My frustration with Basic Income is that it’s a legislative solution to a productivity problem. Instead of redistributing wealth, a practice that can be overturned any time, I advocate for the intentional construction of productive machinery owned by the people. If all people owned shares in machines that produced the goods we need for survival, we could receive the benefit of that productivity directly. With a UBI, the idea is to continue letting a small group of people control all the wealth, and then ask them to give us some. It’s laughable to me that people believe you can let one group have all the power and then force them to give some of that power to everyone else. Why would they do that? The solution in my mind is to arrange things so that everyone has a share of the wealth in the first place. I write a bit about that here:
http://tlalexander.com/machine/
As someone who is currently sleeping under a bridge most nights, I would be happy to tolerate that frustration until a more equitable system can be implemented.
Surely, a UBI would help you immediately. But I don’t think we’ll see one any time soon. Meanwhile I’m trying to develop a more equitable system. I hope it works. It’s clearly unfair to me that I get to sleep in an apartment and some people can’t. My hope is that by owning the means of production and sharing the output, we can build a more equitable system.
Incidentally I talk about how someone can come in with nothing and end up with part ownership in The Machine in its follow on essay, The Corporation.
> Instead of redistributing wealth, a practice that can be overturned any time, I advocate for the intentional construction of productive machinery owned by the people.
Public ownership of means of production is as easily overturned (doing so is called “privatization”) as wealth redistribution; in fact, it's been done many times in places that had established public ownership of some or all of the means of production. So, your objection to redistribution seems to apply at least as strongly to your alternative.
To be clear, I’m not talking about state ownership of the means of production, I’m talking about direct ownership through democratically controlled private corporations.
Any ownership structure can be changed arbitrarily; destroying non-state community ownership of land in favor of privatized, marketable ownership was a key capitalist land “reform” in many places (Mexico for instance). Abrogating any democratic worker-ownership system is no less possible than discontinuing a spending program, and to the extent it's difficult it is because of popularity and the same political factors that constrain ending a spending program.
Property rights, no less than taxing and spending, is a feature of law subject to the whims of the State.
These are all fair points. Part of what drives my thinking is the assumption that the moneyed capitalists will fight to defend individual property rights, and that we can build a socialist system inside of the capitalist system. But as you say, the laws can always change to screw regular people. I’ll have to look in to the reform you speak of in Mexico. Do you have any more details to guide my search on that?
> Part of what drives my thinking is the assumption that the moneyed capitalists will fight to defend individual property rights, and that we can build a socialist system inside of the capitalist system.
It's not an entirely unreasonable approach; it's been used with some notable success in, e.g., the Mondragón system.
OTOH, tax-and-redistribute is even more well-established an approach, being a feature of virtually all modern mixed economies.
> I’ll have to look in to the reform you speak of in Mexico. Do you have any more details to guide my search on that?
The ley Lerdo of 1856 (especially it's application to indigenous communities) and the Constitutional amendment to allow privatization of land held in ejidos that were formed as part of the land reforms of the Mexican Revolution under President Salinas in 1992 are the two notable Mexican examples.
Your link doesn't address full collective ownership, you just talk about the group of people that band together to buy a machine. In a country where we're unwilling to invest in basic maintenance of our critical infrastructure, how would you keep the machines from falling apart? What happens to the ownership of local machines when someone moves? How do you ensure that a broken machine doesn't impoverish a community?
More importantly, how does your solution of inventing a new machine to solve poverty help anyone in the decades before we're able to build it? What's the backup plan if you're wrong about the feasibility of this machine?
You seem to be trying to get rid of economics by solving scarcity rather than come up with solutions to economic problems.
Certainly, I’d like to write a book on these ideas, and I have a lot more to flesh out. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing!
Much of what I want to accomplish is not to get rid of economics, but make it work for regular people. I think that can be done by making sure the people own the means of production and making sure that no one is unfairly exploited for their labor. That is not in my mind getting rid of economics.
And surely, I believe we can realize the benefits of these ideas almost immediately, and I advocate for doing that on my website, http://Reboot.love. Specifically, I think that we can encourage robotics engineers to develop open source solutions, and we can encourage investors and policy makers to fund training so more people can understand how to benefit from these open source designs. I foresee real economic benefits to these ideas helping people within ten years. I believe the reach of these ideas can be broader and more immediate than a UBI. Even if a UBI were implemented in, say, France or Canada, billions would still be without it. But if we design open source productive machinery that can be made in a small shop, everyone from Kenya to Bangladesh to Detroit and Watsonville can benefit.
So you want to do the redistribution in shares issued in ownership the state will sieze from every single company rather than just doing the redistribution in cash. Seems like a really destructive way to achieve the same goal with no added benefit.u
Also it’s kind of comical to insinuate that such shares issued by a government that just appropriated a huge chunk of private corporations would somehow be more secure than cash issued periodically because they are harder to take away, I mean they would litterally signify that this government will take whatever they wish without recourse.
Yes. Espectually given advances in automation this looks like the most reasonable path. This solves both the UBI as well as also stops the accumulation of power in hands of few due to efficiencies and scaling factors.
No UBI. The problem with UBI is social programs. we spend billions on safety nets for specific cases and purposes. safe nets for food. safety nets for healthcare. safety nets so parents can feed their children. this is a good thing. this helps people do something they may not have been able to do
basic income does not replace any of these safety nets. you will still have to have them. UBI is just increasing taxes
i’d rather add more safety nets to help those really in need than raise taxes to pay everyone some small amount
So your safety nets for those "who really need it" are more expensive because of the bureaucracy needed to determine this. Furthermore it becomes a disincentive to accept work (as the article states) and rewards dishonesty i.e. "working the system".
If somebody can’t find work, it would take a lot of social programs to ensure they can live. And I’m not convinced a state is more effective at spending the money than individuals are. Social programs are a huge spend and the quality of the programs leaves a lot to be desired (governments aren’t exactly known for being cost effective.)
I mean, replacing food stamps with thousands of dollars a month means the money could be spent buying food. I'm confused why you would think a UBI would not be allowed to be used to purchase food? The libertarian perspective on this is that we shouldn't tell people how to spend their money. If they can't afford food because they have no money, then give them money. Those who buy food will not starve. Those who don't, will, but they can't say they weren't able to buy food.
I think your parent post's implication may be that those receiving UBI who are on specific government programs would not responsibly budget the right amount of money to the right need, and that there will still be cases where people have run out of money and need the same safety nets as before. If someone (or their children) is starving to death, or in need of urgent medical care, are you going to tell them that they should've budgeted better?
By that reasoning, direct cash disbursement charities like GiveDirectly would fail miserably. But they've been shown to work extremely well. People in general understand how to allocate their own money better than the government does.
Under a traditional UBI system, most people won't get money from the goverment. A UBI as the libertarians described it is basically a negative income tax. If your job pays $20k/year and the UBI level is $10k/yr, for example, then you will not receive anything. However, if your job pays $5k/year, and the UBI is $10k/yr, you receive $5k a year.
If a person can't take care of themself then a social worker should be the safety net. Adult protective services should step in and emergency assistance could be granted. But people with patterns of mismanagement should have a guardianship assigned.
With guardianship that UBI could be directed to an organization to provide that budget management. They can issue a food stamp card, housing assistance, etc. That management could be a government agency or privatized. If privatized it would have to be regulated as a fidicuary.
> I think the your parent post's implication may be that those receiving UBI who are on specific government programs would not responsibly budget the right amount of money to the right need, and that there will still be cases where people have run out of money and need the same safety nets as before. If someone (or their children) is starving to death, or in need of urgent medical care, are you going to tell them that they should've budgeted better?
