
A Guaranteed Income for Every American - hourislate
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586
======
jondubois
I like the idea of UBI, but the problem with schemes to improve wealth
equality is that usually the middle class ends up footing almost all of the
bill.

If a rich person feels that their wealth is threatened, they can evade the
negative consequences of the scheme (taxes) by relocating their head office to
the Caymans. On the other hand, if a middle class family is negatively
impacted by the scheme - They cannot evade it; they can't afford to move to
another country because they rely on their jobs for income.

If UBI is to be instated, we would also have to implement harsh laws to
prevent the upper classes from evading taxes. Moving wealth to a tax haven
should be made a criminal offence (with jail time).

Also, income (passive income in particular) should always be taxed based on
the country of origin (from which the payment originated) instead of the
complex network of case-by-case tax treaties that currently exist. A single,
origin-based tax system would not have all the loopholes that a complex case-
by-case system has. Any country that refuses to enter into the origin-based
tax treaty should be kicked out of the UN and trade sanctions should be
imposed.

In practice, a rich person is currently not bound by the laws of their own
country; they are bound by the laws of the country whose laws are the most
convenient for them - They can literally pick and choose how much tax they
want to pay.

~~~
arebop
Does it really matter if a billionaire stacks up billions in some Cayman
account? If so, it is straightforward to use inflation to redistribute those
digits.

What I care about is a billionaire who buys up all the land in my country. The
land can't be hidden and is therefore easy to tax. I care about a billionaire
who eats gold leaf ice cream sundaes while the children across town are
malnourished, but it is easy to tax gold and food sales at restaurants and
groceries.

The big problem historically with sales tax has been that it is regressive,
but with basic income that doesn't matter any more. There's no problem I know
about with land taxes except misguided concern for the elderly and corrupt
loopholes. Why not stop even trying to tax financial abstractions and just
address hoarding?

~~~
madaxe_again
Those billions in a cayman account are dead money. They are the marginal
efficiency of labour crystallised, and then transformed into a immotile
instrument which benefits nobody.

You say it does no harm, but why do you think we're still working 60 hour
weeks when we've improved efficiency in all fields by orders of magnitude
since industrialisation? All that efficiency gain's benefit was "realised" by
the elites, but until that money is spent, loaned, invested, used - that value
is destroyed.

Sure, sure, tell me it's a store of value, but you'd still think the squirrel
that stored 1000 tonnes of acorns for winter and wouldn't share, causing furry
famine, to only then after winter forget where he left them and demand more
acorns from the working squirrels was pretty damn irrational.

~~~
svantana
Money in bank accounts is not like acorns, it's more like having other
squirrels owe you acorns. I don't see why that is such a big deal.

People working 60 hour weeks has less to do with the Cayman islands than with
those people needing a place to stay, and the demand of land far outstripping
the supply, making it a zero sum game. That's why a huge land tax is a no
brainer, but of course it will never happen, because the land owners can
always pull out the old "poor granny won't afford to stay in her own house"
argument and get all the sympathies on their side.

------
fzeroracer
I am all for Basic Income but the way the author wants to implement it would
be a disaster.

My mother is fully disabled and unable to work as a result of her stroke and
she relies on Medicaid, Food Stamps and SSI to live. $13000 per person would
be lower than what she gets right now and that's without considering the
insurance issues. These changes would quite literally kill or leave homeless a
large amount of America's disabled, poor or elderly population.

If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted
based upon the CoL in each area.

~~~
marcoperaza
> _If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and
> adjusted based upon the CoL in each area._

There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who
cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If
individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to
them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part
of the natural ebb and flow that keeps the cost of living reasonable. And can
you imagine what a CoL adjusted UBI for San Francisco would look like? A
massive ripoff of the rest of the country.

~~~
fzeroracer
The problem of course with that argument is that people also need to move into
higher-cost areas in order to find jobs for certain industries. If there was
no regional adjustment that encourages individuals to stay put. Poor people
congregate in low-cost areas with low job opportunities.

A CoL adjustment for San Francisco isn't the problem, but rather the fact that
San Francisco costs so much to begin with.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The problem of course with that argument is that people also need to move
> into higher-cost areas in order to find jobs for certain industries. If
> there was no regional adjustment that encourages individuals to stay put.
> Poor people congregate in low-cost areas with low job opportunities.

That isn't a problem. You get a concentration of people collecting a basic
income who move into a low cost area, then they have money to buy housing and
food and so on so there are jobs needed to construct housing and sell food, so
then some of them get those jobs. Then they have even more money which leads
to even more jobs etc. and soon enough the low cost area isn't so low cost,
but that isn't a problem anymore because now they have jobs.

~~~
fzeroracer
This is far too simplistic, especially when you consider the issue of
gentrification and the rise of housing costs associated with it. You ignore
that this leads back to the same issue: Poor people are now living in a
higher-cost area where their previously held job no longer suffices to live.

So now you force these poor people out of homes that they used to be able to
afford into even poorer areas with worse job security. This is assuming that
they're even able to acquire new jobs. And it would only get worse with
automation.

A basic income that doesn't scale based off of CoL is one that's bound to fail
in the face of automation.

~~~
imtringued
How is a basic income that scales based off of CoL even supposed to work?

A UBI causes the cost of living to rise in the short run. If you readjust the
UBI the cost of living will rise again and again.

Cities like San Francisco will become more attractive because they not only
have more jobs they also pay you more UBI. The more people move in, the higher
the cost of living if housing supply is constrained. Readjusting the UBI then
makes the city even more attractive. At the same time small cities become less
attractive because not only are people moving into the city but their UBI is
shrinking too.

------
Roboprog
If only all of the things that needed doing for the common good were actually
being done now, either by robots, or by a small number of people with machine
assistance, this discussion might make more sense.

Once the roads are fixed, and the parks are clean, the disabled are cared for,
etc, etc, etc. THEN maybe we should have a discussion about "Basic Income".

Our current technology is NOT "The Culture". There is still work to do, it is
"simply" (not so simple) a matter of clawing back some cash from those who
benefitted most from a stable society.

The WSJ's "10K" plan just sounds like a scam to cut more government jobs while
throwing out a small consolation prize to prevent outright rebellion.

------
throwaway13337
"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies,
welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services
program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare."

How the hell does that happen politically?

I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs
in the states but no one seems to be talking about how we get from where we
are to where we want to be, realistically.

