Most extant forms of welfare exist because at the time of their creation they allowed some group of politicans to buy the votes of some subset of the population. In order to reliably capture those votes, the welfare system has to represent a substantive transfer of wealth from whoever is getting screwed to whoever is selling their vote.
From this angle, the problem with UBI is it doesn't really represent a clear win for a sufficiently narrow group of people. You're basically taking wealth from the top X of society and transferring it to the bottom 1-X, where X is probably somewhere in the range of 30-70%. This is too wide for the strategy to work effectively. Either no one really feels like they're winning that much, or the cost to the losers is so high that they're going to fight tooth and nail to stop it.
That's just the implementation challenge I see from the political angle. I also think there are a ton of problems with UBI and it would probably be very economically and socially destructive, but that's a separate argument from the fact that it's going to be very difficult to implement in a democracy.
The largest problem for UBI - from a state and political standpoint - is that you are actually taking away power from the civil service and politicians, because they would no longer have the power over people's benefits. UBI reduces the amount of benefits you could afterwards give to specific political groups you favour.
> Most extant forms of welfare exist because at the time of their creation they allowed some group of politicans to buy the votes of some subset of the population. In order to reliably capture those votes, the welfare system has to represent a substantive transfer of wealth from whoever is getting screwed to whoever is selling their vote.
Do you have any source on that? One of the original welfare systems, in Imperial Germany, was introduced by conservative politician Otto von Bismarck to preempt the popularity of the Social Democratic party which was gaining popularity with its proposals.
Eastern bloc ( Soviets, Warsaw pact, Yugoslavia) were dictatorships that supressed any dissent, but had very decent welfare states. There were wealth transfers, of course, but they were to the state, not citizens, and welfare wasn't linked to it.
I have no idea if you are right or not, but it is a pretty wild political science theory that a policy can benefit too large of a majority of the population and therefore would be unpopular.
I am worried about how cost of living would explode to untenable levels. Low skilled labor prices would get out of control I am guessing since it is a basic supply/demand issue - when you put a floor with UBI, minimum wage to take up manual labor jobs would rise dramatically. It is actually incredible how much of our society depands on manual labor. Most people on HN are out of touch with this reality. The world runs on physically moving, stacking, filling, driving, cleaning, joining and constructing things. UBI I can see can diminishing the ability for the same laborers to obtain affordable food, housing, and transportation.
> Most extant forms of welfare exist because at the time of their creation they allowed some group of politicans to buy the votes of some subset of the population.
I think this isn't true. The UK got single-payer healthcare (with the creation of the NHS under the postwar Labour government) because it was felt that a national regime could deliver better health outcomes, following the experience of WW2. The NHS was enormously popular, thus it was embraced by the Conservatives, who beat Labour in the next election.
This is normal: successful welfare policies do not grant the party that introduced them lasting popularity and competent politicians understand this. A better model is that they are introduced because the party base wants the party to do it.
Many people have more than a billion, and I can't really think of any sort of luxury you get with 10 billion you can't easily have with 1B. Above the 1B mark you are solely holding wealth to further manipulation of macro-level power structures to your advantage. UBI is a means to forcibly redistribute anything above a certain "unlimited life of luxury" threshold to keep it below oligarchy.
Also, I want fun, cool, tech and if the masses are being put out of work by fun, cool, tech we will have problems, and thereby see far less fun, cool, tech.
which is mostly gross oversimplifications, I suspect, to trigger emotional responses. Around 2:00 they mention funding. Basically, more and higher taxes, and the critical point, IMHO: replacing current subsidies and other public services with UBI. The devil is in the details, though, and wording is critical: they seem to say, but don't clearly state, that they're getting rid of everything else, and thus saving all that money to spend on UBI.
E.g. for countries with a public healthcare system: does UBI mean all public healthcare becomes private, and you spend UBI on your provider of choice? Does this mean people/enterprises no longer need to pay healthcare taxes?
E.g. for countries with unemployment insurance: does this mean it fully goes away, so people/enterprises no longer need to pay the unemployment tax?
