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Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

gizmodo.com

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Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#51

Post by jvanderbot »

netbioserror wrote: post #30
TriangleEdge wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The money has to come out of the system somewhere. Governments have the ability to print money out of thin air. What I'd like to see is how UBI impacts inflation and economic growth.

Right. And if they can print it from thin air and just give it to everyone, then it has no actual value. Price discovery will force significant inflation on every class of product and service because that is what people will be buying with it. Its effectiveness drops with scale, which is what they are not testing. It's great that UBI works in a lab, but this experiment has been run at multiple points in history and a…

Yeah, as much as I hate the inefficiency of some wellfare programs in the USA - their inefficiency is a feature in that it provides a kind of scarcity.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#52

Post by giantg2 »

The speech in this article is highly politicized.

"Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time"

Depends on how we define "works" and also on the scope. All of the examples given involve small sample size programs that end rather quickly, programs that are not universal but based on some need, or programs funded by state owned natural resources (oil).

I appreciate the examples and some of them history around them. I don't agree with the title since most of these are small, short programs, and they are usually not universal. These sorts of tests do nothing to explore macroeconomic effects if everyone recieved the same money. They also don't explore longterm sustainable funding solutions.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#54

Post by danpalmer »

pydry wrote: post #37

UBI is sold to us as a pipe dream by people who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the minimum wage from being raised. It's also not a particularly new idea. The Roman empire had UBI in the form of Cura Annonae.

Really? Thinking of all the people I know personally who think UBI is a good idea, I think all of them would say raising minimum wages is also a good idea. There may be a few fiscally conservative influencers pushing the idea (sama?), but among regular people I think it's only those who strongly support spending on social security, worker rights, minimum wages, etc, who support it.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#55

Post by Acebulf »

woofcat wrote: post #2

I don't think anyone is doubting that giving people money improves their lives. That seems to be the conclusion of these studies. However what is seemingly _never_ studied is how to finance such an operation. The money has to come out of the system somewhere. Is it with new taxation on XYZ, or slashing services somewhere else etc.

The thing that I question is why is this requirement for this fiscal balancing only required for giving money to poor people? In 2018, the US Government added $2 trillion to the US national debt to give a 5k/capita/year subsidy to the top 5% of earners.

If we're already in the business of chucking money at people in fiscally irresponsible ways, I don't see why changing the target from "rich people" or "oil companies" to "everyone" is suddenly a problem.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#56

Post by ben_w »

stray wrote: post #31
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are the effects on the overall economy when it's universal? Inflation.

Hyperinflation.

That depends how it's funded. Printing money? Yes. Taxing economic rents? Probably not. Owning a fully automated workforce? Yet to be determined.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#57

Post by HideousKojima »

sodality2 wrote: post #9
woofcat wrote: post #2

I don't think anyone is doubting that giving people money improves their lives. That seems to be the conclusion of these studies. However what is seemingly _never_ studied is how to finance such an operation. The money has to come out of the system somewhere. Is it with new taxation on XYZ, or slashing services somewhere else etc.

I’ve seen proponents suggest we take the money from other welfare programs, as paradoxically the means-testing overhead costs so much that we can afford to pay everyone $X instead of thousands of workers to process thousands of welfare applications. I haven’t seen specific numbers about this though. Edit: I'm failing to find numbers to support this now.

I hate welfare programs as much as the next libertarian leaning conservative, but overhead from means testing (and admin overhead generally) really isn't a major expense. Medicaid overhead is a grand total of 5% of the program.

It's really just UBI advocates handwaving away the question of funding.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#59

Post by Detrytus »

Universal Basic Income has never been tried, because all the trials lack "Universal" component to it, they are limited in scale.

Once you start giving out free money to millions of people the only result is inflation, and people receiving UBI would not be better off at all.

In fact, the closest thing I can think of that would be similar to introducing UBI was "500+" program in Poland, which, as the name implies, was about giving families 500 PLN monthly per each child that they have. As you might have guessed, inflation in Poland has been brutal since then.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#60

Post by jsbg »

darthoctopus wrote: post #34
monero-xmr wrote: post #12

In the US, we gave money to people during the pandemic. Worker shortages in low-skill labor resulted and inflation hit 10%. I think that's the major flaw - young, childless people without responsibility see no reason to work, when they can watch Netflix all day, either paying their mom some token rent or sharing a flop house with a bunch of friends.

> Fears that the experiment would engender laziness in participants were not borne out in the project’s findings: “The ‘laziness’ contention is just not supported by our findings,” the chief data analyst of one of the experiments said. “There is not anywhere near the mass defection the prophets of doom predicted.”

why are the results of a study with a limited reach preferable to the results of an actual universal real world event?
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