
Why a Universal Basic Income Would Be a Calamity - merraksh
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-universal-basic-income-would-be-a-calamity-1502403580
======
mabbo
Though I don't agree with all of it, the article makes some valid points on
the social problems that may erupt from UBI.

I suspect that reason UBI has the following it does today is because it's
socialism dressed in a funny mask. "Hey, no socialism here! Private industry
still does everything! The money to pay for it all just happens to come from
large taxes on the super rich". The left like it because it's socialism, the
right like it because the government doesn't do very much at all except
distribute the wealth.

I tend to argue instead for actual socialism over UBI. Socialized health care,
public education, infrastructure, etc. Once you stop presuming the government
_can 't_ do anything well, you start to see real possibilities.

(Bias: Canadian, enjoying my relatively efficient and effective health care
system and public education)

~~~
cgmg
"I tend to argue instead for actual socialism over UBI. Socialized health
care, public education, infrastructure, etc."

That's not socialism, at all. That's social democracy.

As someone who comes from a country that has actually been ravaged by
socialism, there's a world of a difference between the two.

~~~
coldtea
> _As someone who comes from a country that has actually been ravaged by
> socialism, there 's a world of a difference between the two._

Those countries have been ravaged by being run by totalitarian parties that
followed a specific Stalinist model

Not by anything specific in socialism itself. Social democracy is still a form
of socialism, and until around the first world war there were one and the same
(including being championed by the same people).

------
y7
The article doesn't give me any convincing arguments against UBI.

The author uses Saudi Arabia as an example as a country with UBI that works
badly. First of all, I have no intimate with if there is any implementation.
The author does not provide any sources, so that's not much help. A cursory
Google search leads me to doubt this claim [1]. The author claims >50%
unemployment in the country, again doubtful [2].

Then, the article states that proponents of a UBI claim that it allows people
to self-improve and take risks, equating this with a transition from a low
skilled worker to a high skilled one, which seems a far stretch. Of course
automation removes low skilled jobs; but more training does not automagically
turn everyone into PhDs with un-automateable jobs.

Then there are even more wild claims about it leading to a demise of the
American democracy, where I don't even begin to see how the author came up
with it.

1: [https://www.quora.com/Is-Saudi-Arabia-an-implementation-
of-b...](https://www.quora.com/Is-Saudi-Arabia-an-implementation-of-basic-
income)

2: [http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/07/saudi-arabia-
unemploym...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/07/saudi-arabia-unemployment-
rate-climbs-127-percent-170730163025234.html)

~~~
criddell
> The article doesn't give me any convincing arguments against UBI.

I'd love to ask the author how a guaranteed income would change his life.
Would he stop writing? Does he only write for the money?

------
blfr
Using Saudi Arabia as an argument against UBI is like using Somalia as an
argument against libertarianism -- oil money or lack of government oversight
are not the problems there.

~~~
eighthnate
The article is a bit disingenuous because saudi arabia's population increased
from 5 million in 1967 to nearly 35 million today.

It's a 600% increase compared to the US's 50% increase in the same time frame.

It's the same kind of dishonest cherrypicking of data to push your agenda. No
different than when people try to compare norway to the US. What applies to a
small racially homogenous scandinavian with tons of oil doesn't usually apply
to a racially diverse continent sized nation like the US.

This is why my opinion on economics and newspapers have declined. Too much
biased cherrypicking of data and too much agenda-pushing.

~~~
vixen99
The status quo is that we don't have basic income. On the agenda is the
proposal that we do. A critique of a novel proposition is agenda-pushing?

~~~
eighthnate
> A critique of a novel proposition is agenda-pushing?