E.g. what about pensions? Does UBI become your pension, thus no more taxes paid for your retirement? We all know what you need to live when you're 20 is a fraction of what you need at 70.
I'm extremely skeptical of any of these initiatives because they tend to be scarce in basic details. Which is likely done on purpose.
The obvious problem here is that UBI only makes sense if you take those other programs out (no public healthcare, no public pensions), but it will be unthinkable for most europeans to loose those. There’s no way to sell a change that requires people to take that amount of personal responsibility, especially when they’ve enjoyed life without them.
I also hate that what was a good economics idea has become into a meme, and has been modified in a way that defeats the purpose.
All the current talk about UBI started with people discussing back the concept of NIT (negative income tax), and the on-paper benefits of removing poverty traps from the system.
I did not read this proposal, but if it is meant to pass as an EU directive, it will then require the member states to ratify it as an actual law, following the general principles contained in the directive. So for example, if the EU directive that passes says "The amount of the UBI has to be between 50% and 80% the average salary", the countries can set a number that way, which can be revised or not in the future, etc. That's how it usually works, for example PSD2, about payment services, had general ideas that obviously member states implemented differently in the details.
In theory, if a member state implements a directive in a way that is not faithful, it might risk a fine from the EU, but member states generally do not care much about it, I am not even sure if all of the fines that have been issued in the past have been paid...
The initiative is apparently to introduce “basic incomes”, plural, which is presumably determined based on local economic circumstances. Not sure how that reduces “regional disparities” and achieves “territorial cohesion”, though.
UBI is supposed to be a baseline guarantee, so it would be quite OK to size it for the cheapest, least developed areas in the EU free-movement area. This should be coupled with very low or non-existent taxation of entry-level wages, so this "low" UBI would still be a meaningful subsidy even in the wealthiest areas of the EU.
I would really like to see a real world UBI experiment. For example, implement UBI on two small communities. To counter act the impacts of potential inflation the experiment would need to occur for about 5 years because inflation follows changes to cash flow with a tail of about 9 to 12 months. You would need two communities to test whether isolation has an effect such that one community is geographically isolated from other population centers and the other is a suburb of a major metropolitan area.
I suspect there are all kinds of interesting pros and cons worth study, but without trials everything is just a wild guess.
A lot of small rural towns around the country already virtually are with very significant portions of the population receiving direct welfare and disability payments.
The study to do is why existing programs don’t work better.
That logo of money changing hands makes a bad impression IMHO. It made me laugh, but I doubt that's their goal. It seems like self-parody, though I'm sure it's not.
Something I've been thinking about is how are addicts and mentally ill detected/addressed in a UBI society? Today it becomes apparent because when you have issues you tend to lose your job and have to join job seeking programs and/or contact social services. With UBI you could just fall through the cracks undetected. Has this been addressed by someone?
Many issues of mental illness and drug abuse come from a lack of stability and ability to reliably meet basic needs.
Some people… have a best possible outcome of at best not contributing anything to society for big chunks of their lives. This is just a feature of humanity. You get the most people out of this situation by taking away the fear of not having enough to exist. A big chunk of people don’t need to be in prison or institutionalized or in elaborate programs to “help”, they just need time and shelter and good food, with enough freedom to pursue happiness in their own way. Drugs, crime, and mental breakdowns always have a component of desperation as cause. You can take that away and help all of those problems without needing to do anything else.
I have known people in social programs to “help” and my god were they terrible under constant threat of losing support and filled with perverse incentives to not try to be better.
I haven't heard of any programs anywhere where people who suffer from addiction or mental health issues and subsequently lose their job are somehow taken care of. People fall through the cracks all the time, every day. Here in BC, 851 people died of toxic drugs so far in 2021[1].
This is a huge issue and one that UBI might make easier to address. The person suffering from addiction or mental health issues would not be dependent on the job which could help prevent homelessness and further degradation of their state. Friends and family being able to temporarily leave the workforce to care for each other could help get that person the help they need.
Right now (speaking from a US perspective, since that's what I know), a best case scenario for someone with mental health issues like you're describing is SSI. It's around $700 a month.
