
Enough with Basic Income - julbaxter
https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bullshit-a6bc92e8286b
======
jnbiche
This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-
related job loss that isn't with traditional welfare solution proposed by the
team he cheers for.

He didn't spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic
income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me
some of the strongest arguments _for_ BI:

1) He worries about division and polarization. Well, BI is the only solution
that I'm aware of that draws on support from both the libertarian right
(strong support, mostly) and liberal left (many support, but some are
suspicious like this guy). No other solution to the jobless future can boast
of support from both sides of the political spectrum.

2) Oddly, the quote from Olaf Palme he offers up as a critique of basic income
reads to me as strong support:

    
    
        "An efficient and stable welfare state must be based on universal social programs,
        such as health insurance, pensions, and child-support allowances-programs that are directed to all citizens. 
        Official “poverty lines” or “means-tests” would not have to define “the poor” (which would minimize the need for bureaucratic controls). 
        At the same time, people in difficult financial circumstances would not have to put up with the degrading classification of “poor.”"
    

This sounds like an extremely persuasive argument _for_ BI and one of the
reasons why I support it.

In fact, it's completely unclear to me after reading this whole damn essay
_why_ he is so strongly in opposition to the point where he wants people to
stop discussing it altogether, other than it's not the favored solution of his
team.

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the
basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who
are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty.

I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the
challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place,
would be as strong, politically, as other universal programs such as universal
social insurance: => Round #1: new left-wing government enacts UBI with
appropriate funding. => Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new
right-wing government decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the
costs. UBI becomes BI without the "U". => Round #3: the rich find that their
taxes are too high and denounce the BI-claiming poor as welfare queens,
contributing to the right-wing government winning reelection and weakening BI
even more.

There are two kinds of universal benefits: the rich (and the middle class) all
need universal health insurance (in case they have cancer), but they don’t
really need UBI because they earn enough money from other sources.

So I’m not sure why, even if they’re supportive at the beginning, they would
keep on supporting UBI under the inevitable ideological and financial pressure
that comes with a polarized democratic society.

Considering this perspective, my understanding is that all the energy thrown
in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of
universal health insurance for instance (which the US still lacks even with
Obamacare, and which could benefit for the attention and design skills from
the tech community).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new right-wing government
> decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the costs. UBI becomes
> BI without the "U".

The flaw here is that this would seem to apply to any form of social
assistance. Why hasn't the same thing happened to social security?

The answer is that Round #2 doesn't make sense. You can't take someone who is
making $60K/year + $10K UBI and take away the UBI without lowering their taxes
unless you want them to burn you in effigy. But if all you propose to do is
replace $10K in UBI with $10K in tax cuts for the same people, who is going to
be the lobby in favor of that?

The dynamic you're describing is what happens to things like education
assistance. Because people would rather have in $1 in cash money tax cuts than
$1 in education vouchers. But the UBI is cash that spends just the same as the
tax cut would.

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
The dynamic (converting universal benefits into means-tested benefits)
happened 2 years ago in France with universal childcare benefits ("allocations
familiales"). It's true that people weren't happy, but the pressure in favor
of austerity was just too much and it was implemented very gradually.

It hasn't happened to Social Security because, if I'm not mistaken, the
pension amount is proportional to what you earned during your career => hence
the rich pay more but also receive more. Same with unemployment benefits.

This is actually the only way to make a universal monetary benefit politically
sustainable. And UBI, with its fixed amount, doesn't match that criteria.

------
teraflop
> You have to fill in many papers, prove that you don’t have sufficient income
> or any valuable property, go through many humiliating and intrusive
> controls. If you want to earn (a small amount of) money without working,
> then you must endure it all. In most cases it is necessary to seek the help
> of a social worker to carry out the procedure in its entirety.

Funny how the article zeroes in on this as a criticism of basic income, even
though it describes the biggest way France's system is _totally different_
from what basic income advocates are talking about.

~~~
newjersey
> You have to fill in many papers, prove that you don’t have sufficient income
> or any valuable property, go through many humiliating and intrusive
> controls. If you want to earn (a small amount of) money without working,
> then you must endure it all. In most cases it is necessary to seek the help
> of a social worker to carry out the procedure in its entirety.

This is exactly the reason I want basic income. I want nobody to feel like
someone else is cheating the system. I hear a bunch of people (even old people
who are on medicare and social security!) who will talk trash about "welfare
queens".

It is not like we can't afford it. There will be short term pain, of course
but I think we will have greater solidarity. This is good for the 0.01% as
well because if you are doing really well, you want to keep the ship steady.
(Well to be cynical, you could try to keep everyone else fighting amongst
themselves but any arsonist will tell you that a fire once started won't spare
the people who started it.)