~~~
VonGuard
The thing is, I don't think it can happen politically. What is going on now is
just the research stage so that we have some sort of data point for UBI
supporters to latch onto.

There are all sorts of groups inside the UBI tent, and many of them disagree
with each other violently, but we're so far from a UBI that for now, everyone
can agree on it in the broadest possible way.

I, personally, have a completely different take on all of this from most
UBI'ers. I take the long view: in 50 years, physical labor could be
eliminated. WTF do we do when this happens? Do we relegate half of society to
be homeless? Or do we begin the slow march towards eliminating work
altogether.

Few talk about this scenario, and those that do often tack on "... and then
Skynet takes over and robots enslave us all." Yet, it's still a very valid
discussion to be having. I think all this UBI research and interest is in
furtherance of the elimination of work, altogether. That's not something that
will happen over night, or even in 10 years, but in order for it to happen,
humanity needs to begin gathering the data points necessary to enact a
solution to the end of work problem.

In the short term, this would eliminate social safety nets, but let's be
honest, this is NEVER going to happen in America without a revolution of some
kind. Whenever that happens, hopefully the UBI research will be far enough
along to support a movement to enact it.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
I fear the question will be answered with some very dark times. Indeed what
will people do, when most of them aren't actually "necessary", and what will
they agree to, given that most of them will also be driven by fear of becoming
one of those unnecessary ones?

As things stands, politically, and culturally, it's more likely to become som
dystopian story of cleansing. Walled communities of elites keeping the poor
outside of civilized society, and perhaps even death camps.

So I really do hope that we, along the way, not only get data on the economics
of it, but also a new ethical mainstream regarding entitlement. Capitalism
will be a rather dangerous as framework of ethics in a world where economic
value is derived entirely from capital. Only the elite can justify their
existance on that framework.

I'm currently aligned with the geo-libertarian view of things, as an example
of a dissenting UBI-proponent. It seems the "mainstream" UBI thinking at the
moment is rather socialistic in nature. Don't really see how that can fare
much better than the capitalistic views when faced with the proposition that
10% is supposed to pay for the other 90%

------
danbruc
Several years ago I thought a universal basic income would be a good idea but
the longer I thought about it the more that went away. Now I can't even tell
which problem it tries to solve. There won't be enough work for everyone in
the future? Well then cut down working hours instead of having half the
population work full time and pay for the other half. Some jobs don't provide
enough income to make a living? Then have sufficient minimum wages, there is
no point in doing any work that does not pay well enough to make a living.
Also universality, what is the point? Above some income you are essentially
just paying yourself. There might be a technical point because it keeps the
rules simple but besides that I don't see in which way absolute universality
is a feature. Reduce the overhead from many different social programs, for
state and citizen? Fair point, but then again an universal basic income seems
quite a huge hammer.

~~~
trothamel
The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve
the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be
productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try
hard to automate the job out of existence. The argument is that at some point,
the skill level required to justify an income becomes so high, large portions
of the populace become unable to meet that bar.

You can't simply cut down working hours, since the problem isn't that there
aren't enough jobs for people - it's that there are people who are unable to
be productive enough to fill a job.

The UBI gradually transfers responsibility for someone from the government to
an employer, as opposed to a minimum wage + welfare system, where the transfer
is a lot more sharp.

(I haven't decided if I agree with this, and how plausible it actually is -
but I think this is the argument for why UBIs are necessary, and necessary
now.)

~~~
danbruc
If there is a job that does not pay for a living, then there are two possible
reasons. Customers actually value the work enough and pay enough for the
product but the business owners take the money. In this case there should be a
minimum wage cutting into the profits of the business owners making it a
viable job.

On the other hand customers may not value the work enough and the job is just
not viable, there is no market. Then you have to either bring the costs down
by improving efficiency or automating it, or the job has to go away. Not
paying a livable wage to the employers is just exploitation, giving benefits
to the employers just means subsidizing the business owners and customers.

I am a bit unsure about the scenario when we just let the job go away and have
a new unemployed we may have to support with benefits. Wouldn't it have been
better to just subsidize the job a bit instead of having to pay for a new
unemployed? But that of course creates incentives to underpay employees and
take advantage of subsidies. It is probably harder to reason about this case
because it is now a dynamic scenario and it is not obvious how things will
turn out.

I am still struggling a bit to follow your thought process but I think you may
have a point. I will probably have to add something later.

If we are in a situation where a part of the population is plainly unable to
perform any work that pays for a living and we are unable to improve their
skills, then we are really is some kind of trouble. They would essentially be
like handicapped people. In analogy we would have a moral obligation to
support them and it seems better to let them do some work not paying for a
living and provide benefits on top of that instead of just having them fully
on benefits. Kind of contradicting what I wrote above. And we are also back at
the point from above of creating incentives to underpay employees.

The obvious solution would be to not get into this situation in the first
place, to heavily invest into education and training. But if that is not good
enough? How does reality compare to this scenario? What is the outlook? It is
also not obvious to me whether a universal basic income or minimum wages and a
conventional welfare system would provide better incentives. But I think I now
at least understand the argument.

~~~
djrogers
Why should every job provide a 'living wage'? A high school kid working
through the summer at an ice cream shop is learning to work, learning
responsibility, and getting a little spending money - why would you want to
outlaw that?

