If you'd told me ten years ago I would ever support a basic income, I would have laughed. My thought would have been, "People getting paid without doing anything? Absurd!" But, in the past few years I've thoroughly changed my mind on this, and a number of other fronts. I now fully support a basic income (though I think a debate needs to happen about how much that basic income ought to be and how it ought to be funded, I'm well past the point where I think we should be discussing whether it ought to happen).
Partly this has been because I did some traveling (a lot of traveling; fulltime for four years, in a motorhome). I spent a lot of time in places that aren't Silicon Valley or other thriving metropolis. Detroit, Slab City, New Orleans, a variety of rural places. There are people who have been completely pushed out of the legitimate economy or merely scrape by at the very bottom, for a variety of reasons. And, it's not a small number of people. It is huge swaths of the population (as much as 39%, based on the poverty line, but more or less, depending on how you define it). That's not sustainable, ethical, or efficient.
The CEO to worker pay gap has also contributed to my changing view on this. When a full-time (or part-time who holds another job) Walmart worker doesn't earn enough to rent a tiny apartment and pay for basic expenses, while the CEO makes orders of magnitude more, it becomes apparent there needs to be other ways to push the income down. If corporations won't behave ethically by choice, there needs to be outside pressure. Increasing efficiency and increasing revenue has not resulted in improved quality of life for workers; and that is mostly reflected across the board. It is not merely egregious examples like Walmart. Even many "good" companies have horrible pay gaps and little loyalty to their employees (while expecting loyalty and dedication in return).
And, that doesn't really even begin to address the changing nature of work. Many skilled work roles, those jobs that the American middle class was built on, have disappeared from the US economy in my lifetime, and this hasn't been reflected in a subsequent increase in pay or benefits for lower-skilled labor jobs that replaced them (and some of those jobs were not replaced...they just don't exist anymore). All while real estate prices and rents have gone through the roof. So, again, large swaths of the population, the kind of people who could have been middle class home owners in previous generations with reasonable retirement savings, are now renters who live paycheck to paycheck, or worse, live on credit. There's certainly room to talk about why the real estate market is as lopsided as it is. And, there may be room to talk about increasing skills in people who currently work low-skill jobs (though, evidence indicates there are many categories of job that are simply not going to exist in the future). Again, it's not sustainable, ethical, or efficient to have so many people living in poverty.
Finally, we already spend a couple trillion dollars on welfare programs. The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems.
I agree with you, but how do you propose going about giving this underclass the leverage they need to make this happen? Short of encouraging them to kill rich people of course, which anyway would get you killed or neutralized long before you had any hope of success. Our system is simply not set up to reliably make changes for the benefit of people with no leverage over it in the first place.
> The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems.
You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward spiral, where you have to readjust the basic income every couple of years to make up for the inflated prices.
Ever heard of minimum wage? Yeah, that one did not work as expected either (and created massive unemployment when the threshold was set too high as well).
I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the vast cost (in time, energy, money) to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having to jump through all the same hoops.)
Based on my experience in the last year working on healthcare.gov etc., I think it's become increasingly clear that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead, along with unintentional side effects, edge cases, and bad incentives.
That said, there's no way politically a basic income is going to fly in the US anytime soon. So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
(I asked this a while back on another BI thread, trying again)
In addition, every rule to catch the "undeserving" will catch some people who really do need the help and who you were trying to help in the first place.
> So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
Possibly a daft idea, but what if a company paid by the hour worked (or some other measure of work produced), but had a minimum that was always paid even if you didn't work.
Rules:
1. Nobody gets fired for not working.
2. You can get fired if you attack / something else normally fireable not related to your work itself.
3. No other jobs on the side? Less sure about that one. Could be interesting to support people trying something new but with the ability to do work on the side for you or come back. Paradoxically, I think that knowing you can leave but come back reduces the chance you'll leave forever. Quite a few careers allow sabbaticals of a year for this reason.
Sort of similar to:
1. Everyone gets BI
2. You don't get it if you're in prison
3. You can't go and live in another country and still receive it
There's been a few aid projects towards impoverished villages in Africa that have a BI setup. There's also Alaska and some other natural resource based payments.
In general I think BI is the social safety net equivalent of Greenspun's Tenth Rule:
Any sufficiently complicated social welfare program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Basic Income.
