
A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing - warrenmar
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-05-02/a-basic-income-should-be-the-next-big-thing
======
gjm11
This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the
usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple
to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc.

And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying
things like

> But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income
> through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 trillion. And if the benefit
> is phased out for households earning more than $100,000 (that would be 20
> percent of the U.S.'s 115 million households, or about 70 million people,
> assuming three to a household), the cost declines to about $2 trillion. You
> could confine the program to adults and shrink the price tag even more,
> possibly to as low as $1.5 trillion.

Yes, you can reduce the amount paid out by making it _not a universal basic
income scheme_ any more. But that rather misses the point.

(The _correct_ thing to say here is: Yes, a universal basic income sufficient
to keep everyone out of poverty would be really expensive. Taxes would need to
go up a lot, which would leave wealthier people less well off than they are
now. If you don't want a large-scale redistribution of wealth, then you don't
want a BI scheme sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty. But you might
still want to consider a BI scheme that's _not_ sufficient to keep everyone
out of poverty, to simplify and to reduce poverty traps. No one would have to
be much worse off then. But it wouldn't be enough for anyone to live on, and
would still need supplementing by other safety nets.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone.

Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous
experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened
during the great recession.

This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to
mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you
give to people, fewer services provided makes us all become poorer. That's
simple arithmetic.

~~~
macawfish
I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of
people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery.
People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are
sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me?
If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you
expect some stranger to do it except out of either good will or fear? Sure,
you can get some deeply fearful stranger to sit in the same building day in
and day out, doing your dishes and pouring you coffee, putting their own
individuation on hold for your career, just to have basic economic security.
But in the big picture, a whole world of people out of touch with what they
love is bad for the planet itself.

Many people never get a chance to discover a passionate relationship with
work. Collectively, when we kick the habit of forcing people into doing things
out of fear (with money) means that a lot of people are gonna be feeling like
fish out of water. Generations of slaves don't just jump out of their chains
eager to get working again.

~~~
CWuestefeld
So much for sanitation. How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic
tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the
displeasure of the job?

Believe it or not, there are jobs that need to be done, but nobody in the
world has a passion for them.

Employment isn't about fear or force. It's about two parties agreeing that
they each come out better after the transaction of selling labor. I may not
love what I do every day, but the sacrifice is worth it to have the benefit of
the salary and other benefits that my employer gives me. And she probably
isn't enamored with having to give up that money to pay me, but values the
productivity I deliver (when I'm not on HN) more than that money.

The ability to trade labor for goods or money is the single greatest invention
in the history of humanity. Without it I'd have to grow my own food and
fibers, weave my own cloth for clothing (in the house I had to construct
myself), sitting in a dark drafty room wishing that some altruist would come
cure my illnesses.

But instead, we found that people can decide they value one thing more than
another, and engage in voluntary commerce so that they can trade in kind.

~~~
ticviking
Employment is in fact often about fear or force.

I work a day job because the state will literally show up with police and guns
if I went out into the mountains and lived off the land. Therefore unless I
want to starve I must work. Even when it's on shit I hate.

I am lucky enough to have a skill that is sufficiently valuable that I can
survive despite disabilities making it difficult to work.

If you imagine that the labor market is free because it happens to mostly be
positive sum, you haven't lived at the bottom of the labor market for any
length of time.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_the state will literally show up with police and guns if I went out into the
mountains and lived off the land_

Why? Is it someone else's land that you're trespassing on, using up their
resources, hunting their animals, etc?

Shall all of us who don't feel fulfilled do the same thing as you propose?
When you hurt yourself and get an infection, are you going to crawl back out
of the woods and expect there to still be other people to care for you, supply
your antibiotic, and yes, clean your bedpan while you recover? What right to
you have to expect the bedpan cleaner to serve you?

 _unless I want to starve I must work._

Who do you expect to plant, harvest, and distribute the food you want to eat?

When you want something from someone - food, medicine, etc. - you're going to
have to offer something in return, else why should they provide it? For almost
all of us, our labor is the product we can offer in trade. Only by all of us
making this tradeoff does society survive.

~~~
aninhumer
>When you want something from someone - food, medicine, etc. - you're going to
have to offer something in return

What if the value of someone's labour is not enough for the things they need
to survive? There's no function of the market that ensures it will be.

At some point, you either have to help people out without anything in return,
or choose to let them die.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_What if the value of someone 's labour is not enough for the things they need
to survive?_

Sure, we can make a moral argument about that. But that's not what this branch
of the debate is about. We were debating the proposition that "money itself
tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people" and employment is force.

But since you bring it up, my biggest concern about BI is along the same lines
as your moral question. Suppose that every year we hand out $X,000 to each
person. Some people are going to waste that on booze, gambling, etc., and
still be left with nothing to eat. What's our moral obligation to those
people?

~~~
mac01021
> What's our moral obligation to those people?

I think we can all agree it to be none.

------
mcv
Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular
interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that
can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty
of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income.

The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess
of programs losing their job is a silly concern. Why should we keep paying
people for unnecessary bullshit jobs? Why should we employ people to check and
ensure that other people aren't secretly working? Let those people do
something more productive.

I would like Basic Income to be a bit more than $10,000 per year, though.
Ideally, especially when the number of jobs available falls due to increased
automation, I'd like the Basic Income to provide a comfortable income. People
can and will still work to increase their income further, but when robots do
more and more of the work for us, there's no reason to punish people for being
unable to compete with robots.

~~~
Aoyagi
10k? That's almost the _average_ income (or more, depending on how you count
taxes) of the Czech Republic. If I had to choose between living in a 2nd world
country and working and living in a 1st world country and not working for the
same money, guess which I'd choose?

~~~
alehander42
I am just amused by the "2nd world country" thing. I really fail to see how
life in Central Europe is somehow of "lower quality"(e.g. Czech, Poland,
Germany) compared to USA. I'd actually prefer living in Central Europe or
especially Southern Europe over USA any day.

~~~
Aoyagi
Well since you just bulked Czechia, Poland and _Germany_ into one group, I can
understand how you fail to see it.

Since you mentioned Germany, I'll use that. A Czech earns about a third of
what a German earns. But everything costs more or less the same (except for
housing, but the difference certainly isn't multiples). Gasoline costs the
same (and much more than in US), vast majority of consumer goods costs the
same, food seems to be cheaper, but that's because it's of lower quality.

Yeah, education is "free". As is government free to take more than half of
what people earn.

By "2nd world" I mean "1st world prices, 3rd world wages" (yes I know 3rd
world is something incomperable).

~~~
alehander42
Oh, I did it intentionally. I live in Bulgaria and the situation is similar.
However my definition of 2nd world is just different, that's all.

~~~
Aoyagi
Well, of course, I consider it more of a tongue-in-cheek term, heh.

------
ww520
The Fed engineers a slow inflation every year via interest rate control and
gives the benefit of the newly created money to banks, the loan borrowers, and
asset holders as rates lower than keeping inflation at zero. Since the money
supply increases anyway, might as well give the new money as basic income to
ALL people. At least the money will be spent directly by the people for
economic activities, instead of indirectly via the loans and asset inflation.

The Fed can raise interest rate to shrink the money supply for banks and
borrowers while give more direct cash to expand the money supply via basic
income. This can be in addition to the government's budget spending on basic
income.

An interesting outcome is the deflation of the asset bubble as rate increases.
The money supply expansion via direct cash counters the deflation in economy.
This should reverse the trend of the great wealth transfer to the asset
holders in the last 20 years.

~~~
MicroBerto
Regarding inflation... if _everyone_ instantly has $X now, doesn't $X become
worthless?

For instance, why would landlords not raise rents knowing that everyone now
has this cash?

~~~
ww520
The problem is not inflation. It happens already. The problem is the new money
created causing the inflation is given to the asset holders and banks, not to
everyone.

Rent increases now, due to inflation. The general public have to give more
despite not getting the created money. Landlords got the benefit of rising
rent due to inflation and rising housing price due to lower interest rate to
create more money.