None of these programs actually prevent that. If someone desperate for a job throws a dinner party to try to network and the guests eat weeks worth of their food, they starve before the next allocation whether the food was bought with food stamps or money. Anyone who wants to convert food stamps to dollars can find a little old lady, offer to do her grocery shopping and then buy the food with food stamps and pocket her cash. If the power fails and all your new food spoils, you're not "allowed" to resell your housing subsidy by subletting for a week to cover the replacement cost.
All the restrictions do is cause inefficiency. If someone wants to eat beans instead of steak or even just go hungry some days because they want to save the money for college or a down payment on a house, who are we to judge?
To me, it seems important to tread with humbleness here because UBI is not a product of modern science. We are not the first to consider it, and it’s never been considered quite an acceptable solution. Why is that?
The problem is, as often with economics, a problem with value and it’s ways of fluctuating across geography, networks, business and social structures in a matter of literally no time at all. Time is merely fuel to the fire.
Social programs are created by a government in the sense of a government that is of the people. Governments are not inherently just rulers of the land. They are ideally institutions built by people for the purpose of maintaining a state of civility and addressing common concern that might undermine that state of civility.
Social programs, or safety nets, serve a very specific purpose: to maintain a floor of minimum dignity (or less) considered acceptible in the sought civil state. If this is defined in terms of money, that level of dignity is then held victim to the precarity of value in a capitalist society; and that is not a floor I would be willing to touch with a ten foot pole; certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.
With commodities necessary to survive, it’s obvious how this can go wrong. We are talking about food and shelter here. Social housing is well-proven and extremely efficient. As it stands, masses of people in the US can’t afford housing at their current wage.
The best argument for UBI is as another economic stimulus, which is absolutely needed to prolong the final crash. The question seems to be who is included in the beneficiaries.
So, like much of this type of thing, if we don’t agree to collectively give a shit about other people in the first place, it’s not worth wasting time over.
> certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.
Um... what? The government quantifies exactly how much it will spend on social welfare programs each year. Simply dividing the budget out by the number of people enrolled (also available from the government) paints a very clear picture of how much 'civil dignity' is worth.
> They are ideally institutions built by people for the purpose of maintaining a state of civility and addressing common concern that might undermine that state of civility.
I agree but they are built by specific people - military. The state of civility is not a goal by itself just the best way for the military to get paid for doing nothing of value for the rest of the people, in predictable and stable fashion.
Well, the libertarian argument for a UBI says yes, you ought to tell people they should've budgeted better. Under a universal basic income, everyone would receive exactly how much money they would need to live and a little more. The extra could likely be spent on a budgeting class for those who need it.
Keep in mind, that libertarians are fundamentally against governments telling people how to spend their money. This includes the rich and the poor. The rich should not be told how to spend their money and the poor ought to be given everything they need to survive and not be told how to spend it either. Thus everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law.
You can still buy some junk food and soda with food stamps, and none of that is good for you. You could theoretically trade whatever food you buy for drugs or money to purchase drugs if you so desired. Should we force feed people nutritious food?
No, obviously not. Removing all individual agency from welfare is simply dehumanizing. Let people make the best decisions for themselves... and get legitimate help (not food stamps) for the people unable to do that.
I've seen a food stamp program called WIC that had limits against junk food and overpriced brands. Also soda and chips will prevent starvation.
Dope dealers will not accept food as payment.
>make the best decisions for themselves.
And what about their children? Many of them are poor because they have kids. No one has the individual agency to get high on free money while their kids starve.
My point is you can’t force people to take care of themselves or their kids, regardless of whether you give them food stamps or just cash. Sure, food stamps guide them perhaps in the right direction, but there’s no guarantee those parents will use the food stamps responsibly. Bad parents will be bad parents. Those bad parents that would let their kids starve if they were given money rather than food stamps should have their kids taken away from them. But I don’t think most people on food stamps are like that.
So then the question is is the overhead worth that marginal case?
If people aren't smart enough to know how to spend their money, perhaps we need to provide better financial education in school. I don't remember having an iota of financial education from K-12 -- it was all focused around math, history, literature and science. "How to live your life independently" may as well be a core subject, because the United States is becoming breeding ground for dependent people. It doesn't seem in the government's best interest to push for better financial education, because they profit off of dependency.
It makes way more sense to have your constituents be financially educated than to "accept that they are dumb" and then just attempt to fix everything they mess up. The latter is unsustainable. UBI + better schooling should preclude the need for food programs, etc.
> Why do you care that jobs don’t work for everyone, but don’t care that UBI won’t work for everyone?
Because jobs and UBI aren't the same thing. You aren't guaranteed a job out of high school or college, so you are more likely to have some sort of basis for your claim that you need support from everyone else. On the other hand, with UBI, if you're given exactly what you need to sustain your life and can't, then it's clearly a personal problem.
Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of money - like being innumerate, or having mental health issues, or a controlling abusive partner, or just being super crap with money no matter how hard they honestly try.
You can say we’ll leave those people to starve to death, but that’s not going to get me to vote for UBI!
You’ll probably more realistically say ‘ok well we’ll help that one mother just one time with the baby starving to death because she is addicted to gambling away her UBI’ but then bingo you’re now running a food program as well.
> Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of mone
We don't have one now; it might be nice to have with UBI as it would be now, but why would it be any more necessary with UBI?
Sure, if UBI is a more efficient means of solving the problems addressed by means-tested programs and unlocks economic potential forgone due to minimum wage, it might make the existing need for such a program something that we can afford to address, but it certainly doesn't create an unmet need that doesn't already exist.
> You can say we’ll leave those people to starve to death, but that’s not going to get me to vote for UBI!
But, that's exactly the status quo for people with too much income to qualify for food aid who don't spend it well. Why would losing that existing situation unchanged whole improving other areas be a reason to oppose UBI?
> Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of money.
Plenty of private charities can exist which you can donate to if you believe your money should be helping those people. A system where some people voluntarily donate has less inequity than a system where all people are forced to donate.
> If someone fuck up and use up all their UBI then they must seek private entity such as church or charity.
But if this is your attitude - people who mess up should be on their own - why are you in favour of UBI? Why don’t you also think that people who can’t get a job should be on their own?
> Why don’t you also think that people who can’t get a job should be on their own?
Personally, I recognize that you need some level of money in order to take part in civic society. For example, it's hard to find a job without a mailing address, nice clothes, cosmetic products, and make up. It's also hard to put your time towards finding a job if you can't eat. Thus, in the interest of maximizing economic output and social engagement, we ought to provide enough money for people to be able to afford these things.
If you are able to afford these things, but still mess up... well, I mean, you have freely and without coercion chosen to disengage with society. To these people, I hope they are happy with their choice, but I struggle to see how they could be.
How is this any difference than the current condition right now? We have many of government program but we still have many mess up, they are on their own too.
I prefer UBI because I can't choose however I want to spend it.
The libertarian response would be to ... do nothing. Sure people may get hurt, but no one will get hurt because they didn't have the resources to avoid it. Every person who fucks up has only themselves to blame, not the whims of some government bureaucrat.
Just as a note, I'm not really a libertarian sympathizer anymore, but that is my understanding of the libertarian justification for UBI.
financial responsibility cannot be bought with UBI. ignoring how incredibly unlikely it is we would ever cancel social programs on a mass scale, let’s say we did. your example of people starving is good.
in that world you get to eat only if you are financially responsible. in the current world everyone gets to eat (or we try to feed the hungry)
i think the current model is way more humane. and we will never cancel social programs to have a less humane society
Libertarians want to cancel social programs and replace with UBI so individuals determine how to spend their benefits.
Socialists want to guarantee everyone a living wage but also want the safety nets.
Policy needs to be in middle. You need to enable people to self-manage. Must be ready to help them when there is a bad turn events. But you also need to have a humane way to deal with people that are incapable of taking care of themselves, for example mental illness. The way to handle that is guardianship, not other government programs that can also be individually mismanaged. Guardianship will surely be more expensive then UBI but it is the humane thing to do.
