As a Canadian entrepreneur I worry that mincome/basic income will serve to knock the wind out of the sails of many innovators and entrepreneurs who, like me, are currently DRIVEN to work hard, research, push the industry along and crank up competition.
I would much, much rather work hard, earn more money, and feed my neighbour - than have no hope of digging myself out of my situation no matter hos hard I worked, being taxed, and then myself being supported by taxes I lost after they've been spread around.
Rigt now I see a need and want to help by helping to educate entrepreneurs on how to make more money, when I see somebody trying really hard to succeed that makes me WANT to invest anything I can in their success. But the moment people want to pillage my profits Im finding greener pastures. I dont think Im alone in this - if mincome is a big tent that relies on a few strong tentpoles to hold it up and cover everybody - those tentpoles are hard working entrepreneurs. If mincome ever becomes a reality those tentpoles will leave and what was a tent sheltering and protecting people will collapse and suffocate all left inside.
What of the arguments that it would encourage entrepreneur by giving them more of a safety net to try new ventures? Additionally most studies suggest Basic Income won't be that much more expense and will save heavily on administration costs, so the tax aspect is minimal.
Most of the reports I've seen have stated that actually, it works the other way around. That the vast majority of people who go into entrepreneurship only do so if they have money to fall back on, one way or another, should their business fail. So by that logic, basic income should actually significantly increase the likelihood of entrepreneurship, because while mincome will still be low enough that people will want to work, it will be high enough to remove the barrier to entrepreneurship of: "but if this idea doesn't work out, I won't be able to eat"
I think there was a bit on NPR a few months ago that discussed the idea that having a fallback will make you work and try less exactly for the same reason. I think having the "cornered animal" type of drive goes a long way.
The pyramids were built with corvee labor as a tax scheme and antebellum America relied on slavery, even the industrial free states utilized cheap raw materials like cotton produced in slave states.
Are you suggesting that compelling people to work by force is an appropriate modern economic system?
Good for making people re-read their Rand, but pretty terrible for maintaining stable systems. What if you fired the bottom 10% of law-abiding citizens, as in 'if you speed and get parking tickets and DUIs and beat your husband or wife, you get fired'? To what extent is 'made more money immediately for the company' a useful societal metric? Why do we benefit just because THAT company happened to make money? And yet that's the metric… better we should ask 'what did they do'. Money is essentially a meaningless metric.
If enough people decided 'the best people are those who bite other peoples' fingers off and keep them in a jar', that would be where the money was, and you'd be firing people who don't have human blood on their lips. There's no correlation between 'earning more money' and anything useful, societally or personally.
I think most firms that tried it have since scrapped it. It turns out to be about as effective as firing a random 10% and promoting another random 10% of staff.
Consider: a project is floundering. You put your best engineers on it to try and save it. It fails anyway. They get fired! Yay stack ranking.
I don't know what the NPR piece was about, but you're right... when I _don't_ have a fallback is absolutely when I work the absolute hardest.... but not at my job. When I don't have a fallback, I'm doing the absolute minimum at my job, and working extra hours around the clock studying to line up a fallback. When I think I have a fallback, or things are going really well at my job is the only time where I'm fully dedicated to my employer
I want to become an enterpreneur, but can't afford it. I'm not interested in "make money fast" schemes just for the sake of making money. I have ideas, things I want to try to build, but building my product would not happen overnight no matter how f*ing hard I work. More likely a minimum of anywhere between 6 and 12 months is required before it's feasible to start selling the product, and from there on it could take long before the income becomes a steady livelihood.
I don't have the money to pay the bills for that long, I can't afford to become an enterpreneur. BI could change my life overnight.
I've learned how that if you can't make a business that's generating 10k / month in 3 months it's probably the wrong market. You could keep iterating through markets until one of them sticks.
I'm not saying it's impossible for me to start generating money in 3 months. But merely generating money is not of interest to me. There are certain things I want to build, things I'm interested in, and these aren't things anyone's going to ship in three months starting from scratch.
Try freelance, or contract work. You can be employed for yourself and making money right away without having to build a product or a business first. That's still running your own business and being an entrepreneur!
Switching from salary to contract can be a big stepping stone for creating the career and life you want :D
In my life I'm not ashamed to say it was the hunger of having nothing, no safety net, and having no job that STILL drives me today. That fire that got started when I had bills and no money is still burning strong today.
But I worry if theres too mucb cushion perhaps I would have not hurt as bad, and ever achieved what Ive accomplished since then.
Then make way for someone who is otherwise motivated, by something other than fire. Your personal drive to get money and succeed has nothing to do with your capacity to provide goods and services: heck, it might be causing you to cut corners, cheat people, and otherwise push so hard that you're harming your longterm prospects.
If you're some sort of titanic corporate entity, you're almost compelled to deliver constantly growing earnings for the next quarter. If you're a sole proprietorship but driven by these deeply personal motivations, you might be stuck in similarly self-defeating attitudes. Compare to Elon Musk, who barely seems to register the concept of money and is only interested in the specific things he's doing. Without the money, he'd be much the same person, I think.
>it was the hunger of having nothing, no safety net, and having no job that STILL drives me today
Canada has had health care provided to you since 1984. So to say you have "no safety net" is factually wrong. Did the existence of public health care make you decide to leave and build your business somewhere else? It seems it did not.
Health care doesn't pay the electric bills. Health care doesn't buy groceries.
I am glad if I went to the doctor I could have been seen without a cost to me. I didn't NEED a doctor, I needed food to eat, and money to pay bills to keep collections off my back.
> In my life I'm not ashamed to say it was the hunger of having nothing, no safety net, and having no job that STILL drives me today.
Canada is a first-world country, and like all first-world safety nets, hasn't had "no safety net" for quite a long time (even the US, which has a fairly weak safety net for a first world country, especially given its relative per capita wealth and income, has had significant social safety nets for a long time.)
Yeah, I applied for Employment Insurance (EI) one time when I got laid off and, though approved, no cheque ever arrived so I still had to make do without it. The second time I found myself in a tight spot I didn't qualify for Employment Insurance - so even though I have paid into it, when I needed it it wasn't there for me.
Beyond what's been pointed out, entrepreneurs have an additional safety net: limited liability.
You can be sure that by creating a legal veneer, your home and other property will be safe, while the rest of society pays for the losses accrued by your experiment. That's potentially a much larger welfare transfer than any BI.
LLC in the US does. I suppose for a few hundreds or thousands you could incorporate in Canada too - though I believe Sole Proprietorship is the most popular type of business by FAR, and with sole proprietorship the proprietor is 100% liable for damages the business incurs. So it's actually more like a “personal liability” net for most…
This seems to be against redistribution, not basic income. Basic income is "how" of redistribution. "How much" part is very much orthogonal.
Are you okay as long as basic income does not increase amount of redistribution, or do you have some specific objection to basic income as a method of redistribution?
Using the government to redistribute money to those in need is like giving your right arm a blood transfusion from your own left arm, but spilling 2/3 of the blood on the way over.
I strongly believe in charity and social assistance, but its MY job, not the governments job to make sure my family and neighbours are fed and safe. Government needs to deal with national and international issues. What happens to my neighbour is MY responsibility and I believe citizens can organize and redistribute resources for muuuuuch cheaper than a government can.
Alright John Gault. If we're talking nation level, your startup is not a 'tentpole.' How does your market cap compare to GE, Google, Amazon, Lockheed? Those are redwoods, and there are plenty of those. You're a maple sapling, there are plenty of those too. You're doing that thing where the middle class rebels against their own interests by positioning said interests as the interests of the working class, because they see themselves as soooo much more driven, and hardworking -- get real, plenty of people living in poverty with the same hustle as you, they just grew up on the other side of Toronto without access to the same resources. Basic income doesn't come off the backs of small business, and that is a silly reason to be so afraid of it.
> Opportunity is not evenly distributed, yes. But neither is skill.
Skill can be learned with enough drive. Opportunity is required for success, there's plenty of smart, skilled people in the world who are stuck in the workforce because of lack of it.
Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers" is a good read on the effect opportunity (or the lack thereof) has on our lives. It can come off as pretty over simplified and anecdotal so don't take my praise of the book as me touting it as something it's not, but it's worth reading (and I rarely say that of required texts from courses I've taken).
That's just willfully ignorant. For majority of people, differences in opportunity are SO much more influential in their lives than differences in skill or intelligence.
Consider three kids -- one is rich, suburban white, IQ is 170. The other is rich, suburban white, IQ is 75. The third is poor, inner city black, IQ 170.
In this situation, which lives do you think look most similar to one another? If you answered 'obviously the white kids', then great! You get it. If you answered 'the two kids with an IQ of 170' then you need to spend some time in the real world.
Let's add kid #4 -- poor, black, inner city, IQ 75. If we want to compare across QoL, opportunity, really almost any metric, we're going to group across socio-economic lines, not IQ.
If you find yourself thinking 'Well what if that young black kid catches a lucky break and gets out of poverty' you're almost there -- the need to catch a lucky break to escape is a defining aspect of poverty and it works against even the most naturally skilled people. The amount of skill needed to overcome that lack in opportunity makes it silly to bring skill into the equation when talking about opportunity.
Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.
> If we want to compare across QoL, opportunity, really almost any metric, we're going to group across socio-economic lines, not IQ.
Do you have any academic literature to support your claim? The only evidence you offered was just an insistence that I should agree, which shouldn't convince any fair minded person. Here's something that I found within 15 seconds of journal searching, that contradicts it: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-1130.2011....
> The results from a series of follow-up studies indicate that the IQ score at age 13 could be viewed as a relatively good indicator for future life outcomes, defined in terms of attained education, occupational status, and material well being
Finally:
> Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.
I don't think we can, and I don't think I said anything like that.
If you can bring your own laptop to a starbucks, they have plenty of the rest of those. A laptop can cost as little as 230$ USD, so thats really the only barrier and I beleive its an attainable goal for anybody in North America. If your life depending on having a laptop, thats something anybody could find.
My point is that business will leave. Those with the most means (Google, etc) would be out of the coutry by the end of the week! It would take longer for the small guys to pack up and move, but the point is that knowing how I would respond surely must be an attitude others have too. Just had to get that out there while we're talking about mincome yet again.
$230 extra above living expenses is not attainable without title loans or something similar for many in America.
Not to mention that if the laptop breaks you have to know how to fix it yourself or pay $100+ to fix it (or buy another new one for $230). If you don't know enough about computers to transfer data off a "dead" machine then you have to pay $100+ for someone to do that even with the new one.
You must be joking, I know an awful lot of americans with laptops. Its not like mortgaging a house!
And Im not talking about 'above living expenses'. When I bought mine I had no money for the electric bill. I leveraged the laptop purchase into paying that bill and many more after it!
You weren't as poor as some people I know then. Many of the people I'm talking about already can't pay their utility bills. Some of them don't have electricity because it was shut off. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it will work for others.
You don't know me or my situation so don't speak like you do. I bargained with collections to give me the time. I paid the electric bill with promises of “If you shut it off right now, I cannot earn the money to pay the bill, but if you keep the lights on I can work hard and pay in full (soon)”.
For months I had negative money in my bank account and a court order against me (collections for a credit card I had been buying groceries on and no longer had). So that means whenever I did make any money, the instant I put the cheque into my account to cash it - it was gone. I still couldn't buy groceries even if you put a cheque for $5000 in my hand at some points.
I got by and survived. Dropped 70 pounds from not eating right, but you're right, perhaps I wasn't poor as some folks you know, so therefore my experience hasn't been my experience.
My point isn't to invalidate your experience, but to invalidate your idea that since you worked hard and made it through everyone else is able to do the exact same thing.
Regardless of all the other points brought up, what if they just have a lower than average intellect? That'll stop them in their tracks too. Regardless of anything else, it requires at least an average intelligence to be able to learn things on your own/with marginal help.
Pretending that -anyone- can do what you did is a disservice to yourself(because you are marginalizing all the hard work you put in, I read your other comment) as well as people who for whatever reason are just not capable of doing the same thing.
Ok, I'm replying to you down the chain a bit because this is a great example of you just not getting it at all.
Do you have a college education? Did you go to a good high school? Do you have motivated peers? Growing up, did you have enough food to eat every day and every night? Do you have two loving parents? Or even one? Did you have a roof over your head every night? How many times did you change houses, schools, districts?
These and more are the factors out of the individual's hands that can severely negatively impact their ability to grow up and become successful.
You didn't 'just have a laptop and a desk.' You had a laptop, a desk, an education, a stable upbringing. MOST PEOPLE DON'T GET THOSE THINGS AND THAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY GAP. Again -- MOST PEOPLE DON'T GET THOSE THINGS AND THAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY GAP.
This comment I am replying to is just the worst kind of ignorance -- no, dude, there are SO many people in this country that can't afford a laptop. And if they could -- do you know how fucking expensive it is to learn to code??? You need one of 3 things -- 1: lots and lots of free time 2: a $50k education 3: an exceptionally great free public education ( I say exceptionally great because <20% of american schools teach coding).
I'm not going to be that commenter that just says 'ugh google privilege and you'll get it.' You had privilege in excess, and now you have ignorance in excess. You need empathy and humility. I'm honestly disgusted by your comments. The kids I work with every fucking day don't have half the shit you grew up with and it makes ALL of the difference in their lives.
Yes! I couldn't afford fancy schools so I did community college for 3 years and paid my own tuition. Total cost <$10k and I had government loans for it that I'm still paying off 7 years later…
> Did you go to a good high school?
I went to an okay high school. It was 1/3 hilbillies from the country, 1/3 rich city folks from a nearby town, and 1/3 lower middle class folks who lived in the country. I was part of the last group.
> Do you have motivated peers?
HELL NO! We called the place where I grew up the 'death trap' because if you don't get out of there before you're 20 years old, your life amounts to nothing. You have to escape the gravitational pull to become nothing and break free.
> Growing up, did you have enough food to eat every day and every night?
Yes, we lived a very frugal life and my parents made 2 things their priority: food, and clothes. We didn't have TV, we didn't have a pool, we didn't buy pop (soda), we didn't have cool desserts in our lunches, we didn't have trendy clothes, we went without a lot of stuff my friends on welfare were able to afford because my parents were working hard to provide for us without welfare. Sometimes I wonder if welfare would have afforded us a better lifestyle, but my parents work ethic would not allow them to stop trying.
> Do you have two loving parents?
Yes, and I think there's more value in that than most want to admit. I believe a lot of the 'economic' problems we see in society are strong evidence of what fatherlessness looks like in a generation or two of people.
> Did you have a roof over your head every night?
Yes
> How many times did you change houses, schools, districts?
I changed schools (at my request) due to harassment my Grade 3 teacher, new school was in a different town.
> do you know how fucking expensive it is to learn to code???
Sure, it costs $0. I do it every day! That's been my saving grace :D I'm so excited that I was able to do this with such few tools that I am ready, willing, and in a place where I want to HELP others learn code :D
I already volunteer my time, money, and labour to help people learn the skills I've picked up, and if I could find a way to turn that into my job I would be thrilled!
> You had privilege in excess, and now you have ignorance in excess. You need empathy and humility. I'm honestly disgusted by your comments. The kids I work with every fucking day don't have half the shit you grew up with and it makes ALL of the difference in their lives.
You know, this whole time you're attacking me but I'm also the guy going wayyyyyyy outside his own comfort zone to get in front of others and help them learn. I think you've got me pegged wrong.
Soo I tell people: “This is what I did, I can show you the ropes and help you figure it out for yourself too!” and for $230, if I saw somebody was serious about learning I wouldn't think twice about affording the tool FOR them. I want to teach others how to build their own earning power and make a living (helping others) - so if it's TRUE that my success is only due to my privilege I may as well quit helping people now right?
Why bother investing in others, teaching them, helping them if all that effort is wasted because only privilege bring success.
Do you really believe that? I'm going to continue helping others because I sure don't!
You're right, I definitely did. Sorry about the assumptions and thanks for furthering the discussion despite that.
I also seem to be misunderstood -- I don't think that your success is only due to your privilege. I see that positioning a lot and it is a dangerous way to think. I think your privilege had a hand in your success, not that it is entirely responsible for your success. I also think that basic income is a way to give that privilege to a wider swath of the population without taking away opportunity from other people.
I think that basic income is a good strategy to lift the norm so it's not so necessary to be a mold breaker to build a high quality of life from impoverished beginnings -- raise the baseline and I think we give more people a chance at success.
The question I have is: should someone be required to work in order to live reasonably well?
One entrepreneur, JK Rowling, is worth USD 1 bil. She did not require many resources to attain this; a savvier setup could have allowed digital-only publishing. Value can literally be created from the mind.
Given this, should it not be an acceptable profession in society to provide mind-workers the space and time they require to produce works unique to them? Should they not have comforts if required?
Can not any individual create in such capacities, and is it not only our fear and reliance upon the tales of a dark history and historical slogans which keep us from thinking the problem through to completion and from the very consideration that such new ways of working are indeed possible at a civilization scale? Are we afraid of success?
- A position as a first class citizen in a tremendously wealthy industrial country that got that way by stealing resources and enslaving native populations for centuries, presumably
'First class citizen', while not really used outside of programming, was likely meant in contrast to a 'second class citizen.'
"A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there."
- Wikipedia
He's saying you probably did not suffer much at all because of systemic discrimination, and pointing out the glaringly obvious -- that you don't realize that majority of the people in this country DO suffer because of systemic discrimination.
How are you so sure that I'm not part of the majority that faces systemic discrimination? I can tell you right now if I had applied to university in the same town I went to college in I would be discriminated against - I don't match the race or gender of the average student in my town if that's what you mean…
Where are they gonna go, Greece? Apple is already in Ireland.
You're assuming giant consumer countries are obligated to just passively let equally giant multinational corporations just do whatever they want. If Apple wants to live in Ireland, let 'em sell exclusively to Irish people. If they'd like to move to Greece, let 'em build an infrastructure there since the Greek government plainly can't.
It's a symbiotic relationship and entities like Apple and Google know that far better than you do. They'd like to get absolutely as much as they can so long as they're not on crumbling sand foundations, and the less headstrong corporations don't even care about that; they'll just lobby for zero or negative taxes for themselves, even if it wrecks the markets they're in.
Business will not leave. There's literally nowhere for them to go: they're already everywhere.
The fact that you replied to "without access to the same resources" with a list of physical needs seems to show that you really don't appreciate the disadvantages lower income people face. A laptop is fairly useless without the knowledge/education of what to use it for. Having time to go to a Starbucks is difficult for anyone with kids and without the money for daycare. Furthermore, the fact that you think everyone lives near a Starbucks is pretty illustrative of your privilege
> Furthermore, the fact that you think everyone lives near a Starbucks is pretty illustrative of your privilege
I didn't say "everybody can do it because everybody has a starbucks" I just gave one example of type of place that provides many of those resources free of cost. Name 3 coffee shops in your town that don't have electricity?
So here's a slightly more complete list for those who can't extrapolate:
- libraries often have electricity, bathrooms, wifi, chairs, and tables
- mall food courts often have electricity, chairs, and tables, many have wifi
- cafés, restaurants, and pubs nearly always will have some kind of seating and tables (correct me if I'm wrong)
- friend's houses come with electricity more often than not
- many schools are open to the public that you could probably just walk in and sit in the cafeteria and get some work done
I know some people live in amish country and don't have access to electricity, but I believe most North Americans are 'on the grid' so to speak.
My comment is not an argument that access to electricity is impossible and you reiterating physical needs seems to suggest you missed my point. That last sentence was only pointing out that you happened to pick as an example the name of a particular chain that (not unlike many other coffee shops) tends to exist in more urban and more affluent neighborhoods.
Sorry, but this is the same argument we see time and time again against higher taxes (not just Mincome). We saw it in 2008 with "Joe the Plumber".
Some entrepreneurs are driven by maximizing profit margins and some aren't. If your opinion was widely shared, there would be almost no entrepreneurial success stories in countries with a much more socialist approach than even Canada (e.g. throughout Europe). I am a Canadian entrepreneur too, but I love this country and that has to do with a lot more than just how much tax I pay. If they were to raise taxes for good reasons, it wouldn't cause me to uproot my family and leave.
If they give taxes a bump of course, but what if they radically rearrange taxes. There are many voices i hear who believe people above certain limits should be taxed 90% or more, and some cutoff limits Ive heard have been 250k, or even 100k.
If you suddenly fell into a 90% taxation bracket would you still be just as happy as today?
You do realize that, assuming taxes work like they do today, it'd be 90% on the amount over 250k/100k not 90% over the total income?
Assuming you realize it, your point must be that only having 10% effective increase in income after you reach the threshold is demotivating, and I would agree.
So a bracket like that which stifles motivation would absolutely hurt industry, economy, and innovation.
Its like youre in a race against every other business and country in the world, and you say: "hey, lets put these leg cuffs on! No everybody has a 3 foot stride wehn walking, so its no fair for you to walk fast. These shackles will only restrict your movement if you succeed too much and are able to take bigger strides. The most important thing is to reduce the gaps between winners and losers!"