Basic income just shifts the inflated money to everyone instead of just the
asset holders.

~~~
Cshelton
"new money" is not, or ever, given to anyone. Banks included. The U.S. gov
basically sells promissory notes (treasuries) to an independent, non
governmental organization (The Federal reserve...which is not "federal" in the
least bit..) on behalf of the American people. Although the fed is more or
less offering a note at x price and the U.S. Treasury just buys it...

Anybody is allowed to buy bonds from the U.S. Treasury. In exchange, you get
the "new money" as you call it. At no one point is anything given to the banks
or asset holders.

The interest rate is determined by the rate the fed sets and buys these notes
from the US T. This is the key and primary tool at which a PRIVATE, non-
governmental organization, determines interest rates. However..you can also
buy these notes directly from the Fed. China does all the time along with many
other countries. Yes...other countries hold the "debt" of the American
people... If that's not crazy enough...it gets better. This organization..the
Fed...gets to tell banks how much to hold in required reserves. Another
primary tool they use to control inflation.

~~~
ww520
The Fed obviously creates inflation by injecting new money into the system.
Who get the extra new money?

------
amelius
I'm still wondering about one thing: if everybody has a basic income, then who
will be doing the dirty jobs like collecting our waste? Will the price for
waste collecting go up? And will there then be a kind of economic "inversion",
where the intellectual people prefer to work on interesting stuff at the
expense of money, while the "non-intellectual" (need a better word here)
people will make all the money doing the dirty jobs?

~~~
thiagoperes
First of all, no job should be considered dirty.

Second, if you go to places like Netherlands, Norway and Japan you'll see that
it's not about money. Higher education prepares workers to do more complex,
more efficient and more productive jobs.

Also, the society is more conscious about not having someone to do stupid
things for them like collecting their trays after they eat at the McDonadls,
this is YOUR responsibility as a member of a society, to look for others as
well.

So in Amsterdam for example, street cleaning and trash collection are done
with specialized vehicles. In Denmark, subways are autonomous.

I like to believe that as you increase education and income, the people that
would be considered "dumb" in an very unequal society will spend their time
developing technologies to automate tasks no one likes to perform and increase
productivity.

~~~
sokoloff
You're suggesting that people that would be considered "dumb" today will
suddenly start inventing automation of street cleaning, trash collection, and
the like if we implement a basic income and better education?

That strikes me as an extraordinary claim.

~~~
spurgu
Yeah, it's more like the people owning the waste companies that would try to
drive up automation because of the high costs associated with manual labor.

------
aub3bhat
I think the reason for huge support behind Basic Income is failure of
government in efficient allocation of its resources. The current generation
with its experience with public education, spending on unnecessary wars and
other poorly run government programs no longer trusts government to
effectively deliver services. Thus Basic Income seems like a natural solution.
I honestly would prefer a smaller government that reallocates resources, over
Bernie Sanders style big government socialism.

~~~
rubyfan
Why does it follow that the answer to an inefficient government is to give
that same government more power to redistribute wealth?

Being a big inefficient government _and_ redistributing wealth are not
mutually exclusive.

~~~
jessriedel
It's important to distinguish between rights- and incentive-based objections
to redistribution and efficiency-based objections to government spending. The
government as an organization of humans is very inefficient and wasteful at
accomplishing actual tasks (e.g., building bridges), but it's actually very
efficient at redistributing wealth through pure transfers (e.g., the
administrative overhead of social security is negligible compared to the
amount redistributed). Thus the best objections are grounded in bad incentive
effects or property rights, not the inefficiency of government.

~~~
rubyfan
I interpreted the parent comment is implying ineptitude by the government in
delivering positive outcomes and my comment is in reply to that. If the regime
is inept at delivering solutions why would we entrust it to take more by way
of taxation to support a basic income.

My comment is not about the efficiency or admin overhead of printing checks.
It's about trust in government to deliver an outcome.

~~~
jessriedel
Trust obviously depends strongly on the task. I trust my dog to fetch the ball
but not do my taxes, because he's a lot better at the former.

------
cmdli
From the $1 trillon stated in the article, spread across 300 million people,
each person would get around $3000 a year. That honestly doesn't seem like it
would help a lot, considering it would replace current welfare systems. The
Swiss proposal of around $2600 a month, implemented in the US, would cost
nearly $10 trillion a year which doesn't really seem feasible.

I don't think the problem with basic income is an ideological one, its a
numbers one. There simply isn't enough money to implement it without massively
increasing taxes.

~~~
_Understated_
I absolutely agree but my biggest fear is that socialists don't give a shit
and will push "progressive taxes".

I live in Scotland and they love the fact that they can raise taxes here
now... they openly talk about it and very few people I know bat an eyelid!

But it's the curse of socialism imo: As long as you tax people earning more
than me then I am fine with it.

Sadly, something I have heard too often

Edit: Spelling

~~~
gjm11
There are some sorts of political proposal it's reasonable to be shocked at
people talking openly about. For me, they're things like: Reintroducing
slavery. Switching to communism. Putting people in prison for having the wrong
religion. Expelling all black people from the country.

... Do I understand correctly that you consider _raising taxes_ to be in this
category?

~~~
_Understated_
I absolutely don't believe they are in the same category: How the hell did you
equate them?

Who honestly wants to pay more tax? Really? I ask you in all seriousness.

I am well-off but up until recently I earned enough to keep my head above
water. I had a disposable income after all bills were paid of around £100 a
month: One burst tyre in my car and that was it but I had no debt (apart from
my mortgage) as I lived within my means.

I work hard, I get up early and study and so on and I am a contractor now,
earning good money.

That being said: I have no issue with taxation. I believe in taxation but I do
not believe in constantly increasing it nor do I believe that it is a moral
issue like it has been made recently.

For as long as I can remember, no Government has decreased taxes in the UK.
None. They shuffle them around but they never decrease them.

I read something a year or so ago (can't remember the reference, maybe
Taxpayers Alliance) that showed over 60% of my money is taxed now through
income tax, stealth taxes etc.

Enough is enough!

~~~
gjm11
I equated them because you said:

> _they love the fact that they can raise taxes here now... they openly talk
> about it and very few people I know bat an eyelid!_

which looked to me (and still does) as if you were expressing surprise that
people _openly talk about raising taxes_ and that others aren't surprised
they're doing so.

> Who honestly wants to pay more tax?

Me. More precisely: all else being equal I prefer to pay less tax, but all
else is not equal and I think increasing the taxes paid by people like me and
using the resulting revenue to increase funding for (e.g.) the national health
service or benefits for disabled people would, overall, make the country I
live in a better place.

> no Government has decreased taxes in the UK

Well, according to the graph here
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom)
tax revenue in the UK was a smaller fraction of GDP in 2005 than in 2000. It's
a little under 40% (which already makes it quite implausible that 60% of your
income gets taken in tax).

Finer-grained comparison is really difficult because the tax system is
complicated (income tax, National Insurance, VAT, capital gains, ...); over
the last few decades income tax has decreased substantially for most people
but other taxes have increased.

> over 60% of my money is taxed now

This is not something you should be believing or disbelieving on the basis of
something you read from an anti-tax campaigning organization. You should have
all the information you need to work it out.

I don't know whether I'm paid better or worse than you are (I would guess
fairly similarly) but I do not pay anywhere near 60% of my earnings in tax.
Adding up all the taxes I can think of, I reckon I pay either about 30% or
about 40% in tax; the lower figure is if I count capital gains (largely
untaxed because most of my assets are in tax-efficient things like ISAs and
pension funds) as "income" and the higher figure is if I look only at salary.

(Maybe the numbers look worse for contractors than for salaried employees? I
am not counting, e.g., corporation tax paid by my employer; neither do I see
any reason why I should.)

------
bontoJR
> Switzerland will hold a June 5 referendum on whether to give every adult
> citizen 2,500 Swiss francs (about $2,600) a month.

Yeah and, for sure, it won't pass... considering how conservative we are, plus
the legal side of the proposal is not so clear in where the money will come
from.

~~~
sambe
This doesn't seem like enough for Switzerland - what do you think? Based on my
experience this would be on the very low side. The previous vote on minimum
wage was quoted as working out at around 4000CHF/month. Granted, most basic
income proposals are on the low side - this just seems even lower than normal.

~~~
VeejayRampay
It seems low. I think this is what cashiers at Lidl or Leader Price actually
make in Switzerland. Or rather, it's the urban legend in France that this how
much a cashier in Lidl/Leader Price makes in Switzerland.

Though this might be part of the whole "Everything is better in Switzerland"
psyche prevalent in France (streets are paved in sheets of gold, etc).

~~~
Kenji
4000 Francs is a de-facto minimum wage in Switzerland. Even the most basic
jobs will earn you that much, usually. It's rare that you earn significantly
less than that.

