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The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

theatlantic.com

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Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#41

Post by oftenbanned »

slifin wrote: post #12

I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter

I agree that we should just build social housing and give it away until housing/land is worthless, and universal free health care has obvious utility, but for everything else just giving away money is a lot more effective. Suppose you give someone food assistance, now they can buy food, but what if they don't have clothes? How are they going to participate in civil society while naked? Handing out cash handles those corner cases.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#42

Post by Density »

jonreem wrote: post #26
mechagodzilla wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your premise that doubling the number of dollars everyone has would simply double prices. If you take someone that has $1 million in the bank, and magically make that $2 million, they almost certainly won't double all of their expenditures (they probably wouldn't change what they spend at all on a wide variety of categories - food or clothing, for instance). Rising inequality means that lack of demand…

While the now $2 millionaire would not be likely to spend that extra million on food and clothing they would be extremely likely to invest that money in a variety of financial instruments, making that capital available in the market so it can be put to good use. Investing does help inject value into the economy and drive growth - "sitting on it" would require literally keeping it in cash in a bank, which no sane pers…

Juicero and their ilk prove that there's too much capital looking for somewhere to go. We don't need this much capital floating around, we need peoples' lives to improve so they stop killing themselves with heroin.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#43

Post by jaibot »

slifin wrote: post #12

I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter

Nothing is free - someone is paying for it. When you give people specific things instead of money, you're taking choices away from them, insisting that you know what they need better than they do.

If you give people money, they can decide what they need most and go do that. Maybe I don't need housing because I can live with relatives and use my money for education. If you insist on free housing instead, you take that option away from me.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#44

Post by strken »

rothbardrand wrote: post #3

One of the things about UBI is that these pilot programs aren't UBI, because they aren't universal. Giving a segment of the population free money is going to benefit that segment, no question. Welfare and Quantitative Easing are both examples of that. But when you make it universal, my economics intuition says that the effect will be washed out by a commensurate rise in prices. Or put another way, you can subsidize t…

I thought the idea was that, firstly, current welfare already does this and UBI just gets rid of most of the harmful distortionary effects, and secondly, that UBI inherently must change the distribution of spending, and therefore while it will result in a long term increase in demand for the items poor people buy, that demand will eventually be followed by some increase in supply as the economy retools to take advantage of the new flow of money.

Would anyone be able to explain why this just-so story is wrong? My econ isn't great.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#45

Post by truxus »

jaibot wrote: post #43
slifin wrote: post #12

I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter

Nothing is free - someone is paying for it. When you give people specific things instead of money, you're taking choices away from them, insisting that you know what they need better than they do. If you give people money, they can decide what they need most and go do that. Maybe I don't need housing because I can live with relatives and use my money for education. If you insist on free housing instead, you take that…

What if you decide to fund a self-destructive addiction? Or send the money to a foreign country? Is that in the public interest?

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#46

Post by fpig »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #13
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you can't subsidize the many at their own expense and have it result in a positive effect. You can if it changes local incentives to cause a better overall outcome. For example, a tragedy-of-the-commons situation can be improved by having each over-user give up their share of use to a monopolist whose subsidies replace the lost income. This is explicitly one of the goals of replacing the current social safety nets w…

Sorry to be annoying on this topic, but: This is explicitly one of the goals of replacing the current social safety nets with UBI. UBI can't replace social safety nets. It's impossible. 12k for every adult is 3 trillion dollars, which almost always assumes cutting other programs. What about healthcare? I bet most would rather have comprehensive health coverage instead of 12k every year, but you can't have both. In th…

What do you mean by safety nets? If you mean economic need-based programs, so something like "if you earn less than X, you get Y for free", UBI generally assumes the elimination of all such programs, so yes, it does assume cutting other programs. In fact one of the goals of UBI is to replace many complicated welfare trap-generating programs with a single non-welfare-trap one, with the advantage of also eliminating the bureaucracy that those need-based programs require.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#47

Post by yellowstuff »

biggc wrote: post #29
yellowstuff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you simply gave everyone $1 for every dollar they already have, all you do is double prices and change nothing of substance. But I think the pro-UBI argument would be that you don't need to increase the money supply to do it. About 60% of Federal spending is on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Reducing the spending on these programs, and other inefficient transfers such as welfare and disability will…

Why would UBI reduce Medicare and Medicaid?

You would have to pay for UBI by:

1) Cutting spending elsewhere.

2) Raising taxes. (Or collecting more from a growing economy.)

3) Printing money.

Probably it would be a combination of all 3, but since UBI can offset entitlement cuts it makes sense to me that that's where the government would find a lot of the money. Raising taxes is unpopular and can be counterproductive if done to the extreme, and printing money is inflationary and also counterproductive unless there are other deflationary forces at work. (Which there are currently, I agree with Ray Dalio that printing money makes sense during a deleveraging spiral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0)

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#48

Post by Density »

jtolmar wrote: post #38
slifin wrote: post #12

I wish there was less focus on distributing money and more focus on free water, food and shelter for everyone It's crazy to me in the UK that we have free healthcare, where you can get free water food and shelter if you're ill but if you're healthy you can go back on the street with potentially no food water shelter

A network of free services will always have gaps. Food, water, shelter... what about power, internet, clothes? Something equally important that not everyone needs? Basic income guarantees that the gaps are filled. It even makes markets more likely to try to fill them. But basic income can't get basic services to people who can't control their own money. Getting food to children of alcoholics requires that the system…

Socialized healthcare should ideally capture the edge cases and provide psychiatric help to the helpless.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#49

Post by Density »

truxus wrote: post #45
jaibot wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is free - someone is paying for it. When you give people specific things instead of money, you're taking choices away from them, insisting that you know what they need better than they do. If you give people money, they can decide what they need most and go do that. Maybe I don't need housing because I can live with relatives and use my money for education. If you insist on free housing instead, you take that…

What if you decide to fund a self-destructive addiction? Or send the money to a foreign country? Is that in the public interest?

The first case is handled by socialized healthcare and the second by the nsa.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#50

Post by Density »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #33
dredmorbius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These services have real costs, and at least in the case of food, water, and shelter, risk (and its side effects) is a minor part of consumption, and so doesn't introduce distortions. Ensuring income adequate for access to these necessities is a fundamental and long-established principle of economics. "A man must always live by his work" comes straight from Adam Smith. The problems are multiple. Wages tend to (or bel…

>Wages tend to (or below) subsistence. // In a pure capitalist system wages [for jobs where there are a surfeit of capable people] should surely tend to zero until enough proles have died to introduce scarcity and buoy the labour price.

Jesus Christ this is a really thought provoking image of capitalism at the limit.
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