
Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0 - TimJRobinson
https://timjrobinson.com/universal-basic-income-is-capitalism-2-0/
======
dang
All: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread.
That's what the "More" link at the bottom of the page points to. Or use these:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=2)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=3](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=3)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=4](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=4)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=5](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=5)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=6](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23993259&p=6)

------
habosa
I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption.

I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than
economic.

1\. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who
depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely
at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus
relief packages.

2\. Predators - individuals and companies will find a way to take your UBI
check from you as fast as possible. We can see this in housing where some
governments give poor people vouchers for rent. Those vouchers are targeted by
slumlords who find a way to give you as little as possible for them. There
will be rampant scams and bad behavior in areas where the UBI makes up a
larger portion of total income.

3\. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food,
housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on
an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end
up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI,
the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the
worst times.

I wish all of the above wasn't true. But I just don't think America can handle
UBI and I'm not sure how that's going to change.

~~~
zpeti
Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be
eliminated in a few years. The very things poorer people would buy from it
would get more expensive by the UBI proportion, it will just be inflated away.

When everyone has an extra $1000 do you really think landlords won’t increase
rent? The price of food and clothing won’t increase? When literally an entire
country is richer by this amount?

UBI does not create more wealth. It does not mean all the people receiving it
will put more value into the economy. It just means everyone gets X+$1000 more
tokens for the same wealth/goods. Poor people will still be in just as
difficult a situation as they will be competing for the same goods against the
same people as before.

~~~
3131s
_Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be
eliminated in a few years. The very things poorer people would buy from it
would get more expensive by the UBI proportion, it will just be inflated
away._

Someone brings this up in literally every UBI discussion ever.

~~~
glogla
Because it makes sense. Why wouldn't rent seekers - both landlords and more
abstract rent-seekers - just raise prices?

Maybe competition takes care of that? But that doesn't seem to work very well
in the current housing market.

~~~
archi42
Housing is the largest issue here, and probably needs gov correction.

OTOH, basic goods becoming more expensive means producing them becomes more
attractive which leads to lower prices or better wages (because less people
will be willing to work shit jobs with crap pay like in the meat industry
today).

~~~
Chris2048
Housing is rarely the issue on its own, because it is what it is due to
related factor. Why live in one particular location? That's the motivator
towards housing, and it relates many different things.

e.g in my city, I am positive the rent is high because of issues with
transport i.e. poor transport means you need to live closer to work for a
reasonable commute.

------
treyfitty
There are a lot of people here dissenting on the idea of UBI on the premise
that they find meaning in work, and to take the incentive to work away will
lead others (themselves included) not to have meaning in life.

I’ve taken a year off of work to start a business that failed and spent the
past few months hanging out with my kids. At first, my stress levels were high
because daycares were shut down and I was panicking about my business. When I
accepted the fate of my business, I chilled out and just hung out with my
kids. These past few months were amazing. I loathe finding a new job now.
Instead, I’ve built a mechanical keyboard, explored streaming, learned how to
cook, read useless books, and learned how to be present.

I see the choice of UBI as: “do I toil away for the wealthy class? Or do I
took away for myself?” No way will I toil for someone else if I had a choice.

~~~
gzu
The lack of real world experience on a HackerNews UBI discussion is
infuriating. Western society's white collar elite are completely unaware of
truly how many "sucky" jobs there are in the world that all enable our
(currently) superior standard of living. Your entire existence relies on a
globalist system of slave level labor producing products from all corners of
the world. Automation of every industry is impossible unless we have true
human replacement robots (many decades out). UBI will over time simply raise
costs of all goods/services to subwelfare level that people "can't live on".

Whos going to: - clean your hotel/office/home - cook your food - serve your
food - fix your household - grab your garbage - build new houses -
build/maintain roads - build/maintain water, sewers - deliver your
packages/mail - Drive trucks around - pack/unpack trucks - produce meat
products (have you seen a meatpacking plant?) - maintain farms/livestock -
provide difficult medical services - be a nurse aide (clean poo?)

I have not even started to list all the jobs required in order to "magically"
produce our cheap goods from overseas including clothing and electronics.
These are farrrr from completely automated.

Lazy Americans don't need to work right? Discussion about UBI is an expression
of guilt over how well our standard of living (general hacker news crowd)
compared to the vast majority of the world.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done _and_ the people doing them
get fairly compensated for it. For example, the pay for a garbage truck driver
is actually quite high, because it's an unpleasant job and they need to
attract people to do it. And because the salary is high, it's also heavily
automated, with pickers that grab bins and empty them into the truck.

Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the same job is done by three people, two of
whom jog outside next to the vehicle in the sweltering heat and manually empty
the bins into it. They're breaking their backs and get paid like crap.

~~~
runarberg
> In Europe and Australia, all those jobs get done and the people doing them
> get fairly compensated for it.

Having worked in the service industry in wealthy Iceland for years, I can’t
say I agree with this statement.

While working exusting 12 hour shifts with mandatory minimum pay (sometime a
little less because of exploitative unpaid overtime), the owner of the
business was regularly found to be the highest payed person in the country.

In other words, my work, contributed to some rich guy getting richer, while my
compensation was only as little as he was allowed to pay me. That doesn’t seem
fair does it. Ask any working class person, in europe and I’m sure they have a
similar story.

~~~
esperent
I live in Vietnam and get to see the rubbish truck go past my house every day
exactly as the person above you described. It's summer time here, 35-40
degrees and high humidity every day. One person drives the truck, the other
two go through people bins and sort their rubbish, extracting the recycling
since nobody here has the habit of separating their waste. I don't know the
exact wage of these guys, but judging from other government jobs it's probably
around 3 million VND/month (~$130), slightly less than $1600 a year, and it's
likely they work 6 days a week.

Food and rent is cheap here, but not that cheap. You can barely survive on
that wage, especially if you have a family. You will be eating mostly rice and
probably scrounging for other work on the grey market.

In Iceland, you'll get at least minimum wage, $2500 a month, ~$30,000 a year.
Of course, the economies are different. However, using PPP (purchasing power
parity) [1], Iceland minimum wage would be equivalent to around $13,000 a year
in Vietnam, or 8 times a garbage collector's pay here, for significantly
easier work and less hours.

I'm not trying to say that you had it easy, or that it was OK to pay you that
amount for such long shifts and to stiff you on overtime. However, by
objective comparison people working equivalent jobs in developing countries
have it much, much, worse.

[1] [https://partnersontheroad.com/salary-comparison-city-
country...](https://partnersontheroad.com/salary-comparison-city-country-
calculator/)

~~~
runarberg
Agreed. I’m glad you left that comment.

Even though the working class in rich countries like Iceland is constantly
cheated out of their fair compensations for a (relatively) shitty job. One
must not forget that in the grand scheme of things, we still have considerable
privilege by the nature of our birthplace.

We can—and should—complain about how we get the shorter end of the stick in
the current economic system. But we must not forget that globally we
constantly are the beneficiaries of much worse cheating of the foreign working
class.

As I write this we are still calling for the arrest of Icelandic business
owners who were guilty of bribing Namibian government officials in exchange
for a privileged and unfair access to common Namibian fisheries in a scandal
known as _Fishrot_. We are also waiting for the justice system to act on a
slumlord who took advantage of imported labor, and left a house he rented them
with inadequate fire escapes. The house burned down with three people (all
foreign laborers) still in it unable to escape. The Icelandic justice system
seem to be unwilling to pursue justice in either of these scandals,
demonstrating how Icelanders are criminally benefiting in the international
context.

------
alexmingoia
Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly
check from government...

Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-
tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold
would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income
approaches zero.

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

I do think people radically underestimate the unforeseen consequences of a
free guaranteed income, even if it was low. I’d be willing to live as a poor
person if that meant not having to work. Actually, where I live now I live
comfortably on $1200 a month. I definitely would choose not to work or work
less if that money came free from government. If I got free money I wouldn’t
increase spending, I would reduce work.

~~~
aahhahahaaa
Why give free school to everyone, libraries? Clearly a rich person doesn't
need those either?

Public services should be public. There's extreme social value in equal access
and you reduce an extreme amount of bureaucracy and debate in the process.

>If I got free money I wouldn’t increase spending, I would reduce work.

WE SHOULD ALL REDUCE WORK.

Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We're
more productive than ever with very little to show for it. We've been having
labor outright stolen from us for decades.

~~~
yelloweyes
Yeah like, wtf is the point of technological innovation if we're still working
like crazy?

~~~
alexmingoia
You don’t need to work like crazy if you do skilled work and spend your money
wisely. When I was a software engineer I took months off between jobs. I
worked less than 40 hours when freelancing. However, most of my colleagues
used their income to buy trappings like a mortgage, clothes, eating out, video
games, drugs, new gadgets and toys, cars, their own apartment, etc.

Most people choose to spend their money increasing their standard of living
instead of buying time at a low standard of living.

As Picasso said, “I’d like to live as a poor man with a rich man’s money.”

~~~
ATsch
> You don’t need to work like crazy if [list of privileges]

Nobody should have to work like crazy

~~~
alexmingoia
If working for what I have is privileged, then that privilege is available to
anyone.

I didn’t graduate high school, my dad waited on tables to raise me. Get out of
here with your privilege crap.

~~~
Afton
You're responding to an aggregate statistic with an anecdote. I too did not
graduate high school, but now have an advanced degree and a high paying job.
Claiming that that invalidates the notion of privilege is silly.

~~~
rcar
Still, he literally said "do skilled work and spend your money wisely", the
former implying that he focused on developing his skills, and the latter
implying that he didn't live beyond his means. Hard to characterize either as
some sort of undue "privilege".

------
christiansakai
I know these are anecdotes but I already heard several cases from my circle of
friends and families where they just chose not to work because of unemployment
checks. Instead of practicing music or learning programming or doing something
productive during their period of unemployment, they decided to watch Netflix
and play games all day.

Creating is hard work, studying is hard work. Just like having information and
online videos/articles/courses at their fingertips do not make people more
educated but instead chose to believe what they believe. Having money and time
alone do not motivate people to study or create.

UBI will probably benefit most to those who already have inner desire to
succeed. But for majority of people, I have my doubts.

~~~
taneq
Were these cases people who would otherwise have engaged in some creative
endeavour (music, programming, art, tinkering, whatever)? Or were they
otherwise engaged in menial repetitive jobs that should probably be automated
anyway?

If the latter, what's wrong with them watching Netflix? We don't need every
human to work.

Also if I gained a perpetual stipend that covered my basic needs, you bet I'd
take a couple of months off just to relax and recuperate. Inside three months
I'd be going insane from boredom and start building things again for the fun
of it. And I bet they'd be better things, too.

~~~
christiansakai
I have a controversial opinion. But every living human should work. Otherwise
it is a drain on the planet Earth.

Yes if they just live to live and consume, we're just speeding up our
extinction, and the rest of the Earth with us.

~~~
taneq
What else are those resources for?

~~~
christiansakai
To be utilized to create something good, not just for consumption only.

~~~
loceng
Do you consider parenthood and learning as work towards good?

Do you think subsidizing everyone including "lazy" or stagnant people would
have a net benefit if it reduced the amount of violence, crime, and suffering?
Or do you not factor that type of balance into your reasoning?

------
john_moscow
I like how the article pointed out the biggest economic problem I see in post-
industrial society - instead of almost everyone being a small business owner,
we have huge corporations reaping massive profits, and poor replaceable
corporate drones barely making ends meet.

That said, I completely disagree with the proposed solution of UBI and here's
why. We humans have a rather nasty bug in our firmware: when we do not _have_
to work, we turn tribal. We form cliques and our meaning of life becomes to
bite, or at least to bark at the clique on the other side of the fence.

If you want some evidence, look at the correlation between cold climate
(forcing people to do serious agriculture) and economic development in many
countries. I also suspect that the recent spike of divisiveness and outrage in
our society has something to do with people having more free time from lost
jobs, and not desperately trying to learn a new marketable skill, because of
the COVID-19 support.

Mind you, I'm not saying that COVID relief is bad, but I seriously suspect
that the recent unrest is a preview of what the society would turn into if we
eliminated the need for people to work.

I wish we could instead figure out a system for taxing scale or subordination
levels. So that having a couple of owner-operated grocery stores in every
neighborhood would become a viable alternative to centrally managed Walmart
with armies of corporate zombies miserable at their jobs. Of course, it would
reduce the overall efficiency, but I would happily pay an extra dollar to live
in a society where people are putting their energy into producing objects of
value and making others happy, than see endless infighting about who deserves
that extra chunk off someone else's table more.

~~~
Miner49er
> I wish we could instead figure out a system for taxing scale or
> subordination levels. So that having a couple of owner-operated grocery
> stores in every neighborhood would become a viable alternative to centrally
> managed Walmart with armies of corporate zombies miserable at their jobs. Of
> course, it would reduce the overall efficiency, but I would happily pay an
> extra dollar to live in a society where people are putting their energy into
> producing objects of value and making others happy, than see endless
> infighting about who deserves that extra chunk off someone else's table
> more.

I think one solution is to end private land ownership. Put land ownership in
the hand of local communities and let them lease out land (maybe based on
money, idk, no reason for there not to be somewhat of a market). Let the
communities create rules for land use, but one major rule should be that land
can only be used by people within the community. No Walmarts coming in and
using land.

Maybe an even better rule is that land can only be leased to the people who
work it - and this means _all_ people who work it. Meaning that you can only
open a business on that land if all the workers will own a chunk of that
business.

~~~
stjo
This breaks down on many different fronts:

1) What about IP? Companies that do not work with land, but tech, science and
ideas. This scheme would not be a barrier for Apple for example to appear.

2) This (as well as the parent comment's) idea is similar to tariffs and trade
wars. "Yeah, you are smart and efficient, but you work 200km from here? Fuck
off."

3) It confines businesses to think small. Big projects would have to be
handled by governments and entities that are exempt from locality laws.
Sometimes there are good reasons to own large swaths of land in multiple
locations, without being a trillion dollar company.

I feel like you are merely trying to make capitalism less efficient and hope
that this would make it magically nicer to participate in. What was the main
problem again?

~~~
Miner49er
> 1) What about IP? Companies that do not work with land, but tech, science
> and ideas. This scheme would not be a barrier for Apple for example to
> appear.

What about it? Apple still needs factories to build their products, wants
offices, and needs datacenters. For any of these their workers need to get a
(fair) share of Apple. Apple could respond by having workers work remotely,
but I doubt many workers would take that deal if they could go somewhere else
and be a co-owner.

> 2) This (as well as the parent comment's) idea is similar to tariffs and
> trade wars. "Yeah, you are smart and efficient, but you work 200km from
> here? Fuck off."

Yeah pretty much, for land use. How can you possible use land if you live
200km away?

> 3) It confines businesses to think small. Big projects would have to be
> handled by governments and entities that are exempt from locality laws.
> Sometimes there are good reasons to own large swaths of land in multiple
> locations, without being a trillion dollar company.

Maybe somewhat, but it's still possible for companies to do this. They just
have to have workers own a (fair) share of the business. Say there is a
Walmart, and they want to open a new store in another town. Sure, they can do
that, if all of the employees at that new store get a fair share of Walmart
ownership.

------
sdunwoody
I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when
it comes up in discussions.

Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here

The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18
and over).

The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live
on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for
example).

53,000,000 * £1000 = £53,000,000,000 (£53 billion) monthly cost

53,000,000,000 * 12 (months) = £636,000,000,000 (£636 billion) yearly cost

Bear in mind the entire UK budget for 2018 was £842 billion:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_Kingdom_budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_Kingdom_budget)

Infact, if you break this down to local/national spending, the national
government budget for 2018 was £652 billion:

[https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2018UKbt_17...](https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2018UKbt_17bc1n#ukgs302)

So a UBI would cost pretty much as much as the entire UK national budget
(healthcare, education, defence, infrastructure, welfare etc.)

I'm all for increasing taxes, but assuming that you replaced welfare with a
UBI, you'd still have a (roughly) £400 billion shortfall - just where does
that money come from?

It's affordable at a lesser amount, sure, but at that sort of level, what's
the point?

This is before even getting to other arguements (if you want to use it to
replace a welfare system, then in my opinion, it's essentially a regressive
scheme, because everyone is getting the same payout, regardless of need).

~~~
mojzu
I'm not entirely convinced by UBI yet either, however I think there are
arguments that could made against your headline cost calculation.

It could eliminate/save other huge portions of the budget. It would also
probably have to be adjusted based on location, or as you said it wouldn't do
much good in expensive cities, which might reduce that cost further. And a
huge chunk of that money is going to people who will immediately spend it on
taxable goods/services which could be a big revenue/jobs boost.

It's still a huge cost though, and while I like the idea from a philosophical
standpoint and some of the small scale tests have some promising results. It's
still seems like a bit of a blue sky idea that could have some really bad
consequences at scale.

~~~
blamestross
UBI would force them to move away from cities. UBI would inflate housing
costs, but more in urban areas and much less in suburban and rural areas. This
would allow us to use land more efficiently. Right now poor people have to
crowd into cities in hopes of work. It should not be "cost of living"
adjusted. We want it to cause a massive re-organization of our society.

------
reilly3000
The basic problem is that efficient producer types make terrible consumers.
From my industrious friends to Warren Buffet, they don't care to spend the
wealth they accumulate. The dollars move more slowly, often to the hands of
rent-seeking institutions. When they do consume on a large scale, it funds
innovative of extravagance. Its fundamentally ineffective and inefficient
relative to other models.

Given resources, consumers are remarkably efficient at consuming. My
neighborhood is alive with home improvement projects, enabled by direct cash
payments. The money isn't going idle. These dollars are flowing throughout
communities into places that large money cannot reach. The velocity of these
dollars is at least an order of degrees faster than sitting in an individual's
offshore account. This invigorates production, adaptation, and research in
ways a grant or tax discount cannot.

I often hear we live in a consumer-driven economy. If that is the case, its
only prudent to empower consumption across the broadest possible base to grow
the economy. The more I think about it, the more it seems like excluding
people from being able to earn and spend money is actually sacrificing
macroeconomic growth in exchange for social control.

~~~
infogulch
> excluding people from being able to earn and spend money is actually
> sacrificing macroeconomic growth in exchange for social control

That's an interesting way to put it

------
alex_young
A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst
consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a
rational excuse for not doing it.

Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/episode-472-the-
one-page-plan-to-fix-global-warming)

They did a followup 5 years later:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/episode-472-the-
one-page-plan-to-fix-global-warming-revisited)

It seems like there are too many entrenched players to make this a reality
unfortunately.

~~~
Aerroon
I don't see how this would really work. A carbon tax in an ideal situation is
just a consumption tax. This means that it's the consumer that pays it. Rich
people don't eat more food nor do they drive dozens of cars at once. If we
want this carbon tax to offset our greenhouse emissions then that means it
will necessarily disproportionately impact poor people.

And then you want to turn around and pay that money back to people as UBI?
It'll be a _slight_ redistribution of wealth from the wealthy to the poor and
that's it. It won't fulfill the role of a UBI.

In an unideal world it will just be gamed to all hell instead. Also, good luck
getting people to swallow a doubling of their tax bill even if you give it
back.

~~~
NumberWangMan
Rich people may not eat more food, but they may eat food that is shipped in
from all over the world. They don't drive dozens of cars at once, but they do
have lots of things delivered, and tend not to take public transport as much.
They also tend to fly a lot more (which is a big source of emissions), and
live in big houses with lots of lights and area to heat and cool.

I agree with your point that a carbon tax would not serve the purpose of a
UBI. Now I'm gonna go off topic a bit and focus on carbon taxes.

I volunteer with Citizens Climate Lobby. The bill we're trying to get through
the House of Representatives, H.R. 763 aka the Energy Innovation Act, is a
carbon tax, but it's not like you imagine, I think. It taxes fossil fuels at
the point of production, and therefore allows normal market mechanisms to
adjust the prices of everything. No change to individual tax bills. Some
things would get more expensive, but we would all get a check in the mail to
offset. If you pollute more than average, the check wouldn't make up for the
increased prices, but if you pollute less, you'd benefit. The change in prices
will shift consumption away from the emissions-intensive goods and services,
toward those that are greener.

The poor would disproportionately benefit from this. Not just financially --
carbon emissions and pollution that affects health are of course closely
linked, and it's poor people who suffer the most from pollution, because they
can't afford to move somewhere else to escape it.

It's not just about individual behavior -- companies would feel the same shift
in incentives. Another way to think of the tax, from an economist's point of
view, is that it's just correctly pricing a market externality.

The weird thing about a carbon tax like this is that a majority of Americans
support it, but most of us don't _think_ that it's a majority! It's already
popular, we just have to convince Congress.

