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A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

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Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#481

Post by clavalle »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #146
gjm11 wrote: post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

>Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10%

So what? Those people spent their time on things they valued more than the money they could earn by selling it. This just shows that they were underpaid for the value of their time through the threat of imminent pain of starvation or homelessness.

The market will adjust and pay those people more if the value they create and the profits reapable from their labor make that paid labor worth it.

Low value jobs will go away.

Some of that freed time will be spent on consuming, no doubt, but much will be spent on longer horizon value adding activities like schooling or starting businesses or more efficient uses like taking care of children.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#482

Post by [deleted] »

PietdeVries wrote: post #361
cujo wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you should advocated for a drinking age of 25 instead. Or move all those other things you get to do at 18 to 25 also.

Let me know when you have this thing in place: I will start a "Spring Break Holiday Park" somewhere in the south where beer is $20 and a Rum&Coke goes for $40. Only people from 25 are allowed in.

[deleted]

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#483

Post by mcv »

DominikR wrote: post #430
mcv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The labour market is not going away with BI. It will just become more free. Currently, many workers are forced to accept crappy jobs for little pay because the alternative is starvation. With BI, they can afford to say no when they don't think the compensation is worth it. If those crappy jobs are necessary, they will have to improve, either by making the jobs more fun or interesting, or increasing the pay.

If you subsidise people so they don't need to accept "crappy jobs" then it distorts the market instead of making it more "free" because now a potential worker with fewer skills valued by the market doesn't need to make his living by taking a job that is adequate for his level of education/skills. > If those crappy jobs are necessary, they will have to improve, either by making the jobs more fun or interesting, or inc…

No, duress (which is what the prospect of death is) does not make a market more free. If you are forced to accept a crappy deal because otherwise you will die, you are not making a free decision. A fair deal in a free market is one that you can afford to say no to.

> Some services or products are worth less precisely because there is no customer available willing to pay more for it.

And for some services or products there simply isn't a viable market. If it's necessary to keep people in poverty to keep it viable, then I say we're better off without it.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#484

Post by nine_k »

sokoloff wrote: post #114
nine_k wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think plumbing or even waste collection is going to be seriously automated any time soon. Can you imagine what kind of autonomous robot would it take to be able to do regular plumbing work, in cramped spaces, with low visibility, requiring relatively significant physical efforts? The software side of it can definitely be solved (though not easy at all). The hardware side would require significant breakthrough…

Agreed, though I don't think I'd include electricians, plumbers, and car mechanics work in the set of things called "menial tasks". Those are skilled trades, even though blue-collar.

Totally agreed. E.g. working successfully with old, crooked, space-constrained pipe connections, let alone broken and misbehaving pipes, does take some ingenuity. The manual component of the work can only be helped so much even with the best tools. Maybe when plumbing standards change drastically this could be reasonably automated, but this would take decades if not centuries, because old buildings are not going anywhere anytime soon.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#485

Post by mcv »

chongli wrote: post #370
akshatpradhan wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income. Anecdotal experience. My anecdotal experience is the opposite where the liberals I know believe increasing the minimum wage is that "next big step forward." They won't even give the idea of Basic Income a chance.

Those people are neoliberals, not progressives.

Isn't neoliberalism about Reagan/Thatcher-style privatize and deregulate everything?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#486

Post by ChrisLomont »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #437
ChrisLomont wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody The bailouts were asset swaps, repaid with a gain for the taxpayer [1]. They were not cash giveaways. Comparing this to simply giving cash to people is ludicrous. The most at risk was about 2T, with only 650B actually out at any time, which at your claim of 20K per person, only pays for 32 million people. You're off by an order of…

You seem to be in search of an argument. I will not provide you with one. Yes, the math is plain wrong. No, it does not change the point. I am not writing an essay or presenting a white paper on UBI. Heck, I'm not even supporting UBI except in terms of "let's experiment" So that was a wonderful tear down of my math, which I expected, but it doesn't change my thesis any: whatever amount of money you would like to prov…

>whatever amount of money you would like to provide for good causes, a good case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide that money directly to everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the system, no complex system of administration.