~~~
rainy-day
Nobody specifically wants to outlaw that. Literally nobody. Laws have to have
a tradeoff between being too general and being too specific (and having too
many special cases). Being too general means catching too many edge cases
where it does more harm than good. Handling too many special cases creates a
moral hazard where there's more benefit in finding loopholes or plainly
ignoring poorly enforced parts of the laws than honest work.

Anecdotally, I did work as a kid, didn't learn anything useful, did not learn
responsibility, a bit of money I didn't really need, and it felt like a waste
of time and left a bad taste overall.

I fully believe that in many, possibly most cases, work is beneficial for kids
(as long as they're not from poor families in which case there will be too
much pressure to overwork, affecting school/homework and taking away whatever
little time they have to enjoy childhood).

------
arbre
Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically
can't afford anything with the basic income?

~~~
stale2002
Only if the government added money to the system without removing it
elsewhere.

Any sane policy doesn't involve just printing money and giving it to people.
It involves taking that money from someone else, through taxes, and THEN
giving it to people.

~~~
j4kp07
Translation: Socialism

------
Roritharr
Once again no answer to the main Question: What to do with people that blow
their UBI by the 2nd of each month on SAAS Startups?

Let them starve? Go without Shelter?

~~~
brador
Pay out UBI daily? The technology exists, no reason not to do it that way.

Also the only way to make a basic income work is through a land or land value
tax. Else you get massive inflation.

~~~
mac01021
How does the redistribution of wealth by using taxes on personal spending or
on earned income to fund UBI cause inflation?

~~~
brador
In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means less
income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation.

Second, under UBI a proportion of the population stops working and this
increases over time as robots replace workers. Reducing earned income,
lowering UBI cash availability. Solution? Print more money = inflation.

With a land value tax you get a known relatively unchanging set amount of $
based on land value. Balancing the inflation/deflation curve.

~~~
chimeracoder
> In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means
> less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation.

This is... not really correct. It's true that expansionary monetary policy is
often practiced in times of economic recession, but that's not really because
there's 'less income to spread around'. And the reason expansionary monetary
policy is practiced isn't to give people more income. (Printing money _doesn
't_ give individuals more income - if you want to do that, you need
expansionary _fiscal_ policy - that's the goal behind tax cuts).

So what _does_ printing money do? Expansionary monetary policy reduces the
costs of loans and investments. The goal is to spur long-term investment
projects by making capital cheaper, which serves to jump-start the economy.
But that has no direct connection to people's personal income. They're
interconnected, sure - everything in the economy is, at some level. But the
connection to inflation (and the connection to printing money) are completely
different things.

~~~
mac01021
> Expansionary monetary policy reduces the costs of loans and investments

How does it do that? Suppose I want to borrow $1M to build a factory, but
nobody (banks, venture capitalists, whatever) can afford to invest in my
endeavor.

So the fed prints a bunch of money, causing 5% inflation. Now the bank can
more easily afford to loan me $1M, because that $1M is worth less.

But now I need a $1.05M loan to build my factory.

~~~
gnaritas
> How does it do that?

By lowering interest rates which encourages borrowing and thus spending and
thus economic activity.

> So the fed prints a bunch of money, causing 5% inflation.

Printing money causes monetary inflation, but does not directly cause price
inflation so you don't need 1.05M to build your factory. Printing money can
eventually lead to price inflation if too much money is printed for too long,
but that doesn't mean all money printing causes price inflation as that lever
can be turned both ways. Lower interest rates to spur spending and get the
economy moving again and then once out of danger raise them again.

------
discardorama
> A UBI will do the good things I claim only if it replaces all other transfer
> payments and the bureaucracies that oversee them.

Unfortunately, I have 2 problems with this:

1\. Of the people that I see in SF who could use UBI, almost none of them seem
the type who would clean up their acts with UBI. They have serious mental
issues, and money means only 1 thing to them: a means to chemical substances.
So what _do_ you do when a guy blows his $2000 monthly stipend on hookers and
blow and now is back on the streets? Arrest him? Send him to jail? Put him in
a mental hospital? And who pays for that? And who provides him the services,
if the bureaucrats who used to do it are gone?

2\. What do you do about the millions who are employed in the service-
providing sector (bureaucrats, non-profits, etc.) ? Right now they make decent
money; you're now going to lay them off. Where will the jobs come from for
them?

~~~
adventured
> Where will the jobs come from for them?

That's a pretty weak criticism. Where are the jobs going to come from to
employ the millions of people that used to be farmers (in 1875)? Where are the
jobs going to come from to employ former delivery milkmen? Or what about the
jobs for people that used to handle telephone call switching?

The same place they've always come from: economic dynamism. The solar
industry, as one basic example, is adding 100,000 new jobs every four years at
this point. In 20 years, that one industry will employ a million people - up
from almost nothing in 2005.

We've got five million job openings presently. The labor market is quite
healthy, with the U6 unemployment rate down to where it was before the
recession.

Besides, unleashing all of that educated labor will result in increased
innovation and economic growth, not less.

~~~
discardorama
> is adding 100,000 new jobs every four years at this point. In 20 years, that
> one industry will employ a million people

I think your math doesn't add up.

But going along with your line of thought: will UBI be phased in over 20
years? No. It'll happen over a year or two. Several million people will
suddenly be off the rolls. That's not a gradual decline; that's a bloody step
function. You will most definitely _not_ have jobs for them. Creating jobs is
hard, really hard.

------
youngButEager
In economics there is a saying: "There's no free lunch."

Basic Income gives people a free lunch.

What is the "opportunity cost" of that free lunch?

