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Why we should all have a basic income

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Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#481

Post by sobani »

crdoconnor wrote: post #366
chriskanan wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's one of the biggest open questions with UBI. What percent of people would use UBI to do productive or self-improving works vs those that solely play video games, watch TV, and feel like life is meaningless? I think psychologically, people need something to do with themselves. However, a counter argument is that many of the people that UBI may benefit the most might have jobs that they loathe. I'd love t…

There was a job guarantee program instituted in Argentina (called plan jefes e jefas - meaning head of household). The jobs were typically care-style jobs (looking after elderly, etc.). The government then tried to shift the women into a sort of UBI (called Plan Familias) by offering more money than under Jefes Unsurprisingly the majority of women took the money. Perhaps more surprisingly (to advocates of basic incom…

> Perhaps more surprisingly (to advocates of basic income, anyway), they took the money and continued to do the jobs "for free".

Isn't this exactly what UBI advocates say will happen: People will start doing useful tasks, because they no longer need to find a job?

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#482

Post by sobani »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #474
prostoalex wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's basically a huge implicit fraud scheme to redirect subsidized student loan money to things that aren't strictly education, which no one can admit to out loud or explicitly negotiate for I agree, but how does showing up with a wad of cash instead of a check from a student loan agency increase your negotiating power? Large number of international students today (Chinese and Saudi until recently) paid cas…

> I agree, but how does showing up with a wad of cash instead of a check from a student loan agency increase your negotiating power? Because cash you can spend somewhere else. Suppose you like football. If the money is "student loans" then you can spend it by attending a school with a big fancy college football stadium and subsidized tickets for students. If the the money is cash then you can use it to go to that sch…

About health costs, things will become more expensive if every person has to negotiate for themselves. People who have a medical problem, want the problem fixed. They don't have the time or ability to find a good alternative. An insurance or government is in a much better position, because they have the time and expertise to shop for an alternative beforehand and make it an all or nothing proposition for the producer.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#483

Post by braveo »

simonh wrote: post #456
braveo wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI is intended to increase people's autonomy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autonomy 1. the quality or state of being self-governing; 2. self-directing freedom and especially moral independence exactly. The point is that they can do what they want.

This was in the context of talking about people playing WoW all day every day. That's not the sort of lifestyle UBI is intended to enable or encourage.

and vehicles were never intended to enable or encourage teenagers joy riding or drunk drivers, but NO ONE is going to seriously argue we should get rid of vehicles as a result.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#484

Post by drdeadringer »

crdoconnor wrote: post #360
closeparen wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things weren't created primarily to give people work, they were created to fulfill demand for electricity and transportation, respectively. If no one needs to commute to work in Manhattan, then there is no need for a Lincoln Tunnel. If no one has business meetings or disposable income for leisure travel, then LAX and LaGuardia would be idiotic. We do see this kind of stuff - huge infrastructure projects with no…

>Those things weren't created primarily to give people work They absolutely were. They were created under the auspices of the Public Works Administration (originally Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works) - part of the 1933 New Deal: https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/1... "Functions: Administered a comprehensive public works program to promote and stabilize employment ." >If no one…

Even if they were created to give people work, what is wrong with "we might as well get something useful out of this untapped unemployment"?

Define "useful" to your heart's desire, be it Hoover Dam 2.0 or Snowflake Poetry.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#485

Post by DougN7 »

stale2002 wrote: post #316
DougN7 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the price of yachts won't increase, but who cares? Do a simple thought experiment. Imagine there are 1 million poor. They, and everyone else, receive $12K per year. The poor (and those just above them on the economic ladder) will spend all of that on basic needs: food, housing, clothing, transportation. That's $12 Billion more now competing for a fixed amount of goods. What would any company/retailer/landlord do…

It is NOT a fixed amount of goods. All this money going into food, means that businesses would enter the market. That is called supply and demand. Increased demand CAUSES increased supply. Read an econ 101 textbook.

True. So where do all of these new businesses get their employees? They'll have to compete for them by raising wages (which would be good). Except people have somewhat less incentive to work now that they're getting some free money, so the wages have to be raised even more to get them to work. That translates directly into higher prices.