> incapable of taking care of themselves, for example mental illness
On this point, I agree 100%, but UBI programs are not really focused on the mentally ill. As is, disability is a fraction of what we traditionally think of as welfare (and it's already neglected in our current society). Most welfare are food stamps, health services, etc, for people that would otherwise be perfectly capable on their own.
A UBI does not mean getting rid of programs for people that cannot actually help themselves like the severely disabled or foster children. It means not treating grown adults like children or wards of the state
Libertarians believe that government is necessary as the only means of justifiable force, but that the government ought to be only as large as necessary to provide the force necessary to protect individual rights.
Anarchists believe there ought to be no government at all.
If you can't see the difference still, I would recommend picking up a book. Hacker news is not the place to learn about various political philosophies.
Some people prefer to sleep outside and spend their money on booze and drugs instead of food. If that's their choice, who are we to say they're misguided?
A basic income can eliminate many wasteful bureaucratic policies, leaving more money to spend on what folks want.
What confuses me about most discussions on this is the automatic assumption that taxes need to be raised to get UBI. Both sides seem to implicitly take this for granted, whereas it's fairly trivial to rework income tax to introduce UBI without anyone having a net difference in earnings.
Of course the real question is whether doing this would allow you to actually simplify anything, or if it's possible to simplify taxes with only minor (or desired) changes in net income.
So what happens to the addict (drugs, gambling, whatever) that blows their UBI? Do we let them die in the streets with lack of medical care? Let their children starve?
How about the homeless in (any super expensive city that still won’t be able to afford housing there, yet for whatever reason won’t leave?
Morally, you're right... we should have both. Politically, however, it would be infeasible to sell UBI as anything but a means of cutting back the existing social welfare infrastructure in order to reduce taxes and the size of government. We can't have both so long as a significant number of voters want neither.
Here's the thing, UBI will be used to argue that other social interventions and support are no longer necessary. "We're giving you free money, and you want more?"
UBI is a convenient way for the wealthy classes to wash their hands of the poor without having to give up too much of their wealth. Not to mention it will probably be provided by a government donor corporation in the form of a cashless card with moralistic restrictions on how the income can be spent (e.g. no alcohol or legal cannabis).
Universal income, unrestricted immigration. Which is it that you really want?
Both of course, people tend to want it all, and dreams to pay for it all. In 100 years it'll supposedly all work out fine, despite "short term" problems, no need to compromise.
I'm sorry you have to withstand the opposition from those who have to weather the problems in the meantime. Perhaps a loaner crystal ball could help us weave our reservations.
> Universal income, unrestricted immigration. Which is it that you really want?
Very few people actually want totally unrestricted immigration, and most of them -- the only consistent ones -- are either unitary world government proponents or full on anarchists. Otherwise you're inviting seven billion people to vote in your country's elections, and then nothing stops them from voting for the same sort of wealth redistribution policies or anything else to the detriment of the existing population. It's not pick one: open borders or redistribution of wealth, it's pick one: open borders or democracy.
The ideological inconsistency you're observing is realpolitik in action. People who want more socialist policies don't want unrestricted immigration, they only want just enough immigration from socialist-leaning countries that they have the majorities needed to pass their policies. Meanwhile people on the right are trying to keep the same people out for the same reason -- Republicans don't oppose immigration because they're "racist", it's because those immigrants disproportionately vote for Democrats. Neither party will be consistent because consistency loses them votes.
UBI incentivizes producing more people. Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish. Which is awesome. Unless the nutrients or the petri dish are finite.
As an alternative to means-tested benefit programs (especially those that beyond means-testing are expressly conditioned on having dependent children) it does not, in fact, it reduces that incentive.
> Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish.
It's not like America needs wealthy people. We really just need basic resources (e.g. arable land, metal) and technology, and it's only a matter of time until people needn't work.
There are several problems with basic income. For starters, housing costs are crazy right now and the US lacks universal health coverage. If we could could solve those two things, you would see a lot fewer people calling for basic income.
I have alimony in about the amount that is frequently cited as how much America should give people for basic income. Without additional income on top of that, I can't pay rent and keep myself fed. I was willing to move almost anywhere in the US to find a low rent place to get myself off the street. Most people can't or won't do that. Most places in the US do not have rentals cheap enough for someone to live on $10k or so a year.
In other words, if you don't address the lack of affordable housing, basic income won't support most people. And if you do, you go a long ways towards not needing basic income. The lack of affordable housing is an issue that needs to be tackled regardless. Talking about basic income strikes me as taking time away from problems that must be addressed regardless.
I see basic income as a lazy answer posited by people who would like to imagine you can throw money at the problem because they can't figure out how to effectively address some of the issues here. I don't think that actually works. I think that would actually go some pretty bad places.
If you think that raising taxes for UBI will result in the politicians actually allocating the money to UBI.... then you just need to look at how current monies are raised and spent.
Here's what will happen:
- taxes raised for "insert acronym of flavor here" (UBI)
- 95% allocated to every citizen, permanent resident, legal immigrant, illegal migrant, etc.
- Over time they will decrease the allocation relative to the amount they collect.
Next thing you know, "UBI" is just another line item on your paycheck deductions just like "EI" and "CPP" is a deduction in Canada for "Employment Insurance" and "Canada Pension Plan".
Neither of which will actually solve the problem because that was not the (hidden) goal to begin with.
There will be just as much, if not more poverty because:
- smart, hardworking people will leave the country because they are tired of getting abused with excessive taxes.... draining productivity
- poorest people will take on brutal loans for things they do not need (lottery, drugs, cars, shiny clothes)
- poorest people will become lethargic. "Free" unearned income is poison to ambition and creativity.
- "Free" income is not Free because it is given based on an inflating money supply. It means your children or grandchildren will be paying it via hidden tax of inflation and effectively sold into debt slavery.
We are watching the final stages take place where the communist revolution will be complete. As it stands, the USA is heavily socialist and stopped being capitalistic once they seized control of the economy in 1913 and began central planning via fiat money printing and manipulating interest rates.
The social justice aspect can include the idea that income derived from resources belongs to everybody. This is reflected on American Indian reservations that distribute revenues even from casinos to all members.
As far as the issue of "encouraging laziness", anyone who has read the Bhagavad Gita is familiar with the idea that alongside the tendency towards rest is an equal tendency towards movement and action.
I get one of those. Roads. Police. Firefighters. Not being invaded by foreign powers. Rule of law. Etc. There's no fixed dollar amount, but I use that cash flow to build my life.
Sort of. Except EITC is anemic and a work incentive with a focus on children rather than a negative income tax.
Someone supporting a kid gets a much larger max benefit than someone earning the max benefit with no children ($3,400 vs $510) and the benefit tapers away for low incomes.
> Even then the prices of various products will likely be affected, but the nature and extent of those effects are not obvious.
They're also likely to be beneficial, because the existing programs that would be replaced are the ones causing exactly the sort of price inflation we don't want by inflating the prices of necessities like food, housing and medicine.
When the government is paying for your healthcare, you get all the unnecessary tests. When the government is giving you the cash equivalent and whatever you don't spend on medicine you get to keep, you only get the necessary tests and then have money left over to take a vacation. So the price of healthcare goes down and the price of cruise tickets goes up, which seems like a pretty good trade off.
What do you mean? The entire US healthcare system operates this way. Either the government is your insurance (medicare, medicaid and similar state programs, federal employees etc.), or they subsidize private insurance through tax incentives and direct subsidies for low income people that encourage/require comprehensive insurance rather than catastrophic coverage.
Then none of those people have the incentive to compare prices or decline unnecessary procedures because the insurance is paying for most or all of it.
Also I think FED constantly creates money by lending to commercial banks. It could lend less to reduce money supply when government issues money to fund basic income.
