I would love to see on what basis. Basic income might or might not work but current economic models have no way of calculating that as they arent able to take externalities into account such as exponential growth of technological progress.
It seems a number of the responses were based on the specific wording of the question ($13000 per year, no other complementary reforms such as abolishing medical insurance industry mentioned).
It seems like an impossible challenge to tackle the downsides of automation and loss of low skilled jobs without basic income. I can't imagine how society is supposed to continue to function for the people displaced by large scale automation without something like basic income.
Basic income isn't some magical panacea. It does exactly the same thing as social security/welfare, but slightly more efficiently. It has the same problem: the rich aren't going to give up money to make it work. Would you accept a 10% tax hike on your income? Because that's roughly what it would take to make basic income provide anything resembling a quality of life to the incoming jobless class.
Would I give up 10% of my income to prevent riots and a rural/urban civil war? Yes, yes I would and frankly if you wouldn't you're being penny wise and pound foolish. You can't just write off the entire blue collar class as they slide into starvation and go "well that's unfortunate," those are people, and more specifically people a lot more used to surviving off the grid than you are. We need them a lot more than they need us.
^ , yes that's the main reason why rich/richer will tolerate.
People without money will tolerate it for a few years, but since it's 99% of Population it will eventually all explode and either slide into chaos, or some war. Don't need to look further than czarist Russia/Soviet Union to see what happens. 10/20% tax hike is peanuts in comparison to getting you and your family shot.
I think you're jumping the gun just a bit, is all I'm saying. You're talking about widespread automation with the assumption that there won't be other jobs created as a result of it.
Also, how do you plan to compensate for the lower buying power people will have when their taxes are increased by 10%? Are we all going to live in government subsidized housing?
The idea that governments are going to close massive departments of staff due to 'efficiency' is extremely naive - and belies a misunderstanding of how that kind of employment works.
Governments are not efficient, generally. In some areas - more than others. 'Teaching' I think is fairly efficient, it's hard to screw up. Building roads, similarly. But other functions can get way out of whack.
Governments on some level employ as a means of redistribution. My sister in law works for Canadian government - there are 600 people to 'research' and 'strategy' for prisons etc. and yet we have no real meaningful reform, experimentation or thoughtfulness in our prison system. It's nearly as basic as it was 50 years ago. So why 600 people? Because they can.
Government unions are the most powerful entities on planet earth. Those jobs will be reallocated elsewhere and there will be no 'operational savings' from UBI.
More likely - they will increase the regulation/complexity of it so that it actually does require 'tons of overhead' to manage.
UBI is a great theoretical idea, that doesn't meet the test of pragmatism. It will be about as effective as other forms of welfare.
A cheaper experiment would be to simply allow people on welfare to have some kind of job/income. No need to re-write the book to see if that works out, which is one of the big things they are trying to find out with UBI.
It does exactly the same thing as social security/welfare
Not at all. The main problem with social security/welfare is that getting and staying on it is basically a job in itself. And the fear of accidentally doing something that will get you kicked out is enough to make people avoid taking shorter term work, freelancing, getting further education etc. etc. Take away all the effort and uncertainty of getting and staying on those programs and people will be freed up to potentially make all kinds of changes to their lives that are currently not possible.
"It seems like an impossible challenge to tackle the downsides of automation and loss of low skilled jobs without basic income. "
Not impossible at all. We've been doing it for over 200 years :).
Job losses due to automation etc. have been happening since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and there's not much happening now that is particularly different - that said - maybe the case could be made for outsourcing.
We need to diversify, make sure consumers are spending, make sure taxation is working, make sure governments are spending effectively, we have reasonable worker protections.
My grandparents never ate out. Ever. My parents now do, and I do quite a lot. The quality and quantity of restaurants has expanded. We eat food from all around the world, better quality, more variety, more consistently fresh.
We used to wear clothes until they wore out. Now they are almost seasonal throw aways!
500 channels of entertainers instead of 3.