~~~
prostoalex
> Rich people may not eat more food, but they may eat food that is shipped in
> from all over the world.

Or they may eat farm-to-table and shop at local farmers' markets. On the other
side, step into any Wal-Mart or dollar store, and almost everything there was
manufactured and shipped from Asian continent.

> It taxes fossil fuels at the point of production

How does it work with fossil fuels refined in Middle East and delivered to
China?

> tend not to take public transport as much

The first thing that happened after California approved driver licenses for
undocumented aliens is that used car sales surged and public transport dropped
(LAMTA and Metrolink specifically). For a lot of lower-income customers buying
the car was aspirational and signified the rite of passage. In their price
segment they're not typically shopping EVs either.

~~~
amluto
Shipping by ocean is surprisingly low in carbon emissions.

Manufacturing abroad is tricky. It takes some creativity to appropriately tax
carbon emissions embodied in imported goods.

~~~
jerkstate
According to
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2019/06/28/shipping-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2019/06/28/shipping-
sector-comes-under-increasing-pressure-to-cut-its-carbon-footprint/)

> Shipping accounts for up to 3% of global emissions and 10% of transport
> emissions – roughly the same as aviation

Shipping emissions equalling aviation emissions is surprisingly high, to me.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The volume of sea cargo is _far_ higher than air cargo.

~~~
distances
That was all aviation, not just air cargo.

------
thephyber
The elephants in the room are the extremely cheap labor that already
undermines the legit goods and services:

    
    
      - extremely cheap prison labor
      - undocumented laborers who have (almost) no legal rights and who take difficult jobs
      - ex-cons who have to pay a portion of their wages to employers who are willing to hire them
      - jobs where wages must be subsidized by government programs (eg. WalMart encourages their lowest paid workers to sign up for SNAP)
    

UBI is nice, but the markets are already distorted and without addressing
these issues, UBI just distorts the markets more.

That said, even if we can't address these issues, I'm happy to support
modernizing the American (federal, state, and county) welfare programs --
including giving recipients the option of taking the cash value.

~~~
spyckie2
This is a good point. I actually consider shoring up these loopholes as part
of (or needing to be passed alongside) UBI.

~~~
thephyber
Yeah, I would prefer we fix them then deal with either UBI or fixing welfare
programs, but with the current state of Congress, I have little hope that this
is a probability.

------
jay_kyburz
I understand and agree with how a UBI will benefit those that are currently
falling between the cracks and not receiving any assistance. I can also see
the benefits of greatly simplifying the social security system. (If it was
implemented in a way that was actually simple. i.e. no distinction between
sick, unemployed, old, lazy)

But I don't understand why people don't believe the UBI will just become the
new definition of poverty. People will still be miserable and feel like they
have nothing when comparing themselves to those who get UBI and have a job.

~~~
blackflame7000
Exactly. The key to making people happier is not to give them money, but
create more jobs that give people meaning and purpose in their lives.

~~~
shredprez
I always hear the argument that UBI will essentially subsidize people's
ability to pursue work that gives them meaning/purpose, particularly if it
isn't highly valued (economically) by their local market.

What does HN think about that?

~~~
spyckie2
It's a bit more nuanced. UBI just gives people more options.

The narrative is that people who live paycheck to paycheck are forced into
undesirable jobs because they are under time pressure to make money and can't
be choosy. UBI will reduce the time pressure and make them be able to be a bit
more choosy in what kind of job they get. UBI will also allow them time to
invest in themselves to be able to land higher skilled jobs.

It will also allow people to more willingly enter low pay, higher calling jobs
(teachers, etc) if they enjoy it because it has been bumped up from "too
little" to "just enough" with UBI.

------
bluedevil2k
I can’t help but think that UBI would distort job markets. Let’s pick an
example of a “sucky job” (and I say this as just an example, I realize these
guys work hard and are vital). A garbage man. He get’s paid $42k a year
because they have to find people who would be willing to do this sucky job and
need to pay higher than minimum wage to do so. At some point of income, people
would be willing to accept the suckiness. Now let’s throw UBI into the world.
Everyone is getting $2k a month. Now a garbage man says “I’m not gonna be a
garbage man anymore, I can do something I love now, like a music teacher that
pays $30k”. Now we have no garbage man and the wage would need to increase to
find new people. To cover that, taxes go up. Higher taxes are a regressive
solution to giving people more money.

~~~
perfmode
UBI frees people from economic coercion.

poverty is like having a gun to your head. you do what you’ve gotta do.

if salaries for essential, dirty jobs must go up, i am all for it.

~~~
motorcycleman9
To me, it seems like man's constant fight against the brutality of mother
nature will never end. As long as we need food, need medicine, and entropy
destroys what we create, we will need a lot of people working to solve
problems.

Any conception of basic income where we can freely give out $2000 a month to
everyone has a net present value roughly equal to giving each person a lump
sum payment of $500,000. There's not enough wealth in the world to sustain it.

~~~
iamthemonster
As is often the case in economics, the scarcity is not an absolute lack of
resources, but a result of inefficient allocation.

The world's mean income is about $18000 adjusted for purchasing power parity
so it's not a complete stretch to get to $2000 per month for the whole world
[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040)

The USA has a mean income of about $72,000 so in theory UBI could be $6000/mo
without bankrupting the country.

It would be very interesting to see what kind of crazy spending-led boom you
could achieve by redistributing wealth exactly evenly across every American
citizen.

~~~
kortilla
The mean income has no relevance on how much UBI can be issued.

~~~
iamthemonster
I don't understand what you mean by this. UBI redistributes income - wouldn't
it obviously be funded via taxation? USA would be able to afford a much higher
UBI than Sierra Leone would because US income is higher. What determines how
much UBI can be issued if aggregate income is irrelevant?

~~~
kortilla
If you fund by a 100% income tax, everyone would quit instantly. There would
literally be no point in working for money. UBI cannot be funded by the thing
UBI would eliminate.

------
zimbatm
Where does that money come from?

The US population has 199M adults[1]. Let's say a decent basic income is $40k.
That's __8 Trillion __that the government has to find every year.

The US federal tax revenue was of 3.86 Trillion last year[2]. Half of which
comes from individual income, and another third from payroll taxes. This is
before the effects that UBI will have on the economy.

Maybe my 10 minute research is wrong? It seems like a quite central piece to
address in an article promoting UBI.

[1]:
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+adults+in+th...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+adults+in+the+US)
[2]: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2020/02/budget...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2020/02/budget_fy21.pdf)

~~~
diffeomorphism
Where does the money currently come from? Take $1000 of each monthly salary
and put a "UBI" sticker on it. Everybody currently employed now gets $1000 UBI
for the total price of nothing.

For a person earning $3000+ per month nothing changes, except that their
salary now reads $2000+ (same money to spend etc.). For a person currently
earning $1500, negotiations with their employer will be different because the
salary reads only $500 and losing out on just 1/3 of your income while looking
for a new job is doable (if still painful).

But what about a person currently working a job but earning less than $1000?
This person doesn't exist because of the "B". But what about a person earning
$1100, won't they simply stop working? No, again "B" and never happened in any
of the trials done thus far.

~~~
BenElgar
That's not UBI though, that's a negative income tax.

~~~
diffeomorphism
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

> The expression 'negative income tax' (NIT) is used in roughly the same sense
> as basic income, sometimes with different connotations in respect of the
> mechanism, timing or conditionality of payments

potayto, potahto

------
pgreenwood
I support the idea of UBI in principle, but I think it needs to be combined
with a land value tax in order to work as intended. Rents are charged at the
highest the market will bear, so the UBI could just flow into the hands of
landlords, and the people who it is supposed to help being no better off.

~~~
wildrhythms
I'm not convinced that UBI doesn't just continue funneling money from the
hands of working class people to the existing billionaire class. UBI doesn't
guarantee housing, UBI doesn't guarantee healthcare, UBI doesn't guarantee
college.

Even with UBI, the existing 1% would continue to sit on more wealth than the
entire working class combined.

~~~
adventured
What the UBI proponents are really simultaneously suggesting, is total
regulation of all aspects of life and economy - which is a necessary
consequence, as you've noted given the obvious outcomes of UBI.

If you give everyone UBI, dramatically boosting incomes, in order to achieve
the desired net gains in quality of life for the lower classes you will have
to drastically increase the regulation of all prices, all assets, all economy,
all consumer activity, all production in order to attempt to control the
negative consequences of UBI. This attempt will fail horrifically, resulting
in catastrophic destruction to the economy.

We've already solved the quality of life problems that UBI claims to solve:
countries like Finland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Japan, Australia, Sweden,
Canada solved it to a large degree long ago, entirely without UBI. They have
relatively extraordinary standards of living, and have made extraordinary
progress over the last half century. We already know how to do it, we already
have something that works, and we should be focused on improving that further.
At its best UBI is entirely unnecessary.

~~~
jdashg
That is not what UBI proponents are really simultaneously suggesting.

------
maurys
I haven't seen this discussed as much, but I am worried about population rises
along with a UBI.

Especially amongst poorer communities where extra children are viewed as
financial stability. Already with free schooling and meals, there is a mindset
that you can raise kids and let the state take care of them to some degree.

But I guess UBI is far more likely to be implemented in places which don't
have population problems to begin with.

~~~
zanny
Most proposals don't give UBI to dependents. You get UBI when you are no
longer the obligation of someone else because then you are truly on your own.

It is important not to inadvertently incentivize those without the financial
means to raise kids to have them. Its better for their mental health, society
as a whole, and the children if they economically prosper first and reproduce
later.

~~~
Zamicol
I would love to see some links or further conversation on this.

If the reproduction issue was really nailed down, I would support UBI. Without
strong protections preventing runaway reproduction I'm firmly anti-UBI.

This is the biggest issue for me.

------
zhyder
Comparing UBI to the welfare system, UBI's upsides:

    
    
      U1. Simple to administer
      U2. Efficient spending since the UBI beneficiary has the most information about what he/she needs
    

But downsides:

    
    
      D1. Will inflate cost of everything, including cost of housing and healthcare
      D2. Some fraction of beneficiaries will spend it poorly, meaning we might still need a welfare safety net for them (which itself might incentivize spending UBI poorly)
    

The alternative is an even bigger welfare system, let's call it Universal
Basic Needs. That should include Universal Basic Healthcare, Universal Basic
Public Housing, Universal Basic Food (aka food stamps aka rations), etc. It's
diametrically opposite to UBI, and the upsides of one are the downsides of the
other.

With UBN, there's no need for unemployment insurance, which is a problematic
part of the current welfare system because it incentivizes not being employed.
Defining the 'basic' level isn't easy, but it should be good enough that each
member of congress or parliament wouldn't mind living at that level for a day
per year.

I find either of these opposite options better for the future of society than
some middle ground of welfare benefits.

------
xivzgrev
Honest question - how does one prevent inflation with UBI?

If the market price of an apartment is $500, and suddenly everyone gets UBI,
the landlord would raise the price as much as he can, say $1000.

People on UBI are in the same relative position as before. They still can’t
get the apartment because there’s enough people who have the UBI plus
something else and can pay $1000.

~~~
bluedevil2k
It could cause inflation because the money velocity would increase (if you’re
a disciple of Milton Friedman). The presumption is that the money taken from
rich peoples (and company’s) savings, that they’re not spending, and giving it
to people who would spend it every month would increase the velocity and
potentially cause inflation.

------
DeonPenny
I feel like this is the perfect example why everyone should at some point be
required to start a business. Because some of these ideas stem from to many
people not understand the economy in a real sense because they are always
workers and see the world through that lens.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You don’t need to make an attempt as a business owner to understand why the
economy is broken. A change in perspective doesn’t fix a broken system.

Edit: I am absolutely biased against a system that favors the wealthy at the
detriment to your average citizen. “Look at how well this system works for us
while the rest of you suffer!” is not helpful.

~~~
DeonPenny
A change in perspective gives you idea of how the system work. The system
isn't broken. Any system you don't understand probably seems problem.

Like how people call the US government broken. When it was meant for the very
beginning to mangle federal power. The only thing broken about that system is
federal power isn't more limited. But a lot of people call that system broken.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The system isn't broken.

One can repeat this until they’re blue in the face, the data says otherwise.

[https://theconversation.com/is-america-a-failing-state-
how-a...](https://theconversation.com/is-america-a-failing-state-how-a-
superpower-has-been-brought-to-the-brink-139680)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underly...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-
conditions/610261/)

[https://www.epi.org/publication/failure-by-
design/](https://www.epi.org/publication/failure-by-design/)

------
justinzollars
This is going to explode in our faces.

Why would the rest of the world finance us (the citizens of the United States)
to sit around and watch Netflix all day? Put another way, someone has to buy
the debt we are issuing. Today our debt is sold to savers in China, and to
other hard working individuals across the world. We have no means of paying
back the debt we are issuing, so we are monetizing the debt through a
mechanism known as QE, otherwise known as a printing press.

If we are debasing the savings of hard working people, why would they want to
continue to lend to us? We could raise interest rates, but with the levels of
our national debt, servicing the debt would become impossible. So that isn't
an option. If trust is lost in the dollar as a reserve currency, we will
become very poor very very fast.

It won't matter if we print more money, or if UBI is 1,000 or 1,000,000 per
month. The dollar will have less value.

It's better to focus on improving productivity and making stuff. There can't
be consumption without production.

There is no free lunch.

~~~
freddie_mercury
> Today our debt is sold to savers in China, and to other hard working
> individuals across the world.

No it isn't. The overwhelming majority of our debt is sold to other Americans.
US debt is $26 trillion. Foreigners only hold $6 trillion of that.

~~~
justinzollars
All the same, why would American savers want the dollar debased?

~~~
afterburner
Oh, you're one of those people that worries about the value of the US dollar
like it's not entire world's reserve currency already or a measure of American
"strength".

~~~
kamaal
I think what he means is if you give some one $1000 for free, they will only
do a job that pays say $2000.

Because people want more salaries, it costs more to produce/service a thing.
Therefore you have to sell your products/services at a higher prices. Now the
$1000 you gave for free is less valuable.

Now come to think of this if your $1000 is less valuable. How much is $26
trillion worth debt valuable now? The people to whom the debt is owed are
screwed.

Also once you do this you will have a hard time raising money next time when
you need it.

Basically. Things like UBI aim to be the 'perpetual motion' equivalent of
economics. The fundamental problem seems to be you can't pull anything out of
nothingness.

------
dopylitty
People don’t need money. People need basics like housing, food, and medical
care. No UBI scheme is going to work in an economic system like the one in the
U.S. that isn’t capable of providing those things. It’s not like there’s a
shortage of food or shelter now and yet we still have homeless people while
homes sit empty. We still have hungry people while farmers are destroying
their crops.

The economic system is the problem.

~~~
tomrod
I need money. Money gives me the freedom to seek after my choice of housing,
food, and medical care.

One common refrain I've heard is that the US already has a UBI, but it is $0.

~~~
samelawrence
What does that sentence even mean?

~~~
prawn
A UBI normally trades away the safety net and social services for a stipend.
Perhaps one explanation is the US has partly done away with that net in
exchange for a stipend of $0/mo.

------
Consultant32452
UBI won't be real until there is a political will to relinquish control of
poor people. The first step towards UBI is changing this culture of control.
People don't even like school choice with vouchers, I doubt we're going to
just give people large sums of money to be spent however they like with no
strings attached. We spend about $15k/yr per public school student. Let's see
how popular it is to cut a $15k check to each family per kid, you can spend
that money however you like. It doesn't even have to be spent on education.
Convert public housing to a check with no strings attached. No more food
stamps or WIC cards either, just a check. Unfortunately we just don't live in
that kind of culture.

------
zuhayeer
The site used to make some of the diagrams on this article is pretty cool:
[https://excalidraw.com/](https://excalidraw.com/)

~~~
TimJRobinson
Yes! I love this tool, and it's open source too! Only took me ~15 minutes to
create the main diagram in the article and it came out looking great.

Watermark is optional, but I kept it because I appreciate someone took the
time to make a high quality diagram tool and still open sourced it.

------
phillpot
GDP is a bad metric. The planet does not have unlimited resources to fuel
unlimited growth.

~~~
thoughtstheseus
Similar arguments were made during our agrarian period, there's only so much
farmable land so there is a limit on population and growth. Productivity gains
and innovation remove that issue.

~~~
ramshorns
Forever?

Surely sooner or later as we run out of resources (and destroy the planet
enough) we have to move away from the idea of growth and toward
sustainability. These are mutually exclusive goals.

~~~
thoughtstheseus
No, but the constraint is on innovation and productivity gains. There’s more
than one place in the solar system to find resources.

------
CharlesMerriam2
How about Universal Basic Employment? Drop minimum wage to $5/hour, and
everyone gets and extra $20 x 30 hours a week if they hit minimum employment.

This would aim at efficient production, and have the side effect of efficient
consumption.

1\. Better Service - economics keep pushing the service quality bar lower as
humans are an expensive way to satisfy customers. We do better with a human
bagging your groceries than having you bag your own groceries and pay for an
idle human.

2\. Experience Ladders - people being interested in their own careers leads to
more experienced people. For example, a corner store might hire someone to
create a promotion if its cheap enough. The person hired might become good at
it.

3\. Crazy Startups - with survival being possible, people can start a company
at high risk, hiring their friends at a cut rate. If it fails, they can give
up and work for their friends.

------
jxramos
So what exactly is the genesis of this income that's to be doled out? Is it
still wealth redistribution underneath where productive individuals make it
possible for others to live off whatever largesse they create and without
those individuals no one has anything to be circulated? Where does it all
begin precisely?

Is UBI predicated on anything exactly? Can it be employed in Mexico or Cuba or
Libya the same effect as it would in Japan or Australia?

Can everyone stop working or would there still be a requirement that some
percentage of the population work or is there a premise that some fuzzy
unquantified percentage of the population would always chose to work
regardless of it being mandated or optional.

~~~
jayd16
UBI can partially replace the piecemeal social funding we already provide but
with much less bureaucracy.

The assumption is that most will still work. I'm fairly convinced that would
be the case. Society seems to revolve around a 40 hour week when we could all
certainly put in less time and survive.

------
yalogin
As long as people think that paying people will disincentivize them from
working this is not going to happen. It's a great idea but I feel universal
health care should be a first step. That will unlock majority of the gains
argued about UBI. Healthcare is the biggest cost outside of housing for
majority of the people and that is where the biggest ROI is IMO. Unfortunately
in the US it will never happen. The healthcare insurance industry is the
biggest one in the country and is worth trillions. They will never let it
happen.

------
babesh
The hypothesis that we are in stagnation is flawed since it looks only at the
lower socioeconomic levels in the developed countries. What happened with
globalization is that the lowest socioeconomic levels in other parts of the
world were lifted from poverty. So the world as a whole hasn’t stagnated.

Because of the transfer of labor to the developing world, you had stagnation
for the lower and middle class in the developed world. You see the same
pattern everywhere in the developed world: Japan, Europe, United States,
etc... It is only the end of capitalism 1.0 if you look just there.

Automation may eventually destroy jobs but probably more will be in those
developing countries. The developed countries have already partly transitioned
into service economies (especially anything that is low skilled and can’t be
done elsewhere).

Some developed countries seem to have de facto UBI to cope with this
stagnation. However some countries have been in a malaise for decades with no
real signs of uptick. This would also counter the hypothesis that plain UBI
would lead to greater productivity.

I think that there needs to be much greater emphasis on supporting learning
and doing (not necessarily in a university setting) to develop the greatest
resource (human potential). We just need to keep leveling up.

------
aembleton
How about providing the basics for life such as

\- Government provided housing

\- Government provided meals. This can be in the form of communal kitchens
much like British Kitchens [1]. This can then be used to ensure that everyone
gets fed, that it is nutritionally sound and that it uses home grown produce.
That way, it in effect subsidises farmers which means we can remove farm
subsidies at the same time.

\- Free public transport. Make all buses and trains free to use for everyone.
This will help to reduce reliance upon cars and ensure that everyone can get
around, so that it is possible to get to work.

