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The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

theatlantic.com

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Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#91

Post by pizza »

truxus wrote: post #45
jaibot wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is free - someone is paying for it. When you give people specific things instead of money, you're taking choices away from them, insisting that you know what they need better than they do. If you give people money, they can decide what they need most and go do that. Maybe I don't need housing because I can live with relatives and use my money for education. If you insist on free housing instead, you take that…

What if you decide to fund a self-destructive addiction? Or send the money to a foreign country? Is that in the public interest?

100%

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#92

Post by pizza »

Density wrote: post #50
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wages tend to (or below) subsistence. // In a pure capitalist system wages [for jobs where there are a surfeit of capable people] should surely tend to zero until enough proles have died to introduce scarcity and buoy the labour price.

Jesus Christ this is a really thought provoking image of capitalism at the limit.

i think it's basically why the black death raised wages for its survivors

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#93

Post by dredmorbius »

gigs wrote: post #54
ChuckMcM wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am understanding your argument, it is a sort of 'thermodynamics' argument against UBI. It argues that there exists a fixed supply of capital and that transfer payments funded by taxes are always counter balanced by an increases in prices to keep capital supplies in balance. If that isn't a correct interpretation of your argument, then the rest of this won't make a lot of sense. The reason this sort of thermodyna…

If the justification for this is rising housing costs, then giving people free money to pay the high rents is just going to cause housing to be even more expensive. We've already tried this experiment. It's called financial aid for college. Tuition prices just keep tracking federal aid increases. http://college.usatoday.com/2015/08/20/report-federal-aid-ri... If they gave the money as credits to developers to build m…

That's why rent-producing goods are subject to rents taxation. See the land taxes suggested by Smith, Ricardo, and George.

Colleges and other shared-expense systems (see also: healthcare, military spending, public spending generally) present and pose other challenges, but they are not the same as the situation as applies to housing, specifically.

You don't give builders credits to build houses. You tax them for the potential revenues of a given quantity of land. Since land is nonfungible, the consequence is to both develop undeveloped lots, and to increase the density of utilisation of developed losts.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#94

Post by dredmorbius »

atomical wrote: post #51

If everyone is getting $500 why wouldn't the landlords raise rents by $500?

That's why UBI (or other mechanisms for assuring minimum living wages) will almost certainly have to be accompanied by land tax and other taxes on rent-generating assets.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#95

Post by dredmorbius »

erentz wrote: post #63
stult wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're not giving UBI to everyone. Just the people who don't earn more than UBI level. For everyone else, UBI becomes like the standard deduction under the current US system.

No. You give UBI to everyone. And you also tax everyone’s income, usually with a flat tax.

s/flat/progressive/

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#96

Post by dredmorbius »

yellowstuff wrote: post #47
biggc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would UBI reduce Medicare and Medicaid?

You would have to pay for UBI by: 1) Cutting spending elsewhere. 2) Raising taxes. (Or collecting more from a growing economy.) 3) Printing money. Probably it would be a combination of all 3, but since UBI can offset entitlement cuts it makes sense to me that that's where the government would find a lot of the money. Raising taxes is unpopular and can be counterproductive if done to the extreme, and printing money is…

Also by increased efficiency through reducing the administration costs of means-tested social programmes.

I'm not an advocate of replacing all means-based programmes with UBI, but it should see a significant improvement over many such.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#97

Post by ThrustVectoring »

plushpuffin wrote: post #87
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way Social Security works - with the exception of federal taxes and criminal judgements, SS payments are largely exempt from garnishment or other actions to seize assets to repay debts. You can't lose your UBI by taking a loan and gambling the proceeds away, because the debtor cannot force you to use UBI to repay the loan.

That makes sense for debts, but how do you handle people who immediately blow their monthly UBI payment and don't have anything left over for food or rent? At least with food stamps, you kind of have to use it on food.

Weekly or even daily payments would cover part of that. You know the amount that should be added to an account each day pretty easily, since it's the same for everyone. If they waste it and still can't afford food or rent, well, at some point you have to make that their problem.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#98

Post by wav-part »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #32
rothbardrand wrote: post #3

One of the things about UBI is that these pilot programs aren't UBI, because they aren't universal. Giving a segment of the population free money is going to benefit that segment, no question. Welfare and Quantitative Easing are both examples of that. But when you make it universal, my economics intuition says that the effect will be washed out by a commensurate rise in prices. Or put another way, you can subsidize t…

If I am understanding your argument, it is a sort of 'thermodynamics' argument against UBI. It argues that there exists a fixed supply of capital and that transfer payments funded by taxes are always counter balanced by an increases in prices to keep capital supplies in balance. If that isn't a correct interpretation of your argument, then the rest of this won't make a lot of sense. The reason this sort of thermodyna…

Alt-Bob will still be on min wage and still anxious and fearful due to inflation.

And why do you think Govts will do better job at identifying/investing in potential productivity than rest of the market ?

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#99

Post by djrogers »

vacri wrote: post #75
truxus wrote: post #40

The problem with UBI is that it doesn't promote social behavior. In fact it promotes anti-social behavior, since a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition of this benefit. Charity is not a legitimate role for government.

> Charity is not a legitimate role for government. Charity is the raison d'être of government. A government is there to run your society. That means doing things for people, even if it's just printing passports and employing a police department.

> printing passports and employing a police department.

You’re just making up an alternate definition for charity - that isn’t a valid argument.

Re: The latest experiment in basic income will be coming to Stockton, California

#100

Post by djrogers »

dredmorbius wrote: post #94
atomical wrote: post #51

If everyone is getting $500 why wouldn't the landlords raise rents by $500?

That's why UBI (or other mechanisms for assuring minimum living wages) will almost certainly have to be accompanied by land tax and other taxes on rent-generating assets.

Wait, so not only does everyone have more money to spend on rent but it now costs more to maintain rental property? You’re just guaranteeing that rents will rise dramatically.
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