In that race, do you think you stand a fighting chance against unshackled competitors?
I can run my business on about 20K a year if I'm frugal. It's another 'laptop' type business and while I can make use of capital to build value, that's not the core business.
I would absolutely accept a 100% marginal tax rate on over 100K a year and be happy about it. I live in an area with extremely low cost of living compared to NYC or SV, and I can build mindshare and interact with extremely happy, encouraging customers and become authoritative in my field with or without raw capital.
Put it this way. I have personal friends who were names on the back of vinyl record albums when I was a kid. On the whole, they are not over 100k a year either, and some of the things they love and cherish most are not (to them) core businesses earning over 100k a year.
If you don't figure you can be happy and fulfilled without millions and billions of dollars, you're doing something wrong. I have no problem with overruling your opinion here, and saying 'you have it wrong, and if you don't understand marginal taxation you're not entitled to opinions about it, still less to scaremonger people over it'.
> There are many voices i hear who believe people above certain limits should be taxed 90% or more, and some cutoff limits Ive heard have been 250k, or even 100k.
Sorry, but I don't believe that there are many voices, in the context of the national conversation espousing such views and they certainly wouldn't get a whiff of being elected if they ran for government. It's hard to not take what you say as fear-mongering when you resort to that kind of hyperbole.
So what's your take on universal healthcare? Do you resent having to pay for the treatment of others?
I get that increased taxes are offputting, but what's your alternative to making sure people aren't forced to live on the street, taking into account future loss of work due to automation? And what makes you believe that mincome would deter people from innovation?
Its not about an increased tax ration, its about entitlement and motivation. Would you feel better giving $1000 to charity, or having $500 stolen from you?
As an entrepreneur, you need consumers to succeed. If there is a healthy middle class (assuming basic income helps) your businesses has better chances.
I'm not sure you're worries are about the right things. As an entreprenuer I highly value safety nets. The odds of failing are so high that without things like publicly supported bankruptcy I don't think I'd ever risk going into the kind of debt necessary to succeed. So I imagine minimum income to be a huge boon entreprenuership.
As an economist however, I may be in agreement. I have some concerns about the inflationary effects of a minimum income. I have a strong suspicion that goods strongly associated with low income will tend to get more expensive, negating much of the benefit of a minimum income. And I'm also concerned about the positive feedback in the political system where the majority continue to vote for increases to their stipends uncontrollably.
All in all I'm not sure which is going to have the bigger effect long term on the economy.
So ... one problem is a long term tanking in the velocity of money. Can't make commissions or skim off money that's not spent. No matter how fast or slow the revenue comes in, the fixed debt, is fixed.
Its very hard to argue that even if every penny goes into the pocket of a couple New York Bankers, that there won't be more activity along the way than if nothing gets spent.
Something interesting to consider is there are goods and economic fields where the population has been trained to say they'll pay anything for X, Y, or Z. Medical care, Education, Real Estate, whatever. Given that we have generations of explosive inflation in those fields way beyond normal inflation rate, I don't think changing the base income would change much in the long run. If health care costs always in the past and forever in the future until rapidly approaching system collapse will increase by 25% annually, then giving a poor person $10K/yr will have basically no impact in the long run. Like arguments I had with my wife about Peapod grocery delivery vs shopping myself... the difference is (was) approximately six months of food inflation price, and I don't enjoy shopping, and I intend to continue eating six months in the future, so I don't care if it costs a little more today, its not really changing anything in my life financially.
Another interesting thing to think about is the old Dr Phil line about money problems being unable to be fixed with money. So giving 10K to poor people means in practice its all going to disappear with no improvement in standard of living, just like every other handout in the history of humanity. Such that there's almost no point in talking about that economic segment of the population WRT mincome. And its not much money for rich people, so ignore them too. mincome is a purely middle class play, its the only group that can experience any change.
As an American entrepreneur I've run a small business for nearly ten years, over that time earning nearly a quarter of a million dollars (yeah, not quite Facebook). I've observed that my income closely tracks a Fed metric having to do with disposable income of working class citizens (almost perfectly tracks a metric of increases/decreases in that labor share)
As such I'm finding your attitude impractical. Why do I, as a business owner, care whether you personally think some third person is a try-hard eager beaver? If you yourself don't want to work, you should indeed leave. I'm not at all sure you understand the math of this. Personally, I'm all for the poorer classes having spending money, because as near as I can work out, sometimes they will spend it on me. When they starve, I starve.
No amount of exceptionalism will change that simple fact, and if you're honest about the math you see that the whole point is getting rid of 'a few strong tentpoles'. Those guys are distorting the system and SHOULD leave. Celebrating them is a fool's game.
"If we’re interested in social policies that are resilient I think the dignity problem, or the moral aspects of these policies are worth considering more closely."
I certainly agree the moral aspects are worth considering. No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.
Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme.
The current welfare systems are a messy parcel of compromises, but they at least acknowledge that people have to demonstrate need to be the recipients of government handouts. Once you establish that people have a permanent, inalienable right to an income, you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
I have seen it in every discussion. Some of the forms of evasion include:
* focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses
* focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish
* focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial failure anyway so comparison is pointless
* taking the position that BI is only replacing current welfare programs (until it's pointed out that current programs would not support anyone if spread around)
Occasionally, someone will admit that they are proposing a 100% tax rate, which is about what such a system requires. Even more occasionally, it's admitted that every country must implement a 100% tax rate at once to avoid mass emigration of anyone earning more than ~$20k/year.
Don't forget lots of incorrect assumptions about human nature, namely that there won't be a large, permanent underclass created by BI and that the people actually paying for BI will be more than happy to do so.
> Don't forget lots of incorrect assumptions about human nature, namely that there won't be a large, permanent underclass created by BI and that the people actually paying for BI will be more than happy to do so.
I think almost everyone would want to work on $13-$15k a year. However, they'd work part time.
And tbh, for our current welfare system, that is essentially what happens already. They work minimum wage jobs, part time, on call.
The most common evasion is in the handwaving around the size of the proposed UBI check. Total US tax revenue per person comes out to just over $20000/year, that's $1666/month (in comparison, a 40 hour workweek at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, no holidays, comes out at $15080/year or $1256/month).
If you abolished every single government program and fire every single government employee, right from the DoD down to your local playground, from congress to the schools, never mind every single existing welfare program, assuming that tax revenue somehow managed to stay at the same level, what with no IRS to collect it and 22 million newly unemployed public sector workers, you could barely afford to pay a UBI at the minimum wage, never mind attending to the people who might legitimately need more help (also, no roads or schools).
UBI is either going to require cuts of a depth never proposed, much less enacted, in any western country, ever -- or be too small (perhaps a hundred dollars a month) to live up to its promises.
The top 1% of americans are about 3 million people and have an average income of 1 million. They already account for just short of half of all income taxes.
Every time you want to raise enough revenue to give the 99% another $1,200 ($100/month), you need to raise taxes on each single member of the 1% by $120,000. And that's on average incomes of a million.
I don't think there's even a common model, yet. Some are designed only to benefit the poor, like negative income tax rates.
It's kind of silly to discuss the details when there aren't any. People need to be open to giving cash to the poor to even begin thinking about how best to implement it, and the US at least has been going in the opposite direction since the original Clinton welfare reform, which emphasizes employment assistance over direct monetary assistance, with mixed results.
I do not agree. Understanding of and agreement on the details makes it possible for people to be open to such a broad idea. Currently, the details are discouraging, so it makes sense for proponents to downplay them, but in the long run, they will have more success solving the prerequisites and working their way up. My opinion is that a career in robotics is the most effective way of solving those prerequisites.
Well, I would investigate negative income tax. I don't know what the current state of the UBI lobby looks like, but there are certainly flavors of UBI that are much more efficient at allocating funds where they are needed most. Negative income tax is just one flavor of the more nuanced strategies. I certainly don't think routing some percentage of money into the governments coffers just to pay out again to the same people paying it would be an attractive option, and that seems like what you're describing. I believe that is by far the least efficient model I've seen.
Personally, I think it's throwing money away without also addressing healthcare costs, including nutritional reform. Sugar is only cheap when you ignore the costs of obesity we all bear in increased premiums. This is the only way of which I can conceive to implement some form of cash relief without cutting into benefits.
Yes. The huge majority of pro-UBI writings I see talk up the benefits in great detail but either ignore, or misrepresent, the costs.
Lots of naive idealists support UBI - but I also frequently see UBI advocates who purport to be "evidence-based" and "rational", and yet who fail to provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how they propose to fund their scheme. Instead they do 1 of 3 things:
1. Provide evidence countering non-essential arguments, e.g., will basic income recipients be motivated to work? This implies they've addressed the opposing side, while simultaneously ignoring the essential counter-argument, i.e., where the money comes from.
2. Hand-wave about reduced administration costs. (This is nowhere near sufficient to cover the huge increase in spending). Or automation (yeah, we have better deep learning algorithms, but machine vision, robotics and natural language processing are advancing glacially slowly, so most jobs will require a human in the loop for the foreseeable future).
3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible.
With a small amount of research I found numerous counter-arguments to UBI, including a paper by the New Zealand government finding what I stated in point 3, i.e., UBI would imply benefit reductions to pensioners and the disabled and still require major tax hikes.
I see many people becoming full-time advocates and researchers into UBI, claiming it to be a rational, scientific, evidence-based policy. And yet they miss these basic issues. (It's no mystery why. After realising that current welfare systems don't work, and that a UBI can't work, the logical next step is to question wealth redistribution itself, but that's too far for most). The 20th century saw many intellectuals proposing "scientific" utopian schemes while blatantly ignoring reality, with well-known results.
OTOH, back of the envelope calculations by detractors are usually misleading by an order of magnitude.
For example 320 million Americans * 15K/year in basic income = 4.8 trillion dollars that has to come from new taxes and spending cuts.
But if it all comes from tax increases than somebody currently making the average income will see their taxes go up by exactly amount as their BI payment. Is that actually a tax increase? And if we can get cost savings from simplifying welfare, then their BI payment is more than their tax increase.
4.8 Trillion is completely unfeasible, but the real cost is in the order of hundreds of billions. A heck of lot, but it is feasible.
All of them, even pro-UBI articles with numbers that can be reversed to figure out what they mean in concrete-ish terms, agree its $2 trillion or more.
This one for instance (~$13k) that argues it will save money:
Its pretty clear the entire savings comes from cuts to Medicaid & Medicare & Agricultural subsidies.
---
> 3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible.
That one one went with a clear option #3.
---
As for your solution, it works-ish, but ultimately requires maintaining Medicare & Medicaid which inflates the cost beyond what you propose or admitting you are doing #3 also.
So you'd need to actually raise ~$5.8 trillion to make your system work. It can work, you'd just need to basically double the current tax levels.
Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition that they insist will be fixed with "economic growth". Its the same handwaving the GOP does.
> In my version, every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically into a bank account in monthly installments. Three thousand dollars must be used for health insurance (a complicated provision I won’t try to explain here), leaving every adult with $10,000 in disposable annual income for the rest of their lives.
~55% of people make $30k or less and would get the full grant. He proposes b/t 30k and 60k it drops to 50%. So lets just drop it for the other 45% to 7k (instead of $6500) to keep the numbers simple.
Healthcare + Social Security + Nondiscretionary Defense = 937+882+585 (billions) = $2.4 trillion. So you are already roughly at the same budget (despite his argument that isn't the case). Yes, he wants people 18-21 not to have access but that won't work in practice realistically some people get kicked out in this country at age 18 and have access to welfare.
The argument he makes is:
> The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper.
Despite his age assumption & numbers being borderline unrealistic...
NHE per capita is ~$9,523. He wants insurance to cost $3,000, even if we magically assume 100% of that goes straight to payments. That extra $6,523 has to come from somewhere for people on Medicaid.
If you get a $13,000 grant, you basically lose (realistically) access to medical care with basic income beyond very basic care. (i.e. If you get cancer, no one will cover it so you die. If you get a possibly deadly chronic disease, you can't afford it, you die.)
That is worse for Medicare enrollees which is ~$10.3k So they lose ~$7.3k worth of care.
Yes it is cheaper (using his math) but he doesn't explicitly explain the impact.
It pays for itself by:
1) Cutting income for those on social security to ~$1000. ( Realistically, for the elderly, with overhead for private insurance you are spending probably ~$12 for equivalent care)
2) Cutting medical care for those on welfare currently to $0. ( Realistically, you can't pay for ...
> Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition
A mature BI (one providing an above-poverty-line benefit) is an expensive proposition, but you don't need a mature BI, or one that replaces all the programs you'd like to replace with one, to get net social benefit from it. So you start with a small BI, and phase out the things it is eventually planned to phase out only as the BI benefit makes the existing program irrelevant. (Until then, you just treat the BI as income when calculating benefit for the existing programs.)
To do this, you establish a funding stream that is expected to grow with economic growth, and let the funding stream (basically; using a formula that cushions fluctuations so that short-term downturns don't lead to BI cuts), including prior year savings from reductions in other programs due to the BI along with tax collections in the "funding stream" calculations -- determine the BI level.
> A mature BI (one providing an above-poverty-line benefit) is an expensive proposition
That was below-poverty-line benefits as defined by existing law. Its $10k income with a $3k mandatory payment for the equivalent of Medicaid/insurance.
The poverty line at the moment is ~$11k + Medicaid.
Your last two sentences couldn't be any more eloquent.
When reasoning on these issues, one should always carefully examine the phrase: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Every single word is chosen very carefully.
A basic right is something you inherently have, and cannot be taken away. It's not something to be provided by the government. I wish more people had a better understanding of this.
A reasonable expectation is something that should be provided by others in a society to those that need them and is the glue that holds that society together. I wish more people had a better understanding of this.
Edit: for example, if someone is in a severe accident and unable to help themselves, it is a reasonable expectation in a functioning society that a passerby might call for help or help directly.
This treats rights (legal) as though they were laws of nature. I have yet to see convincing data or argument supporting this notion.
There is ample evidence from history that the legal construct called "rights" is in fact not absolute at all. In fact, all the data we have suggest that "rights" are in fact provided by the government. The mechanisms differ (e.g. the US's constitutional republic encodes government-defined rights in the Constitution and laws derived from it), but ultimately "rights" are something that people, in the forming of the government they live under, agree should exist.
The US constitution recognizes rights that are inherent to people and enumerates them in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant the rights within it, it merely recognizes them. Theoretically, the government has no authority to infringe on these rights. Obviously, in practice this is different.
Early modern British/early American discourse makes a lot of the idea of "natural rights," which were held to be rights men had that weren't necessarily enumerated in the law. Perhaps that's what the OP means to get at (although the idea that "nobody can take it away from you" is just a definition of the concept of a right, not some innate difference between positive and negative liberties).
I think the philosophy of a basic income scheme is to acknowledge that we all have need of support from the government (which ultimately means, from each other) to some degree or another. No demonstration necessary.
What this seems to say is that people shouldn't starve, but to get food people should demonstrate that they are starving. I am unsure why demonstration is essential, because either way others are still obligated to provide food so that people aren't starving.
If my brother tells me he's hungry and broke I might make him dinner and let him crash on my couch. If I just saw him spend $500 on weed I'll probably tell him he's on his own. The demonstration is essential because if we don't require it, some people will exploit our kind nature to rob us.
This is already a massive problem in programs where we do require demonstrations of need. See NPR's expose on rampant disability fraud: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
It's hard to see how eliminating safeguards will improve things.
But at what level do we accept there's assholes and move on and not let them ruin it for all of us?
If we have a program that helps 1 person and 1 person scams it, we might get rid of that program. What if it helps 10 for every 1 scammer? 1,000? 1,000,000? Certainly with the last we'd say it's ok.
We stop when the marginal cost of additional oversight exceeds the marginal benefit of additional fraud prevented. I.e., we keep increasing oversight until diminishing returns causes $1 of additional fraud prevention spending to reduce fraud by $0.99.
I don't know where that point lives, but as NPRs expose demonstrates, that amount is certainly larger than zero and probably a lot larger than where we are now.
I was taking the most simplistic approach. Your point is better than mine, but usually the argument I see is that "there are welfare queens, and that's not fair, therefore there shouldn't be welfare at all." I was more arguing against that.
I'm arguing for good government, not no government.
Unfortunately good government requires carefully understanding and administering a bureaucracy, taking into account individual incentives, and building something non-simple.
Basic income is just a cheap mental hack used to seduce the lazy. It's like looking at a webapp, realizing that 75% of your compute cycles are doing error handling and then saying "aha, the solution is to ignore all errors!" It's seductive, brilliant in it's simplicity, and complete idiocy.
Among other things, this is why essentially no basic income proponents are willing to even do a back of the envelope calculation to show how it would work. (Similarly, "eliminate all error handling" guy will refuse to write a proof of concept.)
[edit: I altered this comment to explain in better detail what I think is wrong with BI, but eliminated a sentence that SandBOx replied to. I believe the real goal of most BI proponents is to create a vote bank of government dependents.]
It's a reform of the French tax system based around a basic income and flat taxes on income and wealth. The resulting redistribution is similar to the current system without the nasty border effects and bureaucracy.
That is mathematical, but the marginal benefit can't exclusively be considered in terms of the financial health of the program. The imposition of fraud prevention creates a lot of negative externalities (in relation to the finances of the program) on people who are recipients or potential recipients. False positive detections of fraud, or heavy burdens of evidence will cause a feedback effect by causing people who we would want to qualify as recipients to commit fraud in order to elude oversight, thereby (if focused on the solvency of the program) justifying even further oversight, and higher overheads.
Also, since the purpose of the program is to reduce poverty, not to detect fraud, another effect is that the additional oversight will keep people away from the program, either by (as above) their inability to navigate the efforts to protect the program from fraud, but also by the effect of intrusive (and possibly personal and demeaning) questions and inspections has on people's self-image who choose to accept the aid (as per TFA), causing them to avoid taking it to avoid social stigma.
I know these are the types of points that laissez-faire libertarians laugh at i.e. "imagine someone who is taking my money refuse any indignity; they can always choose to starve," but those sorts of libertarians don't think that poverty is a concern anyway. When those types get to design programs like this, they end up largely populated by people who are willing to navigate them as a job, hence largely fraudulent, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The vast bulk of overhead is ultimately fraud control in some form, and as that expands, so the program expands, while the number of people being helped stays steady or even shrinks. This massive administration is farmed out to contractors to reduce ballooning costs (cronies, friends of friends and/or benefactors - an externality that affects us all as a rise in corruption) who are rewarded for finding more fraud with a higher proportion of the budget of the program. Their primary motivation then becomes to find excuses to exclude people from the program.
This is depressing to even type. The reason one would have basic income is to eliminate this. I believe that every millionaire should receive a check. Means-testing is a scam.
How can some people exploit basic income system to "rob us"? Maybe they can fabricate people which don't actually exist? (Or more realistically, delay reporting death to collect basic income of dead people.) These are concerns, but hopefully modern government can deal with fake identities. These still seem a lot better than current welfare system.
If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.
People exploit basic income to rob us when they consume it without needing it. Why do you think having zero oversight and giving benefits to everyone, including those who don't need it, is somehow better than the current system?
If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.
Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us.
Many reasons to this and something has to change at some point.
But just a couple of points is that if everyone receives it then nobody can be robbing the system as everyone is entitled to it. Another point that the HN crew should be well aware of is that we are going to see entire Industries worth of jobs disappear. Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. We are on the cusp of automated vehicles and when that comes to fruition all cab/taxi/bus/truck drivers will be without jobs. This will happen in many other areas as well and to not seriously prepare for this type of future is absolute lunacy. Not saying that BI is THE answer...but it, along with many other things, are definitely worth exploring further.
> Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's.
I see this argument a lot lately, but it isn't clear to me why we should have any confidence in this type of speculation. Even if it this generally turns out to be true, what are the second-order effects of such a radical change to the job market? How will people adapt? What new opportunities will arise?
It'll be a cold day in hell before that idea flies. But how do you balance the mob voting themselves bread and circuses, against the wealthy voting to let the mob starve?
I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.
>I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.
Agreed, sign me up. Power should always be balanced with direct responsibility. If you want to vote for the government to do something, you better be able to pay in blood or treasure to see it done.
>It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is.
You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.
Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case.
"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent concept to acting on one's own behalf as a citizen, where there is only one interest, one's own, being represented, and thus no opportunity for a conflict.
You may be abusing the term to mean a conflict between your interests and those of other citizens, but every citizen would have that kind of conflict, and that's what equal participation exists to resolve (and not what conflict of interest means.)
>"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens
That's precisely what a voter is doing. According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign. Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.
Even Congress recognizes this about itself - it passed Amendment 27 which limits its ability to raise its own pay. It thus recognized that it is acting in a different capacity when addressing its own pay than when addressing normal business.
> >"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens
> That's precisely what a voter is doing.
No, its not. A voter is voting on their own behalf as a citizen, and not graned additional authority beyond that of a citizen to act as an agent of other citizens.
> According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign.