So getting there may be a case of slowly making existing benefits more universal, more cash based etc. I think one suggestion was to just keep lowering the retirement age as BI and state pensions are roughly analogous.
> unintentional side effects, edge cases, and bad incentives.
I'm reminded of Department of Agriculture v. Moreno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Agriculture_v._Mo...). Congress passed a law refusing food stamps to people who lived in shared housing with non-relatives. Of course this was targeting hippies (which is illegitimate in itself--to quote the majority, "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest"), but it naturally hit the very poor especially hard.
Couldn't anyone just start a non-profit with an endowment like a college? All profits get proportionally distrubuted to each citizen, and anything unclaimed in reinvested to grow the pot further.
I think the toughest part of the MVP is the 'citizenship verification' or whatever method you use to make sure people don't collect more than once. Partnering with an identity theft protection company might be a good way to outsource authentication.
Have the economic consequences been studied on a deeper level? There are so many complex correlations in economics that I'm afraid Basic Income can lead to some kind of disaster that's not so obvious at a first glance. How does it affect the national export/import, monetary value, growth, tax income, GDP, housing market, demand/supply on jobs/goods in different sectors etc etc?
This article touches those things, which is refreshing compared to most things written about BI, but I would still like to see a real study.
I'm generally a fan of this idea, as long as its implemented correctly.
At the moment lots of western countries, spend billions on welfare entitlement, and billions more administering a complex system, so that politicans can change particular benefits to win votes from certian groups of voters.
Under this system, all benefits are replaced with a single, universal level, so politicans can give rises either to everyone, or no one. (The only additional benefits should be for those with serve disabilities).
You also lose the withdrawal issues of going from out of work, to in work, you can get rid of things like minimum wages, as their not needed any more, and you can support a more flexible labour market.
Politicans cannot fight over, how particular benefits can change, say increase pensions, but cut unemployment.
If you also merge this into the tax system, with a flat tax as a negative income tax, it is even more efficient.
And eventually you also get what alot of people on the right want - a smaller, more efficient goverment, while doing what alot of people on the left want.
I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies.
To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I find it worrying that the counter-argument is "people are working too hard anyway". It is impossible to guess what would happen but as all former communist countries know, it is not fun to have grand economic ideas experimented on a live population.
The second risk is that this could work in a closed society like Japan. But most western countries have mass immigration and such a system wouldn't survive very long the abuse it would inevitably trigger in an open society.
The idea of Basic Income goes hand in hand with the process of automation. There are millions of jobs that will go away due to automation. The counter-argument to "will basic income lead more people to stop working" is not "people are working too hard anyway" but rather "most people won't have a job...coming soon". What are all those people going to do once this happens? Find another job? Yeah right. Here [1] is an article discussing this very problem.
Also, I don't think the second risk you mention is really applicable. What's to stop a nation implementing BI from capping the number of immigrants it admits? Or am I misunderstanding you.
I also found the idea very interesting, but I don't necessarily agree with all the risks you have identified.
- "at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits": mostly agree, except for benefits related to disabilities. I would still make a distinction between people who are able to work, and people who not only cannot work but need help (sometimes costly help) just to stay alive, and everything in-between.
- "this will lead more people to stop working": could be, or it could be the opposite, but it's hard to know without experimenting. Single mothers or fathers working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet would probably keep at most one and spend more time with their kid(s). Students would probably just focus on their studies. But on the other hand unemployment benefits and related schemes are so badly designed (in general) that for lots of people currently collecting welfare, working would result either in the same purchasing power, or more likely a net decrease in purchasing power. I don't know the situation in US, but it certainly is like that in France. Unconditional Basic Income means every dollar earned on the job is a dollar (minus x% of taxes) extra spendable income. I believe money to be a better source of motivation than some vague sense of duty.
- "mass immigration": there are already societies living on nearly unconditional basic income, where the only condition is to have the right citizenship -> Qatar, etc. The result is not great for the poor immigrants doing the actual work. This is the IMHO the biggest issue with Unconditional Basic Income: how to make it work when getting it will never be quite that universal, but depends on which side of the border and/or citizenship you're standing?
But I do think think that countries which offer a great deal of socialized benefits (such as Finland, Sweden etc.) have a significant problem with a unemployment in the youngest generation of the labor force.