------
MicroBerto
In the early 1970s, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a "mouse utopia" to
see what would happen if he created the perfect world for mice, with unlimited
food, starting with four males and four females, that could reach a population
of 2500.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM)

What happened next is absolutely astonishing. When the mice had nothing to do
and nothing to work for, their society collapsed upon itself. Females stopped
caring for their young. Betas began guarding the elite females, despite them
not breeding with _anyone_. Fights broke out for no reason whatsoever. Mice
stopped eating.

Their population peaked at 2200, and then died off extremely quickly.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/)

It was a big, fat, giant mess. And it's exactly what will happen to us if we
don't have _something_ to work and live for. Hell, it's already happening.

I don't think humanity survives with basic income as planned. We fall apart
when we have nothing to do. We're no better than mice - we are still just
animals with a larger hierarchy.

I'd rather see unproductive humans digging and re-filling holes in the ground
than getting paid to do nothing. Or something like the biking experiment in
Black Mirror.

Yet we need to do _something_ as automation grows. Society is in for some
serious decisions, and no country currently has the leadership to be able to
tackle them.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Do mice have a concept of leisure? Exploration for its own sake? Cultural
enrichment? Scientific endeavour?

Also, in that experiment isn't there a complete excess of resources? We
certainly don't have that, opulence would still be expensive and out of reach
of a BI.

~~~
MicroBerto
> a complete excess of resources? We certainly don't have that

You seen the obesity rates in America?

The people who truly enjoy "Exploration", "Cultural enrichment", and
"Scientific endeavor" are not those that I'm worried about in this world. Most
of the world does not operate like that, nor do they use (or even understand!)
such phrases.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Yes. Obesity is far more complex than that, I'm also looking at the global
perspective.

Obesity to me is about lack of resources for better nutrition (though
companies push junk pretty hard), lack of education, and lack of will power.

FWIW I'm substantially overweight despite being poor enough to need to miss
meals in the past couple of years.

So give people BI and they'll just get blazed/drunk all the time, and make
other mischief, is that your assessment?

~~~
MicroBerto
> So give people BI and they'll just get blazed/drunk all the time, and make
> other mischief, is that your assessment?

Not everyone, but the noisy few will far outweigh those that are "culturally
enriching" themselves with "art" and "scientific exploration".

Just look at what's happening in the western welfare class already. How does
this not become an extension of that?

I'm so absolutely unconvinced by this thread. I fear for the future of this
species. I have a feeling this is why guys like Elon Musk are in such a hurry
too... they see it happening too.

~~~
n72
I'm sorry, what exactly is happening to the "western welfare class"?

------
k-mcgrady
>> "But in the U.S., many liberals see it as naive and a distraction from more
practical priorities, such as a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave."

I can't see how they could believe this. First of all a minimum wage becomes
unimportant as you should hypothetically have enough money to support the kind
of lifestyle a minimum wage job would provide without working. Secondly, as
it's no longer financially critical to them, people won't be as inclined to
take on minimum wage type jobs - which will force the wage up anyway so that
the business can attract employees. So it should take care of itself. As for
paid family leave (I presume they mean maternity/paternity leave?) you won't
need that as your basic income will ensure you still have money coming in. And
if the company wants to retain your services after your leave they will offer
it anyway. The key point in these examples is that even if you don't get a
higher minimum wage or paid family leave it's no longer going to have a big
effect on you as you have your UBI to rely on.

Also, it doesn't seem to me like there is a left/right split on this elsewhere
in the world. This leads me to believe that the problem is the highly partisan
US political system. The right is obviously going to support UBI as it would
significantly reduce government size - the left can't be seen to be agreeing
with the right. I think it's a kind of childishly schoolyard thing you see a
lot in US politics (he likes that so I don't).

~~~
crdoconnor
>I can't see how they could believe this. First of all a minimum wage becomes
unimportant as you should hypothetically have enough money to support the kind
of lifestyle a minimum wage job would provide without working.

It's considered a distraction because it's a political pipe dream that has a
very low chance of being implemented.

The reason the left doesn't like it is fourfold:

* The pretext for basic income presumes that we have a lack of spending because we've run out of things to spend money on. This couldn't be further from the truth. American infrastructure is crumbling and yet politicians still want to restrict necessary spending, choking off demand and killing jobs.

* The pretext for basic income also presumes that we have a wide variety of cheap goods that don't need much US labor because of efficient markets and automation. We don't. We have a wide variety of cheap goods not requiring US labor because China intentionally undervalues its currency. China can pull the plug on that at any point and trigger a torrential level of inflation in the US.

* The last time the US faced this problem of high unemployment due to artificially suppressed demand (in the 30s) it was successfully fixed with federal job guarantees that ended up providing useful employment and getting a huge amount of useful infrastructure built that we still use today.

* However much you try to deny it or dress it up, people actually want jobs - for more than just the income.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Some good points, I'm curious about your final point though. Personal want
just for more than just the income. IF the UBI worked, are you suggested
people would want to, but couldn't work anymore? That jobs would be difficult
to find?

------
golergka
That's a little surprising — with all discussions about basic income taking
place, I assumed it is more of a left-wing thing. But what is even more
surprising are arguments against it: social workers being laid off and other
more complicated policies like minimum wage taking a back seat. With this kind
of rhetoric, it's easy to believe that the real reason is the "welfare lobby"
of government officials who don't want their bloated offices to close, indeed.

------
empressplay
Won't a basic income just increase inflation? Minimum-wage jobs would by
necessity then need to pay more, which would then cause the costs of goods and
services to go up, which would then make living more expensive, necessitating
an increase in the basic income and so forth...?

For example, say I'm a landlord. If everyone all of a sudden had an additional
"base" income, why wouldn't I increase my rents to absorb at least a portion
of that? Then, only people who had a job would still be able to afford to rent
from me, while those on the basic income would be unable to afford it. I'm not
out either way.

So you would say you need to introduce legislation to stop me from doing that,
but the free market would abhor that and likely accuse you of being a
communist. So you can't. So I'm failing to see the point of the whole
exercise?

~~~
panic
_Minimum-wage jobs would by necessity then need to pay more_

That's the opposite of what's being proposed: the minimum income comes from
the government, not employers. Minimum income can replace minimum wage.

 _For example, say I 'm a landlord. If everyone all of a sudden had an
additional "base" income, why wouldn't I increase my rents to absorb at least
a portion of that? Then, only people who had a job would still be able to
afford to rent from me, while those on the basic income would be unable to
afford it. I'm not out either way._

Sure, but now that you've raised the price, there's an opportunity to undercut
you that didn't exist before. The result ultimately depends on the supply and
demand of housing. Just think of it like a bunch of slightly-richer people
moving into the neighborhood. Prices will rise, but not enough to take all the
new residents' extra money.

~~~
empressplay
This would only work in places where supply exceeded demand. In a landlords'
market there is no reason to compete. All the same people who could afford to
rent from you before can still afford to rent from you now, you're just
charging them more.

~~~
AlisdairO
Basic income could have the effect of flattening out demand rather - at the
moment, people are forced to cluster close to where the work is available. If
I want to just live on basic income, why not go somewhere more affordable?

~~~
empressplay
...and all of a sudden these places that were previously unattractive are now
attractive, and housing that previously had no demand now does.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's not as simple as some might like to
think.

~~~
AlisdairO
I take your point, but if we remove the requirement for jobs to be present, a
much larger range of locations become reasonable to live in. A broader range
of acceptable locations spread amongst the same population is clearly likely
to decrease overall competition for a given property.

------
ja30278
I really don't understand how a 'basic' income is supposed to work.

What if I spend my basic income on drugs and hookers? are you willing to let
me starve? what about my kids? If not, then the basic income can't actually
replace the existing social programs.

If nobody need to work, then if employers want employees, they have to pay
more to get them, which makes prices rise, which makes your 'basic' income
insufficient again.

I don't get it.

~~~
habosa
The cost-rising point is greatly simplified. Yes the cost of labor will go up,
however this does not mean the prices rise so much that your basic income is
not very helpful, and here's why:

    
    
      * Only the cost of labor will increase, the cost of other inputs to making goods or providing services will not.
      * The cost of labor will not increase uniformly, but rather it will increase most at the low end (people who are more likely to refuse employment due to basic income) and less at the high end.  A software engineer making $120k is not likely to decide to stop working because he now gets $10k from the government.  However a part-time fry cook making $6k a year might.
    

