UBI as a productivity dividend • Hacker News Board

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#211

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:19 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #209

zozbot234 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that a theoretically optimal non-linear taxation schedule features a UBI plus varying marginal tax rates (i.e. continuous tax brackets) that start out quite high (but sub-100%) in the UBI-clawback range (to manage the UBI break-even point while still offering a high subsidy to the very lowest earners) become very low for low-to-middle income earners and rise gradually for middle- and high-income earners.…

That seems like a lot of added complexity just to make sure the lower middle class gets screwed out of receiving the UBI.

They benefit from greatly lowered tax rates on their earned income (this is also a 'carrot' for the UBI net-receivers themselves, at least at the higher end), and high growth because you don't need to 'soak' higher-earning folks, who only pay moderately progressive rates. The alternative either has the lowest earning folks getting screwed out of receiving a meaningful subsidy (which is really bad) or pushes the break-even point way too high, which is not really what you want either and is the main criticism of UBI from a practical POV.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#212

Post by NicuCalcea » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:24 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #106

NicuCalcea wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we worked fewer hours for the same pay, our purchasing power would remain the same. I'm not saying there won't be any disruption at all, but we did it before with the five-day work week.

If "we" means everyone , yes. But the reality is there is a sufficient number of people willing to work more to earn more, and therefore they will raise prices of everything which destroys your purchasing power. Your purchasing power is defined in a competitive equilibrium with your peers. If you're assuming you can band everyone together to all decide to work fewer hours for the same pay, fine, but you just invented…

There are people working 80-hour weeks now. I don't think "some people want as much money as possible" is the basis of how we should think of labour. Plenty of middle-class workers will be happy to work fewer hours if they can maintain their current lifestyles.

> If you're assuming you can band everyone together to all decide to work fewer hours for the same pay, fine, but you just invented a union, not an improvement to UBI.

Why should this come solely via unions? I elect people to represent me, and I want those people to tax AI/tech companies and their beneficiaries, and return some of the wealth they've generated to the people it's been extracted from. The entire point of UBI is that it's universal, including in industries poorer and more vulnerable workers who can't self-organise work in.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#213

Post by ItsMonkk » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:38 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…

Your concern can easily be addressed by having a 100% tax on the value of land and then distributing this tax money through a citizen's dividend.

But this isn't all that related to the productivity dividend. That's more natural by setting banks to have a full reserve requirement. At that point new innovations would yield deflation, which would be harmful. The Fed would then have to step up and be the creator and distributor of new money. That money would then be the UBI, distributed equally to all.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#214

Post by exabrial » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

If you want UBI, just give away all of your money and stop demanding others do it instead.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#215

Post by jltsiren » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #208

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A UBI is a method of achieving the same effect as progressive taxation without the complexity and perverse incentives of tracking everyone's income and applying different marginal rates. Suppose you have a tax system with progressive tax brackets and then a needs-based welfare system with benefits phase outs. It turns out, those two things (progressive rate structure and benefits phase outs) basically cancel each oth…

It turns out that a theoretically optimal non-linear taxation schedule features a UBI plus varying marginal tax rates (i.e. continuous tax brackets) that start out quite high (but sub-100%) in the UBI-clawback range (to manage the UBI break-even point while still offering a high subsidy to the very lowest earners) become very low for low-to-middle income earners and rise gradually for middle- and high-income earners.…

You should repeat that claim with concrete numbers.

What is the effective marginal tax rate in the UBI-clawback range, including any housing / healthcare / childcare / whatever benefits lost due to income? And what is the minimum hourly net income that would encourage someone with guaranteed basic income to take a job instead of staying at home? With those two numbers, you can calculate an effective minimum wage, below which it would be practically impossible to hire anyone.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#216

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:44 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #211

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a lot of added complexity just to make sure the lower middle class gets screwed out of receiving the UBI.

They benefit from greatly lowered tax rates on their earned income (this is also a 'carrot' for the UBI net-receivers themselves, at least at the higher end), and high growth because you don't need to 'soak' higher-earning folks, who only pay moderately progressive rates. The alternative either has the lowest earning folks getting screwed out of receiving a meaningful subsidy (which is really bad) or pushes the break…

> They benefit from greatly lowered tax rates on their earned income

Lowered marginal tax rates. Raising the marginal rates on the lowest earners is raising the effective rates on the lower middle class. That they don't get anything is essentially the purpose of your proposal.