~~~
blahi
And what happens in the very long term? What happens when kids are raised with
the attitude that they are guaranteed to survive on basic income? What happens
when their number grows? What happens when that large group feels that bare
survival doesn't cut it any more and want more? What happens if the numbers
actually don't pan out but scared politicians doon't want to give up power and
cook the books for decades? Remember that after similar initiatives short and
mid-term gains were huge, but in the long-term they lead to apathy, corruption
and very uncompetitive economy.

There are two states in nature. You either grow or you shrink. You remove the
incentive to grow and guess what happens next.

Or if you want to really start thinking hard, maybe you should ask yourself
what happens when everybody has X in money and businesses raise their prices
accordingly?

~~~
ntaenta
> _What happens when kids are raised with the attitude that they are
> guaranteed to survive on basic income?_

When kids are raised without the persistent threat of not surviving? They'll
stand a better chance of flourishing and reaching their full potential, like
many of us here on HN who have an affluent background.

~~~
geezerjay
> When kids are raised without the persistent threat of not surviving?

Having to contribute to society by keeping a job, and using the income of said
job to finance your cost of living is far from being a life-risking
enterprise.

You're trying to avoid the point by inventing absurd emotional examples.

~~~
calvano915
You're ignoring the seemingly obvious threat of less job opportunities over
time that provide a living, thriving wage. There's many people who have "a
job" now who are barely getting by, enough to live but not thrive by any
means. As efficiency increases over time because of tech, in combination with
increasing reliance on cheap global labor and further stagnating wages
locally, there will need to be some way to keep the local economy flowing
beyond people just "keeping a job".

~~~
geezerjay
> You're ignoring the seemingly obvious threat of less job opportunities over
> time that provide a living, thriving wage.

That's your assumption, and a baseless one at that.

Back in reality, we're experiencing unprecedented economic development which
includes the inception of a whole new economic sector.

You're essentially complaining that buggy whip artisans have less job
opportunities in a world that's creating whole new jobs such as forum
moderators, social media experts, and data scientists.

Today's economy even creates jobs playing video games, surfing, and talking
about gourmet food.

The world's most developed economies are enjoying structural unemployment
rates.

And you're here talking about "less job opportunities over time".

You need to separate facts from fiction, including your own baseless beliefs.

------
anexprogrammer
Fascinating that he picks Blair's Fabian speech as an example of the NHS being
a thorn in government's side.

I didn't vote for Blair, or support many of his policies, _but his governance
utterly transformed the NHS for the better._ It was adequately funded for the
first time in a couple of decades, at the time of this speech, and they were
now searching for ways to measurably improve care, especially in comparatively
neglected areas such as mental health.

Quality goes down when governments start bringing political ideology to the
fore - eg "we must bring the efficiency of the market to the NHS" neatly
ignores the fact the NHS is actually pretty damn efficient, and is one of the
strongest buyers on the planet getting significantly better pricing from all
the drug companies. Adding managers and market aspects actually worsened this.

The French example of basic income isn't. It's a means tested benefit which is
utterly incomparable to UBI.

I'm starting to doubt everything he's written by this point.

~~~
1024core
> The French example of basic income isn't. It's a means tested benefit which
> is utterly incomparable to UBI.

Read the article again. His point is that the RMI (RSA) is what they ended up
with, _even though_ they wanted (started with) something similar to UBI.

~~~
ebalit
No, they did not start with a UBI. RMI was means tested from the start.

The RSA was a reform intended to "smooth the edges". While you would lose
you're RMI as soon as you start working, now you can keep part of the RSA
during a transition period.

But the problem with RSA is that it's really complex and most people still
don't get it. And it's a lot of paperware for a relatively small amount of
money.

I think France is actually one of the best place to start a real UBI scheme.
Our system is close to UBI but probably the worst implementation possible,
with a lot of edge cases.

This proposal details a complete reform of our tax system around a UBI:
[http://www.allocationuniverselle.com/doc/BIEN_Munich_2012-09...](http://www.allocationuniverselle.com/doc/BIEN_Munich_2012-09-15_MdeBasquiat.pdf)

------
SmellTheGlove
There are some good points in here. However, what I think the author misses is
that we are within reach of a post-scarcity economy, at which point all of
those historical economic references go out the window (since nearly all
economic theory assumes scarcity). That possibility makes a UBI experiment
very worthwhile to me.