So you have a slight increase in the price of goods (the x% of the cost of
goods that was from low-paid labor just got y% higher) but an increase in
purchasing power that is larger than x% * y% so overall people now have more
purchasing power.

------
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."'

    
    
        :Rudyard Kipling [0]
    

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

------
DanielBMarkham
The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do
basic math.

Take for instance the amount spent on the bank bailouts, which were supposedly
done to help stimulate the economy. If you'd just let the banks fail, you
could have spent the same money giving everybody a check for somewhere around
20K (the number is debatable).

Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few
decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child. The national debt
is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced budget and a check for
100K? (I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.)

We're reaching the point where the average person who supports helping the
poor can figure out that we could have just set up an endowment for each poor
person when they were born and spent less money than this. And at the same
time we would get rid of a lot of folks doing useless overhead simply because
the system is so complex.

For those reasons and more I like the UBI idea.

But ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. We need about a thousand
different experiments -- ran for 10 or 20 years -- before we can begin to
start saying what might work or not work. When I look at other charitable
causes (aid to Africa comes to mind first), the rhetoric got way out ahead of
the actual results for many, many decades. Tons of time, effort, and money
were spent on strategies that didn't work but sounded pretty cool. We'd be
idiots not to recognize that this is the danger here too.

The first question we have to ask is this: What is UBI? Is it a reliable
income _in place_ of a bunch of other services? Or is it _in addition_ to a
bunch of other services? The difference matters. Once that's defined, I sure
would like to see if a majority of people doing nothing "rubs off" on
ambitious, driven people. Or maybe it works the other way around. Maybe a
small percentage of ambitious, driven people, in a society without external
pressures, can persuade more and more folks to find meaning in helping others.
Beats me. Sure will be fun to learn more.

Slogans are great. Results are better.

~~~
ChrisLomont
>If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving
everybody

The bailouts were asset swaps, repaid with a gain for the taxpayer [1]. They
were not cash giveaways. Comparing this to simply giving cash to people is
ludicrous.

The most at risk was about 2T, with only 650B actually out at any time, which
at your claim of 20K per person, only pays for 32 million people. You're off
by an order of magnitude (completely ignoring that the bailouts were asset
swaps, not giveaways).

>Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few
decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child

Over the course of _decades_. It's not 20K in a year. It's more like 1/40th
($500) of that a year. And the only places I can find a number this large
includes Medicare/SS payouts. Are you going to remove these programs
(especially Mecicare/Medicaid) with your conversion to a once in a lifetime
check per person?

> The national debt is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced
> budget and a check for 100K?

That's nonsense. Adding massively more to spending via UBI is not going to
balance the budget or reduce the debt, and I don't know what magic lets you
take 20T of debt (the biggest holder being SS, and large amounts to the Fed
and loans to US investors, such as retirement funds) and simply divide by 320M
people to get 100K (actually, this is 62.5K) in a check. Nothing in this line
of numerology makes any sense. These uses are nowhere near exchangeable.

>(I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.)

The math isn't fuzzy. It's simply wrong, from the starting values, to the
calculations, to the conclusions.

>The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do
basic math.

Unfortunately this basic math is not coupled to reality, ignores very
important and well tested economic ideas backed by 100+ years of empirical
data, and is ignores the downsides and costs involved.

And so far, I fail to see many UBI proponents that are able to do basic math.
A few can, but mostly they are full of numerology and ignoring the _meaning_
of various amounts.

I've yet to see a UBI that doesn't either require massive tax hikes to the
point of possibly destroying the economy or leave those needing assistance now
in much worse shape.

>Slogans are great. Results are better.

Intellectually honest claims checking is better, and it helps avoid chasing
impossible or unlikely or destructive plans.

[1]
[https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/](https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You seem to be in search of an argument. I will not provide you with one.

Yes, the math is plain wrong. No, it does not change the point. I am not
writing an essay or presenting a white paper on UBI. Heck, I'm not even
supporting UBI except in terms of "let's experiment"

So that was a wonderful tear down of my math, which I expected, but it doesn't
change my thesis any: whatever amount of money you would like to provide for
good causes, a good case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide
that money directly to everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the
system, no complex system of administration.

I'm not in favor of massive tax hikes. I'm also not in favor of bandying
around the slogan "UBI". As I said, until there's some real policy there, it
looks attractive on the surface. I outlined the reasons why it looks
attractive. That's about all we can say about it right now.

~~~
ChrisLomont
>whatever amount of money you would like to provide for good causes, a good
case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide that money directly to
everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the system, no complex
system of administration.

This is my main disagreement with UBI. Resources (money) is limited, and
providing the same social help to all regardless of need necessarily hurts
those most in need and helps those in the least of need.

Your argument to make a simple system can be applied to many places it makes
life worse - should we everything and all at the same rate? Experience shows
that progressive taxes is probably a big benefit overall, and certainly tax
incentives can and do have benefits. I think providing basic assistance, since
resources are not enough to simply give everyone goods, should be targeted to
minimize human suffering, and providing free cash to those that can work in
lieu of providing it to those that honestly cannot is inhumane.

You dislike the middleman, but again, middlemen are vastly beneficial in many
cases, and likely are here too, to distribute limited resources in a way to do
the most good. And the overall cost of the middlemen is small compared to the
amount passed out. UBI would also require a decent amount of administration,
so it's not completely without admin.

>I outlined the reasons why it looks attractive

Sure, free money untethered to reality is attractive. The problem is the
attractiveness fades when one is tasked with explaining how the money is
obtained.

------
rbcgerard
I see two basic issues:

1\. How do you implement this whithout border control - if you create a basic
income that is higher than ~1/2 the world's income the amount of illegal
immigration will be huge

2\. Will we really have the will to tell people who are starving because they
lost their stipend to drugs or gambling "too bad"?

~~~
grogers
1\. Most likely the UBI would only go to legal permanent residents.

2\. It's at least no worse than today for those people. Support groups will
still exist. If you distribute money frequently (e.g. weekly) it might help a
little in preventing catastrophic situations where people lose it all. My
concern here is that the payday loan industry grows instead of shrinking
(tough to predict these types of things).

~~~
rbcgerard
1\. while that is likely the case, since we grant citizenship to those born
here (who i believe can then sponsor their family), the obvious choice would
be to move here illegally and have children.

2\. many current programs today limit what can be bought (SNAPS) or provide
the service directly (low income housing), that's not to say there are not
ways around this or that dollars are not fungible, but I do think there is
difference

------
WWKong
How does a universal basic income work from economics stand point? Let's say
everyone gets $1000/mo. Currently the market knows that everyone has $10 and
prices bread accordingly at $1.50. Tomorrow the market will know that everyone
has $1010 and will price the bread at $100. Thus everything from food to
utilities to rent gets adjusted to the new normal and the poor can't still
afford the basics. Is this theory not correct?

~~~
habosa
Take a step further. Let's say on day 1 of the basic income age all the bread
merchants raise their price to $100.

One smart bread merchant will probably say "Hey I used to sell this for $1.50,
I can do better than $100" and prices it at $90. Now everyone buys bread from
him.

The other merchants feel the price pressure and the cycle continues, with the
price settling down to something likely higher than $1.50 (to reflect the
increased price of labor input as a result of basic income) but not so high
that it totally eats the increased income.

So yes, things will cost more after basic income (after all you'd likely need
some sort of inflation to find the money to give away). But in an efficient
market they will not cost so much more than people are not still effectively
richer than they were before. It does not change the intrinsic value of most
things, it just makes certain inputs (namely labor) more expensive.

~~~
WWKong
In other words, utilities and commodities will always hover around cost price
due to market forces and hence the poor will be able to afford the basics.
There might be other non essentials that might become more expensive to absorb
the extra money in the market, but we would have mostly likely solved a bigger
problem. Makes sense. I still worry about housing.

~~~
habosa
Housing is interesting because it's one of the few things we buy that is
priced mostly around our ability to pay for it rather than the value of what
we are buying. That's why in SF it seems that housing prices rise in lock step
with wages in the dominant industry (tech).

So while it's very likely that the cost of housing will increase in this
situation, again I think people will still be better off overall. People will
have increased purchasing power for non-housing goods and still pay the same
percentage of their income for housing, even if that is now a percentage of a
larger number.

~~~
WWKong
Also education cost spiked because of easy availability of student loans.
Could there be many more products/areas like this?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Also education cost spiked because of easy availability of student loans.
> Could there be many more products/areas like this?