For those of you unfamiliar with "opportunity cost", here's an example:

\- you have two passions at age 18: software and playing in rock bands. You
want to become a professional in one of those fields. The rock band choice
prevents you from being in a place long enough to be hired to write code. And
vice versa.

\- You choose to write code. Ten years later you are at the top of your game,
age 32. You own a condo and are married and on an 'executive track' at the
company you work for.

But had you chosen the 'rock band' career, who knows? Maybe you would have
taken off and at age 32 have a string of hit records, millions of fans and
million$ in wealth.

That's the 'opportunity cost' \-- you cannot do both.

Okay back to Basic Income. A person receiving Basic Income could replace that
income by working more. But they don't work more because, why should they?

The opportunity cost of Basic Income is that lost productivity in the economy,
the lost output from that person. Who knows how large that economic benefit to
society is, when it's replaced by "Basic Income for everyone."

------
rayalez
I'm surprised that so many people on HN support UBI, it sounds horrifying to
me. Did you learn nothing from communism? By increasing taxes you decrease
incentives for making wealth, and, more importantly, infringe on individual
freedoms.

Infringing on human rights of the rich people is one of the worst things you
can do for the economy, because they are the people with means of production,
and they are the people with options to go somewhere else.

The premise that you are free to make as much money as you want and not be
punished for it is one of the biggest things that made USA awesome in the
first place.

The idea behind UBI is that we can now afford it because we have abundance of
resources to support it. If that were the case, these resources would be
available without the need to coerce people out of their money.

The only way to get those resources without taking away the freedom is to
treat UBI as what it should be - a charity. Only when there's so much
abundance that people are _willingly_ giving away enough of their money to
support everyone else, when it's a choice and not a coercion, will UBI have a
chance at working without creepy and horrifying consequences.

~~~
papapra
Did you at least read the article ? He writes about replacing the current
welfare system with UBI.

About the taxes, I think you are wrong because you think in black and white.
It's not binary, it's a spectrum and you want to have a balance, in USA the
current system is very favorable to the rich.

~~~
rayalez
In the previous discussion a commenter pretty much explained why this wouldn't
work:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807840)

Also I think I can accept that a certain amount of taxes is a necessary evil.
But let's treat it as such, and avoid taking more than absolutely necessary.

In my opinion UBI is a step way too far in the wrong direction.

~~~
papapra
Why it is necessary evil ? You don't live alone in this world and I bet you
profited enormously from the country, community that you live in.

~~~
rayalez
Because taxes are mandatory, they are taken from people by force.

I am absolutely happy to give back to the community, when it's a voluntary
decision, a choice I am free to make.

Yes, I did benefit from living in a society, but I never signed up to owing
them something for the rest of my life.

It's beautiful when people are making a decision to contribute to society and
help others, it's very different when they are coerced into it.

------
dclowd9901
Not a fan of the decreasing benefits at $60k. That creates a huge donut hole
for those making 59k and then get a 3% promotion. All of a sudden they've take
a paycut. Make it a flat income. (Also, should be closer to $15 or $18k a
year).

~~~
gizmo686
This proposal decreases benefits between $30k and $60k. The total delta in
benefits would be $6.5k. Assuming this decrease occurs linearly, this comes
out to a marginal tax of 21%.

The current marginal tax rate for someone (unmarried) making between 37k and
91k is 25% [0]

This means that over this $30k interval, people would be facing about a 46%
effective marginal tax [1]. The current top bracket is only 39.6% and does not
kick in (for unmarried individuals) until $415k.

While this proposal does create a silly marginal tax rate, it is still below
100%, which means that making more income still leads to more money in your
pocket. Our current system, if you count the value of non-monotary aid, often
exceeds a marginal rate of 100%, which is a far more serious problem.

I agree that the UBI should be flat, because anything else is equivalent to
changing our tax brackets; and if we want to do that, we should just change
our tax brackets.

[0] [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
drop/rp-15-53.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-15-53.pdf)

[1] This number might be slightly different if the two taxes interact with
each other.

~~~
dclowd9901
My mistake. Still, I think it should be a flat UBI. The point shouldn't be to
supplement income but to _be_ income. Plus I think, politically it's a harder
sell to provide levels is support ("WE DONT GET AS MUCH BECAUSE WE'RE
SUCCESSFUL THATS BULLSHIT", etc.)

------
Tycho
I'm surprised UBI is getting all the attention and negative income tax is not
receiving equal consideration.

~~~
maxerickson
A negative income tax would be one way to implement UBI. It sort of fits into
the UBI umbrella.

~~~
Tycho
Doesn't seem like the same thing to me. Negative income tax means you still
need to find someone who will employ you, and also you don't get any benefit
if you are above the threshold so it's not universal.

~~~
redthrow
> you still need to find someone who will employ you

Not necessarily. Negative income tax is one way to implement means-tested
basic income.

One way to implement a NIT is you have a cutoff point (e.g. $20,000/year) and
a rebate rate (e.g. 50%).

So, using the above rate, if your income is...

(a) $0/year ... you get $10,000/year

(b) $10k/year ... you get ($20k-$10k) x 0.5 = $5,000/year (your total income
is $15k/year)

(c) $15k/year ... you get ($20k-$15k) x 0.5 = $2,500/year (your total income
is $17.5k/year)

(d) $20k/year and up ... you get nothing

\---

> you don't get any benefit if you are above the threshold so it's not
> universal

It's not universal in the sense that not everyone gets the government check,
but it's universal in the sense that the same rule is applied to everyone.

~~~
wscott
True, but this would be a very different feel that the one being proposed.
This system would be public assistance and so only poor people would get it.
So it would come with the usual stigma.

When EVERYONE gets the same check then everyone can talk about it freely and
be happy about the money. It may be that with the change in tax rate, higher
income people don't really get a net change to their income so the result in
similar, but the "feel" is dramatically different.