Change your furniture every so many years instead of 'life long pieces'.
Off-road mountain bikes are actually a new phenom - now we have several different kinds. Amazing gym equipment.
There used to be 5 pilot crew in major airlines - now there are only 2 usually per flight. And yet are pilots out of work? Nope - more flying.
100 years ago everyone worked in factories, farms or in mines. Now hardly anyone does. How could this be?
I'm gonna guess that the "evidence" is programs where limited number of poor people were given money, no strings attached. I think that was some program/study in Africa. And the results were good but that has nothing to do with universal basic income and calling this "evidence" is akin to approving a drug for in vivo use, based on in vitro studies.
Maybe I should have but even if I did, that wouldn't have changed my opinion and the in vitro/in vivo analogy still stands. The described pilots are limited in scope and period or have strings attached. This has nothing to do with UBI. It's easy to spend a $100M grant, give some money to the poor and pretend like you can make conclusions on the effect of UBI on a whole country.
Methinks that if the standard of evidence you require is an unlimited-length study of an entire nation, you may be seeing the bar of evidence too high because of presuppositions. There are plenty of things you believe based on much smaller studies.
Actually, there are things I believe, based on no studies at all but that's why they are called beliefs. The evidence bar for UBI must not be just high but extremely high because of the profound effect it can have on societies, for better or worse.
My country's been through communism. And if a scientist looked at us 10-20 years after the regime started, I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusion was as positive as in the basic income pilots - literacy rate jumped through the roof, poverty was greatly reduced, practically no unemployment. We all know how these stories end but my father still reminisces about the "good old days when everyone had a job" sometimes.
On the other hand, I don't think my bar is set that high. Like I mentioned in another comment here, the biggest problem with these pilots is not the limited scope or the strings attached. The problem is that they are the exact reverse of the UBI version in question. Most of the pilots can be described as "rich giving money to the poor". The UBI version that we're discussing here is "poor giving money to the rich". Because that's exactly the net effect when you dismantle welfare programs and distribute the money to everyone - those who have been on welfare till now will receive less. Those who weren't will get more.
I'm at work right now so I don't have time to summarize, but here are a couple things worth looking at. The USA did studies and experiments with this back in the 60s/70s.
No, it doesn't. Look up communism. Look up productivity in conservative communist countries. They had universal income and a huge group of society was milking the system. If you want to help people, deregulate street trade and small trade and you will be able to help unemployed people get simple jobs selling homemade products etc. Add $0,10 tax on all plastic bottles - force large supermarkets to buy them back from people. This will eliminate extreme poverty immediately. Remove brackets that force a person to forfeit welfare if they find part time job - instead dynamically reduce welfare when other income is introduced. Allow people to work and to earn money easily, and the will. Do not hand out money for free.
Your argument is mostly that people won't have an incentive to work, but one of the main arguments for UBI is the concept of the end of a need for low-skill jobs due to all the new machines taking them over. You should address this if you want to persuade the UBI proponents.
Unless your point is that people should have to work for work's sake to get that money, even if the work is useless.
There is a plenty of work that is hard to be done and is not economically viable. For me, any kind of unemployment should have a cap (let's say 6 months) after which person is forced to do free work (simple jobs like cleaning forests, planting trees etc.) and attend some courses that will help them to find a way to quit unemployment. 16 hours work and 4 hours education a week would be enough and would not interfere with searching for a job. People that get money without any requirement of work get lazy. They will not be incentivized to change their situation.
How does your myopic focus on punishing laziness deal with the situation where there aren't enough jobs to go around, i.e. where unemployment isn't caused by laziness? In your system, how does the worker create jobs? Given that unemployment Cody's is money, would you rather reduce the cost of unemployment or punish the unemployed, given that punishing the unemployed costs more?
The moment, where asking people to work in exchange for money is called punishment, we have failed as a society.
