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Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

greshm.org

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Re: Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

#71
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is the first comment that suggests you read the article. At least kinda? Not sure anymore. US banks create, though lending, 10.7 Trillion per year. If money creation though lending was shut down entirely it would work out to something like 3500 per person per month. You would have the same amount of money in circulation. Rather than trickle down though clogged tubes it would stimulate spending directly. The eco…

> US banks create, though lending, 10.7 Trillion per year. for which interest rate? how much was it creating when it was at its lowest rate?

Seems a great question for the author. He should put some numbers with the theory.

Re: Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

#72

I'm interested in this as a faster intervention than QE. $10 given to a low income family will likely be spent that week. $10 of QE will just sit on somebodies balance sheet. Understanding BI as a tool of monetary policy seems to remove the ideologically charged view we see when it is considered as part of the welfare state

Unfortunately, the paper does nothing that I can see to address the criticisms of UBI in general, such as the pivotal 1930-1950 works of Mises on Socialism.

In such an environment, those with the majority marketshare will simply cooperate and adjust their prices upwards through artificial constraint of supply, inevitably creating imbalances which result in chaotic shortfall that will need to damped, and these people do so with a plausible fallback, "we live in chaotic times". The people will need to be bailed out for the shortfall.

Cooperation prevents economic calculation, leading to the chaotic whipsaws described by Mises as the Socialist Calculation Problem.

The only way to dampen the whipsaw is through money printing, and there is a hard upward limit to money printing after which the currency collapses.

That point is what is generally considered stage 3 of a ponzi scheme, after diminishing returns, where outflows exceed inflows. With regards to debt-based money printing (non-reserve/basel3 [based in objective value]), that transforms when GDP The limit is silently enforced by legitimate market participant producers who exit the market once profit can no longer be made (as the stable store of value is debased and as a monetary property is lost). Since most companies use financial engineering, the time when this is noticed will be long after the critical period since that type of engineering decouples decision-making from short term constraints.

This can lead to catastrophic failure, as the dynamics cascade in similar ways to an avalanche, or a dam break where the trigger is not noticed, and the consequences of mass and motion following a conservation of energy cannot be stopped.

While we are talking about the dynamics of human action, which are not nearly as well defined as physics, the dynamics are no less powerful.

Re: Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People receiving UBI will have any additional income they generate deducted from UBI. This is human nature. I do not personally feel that people receiving financial aid is parasitism, but I do understand that is what it will be called by it's opponents, and they have the power to frame public opinion far more than the proponents of UBI. I do not see the points advocating UBI realistically addressing how every day dir…

> People receiving UBI will have any additional income they generate deducted from UBI. This is human nature. Then it isn't UBI. By definition, you get exactly the same amount as everybody else, regardless of their income from whatever source. This means that you're always better off if you take a job.

But, some people are more equal than others, somehow, always. There's always more important someone calling the shots, for their betterment first. You speak as if you don't live in this same human civilization, where justice is merely a nice idea.

Re: Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math does not work for UBI to exist at all, and all I see are wishful unrealistic thinking that might work in a more mature civilization we do not live within.

All I see is you making sweeping claims no justification or any information, data, or anything at all to back it up. Saying "The math doesn't work" when we literally could convert current welfare to $4 grand a year for every American adult as UBI means you are just flat out wrong.

try. plus, 4K a year is a far cry from UBI's premise.

Re: Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

#75
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even rational to not keep emotion completely out of something like this, since UBI is not meant to maximize economic output, it's meant to improve the quality of life for most people. In order to asses how that quality of life can be improved, it's necessary to treat humans as humans, and not as some automatons for which a specific KPI needs to be maximized. Any proper assessment of quality of life has t…

This take is too far removed from reality. There isn't even a good minimum wage for people who want to and can actually work. employment laws are too much against workers and for employers. there are endless social issues that require funding, why would UBI be a good idea given all that? Yeah, treat humans as humans. the disabled, the elderly, the mentally ill, those who can't care for themselves, they should get hel…

> This take is too far removed from reality.

I wasn't trying to argue for or against UBI here. Rather, I was trying to make a case that it's rational to have some emotional judgement, if we can try to use it as a proxy for how the life of those that benefit from UBI would change.

Personally, I also think that UBI is too much right now, but I think it should be debated as well since the approach one level under it (massive wealth redistribution) deserves an honest chance, which it only gets when it's no longer the extreme position in public debate.

Re: Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]

#76

I'm interested in this as a faster intervention than QE. $10 given to a low income family will likely be spent that week. $10 of QE will just sit on somebodies balance sheet. Understanding BI as a tool of monetary policy seems to remove the ideologically charged view we see when it is considered as part of the welfare state

Another angle: We tell people to "vote with their wallet" to let the better producers rise to the top. That works a lot better if more people actually have something in their wallet to vote with.

This doesn't really work because the big firms that consumers boycott have political leverage and magically become too big to fail.

It also presupposes that unregulated capitalism is the best kind of market. But "unregulated market" only means unregulated in ways that benefit people.

BI and UBI are better ways to ensure that the people that governments actually represent are supported when they need it. They are more direct and have quicker market benefits.

What really gets me is that UBI would be great for everyone, even the rich and the big business. It allows more consumers to buy more, ensures only productive, motivated and properly rewarded workers are in the workforce, lets artists create fine art rather than doing meaningless busy work so that they can eat, and even lowers the cost and inefficiencies of social safety nets.

Conservatives can't see how anything can be anything other than a zero sum game. They are always trying to maximise their wealth, they assume that everyone else is too, but really, most of us are just trying to find enough to eat, have a home and stay alive.

They are scared of losing what they have because they want to take what anyone else has. They hide that by saying it's unearned or whatever, but they mostly haven't earned what they have. They have at best grown what they were given. They don't know what it's actually like to have nothing.

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