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Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

nytimes.com

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Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#241

Post by ahartman00 »

funkysquid wrote: post #35
newacct23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are arguing about specifics that do not make any difference to the overall argument the author is trying to make. UBI for 244 million is still unfeasible. UBI is just a bad idea, jobs in themselves have nice externalities that UBI wont give. People that have jobs generally don't commit crimes. Also a UBI will disincentivize working jobs that are undesirable but are necessary for a functioning society.

Are you saying that people commit crimes because they have too much time on their hands?

What about drunk/intoxicated driving? Ive seen a couple comments saying its ok if people smoke pot and play video games, but what about those who want to go out and drink? 33% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related[1], and that adds up to be quite a few people. Ok, self driving cars will fix that eventually, but what about domestic abuse?

1. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#242

Post by ahartman00 »

geon wrote: post #240
ahartman00 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"BI could prevent urbanization, and make small businesses blossom in smaller countryside towns." I agree that urbanization has its downsides. However, lets remember that they aren't making land anymore:) As someone who grew up on a farm, I remember looking at suburbs as they sprawled out, taking over farmland. I was thinking, what are those people going to eat? Also, my observation is that there are more small busine…

The US has way lower population density than the EU, and even here there's plenty of space. And you don't need much space to grow some veggies.

Im not sure what you mean by plenty of space? I know when Ive had my urban friends over to my parents house, they all remarked about how empty it is 'out here'. But it is not empty, that farmland is in fact being used. Maybe things look different in my chunk of the world, I do come from a community that is largely agricultural.

you dont need much space to grow some veggies, true, the point I was trying to make is that replacing an acre of veggies with a house and .1 acre of veggies reduces the total supply of food(since good, farmable land is limited). Given the demand for food is rising, the impact on the price of food is somewhat predicable

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#243

Post by dTal »

gozur88 wrote: post #207
damptowel wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But government spending within the national economy is not income constrained, so raising taxes is not a requirement.

Then why do we have taxes at all?

To control the money supply. It's true that the government don't need to directly fund all spending with taxes, but if more money is issued than collected, the amount of money in circulation increases and the currency devalues. Obviously this should be avoided as the more the currency you're printing is worth, the better off you are.

So practically speaking, you do have to fund expenditures with taxes. You can't just create value out of thin air.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#244

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

1123581321 wrote: post #234
thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point we are just being handwavy. This is the problem with discussions like this, there aren't any hard facts to support the arguments. Are people being forced to pay .1 pct more of their income or 10 pct more? etc...

It's not hand-wavy to try to convince BI proponents to at least consider second-order effects. But you're right; better modeling and experiments will be good for future discussions.

I agree. just saying that you can't assume the second-order effects will result in a net negative outcome on the whole system

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#245

Post by unprepare »

ahartman00 wrote: post #239
otterley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: "A universal basic income has many undesirable features, starting with its nonnegligible disincentive to work." I can think of two responses to this: (1) Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing -- (2) Except for charity work, which is extremely valuable, and which would be greatly incentivized because having a UBI would free up people's time to work on it.

(1) Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing I largely agree with you here, coal mining being a notable exception. As much as I want to be only on renewables, coal makes up 33% [1] of our current production. They talk about how gas prices are a drag on the economy, I dont want to find out what happens when 33% of power becomes much more expensive!! And fwiw, I do not share the…

oh no! the most pollutant form of energy will become more expensive! whatever shall we do!? /s

this is only a bad thing to people heavily invested in coal. There are other sources of energy which are nearly competitive on price already, with a labor hike Solar would become drastically more competitive (IMO more in line with costs of externalities)

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#246

Post by unprepare »

prostoalex wrote: post #202
otterley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: "A universal basic income has many undesirable features, starting with its nonnegligible disincentive to work." I can think of two responses to this: (1) Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing -- (2) Except for charity work, which is extremely valuable, and which would be greatly incentivized because having a UBI would free up people's time to work on it.

> Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing This is a frequent argument invoked in favor of a higher minimum wage, and the answer is maybe. But then you find out that some fairly useful work, such as running a convenience store or a corner bodega in a low-income neighborhood involves significantly lower margins than operating a Whole Foods or organic juicery in a ritzy resident…

its almost as if hiring a low income neighborhood worker for an extremely low wage isnt particularly beneficial to the neighborhood.....