People that are for a long time on unemployment have a hard time to get back on the market. By forcing them to work few hours here and there in exchange for benefits forces them to leave houses and actually do something instead of sitting in front of TV. It mobilizes them. And it serves public as they will work jobs that benefit everyone. So instead of taxing rich and giving handouts, rich could see this as an investment in better tomorrow and be more willing to pay up.
The punishment I'm describing isn't work, the unemployed don't have that. The punishment is unemployment, and the associated depression, homelessness, starvation, etc.
You have yet to respond to what I said.
Your proposed system is to punish people for being unemployed while not giving them any jobs. You can wax poetic about the benefits of working all you want, but without any jobs, people can't work.
Hint, if you start off by assuming the person you're disagreeing with is so uneducated that they need to "look up communism", you may not be responding to what they are actually saying.
Case inpint: communism is nothing like basic income. With basic income, you always are rewarded for working: people who work are paid in addition to their basic income. If you wish to disagree with me, please tailor your disagreements to what is actually happening, not straw men.
Well, you are wrong. Not sure what communism you are talking about, but communism in countries like Poland and East Germany had exactly that. Everyone was receiving income no matter what. People working on higher positions were receiving higher income and were allowed to buy more. As simple as that.
But higher positions weren't based on the value of work, they were based on nepotism, corruption, etc. Incidentally, I think that's essentially how capitalism works too, but if you're going to claim that work determines pay in a capitalist economy, then you have to admit that it also does in a UBI system.
First, 60% does not sound like too much (makes you think that 40% agree) until you see that only 2% actually agree with it.
Second, the question is not about UBI in general, but about a very specific proposal: "[U]niversal basic income of $13,000 a year — financed by eliminating all transfer programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing subsidies, household welfare payments, and farm and corporate subsidies)".
The 60% is irrelevant. I could equally look at the list of economists that they asked and make the ridiculous statement that "17% of economists are women"
> the ridiculous statement that "17% of economists are women"
Fittingly, that statement is not far from the truth. (Women are 28% of economics assistant professors in the US, 22% of associate professors with tenure, and 11-12% of full professors.)
Raising taxes is the best way of financing UBI. Eliminating some transfer programs will help, but eliminating all of them (like Medicare) will cause significant pain and suffering.
Most sane UBI proposals have taxes going up just enough so that taxes on the middle class go up enough to offset the UBI; resulting in no net benefit or cost to the middle class.
To pay all adults in the US (240 million) a UBI of $13,000 would require $3.1 trillion. The entire US federal budget (which is still in deficit by $500 billion) is $3.8 trillion. That can't be made up just with a little bit of increased taxation.
If my taxes increase by $13,000 at the same time as the government gives me a cheque for $13,000, I'm not going to care, I'm just happy knowing that $13,000 is coming in regularly no matter what happens to my job. So the only people with an effective tax increase are the rich, and for a lot less than $3.1 trillion.
Okay, but if you are, on net, not paying in more to the system than you're getting, then someone is going to have to pay that difference. You cannot maintain all those social programs, and a UBI, without those very large tax increases to pay for those who are net UBI consumers.
Certainly. If you work the numbers, you'll find that you can get a workable UBI with hundreds of billions in benefit reductions and hundreds of billions in non-offset tax increases.
Well you knew that they would figure out a way of going after Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid somehow. They'll now sell it as universal basic income, brilliant. Grab yourself some champagne, the elites are going to celebrate.
So 60% of economists disagree, and only 2% agree, with a proposal that would eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid etc, and this is somehow them "going after" these programs? What are you talking about? They are very broadly against this proposal!
Indeed. A family that qualifies for Medicaid would need to spend the entire $13,000 on healthcare alone if they were trying to get a silver plan (mid-tier health insurance plan in the U.S.) with no subsidies. Since silver plans don't cover as much as Medicaid, low income families would end up spending much more than the UBI they received on healthcare alone.
On the other side, since there's no additional taxes high income earners would simply see their earnings go up by $13,000.