To qualify, they must establish that they're unable to do any job which could earn them about $1200 a month, they can never have more than $2000 in assets, and they basically can't work.
With UBI, they just... get the $700 a month (for the sake of argument). If they can work a little, well, then they do. If they get a gift, inheritance, any sort of windfall, good for them.
There isn't ever a choice between continuing to get the lifeline check or trying to reenter the workforce, also known as the poverty trap.
This is one of the basic arguments for UBI over means-tested benefits, in fact.
I’m sceptical about UBI, but I am willing to change my mind if it works (on a large scale) in practice. The only thing is that I do not want to be part of the experiment.
Since I am from the EU this initiative concerns me, but I would fully support an US or Chinese experiment.
If you don't like the inflation of the governments currency, just build your own. (Thats the libertarian argument when it comes to everything else privatized, e.g. roads, no?)
money will just disappear at some point, it already lost all of its meaning, it is not used to share services anymore
money is used to empower the wrong people, take a look at our society, people who invest live a better life than people who take care of our elderly people, worse they live a better life than the people who are cleaning our cities
worse, they live a better life than researchers, and scientists
Wow. Isn't that a bit extreme? I don't think you fully appreciate how "normal life" depends on having a third party being obliged to do something for you.
Your libertarian success is predicated on a functioning society, with a certain level of peace and mutual trust etc.
History of civilization shows various ways to achieving various degrees of internal peace and mutual trust required for free enterprise to flourish, and all had some form of "obligation" baked in (religious or secular rule)
In the 20th century UBI was mostly supported by libertarians, for example Charles Murray and Milton Friedman. They called in Negative Income Tax, but mathematically it's the same thing.
It's smarter and more efficient than the system we have now, especially if it's funded by land value taxes.
That's exactly what it is. Privileges and handouts in exchange for obedience and votes (at least nationally - the EU has gone full CCP with their irreplaceable bureaucrats).
> through taxes and inflation, which is the worst kind of tax.
100% correct. Most EU members have official debt that equals GDP (some are worse) and they probably figure they have another 50% of GDP to borrow.
Now is also a great opportunity to transition from Covid 19 handouts to UBI (first experimentally and then - after EU-funded scientists discover it works really well - on an ever growing scale).
If they spend 5% of GDP per year on UBI, that can go on for a decade or longer before everything collapses.
Well, in the U.S. we're practically out of capitalist ways to subjugate people to the point that we have people being paid pennies an hour to work in overcrowded, for-profit, prisons. Likewise, one of the biggest, and most brutal, prison systems in the world, which just so happens to be disproportionally full of people who's ancestors were slaves.
So, let's try some new forms of subjugation at least as you'd have to be incredibly creative to find new ways of capitalist oppression.
>UBI, just another socialist way to subjugate people.
Seems preferable to endless wage slavery at the behest of unaccountable corporations run by billionaire oligarchs.
If the choice is between driving a delivery truck and having to piss in a bottle versus a UBI and upsetting libertarians, I know which one I'd choose.
>When a right requires an obligation to do something by a third party through the use of force by the state, then it is not a right, it's a priviledge.
What "privilege" are you referring to here?
>How are you going to pay for the UBI? through taxes and inflation, which is the worst kind of tax.
Part of the allure of a UBI is that society could do away with separate welfare programs and such, which is probably more efficient from a reduction of bureaucracy standpoint, since you no longer have to have that silo in your government.
This is just FIRE without the money. Did you read the actual proposal? They explicitly want to give a middle class life to everyone, with zero obligation from the individual.
This is complete insanity.
Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful. Kids are idiots (past me included), and if they knew they had the option to do nothing productive, then that's what a very significant proportion would do: nothing.
So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.
You know what, why NOT be a teenage parent and never do anything productive? There's no downside.
Or if you're one of the ones being productive, when you hit 30 and get a child, suddenly why bother going back to work ever?
Do you know how many people would be "artists" or "authors" if they could? They really believe in themselves, and write poems their whole life, publish books, paint stuff. But it's all shit. Literally nobody wanted what 99% of them did. But they had no obligation to produce anything anybody else wanted.