One might, perhaps, argue "according to the philosophy to which some subset of the framers subscribed, and which motivated the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign", however, to argue as you do is absolutely without support; the Constitution does not mention sovereignty, and insofar as it expressly grants the traits associated with sovereignty to any entity, it does so to both the states and the federal government, but not anyone else.
> Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.
Even if one accepted the preceding claim, this doesn't follow from it. Individual sovereigns (as opposed to sovereign republics) have no distinction between private and public interests; that's the key thing that distinguishes a Republic from a Monarchy, that in the former government is not a private function. So, the idea that Constitutional sovereign citizenship (if it existed in the first place) would imply that citizens had both "public" and "private" capacities that were distinct is completely incoherent -- if individuals are sovereign, their public sovereign capacity is exactly their private capacity.
> Even Congress recognizes this about itself
Congress is, rather obviously, a body of people who each exercise additional authority in government beyond that of a citizen-voter representing themselves, and who are instead empowered to act as agents representing the interests of other citizens. That's the whole point of Congress.
> it passed Amendment 27
No, Congress doesn't pass amendments. Congress proposes Amendments (Amendment 27 was one of the 12 initial amendments proposed as the bill of rights.)
Like people working for the government, or elected politicians? They get all their income from somebody's else taxes (), have obvious conflict of interests as they make laws that affect their job and income, and I see no chance they won't be allowed to vote.
() Actually most of those money goes back to the state, minus the ones going into savings, private properties or leave the country to pay for imported goods.
Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then you have their $500. It always boggles my mind how many people would rather see the system grind to a halt, rather than anybody naughty be consuming. I would much rather see a class of people with disposable income.
Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then
you have their $500.
Except now, you've used your time and resources to produce weed instead of other goods and services. The people who would have used that $500 to buy those other goods and services will subsequently have a lower standard of living.
If someone steals $5k from me and uses that $5k to buy my car, am I just as well off as I was before because I still have my $5k?
The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Then what about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? What about kids in foster care? What if parents have lots of kids? Should kids also get a basic income? As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.
> The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception.
Or, more likely, we don't include disability programs (which are not purely or primarily means-tested programs) as among the primarily-means-tested programs that are replaced by UBI in the first place. To the extent that improvements are needed in disability programs, they come from elsewhere.
(OTOH, part of the problem creating incentive for disability fraud is secondary testing in primarily means-tested benefit programs, which leaves lots of gaps in basic poverty support.)
> What about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve?
We deal with child neglect through child welfare systems, not social benefit systems.
> What about kids in foster care?
What about them?
> What if parents have lots of kids?
Then...they have lots of kids.
> Should kids also get a basic income?
Pretty obviously, yes, kids should get basic income (if nothing else, most of the primarily means-tested social benefit programs -- both welfare and EITC -- in the country are support programs for parents with dependent children that are strongly scaled by the number of dependent children, so if you want a system that does at least as good for current targets of benefits while removing the adverse effects, the obvious methods is that kids should be included as beneficiaries. There are a few programs that are not targeting such families -- e.g., General Assistance programs, but they are small both in their per-beneficiary benefits and their aggregate costs as a share of overall social welfare spending.)
The most sensible way to do a UBI is probably "all citizens and legal permanent residents".
> As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.
The whole point of the "U" in UBI is that you don't add exceptions. You define a broad universe of recipients with as few qualifications as you can sensibly make, and everyone within that universe gets the same benefit.
Now what about the kids of undocumented workers? Will people in retirement continue to get their social security? How will we pay for all this? Assuming 418M people at $13K which I typically see mentioned as basic income, that is $4T which is more than the entire US federal budget.
> Now what about the kids of undocumented workers?
What about them? Those kids are themselves either citizens or (improbably) legal permanent residents (and thus, beneficiaries) or not (and thus not). This isn't rocket surgery.
> Will people in retirement continue to get their social security?
That depends whether Social Security is a replaced program or not (IMO, it shouldn't be, since its not a means-tested social benefit program.)
> How will we pay for all this?
With new taxes plus the redirected funds from replaced programs.
> Assuming 418M people
From a few different sources, I get that the US population is 319M, about 93% citizens and 3.6% lawful permanent residents. So, assuming 418M beneficiaries of a UBI is unreasonable.
> at $13K which I typically see mentioned as basic income
$13K/capita is a just about the point at which two-person household would clear the poverty line, so its not a bad point to consider a reasonably mature UBI; OTOH, I'd prefer to identify a funding mechanism that should grow with economic growth, and have benefits scaled so as to (in the long-term, smoothing short-term variability) follow that funding mechanism, eventually reaching such a mature level (and going to even higher levels with more growth) rather than setting a benefit level and then trying to fund it out of the gate.
And I wouldn't expect a mature UBI for a generation or so.
You keep asking questions implying that they're problems when in reality they're just really not that big a deal. Tax bureaucracies have dealt with exceptions since forever. Same thing with legal systems.
This is not the slippery slope that you're implying; you can certainly draw certain lines when the system that you're building has limited scope and leaves the outliers to other benefits systems.
It's not that clear cut. Your options are more like:
1) Trust your brother, feed him and let him crash. Costs you $50.
2) Don't trust your brother. Hire an investigator to determine if he bought weed. Most of the time nothing is found so you wind up helping him, which now cost $70. Occaaionally you discover something and choose not to help. Still costs you $20.
Is #2 worth it? That depends on how often the investigator finds a reason not to help.
Also time -- the $50 option costs no time. I think your argument is important. We spend a ton of time debating and considering how to prevent freeloaders. I'm more inclined to just ignore them and see how it goes, then start adding checks into the system when (if?) its apparent the free-loaders are a legitimate threat to the system.
There's never an option costing zero as long as the brother in question has the ability to punch you in the face and take your food for leaving him to starve.
It's actually not a particularly interesting or unique view, it's obvious, and essentially the basis of civilization.
Organisms that hoard resources have been targets of violence since we were all protozoa.
A widely used basic definition of government is simply the group that has cornered the market on the recognized use of violence.
Rich people have to do something to grapple with poverty or the poor people will kill them and eat their food. Same as it ever was, and its reality doesn't change in response to your moral judgement.
The fact there's a section of the population who believes that poor people won't turn to crime before starving to death simply amazes me.
You actually have 4 options: do nothing and then put people in jail. Which will cost you WAYYYYYY more per person, per year, than just giving them money directly to "freeload".
Do nothing and wait for the mass revolt when half the population is starving to death when you've got someone like Martin Shkreli buying his fourth Ferrari "just because". If you think the masses will just roll over and die if they're starving to death, you're delusional (whether intentionally or not).
I'm a bit dismayed at the lack of imagination in this thread.
How about designing public policy that provide incentives to work rather than incentives not to work? (earned income tax credits)
How about decreasing the cost of labor in order to increase employment while simultaneously providing programs that assist during periods of unemployment? (e.g., make it easier to hire and to fire and switch jobs while providing strong unemployment safety net, decouple health insurance from employment)
How about setting expectations that people be self-sufficient and not dependent upon others? This is a more of a cultural problem then a policy problem.
How does an incentive to work accomplish anything if the only jobs that are available (if any for a given person's skillset) are ones that pay far too little to live on. ("decreasing the cost of labor" == "reduce or eliminate the minimum wage")
Most poor people work very hard to earn enough to survive; much harder per $ earned than most people on this website. They don't need an incentive to work, they need jobs that pay better for each hour they work.
Raising the minimum wage won't accomplish that by itself, because most companies would reduce the number of positions to keep their costs stable. We could raise the minimum wage and then provide tax credits to businesses to offset the additional labor cost, but that'd wind up complex to administer and there would probably be loopholes that allow companies to take tax credits and keep the cash to themselves instead of paying them through to employees. With Basic Income, we effectively raise the minimum wage by direct payments to the employee; their income per hour worked goes up. This is much simpler to administer: everyone gets the same amount, and it counts as taxable income.
They also disproportionately engage in other behaviors that also keep them poor (e.g. drug use, beating their wives, etc).
Also, assuming you were right, EITC would immediately solve the problem of "the only jobs that are available...are ones that pay far too little to live on." EITC solves the problem of "I want to live at a western middle class standard of living, but the value of my labor is too low to support that". The only problem it doesn't solve is "I want to sit at home smoking weed and playing video games" (that's what BI solves).
A situation in which assistance is given to people who are working (albeit for a lower wage) is a much better situation than assistance being given to people who aren't working at all.
There is value in enabling people to have jobs, even low paying jobs.
Many workplace laws and regulations effectively increase the cost of labor in the aggregate. So "decreasing the cost of labor" is not all about lowering pay. Think of things like overtime rules, mandatory benefits, onerous compliance rules, shifting various legal burdens to the employer rather than the employee, making it more difficult to fire someone.
The EIC awards a max of ~$6,200 to people with 3 or more children.
How many people with 3 kids do you think are going to stop working if they get an unconditional government benefit of $6,000?
I think the EIC does a good job of addressing the need some people have to moralize about the sanctity of labor, I doubt it has much of any impact on the labor market (it mostly just makes the lives of some kids better).
Do you have any evidence for that? I would wager it leans in the other direction: sleeping on the street leads to other negative behaviors, in aggregate.
If a person is sleeping on streets and still hasn't learned the lesson that food/clothing/shelter is more important than weed. Something tells me the person deserves it.
You might want to check on the price of weed vs rent in a typical city. The brother is unlikely to forgo the weed if doing so just means he's sleeping in the streets sober instead of high.
> This is already a massive problem in programs where we do require demonstrations of need. See NPR's expose on rampant disability fraud: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
But, the disability fraud is due in large part to the rampant unemployment, poverty, and gutted social safety net in that area. So, the option for those folks is disability or live on the streets. I wouldn't exactly say you are making the case for requiring proof of need.
Also interestingly you see use of drugs as reason to refute need. I believe there is a correlation between desperate poverty and drug use, I think it's because for those people with no hope of escaping poverty they need some kind of escape. Unlike you and I if we ever loose a job or get hit with an unfortunate circumstance we can get out of it fairly easy because of our education and in-demand skills. Now imagine a factory closing and 5000 folks with barely an education now out of a job, some percent of that cohort is going to end up resorting to drug use as an escape from their hopeless position. Idealistically, I'm hoping a basic income gives people like this some hope back. But, even then if there truly are no jobs for them, then if some % of the population enjoys weed then maybe that's ok--it's better than a lot of other possibilities they could be doing.
No, the disability fraud is caused by healthy people lying in order to take money from others that they didn't earn.
Are you somehow claiming that wealthy Americans are unable to make choices for themselves, i.e. they are incompetent? If so, lets find them caretakers who can manage their lives for them. Lets not let them continue making bad choices that cost the rest of us.
I have no problem with smoking weed and I do it myself sometimes. I have a problem with spending your own money on weed and then turning to me claiming you are hungry. Spend your own money before you spend mine.
I think that if you did a cost/benefit analysis on benefit fraud, you'd find that it's a lot of work and risk for a very tiny benefit. Unless you don't believe in economics, you'd assume that they would do another job which would require less work and risk and more pay if they had access to one. Disability fraud is caused by desperation. Either that or 2% (IIRC) of the U.S. working population suddenly became either very sick or lying dopesmokers right after the housing bubble burst.
I think if you scrolled up you'd find a link to NPR's expose on rampant disability fraud.
Disability fraud is caused by desperation. Either that or 2% (IIRC) of the U.S. working population suddenly became either very sick or lying dopesmokers right after the housing bubble burst.
You are simultaneously claiming that cracking down on fraud won't save money, yet also saying disability fraud is huge but only because people are desperate to do it.
"Your honor, I didn't kill that guy and he was such a jerk that he deserved to die."
This kind of argument misses the forest for the trees. In any welfare system where we don't just say "screw 'em" to people who can't seem to support themselves enough to survive, there will be people who game the system. Now, I'd argue that those people almost always have the potential to be productive (and aren't productive because of motivational, situational, or basic economic reasons), but there is no benefits system we can introduce that will directly encourage these people to change. Yes, if we introduce basic income, by making things significantly better for everyone at the bottom we might slightly increase the number of people who don't contribute economically, and I agree that initially this feels like a moral problem that we might like to avoid. But in the grand scheme of things, I believe that a basic income will cause an increase in economic productivity (through increased access to education, less reliance on illicit activity, and removal of certain stressors that keep people locked in the cycle of poverty) to a MUCH larger demographic of people, vastly offsetting whatever inefficiencies are introduced by an increase in those who don't contribute to the economic system. Heck, even the reduction in bureaucratic expenditures might be enough to offset this cost. At the end of the day, any system will have a potential for introducing moral hazard, but I feel that any increase that might be introduced by basic income is vastly offset by the other economic benefits the system brings.
Actually the increase is more than "slight". It's a 13% reduction in work effort, more than double the reduced work effort caused by the great recession.
What do you have against your brother putting $500 back into the economy? That's good for everyone (except for him in the example you gave). If you were smart you would have sold him the weed and made yourself a few hundred bucks. Then you could easily feed him with the profit. The local grocer can then feed his family with the extra money he made because you bought more from him due to your sudden windfall and so on. The economy benefits from money circulation. Basic income is going to improve the health of the economy by giving spending power and financial security to everyone. In turn this will make people looser with their everyday spending which will be of phenomenal benefit for the overall health of the economy. You're thinking about it as if it's your personal account. Money doesn't work like that at scale.
What do you have against your brother putting $500 back into the economy? That's good for everyone
How is it good for everyone else? Everyone else now collectively has $500 less to spend on other goods and services. Instead of scarce resources being used to create those other goods and services, they will be used to grow weed. That sounds to me like it's decidedly bad for everyone else.
Considering the amount we waste is enough to feed the rest of the planet, no we don't really have scarce resources and resources are becoming less and less scarce every year.
I'm talking about economic scarcity. In economics, scarcity does not mean you don't have enough of something to fulfill some particular purpose. It means you have to make trade-offs. If I spend my day chopping wood, I can't spend my day cutting grass. Our time is fundamentally scarce. If I use a gallon of gas to drive to the store, I can't use that gallon of gas to light a huge fire. If we're using farmland and labor and capital resources to grow marijuana, we're not using that farmland and that labor and those capital resources to create other goods and services for people to consume. Does that make sense?
With technology there is no upper limit on productivity. We will always be able to produce more than enough. Take your growing weed example. We could do it indoors in skyscrapers with robots. You could grow enough weed for the whole world to chain smoke, in one building in the desert if it came to the point where that made sense (which it might in the nearish future). Capital is essentially imaginary and therefore limitless given the right incentives.
With technology there is no upper limit on productivity.
But it will never be enough to satisfy all human wants and needs.
We will always be able to produce more than enough.
More than enough for what purpose?
We could do it indoors in skyscrapers with robots. You
could grow enough weed for the whole world to chain
smoke, in one building in the desert if it came to the
point where that made sense (which it might in the
nearish future).
Surely you understand that if we're using those robots and that skyscraper to grow weed, we can't also use those robots and that skyscraper to produce some other good. Surely you understand that less of some other goods would be produced because we chose to use that particular productive capacity to grow weed rather than to produce those other goods. Surely you understand that the raw materials, including human labor, used to build the robots and the skyscraper were not available to be used to produce other goods, and that the energy needed to grow the weed could not be used for other purposes. Surely you don't believe that human desires have already been fully sated, except for more pot, and that resources are just sitting around idle until jobless stoners get UBI money to buy pot.
Capital is essentially imaginary and therefore limitless
given the right incentives.
This is the first I'm hearing that capital is "essentially imaginary". What do you mean by that? What do you mean by 'capital'?
There's no incentive for fraud in an unconditional benefit system.
> It's hard to see how eliminating safeguards will improve things.
Its actually easy to see, when the "safeguards" directly produce perverse incentives. Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme creates an incentive for fraud where the benefits of fraud outweigh the expected cost of committing it.
The "safeguards" are the problem, not a mitigation.
Yes, and if I redefine all errors as successes my program has no bugs.
Back in reality, my application is not meeting business needs, and BI is still wasting a bunch of money on people who don't need it.
Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme creates an incentive for fraud where the benefits of fraud outweigh the expected cost of committing it.
A Basic Job Guarantee (if you need a job real bad, the government gives you a real bad job) does not create incentives for fraud. EITC also has minimal incentives for fraud.
> A Basic Job Guarantee (if you need a job real bad, the government gives you a real bad job) does not create incentives for fraud.
No one needs a job. People need good and services, which (in a system that is basically market structured) income is a means to provide. A job isn't a need, its multiple steps removed from needs.
A "Basic Job" labor army programming is a reasonable means of providing stability in income, currency in marketable skills, and providing for infrastructure and other public needs during a short-term disruption in the private economy negatively effecting employment that does not involve a long-term transformation in the nature of the economy and the kinds of work likely to be in demand.
Its a very bad way of dealing with long-term structural unemployment, providing a social safety net during a period of substantial transformation of the jobs in demand which either makes people permanently unemployable or requires substantial time devoted to retraining to regain employability for displaced workers, etc. Its a good component of a set of policies to address the Great Depression, but not for an economic revolution driven by automation and other developments.
> EITC also has minimal incentives for fraud.
Sure, because EITC has a fairly gradual falloff of benefits with increasing income at the top end (and because, though risk of getting caught may be fairly low, sanctions for tax fraud are very steep), it creates only a fairly mild incentive to fraud through concealed outside income. Certainly, rolling all primarily means-tested (but not mainly conditioned on other needs) social benefit programs into EITC, both raising the cap and broadening the range appropriately, and keeping the fairly mild fall-off at the top would substantially reduce overall complexity, and reduce incentives for fraud, at the cost of directing less funds to the neediest at the bottom (due to the phase-in part at the bottom end of the scale with EITC.)
Of course, the only differences between an EITC and a UBI funded (insofar as funds are needed beyond those from replaced means-tested programs) increased high-end taxes in a progressive income tax system is:
(1) EITC doesn't reach the bottom end of the distribution as effectively, due to the phase-in,
(2) EITC is effectively (other than as mentioned in #1) equivalent to a UBI funded by an increased tax on a narrow range of income toward the low (but not absolute bottom) end of the scale (the range at which the UBI phases out.) rather than one funded by an increased tax at the top end of the scale, as in most UBI proposals.
UBI is basically EITC with those two problems fixed.
> But we don't have long term structural unemployment.
No, we have (arguably) the early phases of an economic revolution with rapid changes in the kinds of jobs in demand (which is the other thing I mentioned), long-term structural unemployment is a speculated future issue, both of those (as short and longer term concerns) are issues that are usually cited as motivations for UBI (personally, I'm more interested in the former than the latter, at least in the form of "unemployment" in the strict sense, rather than "decline in the relative value of the median hour of labor".)
You can disagree that either is something we ought to address, but by (earlier in the thread) presenting an alternative solution to BI, you are implicitly agreeing with the problem it is being offered to solve.
> We actually currently have a scarcity of labor
If we had a simple scarcity of labor, you'd see rapid, across the board increases in the market clearing cost of labor, you do not. We may have a scarcity of certain skills, but that's a problem that while a mature UBI addresses (by making it more possible for people to take time for retraining in the hope of future wage gains), a Basic Job as you have proposed does not.
> and BI makes this problem worse (about twice as bad as the great recession did).
The great recession didn't produce a scarcity of labor, it produced a surplus of labor. So "makes this problem worse (about twice as bad as the great recession did)" is simply incoherent.
Anyhow, the experiment you point to is not a BI, its a Minimum Income (a traditional, means-tested welfare program, with a 50% fall-off for outside income and the associated reduced incentive for outside income-earning activities, including work -- the central problem with means-tested benefit programs that UBI is directed at solving.)
Claiming that an experiment with the exact feature of traditional, means-tested welfare programs that UBI proponents point to as a reduced incentive to work that shows that such a program does, in fact, reduce work by some specific amount as proof that a UBI at the same level would reduce incentive to work by the same amount is unjustifiable.
> EITC increases incentives to work
EITC increases incentive to earn additional income within a narrow range at the bottom, has no effect on incentives just above that range for another narrow range, and then decreases incentives to earn additional income within another narrow range, and then has no additional effect above that range.
It increases the incentives for work at a minimal income, and somewhat decreases the incentives for moving beyond that for people who can achieve that but don't see a path to a very large increase.
> Welfare and BI have the opposite effect.
Even granting, arguendo, that that's true, the key issue in evaluating proposals to replace means-tested welfare programs with BI is the relative effect of the means-tested programs replaced vs. the BI replacement.
Yes, and an obese man might speculate that he'll starve in the future. That's not a reason for him to eat 3 cheeseburgers today.
If we had a simple scarcity of labor, you'd see rapid, across the board increases in the market clearing cost of labor, you do not.
This is simply not true. The way to check for a scarcity of labor is simply to determine whether there is labor worth performing at some non-zero price. Scarcity is merely a situation where more of a good is wanted than is available.
You can disagree that either is something we ought to address, but by (earlier in the thread) presenting an alternative solution to BI, you are implicitly agreeing with the problem it is being offered to solve.
I'm proposing a solution to two completely different problems: the problem of people claiming they'll starve if others don't transfer them resources, and the problem of labor scarcity.