I don't think we're there today or anything like that, but it may be within
our lifetimes that we're seriously approaching post-scarcity. Renewables are
getting cheaper, for instance, which may bring about nearly limitless cheap
energy. I won't assume mass scale fusion, but we may tackle the energy issue
in other ways (this is my handwaving). Food security is already within reach -
most of the issues around it are political (meaning kids in Africa aren't
starving because we don't have enough food). The main threats are
overpopulation and politics, as tech seems to be ticking along quite nicely.

I am obviously an optimist, oversimplifying a lot, and believe that we won't
nuke ourselves into oblivion. I also think that we'll eventually solve our
political problems - many of which are based on energy issues. Even if I'm
wrong, though, I don't see an issue with UBI experiments and seeing how it
goes. We shouldn't use economic theory as a reason to not try something
radically different, as economic theory is wrong often enough to warrant the
experiment. It may be worth a look at UBI to look at behavior on a macro
level, since I think we're eventually going to get there globally and we'll
need to know what the hell to do to occupy ourselves in some way that is still
productive in that context.

~~~
justinmk
> The main threats are overpopulation and politics, as tech seems to be
> ticking along quite nicely.

If [over]population is a factor, then "post-scarcity" is fiction.

This makes me think BI advocates are quietly assuming constraints such as
"we'll discourage reproduction somehow"\--while constantly mentioning how BI
will be free of constraints.

~~~
alanwatts
The income itself is what stabilizes the population, this phenomenon is known
as the demographic-economic paradox.

The real false assumption here is that increased standard of living leads to
overpopulation. The data indicates the opposite is true.

Reproduction is a survival mechanism. Threaten an organisms survival, and that
mechanism is triggered.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility)

~~~
justinmk
Ok. But if for some bizarre reason lacking a Nobel prize, people multiply non-
linearly, then BI will not be sustainable, correct? And that constraint defies
the definition of post-scarcity.

------
vitno
"there’s a libertarian ideological bias in Silicon Valley that seems to turn
people into ignorant morons when it comes to social state-related issues. As
engineers, some don’t even get the political stakes."

"So enough already. Grow up now, study history..."

Regardless of the actual content of the article, I found the style of so many
unnecessary ad hominim attacks offputing.

The actual content of the article isn't really backed up. It mostly seems to
say that engineers are seduced by the elegance of Basic Income and that they
should really just focus on making the existing social system have less
friction. Not a bad opinion, just not really in line with the many statements
that "Basic Income won't work".

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I'm certainly not the first
to point out that Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally
uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you
disagree with that?

I didn't write that basic income won't work as a solution designed to fix a
problem. My point is that I don't see a political path to enacting it, and
even though it was enacted, I don't see how it could survive the next round of
election.

So yes maybe it's time to focus on more winnable fights such as implementing
universal health insurance.

[https://medium.com/@Nicolas_Colin/thanks-for-all-the-
respons...](https://medium.com/@Nicolas_Colin/thanks-for-all-the-
responses-399027114d12#.w99ezrg6f)

~~~
dang
> _Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics
> and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that?_

Yes, for two reasons. First, the meaning of the label 'Silicon Valley' is
unclear, but whatever it means, it shouldn't be anthropomorphized. Doing that
is usually just a rhetorical device, and that dilutes arguments.

Second, the people I know in Silicon Valley are acutely interested in those
things, so I'd say your claim is way off base.

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
Proof of current progress: [http://a16z.com/2016/05/16/regulatory-
hacking/](http://a16z.com/2016/05/16/regulatory-hacking/)

I can't wait for regulatory hacking to join the field of social policy. Many
people will convert to social realpolitik at that point :-)

------
wilwade
A reasonable article, albeit not capturing the full argument for UBI. One
missing pro-argument is reducing the creativity monetary risk barrier.

Entrepreneurship is at about 14% working age adults in the US (1). I would say
that the number of people who _would_ be entrepreneurs is higher, but limited
by risk. Entrepreneurship is very high risk. Reducing that risk would enable
more people to become entrepreneurs (a good thing). Removing the risk that
being an entrepreneur will make you loose the shirt off your back, will allow
more people to start companies.

It is not limited to entrepreneurship. How many more amazing painters would
there be? Writers? How much more creative common good would there be in the
world if basic needs (via UBI) was taken care of?

None of the current social risk insurance, are directly reducing this loss to
us all.