Anything that isn't provided by a freely competitive market can be like this
in the long term, and anything where the supply side can't quickly respond to
demand-side changes can be like it in the short term.

------
cromulent
When I think about it from a business perspective, the advantage is not just
smaller government but workforce flexibility. If I only have 20 extra hours of
work some weeks, there is no way I am hiring another person full time. With a
basic income in place, I can hire someone at market rates just for those 20
hours without all of the stress for both parties. Still not perfect, but much
better.

------
unsigner
I don't see how the government can be shrunk, short of violent collapse. UBI
will be introduced, and not a single government program will be dropped, not a
single government official laid off; wars, bailouts and $500 toilet seats will
continue, but we'll have to tax, borrow or print a few more billions (or
trillions, in the case of US-sized economies - I live in a small country).

------
dimino
All of this is basically moot, because while the average person's entitlements
might stay the same or increase due to a basic income to cover the things
entitlements currently cover (we won't need to hand out food stamps if we have
a basic income, for example), every other person's entitlements they rely on
will get cut as a result, and those people (and there are at least tens of
millions of them) will raise unholy hell about it.

There's the 10% for each entitlement that _need_ the full entitlement, and
there are dozens of entitlements, hundreds, so 10% of hundreds of programs
will just be too many people to allow a basic blanket income to cover their
entitlements.

All that said, my favorite version of this is the "negative income tax". We
have something kind of like it already, but the EITC would have to be expanded
significantly before it was actually something like a negative income tax, and
that means cuts to other programs.

------
jasiek
Looks like this topic needs a serious longitudal study. This being a hot
political topic virtually guarantees no one will conduct one.

------
xiphias
The more free money printing is going on, the more I'm incentivized to buy/use
Bitcoins from my hard work's money. UBI centralizes power to the money
printers even more, gives a little to those who don't work (for their votes),
and takes even more money away from those who work. Still, this can go on only
with central banking.

------
narrator
I think this is sort of the apotheosis of the concept that money is the
universally effective solution to all problems.

Money is not the universally effective solution to health care in this
country. We already spend double, as a percent of GDP ,compared to any other
country.

I think we're going to run into some problems on the supply side with a
universal basic income. Some prices will rise due to increased consumption.
This will make capital investment (e.g Research and Development, New
Factories, Upgrading Production Equipment) more costly. Eventually you'll burn
the furniture to heat the house and then things will start to fall apart and
get into an inflationary spiral. It does have the benefit going for it that it
is less complex to administer though, while our health care system is
enormously complex and grows ever more complex with the more money that gets
spent on it.

------
aidenn0
> And they fear that a basic income would, in the end, be less than what many
> people get when all the federal government's cash and social-service
> programs are combined.

Note that the poor will obviously get fewer benefits if BI is only funded from
cuts to programs the benefit the poor.

Example: lets say we eliminate program X that currently has a means test
limiting it to the poorest 20% of the population. If we, as the article
suggests, use that money to fond some fraction of BI for the poorest 80% of
the population, then one can trivially see that we have distributed 3/4 of the
money for program X away from the poorest 20%.

Now there are significant savings from reducing overhead, but unless program X
is 75% overhead, it's still a net loss in realized benefits for the poor.

In order to make BI palatable to the US left, you will need to fund it at
least partly through raising taxes.

------
dilemma
The basic problem that makes universal basic income impossible is that it's
simply not possibly to set the level of it. Have a try:

1\. What should UBI be in San Francisco? 2\. What should UBI be in Detroit?
3\. Should they be the same? 4\. What happens if they're not the same? 5\.
What happens if they're the same?

~~~
epaga
1\. $10,000. 2. $10,000 3. Yes. 4. They would be. 5. All of the proposed
benefits of UBI.

~~~
dilemma
1\. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family
on $10,000 per year in San Francisco? 2\. Can an unemployed single parent of
two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in Detroit? 3\.
Why? 4\. See 3. 5\. What are the proposed benefits of UBI?

~~~
howeyc
No, it's about having enough to live in the USA. Not about having enough to
live where you want at your special snowflake standard of living.

Yes, you may only get enough to live awesome in "the middle of nowhere" or
whatever. So what? If you want to live in San Fran, find a way to get the
money to live there.

~~~
dilemma
So under UBI, if someone in San Francisco, NYC, DC, Seattle, etc. loses their
job, they should move to rural Wisconsin?

~~~
chongli
Yes. Why not? When they do, it'll cause rent to drop in San Fran, NYC, DC and
Seattle. The US has a staggering amount of available land. The problem with
real estate is that prices are high where the jobs are located. With basic
income you no longer have to live where the jobs are and can move around
freely.

~~~
dilemma
>When they do, it'll cause rent to drop in San Fran, NYC, DC and Seattle.

No it won't, no more than today.

>With basic income you no longer have to live where the jobs are and can move
around freely.

Poor people are already "free" to not live in places they can't afford, and
instead live in places with poor access to education and healthcare and jobs,
and as such have reduced life expectancy. Your plan to use UBI to re-locate
and segregate poor is no improvement compared to the current situation.

~~~
chongli
I live in Canada so I always take health care for granted in these sorts of
discussions. Knowing this, it should come as no shock to you that I also
support universal health care.

What may be less obvious is that I also support universal education and in
Canada we also generally have that, at least as far as K-12 goes. If I were a
parent, my children would have access to the same quality of public education
in a small rural town as they would in a rich area of Toronto.

~~~
maxerickson
_If I were a parent, my children would have access to the same quality of
public education in a small rural town as they would in a rich area of
Toronto._

Is this true in reality or just in principle? An area with more students can
naturally better afford to offer programs that are of limited interest,
because they will still have lots of students that are interested. An area
with less students probably can't spend money on things that are only of
interest to 1 or 2 students.

It's not true in either sense in the US, localized funding for schools is
presented as the more fair solution.

~~~
chongli
It's true in reality. We don't have localized funding for schools in Canada;
we fund them province-wide. The small rural school gets the same funding per
student as the big city school. The difference between the smallest schools
and the biggest schools is not that much so rural kids have a longer bus ride
to get to school. They don't have to sacrifice on programs.

------
alexvoda
I think the issue with BI is that no matter how many things are automated and
how many items become abundent there are still things that will remain scarce:
land, minerals. Land will remain a scarce resource and all things that depend
primarily on land will remain scarce (housing, agriculture, etc.).

And in this situation there is nothing stopping land owners from absorbing the
basic income. This means that revenue generated by land owning (not
necessarily land owning itself) would have to be heavily taxed. Maybe even
taxed progressively to avoid economies of scale in land owning and prevent a
very few from owning all the land.

Or we could terraform celestial bodies in the Solar system.

It is important to note that land itself is limited, not housing. As long as
we can continue building even higher and deeper housing is not actually
limited.

~~~
mattgibson
For this reason, I think Basic income really only makes sense when paired with
land value tax (LVT) and rent caps, which would prevent that problem. Both
already work well in other economies in Europe.

------
kempe
You could look at Sweden here for a reference. Everyone does not get a fixed
sum of money but everyone can get social services to help out if you are
unemployed thou the amount of money vary from situation to situation. This and
other things like everyone has a right to schools, universities and health
care does not come for free however. 25% tax on products, salary tax 30-55% on
different salary ranges + ~15% on top for pension plan and state tax that the
employee never sees that the company pays. So sure it can work but it's not
cheap and it builds on that everyone should get a job. If people lost interest
in that and unemployment would raise more, that would be bad...

------
ComteDeLaFere
A basic income fails on the same point as increasing the minimum wage -
neither provides much additional opportunity in life, both simply make being
poor and disenfranchised more palatable.

------
Animats
The next big thing, after the $15 minimum wage, should be the 8 hour day and
the 40 hour week. Everybody gets overtime, unless you're in the 1%.

The whole "exempt" thing needs to go.

~~~
elihu
I agree that everyone who goes over 40 hours should get overtime, but I also
think the standard work week should be reduced from 40 hours.

~~~
Animats
One step at a time. A 40 hour work week is politically sellable. After all, we
used to have it, so it's "conservative".

