Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide enough income to make a living? Then have sufficient minimum wages, there is no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living. Also universality, what is the point? Above some income you are essentially just paying yourself. There might be a technical point because it keeps the rules simple but besides that I don't see in which way absolute universality is a feature. Reduce the overhead from many different social programs, for state and citizen? Fair point, but then again an universal basic income seems quite a huge hammer.
A Guaranteed Income for Every American
41–50 of 387 posts
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have another (hope not stupid) fundamental question: do we have to give people a different UBI based on their location (aka cost-of-life)? If no, it will be pretty hard to find a right value. If yes, should we also change it as soon as they relocate?
My preferred answer (although others may differ) is that it should be the same for everyone. If you can't afford to live where you are now, move somewhere cheaper or get a job. If you're jobless and can't afford an expensive city that means the economy is telling you to make room for someone who can make productive use of the limited space in an area that many need to be to work together. If you want to stay near fam…
>"If you can't afford to live where you are now, move somewhere cheaper or get a job. If you're jobless and can't afford an expensive city that means the economy is telling you to make room for someone who can make productive use of the limited space in an area that many need to be to work together."
That's exactly how it should work, even in a system with no UBI. Sadly, people see the state as the grand fixer and enabler of everything.
Eventually, we'd all realize that certain places simply cost more to live in due to reasons outside of everyone's control. E.g. maybe it's hard to create affordable safe housing in a very earthquake/tornado prone area. Or hard to deliver fresh healthy produce to a city in the middle of nowhere like a desert. I exaggerate, of course, but these minor details still affect prices to a certain extent. We can't have cosmic-justice.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if this is bad because on the net it will make society less compassionate.
Less compassionate to those undeserving of it, sure. Isn't that a good thing? I'm not a fan of UBI but this aspect might turn out to be really beneficial in reversing the perverse incentives and dysgenic effects of current social benefits programs.
> Less compassionate to those undeserving of it, sure. Isn't that a good thing?
Only if we want to continue to have addicts and the mentally ill homeless, abused, and taken advantage of.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#44I'm surprised UBI is getting all the attention and negative income tax is not receiving equal consideration.
A negative income tax would be one way to implement UBI. It sort of fits into the UBI umbrella.
Doesn't seem like the same thing to me. Negative income tax means you still need to find someone who will employ you, and also you don't get any benefit if you are above the threshold so it's not universal.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#45"As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper." Remarkable how much entitlement spending is booked in the near future.
I don't think this adds up. Here ( https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... ) is federal spending for 2015. It shows a total federal spending of 3.8 trillion dollars. This is all spending, including 0.5 trillion on the military, 0.2 trillion in interest on debt, and tons of other spending on things that are not welfare or social-safety-net programs. Meanwhile, $13k * 300m people, results in an…
There's another source of money not included here. The Fed creates money from nothing. That has to go somewhere. On top of the usual inflationary dollar creation of the Fed, they were doing "Quantitative Easing" for years to the tune of about $85-100 Billion per month given to banks in exchange for known worthless mortgages. So a good quarter of that $3.9 trillion could have been covered just by some "Quantitative Easing" programs for the poor.
Since the Fed stopped publishing M2, we don't know how much money is really being created. But it seems to me the logic of "Let's give money to the banks and they will loan it to the people" doesn't work. Here, the argument seems to be: Instead of giving money to the banks with expectations, we just give it directly to the people, cutting out the inefficient middle men entirely.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#46"As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper." Remarkable how much entitlement spending is booked in the near future.
I don't think this adds up. Here ( https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... ) is federal spending for 2015. It shows a total federal spending of 3.8 trillion dollars. This is all spending, including 0.5 trillion on the military, 0.2 trillion in interest on debt, and tons of other spending on things that are not welfare or social-safety-net programs. Meanwhile, $13k * 300m people, results in an…
He did specify certain caveats that would reduce the cost vs your estimate - adults over 21, and it would reduce as you made more, to a floor of 6500/yr. But yeah, probably still missing some piece.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI isn't about libertarianism, it's about reducing the fucking stupid disincentives built into current benefits systems. Instead of telling people that they can have this money only if they work less than 16 hours a week, or only if they stay disabled, just give them the money. That way you don't need to employ doctors to see if someone is still as disabled as they were last year, and people who get a part time job…
But it might create even bigger disincentives that have a much more universal effect, which could be disasterous.
The people who are likely to drop out of the labor market are almost certainly not the motivated, high-productivity workers that actually benefit society. High achievers tend to be motivated by things like passion, creativity, need for recognition, etc, not purely income.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#48Once again no answer to the main Question: What to do with people that blow their UBI by the 2nd of each month on SAAS Startups? Let them starve? Go without Shelter?
Give them a $2 a month vps/cloud instance and ensure that Jekyll is installed on their laptop.
Why would one need a vps if using Jekyll?
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#49I'm sorry libertarians, but you can't just throw a equal amount of cash at everybody and say good luck. Society just isn't that simple. Different people have different needs, and that's where the complex overhead of a bureaucracy comes in. Stop trying to starve the beast already, and instead, help make it better. Or, admit at least, that you just don't give a damn about people who aren't like you.
UBI isn't about libertarianism, it's about reducing the fucking stupid disincentives built into current benefits systems. Instead of telling people that they can have this money only if they work less than 16 hours a week, or only if they stay disabled, just give them the money. That way you don't need to employ doctors to see if someone is still as disabled as they were last year, and people who get a part time job…
In the context of this article, it is very much about libertarianism (the strain of it that is willing to admit that we're facing a jobs crisis, at least). Check the article's author. They want to throw away any sort of a public social safety net, reduce taxes on the wealthy, throw the rest of us a bone and say good luck.
I'm very much for a UBI, but as a part of a comprehensive progressive agenda, and certainly not how the right-wingers want to do it.
Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
A negative income tax would be one way to implement UBI. It sort of fits into the UBI umbrella.
Doesn't seem like the same thing to me. Negative income tax means you still need to find someone who will employ you, and also you don't get any benefit if you are above the threshold so it's not universal.
I don't think it is written in stone that you must have a job to receive a negative income tax. That would be one way to implement it, but you could also have an implementation that was based on some arbitrary level of income, where if you didn't reach that income, the government gave you the difference, even if it were the full amount (this would be a bad way to do it, but nonetheless). For sure, a negative income tax that required employment would not be a UBI. So they may overlap is a better statement than saying it falls under the umbrella.
It's also the case that a UBI is only pretend universal. There are people that will see either an increase in their effective tax rate or a decrease in their buying power (the latter if you fund it by printing money).