------
todd8
I see lots of comments that suggest that a UBI wouldn't work because the rich
have their money offshore, etc. However, I'm not so pessimistic. The parent
article is about a plan for the US, and in the US, the rich do pay their
taxes. According to the IRS [1], the top 10% make 48% of the total adjusted
gross income in the US and pay over 70% of the total income tax.

Many aspects of the tax system don't make sense to me, but overall it just
isn't true that in the US the rich don't pay their taxes.

Some rich Americans choose to renounce their citizenship each year and leave
for other countries. The numbers are relatively small, and it involves
extremely high tax penalties. (Something like 10 years of taxes and the
payment of all capital gains realized _or not_.) This wouldn't make any
difference to a UBI plan.

[1] [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/soi-a-ints-
id1506.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/soi-a-ints-id1506.pdf)

------
avz
The way I understand the motivation behind UBI is that it is inspired by the
notion that we have (mostly) automated production of goods and therefore human
work has been (mostly) delegated to machines. It is therefore perfectly
reasonable for people to receive UBI so they can purchase all the robot-
produced goods.

The reason I am skeptical of such a view is that production of goods is a tiny
fraction of the work humans actually do. A lot of people these days work on
_solving problems_ , not on producing goods. And we are far from being short
on problems to solve... Alzheimer's, clean energy, climate change...

Saying that humans should not need to work is like saying: This is it. We're
done here. This is the world we want.

~~~
rexpop
> Saying that humans should not need to work is like saying: This is it. We're
> done here. This is the world we want.

That's not what's being said. We're not done. This is not the world we want.
We should be able to work on Alzheimer's, clean energy and climate change
without worrying about where our next meal is coming from.

And, sure, many researches have salaries. But many potential researchers
aren't employed, aren't trained, aren't educated. Think of the millions of
folks whose passion for helping people, taking care of the planet or tinkering
is getting sidelined while they work a cash register to save up for community
college. Those people can use a basic income to find a better, more
productive, more fulfilling and more useful position in life.

------
arcanus
"As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion
cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion
dollars cheaper."

Remarkable how much entitlement spending is booked in the near future.

~~~
mac01021
I don't think this adds up. Here ([https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-
basics/federal-bud...](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-
basics/federal-budget-101/spending/)) is federal spending for 2015. It shows a
total federal spending of 3.8 trillion dollars. This is _all_ spending,
including 0.5 trillion on the military, 0.2 trillion in interest on debt, and
tons of other spending on things that are not welfare or social-safety-net
programs.

Meanwhile, $13k * 300m people, results in an expense of 3.9 trillion. Greater
than the _entire federal budget_.

EDIT: I AM WRONG. The spending proposal from the article does not exceed the
entire federal budget, because people who earn more than 30k of income get
payed a smaller UBI. I did a rough calculation using the best numbers I could
easily find describing the USA's income distribution (good numbers are hard to
find). The result was that this proposal would likely cost just short of 3
trillion dollars. Significantly less than the entire 3.8 trillion dollar
budget, but still more than we currently spend on entitlements.

~~~
danjoc
There's another source of money not included here. The Fed creates money from
nothing. That has to go somewhere. On top of the usual inflationary dollar
creation of the Fed, they were doing "Quantitative Easing" for years to the
tune of about $85-100 Billion per month given to banks in exchange for known
worthless mortgages. So a good quarter of that $3.9 trillion could have been
covered just by some "Quantitative Easing" programs for the poor.

Since the Fed stopped publishing M2, we don't know how much money is really
being created. But it seems to me the logic of "Let's give money to the banks
and they will loan it to the people" doesn't work. Here, the argument seems to
be: Instead of giving money to the banks with expectations, we just give it
directly to the people, cutting out the inefficient middle men entirely.

~~~
notahacker
I'm more sympathetic to innovative monetary policies than most people that
have studied the topic, but the monetary base isn't a money tree and
unfortunately virtually every claim you've made is false.

The M2 growth figures are available and published by Fed sources. They're
nowhere near enough to underwrite a basic income, even if none of that newly
created credit was being directed towards useful economic activity
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2)

M2 isn't created by the Fed anyway, it's created by private banks choosing to
extend credit to entities they believe are on average productive enough to
repay them at prevailing interest rates. It's possible to deter banks from
making future loans of course, but I can't imagine doing that to make room for
untargeted handouts being a good idea

The monetary base the Fed actually is responsible for issuing is much smaller
and has actually shrunk since 2014.
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE)

QE was a temporary large-scale response to financial shocks which is designed
in principle to be reversible so it's about the worst way of funding the
steady stream of expenditure required for BI imaginable.

It also consisted of the Fed buying up swapping the cash for existing
financial assets in the form of government debt. If they're giving away the
newly minted money instead, the amount the Fed can inject into the economy
without generating unwanted inflation is much smaller. That might be desirable
for a well targeted short term stimulus programme, but a BI certainly doesn't
fall into that category (plus you don't get the fringe QE benefit of shrinking
the govt debt/interest burden)

~~~
danjoc
>The M2 growth figures are available and published by Fed sources.

Sorry, typo. I meant M3.

[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_Federal_Reserve_ceases_to_pu...](https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_Federal_Reserve_ceases_to_publish_M3_index)

------
dpweb
You can make the case for this as a simplification of social welfare, but btw
hey - it's also a cure for the coming AI jobs apocalypse! Giving everyone 10k
a year isn't going to help a worker replaced by robots. 10k doesn't get you
far as an annual income. BI doesn't solve the jobs crisis.

You could view it, as subsidizing corporations to decrease wages. Taxpayers
paying what the corporations don't have to. So it won't be surprising to see
Basic income touted not just by the liberal crowd, but by the Wall St
Journal's and corporate interests.