I'm for a strong social safety net and reducing inequality, but UBI is insanity until we actually have achieved Star Trek level of abundance.
UBI assumes that everything that people want that gives them fulfilment is actually useful to anybody else.
Neil Breen is funny because there's only one of him. Europe has what, 800M people? There would easily be 5M Neil Breens, but even missing the mark on unintentionally funny.
And NONE of them would be forced to "get their life together". Their life IS together, they're "film makers".
So we would have like 25% otherwise productive people dropping out completely, and another 50% switching to something that makes them fulfilled, but contributes nothing.
And we can't keep the world running on the backs of the 25%.
Another problem is that UBI becomes a level of power. People start planning their life after not needing it, and then politicians decide to not make it grow by inflation. Or they bump it up and make future generations pay for it. C.f. pension systems, medicare, and BBC funding for some unintended political side effects.
You end up with people doing things because they want to.
Lots of people do lots of things for reasons other than money and we’re heading towards an economy where living a middle class life doesn’t require everyone to work.
People will run factories and do science and make art without just needing to do it to eat.
Humans before civilization didn’t work anywhere near so hard to survive as people today.
Go look at github and tell me about how money is necessary to get everything done.
We’re not in a post scarcity economy but it’s nearby.
Relax, it's a petition. Anyone can sign a petition. The very idea that people think a petition is how to achieve UBI means that it will not be achieved. This is a way of feeding illusions to people who want to live in illusion, of catering to people who think complaining and wishing and imagineering unicorns and money raining down from the sky will bring said unicorns and money to them. And so the petition provides a valuable service of helping people live in their minds. It comforts them. They can pretend UBI is already here, or just over the horizon. It shouldn't upset you at all.
The EU has around 450 million residents. And hey, maybe a portion of your 50 % start hyper disruptive start-ups in, say, Berlin. There they can really contribute.
wyager|4 years ago
From this angle, the problem with UBI is it doesn't really represent a clear win for a sufficiently narrow group of people. You're basically taking wealth from the top X of society and transferring it to the bottom 1-X, where X is probably somewhere in the range of 30-70%. This is too wide for the strategy to work effectively. Either no one really feels like they're winning that much, or the cost to the losers is so high that they're going to fight tooth and nail to stop it.
That's just the implementation challenge I see from the political angle. I also think there are a ton of problems with UBI and it would probably be very economically and socially destructive, but that's a separate argument from the fact that it's going to be very difficult to implement in a democracy.
Svip|4 years ago
sofixa|4 years ago
Do you have any source on that? One of the original welfare systems, in Imperial Germany, was introduced by conservative politician Otto von Bismarck to preempt the popularity of the Social Democratic party which was gaining popularity with its proposals.
Eastern bloc ( Soviets, Warsaw pact, Yugoslavia) were dictatorships that supressed any dissent, but had very decent welfare states. There were wealth transfers, of course, but they were to the state, not citizens, and welfare wasn't linked to it.
slg|4 years ago
heavyset_go|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage|4 years ago
chalst|4 years ago
I think this isn't true. The UK got single-payer healthcare (with the creation of the NHS under the postwar Labour government) because it was felt that a national regime could deliver better health outcomes, following the experience of WW2. The NHS was enormously popular, thus it was embraced by the Conservatives, who beat Labour in the next election.
This is normal: successful welfare policies do not grant the party that introduced them lasting popularity and competent politicians understand this. A better model is that they are introduced because the party base wants the party to do it.
nr2x|4 years ago
Also, I want fun, cool, tech and if the masses are being put out of work by fun, cool, tech we will have problems, and thereby see far less fun, cool, tech.
bassman9000|4 years ago
https://rentabasicaincondicional.eu/
Can't find a decent, detailed description of the proposal. They have an intro video, a translation of the same one in the main page:
https://rentabasicaincondicional.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/...
which is mostly gross oversimplifications, I suspect, to trigger emotional responses. Around 2:00 they mention funding. Basically, more and higher taxes, and the critical point, IMHO: replacing current subsidies and other public services with UBI. The devil is in the details, though, and wording is critical: they seem to say, but don't clearly state, that they're getting rid of everything else, and thus saving all that money to spend on UBI.
