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Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

851–860 of 1001 posts

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#851

Promising people a never ending supply of money that they didn't earn will render people children dependent on mommy and daddy(government) to provide for them. This will stunt the growth and potential of many people. Read the finnish experiment. All that happened is that people relxed and chilled on other's people money. They had no incentive to be productive so they weren't. https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-we…

> Read the finnish experiment.

From your own link:

> Targeted basic income instead of a universal one

> The Finnish experiment was about partial basic income targeting able-bodied people without work, it was not about universal basic income. That has been a source of major confusion around the experiment and a source of critique of it.

It’s hardly fair to take as definitive one limited experiment in one country when it doesn’t even properly employ what they’re testing.

> All that happened is that people relxed and chilled on other's people money. They had no incentive to be productive so they weren't.

From what I recall from previous conversations on the topic, people in these experiments tended to take the time to invest in their own educations instead, so they could have better jobs and a better standard of leaving upon returning to the workforce. That’s far from “relax and chill”, and makes it a smart move when you know the money will stop coming in because it’s not really UBI.

We can extract good and bad things from the study and give emphasis to whatever narrative we want to pursue. Your own link mentions several caveats and shortcomings from the study; pretending it provides conclusive evidence of the failure or success of UBI would be disingenuous.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#852
An important part of the article's argument is that giving money to the people directly is best, because they know best how to allocate resources over a top down approach...

I'm sadly not convinced this is the case right now in the U.S. People do stupid things with money, especially 'the house's money'.

For UBI to be a palatable choice to me, it would have to come with a mandatory financial education.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#853

I support the idea of UBI in principle, but I think it needs to be combined with a land value tax in order to work as intended. Rents are charged at the highest the market will bear, so the UBI could just flow into the hands of landlords, and the people who it is supposed to help being no better off.

I'm not convinced that UBI doesn't just continue funneling money from the hands of working class people to the existing billionaire class. UBI doesn't guarantee housing, UBI doesn't guarantee healthcare, UBI doesn't guarantee college. Even with UBI, the existing 1% would continue to sit on more wealth than the entire working class combined.

I'll try and reframe your argument using slightly less incendiary verbiage.

UBI will continue to funnel money from the hands of consumers to the existing producers. Even with UBI, the existing producers would sit on more wealth than the entire consumer-class combined.

That producers are the ones that become billionaires is a feature of our society, not a bug. That anyone who is not a producer is at risk of starving to death is a bug of our society, and it's the bug that a UBI aims to solve.

Also these groups aren't static. Even today, who is in the top 1% changes every ~10 years. With a UBI, the mobility within those groups may be even more dynamic. A net-consumer that has the time and space to improve their skills that also doesn't need to worry about starving to death has a much higher likelihood of eventually becoming a net-producer than the same individual today.

> UBI doesn't guarantee housing, UBI doesn't guarantee healthcare, UBI doesn't guarantee college

You're right about this, and a UBI is useless unless it's also accompanied with reforms to address the rising cost of all of those things.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#854
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…

They will be less at the mercy of the less rich (e.g. 'petitbourgeois') who cannot impact the broader system, and more at the mercy of the super-rich (e.g. 'oligarchs') who will be able to influence the monolithic/all encompassing UBI structure.

this is pretty much an axiomatic property of the power concentration required to implement broad-scope social programs enforced by the state.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#856
post #851

Promising people a never ending supply of money that they didn't earn will render people children dependent on mommy and daddy(government) to provide for them. This will stunt the growth and potential of many people. Read the finnish experiment. All that happened is that people relxed and chilled on other's people money. They had no incentive to be productive so they weren't. https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-we…

> Read the finnish experiment. From your own link: > Targeted basic income instead of a universal one > The Finnish experiment was about partial basic income targeting able-bodied people without work, it was not about universal basic income. That has been a source of major confusion around the experiment and a source of critique of it. It’s hardly fair to take as definitive one limited experiment in one country when…

So pie in the sky theorizing is better than looking at the data where this has failed/is failing. "not real UBI" is now "not real socialism".

even the Stockton experiment has been propped up by private money. Its essentially a charity at this point.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-...

Furthermore, the entire benefit of UBI "is so that people don't have to work and get sick". It is incentivizing not working.

It is incentivizing the dependency on the state.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I especially buy into your third concern. Where I live, if the introduction of a UBI was followed by a drastic reduction (or complete elimination) of the means-tested system we know today, hunger would potentially become a problem for people blowing their money early in the month (or getting robbed?). This tells me the utopian ideas of replacing the entire complex system with a simple UBI isn't feasible. You'll end u…

Where I live, if the introduction of a UBI was followed by a drastic reduction (or complete elimination) of the means-tested system we know today, hunger would potentially become a problem for people blowing their money early in the month (or getting robbed?). If that happened regularly the charities would be started up again, except next time far more people would have a little extra money to give so they could be m…

[deleted]

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#858

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 hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it.

Aside from we haven't figured out how to actually pass a carbon tax despite, what, twenty years of trying. I used to be enamoured with the idea, but now I'm growing to believe it's a distraction and a waste of time & effort that just isn't going to happen in any meaningful timeframe.

There are other ways to skin this cat, and the ones we stand a prayer of implementing are the ones we need to focus on.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#859
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…

As for 1, I view it as a mutualistic relationship. Those who don't depend on UBI to live, depend on those who do to spend.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#860
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…

My main worry is housing. If we don't increase significantly the availability of housing, prices will just increase. Similarly with college education and health care that have had significant price increases in the last 30 years.
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