
After Universal Basic Income, the Flood - simonsarris
https://medium.com/p/after-universal-basic-income-the-flood-217db9889c07
======
jondubois
I don't think rent prices would be such a problem if UBI was introduced. Right
now a lot of people are essentially forced to live in big cities because they
can't find a job elsewhere and they need the money desperately. This drives up
rent prices in the cities.

If you give everyone just enough money to survive, it will encourage people to
move back to the suburbs where rent is cheaper. They might have a hard time
finding a job there initially but they may have the opportunity to start their
own small businesses instead - This would be a boost to suburban economies.

Regarding the argument about some people wasting their UBI. I think that's
fine. We're not looking for equality so much as we're looking for fairness. If
someone gambles away their UBI every month, at least that money will be put
into circulation and provide work to other people who are not wasteful.

UBI is about giving people breathing space to make decisions in their lives
instead of being forced to follow the line of breadcrumbs that corporations
have left behind.

~~~
eesmith
Rent is cheaper in the suburbs, yes, but suburbs have their own costs. For
example, you may need to use a car to go places, and car ownership is not
cheap.

Various sites ([http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/city-or-
suburbs-w...](http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/city-or-suburbs-
where-can-you-afford-to-live/) , [https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/cost-
of-living-in-city-...](https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/cost-of-living-in-
city-vs-suburbs/) , [https://boomerandecho.com/living-in-the-city-vs-the-
suburbs-...](https://boomerandecho.com/living-in-the-city-vs-the-suburbs-pros-
and-cons/) ) discuss how sometimes it's cheaper and sometimes it's more
expensive to live in the suburbs.

The first two point out other alternatives; the first, "many Canadians are
opting for walkable communities that offer nearby shopping, work, transit and
amenities. Known in city-planner speak as “complete neighbourhoods,” these
walkable neighbourhoods can be found in both urban and suburban settings.";
the secondm "you may find a lower cost of living in a small town.".

Personally, I think UBI is more likely to support living in small towns than
living in the suburbs. There are many small towns losing population because of
people moving to the big cities to find work.

~~~
jondubois
I live in a big city now (London UK) and take the train to work. Transport
costs me much more than owning a car back when I lived in a town; even if you
factor in depreciation, petrol, insurance, traffic fines etc... It's
incomparable.

Every big city I've lived in (across many different countries) is similar in
terms of transport costs so it's not just a UK thing.

The cost of living in suburbs is nothing. Peanuts. When I was working remotely
living in a mid size town in Australia I was able to save up a lot of money
very quickly. I just can't do this in a big city.

~~~
hsod
How much do you pay for the train every month?

~~~
jondubois
Minimum £180 per month - $250 USD; that's just for my daily work commute. I
usually pay extra for weekend travel.

------
HisGraceTheDuck
Until I read this I was more or less pro-UBI but this article makes some
excellent points.

UBI essentially assumes that everyone is a rational actor and that they will
not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things (drugs,
alcohol, gambling, excessively expensive consumables, etc). This is
demonstrably false, especially if individuals don't have a day job. On an
individual level it's easy to say that people should be responsible for their
own wellbeing. But as a matter of public policy, it's just plain bad policy.

It's also hard to see how that money would /not/ be extracted in the form of
higher prices across the board.

And the main point of the article is a very good one: what happens to all the
now-unskilled labour?

~~~
tmnvix
> UBI essentially assumes that everyone is a rational actor and that they will
> not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things (drugs,
> alcohol, gambling, excessively expensive consumables, etc). This is
> demonstrably false, especially if individuals don't have a day job.

Most people that collect social welfare payments in Australia and New Zealand
don't do this - they are frugal with what they get and are careful to pay for
their essentials first.

Those that aren't able to budget like this are often offered help in the form
of budgeting advice and planning. Sometimes they will find themselves in a
situation where they receive the payment they are entitled to, minus the cost
of their rent - which is paid directly to their accommodation provider (often
the government).

Beyond this, the number of people that don't benefit from their welfare
payments because they fritter them away is vanishingly small.

BTW, here in NZ we do actually have a UBI, it's available to everyone
regardless of income. The only condition is you have to be of retirement age.
Unsurprisingly, it is very, very popular and nobody _ever_ brings up the kind
of objections to it that you have here with regard to UBI.

~~~
neilwilson
That condition is important though. Have you ever wondered why the retirement
age keeps going up despite there being a constant shortage of work? That's
because society will only grant you a certain number of years off in return
for the years you spent on the job.

