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Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

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Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#201

Post by euroderf »

The surface of the Earth is no longer every person's birthright. Every damned square inch is "owned", with rare exception. The "frontier" is no more. The wide open spaces are no more. The commons is fully fenced.

I see UBI as a hack that attempts to address this new reality. Instead of a place to plant your flag, you get a stipend.

And an aside: If you don't like the UBI, then alternatively how might you feel about putting limits to land ownership ? Rather than perpetuity, how about replacing ownership with 99-year leases ?

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#202

Post by whitewingjek »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #149
whitewingjek wrote: post #111

UBI may sound like a worthwhile endeavor to a great many people, but I can't help but think of what we give up with such a system. If I politicaly dissent from the majority (whomsoever that is or whatever they believe) what stops them—the government as often described—from stopping UBI from those that are deemed "unfit."

By definition they're not doing UBI then. That doesn't alleviate your concern that that's how things might go, but your concern is that UBI might not be UBI.

That would be a correct assessment, but that would not stop people from calling it that if that does happen.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#203

Post by Turing_Machine »

ajross wrote: post #135
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

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…

> The easiest place to take it is via the money printer FWIW: the easiest way to get people to throw you into a "junk economics" bin is to use terms like this. "Printing money" is, at best, an inside-the-echo-chamber shorthand for macroeconomic finance policy that is only going to confuse real economists trying to understand what you're talking about. Most of the time, though, it's just a signal that you don't know w…

This argument seems rather disingenuous. Are they literally printing money? No, not to any significant degree. They're not running the presses 24/7/365 or anything like that.

Perhaps, though, you'd care to explain how, if you grow M1 from $4T to $18T, it matters whether you do it with physical printing presses or pushing buttons on a keyboard. The overall effect is the same.

In fact, the printing press method would be less impactful. There's a physical limit on how fast a mechanical press can run. With the keyboard method, you just have to type in a few more zeros at the end.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#204

Post by Turing_Machine »

breadbreadbread wrote: post #171
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

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…

1. It's important to remember that having struggling poor people is expensive for the system. Emergency shelters, health issues that go untreated until they need emergency intervention, desperation crimes like theft (affecting policing and prisons), foster care, drug use intervention. These are all expenses that are reduced by a system like UBI. If you keep people healthy and fed, you can keep them peaceful and worki…

> Markets fundamentally drift towards consolidation. Source: the past sixty years.

While I'm in favor of UBI (under certain conditions), the "past sixty years" don't back that up at all.

Fortune's top 10 corporations in 1960 (roughly 60 years ago)

1 General Motors

2 Exxon Mobil

3 Ford Motor

4 General Electric

5 U.S. Steel

6 Mobil

7 Gulf Oil

8 Texaco

9 Chrysler

10 Esmark

Top 10 corporations in 2020:

1 Walmart

2 Amazon

3 ExxonMobil

4 Apple

5 CVS Health

6 Berkshire Hathaway

7 United Health Group

8 McKesson

9 AT&T

10 AmeriSourceBergen

Only one company (Exxon/Mobil) is on both lists. Many of the companies on the 2020 list didn't even exist in 1960.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#205

Post by ajross »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #203
ajross wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The easiest place to take it is via the money printer FWIW: the easiest way to get people to throw you into a "junk economics" bin is to use terms like this. "Printing money" is, at best, an inside-the-echo-chamber shorthand for macroeconomic finance policy that is only going to confuse real economists trying to understand what you're talking about. Most of the time, though, it's just a signal that you don't know w…

This argument seems rather disingenuous. Are they literally printing money? No, not to any significant degree. They're not running the presses 24/7/365 or anything like that. Perhaps, though, you'd care to explain how, if you grow M1 from $4T to $18T, it matters whether you do it with physical printing presses or pushing buttons on a keyboard. The overall effect is the same. In fact, the printing press method would b…

> Are they literally printing money? No, not to any significant degree.

Right. So talk about what they are actually doing, be it routine deficit financing (not "printing" under any reasonable definition) or QE (arguably I guess, depending on how you want to spin the repurchase scheduling). Under no circumstances does the government actually create money "out of thin air".

