I've seen realistic figures for my country on UBI and from what I've seen UBI at a realistic level does not seem to be affordable. It's insanely expensive. Moreover, without massive changes elsewhere in society, UBI would decrease social mobility and lead to a two-class society that keeps the poor even poorer than now.
I'd rather see reasonable minimum wages, and higher taxes that are spent on universal health care, free education and social welfare in the usual Prioritarian way, though with very loose conditions on eligible recipients. Make it the least bureaucratic possible and the most friendly to side jobs and transitioning to self-sustenance as possible, and it will works optimally. The current systems in most countries are horrible, because they are designed to punish people who are creative and try to make money on the side - they are based on the stupid and outdated idea that you're either a successful entrepreneur, or an employee, or get social welfare. In reality, the system should allow anyone to transition between those three roles with ease, as it fits best in the current situation, and without being bogged down by existential sorrows all the time.
UBI isn't intended to solve economic problems that existed or even could be centuries ago - it tackles the problem of poverty of people becoming unemployable due to technological progress, despite very high productivity allowing to satisfy the basic needs of everyone with a small fraction of gross national product, or a small fraction of population working on those basic needs. It's a serious problem for the future, but we're just barely (and only in select locations) beginning to have it. UBI doesn't make sense until the abovementioned conditions arrive, but they're coming, and I'm not aware of any other sensible solutions for these solutions.
When this situation comes, the good option is that the society simply gives the new class of unemployable people their basic needs one way (like UBI) or another; the evil option is that the society doesn't give them the basic needs and they starve (since their labor has no value and they have nothing to trade for these basic needs); and the third option is that they take the basic needs in a revolution that likely destroys half of the society. Really, noone wants the second or third options, including most of the 0.1%, so we will see some mass redistribution system being implemented.
In 1917, taking all the resources from rich people and giving it to poor people wasn't enough to keep the poor people out of starvation for long and destroyed the productivity totally. In 2017, taking more money from the rich to feed the poor doesn't require even close to taking all their resources, as feeding the poor is so much cheaper compared to 1917; it would be deeply unpopular but is doable without killing the rich, and the society could sustain such level of taxation indefinitely if they wished even if nothing changed - but it's going to change, and in 2037 taking enough resources from the rich (i.e. the owners of highly automated means of production) to feed everyone UBI-style would be expected to be just a minor tax, and a boost for the economy, giving spending power to people who'd otherwise have no spending power at all.
UBI isn't the clear choice everyone makes it out to be. I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth. But, fundamentally, UBI is just a welfare program with way more money pouring in so it guarantees a livable income to everyone. We could achieve the same effect by just increasing the progressive welfare. We could remove those welfare cliffs where people lose money by making more money by smoothing out the curves. But, UBI does something more by taking money from those who need it and giving it to those who don't. Every dollar going to an upper middle class tech worker is a dollar not going towards uplifting the lowest of our society. We should care a little about efficiency because UBI will be CRAZY expensive and CRAZY anti-business when we increase taxes on them. There are less costly ways to achieve better income equality like better education or increased welfare which don't hurt business. Businesses could operate with way thinner profits sure, but other countries offer other options.
philosophically I like the idea of a UBI. but realistically I don't believe anymore in solutions based on financial reorganizations. the society needs a fundamental shift of how resources are allocated and used. I expect a UBI to only produce a low-income class that depends on UBI and can't find a job that pays sufficiently well and another high-income class that just gets the UBI on top of their ample salary. prices will factor in the new offset and adapt positively. we'll see more low paying jobs for UBI-dependent people who can't choose.
UBI has never seemed like a good idea to me. If the current system is being exploited (corporations like walmart paying below a living wage to workers because they know foodstamps/gov't assistance will cover the rest) it just never made sense to me that the current class conflict gets solved by the losing side (workers) gets free money to pay to the winning side (capital holders). I also haven't heard any convincing arguments for the basic counterpoint that UBI won't lead to just an increase in prices across the board for everything and inflationary pressure (free market competition is a myth in a lot of current-day markets, regulators are asleep at the wheel).
You could argue that we already have forms of UBI in practice right now, but the UBI that gets referred to in tech circles with no significant tax structure changes just uses the government to guarantee more wealth accumulation for those already at the top. As the gulf between the workers and the capital class widens, it gets harder and harder for anyone to make the leap, and then we get the societies we see in Sci-Fi (ex. Elysium). It seems so absurd that people are pushing for UBI in a world where the US doesn't even have nationalized healthcare and a reasonable healthcare system. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
I think the right-ish solution in the US can be oversimplified to:
- Reduce ludicrous defense spending in peace time
- Increase corporate and top end taxes to what they have been historically
- Resurrect unions
- Fix job displacement with investment in education and job retraining programs with extra support linked to enrollment
Unfortunately, getting any of these things done requires an insane amount of political know-how, political will, coordination, and effort, and someone to lay out a plan and lead the effort, not even including all the problems with today's hyper-partisan political climate.