Also worth noting that this plan would get rid of things like renewable energy subsidies.
The headline here is an unfair summary of the actual question asked. The question asked lays out a very specific proposal and quite some comments indicate that the person disagrees because the sum proposed does not adequately cover the services cut - which is quite contrary to a disagreement with UBI in principle.
(e.g.: Eric Maskin: "A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Meidcare.")
This Hacker News headline is bogus. The linked article doesn't prove that at all. This is click-bait.
A simplistic one-paragraph $13,000 UBI proposal was made, and the question was whether it was better than the status quo. Many of the economists chose "disagree" because they felt the details of the UBI proposal were unworkable; not because they disagree with the idea of UBI.
Here are some of the comments from those who disagree:
"And the children get nothing? The basic idea is sound but too simplistic as stated."
"A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Meidcare."
"John Cochrane proposes variants that would be better."
"13K is inadequate for anyone with no other income."
"The simplicity is attractive, but deceptive. Coupled with universal health care & tax reform it could work. but we are far from that."
If you're an economist or work in finance and you are asked this question, your answer is almost certainly going to be based on what you think will happen to the economy. If you think that the economy will get worse, or improve at a slower rate, you will automatically assume that means it should not be introduced.
Maybe. Just maybe. Something which makes the economy worse, might also be a good thing to do.
I've been thinking there should be a 'second' (?) currency. Basic income would be paid in this currency and you can buy certain stuff with it. Food, rent, gas etc.
Then we keep our current currencies right next to it. You can buy the same stuff but also other 'luxury goods' (or find a better nicer name for it)
I know that the Dutch government already makes this distingsion where we have 6% tax on food, art, medicine (and other stuff) and 21% tax on the rest. Since the distingsions is there and recognized, we can utilize it for other purpuses.
Well, they have that, as "food stamps". But of course it gets arbitraged often by people buying storable commodity goods (like soda or detergent) with it, and selling those things at a discount.
1. Then you may limit the economical benefit of the whole thing:
people may not just consume using free money but may use it to small investments, produce something etc... Creative usage of money requires flexibility.
2. Secondary market will come: You either criminalize it then it will cost a lot, or not and you just give part of the money to the money changers for a service that could have been easily avoided.
That would remove much of the point. One of the basic premises of the idea is that individuals are better at knowing how to maximise their utility than the government. Will some people just use the money for beer and video games? Sure. But some people might also use the money in a really creative, positive, way that you and I haven't thought of. I'm willing to accept the former in the hope of increasing the chance of the latter.
My beef with UBI is that it is seen as a fiscal policy to replace welfare (and therefore funded by tax), rather than an alternative distribution of money created by monetary policy.
If you pick a bunch of people who all think the same way it's not very surprising when a majority takes one particular side in a debate. For example, in another survey of the same group of experts, 98% agreed that the USA is better off after NAFTA[1]. That isn't to suggest they're wrong, but is does indicate that this might be a group of people who aren't very diverse in their opinions.
The economists are responding to one very specific version of UBI: Granting every American citizen over 21-years old a universal basic income of $13,000 a year — financed by eliminating all transfer programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing subsidies, household welfare payments, and farm and corporate subsidies) — would be a better policy than the status quo.
E.g. William Nordhaus disagrees as follows: And the children get nothing? The basic idea is sound but too simplistic as stated.
Some of the comments seem quite shallow too. E.g. Oliver Hart (Nobel prize laureate) says: "Bill Gates would get 13K, which is crazy". You might object to giving the 1% $13K on moral grounds (but they profit from e.g. free infrastructure too, that is no problem?), but if the wastage is only 1%, it would compare very favorably with many other programs.
The Bill Gates comment sounds shallow because Bill Gates getting $13K is certainly not the problem. The problem is that this version of UBI essentially takes money from poor folks and gives it to middle class, well-off people. Someone who was getting, say, $2K/month disability benefits, would get $1000 under this UBI version. While a SV programmer would get additional $1000/month out of nowhere. How is that making the society function better?