This way same amount of money would get injected into the economy. Just not into the pockets of borrowers, but directly into consumers.
The Economist has really gone down hill in the past few years. I expect them to publish numbers, not vaguely Marxist reflections lamenting an age of supposed increasing hardship, although I was amused by the idea of social inheritance.
> Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of welfare program
It depends on how you taxonomize terms. Negative Income Tax (which is what Friedman supports) is a type of UBI. As I've said elsewhere in this chain, the policies being proposed today are not really what the libertarians had in mind, since they co-exist with other forms of welfare, which libertarians would be wholeheartedly against. That being said, it's not surprising why the economist would run a story on this... it is still a libertarian idea.
Also, the comment quoted above was made by me... the same guy you responded to, ha! :)
I dunno man, but Milton Friedman, the saint of libertarinism that he is, was a huge proponent [1]. It's a topic of frequent interest in libertarian publications, such as the economist and reason. Gary Johnson (libertarian nominee) was also in support. To say that it's not libertarian is easily dismissable, considering the number of traditional libertarians who support it.
Of course the corollary is that all other welfare programs are immediately ended, but this is not typically included in these modern implementations.
It's all in how you define your terms. Cutting off the head of a poor man with no job, an 80 IQ and 100k in debt is technically setting them free, in one specific sense.
No one can answer that question with any certainty. Ideas are very fluid.
But if I can attempt an answer. I believe it is libertarian in the sense that it does not require a large bureaucracy with onerous rules and regulations controlling the funds distribution and use.
The money is available to everyone for any use. The government may just serve as a pass-through entity.
Where does this basic income come from? If everyone is entitled to a basic income as a matter of right, that means others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor. When the government no longer serves to defend people and their property rights but becomes primarily a means of redistribution, I think it loses its legitimacy.
> If everyone is entitled to a basic income as a matter of right, that means others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor.
...is not an approrpiate response. Just because the government is funded through income at present doesn't mean its the only way to fund government. You could fund the government (and UBI) with a land-value-tax, for example.
Here's another - the whole world (all the land in the world) was claimed by people just because they were born before me (and had guns). Those people who were born before then arbitrarily hand that land/resources to other people, with really no objective justification outside of tradition.
Of course, we treat these traditions are nonsense when it's convenient -- if we really believed them then we'd give back most of the land in America to native Americans.
Yes, it is arbitrary. The idea of "ownership" is just an construct/idea self-aware matter (i.e. humans) happened to come up with because it worked well at that phase in our evolution.
> others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor
This is exactly taxation of all kinds. And your framing presupposes that these fruits that would be obtainable without the social structure that those payments support.
Not to mention that, 'fruits of their labor' is a highly tendentious way of talking about a capitalist system. The fruits of their capital, perhaps. By and large, capital owners already extract a very large proportion of the 'fruits' of their employees labor.
I think it is a very dubious argument whether basic income would all balance out, but it is no different in kind from any other social collectivism.
Do you think the government can protect the right of people by buying more missiles and tanks? Subsidizing more gentrified neighborhoods and private prisons? I think within a few decades UBI will be the cheaper road to go down. A doctor can administer a vaccine, and this is 'pathogen redistribution'.
Many of the mega rich are terrified of a repeat of the French Revolution. They want to stave that off if they can, ideally without disrupting the status quo.
A basic income is perfect for the task. It will make many people complacent. Let them stay home, smoking legalized marijuana and playing video games all day. Young men, especially, who are pacified with such creature comforts are unlikely to take to the hills with assault rifles and sleeping bags.
Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of welfare program
It just seems odd to have so many who scratched and saved and schemed and clawed their way to near the top of their professions, with a great deal of wealth, now telling me how easy it is if we just hand out free cash to people...?
The Economist is more “liberal intelligentsia” than “top-hat and monocole robber baron,” and more pragmatic centrist than libertarian extremist. (Consider the number of NGO management positions advertised in its pages). Beyond basic human empathy, its patrons generally want a stable and productive environment in which to live and conduct business. UBI (like its cousin Negative Income Tax) has some traction in this intellectual circle as a more elegant, less side-effectful way of delivering on those goals than other welfare schemes with more populist appeal (which tend to pick winners, diminish productivity, or function more as working-class catharsis than economic optimization).
The Economist is owned in part by the Rothschild family[1]. Yes, the same family who popularized central banking! Here's a good general overview of the plan [2]. You might think it's a good plan, or a bad plan depending on whether you like nation states or think they shouldn't exist. The same goes for why the economist would support a global carbon tax as thst can't be good for rich people. It's because it would fund a global government with limited accountability and drain national treasuries. The goal is globalism. The enemy is the nation state. They've been working on this for decades and they've failed a bunch, but they never ever give up.
My frustration with Basic Income is that it’s a legislative solution to a productivity problem. Instead of redistributing wealth, a practice that can be overturned any time, I advocate for the intentional construction of productive machinery owned by the people. If all people owned shares in machines that produced the goods we need for survival, we could receive the benefit of that productivity directly. With a UBI, the idea is to continue letting a small group of people control all the wealth, and then ask them to give us some. It’s laughable to me that people believe you can let one group have all the power and then force them to give some of that power to everyone else. Why would they do that? The solution in my mind is to arrange things so that everyone has a share of the wealth in the first place. I write a bit about that here: http://tlalexander.com/machine/
As someone who is currently sleeping under a bridge most nights, I would be happy to tolerate that frustration until a more equitable system can be implemented.
Surely, a UBI would help you immediately. But I don’t think we’ll see one any time soon. Meanwhile I’m trying to develop a more equitable system. I hope it works. It’s clearly unfair to me that I get to sleep in an apartment and some people can’t. My hope is that by owning the means of production and sharing the output, we can build a more equitable system.
Incidentally I talk about how someone can come in with nothing and end up with part ownership in The Machine in its follow on essay, The Corporation.
http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/
> Instead of redistributing wealth, a practice that can be overturned any time, I advocate for the intentional construction of productive machinery owned by the people.
Public ownership of means of production is as easily overturned (doing so is called “privatization”) as wealth redistribution; in fact, it's been done many times in places that had established public ownership of some or all of the means of production. So, your objection to redistribution seems to apply at least as strongly to your alternative.
Hello there!
To be clear, I’m not talking about state ownership of the means of production, I’m talking about direct ownership through democratically controlled private corporations.
http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
Any ownership structure can be changed arbitrarily; destroying non-state community ownership of land in favor of privatized, marketable ownership was a key capitalist land “reform” in many places (Mexico for instance). Abrogating any democratic worker-ownership system is no less possible than discontinuing a spending program, and to the extent it's difficult it is because of popularity and the same political factors that constrain ending a spending program.
Property rights, no less than taxing and spending, is a feature of law subject to the whims of the State.
These are all fair points. Part of what drives my thinking is the assumption that the moneyed capitalists will fight to defend individual property rights, and that we can build a socialist system inside of the capitalist system. But as you say, the laws can always change to screw regular people. I’ll have to look in to the reform you speak of in Mexico. Do you have any more details to guide my search on that?
Thanks!
> Part of what drives my thinking is the assumption that the moneyed capitalists will fight to defend individual property rights, and that we can build a socialist system inside of the capitalist system.
It's not an entirely unreasonable approach; it's been used with some notable success in, e.g., the Mondragón system.
OTOH, tax-and-redistribute is even more well-established an approach, being a feature of virtually all modern mixed economies.
> I’ll have to look in to the reform you speak of in Mexico. Do you have any more details to guide my search on that?
The ley Lerdo of 1856 (especially it's application to indigenous communities) and the Constitutional amendment to allow privatization of land held in ejidos that were formed as part of the land reforms of the Mexican Revolution under President Salinas in 1992 are the two notable Mexican examples.