> it is not fun to have grand economic ideas experimented on a live population.
True, but unfortunately there is no other way to test the validity of economic theories. You can't simulate a human society in a lab.
At best, you can start experimenting on a small subset of humans and expand once you're sure that it's safe. Guess what, there have been several UBI experiments in various places ranging from Namibia to Canada, and the results seem promising.
Japan does sound like a good place for large-scale experiments like this. But even that might be too ambitious for now, with 130 million lives at stake. Perhaps we should try Norway, Finland, Switzerland and/or Iceland first.
One reason why I am currently not so much in favor of UBI is immigration. I have three uncommon beliefs about immigration:
First, I don't believe the idea of human rights allows a state to tell people where they are allowed or forbidden to live.
Secondly, I don't believe immigration controls are ultimately feasible. In the US this is obvious in the big population of illegal immigrants, other countries are also discovering that they can't really stop people from entering and that hunting down and deporting hundreds of thousands of people is harder than it looks.
Thirdly, I don't believe a society can save money by withholding social welfare to someone who lives among them. The cost in health care, crime, and lost potential may very well outpace the savings.
I also believe a UBI would force countries to try and tighten their immigration controls. The problem is not so much that the immigrants wouldn't ultimately benefit that society, but the upfront payments and increased financial risks are just scary as hell.
I agree on 1 and 2, but don't see how 3 follows. If you live as an "illegal immigrant" you are playing life on a higher difficulty level already. UBI wouldn't apply to non-citizens.
Of course you might argue that it very well should, but that to me is a different argument that comes at a way later stage.
EDIT: I believe this argument is confusing how the world should be with how the world can feasibly be at this point in time. Baby-steps :)
There are countries (especially Northern Europe) that already spend a large amount of money for unemployment and social benefits. In those countries the basic income could be implemented in a cost-neutral manner, just refactoring how the the sum of money equal to the present benefits, is allotted.
I like the idea of a basic income on principle, and this article has some great arguments for it. (Though I agree it is far from being paid for--and a land tax essentially means it only gets paid to the landless, so you'd need to exempt "reasonable" owner-occupied land).
But let's simulate how it would look in the real world. I think mindless consumerism would go way up, especially in the lower classes. Advertising in all media would simply encourage this. The well-off would buy stock in Walmart and low end electronics makers with their extra income, thus capturing the income of the less savvy. Without local manufacturing, much of the distributed income would go to China. Paternalism and its religious affiliates would rise up again to capture the income of the not-yet-emancipated (by that I mean women and children). With perceived abundance and linear income, the birth rate would rise.
So I think we need to solve some of these issues first. Education should be the beneficiary for the first trillion in new taxes. Hopefully that could mitigate the consumerism and prompt more entrepreneurialism, as well as reduce the paternalism and birth rate. As mentioned, doing universal health care right would amount to the same thing as a universal income as well (more security, less worry, more productivity). So I wonder if those two aren't bigger priorities.
In the UK the government has recently being trying to increase the birthrate by giving more money to those who have kids, so its interesting to see you suggest this would be a problem with BI.
I assume this is a general problem with advanced economies as I read an article recently that said kids in school were being given better info on how to get pregnant in some countries, in another attempt to lift the birth rate.
I was shocked by the "magic of markets" analysis. When there's no more bread, people make more bread ? Nope, bread becomes more expensive. Especially with automation : it's harder for new baker to start in the market, so those in the market get more powerful. That's concentration.
Basic income will make less poor but more slaves. Slaves that will be dependent on those (I assume it's the state) who define the exact amount of that uncondional income. Since a huge part of the population will be out of the "producer", thus the producer will have more power.
What must be done instead is to make sure power doesn't get concentrated. But this means less efficiency : one big optimised company is surely more efficient that ten smaller ones. With less power, the workforce can still negociate, the workforce can still share the remaining work, those who have no job still have a chance to get one if they want/need to. With basic income, there's no need to do that anymore...
So I don't like that basic income.
For example, there's a lot of unemployment in my country. People gets some allowance to live. The problem is that the lack of work is not acknowledged => those people are stigmatized. Anyway, they do get an allowance, kind of your basic income. The problem is that because of the unemployment, the employer are in a very strong position to pay people less (since many do want/need a job). So work valuation diminishes...
