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The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

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Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#51

Post by delecti »

hermannj314 wrote: post #4
jsprogrammer wrote: post #2

The byline appears to have a redundancy, or a contradiction: >There is an increasing global conversation about the idea of a ‘Universal Basic Income’ – a universal weekly payment to all eligible citizens. Wouldn't everyone be eligible for a universal basic income? Are all persons eligible citizens? Is the article actually talking about an ‘Eligible Citizens' Basic Income’?

I'm guessing criminals (current and former), drug addicts, and the willfully unemployed wouldn't be eligible. These are the vulnerable, marginalized and (sometimes) disenfranchised groups that America loves to shit on when it comes to social programs and basic rights.

If anything, currently imprisoned criminals should definitely keep receiving at least some of their UBI, so they can land on their feet when they're released rather than just resorting to crime again.

I see no reason why we should exclude drug addicts. What level of drug do you start to count against a person? More people die from alcohol than marijuana, and I barely know anybody who isn't on some level addicted to caffeine. Prescription opiates are entirely legal, but lots of people are addicted to those.

The willfully unemployed are more or less the entire point of UBI. The theory is that as society increasingly moves towards automation, there will be fewer and fewer jobs, making the willfully unemployed a rapidly growing segment of the population, and that's a good thing as it will allow people to do with their time what they will.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#52

Post by gshulegaard »

humanrebar wrote: post #47
gshulegaard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I don't see this as being a problem. First, I am a believer in economic momentum and money multiplier dynamics (perhaps irrationally so). But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. Our current welfare system places too much restriction and I feel leaves too many welfare recipients with non-optimal…

> But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. So what's your counter to the 'broken windows' objection? It's pertinent in this case because we're talking not about broken windows but broken (addicted, depressed, isolated) people.

That's a rather complicated question, but in general I think a lot of people tend to believe in a greater broken windows effect than actually manifests in practice...from the Economist article:

> Mr Anoche’s first move on getting his windfall was to buy a new roof. Not only is thatch leaky, but it also needs to be replaced twice a year, at $40 a time. He spent half the money on his home, and half on timber and chickens. Those two businesses now turn a monthly profit of nearly $90. “If you’ve got the money and the mindset,” he says, “you can change your life.”

> Of course, not all the money has gone on things that make development economists happy. Sitting on a rough bench in his moonshine bar in a banana grove, a tipsy Bernard Okumo says his wife used her windfall to bail him out of jail, where he was facing a murder charge. But the first independent study of Give Directly’s methods, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro (who is a former board member of Give Directly), suggests this sort of spending is unusual. In randomly selected poor households in 63 villages that have received the windfalls, they say, the number of children going without food for a day has fallen by over a third and livestock holdings have risen by half. A year after the scheme began, incomes have gone up by a quarter and recipients seem less stressed, according to tests of their cortisol levels.

My own opinion still tends to believe that the net benefit will be positive, despite misapplications. At the moment the things I have read seem to indicate that while misuse occurs, it generally is the exception to the rule, not the other way around.

Edit: I should also point out that UCT (Unconditional Cash Transfers) are concluded to only be part of the solution to poverty in the article. CCT (Conditional Cash Transfers) are also useful for correcting deeper systemic issues (such as undervaluing education in the poor).

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

> UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too.

I don't think you understand the problems it seeks to solve.

Among the major problems it seeks to address (different advocates may not consider all of these important, and some may consider additional problems):

(1) Means- and behavior-tested (and use-limited) welfare programs substitute external judgements of what will provide utility for the recipient for the recipients own judgement, and expend extensive resources applying the means- and behavior-tests, all of which causes significant inefficiencies.

(2) Using minimum wage to reduce economic duress in the labor market, while it has some demonstrated value such that many UBI see it as a net positive compared to no policy to address economic duress, also has drawbacks in that it eliminates the possibility of work that provides a mutual benefit being done, without economic duress, where the pay would be low. UBI provides an alternative approach to address mitigate economic duress and thus allow more work that provides net economic benefit to be done.

(3) Wealth and income inequality is accelerating, and in a way where the saying "a rising tide lifts all boats" is not an accurate reflection of the results, with virtually all of the gains in recent economic expansion going to the very top of the distribution, and this produces a variety of social harms, and is expected to be reinforced as automation and other economic changes continue to reduce the relative value of labor other than the most skilled (resulting in returns increasingly going to capital and shrinking pool of elite labor). Some mechanism to constrain this growing inequality is seen as desirable to address the social impacts.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#54

Post by notahacker »

ThomPete wrote: post #44
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an…

Fast food vendors are already now starting to look for ways to automate as they continue to push the prices down on their products. Prices that needs to keep going down in order for them to 1) survive the competition, 2) deliver affordable food from the majority of their customers who are making less and less money.