E.g. for countries with a public healthcare system: does UBI mean all public healthcare becomes private, and you spend UBI on your provider of choice? Does this mean people/enterprises no longer need to pay healthcare taxes?
E.g. for countries with unemployment insurance: does this mean it fully goes away, so people/enterprises no longer need to pay the unemployment tax?
E.g. what about pensions? Does UBI become your pension, thus no more taxes paid for your retirement? We all know what you need to live when you're 20 is a fraction of what you need at 70.
I'm extremely skeptical of any of these initiatives because they tend to be scarce in basic details. Which is likely done on purpose.
xondono|4 years ago
The obvious problem here is that UBI only makes sense if you take those other programs out (no public healthcare, no public pensions), but it will be unthinkable for most europeans to loose those. There’s no way to sell a change that requires people to take that amount of personal responsibility, especially when they’ve enjoyed life without them.
I also hate that what was a good economics idea has become into a meme, and has been modified in a way that defeats the purpose.
All the current talk about UBI started with people discussing back the concept of NIT (negative income tax), and the on-paper benefits of removing poverty traps from the system.
u678u|4 years ago
winterismute|4 years ago
In theory, if a member state implements a directive in a way that is not faithful, it might risk a fine from the EU, but member states generally do not care much about it, I am not even sure if all of the fines that have been issued in the past have been paid...
mypastself|4 years ago
lu4p|4 years ago
The amount of UBI will most likely depend on how much money an individual needs to buy food, pay rent and pay basic utilities, in a given country.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
hef19898|4 years ago
zozbot234|4 years ago
axiosgunnar|4 years ago
slg|4 years ago
austincheney|4 years ago
I suspect there are all kinds of interesting pros and cons worth study, but without trials everything is just a wild guess.
colechristensen|4 years ago
The study to do is why existing programs don’t work better.
systemvoltage|4 years ago
nemexis|4 years ago
eplanit|4 years ago
Shadonototro|4 years ago
[deleted]
Shadonototro|4 years ago
[deleted]
Shadonototro|4 years ago
[deleted]
spurgu|4 years ago
colechristensen|4 years ago
Some people… have a best possible outcome of at best not contributing anything to society for big chunks of their lives. This is just a feature of humanity. You get the most people out of this situation by taking away the fear of not having enough to exist. A big chunk of people don’t need to be in prison or institutionalized or in elaborate programs to “help”, they just need time and shelter and good food, with enough freedom to pursue happiness in their own way. Drugs, crime, and mental breakdowns always have a component of desperation as cause. You can take that away and help all of those problems without needing to do anything else.
I have known people in social programs to “help” and my god were they terrible under constant threat of losing support and filled with perverse incentives to not try to be better.
barbazoo|4 years ago
This is a huge issue and one that UBI might make easier to address. The person suffering from addiction or mental health issues would not be dependent on the job which could help prevent homelessness and further degradation of their state. Friends and family being able to temporarily leave the workforce to care for each other could help get that person the help they need.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-toxic-dru...
samatman|4 years ago
To qualify, they must establish that they're unable to do any job which could earn them about $1200 a month, they can never have more than $2000 in assets, and they basically can't work.
With UBI, they just... get the $700 a month (for the sake of argument). If they can work a little, well, then they do. If they get a gift, inheritance, any sort of windfall, good for them.
There isn't ever a choice between continuing to get the lifeline check or trying to reenter the workforce, also known as the poverty trap.
This is one of the basic arguments for UBI over means-tested benefits, in fact.
enaaem|4 years ago
Since I am from the EU this initiative concerns me, but I would fully support an US or Chinese experiment.
nemexis|4 years ago
yeslibertarian|4 years ago
[deleted]
j-pb|4 years ago
Shadonototro|4 years ago
money is used to empower the wrong people, take a look at our society, people who invest live a better life than people who take care of our elderly people, worse they live a better life than the people who are cleaning our cities
worse, they live a better life than researchers, and scientists
money is a dumb thing, nowadays
ithkuil|4 years ago
Your libertarian success is predicated on a functioning society, with a certain level of peace and mutual trust etc.
