginal tax rates on the poor. Meanwhile we try to do the opposite with…
At the ideological/theoretical level, I absolutely believe that there exists a radically more optimal way distribute the existing tax burden and funds.
But at the practical level, I think we have to do the equivalent of a long-term refactor. Any changes we make must be within the existing system and make sense on their own. Our only real option is to steer our way, digestible diff-by-digestible diff, to a better future.
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That depends how it's funded. Printing money? Yes. Taxing economic rents? Probably not. Owning a fully automated workforce? Yet to be determined.
It doesn't depend on how it's funded. It's a simple mechanics: once the word gets out that everybody is getting free money then all the companies raise their prices, trying to capture that money, because why wouldn't they?
Laws, price controls, 100% tax rates on profits over certain levels, government ownership of the means of production.
Devil's in the details for what exactly any of those things "should" be.
Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…
> We expanded the M1 money supply from $4T to $18T and largely handed it out in a diffuse way. This is often quoted and either comes out of ignorance or is intentionally misleading. Assuming it's the former, M1 in the US is not a good measure over the time span you are quoting, because there has been an accounting change that significantly expands of what kind of accounts are considered to be in M1. See the descripti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to take it is via the money printer and the second is from the rich. This is not actually that hard because they're only expensive on paper. Right now you have a slew of means tested programs with phase outs that amount to high marginal tax rates on the poor. Meanwhile we try to do the opposite with…
What you're saying might be true. My sense is that the political project of doing a full-on tax-and-entitlement reform that results in a more sane system is impossible in the US. At the ideological/theoretical level, I absolutely believe that there exists a radically more optimal way distribute the existing tax burden and funds. But at the practical level, I think we have to do the equivalent of a long-term refactor.…
Don't start off with a $12,000/year UBI, eliminate SNAP and instead give everyone a tax credit in the same amount. Adjust the tax brackets to make the math work out. Then do the same thing with housing subsidies, and Medicaid, until all the largest programs are gone. At which point you can see the results and start asking why we shouldn't just do everything that's still left at once.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're saying might be true. My sense is that the political project of doing a full-on tax-and-entitlement reform that results in a more sane system is impossible in the US. At the ideological/theoretical level, I absolutely believe that there exists a radically more optimal way distribute the existing tax burden and funds. But at the practical level, I think we have to do the equivalent of a long-term refactor.…
So do it that way. Don't start off with a $12,000/year UBI, eliminate SNAP and instead give everyone a tax credit in the same amount. Adjust the tax brackets to make the math work out. Then do the same thing with housing subsidies, and Medicaid, until all the largest programs are gone. At which point you can see the results and start asking why we shouldn't just do everything that's still left at once.
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Basic needs are costly, and the programs you mention do not completely cover basic needs. For things like social security, people spend something like half a lifetime paying into it inorder to recieve relatively small payments for a short portion of their life. Child benefits and unemployment are also short duration. I have no doubt that eliminating programs and bureaucracy will lead to better efficiency. However, I'…
> Basic needs are costly, and the programs you mention do not completely cover basic needs. If they don't cover basic needs they aren't fit for their intended purpose and should be increased so that they do cover them, if they aren't replaced by UBI.
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Most of these are either fairly short-lived limited pilots, or aren't really "UBI" (e.g. Alaska's $1,600 a year hardly qualifies as UBI as it's just enough to buy groceries with, never mind rent or any other basic needs) You seem to misunderstand what UBI means. UBI doesn't imply an amount of income to keep someone at or above the poverty line (or to meet all of one's needs). There are types of UBI: partial basic inc…
It's clear that from the introduction it's intended to mean "unconditional cash payments to people so that they can meet their basic needs". That's a literal quote from the article. And this is also how UBI is commonly understood in general. If you want to use some different definition in some contexts then that's fine. But in this context it doesn't make a lot of sense to insist on your definition as the One True Co…
And this is also how UBI is commonly understood in general.
Search google, search twitter. Look up Andrew Yang's "freedom dividend" platform. You'll see that it's not my definition that's in question.
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> Basic needs are costly, and the programs you mention do not completely cover basic needs. If they don't cover basic needs they aren't fit for their intended purpose and should be increased so that they do cover them, if they aren't replaced by UBI.
There are other programs that in combination do cover basic needs for those that qualify by need. You're not going to be able to replacement CHIP and Medicaid with UBI. At least not without extensive bureaucracy on the tax side.