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

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

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 236 posts

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

#71

Post by gamepsys »

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.

Warning: Ballpark numbers ahead

The 2022 budget was $1.2T across all welfare programs[0]. This includes programs people don't normally consider welfare such as the Child Tax Credit and parts of the Pell Grant.

There are currently 350M people in the USA [1]. $1.2T / 350M People is $3,428/person/year. Please note that while significantly less, there will still be some overhead in the UBI program so the actual number is lower.

This also doesn't include state budgets for welfare.

[0] https://budget.house.gov/press-release/7582

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population...

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

#72

Post by kevingadd »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #32
kevingadd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't zero sum. We've never let such concerns interfere with funding wars.

This isn’t an argument. What do you say to someone who doesn’t think ubi will scale and who is also anti war?

I'd have to see their argument. A basic "better things aren't possible because where will the money come from?" Isn't possible to engage with seriously. We don't fund our state with gold mines.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

kevingadd wrote: post #21
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.

"young, childless people without responsibility see no reason to work" doesn't seem supported by data. If their workplaces shut down where are they supposed to work?

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by tnel77 »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

While I agree with many of your points, I feel like blaming item shortages on COVID payments is ignoring the massive impacts that panic buying and shutting down ports and factories had on the situation. Yes there was more money floating around, but people were purchasing items like it was the end of days and we had factories worldwide shuttering randomly due to COVID outbreaks and various government mandates which threw supply chains out of wack.

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

#75

Post by Detrytus »

selfsimilar wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[citation needed]

Look at Poland since 2015. We don't have UBI per se, but we have uncoditional handouts of free money to families with children, which goes to about 4 millions of families (so, like half of them).

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

#76

Post by jstummbillig »

psunavy03 wrote: post #11
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.

Google "hyperinflation." Printing money out of thin air causes the existing money to be worth about as much as toilet paper.

We are actually, right now, "printing money" out of thin air. The process is called "fractional reserve banking" and is a cornerstone of modern economics systems. You can of course read up on it, but, suffice to say, if we did not do it, financial systems would be extremely unergonomic.

Hyperinflation is one of the things that could happen, when you do it badly, I suppose, but there is a lot of ways to get hyperinflation, if you do things badly.

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

#77

Post by chimprich »

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.

> However what is seemingly _never_ studied is how to finance such an operation

You haven't understood the concept of UBI. It doesn't have to be "financed". It's a different way of assigning tax and benefits.

E.g. imagine a population of only two people, Alice and Bob. Currently Alice pays £100 in tax, and Bob receives £50 in welfare payments because he's unemployed.

You could set up a UBI scheme to be net zero. Under this UBI system, Alice would pay £150 in tax, and receive £50 in UBI. Bob would receive £50 in UBI instead of benefits.

It doesn't have to cost anything (in theory). You could make it redistributive, but it doesn't have to be.

The proponents of UBI would say it's worth it because you wouldn't have the expense and unfairness of means testing for benefits, and Bob would have the incentive to look for work (any work) without any reduction in benefits. In addition people could do things like start companies on a small guaranteed wage with less risk.

Opposers of UBI would say some proportion of people wouldn't work at all if they were guaranteed an income.

There are likely many more advantages and disadvantages that would only become apparent if a country actually tried it.

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

#78

Post by kevingadd »

FredPret wrote: post #38
kevingadd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't zero sum. We've never let such concerns interfere with funding wars.

Yes we have? There's an ongoing funding crisis for Ukraine's defense, and there are legions of conservatives who are mad about the trillion + spent blowing up Afghanistan + Iraq. Taxation in the US came about to fund a war. Money is in the top-three concerns people have about war; it's right after lives lost and infrastructure destroyed.

You're saying people are mad about war funding. I'm saying the wars and dod get funded every year no matter what. Both things are true.

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

#80

Post by FredPret »

dupertrooper wrote: post #23

[flagged]

If you believe in science, you have to also believe that the free market is working. Instead of getting worked up by online talking points spewed by your fellow Bernie Bros, you should look at some stats about the wealth creation and quality-of-life stats over the past 200yrs, 50yrs, 20yrs, etc.
Post reply on HN