History of civilization shows various ways to achieving various degrees of internal peace and mutual trust required for free enterprise to flourish, and all had some form of "obligation" baked in (religious or secular rule)
akvadrako|4 years ago
It's smarter and more efficient than the system we have now, especially if it's funded by land value taxes.
Proven|4 years ago
> through taxes and inflation, which is the worst kind of tax.
100% correct. Most EU members have official debt that equals GDP (some are worse) and they probably figure they have another 50% of GDP to borrow.
Now is also a great opportunity to transition from Covid 19 handouts to UBI (first experimentally and then - after EU-funded scientists discover it works really well - on an ever growing scale).
If they spend 5% of GDP per year on UBI, that can go on for a decade or longer before everything collapses.
nr2x|4 years ago
So, let's try some new forms of subjugation at least as you'd have to be incredibly creative to find new ways of capitalist oppression.
_ofdw|4 years ago
Seems preferable to endless wage slavery at the behest of unaccountable corporations run by billionaire oligarchs.
If the choice is between driving a delivery truck and having to piss in a bottle versus a UBI and upsetting libertarians, I know which one I'd choose.
>When a right requires an obligation to do something by a third party through the use of force by the state, then it is not a right, it's a priviledge.
What "privilege" are you referring to here?
>How are you going to pay for the UBI? through taxes and inflation, which is the worst kind of tax.
Part of the allure of a UBI is that society could do away with separate welfare programs and such, which is probably more efficient from a reduction of bureaucracy standpoint, since you no longer have to have that silo in your government.
twen_ty|4 years ago
knorker|4 years ago
This is just FIRE without the money. Did you read the actual proposal? They explicitly want to give a middle class life to everyone, with zero obligation from the individual.
This is complete insanity.
Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful. Kids are idiots (past me included), and if they knew they had the option to do nothing productive, then that's what a very significant proportion would do: nothing.
So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.
You know what, why NOT be a teenage parent and never do anything productive? There's no downside.
Or if you're one of the ones being productive, when you hit 30 and get a child, suddenly why bother going back to work ever?
Do you know how many people would be "artists" or "authors" if they could? They really believe in themselves, and write poems their whole life, publish books, paint stuff. But it's all shit. Literally nobody wanted what 99% of them did. But they had no obligation to produce anything anybody else wanted.
I'm for a strong social safety net and reducing inequality, but UBI is insanity until we actually have achieved Star Trek level of abundance.
UBI assumes that everything that people want that gives them fulfilment is actually useful to anybody else.
Neil Breen is funny because there's only one of him. Europe has what, 800M people? There would easily be 5M Neil Breens, but even missing the mark on unintentionally funny.
And NONE of them would be forced to "get their life together". Their life IS together, they're "film makers".
So we would have like 25% otherwise productive people dropping out completely, and another 50% switching to something that makes them fulfilled, but contributes nothing.
And we can't keep the world running on the backs of the 25%.
Another problem is that UBI becomes a level of power. People start planning their life after not needing it, and then politicians decide to not make it grow by inflation. Or they bump it up and make future generations pay for it. C.f. pension systems, medicare, and BBC funding for some unintended political side effects.
UBI is absolutely bananas.
colechristensen|4 years ago
Lots of people do lots of things for reasons other than money and we’re heading towards an economy where living a middle class life doesn’t require everyone to work.
People will run factories and do science and make art without just needing to do it to eat.
Humans before civilization didn’t work anywhere near so hard to survive as people today.
Go look at github and tell me about how money is necessary to get everything done.
We’re not in a post scarcity economy but it’s nearby.
barbazoo|4 years ago
I love how you framed this as a bad thing. As if FIRE was something one has to earn after years and years of wage slavery.
> Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful.
> So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.
That assumption has been disproved time and again.
rsj_hn|4 years ago
hef19898|4 years ago