(1) [http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-
reache...](http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reaches-
record-highs.html)

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
I wrote the article. Thank your for your response.

I get your point about painters and writers. But my guess is that working on
affordable housing would do more good on that front—and would be more
sustainable politically.

You can read this convincing article by Sarah Kendzior:
[http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/expensive-c...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/expensive-
cities-are-killing-creativity-2013121065856922461.html)

~~~
arielb1
So the problem with San Fransisco is too much people chasing not enough
houses, and your solution is to pay people to buy houses?

------
geomark
FTA "...we have long known that technology destroys jobs..."

Should I even bother to continue reading after that? After all, what we
actually know is that technology creates jobs, like the ones that I and a
large number of people I know have had.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Just because it creates jobs doesn't mean it does not also destroy them. There
are lots of jobs technology via automation has 'destroyed'. Some new ones were
created however to write the software to automate those processes. The
important thing is whether it is replacing jobs at the same rate that it is
destroying them.

------
Dwolb
Side note: are there platforms that make responding to essays easier for the
writer and reader to follow the logic? It'd help for replying to pieces like
the OP.

I struggled with this example on the RMI/RSA in France.

>So you could argue that the “RMI/RSA” is basic income, except maybe for the
paperware frictions that it inflicts on those who are eligible and that could
be removed thanks to technology. Accordingly, those in favor of basic income
should pay attention to the “RMI/RSA” and draw appropriate lessons: it’s not
simple (at all); it has adverse economic effects; and it is widely denounced,
notably on the right, as “assistance” (assistanat) that deprives those who
claim the benefit from any incentive to look for a job, thus making them live
off the middle class taxpayers.

The author holds this example up as why UBI might fail. But the reasons listed
why the RMI/RSA failed are all either driving forces for UBI or solved by UBI.

1) RMI/RSA is complicated to administer due to high burden of proof for the
individual to demonstrate no income. UBI solves this by allowing everyone to
have an income, not just those without a salary.

2) RMI/RSA has adverse economic effects because it disincentivizes people to
seek jobs. Part of why people are thinking UBI could be a good idea is there
will be fewer jobs in the future and so disincentivization to look for a job
for a subset of the population is partially a good thing.

3) RMI/RSA is politically difficult. That's why people involved in the UBI
movement are running private, small scale experiments. They want to
prove/disprove their hypotheses to provide evidence in favor of or against
UBI.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I'm glad this story came up. Basic Incomes sounds like a great, simple
solution but it's not. Yes, welfare is an important part of our current
economic system. There are people that needed it no question about it but
giving it to all with no questions asked is a disaster in the making.

The fact is that the only reason we endure a job day after day is that we need
to get paid to pay for our needs and wants. We get up everyday and race to
work not because we owe someone a favor or because we love our work but
because if we don't we'll get fired and have to deal with the consequences.

I would hate to live in a society where people show up to work at will. Think
about it. The fireman, or name your specialist, decided not to show up today.
Yikes!

I can see why the idea is attractive but money is what makes the world go
around. Cliche but very true! If we decide that everyone can get it and not
have to work for it, we are asking for a society that loses a prime motivator
to get people moving towards a career and even to get out of the house.

The Utopian idea that if we don't have to work we'll be free to create a
wonderful world. Is wishful thinking. All we have to do is look at what a
group of rich young adults do when all their needs are filled. They become
self absorbed and look to fill their own selfish wants. How many of them
become nurses or doctors? Yes, rich is an extreme way to look at it, it's not
"basic income" but it gives a clue to what happens when people lose a basic
motivator.

We are scared that technology will suck up all the jobs but if we don't have
people thinking about how to get people jobs and keep them busy we are in real
trouble. Basic Income does not help in the long run.

Also it will never be enough. Basic needs will be fulfilled but people will
always want more. One example that comes to mind is the introduction of the
white phone by Apple. Apple introduced it and some people were falling over
each other to get it. Not because it was white but because they could own
something that others wanted. Human wants are infinite. Basic income will only
create a never ending spiral that will keep people unhappy because they can't
get what they want.

Money is a societal tool that's used to keep society fed and safe but it has
to be used correctly. Giving it away, while attractive, is not the answer.

~~~
orangecat
_Also it will never be enough. Basic needs will be fulfilled but people will
always want more._

I agree with this, and it negates your first point. Basic income is not
intended to be something that you'd want to live on by default; it's just
protection against hunger and homelessness. Almost everyone will want more,
and they'll be unambiguously better off by increasing their earnings (unlike
today:
[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/effective-m...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/effective-
marginal-tax-rates-for-low-income-workers-are-high)).