~~~
mac01021
Why won't 10k per year help a worker replaced by robots?

1> It's definitely enough for a single person to live comfortably on, though
perhaps not in the house they lived in before getting lain-off. (I agree
children can be a small problem and the proposal from the article does not
consider them. But if you're not working and don't need to pay for
professional childcare then the cost of a child per year is only a few
thousand for food.)

2> It's 10k per year plus whatever you can earn. If you don't have that pesky
minimum wage restricting job openings to only those tasks that the customer
base values at >$12/hr, then you can rake in a good amount of money performing
tasks that people don't value quite so much.

------
apo
Maybe a silly question, but why $13,000? Why not $5,000? Why not $20,000?

How does the risk/reward tradeoff of this proposal change as that magic number
changes?

Also:

> The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare,
> Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies,
> welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services
> program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare.

What about education funding? What does corporate welfare entail? Defense
spending, for example?

------
anovikov
This idea seems to be so cynical. So capitalists want to, flatten the
distribution of social welfare: give more or less same money, but evenly to
everyone. What will be achieved? Now it is received by the people who are
deeply in need. You are not going to make much profit on them: people who are
deeply in need are very frugal at spending their money, they are price-
conscious by definition. Now everyone will get an even amount, and most
Americans aren't poor by any standard, so the money will be spent to increase
consumption of the non-essentials (increasing your profits), or to invest in
stock (increasing your valuation). And then it is shown as a move to a better
and more fair society.

They want 'good' consumers to consume more and multiply, and 'useless' poor
people to die as quickly as possible (because $3000 is too little to pay for
health insurance) and never have any children (because the UBI is not given to
children, and so if you leave on UBI and have a child, you are instantly
desperately poor, and no other means to support say, single moms, will exist).
Social Darwinism, supply side!

What a cynicism!

~~~
dragons
_people who are deeply in need are very frugal at spending their money_

This article gives some of the logic behind redistributing income this way:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/14/where...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/14/where-
the-poor-and-rich-spend-really-spend-their-money/)

 _The rich save more than the poor, and the more they have, they more they 'll
save. Money that's being saved isn't being spent, which means less business
for everyone from the dry cleaner on the corner to the owner of a five-star
hotel. In turn, that means less work for everybody and a lethargic economy._

 _To be sure, banks can invest the money that the wealthy save, which can
stimulate the economy as well. Yet many observers... are worried that as a
global society, we 've accumulated too much in the way of savings already._

~~~
anovikov
What i totally don't get from this chart, how can housing expenses be so high?
It means about 1/3 if all spending spent on housing, which is about 4-5
trillion a year. Where all that money goes? Construction for example, employs
less than 3% of U.S. workforce. Banking (profits from mortgages) make a
significant part, but it's easy to calculate that don't get a terribly big
chunk.

Also aren't many families living in paid out homes and don't spend anything on
housing at all? 19.9% of all units in the USA are owner-occupied without a
mortgage, and 12.4% are vacant. Meaning 22.71% of families are neither renting
nor paying a mortgage (homeless aside). Which would imply that those who are
spending anything on their housing, spend about 46%, if the average for all
household is about 35% as the chart on your link suggests. Nearly half. Which
is simply hard to believe. Was that the case, housing would have been the
cornerstone of U.S. economy.

Total outstanding mortgage debt is 13.7 trillion, which is less than 1x total
household income in the USA. So spending 35% of income on housing, all debt
could be paid in 3 years even interest included. Because about 60% of people
own their homes vs rent, even not counting that they pay typically more then
renters, it could mean paying out all mortgages in 5 years, which certainly
isn't the case.

Other way around, total value of all U.S. homes is 27.5 trillion, about 12.4%
are unoccupied (if you are paying a mortgage on a second home you don't
occupy, this isn't a housing expense, this is an investment). which leaves
24.1 trillion for occupied homes. If housing is 35% of all income of
Americans, it means 5 years worth of all 'housing' expenses will pay for all
homes in America - including those already paid out. And less than 4 years if
you exclude those paid out.

Something is wrong here. I think these estimates are about 3x wrong.

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/23/heres-
the-a...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/23/heres-the-average-
americans-mortgage-payment-by-ag.aspx)

this chart suggests average share of income Americans pay in mortgage are ca.
14% of their income. renters probably pay less, but even if not, 22.7% pay
nothing because they own their homes outright. Which leaves 10-11% of income
spent on housing, not 35%. Even less if you remember that interest on mortgage
is tax-deductible, so definitely under 10%.

------
jboggan
. . .

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

. . .

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

------
Cozumel
Something I haven't seen anyone else mention, if UBI is introduced won't that
cause prices to increase? For example, supermarket 'own brands' are usually
cheaper than branded products, but if everyone is getting a minimum income
then those prices won't need to be as cheap, just cheaper than alternatives.

~~~
mac01021
Eggs and milk aren't getting more expensive to produce. So, if the currently-
cheapest brand increases its price, it's opening a window for new competition
to sell at the old low price.

It's possible that anticompetitive forces would prevent that competition from
emerging in many cases, but I would not say that it is _obvious_ that prices
will increase under UBI.

~~~
derekp7
Except that it does become more expensive to produce those eggs. That is,
assuming some of UBI gets paid for out of increased taxes that the farmer
would have to pay.

------
scotty79
UBI will just cause rents to go up. Rents in attractive locations are always
as high as most tenants living there can afford. If you give people 1000$,
rents for the poorest will just go up by up to $1000. Property prices will
follow swiftly.

The only force working in opposite direction would be that some people will be
able not to flock to attractive locations but I don't think it'll be enough to
counter the obvious raise.

You'd have to tax property progressively and accept the drop in property price
associated with it being less attractive for people who buy to rent.
Apparently property prices are sort of holly cow in US so no-one in their
right mind can afford doing anything that would harm that, even it it meant
actually ending the poverty.

