Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 114 posts

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#51

Post by goliatone »

jasonlfunk wrote: post #37

> Everyone should get enough money to be able to refuse to work. That way, the incentive is shifted to employers, where it should be. Want someone to do something? Pay them enough to do it. This sounds nice in theory, but how doesn’t this result in price inflation? Not only are you going to be taking a portion of businesses’ profits in taxes, but now you are increasing the cost of labour. And frankly, some jobs suck…

I always see UBI mentioned when people discuss automation and the disruption of labor. Automation could address your last concern regarding inflation and jobs people don’t want to do.

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#52

Post by candiodari »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
candiodari wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about I just point out the huge flaw here: Bank bailouts, in theory, are to be paid back, with interest. In a lot of cases they were. Not all, of course, but the economy turned. Net, bank bailouts were a good investment. QE may turn out to be as well (I may doubt that, but truth it the jury's still out) If that same deal can be made, believably, for basic income, we wouldn't be having this argument: we'd provide…

> group of expenses without any useful work. Pensioners? Rentiers?

Rentiers are a very small group that arguably organize resources, they don't do nothing. For instance, it is commonly accepted that the markets that allow for rentiers to exist far outperform communist and the older king/nobility directed markets and even mercantilist markets.

Pensioners are a temporary aberration. Of course we can take care of a fixed and tiny percentage of the population while everything else is growing. The issue is, that we've stopped growing. Population growth in the west stopped long ago. That means that for the coming 20 years or so pensioners will "grow" exponentially (or rather exponentially growing birthrates from 50-60 years ago will get transformed into pensioner growth), whereas the working population will actually shrink. Even in China. In Japan it will crash.

And in case you feel like automation will save us ... well, where is it ? Productivity growth stopped in the 80s, along with the introduction of large scale automation.

Unless something dramatically changes from now on there automation looks like at best it can temporarily prevent worse than the current situation.

And what could change ? Having computers organize things is old hat by now. Having factories, actual production automated ... even older hat. Mines, ... just about the only thing with real economic impact remaining is house building.

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#53

Post by PoachedSausage »

rentmoney wrote: post #49

UBI is free money for landlords. Just once, just one single time, I'd like to hear or read a convincing explanation for how UBI will not be completely captured by rents. I'm still waiting.

You fund it with a Georgist style land value tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#54

Post by rjsw »

dingo_bat wrote: post #50
rjsw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to UBI for you is that you either spend the rest of your life in a castle or your head ends up on a spike. It isn't a coincidence that Thomas Piketty is a Parisian, you can still see plenty of signs of the Revolution on buildings around the city.

I don't see any support for your assertion. Why wouldn't we continue the status quo for a 1000 years? There certainly have been long periods in history where royalty has lived in riches and the majority have worked their ass off to support them. Only at the end do the royals get killed. But right now we're just starting! I expect this to last much longer too this time, since we have more automation now.

We are not preserving the status quo right now, the rich are getting richer.

There is also the point that 1000 years ago the poor didn't know that they could kill kings, there are more examples of how to do it now.

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#55

Post by pedrocr »

Simon_says wrote: post #42
ChrisSD wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing spending tends to be regressive. Rich people end up paying less tax as a proportion of their income while the poor end up paying more. It is however less visible. Income tax is at least upfront about how much is taken whereas tax on spending is spread out and often invisible unless you're actively thinking about it. Sure you can make people happier about taxation by making it less visible but I'm not sure that…

I never really understood the argument that taxing spending taxes rich people a lower proportion of their income. Even allowing for investments and savings, rich and poor are all going to spend the money they have in their life (ignore or tax the estates). If there’s a 10% sales tax, then 9.0909...% of your wealth will go to it, no matter how much you make, invest, save.

>rich and poor are all going to spend the money they have in their life (ignore or tax the estates).

