Every political faction has an "idea" about UBI. That's the core of what's wrong with UBI. People don't want their income to be subject to political whims, and change every election cycle.
The problem is that, before automation, people had something to trade for their daily necessities - their work. Work was tied to each individual and that empowered people. Now, with automation, people will have nothing else to offer, but still have the same needs as before. So people lose their influence and become subjects to the whims of whomever decides the quantum of the UBI. What if they set it too low? What can a person do against the state in that case?
I have been thinking about this problem, and came to the conclusion that the only way to assure people's future is agriculture and self-reliant industry. If corporations won't hire people, people need to be "hired by the land". I see cooperatives being formed where people buy land and cultivate their own food, possibly using technology, even robotics, that is in the public domain and can be used freely.
In the long term it will be essential that AI and robotics be implemented in the public domain otherwise only the big corporations will reap the benefits of automation. Remember what happens when a concentrated source of wealth appears: with operating systems, the Windows monopoly; with search - Google; with social - FB, with oil - arab countries (where huge social problems appeared as a result). People need to be in control of their sources of income. UBI is just a promise from the state and "the 1%" that we will not be left to starve. But can we trust them? We need to become self reliant.
As a side note, a number of technologies will be essential for self reliance, such as: solar, water filtration, 3D printing, robotics & AI, agriculture (including the right to create seeds, that has been usurped recently by big corps), open & free education, generic drugs and of course open source software.
I would add that, with more widespread education and college attendance, people also expect more freedom to decide what they do with their time. From a psychological standpoint, they feel they've given themselves some authority by becoming educated and expect to be able to exercise this authority. It's hard to do this if you're forced to spend most of your time realizing someone else's dream (by working for a living) and, due to a stagnant economy, this servitude doesn't even net you enough to build a strong base.
I never thought about the education angle, but in a way yeah - what's the point of being well-read, curious, interested in many things, if you never get time to use any of that because you're tied to spending most of your life working as a cog in an industry, often on things of dubious ethical value?
Some problems with this idea though -- even with a lot of intense agricultural improvements (sky gardening, hydroponics, automation, etc etc) it's pretty hard for a family of 4 to grow all their own food. And it's nigh-impossible for the carrying capacity of the earth to support everyone subsistence farming.
As far as I can tell, the main problem is not even our socioeconomic structures (those currently suck for distributing the efficiency gains of innovation, it's true) but the extent that we feel stuck in them.
That is there's a dual problem where it is very difficult to change policies and because it's very difficult we begin to think that it is impossible to shape the structures we are living in and try new things. (There are also immense political incentives to stay with the status quo in the current system -- see the DEA refusing to reschedule marijuana today) - so we don't have a lot of experimentation.
I don't know how UBI will work long-term or how it can be configured the best. I don't know how any policy proposal will work really, societies are dynamic and complex enough that hypotheses are difficult to come up and difficult to test -- but experimentation is important! So I'm mostly excited to see some people somewhere beginning to experiment and at least start floating the idea that laws/policy is mutable and shapable depending on the outcomes we want.
Anecdata: from my travels in indigenous areas in various parts of the world, and from my experience with organic farmers in the US (not really comparable I know), I would say that the variance is high. With modern medicine and transportation (to bring some produce and things such as handicrafts to market for supplementary income) in some climates and soils the life of subsistence farmers is not at all terrible. Many involved make materially more rewarding choices when they can, but (and again I know this is not really comparable) I know successful PhD scientists (one a biologist and another a physicist) who gave it all up and became organic farmers in the mountains in the SE U.S. and are happy for the choice they made.
First of all, it's expensive. Guaranteeing every American a certain sum of money will cost a ridiculous amount.
Second, it's immoral. Taking money from one person and giving it to another by force is wrong, especially when your justification is that you think they have too much money.
Fourth, the fear mongering about automation needs to stop. Automation will not put everyone out of work and it will not spell the end of capitalism. At every stage of technological advancement, you get people, like the UBIers, who run around like chicken with their heads cut off, Luddite Fallacy. The fact is that automation makes some jobs obsolete but compensates by creating entire industries profitable. Did Software Engineering exist in 1920? No, so don't be surprised if in 20 years a new field has arisen.
I really want to stress the point about automation because I think it is the largest source of misinformation out there. In 1870, 50% of the US labor force worked in agriculture. Today guess how many? 1.2%. Why hasn't the unemployment rate skyrocketed due to the automation in agriculture that allows us to produce more crops cheaper and with less people? Because the increase in labor and decrease in food costs allowed other industries to flourish!
Can't believe you're making the nutty "taxation is immoral" argument. We all have a say in the laws. That's why it's fair we all have to live by them. Disagree with the laws? Change them. Or in this case, argue against them ever being implemented. But you won't get far arguing taxation is immoral.
Not saying I agree with the "taxation is immoral" argument, but have you ever changed a law before? Not exactly a walk in the park. The effort it takes to change even small government policies should clearly show that, for the most part, nobody really has a say in what the law is.
It's not something that's done by one person, alone.
But certainly I vote, I protest, I write letters, I convince others to. I work for an advocacy organization. I knock on doors and make calls. I believe it's not nearly enough to "just vote." And if that's all someone is doing, that person has little room to complain.
The taxation is immoral argument is an argument against democracy.
I think you're absolutely right that the "taxation is immoral" argument is one against democracy. But I still go with democracy, but with protection we ALREADY have in place to protect human rights.
I'm no expert. However, I think taxation becomes immoral when the amount you pay in taxes, is more than the amount that you keep... so anything above 50%?
Have you ever done the math of much taxes you actually pay (hint: products you buy include a ton of taxes)?
Anyway, taxes don't matter. All taxes return to circulation (unless government is radically changing economic policy). What people are really saying is that they want to be better off than some other group of people.
Are you kidding?
An upper income taxpayer in California pays 39.6% federal, 10% state. On top of that there are sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, unemployment benefit insurance, the 3.4% Medicare surcharge, car registration taxes and fees, transfer taxes on assets, and estate taxes when you die.
Explain to me how that doesn't add up to more than 50%?
Mitt Romney paid 14% federal, that doesn't include state. And the person I was responding to said that there is "nobody" paying more than 50%.
FYI, he paid 14% federal because most of his money came from carried interest which is taxed like dividends. The 14% is only after the same income is taxed at the corporate level at 35%.
My argument wasn't that the tax itself is immoral, although I'm a flat tax guy, but rather that where the money is spent and how can easily be immoral.
I agree that argument is nutty! That's why I didn't make it. Where did I say, in fact you supposedly quote me, "taxation is immoral".
I said taking money from some and giving it to others by force is immoral for the reasons people like him give.
Taxation is moral so long as it is spent on programs that benefit everyone. The military, roads, a court system, the post office, police, etc.
