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Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

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Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#661

Post by 6510 »

You know what? We have no idea what would happen. We should just do it and see. If it becomes a mess it will be our mess and be ours to clean up.

We can no doubt think of a million ways to calibrate the process when the need arises. Some ideas (probably not the best but its something):

Require everyone to apply for jobs and create a formal formula for it. Interviews with 1 employee, 1 employer, 1 government employee. 1 application per year seems the minimum. Permanent fines if employer or employee intentionally screws up. (not a real job opening, not showing up for the interview 3 times, etc)

Create a gov agency to repair rental homes cheaply or for free and zero interest mortgages for landlords - then hammer down rents dramatically. Invest in public transport in-to/out-of major (expensive) urban and industrial areas. Build lots of new houses fromwhere people can reach those urban centers.

etc

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#662

Post by mac01021 »

alex_young wrote: post #114

A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…

It's called a "carbon fee & dividend" and an increasing number of people are advocating it.

(https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/)

It's nowhere near enough to fund a UBI that most people could live on without additional assistance, but that's no reason not to do it. It just means you need to fund your UBI with other sources of revenue too.

And it _really_ is the best policy. Even if it did nothing to reduce emissions, it's a matter of justice. I won't tell you that you can't fly across the country every single weekend or emit a gigaton of carbon mining bitcoin but, if you do, you _really_ should reimburse me and my 2-year-old daughter for the harm you're doing to our futures. Likewise, when I heat my ridiculous suburban mansion to 80F through the New York winter, I'm harming you and your children, so I should reimburse you.

But it WILL have a great effect on emissions (if ever implemented). Probably more than any other policy we might enact.

Some of the comments around here complain about how regressive a carbon tax is. But in fact it is only regressive when not combined with the dividend. The price of a poor person's carbon footprint as a fraction of their income or wealth IS larger than that of a wealthier person. But the fact is that most poor and urban working class people's dividends will be greater than the carbon fee they pay, while people who have giant houses, travel by air a lot, etc will pay more in fees than they receive in dividends.

This page (https://citizensclimatelobby.org/household-impact-study/) has a nice chart showing the fees and where they come from for an average household in each income quintile in the USA. The expected fees for each quintile (under a $15/ton carbon fee) are $173, $219, $252, $292, $381. On another page on the same site, you can find that the expected dividend (which just depends on the number of adults/children in the household) is $288.

Lastly, this policy is currently a bill in the US House of Representatives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_D...) and is currently "sponsored" (whatever that means) by 18% of the house. Sadly almost all democrats. I think the policy saw more republican support during the few years before the current administration, but I can't find the data too easily at this moment.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#663

Post by dgzl »

habosa wrote: post #526

I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…

3. Assuming UBI has any negative impact on the value of the dollar, the fall in financial mobility you have from constantly, let's say "messing up" and losing your benefit every month would be greatly devastating. This wouldn't be a new group of people though, this would be the same homeless people we see today.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#664

Post by llamaimperative »

sjwalter wrote: post #546
austhrow743 wrote: post #466

Intergenerational wealth transfer is the root of all evil. She absolutely shouldn't be able to do that.

Wait--the root of all evil is me trying to work hard to leave something for my kids so they can have a better life than I do and, with any luck, pass on the genes that I've given them? When your policy proposals require extinguishing desires built into our minds and bodies by millions of years of evolution, you should go back to the drawing board. The root of all evil is unqualified, absolute, extreme statements, and…

Land ownership is a fairly recent phenomenon and we got along just fine with out it.

Singapore uses this system today and is a capitalist powerhouse.

The desire to build generational wealth is natural. The enormous downstream consequences of allowing people to do that will eradicate all of the wealth anyway through violent upheaval or economic collapse. It’s happened dozens of times already, and it’ll happen again.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#665

Post by imtringued »

7leafer wrote: post #538
sekai wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't Already happens, with welfare. > Predators - individuals and companies will find a way to take your UBI check from you as fast as possible Already happens, with welfare. > Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. Alre…

Already happens, why not make it even worse, right? Just for the alreadist heck of it.