Competition is the problem, if companies would compete less, then basic income could work. There would be more space for choice : do I work or not ? can I share my work ?
Basic income means : let's detach ourselves from the consequences of competition.
The appeal to UBI for me has always, apart from being a good way to stop welfare traps and increase income equality now, is that it marks the beginning of the new phase in our economic system: one from a cash-work model to a material-existence model. I do subscribe to the total job automation theory being every so increasingly talked about, and what these proposals tell me is that government and to a larger extent society is beginning to see that we can indeed provide for everyone using our productivity gains. The cash part of the deal I think is just a carry-on from our ageing economic system that will be replaced by some other form of value transfer mechanism which honestly, I can't imagine what would look like.
One thing I've always wondered about the basic income is wont it just mean prices go up because people are greedy? Take the article about trailer parks that was on here a week ago: The business owners said that they had to be careful when raising prices to make sure tenants can still afford it. If their tenants suddenly get an extra $1000/month, what's to stop them putting the rent up by $1000/month?
The reason trailer park owners can keep raising prices is because cities won't allow new trailer parks to be built. This artificially restricts demand. Local governments artificially restricting the supply of affordable housing isn't necessarily going to be fixed by a basic income.
However, if people have an extra $1000 a month, many of them can afford other types of housing. Increased demand for this newly affordable housing will drive up the price, and developers will move in to build more housing. The increase in supply would then drive down prices until they reach an equilibrium.
People that wouldn't work wouldn't have to live in highly contested areas with a high rent. Workers could afford them, others would live outside of those expensive areas, keep their guaranteed income and decide what to do with their lives.
Sadly I think that UBI supporters tend to the false impression that everybody would be:
1) Frugal.
2) Responsible.
I just don't have that much faith in (roughly) half the population. What happens when people have too many kids and are still too impoverished? Is there going to be a "reasonable limit" to the number of kids you can have? Women could have as many as 20 kids or more. Is that really going to work? What happens when they are drug addicts (or worse free-to-play video games addicts) who cannot control their spending?
For me personally I love the idea of UBI, but I just don't think that it can work on a practical level. The examples that explain how to generate the required money to pay for it don't seem very feasible to me. You cannot add VAT. That is borderline "perpetual motion machine" logic right there. At the most basic level you will just have to tax the wealthy more one way or another. That is it. The only option. The question is: are they ok with that?
The only risk in my opinion is if to little people still pick up a job to satisfy the need for all. Also the basic income should need to be basic, so there is some insensitive to work (at least a little). Can be adjusted of course to compensate. IMPORTANT: legal and medical support has to be free for this to not cause epic issues. (And maybe some others I forgot.)
I am interested in this idea. As I understand it, it's a long-held idea with some support from the center, left, and right.
Having said that, last week I read through an analysis piece -- 6-8 page pdf -- that I found on a financial site. I found out some interesting things that supporters don't emphasize.
The problem, as I understand it, is that UBI is fine in theory and as a high-level idea. Once you start actually thinking about applying it? The words could mean dang near anything. Is it across the board? Are there exceptions? Would you use a reverse income tax, direct payments, or other mechanism to deliver it? What sorts of incentives does it provide to the working poor? If you really wanted to eventually replace hourly occupation, wouldn't it make more sense to begin providing it to those who have worked their entire lives? Begin direct payments to retirees and then slowly decrease the retirement age as the years pass?
Those are just questions I made up after reading the article. Apologies if I botched it. But I was impressed with the fact that there is a ginormous gap between the slogan of UBI and whatever it actually might end up becoming. A big enough gap that politicians could say they support it and actually give you pretty much anything. There's also not a huge amount of real-world data here.
So my position is "cautiously optimistic". Let's do some limited experiments with this to see how the real-world politics play out and what the difference between the PR package and the actual deliverable is. In the U.S., the states have traditionally been the "laboratories of democracy", but if folks don't like that, there has to be other ways to do a bunch of limited trials.
What I am not in support of is some huge national movement built around a slogan where I'm forced to make a yes-no decision for the rest of the citizenry. Here's hoping it doesn't play out like that.
Give me $1000 a month and I'd be able to retire. I wouldn't be rich but with savings and so on I'd be able to manage. So it would cost perhaps $30000 more than that in lost income taxes too as well as lost productivity. I imagine very many people would do this.
