1k people getting 1k a month for 5 years = $60 million. At the end of the day, an expensive group. Really impressed by the ambition here, and hope for great success for the project.
Basic Income research will be vital in the future when it actually becomes a genuine piece of public policy. Although I have little faith it will be used effectively by politicians/decision makers.
impressive, but i feel like this is why we invented computer models and have technology (maybe) to start returning immediate results.
We're basically saying here that $60M (plus the other group) is better spent to see what weights to give to models to see how UBI scales-up rather than spending it to run a full gamut of Test Cases through the models and figuring out which outputs to motivate people to do with the money.
I mean, why are we spending money to figure out what people will spend the money on when we can already envision all the possibilities. Or am i wrong, and no one has modeled this yet??
How do you model a population's (or even am individual's) innate preferences and behavior when their income patterns and ability to spend change? You're essentially describing the economic calculation problem.
Sorry for being negative but as someone who is paid for desingning and conducting experiments I have to say that this experiment is very poorly designed. (Many of the flaws have been discussed here and at previous occasions, no need to repeat them.) The fact that they are spending $60M on this makes me sad. So much great research could be funded with this kind of money.
> 1,000 will receive $1,000 per month for up to 5 years
What does this mean? Is it going to be 5 years or not? Will different participants get it for a different amount of time? Will they know when it is going to stop?
That’s a hugely important piece of information. Granted, if it is assured for any length of time it’s practically much more assured than the usual job.
I hope many of the study participants are living in a low COL area. If the $1000 per month covers most if not all of your expenses it gives someone a much greater opportunity to pursue something the can really improve their life rather than just a nice boon on top of their current income. Of course, this is more of an "I hope this improves peoples' lives" rather than considering how best to design the experiment.
this is not a question.
i know there are tons of those that say no to basic income (just glance the comments here), yet if i was eligible (different country) i would have applied right away and quit my job.
i have a few side projects and some of them just weeks and months away from release, i could return the money with interest if things go as planned (maybe a contract). banks are aggressive, i can not ask my family, kickstarter and similar are too visible, ventures are so noisy and my goals and the respect for the people in general not aligned with them. this would be ideal because it is quite relaxed. here you go, an ideal setup!
> We tentatively plan to randomly select 3,000 individuals across two US states to participate in the study: 1,000 will receive $1,000 per month for up to 5 years, and 2,000 will receive $50 per month and serve as a control group for comparison.
So obvious question on many minds, "Where do I sign up for the free money?"
Also, will it be randomly selected or will the selection criteria factor in cost of living, current financial situation, education, etc?
And where is the potentially $66 million dollars for this coming from?
EDIT: On their FAQ[1] I found the answer to my first question:
>> Can I be a study participant?
> Unfortunately, no. It is important that participants are randomly selected into the study.
It's not clear (to me at least...) if the randomness applies to choosing the original 3000 people selected to take part in the study, the bucketizing of them afterwards into 1000/2000 groups, or both.
YC probably has the contacts to find $66m of philanthropic cash. Though if you wanted to find out whether UBI is a functional improvement on current systems as opposed to whether people like receiving free money from the SV elite, you'd need to test the funding system by raising taxes by much more than $1k per month on all the higher income recipients and eliminating most govt benefits for the lower income recipients. Of course, you might find fewer people willing to participate in the study then.
I would speculate yes. (1) You want subjects in the control group to be incentivized to maintain contact with the researchers throughout the study and be willing to spend time answering their questions. (2) Whenever feasible, you want all subjects in a research study to be better off than not participating in the study. (3) It also controls for some minor confounding effects like "gets in the habit of going to the bank monthly and cashing a check".
I wonder if it has anything to do with the $600 1099 floor.
Staying below that might encourage under-reporting on taxes; staying above that gives the researchers pretty reliable addresses and SSNs from participants.
Economists largely consider payments like this to be the best way to enact policies. It gives people more options instead of trying to control through legal pressures.
> Economists largely consider payments like this to be the best way to enact policies. It gives people more options instead of trying to control through legal pressures.
Many economists would agree that, ceteris paribus, cash is "better" than an equivalent amount of earmarked money in most situations, because cash is more flexible. But that's a very narrow statement that isn't applicable here, because it's assuming that the set of people receiving the money would be the exact same (it's not, by the definition of "universal"), and it's also assuming that there are no other external consequences to the proposal (another topic which is, at best, debatable). So even that point of agreement among economists isn't relevant to this proposal.
> The way that question was worded was a straw man. I’m referring to a general principle regarding transfer payments. They’re usually more simple ways to reach a desired outcome than alternatives.
Yes, and I'm explaining that that statement isn't true (in the sense of consensus among economists) in any way that is applicable to public policies. Certainly not this one, because that's explicitly not a dichotomy being proposed - there's no tradeoff being proposed between the $1000 stipend and all of the other forms of public assistance that the participants could be or are receiving.
It's only true (in the sense of consensus) on a micro level, looking at the value to an individual of cash vs. in-kind payments, ignoring secondary factors, ignoring externalities, and ignoring positive or negative feedback. That's not a relevant framework when discussing public policy.
Two thoughts: I'm nearly positive that basic income means _part of_ "your income", and not "your income".
The intent of basic income I have read about is to increase the personal freedom and provide a flexible safety net for the poorest individuals. And for personal freedom I'm guessing you can take or leave the basic income -- but none will because it's money right?
And about your second thought, you could use evidence for politicians elected based on their promises to raise or lower taxes -- which is essentially an income increase or reduction (for various income subsets of the population).
The freedom is freedom from immediate starvation. Rather than be forced to work a crappy job just so you can eat, you have more freedom to pick and choose your employment, spend time on education, work on art, or whatever.
> Is everyone currently clamoring to elect politicians that want to increase welfare and other "Great Society" programs?
People aren't clamoring to increase welfare because the people whom it's perceived to benefit aren't the ones who actually have the largest voting power.
People absolutely do reward politicians for securing funding for their constituents, usually in the form of earmarks, targeted tax breaks (e.g. disaster relief, geographically targeted bailouts), and stipends. In fact, it's one of the strongest predictors of support for politicians representing smaller districts.
Only at the national level (ie, when running for president) does it become problematic to be perceived as having spent Congressional funds on your own district, because the new constituency includes people who had their money "taken away" in order to provide those earmarks.
I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. And I don't disagree with those last two points.
> I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all.
Huh? No, the point isn't what the richest people would think - they have an incentive to oppose either welfare or cash handouts. The point is that currently, welfare only targets the people with the lowest voting power, because they're both a very small bloc and also a bloc that doesn't vote very consistently in the first place. So there isn't a huge political incentive to increasing welfare.
As soon as you make that a handout that targets everyone (or appears to target everyone), you've suddenly put the largest voting bloc - those who are neither very wealthy nor on welfare - in a position where they will start to clamor to increase it more and more, because they'll see that as money flowing towards themselves.
Also I don't think it's hard to see how this thought would come about (not saying I'm advocating it). But there are plenty of ideas that would help society in general (lower college tuition) that many Americans are against whether rationally or irrationally.
If you fail to see how the American public would have a negative reaction to some kind of redistribution of wealth I think you should think about the average American's reaction to the idea of a socialist politician.
> If you fail to see how the American public would have a negative reaction to some kind of redistribution of wealth I think you should think about the average American's reaction to the idea of a socialist politician.
That's not it - I'm not saying that the American public wouldn't have a negative reaction to "redistribution of wealth". I'm saying that the American public has a negative reaction to "redistribution of wealth" when they don't think it benefits them. In other words, they're generally fine with wealth being redistributed from other people to them, which is most evidenced by people of all income levels usually (though not always) being on board with federal money coming in to their district. This generally takes the form of federally-funded infrastructure projects or targeted subsidies.
I'm using that to explain why people in between welfare-level poverty and comfortable wealth would have a different reaction to a stipend that (they think) is coming out of other people's tax dollars than they would to current welfare programs (which [as they perceive] don't benefit them).
You're still free to seek out other sources of income under these models and the amount recieved from the government effectively decreases as income is raised due to taxes you pay into the system.
>Wouldn't any politician campaigning on this automatically get elected?
No, lay people would be quick to confuse this with communism. The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy.
> The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy.
Milton Friedman did not say that this should be part of public policy, though his words are commonly interpreted very generously to imply that he did, by people who wish to demonstrate that this is a policy with "conservative support".
What Friedman actually said is that the cash value of all welfare and other support systems is greater than the in-kind value. That's a pretty narrow statement. In theory, that sounds like it's a statement of support, but it's really not. In practice, basically nobody is actually proposing doing away with all welfare, social security, government subsidies, etc., because it would be a political non-starter. Even if we scope this discussion to the context of the YC research experiment, that's plainly evident, because there's no stipulation that the participants abstain from all other forms of public assistance, as well as deduct the cash value of every other stipend and subsidy that they receive from the $1000 payment.
Comparing what Freidman wrote about to this proposal is like trying to discuss Adam Smith in the context of the political left, on the basis of the common term "liberal". Yes, there technically exists a frame of reference in which that's a meaningful comparison, but it's not a particularly useful or relevant frame of reference, and it does nothing but mislead and obfuscate the actual details of the underlying facts.
At the point where they start to put back the conditions we have around welfare today. Or at the point they start to treat us the same way employers treat us today.
Sure, for a time, it may become impossible to have a runaway defense budget, might even indirectly make going to war less appetizing, certainly would decrease petty crime and the expense that comes with this.
Wow. Looks like they'll spend a lot of money for this research. Congrats to everyone involved!
I thought basic income was about a time where AI would take most of the jobs, and everything would be far cheaper thanks to automation. I cannot understand how it'll help you not work in the current world.
Because working part-time might not be an option for many, even if they are ready to forgo the money. We also have not built that automated world yet, so although $1000/m certainly helps, it is still not enough to pay for a comfortable life in the US.
Maybe someone more informed on the subject can enlighten me.
For what I know, basic income is not about allowing people to not work, but instead, push people to work by allowing them to take risks by trying to work in a field they actually want to work.
Starting this wood-carving artisanat shop that you're insanely good at looks a lot more promising when you know you'll have a bit of money to eat at the end of the month :D
A huge hope of defensors of basic income is that it may pay itself by the economy boost it gives, and won't just add $1000 to every rent bill in the area !
Because it is not meant to "help you not work." It is meant to ensure a basic minimum whether you work or not. It is also not meant to "pay for a comfortable life." It is meant to prevent you from starving.
For the sake of argument, however, as you say, going part time is not an option for many people. For the lowest paid jobs, on the other hand, going full time is often not an option. The jobs at the bottom tend to be part time with no benefits and no guaranteed hours. These are the people who will be most benefited by a basic income. If they are additionally stuck in a hostile work environment, the basic income may give them enough cushion to quit the job rather than hanging on just so they don't starve. It may also give them enough money to take time off work and go to school in order to earn a slightly better income. And, if they are laid off through no fault of their own, it may allow them to eat until they can find another job.
The effective tax rate an individual would face depends on how much income an individual derives from other sources during this time in addition to the basic income, along with their household demographics (number of children, marriage situation).
By itself with no other income sources the individual would fall below the US federal poverty level[0] by $60 and would likely qualify for some Earned Income Credits[1] as well as subsidized health care.
Adding children or a spouse (especially a working one) will crank the tax rate up or down.
Then there is an entire universe of tax complexity having to do with credits and penalties an individual or family might face.
Basic income is not the same as forced equality. I do fear that basic income will only result in hyperinflation, but it's hard to effectively estimate the impact without actually doing some trial run.
Really awesome to see this coming together. 2 q's - how was the $1,000 per month figure calculated, and will you be deploying in a small, low-income, isolated community where local inflation might occur, a large metropolitan community, distributed randomly across the 2 states? Interesting problems to consider in this study design!
Found the answer to my sampling question: "As described above, we will select areas for the study by taking a stratified random sample of Census tracts in large regions within the two states where median household income does not exceed the area median income. After sampling tracts, we will randomly select addresses within tracts from USPS DSF (a sampling frame of all addresses). We will screen selected addresses for eligibility, ultimately enrolling no more than one percent of individuals within a Census tract. We may use available administrative data eliminate as many ineligible households from the sampling frame as possible to cut down on recruitment and enrollment costs, but we are examining the reliability of this data during the pilot. We are contracting with a survey research firm with extensive experience fielding national studies to assist with sampling, manage recruitment, and conduct in- person enrollment and baseline surveys."
To my thinking it would have been interesting to study the possible inflation effects (treat the isolated community as representative for the whole country) but I'm sure there is a good reason/past research for structuring the sample this way.
You know this might be speculative, but I feel like a basic income applied to a national allows that population to act more like an ant hive. In the sense that only 3% of the population is actually doing the real hard work, but this is a healthy paradigm, and is much better than forcing individuals who shouldn't be doing the work they currently are to pursue things they actually care about, such as taking care of loved ones, or some creative pursuit. Jobs such as these don't pay much, but are equally valuable to society.
Much better than, say, working the TSA, a jobs program based on invading privacy under the ridiculous exaggerated thread of terrorism. I WISH those people would just stay home and play video games.
Maybe more twitch streaming, or more elite gaming as a result? I find that whole economy rather strange but then I remember that a lot of "work" these days is just shuffling imaginary money around.
Maybe for a year. Then people will want meaning in their lives and would seek meaningful productive things to do that they want to do.
The reason people right now love gaming so much and often to an unhealthy degree is because its an escape from a life they don't like living but have no choice in because they are chained to a job to survive.
Yeah, for a lot of people living in Azeroth is still going to be more fun than living off 12k a year. Entertainment is made to be addictive, none of those dynamics you are talking about are going to change.
I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you need to guarantee them that stability forever. Otherwise people will just rationalize that they got some free money for a while and will not behave in the same way.
If the government guarantees a basic income, you're really only guaranteed (at best) until the next election cycle. Just recently, seven years after its passing, the ACA was nearly reverted, which would have kicked millions of people off government-subsidized health insurance plans.
That's why I have approximately 0 faith in the pension plan my government(s) have in place. I'll save for my own retirement so I'm not high and dry when they mismanage the funds or change policies or whatever.
While it is less likely, nothing is guaranteed. You assume your investments will be around until you cash them out for retirement, and they are all dependant on something not failing:
* Direct stock ownership depends on the company growing, not failing, not being bought out, etc.
* Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets.
* Bonds depend on state institutions honoring them.
* You can't really save for retirement in a bank because their rates of return are below inflation. You lose money in banks.
* Hoarding fiat is obviously bad.
* Any asset you would try to store long term is subject to market volatility at the least and potential obsolescence at the worst. You simply cannot guess what anything will be worth decades from now.
The current US administration knows full well that throwing tens of millions of people off insurance will probably cost them the disenfranchised working class that elected them in the first place and lose them their majorities in congress and the presidency. I fully expect them to stab themselves in the foot with this, since a lot of monied interests benefit from the absurdly inefficient default state of healthcare where many people depend on emergency rooms for all problems, but in the same vein repealing social security would destroy their voting base unless they made it a grandfathered in shutdown where the next Democratic administration could just reinstate it and nobody on benefits would lose benefits.
>Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets.
Err, no. This is not a risk of properly structured mutual funds. The manager does not directly hold assets - they make decisions about what to do with the assets, which the custodian executes. And the fund's management has no recourse to the assets held by the custodian. How the fund goes under is if the assets they hold go to zero value.
There's still execution risk, though, which is why passive management is ideal. I'm pretty sure VTSAX can successfully hold a market-cap weighted mix of the 3600 largest US firms pretty much indefinitely. The risk is that the largest US firms stop being generally profitable, like what happened in Japan.
In the case of BI, I disagree. Politicians will see this for what it really is -- the most direct way to buy votes (by promising increased BI). It would be quite popular with both parties, I'm sure.
If we're living in a world where BI is a reality, it will be embraced. Once social programs are implemented, they're nearly impossible to remove -- see ObamaCare. Republicans have given up on going back to the old system and have, well, embraced a tweaked ObamaCare under a new name. They'd do the same with BI.
"Democrats promising $30K BI? Well we're gonna do $35K!"
This is circular logic. In order for BI to become a reality, it first must be embraced. In order for BI to be embraced, it must first be a world where BI is a reality.
The argument from the parent posts rely on ACA being repealed already. If the ACA does get repealed then the above arguments hold but this hasn't happened yet.
BI is the opposite of socialism when it's coupled with dismantling certain pieces of the social safety net. We don't need WIC or CHIP if we have universal BI, for example.
Even if we guarantee some sort of income floor, there will still be those who, despite that guarantee, need additional assistance. Whether it's because they have more children than the average, are irresponsible with spending, are victim to a drug habit, unexpectedly lose their jobs, or succumb to medical debt, we have to come to grips with the idea that UBI won't be a cure-all.
Even if we acknowledge (and not all will) that most people who are dependent on safety-net assistance are perfectly good and responsible, depending on what the amount is, what their life circumstances are, and a myriad other factors, I don't think we can take it for granted that UBI obviates those specific-purpose programs for the remainder of those who need assistance and for whom UBI is not ideal.
Put bluntly, there are people who will take the entirety of their UBI check and spend it on stupid things, and end up without money for food, or for their childrens' health. What are we to do about them?
Yes, BI involves dismantling certain pieces of the social safety net to replace it with a social safety net. The party that opposes wealth redistribution will oppose BI.
I think you're confusing the GOP's motivations and their rhetoric. See also: their failure to repeal the ACA despite having the presidency and a majority in both houses.
That's because the GOP isn't a party, it's a coalition of bickering factions that has chosen to prioritize winning over purity. (As opposed to Democrats, who prioritize purity over winning.)
How would this work? As I understand it pensions are almost never fully funded when they begin because the costs would be prohibitive. Can a smart contract guarantee that funds that are not available now will be made available at a later date?
It wouldn't work, almost nothing people want to do with smart contract can actually work because those people tend not to actually understand what a smart contract is or what it can actually do and what it can't do. Virtually every smart contract proposal is DOA due to a misunderstanding of their nature.
I didn't need to, the comment I replied to already addressed a valid why. Smart contracts can't enforce access to funds without locking the funds up from other use, and that's not how things work in the real world. Pensions aren't savings accounts where funds are locked up ready to be used in a black box. They can't interact with the real world without trusted oracles, but we already have that in the real world and they're only real use is when they can do something deterministic on chain. In short, they're largely hype without a real problem to solve... so far.
You're just claiming it's impractical today, not technically infeasible for any reason.
1. Pensions don't currently work like this
There are many thousands of different pension systems across the world.
It stands to reason that you could create new system, and if it had significantly attractive advantages, people would use it.
2. Trusted oracles are a problem
Yup, we need more decentralized services that smart contracts can take advantage of. Wait a few years, they're coming.
3. Smart contracts are only useful for deterministic changes
Making deterministic change is precisely what you want. Do you mean statically defined? Because that's obviously not correct. And are you considering a new system specifically designed for pensions?
Virtually all innovative technology is "hype" until it isn't. I agree we have a ways to go.
To the extent they are funded, that money could never be rescinded. And you could negotiate early funding as a feature now, because it would actually mean something to the recipients. There are no untrustworthy promises required.
And you could do new things based on control of your pension, which might radically change how we think of them.
The main thing that smart contracts remove is the need for trust. And that's the main problem with pensions.
It's not completely private if bureaucrats tell you what you can or cannot do with it, as well as when you may do it, stealing from you if you step outside of their rules.
Completely private accounts are called savings accounts; governments aren't telling you what to do with your money, they're telling you what you have to do in order to avoid that money being taxed, IRA's offer you a benefit, that benefit isn't without strings. Smart contracts offer nothing here you can't already do easier.
Using a broad definition of theft merely serves to raise the noise floor. Your definition of "completely private" seems like "free markets" or "perfect competition": that is, things which are free from government interference only in misanthropic delusions. As Jefferson explained, stable ownership is not a natural concept; that you are considered to "own" things absent direct physical possession is a function of society. We also collectively agree to believe in this thing called 'money', which is also not an inherent property of mankind. That society can dictate rights and rules about property is inherent to the concept of each.
The "smart contract" is still reacting to things in the real world. It's not going to magically cause the stock market to not fail. And, as we've seen, they are vulnerable to hacking.
That's... that's not really true. For one, we've already seen how these "smart contracts" can be hacked. I can almost guarantee that they will put something in them that will allow them to take the stuff back.
And that hasn't really explained how the funding would be there.
Actually, the fact that it hasn't been unrolled completely yet without backlash is a testament to how angry people are when you try to take their protections away.
If you’re attempting to study how a Basic Income would affect its recipients, then yes. It is terrible. It completely skews the behavior of the recipient in a way that a lifetime BI would not.
Absolutely, and this is also the problem with every* other basic income study that's been conducted over the past few decades.
If you promise basic income for only 5 years, then I'm probably not going to quit my job and become an artist because I can't be unemployed for 5 years and expect to waltz back into a job. If you promise basic income "forever", then I'm far more likely to retire at 30 and plan to never work again.
* I believe this is the case, correct me if there are any I missed
Would you not work? Basic income is nearly not enough to access luxuries. Sure you should be able to live off it, but I think most people would likely want more, the difference from forced equality being that you can still work and keep that as luxury money.
Would they, though? That's the key question that I believe this study (and others like it) fail to address. Depending on the basic income amount, I believe it would be possible to live a fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life without needing to supplement that income.
I would want more. Currently I don't really care what I buy at supermarkets, I can go on 2 week holidays and potentially buy gadgets I like. However I can't really afford a car or buy a home or fancy synthesizers.
With BI I could spend more, but I would still keep on working towards a relaxing financial freedom where money is not a problem at all.
Besides a few monks, everyone I've met that makes under $20k/yr wants more. I've never seen a real area where people are comfortable until the $40k/yr mark. Yeah, I know there are exceptions (there's always outliers in data, but you can still find means and trends). So I am confident you wouldn't see a significant difference in number of workers unless you brought that UBI level up by several times the proposed $1k/mo.
I never understood that point. Almost everyone I know works fulltime although they could live a "fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life" on maybe 15h/week of work. If minimizing work would be a goal, most people would be able to do it right now.
Yes, this requires employer flexibility and the move from 40h->15h per week grants much less freedom than stopping work entirely but masses of people suddenly being content with a minimum amount of money does not sound convincing to me at all.
Haven't most studies around UBI shown that the only people that usually don't work when given a UBI are students and mothers (so they can focus on school and their children, respectively)?
Living off the basics is pretty dull. Most people who live ascetic lifestyles by choice usually come from a position of relative wealth and choose it more as an aesthetic or affectation than anything.
I think there are plenty of people who would be happy having a minimalist life, and there are those who would choose to see the world. And I believe that there are those who are drawn to doing things; working on stuff that they're interested in. And there are those who do want more stuff, and so will work.
All in all, I think there are enough people that things would be fine.
I agree. I think a lot would move to affordable places where that guaranteed income goes a lot further. If that's true then we aren't going to be as competitive on a global scale. Maybe that's not a big deal, maybe it's a huge deal; I don't know.