The great recession didn't produce a scarcity of labor, it produced a surplus of labor.
Not according to Keynesians - they believe there was productive work people people could do that wasn't getting done, simply because nominal wages were too high. That's why they proposed stimulus to inflate away the value of real wages.
So? This seems to be an argument-to-people-you-don't-even-purport-are-authorities... (Not to mention that it seems to be a hostile caricature of the Keynesian argument, which I'll get to in a second.)
> they believe there was productive work people people could do that wasn't getting done, simply because nominal wages were too high.
"Work isn't getting done because forces outside of market rationality prevent prices from adjusting downward to reflect the reduced demand for good X" isn't a real "scarcity of X", its a surplus of X with non-market forces preventing existing supply and demand from connecting.
(Where it occurs, the solution is obvious, deal with the problem that prevents real prices from adjusting to the natural market clearing price, so if one perceived the problem you claimed Keynesians perceived, then the solution you claimed Keynesians preferred would be sensible.)
OTOH, that's not the problems Keynesians saw, and Keynesian stimulus isn't aimed at "inflating away the value of real wages" (nor did the actual stimulus in the great recession do that; inflation during the period remained unusually low). Keynesian stimulus (whether in the form of fiscal stimulus that Keynesians usually prefer, or monetary stimulus that Keynesians will usually complain is a poor mechanism but -- much like Keynes own example of burying banknotes and letting people dig them up -- better than doing nothing when good solutions are off the table) is aimed at increasing demand -- particularly for labor -- which is a solution directly aimed at surplus of labor, not scarcity of labor.
> I take it you believe stimulus was ill-advised?
More to the point, I disagree with your description of the Keynesian case for stimulus, and like most Keynesians, I believe that the form of stimulus was extraordinarily poorly chosen from the perspective of government-as-a-single-decision-maker, but perhaps reasonable (or at least understandable) on the part of the Fed given that the government isn't a single decisionmaker, and the key body deciding fiscal policy was nearly inert.
> And this narrow range is the place our slack labor force lives.
I suppose that this is a meaningful statement if your concern is merely maximizing the number of people doing some kind of work, rather than maximizing welfare, realization of human potential, etc. And, certainly, that seems to comport well with your preference for a permanent government army of economically-compelled labor as the main (or perhaps only, its not really clear) "social benefit" program.
> No one needs a job. People need good and services
This. We've been brainwashed by historical circumstances and the morals derived by them. A job, or theft, or theft disguised as a honest job, has been the only way to get those goods and services but this is becoming less and less true. We can automate the production of some goods and there is little need to work to make them. Hence there is less and less need for money to pay them. We can almost give them away. So basic income is a way to acknowledge this change and give everybody a share of the new commons that our automated factories can build. Do you want more than the basic? Then work, or create, or be special in any way people will acknowledge you.
> A Basic Job Guarantee (if you need a job real bad, the government gives you a real bad job) does not create incentives for fraud.
Are you sure about that? For recipients, there is potential to slack off while still receiving pay. Possibly to the point of doing other work (under the table? for their own household?). While this can be construed as still comparing favorably to BI ("at least we're getting some work out of some of them") it is not at all the same as there being no opportunity for fraud.
Meanwhile, there is tremendous potential for abuse and fraud by those giving out the basic jobs. A long running program whose criteria for success is "employ a lot of people at marginally useful things" is a large pile of money just waiting to be spent on making improvements that especially benefit the connected few.
> Meanwhile, there is tremendous potential for abuse and fraud by those giving out the basic jobs. A long running program whose criteria for success is "employ a lot of people at marginally useful things" is a large pile of money just waiting to be spent on making improvements that especially benefit the connected few.
A point well-illustrated, in fiction, in The Green Mile.
> There's no incentive for fraud in an unconditional benefit system.
Of course there is - money, the same incentive as always. The fraud just takes a different form. Now it's "people that don't exist" instead of "people that don't qualify".
Note, however, that "people that don't exist" may be easier to detect than "people who don't qualify", which involve all kinds of judgment about grey areas.
I thought the point of basic income was that EVERYONE gets it? How can that be exploited?
Some will get a basic income and choose not to work and continue to live, others will choose to work (while also receiving the basis income) and will have a better lifestyle because of them choosing to work. Is this not how this work or am I wrong?
At least some of the budget would come from realizing reductions in bureaucratic overhead from eliminating the welfare apparatus and costs associated with crime (which poverty is the biggest predictor of).
We also always seem to have enough money to bomb the ever living shit out of brown people in all the far flung regions of the universe, so I don't understand why cost should ever be an issue.
I don't think need is either an important issue. The problem with your last sentence is that it "no right to income" implies "no right to feed one's self", i.e. "no right to live." Do people deserve to starve to death just because they are lazy?
The right to life implies you have the right to earn an income. This also implies property rights on your earned income. (The original formulation was "life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness").
> those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors
Don't we already have this? Example: people working for the state vs people working in private companies.
> you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income
I'm not sure that this is a consequence but let's suppose it is. It's already happened in that context for millenia, peacefully at least until everybody agreed that it was a good deal for both parties.
Is basic income a good deal for all parties? There are some experiments running or about to start. We'll see.
You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society. For instance artists, for now, need to try and sell their work but a lot of cultural works are not necessarily sell-able.
It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?
> You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society
You could still measure whether any contribution is being made at all and only give BI to those who are contributing. Which is essentially what existing subsidies for art & etc are for.
> It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?
Under BI, members of minorities who overcame those handicaps will be paying more in taxes to support a whole bunch of white males, though.
Very good points, I think my comments weren't very focused on the argument at hand but more some thoughts that had been kicking around in my brain that go against the general sentiment of the parent comment.
I do think the poor and those with skills in areas that are beneficial to society but not necessarily commercial suffer under our current systems but maybe BI isn't the solution either.
I think the appeal of BI is more one for simplifying the bureaucracies around benefits but we would still need some bureaucracy for those that need additional income to support themselves (say people with severe disabilites that can not work).
Thanks for the thought out response, the downvotes were getting me down.
Why break it down by state except to make a politically charged generalization? The modern economy is dependent on cities and states are a mostly arbitrary political division inherited from a time when cultivated land area determined economic value.
The link is about state economic dependence on the federal government, not which layer of government distributes welfare benefits.
It's just a rehashing of the red state-blue state federal dependence argument, which is really the rural-urban dependence argument.
If you want to knock rural areas as being net welfare recipients, just call them rural areas rather than red states. But even that's still an unhelpful generalization.
If you really want to be granular, you would single out the urban neighborhoods, suburbs, and yes rural areas (such as oil patches) that are net contributors.
And as one of the comments pointed out, many of the rural states are completely at the mercy of the Federal government. When the Federal government controls 48% of a state's land (Wyoming), yet doesn't allow logging, mining or agricultural activities on most of it, what exactly is the local population supposed to generate revenue from?
Are the least dependent states that way because of logging, mining or agricultural activities? No. 52% of the Wyoming's land, ~50,000 sq. miles, is still more land than 18 other states have in the Union.
Logging, mining, and agricultural activities is hardly an exhaustive list of economic activity. It is also strange to think about what people should do with land they don't control. Or even to assume that natural resources are the only resource of importance.
Connecticut has 3.6 million people, Wyoming has roughly 0.6 million people.
6.2% of Connecticut's 5543^2 miles of land is public
56% of Wyoming's 97818^2 miles of land is public.
So Wyoming has about 8 times as much private land as Connecticut and about 1/6th the number of people.
I realize that there is a lot more involved than just land, but it looks like in the aggregate, there is about 50 times as much private land in Wyoming per person than in Connecticut.
It is easy to poke holes in my analysis, but I'd be surprised if scarcity of land is the roadblock to a healthy economy in Wyoming.
I'm also not trying to take an opinion on whether the federal government should hold all that land, just pointing out that there is a lot of land in Wyoming on a per-capita basis.
>>The answer is, unsurprisingly, everyone who pays taxes.
1. Not every one would work to pay taxes, when there is a way to not work and still get paid.
2. Lesser the number of people who work lesser the pool of money to share among the remaining.
3. Those who still continue to work feel cheated all the time to be working and making up for everyone. While they push insane hours to make a living, punished all the time for earning, endlessly being asked to pay for others, or be called greedy and evil otherwise.
4. Mass exodus of people follows to places where there is a decent rewards in return for work.
5. Ecosystem as a whole has endless iteration of fewer and fewer contributors, and more and more people who think are entitled to free cash. At some point it all collapses in its own weight.
1 - 5 is basically the story of every single socialist economy in the past 150 years.
I'm not aware of any socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment. Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war. They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better.
Not that it necessarily matters, since most "socialist" economies didn't really have anything like a basic income. The closest was probably the USSR, where everyone was notionally guaranteed an income, but only because everyone was guaranteed a job, and voluntary long-term joblessness was illegal.
The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income. Nothing even resembling a basic income has been employed in a country that didn't also have its economy devastated by war - whether civil, cold, or world. The small-scale trials of basic income have had either neutral or positive outcomes.
>>socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment
The problem here is not underemployment. Underemployment is a situation where people want to work, but don't have jobs. The situation I mentioned systematically disincentivizes working making it very easy to get by life without work. The net situation is people feel they are entitled to free stuff without doing any work for it. And its always somebody else responsibility to provide for them, while they do nothing at all to contribute anything back.
>>Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war.
Cold war was the perfect test of which country could retain their best. There were barely any incentives to stay in socialist countries. At any given point of time a minority was slogging till death to feed the remaining mouths in their countries. Why do think you so many people from countries like India(Largely still socialistic society) want to move to US?
Robbing Peter to feed Paul only works that long.
>>They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better.
That's strange since none of the socialist economies did better even those which didn't participate in the world wars.
>>The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income.
Sorry, you say- since nothing like it with 100% match existed before we should discard cases with 99.99999% match.
Today we have automation on a scale never before experienced. Ultimately we will need approximately 0% of our population to work. This is not a problem; its actually the goal. We are not there yet, but a BI is a step.
Nonsense. Automation was the same 12 months, and largely the same 10 years ago.
0% working for some definitions of work. People want to be and do all sorts of things and will continue to, automation should help us live more comfortably and more gently on the earth, not make us redundant.
Factory automation today means almost nobody is needed to work factory jobs. And there is no longer a path from the factory floor to technical, engineering or management roles. Just minimum-wage standins for broken/missing equipment (moving a box from one conveyor to another during a rush).
34 million Americans resort to minimum-wage jobs because there's nothing else. This is not a fad or a downturn; its the new normal.
People often miss the fourth dimension when talking about welfare and social security, even though it's a fairly direct element of most of it e.g. "you pay when you're healthy, you get healthcare when you're sick", "you pay when you're young, you get money when you're old".
So there wouldn't be a bright line division, as some people would be receiving one week/month/year/decade and paying the next.
An interesting hack on that outlook is my home state spends a lot of money on bureaucracy and paperwork to "stealth up" what we do with a fraction of gasoline taxes which offset the general fund (aka lower our state income tax) and we obfuscate the heck out of state lotto income by embedding it in prop tax relief.
It would be possible to hack the system by getting rid of all the stealth and corruption and just issuing each of us a check for the gas tax and lotto tax. Then just issue simple, cheap, straightforward normal un-obfuscated prop tax bills and un-obfuscated state income tax forms.
As a side dish WRT "The government's money" all of this money came from voluntary participation in various tax schemed monopolies and centrally controlled economic planning.
A state level "mincome" funded entirely by lotto players and gas tax and so forth is interesting. It should be sustainable and cheaper overall than the current system of byzantine complexity.
Frankly we have a large number of "bribes" paid to the government by non-humans. It would be interesting rather than slush funding them and obfuscating them to mincome all incoming bribe money. All state corporate income tax, all our weird little excises and fees and utility cable tv franchise fees, all of it goes to mincome and the government itself can only accept personal human being state income tax for general revenue. Its an interesting mental model and if implemented would likely save a lot of money... obfuscation is expensive after all. I'm pretty well paid and spend pretty freely, I'd likely remain a net tax payer, but I could imagine many poor people continuing to pay very little tax and getting the same state mincome check.
As pointed out by someone in another thread, some countries is the ME approach a basic income concept. It'd be interesting to read about the results found in the ME where a near UBI has been implemented and whether that has had net benefits or mixed results.
I think some kind of UBI could be of benefit, but there could be some undesired effects that need to be understood before we can consider it a better replacement for the current system.
>Once you establish that people have a permanent, inalienable right to an income, you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
No, you don't.
Wealth is created in one of two ways - by nature or by people.
The fairest and most equitable way to distribute wealth is to share the natural wealth equally as possible and try and make sure that people are compensated as closely as possible for the wealth which they create (e.g. Walmart billionaires).
Our economic set up ensures that natural wealth is kept among the ultra wealthy (e.g. oil barons) and the ultra wealthy can parasitically extract wealth created by others.
those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.
This is only one way to split the pie. Another way to look at it is the division between people who earn their lot in life by working and people who collect economic rents from the commons. It seems only fair to me that those who collect rents should contribute more. This is the principle underlying the concept of the social dividend [0].
Take a factory owner, for example. They are net recipients of many societal benefits, including: roads, electricity, water, sewage removal, education and health care for their employees, favourable tax rates for their property, etc. For that factory owner to then turn around and cry foul at being called upon to be a net contributor to basic income is hypocritical bordering on antisocial.
The factory owner already us a net contributor to the taxation that paid for that infrastructure and those services.
His or her issue isn't with taxation specifically, his or problem is with more taxation in general.
My issues with Basic Income are similar to those raised by PJ O'Rourke about government in general. Government is incompetent, and BI is a recipe for handing even more power to politicians. I'm not convinced that is a good idea.
>No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.
When the idea of basic income is boiled down entirely to dollars and cents, sure. But, because of the volatility in the labor market, there isn't a way for an individual to know or predict whether they or someone else will be a net giver or a net-taker, as these things must be measured across a person's lifetime. J.K. Rowling was a taker for years, now she's wholeheartedly a giver. These status are primarily self-assigned and perceived based on.... well, I'm not sure what they're based on. See the author's 'popularity' argument, see the interviews with people who are anti-welfare but pro-mincome for themselves.
It's also worth considering -- as every discussion of UBI brings up -- the incalculable, invaluable net effects of such a scheme (and indeed of welfare itself). There are intangible benefits that are unnoticed even to the 'net contributors' -- that is, people who are housed and fed are less likely to stab you in the street for your iPhone.
>Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme.
If a particular advocate of UBI doesn't include the tax increase in every point she makes about the system, it's only because that's a given, and has always been mentioned in some other comment. If you believe a particular funding scheme is flawed, have at it.
>you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
UBI doesn't imply that others are obligated to provide them with income. It's explicit in the system. Unless you believe all taxation is theft (in which case: Game over, you'll never come around to UBI), it's safe to say that you believe 'society' has some obligation to the health and safety of its members. UBI is just the free-market expression of that: Rather than have the government try to create a massive, bloated system that tries to predict what people need, give them the tools they need to get it themselves. That tool is money.
Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants and has everything they are to owe to the society that formed them. What a single human can achieve compared to that is extremely small.
The reality is that the greatest amount of wealth is not attained by work but inherited. This stands in total opposition to the idea that our society is a meritocracy.
Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme.
We absolutely shouldn't let them evade that question. So I'll go ahead and not evade it for you.
No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.
This is incorrect. Other commenters rightly point out that the benefits of basic income extend far beyond what can be measured in terms of money. But even if we only take into account the money, your assumption that you need taxes to support basic income is wrong. Money is not zero-sum. The money supply (including deposits, credit, etc.) expands and contracts depending on the needs of the economy.
Without making a rigorous argument, I will boldly assert that we can pay for a basic income without taxing anyone. We can pay for it through deficit spending or helicopter money (money-financed fiscal policy), which are both essentially the equivalent of printing money. You might worry that such a practice would cause inflation or devaluation of the dollar thereby resulting an implicit tax on those who have a lot of money. Here's two reasons why basic income through printing money wouldn't cause inflation:
1. Prices are determined by the amount of spending in the economy relative to the amount of real wealth* being traded. For some (inelastic) spending, people will spend whether they have the money or not. They'll borrow in order to spend. If you give them free money, they'll borrow less. The Fed can raise interest rates to make sure this happens. You're just swapping an unstable form of credit money for stable base money that never has to be paid back.
2. More spending isn't necessarily inflationary either. Most of what we produce is subject to an economy of scale. That means that the more of it we make, the cheaper it gets to make each individual unit. If you give poor people money to buy things they otherwise would not have bought, we make more of that stuff to meet the new demand, and prices can remain stable or even come down. Rich people benefit too because they have more customers to sell to. The money we hand to the poor doesn't just stay with the poor. It ends up in the hands of the rich as usual.
EDIT: 3. Money gradually leaves circulation over time. People hoard it and save it. If we're not continually injecting new money into the economy, we run into trouble. A basic income is as good of a way to do this as any. It's certainly better than incentivizing a bubble in private credit.
EDIT: 4. As technology advances, we produce more and more real wealth. If we want prices to remain stable, we need more and more money circulating. So we need to inject more new money than just what's necessary to replace the money that we lose through saving/hoarding.
A fun thought experiment is to ask yourself what would happen if the taxing arm of the treasury had no direct access to information about how much spending the government was doing and vice versa. Instead, they had to make decisions about how much to tax (and spend) based on macroeconomic indicators such as inflation. Would the budget naturally balance itself? Unlikely. We would run a deficit because that's what's most stable. We just wouldn't know we were running a deficit.
I would argue that for a government that can issue its own currency, we shouldn't think of taxation as a way to fund government spending. Instead we can think of it as an economic policy tool to remove excess money from the economy. But we have other tools to do that too (e.g. raising interest rates or fractional reserve requirements).
Paying for a basic income is cheaper than withholding a basic income. Instead of asking how we pay for a basic income, we should be asking how we expect to be able to pay for all the job creation/job...
It's extremely counterproductive to, as the article puts it, "take the question of the moral quality of the poor off the table."
The fact is that a large amount of poverty is directly correlated with "moral quality". Most poor people in the US (maybe Canada is different?) have low "moral quality", which I define as engaging in behaviors that are likely to keep a person poor. These behaviors include not seeking work [1], substance abuse [2], single motherhood [3] and crime [4] (including crimes with no economic motive such as intimate partner violence).
There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc.
Why would we want to take the primary cause of poverty off the table if our goal is to solve it?
It's almost as if this guy's primary goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents rather than reduce poverty.
So it is your sincere belief that most poor people are 'broken' in the sense that they can't even make rational decisions where 'rational' means 'likely to improve one's life'?
But, back to the point, assuming they are not as rational as the rest of us, somehow sub human, is a harmful position to take -- it precludes any positive action to change the incentive structure of the poor -- in your view, no matter what is done, they are still broken creatures beyond help. That you admittedly take that position with other more useful hypothesis still worthy of exploration is deeply disturbing. All the more so since I doubt you are alone and that your position is common.
The poor commit 4x as much domestic abuse as high income people. And I single out domestic abuse because unlike robbery or selling drugs, "stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry children" is a nonsensical excuse for beating one's wife (or spending one's money on drugs and tobacco)
But, back to the point, assuming they are not as rational as the rest of us, somehow sub human, is a harmful position to take -- it precludes any positive action to change the incentive structure of the poor -- in your view, no matter what is done, they are still broken creatures beyond help.
It doesn't mean this at all. It just means that we need to create the right incentives, and these incentives need to take into account real life behavior rather than wishful thinking.
For example, giving poor people the option to not work will be exploited. But if we need to prevent them from starving, why not put them to work? Bring back FDR's Civilian Conservation Corp. Then we can also fix our crumbling infrastructure for cheap.
That fixes your incentives - you can either do hard labor for low money, or you can start looking for a better job.
The poor may commit 4x the /reported/ domestic violence. Wealthier people have more to lose. I don't doubt that there is somewhat more domestic violence among the poor but I'd be willing to bet that if you take a wealthy couples and put them under extreme financial stress that the numbers would quickly even out. And vice versa.
Assuming people are largely rational is wishful thinking?
I am not against something like the CCC but forcing people to work or starve starts to look like slavery. Since it leads, as you say, to very cheap labor it incentivizes keeping the poor right in the situation they are in. The poor are not the only ones that can exploit a broken incentive structure.
Why should it be low money? Because private contractors (with far, far less resources in terms of capital investment in equipment and bulk materials) are just better?
Sounds good. My little town has a giant hulking diesel powered snow muncher, hundreds of times the size of a consumer snowblower, which munches huge impacted Vermont snowdrifts and TAKES THEM AWAY, paid for by my tax dollars.
Hell, yes, fix the infrastructure, across the board. Pay good money to work on that. Hell, I'd sign up, I like supporting my community. The heavy machinery does most of the hard labor anyway.
Unless you're literally suggesting introducing meaningless and inefficient physical labor for poor money just to punish poor people for being poor? I think maybe you are.
Civilized societies have giant diesel power snow munchers. Just saying. We have big machines and robots and stuff, now.