------
onli
The article fails to present a good alternative to a basic income, or if it
did I missed it. While I don't believe in that concept, I also don't think
that _" I think it is fair to say that being unqualified is less of a risk
today"_ is a fair statement to make today. Tell that the steel workers whose
factory just shut down, and tell them they should become entrepreneurs
instead. What an arrogance!

~~~
ebalit
I think the alternative proposed by the article is clear: use the money to
provide universal services.

The author also mention the fight for Obamacare as more pragmatic. I think his
argument are mainly targeted at the US were universal services are lacking (or
perceived as lacking).

------
tmvphil
This article concludes by saying the best form of state intervention is
"universal [healthcare] coverage". Why not both? It is only a very small far-
right minority of basic income advocates who advocate eliminating the state's
role in healthcare. If the argument is simply that enacting basic income will
drain the political will to defend or enhance other needed government
programs, then it's not so much an argument against basic income as an
argument of political priorities. I even agree that universal healthcare is a
much more attainable and impactful near term target, but that doesn't mean
that basic income is "bullshit".

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
I wrote the article, whose point is precisely that: what I called "bullshit"
is the endless "problem-solution" conversation around basic income which, in
my eyes, ignores politics as well as history and drains the political will to
fight on other fronts, such as universal health insurance in the US (or
affordable housing).

------
MichaelBurge
"We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a
legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their
unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever
scrap my social security program" \- Roosevelt

A Basic Income program is unrepealable after enough time(say 20 years) has
passed. People are terrible at making decisions: They don't save money, they
run up their credit cards, they don't invest. A BI program limits the damage
that their bad decisions can cause.

Even $800/month would wildly distort decision making. I don't think that a lot
of people who've been receiving it their whole life are going to be in a
position to function independently if you try to repeal it. There are going to
be too many single mothers crying "How will I make my rent?" if you take it
away. Even if they otherwise would've managed without it.

A law that's a one-way ratchet requires extraordinary evidence before you even
consider it. It doesn't matter if it has a positive expected value, or the
models say it will probably work; the risk that it won't deliver on its
promises is too high, and we'll be stuck with it forever.

------
sixhobbits
Most discussions I see about basic income (BI) fall into the same trap of
conflating two very different arguments:

Argument 1 looks at BI on a practical level and asks questions such as: Is BI
feasible? Will it ever be feasible? Who should administer it? What would it
mean for the economy?

Argument 2 deals with BI more on a social level and can even be modeled as a
thought experiment: What would people do if they had basic income? Would it
remove the incentive to work? Would it reduce inequality? Would it offer more
freedom to recipients or less?

Many people (including the author of this article) make grand claims like
"It's obvious that it'll fail"; "It's obvious that people will stop being
productive members of society if they have BI"; "It's obvious that it's not
feasible".

I think that the most persuasive argument, and one advocated by the
YCombinator experiment, is "We need more data". This holds true especially for
argument 2 (how will people react _if_ they received BI). Argument 1 for me is
less interesting, but my rudimentary understanding of economics and politics
is enough for me to be sure that anyone who declares a black-and-white
position on the idea probably needs to spend some more time thinking and
reading about it.

No matter whether you are for or against BI, you should be happy that these
experiments are being done. If you're against it, they will provide evidence
that you are right and then people can "Just stop talking about it already".
That's not going to happen because you wrote an overly long rant against it.
If you are for BI, such experiments might confirm your hypotheses that BI will
be beneficial to recipients and will allow us to move more towards argument 1
(is BI feasible? where will the money come from?).

------
josu
The article is all over the place. I don't even think that we can discuss the
article as a whole. Furthermore the premises and the conclusions get mixed up,
and there is a lot of circular reasoning going on.

------
chx
> The leading argument is that there won’t be any jobs left anyway, and that
> meanwhile technology will bring all the costs down.

Oh there will be many jobs left but they will all require a certain level of
education, let's call that university degree for the sake of simplicity. Also
people will need to have some degree of mental capacity to attain this level.
It is pretty much natural to presume not everyone will have this mental
capacity. Already this is showing everywhere. What will society do with those
who have the physical capability but not the mental to work? BI is one of the
answers. It may not be the best answer but do have a better one? We need an
answer right effin' now because long range trucking will be automated away
Real Soon Now(TM) and that's (at least in Canada) is one of the most populated
occupation and society level answers are never reached quick.

------
mindslight
The primary issue with BI is that it is actually just the _exact same_
economic policy of last the two decades, but _masquerading_ as a social
program. "Helicopter Ben" has just taken this long to design and market.

The idea is basically just creating _even more_ "stimulus" money, but
distributing it just a little further from the centralized bankster cronies.
Don't doubt for a second that they will still end up collecting it as rents on
financialized assets (chiefly housing).

Our _fundamental_ economic problem is being in a Keynesian death spiral - now
that production has gotten insanely efficient, the incentives that were
forcing people to overwork are now battering those who can't find work.
Turning up the treadmill even faster yet will not get us out of it!

------
jkot
How about immigration? Once Basic Income is introduced in one area, people
from all over the world will start moving there.

Right now SF is not even capable to host 450 homeless arriving every year.
What would you do if that number of people arrived every day or every hour?