UBI sounds wonderful, but it seems to be more of a subsidy to landlords, and
those who are involved in selling. It would potentially provide for everyone
but we'll then have the same problem as now where some children are going
hungry [2] because there is no way to make sure that they are being fed.
Without subsidised public transport, you have to use some of your UBI to get
to work before you get your first pay cheque. This is a disincentive, as you
are effectively investing up front for a future payout when you can just keep
the money and enjoy it now.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Restaurant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Restaurant)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/15/levels-of-
ch...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/15/levels-of-child-hunger-
and-deprivation-in-uk-among-highest-of-rich-nations)

~~~
xxxxxxxx
I can't tell from your tone if you are joking or not. I hope you are? Your
utopia sounds a lot like Brave New World to me.

------
scaramanga
> Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
> combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the
> world out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings
> enjoyed just a few century’s ago.

No, they wouldn't. Any more that they would have to "respect" that the
combination of Stalinism and technology lifted Russia out of poverty and post-
war destruction. That's because it's quite easy to imagine that Russia could
have been electrified without Stalinist terror.

> Free-Market Capitalism has always outperformed top down economic control
> because those at the top can’t manage all the information about the economy,
> such as who is best at what, and where the most efficient areas to allocate
> resources are.

Citation needed. On the surface, this claim would seem completely absurd to
anyone familiar with 20th century history. I'm writing this from South Korea,
a country that developed "miraculously" under completely top down control of a
military dictator working from centralised 5-year plans. One needn't search
too hard to find other, similar, examples. It would be interesting to see a
single large-scale counter-example that actually existed on planet earth in
our timeline.

Edit: maybe I'm just being ornery, but I just couldn't get past the platitudes
in the front-matter to the meat of the article which I no doubt would be
heartily agreeing with. Hah.

~~~
black_puppydog
I came here for this. What a way to start an article with a foregone
conclusion.

This is quite typical of discussions on this matter: Every discussion of
"where to go from here" immediately asserts that "where we are is great!"
which often leads to conclusions of the kind "therefore we should proceed in
the same direction, but with this one weird trick."

------
YoungWeb
This is an interesting argument. I would like to see this broken down from a
economic perspective.

My concerns:

1\. Inflation - A UBI would touch into an increased money supply and higher
wages which I think could push us towards demand-pull inflation. Possibly
completely negating or at least partially negating the money earned through
the program.

2\. Funds - How would a successful UBI be funded? Would taxes increase? Maybe
we just tax captial markets and use those funds? Could this somehow be a new
role of the fed?

3\. Social Programs - Currently, there are many unemployed making more then
those working part-time and at minimum wage full time work. (This having to do
specifically with the COVID relief added on top of original amount for
unemployment). How would this effect incentive to work? Could it potentially
impact GDP growth? (and by no means am I arguing that this is the only metric
that matters. I am interested in the long term effects this could have.
Obviously, "What are the long term affects of not having a home, to be able to
afford education and food?" is the relevant counter question.)

------
jtlienwis
I am opposed to UBI. I want smart people to have more money. I want less smart
people to have less money, provided they have enough to live on. A smart
person might invest in books, study and self improvement. Then those
industries that create these will be stimulated. That is what you want. Less
smart people might spend their money on lottery tickets, junk food, booze etc.
Those industries would be stimulated by UBI and that is what you do NOT want.
I came to this conclusion when my state had its first statewide lottery
drawing. They interviewed all the final contestants. And when they interviewed
the biggest idiot of the bunch, I told the person next to me that he would be
sure to win. And that person did. And I had visions of him running out with
the winnings and buying expensive sports cars, drinks etc. I was sure the
money would be gone in a month. And the net effect was that a lot of poor
people lost money on their lottery tickets and the money went up in smoke.

~~~
rzwitserloot
> provided they have enough to live on.

That's what UBI does.

> running out with the winnings and buying expensive sports cars, drinks etc.

I'm not entirely sure if you know what UBI is. It is not giving everybody
enough money to buy a sports car. By a long shot.

> Less smart people might spend their money on lottery tickets, junk food,
> booze etc.

That's an incredibly narrow minded view. It is also irrelevant, unless your
intent is that your 'less smart people' have so little money, they are
homeless. The general idea behind UBI is that 'subsistence level' workforce at
its base isn't going to change a whole lot in buying power. They can elect to
stop working entirely and still live decently enough (but certainly not if
they spend it all on lottery tickets. Junk food tends to be cheap; if
anything, UBI will help there) – this is good, as it pressures business that
can automate, to do so, vs. making someone spend their life doing an easily
automated job.

~~~
umvi
> I'm not entirely sure if you know what UBI is. It is not giving everybody
> enough money to buy a sports car. By a long shot.

Really? Because according to this[0] I can make loan payments on a Tesla for
$1000 per month. If I started getting an extra $1000/month, why not drive a
Model S?

[0] [https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-
leasing](https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-leasing)

------
stanfordkid
I will give two quotes from Baudrillard -- UBI is great, but it won't solve
the spiritual problems of the west, nor it's obsession with eliminating death
-- a compulsion borne of a constant internal struggle with nihilism.

“Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.”

― Jean Baudrillard

 _“You have to try everything, for consumerist man is haunted by the fear of
'missing' something, some form of enjoyment or other. You never know whether a
particular encounter, a particular experience (Christmas in the Canaries, eel
in whisky, the Prado, LSD, Japanese-style love-making) will not elicit some
'sensation'. It is no longer desire, or even 'taste', or a specific
inclination that are at stake, but a generalized curiosity, driven by a vague
sense of unease - it is the 'fun morality' or the imperative to enjoy oneself,
to exploit to the full one's potential for thrills pleasure or
gratification.”_

― Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures

------
DebtDeflation
>I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than
economic.

I worry about one specific economic factor - where is this $12K/year for every
American adult and $6K/year for every American child going to come from? If
you take per capita GDP ($65K), subtract out the government expenditures that
aren't going away like the military, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid,
interest on the debt, running the government, etc. (~$13K), subtract out non-
residential fixed investment which is basically business capex to keep their
operations running ($9K), that leaves $43K remaining per capita. Now assume
210M adults and 120M children and you need to take ~$10K of that $43K to fund
it. So an ADDITIONAL tax of ~23% across the board. Note: I'm not criticizing
the theory of UBI, which I think is sound, I'm asking how we fund the specific
amounts that often get thrown around.

~~~
BenElgar
Why do you include Social Security in the list of things that won't be
eliminated? I'm not American but in my understanding UBI would almost
completely eliminate Social Security, along with putting a big dent in the
need for Medicare and Medicaid.

~~~
DebtDeflation
At least in Andrew Yang's version of UBI, Social Security retirement benefits
would stack on top of UBI and not be replaced.

[https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-
faq/](https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/)

I don't think anyone has seriously suggested replacing Medicare with UBI, as
replacement health insurance premiums for people 65+ would almost certainly be
a multiple of $1K/mo.

------
xg15
If the only thing that matters is GDP growth (as the article tells pretty
openly) and if UBI really only has the purpose to keep lower classes in the
consumption loop (not because they _need_ anything but so companies can keep
selling stuff, so their revenue will grow, so the GDP will grow), couldn't
this all be structured a lot more efficiently by automating consumption?

You could imagine an army of robot consumers who are each allotted some amount
of monthly UBI and who are programmed to automatically buy products chosen by
certain criteria (or at random).

Then you can combine this with fully automated production and you finally have
a fully automated economy where the GDP growth rate is just a line in a config
file...

~~~
Random_ernest
> by automating consumption

It's called the subscription economy for a reason. Automated consumption
exists and is constantly growing. The money spent on subscriptions grew in the
US by >50% from 2010 to 2015.

------
bitxbit
I strongly believe the root of modern economic malaise and inequality is the
fact that our antiquated system is purely production driven.

~~~
adammunich
This is a curious thought, can you explain further?

------
tomcam
Amazing idea, Tim! Just one minor, downright trivial question: how much money
should you take away from your fellow citizens to accomplish this plan, and do
we also preserve the existing entitlements?

------
jtr1
As many here have noted, UBI still leaves in place a power structure, or
material relation of dependency. I just think there are a lot more nuanced and
interesting approaches to this problem.

For instance, what would it take to devolve ownership of essential
infrastructure for social reproduction (practically: hospitals, farms,
housing, schools, etc) at the local level? How could we blend small forms of
cooperative ownership into an economy that still has room for
entrepreneurship? What's the right amount of state capacity to safeguard
against disaster? IMO, these question of ownership were thoroughly excised
from US political discourse for a mixture of reasons, some understandable
(revulsion to Soviet totalitarianism) and some frustrating (lack of
information because the conversation threatens entrenched power).

US political culture has an emphasis on personal liberty that I would never
want to lose, but I'd love to see more Americans engage their capacity for
invention toward resolving the tensions between individual freedom and
collective wellbeing. In my opinion, Gar Alperovitz's work around the concept
of a "Pluralist Commonwealth"[1] is a really interesting stab at this problem.

1\. [https://thenextsystem.org/principles-
introduction](https://thenextsystem.org/principles-introduction)

~~~
newacct583
> devolve ownership of essential infrastructure for social reproduction

I think you might want to pull the vocabulary back to conventional terms if
you really want to discuss this productively.

With almost all of those, there are existing practical examples in the real
world: the UK NHS covers hospitals, lots of US municipalities have
experimented with public housing projects, public schooling is The Way It Is
Done through most of the US already, one could argue that existing subsidy
regimes all over the world constitute state "ownership" of farming, etc...

Frankly I don't think there's much mystery at all in what you're asking. Try
picking a specific policy and arguing for that.

~~~
jtr1
Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. That was definitely a jargony phrase.
Mostly I'm wishing for a term to discuss these policies at the level of
abstraction where UBI is situated, and I don't see one in conventional
discourse at the moment.

------
holidayacct
Universal Basic Income is never going to work, we all live in a universe where
everyone wants to build or create something. The average person isn't going to
build or create a damn thing, they aren't going to do anything productive for
society they are going to tear the whole country down or sit on their asses
watching Netflix all day long. Every time I see someone mentioning universal
basic income I start to wonder how much contact they've had with the outside
world.

~~~
stjo
That is my primary fear too, although I'm optimistic. I wish there were more,
larger and longer term studies to check this.

What if you get 1000$, but you are allowed to use them only for food, health
and shelter? Any kind of luxury would require you to work, or educate yourself
to work better. I feel kinda bad for suggesting it, but can't articulate why.

------
doh
I'm all for UBI. However the cash UBI suffers from significant flow, where the
surplus is captured by landlords.

That means if everyone gets $1,000/month, then the rents go up by the same
amount, which pushes prices of real estate and thus the mortgages. So after
some period of adjustment, the money would be lost again.

I have not found an answer, but my gut says that it has something to do with
the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Meaning that UBI should somehow
provide shelter, security and food.

It might be easier that it seems. Most nations already have monopoly on
violence (police).

Food is more tricky. We already do subsidize farmers, so maybe this could be
extended and basic food could be provided by the government (bread and such)
or subsidized in full by it.

Shelter is the trickiest. There are some interesting cases across the World
where governments have strong regulation around housing. One idea could be
that every new development of multi-family housing or condos has to "donate"
10% of them to the municipality. These are then held by the city, that can
"rent" it out to people who need them. They can't sell it. This would push the
cost of these developments by 10% but it would essentially wipe out
homelessness.

There are some ideas that I thought through over the years. As I said, I
unfortunately don't have the answers.

~~~
berkeleyjunk
I think Singapore is really ahead in the affordable housing front. They have
nice places where people actually want to live. I am not sure if and how it is
possible to replicate this on a larger scale.

~~~
doh
California has requirements that developers have to designate certain units
for low income. However, for larger developments, they found a loophole, where
multiple developers pool all of these units and put them in a separate
building.

I think it completely beats the purpose. The whole point of this should be so
people that hit the bottom don't feel like outcasts. We would be so much
better off if we helped them to get on their feet so they can be productive
again.

------
JBSay
This is just the same old keynesian fallacy. You can only consume if you
produce. If we produce nothing it doesn't matter how much money we have. There
is nothing to consume.

------
mdavis6890
If you want to do UBI, the correct implementation is:

\- Give the same amount to everybody* , with no means testing to avoid it
become a political football. Bill Gates gets it too. This also removes any
dis-incentive to work while also collecting UBI. Otherwise congress with write
up a 9000 page law about who gets how much and when, which they then hold
everybody hostage to.

\- Pay for it with a flat tax on all income from all sources, including
capital gains, dividends and carried interest. All the money goes into a
separate off-budget pool for immediate monthly distribution. Like SSI, but
with no 'investing' in treasuries or anything else. Don't let the politicians
get their hands on it. Money comes in and immediately goes out. This makes it
self-balancing. As people reduce their work, the pool shrinks, causing some
people at the margins to re-enter the workforce. As we become more productive
the pool will increase, allowing more people at the margins to reduce work if
they want to. The tax rate can be adjusted as necessary as we see how it's
working out.

* "Everybody" certainly has nuance to it that has to be defined. Children? Green card holders? Illegal Aliens? Felons? Inmates? Citizens living abroad? This is certainly an important definition, but less important than the overall idea.

------
stopachka
I love the intent behind UBI, but second-order consequences seem seldom to be
considered.

For example:

If we give everyone $X, where is the money going to come from? Taxes from
people making > $X dollars. But, how would those people have utilized that
money, if they _weren't_ taxed? Perhaps in ways much better than its
utilization for UBI, which leads to a net loss on balance for most.

If we give everyone $X, what is that going to do to low-income work? Say a
person, previously could only get a job _making_ $X / month. Their incentive
to work is now diminished. We may _think_ that they will will be spend time
learning / etc, but this is an ideal, not reality. The person would most
likely _choose_ not to work. This would deprive both them and society of the
value they would have produced

\---

> The first core component of capitalism is the understanding that when
> everyone performs the work they are best at, then trades with each other,
> everyone wins.

^ This is not quite true. Capitalism works through evolution: It simply
rewards people for doing work that _other people want_, not necessarily work
they are best at.

When you look at capitalism through the lens of: this is an opaque, higher-
order process that allocates capital through evolution, you end up wanting to
change some if it's core components less.

------
highenergystar
It seems that the current model of of the economy with inflation and growth
targets is ripe for revision.

It has pernicious effects of causing 'growth for growth sake' including a vast
infrastructure of wasteful spending - e.g. crop subsidies, fuel subsidies
etc., millions of bullshit jobs[1] and an overall bias to create and foster
consumption based economies.

That model was fine for a time of population expansion and little concern for
co-ordination problems (e.g. environmental impacts, labor exploitation). In a
time of rapidly slowing population growth (in developed and even many
developing countries) and to avoid disruptions due to climate crises, the
focus should be to improve the efficiency of the workforce, and direct that
workforce to work on the several jobs that desperately need to be done -
restore infrastructure, research and deploy efficient and clean technology and
remediate (to the extent possible) the environment. If there is still
productive capacity left over, it could be spent on reducing tail risk (e.g.
viruses)

[https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/](https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-
jobs/)

------
_-___________-_
What mechanism is proposed for determining eligibility? I have multiple
citizenships but have not lived in any of the countries I'm a citizen of for
quite some time, meanwhile I have lived in more than 20 other countries.

Is UBI proposed to be given to:

* every citizen of a country that implements it? (then, can I get more than one?)

* every resident of a country that implements it? (right now I have legal residence in three countries, but I know people who have zero.)

* something else?

------
marcrosoft
I’m for UBI as long as it is actually universal and EVERYONE receives it and
we remove all other government sponsored financial aid and remove all the
other supporting institutions. It would mean we no longer need to pay people
to decide who receives money and who doesn’t.

I support this because it’s fair for all and much harder to game.

I also support this because it would be a net neutral outcome . Basically
people would just get their money back.

~~~
nhumrich
You have a good point. If existing aid programs ceased to exist, then the tax
rate probably wouldn't need to change at all.

------
aetherspawn
How about we meet in the middle.

If you can provide a receipt for accomodation/rent and utilities, you are
eligible for the UBI up to the value of your accomodation and utility bills
(with limits).

The UBI can subsidise classes of certain foods up to a certain value if you
keep the receipts, but can not subsidise confectionary, soft drinks, smokes
and alcohol. Only fresh food, milk, etc. with a nationally recognised UBI code
on the packaging can be subsidised.

The UBI is not money that you can spend on barista coffee, lego, computers
etc. You need a job for that. It’s a tax return for living that’s claimable
each month and doesn’t rely on actually paying tax. Processing the UBI creates
jobs and encourages people to organise their spending. But in this manner, any
reasonably organised person can get off the streets or bootstrap their own
business without anxiety about starving.

Social services would help people with low means (ie can’t read or write) to
organise their affairs to make use of the UBI. Benefit payments for
unemployment and for kids would be suspended. Naturally, taxes would be
increased to support the UBI, but most of the cream that you make could be
used on “nice” things.

~~~
spyckie2
This balloons administrative costs and leaves rooms for loopholes - never
underestimate the cost of having to patch policy loopholes. It also creates
mini games around the UBI system, making it central in people's minds. Ideally
you want UBI to be an afterthought, simple and clear, and let people focus on
what they really want to focus on - their own work or life.

~~~
prawn
Makes me think - and ignore for a fact that this would never get over the line
in the USA - what if it was only paid to a government debit card and funds on
that card could only be spent directly, not withdrawn as cash. Further, they
could only be spent on subscriptions - rent, utility, vehicle lease with built
in mechanical support, health insurance. Try to remove a lot of the financial
unpredictability that wrecks people (car breaking down, for example). Provide
a clear monthly or live (digital) report of where the money was going. Of your
$1k, $200 is x, $150 is y, $20 is z, etc. Build in budgeting/awareness to
encourage people in the right direction.

------
cryptica
I watched the recent antitrust congressional hearing involving Facebook,
Amazon, Google and Apple. From it, it's clear that many small businesses have
fallen prey to anti-competitive behavior at the hands of these corporations.
But the problem seems to be that these corporations are so large that they are
not even capable to stop their own employees from engaging in these anti-
competitive behaviors even if they had the will for it and even if they had
policies in place to try to prevent it. In other words, these companies are
not able to regulate themselves.

We don't let people get away with transgressions, why do we allow corporations
to get away with them? If corporations are to be treated like persons under
the law, they ought to be held to the same level of accountability as persons
too.

If a person committed minor transgressions against millions of people, they
would be held accountable. Why don't we do the same for corporations??

As it stands today, corporations have more rights than people. To change this,
it's crucial that we put power back into the hands of people and the best way
to do this is by giving people money.

------
macspoofing
UBI, like block-chain, is a solution in search of a problem. It has the
following problems:

1) Does not solve the issue of 'meaning' and 'purpose'. That is, now that UBI
(and automation) has gotten rid of the need to work for a living, what is
left? Said another way, why not fall into alcoholism, drub-abuse, and crime?
We don't have any good examples of large populations living off the government
dole and thriving.

2) UBI isn't actually that much of an improvement over a well-funded welfare
state, which leads to #3 ...

3) Does nothing to help developing world. First-world countries don't actually
need UBI. They already have deeply funded welfare states. How does UBI help a
laborer from a developing world compete when his labor is no longer required?
How does UBI help a government of a developing nation build prosperity?

3) UBI is ill-defined. There is tepid acceptance of it on the left, but only
with the implicit assumption that it doesn't replace most (or any) current
welfare programs. UBI's support on the right almost always comes with the
assumption that it will replace much of the welfare state.

~~~
afarrell
> Does not solve the issue of 'meaning' and 'purpose'

For an engineer, it _absolutely_ does.

How? By giving a broader range humans the ability to shout "This problem
matters to me. Please build something to solve it" into the economy.

\---------------------

Suppose it is 2013. I build a tool that helps a luxury hotel in New York do
bespoke guest relations slightly better. They have customers who have money,
so they have revenue, so I get revenue.

Suppose it is 2013. I build a tool that helps a food truck in Flint, Michigan
run their operations. Their customers don't have money, so they don't have
revenue, so I don't get revenue.

Helping people get fed and create community, or polishing a luxury experience
for a very few -- Which job has more meaning and purpose?

~~~
macspoofing
>"This problem matters to me. Please build something to solve it" into the
economy.

That is a property of the free market. We're living in that world. UBI does
nothing to improve that.

I'm not saying nobody will find meaning and purpose in a world where you don't
need to work for a living. I'm saying huge swaths of the population will not
and it will lead to major societal problems and unrest. Some of those problems
will be drug addiction and crime. We don't have good examples of large
populations succeeding (by any measure you choose) where nobody needs to work
for a living.

>Helping people get fed and create community, or polishing a luxury experience
for a very few -- Which job has more meaning and purpose?