> And I single out domestic abuse because unlike robbery or selling drugs, "stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry children" is a nonsensical excuse for beating one's wife (or spending one's money on drugs and tobacco)
Your fallacy is the same as of microeconomics: You try to explain human behavior with only one tool, rational maximization of return on investment.
Not really. On a nation scale its more or less a justification of imperialism or at the very best unequal alliances. That is going thru a bit of a popularity lull at every scale from large imperialism 19th century style down to recent brexit. Its smaller scale equivalent in the welfare state has been under intense turmoil for decades... was the CCC a great idea or a horrible unconstitutional experiment? Was closing all the mental hospitals some of which were abusive and tossing the crazy people into homeless shelters a wise idea? A large fraction of economically non-viable young black men are very expensively warehoused in prisons, that's not going to scale much larger either financially or ethically although it's worked very well up to this point (for everyone but then incarcerated economically non-viable young black men, anyway).
The general zeitgeist at the nation level seems to be to let them fail in place and kind of ignore the problems, while patting ourselves on our backs for our wise non-interference. Look at the path from Somalia to Zimbabwe to South Africa and the inevitable outcome of western civilization doing nothing. Or the future of a country like Nigeria where they're gonna give birth to a billion people, but they'll never produce food for more than 50 million long term sustainably or maybe 100 mill temporarily western industrial ag style, but we're hands off in the west, so unless China saves them ... (and Chinese gotta eat too, so what are the odds of that...).
I figure based on the above national level analysis, the individual welfare level analysis should anticipate the checks getting cut off in the coming decades then its sink or swim time. That'll be an interesting time to live in Detroit.
From what I have seen, the very rich are lacking in morals a lot. Avoiding taxes, exploiting workers, hiking prices of essential drugs to generate profits. Not all of them but many.
I've backed up my claims with careful citations. Can you do the same?
Or is this just scapegoating an unsympathetic minority in order to distract attention from the bad behaviors of a politically powerful and exploitative group? Kind of like how Trump blames illegal Mexicans for the plight of the white non-working class?
>There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc.
Not being able to afford education, or clean clothes, or a permanent residence rules you out of 99% of the job market, which is why so many give up on the job search. As stated by OP (and many parts of society), this is morally wrong, akin to being sub-human, untermensch. Actually believing this sentiment contributes further to this negative feedback cycle and leads to depression which leads to drug abuse.
Not to mention -- college grads are ALSO finding employment rough, unemployment for college grads is > 7% -- surely if the economy looks bleak for people with a college degree, maybe its' a bit more bleaker for those without?
I think this is a super simplistic view. You're basically saying: Bad decisions leads to being poor. Not a single person is under the impression that all poor people made good decisions. Of course there is a causal relationship! But it's much more complicated than that. Some people are poor because they were born physically disabled, or mentally disabled. Some people got sick and lost their job and savings. Some people are poor because they're taking care of loved ones. Not all women choose to be single mothers. And many people living in poverty have jobs.
The causal arrow also goes in both directions. Does a poor man on the street, with no shower, no transportation, no cell phone, and barely enough money in his pocket to eat, really have the ability to seek work? Does a poor man on the street have any reason to worry about the problems of substance abuse? Does a poor man on the street worry about going to jail for a while?
I'm not even sure what you're suggesting though. It sounds like you're suggesting that we should continue shaming poor people as an effective means to prevent poverty. You don't think absolute desperation and lack of safety, security, health, and food, is enough of a motivation? You think shaming works? I don't get it.
None of these ideas even matter though. With basic income, what matters is the end result for a society. Maybe life isn't just better for the poor people, but maybe it's better for you too. Maybe more poor people end up being functional members of society. Maybe you end up safer, healthier and happier in a society with basic income. Maybe people still want to work. Maybe there are more entrepreneurs. Maybe a basic income system is necessary for our society to function in the future. There are a lot of indications that this is the case. This is why we need to do basic income studies.
Does a poor man on the street, with no shower, no transportation, no cell phone, and barely enough money in his pocket to eat, really have the ability to seek work?
Yes. Hundreds of thousands of people manage to do this even with the additional hindrances of no tengo permiso de trabajo and no hablo Ingles. But I'm sure that those illegal Mexicans are suffering from privilege, unlike the white man born into a country where welfare benefits usually exceed the mean GDP/Capita of Mexico.
I'm not even sure what you're suggesting though. It sounds like you're suggesting that we should continue shaming poor people as an effective means to prevent poverty. You don't think absolute desperation and lack of safety, security, health, and food, is enough of a motivation?
Apparently not.
You think shaming works?
No, I think ignoring the cause of the problem is not a road to a solution.
Maybe a basic income system is necessary for our society to function in the future. There are a lot of indications that this is the case.
I have yet to see even a back of the envelope calculation suggesting these benefits will occur.
Except everyone living in poverty also has degraded brain functions - which also keeps them in poverty. There's a real physical correlation to mental health and poverty. Removing poverty from the equation will mean less single moms, because less dads committing crimes to get money. It'll mean more advanced brain function because they don't experience the stress growing up in poverty brings....
You only get one life and anything that let's everyone and not just those born to privilege get a shot at doing more than just surviving can only be a good thing.
It may unlock a whole new level of untapped human creativity and potential leading to a happier and perhaps more dynamic and productive society.
There is a risk of focussing on narrower narratives rooted in the current economic context and missing the proverbial woods for the trees. Maybe freed of that bigger ideas can emerge.
Every time basic income comes up people seem to missunderstand the key points:
1) It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment. Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life.
2) It's a huge reduction and simplification of government, replacing several huge bureaucratic entities with one that effectively just mails out checks to everyone periodically.
> Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life.
That's a glib statement that ignores the experience of welfare pre-reform, and SSDI currently. Of course some people will do just that, and the relative difficulty of earning a wage compared to the relative generosity of a basic income would determine the proportion of people who live like this.
I'm not sure if there's agreement on either of those points, honestly. A good number of people who talk about basic income are talking about giving less than is enough for subsistence living. And many talk about keeping additional programs in place, such as disability (somebody with special medical needs will not be able to live on the same income as somebody that can care for themselves and does not need additional medical care).
It's important to come up with concrete proposals. I don't think that there's going to be much overhead savings from your point number (2), and I'm not sure if we're ready for the tax levels that (1) would bring.
I agree that there are lots of variations on the themes of points 1 and 2 and that's a huge problem in trying to discuss this intelligently and dispassionately.
On a personal note, I'm less interested in savings from point 2 than I am in a reduction in power and corruption (or at least corruptibility).
As far as special medical needs, if we'd go ahead and switch to single payer/otherwise socialized healthcare while we're at it then the job of making sure that the disabled have enough would not be basic income, but the healthcare system.
That would seem to assume we're not already funding (1) already for everyone who isn't too mentally ill to participate in existing more expensive to administrate programs.
A classic example would be something like working poor on food stamps. We've decided as a nation to provide corporate welfare by allowing corporations to under pay employees and taxpayers will pick up the tab by providing food stamps to the employees. A lot of pointless administrative money is spent to make sure yes indeed they work at Walmart and Walmart doesn't pay a living wage. An interesting side effect is many jobs are going to have massive wage deflation down to minimum wage. Sort of a communist system where everyone gets the same pay.
>>It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment.
Pretty soon some will guilt shame a rich guy for driving around an BMW while some 'poor' are getting by on with 'rice', 'beans' and 'small apartment'. And ask for basic luxury.
Basic income shouldn't be welfare imagine you have an ai or robot doing your job who owns the output? If only a few people benefit from this productivity the system eventually implodes. In order to keep capitalism functioning in a post human work society you need a mechanism for redistribution . Basic income shouldn't be welfare it's supposed to represent your share of the productivity of a post human economy.
Assume for the sake of argument, that we woke up one morning and there were machines that could write code. Really good code, 30,000 debugged lines a day. They invented better languages that we couldn't even understand and were willing to do this work just for fun.
In that world of super high productivity but few jobs,
Would basic income make sense? And if not, what's a better system? (asking the BI opponents here) I'm asking as a sincere question, I'm not trying to be persuasive.
I'm not saying this will happen, I'm hoping to avoid that debate, I'm just saying assume-for-the-sake-of-argument that this does happen, in some other world, a world we don't need to debate about.
I think this is actually highly feasible... I mean who better to talk to machines and write code at a deeper machine-level than the machine itself? They have bots now that can write whole news stories, coding wouldn't be that difficult for a sophisticated AI to do in 10-20 years from now. Medical doctors, and even lawyers may be displaced by AI at least in part. It's not just service jobs that will be going away, just wait till the high earning jobs start being automated away.
We are not in the process of transitioning in this type of situation as we would see high productivity gains in every sector if we were. But for the sake of the argument, bellow is how I imagine such a future would look like. Note that basic income doesn't have to be part of it, but some form of redistribution will likely be necessary.
In a world where machines are better than humans at almost everything, unless we discover new laws of physics, machines will still require time and natural resources (space, energy and matter) to produce goods and services. Since there will no longer be a market for labor, the economy will be dominated by markets for readily available energy, space and matter (what economists sometimes call "land").
Robots will be in charge of automatically turning this energy and matter into the maximum amount of value for humans (hopefully).
For most people, "working" in this world will consist of going online, buying or trading an amount of energy, buying raw materials or spent matter that is ready to be recycled and pressing a "go" button.
Some people may also work on designing new better machines that produce finer goods. This will be mostly creative work as the technical part will mostly be automated.
People will not have to go out to work. Machine owners will be able to watch video of machines working maybe in an industrial park somewhere. The finished goods, spent matter (trash) and machines themselves, will be picked up and delivered by delivery robots.
If they wish for more variety, people will trade the production of different machines and they will trade different kinds of spent matter. They will also trade the machine designs and the land or space to host the machines.
The machines will sometimes have to be replaced when worn out or obsolete but that will also be done by machines.
The most important economic constraint will likely be global energy production likely based on what can reasonably be captured from the sun. People could own shares in energy production capacity.
Every day, as energy shareholders, people will receive their energy dividend, an amount of energy to be spent. They will be able to sell this energy, use it in machines to produce stuff or services or maybe store it in a battery.
There might be a level of inequality in this society. This will depend on how much governments allow ownership of things to be concentrated, especially ownership of energy production. Governments may redistribute so as to guarantee a minimal amount of livable space, energy and matter to everyone.
In this future universe, this minimal amount of redistribution of energy and matter (ie. trash) will give people a very high amount of value without them having to work at all (unless they want to as creative endeavors).
Not a bad existence in my opinion.
Something like giving people a minimal number of shares in the economy, shares of energy production or shares of GDP could make for an interesting way to implement something like universal income in a futuristic scenario.
It would probably create better incentives for people to want to grow total output or at least not hurt it too much than to tax and redistribute a fixed amount. It would also make the system robust to variations in real GDP due to natural causes, disasters etc. It's hard to fulfill a real basic income promise when total production suddenly drops.
There's also the fact that growing up in poverty ALMOST ensures that you continue in poverty. Most people who break out of poverty as pop singers, artists, entrepreneurs - their entire family changes, so does future generations from them on..
A recent article exposed how poverty and the stresses from it actually literally affect the brain and cause poor brain development. Essentially this makes Poverty a mental health issue, and should be covered under healthcare.
If we had a UBI for one generation we would see less crime, we would need less police, less militarized toys for police, and see increase in benefits like 30 hour work weeks, time off for births, etc. When technology displaces 40% of jobs by 2030 - why not make it so everyone can contribute but less time?
When you say how lazy people on welfare are, let me ask you how lazy are rich people too? Especially generational wealth (wealthy brats), how many playboys are out on their private jet, or yacht for 4 months of the year? What makes them matter more than someone who's working at a strip club because it's the only thing she can do to put food on the table.
A good portrayal of this is in Les Miserables where Cosette's mother became a prostitute just so she could send $10 per week to the evil caretakers of her daughter, when she was laid off. There are so many people who are desperate like she was.
There's also this thing where we all want to think we're 'equals' in America, but do you really think your kid is equal to the kid slumming it in the bad sector of town, who might get dinner every other night if he's lucky? Who's parents have completely given up hope so yes, they do drugs - but should he suffer because his parents are fuck ups?
I've found a recent government report (June, 2016) very useful in thinking about the economics of taxes and UBI. See The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013 [1].
258 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 256 ms ] threadI would much, much rather work hard, earn more money, and feed my neighbour - than have no hope of digging myself out of my situation no matter hos hard I worked, being taxed, and then myself being supported by taxes I lost after they've been spread around.
Rigt now I see a need and want to help by helping to educate entrepreneurs on how to make more money, when I see somebody trying really hard to succeed that makes me WANT to invest anything I can in their success. But the moment people want to pillage my profits Im finding greener pastures. I dont think Im alone in this - if mincome is a big tent that relies on a few strong tentpoles to hold it up and cover everybody - those tentpoles are hard working entrepreneurs. If mincome ever becomes a reality those tentpoles will leave and what was a tent sheltering and protecting people will collapse and suffocate all left inside.
What's more likely: someone takes a risk knowing that if they fail their kids won't be homeless, or knowing that if they fail, they will be?
If you want interpret my response at the extremes I'm more that glad to dance.
Are you suggesting that compelling people to work by force is an appropriate modern economic system?
Hence my point.
If enough people decided 'the best people are those who bite other peoples' fingers off and keep them in a jar', that would be where the money was, and you'd be firing people who don't have human blood on their lips. There's no correlation between 'earning more money' and anything useful, societally or personally.
Consider: a project is floundering. You put your best engineers on it to try and save it. It fails anyway. They get fired! Yay stack ranking.
I don't have the money to pay the bills for that long, I can't afford to become an enterpreneur. BI could change my life overnight.
I've learned how that if you can't make a business that's generating 10k / month in 3 months it's probably the wrong market. You could keep iterating through markets until one of them sticks.
That's what I'd recommend, anyway.
Switching from salary to contract can be a big stepping stone for creating the career and life you want :D
In my life I'm not ashamed to say it was the hunger of having nothing, no safety net, and having no job that STILL drives me today. That fire that got started when I had bills and no money is still burning strong today.
But I worry if theres too mucb cushion perhaps I would have not hurt as bad, and ever achieved what Ive accomplished since then.
If you're some sort of titanic corporate entity, you're almost compelled to deliver constantly growing earnings for the next quarter. If you're a sole proprietorship but driven by these deeply personal motivations, you might be stuck in similarly self-defeating attitudes. Compare to Elon Musk, who barely seems to register the concept of money and is only interested in the specific things he's doing. Without the money, he'd be much the same person, I think.
Canada has had health care provided to you since 1984. So to say you have "no safety net" is factually wrong. Did the existence of public health care make you decide to leave and build your business somewhere else? It seems it did not.
I am glad if I went to the doctor I could have been seen without a cost to me. I didn't NEED a doctor, I needed food to eat, and money to pay bills to keep collections off my back.
Canada is a first-world country, and like all first-world safety nets, hasn't had "no safety net" for quite a long time (even the US, which has a fairly weak safety net for a first world country, especially given its relative per capita wealth and income, has had significant social safety nets for a long time.)
You can be sure that by creating a legal veneer, your home and other property will be safe, while the rest of society pays for the losses accrued by your experiment. That's potentially a much larger welfare transfer than any BI.
Are you okay as long as basic income does not increase amount of redistribution, or do you have some specific objection to basic income as a method of redistribution?
I strongly believe in charity and social assistance, but its MY job, not the governments job to make sure my family and neighbours are fed and safe. Government needs to deal with national and international issues. What happens to my neighbour is MY responsibility and I believe citizens can organize and redistribute resources for muuuuuch cheaper than a government can.
> Basic income doesn't come off the backs of small business, and that is a silly reason to be so afraid of it.
What's the name of your business?
Skill can be learned with enough drive. Opportunity is required for success, there's plenty of smart, skilled people in the world who are stuck in the workforce because of lack of it.
Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers" is a good read on the effect opportunity (or the lack thereof) has on our lives. It can come off as pretty over simplified and anecdotal so don't take my praise of the book as me touting it as something it's not, but it's worth reading (and I rarely say that of required texts from courses I've taken).
Consider three kids -- one is rich, suburban white, IQ is 170. The other is rich, suburban white, IQ is 75. The third is poor, inner city black, IQ 170.
In this situation, which lives do you think look most similar to one another? If you answered 'obviously the white kids', then great! You get it. If you answered 'the two kids with an IQ of 170' then you need to spend some time in the real world.
Let's add kid #4 -- poor, black, inner city, IQ 75. If we want to compare across QoL, opportunity, really almost any metric, we're going to group across socio-economic lines, not IQ.
If you find yourself thinking 'Well what if that young black kid catches a lucky break and gets out of poverty' you're almost there -- the need to catch a lucky break to escape is a defining aspect of poverty and it works against even the most naturally skilled people. The amount of skill needed to overcome that lack in opportunity makes it silly to bring skill into the equation when talking about opportunity.
Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.
Do you have any academic literature to support your claim? The only evidence you offered was just an insistence that I should agree, which shouldn't convince any fair minded person. Here's something that I found within 15 seconds of journal searching, that contradicts it: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-1130.2011....
> The results from a series of follow-up studies indicate that the IQ score at age 13 could be viewed as a relatively good indicator for future life outcomes, defined in terms of attained education, occupational status, and material well being
Finally:
> Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.
I don't think we can, and I don't think I said anything like that.
Also, what's the name of your business?
- a chair
- a table
- electricity
- any computer
- internet
- coffee (for food)
- bathroom
If you can bring your own laptop to a starbucks, they have plenty of the rest of those. A laptop can cost as little as 230$ USD, so thats really the only barrier and I beleive its an attainable goal for anybody in North America. If your life depending on having a laptop, thats something anybody could find.
My point is that business will leave. Those with the most means (Google, etc) would be out of the coutry by the end of the week! It would take longer for the small guys to pack up and move, but the point is that knowing how I would respond surely must be an attitude others have too. Just had to get that out there while we're talking about mincome yet again.
Not to mention that if the laptop breaks you have to know how to fix it yourself or pay $100+ to fix it (or buy another new one for $230). If you don't know enough about computers to transfer data off a "dead" machine then you have to pay $100+ for someone to do that even with the new one.
And Im not talking about 'above living expenses'. When I bought mine I had no money for the electric bill. I leveraged the laptop purchase into paying that bill and many more after it!
For months I had negative money in my bank account and a court order against me (collections for a credit card I had been buying groceries on and no longer had). So that means whenever I did make any money, the instant I put the cheque into my account to cash it - it was gone. I still couldn't buy groceries even if you put a cheque for $5000 in my hand at some points.
I got by and survived. Dropped 70 pounds from not eating right, but you're right, perhaps I wasn't poor as some folks you know, so therefore my experience hasn't been my experience.
Regardless of all the other points brought up, what if they just have a lower than average intellect? That'll stop them in their tracks too. Regardless of anything else, it requires at least an average intelligence to be able to learn things on your own/with marginal help.
Pretending that -anyone- can do what you did is a disservice to yourself(because you are marginalizing all the hard work you put in, I read your other comment) as well as people who for whatever reason are just not capable of doing the same thing.
Do you have a college education? Did you go to a good high school? Do you have motivated peers? Growing up, did you have enough food to eat every day and every night? Do you have two loving parents? Or even one? Did you have a roof over your head every night? How many times did you change houses, schools, districts?
These and more are the factors out of the individual's hands that can severely negatively impact their ability to grow up and become successful.
You didn't 'just have a laptop and a desk.' You had a laptop, a desk, an education, a stable upbringing. MOST PEOPLE DON'T GET THOSE THINGS AND THAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY GAP. Again -- MOST PEOPLE DON'T GET THOSE THINGS AND THAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY GAP.
This comment I am replying to is just the worst kind of ignorance -- no, dude, there are SO many people in this country that can't afford a laptop. And if they could -- do you know how fucking expensive it is to learn to code??? You need one of 3 things -- 1: lots and lots of free time 2: a $50k education 3: an exceptionally great free public education ( I say exceptionally great because <20% of american schools teach coding).
I'm not going to be that commenter that just says 'ugh google privilege and you'll get it.' You had privilege in excess, and now you have ignorance in excess. You need empathy and humility. I'm honestly disgusted by your comments. The kids I work with every fucking day don't have half the shit you grew up with and it makes ALL of the difference in their lives.
Yes! I couldn't afford fancy schools so I did community college for 3 years and paid my own tuition. Total cost <$10k and I had government loans for it that I'm still paying off 7 years later…
> Did you go to a good high school?
I went to an okay high school. It was 1/3 hilbillies from the country, 1/3 rich city folks from a nearby town, and 1/3 lower middle class folks who lived in the country. I was part of the last group.
> Do you have motivated peers?
HELL NO! We called the place where I grew up the 'death trap' because if you don't get out of there before you're 20 years old, your life amounts to nothing. You have to escape the gravitational pull to become nothing and break free.
> Growing up, did you have enough food to eat every day and every night?