Taxation is immoral when you take from someone you "feel" has to much money and give it to someone you think "deserves" it.
I know it's easy to make emotional arguments and I know it's easy to feel charitable with other people's money, I'm in no way rich btw, but you have to see the problem with that?
> We all have a say in the laws. That's why it's fair we all have to live by them.
Tyranny of the masses is a thing and something our founders tried to prevent.
You wrote, "Taking money from one person and giving it to another by force is wrong." You had an "especially" in there, so you think it particularly applies here, but you still said that statement is true generally.
And UBI advocates generally say it benefits everyone. In fact, that's why they prefer it over other government programs! Because it goes to everyone! I get the policy disagreement on this, but that's still different than the "taxes are immoral" argument. And that's the one that bothers me when I hear it because it's an attack on democracy.
As to our founders - yes, they built protections in our Constitution. Is your point that UBI is Unconstitutional? Because that's a legal argument I'd be interested in reading!
> And UBI advocates generally say it benefits everyone.
It benefits the poorer at the expense of the rich.
>In fact, that's why they prefer it over other government programs!
I would support the UBI as a replacement for the current welfare system but only as a replacement and only because it is less morally bankrupt and ineffective. Just to clarify, I don't support the UBI in general but if you're willing to completely get rid of our current system then we can talk.
> Is your point that UBI is Unconstitutional?
No that was a response to the commenter supporting Democracy over Republicanism.
But the argument is it benefits the poorer more than it hurts the rich.
A society should search to maximize utility. Let's make some numbers up. One starving person has a utility of 1. One not starving person has a utility of 10. One mega-ultra-rich person has a utility of 100. One ultra-rich person has a utility of 99.
If you take money from 1 mega-ultra-rich person and give it to 2 starving persons:
99-100 = -1
2*(10-1) = 18
+___
+17
So the society gains 17 units of utility from the change. Are you claiming that 1 unit of utility for the rich is more valuable than 18 units of utility for the poor? Because the rich person agreed to society's contract, and figured out that they gain much more utility from roads, labor, police, laws than they lost from UBI. A rich American wouldn't be rich if they didn't receive any benefits from society.
> But the argument is it benefits the poorer more than it hurts the rich.
This is a really hard point to prove.
> A society should search to maximize utility.
"Society" doesn't do anything. There is no hivemind. We are each individuals pursuing our own self interest. It is up to the individual to help those who need it, not a small group of people who think they know what we should all be doing.
> One starving person has a utility of 1. One not starving person has a utility of 10. One mega-ultra-rich person has a utility of 100. One ultra-rich person has a utility of 99.
If you take money from 1 mega-ultra-rich person and give it to 2 starving persons: 99-100 = -1 2*(10-1) = 18 +___ +17
You are going to have to clear that up for me because I am frankly not understanding it.
> A rich American wouldn't be rich if they didn't receive any benefits from society.
Yes and society benefits from having rich people with capital invest in companies that produce things we want. It's not a fixed pie.
The main issue I see with this line of thinking is that you simply cannot speak for "society" and whenever we as a species tried to organize everything to our personal standards it has failed miserably.
>Yes and society benefits from having rich people with capital invest in companies that produce things we want. It's not a fixed pie.
That's my entire point. It isn't a fixed pie. The whole concept that a person "owns" part of the pie is dubious, because they relied on everyone else to get that part of the pie.
>you simply cannot speak for "society"
I'm not speaking for society. Society is speaking for society by voting.
>whenever we as a species tried to organize everything to our personal standards it has failed miserably.
What are you referring to? Because I see:
-public services
-public education
-firefighters
-single payer healthcare
-law & order
-criminal justice
-Software standards (you're talking to me over a "personal standard" called TCP/IP)
The rich have nothing to do with UBI. It's the middle class, or new machines/automation, that we can only take from. Lets do a little thought experiment. Lets forget money and make some assumptions.
First, lets assume that after UBI the total amount of work done does not change. Then lets assume that after UBI the poor does not work any harder and certainly neither does the rich (do the rich even work at all?). So if poor were to come out ahead from this deal, then it must be either the middle class, or the new machines (automation), that are now working harder.
And thus if we come up with new automation, or a way for the poor to work more, then UBI does not have to come at anyones expense.
You are assuming a static system in which wealth transfer is a zero-sum game. Unfortunately that isn't the world we live in. It is entirely possible that administrative systems to transfer wealth could utterly destroy the economy (for example, Venezuela).
In particular I'm at a loss to understand the arguments for UBI that assume the system could/should provide a sufficient income for everyone to 'live' independent of any other source of income. How exactly would that work? Wouldn't the people actually working be just a bit unhappy being taxed to support people who didn't work at all? Wouldn't people on the margins simply stop working? Wouldn't this system drift into a completely unsustainable configuration?
In Scandinavia everyone is already guaranteed a certain amount of income by law. If you can't get it by working, then it is provided by welfare. I don't see UBI being any different.
But you're right. I don't know how people in the US would react. Maybe they would see it as an evil tax from rich to poor and never accept it. However, I'm arguing that it doesn't have to come with any extra tax burden.
There is an UBI experiment starting in Finland in 2017. If it proves to be successful, then I have no doubt that it will be implemented elsewhere too.
Everyone benefits from a strong middle class and not-too-poor class. Including you. Also I believe there is an argument to be made that more equal society is better for everyone involved.
What if it were true that free market nor capitalism no longer benefit the poor, what do we do then? I think this can be argued since all markets are already regulated (thus not entirely free) nor is capitalism taken to its logical extreme anywhere in the world.
> What if it were true that free market nor capitalism no longer benefit the poor, what do we do then?
If that were true then we would switch to a better system. I don't think it is and I don't think there is one.
I don't know what capitalism's logical extreme is but if you are talking about anarchy then I am not for that. I believe government serves a very important role in capitalism. It enforces contracts (legal system), protects third parties (environmental hazards), and defends against foreign or domestic aggression (police, military).
This isn't to say capitalism is perfect! Of course not but it is better than every other conceived system and has proven so by bringing millions out of poverty.
Afaik income inequality has been rising despite the fact that markets have been deregulated. Of course the two may have no correlation, but if the current trajectory continues, then I suppose it's inevitable that something has to be done. As far as I can tell, if we must do something, then we can either deregulate more or implement socialistic schemes such as UBI.
So you think it makes more sense for the government to force companies to pay a minimum wage? How is that a free market? Yet without a minimum wage, poverty in the US would be tremendous.
Wouldn't the market be freer if we slowly replaced that minimum wage with UBI (i.e. decrease minimum wage and increase UBI over time). The market would then be free to set prices more accurately because there would be a lower artificial price floor. This also helps create more jobs to offset the ones lost to automation, since people can afford to be paid less, a wider variety of jobs can be economically viable. Additionally, people would have more freedom in find jobs that they enjoy and are well suited for. All of this would increase economic efficiency.