I would too. I'd do so immediately. And what would I do with all that leisure time? I'd teach the local children robotics with Arduinos and RasPis, just like I do now with every scrap of my meager free-time only then I'd get to do it every day.
Imagine how impoverished the world would become if thousands like me took to a life of such mooching!
The more of you who take this deal, the better I and everyone else is. You're so uninvested in what you do for a living you'd stop for $1K/mo? Good riddance. You're a drag on anyone who's actually trying to get shit done. The rest of us will be more productive, and happier, not fucking with you. We'll happily pay higher taxes to get you out of our way.
I imagine the idea is great and most people are not like you. But that is just my imagination. On the other hand, the article presents very good arguments for the system and why would it work.
At some point, intelligent members of society (read: YOU PEOPLE) will realize that there is no such thing as zero-sum fiat monetary system. You don't need to tax someone for the government to create a new spending program. There is no scarcity in USD (its fiat money, there's infinite supply). When there are economic resources untapped, the ~50% unemployed & underemployed, the Government MUST step in and provide stimulus. The multiplier on the economy has been well studied and would benefit society greatly.
IN FIAT MONEY SYSTEMS (USD, CAD, JPY, AUD, CHF, etc.) FEDERAL DEBT IS PUBLIC INCOME. FEDERAL SURPLUS IS PUBLIC DEBT.
The question is whether the money comes out of existing spending or is in addition to it. There's no reason that it couldn't be entirely sourced from existing spending (~36%+ of GDP in US, $6.2T).
I'd say that simple understandings of economic theories fail to acknowledge limited physical resources. But most "theories" I know don't even talk about limited physical resources.
Economic growth is about "value", not necessarily "consumption of physical resources".
The planet offers basically unlimited resources. Assuming the population stops growing, as it is predicted, and settles at some reasonable number, then only limit is the expiration date of the sun.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|10 years ago|reply
Partly this has been because I did some traveling (a lot of traveling; fulltime for four years, in a motorhome). I spent a lot of time in places that aren't Silicon Valley or other thriving metropolis. Detroit, Slab City, New Orleans, a variety of rural places. There are people who have been completely pushed out of the legitimate economy or merely scrape by at the very bottom, for a variety of reasons. And, it's not a small number of people. It is huge swaths of the population (as much as 39%, based on the poverty line, but more or less, depending on how you define it). That's not sustainable, ethical, or efficient.
The CEO to worker pay gap has also contributed to my changing view on this. When a full-time (or part-time who holds another job) Walmart worker doesn't earn enough to rent a tiny apartment and pay for basic expenses, while the CEO makes orders of magnitude more, it becomes apparent there needs to be other ways to push the income down. If corporations won't behave ethically by choice, there needs to be outside pressure. Increasing efficiency and increasing revenue has not resulted in improved quality of life for workers; and that is mostly reflected across the board. It is not merely egregious examples like Walmart. Even many "good" companies have horrible pay gaps and little loyalty to their employees (while expecting loyalty and dedication in return).
And, that doesn't really even begin to address the changing nature of work. Many skilled work roles, those jobs that the American middle class was built on, have disappeared from the US economy in my lifetime, and this hasn't been reflected in a subsequent increase in pay or benefits for lower-skilled labor jobs that replaced them (and some of those jobs were not replaced...they just don't exist anymore). All while real estate prices and rents have gone through the roof. So, again, large swaths of the population, the kind of people who could have been middle class home owners in previous generations with reasonable retirement savings, are now renters who live paycheck to paycheck, or worse, live on credit. There's certainly room to talk about why the real estate market is as lopsided as it is. And, there may be room to talk about increasing skills in people who currently work low-skill jobs (though, evidence indicates there are many categories of job that are simply not going to exist in the future). Again, it's not sustainable, ethical, or efficient to have so many people living in poverty.
Finally, we already spend a couple trillion dollars on welfare programs. The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems.
[+] [-] deciplex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|10 years ago|reply
You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward spiral, where you have to readjust the basic income every couple of years to make up for the inflated prices.
Ever heard of minimum wage? Yeah, that one did not work as expected either (and created massive unemployment when the threshold was set too high as well).