Anecdotally my friend is part Native-American and gets 4k/mo from the tribe's casino money and they're bumping it up more soon. She's chosen to be a stay at home mom.
The question really isn't whether someone person on Hacker News would want to work.
A better question would be, "how many would report their work out of an entire country was offered a basic income?" There are already data points for comparison, when that question is asked.
Most people on Hacker News are really not any different from anyone else in their country - they're just in a different line of work. The idea that you're a better/more moral person if you get paid more is a fallacy.
An interesting question is "can we reasonably automate things that people currently get paid less for than a basic income would be, or will we have to pay them more, and if we have to pay them more, what will be the economic effect of that?"
>>Most people on Hacker News are really not any different from anyone else in their country - they're just in a different line of work. The idea that you're a better/more moral person if you get paid more is a fallacy.
People on HN are significantly different and not even close to a representative sample. No one at any point is saying that HN readers are better or more moral, but there are huge, huge differences in technical skill, intelligence, knowledge, college attendance rates, social skills, empathy, and so forth compared to an average sampling of the population of the United States. I'll leave it up to everyone to decide which direction the arrow points in the above fields.
This is the problem with a lot of economic reasoning. The 'rational actor' construct works in toy models, but is much less useful in reality.
I took a couple years off a long time ago. I didn't stop working on stuff. Really, if you pay me, all that means is that I work on what you want me to work on, and maybe show up at particular times. It doesn't motivate me to work, it just motivates me to change topics.
I absolutely know people who would never work again. I know other people like me, who do it because they enjoy it. And details matter a lot, and tend to be ignored[1] by simplistic first-principle reasoning.
A big part of this is the ratio of those, and how quickly the number of jobs drop. I would fully expect this sort of thing to need tuning as it goes - I personally see the biggest change being a sudden explosion of people with lots of free time. Just as a tiny example, what does this do to the video game market? What about dry cleaners when fewer people wear business-drag?
Anyone who makes confident predictions based on econ101-style reasoning is simply dressing their politics up in an argument from authority.
[1] What does assortive mating look like under such a scheme - how much status will holding a job gain? Is the income set at an "uncomfortable" level, how will that change over time, what sort of barriers (class, academic, opportunities, etc.) will grow up around it? Are there any incentives to do something useful, even if it isn't what we think of as a 'job'?
being time limited it gives you an actual hard value, so it becomes negotiable. I wonder if anyone will instead just use that to negotiate some credit at a favorable rate (say, 50k for those 60k) and actually start something greater than the expected subsistence.
Generally speaking, this would probably be the most efficient use of UBI: you trade it all away as soon as you exit college and invest it in something. I can see whole branches of financial and life insurance services growing out of this market.
Idea: what if they could hide from the recipients how long the program will take, while guaranteeing they'll get two years advance warning? Then for the first three years we might get something more representative of behavior on indefinite BI.
I do realize that by this point this would be hard to hide.
The whole point about Basic Income (at least the unconditionally one) is that there are not going to be any jobs (or very few and only for highly talented people). And even if there are jobs it will always be worthwhile working (as long as it's unconditional)
So if you, like me, believe that's the case, the whole discussion about whether people want to take a job or not becomes moot. It doesn't matter if they would have, they can't.
A much more important discussion then becomes how we make it work financially.
The whole point about Basic Income (at least the unconditional ly one) is that there are not going to be any jobs (or very few and only for highly talented people).
If there are no jobs, it will be because we designed it that way, not because it was inevitable. Tech giants proposing basic income as the solution to their lazy lack of desire to figure out how to better distribute work tell glowing stories of how lovely it will be for low paid workers to get this extra money. They never actually explore the scenario they are actually proposing that all you get is $10k-$20k and you have little or no hope of getting a job at all ever again.
That would be a dystopian nightmare and I think it is likely to end in bloody revolution.
Lots of hopeless people with nothing but time on their hands who are being completely fucked over by the system with no way out of this black hole but just enough money to keep eating well, even if they are living in a tent, sounds like a recipe for creating a well trained guerrilla army.
Technology isn't inevitable but to the extent that we wan't to reap the benefits of it is. In other word, we aren't designing anything other than our own replacements.
With regards to how SV tries to paint it thats a different discussion and have nothing to do with whether it will happen or not.
It doesn't have to be dystopian (ex. Post scarcity society) but until we get there it's going to be worse not better for a lot of people.
But I would challenge you to come up with an alternative that by and large at least compete with the reliance on technology.
The problem is that no specific part of the whole system is responsible and everyone in the system is more or less acting rationally.
So I fundamentally disagree it's not inevitable (with the above context considered)
But I would challenge you to come up with an alternative
Actually, I have. I was homeless for nearly six years until earlier this month. I am medically handicapped and can't work a regular job. I was a homemaker for a lot of years, I had a corporate job for a few years and I currently do freelance writing, resume editing and I blog, which gets me a little money via ads, tips and Patreon.
UBI will solve nothing as long as we do not have universal basic health care and affordable housing. If we establish universal basic health care and create sufficient affordable housing, then the last piece of the puzzle is redistributing work. We did this once before under very similar circumstances where automation was "taking our jobs."
It was called The Industrial Revolution. It gave birth to the 40 hour work week, overtime pay and unions.
If work is structured properly and you can get a cheap SRO or similar somewhere and not have to worry about medical bills, you can cover your basic living expenses working part time. If it is well structured where you work as little or as much as you want, then people who are unambitious hedonists or who have personal burdens, like chronic health issues, can just get by without it being a dystopian horrifying black hole that seems inescapable. Folks with more energy and/or more ambition can work harder and do more with their lives.
I have written a number of pieces laying out the details. Some are listed on this page of my old blog:
You are assuming an awful lot of things about me. Why would I challenge you if I wasn't intersted in what you had to say?
You completely ignore that there is no need to structure work if I don't have to hire people to produce or develop my products. This is the whole point and why I believe you are fundamentally looking at this wrong.
The industrial revolution replaced physical work, this revolution is replacing intellectual work.
You are betting on some political/ideological/moral change in people, not actually addressing the points I was making.
And, yet, your out of hand dismissal fits very well with my assumption that you aren't actually interested in hearing a solution other than UBI.
I am not betting on a political, ideological or moral change. Whether we establish a UBI or go with something akin to my above proposals, these are equally political solutions. Neither will happen without a great many people working to make it happen.
The only question is what kind of future do we want? I think UBI makes no sense and will not work. Universal basic health care would be vastly easier to implement, if only because it has already be done in multiple other countries, so we have models to borrow from. Yet, people think that is a bridge too far and will not happen.
So, to me, the good news is that UBI is unlikely to happen and Gig Work is already on the rise, such as Uber, writing services and delivery services. The challenge here is just getting the word out that such services need to be a win-win scenario for both company and workers.
I am already living this reality. Gig Work has been an ideal solution in the face of a medical situation that makes a normal job not work for me. So, I know firsthand that Gig Work can be a terrific option for the worker if it isn't designed to screw over the little guy.
That can totally coexist alongside factories with very few workers. The rise of the machines does not have to be a terrible thing for humanity. The Industrial Revolution raised standards of living and quality of life across the board. There is no reason The Second Industrial Revolution cannot do the same.
But we do need to set that as a goal and work towards it. My only real concern is that, currently, some very rich and powerful people do not see the 99 percent as actual human beings. They see them as sheeple. And the solutions that grow out of such contempt tend to be self fulfilling prophesies that force powerless people into the narrative imposed on them from high.
I am intersted in hearing actual solutions not wishful thinking based on the idea that humans decide themselves when we obviously don't.
If you want to argue that then I have already asked you how that would happen given the reality we live in.
Gig-work will also be replaced by technology either through digitalization or automation.
95% of jobs created since 2010 are temp jobs i.e. part of the gig-economy, that's obviously not sustainable as there isn't any rise in salaries while as I said the cost of living is rising.
So again unless you believe that technology is not going to take the jobs
Calling it wishful thinking is incredibly dismissive and contemptuous.
If you were genuinely interested, you could read the multiple articles I have already written and linked to. I don't think you have bothered to do that.
I call it that because you haven't actually answered the question I asked you with regards to why people would choose that over technology.
Keep in mind you are the one who claimed that we can just design things the way we want them, yet you haven't actually provided anything close to an argument here.
That the gig-economy works for you is great, it's just not an actual argument and it's definitely not an argument against UBI.
Furthermore if you can't actually formulate your own thinking in a comment but are so lazy that you just point me to go read something you are actually showing who isn't really genuinely intersted in this debate.
This crosses into personal attack. You can't do that here, regardless of how wrong or annoying someone else's comment is, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly. Would you please (re)-read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this?
I'm referring to the personal swipes in "if you can't actually formulate your own thinking in a comment but are so lazy", etc. Yes, there's an "if", but it's still unduly personal. That's why I said "crosses into" rather than "is".
By "fix" I just mean editing that kind of thing out in the future. Shouldn't be hard. And thanks for being an excellent HN contributor!
I agree with you that tech giants promoting basic income are probably only doing that as an easy and attractive answer to - what will happen to all the jobs?
However, I really don't think UBI is the answer. I don't understand where the money will come from/who will do the leftover work. I think we should continue to cultivate an innovative society and new types of jobs - more appealing I think - will be created.
People that rich are used to solving certain things by whipping out their checkbook (so to speak). It may be superficially well meaning, but, no, I don't think UBI actually works. If they manage to get a UBI instituted, I think that is a case of the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But, the odds seem pretty long against it being instituted in this country at all. So, that makes me feel it is mere posturing.
I do a lot of "light one candle rather than curse the dark" type projects. I try to promote things that already exist (like gig work) that I think work. I do my best to get such info into the hands of people who seem hardest hit by the societal growing pains we are witnessing.
It can be hard to measure the results of such efforts and it can be outright impossible to prove to others that it makes a difference. But, I have had experiences* that convince me that it does make a difference, so I persist.
But what are you basing that belief on? Thats what I would like to know. Unless you don't think computers will be able to do most of the things that create fundamental value in society. Of course you can imagine all sorts of services on top (prostitution, games etc) but the idea of the job market as something that we just keep creating new jobs for is simply not backed by reality.
What fundamentally new jobs have we really seen the last 100 years besides computer engineer and how many people does that industry actually occupy. As it turns out not a lot.
Everything else is just a more refined version of things that already existed in some form or another and rapidly being replaced by technology.
Which part of it? Not too many generations ago, many people lived entirely off the land. A large portion of people's "jobs" were displaced from agriculture and yet over time new jobs keep getting created. There are jobs that no one had even thought of that are now providing for the livelihood of many people.
Yes I believe there will also be new things that people want and new ways that other want to help them get it that will keep fueling the economy. There are things that are inaccessible to many people now that will become more everyday and "middle class".
> Unless you don't think computers will be able to do most of the things that create fundamental value in society.
No not at all. Of course I think automation can keep getting better but there are plenty of jobs that I don't see computers doing anywhere in the near term - building a house, paving a street, cooking food, being a nurse, being a garbage man, etc etc.
> What fundamentally new jobs have we really seen the last 100 years besides computer engineer...
Um seriously? I know people who literally are "social media managers". I know people who sell eBooks for a living or do Youtube. I know folks who attempt to at least live off the music they make.
These are just "new" jobs that no one could have envisioned before. But think of all the greater demand there could be existing jobs. I have a friend in Fiji and apparently there nearly everyone has a housekeeper, even "middle class" people. There is a demand for stuff like that even in America - people keep pushing toward whatever improves their standard of living as long as they can afford it.
Technology is growing fast but its far from the only thing desired by people.
Which part of it? Not too many generations ago, many people lived entirely off the land. A large portion of people's "jobs" were displaced from agriculture and yet over time new jobs keep getting created. There are jobs that no one had even thought of that are now providing for the livelihood of many people.
New jobs keeps getting created simply because the markets have grown through population growth and globalization. If you look in the US out of all the new jobs created since 2009 95% of them are temp jobs not structural jobs. Temp jobs means that the job is being perceived as less valuable (no healthcare) than ex a structurally solid job. The actual market value of most jobs is diminishing. At the same time cost of living is going up up up.
The jobs no one have thought of are literally a drop in the ocean. They pay a few people very well while 90% don't make a dime on them. And they are only "new jobs" in the sense that they are about a new medium or technology. But fundamentally nothing new about them.
The problem with most jobs is that they don't actually require the whole human only a small part of the humans abilities. Unless you don't think technology can replace that function I have a hard time seeing where you get your view that it's not an actual problem from.
Technology allow you to be competitive which mean you need to keep investing in technology to be competitive. Yet income is actually declining and cost is going up.
Here is an interesting graph showing price change:
How is that an illustration of things becoming more accessible? Unless of course you mean that TV series covers people fundamental needs.
No not at all. Of course I think automation can keep getting better but there are plenty of jobs that I don't see computers doing anywhere in the near term - building a house, paving a street, cooking food, being a nurse, being a garbage man, etc etc.
Yet there are already technologies doing that today. This will only increase over time.
Um seriously? I know people who literally are "social media managers"
Social media manager are just marketing people in another medium nothing new there. Selling ebooks is just selling books in another media. these aren't actually new types of jobs and it's a very very very small fraction of society who actually make a living from these. You can't live on likes.
The benefits of technology is desired by people and thats what matters here.
How many people and jobs are we talking about, if these are the jobs expected to support the vast majority of the populace? And on a related note, why would these people not feel resentful that (by necessity) a major chunk of their earnings is directed towards everyone else?
Assuming that humans will behave differently and be driven by different things than they have _for millenia_ is foolish, and why BI will never work.
Humans are part of a larger system, that system is evolution. For millions of years evolution have favored those who adapt to a new environment.
Thats the proper perspective to understand this discussion, not pointing back to a few thousand years of human civilization, unless of course you claim that humans is the last word in evolutionary process.
If you (like me) believe technology will take over most jobs then (U)BI is so far the best model we have as it will always make it worthwhile to work.
Seems like the most obvious conclusion is that labor for crappy jobs will become a lot more expensive. Basically any sector that relies upon cheaper labor, or is highly undesirable (think working on pipelines, coal mines, agriculture, sanitation, even low level medical care). And if it isn't based on wealth and only income, I can see a lot of professionals dropping out too once they've become comfortable.
I think you're right at least to the extent that this complicates drawing conclusions. Another issue I see is that in this study we're talking about a single household in a likely poor community getting a basic income. This is totally different from a scenario where the recipient knows that everyone else in their community is receiving a basic income too. Imagine this: a woman in a poor community who works a low-paying job starts receiving a basic income. Her boyfriend loses his job, and he starts to rely on her for support. In a world where both parties have a basic income, she'd have an easier time eventually telling him he needs to get out on his own feet, but in this scenario, she's the one with this "extra money."
And what about border policy? You can't have open border policy + UBI together... I mean why not try to come to America then. I would I come if I had a chance to get UBI and live there, and millions, millions of others. Would the system still work?
I think you mis-understand UBI. UBI enables 'survival' within the country. It will just about pay for a room and basic food. You want to eat steak, you will need to get a job.
Look at social spending rates by government over time. It's typical that they rise, despite attempts to restrain them. Critics call attempts to slow the growth rate "cuts" and paint the reformers as heartless.
Because people lack gratitude for the life we have. (including me) No generation before has been so prosperous or lived so long, healthy lives. Now how do you solve that problem?
Richer society's can support higher standards of government spending. So IMO, the only metric that matters in Government spending is per person spending / per person GDP.
And in that context you see various growth and cuts over time.
However, even that is misleading as richer society's have a higher percentage of discretionary income and may be willing to pay higher tax rates.
Higher "standards" of spending? Is that the new liberal euphemism for higher taxes? Richer societies can spend more dollars, but percentage wise, there's obviously a limit. We'll find out in the next 20 or so years as the amount we spend on social services crowds out all other spending, and we can't pay back the principal on our existing debt.
Sorry, I mean if you keep the percentage of taxes the same you end up with more money. That often changes the perception of reasonable expenses. Police forces for example are often better equipped in wealthy areas. The high school football field may have better bleachers ect.
Nobody thinks it's important to add street lights in the middle of corn fields. But, cities have had various forms of lighting over time and increasing standards for lighting levels from the 1400's to now. US street lights for example could be perfectly useful for walking if they where 1/10 as bright as they currently are which would significantly reduce associated costs.
PS: Anyway, if inflation adjusted medium income was say 10x as much I could see people tolerating 70% tax rates as their take home pay would still be significantly higher than we have. AKA if average person make 500,000$ in inflation adjusted dollars then they might be ok with an after tax take home pay of just 150,000$ / year on average. But say government provided self driving cars and underground tunnel networks.
No I did not. Doesn't it come as obvious that people start asking for equal treatment? Or you just build new barriers and second class citizens.
If USA would pay UBI I would do my best to somehow become citizen, there is no reason for me why I shouldn't try. And there are over 7 billion people on the planet, I'm not the only one who thinks that way. That is why I raised the question of borders/immigration + UBI. It's very different situation when it is now for illegals and also people who want to become citizens.
On the other hand, since you're not going to be the only one with this line of thinking, it will create a potentially large incentive for other countries to establish their own UBI to prevent a "brain drain". (It wouldn't totally eliminate the draw of the USA's UBI, though, since foreign UBIs would likely be lower.)
Presumably any UBI system would be limited to citizens only.
In combination with open borders, you do risk having a class system, where the citizens have money and immigrants don't, but at the same time, it solves the issue of certain jobs not being worth the time of someone who gets UBI (and therefore being for immigrants).
It's a tough balance for sure, and one of the main arguments against UBI (accidental creation of a class system).
again showing that socialism causes division and tribalism. i dont want to give more money (currently near half my earnings) to the top 1% of the world (any american on minimum wage) over the current global charities I give to
This assumes people will enjoy a 5 year vacation though. In Norway if you're chronically disabled you can apply for something that seems very similar to basic income. I'm in that system and in my experience most of the people I know in this system are bored. It could be because all their friends are working so it's difficult to meet new people, there's also that this system is for disabled people and people with mental issues could find it difficult to meet other people, etc.
I remember working somewhere where I was being tested before getting into this system and I met plenty who said they were heavily advised not to go back to work by their doctors. They want to do /something/ because being at home watching TV gets boring after half a year. So they were sent to that place in the meantime. I have other friends who are in this system who end up working in charity somewhere.
But most of my friends i met in this system ended up finding a job, despite being promised permanent "universal income".
In the past if you tried to work somewhere while being in this system, and it worked but you got sick again you'd have to reapply (which is a very long process) but now it's changed so it acts more as a safety net in case working somewhere doesn't work out for your health. I've heard this is to encourage people to work and I've heard (from the people who work in the system) that it's successful so far.
This doesn't assume they'll take a 5 year vacation at all. It's the difference between deciding to become an artist because you know you'll never worry about money, and deciding to study accounting so you can eventually have an accounting job you don't care about that will support your evening art practice.
It's common sense if you have any interaction with US society. Not every common sense thing needs to be verified by a costly scientific study. Though some researchers try.
Plenty of things that people think are "common sense" are far from it. If you want to make a assertion such that you have, you'll have to have evidence.
It's commonly said to be common sense to justify cutting and severely restricting social programs, but rarely with supporting evidence of widespread abuse. Usually just small amounts.
In my experience it is hard to take a 3 week vacation without coming across an idea which "I would do if I had more time". I bet some interesting results will come out of this research even if every single person starts their 5 years with a vacation.
Maybe you would, and you know what? Good for you if you do.
Just about everyone I know would start a business, volunteer, do creative things, contribute to making the world a better place.
But, at the end of the day, I don't care how people spend their time or their money. If some fraction of the population wanted to bum around on their minimal UBI for the rest of their lives, fine by me. It's never going to lead to a life of luxury, and I quite honestly don't care if that's how they want to waste their lives.
This argument has no foundation in logic. There is a subset of people who are fine with paying those taxes and do not care how the intermediary recipients of those funds spend them.
Shit, man. If "financing things I don't like with my taxes" is the hill I'm going to die on, I'm going to set my sights on the insane military budget we use to turn far-away countries into toilets and parking lots.
Funding my fellow countrymen who want to squander their lives, so long as they're doing so peacefully and in the privacy of their own homes? Sign. me. up.
because of the multitude of positive effects it has on society that i live in. less depression, less poverty, less risky or criminal behavior, more economic activity, better educators, better medical care workers. this list can go on forever.
This goes on to prove that man needs a purpose to be happy. A job gives a purpose. Universal basic income is nothing new. Saudi Arabia already has universal basic income, and people are not happy, and after a long period of laziness, they are unwilling and unable to go back to work, and worse -- they are prone to be attracted to terrorism. Free money, by and large, in a majority of cases, will kill a man's soul.
> But most of my friends i met in this system ended up finding a job, despite being promised permanent "universal income".
So this experience stands against one of the most common arguments against basic income, "nobody is going to work anymore". It validates my belief that people will still seek purpose (and monetary rewards) even when their basic needs are fulfilled.
> I've heard this is to encourage people to work and I've heard (from the people who work in the system) that it's successful so far.
Always good to hear of policy that's actually working. At times, watching the news makes it feel like all of politics is just a smoke and mirrors game without any positive outcomes.
I feel like we already have tons of examples of people not really working for the money. CEOs of major companies typically have more than enough saved to just live indefinitely off the returns of that money. And yet, they don't.
While I'm hoping to see this system work I'm not sure if it will and whatnot. It's great to see research for it and maybe they can study some existing systems as well.
I feel a lot of people on here want to be or are already an entrepreneur. So of course your friends are most likely gonna start a business if they had the time, opportunity and safety net. But maybe that's enough?
Another thing I hear a lot from people in this system is saying they wish they had more money and wish they could do something to earn more. (But then again I think this is always the case)
The money we get is based on some average income. It's enough to pay the rent for an apartment, save up a little to buy a TV, maybe even a trip to another country if you're careful, etc.
I don't think it's enough to own a car, buy a house, have kids, etc. To live that kind of "dream" you need to find a full time job. Which sounds fair within the UBI context but maybe unfair if you're disabled. (I personally don't know, my own life is more than good at the moment)
I should have mentioned that there's a social stigma with not working (at least in Norway). Many of my disabled friends are not very open about it because they think it's embarrassing. I have one friend who choose to work at charity-ish place just so he can say he's working. He's 40 years old though and I believe the stigma was much stronger back in the past.
Personally if people ask what I'm doing I tell them that I'm disabled but I like programming, making music and so on. I've never had anyone react negatively to this, but this is face to face, first time we meet, and maybe the non disabled people I meet have similar mindset as me. (programmers, freelancers, artists, etc) The friends I have who are disabled is another friend circle entirely.
So I don't experience the stigma but I can imagine there are some people who don't like it of course. It's just that I don't hang around those people.
But this stigma could be an important factor as to why people want to work.
I feel like I'm talking for https://www.nav.no (the system in Norway I'm talking about). Maybe they have more useful (and more accurate) data for the people who research UBI.