Your link doesn't address full collective ownership, you just talk about the group of people that band together to buy a machine. In a country where we're unwilling to invest in basic maintenance of our critical infrastructure, how would you keep the machines from falling apart? What happens to the ownership of local machines when someone moves? How do you ensure that a broken machine doesn't impoverish a community?
More importantly, how does your solution of inventing a new machine to solve poverty help anyone in the decades before we're able to build it? What's the backup plan if you're wrong about the feasibility of this machine?
You seem to be trying to get rid of economics by solving scarcity rather than come up with solutions to economic problems.
A few things:
The follow on essay to The Machine is The Corporation, which talks a little about the logistics of such a thing.
http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
Certainly, I’d like to write a book on these ideas, and I have a lot more to flesh out. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing!
Much of what I want to accomplish is not to get rid of economics, but make it work for regular people. I think that can be done by making sure the people own the means of production and making sure that no one is unfairly exploited for their labor. That is not in my mind getting rid of economics.
And surely, I believe we can realize the benefits of these ideas almost immediately, and I advocate for doing that on my website, http://Reboot.love. Specifically, I think that we can encourage robotics engineers to develop open source solutions, and we can encourage investors and policy makers to fund training so more people can understand how to benefit from these open source designs. I foresee real economic benefits to these ideas helping people within ten years. I believe the reach of these ideas can be broader and more immediate than a UBI. Even if a UBI were implemented in, say, France or Canada, billions would still be without it. But if we design open source productive machinery that can be made in a small shop, everyone from Kenya to Bangladesh to Detroit and Watsonville can benefit.
That’s what I’m working towards.
So you want to do the redistribution in shares issued in ownership the state will sieze from every single company rather than just doing the redistribution in cash. Seems like a really destructive way to achieve the same goal with no added benefit.u
Also it’s kind of comical to insinuate that such shares issued by a government that just appropriated a huge chunk of private corporations would somehow be more secure than cash issued periodically because they are harder to take away, I mean they would litterally signify that this government will take whatever they wish without recourse.
How is that not also redistributing wealth?
Maybe it is better to call it redistribution income vs redistrubuting wealth
Yes. Espectually given advances in automation this looks like the most reasonable path. This solves both the UBI as well as also stops the accumulation of power in hands of few due to efficiencies and scaling factors.
No UBI. The problem with UBI is social programs. we spend billions on safety nets for specific cases and purposes. safe nets for food. safety nets for healthcare. safety nets so parents can feed their children. this is a good thing. this helps people do something they may not have been able to do
basic income does not replace any of these safety nets. you will still have to have them. UBI is just increasing taxes
i’d rather add more safety nets to help those really in need than raise taxes to pay everyone some small amount
So your safety nets for those "who really need it" are more expensive because of the bureaucracy needed to determine this. Furthermore it becomes a disincentive to accept work (as the article states) and rewards dishonesty i.e. "working the system".
If somebody can’t find work, it would take a lot of social programs to ensure they can live. And I’m not convinced a state is more effective at spending the money than individuals are. Social programs are a huge spend and the quality of the programs leaves a lot to be desired (governments aren’t exactly known for being cost effective.)
I mean, replacing food stamps with thousands of dollars a month means the money could be spent buying food. I'm confused why you would think a UBI would not be allowed to be used to purchase food? The libertarian perspective on this is that we shouldn't tell people how to spend their money. If they can't afford food because they have no money, then give them money. Those who buy food will not starve. Those who don't, will, but they can't say they weren't able to buy food.
I think your parent post's implication may be that those receiving UBI who are on specific government programs would not responsibly budget the right amount of money to the right need, and that there will still be cases where people have run out of money and need the same safety nets as before. If someone (or their children) is starving to death, or in need of urgent medical care, are you going to tell them that they should've budgeted better?
By that reasoning, direct cash disbursement charities like GiveDirectly would fail miserably. But they've been shown to work extremely well. People in general understand how to allocate their own money better than the government does.
> People in general understand how to allocate their own money better than the government does.
Mwuh ha ha! Then why levy taxes for anything?!
The people receiving government assistance are not expected to be the same people paying net taxes to fund it.
Although the existing system is so asinine that sometimes they are, which is just another reason to replace it.
> Then why levy taxes for anything?!
Because people owning tanks and bombs want to be paid for not using them.
Knowing how best to allocate money != having enough of it.
Internalizing externalities.
“People in general” don’t need UBI. The exceptions are why the safety nets exist.
Under a traditional UBI system, most people won't get money from the goverment. A UBI as the libertarians described it is basically a negative income tax. If your job pays $20k/year and the UBI level is $10k/yr, for example, then you will not receive anything. However, if your job pays $5k/year, and the UBI is $10k/yr, you receive $5k a year.
If a person can't take care of themself then a social worker should be the safety net. Adult protective services should step in and emergency assistance could be granted. But people with patterns of mismanagement should have a guardianship assigned.
With guardianship that UBI could be directed to an organization to provide that budget management. They can issue a food stamp card, housing assistance, etc. That management could be a government agency or privatized. If privatized it would have to be regulated as a fidicuary.
> I think the your parent post's implication may be that those receiving UBI who are on specific government programs would not responsibly budget the right amount of money to the right need, and that there will still be cases where people have run out of money and need the same safety nets as before. If someone (or their children) is starving to death, or in need of urgent medical care, are you going to tell them that they should've budgeted better?
None of these programs actually prevent that. If someone desperate for a job throws a dinner party to try to network and the guests eat weeks worth of their food, they starve before the next allocation whether the food was bought with food stamps or money. Anyone who wants to convert food stamps to dollars can find a little old lady, offer to do her grocery shopping and then buy the food with food stamps and pocket her cash. If the power fails and all your new food spoils, you're not "allowed" to resell your housing subsidy by subletting for a week to cover the replacement cost.
All the restrictions do is cause inefficiency. If someone wants to eat beans instead of steak or even just go hungry some days because they want to save the money for college or a down payment on a house, who are we to judge?
That is not the problem.
To me, it seems important to tread with humbleness here because UBI is not a product of modern science. We are not the first to consider it, and it’s never been considered quite an acceptable solution. Why is that?
The problem is, as often with economics, a problem with value and it’s ways of fluctuating across geography, networks, business and social structures in a matter of literally no time at all. Time is merely fuel to the fire.
Social programs are created by a government in the sense of a government that is of the people. Governments are not inherently just rulers of the land. They are ideally institutions built by people for the purpose of maintaining a state of civility and addressing common concern that might undermine that state of civility.
Social programs, or safety nets, serve a very specific purpose: to maintain a floor of minimum dignity (or less) considered acceptible in the sought civil state. If this is defined in terms of money, that level of dignity is then held victim to the precarity of value in a capitalist society; and that is not a floor I would be willing to touch with a ten foot pole; certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.
With commodities necessary to survive, it’s obvious how this can go wrong. We are talking about food and shelter here. Social housing is well-proven and extremely efficient. As it stands, masses of people in the US can’t afford housing at their current wage.
The best argument for UBI is as another economic stimulus, which is absolutely needed to prolong the final crash. The question seems to be who is included in the beneficiaries. So, like much of this type of thing, if we don’t agree to collectively give a shit about other people in the first place, it’s not worth wasting time over.
> certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.
Um... what? The government quantifies exactly how much it will spend on social welfare programs each year. Simply dividing the budget out by the number of people enrolled (also available from the government) paints a very clear picture of how much 'civil dignity' is worth.
> They are ideally institutions built by people for the purpose of maintaining a state of civility and addressing common concern that might undermine that state of civility.
I agree but they are built by specific people - military. The state of civility is not a goal by itself just the best way for the military to get paid for doing nothing of value for the rest of the people, in predictable and stable fashion.
Are you saying that all social safety nets are bad, or is there something that differentiates UBI from the others?