Some of their comments show a deplorable lack of vision:
> "Bill Gates would get 13K, which is crazy. Raising taxes is costly and so redistribution should be targeted to those who need help most."
People like Bill Gates without a doubt would have to be taxed more (amounting to much more than 13k) for this to work. The current system works by redistributing and targeting those who supposedly need help most. As of now, it works somewhat ok for the most part but it's tremendously wasteful and promotes wrong incentives. A basic income can reduce that waste and puts everyone on an equal footing.
> "Total health expenses and risk will remain high for individuals. It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society"
> "Lots of conflicting incentives that can discourage work in the existing rules."
Because work is an end to itself? Opinions like these seem to be founded in Puritan ethics (work as penance in this life) rather than economic reasoning. If human work doesn't necessarily create value anymore what's the point in continuing to work by the current rules from an economic perspective?
> "What about e.g. national defense?"
Sure. Everything's up for discussion. Save for sacred national defence.
> "A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Meidcare."
> "This is a dumb question. We are not going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare etc."
Why is that exactly? Are we that stuck in ideology that as a society we can't seem to think beyond concepts that date back to the first Industrial Revolution anymore?
Regarding "People like Bill Gates without a doubt would have to be taxed more", the problem is that the question doesn't include those taxes - i.e., it's the proposal that is shortsighted, not the voters. They can't invent other stuff out of the blue to justify their vote, otherwise each person would be effectively voting on a different question.
The necessity for something like a universal basic income is pretty obvious to me. However I wonder, as it expands if politics will change in a very negative way.
Let's say distribution is an even division between the entire population. If the distribution is low, the obvious solution soon becomes "reduce population". The specifics of that can be pretty gnarly, even if it's a simple "attrition" policy. My imagination for what's possible goes to dark places.
I wonder "who" will make the policies, and I fear the power structures will change in very negative ways. I can see reactions to power structures changing to change to a blockchain type system ran by algorithms... but that has equally dystopian ramifications.
Though its defiantly a rosy picture, the old west I think appeals to a lot of people like me because old world capitalism allows for independence. As we scale society we're giving a way that independence for equality and comfort. The problem is there are always inherit problems in every system, and someone finds a way to exploit them.
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[ 88.7 ms ] story [ 3420 ms ] threadPeople without money will tolerate it for a few years, but since it's 99% of Population it will eventually all explode and either slide into chaos, or some war. Don't need to look further than czarist Russia/Soviet Union to see what happens. 10/20% tax hike is peanuts in comparison to getting you and your family shot.
Also, defending the exploitation of groups of people with "they are probably not going to kill us yet" isn't a great line of thought. Just saying.
Also, how do you plan to compensate for the lower buying power people will have when their taxes are increased by 10%? Are we all going to live in government subsidized housing?
The idea that governments are going to close massive departments of staff due to 'efficiency' is extremely naive - and belies a misunderstanding of how that kind of employment works.
Governments are not efficient, generally. In some areas - more than others. 'Teaching' I think is fairly efficient, it's hard to screw up. Building roads, similarly. But other functions can get way out of whack.
Governments on some level employ as a means of redistribution. My sister in law works for Canadian government - there are 600 people to 'research' and 'strategy' for prisons etc. and yet we have no real meaningful reform, experimentation or thoughtfulness in our prison system. It's nearly as basic as it was 50 years ago. So why 600 people? Because they can.
Government unions are the most powerful entities on planet earth. Those jobs will be reallocated elsewhere and there will be no 'operational savings' from UBI.
More likely - they will increase the regulation/complexity of it so that it actually does require 'tons of overhead' to manage.
UBI is a great theoretical idea, that doesn't meet the test of pragmatism. It will be about as effective as other forms of welfare.
A cheaper experiment would be to simply allow people on welfare to have some kind of job/income. No need to re-write the book to see if that works out, which is one of the big things they are trying to find out with UBI.