Yes, we lived a very frugal life and my parents made 2 things their priority: food, and clothes. We didn't have TV, we didn't have a pool, we didn't buy pop (soda), we didn't have cool desserts in our lunches, we didn't have trendy clothes, we went without a lot of stuff my friends on welfare were able to afford because my parents were working hard to provide for us without welfare. Sometimes I wonder if welfare would have afforded us a better lifestyle, but my parents work ethic would not allow them to stop trying.
> Do you have two loving parents?
Yes, and I think there's more value in that than most want to admit. I believe a lot of the 'economic' problems we see in society are strong evidence of what fatherlessness looks like in a generation or two of people.
> Did you have a roof over your head every night?
Yes
> How many times did you change houses, schools, districts?
I changed schools (at my request) due to harassment my Grade 3 teacher, new school was in a different town.
> do you know how fucking expensive it is to learn to code???
Sure, it costs $0. I do it every day! That's been my saving grace :D I'm so excited that I was able to do this with such few tools that I am ready, willing, and in a place where I want to HELP others learn code :D
I already volunteer my time, money, and labour to help people learn the skills I've picked up, and if I could find a way to turn that into my job I would be thrilled!
> You had privilege in excess, and now you have ignorance in excess. You need empathy and humility. I'm honestly disgusted by your comments. The kids I work with every fucking day don't have half the shit you grew up with and it makes ALL of the difference in their lives.
You know, this whole time you're attacking me but I'm also the guy going wayyyyyyy outside his own comfort zone to get in front of others and help them learn. I think you've got me pegged wrong.
Soo I tell people: “This is what I did, I can show you the ropes and help you figure it out for yourself too!” and for $230, if I saw somebody was serious about learning I wouldn't think twice about affording the tool FOR them. I want to teach others how to build their own earning power and make a living (helping others) - so if it's TRUE that my success is only due to my privilege I may as well quit helping people now right?
Why bother investing in others, teaching them, helping them if all that effort is wasted because only privilege bring success.
Do you really believe that? I'm going to continue helping others because I sure don't!
You're right, I definitely did. Sorry about the assumptions and thanks for furthering the discussion despite that.
I also seem to be misunderstood -- I don't think that your success is only due to your privilege. I see that positioning a lot and it is a dangerous way to think. I think your privilege had a hand in your success, not that it is entirely responsible for your success. I also think that basic income is a way to give that privilege to a wider swath of the population without taking away opportunity from other people.
I think that basic income is a good strategy to lift the norm so it's not so necessary to be a mold breaker to build a high quality of life from impoverished beginnings -- raise the baseline and I think we give more people a chance at success.
The question I have is: should someone be required to work in order to live reasonably well?
One entrepreneur, JK Rowling, is worth USD 1 bil. She did not require many resources to attain this; a savvier setup could have allowed digital-only publishing. Value can literally be created from the mind.
Given this, should it not be an acceptable profession in society to provide mind-workers the space and time they require to produce works unique to them? Should they not have comforts if required?
Can not any individual create in such capacities, and is it not only our fear and reliance upon the tales of a dark history and historical slogans which keep us from thinking the problem through to completion and from the very consideration that such new ways of working are indeed possible at a civilization scale? Are we afraid of success?
"A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there." - Wikipedia
He's saying you probably did not suffer much at all because of systemic discrimination, and pointing out the glaringly obvious -- that you don't realize that majority of the people in this country DO suffer because of systemic discrimination.
Lucky guess.
You're assuming giant consumer countries are obligated to just passively let equally giant multinational corporations just do whatever they want. If Apple wants to live in Ireland, let 'em sell exclusively to Irish people. If they'd like to move to Greece, let 'em build an infrastructure there since the Greek government plainly can't.
It's a symbiotic relationship and entities like Apple and Google know that far better than you do. They'd like to get absolutely as much as they can so long as they're not on crumbling sand foundations, and the less headstrong corporations don't even care about that; they'll just lobby for zero or negative taxes for themselves, even if it wrecks the markets they're in.
Business will not leave. There's literally nowhere for them to go: they're already everywhere.
I didn't say "everybody can do it because everybody has a starbucks" I just gave one example of type of place that provides many of those resources free of cost. Name 3 coffee shops in your town that don't have electricity?
So here's a slightly more complete list for those who can't extrapolate:
- libraries often have electricity, bathrooms, wifi, chairs, and tables
- mall food courts often have electricity, chairs, and tables, many have wifi
- cafés, restaurants, and pubs nearly always will have some kind of seating and tables (correct me if I'm wrong)
- friend's houses come with electricity more often than not
- many schools are open to the public that you could probably just walk in and sit in the cafeteria and get some work done
I know some people live in amish country and don't have access to electricity, but I believe most North Americans are 'on the grid' so to speak.
The difficult circumstances of your life drove you to work hard, to hopefully succeed, to be a better person, to become who you are today.
But did it/should it have to be that way? Did it have to be so hard?
Maybe. Maybe not. I wish it didn't have to be that way - for anyone.
But such difficulties in life are what make our accomplishments so spectacular...
Some entrepreneurs are driven by maximizing profit margins and some aren't. If your opinion was widely shared, there would be almost no entrepreneurial success stories in countries with a much more socialist approach than even Canada (e.g. throughout Europe). I am a Canadian entrepreneur too, but I love this country and that has to do with a lot more than just how much tax I pay. If they were to raise taxes for good reasons, it wouldn't cause me to uproot my family and leave.
If you suddenly fell into a 90% taxation bracket would you still be just as happy as today?
Assuming you realize it, your point must be that only having 10% effective increase in income after you reach the threshold is demotivating, and I would agree.
Its like youre in a race against every other business and country in the world, and you say: "hey, lets put these leg cuffs on! No everybody has a 3 foot stride wehn walking, so its no fair for you to walk fast. These shackles will only restrict your movement if you succeed too much and are able to take bigger strides. The most important thing is to reduce the gaps between winners and losers!"
In that race, do you think you stand a fighting chance against unshackled competitors?
I would absolutely accept a 100% marginal tax rate on over 100K a year and be happy about it. I live in an area with extremely low cost of living compared to NYC or SV, and I can build mindshare and interact with extremely happy, encouraging customers and become authoritative in my field with or without raw capital.
Put it this way. I have personal friends who were names on the back of vinyl record albums when I was a kid. On the whole, they are not over 100k a year either, and some of the things they love and cherish most are not (to them) core businesses earning over 100k a year.
If you don't figure you can be happy and fulfilled without millions and billions of dollars, you're doing something wrong. I have no problem with overruling your opinion here, and saying 'you have it wrong, and if you don't understand marginal taxation you're not entitled to opinions about it, still less to scaremonger people over it'.
Sorry, but I don't believe that there are many voices, in the context of the national conversation espousing such views and they certainly wouldn't get a whiff of being elected if they ran for government. It's hard to not take what you say as fear-mongering when you resort to that kind of hyperbole.
I get that increased taxes are offputting, but what's your alternative to making sure people aren't forced to live on the street, taking into account future loss of work due to automation? And what makes you believe that mincome would deter people from innovation?
As an economist however, I may be in agreement. I have some concerns about the inflationary effects of a minimum income. I have a strong suspicion that goods strongly associated with low income will tend to get more expensive, negating much of the benefit of a minimum income. And I'm also concerned about the positive feedback in the political system where the majority continue to vote for increases to their stipends uncontrollably.
All in all I'm not sure which is going to have the bigger effect long term on the economy.
Its very hard to argue that even if every penny goes into the pocket of a couple New York Bankers, that there won't be more activity along the way than if nothing gets spent.
Something interesting to consider is there are goods and economic fields where the population has been trained to say they'll pay anything for X, Y, or Z. Medical care, Education, Real Estate, whatever. Given that we have generations of explosive inflation in those fields way beyond normal inflation rate, I don't think changing the base income would change much in the long run. If health care costs always in the past and forever in the future until rapidly approaching system collapse will increase by 25% annually, then giving a poor person $10K/yr will have basically no impact in the long run. Like arguments I had with my wife about Peapod grocery delivery vs shopping myself... the difference is (was) approximately six months of food inflation price, and I don't enjoy shopping, and I intend to continue eating six months in the future, so I don't care if it costs a little more today, its not really changing anything in my life financially.
Another interesting thing to think about is the old Dr Phil line about money problems being unable to be fixed with money. So giving 10K to poor people means in practice its all going to disappear with no improvement in standard of living, just like every other handout in the history of humanity. Such that there's almost no point in talking about that economic segment of the population WRT mincome. And its not much money for rich people, so ignore them too. mincome is a purely middle class play, its the only group that can experience any change.
As such I'm finding your attitude impractical. Why do I, as a business owner, care whether you personally think some third person is a try-hard eager beaver? If you yourself don't want to work, you should indeed leave. I'm not at all sure you understand the math of this. Personally, I'm all for the poorer classes having spending money, because as near as I can work out, sometimes they will spend it on me. When they starve, I starve.
No amount of exceptionalism will change that simple fact, and if you're honest about the math you see that the whole point is getting rid of 'a few strong tentpoles'. Those guys are distorting the system and SHOULD leave. Celebrating them is a fool's game.
I certainly agree the moral aspects are worth considering. No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.
Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme.
The current welfare systems are a messy parcel of compromises, but they at least acknowledge that people have to demonstrate need to be the recipients of government handouts. Once you establish that people have a permanent, inalienable right to an income, you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
Have you witnessed this?
* focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses
* focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish
* focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial failure anyway so comparison is pointless
* taking the position that BI is only replacing current welfare programs (until it's pointed out that current programs would not support anyone if spread around)
Occasionally, someone will admit that they are proposing a 100% tax rate, which is about what such a system requires. Even more occasionally, it's admitted that every country must implement a 100% tax rate at once to avoid mass emigration of anyone earning more than ~$20k/year.
I think almost everyone would want to work on $13-$15k a year. However, they'd work part time.
And tbh, for our current welfare system, that is essentially what happens already. They work minimum wage jobs, part time, on call.
If you abolished every single government program and fire every single government employee, right from the DoD down to your local playground, from congress to the schools, never mind every single existing welfare program, assuming that tax revenue somehow managed to stay at the same level, what with no IRS to collect it and 22 million newly unemployed public sector workers, you could barely afford to pay a UBI at the minimum wage, never mind attending to the people who might legitimately need more help (also, no roads or schools).
UBI is either going to require cuts of a depth never proposed, much less enacted, in any western country, ever -- or be too small (perhaps a hundred dollars a month) to live up to its promises.
Every time you want to raise enough revenue to give the 99% another $1,200 ($100/month), you need to raise taxes on each single member of the 1% by $120,000. And that's on average incomes of a million.
It's kind of silly to discuss the details when there aren't any. People need to be open to giving cash to the poor to even begin thinking about how best to implement it, and the US at least has been going in the opposite direction since the original Clinton welfare reform, which emphasizes employment assistance over direct monetary assistance, with mixed results.
Personally, I think it's throwing money away without also addressing healthcare costs, including nutritional reform. Sugar is only cheap when you ignore the costs of obesity we all bear in increased premiums. This is the only way of which I can conceive to implement some form of cash relief without cutting into benefits.
Lots of naive idealists support UBI - but I also frequently see UBI advocates who purport to be "evidence-based" and "rational", and yet who fail to provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how they propose to fund their scheme. Instead they do 1 of 3 things:
1. Provide evidence countering non-essential arguments, e.g., will basic income recipients be motivated to work? This implies they've addressed the opposing side, while simultaneously ignoring the essential counter-argument, i.e., where the money comes from.
2. Hand-wave about reduced administration costs. (This is nowhere near sufficient to cover the huge increase in spending). Or automation (yeah, we have better deep learning algorithms, but machine vision, robotics and natural language processing are advancing glacially slowly, so most jobs will require a human in the loop for the foreseeable future).
3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible.
With a small amount of research I found numerous counter-arguments to UBI, including a paper by the New Zealand government finding what I stated in point 3, i.e., UBI would imply benefit reductions to pensioners and the disabled and still require major tax hikes.
I see many people becoming full-time advocates and researchers into UBI, claiming it to be a rational, scientific, evidence-based policy. And yet they miss these basic issues. (It's no mystery why. After realising that current welfare systems don't work, and that a UBI can't work, the logical next step is to question wealth redistribution itself, but that's too far for most). The 20th century saw many intellectuals proposing "scientific" utopian schemes while blatantly ignoring reality, with well-known results.
http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor...
http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/31-03-2016/i-love-the-idea-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/universal...
For example 320 million Americans * 15K/year in basic income = 4.8 trillion dollars that has to come from new taxes and spending cuts.
But if it all comes from tax increases than somebody currently making the average income will see their taxes go up by exactly amount as their BI payment. Is that actually a tax increase? And if we can get cost savings from simplifying welfare, then their BI payment is more than their tax increase.
4.8 Trillion is completely unfeasible, but the real cost is in the order of hundreds of billions. A heck of lot, but it is feasible.
This one for instance (~$13k) that argues it will save money:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am...
Its pretty clear the entire savings comes from cuts to Medicaid & Medicare & Agricultural subsidies.
---
> 3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible.
That one one went with a clear option #3.
---
As for your solution, it works-ish, but ultimately requires maintaining Medicare & Medicaid which inflates the cost beyond what you propose or admitting you are doing #3 also.
So you'd need to actually raise ~$5.8 trillion to make your system work. It can work, you'd just need to basically double the current tax levels.
Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition that they insist will be fixed with "economic growth". Its the same handwaving the GOP does.
Perfect example:
There are 242,470,820 adults in the US.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am...
> In my version, every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically into a bank account in monthly installments. Three thousand dollars must be used for health insurance (a complicated provision I won’t try to explain here), leaving every adult with $10,000 in disposable annual income for the rest of their lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
~55% of people make $30k or less and would get the full grant. He proposes b/t 30k and 60k it drops to 50%. So lets just drop it for the other 45% to 7k (instead of $6500) to keep the numbers simple.
($13,000 * 242,470,820 * .55) + ($7,000 * 242,470,820 * .45) = $2.5 trillion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...
The current budget is $3.7 trillion.
Healthcare + Social Security + Nondiscretionary Defense = 937+882+585 (billions) = $2.4 trillion. So you are already roughly at the same budget (despite his argument that isn't the case). Yes, he wants people 18-21 not to have access but that won't work in practice realistically some people get kicked out in this country at age 18 and have access to welfare.
The argument he makes is:
> The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper.
Despite his age assumption & numbers being borderline unrealistic...
https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
NHE per capita is ~$9,523. He wants insurance to cost $3,000, even if we magically assume 100% of that goes straight to payments. That extra $6,523 has to come from somewhere for people on Medicaid.
If you get a $13,000 grant, you basically lose (realistically) access to medical care with basic income beyond very basic care. (i.e. If you get cancer, no one will cover it so you die. If you get a possibly deadly chronic disease, you can't afford it, you die.)
http://kff.org/medicare/state-indicator/per-enrollee-spendin...
That is worse for Medicare enrollees which is ~$10.3k So they lose ~$7.3k worth of care.
Yes it is cheaper (using his math) but he doesn't explicitly explain the impact.
It pays for itself by:
1) Cutting income for those on social security to ~$1000. ( Realistically, for the elderly, with overhead for private insurance you are spending probably ~$12 for equivalent care)
2) Cutting medical care for those on welfare currently to $0. ( Realistically, you can't pay for ...
A mature BI (one providing an above-poverty-line benefit) is an expensive proposition, but you don't need a mature BI, or one that replaces all the programs you'd like to replace with one, to get net social benefit from it. So you start with a small BI, and phase out the things it is eventually planned to phase out only as the BI benefit makes the existing program irrelevant. (Until then, you just treat the BI as income when calculating benefit for the existing programs.)
To do this, you establish a funding stream that is expected to grow with economic growth, and let the funding stream (basically; using a formula that cushions fluctuations so that short-term downturns don't lead to BI cuts), including prior year savings from reductions in other programs due to the BI along with tax collections in the "funding stream" calculations -- determine the BI level.
That was below-poverty-line benefits as defined by existing law. Its $10k income with a $3k mandatory payment for the equivalent of Medicaid/insurance.
The poverty line at the moment is ~$11k + Medicaid.
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-FP...
Its way above the poverty line for any household size greater than 1. ($11,880 + $4,140-4,160 per additional member) [0]
[0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines
http://kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/medicaid-spending-pe...
That is ~$6k of benefits per person.
So lets say two adults for $26k with $12k in lost benefits is ~$14k.
The poverty line is $16k.
When reasoning on these issues, one should always carefully examine the phrase: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Every single word is chosen very carefully.
Edit: for example, if someone is in a severe accident and unable to help themselves, it is a reasonable expectation in a functioning society that a passerby might call for help or help directly.
There is ample evidence from history that the legal construct called "rights" is in fact not absolute at all. In fact, all the data we have suggest that "rights" are in fact provided by the government. The mechanisms differ (e.g. the US's constitutional republic encodes government-defined rights in the Constitution and laws derived from it), but ultimately "rights" are something that people, in the forming of the government they live under, agree should exist.
This is already a massive problem in programs where we do require demonstrations of need. See NPR's expose on rampant disability fraud: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
It's hard to see how eliminating safeguards will improve things.
If we have a program that helps 1 person and 1 person scams it, we might get rid of that program. What if it helps 10 for every 1 scammer? 1,000? 1,000,000? Certainly with the last we'd say it's ok.
I don't know where that point lives, but as NPRs expose demonstrates, that amount is certainly larger than zero and probably a lot larger than where we are now.
Unfortunately good government requires carefully understanding and administering a bureaucracy, taking into account individual incentives, and building something non-simple.
Basic income is just a cheap mental hack used to seduce the lazy. It's like looking at a webapp, realizing that 75% of your compute cycles are doing error handling and then saying "aha, the solution is to ignore all errors!" It's seductive, brilliant in it's simplicity, and complete idiocy.
Among other things, this is why essentially no basic income proponents are willing to even do a back of the envelope calculation to show how it would work. (Similarly, "eliminate all error handling" guy will refuse to write a proof of concept.)
[edit: I altered this comment to explain in better detail what I think is wrong with BI, but eliminated a sentence that SandBOx replied to. I believe the real goal of most BI proponents is to create a vote bank of government dependents.]
It's a reform of the French tax system based around a basic income and flat taxes on income and wealth. The resulting redistribution is similar to the current system without the nasty border effects and bureaucracy.
Also, since the purpose of the program is to reduce poverty, not to detect fraud, another effect is that the additional oversight will keep people away from the program, either by (as above) their inability to navigate the efforts to protect the program from fraud, but also by the effect of intrusive (and possibly personal and demeaning) questions and inspections has on people's self-image who choose to accept the aid (as per TFA), causing them to avoid taking it to avoid social stigma.
I know these are the types of points that laissez-faire libertarians laugh at i.e. "imagine someone who is taking my money refuse any indignity; they can always choose to starve," but those sorts of libertarians don't think that poverty is a concern anyway. When those types get to design programs like this, they end up largely populated by people who are willing to navigate them as a job, hence largely fraudulent, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The vast bulk of overhead is ultimately fraud control in some form, and as that expands, so the program expands, while the number of people being helped stays steady or even shrinks. This massive administration is farmed out to contractors to reduce ballooning costs (cronies, friends of friends and/or benefactors - an externality that affects us all as a rise in corruption) who are rewarded for finding more fraud with a higher proportion of the budget of the program. Their primary motivation then becomes to find excuses to exclude people from the program.
This is depressing to even type. The reason one would have basic income is to eliminate this. I believe that every millionaire should receive a check. Means-testing is a scam.
If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.
If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.
Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us.
But just a couple of points is that if everyone receives it then nobody can be robbing the system as everyone is entitled to it. Another point that the HN crew should be well aware of is that we are going to see entire Industries worth of jobs disappear. Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. We are on the cusp of automated vehicles and when that comes to fruition all cab/taxi/bus/truck drivers will be without jobs. This will happen in many other areas as well and to not seriously prepare for this type of future is absolute lunacy. Not saying that BI is THE answer...but it, along with many other things, are definitely worth exploring further.
Just because you redefine taking money you don't need from productive people as "entitled" doesn't make the problem go away.
I see this argument a lot lately, but it isn't clear to me why we should have any confidence in this type of speculation. Even if it this generally turns out to be true, what are the second-order effects of such a radical change to the job market? How will people adapt? What new opportunities will arise?
There's a simple solution that all BI advocates should embrace: you take BI money and you give up your vote, because it is a conflict of interest.
I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.
Agreed, sign me up. Power should always be balanced with direct responsibility. If you want to vote for the government to do something, you better be able to pay in blood or treasure to see it done.
You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.
"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent concept to acting on one's own behalf as a citizen, where there is only one interest, one's own, being represented, and thus no opportunity for a conflict.
You may be abusing the term to mean a conflict between your interests and those of other citizens, but every citizen would have that kind of conflict, and that's what equal participation exists to resolve (and not what conflict of interest means.)
That's precisely what a voter is doing. According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign. Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.
Even Congress recognizes this about itself - it passed Amendment 27 which limits its ability to raise its own pay. It thus recognized that it is acting in a different capacity when addressing its own pay than when addressing normal business.