Thus, yes, UBI could benefit everyone by making our labour market freer and more efficient. Basically, UBI is a form of economic infrastructure, and thus is a MORAL thing to spend taxes on.
> So you think it makes more sense for the government to force companies to pay a minimum wage? How is that a free market? Yet without a minimum wage, poverty in the US would be tremendous.
That is an assertion/opinion, not a fact. You are also confusing a problem (poverty) with a solution (minimum wage). There are many other ways to tackle poverty that don't involve distorting labor markets with minimum wage. There is also a strong argument to be made that a minimum wage that is above market prices hurts low-skilled workers by making it illegal for them to be employed.
Personally I'd rather have the challenge of supporting people with low-paying jobs vs the challenge of supporting people with no job at all.
I don't think anyone would ever argue that a government should do things it shouldn't. The most common disagreement is not if the government should do more than it should, but what exactly it should do. :P
> Taxation is moral so long as it is spent on programs that benefit everyone. The military, roads, a court system, the post office, police, etc.
> Taxation is immoral when you take from someone you "feel" has to much money and give it to someone you think "deserves" it.
Dude... you're just framing it differently. You can easily look at UBI and taxes as they currently are as moneys from individuals that go into a large pot which is then spent to help the greater good. Roads do that, police do that, and so does public assistance programs like social security and welfare. But somehow UBI is different because it is cash? It's all the same. It does the same basic thing: lower income inequality.
It isn't "feeling" they have too much money and "deserving" it. It would be a calculated number that is used to maximize total utility of the economy. You're the one making the emotional argument here.
Not sure why anyone these days would oppose a system that would lower income inequality from the absurd point it has reached.
If there are ten people in a country and money is dispersed in this way:
Bottom 2 each have $10
Middle 6 each have $20
Top 2 each have $50
I would support a system that takes say... 10% from everyone.
Bottom 2 are taxed $1 each == $2
Middle 6 are taxed $2 each == $12
Top 2 are taxed $5 each = $10
They then put all of the money in a "pot" to be spent on a military. This benefits everyone because a poor homeless person in Alabama will be defended equally as well as a middle class secretary in Georgia.
However, if you tax the Top 2 for an extra 10% which comes out to $10 more and then put it in a "pot" that will only be spent on the Bottom 2, we have a problem.
This is a problem because you are treating 20% of the population unfairly simply because they have more money than the other 80%. This is being charitable with their money and not letting them decide to do with it as they please. I support the poor in my own way by donating money, volunteering for charity, etc. but it is wrong for you to take a larger percent of my money and give it to another group of people for arbitrary reasons.
> It would be a calculated number that is used to maximize total utility of the economy.
I would love to see the geniuses and God level economists who can make those calculations and factor in every aspect of the economy. You can't, it's impossible.
Riches have more to gain from a working society and more to loose from a failing one.
Or as Adam Smith puts it:
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
In that sense, it's quite natural that the richer you are the more you contribute.
It's interesting that in your example you seem to tax wealth and not income. I don't know of any country in which the tax system is based around wealth and not income.
And indeed, a flat tax on wealth would probably be the fairest tax, but I imagine that it's a lot harder to do than taxing income or consumption.
Wealth redistribution programs do benefit everyone in that it prevents masses of people from getting desperate enough to murder you and take your stuff.
> Why hasn't the unemployment rate skyrocketed due to the automation in agriculture that allows us to produce more crops cheaper and with less people? Because the increase in labor and decrease in food costs allowed other industries to flourish!
The unemployment rate is still high (~9%), and thats just people still looking who haven't given up yet.
Lowest labor participation since the '80s, and minimal recovery? Hell, I didn't know things were that bad.
The 9% figure is all-source underemployment, though. It's a way better number than unemployment rate, but it's misleading to cite it as though it's the same number politicians reference.
I meant "better number" as in "far more representative than the jobless-and-looking rate". I objected to calling it the "unemployment rate" without caveat, because that term usually refers to jobless-and-looking and therefore threatens to cause confusion.
The unemployment rate would be closer to 50% if everyone that "should" be unemployed now were. We can argue about the recovery and other economic problems, I'm simply saying automation isn't a source for unemployment, maybe in the short term but definitely not in the long term.
Depends on what you consider basic needs doesn't it? If humans only consumed their basic needs than I agree, we should be scared of automation. The thing is as we become more prosperous, our basic needs are met and our other needs expand. Do you need a cell phone? Do you need a car? No, of course not, but people demand them, and other people supply them. The problem is that the automation people are making sweeping statements about all of our needs being supplied by automation. I don't think that's possible. I also don't think its wise to take advice from a Keynesian.
Oh come on, we've been over all of this a hundred times here on HN.
> Second, it's immoral. Taking money from one person and giving it to another by force is wrong, especially when your justification is that you think they have too much money.
Also known as taxation, or living in a society. If you don't like money being taken from you by force then fine, just please opt out of all the services and benefits the society provides for you. This is in fact entirely doable, and it's called "renunciation of citizenship".
RE the automation angle, you're ignoring the automation quality aspect. Humans can basically provide three types of labour - physical labour, cognitive labour and social labour. The first type is already almost completely eliminated by the first wave of automation, starting with industrial revolution. Current wave of automation is making inroads in the second one. Just how many people you think we can fit in jobs which value is mostly created by the fact they're done by a human (e.g. psychologist, waitress, nanny)?
Renunciation of citizenship is not an effective way to opt out of the state for a few reasons,[1] such as:
1) There is nowhere on Earth that someone can go to escape the reach of government.
2) There is no reason why the anarchist should bear the burden of leaving. If someone comes along and starts extorting you, but says you can leave their area of extortion, you are not obligated to either pay them or leave.
In case you rely on social contract theory (or implied/tacit social contract theory), here is a brief explanation of why it is wrong.[2]
>> If someone comes along and starts extorting you, but says you can leave their area of extortion, you are not obligated to either pay them or leave.
Ok, so you're just declaring yourself king of the US? You're allowed to travel wherever you want without playing by any of the rules the rest of us have agreed to?
There are plenty of places in the world with no or non-functioning government, mostly Antarctica and subsaharan Africa, but there are also plenty of barely-inhabited islands where you could probably live off the grid. Just have to figure out food, medicine, etc.
I have not declared myself king, and I don't have any more authority to tell you how to live than you (or the state) have over me.
Did you agree to the rules? I didn't agree to any, and I don't know anyone who did; most people just follow them. There are some interesting theories on political authority derived from democracy, but all that I've seen are fatally flawed.
Antarctica has many (overlapping) claims by non-Antarctican countries, so it is not a good place to go and avoid states. If you go to Subsaharan Africa, you are still subject to the government of whatever state you are in, whether it is 'failed' for now, or not. More importantly, you haven't explained why the victim is the one who has to accommodate their oppressor.