Not at all. The main problem with social security/welfare is that getting and staying on it is basically a job in itself. And the fear of accidentally doing something that will get you kicked out is enough to make people avoid taking shorter term work, freelancing, getting further education etc. etc. Take away all the effort and uncertainty of getting and staying on those programs and people will be freed up to potentially make all kinds of changes to their lives that are currently not possible.
Not impossible at all. We've been doing it for over 200 years :).
Job losses due to automation etc. have been happening since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and there's not much happening now that is particularly different - that said - maybe the case could be made for outsourcing.
We need to diversify, make sure consumers are spending, make sure taxation is working, make sure governments are spending effectively, we have reasonable worker protections.
My grandparents never ate out. Ever. My parents now do, and I do quite a lot. The quality and quantity of restaurants has expanded. We eat food from all around the world, better quality, more variety, more consistently fresh.
We used to wear clothes until they wore out. Now they are almost seasonal throw aways!
500 channels of entertainers instead of 3.
Change your furniture every so many years instead of 'life long pieces'.
Off-road mountain bikes are actually a new phenom - now we have several different kinds. Amazing gym equipment.
There used to be 5 pilot crew in major airlines - now there are only 2 usually per flight. And yet are pilots out of work? Nope - more flying.
100 years ago everyone worked in factories, farms or in mines. Now hardly anyone does. How could this be?
We're mostly going to be ok.
Why people continue to put so much stock in economists?
The only other profession I know of that is proven wrong so consistently but remain doggedly dedicated are religious institutions.
A lot of economists work in finance, the industry that benefits the most from our financial system staying the way it is.
Here's a good place to start: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots
On the other hand, I don't think my bar is set that high. Like I mentioned in another comment here, the biggest problem with these pilots is not the limited scope or the strings attached. The problem is that they are the exact reverse of the UBI version in question. Most of the pilots can be described as "rich giving money to the poor". The UBI version that we're discussing here is "poor giving money to the rich". Because that's exactly the net effect when you dismantle welfare programs and distribute the money to everyone - those who have been on welfare till now will receive less. Those who weren't will get more.
Could you provide some references?
New Jersey Graduated Work Incentive Experiment. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015018521420;vi...
PDF warning: https://ia800309.us.archive.org/14/items/PovertyAmidPlentyTh...
Unless your point is that people should have to work for work's sake to get that money, even if the work is useless.
People that are for a long time on unemployment have a hard time to get back on the market. By forcing them to work few hours here and there in exchange for benefits forces them to leave houses and actually do something instead of sitting in front of TV. It mobilizes them. And it serves public as they will work jobs that benefit everyone. So instead of taxing rich and giving handouts, rich could see this as an investment in better tomorrow and be more willing to pay up.
You have yet to respond to what I said.
Your proposed system is to punish people for being unemployed while not giving them any jobs. You can wax poetic about the benefits of working all you want, but without any jobs, people can't work.
Case inpint: communism is nothing like basic income. With basic income, you always are rewarded for working: people who work are paid in addition to their basic income. If you wish to disagree with me, please tailor your disagreements to what is actually happening, not straw men.
First, 60% does not sound like too much (makes you think that 40% agree) until you see that only 2% actually agree with it.
Second, the question is not about UBI in general, but about a very specific proposal: "[U]niversal basic income of $13,000 a year — financed by eliminating all transfer programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing subsidies, household welfare payments, and farm and corporate subsidies)".
Fittingly, that statement is not far from the truth. (Women are 28% of economics assistant professors in the US, 22% of associate professors with tenure, and 11-12% of full professors.)
"People disagree with implementing an idea in this specific way? They must not like the idea at all, in any circumstance!"
Of course, the only way you could finance a $13 000 UBI is by getting rid of all those other transfer programs, pretty much.
Most sane UBI proposals have taxes going up just enough so that taxes on the middle class go up enough to offset the UBI; resulting in no net benefit or cost to the middle class.