~~~
daenney
> people from all over the world will start moving there.

I don't think immigration laws would permit that. For one, you couldn't "just
move" to the US like that.

Within the EU it could become an interesting problem if some countries did
this and others didn't. I suspect that if anyone were to try this there'll be
some limitations at first, like you have to have citizenship, or prove legal
residency for longer than "since the past few minutes".

~~~
jkot
But that would not be really basic income (which is unconditional). There
would be second class of citizens. Something like controlled rent today.

~~~
TillE
I can't vote in Germany. I'm not a "second class of citizen", I'm literally
not a citizen.

~~~
jkot
But you are "citizen enough" to pay taxes or receive social benefits. And some
non-citizens can vote in Germany.

Anyway, by definition Basic Income is unconditional. Anyone who applies should
get it.

~~~
chillwaves
> by definition Basic Income is unconditional. Anyone who applies should get
> it.

Doesn't have to be. Some versions are, some aren't. Given we are talking about
a system that does not exist, not sure why you say it _is_ one thing or the
other. Some versions give to minors, some do not. Some only give to citizens
in good standing (no felons). Conditions can exist and should exist in my
opinion.

------
totalcrepe
The French program as quoted is nothing like basic income. I've seen quite a
few people just need a few bucks. The longterm risk of that and the likelihood
that if they didn't get the few bucks they would need permanent safety net was
sometimes pretty high.

For example, I knew a vet in college who came very close to dropping out,
where a few hundred bucks the safety net never knew he needed made all the
difference. I can only imagine what percent of their lifetime writeoffs come
from having these condescending "shutup, we know what you need" safety net
systems.

------
k-mcgrady
There is a lot in this article I disagree with but let me focus on the NHS
argument.

>> "The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of
every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred
of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by
the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and
ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as
professionals."