Since they have a control group, they can at least learn how people's behavior changes when they get free money for 5 years. 5 years is enough for going back to school, getting retrained, moving to a new location for better work prospects, etc.
They can't claim to know how people will behave if it is a lifetime, but evaluating some change is better than evaluating none.
I think you overestimate how much the average person prepares for the future. Look at the number of people who have emergency funds. 62% of Americans have <$1k and ~20% have no savings [1]. That number is too high to be explained away by necessary expenses. It is clear that people are just bad at saving. We can even look at the old game of "I'll give you a dollar today or five at the end of the week." Most people take the dollar today.
So with this time frame I believe initial ideas of "I'm going to put this to savings" will quickly disappear. Five years is a pretty long time, especially when considering at how bad humans are at preparing for the future.
What I think will be interesting is to see the different spending trends over time. I would imagine the first and last years are different than the middle three. But that's just a guess.
That's still not the same thing. Failing to save is partially because people think jobs are stable. That's unrelated to knowing you will need to get a job in 5 years after your extended basic income vacation.
Saving $1k has nothing to do with your job being stable or not. That's a safety net for life. It is the basic emergency fund. Cars break down, people get sick, life happens. So to extend your premise, "Failing to save is partially because people think expenses are stable." Which is clearly poor planning. We know humans are bad about estimating risk. I'm not sure why this is such a controversial idea.
What I'm saying is that if even those above the 50% income level are bad about saving a basic emergency fund, I don't expect those receiving this kind of grant to be any better at preparing emergencies. I do think they will be able to handle them better, but I do not expect them to plan better.
The 60 percentile income is < $46k. That people have little emergency funds on incomes less than this is largely explained away by necessary expenses. 20% have no savings -- the 20 percentile income is $17k. Show me a net savings budget on $17k.
The median income is $57k/yr [1]. Or we can go to the second chart and get the following: 11.2% make under $15k. 20.8% make under $25k. 30.2% < 35k, 43.1% under 50k, 60.1% under 75k.
The point isn't that the lower can't save, it is that people above the median income still don't save. These people should be able to save, but don't.
You also have to look at the effect of UBI over generations. Children growing up with UBI may never see people close to them who do actual work. I once had a summer job at a welfare/employment agency. A lot of the people who received welfare in the second or third generation often had no idea how a job works. They were late all the time or just didn't show up for a week. The social worker had to explain to them how a job works.
I don't blame them. They just never had seen what people who have a job do. When I grew up everybody close to me was working so I could observe how a job works. And people who grow up around high-powered people like CEOs know how being a CEO works.
>A lot of the people who received welfare in the second or third generation often had no idea how a job works. They were late all the time or just didn't show up for a week.
I dont understand. You have seen firsthand how entitlements ruin people, and you're arguing that UBI will be good for society?
Edit: why the down votes? Are adults who do not understand the concept of a job not a problem? How else could so many of them live without this knowledge if they weren't being handed out the resources to enable them?
> You have seen firsthand how entitlements ruin people
My grandfather received a very lucrative PhD offer at a very prestigious American university, but he didn't have the money to make the trip himself, and airplanes were much too expensive for him. So he found a ship in the harbor that was taking a passage to the US and volunteered to be a deck-hand.
Now his grandkids, those in India and those abroad, drive cars, go to fancy bars and restaurants. I've never been a deck-hand in my life, and I have cousins who have never even seen a boat up close.
It's easy for us to think that "entitlements ruin people" because it allows us to legitimatze our individual struggles, but it takes a leap beyond to comprehend whether our struggles should mean anything or are simply an artifact of the technology and logistics we have available to us.
>because it allows us to legitimatze our individual struggles
Please. Have you ever lived in poverty? The people who climb out will tell you what other poor people are like. And I'm not just talking about poverty. Look at what former Soviets have done in NYC, especially Brighton beach. They live out of the projects but stereotypically drive BMWs. The average poor person is not your aspiring PHD father, its someone who wants a quick buck for the immediate future.
UBI is textbook ivory tower politics. Poor people aren't just poor because they have no money, and by and large throwing more money at them won't solve anything.
Now if you want to argue that the waste is worth it because of people like your father, thats plausible, but acting like UBI is the answer to poverty is absurd. Not to mention that you're essentially setting a demand floor which will "unnaturally" interfere with the economy. Another potential can of worms.
Yes, yes I have. I grew up in it. And most of my friends are struggling to make ends meet, working at restaurants, nail salons, and cafes. There's no glory in realizing that you can't make rent this month and you need to beg your landlord, or that after rent you have $50 leftover for a month's expenses. I've been there.
> They live out of the projects but stereotypically drive BMWs.
So you're using a stereotype to make your argument? Come on.
> Not to mention that you're essentially setting a demand floor which will "unnaturally" interfere with the economy. Another potential can of worms.
And you're arguing that supply is finite, which is the same fallacy that proponents of command economies often fall into.
I am not arguing that supply if finite, I am arguing that extraction of supply is finite and if you deincentivise millions of people from working while throwing money at them, you further reduce supply and exacerbate long term economic problems.
>So you're using a stereotype to make your argument? Come on
The argument could have been made without the stereotype, I agree. But it is an open secret in NYC that people, especially in Soviet neighborhoods, abuse the welfare system. I'll drop it though because I only have anecdata.
If you lived in poverty, surely you at least caught glimpses of all the people who were not quite as noble as your friends? I do not deny that there are truly hard working poor who need a little extra to climb out. I merely argue that there is a much higher proportion of poor who dont care to learn or work than you are acknowledging, and those are the people who will ruin any UBI experiment.
You don't seem to grok the point of UBI because you seem to fetishize work. UBI is the solution to a world where work isn't an essential due to automation, there is more to being human than getting money for labor, we want people to be happy not working, that's the goal, so those people aren't ruining the experiment, they're proving it correct.
> The argument could have been made without the stereotype, I agree. But it is an open secret in NYC that people, especially in Soviet neighborhoods, abuse the welfare system. I'll drop it though because I only have anecdata.
I'd take those ex-soviet commonwealth welfare abusers anytime over welfare non-abusers any time.
These projects are one of the nicest and the most well maintained projects in the city. They bribe the city housing dept to win the lottery, and take the money they would have to spend on purchasing the property to maintain it.
Its almost like giving UBI to those who don't need it, give you a better society, and giving UBI to those who need it, you get more 'needs'.
You cannot pull yourself up by anyones bootstraps if you dont care to, or are so far removed from functional society that you dont know how a job works, and there is no one in your family or circle of acquaintances to teach you to learn because your community is as unortunately poor and ignorant as you are.
UBI is not the answer to the modern ghetto. Regardless of race. We much first address problems with culture and education. Or at the very least do that in conjunction with UBI.
> there is no one in your family or circle of acquaintances to teach you to learn [how a job works]
Sounds like you're having the wrong discussion. It shouldn't be about "UBI" or "not UBI", it should be about educating teenagers and young adults from poor families how to make a living and climb up the social ladder.
(I'm going to make a guess and say that this part of the discussion is ignored because it's evident that there's only limited space in the upper and middle classes of society.)
I do agree that you describe the crux of the issue, I'm point it out because I believe it is the reason UBI will do more harm than good, until we address the problem of education first.
But, consider this: when we say education in the U.S., we imply westernization. Who are you to decide for someone else that their culture of ignorance is inferior to your own?
Life is complicated. I personally feel that, historically, these kinds of interventions do more harm than good. If you really want to solve a problem, you dont need to add regulations, you need to get more people on the same page, in general.
Your comments are probably being downvoted (correctly) because they break the HN guidelines by posting ideological boilerplate and being uncharitable in interpreting others.
We've had to ask you not to do these things before. Would you kindly re-read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this? We'd greatly appreciate your help in raising discussion quality above that bar.
Hi, I’m someone who happened to both grow up on welfare AND watch zero people close to me work any sort of job ever.
Your comment reads to me as an implicit argument against UBI. Is that your case?
Allow to me comment from an insider perspective.
- The welfare money didn’t cause the lack of work. They were not strongly related or if anything it’s the lack of work that drives the need to take up welfare.
- It’s likely an extremely small minority of children in welfare-assisted families who see zero closely related adults working at all.
- People who grow up without working role models do have a harder time learning the ropes on the work life, on that we agree. That doesn’t mean they’re doomed to fail completely. (Saying this as someone who had no idea how to do this right but eventually learned, went through grad school, now works in tech, outearns the median income in her city, etc). Also how do you explain the many underemployed/unemployed/deadbeat kids of successful high-status parents? The connection seems rather spurious to me.
- Taking away the welfare money would do nothing to get someone employed. Instead it might endanger the family’s life. You realize that right?
I am not arguing against welfare or UBI. I am just saying the long-term effect may be different from what people are thinking. Especially at HN people seem to think all people on UBI will turn into artists or develop software all day. Maybe that will be the case but I have my doubts.
"People who grow up without working role models do have a harder time learning the ropes on the work life, on that we agree. That doesn’t mean they’re doomed to fail completely. "
People certainly can escape their upbringing but from my observation on average most people stay close to their social class. That doesn't mean that some won't do much better or much worse than their family.
The basic problem with welfare as it currently exists, is that it actually provides disincentives to working. If you start working they take away similar amounts of welfare. You'd have to get a job that is way more than the welfare for it to make even a little sense.
That disincentive goes away with UBI, which is the main reason I think it would work better. Under that system, every dollar you earn directly translates to a better standard of living.
I don't completely disagree with you. I personally know two 2nd-generation 'trustfunders' who many would say don't do much. That is, they 'just' do leisure work. One plays poker part time, and he volunteers the rest of his time. The other promotes bands that she likes. But, are they really doing nothing of value? I think many people who meet them are sort of envious: seems like a nice life!
I also know more than a few 1st-generation 'trustfunders'. Some are artists, some scientists, a couple work as university professors. They certainly are all doing useful work, right?
Just look at HN as a case study. There are many people here (myself included) who could live off of their savings indefinitely. In fact, I've tried a few times. But, as others have pointed out, sitting around doing nothing is dreadfully boring. Once one removes the usual daily stressors (e.g. being able to pay for rent, food, kids, etc.), escapist behavior quickly grows dull. Believe me, when not required to manage stress, there is only so much Netflix one can watch and only so many video games one can play.
I wouldn't worry about the vast majority of Humans doing nothing. People just do stuff. It just means changing perspective of what is valuable work. There are many types of work that are valuable to Humanity even if the market can't support them.
Edit: just want to add that I would be concerned by younger adult males forming gangs. Their PFC's aren't completely formed, and they have raging hormones. In Christian western countries, it's a common saying that "idle hands are the devil's workshop". And, I find that true. So, young adult males, with nothing to do and risk-taking brains, tend to get into trouble.
I wish technically-inclined people who could live off their savings would work on FOSS communication tools (e.g. FreedomBox, MatterMost, Matrix.org, Smallest Federated Wiki, or similar) to create viable alternatives to the centralized profit-driven communication and search systems created by venture capitalism. Or do whatever other worthwhile FOSS floats your boat like for educational simulations or whatever to be part of the gift economy. We desperately need alternatives -- and they are mostly not going to come from the surveillance capitalism culture (or its captive governance) which privatizes gains while socializing costs and risks (including costs and risks to privacy and democracy).
And non-technically-inclined people with savings could help by promoting, documenting distributing, training, prettifying, and providing other support for such systems.
And yes, I've put all my spare resources into that kind of FOSS technical work myself (although at the moment I'm once again working for pay to climb out of taking on debt to finish another FOSS project done with my wife -- this one called NarraFirma).
Related by Alan Kay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15261691
"In the interview -- to say it again -- I'm not calling for the field to implement my vision -- but I am calling for the field to have a larger vision of civilization and how mass media and our tools contribute or detract from it. Thoreau had a good line. He said "We become the tools of our tools" -- meaning, be very careful when you design tools and put them out for use. (Our consumer based technology field is not being at all careful.)"
And yes -- a Basic Income would make that possible for everyone someday. But if you can live that way now, why not help create a more joyful and sustainable alternative right now? Isn't it plausible that our direction coming out of any Singularity may have a lot to do with our moral and technical infrastructure going into one?
(Obviously, there are some paying jobs that align more closely with such ideals, but they tend to be few and far between, and if you have savings and take one, you displace someone else who might not have your options.)
Personally I don't believe in idea that many people would be able to build successful FOSS projects and communities around them while living off their savings. It's could be a good for the start, but nothing would work without project having viable business model like MatterMost or Discourse have. Or if someone sponsors it be it some corporation or individual.
Reason for this is simple: successful project it's not just the code, but also community around it. Coordinating even small team across different time zones, helping new contributors, reviewing the code and keeping it all together is exhausting daily job and not everyone can handle that. Now projects that you find valuable would require highly skilled programmer to work on them.
So the person it's require to build such software can easily find a job in one of corporations that pay very well or FOSS-related job that might have lesser pay. Why should someone prefer to live off savings or in debt just to build software that don't have business model?
This is the reason I don't think basic income would help here at all. Of course some could be okay in living just above poverty while working on project they believe in, but most would prefer job for some corporation that would have have 3-10 times better pay.
So instead of basic income there should be viable way to fund open source projects and to distribute the pay fairly according to the job done. For individuals and small teams there is already Patreon, but there no simple solution for distributed teams usual open source project have because it's extremely hard to collect and distribute the money without offending someone or contributors lose motivation to work on project when one guy is being paid while they get nothing. Unfortunately I don't even sure if ever will be solution for this.
I agree anyone competent enough to run a good FOSS project from their savings will face a daily temptation of abandoning their precarious existence for a substantial secure income working at a corporate job. And I agree also that it is problematical how to divide donations to a project when there are multiple contributors (especially versus donations to specific developers, but even that is problematic if a multi-person project is involved). I also agree on the need for building a community around a project.
Where we differ regarding the BI and FOSS is possibly in thinking in these areas:
* There are many small but important projects (Mithril, Vue, many others -- even Linux early on) which are initially the work of one developer, eventually supported by a community. A BI would make more such starts possible, and also make contributions more feasible. While it is not quite "if you build it, they will come", certainly there are a lot of cases where a good project, well supported by one person, makes a big difference to a lot of people. Khan Academy in its early years is another great example of this.
* There is an entire gift economy of volunteerism. In some ways, much economic activity in even the USA is voluntary (even if it is ignored in the GDP) when you consider child care, helping neighbors, volunteering at non-profits, conversing with strangers to share knowledge, and so on. So, I know it is possible.
* Regarding "most people" and "some people": If you multiple seven billion people on the planet times even 0.1% of people being civic-minded at any particular time (and the percentage is probably much higher), then you get 7 million people. That is still a lot of people who can put a lot of time into things. And even without a BI, Clay Skirky said, there is a lot of time that could be liberated for improving free software and free content:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110102193349/http://www.shirky...
"Two hundred billion hours [of TV watching], in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus."
The bottom line is that the way people make a lot of money is by standing between someone and something they want and asking for a toll to access that thing. Almost all venture business models are based on some variation of that (or aspire to that such rent seeking). It's not the only way to make money, but it is the way to make a lot of money. The problem is that tolls have lots of external costs. For tolls at bridges there are delays, health costs of fumes, and increased risks of accidents. For online software, there is the externality of lost privacy (but only one-way, consumer to aggregator) needed to make possible the tolls Google and Facebook charge advertisers as they sell human eyeballs. There is also the externality of risks from central points of failure (whether loss of service or censorship).
Small-scale exchange commerce may make a lot of capitalistic sense at the scale of, say, running a local farm, bagel shop, or plumbing company. But on a large scale, like Facebook, Google, Slack, and so on, the centralization of control of information flows poses enormous risks to democracy.
If there was not so much regulatory capture, we might expect our governments to pour literally trillions of dollars a year into software (and content) for democracy right now given how important that is. Instead we have a proprietary centralized Facebook, Google, Twitter, and even Windows -- and our democracy and culture is at great risk from an imbalance of power. Governments at the behest of content publishers have con...
While I wish to be as positive as you are about the future there still few points I feel important to make.
* First of all I don't think that important projects started by single developer is right example for benefit that BI could bring because they managed without basic income in past and they don't need it today.
If project don't get enough traction during period when project originator actively work on it that's usually mean that will never happen. But if original developer leave there still chance for someone else who believe in idea to take control or just fork it and continue. Also this rotation seems like one of crucial parts that make open source successful.
So while BI would let someone to work on the same code indefinitely or at least much longer than now I don't think that will greatly increase number of popular and widely used open source projects. And who knows might be it's will even decrease that number.
* Another note about voluntarism. It's great that in developed countries there is endless number of ways for society to participate in all kind of useful activities and I wish it's was even remotely close in country of my origin. Though for the reasons stated before I simply don't believe that crowd-sourcing can be applied to build successful software projects. You might say that community can go promote software instead of helping with development, but today you can't even promote project efficiently using centralized tools we have simply because companies companies like Facebook and others want you to pay for that. Number of communities outside of centralized social networks is dwindle over last 10 years.
So I wish to think positively, but so far all I see is that distributed FOSS projects cannot successfully compete with corporate or VC funded products. With direction where Internet, hardware trends, Internet and society itself going I don't see how we going to get more people involved in open source and not less.
But hopefully someone will come up with idea how to fund truly distributed open source teams so they can at least somewhat compete with VC money burning centralized proprietary alternatives. Without that best we can hope for is that open source will keep positions it's have today.
A basic income makes it possible for, say, 100 software developers to choose to work together on the same project of their own choosing and of their own free will -- as opposed to having to work for someone else on someone else's choice of project just to be able to pay for food and rent. That's the difference a BI would make.
Now, getting 100 software developers top agree to work together on the same project might not be easy ("herding cats"). But it seems doable, as we can point to quite a few projects (including big names like Linux, WordPress, Apache, and Python) where it has happened. And there are even some books out there on how to create and manage FOSS projects.
Granted, those particular big-name projects have also had commercial support eventually -- so we don't know all the details of what might be possible otherwise. But there are plenty of examples of voluntary groups of significant size dedicated to a common purpose (fire companies, sports clubs, historical societies, and so on) so it is not inconceivable the same will continue to happen for software if people have the free time to participate in them.
I just don't buy that even if basic income implemented properly it's would provide enough money so skilled programmers would go work on their dream project instead of getting full-time job with good pay. Being just a bit above poverty with food and rent is simply not enough.
I know many people who would say it's would be great, but I sure that wouldn't looks so great in practice. If average salary of developer is going to be multiple times above BI the only people who going to stay out of full time job would likely be useless due to their poor skills or inability to work in team.
I saying that from my own experience: I almost left doing my boring freelance stuff to learn C++ and work on project I want to see finished. I still keep doing it because I like it, but living without money is not fun. And I'm crazy Russian guy who used to see poverty all around, but I absolutely don't see how people who used to get at least $70,000/year salary in EU / US would go change it to something like $40,000/year BI.
Also I can't say much about Apache or Python, but other two examples are wrong. Linux become actually successful after corporations backed it while WordPress have massive business behind it: Automattic has 500+ employees and way above 1B valuation.
Participating projects in free time might work for some software, but most of time there is group of lead developers who doing most of heavy lifting and projects wouldn't live without them. And there plenty of extremely boring, but very important work that is critical for security and project integrity, but can't be really crowd sourced at all.
PS: Though I should note that I'm proponent of BI and I feel it would work great as replacement for traditional ineffective welfare systems that either useless or too easy to abuse (I seen plenty of it while lived in the UK). And I sure that BI could give indirect benefit for the society in general, but I don't believe it's what's needed to push FOSS forward.
I watched the development and later commercialization of all four of those. I even contributed a bit like by getting Python approved inside IBM Research for internal use around 1999 back when using "Open Source" software was a novel idea to many companies, and I also tried to popularize Linux a bit inside IBM Research at the time.
Linux and WordPress were both started with one or two people, and it was years before a lot of corporate money jumped onboard after they were starting to show success. It took thousands of people who cared about FOSS quietly lobbying for it in the companies they worked for (as I did at IBM Research) and also others to turn that interest into companies like Cygnus and RedHat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress "WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg[1] and Mike Little,[9] as a fork of b2/cafelog."
I understand this BI approach may not work for you right now. It may not even work for most software developers right now.
But, as a counter example, there are about eleven million graduate students in the world, many living on about a Basic Income level of funding. That is proof that millions of people are willing to live for years at poverty level wages (or even taking on debt) in order to do something they care about -- even if quite a few could get jobs paying a lot more by pursuing more immediate commercial success. Granted many may aspire to a better paying job as a tenured professor, but any look at the statistics show that is not going to happen for 90%+ of such students. Most of these people in graduate programs are generally not there because they are "useless due to their poor skills or inability to work in [a] team."
http://www.richardprice.io/post/12855561694/the-number-of-ac...
See also: "The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet" by Micky Z. From the book blurb: "Mickey Z. considers work a 50-year fugue from which some people awaken to wonder what has become of their lives. In The Murdering of My Years, cabbies, waitresses, clerks, telemarketers, and an array of others tell how they balance activism and artistic production with the daily struggle to make ends meet. Contributors’ essays are at once absurd and poignant; captivating and strange. Collectively, their reflections challenge the myth of the American work ethic and exhort readers to advocate for themselves in the workplace."
=== A tangent on what I want to do, making public intelligence tools for civic sensemaking, and how a BI could help
Here is a different path to a similar place instead of a BI, but it is much less compatible with our current economic system: :-)
pdfernhout↗
A good resource by Karl Fogel on: "Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project" http://producingoss.com/
Supporting your third paragraph, I had some contact with the unschooling movement while growing up. The experience is typically that kids will do nothing for a while. Maybe quite a while. But then they get bored, and start to pursue things they find interesting. Art, music, literature, science, programming. You sort of need to detox from living under a very defined structure before you learn to self direct and spend time doing things you enjoy. It also seems possible that this transition could become more difficult as people age. Intuitively that makes sense to me, and might partially explain why some adults have a hard time transitioning into retirement.
I'm not sure if I or the people here are representative of the people the proposal targets, but if I had a guaranteed basic income for 5 years, I would attempt to start a startup full time.
One factor that would be lost in a controlled, basic income test is the inflation effect. Implemented on a national scale, cost inflation of basic consumer needs is a near certainty. On a controlled test of 1000 people inflation would be nearly impossible to achieve without localizing the test to an absurd degree.
I could see this test could serving as a dataset for calculating anticipated inflation rates on a national scale. If money is sent out via a trackable card instead of raw cash, you could begin to extrapolate where this basic income spends would be going, be it consumer products, bills, etc.
I like the thought behind the trackable card idea, but most participants are going to have other income and savings too, so what you're really learning from them is what spending they're willing to share with people who've given them money to track how it's spent.
Even if it was people's entire household budget being tracked, it'd be difficult to draw too many inferences from spending in the absence of price pressures driven by everyone else having UBI too.