Yes? Especially when it disingenuous and cherrypicking data. As I said, people
with an agenda tend to do this. Whether it is the people on the left trying to
compare us to norway or the people on the right trying to compare us to saudi
arabia.

~~~
posterboy
name calling is disenginious, too. Everyone has an agenda. People with a
"wrong" agenda tend to use wrong methods to push it. But you imply malignance
of a particular flavor without giving concrete evidence for the cause ... or
giving due critique (edit: wait, there is critique, just not concerned with
the conclusion). Granted, to claim low quality of content, none of that's
needed.

------
fsloth
Right to vote was disconnected from financial contribution in the western
countries quite explicitly by the implementation of general suffrage roughly a
century ago, where it usually replaced capital, class and gender based
limitations. It would be quite a political throwback to reverse on this.
Granted, the political shift was in part to pacify and commit critical
industrial workers to the established financial order, but was driven in part
by the general humanistic spirit.

------
anotheryou
\- Money already rules politics and we have to fight for true democracy either
way

\- Most people are not egomanic workaholic persuing their carreer and don't
need the job as a centor of life and pride. Why not let them play video games
or do sports or anything they want?

\- Isn't automation able to replace the booring jobs?

\- Nerds still want to play with tech, give them 15h work weeks and some good
pay and they will keep doing their job. High payed professionals today also
would not have to work much for the equivalent ammount of money that UBI would
give them and yet they still work.

\---

What I really wonder:

\- if an inflation would happen

\- how many are really incapable of finding purpose for themselves (I think
most will do very fine, even if they just play video games with friends)

\- if a country stays competetive with other more exploitive countries

\- how much we'd have to pay people doing shitjobs so they stay attractive
enough and if this is realistic to do

------
mabbo
Alternative link: [http://luxlibertas.com/why-a-universal-basic-income-would-
be...](http://luxlibertas.com/why-a-universal-basic-income-would-be-a-
calamity/)

------
Mz
All the warm, fuzzy pro UBI articles gush about how tech giants are generously
willing to support UBI in the face of jobs going away. They then paint glowing
pictures of how useful that money will be for underpaid workers doing "good
work," like teachers and social workers.

They never go into how bleak a dystopian future we are talking about if large
numbers of jobs that pay $20k-$50k or so disappear and now you have to live on
$10k-$20k with little or no hope of ever getting a job again while inflation
steadily erodes the real value of your UBI. Glad to see one article exploring
that (dystopian view), though it fails to mention this aspect of UBI.

We need to resolve the widespread lack of affordable housing in the US and we
need to fix our broken healthcare system. That would give ordinary people
substantial relief.

~~~
PeterisP
UBI is a non-perfect solution to the problem of the (IMHO inevitable)
situation when "large numbers of jobs that pay $20k-$50k or so disappear and
now you have to live [...] with little or no hope of ever getting a job
again". This part doesn't depend on UBI in any way whatsoever, it's not caused
by UBI but by the current trends in technology development, and it's only
relevance to UBI is that "UBI people" are willing to think and talk about this
scenario while mainstream politicians would (obviously) rather pretend that
this problem doesn't exist, since voters tend to punish politicians that bring
bad news even if they're true.

Assuming your assumptions, in this situation is living on $10k-20k a bleak,
dystopian future compared to the default (if nothing changes in our policy, no
UBI) scenario of all these permanently unemployable people having _no_
reasonable income?

~~~
Mz
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15060319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15060319)

The last time we faced the possibility of "automation" taking our jobs, we
invented the 40 hour work week to redistribute work and raise quality of life
for more working class people. We called it The Industrial Revolution.

I think of this as The Second Industrial Revolution. I think we need new ways
to cut the burden of work for the average individual without cutting large
numbers of people out of work entirely.

Designing it that way is not a given. And it is a design choice to say "meh,
too bad, so sad that many people will simply be unemployed -- not my problem."
It is a terrible design choice, but it is a choice.

------
websitescenes
Sure, but it's the only way I can conceive of offsetting the effects of
automation and AI. If there are no jobs then capitalism will essentially
break. Only the extremely skilled and technical workers will be able to find
jobs and the wealth disparity will grow to previously unimagined proportions.
What is the alternative? There are literally no solutions in this article.

~~~
Mz
_What is the alternative?_

IIRC, healthcare now accounts for about 20% of the GDP in the US. Provide
universal basic healthcare and you cover around 20% of the budget of many
people. You also benefit families and people with health problems more,
without having to try to give them additional benefits.

Create an adequate supply of genuinely affordable, decent housing so you don't
have large numbers of people paying 50% or more of their income to rent and
you alleviate another huge burden.

Then, create gig work opportunities that are well designed so that people can
work as much as they like, when, where and how they so choose.

The last industrial revolution gave birth to the 40 hour work week in order to
redistribute work without throwing large numbers of people out of work. Gig
work done right can be a means to uncouple work from its current constraints
for many people.

If your cost of living is low and healthcare is covered, part-time gig work
will be sufficient to provide for your needs.