Your examples are contrived and just plain odd. For one thing, UBI does not
mean unlimited resources. People will still need to discriminate between
option A or option B - so your food truck business in Flint isn't guaranteed
to succeed in an UBI world because people may opt to spend their money
elsewhere. Similarly, your luxury New York business is also not guaranteed to
succeed (just because a profitable New York hotel has money, doesn't mean they
will buy from you). Second, business needs a stable climate in order to
operate. If you have crime, and riots and social unrest, that's not a good
climate for businesses to operate in. UBI does not solve it, and in fact,
probably aggravates it. There is more incentive to riot when you have nothing
else to fill your day with.

Again, UBI does not improve the free market.

~~~
afarrell
> our examples are contrived and just plain odd

Huh? "line-of-business software for foodservice" and "line-of-business
software to do customer relations" seem like incredibly mundane examples.

> your food truck business in Flint isn't guaranteed to succeed in an UBI
> world because people may opt to spend their money elsewhere

Yep! So the food truck would fail not because it is in a community mired in
poverty, but because it didn't make good business choices or achieve a
worthwhile purpose _as judged by those whom its work impacted_.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------

The core of your thesis seems to be that if given the freedom, people would
turn naturally to behavior that destroys themselves and others. I'll grant
thats true for up to 4% of the population, but what's stopping that 4% from
silently spitting in your hamburger nowadays? You can't make a riot with 4
shitheads surrounded by 96 non-shitheads who have a sense of ownership of
their community.

(But if the commercial real estate is owned by Berkshire Hathaway rather than
your pewmate's uncle? Well, then fuckit. Why intervene?)

Generally, people are not total fools. They make tragic and silly choices
sometimes, especially under stress. I've been to enough meetings of Alcoholics
Anonymous to attest to that. But a free people left to their own devices will
seek meaning and purpose by investing in relationships and churches and
passion-projects. Or are you unaware of the phenomenons of people gardening
and babysitting for relatives or teaching free community classes?

~~~
macspoofing
>seem like incredibly mundane examples.

They are. The contrived part is your characterization of succeeding in Flint
vs New York.

>So the food truck would fail not because it is in a community mired in
poverty, but because it didn't make good business choices ...

Which is the case today!! There are businesses succeeding in low income
communities. There is no level of income low enough that a market cannot
operate in. UBI does not improve that. What business needs is a stable climate
and business friendly policies. If a low-income community has issues with
crime (or war, or civil strife) or the government is hostile to private
business, that's a bigger factor than the fact it is a low-income community.

>The core of your thesis seems to be that if given the freedom, people would
turn naturally to behavior that destroys themselves and others

Not 'freedom'. If the people's ability to work and provide themselves is taken
away, then yes, it will lead to major societal issues. UBI does not solve
that. There is something that changes when you go from providing for yourself,
to have some other entity provide for you.

~~~
afarrell
How does UBI take away people's ability to work and provide for themselves?

------
bilal4hmed
most of the middle eastern countries have UBI. Hasnt really done anything for
them

~~~
mc32
I wonder why people tend to ignore de facto near UBI in those places (for
citizens).

And since no one (citizens who get de facto UBI) wants to work, they have to
import labor.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
Would anybody please volunteer to tell us more about it?

~~~
kamaal
Say you can be a chef, cab driver, plumber, electrician, carpenter, welder or
whatever for 1000 riyals a month. And the government is already paying its
citizens 1000 riyals a month. No citizen really wants to be a chef, cab
driver, plumber etc anymore. No one wants to do a job, the pay equivalent of
which you already get for free.

Now some one has to do those jobs, there are two options now. You either pay
people more, and therefore now products/services cost more[Inflation]. Or you
get people from outside to work at same price you would pay.

This has led to the situation where Middle east is full of South East Asians.
Pretty much any skill based job you see is being done by
Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis. On the very long run you turn your whole
populace into freeloaders. Or worst the laziest kind of freeloaders, who just
won't work no matter what. It will eventually precipitate to everything. Given
you don't plan to do a job, why would you want an education anyway? Eventually
you will arrive at where UAE or Saudi Arabia is today.

Saudi Arabia even worked to fix this problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudization)

But apparently cheating is common, and it mostly doesn't work.

Long story short, when something is given for free this way, its border line
impossible to undo it until a total collapse comes to pass.

~~~
bilal4hmed
Spot on, having lived there for so many years this is exactly what I saw.
People pushing for these things dont realize that there are countries where
these policies are implemented for decades. Look and them and study. Most of
these people have never lived anywhere else

It leads to more nationalism and youll be wishing for the good ol days of
today when you go down the path others have gone down.

------
HeavyStorm
The poorest person in a certain place has 10 income. The richest 10^1000.
Prices reflect that - some goods are exclusive and have a price relative to
10^1000, whereas others reflect income as low as 10. Why? Mostly because
there's a market of people earning 10, so, as long as you can produce goods
with less than 10, you'll profit. Still, those with 10 have little access to
important goods like housing.

Now, people have UBI. Let's say, 1000? Prices now reflect the poorest person
with 10+1000 and the richest with 10^1000+1000. Goods and services that
targeted the 10 income market are now priced for the 10+1000. Housing goes up,
food goes up, everything goes up.

The power of money is relative. Adding money to an economy adds inflation, and
adding money até the base of the pyramid inflates crucial goods and
services.[1]

So, unfortunately, the solution isn't as simple as UBI.

1 [https://youtu.be/UfeTFKXbhGY](https://youtu.be/UfeTFKXbhGY)

------
hardwaresofton
UBI has never seemed like a good idea to me. If the current system is being
exploited (corporations like walmart paying below a living wage to workers
because they know foodstamps/gov't assistance will cover the rest) it just
never made sense to me that the current class conflict gets solved by the
losing side (workers) gets free money to pay to the winning side (capital
holders). I also haven't heard any convincing arguments for the _basic_
counterpoint that UBI won't lead to just an increase in prices across the
board for everything and inflationary pressure (free market competition is a
myth in a lot of current-day markets, regulators are asleep at the wheel).

You could argue that we already have forms of UBI in practice right now, but
the UBI that gets referred to in tech circles with no significant tax
structure changes just uses the government to guarantee more wealth
accumulation for those already at the top. As the gulf between the workers and
the capital class widens, it gets harder and harder for anyone to make the
leap, and then we get the societies we see in Sci-Fi (ex. Elysium). It seems
so absurd that people are pushing for UBI in a world where the US doesn't even
have nationalized healthcare and a reasonable healthcare system. Talk about
putting the cart before the horse.

I think the right-ish solution in the US can be oversimplified to:

\- Reduce ludicrous defense spending in peace time \- Increase corporate and
top end taxes to what they have been historically \- Resurrect unions \- Fix
job displacement with investment in education and job retraining programs with
extra support linked to enrollment

Unfortunately, getting any of these things done requires an insane amount of
political know-how, political will, coordination, and effort, and someone to
lay out a plan and lead the effort, not even including all the problems with
today's hyper-partisan political climate.

------
linkmotif
I wish someone would challenge the premise that a "basic income," a basic
standard of life is something that can even be identified. I challenge the
idea that people can point to some standard of living and say, "that is the
basic standard of living that people, and we should provide people with that
standard of living."

The problem is that Americans, and most societies in the West in general, have
totally lost touch with basic human existence. For example, in New York right
now, people are delivering pre-cooked, packaged food in single-use containers
to poor people[0]. If you can't provide food for yourself, are we to assume
that this is the standard level of living that you are entitled to? I wouldn't
be surprised if many people say: "Yes, this is what people who can't provide
for themselves need."

My opinion, however, is that sustaining people in this way is completely
unsustainable, a form of terrorism on the environment. You can't just give
people free endless takeout and say that that is the basic standard of living
they need to advance in life. But that is how this is being done right now,
because the people who think UBI makes sense, I find, are by and large the
same people who consume prepared, plastic-packaged foods all the time. These
people, largely, live unsustainable, intensely capitalism-based lifestyles,
and think for some reason that it makes sense to bring the rest of the world
into their divorced for nature-reality existence.

Giving people a "universal basic income" so they can live the destructive
Western capitalist lifestyle is a plague on our species, human culture, and
worst of all, on the environment.

[0] [https://nypost.com/2020/07/29/free-city-meals-meant-for-
need...](https://nypost.com/2020/07/29/free-city-meals-meant-for-needy-left-
at-wrong-address-since-may/)

------
ellyagg
A single land tax that pays its surplus out to the citizens is my vote for
Capitalism 2.0:

    
    
      Some libertarians advocate land value capture as a consistently
      ethical and non-distortionary means to fund the essential operations
      of government, the surplus rent being distributed as a type of
      guaranteed basic income, traditionally called the citizen's dividend,
      to compensate those members of society who by legal title have been
      deprived of an equal share of the earth's spatial value and equal
      access to natural opportunities. (See geolibertarianism)[1]
    

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax#cite_ref-2:~:text=S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax#cite_ref-2:~:text=Some%20libertarians%20advocate%20land%20value%20capture,access%20to%20natural%20opportunities.%20\(See%20geolibertarianism\))

------
Hermel
Universal basic income is not compatible with open borders. This is the main
reason the left struggles with promoting it.

~~~
anticensor
Why? Can you not just check the residency and citizenship status every few
months? You already collect these for other purposes.

~~~
Hermel
If you give every resident a nice check every month (the universal basic
income) and have open borders, your country will soon be overcrowded with
immigrants. And if you give the universal basic income to citizens only, it it
not universal any more.

~~~
anticensor
There is an easy compromise that does not require means testing:

    
    
       *Citizens-by-birth (regardless of whether it is acquired territorially or by blood-line) are eligible past majority age, as long as they reside in the country (short interruptions up to a year may be considered acceptable for this purpose)
       *Naturalised people and immigrant residents become eligible past residency of equal length to majority age, subject to the rule above

------
jondubois
This article forgets to mention that right now the Fed is printing and giving
free money to corporations via pretend-loans. The interest rates are so low
that, in the hands of large corporations, the loans pay themselves off through
stock price inflation which the loans themselves create (including future
loans).

------
w0rdson
I definitely need to research this topic more, but after reading everyone's
arguments for and against UBI, I think maybe the right solution is somewhere
right in the middle.

Instead of giving everyone $X,000 a month, what if there was some sort of
secondary currency or credits that all Americans receive (call them Patriot
bucks or whatever) that could be used for necessities like food, public
transportation, etc.

I don't think the currency should be used for housing costs, but I could maybe
be persuaded otherwise. Ideally though, by having the necessities covered, it
would free up income earned through working to cover rent, and thus working
would still be encouraged.

This seems like something that's easily doable and doesn't solve poverty
completely (there are still other costs like health care), but this would help
a lot of people and be a step toward UBI in the future maybe.

~~~
jnwatson
Shadow currencies never work. If doesn’t work for food stamps and it doesn’t
work for WoW gold.

There’s no reason to tell people what to spend their money on. Generally,
folks are better at determining how to spend money for themselves.

~~~
w0rdson
I hear you, it's just such a difficult problem. I was just thinking of what
the bare minimum is we could do to ensure no one is really living without
basic necessities, until the point where our political climate makes it
actually feasible to blindly give everyone X,000 a month.

I'm sure there are issues with welfare coupons, but being able to go into a
grocery store and buy items you need without having to apply for anything has
to be an improvement. Like I said though I need to research more so I could be
wrong.

------
6510
You know what? We have no idea what would happen. We should just do it and
see. If it becomes a mess it will be our mess and be ours to clean up.

We can no doubt think of a million ways to calibrate the process when the need
arises. Some ideas (probably not the best but its something):

Require everyone to apply for jobs and create a formal formula for it.
Interviews with 1 employee, 1 employer, 1 government employee. 1 application
per year seems the minimum. Permanent fines if employer or employee
intentionally screws up. (not a real job opening, not showing up for the
interview 3 times, etc)

Create a gov agency to repair rental homes cheaply or for free and zero
interest mortgages for landlords - then hammer down rents dramatically. Invest
in public transport in-to/out-of major (expensive) urban and industrial areas.
Build lots of new houses fromwhere people can reach those urban centers.

etc

------
mac01021
I just googled "advertising as fraction of gdp" and the two top results are
19% [1] and 1.17% [2], respectively. It's almost as though random pages on the
web are not to be trusted.

The OP's argument, to a large extent, would seem to me to hinge on this
number, though I'm not sure I can work out the relevant math on my own. (If
anyone else can, I would definitely like to see it)

[1]
[https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/37679](https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/37679)

[2] [https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/273094/us-
adv...](https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/273094/us-advertising-
as-percentage-of-gdp-slows.html)

------
ptttr
The most humanitarian solution to the collapse seems to be a combination of
both:

Global Universal Basic Income and Global Carbon Tax.

Global GDP [1] = $142000bn

Human population [2] = 7.8bn

GUBI = $100 * 12 months * 7.8bn = $9360bn

$9360bn / $142000bn = 6.59% of global GDP

6.59% is below the common tax rate. If it could end all wars forever, wouldn't
it be worth it?

Can you survive on $100 per month? Barely anywhere so people would still work
but it would be a big step towards rebuilding trust among humanity.

We can only avoid violent dystopia if we solve communication and resource
distribution problems.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=global+gdp](https://www.google.com/search?q=global+gdp)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=human+population](https://www.google.com/search?q=human+population)

------
runawaybottle
Won’t it just be negated with increased cost of living? If people get 1000 a
month free, you better believe that rent starts at 1000.

The free money will never do what it’s supposed to do in the long run. It’s
better to just give the actual service for free (healthcare, college,
transportation).

~~~
jc_811
Is that totally guaranteed though? It’s important to remember that the
landlords as well will be getting the 1000$ UBI. So yes, there will be
landlords starting their rent at $1000, but there will also be landlords who
start lower because they too have become more enriched from the UBI and don’t
need to squeeze the margins as much anymore.

~~~
runawaybottle
Fair point, but if I had to counter I’d point to egregious wealth accumulation
in our society, which is in it’s distilled form is just greed.

The greedy could siphon away most of the UBI, bringing us back to square one.
UBI suffers from the assumption that we have a system with the right incentive
structures. We kind of don’t from what I’m seeing.

~~~
_jahh
but the only way to pay for the dividend is through taxing the greedy so even
if they do that's a plus, again the greedy/enterprising are what make
everything we love like these devices.

------
alangibson
UBI reminds me of Bagehot's statement on the English Constitution being split
into two parts: the dignified and the efficient.

It's also useful to think about the economy as being divided in two halves:
one that keeps people alive by making available basics like food and shelter
(the efficient), and the other that is where we pursue our hopes and dreams
(the dignified). UBI plays in the first half by making sure people can at
least subsist. They may then choose to what degree they participate in the
second half.

If you just want a few extra creature comforts, then you can do gig work when
you need it. If you dream big, then start prepping to interview at a FAANG
while UBI pays the rent on a modest apartment.

------
jknoepfler
I support UBI broadly speaking, but one thing I worry about with UBI are the
unforeseen consequences on immigration. Say UBI is in place for citizens, but
not for greencard holders. You've created a massive incentive for non-UBI
workers to enter the labor force, and a massive incentive for companies to
import as many workers as they can (who do not have access to UBI, and
therefore cannot negotiate a higher wage). I'm not sure I want to live in a
country where UBI "citizens" pay for cheaply produced goods and services made
by non-UBI migrants desperate to earn citizenship, that seems like precisely
the kind of two-tier economy UBI is designed to avoid.

Anyway, food for thought.

------
tomazino
Tbh, it seems like the author does not understand the basic principles of
economics and history of economics.

The core problem regarding UBI is the fact that throwing such amounts of money
to economy will create an enormous inflation, which will basically mean we
would only improve our well being by margin, since more money won't let us buy
more goods.

Furthermore, the ones that will benefit most from UBI are those, who have
reached en equilibrium, meaning they will generate even bigger profits without
investing more money. As the author states - we need to have more money, so
that we could consume more, but in the end, the ones that end up with more
money are the top 0.01%.

------
miltondts
I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way
of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms.

Money was invented in a time of scarcity and it was a very useful tool then.
In some situations it still is today, but for many things we have more than
enough for everyone, so maybe those should be provided without the need to go
through the money system.

Anyway, I don't know what would work, but it still bothers me that we don't
try to constantly improve our systems and if necessary change them in radical
ways. We just implement systems that then become controlled by a few people
who greatly benefit from it and thus have no incentive to change it.

~~~
macspoofing
>I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way
of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms.

That is a feature, not a bug.

Society is incredibly complicated and is an intrinsically chaotic system
resulting from the beliefs and actions of hundreds of millions of individuals.
The system has generations of iterative 'fixes' to problems and with delicate
balances negotiated and fought for by various groups across tens or hundred of
years. What makes you think you think you can rebuild it better? What makes
you think you can account for all the things that the system does well in your
new 'paradigm'? We saw with various revolutions (e.g. French, Russia, and
Chinese) that when you try to upend even a bad system and rebuild from scratch
with a 'new paradigm', it leads to something much much worse.

~~~
miltondts
The problem I see with the revolutions you mention is the people implementing
those changes believe (or at least act like) their new system is perfect. I'm
advocating precisely the opposite! I would like for people to view their
system in terms of trade-offs and deliberately experiment with new ones and
asses the results and not just in an incremental way, but also in radical
ways. Because right now, all I see is a sort of headless chicken running
around destroying everything with zero regards for the consequences.

Even the article's author doesn't appear to conceive of anything better than
capitalism. The solution is to consume more! Really?

So I guess what I want is less of a religious view of the social systems and
more of a engineering view.

~~~
macspoofing
>Even the article's author doesn't appear to conceive of anything better than
capitalism.

Because through blood, sweat and tears we've landed on a system that is based
on market-economics coupled with welfare state to provide a safety net.
Changing any of that would require a wholesale destruction of our current
system and is no better than the Russian revolution. Our system has a lot of
slack. You can adjust market and welfare policies across elections. There's a
lot you can do within the system - your problem seems to be that policies you
like are not pushed through the system ... but that's Democracy for you. It
takes effort and negotiation to make societal level changes.

>So I guess what I want is less of a religious view of the social systems and
more of a engineering view.

Social systems are not engineering systems. They are messy because they are
fundamentally composed of messy individuals with historical baggage to boot.
You cannot create a clean top-down plan without it looking like Soviet-style
communism. Democracy is messy and requires give and take and negotiation,
compromise, and horse-trading between all the thousands of different
stakeholders and groups. You cannot clean that up with an engineering
schematic. You're falling into the trap that all ideologues fall into.

------
WhompingWindows
Rather than UBI, why not add supplemental salary to important industries?
Instead of handing out a ton of money for free, we could ask citizens to work
in the industries with the best long-term pay-off for the economy, things like
education, research, maintenance, infrastructure, healthcare, environmental
restoration, energy improvements, etc.

If these jobs were more highly paid, our brightest minds might be pulled there
instead of to companies whose goal is to capture our attention and display
ads. And an influx of talent and more workers to these areas would surely
improve quality of life, resiliency to future epidemics, literacy, belief in
science, etc.

~~~
jnwatson
The biggest problem is that you have a central planner deciding what the
“good” jobs are.

There are more straightforward mechanisms for the government to invest in
future-oriented endeavors.

------
known
Unconditional cash transfer is the most efficient form of relief for the Poor;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer)

------
Animats
One possibility is to discourage advertising. As the article points out, it's
zero-sum. 78% of Americans are spent out. Make advertising no longer a
deductible business expense. It's like multilateral disarmament. There are too
many products where most of the cost is advertising.

As for universal basic income, someone wrote that the 21st century has been
the move from career, to job, to gig, to universal basic income.

How about enforcing an 8 hour day, a 40 hour week, and a good minimum wage?
That's a start. And make "time theft" by employers a crime.

------
fazed
> Instead of continually trying to optimize supply, with diminishing returns,
> we need to optimize demand by giving consumers more money to spend on things
> they desire.

> If we can give companies overwhelming demand so they have to scale up
> production instead of spending all their money on advertising, we can have
> both happy companies making profit hand over fist, and happy consumers who
> get everything they desire.

> everything they desire.

This seems very bad for the environment? The article seemed to make some
interesting points, but I got concerned here. These paragraphs seem awfully
gung-ho about runaway hyperconsumption

------
Unsimplified
Thought experiment. Suppose 10K people have the technology and willingness to
volunteer enough worktime to provide the essentials for all of the US. Some
basic income program is implemented to distribute these necessities. Possible?
Yes. Sustainable? Yes, bounded by science and political stability. Good? Yes
on quality of life floor and economic freedom. Conditional yes depending on
competitive accessibility of the system (anti corruption/abuse). Fair? Better
if more people share the work burden.