Well, the libertarian argument for a UBI says yes, you ought to tell people they should've budgeted better. Under a universal basic income, everyone would receive exactly how much money they would need to live and a little more. The extra could likely be spent on a budgeting class for those who need it.
Keep in mind, that libertarians are fundamentally against governments telling people how to spend their money. This includes the rich and the poor. The rich should not be told how to spend their money and the poor ought to be given everything they need to survive and not be told how to spend it either. Thus everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law.
Some people would inevitably fuck up and spend all their money and have none left to buy food... so you’d still need food banks or stamps.
You can still buy some junk food and soda with food stamps, and none of that is good for you. You could theoretically trade whatever food you buy for drugs or money to purchase drugs if you so desired. Should we force feed people nutritious food?
No, obviously not. Removing all individual agency from welfare is simply dehumanizing. Let people make the best decisions for themselves... and get legitimate help (not food stamps) for the people unable to do that.
I've seen a food stamp program called WIC that had limits against junk food and overpriced brands. Also soda and chips will prevent starvation.
Dope dealers will not accept food as payment.
>make the best decisions for themselves.
And what about their children? Many of them are poor because they have kids. No one has the individual agency to get high on free money while their kids starve.
My point is you can’t force people to take care of themselves or their kids, regardless of whether you give them food stamps or just cash. Sure, food stamps guide them perhaps in the right direction, but there’s no guarantee those parents will use the food stamps responsibly. Bad parents will be bad parents. Those bad parents that would let their kids starve if they were given money rather than food stamps should have their kids taken away from them. But I don’t think most people on food stamps are like that.
So then the question is is the overhead worth that marginal case?
If people aren't smart enough to know how to spend their money, perhaps we need to provide better financial education in school. I don't remember having an iota of financial education from K-12 -- it was all focused around math, history, literature and science. "How to live your life independently" may as well be a core subject, because the United States is becoming breeding ground for dependent people. It doesn't seem in the government's best interest to push for better financial education, because they profit off of dependency.
It makes way more sense to have your constituents be financially educated than to "accept that they are dumb" and then just attempt to fix everything they mess up. The latter is unsustainable. UBI + better schooling should preclude the need for food programs, etc.
So why UBI then? People getting jobs should preclude the need for food programs, but it doesn’t in practice so you want UBI.
UBI should preclude the need for food programs and it also won’t in practice. What’s changed?
Why do you care that jobs don’t work for everyone, but don’t care that UBI won’t work for everyone?
If you’re a ‘people should just be smarter’ person why do you want to help people using UBI in the first place?
> Why do you care that jobs don’t work for everyone, but don’t care that UBI won’t work for everyone?
Because jobs and UBI aren't the same thing. You aren't guaranteed a job out of high school or college, so you are more likely to have some sort of basis for your claim that you need support from everyone else. On the other hand, with UBI, if you're given exactly what you need to sustain your life and can't, then it's clearly a personal problem.
> then it's clearly a personal problem
Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of money - like being innumerate, or having mental health issues, or a controlling abusive partner, or just being super crap with money no matter how hard they honestly try.
You can say we’ll leave those people to starve to death, but that’s not going to get me to vote for UBI!
You’ll probably more realistically say ‘ok well we’ll help that one mother just one time with the baby starving to death because she is addicted to gambling away her UBI’ but then bingo you’re now running a food program as well.
> Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of mone
We don't have one now; it might be nice to have with UBI as it would be now, but why would it be any more necessary with UBI?
Sure, if UBI is a more efficient means of solving the problems addressed by means-tested programs and unlocks economic potential forgone due to minimum wage, it might make the existing need for such a program something that we can afford to address, but it certainly doesn't create an unmet need that doesn't already exist.
> You can say we’ll leave those people to starve to death, but that’s not going to get me to vote for UBI!
But, that's exactly the status quo for people with too much income to qualify for food aid who don't spend it well. Why would losing that existing situation unchanged whole improving other areas be a reason to oppose UBI?
> Right - so we still need a food program for people who have personal problems that cause them to run out of money.
Plenty of private charities can exist which you can donate to if you believe your money should be helping those people. A system where some people voluntarily donate has less inequity than a system where all people are forced to donate.
Same thing with welfare, despite the availability of various government program, some people still end up fuck up.
If someone fuck up and use up all their UBI then they must seek private entity such as church or charity.
> If someone fuck up and use up all their UBI then they must seek private entity such as church or charity.
But if this is your attitude - people who mess up should be on their own - why are you in favour of UBI? Why don’t you also think that people who can’t get a job should be on their own?
> Why don’t you also think that people who can’t get a job should be on their own?
Personally, I recognize that you need some level of money in order to take part in civic society. For example, it's hard to find a job without a mailing address, nice clothes, cosmetic products, and make up. It's also hard to put your time towards finding a job if you can't eat. Thus, in the interest of maximizing economic output and social engagement, we ought to provide enough money for people to be able to afford these things.
If you are able to afford these things, but still mess up... well, I mean, you have freely and without coercion chosen to disengage with society. To these people, I hope they are happy with their choice, but I struggle to see how they could be.
How is this any difference than the current condition right now? We have many of government program but we still have many mess up, they are on their own too.
I prefer UBI because I can't choose however I want to spend it.
… or churches or charities or … but the volume would go way down. From a utilitarian point of view, its saving money to switch to a BI.
The libertarian response would be to ... do nothing. Sure people may get hurt, but no one will get hurt because they didn't have the resources to avoid it. Every person who fucks up has only themselves to blame, not the whims of some government bureaucrat.
Just as a note, I'm not really a libertarian sympathizer anymore, but that is my understanding of the libertarian justification for UBI.
financial responsibility cannot be bought with UBI. ignoring how incredibly unlikely it is we would ever cancel social programs on a mass scale, let’s say we did. your example of people starving is good.
in that world you get to eat only if you are financially responsible. in the current world everyone gets to eat (or we try to feed the hungry)
i think the current model is way more humane. and we will never cancel social programs to have a less humane society
UBI is stuck in extremes.
Libertarians want to cancel social programs and replace with UBI so individuals determine how to spend their benefits. Socialists want to guarantee everyone a living wage but also want the safety nets.
Policy needs to be in middle. You need to enable people to self-manage. Must be ready to help them when there is a bad turn events. But you also need to have a humane way to deal with people that are incapable of taking care of themselves, for example mental illness. The way to handle that is guardianship, not other government programs that can also be individually mismanaged. Guardianship will surely be more expensive then UBI but it is the humane thing to do.
> incapable of taking care of themselves, for example mental illness
On this point, I agree 100%, but UBI programs are not really focused on the mentally ill. As is, disability is a fraction of what we traditionally think of as welfare (and it's already neglected in our current society). Most welfare are food stamps, health services, etc, for people that would otherwise be perfectly capable on their own.
A UBI does not mean getting rid of programs for people that cannot actually help themselves like the severely disabled or foster children. It means not treating grown adults like children or wards of the state
The libertarian perspective is to not force people to give up their property, money and other assets as taxes at gunpoint in the first place.
So I totally agree that the Libertarian perspective is not to TELL (force) ME to spend my money on UBI
I agree. Didn't follow that logic either.
What is the difference between the libertarian perspective and anarchy?
Libertarians believe that government is necessary as the only means of justifiable force, but that the government ought to be only as large as necessary to provide the force necessary to protect individual rights.
Anarchists believe there ought to be no government at all.
If you can't see the difference still, I would recommend picking up a book. Hacker news is not the place to learn about various political philosophies.
Property rights pretty much.
Libertarians consider government to be a necessary evil, anarchists consider it an unnecessary evil.
> basic income does not replace any of these safety nets.
Yes, it does, in the same way that any other income already does, which is why those all tend to be means-tested programs.
> you will still have to have them.
No, you won't, once the UBI level is above the income level at which the programs would not be available.