Yep, basic consumer staple price inflation is something I never see addressed with any satisfaction when people are talking about UBI. Housing prices and rent will assuredly rise proportionally to the basic income amount if this were to be implemented nationally, so wouldn't pumping all this money in basically just have the effect of increasing inequality?
>Housing prices and rent will assuredly rise proportionally to the basic income amount if this were to be implemented nationally, so wouldn't pumping all this money in basically just have the effect of increasing inequality?
Unlikely. UBI removes the connection between location and income. As a result you can move to somewhere incredibly cheap to live since there's no need to be in an in demand market in order to have a nice job.
Housing is really quite cheap in the US. With Real Estate you pay for the location not the actual land or building.
Of course people won't necessarily want to move away from their "hip" city, but UBI is "basic" and if you want to stay in a high demand area you will have to supplement UBI with work.
As for basic consumables, demand is unlikely to go up for these fundamental goods because people are _already_ consuming them at their basic required levels under the current system (toilet paper, eggs, milk, bread, chicken, beans, rice, birth control, etc).
If people in every location have their income increased, then the housing prices inflate in every location. Saying, "People can just move" is missing the point.
It isn't that they can't afford to live where they are now, it's that BI will be absorbed by price inflation everywhere.
A big reason for the current rise in real estate prices is urbanisation (centralisation of population in big urban centers) - e.g. London, NY, SF, and plenty other cities. (The other reason is foreign investments, but I'd argue the investment comes after the initial rise in prices, simply because real estate is perceived as a good investment opportunity.) This urbanisation is to a large extent driven by the fact that the most high-paying jobs are available in these cities, which consequently also increases the availability of lower-paying jobs. I.e. people move to cities to succeed/earn money.
If you remove the last implication - if people can earn a living without moving to big, overpopulated cities - then arguably the concentration of population would drop and the "bubble" would pop/deflate.
You're assuming that there can only be one cause of real estate price increases.
Housing prices are a function of income elasticity - raising the income for everyone will raise housing prices for everyone. Note - this is not the only way that real estate prices can increase (as you described urbanization), but it is one that BI would cause.
>raising the income for everyone will raise housing prices for everyone
This is a truism but incorrect in the context of this conversation.
UBI does not increase incomes for everyone. It is a wealth redistribution. Many will see their income fall, especially initially, in order to prop up the incomes of the poor and those who decide to live solely off UBI.
At a glance (and because of the name) it appears that way, but it does not universally increase income, it gives everyone universal access to basic income.
Many people (the wealthy) will have their net income (income after taxes) go down considerably in a UBI system.
For example, everyone gets $12k a year in UBI income, however funding such a system will require a fairly stiff tax increase (this is how the wealth redistribution will occur), so for high earners, their $12k in UBI will be negatively offset by the increase in taxes.
As an extreme example, someone earning $1MM annually will get the $12k UBI same as everyone else, but an (example) increase in the top income bracket from 39.6% to 60% will cause them to pay $118646.4 more in taxes resulting in their net income under a UBI system to go down (-$118646.40 taxes + $12000 ubi) $106646.40.
The top income bracket is 3% of the population. You're still increasing the income of 97% of the population, which is what causes inflation on income-elastic prices like housing.
This is a misunderstanding of how both macro inflation occurs (money supply growing faster than true value of wealth it abstracts), and how price is set (supply and demand).
UBI does not "create" new money and just give it to everyone (which would cause inflation). It's a wealth redistribution. That is, many people will see their income go down under UBI (probably most HN readers for example). The money supply will represent the same amount of wealth, what changes is who owns that wealth and as a result who decides how to use that wealth to consume.
Regarding price changes, price is set by the amount of a good/service demanded by consumers, and the supply of the good/service created by suppliers. High discretionary income does cause the demand for certain goods/services to go up (especially luxuries), but UBI is so basic at $1k per month it won't make much of a change in the demand curve because the type of goods/services that will be consumed by someone living on UBI are so fundamental they are already consuming these goods at the same rate under the current system.
So far as housing is concerned, UBI will pretty much "explode" the supply of acceptable housing for people living solely on UBI since they get access to housing in the entire US instead of having it constrained to locations where they could conceivably "make a living." I'm sure you realize what happens when supply increases drastically but demand stays somewhat constant (everyone has to live somewhere and you can only live in one place at once) -- the price of housing on avg will plummet considerably for UBI'ers.
The idea of UBI at $1K per month shows that UBI advocates don't know how to do math. The US tax revenues (combined Fed and State) are roughly $6 Trillion. Giving 150 million people $12K per year is $1.8 Trillion. Unless you raise taxes by 1/3, you're going to cause inflation.
Not a strawman at all. Many UBI proponents claim that it's more efficient, by directly paying for services already provided. Then when called on that, they switch to your strawman that "Everyone knows UBI will require an increase in taxes..."
Again, good luck trying to raise tax revenue 30% without killing the US economy.
My taxes are already pushing oppressive. Raise them further, and I'll seriously consider "going Galt" - cash in my investments, buy real estate & capital equipment outright, and live quite comfortably on $4000/mo ($UBI * family population).
You're subsidizing the unproductive, and punishing the productive. I can be productive in untaxable ways.
>My taxes are already pushing oppressive. Raise them further, and I'll seriously consider "going Galt"
Under UBI that would be your prerogative. Most highly productive individuals and all corporations will carry on producing.
>You're subsidizing the unproductive, and punishing the productive.
You may have moral qualms with a UBI system. You will need to come to terms with these doubts in the midterm future, as UBI will be the only system (we currently know of) capable of sustaining a market economy in a world where automation has displaced the workforce.
The same "displace the workforce" arguments abounded during the Industrial Revolution. Most everyone is still employed (biggest impediment isn't lack of jobs per se, it's oppressive regulation making employment of low-productivity people untenable).
There does indeed come a point where taxation reaches high enough levels that people (and groups of them a la corporations) lose interest in exerting greater effort. The popular actor Ronald Regan famously noted that he would have produced far more movies, but it just wasn't worth it under the confiscatory tax rates. Most of the time, people will indeed continue producing without such drastic obviousness - but there WILL be a tapering off of productivity, and history makes that clear to those willing to see the objective facts.
:thinking_face: maybe we need a reverse-graduated income tax i.e. you are taxed less the more productive you become. Then the most productive are super encouraged!? There's definitely some unintended consequences in there... but it might be the start of an idea.
It doesn't seem like a strawman to me. The money has to come from somewhere or else mass inflation will happen instantaneously. The number of goods and services that exists is finite. Giving people free money which removes their burden of supplying value to others will not only fatally harm the buying power of the dollar but it will actually reduce the number of goods and services available which will have the opposite affect than intended. UBI will fail spectacularly if implemented at any meaningful scale.
Sounds like yet another argument trying to deny the law of supply-and-demand, like those who quote the laws of thermodynamics and then claim they have a perpetual motion machine.
Instead of having to work for that first $1000/mo, it just...appears. Yes it was earned elsewhere, and whoever earned it won't miss it as much as the recipient will appreciate it, but since the recipient has done nothing for it, its local value plummets. Instead of some low-income people having $1000/mo for rent, now everyone has $1000/mo for rent - and basic prices will rise accordingly.
I won't notice much change for losing a sub-1% of my income, but those for whom UBI is really intended can go from really struggling to renting (even buying) housing. With limited housing supply, suddenly prices will rise.
While I'm a staunch advocate of "move already!" for solving economic problems, I don't see enough people moving - nor enough housing for them to move to - to cause "the price of housing on avg will plummet for UBIers".
Imagine the poor section of town. Many/most rent. Suddenly, with no additional productivity, everyone is getting checks for $1000/mo. You think rent etc prices aren't going to suddenly skyrocket? I grasp your theory that people can now move to more affordable locations, not needing to be near jobs - but will they really? before they can, rent prices just shot up, consuming their newfound income. Destination rental prices similarly increase - still relatively attractive, but higher than before since there is more demand and more money to pay for it.
Yes the supply of acceptable housing for UBIers increases, but those markets already existed and were already priced for a low-demand market; now you've "exploded" the demand - prices will rise, matching people who now have $1000/mo and few expenses.
Here you claim to earn more than $100k every MONTH, yet in another comment you claim the amount you are taxed is nearing oppression. It sounds like maybe you're just saying whatever helps your argument at the time.
I’m not convinced that UBI will dramatically affect the housing supply for many people who would rely on it. Maybe you can expand on what you mean in light of an example:
I live near Vancouver, which is the most expensive housing market in Canada. Poor people here have access to free health care, a provincial welfare program, and a permanent disability allowance. The income amount is enough to live on in some parts of the province, but not Vancouver. Still there's a glut of unemployed poor people who prefer substandard housing or homelessness over relocating to where they could afford to live. They don’t choose to live anywhere else, even though they're not in Vancouver to “make a living”.
Programs aimed at helping the poor here focus on providing subsidized housing, not relocation.
It seems to me that if UBI doesn’t help these people afford a better standard of living where they are now, then it won’t help them at all unless they’re forced to relocate. What am I missing?
Figures put 14-20 million unoccupied houses in the US. A lot of those are just rich people buying valuable real estate and hoarding it as a store of value, but a lot of them are also in locations where nobody who would want to buy them can afford to live because there is no work available. There are thousands of ghost towns in rural America which depopulated for a wide variety of reasons since the 70s but all could be cheaply renewed if people could survive living there without guaranteed constant employment.
So its not that the whole housing market just moves up the value of UBI and nothing changes. UBI introduces a new market of houses that currently are unsellable and rotting.
Those are obviously not a long term solution, but the existence of UBI and the economic pressure it produces will incentivize builders to develop the cheapest possible living conditions to supply to people living on UBI. That almost certainly would be an entirely new model of building - constructing for density, but without the limitations of building in already densely populated areas.
The unoccupied homes in the U.S. is primarily due to banks holding onto foreclosed properties.
You could say, "This is a problem with the current financial system," which it is, but it's not a problem that UBI will solve.
If UBI is enacted, then prices will still inflate and people who purchase foreclosed homes at auction will continue to do so today, because they will also have the same increase in income as everyone else.
If you assume UBI is based on an income tax, then that's not universal basic income, that's negative income tax.
Even so, if you hypothetically see a decrease in income for 3% of the population and an increase in income for 97%, you still have inflation. 100% of the population purchases housing, which is income-elastic, meaning housing prices will increase because 97% of the population's income will increase.
I'm not assuming it would be distributed through the tax system, I'm insisting that it is either funded by taxation or inflation.
Maybe it would be funded by magic fairies, who knows. I guess funding it with inflation would be close enough to that.
The point I'm making is that the "universal" or "unconditional" just means that everyone gets it. It doesn't mean that everyone is better off after it is put in place, because there will be tax and economic effects from putting such a thing in place.
This assumes both A. everyone is suddenly just making more money and B. the supply of housing remains constant.
In terms of A, some people would drop out of their current employment. In all likelihood temporarily, but a lot of people are doing things they don't want to do because they don't want to be homeless. Likewise, it would almost certainly not be 97% of people making more money - that kind of progressive tax threshold would mean you don't even start taxing for UBI until 6 figure income.
In terms of B, a lot of areas of the country are currently unlivable for a huge percentage of people because there is no way to earn money to afford to live there. Living there in absolute monetary terms would be cheap, but absolute money is pointless if you have nothing coming in.
UBI reduces demand for housing in cities because anyone that doesn't want the added income from living there would now have the option to move away. City housing prices are extraordinarily beyond the flat costs of construction and maintenance - the scarcity of work means a scarcity of high demand housing in cities surrounded by deserts of unlivable land.
Finally, for all those dropping out of the workforce, the UBI is not an elastic income - it will be a simple binary can a UBI recipient afford to live in your apartments or not. For those who want an extremely reliable tenant who has a guaranteed ability to pay rent every month, meeting the UBI threshold becomes an extremely strong price ceiling on affordable housing.
Inflation isn't magic. Inflation happens insofar as someone is willing to pay the higher prices and nobody can produce supply to drive the price back down. Introducing UBI does neither to housing (especially when as a percentage of income UBI relative to the cost of home ownership would be a relatively small gain in income for most people, and almost all current homeowners / tenants).
Inflation is a result of the money supply growing faster than the national wealth it represents. Example: US goods & services increase in value 5% but the Fed increases the money supply by 8% leads to inflation - the money/value abstraction is out of sync in such a way that money represents less value.
Wealth redistributions don't cause inflation. The money abstraction still represents the same amount of wealth, it just changes who can choose how to use that money to consume.
That said, you'll probably see some radical pricing changes in the market from the new system, but probably not as much as you would expect because UBI will be so limited at first, the money will be spent on absolute necessities that people are already consuming under the current system (ie demand won't go up for toilet paper and basic consumables, and UBI isn't enough for luxury goods).
That's one cause of inflation. Another cause is raising the income for everyone (i.e. minimum wage, etc.).
There exist goods and services with prices that are a function of income-elasticity, meaning that they inflate with the more money that people make (e.g. housing). This is one of the reasons that many welfare programs are targeted spending, like food stamps or medicaid.
Arbitrarily raising wages for everyone is the same as increasing the money supply without increasing the underlying value it represents (which causes inflation).
UBI does not do this. It doesn't "increase" the amount of money floating around, it simply redistributes a portion of the created wealth from one population (the rich) to the total population. UBI money isn't pulled out of thin air, it's taken from one group (via taxation) and distributed.
Of course prices for certain goods and services will change as a result of this wealth distribution, but to suggest global inflation will occur (ie the value that money represents decreasing within the complete system) is incorrect. Furthermore, while I obviously can't say for certain, I imagine prices for fundamental goods will not change drastically simply because UBI doesn't provide enough money for real discretionary spending. The goods/services you consume under a UBI program you already would be consuming at the same rate under the current system.
Sure, what you're describing is the quantity theory of money, but there are other reasons why you could see inflation given a universal income, depending on the circumstances.
If you consider the velocity of money, you will almost certainly see inflation on consumer goods if the money to be redistributed would have otherwise just sat in some rich guys's savings account.
There are also inflation expectation to consider, liquidity traps, the actual demand for money, etc.
I expect prices to change in order to reflect the new system, but I think people's "sky is falling" concerns about the price of consumer goods shooting up is way off base and sensationalist.
UBI alone simply won't provide enough discretionary income to cause sharp increases in demand of goods. Not to mention, the type of goods that a basic income affords are those that are already scaled out and are easily scaled out - ramping up supply would happen relatively quickly in the unlikely scenario that demand for these goods does go up drastically.
As I've repeatedly said in other comments, I believe demand for these simple goods will stay relatively flat since they are such fundamental necessities people are already consuming them and won't necessarily increase demand significantly (UBI won't cause demand for toilet paper to go up significantly).
Currently we have an economy that motivates companies to spend 1000x more capital developing innovations for a consumer with 1000x more buying power. Basic income introduces a source of capital that motivates companies to innovate in that area of "basic consumer needs", i.e. things needed by the majority of people, not the majority of dollars.
You're right that the short-term effect of this is indeed inflation on the prices of these needs, but the long-term effect is larger portion of the economy dedicated to filling basic needs instead of superfluous luxuries.
> Implemented on a national scale, cost inflation of basic consumer needs is a near certainty.
How so? Is there are large number of consumers that are currently not able to satisfy their current basic needs? Otherwise aggregate demand will stay the same and on the supply side nothing changed, so there is no reason why prices would change.
Its also worth noting that inflation only happens like that when demands cannot be met. IE fixed quantity of goods that cannot grow, being demanded more and more over time. That is not how basic necessities work at all. If you increase the profit margin in almost any food crop or raw material by a few fractions of a percent you see dramatic investment in sating that demand because its an extremely safe profit center.
Why do you think nothing would change on the supply side? There are plenty of low income workers that would quit their jobs, driving their wages up - thereby either driving up the cost of goods or reducing supply. Unless of course the goods are shipped from nonUBI countries
Good point, I hadn't considered those second order effects.
> There are plenty of low income workers that would quit their jobs, driving their wages up
I don't think we have enough information currently to unequivocally state that. How many low income workers would quit? It's not like many people in better paying jobs reduce their working hours up to a point where they make the equivalent amount of money as a UBI. How many currently unemployed people would be picking up the slack?
> thereby either driving up the cost of goods or reducing supply.
Labor costs are a small part of the price of basic goods. I couldn't find much good information, but e.g. [1] says that for fresh fruit and vegetables a 40% increase of labor costs amounts to a 4% increase for consumers.
On a first moment, possibly. After that, we would see how free the market really is. If it's reasonably free, the market will self-correct and prices will decrease.
A thought experiment: you have a business; now everyone has money; then prices rise "together"; so market distribution remains the same; you decide to reduce your price to the old price and your competitors don't. Now you get customers from your competitors that you didn't have before.
The amount that this happens depends, naturally, on how free the markets involved are (if free at all).
Trillions. That's what's currently going around in quantitative easing. That's why many are calling for QE for the people. Instead of giving money to financial institutions, give it directly to the people.
You loan 1T to the poor one year and get paid back 1T from the rich the next from all those poor spending money on goods the rich sell.
UBI isn't like defense spending. It isn't a black hole you put tax dollars down and get nothing out. It means tremendous goods demand for the necessities of life that is extremely stable and reliable for businesses to profit off.
No offense, but defense spending is exactly the same as what you describe. It's money that goes to hundreds of thousands of workers that spend it in the economy.
Unlike (some) defense spending, UBI doesn't intrinsically create some economic value. Increased stability would indirectly create economic value, but it needs to be more than the face value of the UBI check for it to not lead to gross inflation.
Presumably, the amount given could be on a sliding scale, where more wealthy people receive less money, but I'm sure there would be challenges to such a system.
Personally, I'd love an extra 1k / month, but I rather see that go to a lot of other people before me.
It would not be an extra cost. It's just distributing money differently.
Most people would pay $1000 more taxes per month and get it right back as $1000 in BI. The benefit would be that if their income suddenly fluctuates, that $1000 would be there as a baseline.
I like the idea of basic income but I confess that my ideal of a basic income recipient is someone akin to the 19th-century amateur scientist subsisting on a private income whilst making original contributions to human knowledge, and, as a side effect, to society.
Whereas the reality of people receiving free money might be somewhat different. There's the drip, drip welfare payments of just enough money to survive without being motivated to find a job. Then there's the fallout, family break-up and chaos that occur in the wake of a lottery win. Both morally questionable.
Or perhaps there might be a settling down period of people acting irresponsibly followed by a recognition that engagement with the problems of civilisation and survival doesn't end because one has food, shelter and internet. There are novels to write, structures to design, problems to solve and of course there's science to be done. Work is more fun than 'fun'. Pick something worthy of your talents or start the slide into mental disorder and addiction.
Whatever the truth it almost goes without saying that a study alone cannot sort these issues out. Perhaps it can help. But in science experiment is insufficient there has to be theory to go with. (This is a major reason why so few studies in medicine and psychology are reproducible. I assume in sociology too.) What makes it more difficult in this case is there are moral components which can't be assessed empirically, only by conjecture and criticism.
It means putting 99% of recipients, or more, into illustion which will result in nothing but a severe depression in a few years. Suddenly being able to contribute to the world in a 'larger' way, they will quickly realize that they can't - just as many startup founders. Maybe, need to meet the bills by mind-numbing work is really a blessing for most people - i had stable income almost without work for years and i got very, very depressed.
I disagree that everyone would be depressed. Cityfolk probably but they deserve it because they will be the ones voting in ubi. They will also be the ones starving when us country people start only making enough food for ourselves and spend our days at the river drinking beers and fishing or hunting
Having to work to survive keeps people engaged with reality and I think this may explain why people in the past and in developing countries today seem to be at least as happy and mentally resilient as modern westerners, maybe more so. In spite of hardship, disease and early death.
Whereas many of us spend our limited freedom chasing pleasurable (and unpleasurable) illusions that lead only to disorder and despair. That said, there are plenty of sane, wealthy people in the West who do important work for the sake of it, because they wish to. How do more of us become like them?
Also, despite apparently comfortable conditions, there are plenty of survival problems which remain. For example, meteor strikes, super-volcanoes, cancers, toxic ideologies/religions. Plus an unlimited number of as yet unidentified problems.
These problems are more abstract than working for a pay packet to buy food but they are nonetheless real. And they are not being sufficiently addressed! Universal Basic Income could turn out to be an important breakthrough in this regard, I think, if we also address the question I posed at the end of paragraph 2 above.
>Whereas the reality of people receiving free money might be somewhat different. There's the drip, drip welfare payments of just enough money to survive without being motivated to find a job.
That's why I always clarify that an essential piece of Basic Income is that it is unconditional. Whether you're on the bottom rung of society or the top, employed or unemployed, basic income should be the same amount.
When the choice to get a job changes from "Well I'd lose my benefits" to "Well my basic income is no longer enough, I'll work part time", then state welfare no longer becomes as much of a trap. It can finally make strides towards lifting people out of poverty.
If it isn't unconditional and universal, it's just welfare under a different brand name with the same inefficiencies and rent seeking political problems.
Certainly not. Any UBI policy has to be set for a universal basic standard of living in a contiguous zone of free movement. US citizens can live anywhere in the US - UBI reverses the current bubble of housing prices that is concentrating people in cities that then resist increasing density and thus just drives property values to infinity. It lets people who don't want to live there the option to move elsewhere that is much cheaper and thus lets them live off the UBI.
Trying to peg UBI to regional cost of living costs an incredible amount of money (the cost of living in the Bay Area has to be at least 10x the rural Rust Belt) and has practically no benefit (because all it means is people get the privilege of living wherever they want on redistributed money, rather than choosing to either live where they want and seek the means to afford it or living where its cheapest and costing society less in macrospect.
This is, by the way, another reason UBI is a Utopian fantasy: It’s impossible to imagine an elected government resisting the temptation to fiddle with the formula to achieve policy goals and reward constituents, just like today’s tax code.
There would be an industry overnight that would pop up to help people migrate where cost of living is affordable on a UBI because that is an insane amount of dependable profit to be made. It would be as simple as "your first month pays the move, and every month after that is last months rent payment".
There already exist communities and retirement homes whose entire agreement with its residents is "give us your social security checks, we give you food shelter etc". If you know constant money is coming in, arranging your business around being super easy to use for that money is a very lucrative opportunity.
I think the parent comment I was replying to was more concerned about the situation where we have UBI without full automation. In which case there may be a push for jobs not yet automated to be split into part time positions. If society really feels like keeping people employed is a moral good in the face of increasing automation, then there may be pressure to increase workforce numbers and reduce working hours. Especially possible if UBI can close the gap and maintain a safety net.
In addition, full, 100% automation doesn't seem likely to me. Service sectors of the economy may simply keep smaller human staffs in order to keep their hospitality atmosphere. Not enough to offset job loss in other sectors, but there are already plenty of businesses today that have a human element that don't _actually_ need them. It might even look like a luxury business model. No reason that will go away just because robots can do it better.