This is a spherical cow in a vaccum style argument. If you ignore estates and also ignore property and other investments that don't pay sales tax then yes, everyone pays the same sales tax. But the rich will disproportionally own investments and properties that will then be passed on to their heirs. Over any period and particarly over a few generations because of compounding this means taxing spending is indeed very regressive.

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#56

Post by uoaei »

akvadrako wrote: post #45
uoaei wrote: post #2

Basic income is a bottom-up stimulus package, like how bailouts for banks are "stimulus" packages but nestled in Reaganomics, i.e., expecting the money to trickle down. Except that bailouts sequester the money almost exclusively in the banking industry and so are useless for everyone except those who are already rich, and the government itself. Basic income fills the economy with money that can be really spent, and l…

I don't know why you say "free market fanboys" don't like basic income; libertarians seem to be one of the major supporting factions.

How do you figure that? Libertarians are by definition against any government involvement in the market. Governments giving citizens money is something that falls under the category of "government involvement."

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#58

Post by slfnflctd »

vertex-four wrote: post #20
hal9000xp wrote: post #7

Yes, it's a free money! What else it could be?? You give free money to people who don't work (and probably don't want to work at all) and you naively expect them to have high-level of responsibility in the sense they eventually find a job and pay back money in form of taxes. Do you know what's happen if you give free money to people? They just ask for more money! They won't feel guilty for not working because they wo…

Perhaps, as a society, we don't need everyone "working" (as in participating in work-for-wages, as opposed to other forms of ad-hoc and uncompensated work). In fact, the idea that we do is very new - it's only really in the last 60 years or so that women, a good 50% of the working-age population, have entered the workforce. Instead of using involuntary sexism as a basis for shrinking the working population, perhaps b…

Anecdotally, I have been on the receiving end of 'free' food and shelter from a friend or family member on several occasions (as an adult fully capable of working, but un- or under-employed). The benefits to my mental health were immediate and lasting, which in turn benefited those around me. I had free time and energy to further my education, write songs, produce videos, and try out some business ideas. I was also glad to take up more of the yuckier household chores, so those who were earning more wouldn't have to.

In the end, I found that yes, it was easier to be 'more lazy', but that allowing myself to didn't make me happier (more contented, perhaps, but not by much in the long run). I realized I would ultimately be better off bringing in more money doing something that matched well with my higher abilities.

As a man, it didn't fully occur to me until I read your comment how closely my experience matched that of housewives of the past-- many of whom, as it turned out, very much wanted to do more sophisticated and lucrative work once they had the chance.

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#59

Post by Simon_says »

akvadrako wrote: post #47
Simon_says wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Basic Income isn’t socialism, I shudder to think of what the author would consider socialism.

Socialism might be central planning. Basic income is almost the opposite of central planning, because it replaces all sorts of conditional and focused welfare with what is equivalent to a negative income tax. That's why so many libertarians are on board with the idea.

That doesn’t sound right to me. Speaking as someone with mild Libertarian tendencies, UBI seems pretty contra to Libertarian ideals. Not the UBI itself, but the taxation required to fund it. Can you give references to any well-known Libertarian thinkers who are on board with UBI?

Re: If You Think Basic Income Is “Free Money” or Socialism, Think Again

#60

Post by dingo_bat »

rjsw wrote: post #54
dingo_bat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any support for your assertion. Why wouldn't we continue the status quo for a 1000 years? There certainly have been long periods in history where royalty has lived in riches and the majority have worked their ass off to support them. Only at the end do the royals get killed. But right now we're just starting! I expect this to last much longer too this time, since we have more automation now.

We are not preserving the status quo right now, the rich are getting richer. There is also the point that 1000 years ago the poor didn't know that they could kill kings, there are more examples of how to do it now.

> We are not preserving the status quo right now, the rich are getting richer.

The status quo is that some people are rich and some are poor. To maintain it means the same people (more-or-less) stay rich and the same people stay poor.

> There is also the point that 1000 years ago the poor didn't know that they could kill kings

What? People did not know about death?

Post reply on HN