[+] [-] kalvin|10 years ago|reply
Based on my experience in the last year working on healthcare.gov etc., I think it's become increasingly clear that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead, along with unintentional side effects, edge cases, and bad incentives.
That said, there's no way politically a basic income is going to fly in the US anytime soon. So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
(I asked this a while back on another BI thread, trying again)
[+] [-] IanCal|10 years ago|reply
> So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
Possibly a daft idea, but what if a company paid by the hour worked (or some other measure of work produced), but had a minimum that was always paid even if you didn't work.
Rules:
1. Nobody gets fired for not working.
2. You can get fired if you attack / something else normally fireable not related to your work itself.
3. No other jobs on the side? Less sure about that one. Could be interesting to support people trying something new but with the ability to do work on the side for you or come back. Paradoxically, I think that knowing you can leave but come back reduces the chance you'll leave forever. Quite a few careers allow sabbaticals of a year for this reason.
Sort of similar to:
1. Everyone gets BI
2. You don't get it if you're in prison
3. You can't go and live in another country and still receive it
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|10 years ago|reply
In general I think BI is the social safety net equivalent of Greenspun's Tenth Rule:
Any sufficiently complicated social welfare program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Basic Income.
So getting there may be a case of slowly making existing benefits more universal, more cash based etc. I think one suggestion was to just keep lowering the retirement age as BI and state pensions are roughly analogous.
[+] [-] alexbecker|10 years ago|reply
I'm reminded of Department of Agriculture v. Moreno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Agriculture_v._Mo...). Congress passed a law refusing food stamps to people who lived in shared housing with non-relatives. Of course this was targeting hippies (which is illegitimate in itself--to quote the majority, "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest"), but it naturally hit the very poor especially hard.
[+] [-] cwkoss|10 years ago|reply
I think the toughest part of the MVP is the 'citizenship verification' or whatever method you use to make sure people don't collect more than once. Partnering with an identity theft protection company might be a good way to outsource authentication.
[+] [-] MCRed|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|10 years ago|reply
This article touches those things, which is refreshing compared to most things written about BI, but I would still like to see a real study.
[+] [-] lloydsparkes|10 years ago|reply
At the moment lots of western countries, spend billions on welfare entitlement, and billions more administering a complex system, so that politicans can change particular benefits to win votes from certian groups of voters.
Under this system, all benefits are replaced with a single, universal level, so politicans can give rises either to everyone, or no one. (The only additional benefits should be for those with serve disabilities).
You also lose the withdrawal issues of going from out of work, to in work, you can get rid of things like minimum wages, as their not needed any more, and you can support a more flexible labour market.
Politicans cannot fight over, how particular benefits can change, say increase pensions, but cut unemployment.
If you also merge this into the tax system, with a flat tax as a negative income tax, it is even more efficient.
And eventually you also get what alot of people on the right want - a smaller, more efficient goverment, while doing what alot of people on the left want.
[+] [-] cm2187|10 years ago|reply
To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I find it worrying that the counter-argument is "people are working too hard anyway". It is impossible to guess what would happen but as all former communist countries know, it is not fun to have grand economic ideas experimented on a live population.
The second risk is that this could work in a closed society like Japan. But most western countries have mass immigration and such a system wouldn't survive very long the abuse it would inevitably trigger in an open society.
[+] [-] vlasev|10 years ago|reply
Also, I don't think the second risk you mention is really applicable. What's to stop a nation implementing BI from capping the number of immigrants it admits? Or am I misunderstanding you.
[1]: https://medium.com/basic-income/should-we-be-afraid-very-afr...
[+] [-] Xixi|10 years ago|reply
- "at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits": mostly agree, except for benefits related to disabilities. I would still make a distinction between people who are able to work, and people who not only cannot work but need help (sometimes costly help) just to stay alive, and everything in-between.
- "this will lead more people to stop working": could be, or it could be the opposite, but it's hard to know without experimenting. Single mothers or fathers working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet would probably keep at most one and spend more time with their kid(s). Students would probably just focus on their studies. But on the other hand unemployment benefits and related schemes are so badly designed (in general) that for lots of people currently collecting welfare, working would result either in the same purchasing power, or more likely a net decrease in purchasing power. I don't know the situation in US, but it certainly is like that in France. Unconditional Basic Income means every dollar earned on the job is a dollar (minus x% of taxes) extra spendable income. I believe money to be a better source of motivation than some vague sense of duty.