> and high growth because you don't need to 'soak' higher-earning folks, who only pay moderately progressive rates.

But did you actually have to do that? Having the lowest marginal rates be in the middle is pretty expensive because it's also lowering the effective rate on everyone above them, or at best is just balancing out having the highest rates at the bottom. It seems like you're trying to increase the amount of the UBI while making sure the extra money comes from the middle rather than the top. Having approximately the top half (50% of the population) pay so that the second quartile (25% of the population) can get ~half the UBI instead of none both doesn't seem like a bad thing and doesn't seem like it would cost them that much rate-wise because it's a 2:1 population ratio and they they have a higher per capita base to apply the rate to.

And having the highest rates at the bottom is pretty bad incentive-wise.

> or pushes the break-even point way too high

What's the problem with the break-even point being somewhere around the middle? The people only slightly below that aren't getting a large subsidy, they're just not getting literally zero.

Meanwhile the amount of "well I didn't make that much money because I had half of it paid to my kid" marginal rate arbitrage you're reintroducing is large.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#217

Post by 6510 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:52 PM UTC

We never accomplished anything by everyone agreeing. If you want something and there are enough of you you take it. (It's easier if morality is on your side.) People who want to antagonize, moan or otherwise desire to get in the way need to be so afraid they wont do it or be discontinued prematurely.

At a time 99.9% worked in agriculture and agriculture was and still is complete bullshit. You can just mix plants and leave them alone. Just visit the garden if you want something to eat. Do a bit of modest pruning. Rabbits and other creatures will eat everything if you don't eat them. Just like with agriculture the rabbits will upscale their population to match whatever food is available.

I'm simplifying of course. The point being, 3% now works in agriculture. We know how to make durable houses, durable clothing, durable everything-you-need's stop listening to your wife (lol), all you need is a roof, bed, cloths, food, a good book and some time to think about what the hell we are doing.

Everything else is certainly nice to have but it should not be part of this topic.

One of my funny hypothetical: Say we rip all the roads out of the city and fill her up with chickens. Then, in stead of driving to your job you pick eggs and catch a chicken. Then, after 10 minutes your job is done for the day. If people don't like eggs or chicken that's fine, we can feed them to the chickens, or the delicious maggots that grow on them. I mean proverbial of course, no way you need to explain how it works to the chicken, it will do all that for free on factory settings.

I'm sure this is all very hard to understand, it might not make any sense to you. Then think of the UBI as the ultimate crypto currency. You take a unit of humans, a unit of time, multiply the two and hand the coins to the human. You get nice linear expansion and nice coin distribution. You only need proof of humans and proof of time. The white paper will be very short and (sadly) lack all the interesting math.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#218

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:52 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #215

zozbot234 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that a theoretically optimal non-linear taxation schedule features a UBI plus varying marginal tax rates (i.e. continuous tax brackets) that start out quite high (but sub-100%) in the UBI-clawback range (to manage the UBI break-even point while still offering a high subsidy to the very lowest earners) become very low for low-to-middle income earners and rise gradually for middle- and high-income earners.…

You should repeat that claim with concrete numbers. What is the effective marginal tax rate in the UBI-clawback range, including any housing / healthcare / childcare / whatever benefits lost due to income? And what is the minimum hourly net income that would encourage someone with guaranteed basic income to take a job instead of staying at home? With those two numbers, you can calculate an effective minimum wage, bel…

> And what is the minimum hourly net income that would encourage someone with guaranteed basic income to take a job instead of staying at home? With those two numbers, you can calculate an effective minimum wage, below which it would be practically impossible to hire anyone.

The answer to the first question varies from person to person, and from job to job since some of them are less desirable to do independent of what they pay, which means the threshold in the second question doesn't actually exist. There may be 100 people willing to work a specific job for $X/year but not 1000 people, etc.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#219

Post by 6510 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:54 PM UTC

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…

> if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year

You mean as opposed to very few people?

I'm told that if one is very curious about the topic one should not start by asking questions but read the 100+ years of the same questions being asked and answered again and again. I cant say I've followed the advice but it sounds very sensible.

Re: UBI as a productivity dividend

#220

Post by estearum » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 11:57 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #175

estearum wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Unreasonable behavior" is just "setting market prices."

Correct it wouldn't stop landlords from continuing to earn from their properties but it would destroy the incentive to produce additional housing, so nobody wins.