Which under some circumstances is fine. If you're discussing a political topic with a bunch of like-minded gold standard fans (or whatever), then you can use this as a shorthand for "the fiat currency policy we all hate". And no one is confused.

But THIS subthread is actually talking about financing public policy. So trying to shorthand the issue away is just a rhetorical trick. If you want to argue against public financing of a UBI, you have to do more than just shout "Money Printing!".

Edit, because I missed this bit:

> if you grow M1 from $4T to $18T

I shouldn't have replied. That's a 100% bad faith argument, owing to a redefinition of the M1 money supply in May 2020 (to include "savings" accounts, which were previously ignored) that created a big discontinuity in the graph. You can argue that the new measurement is better or worse than the old, you can't use a delta between them as "growth". That's just a lie, and you should know better.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#206

Post by pydry »

orangecat wrote: post #93
pydry wrote: post #37

UBI is sold to us as a pipe dream by people who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the minimum wage from being raised. It's also not a particularly new idea. The Roman empire had UBI in the form of Cura Annonae.

UBI is sold to us as a pipe dream by people who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the minimum wage from being raised. If there's a UBI, why do you need a minimum wage? A UBI gives people negotiating power to decline unfairly low wages, because they don't have to face homelessness or hunger if they're not working.

Indeed there are many different kinds of political pipe dreams that would negate the need for a minimum wage.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#207

Post by pydry »

danpalmer wrote: post #54
pydry wrote: post #37

UBI is sold to us as a pipe dream by people who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the minimum wage from being raised. It's also not a particularly new idea. The Roman empire had UBI in the form of Cura Annonae.

Really? Thinking of all the people I know personally who think UBI is a good idea, I think all of them would say raising minimum wages is also a good idea. There may be a few fiscally conservative influencers pushing the idea (sama?), but among regular people I think it's only those who strongly support spending on social security, worker rights, minimum wages, etc, who support it.

Im talking about the billionaires who talk about how theoretically great this idea is, not the receptacles for their propaganda.

If it became politically feasible theyd quickly sour on the idea. However, pipe dreams are a-ok - they arent inflationary.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#208

Post by NoraCodes »

jsbg wrote: post #60
darthoctopus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fears that the experiment would engender laziness in participants were not borne out in the project’s findings: “The ‘laziness’ contention is just not supported by our findings,” the chief data analyst of one of the experiments said. “There is not anywhere near the mass defection the prophets of doom predicted.”

why are the results of a study with a limited reach preferable to the results of an actual universal real world event?

There is no control available; we don't have a second population of people who did go through the beginning of the COVID pandemic, 2020 political environment, and so forth, but did not receive the stimulus package.

I suggest looking into some basic experimental design texts if you're interested in why this is so important!

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#209

Post by piva00 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #204
breadbreadbread wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's important to remember that having struggling poor people is expensive for the system. Emergency shelters, health issues that go untreated until they need emergency intervention, desperation crimes like theft (affecting policing and prisons), foster care, drug use intervention. These are all expenses that are reduced by a system like UBI. If you keep people healthy and fed, you can keep them peaceful and worki…

> Markets fundamentally drift towards consolidation. Source: the past sixty years. While I'm in favor of UBI (under certain conditions), the "past sixty years" don't back that up at all. Fortune's top 10 corporations in 1960 (roughly 60 years ago) 1 General Motors 2 Exxon Mobil 3 Ford Motor 4 General Electric 5 U.S. Steel 6 Mobil 7 Gulf Oil 8 Texaco 9 Chrysler 10 Esmark Top 10 corporations in 2020: 1 Walmart 2 Amazon…

Sixty years is perhaps too long, neoliberalism really kicked off in the 80s/90s with an increase in globalisation, and corporate consolidation through M&As ramped up quickly in the 2000s after financialisation of the economy went in high gear. If we backtrack to the last thirty to forty years and check which top 20 companies got to that spot through M&As it might paint a different picture.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#210

Post by smegger001 »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

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…

there is a third option state owned enterprises, look at the Alaska Permanent Fund for example.
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