And you haven't explained why I don't have a pony.
You don't get a patch of sovereign land as a birthright. That's never how it worked, anytime in history. You can play by the rules here, you can go someplace with different rules, or you can go someplace with no rules. Plenty of rural areas in the 3rd world with no effective government presence.
I'd also consider the whole dynamics over the course of history. Many times people wandered into uninhabited lands. They always eventually ended up forming societies and governments to regulate the commons and avoid infighting. This seems like a feature of human nature.
Hey, it's not like they got those "uninhabited" lands for free, unless we're talking about the first migrations out of Africa. They had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and genocide their neighbors before they got any uninhabited lands. Now these anarcho-libertarian kids want to just get lands without any of that hard work butchering people. Sigh.. kids these days. No work ethic or respect for history.
I think this is a wrong point of view for the entire issue. After all, one of the primary reasons people form societies - and societies as they grow form governments - is to prevent the oppressor scenario you describe. You can say that maybe every generation of adults should decide again if they like this idea, but that seems a bit inefficient.
Consider instead a different question - what authority your parents have over you when you're a child? After all, you haven't agreed on anything. Aren't they an oppressor, that often forces you to do things (like eating broccoli) against your will?
The parents/children example is an interesting one, and parents are usually given authority over their children until the child reaches the age of majority. The problem with this reasoning is that there are a few possible conclusions (which I can think of):
1) The state has authority over its citizens until the citizens reach a certain level of capacity. As an adult who makes most of his own decisions, I believe I have a level of capacity which allows me to make good decisions without a state. This seems reasonable, as the state has declared me "eligible to vote", and perform other tasks significant to the state, which appears to be an endorsement of my level of capacity.
2) The state is our eternal guardian, and has authority over all of us forever, thus North Korea and other totalitarian states have the moral authority to oppress and direct their people in ways that seem wrong, because we are but children.
The other problem with this reasoning is that it doesn't really define what gives a state this authority. If I declare my own state "The Kingdom of Nickff", and invade (a portion of) Canada, I have the same authority as the previous government, though I may be 'cruel' and 'despotic'.
> Oh come on, we've been over all of this a hundred times here on HN.
I'm new here! Don't kill me!
> Also known as taxation,
I wrote a lengthy reply to this argument below.
Automation:
There are still tons of physical jobs. The point is that even when automation "almost completely eliminated" the first type, unemployment did not skyrocket. I'd rather base my policy prescriptions on history and well documented economic factors than wild speculation about the effects future automation will have.
> The point is that even when automation "almost completely eliminated" the first type, unemployment did not skyrocket.
Yeah, the labor pool moved to the service / cognitive jobs. With automation taking big bites off services and mental work, where should the labor pool move next? Now, I know there's a lot of place in marketing and all kind of bullshit jobs, but it surely has its limits, if not economical then those of mental health - bullshit jobs aren't exactly good for one's self-esteem.
That lots of humans are required to work the land, or that the horses are important for logistics and transporting people were both well-documented and established facts for many thousand years. Until at some point, they stopped being true.
> Yeah, the labor pool moved to the service / cognitive jobs.
I'm sure you are right but I would argue that trying to quantify cognitive jobs is foolhardy and I am not convinced in the slightest that automation is capable of replacing them. Having said that, I have time and time again been surprised as to how ingenious human beings are with creating jobs! Industries no one ever thought of are now major industries. Humans are far more adaptable than horses. That's kind of our thing.
> Automation will not put everyone out of work and it will not spell the end of capitalism.
The problem isn't going to be putting everyone out of work, it's going to be putting a quarter of the country out of work or loosely attached to the labor market.
The social costs for this are going to be absolute huge. Our norms are not ready for that many people to not work, and you only need a handful of people with little to lose to have massive social disorder.
Automation WILL put people out of work. Just looking at my agricultural example that is true. My point is that those people found other jobs in other industries which is why the unemployment rate isn't currently 52%. There is a reason why economists use the term "technological unemployment."
It's not 'automation' it's free/low-tariff trade pacts with cheap labor countries supported by both corporations and politicians (both Democrat and Republican)
Blaming tech and automation is all a lot of hand-waving and finger pointing away from the real issue.
The jobs lost to those trade deals are generally pretty crappy jobs. We'd be better off if we captured some of the value those treaties create and redistribute it to those negatively impacted... with something like UBI.
> The jobs lost to those trade deals are generally pretty crappy jobs.
Not to mention, that if those jobs hadn't gone to Mexico because of NAFTA, they would have gone to China, or southeast Asia somewhere. There is pretty much no way they would have stayed in the US.
It's also the case that the US manufactures more goods now than ever before, but with fewer people. We manufacture more goods per worker than ever before -- that's because of increases in productivity, only some of which are due to automation. Those increases in productivity almost certainly would have happened with or without the various trade agreements we have put in place over the past few decades.
Pretty much all the "death of American manufacturing" stories neglect this.
You can find a lot of unemployed steelworkers and abandoned factories, but those factories have largely been supplanted by newer, more efficient ones. 'Onshoring' is becoming popular because domestic production is actually cost-effective once you factor in the low ongoing costs and defect rates for automated production.
So NAFTA mattered, and it may have changed how automation happened (I'll bet automating still-running factories looks very different than offshoring, then onshoring from scratch). But it didn't change the essential structure of what's happened - manufacturing was going to move away from mass American labor regardless.
The argument is that NAFTA caused low-wage jobs to move to Mexico instead of to Asia. Suppliers in Mexico work closely with US suppliers, because they are geographically close to one another -- therefore, the supply chain stayed in North America. If the jobs had gone to Asia, the Asian suppliers would probably have worked with other suppliers close to them, rather than US suppliers. So the US suppliers would have lost their business partners, and many would have gone out of business.
I think we should also keep in mind that trade happens whether you have free-trade deals or not. Even with US tariffs of 2.5% on cars and 25% on trucks, Japanese car companies did very well in the US and took a substantial amount of market share away from domestic automakers in the 1970s and 1980s, back when all of their cars were imported from Japan (they build many in the US now, though). The Japanese cars were so competitive that Americans chose to buy them even though they cost more than American cars, due to both the tariffs and shortages -- Hondas sold substantially above MSRP for a while due to demand, for example. So, unless you prevent imports from coming into the country at all, you still have to compete whether you have free trade or tariffs.
People tend to go "trade deals are economically efficient, so they don't decrease employment!", but that's not true. They generally do decrease US employment in shitty jobs, while increasing efficiency. The global economy isn't Pareto optimal, and it ought to be possible to move those gains to the people who would otherwise be hurt.
The value doesn't need to be captured because it isn't lost. The value is simply distributed across the entire economy by lower costs.
There is room for policies that support workers displaced by economic change (i.e. unemployment insurance) but free trade helps to maintain a vibrant, adaptive, and productive economy (i.e. to create wealth).