This is my main disagreement with UBI. Resources (money) is limited, and providing the same social help to all regardless of need necessarily hurts those most in need and helps those in the least of need.

Your argument to make a simple system can be applied to many places it makes life worse - should we everything and all at the same rate? Experience shows that progressive taxes is probably a big benefit overall, and certainly tax incentives can and do have benefits. I think providing basic assistance, since resources are not enough to simply give everyone goods, should be targeted to minimize human suffering, and providing free cash to those that can work in lieu of providing it to those that honestly cannot is inhumane.

You dislike the middleman, but again, middlemen are vastly beneficial in many cases, and likely are here too, to distribute limited resources in a way to do the most good. And the overall cost of the middlemen is small compared to the amount passed out. UBI would also require a decent amount of administration, so it's not completely without admin.

>I outlined the reasons why it looks attractive

Sure, free money untethered to reality is attractive. The problem is the attractiveness fades when one is tasked with explaining how the money is obtained.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#487

Post by mcv »

Spooky23 wrote: post #162
mcv wrote: post #130

Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income. The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess of programs losing their job is a silly concern.…

>Why should we keep paying people for unnecessary bullshit jobs? Because human services jobs employ thousands of people (a state like New York has 40k+ people in public sector social services and at least that many private sector) and control thousands of votes. Democrats will have a hard time supporting it, because those unionized workers will get them voted out. It's also very telling about what "basic income" real…

But why employ that many people to do something we don't need, when you could also employ them to do something more productive?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#488

Post by jessriedel »

rubyfan wrote: post #164
jessriedel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to distinguish between rights- and incentive-based objections to redistribution and efficiency-based objections to government spending. The government as an organization of humans is very inefficient and wasteful at accomplishing actual tasks (e.g., building bridges), but it's actually very efficient at redistributing wealth through pure transfers (e.g., the administrative overhead of social security i…

I interpreted the parent comment is implying ineptitude by the government in delivering positive outcomes and my comment is in reply to that. If the regime is inept at delivering solutions why would we entrust it to take more by way of taxation to support a basic income. My comment is not about the efficiency or admin overhead of printing checks. It's about trust in government to deliver an outcome.

Trust obviously depends strongly on the task. I trust my dog to fetch the ball but not do my taxes, because he's a lot better at the former.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#489

Post by slavik81 »

Unklejoe wrote: post #453
slavik81 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have two friends who inhereted $20,000+ sums of money from relatives when they were in their late teens, and both of them pissed it away in under a year. Looking back, both of them seem to regret it. Would they have learned that lesson without making that mistake? Are you even sure they really wouldn't do the same again? To quote Time, "About 70 percent of people who suddenly receive a windfall of cash will lose…

[Would they have learned that lesson without making that mistake? Are you even sure they really wouldn't do the same again?] It's hard to say. However, I think one really learns the value of money after having been in the work force for a while. I think that experience may have had a positive impact on their decision making had this happened later on in their life. [To quote Time, "About 70 percent of people who sudd…

> I think one really learns the value of money after having been in the work force for a while.

Perhaps you should consider using that as your criteria rather than discriminating based on age. I'd still disagree, but that policy would deprive fewer people than your current proposal.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#490

Post by Unklejoe »

slavik81 wrote: post #489
Unklejoe wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Would they have learned that lesson without making that mistake? Are you even sure they really wouldn't do the same again?] It's hard to say. However, I think one really learns the value of money after having been in the work force for a while. I think that experience may have had a positive impact on their decision making had this happened later on in their life. [To quote Time, "About 70 percent of people who sudd…

> I think one really learns the value of money after having been in the work force for a while. Perhaps you should consider using that as your criteria rather than discriminating based on age. I'd still disagree, but that policy would deprive fewer people than your current proposal.

True. Even though there's a correlation, basing it off of age would screw some people who are otherwise capable. Point taken.
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