So retirement is just deferred wages. That's a different concept to getting
paid for nothing all the time.

~~~
tmnvix
How to afford a UBI is a different issue. (As an aside, I believe it is
possible, but only after fundamental tax reform that shifts the burden away
from earned income and towards unearned income.)

My point with the pension example above was to illustrate that a universal
'living allowance' doesn't necessarily get squandered.

------
sologoub
Reading the article, the author takes a lot of stabs at "hipsters" and makes
"men just want to do drugs and watch TV" comment. So what?

If we truly are moving to a society where labor as we have it today becomes
unnecessary, leisure has to replace a portion of that. Note that 18-19 century
landowning classes produced a lot of what we today would call negative
behaviors (drugs, drinking, gambling, parties, etc), but the same classes also
produced a lot of scientific and philosophical advances we take for granted
today. A lot of these advances are possible because people could sit for hours
musing on various topics without the need to produce something marketable
immediately.

If we can finance one more Newton or Einstein at the cost of hundreds of
thousands spending their time watching TV, I'd say that's a worthy trade.

Another issue here is that UBI can bring about a lot more investment of human
capital into causes that do not produce marketable outputs, such as care for
environment or fellow human being on a voluntary basis. This needs a
culture/norm shift, but it is possible.

~~~
sologoub
One of the unintended consequence that just occurred to me is trying to game
the system with the number of children to secure the greatest total income.
This could lead to unsustainable (not that we know if our current population
size is sustainable) population growth/explosion.

To combat such gaming, the UBI may need to phase out payments beyond
replacement rate until they reach 18 or something like that.

~~~
eesmith
Your observation which just occurred to you has been a long-time bugbear of
the conservative tabloid "Daily Mail" and at least some Tories. Here's an
article combining the two:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364718/No-
benefit-c...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364718/No-benefit-
child-youre-dole-Tories-unveil-controversial-welfare-plan.html) .

My view is that people don't want to simply maximize income, otherwise
everyone would have two or three jobs and no free time. And taking care of
children sometimes feels like having an extra job. I think the Daily Mail,
etc. view comes from the idea that the poor are poor simply because they are a
bad type of person, and not because of, say, structural inequalities or class
oppression.

Bear also in mind that those countries with a level high amount of social
services (long paternity leave, free day care, subsidies for children, etc.)
tend also to have low rates of childbirth. Quoting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#Coercive_population...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#Coercive_population_control)
:

> In many countries, the steady decline in birth rates over the past decades
> can be greatly attributed to the significant gains in women's freedoms, such
> as tackling the phenomenon of forced marriage and child marriage, education
> for women and increased socioeconomic opportunities. Women of all economic,
> social, religious and educational persuasions are choosing to have less
> children as they are gaining more control over their own reproductive
> rights. Apart from more children living into their adult years, women are
> often more ambitious to take up work, education and living their own lives
> rather than just a life of reproduction.[45] Birth rates in third world
> countries have fallen due to the introduction of family planning clinics.

~~~
sologoub
The low rates are from incumbent majority populations, as things you describe
tend to also come with a much better treatment of women and significantly
increased use of contraception.

My comment was not meant to vilify a family that would choose to have more
kids as the result of UBI, but more to indicate that it could be a rational
choice for some.

With full time work, it's often hard to raise one child, but if all you are
obligated to do is care for the children and everything else is flexible, it
is rational to consider that many families will choose 2 instead of 1, 3
instead of 2 and so on.

This choice is irrespective of the income braket, btw. End result could still
be a disaster for our ecology.

~~~
eesmith
I'm sorry to sound disrespectful, but I find it hard to believe that within an
hour you did the research to go from "I just thought of X" to being able to
make large-scale statements like "The low rates are from incumbent majority
populations".

Do you have references that support your statement?

Especially as the reference I gave concerned people on the dole in England,
most of whom are members of the "incumbent majority population".

"This choice is irrespective of the income braket"

Yet if you look at rich people, with more than enough income to hire nannies,
au pairs, and the like, and who don't need to work _at all_ , you still don't
see them as a group having more children.

~~~
sologoub
Relationship between furtility rates and condition of women is very well
documented and something I studied in advanced Econ classes in university.
Google would be a good source for that.

Here's one example of a paper on the subject:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12037/full#p...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12037/full#padr12037-tbl3-note-0001)
"Immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh in the UK and immigrants from Turkey
in France, Belgium, and Germany have significantly higher first birth rates
than most other population subgroups, which is expected given that they
arrived in Europe from high-fertility societies."

Note that there is a decaying towards the national average with each
successive generation.

Please show statistics that demonstrate that the ultra wealthy do not have
more children than the national average.

~~~
AstralStorm
This is dodging the issue. There must be another reason than "not immigrant".

The direct inverse correlation is with income per capita (PPP and adjusted for
social services) and nothing else. Not education levels, GINI, freedom of
women. Even in countries where contraceptives are rarely used and women have
limited rights, such as Saudi Arabia.

Try stats from, say, gapminder.

The biological theories suggest birth rate selection based on living
conditions.

------
ajuc
The problem I have with UBI is - I lived in a country that had something very
similar - communist Poland.

I've seen it personally - when you get money no matter if you do anything - A
LOT of people just won't. They will happily consume what little they have and
focus on other things. You could go to jail for not working in these times, so
people pretended to work, but they weren't really working.

Efficiency was awful. One example - my country is one of the top food
exporters in EU. 27 years ago we had food shortages and rationing system for
many goods. Exports grew over 20 times. GDP grew around 10 times.

That's the difference in output I'm talking about. And countries where they
had full collectivization were even worse. We had "communism lite".

Admittedly there are differences between communism and UBI - the system was
forced by USSR and they also did some very unpopular things (like persecuting
people for religion, murdering WW2-era heroes, beating students and falsifying
elections). Also - the chances to make any proper career were very small
without at least some participation in the regime - for example signing "I
will spy on my colleagues", giving bribes (not money, money were worthless,
but favours), etc.

So compared to capitalism the positive reinforcement to working was much
weaker, and negative reinforcement wasn't there.

With UBI negative reinforcement also disappears but positive reinforcement
stays there. Maybe it will suffice. I don't think so.