There is already sizeable group of have independently wealthy people with inherited money. If we look at how many of these people behave in different wealth categories, it might give a clue.
If it's determined that money makes lazy and that's moral hazard there should be really high tax for inheritance.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't UBI operate on the premise that it's replacing many of the existing social programs? For example, unconditional money rather than food/housing assistance. If the participants of the study also get access to these things, doesn't that severely limit the usefulness of this study?
Also, $1k/mo is pretty small. Are you just hoping to observe some behavioral changes at the margin with which to extrapolate?
There seems to be a common bait-and-switch tactic performed by proponents of UBI, in which they mention UBI as a replacement for social programs when talking about affordability, but back away from that assertion when questioned about how to handle (for example) recipients that spend all of their UBI on drugs instead of food.
I see that as a societal symptom instead of a personal failure. I would rather a person spend their time playing videogames* instead of being stuck working dead-end jobs until the day they die.
*Drugs are a different issue, that should be treated as a health problem and dealt with accordingly.
We handle them exactly as we do now... by doing nothing. Today's social programs don't give people more money just because they spent all that they were given yesterday.
It's universal INCOME, not universal "take care of all your problems for you".
That's the end game, certainly, but having guaranteed income and additional programs doesn't hurt the experiment.
The idea is you can help pay for UBI by cutting the then-superfluous programs. But the benefit for people is in having the unconditional safety net, not in having access to only one program.
In the end, though, isn't that just an observation of how people behave with marginally additive wealth transfers? Shouldn't we have enough people who chose the annuity option of a lottery or had an unknown trust bequeathed to them to adequately study this phenomenon? I thought the real idea to be tested would be to take away the $1000/mo section 8 house, and instead give the recipients $1000/mo, and just see if they can more effectively use that resource.
Also, if we're making the usual assumption a UBI is intended to replace [most] needs assessment of state benefits, we need to test how people respond to having $2500/month value in various state cash and in-kind benefits replaced by $1000/month in cash (with the difference pocketed by people hitherto deemed less in need of support)
Basic Income is often proposed in conjunction with cutting basic social services & welfare payments, thus achieving a net gain for the government. This seems to make it attractive to both the neoliberals and the neosocialismés, but I believe this is a terrible mistake that will have the exact opposite effect to what its supporters intend - there will be more poverty and debt slavery, not less. (Methodology debates aside, I generally think both sides want people to propser & be happy).
My proof is by example through thought experiment: I'm a grad student who has a bicycle accident. Without free gov healthcare I now must go into debt to either the hospital or a lender (medical purchases are just one example of an essentially non-negotiable expense). Perhaps I already had other debts, but somehow now my interest payment + living expenses payments are more than my basic income, otherwise known as the normal life of a grad student in todays society anyway - in my case BI didn't work. This is just one example of how easy it is to slide back into poverty with such a system, it could occur slower and over a few generations but sooner or later poverty is back. We just pushed the goal posts back a little bit.
Instead I believe we should leave our dealings with money to the marketplace, but should definitely act as a society to provide a good life for all citizens by seeing that their basic needs are met. Make free public housing that all citizens have a right to ask for. Provide basic but nutritious food to the populace, for free. Encourage free markets and capitalism, but see that the basic needs of every citizen are met - and perhaps a little power in the marketplace i.e. money is also a basic need, but its still only one of many. "If they didn't already exist, people would think public libraries were the most radically extreme socialism".
For these reasons, the growing popularity of BI is worrysome to me. It's just neoliberalism made pallitable by a once-in-every-few-generations wealth transfer.
If you strip out all the regulations in healthcare all it takes is one preexisting condition to make healthcare runaway expensive for a majority of people.
Most UBI proposals include universal healthcare because healthcare is a problem best solved when everyone is in the "insurance pool" automatically. As long as the hippocratic oath exists and doctors have to provide life saving treatment it will always be in our macroeconomic self interest to incentivize people to seek healthcare before its life threatening.
"it could occur slower and over a few generations but sooner or later poverty is back." But, if the UBI is set to a percentage of GDP, then as overall wealth increases, the wealth of those depending on UBI increase. In the past few generations, ex. since the 1950's, real GDP has grown 6x [1] while the population has only doubled [2], meaning the real wealth of our society has grown three-fold in "a few generations".
I'm not sure that it gives good incentives to have it directly linked to GDP. I think it would make more sense to have a circuit-breaker type provision where if GDP increases by more than x% the amount increases by y%, but I doubt we would want to decrease it immediately when GDP decreases, since that has the potential to cause a runaway feedback loop.
That's really smart. I hadn't even considered that and was naively operating on a default assumption of increasing GDP. Especially during a recession, adjusting the basic-income downwards with GDP could create a devastating runaway feedback loop. I think as you wouldn't want the economy to grow faster than basic income, though, in the circuit-breaker-style implementation as GDP increases by more than x%, the amount should also increase x%, by default. When the GDP is assessed, say annually, it should only increase or maintain the current basic income rate. In the event of an unprecedented long-term decrease in productivity, the congress should be required to take action to lower the payouts.
> But, if the UBI is set to a percentage of GDP, then as overall wealth increases
That's an extraordinary assumption. The majority of nations in fact do not see routine, much less significant, overall wealth increases. Major economies as varied as Germany, Mexico, Russia, Britain, Japan, Brazil - have seen near zero economic growth for the last decade. The US appears in fact to be starting a protracted stagnation of growth, due to its extreme debt (in most every regard from public to consumer to corporate), resulting in problems similar to those experienced by Japan due to its egregious debt problems (low productivity gains, weak or negative income growth, weak or negative real wealth gains, low GDP growth, etc).
UBI can't be implemented in a nation in which population growth is falling rapidly (fewer workers to carry the tax burden), while debt is already sky high, incomes are stagnant, and existing entitlement system IOU's are already set to bankrupt (either directly via default or indirectly by currency debasement) the government (with already dire perpetual half trillion plus dollar deficits with the public debt soaring toward $30 trillion next and annual deficits set to climb toward a trillion dollars).
> Make free public housing that all citizens have a right to ask for.
Median rent in the US is $934 thus this one benefit costs the US goverment as much as this proposed BI would. Unless we are talking about housing where people aren't which is likely a non-starter for a slue of reasons.
UBI isn't expensive. Its wealth redistribution, not consumption. Military spending is a black hole of money - you get very little R&D or productive GDP growth yields out of it but it stucks hundreds of billions out of the country every year. Social security is better than military spending but usually worse than UBI - recipients of social security are some of the richest people right now as an age class, so transferring wealth to them often doesn't see it stimulating economic growth - it just gets reinvested. Additionally, social security taxes are not progressive - they cap out, and anyone making any money over 10k is paying into them. Its a regressive tax scheme that takes money from disproportionately the working poor and moves it into a richer age group.
It still isn't a black hole, though. A ton of social security money is then spent on essentials. Its much less wasteful than defense spending.
On the other end of the spectrum is a lot of infrastructure spending, especially big projects like Eisenhowers national highway system that built the interstates - money goes in, but the productive gains and economic stimulant from the spending is greater than the money going in so it is a net positive for the economy. I'm hesitant to even call that government spending or debt or the cost of the state since it doesn't really cost anything - you are using money to make money. It is state investment.
Now, of course, state investments have variable success rates. You can look back at successful projects and say they were obviously worth doing in hindsight because they have produced substantial prosperity. The highway system, the national railroads, the panama canal, national electrification, the Hoover dam, etc have all proven valuable. But often a bridge built or rails laid go unused and were wasteful. And then there is the matter of how bad the government is at keeping these projects within sane budets - Boston's Big Dig took significantly longer and cost multiple times more than initially projected, and that brings the value into question after its done whereas beforehand it looked obviously beneficial.
UBI I think is in a very optimal spot on that spectrum. It is immediate wealth redistribution, going almost exclusively to the poorest who per dollar earned spend the most of directly stimulating economic demand that grows the economy most optimally. But unlike infrastructure investment the return is immediate - as checks go out money is spent often same day, and as long as money is moving from slow growth (investment) to fast growth (consumption) its a net benefit to the economy, as long as said benefit is greater than the overhead of administrating the taxes to fund it and the distribution of the money. Which comes back to the infrastructure is great scenario - its great until you are being wasteful and corrupt in spending on it. If money is actually going to building infrastructure or money is actually going to the poor it is a colossal boon. When money goes into private pockets as it does in spades with the DoD it is wasteful. It isn't the amounts you take, it is how you spend that, and how predictable your spending and taxing will be going forward - markets can handle very high taxes as long as they are predictable.
>>Military spending is a black hole of money - you get very little R&D or productive GDP growth yields out of it but it stucks hundreds of billions out of the country every year.
I am no fan of the military and I agree with your premise, but I would strongly, strongly disagree with the "little R&D" portion of this comment. A great deal of technology we take for granted today was first made available due to the military taking on the huge reverse asymptotic cost curves of early adoption and invention of new tech.
The military is an inefficient and potentially immoral R&D department, but it is not one that generates very little. A quick historical look at what has come out of the machinations of war and preparing for it will illustrate the point, and fast.
In terms of R&D for dollar spent, the military is awful compared to fairly parallel state institutions like public universities and NASA. If you want R&D, you shouldn't do it indirectly through researching ways to blow people up and murder - you should just do R&D spending.
A lot of the problems when discussing the military budget are intentions. Nobody is proposing to grow or keep the current scale of the military on the idea its a valuable source of research. It is in the same vein as how you would not fund a basic income for research purposes - surely a lot of valuable R&D would actually come from a UBI by letting more people experiment as a hobby, but you wouldn't use it as an argument for making a UBI because the research per dollar spent ratio would be awful compared to dedicated research institutions.
Funding CERN et al is on the order of magnitudes more bang for your buck if you are spending money to advance science than spending it on a military.
Which relates back to my original point. All government spending needs to be interpreted through one of two lenses - either the government is absorbing an absolutely unavoidable expense and using its scale to lessen the burden (infrastructure maintenance, healthcare, retirement) or it is investing money with the intent for it to improve the country. There is absolutely a lot of overlap, but we are back at intents - when healthcare makes your citizenry healthier more often so they can be more productive that is a nice perk but does not come close to justifying public healthcare spending. Infrastructure can fall into both camps - building last-mile roads is absolutely not in all likelihood going to grow the economy - people would live more densely if not for state subsidies on public housing developments hooking into the public road network. But when they build highways to increase traffic throughput that is almost always with intent to grow the economy.
A UBI falls in both camps, but conservatives should focus on the later benefits. The economic growth potential. On the topic of the military budget, anyone arguing for the current scale of the US military is arguing for a "necessary expense" perspective, not an investment one. Because its investment value is atrocious. And in general people are very skeptical of anything suggested to qualify for the first camp - and we should always be skeptical of those expenses, because they are the legitimate expenses where government spending actually contracts the economy.
UBI doesn't need to cover the median cost of living in the US. In fact with just income tax that is an impossible line to hit as it would certainly trigger inflation.
But that doesn't mean that X dollars won't matter. In fact that is the entire purpose of this study "If we give people $1000/month, what happens?". Sure it isn't representative of what would actually happen with BI but if the study is done well and its findings are sound through review, then it would be a great way of answering "would that amount of money matter".
You're right - it serves both conservative and liberal ideals, which is a good thing.
> but I believe this is a terrible mistake that will have the exact opposite effect to what its supporters intend - there will be more poverty and debt slavery, not less
> My proof is by example through thought experiment: I'm a grad student who has a bicycle accident. Without free gov healthcare I now must go into debt to either the hospital or a lender (medical purchases are just one example of an essentially non-negotiable expense). Perhaps I already had other debts, but somehow now my interest payment + living expenses payments are more than my basic income, otherwise known as the normal life of a grad student in todays society anyway - in my case BI didn't work. This is just one example of how easy it is to slide back into poverty with such a system, it could occur slower and over a few generations but sooner or later poverty is back. We just pushed the goal posts back a little bit.
Two arguments against this. The first is that you are comparing a steady income with an insurance. You can always spend your BI on insurance. Wether insurance would be more expensive if you had BI or not, has not been proven in this model, but it could go either way.
The second is that BI in that tought experiment, even if you eliminated insurance-type nets, would still yield lower poverty. Its just not the exact same people. That is one of the hardest problems on any social welfare program: if you need to improve everyones position absolutely and relatively, you basically cant do anything. You have to let some lose for others to gain.
The pathologies of income schemes that cause all of them to be degraded and cancelled build up over time as people adjust to the new scheme and work out who is failing to reciprocate.
What we need are guaranteed jobs at a guaranteed living wage, paid for by the state working for the public good. Then private businesses finally have to compete for labour and that maintains the wage share.
People need something to do where they can be of service to others. Not paying off and left to rot.
Given that the discussion is a research proposal to test basic income as a concept, rather than focus your comment on dismissing the concept of basic income (which it's worth noting is totally fine to do but isn't relevant to the thread), why not propose changes to refine the study so that it may more effectively assess whether basic income is viable?
You would need a small nation state to run the experiment with its own currency and limited natural resources (as in, it can't just sell oil and distribute profits like Alaska).
It would also have to be very librial about borders and illegal immigrants to simulate the US.
I would suggest the minimum size of this nation should be around 15+ million people.
It should be noted that the parent is basing his conclusions on Modern Monetary Theory[0], a heretodox economic theory in which fiscal policy is unconstrained, deficits aren't relevant, and a country is always able to spend.
MMT doesn't model fiscal policy as unconstrained in real terms, only nominal terms. And given the legal authority, of course a sovereign issuer is always able to spend. In this case spending is merely typing digits into a computer. This fact doesn't imply deficits/debt "aren't relevant", but rather deficits/debt work very differently for the currency issuer as opposed to the currency user.
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled travelling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
Disagree, basic income is equitable distribution of a collective legacy of increasingly advanced tools and a necessary recognition of limited natural resources and duty to share a small portion to every human being on the basis of birth into our society, aka social contract.
Your abstract 3rd-party justification from a distance fails to note the rest of that sentence:
"Overall basic income is theft from workers and will be seen as such by those workers."
When enough of those producing wealth decide that UBI = theft, they aren't going to just continue producing without pushing back. Personally, if UBI is implemented, I will "go Galt" and move to a self-sufficient homesteading-style life, leaving any cash-requiring activities (like paying taxes) to my $UBI/mo check. That I am a productive person does not mean my productivity will necessarily be taxable; I grew up in a live-off-the-land family, and would be happy to return to that lifestyle if you're going to just take a big chunk of my income just to give to others.
There are enough jobs (yes, there are). Wealth is not durable (you eat a hamburger, $1 of economic wealth turns to *). Encouraging idleness by funding it is an unsustainable economic strategy, because so many people find paid idleness a desirable lifestyle.
>because so many people find paid idleness a desirable lifestyle.
You're close, and it's an easy mistake to make since it seems intuitive. However, the reality is that people find THE IDEA of paid idleness desirable. Small N, but everyone I know who has found themselves in that position has only remained idle for a very short time. Productivity quickly returns, although not in the form of trading time for money.
I believe you but that is anecdotal. I know people that not only want to remain idle if their basic needs are taken care of but currently do, and have been doing it for decades.
Like most human traits, there is a wide degree of variance. As such there is no doubt in my mind UBI would allow a greater number of idlers because it would be more easily available. Just as it would allow more people to trade a job they don't like for a constructive activity they do.
While I actively help the poor, it frequently appalls me how many of them choose to live that way. Basic needs met, a significant percentage find no reason to do more than watch TV, eat, and reproduce. Hence my comment elsewhere on this thread lamenting that Y Combinator, having focused on financially assisting the hyper-productive, have lost comprehension of how much of society is populated by those that only produce because they have to for survival; supply basic survival, and they do nothing.
(I'm not saying that about all poor, but the fraction thereof who are is significant.)
I'll grant you that you've found a clever justification for stealing from producers. The question is what do you do once the people who are generating the value no longer agree?
The ever shrinking % of people who can viably trade labor for wages will have to count on a robot army to cleanse the world of undesirables. Either that or you pay people to dig holes and fill them back in for moral value?
What is it? It's a bit of guilt, a bit of idealism and a bit of intellectual masturbation (for lack of a better way to put it). The fact is only someone who has their own needs taken care of at least monetarily (yc and/or the researchers on this project with secure jobs) can have the type of personality that will want to entertain themselves with this type of a project. Meanwhile, as they used to say back in my day growing up, 'children are starving in Africa so eat your food'. That was a reference to the fact that there were real problems in the world that needed to be solved today. Or in our own country right now. In other words they are spending time and money or something hypothetical (no jobs) instead of doing something today to help people that need help right now. Today. Not in 10 or 70 years. That's because they can't deal hypothetically and have success with today (or actually don't want to get their hands dirty) so they need to pick something in the future to occupy their available time and spend some of their money and get rid of guilt. In the end the 'guilt' refers to making then feel better about themselves for their extreme luck.
My tin-foil theory: The poor are no longer able to purchase consumer goods as their entire income goes to their basic needs. With the middle class being pushed to the poor class, this will have devastating consequences for our consumerist-based economy. Thus, BI is nothing more than recession prevention.
A huge part of what makes basic income appealing is that it is unconditional and guaranteed. Otherwise it seems like it would create unsafe levels of government control.
For many people, BI would end up being a large portion of their income, such that losing it would be catastrophic. Now those people would become beholden to any government demand made on penalty of revoking BI.
If a government enacts unconditional BI in the year 2020, who's to say they won't change their minds in 2028 and make it conditional on good behavior?
Are there any mechanisms that could make basic income a true unconditional guarantee?
>Are there any mechanisms that could make basic income a true unconditional guarantee?
Maybe a government backed cryptocurrency? One that distributes the BI through some sort of immutable smart contract? Lots of problems with the approach, but maybe we can solve enough of them.
Now, whether our current governmental or political realities would ever give up control in that manner is another story :(
Social security income is indispensable for the majority of pensioners now. It used to be only for day laborers who it was understood never had an opportunity to save. Things have changed for sure.
Similarly, most old people wouldn't be able to afford their healthcare if it wasn't for Medicare, even it they never even filled out a Medicaid application.
They could make it a constitutional amendment or whatever your countries mechanism for codifying founding documents is that requires more than a simple majority to make law.
You could e.g. require a national poll for any change to the BI. Or it would not be introduced nationwide but per state or even communal so individuals have more control over what happens.
426 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadBasic Income research will be vital in the future when it actually becomes a genuine piece of public policy. Although I have little faith it will be used effectively by politicians/decision makers.
I hope it provides some meaningful and insightful data either way, though I'm partial to a positive result from this effort.
We're basically saying here that $60M (plus the other group) is better spent to see what weights to give to models to see how UBI scales-up rather than spending it to run a full gamut of Test Cases through the models and figuring out which outputs to motivate people to do with the money.
I mean, why are we spending money to figure out what people will spend the money on when we can already envision all the possibilities. Or am i wrong, and no one has modeled this yet??
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
What does this mean? Is it going to be 5 years or not? Will different participants get it for a different amount of time? Will they know when it is going to stop?
"We propose two treatment arms, one of which will receive the basic income payments for 3 years while the other receives a 5-year guarantee."[0]
[0] - https://static1.squarespace.com/static/599c23b2e6f2e1aeb8d35...
So obvious question on many minds, "Where do I sign up for the free money?"
Also, will it be randomly selected or will the selection criteria factor in cost of living, current financial situation, education, etc?
And where is the potentially $66 million dollars for this coming from?
EDIT: On their FAQ[1] I found the answer to my first question:
>> Can I be a study participant?
> Unfortunately, no. It is important that participants are randomly selected into the study.
[1]: https://basicincome.ycr.org/faqs
It's not clear (to me at least...) if the randomness applies to choosing the original 3000 people selected to take part in the study, the bucketizing of them afterwards into 1000/2000 groups, or both.
Staying below that might encourage under-reporting on taxes; staying above that gives the researchers pretty reliable addresses and SSNs from participants.
Wouldn't any politician campaigning to increase the basic income be almost automatically elected?
That's not true at all, and in fact, the last time a large number of economists were surveyed about a proposal, the response was overwhelmingly in opposition: http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/universal-basic-income
Many economists would agree that, ceteris paribus, cash is "better" than an equivalent amount of earmarked money in most situations, because cash is more flexible. But that's a very narrow statement that isn't applicable here, because it's assuming that the set of people receiving the money would be the exact same (it's not, by the definition of "universal"), and it's also assuming that there are no other external consequences to the proposal (another topic which is, at best, debatable). So even that point of agreement among economists isn't relevant to this proposal.
I’m referring to a general principle regarding transfer payments. They’re usually more simple ways to reach a desired outcome than alternatives.
Yes, and I'm explaining that that statement isn't true (in the sense of consensus among economists) in any way that is applicable to public policies. Certainly not this one, because that's explicitly not a dichotomy being proposed - there's no tradeoff being proposed between the $1000 stipend and all of the other forms of public assistance that the participants could be or are receiving.
It's only true (in the sense of consensus) on a micro level, looking at the value to an individual of cash vs. in-kind payments, ignoring secondary factors, ignoring externalities, and ignoring positive or negative feedback. That's not a relevant framework when discussing public policy.
The intent of basic income I have read about is to increase the personal freedom and provide a flexible safety net for the poorest individuals. And for personal freedom I'm guessing you can take or leave the basic income -- but none will because it's money right?
And about your second thought, you could use evidence for politicians elected based on their promises to raise or lower taxes -- which is essentially an income increase or reduction (for various income subsets of the population).
People aren't clamoring to increase welfare because the people whom it's perceived to benefit aren't the ones who actually have the largest voting power.
People absolutely do reward politicians for securing funding for their constituents, usually in the form of earmarks, targeted tax breaks (e.g. disaster relief, geographically targeted bailouts), and stipends. In fact, it's one of the strongest predictors of support for politicians representing smaller districts.
Only at the national level (ie, when running for president) does it become problematic to be perceived as having spent Congressional funds on your own district, because the new constituency includes people who had their money "taken away" in order to provide those earmarks.
Huh? No, the point isn't what the richest people would think - they have an incentive to oppose either welfare or cash handouts. The point is that currently, welfare only targets the people with the lowest voting power, because they're both a very small bloc and also a bloc that doesn't vote very consistently in the first place. So there isn't a huge political incentive to increasing welfare.
As soon as you make that a handout that targets everyone (or appears to target everyone), you've suddenly put the largest voting bloc - those who are neither very wealthy nor on welfare - in a position where they will start to clamor to increase it more and more, because they'll see that as money flowing towards themselves.
Also I don't think it's hard to see how this thought would come about (not saying I'm advocating it). But there are plenty of ideas that would help society in general (lower college tuition) that many Americans are against whether rationally or irrationally.
If you fail to see how the American public would have a negative reaction to some kind of redistribution of wealth I think you should think about the average American's reaction to the idea of a socialist politician.