- "mass immigration": there are already societies living on nearly unconditional basic income, where the only condition is to have the right citizenship -> Qatar, etc. The result is not great for the poor immigrants doing the actual work. This is the IMHO the biggest issue with Unconditional Basic Income: how to make it work when getting it will never be quite that universal, but depends on which side of the border and/or citizenship you're standing?
EDIT: typo
[+] [-] hurin|10 years ago|reply
But I do think think that countries which offer a great deal of socialized benefits (such as Finland, Sweden etc.) have a significant problem with a unemployment in the youngest generation of the labor force.
[+] [-] kijin|10 years ago|reply
True, but unfortunately there is no other way to test the validity of economic theories. You can't simulate a human society in a lab.
At best, you can start experimenting on a small subset of humans and expand once you're sure that it's safe. Guess what, there have been several UBI experiments in various places ranging from Namibia to Canada, and the results seem promising.
Japan does sound like a good place for large-scale experiments like this. But even that might be too ambitious for now, with 130 million lives at stake. Perhaps we should try Norway, Finland, Switzerland and/or Iceland first.
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|10 years ago|reply
First, I don't believe the idea of human rights allows a state to tell people where they are allowed or forbidden to live.
Secondly, I don't believe immigration controls are ultimately feasible. In the US this is obvious in the big population of illegal immigrants, other countries are also discovering that they can't really stop people from entering and that hunting down and deporting hundreds of thousands of people is harder than it looks.
Thirdly, I don't believe a society can save money by withholding social welfare to someone who lives among them. The cost in health care, crime, and lost potential may very well outpace the savings.
I also believe a UBI would force countries to try and tighten their immigration controls. The problem is not so much that the immigrants wouldn't ultimately benefit that society, but the upfront payments and increased financial risks are just scary as hell.
[+] [-] oskarth|10 years ago|reply
Of course you might argue that it very well should, but that to me is a different argument that comes at a way later stage.
EDIT: I believe this argument is confusing how the world should be with how the world can feasibly be at this point in time. Baby-steps :)
[+] [-] jakozaur|10 years ago|reply
Though not sure if people would support that, once they saw the bill for their land. Changing status quo is hard.
Though I would suggest that universal free healthcare is some form of basic income. Maybe let's do it first?
Another less hardcore version is to expand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
E.g. Tax rate is negative on initial amount. E.g. You earn $2k and get additional $200 tax refund.
[+] [-] jackgavigan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sampo|10 years ago|reply
There are countries (especially Northern Europe) that already spend a large amount of money for unemployment and social benefits. In those countries the basic income could be implemented in a cost-neutral manner, just refactoring how the the sum of money equal to the present benefits, is allotted.
[+] [-] 205guy|10 years ago|reply
But let's simulate how it would look in the real world. I think mindless consumerism would go way up, especially in the lower classes. Advertising in all media would simply encourage this. The well-off would buy stock in Walmart and low end electronics makers with their extra income, thus capturing the income of the less savvy. Without local manufacturing, much of the distributed income would go to China. Paternalism and its religious affiliates would rise up again to capture the income of the not-yet-emancipated (by that I mean women and children). With perceived abundance and linear income, the birth rate would rise.
So I think we need to solve some of these issues first. Education should be the beneficiary for the first trillion in new taxes. Hopefully that could mitigate the consumerism and prompt more entrepreneurialism, as well as reduce the paternalism and birth rate. As mentioned, doing universal health care right would amount to the same thing as a universal income as well (more security, less worry, more productivity). So I wonder if those two aren't bigger priorities.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|10 years ago|reply
I assume this is a general problem with advanced economies as I read an article recently that said kids in school were being given better info on how to get pregnant in some countries, in another attempt to lift the birth rate.
[+] [-] rjaco31|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wiz21|10 years ago|reply
Basic income will make less poor but more slaves. Slaves that will be dependent on those (I assume it's the state) who define the exact amount of that uncondional income. Since a huge part of the population will be out of the "producer", thus the producer will have more power.