------
a_imho
Why is that ubi is considered the next big thing, while people on welfare are
usually looked down upon? In the current (optimistic) horizon it might seem
like a good idea, but a recession could easily spin this the wrong way imho.
If you don't contribute by working and paying taxes on your income, there can
be a problem when a stressed actor comes asking to justify your ubi. OTOH, if
you do need to work either way, why not tweak the current distribution system
and include ubi money in wages.

~~~
lsaferite
The reason many (not me) look down on things like welfare is they are not
personally and directly benefitting while some other person is and they aren't
perceived as working to deserve the benefit.

The idea with UBI is that you no longer make the government assistance a merit
based assistance and instead everyone gets it equally. For those with large
incomes the small amount of UBI will be a pittance. For those with little or
no income it will be a lifeline. In both cases the amount would be exactly the
same.

------
lackingcaffeine
I think the idea of a basic income is really interesting though one aspect of
it troubles me and I would be interested to hear HN's solutions to it. The
trouble lies in the creative and economic relationship. If a substantial
number of people reduce or stop their usual working hours and live off the
income to pursue entirely creative activities, such as making a website or
art, they are exempt from the usual capitalist status quo which forces a
venture to be good, popular and eventually profitable (there is no standard of
quality necessary as long as its overheads are not too high). This could mean
a substantial number of people are neither creating wealth through work or
taxable business.

One counter-argument is that by freeing up people to pursue their interests,
there will be more good businesses opened as well, which will be profitable in
the long run. The other is that a person would not pursue a project that is
not well-received for a long period of time due to negative feedback.

Neither of these fully answers the problem though of what the system would do
to stop people falling off the economic grid and the impact on GDP/taxable
income this would have. Any thoughts?

~~~
mcv
I think most people will continue to work, simply because people generally
like having more money. What will stop is degrading bullshit jobs for little
pay. Businesses that rely on those jobs will disappear, unless they manage to
make their jobs more attractive. Businesses will have to work harder to
attract employees, because employees are less desperate for work. More of the
profit will go to employees, less to upper management and shareholders. I
think that's a good thing.

Unless those jobs can be automated completely, of course. But then, GDP is
fine, taxes will probably focus more on corporations, and people will be freed
from the degrading bullshit jobs, free to look for something better. And that,
I think, is also a good thing. Let the robots do the stupid work, while we're
off doing more fun stuff.

Make sure technology makes everybody's lives better. Isn't that the entire
point?

~~~
lackingcaffeine
My concern is perhaps not with this generation but the next. I don't think
anybody who is used to working and the lifestyle that it allows would seek a
massive reduction in income to pursue something frivolous, but it is easy to
imagine an entire group of people entering the job-market for the first time
having no inclination to work for a job, when their own hobbies and interests
can be sated without the need to be profitable. Which needless to say would be
economically damaging in the long run

------
irrational
I make more than $100,000 a year, but I'd gladly quit if I had a basic income
that let me lay around at home all day and read library books.

~~~
scld
And you would be replaced by someone who likes to travel to tropical beaches
to sit and read books all day :)

~~~
aminok
It would reduce the supply of highly skill labour, which would reduce the
amount of goods/services produced, and as a consequence, the amount of wealth
the world gets to consume. You're making the 'lump of labour fallacy' in
assuming that someone will just take his stop with no loss.

------
_Understated_
There is something else to consider too: The political party that brings this
in will likely be in power for a really long time!

Think about the consequences: Even if it was proven financial suicide for the
country (Governments can always print more money I suppose and let the next
generation deal with the fallout), what political party would have a manifesto
abolishing or reducing it? It would be political suicide.

~~~
clarkmoody
It already is political suicide to mention cutting any entitlement. This is
the fundamental flaw of democracy.

------
googletazer
I'm for basic income, however looking beyond it - whats really necessary is to
be able to let each person discover their (productive) passion to be able to
contribute and exchange their time and labor for some unit of value. 99% of
people will still be competing for the same thing - food, housing,
transportation, low level luxuries. With demand getting stronger, UNLESS the
people receiving basic income get creative and produce the things they need,
expanding the pie, the prices for them will go up.

Overall, tastes are infinite, I'd love to drive a tesla and live in a
(multi?)million dollar mansion, but I can't. They are too expensive for me -
meaning my work and labor doesn't produce enough value (or may be not valued
appropriately - but this a whole other topic) to exchange for those things I
want. If we want more people to drive teslas and live in mansions, everybody
who will be getting UBI needs to get productive to increase the amounts of
teslas and mansions in existence.

------
ascotan
This concept would simply create inflation.

Image everyone has $10 on island A. Island B sells coconuts and the going rate
for a coconut is $1. Based on other bills the islanders need to pay for, $1
fits the average budget and is what people are willing to pay for coconuts.

Now make everyone on island A have $100. The demand for coconuts rises but
people on island B soon realize they can make more money by raising prices
even though they sell less units. They eventually increase the price of
coconuts to $10 because that ends up being the price point at which the Island
B people are making the most money.

Therefore by increasing the income of everyone by a factor of 10, you end up
increase the prices by a factor of 10. There is some lag time where prices
will balance out though, so if you just kept doing this every month you might
have a period of faux prosperity but you would also be creating runaway
inflation.

~~~
Chinjut
We would not be increasing everyone's income by the same factor. People with
less money would see their income rise by a larger factor than people with
more money. Thus, for example, if you have $0 pre-BI and $X post-BI, with X >
0, there's no amount of inflation that will cancel out the fact that you've
benefited.

------
gerbilly
I would be for this but I'm afraid that once all the other programs are
dismantled, food stamps, welfare etc, that the poor might end up getting less
support than they did before.

I try hard not to be cynical, but I wonder if this isn't a ruse to accomplish
exactly that.

I mean the US is known for being "frugal" when it comes to helping people. See
the medical system for example, or the treatment that veterans get. Why the
sudden surge in generosity, why the sudden desire to redistribute income?

Weren't these anathema just recently, even to some democrats?

Also the fact that it keeps coming up in the media makes me slightly
suspicious.

Why is this being promoted so much right now? I bet there are PR firms out
there calling newspaper reporters and bloggers, to promote coverage of this
idea on behalf of who knows which group or organization. [1]

[1]: [http://www.prwatch.org/](http://www.prwatch.org/)

------
raphaelj
A basic income could make low-pay jobs more interesting than ever, and
companies could benefit from it.

In most developed EU countries, a "social" income is given to unemployed
people. In Belgium, it varies between 550€/month and 850€/month, depending on
the situation. People lose this income as soon as they start to work, that
means that a part-time job with an income of about 1000€/month is really
unattractive. With a basic income, unemployed workers could be stimulated to
accept this kind of low-pay jobs, as the pay will add up to their basic
income.

With the increase of productivity we got in the last 50 years, the hours
worked by low-skilled workers must be lowered, or we will face endlessly
increasing unemployment rates. An universal basic income can stimulate this.

------
wapapaloobop
This isn't why we would do it, but only 1 in 10,000 'unemployed' citizens need
make a significant contribution to open source or some kind of theoretical
discovery to make Basic Income a bargain investment for society as a whole.

------
maxxxxx
This is such a nice distraction from solving any real issues. While people are
debating basic income wages will keep stagnating and big companies are
hoarding money in tax shelters. But hey, let's discuss basic income.

------
branchless
Land value tax. Basic income will raise rents. Tax land not labour.

[http://www.landvaluetax.org/what-is-lvt/](http://www.landvaluetax.org/what-
is-lvt/)

------
uhtred
Surely $833 a month ($10,000 a year) still wouldn't be even close to enough
for someone who is unemployed to live? Wouldn't rent and bills use that up,
without leaving anything for food, clothing etc? I love the idea of universal
basic income, but I feel it would need to be double the amount proposed in
this article to really change society for the better. Otherwise people will
still need to resort to crime to extra money, seeing as there are going to be
even less jobs in the future.

~~~
habosa
While I also find it hard to believe, the Federal Poverty Line is $11,880 for
individuals. If you make $12k a year you are not considered to be in poverty
(if you live alone).

So yes, 10k a year would still leave people below the current poverty line.
But over 45 million americans already live below the poverty line. So evidence
suggest it actually is enough to survive by some standard and may be a good
place to start since it's likely that people will be able to find some
supplementary income through work.

In the long term the goal would be to significantly increase quality of living
for all and hopefully change the horrifying numbers I just presented.