The Automat has been around since before most of the fast food chains, yet half a century of continuous innovation in process optimization has continued to conclude that paying a bunch of people to mostly stand behind counters exchanging cooked food for cash is worth the money. And unlike the average service industry employee the fast food worker isn't even expected to be a particularly good generalist, is mocked for perceived lack of social skill and isn't operating in a role where new tasks can be invented to supplant tasks which have largely been automated away.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#55

Post by JDiculous »

chrisco255 wrote: post #36
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely - and UBI would free people who want to work from having to find dead-end jobs. They would have the financial freedom to pursue education, volunteering or educational unpaid internships.

This idea of a "dead-end job" is foreign to me. Only privileged, spoiled people talk like this. All job experience is valuable and will teach you lessons if you let it. If you can't look at even an entry-level job as a chance to gather experience and use it as a stepping stone to something better, and you'd rather sit back and be idle and privileged with some welfare check over working then you're the problem, not th…

No, dead-end jobs are very much a real phenomenon. Working as a janitor is not a stepping stone to anything except more minimum wage janitorial work.

Meanwhile as a software engineer, the work you do can be put on your resume and used as leverage for better opportunities.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#56

Post by brbsix »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

By unworthy I assume you mean unworthy of our support and sympathy?

What differentiates the "19th century style" worthy and unworthy poor is that unworthy poor are thought to have made poor decisions and brought about their circumstances on themselves whereas the worthy poor were seen as suffering through little to no fault of their own.

Prior to the welfare state (which makes no such distinction) the "unworthy poor" served as an example of what not to do. Do we really want to discard that wisdom (even more than we already have)?

Put another way, is every poor person equally deserving of our support and sympathy? I would think not.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#57

Post by beat »

ThomPete wrote: post #44
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an…

Fast food vendors are already now starting to look for ways to automate as they continue to push the prices down on their products. Prices that needs to keep going down in order for them to 1) survive the competition, 2) deliver affordable food from the majority of their customers who are making less and less money.

"Now starting"? Fast food vendors have been automating since fast food was invented. And now, the industry is bigger than ever.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#58

Post by crdoconnor »

hermannj314 wrote: post #10
jupiterrising wrote: post #5

[deleted]

The current system in America provides a disincentive to work. Social programs generally are not considered as income and do not preclude you from being eligible for other social programs (i.e. the benefits stack). This creates the unfortunate situation that some people that don't work at all receive more annual income (in kind) from the government than their working neighbors. It works out to nearly $60k per year in…

>The current system in America provides a disincentive to work.

It also artificially eliminates jobs that need to exist via austerity (e.g. not building necessary infrastructure), offshoring (moving manufacturing jobs abroad) and massive transfers of wealth to the already wealthy (e.g. wall street bailouts).

The techno-utopian notion of us approaching a post-work society glosses over these three things in a major way.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#59

Post by c22 »

hermannj314 wrote: post #16
josscrowcroft wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I'm guessing criminals (current and former), drug addicts, and the willfully unemployed wouldn't be eligible." I believe "criminals (current and former), drug addicts, and the willfully unemployed" are all eligible under most proposed schemes, although the income level may differ for current prisoners. Edit: according to the RSA blog introducing their proposal: "Prisoners would not receive it." https://www.thersa.…

I know. I have no doubt the British have a sensible system that treats human beings with dignity. I was speaking about US hypothetically. I would think when the state acts as ward to an individual, the agency would receive the BI on their behalf. I've always felt basic income would greatly simplify many funding / administrative questions. Perhaps my view is too simplistic.

> I would think when the state acts as ward to an individual, the agency would receive the BI on their behalf.

Probably not a good idea if we want to see our prison population lessen in the future.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#60

Post by golemotron »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

So noble. When people see others spending their money in ways that they wouldn't, do you really think notions of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' will go away? People are judgmental. History and current events show it to be a dependably consistent aspect of our nature.

As an aside, I think that the biggest challenge in this century will be to cast aside idealistic visions of 'tabula rasa' humanity (largely based in Marxism and subsequent modernism) that were part of the 20th century's program. You can't fix people, you can only create systems that accommodate, deflect, and channel toward positivity rather than work against their nature.

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