UBI doesn't work under any circumstances. And you don't need it besides. The better managed welfare states of Europe such as Austria, Germany, Finland or Sweden, have already figured out how to operate relatively good systems. No UBI needed.
The approach that will work in the US is a system of income crediting targeted at lower wage workers. And that will still push up their cost of living, for housing and lower priced used vehicles in particular (which will result in the left attempting aggressive rent controls in cities, which will largely backfire).
It's irrational to give everyone a universal basic income. Scale a wage credit for poorer workers and reduce it as you go up the income brackets. Instead of earning $10/hr, it's $15/hr with the credit; instead of $12/hr, it's $16/hr; instead of $15, it's $18/hr. Make the floor $15; shift the federal minimum wage up to $10. Spend the time and money necessary to research what setup - what bracketing - will work best for the present US economy, and then fix it to be adjusted every few years.
It will also put pressure on wages above those workers. It'll ripple through the pay scales. People just beyond the cutoff will be the most unhappy.
* why not shift the minimum wage up to $15? Because if a worker's labor isn't worth $15/hr, they have no place in the labor force. If you use a credit system, their labor may be worth $7-$10/hr, and they can be subsidized up to eg $15/hr or whatever makes sense. A high minimum wage is regressive by comparison, it chops people off at the knees if their labor value isn't high enough.
I don't think UBI can work. I love the idea of it, but as soon as you have a democracy and state provided income, it's too easy to vote yourself a raise. Look at countries like Argentina, Spain, Greece, Venezuela, where there are or were a huge percentage of people on the dole. Their economies collapsed. You can't keep squeezing a small upper middle class to pay for everyone. We're pretty much at the limit there as it is in many countries. I think UBI is fundamentally at odds with human nature in a way that would prevent it from being successful at scale.
UBI isn't meant to be a full replacement for an individual's economic activity. It is /basic/, which is to say, it will cover the basic necessities.
The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease economically profitable activity.
I think the opposite will happen: once people have the basics taken care of they will become more economically active. They will take risks they couldn't before because of the overhanging risk of complete destitution. They will negotiate for better wages because everyone will know they have a perfectly viable alternative. They will invest time in themselves because they won't have to worry about how they will live if they don't have a job while they study or launch a business.
Further, there will be more money sloshing around and creating broad-based demand for goods and services that these self-same people can try to capture through their own industriousness.
I strongly believe that we have as many on welfare right now because we have a huge sector of our population that have the following choice: live in poverty on welfare with lots of free time or live in poverty while working your ass off treading water. And the reason they remain in poverty is that their employers know that there isn't a great alternative for those marginal employees so they pay just enough to keep their employees afloat but not enough that they can get ahead. UBI or negative income tax (my personal preference) would deeply change this calculus. People could spend their time and energy to truly better their situation rather than merely not lose everything.
We're not going to turn into a banana republic where only the economically elite and the political class keep each other happy and everyone else are kept just happy enough to avoid revolution. There isn't a lot of democratizing of economic power in those regimes.
UBI is a tool for dealing with rising inequality and economic insecurity, not a solution on its own.
People will be incentivized to work despite UBI because they still want better things, and will work to pay for things that provide social signalling value.
A UBI shouldn't be designed to try to cover all desires and eliminate all reason to work, but rather should be tailored to give people more flexibility in choosing jobs and locations.
Even Andrew Yang's $1k/mo/adult proposal will not allow anyone to live very well in even the low COL areas of the US. But it might help them not to lose their roof or car while unemployed.
This is analogous to how universal healthcare will never cover cosmetic procedures, but that's ok because it will cover your healthcare even if you end up unemployed.
Without an UBI they would be starving and start street protests.
Much like what happened during French revolution.
UBI removes that risk.
I'm in favour of an UBI, but one that's really universal (rich and poor get the same amount of money, forever) and one that goes together with a real public system including public universal healthcare, public schools, public infrastructures - roads, railroads - and trasnportation, similar to the ones we have in many European countries, but improved.
Even the most generous UBI proposals are basically a “don’t starve to death” level of income. Maybe fine for a 20 year old who is couch surfing and working on their blog for a while, but UBI isn’t a realistic solution to free everyone from the need to work.
The idea of a UBI that provides a comfortable lifestyle for anyone who doesn’t want to work a normal job is just a pipe dream.
- mostly because people on the bottom can be powerless and get stuck in low paying jobs, no means to move, to re-educate, etc.
- today most countries already redistribute money, in form of minimum wage, tax cuts, food stamps, disability benefits, heath insurance, etc.