Wise governments should set policies to help this transition.

------
aww_dang
I find it interesting that an article celebrating UBI as a panacea goes to the
top of the queue, while articles critical of UBI are flagged and removed. Is
this what intellectual curiosity looks like?

------
ZinniaZirconium
I can get paid to write code nobody uses?! Sign me up!

Zero users _and loving it!_

~~~
Polylactic_acid
You can already do that in most places by just applying for welfare payments
and making a fake effort to get a job. The thing is that working a real
programming job pays a lot more.

~~~
ZinniaZirconium
Not if you genuinely don't care about impressing anyone. A real programming
job involves convincing someone your work is valuable enough to pay for. A
welfare scam involves convincing someone you deserve free money. Both are too
much social involvement if you prefer a hikikomori lifestyle of writing code
nobody will ever use.

Zero users _and loving it!_ is not necessarily hyperbole.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Under a UBI you would not have to fake anything since the only qualification
is having a low or no taxable income.

Again, this is how it works in most developed countries under welfare systems
without issue. The majority still seek real jobs because they want to live
above the base level of income required to live. A UBI won't be paying for
your overseas holiday and fancy car.

------
hexxiiiz
UBI is not bad. But without a better housing infrastructure in cities, UBI
will be mostly a voucher for landlords, who will disproportionately end up
quickly receiving a large fraction of this cashflow. Affordable housing,
education, and healthcare need to be addressed. UBI will just kick these cans
down the road. That being said, if we are committed to not solving those more
fundamental problems, as we seem to be in the US, I welcome UBI as a great
alternative to doing absolutely nothing.

------
miguelmota
UBI will really take off once automation has completely replaced all the
essential grunt work jobs which would make food and shelter abundant. Once
that happens then everyone can do whatever they want and not worry about
trying to have enough money for groceries or pay rent. We're not there yet but
maybe in the next decade or two. My concerns with UBI right now is that it'll
incentivize businesses to raise their prices and make people more dependent on
government.

------
lvs
Let's say I'm a landlord. If you give my tenant $1000/month, I'll just take
it. Their rent is now R+1000 next year.

You could tax the $1000 back away from me, but that doesn't stop the price
from rising. It actually just boosts my incentive to take every last cent of
the $1000 that I can extract.

I think you all need to think more about the economics. You have to be
willing, on rational grounds, to step away from free markets in some other way
in order to make this viable.

~~~
carabiner
Let's say I'm a different landlord. If the other landlords are raising their
rents, I know that by not raising mine, I can attract more tenants and
increase my occupancy rate. Maybe I'm at 70%, and I need 80% to cover my
costs. I know that if I raised my rents by $1,000/month, I would lose tenants
to the landlords who didn't.

~~~
lvs
Maybe if you're a landlord in an empty town. But if you're a landlord
operating at 70% occupancy, then you're not in a major city of most advanced
economies. Cities have demand-driven pricing. 80% of Americans live in an
urban area, according to the Census Bureau. There is constant and ever-growing
demand, so there is no downward pricing pressure in cities -- Corona aside. I,
as a landlord, can take any price the income levels will bear. That is why
urban incomes and housing costs must, in tandem, rise unbounded.

------
LatteLazy
The issue with ubi is that it will never be implimentable with the type of
winner-takes-all government of the US, UK, Australia etc. There will always be
a slim majority to cross out the Universal part and give people like them
(almost) double and everyone else nothing. This is why we have insanely high
pensioner benefits and no funding for working people at the moment.

If you cannot implimented a good policy, it doesn't matter how good it is,
it's a unicorn.

------
fny
This article is absurd. Capitalism 2.0 != Capitalism. Nominal GDP growth !=
real GDP growth. UBI != ending winner takes all.

UBI to all is pure, unadulterated inflation. _More money is chasing, the same
goods and the same winners will suck that money out of the system._ If the
money is given to everyone, there will not even be a redistributive effect.

Hell, you might even have fewer goods being produced since there could
potentially be less incentive to work. Couple this with a boomer population
that's exiting the workforce, and a nightmare could potentially unfold.

So yes be prepared for GDP to skyrocket... because of inflation.

Now if you want to pitch employment guarantee programs and better social
services, that's worth a discussion. Otherwise, injecting pieces of paper into
the system does nothing for real growth in the economy.

------
jboggan
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing
selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money,
there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
said: "If you don't work you die."

[0] -
[http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm)

------
sadfev
I still have reservations against UBI but I think some form of it is
inevitable and perhaps necessary.

I am not sure even OECD nations have sufficient production capacity for
everyone and carrying capacity can solely rely on automation in the near
future.

I think a short “draft” (2-3 years) of people into various community and
defense activities should be mandatory for all healthy young adults before
they are eligible for UBI.

I like the idea of efficient consumption.

------
pickledcods
I am busy in the field of fractal arithmetic and quantum logic. Thanks to an
incompetent advisor I was dis-advised to follow an academic schooling and
missed the boat. With UBI I would have finished the basics of these two fields
long ago and published them for the good of science releasing a trove of new
techniques, insights, algorithms and hardware designs. Now I have to scavenge
for work and waste my time.

~~~
attilakun
I'm curious: what kind of quantum logic are you working on?

Can you elaborate on what grounds did your advisor disadvise you to follow
academic schooling?

~~~
pickledcods
Breaking arithmetic down to a single operator represented as movement and a
single value represented as null/zero. Because there is no variation in
operator or value you can remove them from the equation so only the structure
remains. You can use that structure to create fractals storing information,
manipulate and navigate through them. Working on the final prototype now and
got rough designs to implement in hardware but its getting severely delayed
because of absence of UBI.

There are two types of higher education here, academic and applied. School
adviser had no clue and advised to walk the applied path because it would get
me into computer science one year faster. Yeah, applied CS, but I needed
academic. Tried to get back onto the train, did hardware and software for a
total of 9 years but in the end the gap was too large to get recognised and
make the jump. One advantage though, it allowed me to think outside the
academic box.

~~~
attilakun
Thanks! So for your prototype you need a new hardware design? Or can the idea
be validated in Qiskit/Q#?

~~~
pickledcods
Not necessary, I can emulate in software which I am doing now. I'm not sure if
validation software works as intended because the concept isn't quantum
physics and for traditional it has no explicit and/or/xor gates. Quantum might
be a dangerous word now as the meaning has been hijacked, I should be more
careful. This design has a new type of gate which is more like a vector of
switches. It doesn't differentiate between the logic type because those have
been broken down into terms of that switch. It's all about connection. Memory
is also different, more like bit sequential memory. But ultimately I do hope
to get it running on dedicated hardware. Also dreaming of the possibility with
polarised light and crystals because of the uniformity of the switch.

------
joyeuse6701
An important part of the article's argument is that giving money to the people
directly is best, because they know best how to allocate resources over a top
down approach...

I'm sadly not convinced this is the case right now in the U.S. People do
stupid things with money, especially 'the house's money'.

For UBI to be a palatable choice to me, it would have to come with a mandatory
financial education.

------
jay_kyburz
A UBI seems to me like an overly complicated way to just give everybody a free
food, cloths, shelter, electricity, internet, and medicine. Why don't we just
make that stuff free.

Every person can just go to a special Costco like store and spend x credits a
month taking whatever they want. That way we can just make that stuff as
efficiently as possible, rather than messing with the whole economy.

~~~
zanny
Because the logistics of government bodies trying to guarantee essentials
while somehow getting them as efficiently as markets in optimal conditions can
is anything but simple.

The IRS sent me a $1200 months ago via direct deposit in the bank account it
already had on record for me. Setting up public bank accounts at post offices
so every citizen has access and having the tax apparatus that already collects
all your financial information reverse the process for 12-24k a year is
_extremely_ easy to implement compared to establishing entirely new branches
of government.

There might be an argument that the food stamps program can be made universal
for a fixed amount for everyone as a compromise position. IE you get 800
instead of 1k a month in UBI but get $200 on an EBT card to buy food with. But
a UBI lets you simply abolish the bureaucracy of food stamps altogether.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Here in Australia we are mostly there with a lot of these things. Medicare
could be extended to dental. We have housing but there could be more of it.
Food and clothes seems easy.

It might be harder than just handing out cash, but it would be significantly
cheaper, and could be implemented in small steps.

Staff and fund it properly. Have a good corruption watchdog. Run government
departments against each other with bonuses for "the winners".

Fix government, don't dismantle it.

~~~
zanny
UBI isn't "expensive". Its not a sunk cost. Its wealth redistribution, not
destruction. It makes your states books look massive to implement - "wow, the
government is taking for trillions to cover its expenses, thats so much!" but
if one of those expenses is guaranteeing the minimum standard of living to
everyone that is _stimulative_.

Compare that to US defense spending now. Of course, 2.4 trillion a year in UBI
payments is still 4x more than the US spends in the defense budget every year,
but defense is a monetary black hole - the return on investment is awful
because unless all the personnel and equipment commitments correlate directly
to substantial amounts of economic enablement (and they really don't - the
most direct example is exposing oil markets in the Middle East through
occupation in recent years, but pretty much no country on Earth is lining up
to pay what would functionally be protection money to the US military mob for
being global police) then you build the tanks, bombs, trani the troops, run
the bases, etc to do the equivalent of dig and fill ditches. There is no
realized productive value in having the weapons capacity or entrenchment
internationally the US military has.

 _That_ is the kind of money drain in government that can wreck a nation
through siphoning of its profitable yields. Most would _spend_ UBI on
immediate goods requisite to human survival, that is a huge capitalization
opportunity. Tremendous growth. The rest would be paying more in taxes than
they get in UBI anyway to cover the costs.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Yes, but the government buying essentials for people in need is "stimulative"
in the same way. Money goes to farmers for food, manufactures for clothing
etc. People in need are still choosing and buying things in a market, but is a
subset - just the essentials.

The point I was trying to make is that you don't have to upend the entire
economy to help people in need.

------
thinkingkong
I find it peculiar that Americans even discuss UBI prior to having universal
healthcare. The whole idea of universality in this context is to eliminate the
requirement to work in order to live a reasonable healthy life. If you
implement UBI without healthcare then you maintain a form of economic slavery
which more or less states that employment is required to have medical
coverage.

~~~
spyckie2
Healthcare is one of the most talked about topics in the US. UBI in comparison
is still a fringe topic.

You can talk about multiple issues at once, we have that capability.

------
elvinn
UBI might work overall, the humanity has accumulated too much wealth, stuff
and automation powers. Supply is overweighting demand historically for the
first time. Why not redistribute wealth evenly, so that economic well-being
becomes a new norm. Because, guess what happens, when one doesn't have to work
to survive anymore? Happier, healthier and more creative people overall.

------
thrownaway954
maybe i'm an idiot, but i really don't get the whole UBI argument... we
already have it, it's called welfare and you see and how that has been taken
advantage of and what a sh*t storm it is.

we don't a UBI, we need the government to stop dipping their hands in
everyone's pockets and free up money.

1) stop taxing social security checks. these people have worked their entire
lives and now you're taxing them on money THEY put in. 2) stop taxing
disability checks. these people DEPEND on that money cause they can't work. 3)
speaking of SS. we need to end it at some point. a good way of doing it would
be to automatically put 25% of their SS contribution into a ROTH IRA. 4) you
should be allowed to contribute an additional 20% of your salary to a ROTH IRA
instead of the 6K it is now. 5) stop taxing people who make less than 40K per
year.

these are just some of the ways i can think of to put more money into people's
pocket without killing the economy, but that's just me talking out loud. maybe
i'm wrong.

------
danschumann
In the future, robots theoretically can do everything, and yes ubi would be
needed.

What level are we at now? I don't think a ubi should be very much, maybe a
dollar a day. Maybe 2. Considering we have all the other social programs for
needy people. 5 bucks a day, who knows. The problem is people wanting to start
it at some real high number.

~~~
aww_dang
If robots did everything, then prices would fall. The effort required to
obtain goods would be less.

CB money printing and UBI would prevent this prosperity.

------
gorgoiler
Of all the things on my _make the world right_ shopping list, I absolutely do
not see UBI.

Renters need help. My priority would be housing rights. What I want is for the
government to stop tiptoeing around and implement real regulation.

Minimum square footage per person. Minimum building standards to guarantee
peace at home. Guaranteed rights, as a tenant, to remain in the property until
you decide to leave. No more annual renewal fee stress when the estate agent
threatens to replace you with someone (plucked from the free market) who will
pay 3% more.

Regulation to prevent dense tenant battery farms. No more conversion of three
bedroom homes (with two large living spaces) into six bedroom slums for
common-licensed tenants. Oftentimes the kitchen is the only common living
space and your bedroom has a lock on it. This is a horrible way to live.

It also drives down wages with a race to the bottom for lowest possible
housing quality at the maximum possible price.

I’ve lived in — and seen my friends live in — various slums in the US and
England over the years. In the very crowded rental markets of major cities and
popular towns, tenants are treated like cattle, but without the animal rights.

~~~
zanny
Fixing housing policy is not exclusive with UBI.

And in most states there are minimum square footage requirements that, when
too high for the incomes of the population to sustain them in housing, are
going to be ignored by said population.

~~~
gorgoiler
Yes. Any exclusivity would be in the attention spans of voters. One feels like
one can only pick one battle at a time.

------
thephyber
I find one of the more interesting benefits of UBI that stay-at-home-moms
would be paid at least something compared to the status quo nothing-unless-
your-company-has-really-great-benefits.

Alternatively, if the UBI pays for children, that subsidy could help more moms
go to work by effectively subsidizing day-care.

------
wiz21c
FTA : "To reverse this trend of stagnating growth, we must put more capital in
the hands of lower income consumers, who will then spend it on things they
desire and increase GDP."

Why on earth should be reversing the trend ? Why not just accept zero-growth
and organize the society accordingly ?

~~~
stjo
For the same reason I don't "just accept" that I'm going to die, or that there
is no justice in the universe. I want to live longer than my parents, possibly
forever. I want to impose my sense of order and justice in the world, because
I don't like chaos.

I want live more comfortably than my parents and my kids more than me (and
thus growth). Of course I accept anything, but why should I? Isn't being human
making sure you always progress?

~~~
foxrob92
>I don't "just accept" that I'm going to die

But you _are_ going to die. This[1] is a very thorough walkthrough. Wanting to
live longer than your parents is one thing, but "forever" is a long time. I'd
go as far as to say that if you think you can live forever, you don't
understand forever.

>no justice in the universe.

Justice is an idea created by humans.

Wanting to improve yourself and the world around you is a central human trait
imo, but there are some things we will never completely fix. One of them is
death.

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dn43v/i_rema...](https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dn43v/i_remain_unconvinced_that_my_death_has_a_fixed/c9s173k/)

------
kampsduac
What would happen if UBI was instead Guaranteed Work and Wage?

I'm thinking if tax dollars were shared in the form of education, training and
entry level exposure to trade skills, and jobs that may not typically pay
above a minimum threshold for poverty but are subsidized to make them
comfortable.

------
raintrees
It would seem there are gaping holes here - No mention of size of government.
No mention of government creating the very distortion of big companies
mentioned (competition is stifled by regulation). No mention of what UBI will
do to pricing in the longer term (Cantillon effect).

------
dcewcrrec
In disbelief at this thread. People work because they WANT TO. Work is a
natural human desire. It's easy to say we'd all just sit around playing games,
but after a while you'd go insane. Work is never going to stop under UBI, or
any sort of social welfare program.

------
drummer
UBI is extremely dangerous as long as governments exist. Take what China is
doing with their citizen score and it's not hard to imagine what could go
wrong.

"...imagine how easy it would be for such a government that was also providing
a basic income to its citizens to manipulate their citizens based on that
basic income that they depended on. If they can deny citizens access to things
like public transportation based on their ‘citizen score’, they can also deny
those citizens (part of) their basic income depending on how ‘good’ their
behavior is. So if you were too critical and thinking too independently, you
could very easily be denied your basic income, and this could be a serious
problem especially if you were brought up to be dependent on the government
and to (heavily) rely on the income they provided."

More: [https://blog.kareldonk.com/an-example-of-the-dangers-of-a-
go...](https://blog.kareldonk.com/an-example-of-the-dangers-of-a-government-
provided-basic-income/)

~~~
baddox
That’s literally the “universal” part of it. If you don’t have that, you don’t
have UBI. The fact that the government has the physical power to withhold a
hypothetical UBI might be an issue, of course, but every government has the
physical power to do pretty much anything to any citizen, so there’s nothing
unique there.

~~~
daenz
Until we are in a time where I can't find a disturbing number of people who
are willing to deny someone UBI for saying the wrong things--and willing to
vote for someone who will do that--then UBI should never be seriously
considered.

~~~
baddox
But if you don’t support it being universal then you don’t support UBI. Those
people you’re talking about just don’t support UBI.

~~~
daenz
How does that change anything besides making a "ha, gotcha!" point? That's
your definition of universal, which is (I assume) limited to citizens of the
USA who are adults.

EDIT>> Also there is plenty of precedent for limiting things which are worded
in such a way as to suggest they cannot be limited, eg: "shall not be
infringed"

~~~
baddox
It’s just weird to say that you don’t support a policy if there a lot of
people that don’t support it. Surely that’s true of every taxation and welfare
system in every government, for instance.

~~~
themacguffinman
The tautology you see is in your own phrasing. The problem being raised here
is that UBI is easy to abuse. Voters and politicians and bureaucrats can more
easily hijack a deceptively simple UBI system after it's enacted, and no
amount of "but that's not what Universal means" hairsplitting will help you
then.

Welfare, on the other hand, is better understood and more narrowly focused.
And even there you still have a ton of bullshit. I think UBI's deceptively
simple yet vaguely broad scope will be tussled & twisted even more.

~~~
baddox
Why would it be easier to abuse? If anything, the “universal” part is even
clearer since it’s right there in the name.

~~~
themacguffinman
"Universal" is a lot vaguer than you claim. Even though you claimed that it
means "no restrictions", you probably implicitly accept basic restrictions
like "only for citizens" or "only people residing in the US" or "only people
who bothered to register". "Universal" has practically never meant "free of
all restrictions", but everyone who sees it thinks they know what those
restrictions are and should be. Someone right now is probably thinking
"obviously it doesn't include people who are in prison for life".

