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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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181–190 of 669 posts

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#181

UBI might be an OK stopgap in the beginning when comparatively just a few are losing their jobs. Over time though, in the long run, the core of currency-based systems will need to be replaced as a greater percentage of labor is made valueless by AI, with the resulting increase in bodies not earning anything and decrease in bodies bearing the tax burden. I hardly see any discussion anywhere of what happens when 100% o…

As long as energy isn't unlimited, humans will always have some comparative language compared to AI + robots. Favorite metaphor for this is a lawyer and a secretary. The lawyer is better at everything than the secretary, but there's still a role for the secretary because the lawyer's time is better spent actually doing the law. It'll be the same for humans and AI.

The sun's energy is "unlimited"; it'll be around for far longer than we will be.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES!!!! Not every job is moral, essential or needed, the idea that 'everyone needs to participate with American capitalism as a worker drone' needs to die.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" - Karl Marx. It's not an inherent function of capitalism. If anything, Marx himself actually pitched communism as boosting overall productivity of society by putting bourgeois to work.

This stupid adage by Marx has to die. It never works.

For one, some people have extraordinary abilities, and will be pissed off if, in exchange for their extraordinary contributions, they only got the income "according to their needs", as defined by government. This basically takes away all the motivation to excel at something.

Also, the masses would be discontent because their perceived "needs" are much bigger that their actual ability to produce anything. This is partially remedied by capitalism, where the "greedy capitalist" basically forces them to work harder than they would out of their own free will.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone who's yearly income is in the 5th percentile is still earning in the 5th percentile. Isn't this an intended feature of UBI? The idea of UBI is that some level of material support should be guaranteed. It's about bringing "up" the floor, not really re-arranging relative equal and unequal positions. Plenty of people dislike that about it, but it's an intended feature. That said, this is basically inflationary…

> Isn't this an intended feature of UBI? The idea of UBI is that some level of material support should be guaranteed. It's about bringing "up" the floor, not really re-arranging relative equal and unequal positions. Plenty of people dislike that about it, but it's an intended feature. Absolutely, but I guess I don't see how just giving everyone money brings that floor up. Maybe I'm looking at this naively, but I don'…

That's super fair and I think you are absolutely right that it's an obvious question. Generally when people get more money for some reason the people who they buy from don't know it - but in this case they would know it! It would be foolish to ignore it.

I don't have a pat answer to your concerns, but I also want you to think about what stops your landlord from raising your rent by $1000 / month right now. Like, why not just go for it? Unless there's rent control it's allowed. The classic "efficient markets" answer is that providing housing does have underlying costs and, though people having more money does tend to lead prices to go up, sellers are still competing for buyers. At least historically, even in boom economic times, housing costs did not 100% stay even with rising incomes (which is just what this is).

That said, us housing has been getting worse for most people for a long time. House costs have outpaced inflation for 60 years[1]. Rents are even worse[2]. Reporting suggests this is now being made worse by highly concentrated rental conglomerates[3]. That is to say that the cost of these services is not tied to how much money people have to pay for them - your scenario where landlords just raise prices to new income levels is actually optimistic. There's also practical evidence that local factors and competition will lead prices to go down under "the right" local conditions[4].

So I think my answer is that your concern is based on an idealized economic model, but the actual trends US in housing haven't really been following the economic ideal for some time. I don't think all gains from UBI would be snapped up by raising prices, but like all inflation we'd lose some! Overall, to me, the weakness here is that the study doesn't show that many benefits for a ~40% (!!) increase in income. Which seems WILD. Just not what you would expect at all.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/19/why-home-prices-have-risen-f...

[2] https://www.realestatewitch.com/rent-to-income-ratio-2022/

[3] https://accountable.us/watchdog-major-landlord-companies-con...

[4] https://sfist.com/2024/03/29/report-sf-rents-still-coming-do...

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#184

I don't see how UBI can work, on a nationwide scale it means everyone got x% more money and the market would adjust itself accordingly by raising prices? Also UBI is funded by taxes, which if applied to middle class they will vote against you. And if applied to companies, they push it down on the customer, making everything cost more (and therefore negating the UBI effect). What probably would be more effective for s…

> Also UBI is funded by taxes

Some of those taxes are already being paid. We have a lot of social programs that, for what could politely be called "political reasons", include extensive administration whose primary function is gatekeeping and means testing. Often, the administration of those programs costs substantially more than any money "saved", leaving aside that it also has a very high false positive rate, excluding people who actually should have received it. But there is a political faction that would rather see government burn a billion dollars just to make sure a tiny fraction of that isn't paid to someone who didn't "deserve" it. To quote https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra... , "the policy choices available to them impact the user experience of fraudsters and legitimate users alike. They want to choose policies which balance the tradeoff of lowering fraud against the ease for legitimate users to transact."