- UBI is a dial, you can turn it up, or turn it down, redistribute 15% of all value created is not unreasonable, some European countries are already at 10-15%
- make sure every dollar earned, helps you move forward, benefits, UBI, taxation, should never have jumps in scales, but always be linear (this is horribly off in my country today)
- drug misuse, poor that cannot handle money, is a problem today, and UBI won't solve it, it's not on the agenda to dump all social workers ...
- lazy hipsters, that is intuitive but likely wrong, ... UBI is not exactly luxurious living, you'd want a job or no car, no nice clothes, no travelling, etc ...
We should have UBI that is at least sufficient to wholly replace the income of low-paid workers. I think $20,000 a year is a nice round number to start a discussion at.
At its heart, UBI sounds like a good thing but it ignore basic human nature and particularly in-group and out-group conflicts. UBI in America would calcify a class system where one group of people works and another lives off their work. The working group will come to resent the non-working group and it will further divide the society. People are living a bubble if they don’t think this would be a major source of political and social friction.
Also, I don’t think the proponents of UBI can account for how many people would simply not work if they had the option. I love programming but there are some days where I don’t like my boss and my co-workers. I endure some discomfort but at the end of the day, I’m compensated for that. If you told me I would get 50k per year and free housing, I would probably spend most of my time snowboarding and playing video games rather sit in 1 hour planning meeting. I would probably be much more likely to do this if all my friends were snowboarding and playing video games ….
I've heard the opposite quite often. With a UBI you can eliminate minimum wage. Employers would be encouraged to offer fair wages: nobody is going to work for peanuts because they won't starve without the job.
To me the best argument for UBI is that it would obliterate a bunch of economic disincentives that are dragging down on societal progress.
To be clear I’m working from two assumptions:
1) I have no issue with people being completely dependent on government support.
2) I have no issue nor do I partake in our glorification of work for work’s sake.
Having said that, the most important economic aberration UBI would do away with is the need for government and most public policy in general being run as de-facto job programs for the otherwise unemployable. If UBI were a reality there would be no rationale for bloated agencies, over-staffed infrastructure projects, tax schemes for factories, you name it. In that world, we could potentially turbocharge governance, as well as governmental and policy efficiency and efficacy.
A secondary, yet also important benefit of UBI is that it would unleash a ton of capable people who are otherwise bound to jobs or arrangements far below their capacity, for the simple fact that the fear of starvation or homelessness is too great. Think of all the human potential we could release if capable people felt safe enough to get an education or start a business.
Ultimately a bunch of people would just rely on UBI from birth to death. I don’t think that is a bad outcome. We live in a society advanced enough to be horrified by just letting people die/starve. However we struggle with the idea of some people just doing nothing when in fact the best possible outcome is for them to do just that. Some people are just not capable enough to do stuff at the level required in an advanced society, and saddling some institutions with employing them for charity does more harm than good.
Maybe a system where people work in the extreme system from 20-30, get paid highly, and save enough to not need to work again in their early 30's. Seems like a much better system than UBI.
It seems like you are missing an important aspect of UBI: What level of income will it provide?
If a (perhaps more fulfilling or “fitting”) life on UBI is to rival that of say a stockbroker, UBI must provide more freedom than one can get by working in that position, while perhaps saving up for early retirement.
The income level will have to be moderate at the very least, to rival that. Since it is supported by tax revenue, it must be part of a balanced budget. This can quite easily be matched by a reasonable income, where a good amount is put into savings each month.
I agree, that this is not an option for a lot of people, as their monthly expenses won’t allow to save like that. But then that isn’t something that UBI will fix - given its “basic” nature. If all else equal, the higher the level of UBI, the higher the price level as demand increases.
I do support some models of UBI. It could help in replacing the myriad of different welfare programmes that are only about money here in Denmark, where billions of USD are either wasted or swallowed by bureaucracy each year.
However, I find it almost fraudulent how UBI is being misused as a “Trojan Horse” by some people and especially by politicians.
UBI, like most other insurance schemes, will only work if most people are net-positive contributors. This makes UBI mostly into a welfare programme - something that’s limited in its use.
But if the idea is that it’s something for everyone, most of the time, I’m hard pressed to answer how it will work on a societal basis, without the use of force.
I don’t believe that is what you argue for, so please don’t take this as a straw man argument against your point.
I'd rather see reasonable minimum wages, and higher taxes that are spent on universal health care, free education and social welfare in the usual Prioritarian way, though with very loose conditions on eligible recipients. Make it the least bureaucratic possible and the most friendly to side jobs and transitioning to self-sustenance as possible, and it will works optimally. The current systems in most countries are horrible, because they are designed to punish people who are creative and try to make money on the side - they are based on the stupid and outdated idea that you're either a successful entrepreneur, or an employee, or get social welfare. In reality, the system should allow anyone to transition between those three roles with ease, as it fits best in the current situation, and without being bogged down by existential sorrows all the time.
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