
The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income” - andrenth
https://mises.org/blog/dangers-universal-basic-income
======
Spivak
I don't care where anyone stands on the UBI proposal but we should demand a
higher quality from a supposedly scholarly news source. This article reads
like a first year econ class paper. Nobody who reads this piece who supports
UBI will be convinced in any way by these arguments and the comments seem to
suggest that this site is entirely an extremely libertarian echo chamber.

The author makes matter-of-fact claims that are not backed by anything -- no
data, no argument, no analysis, no citations, nothing. Even if I agreed with
the author it's hard to believe him.

As the author progresses it's clear that he actually has a problem with all
progressive taxation, social welfare, and most government regulations and
actions. It's fine to take this position but it's completely useless in a
discussion about regulatory policy. You wouldn't answer a public policy
question like, "should we raise the federal minimum wage to $9.25/hr" with, "I
deny the authority of the federal government".

Someone in support of UBI is likely fine with all of the listed 'downsides' in
general -- arguments that would convince them would be an analysis or data
showing that it would be ineffective. A lecture on econ 101 free market
fanboyism is exactly the wrong approach to this discussion.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Mises is a Koch-funded propaganda outlet. Its not scholarly. It will never
publish anything remotely counter to its agenda.

Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends
didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation
revolution dividends don't go to the people. I find it depressing that we will
always be fighting this fight.

~~~
aminok
Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch
propaganda outfit.

>Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends
didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation
revolution dividends don't go to the people.

What are you referring to? Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization,
with no statistical support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist
demagoguery.

~~~
harrumph
>Something being funded by the Kochs doesn't automatically make it a Koch
propaganda outfit.

When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it produces
is intellectual ammunition for increased privatization and reduced protections
for consumers, employees and neighbors of business. In this case, very low-
grade ammunition.

>Vague, unscientific claims of class victimization, with no statistical
support provided, is the bread and butter of socialist demagoguery

And the bread and butter of right-wing pro-business "think tanks" is the
prompting of voluntary red-baiting such as you just offered.

Fact: on the basis of influence, there is no socialist or pro-cooperative-
ownership analog to Mises or Manhattan Institute nor to any one of the dozens
of pro-market / libertarian think tanks cranking out "science" that _always_
finds in favor of capitalist boardrooms.

That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science --
all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most
entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science, unlike
yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of "science" that
never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem domain.

~~~
rvdavis
> When that something is a "think tank", adults understand that what it
> produces...

> That indisputable fact alone means you have no business invoking science --
> all you're doing is literally standing up to defend the world's most
> entrenched, powerful interests. Someone actually interested in science,
> unlike yourself, would, on principle, be skeptical toward purveyors of
> "science" that never comes to different conclusions no matter the problem
> domain.

I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem.

~~~
harrumph
>I think you could have made your point without the ad hominem.

Fair enough. I hope that everybody involved will survive the encounter.

------
lightbyte
What a mess.

>"The progressive taxation that is necessary to finance a UBI means that the
more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from
them. The work disincentives are therefore still very much present in the tax
system."

I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US
tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means
you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise.

>"The struggling entrepreneurs and artists mentioned earlier are struggling
for a reason. For whatever reason, the market has deemed the goods they are
providing to be insufficiently valuable. Their work simply isn’t productive
according to those who would potentially consume the goods or services in
question."

What a huge leap to make from struggling to struggling because nobody wants to
buy their product. They could easily be struggling purely because they left
their old job to pursue this and now have no steady income. The article even
suggests this initially, so I have no idea how they just ignored it.

>"The universal basic income, however, allows them to continue their less-
valued endeavors with the money of those who have actually produced value,
which gets to the ultimate problem of all government welfare programs."

Not everything needs to be about generating more wealth for yourself.

This article also completely ignored the idea that eventually there just
aren't going to be any jobs left for the vast majority of people to take. What
do we do then? The UBI is the solution to that. I wonder why they did not
discuss that:

>"Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual
climate: away from statism and toward a private property order."

Oh, that's why. This is just about generating wealth and screwing over
everyone in the process for them

~~~
geebee
"There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less
money than you would have before your raise."

I'm not sure if that's true, but I think the real issue is the loss of
government support, particularly in terms of direct welfare. For instance,
going up in salary by $10k a year wouldn't result in a lower _paycheck_ due to
taxes, but it might result in a loss of government supported child care, and
might disqualify a family from government subsidized housing, either in direct
benefits or access to a required set aside of "below market rents" (common in
SF). Because those benefits may be worth well over 10k a year, you might
experience a net loss by working.

As a result, even if the tax rate is progressive, there is a transitional
period for relatively low income people where the marginal "tax", if you
include the loss of subsidies, is 100% or higher. As a result, there could be
a powerful disincentive to work.

I think this is part of the appeal of the UBI - it's "universal". Everyone
gets it. You get your money regardless of whether you work. Yes, that could
deter people from working, since they already get their money. But it might
also encourage people to work more, since they will no longer lose those
benefits at low salary levels that make working a losing proposition relative
to direct government welfare.

~~~
lightbyte
>Yes, that could deter people from working, since they already get their
money.

One thing that this also does not discuss, I do not consider this a bad thing
at all. In fact, I think it is great. If someone is purely content with living
on their UBI paycheck, more power to them. They are now spending money on
things to contribute to the economy whereas before they were not.

------
k_lander
My only qualm with UBI is that it needs to be Universal in the non-
discriminating sense. I don't see how that could perform better than a system
that at least attempts to discriminate between good and bad actors. Not to
underestimate the difficulty of that task, but I feel as long as we are
testing out Unconditional BI in the real world, which is great - we shouldn't
miss out on experimenting with Conditional Basic Income as well. Even if you
do not manage to catch all the bad actors, it could still be worthwhile
improvement over otherwise. The good folks at Ethereum and other crypto based
decentralized platforms have been working on useful tools like decentralized
identity, smart contracts, tokens that can hopefully make this practical.

~~~
tdb7893
The point is that if everyone is equal you can't have "bad actors" without
explicit fraud. I'm not sure what a bad actor is in the context of UBI