Eliminating entire programs and the massive administrative overhead of those programs, and replacing them with something that merits the label "universal", is much more efficient.

Also:

> on a nationwide scale it means everyone got x% more money and the market would adjust itself accordingly by raising prices?

This is assuming the injected money has zero multiplicative effect on the economy, which is very unlikely to be the case. By way of example, since we're on a site created by a startup accelerator: Many, many people have said that UBI would be a massive boon to the startup ecosystem, by making it possible for many more people to safely try to build a startup without as much personal risk.

Analyses vary, but some analyses have suggested that UBI may be a net benefit to the economy. At the very least, economic boosts provided by UBI substantially offset its cost. That's in addition to the offset mentioned above of replacing existing less-efficient programs with UBI.

> improved an ACA, a cap on healthcare costs for all if you will and free yearly health checkups.

We should do this as well, because healthcare is one of the few things that isn't addressed by UBI (since ultimately it's an insurance mechanism).

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#185
post #33
post #22

$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute. It's not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work. I don't think we've ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It's below basic and not at all universal. I suspect that you need to get international cooperation…

I'm reading this as: anything short of providing everyone globally with enough money to quit their jobs and rent a nice apartment is not UBI. Which, of course, is never going to happen, nor should it. The term "basic" definitely does not automatically entail quitting jobs or getting an apartment.

how much hair is enough to distinguish between a man that is bald and one that isn't ?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's my incentive for subsidizing non-work in others?

What's your incentive for continuing to eat, drink, and breathe once your overlords have fulfilled their greatest dream and replaced their need for human labor with robots and machines and other forms of automation? Your purpose will have been fulfilled and your existence now meaningless. That is the ultimate goal we're all working for, right? Being freed from working for our overlords so that we can all just lay dow…

"Overlords" are a meme.

In both the US and UK over 30% of households are owned outright with no mortgage.

The economy is made up of us, it's not (predominantly) a downtrodden serving a tiny elite.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#187

UBI might be an OK stopgap in the beginning when comparatively just a few are losing their jobs. Over time though, in the long run, the core of currency-based systems will need to be replaced as a greater percentage of labor is made valueless by AI, with the resulting increase in bodies not earning anything and decrease in bodies bearing the tax burden. I hardly see any discussion anywhere of what happens when 100% o…

> I hardly see any discussion anywhere of what happens when 100% of useful labor is automated to the point that humans have 0 comparative advantage compared to AI+robots in anything of economic value.

Eventually automated gas chambers, or just letting poverty take care of the problem my itself.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#188
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the "welfare today is a disincentive to work" myth, with emphasis on "today" (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don't "want" to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US mili…

There was a podcast or video about this exact same issue in... Sweden? Some anecdata from people receiving welfare, but couldn't start a job or a business because if they received any money, they get nothing from welfare and wouldn't be able to support themselves. This resulted in people that were trying to start a business not get paid for their work (I believe one of the anecdata was a photographer) because doing s…

> Personally, I'm a big fan of the "for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI/Welfare"

That's..that's not UBI, at all. UBI is universal. If there are any means tests whatsoever, that's not UBI.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#189
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a podcast or video about this exact same issue in... Sweden? Some anecdata from people receiving welfare, but couldn't start a job or a business because if they received any money, they get nothing from welfare and wouldn't be able to support themselves. This resulted in people that were trying to start a business not get paid for their work (I believe one of the anecdata was a photographer) because doing s…

> Personally, I'm a big fan of the "for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI/Welfare" concept. This seems a very easy way to wean people off of welfare. That money is already tracked by the IRS (unless you're getting paid under the table). That's a more gradual phase-out, but it still is an effective marginal tax rate of 50%+ – a level that wealthy earners would complain about to no end. In light of this study…

> In light of this study, it seems to me that a cash-support system that wants to encourage work should have a starting region with a negative effective phase-out rate: "for every $1 you make up to $X, you get $0.25 more from UBI/Welfare." That would encourage labour-market attachment even if tenuous, and it would also have a side benefit of making the worker want to report the income, possibly uncovering under-the-table payment schemes.

Nobody tell this guy about the Earned Income Tax Credit. Let him think he discovered it.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#190
post #115
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At those levels you just get inflation

But even w/o these levels we get inflation? How could we compare it to the recent inflation which has been labelled as "greed-flation" and "shrink-flation" ?

Inflation is not an on/off switch.
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