Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#431

Post by yinyang_in » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

laingc wrote: post #419

alex_young wrote: post #114

A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…

One of my best friends is an academic economist working in this space, so while I won’t pretend to be an expert, I have spent a goodly amount of time discussing this with one. With no disrespect intended to you personally, this policy you propose makes no sense. Without putting words in your mouth, it looks to me like “two things I as a progressive like the idea of”, rather than a coherent economic policy. Carbon tax…

Hi, I read once somewhere about it that, if (big if), if we make large transaction to make digital and tax of digital transaction like transaction fees/banking fees, for every transaction we make there is x% of tax is taken by government.

It may cause people to not go digital but encourage black money, but if government i.e basically us make a decision that's(non digital translation) are not legal in country. What do you think about it?

I see black money, barter system creeping in but in bigger picture what do you think about it

This form of tax will take people with more spending to tax more, so people who live beyond their means will be taxed more and poor people will be taxed less.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#432

Post by spyckie2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

gzu wrote: post #383

treyfitty wrote: post #272

There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life. I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panickin…

The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your entire existence relies on a globalist system of slave level labor producing products from all corners of the world. Automation of every industry is impossible…

UBI, at least Andrew Yang's UBI, is not going to remove those jobs - they will still be around and still be in demand because UBI isn't an income, it's a basic income, or around 1/3 of what an income should be for most people.

If anything, the wages of those jobs will go up because the demand of it from laborers will go down.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#433

Post by icelancer » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #421

gzu wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our (currently) superior standard of living. Your entire existence relies on a globalist system of slave level labor producing products from all corners of the world. Automation of every industry is impossible…

In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the same job is don…

>> In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck.

This is true in America as well, FYI. It's a large source of union jobs.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#434

Post by bikamonki » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

Hold on. Wouldn't UBI actually be Socialism 2.0? I mean, who would pay for UBI? It has to be tax money, no?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#435

Post by qlk1123 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

TimJRobinson wrote: post #260

christiansakai wrote: post #207

I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix and play games all day. Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and on…

I think the timescale matters. I agree when out of work for a few weeks or months most people will take time to relax and do nothing. But when you don't have to work for a longer period of time (say 6+ months) many people will get bored of just consuming and start making more productive use of their life. I don't have evidence to back this up though, I would be interested in seeing this studied.

Yeah, that would be interesting.

Basically there is statistics: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217837/average-duration-... But what these people do after the unemployment period is unknown. Or maybe some of them starts productive work before one find a job.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#436

Post by spyckie2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

alexmingoia wrote: post #82

Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income approaches zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax I do think people radically…

I think you'd be surprised and how meaningful work can be if it is actually meaningful. The definition of work has been taken over by the current economy as maintaining some rich corporation's systems of printing money. Work instead should be defined as adding value to society.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#437

Post by glerk » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #418

glerk wrote: post #415

But money does not create wealth. Money is just a tool of trade and a measure of the value of goods and services produced in an economy. Airdropping money will not transform this world into a utopia where everyone is wealthy and can live without working. At the end of the day, we need plumbers, electricians, garbage men, software engineers, nurses, lawyers, etc. to maintain this civilization and this will not be chan…

Those plumbers etc will be paid bonus money. That's pretty simple. At some point, unemployment can hurt the economy.

> Those plumbers etc will be paid bonus money

Yes, nominally they will be paid more money. However, the same amount of goods and services will be produced in this economy, so an increase in the money supply will In reality be worthless.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#438

Post by ed25519FUUU » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

The whole system of benevolent governance is built on consent. I’m not sure how you’ll ever roll out a system like this with the consent of the governed.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#439

Post by foxrob92 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

I feel like the author has a weird conception of what capitalism (and socialism) is. They seem to conflate market economies with capitalism, when capitalism is just a mode of economic production where the means of production are owned by people other than those who operate them. It's an economic system where you have a Capital - Wages - Profit cycle.

>is some sort of socialism, where the government introduces new laws and systems to redirect money to attempt to balance the system manually

"The government doing things" is not socialism. Socialism is when the means of production are socially owned (usually by the people who operate the means of production). What the author is talking about here is "welfare statism" [1], and IMO UBI is just welfare statism taken to an extreme.

That being said, I'd definitely agree that UBI (under a capitalist state) is a way to keep capitalism ticking along.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#440

Post by jubana » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

treyfitty wrote: post #272

There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life. I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high because daycares were shut down and I was panickin…

So someone else should pay for you to sit around doing new hobbies? Glad you are having a good time, but how can you not view what you do as lazy from the eyes of society? There is no free lunch; the money is coming from somewhere.