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

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

#91

Post by cgh »

unethical_ban wrote: post #63
SirMaster wrote: post #6

When has UBI actually every been tried? I don't think any trials really qualify as "Universal". IMO the universal part is the hard part and changes it drastically. Compared to a small limited trial of giving people money, where does it all come from when it's actually universal? And what are the effects on the overall economy when it's universal?

Taxes. One form of UBI is essentially a negative income tax rate for people making below a certain line. As more and more jobs get automated away, we will either become a society of wage slaves with a small upper class controlling trillions (wait a minute...) or we will distribute the benefits of an automated society to all people.

This Canadian site attempts to lay out a "who pays for it" plan of sorts: https://www.ubiworks.ca/howtopay

A lot of it is pretty hand-wavy and I'm not sure how legit it is. I'm posting it because they claim it won't cause taxes to increase for the majority of people. Instead, it comes from mainly corporate taxes and other sources.

Of course, it seems likely that this just passes on the cost to ordinary people in the form of increased costs for goods and services. As for inflationary effects, I'm not qualified to say.

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

#92

Post by vharuck »

lenkite wrote: post #47
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.

The folks down-voting you down appear to have no problems with hundreds of billions of dollars spent on War every year - the money for that was printed out of thin air. The current U.S. Biden administration even removed the debt ceiling to do this!

The US has raised the debt ceiling multiple times across multiple administrations. And the debt ceiling isn't raised so that we can pass a specific bill or take a specific action, it's so we can pay for the bills and actions we agreed to months beforehand.

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

#93

Post by orangecat »

pydry wrote: post #37

UBI is sold to us as a pipe dream by people who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the minimum wage from being raised. It's also not a particularly new idea. The Roman empire had UBI in the form of Cura Annonae.

UBI is sold to us as a pipe dream by people who will fight tooth and nail to prevent the minimum wage from being raised.

If there's a UBI, why do you need a minimum wage? A UBI gives people negotiating power to decline unfairly low wages, because they don't have to face homelessness or hunger if they're not working.

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

#94

Post by zooq_ai »

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…

Bravo!

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

#95

Post by CityOfThrowaway »

tnel77 wrote: post #74
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 th…

You're right, the problem in the US was multi-causal. I mention that case because it is probably the best large-scale deployment of a UBI-like program any country has ever done.

While we can't completely untangle the exact contribution magnitude, I think we can deduce that at least some meaningful % of the shortage/inflation situation was caused by the UBI-like program.

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

#96

Post by corford »

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]

https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/fiscal-narratives-for-us-...

https://www.johnhcochrane.com/s/inflation_PPP.pdf

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

#97

Post by orangesite »

Sam Altman diverting the salaries of folk replaced by AI into his own pocket: "Yeeeerrrrs… I think we should replace those salaries with taxes paid by the people who still have jobs left and don't y'all think I'm just such a wonderful guy for saying such a socially progressive thing?"

What the hell is everyone smoking? Is there no systemic awareness left in the world?

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

#98

Post by dfxm12 »

tuututututu wrote: post #14

I'd like to make food stamps automatic for everyone. It makes pretty good sense to me. Everyone who has a driver's license or is enrolled in school or is registered to vote gets food stamps. The most hateful southern baptists in my family who are still screaming about Obama's death panels can still agree that donating to food banks is a good idea. I can understand people who say "I don't want to pay higher taxes to s…

Why is food different from roads? Schools? Police? Fire departments? Have these people ever made an insurance claim? Set foot in a state/national park? Cashed a stimulus check? etc.

My point is, someone saying "I don't want to pay higher taxes to support other people" has already lost the plot. They are already receiving benefits paid for by someone else. If they weren't already convinced that this is a good thing, they're either not paying attention (in which case, why would they start now?), or care more about keeping poor people suffering than improving their own lot in life (which, in my experience, is more likely).

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

#99

Post by mattw2121 »

tuututututu wrote: post #14

I'd like to make food stamps automatic for everyone. It makes pretty good sense to me. Everyone who has a driver's license or is enrolled in school or is registered to vote gets food stamps. The most hateful southern baptists in my family who are still screaming about Obama's death panels can still agree that donating to food banks is a good idea. I can understand people who say "I don't want to pay higher taxes to s…

Make them transferable and I agree. If I get the food stamps and can easily transfer them to my adult kids, that would be great. Yes, it would probably mean drug dealers will take food stamps, but whatever.
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