
Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang - SubiculumCode
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8265053/Pelosi-says-time-consider-universal-basic-income-pushed-Andrew-Yang.html
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munificent
I think well before we consider universal basic income, we should consider
universal basic _services_. Many services are already highly regulated and
naturally somewhat difficult to exploit.

Healthcare is the obvious one. It's not like you can get a surgery and then
resell it to exploit the system. (You could, of course, exploit things like
pain medication, but _overall_ healthcare is not expoitation-friendly.)

Some amount of water, electricity, Internet access, and some amount of food
are other good candidates. (Shelter is a much harder problem to solve and one
where I think going through money is probably a better approach.)

I'd much rather see every person be given a reasonable amount of food, water,
electricity, Internet access, and good healtcare. That is almost enough to
lift people out of poverty and give them enough safety and security to enable
them to live healthy, successful lives.

 _Then_ maybe see if it makes sense to provide money too. But my hunch is that
UBI itself isn't a great solution. You can think of it effectively as a
negative tax rate for the poor. The UBI has to be paid for by other taxes, so
at some income/wealth level you will be breaking even and above that you will
be paying for the UBI for people under.

I think that structure is perfectly fine for moral reasons, but looking at it
from that perspective, it's not clear to me how simply having a relatively
minor negative tax rate will solve the systemic problems faced by the poor.
Getting a check for a hundred bucks every month isn't going to fix everything
if you break your back and need a million dollars in healthcare.

What people need to thrive is _security_ the knowledge that if unfortunate
events outside of their control happen, that they will be helped to the degree
that society is able. If you know you can be made bankrupt if you get sick, or
your access to water can be shut off if someone robs you, then you are "poor"
in all of the ways that subjectively matter.

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LaEc
Elimination of the price mechanism eliminates a key way to sort out who truly
needs healthcare (or whatever service). Consider a safe elective knee surgery.
If you knew it was paid for by the government, you would just sign yourself up
for the surgery for even the slightest ache. If there was a copay, you might
reconsider unless your pain was actually painful enough to warrant it. Ask any
Brit about NHS waiting times and they would understand.

Is access to healthcare important? Yes, but universal healthcare eliminates
market forces which makes things efficient. A better way would be a mixture of
health saving accounts (and redistributive transfers to such accounts) and
subsidizing hospitals (to reflect the fact that healthcare is typically
underconsumed).

Further, the government lacks the necessary profit incentive to keep costs low
or maintain high standards. Bureaucrats on fixed salaries have no incentive to
try harder.

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scabbycakes
I can agree on the points you made about the system not having any need to be
efficient, a government ran system is just not able to be lean - but as far as
people just getting whatever they can for the heck of it, that's probably not
the case.

Just from personal experience, I don't have copays or much in the way of
direct monetary costs (I'm not American) and it's not like I'm out there
grabbing free drugs and surgeries. There's a cost other than money to
everything, time and effort and rehabilitation and fear of the unknown and so
on. As another example my retired parents have messed up knees and hips but
they don't feel it warrants the hassle/risk even though it'd not cost them
anything to have surgeries, there's more to it than just financial
consideration.

Health savings accounts doesn't seem that great though - I don't know if I'll
ever have health issues so if I'm socking away $x00/month I'm removing that
from the economy betting against my health. Assuming a somewhat capable health
care system I'd rather pay that amount to the government in taxes so they can
leverage it now for someone else and if my time comes, then I don't have to
worry about dollars and cents and what I can afford.

Also if the government had the money from everyone now in the form of taxes
instead of individuals socking it away, it'd be more able to purchase
equipment and hire doctors well in advance and the local hospital may have
better capacity to cater to my needs.

Just my two cents.

~~~
basch
Expand the HSA to be a universal savings account, more like food stamps +
social security.

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010921)

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jjtheblunt
How was $1000/month for anyone over age 18 supposed to be funded?

Without exact details answering such, do voters believe this is more than
seeking voter-attention. Are there actual plans of implementation whose
economics/numbers work?

I see people discuss such but never see answers.

~~~
cultus
The same way we are funding massive corporate bailouts. Sovereign government
debt does not work like personal debt, for the simple reason that money can be
printed. Fears of inflation in a time like this are completely unwarranted.

edit: Back of the envelope math shows that 1000/month for the US population is
about $4 trillion/year. The Fed has pumped more than that into financial
markets since this pandemic has started, alone. That is why the S&P is back up
to where it was in 2018, despite the world suffering the greatest demand shock
in history. Pumping up the financial markets is doing nowhere near the
economic good that a UBI would right now.

~~~
throwaway894345
Why are they completely unwarranted? I'm not an economist, so it's not obvious
to me why printing money wouldn't lead create an inflation problem that is
worse than the unemployment problem. I would be very interested to know the
details that allow us to say such things so confidently.

EDIT: Thanks to those who provided such insightful answers! Very helpful for a
layperson like me.

~~~
zhte415
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_exchange)

The velocity has dropped rapidly in recent weeks. To not increase supply would
be deflationary.

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legitster
Honestly, it costs about the same to implement as Medicare for All, but I
would much prefer a UBI.

Imagine if everyone had a catastrophic healthcare plan that was essentially an
out-of-pocket maximum of $12,000. And then everyone gets $12,000 a year to
spend on healthcare - _or anything else_.

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RickJWagner
Dangling the idea seems like a good way to attract hopeful voters. But let's
see the plan for paying for such a program.

