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

Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#781

Post by coldtea »

>The first solution is some form of nationalism, where countries enact tariffs and attempt to bring all production back to the country instead of producing it overseas. This will create higher paying jobs for those whose work was previously outsourced to cheaper countries. However, this creates less wealth overall as work is no longer given to where it’s done most efficiently. This breaks the primary component of capitalism.

On the other hand more countries learn to make things more efficiently, instead of relying on the industrial monopoly of a few efficient factory-countries like China, Japan or the US (with which they might even have competing interests).

More efficient product != more efficient society using said product.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#782

Post by qntty »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #766
sdunwoody wrote: post #761

I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…

There's similar concepts like a negative income tax of a Universal Garrenteed Income that would be more affordable than just cutting everyone a check.

In principle there's no difference between a negative income tax and UBI funded with progressive taxation. Either way, some people pay more than they get, and some people get more than they pay. The net cost as a function of income can look identical for each.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#783

Post by dd36 »

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…

There would be massive housing price and rent inflation.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#784

Post by trentnix »

There's nothing wrong with Capitalism 1.0. It's all the 'Crony Capitalism' upgrades that we need to uninstall.

UBI incorrectly assumes its capital that has kept people from producing, when it's skills. And then you're assured people will use UBI to acquire skills, but capital isn't what's preventing people from acquiring skills either.

UBI is, at its core, taking money from people producing and giving it to those who aren't. And that's not a recipe for economic growth.

There's certainly a place for public assistance, but UBI looks an awful lot like putting lipstick on the pig of wealth redistribution.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#785

Post by bhupy »

miltondts wrote: post #775

I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms. Money was invented in a time of scarcity and it was a very useful tool then. In some situations it still is today, but for many things we have more than enough for everyone, so maybe those should be provided without the need to go through the money system. Anyway, I don't know what would work, b…

I don't think there is any good or service for which we have transcended "scarcity".

Even with food production, actually manufacturing food is dirt cheap now, but it's the transportation and logistics that's the hard part — I.e. the scarcity is in the supply chain. The pricing system works remarkably well at addressing this scarcity, provided the buyer has money to pay for things. Per the OP, the diminishing returns might be overcome by fixing the "buyer does not have money to pay for things" constraint.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#786

Post by tomrod »

trentnix wrote: post #784

There's nothing wrong with Capitalism 1.0. It's all the 'Crony Capitalism' upgrades that we need to uninstall. UBI incorrectly assumes its capital that has kept people from producing, when it's skills. And then you're assured people will use UBI to acquire skills, but capital isn't what's preventing people from acquiring skills either. UBI is, at its core, taking money from people producing and giving it to those who…

Why do you think skills is what prevents people from producing?

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#787

Post by DebtDeflation »

BenElgar wrote: post #750
DebtDeflation wrote: post #744

>I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. I worry about one specific economic factor - where is this $12K/year for every American adult and $6K/year for every American child going to come from? If you take per capita GDP ($65K), subtract out the government expenditures that aren't going away like the military, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, interest on the debt, running t…

Why do you include Social Security in the list of things that won't be eliminated? I'm not American but in my understanding UBI would almost completely eliminate Social Security, along with putting a big dent in the need for Medicare and Medicaid.

At least in Andrew Yang's version of UBI, Social Security retirement benefits would stack on top of UBI and not be replaced.

https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/

I don't think anyone has seriously suggested replacing Medicare with UBI, as replacement health insurance premiums for people 65+ would almost certainly be a multiple of $1K/mo.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#788

Post by Miner49er »

john_moscow wrote: post #328

I like how the article pointed out the biggest economic problem I see in post-industrial society - instead of almost everyone being a small business owner, we have huge corporations reaping massive profits, and poor replaceable corporate drones barely making ends meet. That said, I completely disagree with the proposed solution of UBI and here's why. We humans have a rather nasty bug in our firmware: when we do not h…

> I wish we could instead figure out a system for taxing scale or subordination levels. So that having a couple of owner-operated grocery stores in every neighborhood would become a viable alternative to centrally managed Walmart with armies of corporate zombies miserable at their jobs. Of course, it would reduce the overall efficiency, but I would happily pay an extra dollar to live in a society where people are putting their energy into producing objects of value and making others happy, than see endless infighting about who deserves that extra chunk off someone else's table more.

I think one solution is to end private land ownership. Put land ownership in the hand of local communities and let them lease out land (maybe based on money, idk, no reason for there not to be somewhat of a market). Let the communities create rules for land use, but one major rule should be that land can only be used by people within the community. No Walmarts coming in and using land.

Maybe an even better rule is that land can only be leased to the people who work it - and this means all people who work it. Meaning that you can only open a business on that land if all the workers will own a chunk of that business.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#790

Post by mojzu »

sdunwoody wrote: post #761

I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…

I'm not entirely convinced by UBI yet either, however I think there are arguments that could made against your headline cost calculation.

It could eliminate/save other huge portions of the budget. It would also probably have to be adjusted based on location, or as you said it wouldn't do much good in expensive cities, which might reduce that cost further. And a huge chunk of that money is going to people who will immediately spend it on taxable goods/services which could be a big revenue/jobs boost.

It's still a huge cost though, and while I like the idea from a philosophical standpoint and some of the small scale tests have some promising results. It's still seems like a bit of a blue sky idea that could have some really bad consequences at scale.

Post reply on HN