That's not it - I'm not saying that the American public wouldn't have a negative reaction to "redistribution of wealth". I'm saying that the American public has a negative reaction to "redistribution of wealth" when they don't think it benefits them. In other words, they're generally fine with wealth being redistributed from other people to them, which is most evidenced by people of all income levels usually (though not always) being on board with federal money coming in to their district. This generally takes the form of federally-funded infrastructure projects or targeted subsidies.
I'm using that to explain why people in between welfare-level poverty and comfortable wealth would have a different reaction to a stipend that (they think) is coming out of other people's tax dollars than they would to current welfare programs (which [as they perceive] don't benefit them).
>Wouldn't any politician campaigning on this automatically get elected?
No, lay people would be quick to confuse this with communism. The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy.
Milton Friedman did not say that this should be part of public policy, though his words are commonly interpreted very generously to imply that he did, by people who wish to demonstrate that this is a policy with "conservative support".
What Friedman actually said is that the cash value of all welfare and other support systems is greater than the in-kind value. That's a pretty narrow statement. In theory, that sounds like it's a statement of support, but it's really not. In practice, basically nobody is actually proposing doing away with all welfare, social security, government subsidies, etc., because it would be a political non-starter. Even if we scope this discussion to the context of the YC research experiment, that's plainly evident, because there's no stipulation that the participants abstain from all other forms of public assistance, as well as deduct the cash value of every other stipend and subsidy that they receive from the $1000 payment.
Comparing what Freidman wrote about to this proposal is like trying to discuss Adam Smith in the context of the political left, on the basis of the common term "liberal". Yes, there technically exists a frame of reference in which that's a meaningful comparison, but it's not a particularly useful or relevant frame of reference, and it does nothing but mislead and obfuscate the actual details of the underlying facts.
It answers many of the questions people are asking here.
I thought basic income was about a time where AI would take most of the jobs, and everything would be far cheaper thanks to automation. I cannot understand how it'll help you not work in the current world.
Because working part-time might not be an option for many, even if they are ready to forgo the money. We also have not built that automated world yet, so although $1000/m certainly helps, it is still not enough to pay for a comfortable life in the US.
Maybe someone more informed on the subject can enlighten me.
Starting this wood-carving artisanat shop that you're insanely good at looks a lot more promising when you know you'll have a bit of money to eat at the end of the month :D
A huge hope of defensors of basic income is that it may pay itself by the economy boost it gives, and won't just add $1000 to every rent bill in the area !
For the sake of argument, however, as you say, going part time is not an option for many people. For the lowest paid jobs, on the other hand, going full time is often not an option. The jobs at the bottom tend to be part time with no benefits and no guaranteed hours. These are the people who will be most benefited by a basic income. If they are additionally stuck in a hostile work environment, the basic income may give them enough cushion to quit the job rather than hanging on just so they don't starve. It may also give them enough money to take time off work and go to school in order to earn a slightly better income. And, if they are laid off through no fault of their own, it may allow them to eat until they can find another job.
I wonder how long it will be until USA is ready for that stuff.
Also, will be interesting to see the difference in results from this study to ones done in countries where healthcare is free or subsidised.
By itself with no other income sources the individual would fall below the US federal poverty level[0] by $60 and would likely qualify for some Earned Income Credits[1] as well as subsidized health care.
Adding children or a spouse (especially a working one) will crank the tax rate up or down.
Then there is an entire universe of tax complexity having to do with credits and penalties an individual or family might face.
[0]https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
Are the results of this feasibility study publicly available?
The site guidelines are specifically written to guard against this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
To my thinking it would have been interesting to study the possible inflation effects (treat the isolated community as representative for the whole country) but I'm sure there is a good reason/past research for structuring the sample this way.
The reason people right now love gaming so much and often to an unhealthy degree is because its an escape from a life they don't like living but have no choice in because they are chained to a job to survive.
* Direct stock ownership depends on the company growing, not failing, not being bought out, etc. * Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets. * Bonds depend on state institutions honoring them. * You can't really save for retirement in a bank because their rates of return are below inflation. You lose money in banks. * Hoarding fiat is obviously bad. * Any asset you would try to store long term is subject to market volatility at the least and potential obsolescence at the worst. You simply cannot guess what anything will be worth decades from now.
The current US administration knows full well that throwing tens of millions of people off insurance will probably cost them the disenfranchised working class that elected them in the first place and lose them their majorities in congress and the presidency. I fully expect them to stab themselves in the foot with this, since a lot of monied interests benefit from the absurdly inefficient default state of healthcare where many people depend on emergency rooms for all problems, but in the same vein repealing social security would destroy their voting base unless they made it a grandfathered in shutdown where the next Democratic administration could just reinstate it and nobody on benefits would lose benefits.
Err, no. This is not a risk of properly structured mutual funds. The manager does not directly hold assets - they make decisions about what to do with the assets, which the custodian executes. And the fund's management has no recourse to the assets held by the custodian. How the fund goes under is if the assets they hold go to zero value.
There's still execution risk, though, which is why passive management is ideal. I'm pretty sure VTSAX can successfully hold a market-cap weighted mix of the 3600 largest US firms pretty much indefinitely. The risk is that the largest US firms stop being generally profitable, like what happened in Japan.
"Democrats promising $30K BI? Well we're gonna do $35K!"
You keep referencing ACA, but there is currently a new bill to repeal it: https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/06822f49-...
Even if we guarantee some sort of income floor, there will still be those who, despite that guarantee, need additional assistance. Whether it's because they have more children than the average, are irresponsible with spending, are victim to a drug habit, unexpectedly lose their jobs, or succumb to medical debt, we have to come to grips with the idea that UBI won't be a cure-all.
Even if we acknowledge (and not all will) that most people who are dependent on safety-net assistance are perfectly good and responsible, depending on what the amount is, what their life circumstances are, and a myriad other factors, I don't think we can take it for granted that UBI obviates those specific-purpose programs for the remainder of those who need assistance and for whom UBI is not ideal.
Put bluntly, there are people who will take the entirety of their UBI check and spend it on stupid things, and end up without money for food, or for their childrens' health. What are we to do about them?
Why do you think it's impossible to encode the mechanics of a pension in a smart contract-based system?
1. Pensions don't currently work like this
There are many thousands of different pension systems across the world.
It stands to reason that you could create new system, and if it had significantly attractive advantages, people would use it.
2. Trusted oracles are a problem
Yup, we need more decentralized services that smart contracts can take advantage of. Wait a few years, they're coming.
3. Smart contracts are only useful for deterministic changes
Making deterministic change is precisely what you want. Do you mean statically defined? Because that's obviously not correct. And are you considering a new system specifically designed for pensions?
Virtually all innovative technology is "hype" until it isn't. I agree we have a ways to go.
> Making deterministic change is precisely what you want.
Yes, but that's a problem when you have to interact with the real world which isn't.
And you could do new things based on control of your pension, which might radically change how we think of them.
The main thing that smart contracts remove is the need for trust. And that's the main problem with pensions.
The promise that is your pension would be cryptographically enshrined in a blockchain, with full transparency.
And that hasn't really explained how the funding would be there.
If you promise basic income for only 5 years, then I'm probably not going to quit my job and become an artist because I can't be unemployed for 5 years and expect to waltz back into a job. If you promise basic income "forever", then I'm far more likely to retire at 30 and plan to never work again.
* I believe this is the case, correct me if there are any I missed
Seems great, as opposed to just trying to make it while working full time.
Would they, though? That's the key question that I believe this study (and others like it) fail to address. Depending on the basic income amount, I believe it would be possible to live a fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life without needing to supplement that income.
With BI I could spend more, but I would still keep on working towards a relaxing financial freedom where money is not a problem at all.
Yes, this requires employer flexibility and the move from 40h->15h per week grants much less freedom than stopping work entirely but masses of people suddenly being content with a minimum amount of money does not sound convincing to me at all.
Living off the basics is pretty dull. Most people who live ascetic lifestyles by choice usually come from a position of relative wealth and choose it more as an aesthetic or affectation than anything.
All in all, I think there are enough people that things would be fine.
Anecdotally my friend is part Native-American and gets 4k/mo from the tribe's casino money and they're bumping it up more soon. She's chosen to be a stay at home mom.
A better question would be, "how many would report their work out of an entire country was offered a basic income?" There are already data points for comparison, when that question is asked.
An interesting question is "can we reasonably automate things that people currently get paid less for than a basic income would be, or will we have to pay them more, and if we have to pay them more, what will be the economic effect of that?"
People on HN are significantly different and not even close to a representative sample. No one at any point is saying that HN readers are better or more moral, but there are huge, huge differences in technical skill, intelligence, knowledge, college attendance rates, social skills, empathy, and so forth compared to an average sampling of the population of the United States. I'll leave it up to everyone to decide which direction the arrow points in the above fields.
You are making arguments against things I never wrote, which is a strawman fallacy.
I took a couple years off a long time ago. I didn't stop working on stuff. Really, if you pay me, all that means is that I work on what you want me to work on, and maybe show up at particular times. It doesn't motivate me to work, it just motivates me to change topics.
I absolutely know people who would never work again. I know other people like me, who do it because they enjoy it. And details matter a lot, and tend to be ignored[1] by simplistic first-principle reasoning.
A big part of this is the ratio of those, and how quickly the number of jobs drop. I would fully expect this sort of thing to need tuning as it goes - I personally see the biggest change being a sudden explosion of people with lots of free time. Just as a tiny example, what does this do to the video game market? What about dry cleaners when fewer people wear business-drag?
Anyone who makes confident predictions based on econ101-style reasoning is simply dressing their politics up in an argument from authority.
[1] What does assortive mating look like under such a scheme - how much status will holding a job gain? Is the income set at an "uncomfortable" level, how will that change over time, what sort of barriers (class, academic, opportunities, etc.) will grow up around it? Are there any incentives to do something useful, even if it isn't what we think of as a 'job'?
Details really matter.
Generally speaking, this would probably be the most efficient use of UBI: you trade it all away as soon as you exit college and invest it in something. I can see whole branches of financial and life insurance services growing out of this market.
I do realize that by this point this would be hard to hide.
The whole point about Basic Income (at least the unconditionally one) is that there are not going to be any jobs (or very few and only for highly talented people). And even if there are jobs it will always be worthwhile working (as long as it's unconditional)
So if you, like me, believe that's the case, the whole discussion about whether people want to take a job or not becomes moot. It doesn't matter if they would have, they can't.
A much more important discussion then becomes how we make it work financially.
If there are no jobs, it will be because we designed it that way, not because it was inevitable. Tech giants proposing basic income as the solution to their lazy lack of desire to figure out how to better distribute work tell glowing stories of how lovely it will be for low paid workers to get this extra money. They never actually explore the scenario they are actually proposing that all you get is $10k-$20k and you have little or no hope of getting a job at all ever again.
That would be a dystopian nightmare and I think it is likely to end in bloody revolution.
Lots of hopeless people with nothing but time on their hands who are being completely fucked over by the system with no way out of this black hole but just enough money to keep eating well, even if they are living in a tent, sounds like a recipe for creating a well trained guerrilla army.
Technology isn't inevitable but to the extent that we wan't to reap the benefits of it is. In other word, we aren't designing anything other than our own replacements.
With regards to how SV tries to paint it thats a different discussion and have nothing to do with whether it will happen or not.
It doesn't have to be dystopian (ex. Post scarcity society) but until we get there it's going to be worse not better for a lot of people.
But I would challenge you to come up with an alternative that by and large at least compete with the reliance on technology.
The problem is that no specific part of the whole system is responsible and everyone in the system is more or less acting rationally.
So I fundamentally disagree it's not inevitable (with the above context considered)
Actually, I have. I was homeless for nearly six years until earlier this month. I am medically handicapped and can't work a regular job. I was a homemaker for a lot of years, I had a corporate job for a few years and I currently do freelance writing, resume editing and I blog, which gets me a little money via ads, tips and Patreon.
UBI will solve nothing as long as we do not have universal basic health care and affordable housing. If we establish universal basic health care and create sufficient affordable housing, then the last piece of the puzzle is redistributing work. We did this once before under very similar circumstances where automation was "taking our jobs."
It was called The Industrial Revolution. It gave birth to the 40 hour work week, overtime pay and unions.
If work is structured properly and you can get a cheap SRO or similar somewhere and not have to worry about medical bills, you can cover your basic living expenses working part time. If it is well structured where you work as little or as much as you want, then people who are unambitious hedonists or who have personal burdens, like chronic health issues, can just get by without it being a dystopian horrifying black hole that seems inescapable. Folks with more energy and/or more ambition can work harder and do more with their lives.
I have written a number of pieces laying out the details. Some are listed on this page of my old blog:
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html
But I don't imagine you are actually interested. That "challenge" was most likely intended to mean "Shut up. It isn't like you have a solution."
You completely ignore that there is no need to structure work if I don't have to hire people to produce or develop my products. This is the whole point and why I believe you are fundamentally looking at this wrong.
The industrial revolution replaced physical work, this revolution is replacing intellectual work.
You are betting on some political/ideological/moral change in people, not actually addressing the points I was making.
I am not betting on a political, ideological or moral change. Whether we establish a UBI or go with something akin to my above proposals, these are equally political solutions. Neither will happen without a great many people working to make it happen.
The only question is what kind of future do we want? I think UBI makes no sense and will not work. Universal basic health care would be vastly easier to implement, if only because it has already be done in multiple other countries, so we have models to borrow from. Yet, people think that is a bridge too far and will not happen.
So, to me, the good news is that UBI is unlikely to happen and Gig Work is already on the rise, such as Uber, writing services and delivery services. The challenge here is just getting the word out that such services need to be a win-win scenario for both company and workers.
I am already living this reality. Gig Work has been an ideal solution in the face of a medical situation that makes a normal job not work for me. So, I know firsthand that Gig Work can be a terrific option for the worker if it isn't designed to screw over the little guy.
That can totally coexist alongside factories with very few workers. The rise of the machines does not have to be a terrible thing for humanity. The Industrial Revolution raised standards of living and quality of life across the board. There is no reason The Second Industrial Revolution cannot do the same.
But we do need to set that as a goal and work towards it. My only real concern is that, currently, some very rich and powerful people do not see the 99 percent as actual human beings. They see them as sheeple. And the solutions that grow out of such contempt tend to be self fulfilling prophesies that force powerless people into the narrative imposed on them from high.
I am intersted in hearing actual solutions not wishful thinking based on the idea that humans decide themselves when we obviously don't.
If you want to argue that then I have already asked you how that would happen given the reality we live in.
Gig-work will also be replaced by technology either through digitalization or automation.
95% of jobs created since 2010 are temp jobs i.e. part of the gig-economy, that's obviously not sustainable as there isn't any rise in salaries while as I said the cost of living is rising.
So again unless you believe that technology is not going to take the jobs
If you were genuinely interested, you could read the multiple articles I have already written and linked to. I don't think you have bothered to do that.
I see no reason to engage further.
Keep in mind you are the one who claimed that we can just design things the way we want them, yet you haven't actually provided anything close to an argument here.
That the gig-economy works for you is great, it's just not an actual argument and it's definitely not an argument against UBI.
Furthermore if you can't actually formulate your own thinking in a comment but are so lazy that you just point me to go read something you are actually showing who isn't really genuinely intersted in this debate.
What exactly are you referring to?
Furthermore I can't fix anything as I can't edit.
By "fix" I just mean editing that kind of thing out in the future. Shouldn't be hard. And thanks for being an excellent HN contributor!
However, I really don't think UBI is the answer. I don't understand where the money will come from/who will do the leftover work. I think we should continue to cultivate an innovative society and new types of jobs - more appealing I think - will be created.
I do a lot of "light one candle rather than curse the dark" type projects. I try to promote things that already exist (like gig work) that I think work. I do my best to get such info into the hands of people who seem hardest hit by the societal growing pains we are witnessing.
It can be hard to measure the results of such efforts and it can be outright impossible to prove to others that it makes a difference. But, I have had experiences* that convince me that it does make a difference, so I persist.
* http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-few...
What fundamentally new jobs have we really seen the last 100 years besides computer engineer and how many people does that industry actually occupy. As it turns out not a lot.
Everything else is just a more refined version of things that already existed in some form or another and rapidly being replaced by technology.
Which part of it? Not too many generations ago, many people lived entirely off the land. A large portion of people's "jobs" were displaced from agriculture and yet over time new jobs keep getting created. There are jobs that no one had even thought of that are now providing for the livelihood of many people.
Yes I believe there will also be new things that people want and new ways that other want to help them get it that will keep fueling the economy. There are things that are inaccessible to many people now that will become more everyday and "middle class".
> Unless you don't think computers will be able to do most of the things that create fundamental value in society.
No not at all. Of course I think automation can keep getting better but there are plenty of jobs that I don't see computers doing anywhere in the near term - building a house, paving a street, cooking food, being a nurse, being a garbage man, etc etc.
> What fundamentally new jobs have we really seen the last 100 years besides computer engineer...
Um seriously? I know people who literally are "social media managers". I know people who sell eBooks for a living or do Youtube. I know folks who attempt to at least live off the music they make.
These are just "new" jobs that no one could have envisioned before. But think of all the greater demand there could be existing jobs. I have a friend in Fiji and apparently there nearly everyone has a housekeeper, even "middle class" people. There is a demand for stuff like that even in America - people keep pushing toward whatever improves their standard of living as long as they can afford it.
Technology is growing fast but its far from the only thing desired by people.
New jobs keeps getting created simply because the markets have grown through population growth and globalization. If you look in the US out of all the new jobs created since 2009 95% of them are temp jobs not structural jobs. Temp jobs means that the job is being perceived as less valuable (no healthcare) than ex a structurally solid job. The actual market value of most jobs is diminishing. At the same time cost of living is going up up up.
The jobs no one have thought of are literally a drop in the ocean. They pay a few people very well while 90% don't make a dime on them. And they are only "new jobs" in the sense that they are about a new medium or technology. But fundamentally nothing new about them.
The problem with most jobs is that they don't actually require the whole human only a small part of the humans abilities. Unless you don't think technology can replace that function I have a hard time seeing where you get your view that it's not an actual problem from.
Technology allow you to be competitive which mean you need to keep investing in technology to be competitive. Yet income is actually declining and cost is going up.
Here is an interesting graph showing price change:
https://twitter.com/hnshah/status/909557796873662464/photo/1
How is that an illustration of things becoming more accessible? Unless of course you mean that TV series covers people fundamental needs.
No not at all. Of course I think automation can keep getting better but there are plenty of jobs that I don't see computers doing anywhere in the near term - building a house, paving a street, cooking food, being a nurse, being a garbage man, etc etc.
Yet there are already technologies doing that today. This will only increase over time.
Um seriously? I know people who literally are "social media managers"
Social media manager are just marketing people in another medium nothing new there. Selling ebooks is just selling books in another media. these aren't actually new types of jobs and it's a very very very small fraction of society who actually make a living from these. You can't live on likes.
The benefits of technology is desired by people and thats what matters here.
How many people and jobs are we talking about, if these are the jobs expected to support the vast majority of the populace? And on a related note, why would these people not feel resentful that (by necessity) a major chunk of their earnings is directed towards everyone else?
Assuming that humans will behave differently and be driven by different things than they have _for millenia_ is foolish, and why BI will never work.
Thats the proper perspective to understand this discussion, not pointing back to a few thousand years of human civilization, unless of course you claim that humans is the last word in evolutionary process.
If you (like me) believe technology will take over most jobs then (U)BI is so far the best model we have as it will always make it worthwhile to work.
UBI is going to be treated just the same as a tax break for the poor and likely to stay at very minimal levels.
Whose? Most people seem to be dying of cancer at 50 these days.
And in that context you see various growth and cuts over time.
However, even that is misleading as richer society's have a higher percentage of discretionary income and may be willing to pay higher tax rates.
Nobody thinks it's important to add street lights in the middle of corn fields. But, cities have had various forms of lighting over time and increasing standards for lighting levels from the 1400's to now. US street lights for example could be perfectly useful for walking if they where 1/10 as bright as they currently are which would significantly reduce associated costs.
Historically, rates where vastly lower. But, people also got vastly fewer benefits from the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_medieval_England So, YMMV.
PS: Anyway, if inflation adjusted medium income was say 10x as much I could see people tolerating 70% tax rates as their take home pay would still be significantly higher than we have. AKA if average person make 500,000$ in inflation adjusted dollars then they might be ok with an after tax take home pay of just 150,000$ / year on average. But say government provided self driving cars and underground tunnel networks.
If USA would pay UBI I would do my best to somehow become citizen, there is no reason for me why I shouldn't try. And there are over 7 billion people on the planet, I'm not the only one who thinks that way. That is why I raised the question of borders/immigration + UBI. It's very different situation when it is now for illegals and also people who want to become citizens.
In combination with open borders, you do risk having a class system, where the citizens have money and immigrants don't, but at the same time, it solves the issue of certain jobs not being worth the time of someone who gets UBI (and therefore being for immigrants).
It's a tough balance for sure, and one of the main arguments against UBI (accidental creation of a class system).
I remember working somewhere where I was being tested before getting into this system and I met plenty who said they were heavily advised not to go back to work by their doctors. They want to do /something/ because being at home watching TV gets boring after half a year. So they were sent to that place in the meantime. I have other friends who are in this system who end up working in charity somewhere.
But most of my friends i met in this system ended up finding a job, despite being promised permanent "universal income".
In the past if you tried to work somewhere while being in this system, and it worked but you got sick again you'd have to reapply (which is a very long process) but now it's changed so it acts more as a safety net in case working somewhere doesn't work out for your health. I've heard this is to encourage people to work and I've heard (from the people who work in the system) that it's successful so far.
Just about everyone I know would start a business, volunteer, do creative things, contribute to making the world a better place.
But, at the end of the day, I don't care how people spend their time or their money. If some fraction of the population wanted to bum around on their minimal UBI for the rest of their lives, fine by me. It's never going to lead to a life of luxury, and I quite honestly don't care if that's how they want to waste their lives.
Funding my fellow countrymen who want to squander their lives, so long as they're doing so peacefully and in the privacy of their own homes? Sign. me. up.
So this experience stands against one of the most common arguments against basic income, "nobody is going to work anymore". It validates my belief that people will still seek purpose (and monetary rewards) even when their basic needs are fulfilled.
> I've heard this is to encourage people to work and I've heard (from the people who work in the system) that it's successful so far.
Always good to hear of policy that's actually working. At times, watching the news makes it feel like all of politics is just a smoke and mirrors game without any positive outcomes.
I feel a lot of people on here want to be or are already an entrepreneur. So of course your friends are most likely gonna start a business if they had the time, opportunity and safety net. But maybe that's enough?
Another thing I hear a lot from people in this system is saying they wish they had more money and wish they could do something to earn more. (But then again I think this is always the case)
The money we get is based on some average income. It's enough to pay the rent for an apartment, save up a little to buy a TV, maybe even a trip to another country if you're careful, etc.