Beyond that, it's also ripe for political agitation because UBI would have
fewer restrictions than welfare. You can already find provocative "news"
segments about how disgraceful and undeserving welfare recipients are because
they found one dude buying some crab meat or something using foodstamps.
Imagine the outcry when people buy weed with UBI. The pressure to start
policing and controlling UBI recipients would be enormous, even more than
welfare which already has so many restrictions.

~~~
baddox
> Even though you claimed that it means "no restrictions", you probably
> implicitly accept basic restrictions like "only for citizens" or "only
> people residing in the US" or "only people who bothered to register".
> "Universal" has practically never meant "free of all restrictions", but
> everyone who sees it thinks they know what those restrictions are and should
> be.

Yes, and it's only for humans too. Raccoons and shrubs don't receive the basic
income.

------
kingbirdy
> I’m a huge fan of capitalism and free trade, as laid out in Adam Smith’s
> genre defining book The Wealth of Nations.

The fact that he included an Amazon link to a book that came out over 200
years ago and is available on Project Gutenberg[0] certainly backs up his
credentials as a "huge fan of capitalism".

[0]
[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm)

------
bjornsing
The argument doesn’t seem very solid to me (e.g. I don’t see sharply
increasing marketing budgets in the graph indicating more businesses are
demand constrained), but the conclusion still seems likely to be correct. I’ve
had similar thoughts for a long time now.

------
GoToRO
I don't know what UBI is, but as long as you are not allowed to print your own
money, you must be allowed to participate in the (unique) economy, so yeah,
somebody must give you a job no matter what. Or, if they don't have one, they
can give you UBI.

------
droptablemain
Ahh, yes, another patched-together hotfix to maintain this shoddy, bloated
chunk of software.

------
known

        Everybody should pick garbage on 'rotational' basis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus
    
        And UBI should lead everybody to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization

------
flarg
I'm not sure why the biggest benefit of UBI is not promoted, in that it
dramatically reduces the cost of providing state benefits? No more big IT
companies changing crappy old systems to meet new requirements. Just a cheque
once a month.

------
qudat
> I’m a huge fan of capitalism and free trade, as laid out in Adam Smith’s
> genre defining book The Wealth of Nations.

> Strangely, even though we’re in a golden age of hyper-efficient production
> and trade, the overall GDP growth of the USA is slowing.

We don't have pure capitalism and we certainly don't have free trade, couldn't
those be valid reasons why GDP growth has been slowing? Rules, regulations,
and laws have only been increasing and corporatism is winning. It's a memory
leak. This isn't the result of capitalism, this is the result of businesses
colluding with government to create coercive monopolies. Natural monopolies
don't exist in this country, they are all spawned out of the nation states'
monopoly on force.

I also disagree with the premise that wealth inequality is necessarily bad. If
everyone's quality of life is increasing over time, that seems good for
everyone, right? It's a terrible metric to base economic policies on.

Having said all that, I'm a reasonable person. If we replaced the current
welfare programs with UBI, I'd be excited to see that experiment play out. I
think eventually the cost of basics (in particular rentals) will increase to
meet the new income floor, and people will inevitably say "UBI doesn't meet
basic needs anymore, we must increase it." Haven't we heard this before? We
read about it all the time with minimum wages. After reading the arguments for
it (which seem bountiful and raises red flags for me), I'm ultimately
skeptical, but I'd be willing to give it a shot and I think it is better than
the systems we have in place today.

Things that are too good to be true usually are.

------
z3t4
The economic problem is that advertising and capturing a bigger chunk of the
market is more effective then lower prices. This is good in one way because
markets are getting bigger. But players are not incentivised to lower prices.

------
negamax
What happens in UBI when people who are still employed leave the state and by
virtue of Internet remain employed in their new low tax state? Would UBI again
not concentrate wealth outside and remove wealth from the system?

------
markus_zhang
Free basic food + government housing + free schooling should be better.

And more importantly how do you promote equal opportunity to the kids? Still
have to make sure that somehow kids from poor cities/districts get proper
education.

------
yters
Most of my work is motivated by the desire to become financially independent.
If someone just hands me financial independence, why should I work? If most
people are as lazy as I, where does the money for UBI come from?

------
besart_hoxhaj
Worth listening to "Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM)

------
bnosach
What happens when your landlord realizes that you have extra $1K to spend
every month? What would their incentive be to not jack up your rent? I fail to
see any. The prices on most things would just shoot up overnight.

------
jonplackett
So all we need is more and more growth? Screw the climate right? Just give
everyone cash and they can buy buy buy!

I think universal income would be a positive thing but based on this
explanation of why we need it I’m now not so sure

------
jacknews
I prefer Yanis Varoufakis' idea of a universal basic dividend. A percentage of
all shares should go into a public equity trust like a wealth fund for
society, the dividends from which are paid as basic income.

------
hevelvarik
Something about this topic...Can someone, you know, do the math.

So what, say everyone over 18 gets 2k month * 12 = 24k per year. There’s
roughly 250 million such people in the US.

Who do we tax to make that happen? Or do we just add it to the debt.

------
jlnthws
Where do you get the UBI from? Taxing reach people and companies? Which ones?
Can they avoid it, even with a complex sequences of numerous administrative
steps, clever legal interpretations and social engineering? ...

Now suppose you have UBI, it means some (formerly) poor people receive some
money, in exchange of no work from their part, to spend on things they
"desire" ("need" would be better here): so you end up having fake prices on
those things, precisely what you wanted to avoid. And who can benefit from
UBI? Could some not really poor people apply to it, even with a complex
sequences of numerous...?

The only way is to have complete globalisation of finance while keeping
localism for (most of) production and political decisions. Transitioning to
that model won't be fun.

------
Ericson2314
Keynesianism 2.0

------
loki49152
No, it isn't. There is no secret magical end-run around Say's Law.

------
mytailorisrich
As is often the case this completely ignores the cost and the financing, which
are key but paint a much less rosy picture of UBI (which meaning must also be
clearly defined in any discussion).

------
alltakendamned
I've always wondered if UBI would not simply lead to inflation. I cannot
imagine that prices would not increase if suddenly everyone had additional
funds and could "pay extra".

------
exabrial
No it's not, unless it's funded by willing volunteers.

What if I don't want to pay the UBI tax? Are you going to send the government
in unmarked mini vans to kidnap me or kneel on my kneck?

------
known
Local governments can adopt
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer)

------
frankdenbow
I believe this as well, thats why we created:
[https://inflectioncommunity.com/nation](https://inflectioncommunity.com/nation)

------
known
UBI promotes Social mobility and doesn't redistribute Wealth
[http://archive.is/20K8w](http://archive.is/20K8w)

------
persona
In complex systems, it's tempting to look for a silver bullet: If we only did
"this".

This Capitalism 2.0 would also need to be a system of things that enables a
new direction - whatever that may be - based on the fragile regression to the
mean of what an expected aggregated view of that looks like.

UBI can or cannot be part of that system, but by itself it can quickly become
irrelevant.

Most economic theories of capitalism are based on (mostly) rational behaviors
of the majority of market participants. Social studies will show that in
topics related to finances/money, behaviors are all over the place.

Want to drive towards Capitalism 2.0? Start with financial education, support
systems, relevant incentives (maybe UBI is one of them) and a good shared
vision of what that 2.0 is.

------
ed25519FUUU
The whole system of benevolent governance is built on consent. I’m not sure
how you’ll ever roll out a system like this with the consent of the governed.

------
enaaem
I do not believe in UBI, but I am willing to change my mind if it works in
practice, as long as my country doesn't take part in the experiment.

------
Fatalist_ma
The argument was not convincing at all. He focuses on how UBI will let poor
people to consume more. But will it help them produce more? I believe it will,
but that needs explaining.

> If we can give companies overwhelming demand so they have to scale up
> production instead of spending all their money on advertising, we can have
> both happy companies making profit hand over fist, and happy consumers who
> get everything they desire.

lol... Consumers won't be able to buy "everything they desire" with UBI. And
the UBI will be funded with the taxes payed by the companies, so not all of
them will actually make more profit.

> The second solution is some sort of socialism, ...

And UBI is not "some sort of socialism"? O_o

------
100111010110
> Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
> combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the
> world out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings
> enjoyed just a few century’s ago.

The article starts with a fallacy.. It should be: only technology has improved
our lives, not capitalism. And there are still insane amounts of people
suffering and living in poverty because they do not have access to even the
most basic resources, let alone the latest technology.

In fact "the combination of capitalism and technology" has opened the door to
horrific new ways to suppress and exterminate people.

~~~
flr03
Here is another fallacy: "This led to massive accumulations of wealth and the
biggest wealth gap in history. This in itself isn’t a bad thing. After all,
we’ve all become wealthier in the last few centuries even if some have become
unimaginably wealthy."

------
kyletns
Sure, let's assume we can (and in fact should) grow _endlessly_ on a finite
planet. I'm sure that'll work out.

------
matthewfelgate
Do you need Universal Basic Income, or could you target increase social
spending on the poorest and most needy in society instead?

------
trentnix
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism 1.0. It's all the 'Crony Capitalism'
upgrades that we need to uninstall.

UBI incorrectly assumes its capital that has kept people from producing, when
it's skills. And then you're assured people will use UBI to acquire skills,
but capital isn't what's preventing people from acquiring skills either.

UBI is, at its core, taking money from people producing and giving it to those
who aren't. And that's not a recipe for economic growth.

There's certainly a place for public assistance, but UBI looks an awful lot
like putting lipstick on the pig of wealth redistribution.

~~~
tomrod
Why do you think skills is what prevents people from producing?

------
dutch3000
it’s not the only way and i think there could be massive, negative side
effects. economic localization is the way forward. it would help with carbon
reduction, offset job loss from automation, counteract the loss of human scale
with regards to the interconnected, toxic mass consciousness by moving our
realities back to our communities.

------
ambyra
Austria already has unlimited unemployment insurance, and is rated as one of
the happiest countries. Why is UBI any better?

------
thomasfl
Andrew Yang says he don’t like the name Universal Basic Income. He rather
prefer Freedom Money. I do agree. It sounds good.

------
glerk
But money does not create wealth. Money is just a tool of trade and a measure
of the value of goods and services produced in an economy.

Airdropping money will not transform this world into a utopia where everyone
is wealthy and can live without working. At the end of the day, we need
plumbers, electricians, garbage men, software engineers, nurses, lawyers, etc.
to maintain this civilization and this will not be changed from the top-down
by inflating the money supply.

~~~
jokoon
Those plumbers etc will be paid bonus money. That's pretty simple. At some
point, unemployment can hurt the economy.

~~~
glerk
> Those plumbers etc will be paid bonus money

Yes, nominally they will be paid more money. However, the same amount of goods
and services will be produced in this economy, so an increase in the money
supply will In reality be worthless.

~~~
jokoon
> However, the same amount of goods and services will be produced in this
> economy

It has often been shown that giving money to the poor generates more trade and
consumption. Poor people have a restrained budget, so they naturally reduce
their spending. If you you give them money, it easily generates a lot of
economic activity.

So I have trouble understanding your argument.

~~~
glerk
> > However, the same amount of goods and services will be produced in this
> economy

> It has often been shown that giving money to the poor generates more trade
> and consumption.

Goods and services need to be _produced_ before they are traded and consumed.
More money chasing the same amount of goods and services is bound to create
inflation. This UBI is a just a roundabout attempt at economic stimulation
through currency debasement. The same thing was tried many times before in
many different places, and the result has always been the same.

> Poor people have a restrained budget, so they naturally reduce their
> spending. If you you give them money, it easily generates a lot of economic
> activity.

I think you have a misconception about what money is. Money is just a relative
measurement of value and a tool of exchange. Yes initially poor people will be
able to increase their spending. But most prices are elastic and will increase
quickly until the poor are in the same situation as before, even with the
additional UBI income.

~~~
jokoon
No, the UBI is a simplification of welfare, to reduce the cost of poverty.

It's mostly about social problems than economic problems. Inflation can be
controlled.

> The same thing was tried many times before in many different places, and the
> result has always been the same.

Do you have sources that are comparable with UBI experiments?

> until the poor are in the same situation as before, even with the additional
> UBI income.

No. Unconditional money, whatever the amount, is what matters.

Generally there is a critic that economics tend to focus too much on the math,
and not on the political, social, psychological and human side. Ideologies
have always affected economics. It also does today.

------
FartyMcFarter
If I had a cent for each time people suggest UBI without explaining how to pay
for it, I could probably fund UBI myself.

------
rbg246
It's utterly disappointing to see the top voted story on hacker news is am
economics story (which is great!) on such an interesting topic written by a
developer who from reading from his introduction has an undergraduate level of
knowledge of economics, surely we can do better for sources and expertise in
subject matter.

And this is not personal against the author a brilliant blog post (but note
it's a blog).

~~~
zarathustreal
Try not to rely on appeals to authority, it’s not about where information
comes from, it’s about the logical validity of that information. If you’re
taking everything you read at face value that’s okay! Keep in mind that many
people here are taking it into deep consideration and evaluating what is said
based on its logical merit, who the author is does not play a role in that
consideration. Regardless of whether the author is a scholar of economics or a
homeless person, the content of the writing is all that matters. If it helps
you can just pretend that it has no author

~~~
rbg246
I understand what you are saying however... logical analysis only gets you so
far.

What was logical to a medieval mind is not logical today with no difference in
intelligence in the thinker the only difference being a far superior knowledge
base.

And my main point is we have the internet we have access, we have access to
economists who have the baseline of information to provide a considered
argument I can trust.

------
hannofcart
> Imagine an 18th century town with two widget makers...

TIL from this article that physical widgets pre-date digital ones.

------
peacefulhat
> "Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
> combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the
> world out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings
> enjoyed just a few century’s ago."

I really don't have to. The best tools in software are free and open source,
and if I contrast that with the tools which aren't it's really obvious that
there are externalities from competition i.e. anti-cooperation. You also need
an explanation for progress in communist countries besides "they would have
been better off with capitalism." Maybe, but the premise is that capitalism is
the reason for "comfort only kings enjoyed just a few centuries ago"...or one
century ago in Russia. Research, engineering and trade are some of the real
reasons for rapid growth.

A big problem with UBI is that it gives up on dealing with concentration of
wealth and power into the hands of a few ceos, often for no benefit to anyone
else. This is especially true of the version of UBI with a funding model like
Andrew Yang proposes. I think a better path forward for "capitalism 2.0" is to
require companies give much more stock equity to employees - all employees,
including low wage and contractor. An extreme option would be to force every
company to reform as a coop. And neither of these are mutually exclusive with
UBI.

~~~
dev_tty01
>Research, engineering and trade are some of the real reasons for rapid
growth.

And how is that not the combination of capitalism and technology? Trade is
capitalism and research and engineering create technology, as you point out,
funded by capitalism.

~~~
peacefulhat
Do you consider USSR capitalist since it had trade, research, and engineering?
Incoherent.

------
didibus
One thing I've recently rediscovered is most thinkers of the enlightenment
time including some founding fathers seem to mention that inheritance tax are
a necessity of a liberal democracy. And I've been pondering on that.

Kind of like in sports, you need to reset the seasons once in a while.
Otherwise last year's winner starts with too much of an advantage and the
competition degenerates.

Now maybe you have to reset this throughout someone's lifetime, or maybe only
at their death on inheritance I'm not sure. Like maybe you tax people for how
long they've had their money for. If you've been sitting on that billion for X
year, then you get taxed Y times X amount on it where X is the number of years
you've had it. This would include asset holdings.

And maybe this tax goes to pay UBI.

What I like about this is, it retains the capitalist idea of having the right
to enjoy your profits. If you've earned yourself the best of steaks, you are
allowed to eat it. But you can't just get out of the game and continue to
earn. If you are so self made, you should be able to make it again next
season, starting from the same footing as everyone else.

I think it would require getting the right weights and equation in place. Like
obviously you want to allow for retirement. And you don't necessarily want to
reset things too often, people should be allowed longer period to acquire
momentum and succeed. And maybe you want something more complex than just a
multiplier of years. And the reset over one's life doesn't need to be to zero,
same for the inheritance, though I'd imagine the inheritance one honestly
could get close to zero.

Thoughts? This isn't something I'm clamoring for, still thinking about it, but
I found the idea interesting. If you acrue a billion dollars, good for you,
but why should your children get to start with that money? Unlike you, they
didn't provide value to society. Why can't others have an equal footing with
them? And even you, do you just get to sit on the company you setup for the
rest of your life just taking money from it? Seems ridiculous, the amount of
risk taking and effort being put year over year no longer corresponds with the
reward. Why not let someone else a chance to shine, prove yourself that you're
still this valuable ten year after?

------
djsumdog
UBI feels like Communism with extra steps. With UBI, we're saying "You still
have a choice on where you apply your skills and labour," and contrast it with
systems where the choice is removed; or people are filtered via school and
tests to things to 'the best of their abilities'

But who exactly will do the farm work? There are things we may never be able
to automate, like picking green chili peppers. You may say,'Well those jobs
will higher salaries,' but then the end product has a higher cost. I feel like
you end up in the Animal Farm situation where, when you begging to stretch out
all the cascading changes, someone will always find a way to either game that
system, or just work insanely hard within that system, and end up on top.

This also doesn't address people with extreme wealth (Gates, Bezos,
Zuckerberg) who don't really care about the money, but only the insane power
it wields them. Their wealth can't be pure luck. How much was merit? Is the
merit worth the power they've acquired?

What about undocumented workers? Do non-residents of a nation get UBI? Do we
create a new lower class, similar to the ones who rose up in Libya (a nation
that now has a slave trade due to US bombings). Prior to the bombings, their
citizens had dividends paid from oil wealth (similar to Alaska), and the
government subsidized power, houses and education.

You will always end up with a group without UBI, unless you find a way to
apply it to the planet. Otherwise your peripheral nations, and workers within
your own nation, will rise up, and history repeats itself.

------
somewhereoutth
Universal Basic Stake would be more in tune with the idea of Capitalism 2.0

Instead of everyone being born with nothing (except that provided by their
parents), everyone would 'own' a share of the national wealth. This share
would provide a UBI, and eventually transition into a retirement fund. The
bulk of the capital in the share would be in safe income bearing assets
(interest rates will need to go back to ~5% for this), but a potion could be
allowed for spending at the discretion of the individual, to cover large
purchases such as deposit on a house, or a car. You would be able to pay into
your stake if you wanted a better retirement or to save for something.

This would be financed through a sovereign wealth fund, constructed from taxes
on natural resource extraction (e.g. Norway), but also heavily progressive
wealth taxes (perhaps increasing up to as much as 20% _each year_ on personal
wealth above 5MM USD). Such a wealth tax acts to counterbalance the natural
accumulation effect of capitalism, i.e. the rich getting richer only because
they are rich.

People will see it not as a handout, but as a way of participating in the
capitalist economy. If the economy does well, then the stakes will increase.
There would be a sense of ownership and (hopefully) a stronger feeling of
social responsibility flowing from that connection.

However a UBI/UBS should only come _after_ universal benefits in kind:
Healthcare, public transport, professional policing, transparent and
democratically accountable governance, education according to ability not
ability to pay, high quality housing stock, consumer protection standards,
environmental protection standards...

------
Kronen
Nice version 2.0 soon (tm). It should have been fixed with universal basic
income long ago.

------
vvpan
Weren't Andrsessen-Horowitz sponsoring a bunch of research on the topic. Any
results?

------
EricE
lol - love how he tosses out "The third solution is a Universal Basic Income,
where countries distribute some wealth to all residents equally. "

Where does that "some wealth" come from?!? More magic beans please!

------
t0astbread
Whenever I read something about capitalism the piece always points out how
capitalism increases humanity's overall wealth but fails to mention that it
rips off some people so hard, their wealth benefit is negative. For example,
workers in low-income countries might receive some technological advancements
via capitalism but the exploitation they have to endure is not at all
justified by the benefits.

Here's a "hot new idea that no capitalist has ever thought of" (it's phrased a
bit provocative but I honestly think it's a good point): Wealth can be a bad
thing if it's not shared. If I have a higher living standard in one country
(or society, group, whatever) then my freedom to move to another country
decreases because I wouldn't want my living standard to decrease. Differences
in wealth make barriers which also disbenefit the wealth-bearer. In extreme
cases, a difference in wealth can also lead to envy, hatred and, sometimes,
escalation from the non-wealth-bearer side (as the article points out).

------
foxrob92
I feel like the author has a weird conception of what capitalism (and
socialism) is. They seem to conflate market economies with capitalism, when
capitalism is just a mode of economic production where the means of production
are owned by people other than those who operate them. It's an economic system
where you have a Capital - Wages - Profit cycle.

>is some sort of socialism, where the government introduces new laws and
systems to redirect money to attempt to balance the system manually

"The government doing things" is not socialism. Socialism is when the means of
production are socially owned (usually by the people who operate the means of
production). What the author is talking about here is "welfare statism" [1],
and IMO UBI is just welfare statism taken to an extreme.

That being said, I'd definitely agree that UBI (under a capitalist state) is a
way to keep capitalism ticking along.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state)

------
hartator
All of this is based on the false premises we are super wealthy. We are not.

------
waingake
For the advocates of a UBI—the problem of capitalism merely concerns the
distribution of wealth, whereas the production and measure of wealth under
capitalism are never interrogated.

No form of universal basic income can free us from capitalist exploitation,
since only wage labor in the service of profit can generate the wealth that is
distributed in the form of a UBI.

The less our lives are exploited for the sake of profit—i.e., the more we
devote our lives to the public goods of the welfare state or to non-profit
projects supported by a UBI—the less wealth there is to finance the welfare
state and the universal basic income. This practical contradiction in the
redistribution of wealth is unavoidable under capitalism, since the measure of
value is socially necessary labor time rather than socially available free
time. The more we emancipate ourselves from the exploitation of living labor
time, the less wealth we have to support our state of freedom.

Excerpts from "Hägglund, Martin. This Life"

------
g7r
How employers would reason when their employees start getting UBI? "Hmm, I was
paying my employees say $1000/mo that was barely enough to survive. Now
government gives them $500/mo. That means that I can can subtract $500/mo from
their salary".

~~~
akvadrako
Wages would probably go up under a UBI because workers don’t need to work as
badly, giving them more negotiating power.

Your example only applies if there is no market for jobs.

------
Executor
Is there any proof that automation will destroy jobs? Citation needed.

------
clapper
No, a land value tax is Capitalism 2.0 - deriving tax revenues from people who
don't work instead of people who do work.

~~~
bluedevil2k
That’s a really regressive tax and would punish poor people, who have a much
greater portion of their net worth tied up on land than a rich person.

~~~
pjmorris
I've heard this claim before, but have never seen it supported. Anecdotally,
across decades of experience, it's typically not the poorest people I know who
own much land, if any at all. Where they do, they own only a little, rather
than a lot. Can you speak to your evidence for your claim?