Highly regulated trade is riddled with preferential treatment for politically connected firms or industries. This is a great way for politicians and bureacrats to wield power, exchange favors, and generally funnel value away from consumers and towards the favored firms and industries.
> An odd coalition of conservative, libertarian, and liberal intellectuals has advocated for Basic Income over the past 60 years.
This, of course, is the (political) downfall of UBI. That coalition will stand together right up until someone has to draft an actual Senate bill implementing the thing.
Then, the liberals want to phase out existing social programs gradually, or implement it as a more-palatable negative income tax. The conservatives want to drug test applicants, and add a "family bonus" to promote two-parent homes. The libertarians want to set a low price-point to encourage work, and tie it to ending student loan programs. And so on.
Basically, UBI has real value, but the current popularity is gained from being all things to all people. WIC and SNAP are concrete enough to hate, but UBI is still so ill-defined that people can 'agree' without having any overlap on what laws they would actually support.
It's worse than you think. Even if all politicians agreed on what they wanted for UBI today, there is no reason to believe it would remain that way for long. There are any number of reasons people would want to tinker with it in the future, and some of them will be valid and will deserve to be considered -- for example, should disabled people receive more money under UBI, because they have a higher cost of living due to the necessity of wheelchair purchases, a wheelchair lift for their vehicle, or other kinds of equipment? Should UBI payments be made to people who are incarcerated?
There is no country in the world I am aware of that has passed a law that implements a simple, elegant concept, such as the ideal form of UBI, and resisted the urge to tinker with it over the years.
Furthermore, our current welfare systems are the way they are for powerful reasons. WIC, SNAP, the EITC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc. all exist the way they do for a reason, and those reasons won't go away if UBI is implemented. It's very likely that UBI will end up being a re-implementation of the same ideas behind WIC, SNAP, the EITC, and other programs, for the same reasons those programs existed in the first place. We will end up turning UBI into something similar to the welfare system we have now. Tyler Cowen has been very perceptive on this point: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...
Your final paragraph actually brings to mind the famous Don't Rewrite Software essay. Specifically: "it's just a simple function... but it has grown little hairs and stuff on it and nobody knows why. Well, I'll tell you why: those are bug fixes."
I imagine that as UBI goes to the table, someone will point out that unreliable mothers will squander the money and fail to feed their kids, and so we'll replay the same arguments that created WIC. Someone else will point out that UBI doesn't save the suddenly-unemployed from defaulting on their payments, so for stability's sake we should have payments scaled by lost income, and we'll reinvent unemployment insurance. Etc.
Obviously the existing welfare program could be streamlined and improved, but you're exactly right that it exists as-is for a reason. All the little convolutions exist either to make it more politically viable, or to handle some objective more specific than "give money to the poor". That's not going to disappear because UBI looks pretty.
From personal experience, unemployment scales terribly. It capped out for me at around $1,200 a month, pre tax. it's been a long time since I've tried to live on that little, and I hope it doesn't happen again.
We need a word for this dynamic, which also surfaced in Brexit. You had the "dey turker jerbs" crowd, the sovereignty crowd, the free market crowd, and the racist crowd - and the only common element between them was "Brexit", rather than any kind of unified vision. And now we're stuck with an a priori decision with no idea how to go about implementing it in a sensible way. Cries of "shouldn't we have thought of this before?" abound. Yes, we should.
I think a more successful democratic process should involve at least three steps:
1) Should we even consider doing this thing?
2) What's the best way of doing this thing we can think of?
3) Having given it our best, should we go ahead with it?
I hadn't made the connection, but you're right. This pattern comes up constantly when people become allies over some narrow point of convergence. In some cases, like UBI, the alliance will probably fall apart before anything gets done. In other, like Brexit, some huge change gets accomplished by a coalition that all wanted it for different reasons.
At least in the case of Brexit, the awful error was giving a simple up/down referendum. If the option to leave had been tied to a clear next step, it would have shattered the coalition and probably failed.
I'm not sure if you can regulate something like this, or if you just have to push the David Camerons of the world to not screw up so badly, but forcing people to put whole processes up at once would probably force a lot more movements to sort out whether they actually have any common ground.
Like a social fulcrum - a tiny point upon which large changes are made, yet really it's the lever and the force(s) behind it which make up the bigger picture.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadThe problem is that, before automation, people had something to trade for their daily necessities - their work. Work was tied to each individual and that empowered people. Now, with automation, people will have nothing else to offer, but still have the same needs as before. So people lose their influence and become subjects to the whims of whomever decides the quantum of the UBI. What if they set it too low? What can a person do against the state in that case?
I have been thinking about this problem, and came to the conclusion that the only way to assure people's future is agriculture and self-reliant industry. If corporations won't hire people, people need to be "hired by the land". I see cooperatives being formed where people buy land and cultivate their own food, possibly using technology, even robotics, that is in the public domain and can be used freely.
In the long term it will be essential that AI and robotics be implemented in the public domain otherwise only the big corporations will reap the benefits of automation. Remember what happens when a concentrated source of wealth appears: with operating systems, the Windows monopoly; with search - Google; with social - FB, with oil - arab countries (where huge social problems appeared as a result). People need to be in control of their sources of income. UBI is just a promise from the state and "the 1%" that we will not be left to starve. But can we trust them? We need to become self reliant.
As a side note, a number of technologies will be essential for self reliance, such as: solar, water filtration, 3D printing, robotics & AI, agriculture (including the right to create seeds, that has been usurped recently by big corps), open & free education, generic drugs and of course open source software.
Probably resulting in a lot more indie game devs (artists), but it could be worse.
As far as I can tell, the main problem is not even our socioeconomic structures (those currently suck for distributing the efficiency gains of innovation, it's true) but the extent that we feel stuck in them.
That is there's a dual problem where it is very difficult to change policies and because it's very difficult we begin to think that it is impossible to shape the structures we are living in and try new things. (There are also immense political incentives to stay with the status quo in the current system -- see the DEA refusing to reschedule marijuana today) - so we don't have a lot of experimentation.
I don't know how UBI will work long-term or how it can be configured the best. I don't know how any policy proposal will work really, societies are dynamic and complex enough that hypotheses are difficult to come up and difficult to test -- but experimentation is important! So I'm mostly excited to see some people somewhere beginning to experiment and at least start floating the idea that laws/policy is mutable and shapable depending on the outcomes we want.
First of all, it's expensive. Guaranteeing every American a certain sum of money will cost a ridiculous amount.
Second, it's immoral. Taking money from one person and giving it to another by force is wrong, especially when your justification is that you think they have too much money.
Third, it's funny that he points to Social Security when it is approaching disaster. http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/ssa/social-security-reti...