Each individual piece of UBI sounds good. But when the whole system gets put together, it doesn't balance out. It can't.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#486

Post by DougN7 »

jganetsk wrote: post #259
DougN7 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that thinking, the government should just turn on the printing presses and hand money out. People who had zero now have non-zero. Surely Big Macs can't go to $12,000, right?

You haven't read the article. Printing presses are not in consideration here. The whole point was that basic income is redistributive: basic income is financed by income tax.

I wasn't saying the article said printing presses would be used. But taking money that wasn't being spent (all that money corporations and the rich have stowed away) and giving it to people that will spend it is equivalent - lots of money that's not in circulation entering circulation. You end up with more money in circulation either way, with the ramifications that come with it (inflation).

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#487

Post by AnthonyMouse »

prostoalex wrote: post #476
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some cities with very lax zoning regulations, Dallas or Houston come to mind. And yet we don't see a massive migration from suburbs to the high rises. Have you actually compared rents in cities like Houston to the same sized apartments in cities with more restrictive zoning? They're lower in Houston. The reason people don't live in high rises in Texas cities is that they're so sprawled they don't need ver…

> If you own a ten story building on a lot zoned for twenty, adding the extra ten floors looks a lot more attractive before you subtract out the additional property taxes you'll owe forever if you do it. By that logic one should bulldoze the existing 10-story building and stick to owning dirt lots, realizing enormous property tax savings along the way. The reason you don't see entire cities converted into dirt lots i…

> By that logic one should bulldoze the existing 10-story building and stick to owning dirt lots, realizing enormous property tax savings along the way.

It's not that rent > The developer that builds condos doesn't really have an opinion on property taxes because paying those will be up to condo owners.

Net present value of expected future property tax comes out of what the buyer will pay the builder for the condo, and the builder doesn't build the condo when the price he can sell it for falls below the construction cost.

> In reality large-scale commercial build-outs do not depend on financing from existing renters.

How you finance construction has nothing to do with it.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#488

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sobani wrote: post #482
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree, but how does showing up with a wad of cash instead of a check from a student loan agency increase your negotiating power? Because cash you can spend somewhere else. Suppose you like football. If the money is "student loans" then you can spend it by attending a school with a big fancy college football stadium and subsidized tickets for students. If the the money is cash then you can use it to go to that sch…

About health costs, things will become more expensive if every person has to negotiate for themselves. People who have a medical problem, want the problem fixed. They don't have the time or ability to find a good alternative. An insurance or government is in a much better position, because they have the time and expertise to shop for an alternative beforehand and make it an all or nothing proposition for the producer…

You're making the argument for medical licensing, not the argument for single payer. People don't know which doctors are quacks so the government has to step in. But money is a different question -- if we required doctors to provide prospective patients with a standardized price schedule it would be trivial for patients to see which doctor charges $100 and which charges $200.

If you have government or insurance pay for everything (and then pay everyone the same amount) the buyer still doesn't know which doctor provides the best care, but now doctors have the incentive to provide no more than the bare minimum care because they aren't allowed to charge any more for better quality/convenience/atmosphere for the same procedure.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#489

Post by crdoconnor »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #470
crdoconnor wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That was the point. That was actually my point. >But a UBI also lets you quit your terrible job A guaranteed job that isn't horrible makes terrible jobs better since employers will have to compete to keep their employees.

How do you guarantee a non-terrible job to people with minimal skills? And how do you finance it? With a UBI you don't have to pay as much because people can supplement it with an actual job even if pays less than current minimum wage, and everyone who works is offsetting part or all of their own cost by paying taxes. 100% of people can collect the UBI because most of them will still be working and paying taxes, and…

>How do you guarantee a non-terrible job to people with minimal skills?

Don't overwork them, don't be unreasonable towards them, don't disrespect them and pay them a living wage to do some sort of meaningful work (e.g. care work).

This isn't that hard. The US has done it before.

>And how do you finance it?

There's a hundred different ways.

>With a UBI you don't have to pay as much

You have to pay more because it goes to everybody instead of just the unemployed and you don't get anything in return for that money.

>What if 85% of people choose the "basic job"

That's kind of like asking "what if programmers all gave up their jobs at once to become cleaners?".

> the only way to change that is to either make the "basic job" degrading

A "basic job" can establish a floor on job quality and wages. Private employers will respond to this market force by paying more and treating people better and they will complain bitterly about it.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#490

Post by PaulineCross »

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