~~~
blackflame7000
For most middle class families the most expensive asset they own is their
house. Do you really need evidence of that? It should be pretty self evident.

~~~
teraflop
What does that statement have to do with whether such a tax would be
regressive or not?

~~~
blackflame7000
It doesn't, I was replying to the comment that assumes that a property tax
wouldn't hurt the poor because middle class is infinitely closer to being poor
than they are being rich and this type of tax would hurt those people the most
thereby causing them to fall into poverty.

------
nickpp
I am afraid UBI completely ignores the human psyche produced by millions of
years of evolution. We have evolved to conserve our energy and do the least
amount of work necessary. In general, motivation comes in two flavors: carrot
and stick. But it seems that in general population, stick is a much more
prevalent form of motivation.

Thus if you give people UBI, you rob them of the most basic motivation to get
out there and improve themselves. I am sure if I had UBI when I was young I
would've stayed at my parents', smoking weed, jerking off and playing computer
games all they. The fact that I couldn't afford these things made me go out,
get a job and educate myself towards making something out of my life.

So, am I wrong? I hope so. I really want UBI to succeed, it seems like such a
wonderful idea. But so did communism and we know how that turned out...

------
tudorhn
The big risk of UBI is that it can lead to a rise in populism. This is very
obvious in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. A large part of
the population is fully dependent on the state for pensions or some sort of
basic income and lots are even working as civil servants. This sizeable
section of the population is very susceptible to populist promises or scares.
“If X wins, they will cut your pension” type of rhetoric. This has very
perverse and non-intuitive consequences. People vote for obviously corrupt
leaders in the hope that they would share the spoils with them, and to some
extent they do. If a western country adopts UBI, I can easily see a similar
path. Maybe not immediately but over 20-30 years as more and more people
become dependent and know nothing else. This is a very slippery slope.

------
sascha_sl
>Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the world
out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings enjoyed
just a few century’s ago.

I reject this premise, because it is not true. Extreme poverty is a different
topic (and also defined at below $2 a day), but overall, poverty is not
decreasing, it's just leveling out.[1]

In a way this is what the neoliberal vision of UBI does, so I guess that's
pertinent to the thread even.

[1]:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-g...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-
gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal)

------
coldtea
> _The first solution is some form of nationalism, where countries enact
> tariffs and attempt to bring all production back to the country instead of
> producing it overseas. This will create higher paying jobs for those whose
> work was previously outsourced to cheaper countries. However, this creates
> less wealth overall as work is no longer given to where it’s done most
> efficiently. This breaks the primary component of capitalism._

On the other hand more countries learn to make things more efficiently,
instead of relying on the industrial monopoly of a few efficient factory-
countries like China, Japan or the US (with which they might even have
competing interests).

More efficient product != more efficient society using said product.

------
fab13n
It needs to be called for what it is in a capitalist framework: a _dividend_,
not merely an income.

It is a share of the nation's wealth, which you receive as a legitimate co-
owner of that nation. The only difference with a company stock is that you
cannot sell it, citizenship is unalterable. This safeguard prevents a lot of
extortion schemes.

And when discussing the amount of dividend to grant (a political discussion
which must be repeated regularly), the tradeoffs are the same as for a
company: you want as much dividend as possible, as long as it's not
detrimental to the nation's future wealth.

Many opponents to such schemes wrongly perceive it as communist, it's
important to present it in a way that debunks that misconception.

------
Miner49er
I agree with all the problems and analysis this article does, but disagree
with (most of) the solution. Socialism seems to be the answer to me. Not the
top-down, government controlled socialism described by the author, but a form
of socialism that still has markets for most things. The only major difference
in this solution vs. capitalism is that workers would own the companies they
work at, not rich shareholders who have no interest in the well-being of their
workers beyond what is necessary to keep productivity up.

UBI may still be a part of the solution, but applying UBI with the current
system _will be_ capitalism 2.0, and therefore won't fix anything long-term.
It'll simply be a band-aid.

------
pyronik19
Stop taking from Peter to give to Paul. End of story.

------
zupa-hu
Summary: UBI should be introduced to grow the GDP as the poorest 78% in the
USA live paycheque to paycheque thus can't spend more. The wealthiest
companies spend on ads which is a zero-sum game, not growing the GDP.

This argument is incredibly flawed. Who will fund the UBI? The poorest 78%
can't, so it will be the wealthiest companies. But for every $1 dollar they
spend on UBI, they can only get back less. (Taxes, payment & postage fees,
cost of production, cost of ads, etc.) Then they are better off simply giving
away their products for free.

UBI may have interesting upsides - this is not one of them.

EDIT: replace "TL;DR" with "Summary"

------
jp555
UBI is interesting and may very well play some kind of a role in the future,
but I can't help but think:

Everybody gets equal UBI in the game Monopoly, and that _never_ works out
well.

------
dfilppi
UBI really stands for Universal Basic Inflation

------
anticristi
I don't get UBI. If everyone in my town gets 100€/month on top of their
regular income, how will that not drive all rents/mortgages 100€/month up?

I think there are more options for Capitalism 2.0 that can be explored: \-
Make healthcare fully free for everyone (e.g. including dental, eyes, etc.) \-
Make university education and evening courses free for everyone \- Disclose
compensation company-wide: This would likely also fix the gender salary gap,
since women could compare their compensation to "that d00d that does nothing
all day".

~~~
dragonwriter
> If everyone in my town gets 100€/month on top of their regular income, how
> will that not drive all rents/mortgages 100€/month up?

Because the issuer of UBI is going to pay for it somehow, and pretty much
every plausible mechanism makes it, in net, a downward redistribution of
wealth, not a flat increase. If you could guarantee everyone will rent only
and exactly the same unit they rent before the policy, so that competitive
forces weren't a factor, it would simply compress rents and, sure, even though
it would be a flat increass, the opportunity for monopoly rents you just
assumed would allow landlords to capture it all.

But realistically you don't have that kind of lock in, and local competition
does play a role in pricing, so not only won't any induced increase be a flat
across the board amount, it also won't capture the full amount of the
increases (or decreases, depending on where you look) due to UBI, leaving the
net income change still resulting in net change in what people can afford in
the same direction (though not the same magnitude at pre-policy price levels)
that the change in net income would suggest.

~~~
anticristi
I think I understand what you mean, but I am unsure rents are competitive.
There is finite space around good locations (where "good" can roughly be
defined as close to hospitals, groceries, services, transportation, high-speed
Internet, parks and jobs). Wherever I lived I encountered two ways of setting
rents:

* "Real" market pricing (e.g., France, Germany), where rent prices can pretty much go as high as needed (subject to some regulatory constraints). My experience is that rents eventually converge to 1/3 of the average income of people that want to live there. If you cannot pay up, you need to head for "worse" locations.

* Controlled market pricing (e.g., Sweden), which essentially means that you need to wait forever to get to the "good" locations or hope that a new "good" location will be built. The former is inaccessible to most people, the latter usually starts rents at 1/3 of the average income of people that could move in.

All-in-all, I suspect that UBI would eventually lead to increased prices in
"good" locations, so the net benefit is negligible. Maybe people living in
"less good" locations could benefit from UBI, but I feel that would still not
help with the "flattening of wealth" that UBI tries to achieve.

------
jahaja
I think UBI is a pipe dream with the current power structures. A proper UBI
that covers all basic living expenses - meaning that you could actually live a
dignified life solely on the UBI - would radically shift the power balance
from capitalist/business owners to workers. I just can't see capitalists
willingly dismantling their own power and leverage.

For this reason, I think that any sort of UBI will likely be woefully
inadequate and may even be intentionally devalued over time, especially if
it's used as a reason to dismantle welfare services.

------
tamrix
UBI isn't free money. It's working for the government.

You better do as the government tells you, or you're not getting your UBI
payment this month.

This can easily be abused.

~~~
thomasfromcdnjs
This is pretty much the only counter argument you need to dismiss the whole
concept.

~~~
tomrod
Nah, it's a pretty standard slippery slope fallacy.

------
rubyfan
serious question... if we give everyone some money evenly, would we see
inflation relative to that new money?

------
FranzFerdiNaN
> Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
> combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the
> world out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings
> enjoyed just a few century’s ago.

Except capitalism had nothing to do with it. Technology, sure. But capitalism
has only hampered this lifting out of poverty, not helped.

And yes yes, i cant wait for people to go "but what about USSR????", and i
fully admit, dictatorships also don't work.

------
gonational
UBI is transfer payments, plain and simple. It is socialism. It is a rich
man’s trick to delete the middle class.

Why hasn’t any coalition of companies or rich people created a utopia with
UBI? They could easily buy up tens of thousands of acres of property and do
all of this fantastic stuff... but they don’t. Why? Because they are the ones
who produce. Socialism is about taking from those who produce and giving it to
those who don’t. The only way to keep that going long-term is by force.

Use some common sense.

Don’t say nobody warned you.

------
benrr
Using UBI as a band aid on the societal wounds caused by Capitalism, is in my
opinion, ignoring a bigger issue. That's not to say UBI isn't a good idea,
though.

We're in the midst of an ecological catastrophe, where our very existence as a
species is at risk. We're driving towards a cliff edge and the discussion here
largely focuses on a strategy to get more fuel in the car. We need to change
our fuel, rethink our metrics of progress and change our course.

------
Funes-
To my mind, the essential problem with UBI is finding a just way to fund it.
Making people contributing to a capitalist economy support those that aren't,
in order to keep them from ever contributing to it, is greatly unjust.

There is no fair way, as far as I can tell, to implement a non-capitalistic
program _within_ a capitalistic economy. What the UBI concept might do,
rather, is sway the debate towards exploring alternatives to capitalism,
instead of reform.

------
djsumdog
> However, this creates less wealth overall as work is no longer given to
> where it’s done most efficiently. This breaks the primary component of
> capitalism.

Does it bother anyone that many of these places where the production is
'efficient,' are often not bastions of democracy? One of the biggest players
is obviously the Chinese Communist Party, which literally has reeducation (and
possibly forced labour) camps for certain ethnic/cultural groups.

------
cies
UBI + a wealth cap (on say 10 million USD) is socialism 2.0 :)

Changing the UBI will make people less/more inclined to do bullshit jobs,
changing the wealth cap will make people less/more inclined to "make a
killing". People with more wealth than the wealth cap should be deemed an
undemocratic force in society (they go lobby --use money instead of public
opinion-- for their interests), and hence should be deemed undesireables.

------
throw7
So what is each person's UBI amount?

I see people here saying $1k or even $2k a month. How should you calculate
that amount and why? Will it be adjusted year to year? How so?

One practical problem right _now_, some conservatives are going bonkers that
we're basically paying some part of workforce to NOT work as they're making
more now not working. Pretty sure you're not going to convince them to vote
for UBI.

------
georgewsinger
> To reverse this trend of stagnating growth, we must put more capital in the
> hands of lower income consumers, who will then spend it on things they
> desire and increase GDP.

I have some better ideas to increase GDP, using the author's chain of
reasoning.

1\. Use the military to break every window in every major city. This will
force consumers to pay money to window manufacturers, thus increasing GDP!

2\. Rob every poor person at gunpoint, and distribute all of the money to
someone interested in funding a giant hole digging expedition. It will
increase the GDP!

3\. Threaten every rich person with the following ultimatum: "give me 50% of
your money, or I will kidnap you from your family and lock you in a small cell
for several years". Distribute the money to the poor, who will consume more
goods, thus increasing GDP! <\-- This is just a restatement of the author's
position, since rich people who refuse to pay for a re-distributive tax are
literally sent to prison.

In all cases (i) the economic fallacy is equating an "increase in GDP" with an
"increase in wealth" and (ii) the moral fallacy is assuming it would be
justified to take people's money from them without their consent.

In the long-run, it is the supply-side that increases societal wealth (not the
"demand-side"), since long-run wealth is generated by entrepreneurs and
investors who take risks to coordinate economic activity and invent new
technologies. New technology, especially, is created by investors &
entrepreneurs on the supply-side. So even if it weren't immoral,
redistributing wealth from suppliers of capital and technologists to consumers
doesn't actually create any new wealth. It is instead literally the
consumption of wealth made by the suppliers of it!

The moral case against redistribution is the following argument: (i) it would
be wrong for me or my gang to personally rob you of your money, even if I/we
had noble plans for how to spend it; (ii) there are no morally relevant
differences between individuals doing this and the state doing this,
therefore, (iii) forceful redistribution of property is wrong. The details
(and nuance) of this argument are supplied in Michael Huemer's "The Problem of
Poltical Authority", which I highly recommend:
[https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-
Examinati...](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-
Coerce/dp/1137281650/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2S9X4AMOQJR2N&dchild=1&keywords=problem+of+political+authority&qid=1596080522&sprefix=problem+of+political+aut%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-1)

~~~
ramshorns
If wealth redistribution is wrong, why are you encouraging us to give our
money to the richest person in the world?

Wealth is redistributed all the time, and because of an economic system that
rewards already being wealthy, most of the redistribution is from the non-rich
to the rich. UBI is an attempt to mitigate that imbalance by providing for
people's basic needs when the market has failed to. It doesn't solve all
problems but it's a start.

I agree with you that GDP isn't a good metric of success to optimize for,
though.

~~~
r29vzg2
The difference here is that the wealthy became wealthy by providing something
of value. Wealth redistribution does the opposite, take from those that are
providing value and give it to those that aren’t.

~~~
ramshorns
> Wealth redistribution does the opposite, take from those that are providing
> value and give it to those that aren’t.

Yeah, that's capitalism. The goal of UBI is to return some of that extracted
wealth to the working class.

------
chrisco255
UBI is Communism Lite. Very likely ends badly, as voters seek to increase UBI
to infinity. Politicians will get reelected on the basis of how much they're
willing to increase UBI. Probably causes a currency crisis as well.
Unfortunately the Silicon Valley crowd seems to be beholden to this flawed
idea. Voters and politicians will not restrain themselves if this tool is made
available.

~~~
holdtheline
_UBI is Communism Lite._

Communism is when the government owns all property and all factors of
production. UBI does not involve the government taking over anything.

 _Very likely ends badly, as voters seek to increase UBI to infinity._

Considering how much doubt there is among UBI in the first place, I don't know
why you would assume politicians and voters would just want to endlessly
increase the size of monthly payments.

~~~
chrisco255
Sure it does. In this case the money for UBI has to come from somewhere. It
will come in the form of extremely high taxes. If the government gets to keep
more than 50% of your income, then they are a majority shareholder in your
individual output. They retain extraordinary power and control over you. And
that could ratchet up all the way to 100% theoretically under the UBI system.
There really is nothing stopping it from happening other than voter sentiment.

There might not be favorable sentiment now, but sentiment can change. But I do
suspect that if you implement such a system, society will become dependent on
that system. And it will be ratcheted up to pander to populace. It would be a
powerful tool for politicians to garner favor. I've seen it done in other
countries that openly embraced socialism and populism. It ends in economic
catastrophe for nearly everyone.

------
scottrogowski
Let me start by saying, [citation needed].

I'm incredulous that an article which states, "Even if you're still doubtful
you can see it's the least worst [sic] solution we have to make capitalism
work in the 21st century." is getting this many upvotes. HN has a reputation
as an evidence-valuing rational community that appreciates articulate
arguments. I guess that these principles do not apply when we are talking
about UBI (or when accusing Apple of business practices they do not engage in,
apparently
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750))

It's obvious that the author doesn't have more than an introductory
macroeconomics course under his belt. The article reads like something an
idealistic first-year undergraduate might try to pass off. It is full of
cliches and incredibly bold statements with no citations used to prop up a
flimsy argument.

For example:

"[The increasing size of markets] is why wealth inequality soared when
capitalism went global in the 20th century." The increasing size of markets
may be a factor in inequality, but it is certainly not the only one. Also, a
graph would be nice. Inequality was higher in the late 19th century and took a
dip in the early-to-mid 19th century. Without seeing this data, it is foolish
to make sure a sweeping generalization.

"If we can give companies overwhelming demand so they have to scale up
production instead of spending all their money on advertising, we can have
both happy companies making profit hand over fist, and happy consumers who get
everything they desire." First, the phrases "Happy companies", "profit hand
over fist", "happy customers", "everything they desire" sound like they were
written by a 12-year-old. Second, money is an abstraction used to allocate
goods from production to consumption. When production does not match
consumption, this causes either excess inventory or shortages - neither of
which are desirable, but both of which tend to resolve themselves quickly. One
of the often-stated goals of UBI is to free workers from unfulfilling labor.
However, labor is an essential factor in production, and by "freeing" labor,
we will reduce production. Since consumption is equal to production, workers
will not be able to magically "get everything they desire." In fact, they
might get less.

------
yunusparvezkhan
i don't know what is this... But watching the scrollbar I left the page

------
maxdo
how about US is USSR 2.0. law is replaced with political views, ideas to
improve economy been replaced by some social dreams. Seriously I can only here
socialist debates among democrats. Not trying to create jobs, bring talents to
country to support those rose dreams. Nah that's to boring. By automating and
modernizing construction business you can have lots of government money. US
infrastructure is lagging behind any fist world countries. Let small
businesses innovate and you'll find so many people not depend and simply
waiting. Instead you have light drugs allowed from one side, heavy opioid
epidemic from second and approaching universal income from another and country
still rulling by big business interested not to innovate but keep rates
expensive. To me it sounds like something so dangerous but nobody cares.

Are you really that socialistic drunk not to see that in current reality
people just jump into drugs world with passive people happy to be on a basic
income.

------
modzu
"Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the world
out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings enjoyed
just a few century’s ago."

wut? "most" of the world? does he mean most of the usa? statistically, most of
the world lives in poverty.

------
owenversteeg
One thing I'd like to see more discussion on HN of is the size of UBI. People
seem to be very hesitant to throw out any actual dollar figures and stick to
them and defend them.

Furthermore, I find it interesting how a lot of the UBI studies concerned
substantially lower amounts than the amounts currently discussed in American
politics. I hear amounts usually ranging from Yang's US$1000 as a "starting
point" to $2000 monthly, but there are many people throwing even higher
numbers out there.

There's also a decent amount of straight up lies, mistruths, and
misrepresentations of UBI and previous experiments. Articles about Mincome,
the Canadian experiment, like to say or imply that it paid out a substantial
amount (I've seen several people claiming that it was $16,000 of today's CAD a
year for a single individual), but the reality is that it was far lower. From
a paper about Mincome, the calculation for how much Mincome you got was 60% of
Canada's low income cutoff [0], which was $3386 in 1975 CAD for a single
person living alone and $4907 in 1975 CAD for a family of two. The official
Bank of Canada CAD CPI inflation calculator puts that at 16130 of today's CAD
(12092 USD) and 23375 of today's CAD (17523 USD). I suspect this is where the
erroneous $16k figure comes from. Doing the correct calculation, using the
Canadian CPI inflation calculator and multiplying by 0.6 would give 7255 USD
per year for a single person and $10513 USD per year for a family of 2.

That, of course, completely changes the game. Nobody's going to retire on $600
a month in America, or $875/mo for 2 people. But take the lowest of the UBI
proposals of 1k/person/mo - aka give a young couple 24 grand a year,
guaranteed by the federal government in perpetuity - and I could definitely
see them dropping out of the workforce. I just took a look and found plenty of
entire houses for rent in the Midwest for $800/mo or even less. That leaves
1200 a month for food, transportation, and entertainment in a low COL state.
You could totally make that work (ha ha.)

You increase that UBI even further, to what some congresspeople proposed
recently of $2000/mo, and that young couple is now making $48,000.00 a year
sitting on their couch. Assuming that's tax free, as most UBI proposals are,
now your average couple is now making more than the median US household
income. Now, you don't even have to live in flyover country; that's enough to
live on for two people in nearly all of the country, minus a few cities. Keep
in mind that the costs of working also evaporate when you don't work: commute,
time to cook and find deals, flexibility in booking things etc. In the median
household, everyone could quit their jobs and enjoy an _increased_ standard of
living.

People like to dismiss the UBI attack of "people won't work" by citing Mincome
and a slew of other experiments from the Alaskan Permanent Fund of $1200/yr to
Iran's $40/mo. But giving $1000 - $2000 a month, permanently, over an entire
society? The $24-48k/yr that a couple would receive would blow away the $10k
that they would have gotten in Mincome.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170126003728/http://public.eco...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170126003728/http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-
cea%20%282%29.pdf)

[1]
[https://books.google.ca/books?id=L4lBLrMaNkIC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ca/books?id=L4lBLrMaNkIC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=low+income+cut+off+canada+1974&source=bl&ots=iML7rBqemR&sig=iAy7m_aLPx02K7No5gx4zOD0WTM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ym2YVMzjJYygNqqTgpAE&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=low%20income%20cut%20off%20canada%201974&f=false)

[2] [https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-
calculat...](https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/)

------
cannabis_sam
> increase our free time, empower workers, and ensure everyone has food and a
> roof over their head.

All these things are terrible for capitalism, because it would increase
expenses...

Capitalism 2.0 is just shedding any pretense toward any common good coming out
of it, and accepting being ruled by concentrated capital protected by the
state, with little to no social mobility.

------
JacKTrocinskI
UBI seems to be socialism in disguise. Redistribution of wealth from the ultra
rich to the poor by adding additional taxes on robots, carbon, etc. in order
to create a more balanced society where the poor have better living standards
and more expendable income to fuel the economy. Am I missing something?

------
bsenftner
Universal Basic Income does not address ANY of the underlying reasons for
wealth inequality - it is license for the economic abusers (exploitative
capitalists) to continue business as usual, but with every mark they play now
having more disposable income for them to fraudulently take.