The only reason this is a problem is political. We have the NHS but we also
have private options - get rid of those. Then there would be more staff
available for the NHS, a huge some of money would not be wasted on locum
staff, and therefore more money would be available to the NHS. Some of that
could be used for funding and some could be used to pay staff a fairer wage.
The fiscal austerity argument is nonsense. We have plenty of money - it's just
spent poorly. We don't need to spend £30bn on nuclear missiles we'll never use
(and if we ever do need to use them it'll be too late anyway). We don't need
to spend £30-40bn on the military. Of course defunding these things is
political suicide but you can't tell me we can't afford decent healthcare when
we're wasting money on missiles we don't need, a huge military we don't need,
and locum staff which shouldn't be a thing in the first place when you have a
public health care system.

~~~
bko
So the solution to poor service provided by NHS is to eliminate any
competitors and force more people onto NHS hoping that this improves the
service?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Yes. The amount of money locum staff get is incredible. I know a doctor who
exclusively does locum work - he works 3 months a year and has more than
enough money to spend the rest of the time travelling. If you eliminate
private health care you eliminate that cost and you are the only employer.

Edit: To clarify this as it seems like a very unpopular opinion around these
parts: a public system isn't going to work in a free/competitive market. I
think we need to either go all in on a public system or all in on a private
system. When you land somewhere in the middle it just doesn't work.

------
andyewilliams
I completely agree with many of the authors points. Unfortunately they make
assumptions that might change dramatically. The right technology can
dramatically improve matching individuals with open jobs. And since human
beings are still the most cost effective source of flexibility for tasks that
are not high value or high volume enough to justify automation the right
technology can not only search for places where people can add value but also
create them. Furthermore, in the information economy where there is no
physical scarcity of materials the number of jobs that can be created is
infinite. Using these facts technology can actually increase the number of
jobs and the certainty of getting one ... to virtually guarantee a basic
income without politically imposing one. Download "The Technology Gravity
Well" free until it's September 15, 2016 launch date.
[http://bit.ly/2cqXU79](http://bit.ly/2cqXU79)

------
taylorscollon
I wrote a longer rebuttal to this (it's in the responses section of Colin's
original piece), but here's an excerpt on the issue of political vulnerability
which is his main line of attack.

"It is broadly true that the more people who benefit from a government
program, the more popular the program usually is. Social insurance programs
that benefit the middle-class and the poor are usually politically durable.

American social security, for example, is less politically vulnerable than
food stamps, in part because food stamps will never benefit most middle-class
people. UBI, however, is more like social security than it is like food
stamps. The middle-class may not need UBI, but UBI would still benefit them.

A comparable case is the status of single-payer health insurance programs in
countries that have them. Most middle-class and rich people in these countries
don’t need single payer healthcare — nearly all of them would have employer
coverage if single payer didn’t exist. And yet there is broad support across
classes for single-payer in these countries, in part because it (like UBI)
benefits the middle-class. Universal healthcare is in these countries what
conservatives would malign as “a sacred cow”.

None of this is to say that UBI would be politically invulnerable. Even the
most durable social insurance programs are often put at risk.

[...]

But Colin appears to think UBI would inevitably become means-tested to only
benefit the poor. Financial pressures, he says, would cause voters to limit
the program. But Colin doesn’t make it clear why middle-class voters would
react in this way, stripping themselves of a direct cash benefit. This is
certainly not typical voter behaviour, and I am skeptical that a popular turn
against UBI is inevitable or likely."

------
caente
I don't think UBI will fix any current welfare systems. It doesn't fix
anything. It changes everything. I believe it can be done gradually. But no
one should expect to preserve the status quo in long term. Any attempt to
implement it should consider this: UBI will change our society forever.
Hopefully for the better, but not necessarily.

------
sharemywin
The problem is the math: 808+492+275+340 =1.9T/318M = 5915/yr=$497/mo

so your supposed to replace: housing assistance, social security, medcaid,
medicare, tuition assistance,food assistance, among others with $497/mo. Also,
a strong incentive to have children without a job.

Now you could not give it to children but they seem like the neediest group of
people to give it to.

Now you could leave out medicare and social security but now your left with
615B / 272M = $188/mo but, why bother?

------
transfire
> So enough already. Grow up now, study history, and then join the liberal
> politicians and union activists (and some Entrepreneurs) who, while you’re
> playing around with that simplistic idea, are waging political battles and
> trying hard to imagine a new social state for the digital age.

Read as "continue to serve the oligarchs who pretend to care, pandering their
endless bullshit solutions that serve only their own interests".

Nicolas Colin eat your own.

------
AdrianB1
It would be so nice if the people in favor of UBI would be the only
contributors to the system, leaving everyone else to live their lives as they
like. But no, UBI means everyone else needs to contribute and convincing is
done by force ("you pay your taxes or go to prison, you citizen, and your tax
money will be used for what we want").

~~~
nugga
Doesn't the society you live in already maintain order through force? Aren't
you already being taxed and the money used for whatever, including things you
may find reprehensible?

If UBI were to make more sense than whatever welfare maze we currently have
then why not switch? Having a job or means to support yourself is not a
guarantee these days, not everyone is as lucky.

~~~
AdrianB1
That's the point: the entire welfare maze does not make sense, so UBI does not
either. I am not talking about maintaining order (by force or not), but about
extorting people to pay from their work to give to others. There are many
arguments around pro and con, some are simply ridiculous but there are around
for so many time and inoculated so well, it works like a religion now: beliefs
trumps reason.

------
overgard
Ugh, with any problem there always has to be the "well it's more complicated
than that" guy who doesn't actually offer any ideas, they just toss negativity
onto any proposed solution. It's always "more complicated" than that, but this
line of thinking is obnoxious and pointless.

------
TheRealPomax
Kinda stopped reading when he described "the four things states are proxy
insurers for", demonstrating a pretty drastic misrepresentation of how modern
functional democratic social policies can be grouped and analyzed.

~~~
Nicolas_Colin
How so? It's exactly the way it's grouped and organized in all European social
systems. It's also the framework used by Yale University's Jacob Hacker in
"The Great Risk Shift" to discuss US social policy:
[https://www.amazon.com/Great-Risk-Shift-Economic-
Insecurity/...](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Risk-Shift-Economic-
Insecurity/dp/0195335341)

(I wrote the Medium article)

------
wiz21c
nobody talks about climate change here. That will affect us all..

he's right when pointing at lack of a political argument. But form me it's
quite clear. The argument is : redistribution. I know it's a simplistic left-
wing argument but wealth redistribution is what basic income is. And
unfortunately it's way too simple. I'd prefer a complex system because it
offers many places for negotiating redistribution.