------
shams93
10,000 isn't basic income its like slightly more than welfare for a basic
income to be meaningful in a city like los angeles you're talking at least 70k
if a person has even any hope of having a roommate situation. The other
alternative is to give everybody everything they need in life at no cost, but
10k in los angeles is a joke, if they tax it you're talking still talking
about having a choice between food and a youth hostel bed on that low an
income.

~~~
scld
You wouldn't need to live in a city like Los Angeles. Without job security to
tie you to a location, you would move to areas of the country/state where cost
of living was lowest.

Additionally, if you wanted to live a middle class lifestyle, you would have a
job. That's the incentive to keep working. The basic income is to keep people
at an above-poverty income level, not to keep everyone at middle class. In
fact, the mere definition of the term means you couldn't have everyone at
middle class.

------
Animats
The Bloomberg version of basic income means a minimal payment and an end to
most need-based welfare programs. The guy who drinks up his benefits can just
die on the street.

------
nxzero
One thing that strikes me as a bit off is that there are a massive amount
people that are "retired" but want to work. While I get that basic income is
intended for a segment of the population that's able to work, seems like
including a massive segment of the population that's already receiving basic
income via social security AND wants to work would provide a lot of data for
just the cost of measuring it; meaning the basic income is already covered.

------
jrcii
Abolish all welfare, phase out social security, and have the poor rely on
private charities. If people don't want to donate to the charities that's
their choice, it's their money. You're not entitled to money, food, a home, or
a job -- you're entitled to nothing. You're entitled to starve in the gutter.
If you want something more you have to earn it or have someone voluntarily
agree to give it to you out of their own free will.

~~~
habosa
If you live in the United States, that's not the social contract we've agreed
upon and you should leave if you feel that way. As a citizen of the US we have
decided to collect taxes to provide certain services for the common good.

You are free to fend for yourself in many parts of the world. But not if you
like that blue passport.

------
Overtonwindow
Negative. Those with money will fight like hell to keep from giving it up.
However if by some chance/miracle a guaranteed income is ever instituted, it
will become a political football, as politicians and advocacy groups seek to
continuously push it higher and higher. Instead of a money handout, I would
rather support money in exchange for public works and service. I don't believe
handouts without some kind of exchange will ever really work.

~~~
dsr_
The primary problem with a guaranteed employment program is the proliferation
of edge cases:

\- I want a job, but I have no transportation

\- I want a job, but I have no skills

\- I want the money from a job, and I'm willing to show up to a job, but I
never actually do the work. If you fire me, I will go get another guaranteed
job.

\- I show up to the job and do the work, but my manager hates me and fires me.
I guess I will go get another guaranteed job.

\- I show up to the job and do the work, but all the managers in this town
have an unspoken agreement that they will report people of my (skin color,
gender, orientation, whatever) as not doing the work, so I have been fired
multiple times.

\- Bureaucracy managing the guaranteed jobs program replaces the bureaucracy
managing the programs eliminated by Basic Income.

I'm in favor of more spending on maintenance and public works, but I don't
think a guaranteed jobs program will work as well as basic income.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Good point.

------
yuzi
Side question: what prevents a basic income from being a driving force behind
an inflation jump making the system less stable?

For example: rent. Wouldn't landlords managing properties at the low end of
the market price, raise those prices knowing people both 1. have more
distribution control over their money (cash vs. coupons for things) and 2.
More people in their target market have cash to pay.

------
lmedina
Why not have repayable assistance? The government gives you money for up to 5
years until you get a job, and then you have to pay the government back. You
pay the government back a small percentage of your monthly paycheck, say
0.05%, no interest. It's basically an interest free loan with a long repayment
schedule. But at least the government gets something back.

------
aminok
Entrenching authoritarianism should NOT be the next big thing.

Compulsory basic income requires throwing people who refuse to hand over
currency they receive in private trade in prison, where they are kept in small
enclosures, and often develop mental illness, and suffer physical and sexual
abuse. Techies should not support such a dark, authoritarian vision for the
future.

~~~
Buge
I don't understand your comment. By "hand over currency they receive in
private trade" are you referring to taxes? Taxes already exist without basic
income. The punishment for tax evasion does not necessarily have to increase
because of basic income.

~~~
aminok
Yes. Specifically, I'm referring to taxes on income and sales. A basic income
would most likely require taxes to increase and at the very least will make us
more dependent on these taxes.

------
abhi152
The simple answer is : A subsidy of such large proportions is not economically
viable for the Govt.

------
dools
A universal basic income is inferior to a job guarantee:

[http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/07/09/how-big-is-
big...](http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/07/09/how-big-is-big-enough-
would-the-basic-income-guarantee-satisfy-the-unemployed/)

[http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/16-reasons-
matt-y...](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/16-reasons-matt-
yglesias-wrong-job-guarantee-vs-basic-income.html)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3ne2iu/randall...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3ne2iu/randall_wray_mmt_economist_against_basic_income/)?

[http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=13025](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=13025)

~~~
amai
A job guarantee like they had it in the the former
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc)
?

~~~
dools
No, that was under a communist dictatorship.

That was 100% government employment to the exclusion of the private purpose.

It was a centrally planned economy where the government determined what
everyone should do at all times.

A Job Guarantee, on the other hand (which I'll explain because you obviously
didn't look at any of the links I posted in my initial comment, but rather
went off your pre-existing opinions) is a guarantee by the government that if
the private sector will not or can not employ someone, they will be given a
good job by the government.

I won't bother providing additional links, you're obviously only interested in
dealing with straw men.

------
zamalek
Although I advocate the empowerment of the impoverished, this looks like a
very fundamentally flawed idea that would actually harm those it sets out to
help. We need a different approach.

When you give everyone in the economy a $10000 basic income you drive demand
without driving supply. This graph[1] demonstrates how we _estimate_ the
relationship between the two, as well as price. As you'll notice, an increase
in demand without an associated increase in supply results in an increase in
prices. Essentially we might expect that over time the $10000, with market
forces as the causation, will become the new N=0 point. Your basic salary
becomes worthless. Any economic freedoms that you have created are fleeting in
nature.

A stricter socialist approach seems to be the better one: instead of investing
that money into people's pockets, you invest it in job creation in services
that assist these people. For example: aggressive funding of soup kitchens.
The poorest of the poorest might not have money in their pockets, but it might
be possible to provide even advanced (e.g. internet) services to them in such
a way that they don't require money. This solution conveys no economic freedom
- an ingredient for misery.

Point is: I don't know and honestly, _we_ don't know.

Helping the impoverished is one of the most important goals of our race; but
racing into poorly thought out solutions _might_ result in the impoverished
being no better off in the long run. I'd love to hear some counterarguments
because the basic salary, at least superficially, has the attractive quality
of being simple to implement.

[1]:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Su...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Supply-
and-demand.svg/2000px-Supply-and-demand.svg.png)

~~~
MaulingMonkey
What's the net economic difference between giving someone $5, which they then
spend on soup, and spending $5 to buy soup on their behalf? None. Same for
spending $10000 on someone's behalf via services, versus simply giving them
$10000 which they then spend on the same services. Who holds the taxpayer
provided money when making the final sale for goods or services is moot.

In both cases you're driving up demand, which is what in turn drives up
supply. Supply doesn't magically materialize - either someone pays for it with
money, or someone pays for it with time not spent earning money, to provide
those services or products. As your own graph demonstrates, quantity goes up
regardless. What's your "new N=0 point" on the graph?

My point here is not that there aren't issues with funding demand for services
with inelastic supply (where large increases in price only lead to small
increases in quantity, meaning little good was done.) There are such issues.
Instead, my point is that these are _not UBI specific issues_. They're valid
concerns with housing programs and rent controls today, for example.

The real difference of consideration between UBI vs other social welfare
programs (when taken as a whole), is how demand might _change_ (lowering in
some places while increasing in others) when the ones actually consuming the
services get to direct where the dollars are spent, instead of government
policymakers.

In theory, replacing social welfare programs with UBI might drive demand away
from elastically supplied goods and services, towards inelasticly supplied
goods and services. It's far from a given, though - we have plenty of existing
government programs for such inelastic things as housing. If you see some
fundamental flaw of UBI that would cause demand to shift this way, I've missed
it, so please do share.

I'm more concerned by the other factors:

On the one hand, those in need of services in many cases the ones in the best
position to know what they need, so the money for those services may be spent
more efficiently - especially if there's less waste in red tape bureaucracy,
from government organizations unfettered from the pressures of capitalism.

On the other, if you haven't learned how to manage your money, don't know
about the things that could best help your situation, or are in the grips of
addiction, it may be difficult for you to spend your money wisely.