Some people prefer to sleep outside and spend their money on booze and drugs instead of food. If that's their choice, who are we to say they're misguided?
A basic income can eliminate many wasteful bureaucratic policies, leaving more money to spend on what folks want.
I (somewhat tongue in cheek) wonder how all those bureaucrats that’s we’ll get rid of will make a living. :)
What confuses me about most discussions on this is the automatic assumption that taxes need to be raised to get UBI. Both sides seem to implicitly take this for granted, whereas it's fairly trivial to rework income tax to introduce UBI without anyone having a net difference in earnings.
Of course the real question is whether doing this would allow you to actually simplify anything, or if it's possible to simplify taxes with only minor (or desired) changes in net income.
>basic income does not replace any of these safety nets. you will still have to have them
No, you would repeal all existing social and welfare programs, the minimum wage and employer healthcare, and replace them with a bare minimal UBI.
At least in the US, there is no other implementation that would be palatable to conservatives, business and most voters.
So what happens to the addict (drugs, gambling, whatever) that blows their UBI? Do we let them die in the streets with lack of medical care? Let their children starve?
How about the homeless in (any super expensive city that still won’t be able to afford housing there, yet for whatever reason won’t leave?
No, we’ll STILL need safety nets even with UBI.
Morally, you're right... we should have both. Politically, however, it would be infeasible to sell UBI as anything but a means of cutting back the existing social welfare infrastructure in order to reduce taxes and the size of government. We can't have both so long as a significant number of voters want neither.
> basic income does not replace any of these safety nets.
But it lessens the burden on all of them.
Here's the thing, UBI will be used to argue that other social interventions and support are no longer necessary. "We're giving you free money, and you want more?"
UBI is a convenient way for the wealthy classes to wash their hands of the poor without having to give up too much of their wealth. Not to mention it will probably be provided by a government donor corporation in the form of a cashless card with moralistic restrictions on how the income can be spent (e.g. no alcohol or legal cannabis).
Universal income, unrestricted immigration. Which is it that you really want?
Both of course, people tend to want it all, and dreams to pay for it all. In 100 years it'll supposedly all work out fine, despite "short term" problems, no need to compromise.
I'm sorry you have to withstand the opposition from those who have to weather the problems in the meantime. Perhaps a loaner crystal ball could help us weave our reservations.
> Universal income, unrestricted immigration. Which is it that you really want?
Very few people actually want totally unrestricted immigration, and most of them -- the only consistent ones -- are either unitary world government proponents or full on anarchists. Otherwise you're inviting seven billion people to vote in your country's elections, and then nothing stops them from voting for the same sort of wealth redistribution policies or anything else to the detriment of the existing population. It's not pick one: open borders or redistribution of wealth, it's pick one: open borders or democracy.
The ideological inconsistency you're observing is realpolitik in action. People who want more socialist policies don't want unrestricted immigration, they only want just enough immigration from socialist-leaning countries that they have the majorities needed to pass their policies. Meanwhile people on the right are trying to keep the same people out for the same reason -- Republicans don't oppose immigration because they're "racist", it's because those immigrants disproportionately vote for Democrats. Neither party will be consistent because consistency loses them votes.
UBI incentivizes producing more people. Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish. Which is awesome. Unless the nutrients or the petri dish are finite.
> UBI incentivizes producing more people.
As an alternative to means-tested benefit programs (especially those that beyond means-testing are expressly conditioned on having dependent children) it does not, in fact, it reduces that incentive.
> Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish.
It's not like that at all.
> UBI incentivizes producing more people.
Do you think UBI would encourage people to have more children?
Why do you think money is finite?
It's just a way of tracking of what fraction of humanity output each person is entitled to.
It's funny that at the time I wrote this comment another front page post is about people escaping high taxation areas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476342 .
It's not like America needs wealthy people. We really just need basic resources (e.g. arable land, metal) and technology, and it's only a matter of time until people needn't work.
There are several problems with basic income. For starters, housing costs are crazy right now and the US lacks universal health coverage. If we could could solve those two things, you would see a lot fewer people calling for basic income.
I have alimony in about the amount that is frequently cited as how much America should give people for basic income. Without additional income on top of that, I can't pay rent and keep myself fed. I was willing to move almost anywhere in the US to find a low rent place to get myself off the street. Most people can't or won't do that. Most places in the US do not have rentals cheap enough for someone to live on $10k or so a year.
In other words, if you don't address the lack of affordable housing, basic income won't support most people. And if you do, you go a long ways towards not needing basic income. The lack of affordable housing is an issue that needs to be tackled regardless. Talking about basic income strikes me as taking time away from problems that must be addressed regardless.
I see basic income as a lazy answer posited by people who would like to imagine you can throw money at the problem because they can't figure out how to effectively address some of the issues here. I don't think that actually works. I think that would actually go some pretty bad places.
If you think that raising taxes for UBI will result in the politicians actually allocating the money to UBI.... then you just need to look at how current monies are raised and spent.
Here's what will happen:
- taxes raised for "insert acronym of flavor here" (UBI)
- 95% allocated to every citizen, permanent resident, legal immigrant, illegal migrant, etc.
- Over time they will decrease the allocation relative to the amount they collect.
Next thing you know, "UBI" is just another line item on your paycheck deductions just like "EI" and "CPP" is a deduction in Canada for "Employment Insurance" and "Canada Pension Plan".
Neither of which will actually solve the problem because that was not the (hidden) goal to begin with.
There will be just as much, if not more poverty because:
- smart, hardworking people will leave the country because they are tired of getting abused with excessive taxes.... draining productivity
- poorest people will take on brutal loans for things they do not need (lottery, drugs, cars, shiny clothes)
- poorest people will become lethargic. "Free" unearned income is poison to ambition and creativity.
- "Free" income is not Free because it is given based on an inflating money supply. It means your children or grandchildren will be paying it via hidden tax of inflation and effectively sold into debt slavery.
We are watching the final stages take place where the communist revolution will be complete. As it stands, the USA is heavily socialist and stopped being capitalistic once they seized control of the economy in 1913 and began central planning via fiat money printing and manipulating interest rates.
Plan accordingly over the next 5-20 years
He doesn't talk about inflation and handwaves the cost concerns.
Why the world won't adopt a basic income: Basic Economics.
The social justice aspect can include the idea that income derived from resources belongs to everybody. This is reflected on American Indian reservations that distribute revenues even from casinos to all members.
As far as the issue of "encouraging laziness", anyone who has read the Bhagavad Gita is familiar with the idea that alongside the tendency towards rest is an equal tendency towards movement and action.
Call it a dividend; we could all expect out monthly American Dividend check and it would perhaps help congeal some sense of common purpose as well.
I get one of those. Roads. Police. Firefighters. Not being invaded by foreign powers. Rule of law. Etc. There's no fixed dollar amount, but I use that cash flow to build my life.
Yes. I'd be happy if more people acknowledged that.
Wouldn't hurt if we also got a bit of actual cash on top of that though.
One of the ideas behind paying out cash is that individuals get to express their needs and desires by deciding what to do with it.
Cash is probably not the right word.
A negative income tax is a much better idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
> A negative income tax is a much better idea.
A negative income tax is the exact same idea with slightly different framing.
The US already has this with EITC and CTC. These programs paid out over 70 billion in 2017 to over 27 million families.
Sort of. Except EITC is anemic and a work incentive with a focus on children rather than a negative income tax.
Someone supporting a kid gets a much larger max benefit than someone earning the max benefit with no children ($3,400 vs $510) and the benefit tapers away for low incomes.
"And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"
[0] - http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Can someone explain how this doesn't create an obvious inflation issue?
The state doesn't need to grow the money supply if it takes from the people the same amount that it distributes to the people.
Even then the prices of various products will likely be affected, but the nature and extent of those effects are not obvious.