Really big numbers, but not crazy unworkable big.
On the other side, since there's no additional taxes high income earners would simply see their earnings go up by $13,000.
Also worth noting that this plan would get rid of things like renewable energy subsidies.
(e.g.: Eric Maskin: "A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Meidcare.")
A simplistic one-paragraph $13,000 UBI proposal was made, and the question was whether it was better than the status quo. Many of the economists chose "disagree" because they felt the details of the UBI proposal were unworkable; not because they disagree with the idea of UBI.
Here are some of the comments from those who disagree:
"And the children get nothing? The basic idea is sound but too simplistic as stated."
"A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Meidcare."
"John Cochrane proposes variants that would be better."
"13K is inadequate for anyone with no other income."
"The simplicity is attractive, but deceptive. Coupled with universal health care & tax reform it could work. but we are far from that."
"Universal Basic Income – Poll Results from IGM Economic Experts Panel"
Previously posted on HN with 120 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12009562
Maybe. Just maybe. Something which makes the economy worse, might also be a good thing to do.
Then we keep our current currencies right next to it. You can buy the same stuff but also other 'luxury goods' (or find a better nicer name for it)
I know that the Dutch government already makes this distingsion where we have 6% tax on food, art, medicine (and other stuff) and 21% tax on the rest. Since the distingsions is there and recognized, we can utilize it for other purpuses.
2. Secondary market will come: You either criminalize it then it will cost a lot, or not and you just give part of the money to the money changers for a service that could have been easily avoided.
Here is a very interesting article about all those major failed recent predictions by economists: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html...
[1] http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/free-trade
E.g. William Nordhaus disagrees as follows: And the children get nothing? The basic idea is sound but too simplistic as stated.
Some of the comments seem quite shallow too. E.g. Oliver Hart (Nobel prize laureate) says: "Bill Gates would get 13K, which is crazy". You might object to giving the 1% $13K on moral grounds (but they profit from e.g. free infrastructure too, that is no problem?), but if the wastage is only 1%, it would compare very favorably with many other programs.
try editing the "UBI Benefit" and "UBI Tax Rate" to see the total budget effects.
* assumes no money from medicare, medicaid or SS, just existing welfare benefits.
> "Bill Gates would get 13K, which is crazy. Raising taxes is costly and so redistribution should be targeted to those who need help most."
People like Bill Gates without a doubt would have to be taxed more (amounting to much more than 13k) for this to work. The current system works by redistributing and targeting those who supposedly need help most. As of now, it works somewhat ok for the most part but it's tremendously wasteful and promotes wrong incentives. A basic income can reduce that waste and puts everyone on an equal footing.
> "Total health expenses and risk will remain high for individuals. It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society" > "Lots of conflicting incentives that can discourage work in the existing rules."
Because work is an end to itself? Opinions like these seem to be founded in Puritan ethics (work as penance in this life) rather than economic reasoning. If human work doesn't necessarily create value anymore what's the point in continuing to work by the current rules from an economic perspective?
> "What about e.g. national defense?"
Sure. Everything's up for discussion. Save for sacred national defence.
> "A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Meidcare." > "This is a dumb question. We are not going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare etc."
Why is that exactly? Are we that stuck in ideology that as a society we can't seem to think beyond concepts that date back to the first Industrial Revolution anymore?
Let's say distribution is an even division between the entire population. If the distribution is low, the obvious solution soon becomes "reduce population". The specifics of that can be pretty gnarly, even if it's a simple "attrition" policy. My imagination for what's possible goes to dark places.
I wonder "who" will make the policies, and I fear the power structures will change in very negative ways. I can see reactions to power structures changing to change to a blockchain type system ran by algorithms... but that has equally dystopian ramifications.
Though its defiantly a rosy picture, the old west I think appeals to a lot of people like me because old world capitalism allows for independence. As we scale society we're giving a way that independence for equality and comfort. The problem is there are always inherit problems in every system, and someone finds a way to exploit them.