Fourth, the fear mongering about automation needs to stop. Automation will not put everyone out of work and it will not spell the end of capitalism. At every stage of technological advancement, you get people, like the UBIers, who run around like chicken with their heads cut off, Luddite Fallacy. The fact is that automation makes some jobs obsolete but compensates by creating entire industries profitable. Did Software Engineering exist in 1920? No, so don't be surprised if in 20 years a new field has arisen.
I really want to stress the point about automation because I think it is the largest source of misinformation out there. In 1870, 50% of the US labor force worked in agriculture. Today guess how many? 1.2%. Why hasn't the unemployment rate skyrocketed due to the automation in agriculture that allows us to produce more crops cheaper and with less people? Because the increase in labor and decrease in food costs allowed other industries to flourish!
But certainly I vote, I protest, I write letters, I convince others to. I work for an advocacy organization. I knock on doors and make calls. I believe it's not nearly enough to "just vote." And if that's all someone is doing, that person has little room to complain.
The taxation is immoral argument is an argument against democracy.
Taxation when taken too far is immoral, regardless of the popular vote
So how does one define the point at which taxation becomes immoral?
Anyway, taxes don't matter. All taxes return to circulation (unless government is radically changing economic policy). What people are really saying is that they want to be better off than some other group of people.
FYI, he paid 14% federal because most of his money came from carried interest which is taxed like dividends. The 14% is only after the same income is taxed at the corporate level at 35%.
I agree that argument is nutty! That's why I didn't make it. Where did I say, in fact you supposedly quote me, "taxation is immoral".
I said taking money from some and giving it to others by force is immoral for the reasons people like him give.
Taxation is moral so long as it is spent on programs that benefit everyone. The military, roads, a court system, the post office, police, etc.
Taxation is immoral when you take from someone you "feel" has to much money and give it to someone you think "deserves" it.
I know it's easy to make emotional arguments and I know it's easy to feel charitable with other people's money, I'm in no way rich btw, but you have to see the problem with that?
> We all have a say in the laws. That's why it's fair we all have to live by them.
Tyranny of the masses is a thing and something our founders tried to prevent.
And UBI advocates generally say it benefits everyone. In fact, that's why they prefer it over other government programs! Because it goes to everyone! I get the policy disagreement on this, but that's still different than the "taxes are immoral" argument. And that's the one that bothers me when I hear it because it's an attack on democracy.
As to our founders - yes, they built protections in our Constitution. Is your point that UBI is Unconstitutional? Because that's a legal argument I'd be interested in reading!
It benefits the poorer at the expense of the rich.
>In fact, that's why they prefer it over other government programs!
I would support the UBI as a replacement for the current welfare system but only as a replacement and only because it is less morally bankrupt and ineffective. Just to clarify, I don't support the UBI in general but if you're willing to completely get rid of our current system then we can talk.
> Is your point that UBI is Unconstitutional?
No that was a response to the commenter supporting Democracy over Republicanism.
A society should search to maximize utility. Let's make some numbers up. One starving person has a utility of 1. One not starving person has a utility of 10. One mega-ultra-rich person has a utility of 100. One ultra-rich person has a utility of 99.
If you take money from 1 mega-ultra-rich person and give it to 2 starving persons:
So the society gains 17 units of utility from the change. Are you claiming that 1 unit of utility for the rich is more valuable than 18 units of utility for the poor? Because the rich person agreed to society's contract, and figured out that they gain much more utility from roads, labor, police, laws than they lost from UBI. A rich American wouldn't be rich if they didn't receive any benefits from society.This is a really hard point to prove.
> A society should search to maximize utility.
"Society" doesn't do anything. There is no hivemind. We are each individuals pursuing our own self interest. It is up to the individual to help those who need it, not a small group of people who think they know what we should all be doing.
> One starving person has a utility of 1. One not starving person has a utility of 10. One mega-ultra-rich person has a utility of 100. One ultra-rich person has a utility of 99.
If you take money from 1 mega-ultra-rich person and give it to 2 starving persons: 99-100 = -1 2*(10-1) = 18 +___ +17
You are going to have to clear that up for me because I am frankly not understanding it.
> A rich American wouldn't be rich if they didn't receive any benefits from society.
Yes and society benefits from having rich people with capital invest in companies that produce things we want. It's not a fixed pie.
The main issue I see with this line of thinking is that you simply cannot speak for "society" and whenever we as a species tried to organize everything to our personal standards it has failed miserably.
>Yes and society benefits from having rich people with capital invest in companies that produce things we want. It's not a fixed pie.
That's my entire point. It isn't a fixed pie. The whole concept that a person "owns" part of the pie is dubious, because they relied on everyone else to get that part of the pie.
>you simply cannot speak for "society"
I'm not speaking for society. Society is speaking for society by voting.
>whenever we as a species tried to organize everything to our personal standards it has failed miserably.
What are you referring to? Because I see:
-public services
-public education
-firefighters
-single payer healthcare
-law & order
-criminal justice
-Software standards (you're talking to me over a "personal standard" called TCP/IP)
First, lets assume that after UBI the total amount of work done does not change. Then lets assume that after UBI the poor does not work any harder and certainly neither does the rich (do the rich even work at all?). So if poor were to come out ahead from this deal, then it must be either the middle class, or the new machines (automation), that are now working harder.
And thus if we come up with new automation, or a way for the poor to work more, then UBI does not have to come at anyones expense.
In particular I'm at a loss to understand the arguments for UBI that assume the system could/should provide a sufficient income for everyone to 'live' independent of any other source of income. How exactly would that work? Wouldn't the people actually working be just a bit unhappy being taxed to support people who didn't work at all? Wouldn't people on the margins simply stop working? Wouldn't this system drift into a completely unsustainable configuration?
But you're right. I don't know how people in the US would react. Maybe they would see it as an evil tax from rich to poor and never accept it. However, I'm arguing that it doesn't have to come with any extra tax burden.
There is an UBI experiment starting in Finland in 2017. If it proves to be successful, then I have no doubt that it will be implemented elsewhere too.
If that were true then we would switch to a better system. I don't think it is and I don't think there is one.
I don't know what capitalism's logical extreme is but if you are talking about anarchy then I am not for that. I believe government serves a very important role in capitalism. It enforces contracts (legal system), protects third parties (environmental hazards), and defends against foreign or domestic aggression (police, military).
This isn't to say capitalism is perfect! Of course not but it is better than every other conceived system and has proven so by bringing millions out of poverty.
Wouldn't the market be freer if we slowly replaced that minimum wage with UBI (i.e. decrease minimum wage and increase UBI over time). The market would then be free to set prices more accurately because there would be a lower artificial price floor. This also helps create more jobs to offset the ones lost to automation, since people can afford to be paid less, a wider variety of jobs can be economically viable. Additionally, people would have more freedom in find jobs that they enjoy and are well suited for. All of this would increase economic efficiency.