What must be done instead is to make sure power doesn't get concentrated. But this means less efficiency : one big optimised company is surely more efficient that ten smaller ones. With less power, the workforce can still negociate, the workforce can still share the remaining work, those who have no job still have a chance to get one if they want/need to. With basic income, there's no need to do that anymore...
So I don't like that basic income.
For example, there's a lot of unemployment in my country. People gets some allowance to live. The problem is that the lack of work is not acknowledged => those people are stigmatized. Anyway, they do get an allowance, kind of your basic income. The problem is that because of the unemployment, the employer are in a very strong position to pay people less (since many do want/need a job). So work valuation diminishes...
Competition is the problem, if companies would compete less, then basic income could work. There would be more space for choice : do I work or not ? can I share my work ?
Basic income means : let's detach ourselves from the consequences of competition.
[+] [-] momavujisic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucaspiller|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] learc83|10 years ago|reply
However, if people have an extra $1000 a month, many of them can afford other types of housing. Increased demand for this newly affordable housing will drive up the price, and developers will move in to build more housing. The increase in supply would then drive down prices until they reach an equilibrium.
[+] [-] zxyzzxxx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ydx|10 years ago|reply
1) Frugal. 2) Responsible.
I just don't have that much faith in (roughly) half the population. What happens when people have too many kids and are still too impoverished? Is there going to be a "reasonable limit" to the number of kids you can have? Women could have as many as 20 kids or more. Is that really going to work? What happens when they are drug addicts (or worse free-to-play video games addicts) who cannot control their spending?
For me personally I love the idea of UBI, but I just don't think that it can work on a practical level. The examples that explain how to generate the required money to pay for it don't seem very feasible to me. You cannot add VAT. That is borderline "perpetual motion machine" logic right there. At the most basic level you will just have to tax the wealthy more one way or another. That is it. The only option. The question is: are they ok with that?
[+] [-] dopkew|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graycat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qantourisc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|10 years ago|reply
Having said that, last week I read through an analysis piece -- 6-8 page pdf -- that I found on a financial site. I found out some interesting things that supporters don't emphasize.
The problem, as I understand it, is that UBI is fine in theory and as a high-level idea. Once you start actually thinking about applying it? The words could mean dang near anything. Is it across the board? Are there exceptions? Would you use a reverse income tax, direct payments, or other mechanism to deliver it? What sorts of incentives does it provide to the working poor? If you really wanted to eventually replace hourly occupation, wouldn't it make more sense to begin providing it to those who have worked their entire lives? Begin direct payments to retirees and then slowly decrease the retirement age as the years pass?
Those are just questions I made up after reading the article. Apologies if I botched it. But I was impressed with the fact that there is a ginormous gap between the slogan of UBI and whatever it actually might end up becoming. A big enough gap that politicians could say they support it and actually give you pretty much anything. There's also not a huge amount of real-world data here.
So my position is "cautiously optimistic". Let's do some limited experiments with this to see how the real-world politics play out and what the difference between the PR package and the actual deliverable is. In the U.S., the states have traditionally been the "laboratories of democracy", but if folks don't like that, there has to be other ways to do a bunch of limited trials.
What I am not in support of is some huge national movement built around a slogan where I'm forced to make a yes-no decision for the rest of the citizenry. Here's hoping it doesn't play out like that.
[+] [-] jbb555|10 years ago|reply
The whole whole idea is stupid.
[+] [-] noonespecial|10 years ago|reply
Imagine how impoverished the world would become if thousands like me took to a life of such mooching!
[+] [-] sjtrny|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbenhur|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zxyzzxxx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conanbatt|10 years ago|reply
Also if you make 1000 a month now, you probably dont pay much taxes.
[+] [-] orlandob|10 years ago|reply
IN FIAT MONEY SYSTEMS (USD, CAD, JPY, AUD, CHF, etc.) FEDERAL DEBT IS PUBLIC INCOME. FEDERAL SURPLUS IS PUBLIC DEBT.
[+] [-] jboggan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Meekro|10 years ago|reply
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
[+] [-] cnsbwkf9385|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmnicolas|10 years ago|reply
- the System (corporations / politicians) will never allow it
- we're on a planet with limited resources and all economic theories fail to acknowledge that
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|10 years ago|reply
Economic growth is about "value", not necessarily "consumption of physical resources".
[+] [-] zxyzzxxx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conanbatt|10 years ago|reply