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#247

Post by chillacy »

Grishnakh wrote: post #224
chillacy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an incredible amount of businesses set out to make money from those without steady pay, or who live paycheck to paycheck, which includes some UBI recipients (if they require a large sum today they may borrow money from a payday loan company, for instance, and the interest is insane). One challenge is going to be preventing this from becoming the new form of exploitation. That comes down to education, and the…

There's two things that can be done here: 1) We could definitely use better education in this country. Kids should be taught in grade/high school how to handle money, personal finance, etc. They used to have something called "home economics" when I was a kid, but it was only for girls and probably concentrated more on doing dishes or something. 2) We need to stop electing Democrats like Hillary Clinton and DWS who ar…

> Kids should be taught in grade/high school how to handle money, personal finance, etc

I think that's a pretty swell idea.

> There's really no reason someone on UBI should ever need a large sum of money

I don't think that's true. The problem is living paycheck to paycheck without savings. UBI adds steady income but if the recipient fails to save, then when large expenses come like bank overdraft fees, medical expenses, and general rainy day stuff, they'll have to take out loans or credit card debt. Which goes back to why education is so important.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#248

Post by ktRolster »

sgnelson wrote: post #190
fiatmoney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Food insecurity" is not remotely the same thing as starvation. I would wager a fair amount that no one in the US has starved to death due to lack of money (ignoring neglect of children, catatonia, etc) in quite a while.

I'm pretty sure he was talking about food insecurity and not actual starving to death, though his use of the word in this case is actually quite correct. Starve does not solely imply starvation unto death, Mr. Pedant. And his point still stands, it's an issue in the US that has yet to be solved.

In the US, "poverty is not a direct causation of hunger."

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#249

Post by Grishnakh »

chillacy wrote: post #247
Grishnakh wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two things that can be done here: 1) We could definitely use better education in this country. Kids should be taught in grade/high school how to handle money, personal finance, etc. They used to have something called "home economics" when I was a kid, but it was only for girls and probably concentrated more on doing dishes or something. 2) We need to stop electing Democrats like Hillary Clinton and DWS who ar…

> Kids should be taught in grade/high school how to handle money, personal finance, etc I think that's a pretty swell idea. > There's really no reason someone on UBI should ever need a large sum of money I don't think that's true. The problem is living paycheck to paycheck without savings. UBI adds steady income but if the recipient fails to save, then when large expenses come like bank overdraft fees, medical expens…

I completely disagree. There is no good reason for these people to need large sums of money.

>then when large expenses come like bank overdraft fees

Simple: ban them. These should not be allowed, ever. If the bank is too stupid to prevent you from overdrafting using technical means, then they should eat the loss. The only reason overdrafting is possible, in this age where no one uses paper checks any more, is because banks can make money on usurious fees. Ban them.

>medical expenses

Not needed. We should have single payer healthcare.

>and general rainy day stuff

Like what? The UBI is the safety net. Maybe if their car breaks down or something. Still, the whole point of UBI is to be a safety net; if someone is such a mess they need to constantly take out loans to try to get to work, then maybe they shouldn't be working a regular job at all. Ban payday loans and let them learn how to live on the UBI. It's not like they're going to lose all their money and be on the street; that's the whole point of the thing.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#250

Post by grahamburger »

Grishnakh wrote: post #222
grahamburger wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much about setting it high enough as keeping it high enough. How do you convince the wealthy and powerful to keep giving up more and more of their income to keep up with inflation so that UBI continues to meet the definition of 'basic income'?

If there's inflation, the wealthy are going to earn more money in absolute dollars (if they don't, that means they're getting poorer). The same tax rate will automatically bring in more money from these people. I don't see the problem. You're making the common mistake of thinking that a given tax rate (as a percentage) equals a fixed amount of revenue, which is just plain wrong. A fixed percentage of a rising amount…

Ok, that's fair - I still see a few problems though. First, if you're right and the wealthy keep making more in absolute dollars and therefore paying more in taxes (IE UBI doesn't make them poorer) then we still have to index the UBI against inflation. And every time UBI goes up, it will be an upstream battle against people who had the same common mistake that you suggest that I made. In other words, in this case at least, perception is reality.

Second, what if UBI does make the wealthy less wealthy? Isn't that kind of the point of wealth redistribution? To reduce income inequality?

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