Thus, yes, UBI could benefit everyone by making our labour market freer and more efficient. Basically, UBI is a form of economic infrastructure, and thus is a MORAL thing to spend taxes on.
That is an assertion/opinion, not a fact. You are also confusing a problem (poverty) with a solution (minimum wage). There are many other ways to tackle poverty that don't involve distorting labor markets with minimum wage. There is also a strong argument to be made that a minimum wage that is above market prices hurts low-skilled workers by making it illegal for them to be employed.
Personally I'd rather have the challenge of supporting people with low-paying jobs vs the challenge of supporting people with no job at all.
Dude... you're just framing it differently. You can easily look at UBI and taxes as they currently are as moneys from individuals that go into a large pot which is then spent to help the greater good. Roads do that, police do that, and so does public assistance programs like social security and welfare. But somehow UBI is different because it is cash? It's all the same. It does the same basic thing: lower income inequality.
It isn't "feeling" they have too much money and "deserving" it. It would be a calculated number that is used to maximize total utility of the economy. You're the one making the emotional argument here.
Not sure why anyone these days would oppose a system that would lower income inequality from the absurd point it has reached.
If there are ten people in a country and money is dispersed in this way:
Bottom 2 each have $10 Middle 6 each have $20 Top 2 each have $50
I would support a system that takes say... 10% from everyone.
Bottom 2 are taxed $1 each == $2 Middle 6 are taxed $2 each == $12 Top 2 are taxed $5 each = $10
They then put all of the money in a "pot" to be spent on a military. This benefits everyone because a poor homeless person in Alabama will be defended equally as well as a middle class secretary in Georgia.
However, if you tax the Top 2 for an extra 10% which comes out to $10 more and then put it in a "pot" that will only be spent on the Bottom 2, we have a problem.
This is a problem because you are treating 20% of the population unfairly simply because they have more money than the other 80%. This is being charitable with their money and not letting them decide to do with it as they please. I support the poor in my own way by donating money, volunteering for charity, etc. but it is wrong for you to take a larger percent of my money and give it to another group of people for arbitrary reasons.
> It would be a calculated number that is used to maximize total utility of the economy.
I would love to see the geniuses and God level economists who can make those calculations and factor in every aspect of the economy. You can't, it's impossible.
Or as Adam Smith puts it: "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
In that sense, it's quite natural that the richer you are the more you contribute.
It's interesting that in your example you seem to tax wealth and not income. I don't know of any country in which the tax system is based around wealth and not income.
And indeed, a flat tax on wealth would probably be the fairest tax, but I imagine that it's a lot harder to do than taxing income or consumption.
The unemployment rate is still high (~9%), and thats just people still looking who haven't given up yet.
Labor force participation rate: https://i.imgur.com/v9sD9PB.png
U-6: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
The 9% figure is all-source underemployment, though. It's a way better number than unemployment rate, but it's misleading to cite it as though it's the same number politicians reference.
Respectively disagree! U-6 is the perfect indicator of why we're having a terrible recovery.
I meant "better number" as in "far more representative than the jobless-and-looking rate". I objected to calling it the "unemployment rate" without caveat, because that term usually refers to jobless-and-looking and therefore threatens to cause confusion.
https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/machine-money-and-people-...
Depends on what you consider basic needs doesn't it? If humans only consumed their basic needs than I agree, we should be scared of automation. The thing is as we become more prosperous, our basic needs are met and our other needs expand. Do you need a cell phone? Do you need a car? No, of course not, but people demand them, and other people supply them. The problem is that the automation people are making sweeping statements about all of our needs being supplied by automation. I don't think that's possible. I also don't think its wise to take advice from a Keynesian.
http://www.cato.org/blog/keynes-was-wrong-stimulus-keynesian...
Oh man. Please explain this one.
> Second, it's immoral. Taking money from one person and giving it to another by force is wrong, especially when your justification is that you think they have too much money.
Also known as taxation, or living in a society. If you don't like money being taken from you by force then fine, just please opt out of all the services and benefits the society provides for you. This is in fact entirely doable, and it's called "renunciation of citizenship".
RE the automation angle, you're ignoring the automation quality aspect. Humans can basically provide three types of labour - physical labour, cognitive labour and social labour. The first type is already almost completely eliminated by the first wave of automation, starting with industrial revolution. Current wave of automation is making inroads in the second one. Just how many people you think we can fit in jobs which value is mostly created by the fact they're done by a human (e.g. psychologist, waitress, nanny)?
1) There is nowhere on Earth that someone can go to escape the reach of government.
2) There is no reason why the anarchist should bear the burden of leaving. If someone comes along and starts extorting you, but says you can leave their area of extortion, you are not obligated to either pay them or leave.
In case you rely on social contract theory (or implied/tacit social contract theory), here is a brief explanation of why it is wrong.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Autho...
[2] http://trolleyproblem.blogspot.ca/2012/02/why-social-contrac...
Ok, so you're just declaring yourself king of the US? You're allowed to travel wherever you want without playing by any of the rules the rest of us have agreed to?
There are plenty of places in the world with no or non-functioning government, mostly Antarctica and subsaharan Africa, but there are also plenty of barely-inhabited islands where you could probably live off the grid. Just have to figure out food, medicine, etc.
Did you agree to the rules? I didn't agree to any, and I don't know anyone who did; most people just follow them. There are some interesting theories on political authority derived from democracy, but all that I've seen are fatally flawed.
Antarctica has many (overlapping) claims by non-Antarctican countries, so it is not a good place to go and avoid states. If you go to Subsaharan Africa, you are still subject to the government of whatever state you are in, whether it is 'failed' for now, or not. More importantly, you haven't explained why the victim is the one who has to accommodate their oppressor.
You don't get a patch of sovereign land as a birthright. That's never how it worked, anytime in history. You can play by the rules here, you can go someplace with different rules, or you can go someplace with no rules. Plenty of rural areas in the 3rd world with no effective government presence.
Consider instead a different question - what authority your parents have over you when you're a child? After all, you haven't agreed on anything. Aren't they an oppressor, that often forces you to do things (like eating broccoli) against your will?
1) The state has authority over its citizens until the citizens reach a certain level of capacity. As an adult who makes most of his own decisions, I believe I have a level of capacity which allows me to make good decisions without a state. This seems reasonable, as the state has declared me "eligible to vote", and perform other tasks significant to the state, which appears to be an endorsement of my level of capacity.
2) The state is our eternal guardian, and has authority over all of us forever, thus North Korea and other totalitarian states have the moral authority to oppress and direct their people in ways that seem wrong, because we are but children.
The other problem with this reasoning is that it doesn't really define what gives a state this authority. If I declare my own state "The Kingdom of Nickff", and invade (a portion of) Canada, I have the same authority as the previous government, though I may be 'cruel' and 'despotic'.