------
cathartes
What I find strangely absent in most discussion of the UBI is how these fixed
payments will hold up against inflation. Even simple arithmetic based on the
Consumer Price Index over the past forty years will suggest that an amount
like $10,000 US in 2016 dollars will likely be trivial cash in twenty years
time. (And, arguably, it's already trivial cash today for just getting by.)

More than likely, the UBI will have no lasting impact, no matter how it is
implemented, unless the buying power of the dollar is realistically accounted
for in each year's handout. And I just don't see that happening.

------
Shivetya
While it is an interesting idea it is going to have to be crafted in such a
way that politicians don't just treat it like tax law and start carving out
exceptions.

another area people need to look into is changing the direction of though that
has crept into society which that "you deserve this, that, and this, as its
your right" and instead get back to the days where people were encouraged to
strive to return more to society than society gave them.

------
Mz
_This was a bad trade, in my view. Government agencies are the worst of all
mechanisms for dealing with human needs. They are necessarily bound by rules
applied uniformly to people who have the same problems on paper but who will
respond differently to different forms of help. Whether religious or secular,
nongovernmental organization are inherently better able to tailor their
services to local conditions and individual cases._

Yet, ironically, he is for a UBI.

------
TACIXAT
Kind of a meta comment, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if the basic income
movement was (for the most part) started and promoted by an intelligence
agency.

After reading about the literary magazines and abstract art that the CIA
funded I started thinking what a current program would look like. I think it
would look like how basic income is developing.

~~~
mac01021
> After reading about the literary magazines and abstract art that the CIA
> funded ...

Any links?

~~~
Pamar
I suppose the op meant this: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-
art-was-cia-w...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-
weapon-1578808.html)

------
dba7dba
We shouldn't be talking about government paying basic income. We should talk
about millionaires and billionaires paying living wage to everyone working in
their home and every employee in their companies that they share ownership in.
That would be a better conversation to have.

~~~
mac01021
And when they stop hiring people because they no longer require the labor of
people who do not have specialized skill sets?

------
hackaflocka
Some clarifications needed:

1) So, someone who has 8 kids gets the same exact income as someone who has 0
kids?

2) What happens when health insurance costs escalate?

------
TrevorJ
ten thousand dollars a year isn't going to really do anything but enable
people to remain in minimum wage jobs though.

~~~
gregw134
A lot of people only make 15-20k/year. It would do a lot for them.

------
dreamdu5t
I feel surrounded by total idiots. None of the math adds up... Cost of living
is not considered at all. I'm not against the basic idea but the proposals are
beyond half-baked - they're idiotic. I get the feeling nobody writing this UBI
stuff has any experience or understanding of the welfare systems they're
aiming to replace.

------
dragonwriter
The choice for the surtax is perverse: a major point of having a UBI as
opposed to means-tested social benefit program is to maintain the marginal
benefit of additional income; having a "surtax" that reduces the benefit
progressively with income that kicks in at a fairly low income level and
proceeds to increase up to a level that's still not a high income is a fairly
horrible idea that defeats key elements of the basic idea of a UBI.

I'm not a fan of radical big-bang all-at-once UBI replacing other programs
swap anyway (favoring a UBI tied to a dedicated revenue stream that displaces
means-tested benefit programs as it ramps up, instead) but even among big-bang
implementations this is particularly poorly designed.

(1) The "surtax", as discussed above.

(2) Because it relies on electronic deposit to a bank account, it relies on
(but does not provide) a solution to the problem of the unbanked.

(3) The decision to apply it only to adults is dubious, but if you are going
to have an age-qualified UBI, it should apply at a minimum to all legal adults
-- everyone over 18.

(4) The benefit (after deducting the required health insurance purchase, which
for those with no other income simply replaces Medicaid, which is eliminated
[0]) is below poverty level. Which would make sense as an initial condition of
a UBI which was built to grow over time, but this proposal doesn't appear to
be -- its a proposal, therefore, to maintain, rather than alleviate, poverty.

(5) Apparently, the author prefers to fund the UBI for everyone largely by
continuing the existing regressive, labor-pays-only, payroll taxes (Medicare
is flat, Social Security is flat up to a limit, and then capped, making it --
and overall payroll taxes -- regressive overall), whose current regressive
structure (including the flat structure of Medicare) is justified based on the
idea that they are buy-ins to benefit programs that provide consistent
(Medicare) or capped, contribution-determined (Social Security) benefits.
Aside from there being no sane rationale that would justify this, it entirely
eliminates UBI's utility as a system to help adapt the economy to deal with
progressive automation and the dynamics of the labor market moving toward a
larger pool of jobs that have lower returns and a narrowing highly (and
increasingly-highly) paid pool of elite workers. Moral issues aside, payroll
tax structure can't support the author's proposed UBI going forward.

Then again, I suspect that's the author's intent: kill Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid, etc., and replace them with something that _cannot_
function in the long term. After all, this is a proposal for a social transfer
program from an author who has written an entire book setting out supposedly
universal laws that each individually (and, _a fortiori_ , all combined)
supposedly justify the conclusion that _all social transfers are inherenty
harmful and should be eliminated_.

[0] The author indicates the healthcare component is too complex to discuss in
the article, but this is also a particularly worrying component. Looking at
what $3,000 gets you on the health insurance market, this mandatory insurance
purchase replacing Medicaid might make the poorest of the poor significantly
worse off by itself.

------
blazespin
This will track inflation?

------
aminok
Basic income, like all compulsory income redistribution programs, is a
disgusting authoritarian intrusion that should be rejected by all moral
people.