~~~
urban_strike
Seriously. If a group of vampires have been sucking so much blood that
everyone's anemic, the solution isn't to have "universal basic transfusions"
to make sure all the victims aren't tapped out and die when the next
extraction rolls around.

~~~
bsenftner
Your analogy is brilliant - I'm going to use it myself.

------
turbinerneiter
tl;dr

In modern capitalism, a humans worth to society is determined by their ability
to consume, not create.

I fully agree with the idea that currently our economy is constrained by
demand, because people do not earn enough. I don't believe we can fix this by
using an UBI, which would create an even worse power dynamic between rich and
poor as well as working and non-working people, but by increasing labours
share in generated profit.

See wage share:
[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wage_share](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wage_share)

We need to put more money in peoples hands, instead of shareholders and stock
markets. And we need to use money to lift people from poverty, instead of
using it generate real estate bubbles.

Send me a message if you have an idea how to do that ;)

------
y1182baumy247y
I did not read all the posts completely, but I missed one point here. Our
system only works because we are wasting resources through unnecessary
production. Just today there was a fitting reddit post about what I mean.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/i04tc1...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/i04tc1/something_like_half_of_the_food_produced_gets/)

UBI is for the last nail in the coffin that justifies our current economic
system. It just prolongs the eventual discussion about real changes.

I am not close to understand the current economy. As I see it, the thing that
somehow works is FOSS and the path it took to succeed. People believe in free
distribution and usage. People devoting their time to produce software for the
community and participation in such projects.

Economy experts will always try to convince us that capitalism and the growth
problem can be solved, but this only under the assumption that we continue
exploiting and wasting resources, both natural and human.

Over last the couple of month I have been reading statements to be not that
much productive. The argument is, that if we automate too much, how can the
system live on?

By handing out income via UBI? All the unclear points have already been
pointed out here and it does not solve my initial statement and that is that
we are producing too much and development and with it production cycles are
too short. New devices, new products just come with minor changes and those
maybe because of the short development time with a shorter lifetime and more
problems.

We are used to a certain way of living. It is time to overthink our lifestyle
and then start a real discussion on how to solve our problems.

------
MH15
The author seems to assume that people make the most efficient decisions under
capitalism, and idea that is provably false. There is simply too much
information for a consumer to make the "right" purchase in markets where
capitalism has failed, e.g. healthcare.

------
akamoonknight
This isn't a fully formed idea, but it kind of feels like even the _option_
for UBI is based off the exploitation inherent to capitalism. The statement in
the article: "Because we all become wealthier when goods are produced by those
most efficient at making them" reads to me more as 'we become wealthier when
we offload work to the nations that are more willing to take advantage of
their people by treating them worse' Of course these things are complex
topics, but it feels like one of the reasons for recent explosive wealth is
the offloading of negative externalities. I've never really thought this
through, but maybe UBI is just an extension of that. I know this isn't
strictly a US topic, but I wonder if it's even valid to think about UBI in a
US-centric way or if it has to become a global concept, otherwise it feels
like just another way that advanced economies siphon wealth out of developing
nations/disenfranchised people.

------
MH15
Noting that "I’m a huge fan of capitalism and free trade" in the modern world
seems questionable. If it was capitalism that lifted the world out of poverty,
what is it that is pulling the US (and others) back into poverty through
massive inequality?

------
gcpwnd
> This is happening because we’re reaching the end of the current stage of
> capitalism and need a new paradigm for the 21st century.

Can anyone explain how to find the end of capitalism? Is there a finishing
line or is there just a theme which suggest I am getting close?

~~~
foxrob92
It's a blurry thing, like how Europe slowly moved from Feudalism to Capitalism
over a period of time.

------
MarxOk
UBI has always been a no-brainer. It's economically sound, the research is
clear. But it's just not popular enough, because people are scared of the
socialist undertones. Look at Yang's treatment in the last election.

------
jeremiahhs
This is simplistic.

Anyone, currently can participate in"capitalism 1.0" by buying the stock
market.

Most people prefer to watch sports, buy big TVs and not start saving.

Giving those people money will enable entitled feelings, and create perverse,
non productive incentives.

------
maxekman
The sad part about capitalism is that it’s working so well because we exploit
and (ab)use the earth in such an efficient way. There has to be some more
balance to this aspect for the human race to be truly sustainable.

------
bullen
Capitalism only works with entropy. There is only dead trees: coal, oil and
gas! Scarcity is about to change things in ways most people don't understand,
because they don't want to understand it!

------
antiutopian
There is not going to be a Capitalism 2.0. Capitalism was progressive for a
time, but it has gradually created the conditions for its replacement by
democratic socialism. Those conditions are highly socialized production
processes (not individual crafts) plus a gigantic class of wage laborers with
an interest in a collective approach. A democratically planned economy is
entirely possible and would outpace the massive waste and duplication of
efforts that capitalism requires to function. Even the bureaucratically
degenerated USSR grew to an economic superpower. Imagine what genuine
democracy in the plan could accomplish in terms of meetings peoples' real
needs.

~~~
TimTheTinker
> democratically planned economy

Sounds like an absolute nightmare on anything but the most local scale.

Think about the number of economic decisions made _daily_ by individuals in a
free-market economy. That’s many orders of magnitude more than the number of
decisions that could be made by a democratically elected group of
representatives at the federal level, even if assisted by computer systems.
And that’s not even considering secondary effects.

Command economies have been tried many times and have never worked well.
Beyond a certain limit, the larger the scale the more colossal the failure.
The USSR was only able to go as long as it did because Stalin was shipping
trainloads of grain out of the Ukraine leaving millions of people starving.

EDIT: Video of a grocery store in Moscow, USSR, 1989:
[https://youtu.be/jWTGsUyv8IE](https://youtu.be/jWTGsUyv8IE)

~~~
rmorey
democratic socialism does not mandate a command economy see: market socialism,
anarcho-syndicalism

~~~
TimTheTinker
Whatever form of government and economy that arises most directly and
naturally from the first principles of land and property ownership, the
freedom to work, sell, and buy, and especially that “all men are created equal
and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness”—which include freedom of speech, religion, the
press, assembly, arms, etc.

Unfortunately, every other large-scale form of government that’s been tried
has badly trampled on the personal rights enumerated in the USA’s founding
documents. If anything should change here, it should be a dismantling of all
the laws and institutions that have grown up like weeds since the late 1700s
that are trampling on those rights.

That’s not to disparage some great things that have happened in the mean time:
freeing the slaves, illegalizing discrimination by the government, women’s
suffrage, etc. But each of those things I’ve named are good _because_ they
apply those first principles to areas of government that were lacking
application when the country was founded.

------
SandersAK
Talking "Why does capitalism work so well?" during a pandemic caused in large
part by crony capitalism is the sort of bravado energy I need right now.

------
rpiguy
State mandated income sounds more like Communism 2.0, but this time with tacit
acknowledgement and acceptance of an elite class and a serf class.

------
mmmnnn6789698
> This is why wealth inequality soared when capitalism went global in the 20th
> century... This led to massive accumulations of wealth and the biggest
> wealth gap in history.

Is he saying that wealth was better distributed in prior centuries ? Is he
discarding the huge social progress in the 20th ?

> The third solution is a Universal Basic Income, where countries distribute
> some wealth to all residents equally.

Who's paying ? "The countries" ? Charming way to say "the middle class".

------
bikamonki
Hold on. Wouldn't UBI actually be Socialism 2.0? I mean, who would pay for
UBI? It has to be tax money, no?

------
mikewhy
Is there a way to change people's base level of income without it being
Capitalism 2.0?

------
agjm
In the event we did go socialist, UBI would be a much more effective way to
allocate goods and services than a centrally managed economy. Let people
determine what they need most, and use 'credits' to get it -- save the
paperwork for less ordinary needs / circumstances.

That said, I prefer capitalism.

~~~
hexane360
What tortured definition of 'socialist' includes a privately owned and
operated market economy?

~~~
krapp
Social democracy[0]?

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

------
deeblering4
Great idea. Please rebrand UBI in a way that makes it palatable to
capitalists.

~~~
Fellshard
Rebranding is a dastardly bad way to make a decent argument.

------
surround
Nice try, they already made Capitalism 2 back in 2001

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/638200/Capitalism_2/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/638200/Capitalism_2/)

------
freddealmeida
It is communism 2.0. We don't need this.

------
sandes
Capitalism 2.0 is a Darwinian system

------
ratbum
Capitalism is destroying the planet; no amount of basic income will stop that.

~~~
dantheman
Capitalism has ended poverty at a faster rate in the past 20 years than
anytime in history. Capitalism is why we have nice things. The destruction of
the environment is more extreme in non-capitalist countries that are poorer. A
clean environment is something that people value, they just value it less than
basic survival -- which seems to make sense to me.

In fact, if UBI slows down growth and progress -- it will in fact do more
damage to the environment than not having it.

------
jillesvangurp
The best argument for UBI is that we already have it in some form. Most modern
nations have lots of issues but the poor starving is not one of them. In fact,
obesity due to over consumption seems to be correlated with (relative) poverty
in many countries. The reason for this is that we have all sorts of safety
nets that collectively mean that you are taken care of one way or another.
Food, shelter, and to some extent health care are pretty much taken care off
in most countries. It's almost universal with some notable exceptions.

Introducing UBI properly is basically just simplifying the status quo and has
useful side effects in the form of it being overall cheaper, simpler, more
effective, and fairer.

More importantly, it can act as an economic stimulus as well. Yes, there's a
cost but it's not different than any other economic stimulus. The current
corona crisis is basically a good example of governments printing a little
extra cash to help out businesses and people. We're talking trillions here.
Economies are not closed/circular systems and increasing the supply of money
is routine. The role of central banks is to control the rate at which we print
new money to keep inflation in line with economic growth. So people waiving
the cost argument without considering the benefits are being disingenuous.
Bailing out a bank is no different than bailing out an unemployed person. If
we can do one, we can do the other. And we routinely bail out banks and other
industries to the extend of trillions.

From an economics point of view, more people with disposable income is
actually great because it increases spending. It's a particularly effective
form of economic stimulus. Perhaps more effective than bailing out a few
wealthy individuals could ever be. The current model of all the wealth
accumulating with a small group of people is actually bad because while they
spend some of it, a lot of the wealth just disappears abroad via off shore
accounts, spending in other nations economies, travel, etc. Increasing incomes
at the bottom by a few percent on the other hand basically feeds almost
entirely in the local economy. People spend it and they mostly spend it
locally benefiting local businesses. You could argue that our current system
of sucking the lower classes dry so we can provide tax benefits to the rich is
actually killing our economy and is actively harmful. This form of reverse
robin hood style handouts is not new either. It's basically how feudalism used
to work. Capitalism is reverting to feudalism.

The argument of stimulating the economy also can be used to motivate raising
minimum wages; which of course become redundant with a UBI. This is another
advantage because it reduces the cost and risk of employing people for
employers. They can pay market prices instead of having to overpay a minimum
wage for someone that they have to commit to keeping employed long term. It's
a big reason why outsourcing to low wage countries is popular. So, UBI can
potentially fix this too.

But again, we already have it. All we're talking about here is how to do it
better and get more economic effects out of it.

------
jokit
As always the issue is force, and the solution is freedom.

------
throwaway6000
ROFL worst idea ever.

------
austhrow743
Intergenerational wealth transfer is the root of all evil. She absolutely
shouldn't be able to do that.

~~~
sjwalter
Wait--the root of all evil is me trying to work hard to leave something for my
kids so they can have a better life than I do and, with any luck, pass on the
genes that I've given them?

When your policy proposals require extinguishing desires built into our minds
and bodies by millions of years of evolution, you should go back to the
drawing board.

The root of all evil is unqualified, absolute, extreme statements, and the
people who fervently believe in them.

~~~
austhrow743
\- Desires to hit people you hate and fuck people you find attractive are
built into our minds and bodies by millions of years of evolution yet most
people find not running around assaulting and raping to be pretty easy.

\- Most terrible things people do are for the gain or preservation of
resources and most people either have kids or want them. Piracy, animal
poaching, bear bile farms, kidnapping and ransoming people, making and selling
hard drugs, organised crime in general, war, telemarketing. Most people doing
this aren't millionaires looking to buy yacht number 4, it's largely people
just providing for their kids and we rightly hate those people anyway. So
again not really a defence.

~~~
alickz
> Desires to hit people you hate and fuck people you find attractive are built
> into our minds and bodies by millions of years of evolution yet most people
> find not running around assaulting and raping to be pretty easy.

You're equating assault and rape with leaving money for your kids.

I think it's obvious why not doing the first 2 is pretty easy and not doing
the last is pretty hard.

~~~
austhrow743
No I'm not. I'm choosing two particularly bad activities that would be
justified by their choice of reasoning if it was valid, to show that it's not
valid. They're the ones that brought up millions of years of evolution as if
it doesn't apply to all behaviour.

If it covers rape and murder it's not exactly a good defence for not being bad
for society.

------
m0zg
People need jobs though. Otherwise you get riots.

~~~
krapp
People _need_ food, clothing, shelter, access to healthcare, education and
communication, and jobs only because employment provides the income necessary
to purchase those actual necessities. No one riots for jobs simply to have a
job to do.

~~~
m0zg
Actually, no. People need jobs to occupy their time with something "good" and
productive. Otherwise they will fuck around and do stupid shit. This is
severely exacerbated by the existence of social networking, as well.

I will agree that people do not need to work as much as they currently do, but
they do need to be useful to society. Idle hands are devil's workshop. That
much should be clear as a day by now, even to the skeptics.

~~~
krapp
Your comment defines a person's benefit to society as being strictly
equivalent to their utility to the market. But society is more than the
market, and a person can be productive and create value for society beyond
that created for an employer.

The point of UBI is that work should be a choice. People who aren't capable of
finding value in life outside of work can work, and find that fulfillment. It
just shouldn't be necessary for survival.

~~~
themacguffinman
A person's utility to the market is the best tool we have to measure a
person's benefit to society. The measurement is not perfect, market valuation
obviously has blind spots, but what's UBI's alternative? Throw it all out, let
people choose whatever they want?

I agree that grueling work shouldn't be necessary for survival. And people who
can't or won't work for whatever reason shouldn't be left to suffer horribly
or just die. But that's why I support welfare. UBI doesn't pressure or even
incentivize people to create value for society. Doing no work at all should
not be an easy choice.

------
zzzkkk
> Even the most hardcore anti-capitalists have to give respect to how the
> combination of capitalism and technology has worked to lift most of the
> world out poverty and provided us with the security and comfort only kings
> enjoyed just a few century’s ago.

no, we fucking don't.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Having air conditioning and modern medicine as well as clothes not patched
together from potato sacks brings you pretty close to king level of comfort.

------
MCbobby
No. Absolutely no. UBI is Socialism under a different name. Why do people keep
bringing up this topic? Why do people want the government to do everything for
them? They are spectacularly sucky at everything. Take from others to give to
"poor." We aren't doing anyone service by giving them something for nothing. I
can see it now: "Whelp, $40k isn't enough now that rent is higher. Now I need
$80k"...and on and on. Nobody is stopping proponents from giving someone else
"their" entitled UBI. Use your own money though, not mine. Better to teach
independence & self reliance. Grow a garden, hold a job, work hard, love your
family, respect others. "Nothing has done more to lift humanity out of poverty
than the market economy" [https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-is-good-for-the-
poor/](https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-is-good-for-the-poor/)

------
zozin
I think UBI would be disastrous for society even if it's perfectly
implemented, which in a democracy is nigh impossible because there are too
many stakeholders fighting for a piece of the pie. To think that you could
replace entrenched welfare schemes with a flat sum sent to each citizen (?)
and for it to be relatively successful is a pipe dream. For example, our
disastrous healthcare system is a direct result of an afterthought FDR-era
program. There are simply too many negative externalities to consider.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel in order to "fix" capitalism. Our current
problem is that the 1% are taking too much of the pie for themselves. This has
led to increased corporatization, reduction in competition as companies merge
and there's less players in any particular field, this results in the white-
collar service class being beholden to their corporations, making it unable
for them to save enough money to spin off and start their own small and medium
sized businesses which would create more jobs for people lower on the economic
rungs of society. In effect capitalism is working a little too
well/efficiently as the owners of capital are using their entrenched power to
squeeze more production/efficiency out of employees, which forces employees to
stay employees instead of business owners.

This problem can be fixed by tweaking the tax code and some other small
changes at the federal level. You don't need to effectively reboot the system
to make capitalism work again for the 99%.

------
aj_21
It is so unfortunate so many young people (I assume majority of this site’s
visitors) are either rooting for or in support of UBI. You all should read one
book - Road to Serfdom.

------
ponker
As a rich person I am happy to pay for UBI as it lowers the likelihood that I
will be the victim of a possibly violent crime by someone with not enough to
lose. The one modification I’d make is that a violent felony conviction docks
5 years of UBI and a second conviction nixes them permanently.

~~~
rmorey
reducing poverty reduces crime, i would think

------
badmadrad
Promising people a never ending supply of money that they didn't earn will
render people children dependent on mommy and daddy(government) to provide for
them. This will stunt the growth and potential of many people.

Read the finnish experiment. All that happened is that people relxed and
chilled on other's people money. They had no incentive to be productive so
they weren't.

[https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-welfare-
news/heikki-h...](https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-welfare-news/heikki-
hiilamo-disappointing-results-from-the-finnish-basic-income-experiment)

This UBI movement is another form of mass hysteria which if passed will hurt
the US and our economy.

~~~
latexr
> Read the finnish experiment.

From your own link:

> Targeted basic income instead of a universal one

> The Finnish experiment was about partial basic income targeting able-bodied
> people without work, it was not about universal basic income. That has been
> a source of major confusion around the experiment and a source of critique
> of it.

It’s hardly fair to take as definitive one limited experiment in one country
when it doesn’t even properly employ what they’re testing.

> All that happened is that people relxed and chilled on other's people money.
> They had no incentive to be productive so they weren't.

From what I recall from previous conversations on the topic, people in these
experiments tended to take the time to invest in their own educations instead,
so they could have better jobs and a better standard of leaving upon returning
to the workforce. That’s far from “relax and chill”, and makes it a smart move
when you know the money will stop coming in because it’s not really UBI.

We can extract good and bad things from the study and give emphasis to
whatever narrative we want to pursue. Your own link mentions several caveats
and shortcomings from the study; pretending it provides conclusive evidence of
the failure or success of UBI would be disingenuous.

~~~
badmadrad
So pie in the sky theorizing is better than looking at the data where this has
failed/is failing. "not real UBI" is now "not real socialism".

even the Stockton experiment has been propped up by private money. Its
essentially a charity at this point.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-
extends-its-universal-basic-income-pilot)

Furthermore, the entire benefit of UBI "is so that people don't have to work
and get sick". It is incentivizing not working.

It is incentivizing the dependency on the state.

~~~
latexr
> So pie in the sky theorizing is better than looking at the data where this
> has failed/is failing.

I have no need to theorise. The data doesn’t demonstrate what you claim it
does, _as your own link makes clear_.

This seems to be a subject matter that makes you angry, so I’ll let it rest. I
take no pleasure in enraging anyone.

~~~
badmadrad
Explain how it doesn't demonstrate. Because it does. The only ting that is
annoying is your willful inability to acknowledge it.