I'm new here! Don't kill me!
> Also known as taxation,
I wrote a lengthy reply to this argument below.
Automation:
There are still tons of physical jobs. The point is that even when automation "almost completely eliminated" the first type, unemployment did not skyrocket. I'd rather base my policy prescriptions on history and well documented economic factors than wild speculation about the effects future automation will have.
Sorry :). I'll leave that to Skynet ;).
> The point is that even when automation "almost completely eliminated" the first type, unemployment did not skyrocket.
Yeah, the labor pool moved to the service / cognitive jobs. With automation taking big bites off services and mental work, where should the labor pool move next? Now, I know there's a lot of place in marketing and all kind of bullshit jobs, but it surely has its limits, if not economical then those of mental health - bullshit jobs aren't exactly good for one's self-esteem.
That lots of humans are required to work the land, or that the horses are important for logistics and transporting people were both well-documented and established facts for many thousand years. Until at some point, they stopped being true.
CGPGrey rears his ugly head!
> Yeah, the labor pool moved to the service / cognitive jobs.
I'm sure you are right but I would argue that trying to quantify cognitive jobs is foolhardy and I am not convinced in the slightest that automation is capable of replacing them. Having said that, I have time and time again been surprised as to how ingenious human beings are with creating jobs! Industries no one ever thought of are now major industries. Humans are far more adaptable than horses. That's kind of our thing.
The problem isn't going to be putting everyone out of work, it's going to be putting a quarter of the country out of work or loosely attached to the labor market.
The social costs for this are going to be absolute huge. Our norms are not ready for that many people to not work, and you only need a handful of people with little to lose to have massive social disorder.
Automation WILL put people out of work. Just looking at my agricultural example that is true. My point is that those people found other jobs in other industries which is why the unemployment rate isn't currently 52%. There is a reason why economists use the term "technological unemployment."
Blaming tech and automation is all a lot of hand-waving and finger pointing away from the real issue.
Not to mention, that if those jobs hadn't gone to Mexico because of NAFTA, they would have gone to China, or southeast Asia somewhere. There is pretty much no way they would have stayed in the US.
It's also the case that the US manufactures more goods now than ever before, but with fewer people. We manufacture more goods per worker than ever before -- that's because of increases in productivity, only some of which are due to automation. Those increases in productivity almost certainly would have happened with or without the various trade agreements we have put in place over the past few decades.
You can find a lot of unemployed steelworkers and abandoned factories, but those factories have largely been supplanted by newer, more efficient ones. 'Onshoring' is becoming popular because domestic production is actually cost-effective once you factor in the low ongoing costs and defect rates for automated production.
So NAFTA mattered, and it may have changed how automation happened (I'll bet automating still-running factories looks very different than offshoring, then onshoring from scratch). But it didn't change the essential structure of what's happened - manufacturing was going to move away from mass American labor regardless.
The argument is that NAFTA caused low-wage jobs to move to Mexico instead of to Asia. Suppliers in Mexico work closely with US suppliers, because they are geographically close to one another -- therefore, the supply chain stayed in North America. If the jobs had gone to Asia, the Asian suppliers would probably have worked with other suppliers close to them, rather than US suppliers. So the US suppliers would have lost their business partners, and many would have gone out of business.
I think we should also keep in mind that trade happens whether you have free-trade deals or not. Even with US tariffs of 2.5% on cars and 25% on trucks, Japanese car companies did very well in the US and took a substantial amount of market share away from domestic automakers in the 1970s and 1980s, back when all of their cars were imported from Japan (they build many in the US now, though). The Japanese cars were so competitive that Americans chose to buy them even though they cost more than American cars, due to both the tariffs and shortages -- Hondas sold substantially above MSRP for a while due to demand, for example. So, unless you prevent imports from coming into the country at all, you still have to compete whether you have free trade or tariffs.
People tend to go "trade deals are economically efficient, so they don't decrease employment!", but that's not true. They generally do decrease US employment in shitty jobs, while increasing efficiency. The global economy isn't Pareto optimal, and it ought to be possible to move those gains to the people who would otherwise be hurt.
There is room for policies that support workers displaced by economic change (i.e. unemployment insurance) but free trade helps to maintain a vibrant, adaptive, and productive economy (i.e. to create wealth).
Highly regulated trade is riddled with preferential treatment for politically connected firms or industries. This is a great way for politicians and bureacrats to wield power, exchange favors, and generally funnel value away from consumers and towards the favored firms and industries.
This, of course, is the (political) downfall of UBI. That coalition will stand together right up until someone has to draft an actual Senate bill implementing the thing.
Then, the liberals want to phase out existing social programs gradually, or implement it as a more-palatable negative income tax. The conservatives want to drug test applicants, and add a "family bonus" to promote two-parent homes. The libertarians want to set a low price-point to encourage work, and tie it to ending student loan programs. And so on.
Basically, UBI has real value, but the current popularity is gained from being all things to all people. WIC and SNAP are concrete enough to hate, but UBI is still so ill-defined that people can 'agree' without having any overlap on what laws they would actually support.
There is no country in the world I am aware of that has passed a law that implements a simple, elegant concept, such as the ideal form of UBI, and resisted the urge to tinker with it over the years.
Furthermore, our current welfare systems are the way they are for powerful reasons. WIC, SNAP, the EITC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc. all exist the way they do for a reason, and those reasons won't go away if UBI is implemented. It's very likely that UBI will end up being a re-implementation of the same ideas behind WIC, SNAP, the EITC, and other programs, for the same reasons those programs existed in the first place. We will end up turning UBI into something similar to the welfare system we have now. Tyler Cowen has been very perceptive on this point: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...
Your final paragraph actually brings to mind the famous Don't Rewrite Software essay. Specifically: "it's just a simple function... but it has grown little hairs and stuff on it and nobody knows why. Well, I'll tell you why: those are bug fixes."
I imagine that as UBI goes to the table, someone will point out that unreliable mothers will squander the money and fail to feed their kids, and so we'll replay the same arguments that created WIC. Someone else will point out that UBI doesn't save the suddenly-unemployed from defaulting on their payments, so for stability's sake we should have payments scaled by lost income, and we'll reinvent unemployment insurance. Etc.
Obviously the existing welfare program could be streamlined and improved, but you're exactly right that it exists as-is for a reason. All the little convolutions exist either to make it more politically viable, or to handle some objective more specific than "give money to the poor". That's not going to disappear because UBI looks pretty.
I think a more successful democratic process should involve at least three steps:
At least in the case of Brexit, the awful error was giving a simple up/down referendum. If the option to leave had been tied to a clear next step, it would have shattered the coalition and probably failed.
I'm not sure if you can regulate something like this, or if you just have to push the David Camerons of the world to not screw up so badly, but forcing people to put whole processes up at once would probably force a lot more movements to sort out whether they actually have any common ground.