> That's precisely what a voter is doing.
No, its not. A voter is voting on their own behalf as a citizen, and not graned additional authority beyond that of a citizen to act as an agent of other citizens.
> According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign.
One might, perhaps, argue "according to the philosophy to which some subset of the framers subscribed, and which motivated the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign", however, to argue as you do is absolutely without support; the Constitution does not mention sovereignty, and insofar as it expressly grants the traits associated with sovereignty to any entity, it does so to both the states and the federal government, but not anyone else.
> Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.
Even if one accepted the preceding claim, this doesn't follow from it. Individual sovereigns (as opposed to sovereign republics) have no distinction between private and public interests; that's the key thing that distinguishes a Republic from a Monarchy, that in the former government is not a private function. So, the idea that Constitutional sovereign citizenship (if it existed in the first place) would imply that citizens had both "public" and "private" capacities that were distinct is completely incoherent -- if individuals are sovereign, their public sovereign capacity is exactly their private capacity.
> Even Congress recognizes this about itself
Congress is, rather obviously, a body of people who each exercise additional authority in government beyond that of a citizen-voter representing themselves, and who are instead empowered to act as agents representing the interests of other citizens. That's the whole point of Congress.
> it passed Amendment 27
No, Congress doesn't pass amendments. Congress proposes Amendments (Amendment 27 was one of the 12 initial amendments proposed as the bill of rights.)
To do otherwise is madness, and the degree to which our legal and political systems say otherwise is madness.
() Actually most of those money goes back to the state, minus the ones going into savings, private properties or leave the country to pay for imported goods.
If someone steals $5k from me and uses that $5k to buy my car, am I just as well off as I was before because I still have my $5k?
Or, more likely, we don't include disability programs (which are not purely or primarily means-tested programs) as among the primarily-means-tested programs that are replaced by UBI in the first place. To the extent that improvements are needed in disability programs, they come from elsewhere.
(OTOH, part of the problem creating incentive for disability fraud is secondary testing in primarily means-tested benefit programs, which leaves lots of gaps in basic poverty support.)
> What about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve?
We deal with child neglect through child welfare systems, not social benefit systems.
> What about kids in foster care?
What about them?
> What if parents have lots of kids?
Then...they have lots of kids.
> Should kids also get a basic income?
Pretty obviously, yes, kids should get basic income (if nothing else, most of the primarily means-tested social benefit programs -- both welfare and EITC -- in the country are support programs for parents with dependent children that are strongly scaled by the number of dependent children, so if you want a system that does at least as good for current targets of benefits while removing the adverse effects, the obvious methods is that kids should be included as beneficiaries. There are a few programs that are not targeting such families -- e.g., General Assistance programs, but they are small both in their per-beneficiary benefits and their aggregate costs as a share of overall social welfare spending.)
The most sensible way to do a UBI is probably "all citizens and legal permanent residents".
> As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.
The whole point of the "U" in UBI is that you don't add exceptions. You define a broad universe of recipients with as few qualifications as you can sensibly make, and everyone within that universe gets the same benefit.
What about them? Those kids are themselves either citizens or (improbably) legal permanent residents (and thus, beneficiaries) or not (and thus not). This isn't rocket surgery.
> Will people in retirement continue to get their social security?
That depends whether Social Security is a replaced program or not (IMO, it shouldn't be, since its not a means-tested social benefit program.)
> How will we pay for all this?
With new taxes plus the redirected funds from replaced programs.
> Assuming 418M people
From a few different sources, I get that the US population is 319M, about 93% citizens and 3.6% lawful permanent residents. So, assuming 418M beneficiaries of a UBI is unreasonable.
> at $13K which I typically see mentioned as basic income
$13K/capita is a just about the point at which two-person household would clear the poverty line, so its not a bad point to consider a reasonably mature UBI; OTOH, I'd prefer to identify a funding mechanism that should grow with economic growth, and have benefits scaled so as to (in the long-term, smoothing short-term variability) follow that funding mechanism, eventually reaching such a mature level (and going to even higher levels with more growth) rather than setting a benefit level and then trying to fund it out of the gate.
And I wouldn't expect a mature UBI for a generation or so.
This is not the slippery slope that you're implying; you can certainly draw certain lines when the system that you're building has limited scope and leaves the outliers to other benefits systems.
1) Trust your brother, feed him and let him crash. Costs you $50.
2) Don't trust your brother. Hire an investigator to determine if he bought weed. Most of the time nothing is found so you wind up helping him, which now cost $70. Occaaionally you discover something and choose not to help. Still costs you $20.
Is #2 worth it? That depends on how often the investigator finds a reason not to help.
That's an interesting view.
If and when attempting to formulate coherent arguments, avoid using such absolute statements.
Organisms that hoard resources have been targets of violence since we were all protozoa.
A widely used basic definition of government is simply the group that has cornered the market on the recognized use of violence.
Rich people have to do something to grapple with poverty or the poor people will kill them and eat their food. Same as it ever was, and its reality doesn't change in response to your moral judgement.
You actually have 4 options: do nothing and then put people in jail. Which will cost you WAYYYYYY more per person, per year, than just giving them money directly to "freeload".
Do nothing and wait for the mass revolt when half the population is starving to death when you've got someone like Martin Shkreli buying his fourth Ferrari "just because". If you think the masses will just roll over and die if they're starving to death, you're delusional (whether intentionally or not).
How about designing public policy that provide incentives to work rather than incentives not to work? (earned income tax credits)
How about decreasing the cost of labor in order to increase employment while simultaneously providing programs that assist during periods of unemployment? (e.g., make it easier to hire and to fire and switch jobs while providing strong unemployment safety net, decouple health insurance from employment)
How about setting expectations that people be self-sufficient and not dependent upon others? This is a more of a cultural problem then a policy problem.
Most poor people work very hard to earn enough to survive; much harder per $ earned than most people on this website. They don't need an incentive to work, they need jobs that pay better for each hour they work.
Raising the minimum wage won't accomplish that by itself, because most companies would reduce the number of positions to keep their costs stable. We could raise the minimum wage and then provide tax credits to businesses to offset the additional labor cost, but that'd wind up complex to administer and there would probably be loopholes that allow companies to take tax credits and keep the cash to themselves instead of paying them through to employees. With Basic Income, we effectively raise the minimum wage by direct payments to the employee; their income per hour worked goes up. This is much simpler to administer: everyone gets the same amount, and it counts as taxable income.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382336
They also disproportionately engage in other behaviors that also keep them poor (e.g. drug use, beating their wives, etc).
Also, assuming you were right, EITC would immediately solve the problem of "the only jobs that are available...are ones that pay far too little to live on." EITC solves the problem of "I want to live at a western middle class standard of living, but the value of my labor is too low to support that". The only problem it doesn't solve is "I want to sit at home smoking weed and playing video games" (that's what BI solves).
Doubtless. I've even heard rumors that some miscreants collect healthy software developer salaries but just post on HN all day.
A situation in which assistance is given to people who are working (albeit for a lower wage) is a much better situation than assistance being given to people who aren't working at all.
There is value in enabling people to have jobs, even low paying jobs.
Many workplace laws and regulations effectively increase the cost of labor in the aggregate. So "decreasing the cost of labor" is not all about lowering pay. Think of things like overtime rules, mandatory benefits, onerous compliance rules, shifting various legal burdens to the employer rather than the employee, making it more difficult to fire someone.
How many people with 3 kids do you think are going to stop working if they get an unconditional government benefit of $6,000?
I think the EIC does a good job of addressing the need some people have to moralize about the sanctity of labor, I doubt it has much of any impact on the labor market (it mostly just makes the lives of some kids better).
the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.
But, the disability fraud is due in large part to the rampant unemployment, poverty, and gutted social safety net in that area. So, the option for those folks is disability or live on the streets. I wouldn't exactly say you are making the case for requiring proof of need.
Also interestingly you see use of drugs as reason to refute need. I believe there is a correlation between desperate poverty and drug use, I think it's because for those people with no hope of escaping poverty they need some kind of escape. Unlike you and I if we ever loose a job or get hit with an unfortunate circumstance we can get out of it fairly easy because of our education and in-demand skills. Now imagine a factory closing and 5000 folks with barely an education now out of a job, some percent of that cohort is going to end up resorting to drug use as an escape from their hopeless position. Idealistically, I'm hoping a basic income gives people like this some hope back. But, even then if there truly are no jobs for them, then if some % of the population enjoys weed then maybe that's ok--it's better than a lot of other possibilities they could be doing.
Are you somehow claiming that wealthy Americans are unable to make choices for themselves, i.e. they are incompetent? If so, lets find them caretakers who can manage their lives for them. Lets not let them continue making bad choices that cost the rest of us.
I have no problem with smoking weed and I do it myself sometimes. I have a problem with spending your own money on weed and then turning to me claiming you are hungry. Spend your own money before you spend mine.
Disability fraud is caused by desperation. Either that or 2% (IIRC) of the U.S. working population suddenly became either very sick or lying dopesmokers right after the housing bubble burst.
You are simultaneously claiming that cracking down on fraud won't save money, yet also saying disability fraud is huge but only because people are desperate to do it.
"Your honor, I didn't kill that guy and he was such a jerk that he deserved to die."
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf
Heck, even the reduction in bureaucratic expenditures might be enough to offset this cost.
Why don't you do a back of the envelope calculation to demonstrate how this could possibly work?
I have yet to see a single successful attempt at this.
There's no incentive for fraud in an unconditional benefit system.
> It's hard to see how eliminating safeguards will improve things.
Its actually easy to see, when the "safeguards" directly produce perverse incentives. Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme creates an incentive for fraud where the benefits of fraud outweigh the expected cost of committing it.
The "safeguards" are the problem, not a mitigation.
Back in reality, my application is not meeting business needs, and BI is still wasting a bunch of money on people who don't need it.
Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme creates an incentive for fraud where the benefits of fraud outweigh the expected cost of committing it.
A Basic Job Guarantee (if you need a job real bad, the government gives you a real bad job) does not create incentives for fraud. EITC also has minimal incentives for fraud.
No one needs a job. People need good and services, which (in a system that is basically market structured) income is a means to provide. A job isn't a need, its multiple steps removed from needs.
A "Basic Job" labor army programming is a reasonable means of providing stability in income, currency in marketable skills, and providing for infrastructure and other public needs during a short-term disruption in the private economy negatively effecting employment that does not involve a long-term transformation in the nature of the economy and the kinds of work likely to be in demand.
Its a very bad way of dealing with long-term structural unemployment, providing a social safety net during a period of substantial transformation of the jobs in demand which either makes people permanently unemployable or requires substantial time devoted to retraining to regain employability for displaced workers, etc. Its a good component of a set of policies to address the Great Depression, but not for an economic revolution driven by automation and other developments.
> EITC also has minimal incentives for fraud.
Sure, because EITC has a fairly gradual falloff of benefits with increasing income at the top end (and because, though risk of getting caught may be fairly low, sanctions for tax fraud are very steep), it creates only a fairly mild incentive to fraud through concealed outside income. Certainly, rolling all primarily means-tested (but not mainly conditioned on other needs) social benefit programs into EITC, both raising the cap and broadening the range appropriately, and keeping the fairly mild fall-off at the top would substantially reduce overall complexity, and reduce incentives for fraud, at the cost of directing less funds to the neediest at the bottom (due to the phase-in part at the bottom end of the scale with EITC.)
Of course, the only differences between an EITC and a UBI funded (insofar as funds are needed beyond those from replaced means-tested programs) increased high-end taxes in a progressive income tax system is:
(1) EITC doesn't reach the bottom end of the distribution as effectively, due to the phase-in,
(2) EITC is effectively (other than as mentioned in #1) equivalent to a UBI funded by an increased tax on a narrow range of income toward the low (but not absolute bottom) end of the scale (the range at which the UBI phases out.) rather than one funded by an increased tax at the top end of the scale, as in most UBI proposals.
UBI is basically EITC with those two problems fixed.
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou...
We actually currently have a scarcity of labor and BI makes this problem worse (about twice as bad as the great recession did).
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf
EITC increases incentives to work as does a basic job guarantee. Welfare and BI have the opposite effect.
No, we have (arguably) the early phases of an economic revolution with rapid changes in the kinds of jobs in demand (which is the other thing I mentioned), long-term structural unemployment is a speculated future issue, both of those (as short and longer term concerns) are issues that are usually cited as motivations for UBI (personally, I'm more interested in the former than the latter, at least in the form of "unemployment" in the strict sense, rather than "decline in the relative value of the median hour of labor".)
You can disagree that either is something we ought to address, but by (earlier in the thread) presenting an alternative solution to BI, you are implicitly agreeing with the problem it is being offered to solve.
> We actually currently have a scarcity of labor
If we had a simple scarcity of labor, you'd see rapid, across the board increases in the market clearing cost of labor, you do not. We may have a scarcity of certain skills, but that's a problem that while a mature UBI addresses (by making it more possible for people to take time for retraining in the hope of future wage gains), a Basic Job as you have proposed does not.
> and BI makes this problem worse (about twice as bad as the great recession did).
The great recession didn't produce a scarcity of labor, it produced a surplus of labor. So "makes this problem worse (about twice as bad as the great recession did)" is simply incoherent.
Anyhow, the experiment you point to is not a BI, its a Minimum Income (a traditional, means-tested welfare program, with a 50% fall-off for outside income and the associated reduced incentive for outside income-earning activities, including work -- the central problem with means-tested benefit programs that UBI is directed at solving.)
Claiming that an experiment with the exact feature of traditional, means-tested welfare programs that UBI proponents point to as a reduced incentive to work that shows that such a program does, in fact, reduce work by some specific amount as proof that a UBI at the same level would reduce incentive to work by the same amount is unjustifiable.
> EITC increases incentives to work
EITC increases incentive to earn additional income within a narrow range at the bottom, has no effect on incentives just above that range for another narrow range, and then decreases incentives to earn additional income within another narrow range, and then has no additional effect above that range.
It increases the incentives for work at a minimal income, and somewhat decreases the incentives for moving beyond that for people who can achieve that but don't see a path to a very large increase.
> Welfare and BI have the opposite effect.
Even granting, arguendo, that that's true, the key issue in evaluating proposals to replace means-tested welfare programs with BI is the relative effect of the means-tested programs replaced vs. the BI replacement.
If we had a simple scarcity of labor, you'd see rapid, across the board increases in the market clearing cost of labor, you do not.
This is simply not true. The way to check for a scarcity of labor is simply to determine whether there is labor worth performing at some non-zero price. Scarcity is merely a situation where more of a good is wanted than is available.
You can disagree that either is something we ought to address, but by (earlier in the thread) presenting an alternative solution to BI, you are implicitly agreeing with the problem it is being offered to solve.
I'm proposing a solution to two completely different problems: the problem of people claiming they'll starve if others don't transfer them resources, and the problem of labor scarcity.
The great recession didn't produce a scarcity of labor, it produced a surplus of labor.
Not according to Keynesians - they believe there was productive work people people could do that wasn't getting done, simply because nominal wages were too high. That's why they proposed stimulus to inflate away the value of real wages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Output_gap
I take it you believe stimulus was ill-advised?
EITC increases incentive to earn additional income within a narrow range at the bottom
And this narrow range is the place our slack labor force lives.
So? This seems to be an argument-to-people-you-don't-even-purport-are-authorities... (Not to mention that it seems to be a hostile caricature of the Keynesian argument, which I'll get to in a second.)
> they believe there was productive work people people could do that wasn't getting done, simply because nominal wages were too high.
"Work isn't getting done because forces outside of market rationality prevent prices from adjusting downward to reflect the reduced demand for good X" isn't a real "scarcity of X", its a surplus of X with non-market forces preventing existing supply and demand from connecting.
(Where it occurs, the solution is obvious, deal with the problem that prevents real prices from adjusting to the natural market clearing price, so if one perceived the problem you claimed Keynesians perceived, then the solution you claimed Keynesians preferred would be sensible.)
OTOH, that's not the problems Keynesians saw, and Keynesian stimulus isn't aimed at "inflating away the value of real wages" (nor did the actual stimulus in the great recession do that; inflation during the period remained unusually low). Keynesian stimulus (whether in the form of fiscal stimulus that Keynesians usually prefer, or monetary stimulus that Keynesians will usually complain is a poor mechanism but -- much like Keynes own example of burying banknotes and letting people dig them up -- better than doing nothing when good solutions are off the table) is aimed at increasing demand -- particularly for labor -- which is a solution directly aimed at surplus of labor, not scarcity of labor.
> I take it you believe stimulus was ill-advised?
More to the point, I disagree with your description of the Keynesian case for stimulus, and like most Keynesians, I believe that the form of stimulus was extraordinarily poorly chosen from the perspective of government-as-a-single-decision-maker, but perhaps reasonable (or at least understandable) on the part of the Fed given that the government isn't a single decisionmaker, and the key body deciding fiscal policy was nearly inert.
> And this narrow range is the place our slack labor force lives.
I suppose that this is a meaningful statement if your concern is merely maximizing the number of people doing some kind of work, rather than maximizing welfare, realization of human potential, etc. And, certainly, that seems to comport well with your preference for a permanent government army of economically-compelled labor as the main (or perhaps only, its not really clear) "social benefit" program.
This. We've been brainwashed by historical circumstances and the morals derived by them. A job, or theft, or theft disguised as a honest job, has been the only way to get those goods and services but this is becoming less and less true. We can automate the production of some goods and there is little need to work to make them. Hence there is less and less need for money to pay them. We can almost give them away. So basic income is a way to acknowledge this change and give everybody a share of the new commons that our automated factories can build. Do you want more than the basic? Then work, or create, or be special in any way people will acknowledge you.
Are you sure about that? For recipients, there is potential to slack off while still receiving pay. Possibly to the point of doing other work (under the table? for their own household?). While this can be construed as still comparing favorably to BI ("at least we're getting some work out of some of them") it is not at all the same as there being no opportunity for fraud.
Meanwhile, there is tremendous potential for abuse and fraud by those giving out the basic jobs. A long running program whose criteria for success is "employ a lot of people at marginally useful things" is a large pile of money just waiting to be spent on making improvements that especially benefit the connected few.
A point well-illustrated, in fiction, in The Green Mile.
Of course there is - money, the same incentive as always. The fraud just takes a different form. Now it's "people that don't exist" instead of "people that don't qualify".
Note, however, that "people that don't exist" may be easier to detect than "people who don't qualify", which involve all kinds of judgment about grey areas.
Some will get a basic income and choose not to work and continue to live, others will choose to work (while also receiving the basis income) and will have a better lifestyle because of them choosing to work. Is this not how this work or am I wrong?
The entire point of universal basic income is that no such need exists, and pretending that it does is the reason that our current system is failing.
We also always seem to have enough money to bomb the ever living shit out of brown people in all the far flung regions of the universe, so I don't understand why cost should ever be an issue.
I don't think need is either an important issue. The problem with your last sentence is that it "no right to income" implies "no right to feed one's self", i.e. "no right to live." Do people deserve to starve to death just because they are lazy?
The sign on your tax return seems much less of a class divide than whether you spend every waking moment trying to afford food and shelter.
Don't we already have this? Example: people working for the state vs people working in private companies.
> you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income
I'm not sure that this is a consequence but let's suppose it is. It's already happened in that context for millenia, peacefully at least until everybody agreed that it was a good deal for both parties.
Is basic income a good deal for all parties? There are some experiments running or about to start. We'll see.
It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?
> You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society
You could still measure whether any contribution is being made at all and only give BI to those who are contributing. Which is essentially what existing subsidies for art & etc are for.
> It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?
Under BI, members of minorities who overcame those handicaps will be paying more in taxes to support a whole bunch of white males, though.
I do think the poor and those with skills in areas that are beneficial to society but not necessarily commercial suffer under our current systems but maybe BI isn't the solution either.
I think the appeal of BI is more one for simplifying the bureaucracies around benefits but we would still need some bureaucracy for those that need additional income to support themselves (say people with severe disabilites that can not work).
Thanks for the thought out response, the downvotes were getting me down.
Isn't the point of UBI, that everyone gets the money? Not only those who don't work.
We already have that in the US. For example, on a state-by-state basis: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
Every serious basic income article I've read addresses the question of who pays for it. The answer is, unsurprisingly, everyone who pays taxes.
It's just a rehashing of the red state-blue state federal dependence argument, which is really the rural-urban dependence argument.
If you want to knock rural areas as being net welfare recipients, just call them rural areas rather than red states. But even that's still an unhelpful generalization.
If you really want to be granular, you would single out the urban neighborhoods, suburbs, and yes rural areas (such as oil patches) that are net contributors.
Connecticut has 3.6 million people, Wyoming has roughly 0.6 million people. 6.2% of Connecticut's 5543^2 miles of land is public 56% of Wyoming's 97818^2 miles of land is public.
So Wyoming has about 8 times as much private land as Connecticut and about 1/6th the number of people.
I realize that there is a lot more involved than just land, but it looks like in the aggregate, there is about 50 times as much private land in Wyoming per person than in Connecticut.