------
ChrisLomont
Some sanity checks that UBI fails in every method I've seen: it's some
combination of (usually multiple): 1) costs a huge amount more in taxation, 2)
screws those most needing help, 3) is not universal, but simply a tax on rich
to give to poor, or 4) does not address the economic consequences that negate
a significant part of the claims. Simple checks for this one:

1) 236,000,000 Americans aged 21+ [1] times 13,000 each is $3 trillion needing
gathered in taxed to hand out. Entire Federal receipts for 2015 was $3.25
trillion [2].

2) The author scraps all current transfer programs (common), including Social
Security and Medicare. The plan requires 3K of the 10K to be for health
insurance. Average Social Security payment is 14,784 [3]. So we screwed Social
Security recipients, who more likely need the money than then average person
getting the new free UBI.

3) Medicare currently spends around 900B, which I assume will still need
covered, since people will still have medical needs. The 3K allocated above,
times 236M people, is 708B, not enough to cover Medicare, and certainly not
enough to replace all current health care insurance.

4) The transfer programs cut total at most 2T [2].

5) An analysis of his tax scheme, using [4]. The first 30K is not taxed (23.5%
of households). Those above 60K get no UBI (46% of households). As such, I
wonder if they still need to pay an additional 3K for insurance since they
didn't get the 13K? We'll assume so. The rest we can assume has linear
benefits from 30K (13K free money) to 60K (no free money). This means for each
$2.3 earned over 30K, one loses $1 in free money, which I think would create a
huge disincentive to jump this weird benefit gap. Here's [5]effective federal
tax rates by quintile. Coupled with the income breakdown above, those under
the 60K range will get tax breaks, meaning those above 60K will shoulder a
decent amount more in taxes.

6) It would be interesting to chase down who will have to pay what to meet
these requirements - it's late; perhaps I'll do that later.

7) Removing targeted money (for housing, for food for kids, etc), and simply
giving cash allows people to spend on bad items. The reason many programs are
targeted is to help ensure people buy the necessities first. I would expect
UBI as posed here would realize this, and then add back targeted programs to
avoid the bad effects, negating the claimed simplicity of UBI. Also, many poor
get money from multiple programs, and removing those programs and giving
everyone a fixed 10K would mean a lot of them now get a lot less (as I
claimed, these plans screw the most needy quite often).

8) UBI will most likely make the entire country poorer: the report on Mincome
gives an example of a previous UBI experiment causing a 13% reduction in hours
worked. OECD reports show as benefits increase across countries, more people
live off benefits as opposed to working. Basic economic theory also would make
the same claim. If so, less production means we have less goods and services.

9) Counter to 8, prices will likely rise for things the poor buy, especially
rent, forcing people back to work. This is also basic economic theory;
currently someone willing to put forth X effort to trade for a place to stay
will still do so, and giving that person free money (and everyone) will allow
landlords to raise rent to consume some of the free money. Think of the common
complaint that govt making money easy for houses or college causes those
prices to climb faster than without the easy money - except now this applies
to a lot more goods.

So, if we have limited resources, which we do, why not use them in targeted
ways to alleviate problems instead of trying a ham-handed, one-size-tries-to-
fit-all solution? This is my main complaint about UBI desires - it necessarily
removes benefits from the most needy to give to the less needy by ignoring the
level or situation (or even regional cost of living changes).

And if your reply is we simply raise taxes, then why not apply targeted
benefits with those increased taxes? It _still_ would provide help where most
needed, instead of blind (and suboptimal) allocation.

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

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget)

[3]
[https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)

[5]
[https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/effective_rates_0.pdf)

------
poppow
Murray is known for his eugenics arguments. He's pushing for economic
Darwinism. The use of 'DNA' in his article belies his propensities. He uses
pseudoscience to sell his brand of politics. Firing salvos for a Trump
advisor.

------
jkelsey
I'm sorry libertarians, but you can't just throw a equal amount of cash at
everybody and say good luck. Society just isn't that simple. Different people
have different needs, and that's where the complex overhead of a bureaucracy
comes in.

Stop trying to starve the beast already, and instead, help make it better. Or,
admit at least, that you just don't give a damn about people who aren't like
you.

~~~
DanBC
UBI isn't about libertarianism, it's about reducing the fucking stupid
disincentives built into current benefits systems.

Instead of telling people that they can have this money only if they work less
than 16 hours a week, or only if they stay disabled, just give them the money.

That way you don't need to employ doctors to see if someone is still as
disabled as they were last year, and people who get a part time job can
increase their hours without penalty.

~~~
Tycho
But it might create even bigger disincentives that have a much more universal
effect, which could be disasterous.

~~~
leereeves
There are good reasons to think it won't.

People continue to work after they have enough money not to; people making
$40K per year go to night school to try to increase their income.

Most people continue to want more after their basic needs are met.

And beyond money, work can give a sense of purpose and a connection to other
people.

~~~
Tycho
But we're not talking about 'most' people. We're talking about all people.
What about the people who think to themselves, I don't want to work, I want to
live off welfare. Now there will be more of those people (especially since
technology satisfies more and more leisure needs for just the price of an
internet connection). Also as people grow up in such a society, they don't
have that driving motive in the back of their mind that if they have to
eventually find employment to survive. How will such people turn out as
adults?

The promise of UBI is saving money and unlocking more human potential (by
allowing more risk taking, or letting artists pursue their art, or whatever).
But if you think of the need to be productive (for survival) as a
force/pressure that has shaped the complex system we call society since the
dawn of civilisation, then I can imagine that removing that force in a large
nation could result in something extremely dysfunctional or even horrifying.

~~~
sambe
I would expect them to get bored and find something interesting to do. Could
be quite a positive. Regardless, most existing small studies and surveys show
few people behave like this or intend to.

~~~
Tycho
I worry that the small studies and surveys tell us nothing about the real
dangers - from interaction and scale effects in a complex system.