My understanding is that direct cash influxes to the poor in 3rd world
countries has worked pretty well. It's not _perfectly_ analogous to helping
out the poor in 1st world countries via UBI, but I'm fairly hopeful it's
analogous enough.

~~~
zamalek
> What's your "new N=0 point" on the graph?

In essence I meant that, in a construed way, the buying power of $10000 would
approach the same buying power as the pittance that the impoverished have
today. Your argument was very educational so I have to do some more thinking
about this and may discard that point. Thanks for the food for thought.

------
TrevorJ
The problem is, this doesn't happen in a vacuum: how do you prevent rent-
seeking and COL inflation? Not universal basic income works in a free market,
you may have to control prices directly in order to do it.

------
nazgob
Does such tests as the one made in Kenya make sense at all? Having external
money injected into local economy will have a different effect that taxing
that economy and then redistributing part of it in form of UBI.

------
xufi
Let people fend off for themselves. That's what we do anyways when terror
strikes. Imagine a post acolypatic world everyone fends for themselves are
work hard for it.

------
mindcrime
Find a way to do it without using force, or threat of force, and I'll be on
board. Otherwise, any UBI proposal is a non-starter in my book.

------
michaelbuddy
Problem is there's a large number of people who work hard, produce and frankly
don't look too kindly on those who don't. Why is it so hard to understand that
when we don't have to do something, a lot of people won't do anything but
frivolous non productive activities, while unabashedly leeching off those who
like to work for profit, progress and frankly to make life interesting for
them, their community and the future of all.

------
discardorama
OK, so you introduce UBI. Yay! Now what happens to all the social workers
employed by the city (say, SF)? Remember: SF spends ~$35K/homeless/year. Who
pays when a homeless guy ODs and needs hospitalization? Right now government
housing is subsidized for the poor (some people in SF pay $35/mo for a 2BR
government apartment). Do we still have these subsidies after UBI? What about
food stamps? And the 10M+ illegal immigrants?

------
heckerboy
I will say that if the US ever got a basic income, I wouldn't have a reason to
kill myself anymore.

~~~
aminok
Living on money taken by force from others is an easy solution, but it is not
an ethical one. If you feel like you have a reason to kill yourself, you need
to find someone to talk to about this, not look to the government, and the
fruits of its authority, for your salvation. It's not lack of resources that
makes someone suicidal. It's a deficiency in your ability to address the
challenges you face in your life.

Again: the solution is to talk to someone. There are many who go through what
you do, and there are many people out there who can help. You're not alone.

------
saiya-jin
communism. everybody was forced to have a job, hence income. once you leave
market forces driving the direction and try to force some righteous system
down the throat of whole society, no exceptions taken, many bad things will
happen. a lot of very unfair situations will occur in the system that aims to
do the opposite.

I mean, by all means, do it, experiment on your society, take all the risks
foreseen and unforeseen. if you manage to make first 50 years in glory (or 100
to be sure), you have my attention. just please, please don't shove it down my
throat in country where me or my family lives. Please. Thank you.

where is the push for better education and more accessible healthcare? Fixing
those guarantees a brighter future for mankind, period. this is roulette where
you can lose a lot, gain a lot too.

------
snomad
Will universal basic income take into account relative cost of living per
geographical area? If so, why isn't the same done with income tax. If no, why
then is it really a universal basic income / all that useful?

~~~
undersuit
Many states, counties and cities in the United States already leverage their
own income taxes in addition to federal income taxation. How about we let the
same states, counties, and cities decide if they want to provide their own
basic income addendum. And they might need to if the BI amount is great enough
that a janitor in Seattle, or a maid in SF no longers sees a reason to live
anywhere near a big city for a job that barely covers their financial needs,
needs imposed on them by living in a big city.

------
coderKen
First world problems.

------
shamus
Testing

------
shamus
I agree

------
idiot99
There isn't huge support. Step out of the bubble...

It's just the new generation of kids flirting with communism.

~~~
gjm11
I think you may not have it perfectly clear in your mind what "communism"
means.

~~~
idiot99
Perhaps you need to convince the public that having a large government handing
out a specific allowance to everyone regardless of how hard they work, is
somehow different to communism.

~~~
gjm11
So far as I can tell, "the public" has this perfectly clear. (Or at least as
clear as "the public" ever has anything, which is not necessarily all that
clear.) I think what you mean is that I need to convince _you_.

I've no idea what (if anything) you would accept as evidence. Here's the first
paragraph of the Wikipedia page on communism; feel free to check that the
[...]s don't hide anything that changes the meaning.

> [...] communism [...] is a[...] ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is
> the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order
> structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the
> absence of social classes, money, and the state.

Does a universal basic income cause, or require, _common ownership of the
means of production_? Nope. The means of production stay largely in the hands
of businesses (or, as the communists might say, of Capital). Does it involve
_the absence of social classes_? Nope. Successful lawyers (say) will continue
to have much, much more money and much higher social status than anyone who's
largely dependent on basic income. Does it involve _the absence of money_?
Nope. It depends on the continued existence of money. Does it involve _the
absence of the state_? Nope. It depends on the continued existence of the
state.

Well, who cares what those pinko loons at Wikipedia say? Communism is whatever
they had in the Soviet Union. How about that?

Well, in the Soviet Union they had a _centrally planned economy_ where the
government told factories how many of everything to make, etc. Does a
universal basic income cause or require that? Nope. Businesses continue to
decide what to make and what to sell at what prices; individual consumers
continue to decide what to buy. ("But a basic income would require a _big
government_!" Well, kinda, in that the government would be taking in more tax
and handing out more money. But that's got nothing to do with central
planning. A basic income wouldn't mean that the government would do more of
the _work_ ; if anything, it should be less because the BI would replace a
bunch of other more complicated benefits that require more administrative work
to make sure they're going to the "right" people.) In the Soviet Union they
had a _totalitarian state_ with secret police, gulags, etc. Does a universal
basic income require that? Nope. Obviously. The Soviet Union had _undemocratic
politics_ where the Communists were always in power. Does a universal basic
income require that? Nope. Obviously.

"Communism" does not mean the same as "anything vaguely leftish that I don't
like".

~~~
idiot99
We'll have to agree to disagree. And as I say, step outside your bubble. The
vast vast majority of the population reject basic income, in favour of a
meritocracy, where the harder you work, the more money you can earn.

Confiscating money from everyone, and then distributing it equally amongst the
population (Regardless of whether they need it or deserve it) doesn't sit very
well with people.

~~~
undersuit
>The vast vast majority of the population reject basic income, in favour of a
meritocracy, where the harder you work, the more money you can earn.

Then the vast majority of the population are rejecting basic income for the
wrong reasons. Nothing about basic income invalidates meritocracy. In fact I
would say it strengthens it. No longer is the rat race composed of a
hodgepodge of willing, unwilling, and incompetent workers. All the unwilling
or incompetent workers drop out. Those that still work have reasons to work
besides filling a seat for 8 hours so they can continue to afford a meal .

~~~
tniswong
Mind explaining how intentionally reducing the explicit tangible rewards of
personal merit strengthens a meritocracy?

Is critical thinking no longer a thing?

~~~
undersuit
Would you mind explaining how you think anyone is "intentionally reducing the
explicit tangible rewards of personal merit?"

~~~
tniswong
In a meritocracy, people earn money by means reaping the rewards of their own
personal merit.

The government has no money of its own. So, in order to fund these programs,
it must first appropriate said money from the people who earned it in the
first place.

This appropriation (taxation) is non-voluntary, and enforced by threat of
violence (force of law).

When someone takes something from me by force that I would not otherwise be
willing to give them, it is by definition theft.

Therefore, it would seem to me that taxation/theft is an intentional attempt
by the government to reduce the rewards of my own personal merit.

------
ck2
Millions can't even get health insurance in half of the entire USA (24 vs 26
states do not have medicaid expansion because the supreme court ruled it was
okay to screw everyone over).

Good luck with this basic income fantasy. Might as well try to negotiate
reparations for slavery.

How about you finish what was started FIRST - and don't give me this "we can
do multiple things at the same time" nonsense. This is six years later. The
need for health care is pretty much universally understood. Giving people free
money would never get out of congress.

------
known
1\. USA could have PREVENTED
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia)
had it initiated UBI in 1971 for rest of the world when it pegged dollar to
OPEC Oil
[http://www.zerohedge.com/print/502779](http://www.zerohedge.com/print/502779)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world)
provides impetus to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)
will OPPOSE UBI because they fear you'll NOT be subservient to them

4\. UBI is prudent distribution of cash, not wealth