------
JabavuAdams
Interesting article, and a good mind-expanding summary of various options and
history.

TL/DR:

> Basic income is to the social state what the flat tax is to the tax system.
> It flatters the engineering mind with its apparent simplicity. But in fact
> it is impossible to implement; it’s also politically suicidal; nobody’s
> ready to die for it; and even if it existed, it would probably trigger
> extraordinary political tension and the highest level of inequality in
> modern Western history.

~~~
AdrianB1
I live in a country that has a flat rate tax system. Not a flat tax (as in
"equal amount for all taxpayers"), but a flat percentage. The overall tax rate
in my country is about double than US and the life quality is worse. Go figure
:)

------
westvaflamer
...I'm not gonna pay for that article and I use adblocker.

------
jrbapna
A quick look at humanities progress, and its fairly obvious where we're
headed. there will be a day where many people won't have to work to survive.
There will be an extreme amount of abundance in the economy due to technology
and automation. More for everyone... :)

Whether this happens 20 years from now or 100 years or 1000 years from now is
beside the point. It will happen. And therefore thinking about and preparing
for this future is worthwhile.

------
aminok
Basic Income (aka universal welfare) is bullshit because it is authoritarian.
It depends on throwing people who refuse to hand over a share of the currency
they receive in private trade in prison, where they are confined like captive
animals, so that the rest of the population is cowed into handing over the
demanded amount.

Likewise, the author's arguments for social welfare are bullshit:

>There are two reasons why those four risks call for social state
intervention. The first is their high criticality. A risk is critical if it is
highly probable: for instance, most of us are bound to get old (dying young,
fortunately, remains a small probability). A risk is also critical if, however
improbable, it can have a devastating impact on your life: having cancer can
ruin you if you don’t have health insurance; losing your job can plunge you
into a devastating spiral towards poverty, etc. By definition, criticality is
probability times impact.

That does not explain why we have to resort to state intervention.

>The other reason why these risks are not well-covered on the insurance market
is that they are all affected by what economists call market imperfections.
Moral hazard, a well-known imperfection, “occurs when one person takes more
risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks”: it plays a key role
when it comes to covering the unemployment risk.

This does not explain why we need state intervention. It sounds like market
insurance doesn't want to cover these things for sound economic reasons, so he
wants the government to cover it instead (even though it faces all of the same
micro-economic problems, like moral hazard).

>Another frequent imperfection on insurance markets is adverse selection: if
given the choice, an insurer will refuse to cover those who present signs of a
high level of risk, thus providing insurance only to those who eventually
don’t need it.

False. An insurer will cover a person who pays a premium that accounts for the
risk.

This has the economically necessary effect of encouraging people to get
insurance before they get sick and need it.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "it is authoritarian. It depends on throwing people who refuse to hand over
a share of the currency they receive in private trade in prison"

If that's what you believe then any tax would meet the criteria and you would
have to consider almost every government in the world authoritarian. Is that
the case?

~~~
aminok
Not all taxes demand a share of the currency we receive in private trade. A
split rate property tax for example does not require making such a demand. My
preference is to replace all taxes with user fees for use of government
services and assets (like roads), and a heavy split rate property tax, and
compensate property owners for the loss of value in their real estate that
this tax shift causes.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Interesting.

>> "replace all taxes with user fees for use of government services and assets
(like roads)"

I'm guessing with this we would also have to drastically reduce the number of
services the government is providing? For example there will be certain
services that they few people use but cost a lot to provide so if we aren't
all contributing they can't continue to offer them.

As for a split rate tax I hadn't heard of it before but after a quick glance
it looks interesting.

However I don't understand how you can think tax on trade is authoritarian yet
other tax forms aren't.

~~~
aminok
Yes, moving to the tax system as proposed would require a massive reduction in
government spending.

>However I don't understand how you can think tax on trade is authoritarian
yet other tax forms aren't.

Land, and to a lesser extent the property that's built on it, can more
justifiably be taxed, because an individual has less of a natural right of
ownership over it.

This is due to land being a natural resource, that derives almost all of its
value from its natural form, rather than the value the party that appropriated
it added to it.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Thanks for taking the time to explain your thinking on this.

~~~
aminok
You're most welcome.