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wayneftw
IMO you can't have long term success for basic income without coupling it with
population control measures such as requiring a license to have a baby and/or
limiting the number of babies people can have.

I fully support requiring a license to have a baby.

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lcall
To the extent that we remove the connection between choices and consequences,
we harm everyone. This applies in so many ways.

This includes things like lifestyle, including habits, striving to learn &
build good family ties, honesty, choosing to pursue education and service,
more than just entertainment and pleasure (but with appropriate balance),
trustworthiness, avoiding self-destructive behaviors, etc etc. All which
greatly affect employability!

But if we make it easily survivable to live on the wrong side of those...what
do we encourage? At ever-greater cost to everyone... Think we have a drug
problem now?

Some consistently very bad experiences with medicare's and SSA's
organizational incompetence (as reflected in ability to provide remotely
useful information over many weeks and months, etc) make me _definitely_ not
want the federal government to take ever-more resources and control of our
economy and lives.

I do believe we are responsible (before God, and if one doesn't believe, then
at least to our consciences) to care wisely for one another, and with personal
sacrifice to do so -- but not by force.

I also believe, with a fair amount of observation and study among myself and
family, that things resembling forcible socialism (or the fed. government
solving everyone's problems instead of being strictly limited to its
constitutional role) are also harmful to everyone and have been proven many
times to be a disastrous failure (Soviets, Venezuela, etc etc).

Charity by force is wrong and foolish, from Christian principle, long
historical observation, and (to me at least), logic.

Charitable service done voluntarily by individuals, organizations, families,
communities, maybe even states who can then learn from each other what works
vs. not, can be wonderful, and I and many others have seen it work in long-
term multifaceted practice. But when we force a system on everyone -- bad
things happen, in the short and long run.

We can go out and do good and solve problems, by joining with others, using
_persuasion_ and _fundraising_ , creating jobs programs (not federal),
promoting good ideas, seeing what has worked well elsewhere, but not by
forcibly taking control of others people's money (which represents their time
and energy, planning and preparation) and thus a loss of freedom for all.
Every crisis should _not_ be an excuse to expand control by some, over others.

I have written many more details about this & related subjects at my web site,
which is in my profile.

I very much hope we can promote principles over politics, such as: earned
trust matters; opportunity, honesty and the Golden Rule matter; charity is
important, charity by force is wrong, and breaking the link between choices
and consequences harms everyone.

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lootsauce
What I keep thinking about all of this is that an open, functioning, well
regulated, free market economy (not defending crony-capitalism like we have
had) with targeted generous welfare programs is a far better solution than UBI
and other massive fiscal interventions/bailouts/helicopter money. Here is my
concern and would love to hear any reasoned arguments as to why it is not a
problem.

It is a lot of money, and eventually the money comes out of something, be it
the increased prices from increased buying power in the market or the loss of
buying power due to slippage against inflation driven by government spending
debasing the currency. (they are two sids of the same coin i guess)

It wont happen immediately, this is a massive deflationary shock right now,
but surely helicopter money will do what is intended and drive inflation
eventually undermining the intended effect of UBI in the first place. The
economy is dynamic and reflexive, if everyone knows that everyone is getting x
amount of money increased demand and information in the market will drive
prices quickly higher.

Government planners will eventually seek ways to mitigate this outcome,
perhaps by pegging UBI payments to inflation or enacting price controls on say
rents or taxes to take money out of circulation perhaps through a VAT. Either
way this is the long-run nightmare of more directly managing an economy from
the top down. And I fear that it is a road that leads to a far less dynamic,
creative and self sustaining economy.

The intended economic foundation for everyone that UBI seeks to provide may
prove to be a short term benefit and eventually become a complex game of
trying to control a very complex system.

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spking
I'm sure we could find the money for this by eliminating existing duplicative
or particularly wasteful line items in the fountain of corporate pork, waste
and fraud that is the federal budget.

[https://www.usdebtclock.org/](https://www.usdebtclock.org/)

~~~
hyperpape
The federal budget was $4.11 trillion in 2018. Quick Googling doesn't give me
a number for population over 18, but I'm going to guess >= 200 million (>= 300
million total in the US).

So that's 200M people * (12 months / year) * 1000 / person = 2.4 trillion.

Most of the budget is defense, social security, medicare and interest on the
debt
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:US_Federal_Budget_Comparison_2016_vs._2015.png)).

Yang's plan would've required major tax increases, and/or cuts to core
programs. This isn't me editorializing, just stating what would be required.

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bsanr2
Now is the time to watch closely. When Pelosi got on board healthcare reform,
we lost the public option. The chances that her support is a mask for a
campaign to water down any potential legislation are high.

~~~
nobodyandproud
Can you explain?

My recollection is that there was too much squabbling within the Democrat
party to achieve it, with moderates wavering.

And with the Senate putting in a watered down public option, it killed any
chance for the House to submit tgeir own.

~~~
mkr-hn
Not the person you replied to, but there are different narratives for it:

"Democrats didn't want it because their insurance company sponsors didn't want
it."

"Democrats didn't fight for it because they needed votes from a few people who
wouldn't support it."

I'm partial to the view that they could have motivated those few senators to
vote for a public option if they tried. Democrats wave their hands too much on
the viability of progressive policy for my taste. Whether the belief in that
unviability is genuine or a smokescreen is uncertain.