It is easy to poke holes in my analysis, but I'd be surprised if scarcity of land is the roadblock to a healthy economy in Wyoming.
I'm also not trying to take an opinion on whether the federal government should hold all that land, just pointing out that there is a lot of land in Wyoming on a per-capita basis.
1. Not every one would work to pay taxes, when there is a way to not work and still get paid.
2. Lesser the number of people who work lesser the pool of money to share among the remaining.
3. Those who still continue to work feel cheated all the time to be working and making up for everyone. While they push insane hours to make a living, punished all the time for earning, endlessly being asked to pay for others, or be called greedy and evil otherwise.
4. Mass exodus of people follows to places where there is a decent rewards in return for work.
5. Ecosystem as a whole has endless iteration of fewer and fewer contributors, and more and more people who think are entitled to free cash. At some point it all collapses in its own weight.
1 - 5 is basically the story of every single socialist economy in the past 150 years.
Not that it necessarily matters, since most "socialist" economies didn't really have anything like a basic income. The closest was probably the USSR, where everyone was notionally guaranteed an income, but only because everyone was guaranteed a job, and voluntary long-term joblessness was illegal.
The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income. Nothing even resembling a basic income has been employed in a country that didn't also have its economy devastated by war - whether civil, cold, or world. The small-scale trials of basic income have had either neutral or positive outcomes.
The problem here is not underemployment. Underemployment is a situation where people want to work, but don't have jobs. The situation I mentioned systematically disincentivizes working making it very easy to get by life without work. The net situation is people feel they are entitled to free stuff without doing any work for it. And its always somebody else responsibility to provide for them, while they do nothing at all to contribute anything back.
>>Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war.
Cold war was the perfect test of which country could retain their best. There were barely any incentives to stay in socialist countries. At any given point of time a minority was slogging till death to feed the remaining mouths in their countries. Why do think you so many people from countries like India(Largely still socialistic society) want to move to US?
Robbing Peter to feed Paul only works that long.
>>They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better.
That's strange since none of the socialist economies did better even those which didn't participate in the world wars.
>>The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income.
Sorry, you say- since nothing like it with 100% match existed before we should discard cases with 99.99999% match.
0% working for some definitions of work. People want to be and do all sorts of things and will continue to, automation should help us live more comfortably and more gently on the earth, not make us redundant.
34 million Americans resort to minimum-wage jobs because there's nothing else. This is not a fad or a downturn; its the new normal.
Citation: this article calls manufacturing automation "an explosion" in the last decade. http://www.automationworld.com/manufacturing-trends-2015
Isn't that already the case?
So there wouldn't be a bright line division, as some people would be receiving one week/month/year/decade and paying the next.
It would be possible to hack the system by getting rid of all the stealth and corruption and just issuing each of us a check for the gas tax and lotto tax. Then just issue simple, cheap, straightforward normal un-obfuscated prop tax bills and un-obfuscated state income tax forms.
As a side dish WRT "The government's money" all of this money came from voluntary participation in various tax schemed monopolies and centrally controlled economic planning.
A state level "mincome" funded entirely by lotto players and gas tax and so forth is interesting. It should be sustainable and cheaper overall than the current system of byzantine complexity.
Frankly we have a large number of "bribes" paid to the government by non-humans. It would be interesting rather than slush funding them and obfuscating them to mincome all incoming bribe money. All state corporate income tax, all our weird little excises and fees and utility cable tv franchise fees, all of it goes to mincome and the government itself can only accept personal human being state income tax for general revenue. Its an interesting mental model and if implemented would likely save a lot of money... obfuscation is expensive after all. I'm pretty well paid and spend pretty freely, I'd likely remain a net tax payer, but I could imagine many poor people continuing to pay very little tax and getting the same state mincome check.
I think some kind of UBI could be of benefit, but there could be some undesired effects that need to be understood before we can consider it a better replacement for the current system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
>Once you establish that people have a permanent, inalienable right to an income, you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
No, you don't.
Wealth is created in one of two ways - by nature or by people.
The fairest and most equitable way to distribute wealth is to share the natural wealth equally as possible and try and make sure that people are compensated as closely as possible for the wealth which they create (e.g. Walmart billionaires).
Our economic set up ensures that natural wealth is kept among the ultra wealthy (e.g. oil barons) and the ultra wealthy can parasitically extract wealth created by others.
This is an attribute of all conceivable systems of government, and as such the comment contains no insight.
This is only one way to split the pie. Another way to look at it is the division between people who earn their lot in life by working and people who collect economic rents from the commons. It seems only fair to me that those who collect rents should contribute more. This is the principle underlying the concept of the social dividend [0].
Take a factory owner, for example. They are net recipients of many societal benefits, including: roads, electricity, water, sewage removal, education and health care for their employees, favourable tax rates for their property, etc. For that factory owner to then turn around and cry foul at being called upon to be a net contributor to basic income is hypocritical bordering on antisocial.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dividend
His or her issue isn't with taxation specifically, his or problem is with more taxation in general.
My issues with Basic Income are similar to those raised by PJ O'Rourke about government in general. Government is incompetent, and BI is a recipe for handing even more power to politicians. I'm not convinced that is a good idea.
When the idea of basic income is boiled down entirely to dollars and cents, sure. But, because of the volatility in the labor market, there isn't a way for an individual to know or predict whether they or someone else will be a net giver or a net-taker, as these things must be measured across a person's lifetime. J.K. Rowling was a taker for years, now she's wholeheartedly a giver. These status are primarily self-assigned and perceived based on.... well, I'm not sure what they're based on. See the author's 'popularity' argument, see the interviews with people who are anti-welfare but pro-mincome for themselves.
It's also worth considering -- as every discussion of UBI brings up -- the incalculable, invaluable net effects of such a scheme (and indeed of welfare itself). There are intangible benefits that are unnoticed even to the 'net contributors' -- that is, people who are housed and fed are less likely to stab you in the street for your iPhone.
>Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme.
If a particular advocate of UBI doesn't include the tax increase in every point she makes about the system, it's only because that's a given, and has always been mentioned in some other comment. If you believe a particular funding scheme is flawed, have at it.
>you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
UBI doesn't imply that others are obligated to provide them with income. It's explicit in the system. Unless you believe all taxation is theft (in which case: Game over, you'll never come around to UBI), it's safe to say that you believe 'society' has some obligation to the health and safety of its members. UBI is just the free-market expression of that: Rather than have the government try to create a massive, bloated system that tries to predict what people need, give them the tools they need to get it themselves. That tool is money.
The reality is that the greatest amount of wealth is not attained by work but inherited. This stands in total opposition to the idea that our society is a meritocracy.
We absolutely shouldn't let them evade that question. So I'll go ahead and not evade it for you.
No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.
This is incorrect. Other commenters rightly point out that the benefits of basic income extend far beyond what can be measured in terms of money. But even if we only take into account the money, your assumption that you need taxes to support basic income is wrong. Money is not zero-sum. The money supply (including deposits, credit, etc.) expands and contracts depending on the needs of the economy.
Without making a rigorous argument, I will boldly assert that we can pay for a basic income without taxing anyone. We can pay for it through deficit spending or helicopter money (money-financed fiscal policy), which are both essentially the equivalent of printing money. You might worry that such a practice would cause inflation or devaluation of the dollar thereby resulting an implicit tax on those who have a lot of money. Here's two reasons why basic income through printing money wouldn't cause inflation:
1. Prices are determined by the amount of spending in the economy relative to the amount of real wealth* being traded. For some (inelastic) spending, people will spend whether they have the money or not. They'll borrow in order to spend. If you give them free money, they'll borrow less. The Fed can raise interest rates to make sure this happens. You're just swapping an unstable form of credit money for stable base money that never has to be paid back.
2. More spending isn't necessarily inflationary either. Most of what we produce is subject to an economy of scale. That means that the more of it we make, the cheaper it gets to make each individual unit. If you give poor people money to buy things they otherwise would not have bought, we make more of that stuff to meet the new demand, and prices can remain stable or even come down. Rich people benefit too because they have more customers to sell to. The money we hand to the poor doesn't just stay with the poor. It ends up in the hands of the rich as usual.
EDIT: 3. Money gradually leaves circulation over time. People hoard it and save it. If we're not continually injecting new money into the economy, we run into trouble. A basic income is as good of a way to do this as any. It's certainly better than incentivizing a bubble in private credit.
EDIT: 4. As technology advances, we produce more and more real wealth. If we want prices to remain stable, we need more and more money circulating. So we need to inject more new money than just what's necessary to replace the money that we lose through saving/hoarding.
A fun thought experiment is to ask yourself what would happen if the taxing arm of the treasury had no direct access to information about how much spending the government was doing and vice versa. Instead, they had to make decisions about how much to tax (and spend) based on macroeconomic indicators such as inflation. Would the budget naturally balance itself? Unlikely. We would run a deficit because that's what's most stable. We just wouldn't know we were running a deficit.
I would argue that for a government that can issue its own currency, we shouldn't think of taxation as a way to fund government spending. Instead we can think of it as an economic policy tool to remove excess money from the economy. But we have other tools to do that too (e.g. raising interest rates or fractional reserve requirements).
Paying for a basic income is cheaper than withholding a basic income. Instead of asking how we pay for a basic income, we should be asking how we expect to be able to pay for all the job creation/job...
The fact is that a large amount of poverty is directly correlated with "moral quality". Most poor people in the US (maybe Canada is different?) have low "moral quality", which I define as engaging in behaviors that are likely to keep a person poor. These behaviors include not seeking work [1], substance abuse [2], single motherhood [3] and crime [4] (including crimes with no economic motive such as intimate partner violence).
There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc.
Why would we want to take the primary cause of poverty off the table if our goal is to solve it?
It's almost as if this guy's primary goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents rather than reduce poverty.
[1] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...
[2] http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs... https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/adultsmoking/
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage... http://www.economics21.org/html/great-gatsby-curve-revisited...
[4] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf
In the past I argued that the poor are completely rational and simply choose to exploit the safety net. It's a hypothesis I can't rule out.
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_wo...
But that doesn't explain many of their other bad behaviors, e.g. wife beating.
But, back to the point, assuming they are not as rational as the rest of us, somehow sub human, is a harmful position to take -- it precludes any positive action to change the incentive structure of the poor -- in your view, no matter what is done, they are still broken creatures beyond help. That you admittedly take that position with other more useful hypothesis still worthy of exploration is deeply disturbing. All the more so since I doubt you are alone and that your position is common.
But, back to the point, assuming they are not as rational as the rest of us, somehow sub human, is a harmful position to take -- it precludes any positive action to change the incentive structure of the poor -- in your view, no matter what is done, they are still broken creatures beyond help.
It doesn't mean this at all. It just means that we need to create the right incentives, and these incentives need to take into account real life behavior rather than wishful thinking.
For example, giving poor people the option to not work will be exploited. But if we need to prevent them from starving, why not put them to work? Bring back FDR's Civilian Conservation Corp. Then we can also fix our crumbling infrastructure for cheap.
That fixes your incentives - you can either do hard labor for low money, or you can start looking for a better job.
Assuming people are largely rational is wishful thinking?
I am not against something like the CCC but forcing people to work or starve starts to look like slavery. Since it leads, as you say, to very cheap labor it incentivizes keeping the poor right in the situation they are in. The poor are not the only ones that can exploit a broken incentive structure.
Sounds good. My little town has a giant hulking diesel powered snow muncher, hundreds of times the size of a consumer snowblower, which munches huge impacted Vermont snowdrifts and TAKES THEM AWAY, paid for by my tax dollars.
Hell, yes, fix the infrastructure, across the board. Pay good money to work on that. Hell, I'd sign up, I like supporting my community. The heavy machinery does most of the hard labor anyway.
Unless you're literally suggesting introducing meaningless and inefficient physical labor for poor money just to punish poor people for being poor? I think maybe you are.
Civilized societies have giant diesel power snow munchers. Just saying. We have big machines and robots and stuff, now.
Your fallacy is the same as of microeconomics: You try to explain human behavior with only one tool, rational maximization of return on investment.
Not really. On a nation scale its more or less a justification of imperialism or at the very best unequal alliances. That is going thru a bit of a popularity lull at every scale from large imperialism 19th century style down to recent brexit. Its smaller scale equivalent in the welfare state has been under intense turmoil for decades... was the CCC a great idea or a horrible unconstitutional experiment? Was closing all the mental hospitals some of which were abusive and tossing the crazy people into homeless shelters a wise idea? A large fraction of economically non-viable young black men are very expensively warehoused in prisons, that's not going to scale much larger either financially or ethically although it's worked very well up to this point (for everyone but then incarcerated economically non-viable young black men, anyway).
The general zeitgeist at the nation level seems to be to let them fail in place and kind of ignore the problems, while patting ourselves on our backs for our wise non-interference. Look at the path from Somalia to Zimbabwe to South Africa and the inevitable outcome of western civilization doing nothing. Or the future of a country like Nigeria where they're gonna give birth to a billion people, but they'll never produce food for more than 50 million long term sustainably or maybe 100 mill temporarily western industrial ag style, but we're hands off in the west, so unless China saves them ... (and Chinese gotta eat too, so what are the odds of that...).
I figure based on the above national level analysis, the individual welfare level analysis should anticipate the checks getting cut off in the coming decades then its sink or swim time. That'll be an interesting time to live in Detroit.
Or is this just scapegoating an unsympathetic minority in order to distract attention from the bad behaviors of a politically powerful and exploitative group? Kind of like how Trump blames illegal Mexicans for the plight of the white non-working class?
Not being able to afford education, or clean clothes, or a permanent residence rules you out of 99% of the job market, which is why so many give up on the job search. As stated by OP (and many parts of society), this is morally wrong, akin to being sub-human, untermensch. Actually believing this sentiment contributes further to this negative feedback cycle and leads to depression which leads to drug abuse.
http://www.epi.org/publication/the-class-of-2015/
The causal arrow also goes in both directions. Does a poor man on the street, with no shower, no transportation, no cell phone, and barely enough money in his pocket to eat, really have the ability to seek work? Does a poor man on the street have any reason to worry about the problems of substance abuse? Does a poor man on the street worry about going to jail for a while?
I'm not even sure what you're suggesting though. It sounds like you're suggesting that we should continue shaming poor people as an effective means to prevent poverty. You don't think absolute desperation and lack of safety, security, health, and food, is enough of a motivation? You think shaming works? I don't get it.
None of these ideas even matter though. With basic income, what matters is the end result for a society. Maybe life isn't just better for the poor people, but maybe it's better for you too. Maybe more poor people end up being functional members of society. Maybe you end up safer, healthier and happier in a society with basic income. Maybe people still want to work. Maybe there are more entrepreneurs. Maybe a basic income system is necessary for our society to function in the future. There are a lot of indications that this is the case. This is why we need to do basic income studies.
Yes. Hundreds of thousands of people manage to do this even with the additional hindrances of no tengo permiso de trabajo and no hablo Ingles. But I'm sure that those illegal Mexicans are suffering from privilege, unlike the white man born into a country where welfare benefits usually exceed the mean GDP/Capita of Mexico.
The book Scratch Beginnings is well worth a read: https://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Beginnings-Search-American-Dr...
I'm not even sure what you're suggesting though. It sounds like you're suggesting that we should continue shaming poor people as an effective means to prevent poverty. You don't think absolute desperation and lack of safety, security, health, and food, is enough of a motivation?
Apparently not.
You think shaming works?
No, I think ignoring the cause of the problem is not a road to a solution.
Maybe a basic income system is necessary for our society to function in the future. There are a lot of indications that this is the case.
I have yet to see even a back of the envelope calculation suggesting these benefits will occur.
Here's a good article on this: http://europe.newsweek.com/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239...
It may unlock a whole new level of untapped human creativity and potential leading to a happier and perhaps more dynamic and productive society.
There is a risk of focussing on narrower narratives rooted in the current economic context and missing the proverbial woods for the trees. Maybe freed of that bigger ideas can emerge.
1) It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment. Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life.
2) It's a huge reduction and simplification of government, replacing several huge bureaucratic entities with one that effectively just mails out checks to everyone periodically.
That's a glib statement that ignores the experience of welfare pre-reform, and SSDI currently. Of course some people will do just that, and the relative difficulty of earning a wage compared to the relative generosity of a basic income would determine the proportion of people who live like this.
It's important to come up with concrete proposals. I don't think that there's going to be much overhead savings from your point number (2), and I'm not sure if we're ready for the tax levels that (1) would bring.
On a personal note, I'm less interested in savings from point 2 than I am in a reduction in power and corruption (or at least corruptibility).
A classic example would be something like working poor on food stamps. We've decided as a nation to provide corporate welfare by allowing corporations to under pay employees and taxpayers will pick up the tab by providing food stamps to the employees. A lot of pointless administrative money is spent to make sure yes indeed they work at Walmart and Walmart doesn't pay a living wage. An interesting side effect is many jobs are going to have massive wage deflation down to minimum wage. Sort of a communist system where everyone gets the same pay.
Pretty soon some will guilt shame a rich guy for driving around an BMW while some 'poor' are getting by on with 'rice', 'beans' and 'small apartment'. And ask for basic luxury.
Why is it purposefully difficult to read.
This is the mental effort that I have to go through.
1. Ok so not and unlike, let's say the cancel each other out. Not dissimilar can become similar.
2. un-stigmatizing, does this mean that it's just not stigmatizing or that it is removing a stigma?
2a. "mincome is lacking stigma, similar to tax time benefits"
2b. "mincome removes a stigma, similar to tax time benefits"
edit:format
In that world of super high productivity but few jobs,
Would basic income make sense? And if not, what's a better system? (asking the BI opponents here) I'm asking as a sincere question, I'm not trying to be persuasive.
I'm not saying this will happen, I'm hoping to avoid that debate, I'm just saying assume-for-the-sake-of-argument that this does happen, in some other world, a world we don't need to debate about.
In a world where machines are better than humans at almost everything, unless we discover new laws of physics, machines will still require time and natural resources (space, energy and matter) to produce goods and services. Since there will no longer be a market for labor, the economy will be dominated by markets for readily available energy, space and matter (what economists sometimes call "land").
Robots will be in charge of automatically turning this energy and matter into the maximum amount of value for humans (hopefully).
For most people, "working" in this world will consist of going online, buying or trading an amount of energy, buying raw materials or spent matter that is ready to be recycled and pressing a "go" button.
Some people may also work on designing new better machines that produce finer goods. This will be mostly creative work as the technical part will mostly be automated.
People will not have to go out to work. Machine owners will be able to watch video of machines working maybe in an industrial park somewhere. The finished goods, spent matter (trash) and machines themselves, will be picked up and delivered by delivery robots.
If they wish for more variety, people will trade the production of different machines and they will trade different kinds of spent matter. They will also trade the machine designs and the land or space to host the machines.
The machines will sometimes have to be replaced when worn out or obsolete but that will also be done by machines.
The most important economic constraint will likely be global energy production likely based on what can reasonably be captured from the sun. People could own shares in energy production capacity.
Every day, as energy shareholders, people will receive their energy dividend, an amount of energy to be spent. They will be able to sell this energy, use it in machines to produce stuff or services or maybe store it in a battery.
There might be a level of inequality in this society. This will depend on how much governments allow ownership of things to be concentrated, especially ownership of energy production. Governments may redistribute so as to guarantee a minimal amount of livable space, energy and matter to everyone.
In this future universe, this minimal amount of redistribution of energy and matter (ie. trash) will give people a very high amount of value without them having to work at all (unless they want to as creative endeavors).
Not a bad existence in my opinion.
Something like giving people a minimal number of shares in the economy, shares of energy production or shares of GDP could make for an interesting way to implement something like universal income in a futuristic scenario.
It would probably create better incentives for people to want to grow total output or at least not hurt it too much than to tax and redistribute a fixed amount. It would also make the system robust to variations in real GDP due to natural causes, disasters etc. It's hard to fulfill a real basic income promise when total production suddenly drops.
A recent article exposed how poverty and the stresses from it actually literally affect the brain and cause poor brain development. Essentially this makes Poverty a mental health issue, and should be covered under healthcare.
http://europe.newsweek.com/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239...
If we had a UBI for one generation we would see less crime, we would need less police, less militarized toys for police, and see increase in benefits like 30 hour work weeks, time off for births, etc. When technology displaces 40% of jobs by 2030 - why not make it so everyone can contribute but less time?
When you say how lazy people on welfare are, let me ask you how lazy are rich people too? Especially generational wealth (wealthy brats), how many playboys are out on their private jet, or yacht for 4 months of the year? What makes them matter more than someone who's working at a strip club because it's the only thing she can do to put food on the table.
A good portrayal of this is in Les Miserables where Cosette's mother became a prostitute just so she could send $10 per week to the evil caretakers of her daughter, when she was laid off. There are so many people who are desperate like she was.
There's also this thing where we all want to think we're 'equals' in America, but do you really think your kid is equal to the kid slumming it in the bad sector of town, who might get dinner every other night if he's lucky? Who's parents have completely given up hope so yes, they do drugs - but should he suffer because his parents are fuck ups?
[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...