------
noddy1
I was skeptical about UBI until listening to michael munger's interview about
it on econtalk

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/michael_munger_3.ht...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/michael_munger_3.html)

I think one of the biggest flaws of capitalism is the assumption that those
are the bottom of the pile are rational economic actors, when in fact they
often have factors like substance abuse problems, low iq, disability,
miserable abusive upbringings, etc which prevent them from making smart
decisions or functioning at the level required to get ahead in a competitive
capitalist system. We can afford to, and are morally obligated to look after
them. A starter UBI is a great way to do that. It also opens the door for
employers to pay these people low wages, which can help them get a leg up in
the job market, without risking losing benefits. Eg. a really low intelligence
person sweeping floors for $2.50 an hour is moral when they get a reasonable
UBI & if taxation of corporations and wealthy individuals means they get
healthcare and education for their kids etc.

So overall, socialism for the people at the bottom of society, and capitalism
for the people with a high enough level of function to be able to thrive under
that system.

------
Aron
The embrace of UBI seems entirely too eager for many. It's as if the huge,
unpredictable and ambitious nature of it isn't fully felt. Attempts to
refactor giant economies according to high modern ideals has been tried to
disastrous results, and it is completely valid to bring this up. Most
disasters for which the UBI is supposed to handle aren't even particularly
present yet, and may be mirages.

~~~
scarmig
It's as if the huge, unpredictable, and ambitious nature of mass automation
isn't fully felt by you. Attempts to refactor giant economies according to
laissez-faire, high modern ideals has been tried to disastrous results, and it
is completely valid to bring this up.

Yes, it's still up in the air whether it will happen, and there are reasonable
arguments that it won't.

But it's incredibly telling that opponents of a basic income spend about 100%
of their time saying it's solving a problem that doesn't and will never exist.

There's a real likelihood that the economy is going to go through massive,
unpredictable changes. Working from that assumption, very few alternatives to
a basic income exist, and most are either bad (make work schemes) or immoral
(do nothing and let the peasants starve if they don't pull themselves up by
their bootstraps and get a nonexistent job).

------
kafkaesq
_How long before the elites decide the unemployed underclass shouldn’t have
the right to vote?_

It's really hard to justify the time investment in reading a piece that starts
off with an implausible scare tactic like this.

One can only expect it to go downhill from there.

------
criddell
Does anybody have a link to the complete article, I'd like to read it.

And who is Dan Nidess? I don't know a whole lot about economics, but I do know
that semi-knowledgeable people like myself are usually wrong about economic
issues.

~~~
eighthnate
> I don't know a whole lot about economics, but I do know that semi-
> knowledgeable people like myself are usually wrong about economic issues.

The knowledgeable people are even more wrong about economic issues. The
history of economics and economists is a history of failure. So your shouldn't
be so down on yourself.

According to one of today's great economist, we are supposed to be in a global
depression without end.

"So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.
I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else,
a terrible thing has just happened."

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elec...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-
night-2016/could-trump-end-the-culture-wars)

~~~
criddell
The quote isn't from the column you linked to. That column is by a professor
of history and as far as I can tell, Daniel Williams isn't an economist.

I was mostly speaking about issues like the deficit. I used to subscribe to
the _deficits are bad_ theory of budgets. If I shouldn't run my household with
a deficit, then how does it make sense to run the country with a deficit?
Turns out, they aren't the same thing.

------
yellowapple
The universal right to vote is likely among the few things preventing the
citizenries from violently overthrowing their governments. A right to vote
provides at least an illusory hope of changing a government from within. Take
that away, and you'll be lighting a fuse leading straight to revolution (of a
likely-violent nature).

------
vminkov
Governance had become too complicated already, people with higher knowledge in
governing and econ should have higher vote weight.

------
scottmf
Paywall. What is their proposed alternative?

~~~
blfr
Forge the referal to say you're coming from Twitter. (My proposed alternative,
not theirs, obviously.)

------
neilwilson
Usual problem. If automation is taking jobs then why does the retirement age
keep going up?

Because the simplest solution that works is to progressively lower the
retirement age.

It never happens does it because that would be a burden on the workers.

And that's because the problem has nothing to do with automation and money.
The problem is that we are a reciprocating species. If you want the carrots
I've grown then I need to see you do something of social value and benefit to
me before I'll let you have any.

Hiding behind the money illusion doesn't fool people for long. You bought what
I laboured to produce _and_ you spent time on the Xbox. So you consumed my
time and yours. That's seen as unfair and rightly so.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. What we
need is a social system that ensures everybody can make that rent.

And for that we need a Job Guarantee not a hand out.

~~~
neon_electro
If you replace "spent time on the Xbox" with

* "took care of your aging grandmother"

* "worked on your new business that caters to the community"

* "contributed to open-source software"

* or "volunteered for a community outreach program"

how does it change your opinion? What can a job guarantee do to support the
above socially beneficial activities that basic income doesn't do better?

