Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#441

Post by spyckie2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

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…

To be very honest, these times should not be taken as data points for normal behavior. Stress is extremely high, optimism is low, and its just very hard to find a job these days.

I'd take the anecdote more seriously if there were many opportunities on the market and they still said the same thing.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#442

Post by r29vzg2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

ramshorns wrote: post #347

georgewsinger wrote: post #327

> To reverse this trend of stagnating growth, we must put more capital in the hands of lower income consumers, who will then spend it on things they desire and increase GDP. I have some better ideas to increase GDP, using the author's chain of reasoning. 1. Use the military to break every window in every major city. This will force consumers to pay money to window manufacturers, thus increasing GDP! 2. Rob every poor…

If wealth redistribution is wrong, why are you encouraging us to give our money to the richest person in the world? Wealth is redistributed all the time, and because of an economic system that rewards already being wealthy, most of the redistribution is from the non-rich to the rich. UBI is an attempt to mitigate that imbalance by providing for people's basic needs when the market has failed to. It doesn't solve all…

The difference here is that the wealthy became wealthy by providing something of value. Wealth redistribution does the opposite, take from those that are providing value and give it to those that aren’t.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#443

Post by spyckie2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #153

The elephants in the room are the extremely cheap labor that already undermines the legit goods and services: - extremely cheap prison labor - undocumented laborers who have (almost) no legal rights and who take difficult jobs - ex-cons who have to pay a portion of their wages to employers who are willing to hire them - jobs where wages must be subsidized by government programs (eg. WalMart encourages their lowest pa…

This is a good point. I actually consider shoring up these loopholes as part of (or needing to be passed alongside) UBI.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#444

Post by uoylj » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:28 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…

Most of that stems from the fact that the US dollar is the main global reserve currency - so people around the world are willing to accept them in exchange for real goods and services.

This won't be the case forever. Once it flips, the magically cheap overseas goods become the expensive imported goods only rich people can afford.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#445

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

holdtheline wrote: post #306

chrisco255 wrote: post #282

UBI is Communism Lite. Very likely ends badly, as voters seek to increase UBI to infinity. Politicians will get reelected on the basis of how much they're willing to increase UBI. Probably causes a currency crisis as well. Unfortunately the Silicon Valley crowd seems to be beholden to this flawed idea. Voters and politicians will not restrain themselves if this tool is made available.

UBI is Communism Lite. Communism is when the government owns all property and all factors of production. UBI does not involve the government taking over anything. Very likely ends badly, as voters seek to increase UBI to infinity. Considering how much doubt there is among UBI in the first place, I don't know why you would assume politicians and voters would just want to endlessly increase the size of monthly payments…

Sure it does. In this case the money for UBI has to come from somewhere. It will come in the form of extremely high taxes. If the government gets to keep more than 50% of your income, then they are a majority shareholder in your individual output. They retain extraordinary power and control over you. And that could ratchet up all the way to 100% theoretically under the UBI system. There really is nothing stopping it from happening other than voter sentiment.

There might not be favorable sentiment now, but sentiment can change. But I do suspect that if you implement such a system, society will become dependent on that system. And it will be ratcheted up to pander to populace. It would be a powerful tool for politicians to garner favor. I've seen it done in other countries that openly embraced socialism and populism. It ends in economic catastrophe for nearly everyone.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#446

Post by spyckie2 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #79

I understand and agree with how a UBI will benefit those that are currently falling between the cracks and not receiving any assistance. I can also see the benefits of greatly simplifying the social security system. (If it was implemented in a way that was actually simple. i.e. no distinction between sick, unemployed, old, lazy) But I don't understand why people don't believe the UBI will just become the new definiti…

UBI will become the new definition of poverty, and this is a great thing, poverty being you are on UBI is much better than any other definition of poverty in history.

Per the article (and I agree with this) UBI is not meant to uproot capitalism, it's meant to optimize capitalism. A capitalist system where the poorest person is still able to participate on the demand side is quite novel.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#447

Post by luckylion » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

chadlavi wrote: post #342

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…

A lot of the people objecting also think someday they're going to be a baron of industry who needs income incentives to keep workers toiling away for them.

No, that's just a straw man. A lot of people are paying giant amounts of taxes and they'd rather not see them go up much further.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#448

Post by superkuh » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #187

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…

> It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Well the numbers being off by an order of magnitude is a good reason. The US tax revenue would have to double just to pay for anything that resembles UBI. The carbon tax would have to be obscene to gather that amount of money (another $25k in taxes on a middle class US family). Even if people survive the initial shock, the rapid drop in demand for anything with…

The majority of the M0 money supply, that bit of currency we use to get things done in our economy, is created by fiat at any of the ~4500 commercial banks (in the USA). Every time they give out a loan they create the money out of thin air as debt on their balance sheets. They are only required to have a tiny fraction of the money they 'loan'/create (fractional reserve).

If instead of letting only these banks create money, if the new M0 money supply was distributed to ~300 million human people instead of ~4500 corporate people, there'd be plenty for basic income. It'd be universal basic income then instead of commercial bank basic income. And banks could just be banks and get by on their actual services instead of being money machines.

... and that's not even acknowledging what the NY Fed have begun doing since October of last year, 10s to 100s of billions a week swapped for worthless items from corporations who can't pay their bills in Reverse Repo operations: a shallow attempt to pretend it isn't just giving money away (https://apps.newyorkfed.org/en/markets/autorates/temp).

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#449

Post by aetherspawn » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

How about we meet in the middle.

If you can provide a receipt for accomodation/rent and utilities, you are eligible for the UBI up to the value of your accomodation and utility bills (with limits).

The UBI can subsidise classes of certain foods up to a certain value if you keep the receipts, but can not subsidise confectionary, soft drinks, smokes and alcohol. Only fresh food, milk, etc. with a nationally recognised UBI code on the packaging can be subsidised.

The UBI is not money that you can spend on barista coffee, lego, computers etc. You need a job for that. It’s a tax return for living that’s claimable each month and doesn’t rely on actually paying tax. Processing the UBI creates jobs and encourages people to organise their spending. But in this manner, any reasonably organised person can get off the streets or bootstrap their own business without anxiety about starving.

Social services would help people with low means (ie can’t read or write) to organise their affairs to make use of the UBI. Benefit payments for unemployment and for kids would be suspended. Naturally, taxes would be increased to support the UBI, but most of the cream that you make could be used on “nice” things.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#450

Post by thinkingkong » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

I find it peculiar that Americans even discuss UBI prior to having universal healthcare. The whole idea of universality in this context is to eliminate the requirement to work in order to live a reasonable healthy life. If you implement UBI without healthcare then you maintain a form of economic slavery which more or less states that employment is required to have medical coverage.