I don't think it's enough to own a car, buy a house, have kids, etc. To live that kind of "dream" you need to find a full time job. Which sounds fair within the UBI context but maybe unfair if you're disabled. (I personally don't know, my own life is more than good at the moment)
I should have mentioned that there's a social stigma with not working (at least in Norway). Many of my disabled friends are not very open about it because they think it's embarrassing. I have one friend who choose to work at charity-ish place just so he can say he's working. He's 40 years old though and I believe the stigma was much stronger back in the past.
Personally if people ask what I'm doing I tell them that I'm disabled but I like programming, making music and so on. I've never had anyone react negatively to this, but this is face to face, first time we meet, and maybe the non disabled people I meet have similar mindset as me. (programmers, freelancers, artists, etc) The friends I have who are disabled is another friend circle entirely.
So I don't experience the stigma but I can imagine there are some people who don't like it of course. It's just that I don't hang around those people.
But this stigma could be an important factor as to why people want to work.
I feel like I'm talking for https://www.nav.no (the system in Norway I'm talking about). Maybe they have more useful (and more accurate) data for the people who research UBI.
They can't claim to know how people will behave if it is a lifetime, but evaluating some change is better than evaluating none.
In that case, you're going to have to be content with a thought experiment, because there is no entity that can credibly make such a guarantee.
When there's a cultural shift to a UBI, that's not going to vanish overnight just because of an election cycle.
Its true that its easier to add than to remove. One solution to that would be to tie adding it to removing something else.
So with this time frame I believe initial ideas of "I'm going to put this to savings" will quickly disappear. Five years is a pretty long time, especially when considering at how bad humans are at preparing for the future.
What I think will be interesting is to see the different spending trends over time. I would imagine the first and last years are different than the middle three. But that's just a guess.
[1]
What I'm saying is that if even those above the 50% income level are bad about saving a basic emergency fund, I don't expect those receiving this kind of grant to be any better at preparing emergencies. I do think they will be able to handle them better, but I do not expect them to plan better.
The point isn't that the lower can't save, it is that people above the median income still don't save. These people should be able to save, but don't.
[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/income-poverty/...
- A small amount of free money for everyone
- Rollback the state, welfare programs, etc. to balance out step 1
It's not realistic to reason about the effectiveness of the UBI proposal without considering the effects of the second step.
I don't blame them. They just never had seen what people who have a job do. When I grew up everybody close to me was working so I could observe how a job works. And people who grow up around high-powered people like CEOs know how being a CEO works.
I dont understand. You have seen firsthand how entitlements ruin people, and you're arguing that UBI will be good for society?
Edit: why the down votes? Are adults who do not understand the concept of a job not a problem? How else could so many of them live without this knowledge if they weren't being handed out the resources to enable them?
My grandfather received a very lucrative PhD offer at a very prestigious American university, but he didn't have the money to make the trip himself, and airplanes were much too expensive for him. So he found a ship in the harbor that was taking a passage to the US and volunteered to be a deck-hand.
Now his grandkids, those in India and those abroad, drive cars, go to fancy bars and restaurants. I've never been a deck-hand in my life, and I have cousins who have never even seen a boat up close.
It's easy for us to think that "entitlements ruin people" because it allows us to legitimatze our individual struggles, but it takes a leap beyond to comprehend whether our struggles should mean anything or are simply an artifact of the technology and logistics we have available to us.
Please. Have you ever lived in poverty? The people who climb out will tell you what other poor people are like. And I'm not just talking about poverty. Look at what former Soviets have done in NYC, especially Brighton beach. They live out of the projects but stereotypically drive BMWs. The average poor person is not your aspiring PHD father, its someone who wants a quick buck for the immediate future.
UBI is textbook ivory tower politics. Poor people aren't just poor because they have no money, and by and large throwing more money at them won't solve anything.
Now if you want to argue that the waste is worth it because of people like your father, thats plausible, but acting like UBI is the answer to poverty is absurd. Not to mention that you're essentially setting a demand floor which will "unnaturally" interfere with the economy. Another potential can of worms.
Yes, yes I have. I grew up in it. And most of my friends are struggling to make ends meet, working at restaurants, nail salons, and cafes. There's no glory in realizing that you can't make rent this month and you need to beg your landlord, or that after rent you have $50 leftover for a month's expenses. I've been there.
> They live out of the projects but stereotypically drive BMWs.
So you're using a stereotype to make your argument? Come on.
> Not to mention that you're essentially setting a demand floor which will "unnaturally" interfere with the economy. Another potential can of worms.
And you're arguing that supply is finite, which is the same fallacy that proponents of command economies often fall into.
>So you're using a stereotype to make your argument? Come on
The argument could have been made without the stereotype, I agree. But it is an open secret in NYC that people, especially in Soviet neighborhoods, abuse the welfare system. I'll drop it though because I only have anecdata.
If you lived in poverty, surely you at least caught glimpses of all the people who were not quite as noble as your friends? I do not deny that there are truly hard working poor who need a little extra to climb out. I merely argue that there is a much higher proportion of poor who dont care to learn or work than you are acknowledging, and those are the people who will ruin any UBI experiment.
I'd take those ex-soviet commonwealth welfare abusers anytime over welfare non-abusers any time.
These projects are one of the nicest and the most well maintained projects in the city. They bribe the city housing dept to win the lottery, and take the money they would have to spend on purchasing the property to maintain it.
Its almost like giving UBI to those who don't need it, give you a better society, and giving UBI to those who need it, you get more 'needs'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004
I found one of them for you https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/07/15/fb...
No, poverty is all about the lack of money. You cannot pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots. A relevant article about "the psychology of scarcity": https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-...
UBI is not the answer to the modern ghetto. Regardless of race. We much first address problems with culture and education. Or at the very least do that in conjunction with UBI.
Sounds like you're having the wrong discussion. It shouldn't be about "UBI" or "not UBI", it should be about educating teenagers and young adults from poor families how to make a living and climb up the social ladder.
(I'm going to make a guess and say that this part of the discussion is ignored because it's evident that there's only limited space in the upper and middle classes of society.)
But, consider this: when we say education in the U.S., we imply westernization. Who are you to decide for someone else that their culture of ignorance is inferior to your own?
Life is complicated. I personally feel that, historically, these kinds of interventions do more harm than good. If you really want to solve a problem, you dont need to add regulations, you need to get more people on the same page, in general.
We've had to ask you not to do these things before. Would you kindly re-read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this? We'd greatly appreciate your help in raising discussion quality above that bar.
Your comment reads to me as an implicit argument against UBI. Is that your case?
Allow to me comment from an insider perspective.
- The welfare money didn’t cause the lack of work. They were not strongly related or if anything it’s the lack of work that drives the need to take up welfare.
- It’s likely an extremely small minority of children in welfare-assisted families who see zero closely related adults working at all.
- People who grow up without working role models do have a harder time learning the ropes on the work life, on that we agree. That doesn’t mean they’re doomed to fail completely. (Saying this as someone who had no idea how to do this right but eventually learned, went through grad school, now works in tech, outearns the median income in her city, etc). Also how do you explain the many underemployed/unemployed/deadbeat kids of successful high-status parents? The connection seems rather spurious to me.
- Taking away the welfare money would do nothing to get someone employed. Instead it might endanger the family’s life. You realize that right?
"People who grow up without working role models do have a harder time learning the ropes on the work life, on that we agree. That doesn’t mean they’re doomed to fail completely. "
People certainly can escape their upbringing but from my observation on average most people stay close to their social class. That doesn't mean that some won't do much better or much worse than their family.
That disincentive goes away with UBI, which is the main reason I think it would work better. Under that system, every dollar you earn directly translates to a better standard of living.
I also know more than a few 1st-generation 'trustfunders'. Some are artists, some scientists, a couple work as university professors. They certainly are all doing useful work, right?
Just look at HN as a case study. There are many people here (myself included) who could live off of their savings indefinitely. In fact, I've tried a few times. But, as others have pointed out, sitting around doing nothing is dreadfully boring. Once one removes the usual daily stressors (e.g. being able to pay for rent, food, kids, etc.), escapist behavior quickly grows dull. Believe me, when not required to manage stress, there is only so much Netflix one can watch and only so many video games one can play.
I wouldn't worry about the vast majority of Humans doing nothing. People just do stuff. It just means changing perspective of what is valuable work. There are many types of work that are valuable to Humanity even if the market can't support them.
Edit: just want to add that I would be concerned by younger adult males forming gangs. Their PFC's aren't completely formed, and they have raging hormones. In Christian western countries, it's a common saying that "idle hands are the devil's workshop". And, I find that true. So, young adult males, with nothing to do and risk-taking brains, tend to get into trouble.
And non-technically-inclined people with savings could help by promoting, documenting distributing, training, prettifying, and providing other support for such systems.
And yes, I've put all my spare resources into that kind of FOSS technical work myself (although at the moment I'm once again working for pay to climb out of taking on debt to finish another FOSS project done with my wife -- this one called NarraFirma).
Related by Alan Kay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15261691 "In the interview -- to say it again -- I'm not calling for the field to implement my vision -- but I am calling for the field to have a larger vision of civilization and how mass media and our tools contribute or detract from it. Thoreau had a good line. He said "We become the tools of our tools" -- meaning, be very careful when you design tools and put them out for use. (Our consumer based technology field is not being at all careful.)"
See also "The Skills of Xanadu":
Printed: https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1956-07/Galaxy_195...
Audio: https://archive.org/details/pra-BB3830.08
And yes -- a Basic Income would make that possible for everyone someday. But if you can live that way now, why not help create a more joyful and sustainable alternative right now? Isn't it plausible that our direction coming out of any Singularity may have a lot to do with our moral and technical infrastructure going into one?
(Obviously, there are some paying jobs that align more closely with such ideals, but they tend to be few and far between, and if you have savings and take one, you displace someone else who might not have your options.)
Also related by me on basic income: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-p... http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-s...
Reason for this is simple: successful project it's not just the code, but also community around it. Coordinating even small team across different time zones, helping new contributors, reviewing the code and keeping it all together is exhausting daily job and not everyone can handle that. Now projects that you find valuable would require highly skilled programmer to work on them.
So the person it's require to build such software can easily find a job in one of corporations that pay very well or FOSS-related job that might have lesser pay. Why should someone prefer to live off savings or in debt just to build software that don't have business model?
This is the reason I don't think basic income would help here at all. Of course some could be okay in living just above poverty while working on project they believe in, but most would prefer job for some corporation that would have have 3-10 times better pay.
So instead of basic income there should be viable way to fund open source projects and to distribute the pay fairly according to the job done. For individuals and small teams there is already Patreon, but there no simple solution for distributed teams usual open source project have because it's extremely hard to collect and distribute the money without offending someone or contributors lose motivation to work on project when one guy is being paid while they get nothing. Unfortunately I don't even sure if ever will be solution for this.
Where we differ regarding the BI and FOSS is possibly in thinking in these areas:
* There are many small but important projects (Mithril, Vue, many others -- even Linux early on) which are initially the work of one developer, eventually supported by a community. A BI would make more such starts possible, and also make contributions more feasible. While it is not quite "if you build it, they will come", certainly there are a lot of cases where a good project, well supported by one person, makes a big difference to a lot of people. Khan Academy in its early years is another great example of this.
* There is an entire gift economy of volunteerism. In some ways, much economic activity in even the USA is voluntary (even if it is ignored in the GDP) when you consider child care, helping neighbors, volunteering at non-profits, conversing with strangers to share knowledge, and so on. So, I know it is possible.
* Regarding "most people" and "some people": If you multiple seven billion people on the planet times even 0.1% of people being civic-minded at any particular time (and the percentage is probably much higher), then you get 7 million people. That is still a lot of people who can put a lot of time into things. And even without a BI, Clay Skirky said, there is a lot of time that could be liberated for improving free software and free content: https://web.archive.org/web/20110102193349/http://www.shirky... "Two hundred billion hours [of TV watching], in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus."
The bottom line is that the way people make a lot of money is by standing between someone and something they want and asking for a toll to access that thing. Almost all venture business models are based on some variation of that (or aspire to that such rent seeking). It's not the only way to make money, but it is the way to make a lot of money. The problem is that tolls have lots of external costs. For tolls at bridges there are delays, health costs of fumes, and increased risks of accidents. For online software, there is the externality of lost privacy (but only one-way, consumer to aggregator) needed to make possible the tolls Google and Facebook charge advertisers as they sell human eyeballs. There is also the externality of risks from central points of failure (whether loss of service or censorship).
Small-scale exchange commerce may make a lot of capitalistic sense at the scale of, say, running a local farm, bagel shop, or plumbing company. But on a large scale, like Facebook, Google, Slack, and so on, the centralization of control of information flows poses enormous risks to democracy.
If there was not so much regulatory capture, we might expect our governments to pour literally trillions of dollars a year into software (and content) for democracy right now given how important that is. Instead we have a proprietary centralized Facebook, Google, Twitter, and even Windows -- and our democracy and culture is at great risk from an imbalance of power. Governments at the behest of content publishers have con...
* First of all I don't think that important projects started by single developer is right example for benefit that BI could bring because they managed without basic income in past and they don't need it today.
If project don't get enough traction during period when project originator actively work on it that's usually mean that will never happen. But if original developer leave there still chance for someone else who believe in idea to take control or just fork it and continue. Also this rotation seems like one of crucial parts that make open source successful.
So while BI would let someone to work on the same code indefinitely or at least much longer than now I don't think that will greatly increase number of popular and widely used open source projects. And who knows might be it's will even decrease that number.
* Another note about voluntarism. It's great that in developed countries there is endless number of ways for society to participate in all kind of useful activities and I wish it's was even remotely close in country of my origin. Though for the reasons stated before I simply don't believe that crowd-sourcing can be applied to build successful software projects. You might say that community can go promote software instead of helping with development, but today you can't even promote project efficiently using centralized tools we have simply because companies companies like Facebook and others want you to pay for that. Number of communities outside of centralized social networks is dwindle over last 10 years.
So I wish to think positively, but so far all I see is that distributed FOSS projects cannot successfully compete with corporate or VC funded products. With direction where Internet, hardware trends, Internet and society itself going I don't see how we going to get more people involved in open source and not less.
But hopefully someone will come up with idea how to fund truly distributed open source teams so they can at least somewhat compete with VC money burning centralized proprietary alternatives. Without that best we can hope for is that open source will keep positions it's have today.
Now, getting 100 software developers top agree to work together on the same project might not be easy ("herding cats"). But it seems doable, as we can point to quite a few projects (including big names like Linux, WordPress, Apache, and Python) where it has happened. And there are even some books out there on how to create and manage FOSS projects.
Granted, those particular big-name projects have also had commercial support eventually -- so we don't know all the details of what might be possible otherwise. But there are plenty of examples of voluntary groups of significant size dedicated to a common purpose (fire companies, sports clubs, historical societies, and so on) so it is not inconceivable the same will continue to happen for software if people have the free time to participate in them.
I know many people who would say it's would be great, but I sure that wouldn't looks so great in practice. If average salary of developer is going to be multiple times above BI the only people who going to stay out of full time job would likely be useless due to their poor skills or inability to work in team.
I saying that from my own experience: I almost left doing my boring freelance stuff to learn C++ and work on project I want to see finished. I still keep doing it because I like it, but living without money is not fun. And I'm crazy Russian guy who used to see poverty all around, but I absolutely don't see how people who used to get at least $70,000/year salary in EU / US would go change it to something like $40,000/year BI.
Also I can't say much about Apache or Python, but other two examples are wrong. Linux become actually successful after corporations backed it while WordPress have massive business behind it: Automattic has 500+ employees and way above 1B valuation.
Participating projects in free time might work for some software, but most of time there is group of lead developers who doing most of heavy lifting and projects wouldn't live without them. And there plenty of extremely boring, but very important work that is critical for security and project integrity, but can't be really crowd sourced at all.
PS: Though I should note that I'm proponent of BI and I feel it would work great as replacement for traditional ineffective welfare systems that either useless or too easy to abuse (I seen plenty of it while lived in the UK). And I sure that BI could give indirect benefit for the society in general, but I don't believe it's what's needed to push FOSS forward.
Linux and WordPress were both started with one or two people, and it was years before a lot of corporate money jumped onboard after they were starting to show success. It took thousands of people who cared about FOSS quietly lobbying for it in the companies they worked for (as I did at IBM Research) and also others to turn that interest into companies like Cygnus and RedHat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress "WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg[1] and Mike Little,[9] as a fork of b2/cafelog."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic "Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005."
On the commercialization of Linux and how it took coordinated effort to promote it before companies adopted it: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/00/02/03/0039223/commercial... which references: https://web.archive.org/web/20020206225729/http://www.linuxw...
I understand this BI approach may not work for you right now. It may not even work for most software developers right now.
But, as a counter example, there are about eleven million graduate students in the world, many living on about a Basic Income level of funding. That is proof that millions of people are willing to live for years at poverty level wages (or even taking on debt) in order to do something they care about -- even if quite a few could get jobs paying a lot more by pursuing more immediate commercial success. Granted many may aspire to a better paying job as a tenured professor, but any look at the statistics show that is not going to happen for 90%+ of such students. Most of these people in graduate programs are generally not there because they are "useless due to their poor skills or inability to work in [a] team." http://www.richardprice.io/post/12855561694/the-number-of-ac...
See also: "The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet" by Micky Z. From the book blurb: "Mickey Z. considers work a 50-year fugue from which some people awaken to wonder what has become of their lives. In The Murdering of My Years, cabbies, waitresses, clerks, telemarketers, and an array of others tell how they balance activism and artistic production with the daily struggle to make ends meet. Contributors’ essays are at once absurd and poignant; captivating and strange. Collectively, their reflections challenge the myth of the American work ethic and exhort readers to advocate for themselves in the workplace."
=== A tangent on what I want to do, making public intelligence tools for civic sensemaking, and how a BI could help
Here is a different path to a similar place instead of a BI, but it is much less compatible with our current economic system: :-) pdfernhout ↗ A good resource by Karl Fogel on: "Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project" http://producingoss.com/ SXX ↗ Thanks. Interesting read!
I could see this test could serving as a dataset for calculating anticipated inflation rates on a national scale. If money is sent out via a trackable card instead of raw cash, you could begin to extrapolate where this basic income spends would be going, be it consumer products, bills, etc.
Even if it was people's entire household budget being tracked, it'd be difficult to draw too many inferences from spending in the absence of price pressures driven by everyone else having UBI too.
Unlikely. UBI removes the connection between location and income. As a result you can move to somewhere incredibly cheap to live since there's no need to be in an in demand market in order to have a nice job.
Housing is really quite cheap in the US. With Real Estate you pay for the location not the actual land or building.
Of course people won't necessarily want to move away from their "hip" city, but UBI is "basic" and if you want to stay in a high demand area you will have to supplement UBI with work.
As for basic consumables, demand is unlikely to go up for these fundamental goods because people are _already_ consuming them at their basic required levels under the current system (toilet paper, eggs, milk, bread, chicken, beans, rice, birth control, etc).
It isn't that they can't afford to live where they are now, it's that BI will be absorbed by price inflation everywhere.
A big reason for the current rise in real estate prices is urbanisation (centralisation of population in big urban centers) - e.g. London, NY, SF, and plenty other cities. (The other reason is foreign investments, but I'd argue the investment comes after the initial rise in prices, simply because real estate is perceived as a good investment opportunity.) This urbanisation is to a large extent driven by the fact that the most high-paying jobs are available in these cities, which consequently also increases the availability of lower-paying jobs. I.e. people move to cities to succeed/earn money.
If you remove the last implication - if people can earn a living without moving to big, overpopulated cities - then arguably the concentration of population would drop and the "bubble" would pop/deflate.
Housing prices are a function of income elasticity - raising the income for everyone will raise housing prices for everyone. Note - this is not the only way that real estate prices can increase (as you described urbanization), but it is one that BI would cause.
This is a truism but incorrect in the context of this conversation.
UBI does not increase incomes for everyone. It is a wealth redistribution. Many will see their income fall, especially initially, in order to prop up the incomes of the poor and those who decide to live solely off UBI.
What you're thinking about is a negative income tax or some other BI that is disproportionately weighted.
Many people (the wealthy) will have their net income (income after taxes) go down considerably in a UBI system.
For example, everyone gets $12k a year in UBI income, however funding such a system will require a fairly stiff tax increase (this is how the wealth redistribution will occur), so for high earners, their $12k in UBI will be negatively offset by the increase in taxes.
As an extreme example, someone earning $1MM annually will get the $12k UBI same as everyone else, but an (example) increase in the top income bracket from 39.6% to 60% will cause them to pay $118646.4 more in taxes resulting in their net income under a UBI system to go down (-$118646.40 taxes + $12000 ubi) $106646.40.
UBI does not "create" new money and just give it to everyone (which would cause inflation). It's a wealth redistribution. That is, many people will see their income go down under UBI (probably most HN readers for example). The money supply will represent the same amount of wealth, what changes is who owns that wealth and as a result who decides how to use that wealth to consume.
Regarding price changes, price is set by the amount of a good/service demanded by consumers, and the supply of the good/service created by suppliers. High discretionary income does cause the demand for certain goods/services to go up (especially luxuries), but UBI is so basic at $1k per month it won't make much of a change in the demand curve because the type of goods/services that will be consumed by someone living on UBI are so fundamental they are already consuming these goods at the same rate under the current system.
So far as housing is concerned, UBI will pretty much "explode" the supply of acceptable housing for people living solely on UBI since they get access to housing in the entire US instead of having it constrained to locations where they could conceivably "make a living." I'm sure you realize what happens when supply increases drastically but demand stays somewhat constant (everyone has to live somewhere and you can only live in one place at once) -- the price of housing on avg will plummet considerably for UBI'ers.
UBI is Universal Basic Income, meaning that income is increased for everyone universally. Nobody is claiming that money is created out of thin air.
What you're thinking about is a negative income tax or some other disproportionately weighted welfare program.
Increasing the income for the vast majority of the population inflates the prices of income-elastic goods and services.
Again, good luck trying to raise tax revenue 30% without killing the US economy.
You're subsidizing the unproductive, and punishing the productive. I can be productive in untaxable ways.
Under UBI that would be your prerogative. Most highly productive individuals and all corporations will carry on producing.
>You're subsidizing the unproductive, and punishing the productive.
You may have moral qualms with a UBI system. You will need to come to terms with these doubts in the midterm future, as UBI will be the only system (we currently know of) capable of sustaining a market economy in a world where automation has displaced the workforce.
Instead of having to work for that first $1000/mo, it just...appears. Yes it was earned elsewhere, and whoever earned it won't miss it as much as the recipient will appreciate it, but since the recipient has done nothing for it, its local value plummets. Instead of some low-income people having $1000/mo for rent, now everyone has $1000/mo for rent - and basic prices will rise accordingly.
I won't notice much change for losing a sub-1% of my income, but those for whom UBI is really intended can go from really struggling to renting (even buying) housing. With limited housing supply, suddenly prices will rise.