Why would it be worse? Slumlords exist because they are the only ones who accept the rent vouchers. If you just receive cold hard cash you can spend it in the conventional housing market.

Welfare isn't meant to solve addiction but it could certainly kick start someone's life after they have recovered. People think drug addicts don't deserve welfare but a UBI would prevent that stigma because nobody gets excluded.

Really the only valid concern is the first one. The rich have no interest in giving up their wealth but that is only natural.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#666

Post by JacKTrocinskI »

onion2k wrote: post #544
habosa wrote: post #526

I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…

Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. If you're a poor person now you absolutely have to try to keep your horrible job else you'll lost the ability to pay rent and buy food. You have to take all the cra…

How does UBI differentiate itself from socialism, a welfare state and/or communism? Where is the money for UBI going to come from? What incentive would there be for people to work?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#667

Post by longtom »

onion2k wrote: post #544
habosa wrote: post #526

I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…

Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. If you're a poor person now you absolutely have to try to keep your horrible job else you'll lost the ability to pay rent and buy food. You have to take all the cra…

With UBI, the poor will actually be more at the mercy of the rich as they'll depend on some powerful centralized instance providing them money, instead of earning their own via providing goods to the market (e.g. services).

So, to actually solve the issue you're going to need to decentralize and de-automatize. Otherwise lots of people are going to lose their economic and hence existential purpose.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#668

Post by Aachen »

makomk wrote: post #654
hanspeter wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. In countries with a tradition to have full government care for all citizens, those cases are solved by having the payments managed for you (usually by the city). So you would have weekly smaller payments rather than a monthly payment, and you may even have the city pay your rent for you rather than giving you cash in hand. And if you still mess…

The "nanny state" is only part of what would make this unattractive. I'm pretty sure that a lot of other Americans would see this not as UBI but as the government funding landlords and making them richer.

Because addicts, when given the choice, might choose not to have a roof over their heads and thereby collectively pay landlords less, it would make landlords richer to give them reasonable living conditions standard?

It's not as if the government will rent you a penthouse. If there are no cheap apartments available in a certain place, you just don't get to live there. I've lived in a building with a fair number of government-paid apartments and the people there are very, um, shall we say "poor" in the non-monetary sense (though that too). The rents were low (that's why I was there as a student) and while I'm sure they turned a reasonable profit just like they did from the students renting there, the rents were below those of neighbouring buildings. What's more, in the Netherlands many landlords price their apartments just above the limit for government support so that even if you could easily afford a place €10 cheaper, you now can't because you are losing out on up to 350 euros a month of support. Landlords don't want government-supported renters much of the time. It's not that lucrative.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#669

Post by djrobstep »

bmitc wrote: post #652
onion2k wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. If you're a poor person now you absolutely have to try to keep your horrible job else you'll lost the ability to pay rent and buy food. You have to take all the cra…

> One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. That is a very strong statement that I don't think can be claimed at this point. In my opinion, I feel things will simply shift under UBI. People will receive UBI, but then other things, like rent, food, etc. will all just magically get more expensive. I cannot see any implementation of UBI working any better than things now unless the pr…

I see this line of thinking a lot, but it's a bad one. It's understandable that people think like this in a place like SF where landlords have grabbed up a lot of salary increases, but it really doesn't work that way.

If it was true, rents would keep climbing to 90+% of incomes but they don't. It would also imply that any other income income increases or redistribution (widespread pay rises, social security, etc etc) were pointless, you might as well give up on any kind of redistribution entirely.

Of course, if there was a UBI, there would be increased demand for stuff that low income people need like housing and food. That's the whole point of increasing equality! Shifting consumption from sports cars and chandeliers to food and shelter is the goal. But then supply would shift to compensate.

Another advantage of UBI is that even if you do wrongly assume it doesn't result in any net redistribution, it's still beneficial, because it smoothes income over the lifecycle, and a smoother income is much less stressful and unpleasant than a choppier income.

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