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.
FWIW, I think UBI only makes sense in a context where most people cannot compete in the economic system (against corporations with automation) and so the alternative (to just giving them money) is some kind of nightmare (take your pick.)
Maybe it's just me but I'm getting tired of UBI being put forward as a realistic answer to technological displacement of workers. The most immediate problem would be getting it through legislatures without loopholes that undercut its purpose as a replacement for all other redistributions. That simply never happens, particularly in the US.
The next problem is that no one seems to appreciate how incompatible it is with open borders in a world of nation-states. The latter is particularly telling since advocates of UBI are often advocates of less restrictive immigration across the world, yet they don't seem to see the problem. It's an indication of how ungrounded the discussion about UBI is right now.
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.
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.
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 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.
The idea that UBI alone solves anything is silly and not a realistic policy proposal.
UBI is the government distributing money to people. Normally the government spends money on behalf of people who are expected to contribute toward repaying it. A simple way to reduce the cost of UBI is to have it reduced by the cost of ALL government services you elect to use.
Assuming such a UBI covers basic needs, eliminate minimum wages. Wages no longer need a lower bound as everyone has sufficient income.
The root problem is an unfavorable distribution of wealth and income toward asset holders. Stop taxing labor.
Companies need to broaden the distribution of wealth gains- the plumbing for this is still uncertain.
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 ….
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.
I dislike UBI a lot. (coming from the left side of the European political spectrum for what it's worth) for a few reasons. The first one is that I think work is a fundamental aspect of personal life and people feel deeply rewarded for being compensated for it. UBI is underpinned by a sort of Wall-E philosophy of human nature. It in a weird way presents itself as humanistic but is deeply apolitical and anti-social.
Secondly it creates dependency between receivers and givers. I'd rather empower workers collectively than make people dependent on welfare. This, in contrast to UBI is I think viable across the spectrum and actually what people want.
I think UBI rests on a sort of naive utilitarianism that overrates material equality and underestimates what's wrong with the system as it is and what really makes people angry and pessimistic. For that reason I also don't think it's ever going to get a political majority.
UBI will not happen. Not because free money are not good for the people — they are. Not because everyone will suddenly get lazy and stop working — they won't.
Because UBI is unsustainable and won't last more than a year. There is not enough money for any plausible scenario. That's why.
And yes, let's give people "free" money and do nothing about hugely overpriced and corrupt healthcare system, education and things. In fact, let's introduce new obligatory payments for everyone!
Who, do you think, might be the most interested in lobbying for _that_?
I have difficulty believing that UBI will ever work, unless you get the basic problems solved first.
Namely, housing.
The problem actually boils down to democracy itself, where people vote for laws that favors themselves, and excludes outsiders, specifically the NIMBY crowd. These are the people that vote in housing regulations, environmental review injunctions to prevent construction, etc.
Regardless of whether UBI is given freely like welfare, these NIMBYs will continue to exist, and they will act as a corruption on society. They got theirs already, and they will prevent others from getting it too.
For all other things, technology should be able to help make things plentiful. Food can come from mechanized and automated mass farming. Medicine can come from mechanized and automated mass production. Clothing, cars, consumer goods, well, I guess there are factories in China that can mass produce that.
But either way, unless you solve the core problems first, then UBI is dead in the water.
Otherwise, with the low interest rates, and massive corporate stock buybacks, then this will just continue to inflate the stock market, and property bubble, and other asset prices.
Then, what is the end result? The rents will continue to rise, and it will just eat away at your UBI. Now, we’re back at square one.
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.
I want to re-iterate that I'm in favour of UBI. I can imagine there are potential pitfalls to UBI, but I think those pitfalls are not as dangerous as the alternative. I really do think we should have some form of UBI (though I don't think it would be a panacea).
I just think that there isn't actually anything meaningful to be learned from this study about how things would play out if we implemented actual UBI.
The reason this doesn't tell you anything is that economies are strongly interacting systems, and humans are tricky test subjects. If you give a couple thousand people a couple years of money, that's a very different situation than an entire country of people being promised that money forever.
People against UBI worry that it'd cause people to quit their jobs or be lazy. Who is going to quit their job to live off UBI if they know the money will dry up in two years? Furthermore, one might be concerned that even if the first generation of people to get UBI treat it responsibly, what if the next generation who grows up taking it for granted don't treat it responsibly?
One could play this game all day where people who are against can come up with rationalizations for why the results of the study don't scale and people who are pro-UBI can come up with reasons why it would scale.
No problem with UBI as a theory, for all I know it might be strictly better than the status quo. Handing money out seems to have worked out for the banking system, hahaha. :[
The issue is that the economy is outrageously complicated and it isn't obvious that the people who want to bring in a UBI are the same people who will be working to bear the cost of a UBI. If it turns out to be unfair and negative, as any ambitious economic policy can be, it could be politically very costly verging on impossible to unwind.
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.
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.
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