While I'm a staunch advocate of "move already!" for solving economic problems, I don't see enough people moving - nor enough housing for them to move to - to cause "the price of housing on avg will plummet for UBIers".
Imagine the poor section of town. Many/most rent. Suddenly, with no additional productivity, everyone is getting checks for $1000/mo. You think rent etc prices aren't going to suddenly skyrocket? I grasp your theory that people can now move to more affordable locations, not needing to be near jobs - but will they really? before they can, rent prices just shot up, consuming their newfound income. Destination rental prices similarly increase - still relatively attractive, but higher than before since there is more demand and more money to pay for it.
Yes the supply of acceptable housing for UBIers increases, but those markets already existed and were already priced for a low-demand market; now you've "exploded" the demand - prices will rise, matching people who now have $1000/mo and few expenses.
I live near Vancouver, which is the most expensive housing market in Canada. Poor people here have access to free health care, a provincial welfare program, and a permanent disability allowance. The income amount is enough to live on in some parts of the province, but not Vancouver. Still there's a glut of unemployed poor people who prefer substandard housing or homelessness over relocating to where they could afford to live. They don’t choose to live anywhere else, even though they're not in Vancouver to “make a living”.
Programs aimed at helping the poor here focus on providing subsidized housing, not relocation.
It seems to me that if UBI doesn’t help these people afford a better standard of living where they are now, then it won’t help them at all unless they’re forced to relocate. What am I missing?
So its not that the whole housing market just moves up the value of UBI and nothing changes. UBI introduces a new market of houses that currently are unsellable and rotting.
Those are obviously not a long term solution, but the existence of UBI and the economic pressure it produces will incentivize builders to develop the cheapest possible living conditions to supply to people living on UBI. That almost certainly would be an entirely new model of building - constructing for density, but without the limitations of building in already densely populated areas.
You could say, "This is a problem with the current financial system," which it is, but it's not a problem that UBI will solve.
If UBI is enacted, then prices will still inflate and people who purchase foreclosed homes at auction will continue to do so today, because they will also have the same increase in income as everyone else.
If UBI is funded by printing money, people with assets will see them devalue through inflation (people with no assets won't have this loss).
If UBI is funded by taxes, it's likely to be progressive. So sure, the high income people get the UBI check. And a bigger tax bill to go with it.
Even so, if you hypothetically see a decrease in income for 3% of the population and an increase in income for 97%, you still have inflation. 100% of the population purchases housing, which is income-elastic, meaning housing prices will increase because 97% of the population's income will increase.
Maybe it would be funded by magic fairies, who knows. I guess funding it with inflation would be close enough to that.
The point I'm making is that the "universal" or "unconditional" just means that everyone gets it. It doesn't mean that everyone is better off after it is put in place, because there will be tax and economic effects from putting such a thing in place.
This is why traditional welfare programs tend to limit the type of spending - i.e. medicaid or food stamps.
In terms of A, some people would drop out of their current employment. In all likelihood temporarily, but a lot of people are doing things they don't want to do because they don't want to be homeless. Likewise, it would almost certainly not be 97% of people making more money - that kind of progressive tax threshold would mean you don't even start taxing for UBI until 6 figure income.
In terms of B, a lot of areas of the country are currently unlivable for a huge percentage of people because there is no way to earn money to afford to live there. Living there in absolute monetary terms would be cheap, but absolute money is pointless if you have nothing coming in.
UBI reduces demand for housing in cities because anyone that doesn't want the added income from living there would now have the option to move away. City housing prices are extraordinarily beyond the flat costs of construction and maintenance - the scarcity of work means a scarcity of high demand housing in cities surrounded by deserts of unlivable land.
Finally, for all those dropping out of the workforce, the UBI is not an elastic income - it will be a simple binary can a UBI recipient afford to live in your apartments or not. For those who want an extremely reliable tenant who has a guaranteed ability to pay rent every month, meeting the UBI threshold becomes an extremely strong price ceiling on affordable housing.
Inflation isn't magic. Inflation happens insofar as someone is willing to pay the higher prices and nobody can produce supply to drive the price back down. Introducing UBI does neither to housing (especially when as a percentage of income UBI relative to the cost of home ownership would be a relatively small gain in income for most people, and almost all current homeowners / tenants).
Wealth redistributions don't cause inflation. The money abstraction still represents the same amount of wealth, it just changes who can choose how to use that money to consume.
That said, you'll probably see some radical pricing changes in the market from the new system, but probably not as much as you would expect because UBI will be so limited at first, the money will be spent on absolute necessities that people are already consuming under the current system (ie demand won't go up for toilet paper and basic consumables, and UBI isn't enough for luxury goods).
There exist goods and services with prices that are a function of income-elasticity, meaning that they inflate with the more money that people make (e.g. housing). This is one of the reasons that many welfare programs are targeted spending, like food stamps or medicaid.
UBI does not do this. It doesn't "increase" the amount of money floating around, it simply redistributes a portion of the created wealth from one population (the rich) to the total population. UBI money isn't pulled out of thin air, it's taken from one group (via taxation) and distributed.
Of course prices for certain goods and services will change as a result of this wealth distribution, but to suggest global inflation will occur (ie the value that money represents decreasing within the complete system) is incorrect. Furthermore, while I obviously can't say for certain, I imagine prices for fundamental goods will not change drastically simply because UBI doesn't provide enough money for real discretionary spending. The goods/services you consume under a UBI program you already would be consuming at the same rate under the current system.
If you consider the velocity of money, you will almost certainly see inflation on consumer goods if the money to be redistributed would have otherwise just sat in some rich guys's savings account.
There are also inflation expectation to consider, liquidity traps, the actual demand for money, etc.
UBI alone simply won't provide enough discretionary income to cause sharp increases in demand of goods. Not to mention, the type of goods that a basic income affords are those that are already scaled out and are easily scaled out - ramping up supply would happen relatively quickly in the unlikely scenario that demand for these goods does go up drastically.
As I've repeatedly said in other comments, I believe demand for these simple goods will stay relatively flat since they are such fundamental necessities people are already consuming them and won't necessarily increase demand significantly (UBI won't cause demand for toilet paper to go up significantly).
You're right that the short-term effect of this is indeed inflation on the prices of these needs, but the long-term effect is larger portion of the economy dedicated to filling basic needs instead of superfluous luxuries.
How so? Is there are large number of consumers that are currently not able to satisfy their current basic needs? Otherwise aggregate demand will stay the same and on the supply side nothing changed, so there is no reason why prices would change.
> There are plenty of low income workers that would quit their jobs, driving their wages up
I don't think we have enough information currently to unequivocally state that. How many low income workers would quit? It's not like many people in better paying jobs reduce their working hours up to a point where they make the equivalent amount of money as a UBI. How many currently unemployed people would be picking up the slack?
> thereby either driving up the cost of goods or reducing supply.
Labor costs are a small part of the price of basic goods. I couldn't find much good information, but e.g. [1] says that for fresh fruit and vegetables a 40% increase of labor costs amounts to a 4% increase for consumers.
[1] https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=2005
Because of this I think prices would soar much higher than 40%
A thought experiment: you have a business; now everyone has money; then prices rise "together"; so market distribution remains the same; you decide to reduce your price to the old price and your competitors don't. Now you get customers from your competitors that you didn't have before.
The amount that this happens depends, naturally, on how free the markets involved are (if free at all).
~323,000,000 total US population
77.2% over the age of 18
~250,000,000 total over the age of 18
$12,000 per year per adult = $3,000,000,000,000 per year
[0] - https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045216
I feel it would drive a great de-urbanization, as people try to move places where they could get the most for their UBI.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
UBI isn't like defense spending. It isn't a black hole you put tax dollars down and get nothing out. It means tremendous goods demand for the necessities of life that is extremely stable and reliable for businesses to profit off.
Unlike (some) defense spending, UBI doesn't intrinsically create some economic value. Increased stability would indirectly create economic value, but it needs to be more than the face value of the UBI check for it to not lead to gross inflation.
Personally, I'd love an extra 1k / month, but I rather see that go to a lot of other people before me.
The hard part is figuring out where to take the money to cover the difference.
Most people would pay $1000 more taxes per month and get it right back as $1000 in BI. The benefit would be that if their income suddenly fluctuates, that $1000 would be there as a baseline.
Whereas the reality of people receiving free money might be somewhat different. There's the drip, drip welfare payments of just enough money to survive without being motivated to find a job. Then there's the fallout, family break-up and chaos that occur in the wake of a lottery win. Both morally questionable.
Or perhaps there might be a settling down period of people acting irresponsibly followed by a recognition that engagement with the problems of civilisation and survival doesn't end because one has food, shelter and internet. There are novels to write, structures to design, problems to solve and of course there's science to be done. Work is more fun than 'fun'. Pick something worthy of your talents or start the slide into mental disorder and addiction.
Whatever the truth it almost goes without saying that a study alone cannot sort these issues out. Perhaps it can help. But in science experiment is insufficient there has to be theory to go with. (This is a major reason why so few studies in medicine and psychology are reproducible. I assume in sociology too.) What makes it more difficult in this case is there are moral components which can't be assessed empirically, only by conjecture and criticism.
Whereas many of us spend our limited freedom chasing pleasurable (and unpleasurable) illusions that lead only to disorder and despair. That said, there are plenty of sane, wealthy people in the West who do important work for the sake of it, because they wish to. How do more of us become like them?
Also, despite apparently comfortable conditions, there are plenty of survival problems which remain. For example, meteor strikes, super-volcanoes, cancers, toxic ideologies/religions. Plus an unlimited number of as yet unidentified problems.
These problems are more abstract than working for a pay packet to buy food but they are nonetheless real. And they are not being sufficiently addressed! Universal Basic Income could turn out to be an important breakthrough in this regard, I think, if we also address the question I posed at the end of paragraph 2 above.
That's why I always clarify that an essential piece of Basic Income is that it is unconditional. Whether you're on the bottom rung of society or the top, employed or unemployed, basic income should be the same amount.
When the choice to get a job changes from "Well I'd lose my benefits" to "Well my basic income is no longer enough, I'll work part time", then state welfare no longer becomes as much of a trap. It can finally make strides towards lifting people out of poverty.
Trying to peg UBI to regional cost of living costs an incredible amount of money (the cost of living in the Bay Area has to be at least 10x the rural Rust Belt) and has practically no benefit (because all it means is people get the privilege of living wherever they want on redistributed money, rather than choosing to either live where they want and seek the means to afford it or living where its cheapest and costing society less in macrospect.
There already exist communities and retirement homes whose entire agreement with its residents is "give us your social security checks, we give you food shelter etc". If you know constant money is coming in, arranging your business around being super easy to use for that money is a very lucrative opportunity.
In addition, full, 100% automation doesn't seem likely to me. Service sectors of the economy may simply keep smaller human staffs in order to keep their hospitality atmosphere. Not enough to offset job loss in other sectors, but there are already plenty of businesses today that have a human element that don't _actually_ need them. It might even look like a luxury business model. No reason that will go away just because robots can do it better.
If it's determined that money makes lazy and that's moral hazard there should be really high tax for inheritance.
http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ "It takes the average recipient of an inheritance 19 days until they buy a new car."
Also, $1k/mo is pretty small. Are you just hoping to observe some behavioral changes at the margin with which to extrapolate?
*Drugs are a different issue, that should be treated as a health problem and dealt with accordingly.
Unless you are serving food directly you cannot prevent turning assistance into drugs because you can always just sell whatever you are given.
It's universal INCOME, not universal "take care of all your problems for you".
The idea is you can help pay for UBI by cutting the then-superfluous programs. But the benefit for people is in having the unconditional safety net, not in having access to only one program.
My proof is by example through thought experiment: I'm a grad student who has a bicycle accident. Without free gov healthcare I now must go into debt to either the hospital or a lender (medical purchases are just one example of an essentially non-negotiable expense). Perhaps I already had other debts, but somehow now my interest payment + living expenses payments are more than my basic income, otherwise known as the normal life of a grad student in todays society anyway - in my case BI didn't work. This is just one example of how easy it is to slide back into poverty with such a system, it could occur slower and over a few generations but sooner or later poverty is back. We just pushed the goal posts back a little bit.
Instead I believe we should leave our dealings with money to the marketplace, but should definitely act as a society to provide a good life for all citizens by seeing that their basic needs are met. Make free public housing that all citizens have a right to ask for. Provide basic but nutritious food to the populace, for free. Encourage free markets and capitalism, but see that the basic needs of every citizen are met - and perhaps a little power in the marketplace i.e. money is also a basic need, but its still only one of many. "If they didn't already exist, people would think public libraries were the most radically extreme socialism".
For these reasons, the growing popularity of BI is worrysome to me. It's just neoliberalism made pallitable by a once-in-every-few-generations wealth transfer.
Most UBI proposals include universal healthcare because healthcare is a problem best solved when everyone is in the "insurance pool" automatically. As long as the hippocratic oath exists and doctors have to provide life saving treatment it will always be in our macroeconomic self interest to incentivize people to seek healthcare before its life threatening.
[1] http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-inflation-adjusted/
[2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&...
That's an extraordinary assumption. The majority of nations in fact do not see routine, much less significant, overall wealth increases. Major economies as varied as Germany, Mexico, Russia, Britain, Japan, Brazil - have seen near zero economic growth for the last decade. The US appears in fact to be starting a protracted stagnation of growth, due to its extreme debt (in most every regard from public to consumer to corporate), resulting in problems similar to those experienced by Japan due to its egregious debt problems (low productivity gains, weak or negative income growth, weak or negative real wealth gains, low GDP growth, etc).
UBI can't be implemented in a nation in which population growth is falling rapidly (fewer workers to carry the tax burden), while debt is already sky high, incomes are stagnant, and existing entitlement system IOU's are already set to bankrupt (either directly via default or indirectly by currency debasement) the government (with already dire perpetual half trillion plus dollar deficits with the public debt soaring toward $30 trillion next and annual deficits set to climb toward a trillion dollars).
Median rent in the US is $934 thus this one benefit costs the US goverment as much as this proposed BI would. Unless we are talking about housing where people aren't which is likely a non-starter for a slue of reasons.
It still isn't a black hole, though. A ton of social security money is then spent on essentials. Its much less wasteful than defense spending.
On the other end of the spectrum is a lot of infrastructure spending, especially big projects like Eisenhowers national highway system that built the interstates - money goes in, but the productive gains and economic stimulant from the spending is greater than the money going in so it is a net positive for the economy. I'm hesitant to even call that government spending or debt or the cost of the state since it doesn't really cost anything - you are using money to make money. It is state investment.
Now, of course, state investments have variable success rates. You can look back at successful projects and say they were obviously worth doing in hindsight because they have produced substantial prosperity. The highway system, the national railroads, the panama canal, national electrification, the Hoover dam, etc have all proven valuable. But often a bridge built or rails laid go unused and were wasteful. And then there is the matter of how bad the government is at keeping these projects within sane budets - Boston's Big Dig took significantly longer and cost multiple times more than initially projected, and that brings the value into question after its done whereas beforehand it looked obviously beneficial.
UBI I think is in a very optimal spot on that spectrum. It is immediate wealth redistribution, going almost exclusively to the poorest who per dollar earned spend the most of directly stimulating economic demand that grows the economy most optimally. But unlike infrastructure investment the return is immediate - as checks go out money is spent often same day, and as long as money is moving from slow growth (investment) to fast growth (consumption) its a net benefit to the economy, as long as said benefit is greater than the overhead of administrating the taxes to fund it and the distribution of the money. Which comes back to the infrastructure is great scenario - its great until you are being wasteful and corrupt in spending on it. If money is actually going to building infrastructure or money is actually going to the poor it is a colossal boon. When money goes into private pockets as it does in spades with the DoD it is wasteful. It isn't the amounts you take, it is how you spend that, and how predictable your spending and taxing will be going forward - markets can handle very high taxes as long as they are predictable.
I am no fan of the military and I agree with your premise, but I would strongly, strongly disagree with the "little R&D" portion of this comment. A great deal of technology we take for granted today was first made available due to the military taking on the huge reverse asymptotic cost curves of early adoption and invention of new tech.
The military is an inefficient and potentially immoral R&D department, but it is not one that generates very little. A quick historical look at what has come out of the machinations of war and preparing for it will illustrate the point, and fast.
A lot of the problems when discussing the military budget are intentions. Nobody is proposing to grow or keep the current scale of the military on the idea its a valuable source of research. It is in the same vein as how you would not fund a basic income for research purposes - surely a lot of valuable R&D would actually come from a UBI by letting more people experiment as a hobby, but you wouldn't use it as an argument for making a UBI because the research per dollar spent ratio would be awful compared to dedicated research institutions.
Funding CERN et al is on the order of magnitudes more bang for your buck if you are spending money to advance science than spending it on a military.
Which relates back to my original point. All government spending needs to be interpreted through one of two lenses - either the government is absorbing an absolutely unavoidable expense and using its scale to lessen the burden (infrastructure maintenance, healthcare, retirement) or it is investing money with the intent for it to improve the country. There is absolutely a lot of overlap, but we are back at intents - when healthcare makes your citizenry healthier more often so they can be more productive that is a nice perk but does not come close to justifying public healthcare spending. Infrastructure can fall into both camps - building last-mile roads is absolutely not in all likelihood going to grow the economy - people would live more densely if not for state subsidies on public housing developments hooking into the public road network. But when they build highways to increase traffic throughput that is almost always with intent to grow the economy.
A UBI falls in both camps, but conservatives should focus on the later benefits. The economic growth potential. On the topic of the military budget, anyone arguing for the current scale of the US military is arguing for a "necessary expense" perspective, not an investment one. Because its investment value is atrocious. And in general people are very skeptical of anything suggested to qualify for the first camp - and we should always be skeptical of those expenses, because they are the legitimate expenses where government spending actually contracts the economy.
But that doesn't mean that X dollars won't matter. In fact that is the entire purpose of this study "If we give people $1000/month, what happens?". Sure it isn't representative of what would actually happen with BI but if the study is done well and its findings are sound through review, then it would be a great way of answering "would that amount of money matter".
You're right - it serves both conservative and liberal ideals, which is a good thing.
> but I believe this is a terrible mistake that will have the exact opposite effect to what its supporters intend - there will be more poverty and debt slavery, not less
Watch this to understand why it would not be the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
Two arguments against this. The first is that you are comparing a steady income with an insurance. You can always spend your BI on insurance. Wether insurance would be more expensive if you had BI or not, has not been proven in this model, but it could go either way.
The second is that BI in that tought experiment, even if you eliminated insurance-type nets, would still yield lower poverty. Its just not the exact same people. That is one of the hardest problems on any social welfare program: if you need to improve everyones position absolutely and relatively, you basically cant do anything. You have to let some lose for others to gain.
The book "Inventing The Future" by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams gives a detailed explanation of how to use UBI to move beyond neoliberalism.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-finnish-experiment...
(i) there are others in the same currency area who don't receive the income
(ii) the amount is insufficient to live on
(iii) there are insufficient jobs overall in the economy for all that want them
(iv) it isn't permanent
then all you actually have is a tax credit system with a different withdrawal mechanism. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...
The pathologies of income schemes that cause all of them to be degraded and cancelled build up over time as people adjust to the new scheme and work out who is failing to reciprocate.
Overall basic income is theft from workers and will be seen as such by those workers. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi... They then agitate to have the income removed from those seen as cheating the system.
What we need are guaranteed jobs at a guaranteed living wage, paid for by the state working for the public good. Then private businesses finally have to compete for labour and that maintains the wage share.
People need something to do where they can be of service to others. Not paying off and left to rot.
It would also have to be very librial about borders and illegal immigrants to simulate the US.
I would suggest the minimum size of this nation should be around 15+ million people.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
MMT doesn't model fiscal policy as unconstrained in real terms, only nominal terms. And given the legal authority, of course a sovereign issuer is always able to spend. In this case spending is merely typing digits into a computer. This fact doesn't imply deficits/debt "aren't relevant", but rather deficits/debt work very differently for the currency issuer as opposed to the currency user.
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled travelling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
Disagree, basic income is equitable distribution of a collective legacy of increasingly advanced tools and a necessary recognition of limited natural resources and duty to share a small portion to every human being on the basis of birth into our society, aka social contract.
"Overall basic income is theft from workers and will be seen as such by those workers."
When enough of those producing wealth decide that UBI = theft, they aren't going to just continue producing without pushing back. Personally, if UBI is implemented, I will "go Galt" and move to a self-sufficient homesteading-style life, leaving any cash-requiring activities (like paying taxes) to my $UBI/mo check. That I am a productive person does not mean my productivity will necessarily be taxable; I grew up in a live-off-the-land family, and would be happy to return to that lifestyle if you're going to just take a big chunk of my income just to give to others.
There are enough jobs (yes, there are). Wealth is not durable (you eat a hamburger, $1 of economic wealth turns to *). Encouraging idleness by funding it is an unsustainable economic strategy, because so many people find paid idleness a desirable lifestyle.
You're close, and it's an easy mistake to make since it seems intuitive. However, the reality is that people find THE IDEA of paid idleness desirable. Small N, but everyone I know who has found themselves in that position has only remained idle for a very short time. Productivity quickly returns, although not in the form of trading time for money.
Like most human traits, there is a wide degree of variance. As such there is no doubt in my mind UBI would allow a greater number of idlers because it would be more easily available. Just as it would allow more people to trade a job they don't like for a constructive activity they do.
(I'm not saying that about all poor, but the fraction thereof who are is significant.)
No, they need fulfillment in their life. Do you think flipping burgers at McDonald's provides that?
UBI allows people to not have to work long hours at shitty jobs. That is something that should be praised, not derided as "theft".
But maybe there much smarter than I, and they secretly want to create these problems so they can capitalize on them.
Or maybe, they want to sap the proletariat of their drive so that the elite can remain the elite forever.
My tin-foil theory: The poor are no longer able to purchase consumer goods as their entire income goes to their basic needs. With the middle class being pushed to the poor class, this will have devastating consequences for our consumerist-based economy. Thus, BI is nothing more than recession prevention.
Of course, that's probably not the case.
For many people, BI would end up being a large portion of their income, such that losing it would be catastrophic. Now those people would become beholden to any government demand made on penalty of revoking BI.
If a government enacts unconditional BI in the year 2020, who's to say they won't change their minds in 2028 and make it conditional on good behavior?
Are there any mechanisms that could make basic income a true unconditional guarantee?
>Are there any mechanisms that could make basic income a true unconditional guarantee?
Maybe a government backed cryptocurrency? One that distributes the BI through some sort of immutable smart contract? Lots of problems with the approach, but maybe we can solve enough of them.
Now, whether our current governmental or political realities would ever give up control in that manner is another story :(
Social security income is indispensable for the majority of pensioners now. It used to be only for day laborers who it was understood never had an opportunity to save. Things have changed for sure.
Similarly, most old people wouldn't be able to afford their healthcare if it wasn't for Medicare, even it they never even filled out a Medicaid application.