> Even then the prices of various products will likely be affected, but the nature and extent of those effects are not obvious.
They're also likely to be beneficial, because the existing programs that would be replaced are the ones causing exactly the sort of price inflation we don't want by inflating the prices of necessities like food, housing and medicine.
When the government is paying for your healthcare, you get all the unnecessary tests. When the government is giving you the cash equivalent and whatever you don't spend on medicine you get to keep, you only get the necessary tests and then have money left over to take a vacation. So the price of healthcare goes down and the price of cruise tickets goes up, which seems like a pretty good trade off.
> When the government is paying for your healthcare, you get all the unnecessary tests.
Where does this happen?
> Where does this happen?
What do you mean? The entire US healthcare system operates this way. Either the government is your insurance (medicare, medicaid and similar state programs, federal employees etc.), or they subsidize private insurance through tax incentives and direct subsidies for low income people that encourage/require comprehensive insurance rather than catastrophic coverage.
Then none of those people have the incentive to compare prices or decline unnecessary procedures because the insurance is paying for most or all of it.
Also I think FED constantly creates money by lending to commercial banks. It could lend less to reduce money supply when government issues money to fund basic income.
This way same amount of money would get injected into the economy. Just not into the pockets of borrowers, but directly into consumers.
The Economist has really gone down hill in the past few years. I expect them to publish numbers, not vaguely Marxist reflections lamenting an age of supposed increasing hardship, although I was amused by the idea of social inheritance.
The economist is self-avowed libertarian. UBI is a libertarian idea.
How exactly is redistributing income a libertarian idea? Seems like the exact opposite to me.
From another commenter...
> Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of welfare program
I don't think he ever supported a UBI. He supported a Negative Income Tax which is different.
It depends on how you taxonomize terms. Negative Income Tax (which is what Friedman supports) is a type of UBI. As I've said elsewhere in this chain, the policies being proposed today are not really what the libertarians had in mind, since they co-exist with other forms of welfare, which libertarians would be wholeheartedly against. That being said, it's not surprising why the economist would run a story on this... it is still a libertarian idea.
Also, the comment quoted above was made by me... the same guy you responded to, ha! :)
I dunno man, but Milton Friedman, the saint of libertarinism that he is, was a huge proponent [1]. It's a topic of frequent interest in libertarian publications, such as the economist and reason. Gary Johnson (libertarian nominee) was also in support. To say that it's not libertarian is easily dismissable, considering the number of traditional libertarians who support it.
Of course the corollary is that all other welfare programs are immediately ended, but this is not typically included in these modern implementations.
[1] http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/03/the-indestructible-ide...
More libertarian resources:
[2] https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basi...
[3] https://basicincome.org/news/2016/08/us-johnson-supports-bas...
[4] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragm...
It's all in how you define your terms. Cutting off the head of a poor man with no job, an 80 IQ and 100k in debt is technically setting them free, in one specific sense.
It empowers the individual vs let the govt decide.
Redistribution income unconditionally, rather than according to a popular notion of deservingness, is as libertarian as it gets.
No one can answer that question with any certainty. Ideas are very fluid.
But if I can attempt an answer. I believe it is libertarian in the sense that it does not require a large bureaucracy with onerous rules and regulations controlling the funds distribution and use.
The money is available to everyone for any use. The government may just serve as a pass-through entity.
Where does this basic income come from? If everyone is entitled to a basic income as a matter of right, that means others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor. When the government no longer serves to defend people and their property rights but becomes primarily a means of redistribution, I think it loses its legitimacy.
They're "coerced" into handing over the fruits of labor exploitation.
Money and power accrete more money and power. Government must serve as a redistributive force, to some degree, unless we're all-in on exploitation.
I personally am against UBI but...
> If everyone is entitled to a basic income as a matter of right, that means others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor.
...is not an approrpiate response. Just because the government is funded through income at present doesn't mean its the only way to fund government. You could fund the government (and UBI) with a land-value-tax, for example.
What is government if not a system for redistributing labour and resources?
A government is for protecting our inalienable rights.
> our inalienable rights.
I take it that you have a universal definition of 'inalienable rights'.
The USA crossed that bridge a long time ago. This just adds a bit more.
Saying simple it comes from the same place where jobs eliminated by automation go.
That's one way to look at the world.
Here's another - the whole world (all the land in the world) was claimed by people just because they were born before me (and had guns). Those people who were born before then arbitrarily hand that land/resources to other people, with really no objective justification outside of tradition.
Of course, we treat these traditions are nonsense when it's convenient -- if we really believed them then we'd give back most of the land in America to native Americans.
If you really believe this, do you lock your car? Your house? Do you let people just walk into where you live and eat your food and use your stuff?
Isn't it just arbitrary that you're excluding others from enjoying these things? What right do you have to have exclusive use of anything?
Yes, it is arbitrary. The idea of "ownership" is just an construct/idea self-aware matter (i.e. humans) happened to come up with because it worked well at that phase in our evolution.
> others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor
This is exactly taxation of all kinds. And your framing presupposes that these fruits that would be obtainable without the social structure that those payments support.
Not to mention that, 'fruits of their labor' is a highly tendentious way of talking about a capitalist system. The fruits of their capital, perhaps. By and large, capital owners already extract a very large proportion of the 'fruits' of their employees labor.
I think it is a very dubious argument whether basic income would all balance out, but it is no different in kind from any other social collectivism.
Do you think the government can protect the right of people by buying more missiles and tanks? Subsidizing more gentrified neighborhoods and private prisons? I think within a few decades UBI will be the cheaper road to go down. A doctor can administer a vaccine, and this is 'pathogen redistribution'.
I hear this a lot but haven't seen enough evidence that fruits of labor (more like fruits of capital) aren't ill-gotten.
Why would the mouthpieces of the neoliberal rich (the Economist is one of them ) , all want to give away free money?
Are there any other times that they gave away something for free without a concomitant benefit eventually accruing to them?
Many of the mega rich are terrified of a repeat of the French Revolution. They want to stave that off if they can, ideally without disrupting the status quo.
A basic income is perfect for the task. It will make many people complacent. Let them stay home, smoking legalized marijuana and playing video games all day. Young men, especially, who are pacified with such creature comforts are unlikely to take to the hills with assault rifles and sleeping bags.
Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of welfare program
Because your understanding of their ideology and motivation is wrong?
I'm willing to listen.
It just seems odd to have so many who scratched and saved and schemed and clawed their way to near the top of their professions, with a great deal of wealth, now telling me how easy it is if we just hand out free cash to people...?
The Economist is more “liberal intelligentsia” than “top-hat and monocole robber baron,” and more pragmatic centrist than libertarian extremist. (Consider the number of NGO management positions advertised in its pages). Beyond basic human empathy, its patrons generally want a stable and productive environment in which to live and conduct business. UBI (like its cousin Negative Income Tax) has some traction in this intellectual circle as a more elegant, less side-effectful way of delivering on those goals than other welfare schemes with more populist appeal (which tend to pick winners, diminish productivity, or function more as working-class catharsis than economic optimization).
They want to create a single global government. The best way to do this is bankrupt sovereign governments, especially of rich nations.
That seems like a reasonably likely outcome, but this is the first time I've seen a claim that it is the entire goal.
Do you have any pointers I could follow to evidence that this is a deliberate strategy like you are describing?
The Economist is owned in part by the Rothschild family[1]. Yes, the same family who popularized central banking! Here's a good general overview of the plan [2]. You might think it's a good plan, or a bad plan depending on whether you like nation states or think they shouldn't exist. The same goes for why the economist would support a global carbon tax as thst can't be good for rich people. It's because it would fund a global government with limited accountability and drain national treasuries. The goal is globalism. The enemy is the nation state. They've been working on this for decades and they've failed a bunch, but they never ever give up.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group
[2] https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/03/24/a-rothschild...