~~~
closeparen
Except "how do I motivate my workers to actually do work" isn't a problem we
have as a society anymore, it's "oh shit what do we do with all these people
no employer has any use for?"

~~~
jahnu
To horrendously butcher a quote: "He who claims the unemployed should not be
lazy but find jobs usually has none to offer nor knows where one can be
found."

------
ageek123
I think many of the UBI supporters know "UBI will replace all the existing
welfare programs" is just a sales pitch, and not actually what will happen.
For the reasons mentions in this article, UBI will end up being _in addition_
to existing welfare programs, not _instead of_ them. This deceit allows
supporters to claim it won't be astronomically expensive, and then once it has
become policy and it turns out people aren't using the money on necessities,
they will say "oh, I guess we need to keep all the other programs too!" Thus
achieving their actual goal of massively growing the welfare state.

UBI is fundamentally about ratcheting up redistribution, not ensuring that
people's necessities are met. Programs for the latter will continue to be
necessary.

~~~
jahnu
> I think many of the UBI supporters know

A supposition. Fine. Opinion is ok although supporting evidence would be nice.

> UBI is fundamentally about ratcheting up redistribution, not ensuring that
> people's necessities are met

Declaration of fact without supporting evidence. An argument based on an
unsupported opinion.

~~~
mcbruiser3
common sense requires no supporting evidence.

------
docdeek
Nice article. The most interesting point is the question posed for proponents
of UBI: what do you do if it doesn’t work out as planned? Extending that, if
it turns out UBI is a bad idea, how do you get out of it? One thing that
governments find hard to do is take back something that they have started
giving away to people. It seems to me that, despite the obvious challenges, it
is going to be far easier to launch UBI than it would be to close it down and
move onto something else. If anyone knows of a UBI supporter that has
explained how to ‘exit’ UBI if it isn’t working, I’d be interested in the
link.

~~~
tromp
You could introduce it gradually. First it's only available to those of age
65+, then one year later, if all goes well, it becomes available at age 64,
etc. When it turns out a bad idea, you similarly roll it back, one year at a
time.

~~~
RestlessMind
Then most of the advanced countries already have this sort of system in terms
of pensions or social security in the US. And based on discussions around
strengthening social security, the solutions which are politically feasible
seem to revolve around: increasing retirement age, reducing the benefits (by
limiting COLAs), increasing taxes (by removing caps on salaries subject to SS
taxes).

Any final proposal to improve SS budgets would be a combination of all three,
but I don't see _reducing_ retirement age on the table. So how would your
proposal work in this political climate?

------
jarym
UBI makes sense only if you’re able to ignore pretty much every economic
theory except communism.

One particular issue I have is the fiat nature of money: it’s meant to be
printed to promote economic growth but it will usually reduce purchasing
power. This is similar to the effect of dilution on stock.

The article talked about price inflation bit the real issue with UBI is we
finally remove any economic value that may be equated to money - it just
becomes a piece of paper and it will likely lose value until it has none left.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
Try Georgism if you need an alternative theory:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)

------
youdontknowtho
UBI without a basic safety net for health care is a non-starter. It's not a
substitute for a welfare state. Without it you are on an ever escalating
probability curve towards destabilization.

As for people not "being productive" with their UBI...I hate to break to
everyone but the vast majority of people involved in corporate America are not
productive at all. There is more make work and duplication and accountability
avoidance built-in to corporate life to protect people's income than people
involved in valley startups could possibly understand.

Because the stakes are so high around unemployment, accountability becomes a
very dangerous proposition. Projects are designed to put potentially career
ending actions on consultants or outside parties that assume that
responsibility as part of implementation contracts. It's crazy.

If there was a UBI and social safety net that allowed people to pursue
interests and not force them to take jobs that they dislike and cling to for
dear life...everyone will be better, and I promise the people motivated to
perform will still be performing, they just won't have people in the way that
don't want to be there.

It will also stop hiding the cost of getting high performance employees.
People won't have to take employment to survive.

------
ozy
I am in favor of UBI, a few remarks:

\- mostly because people on the bottom can be powerless and get stuck in low
paying jobs, no means to move, to re-educate, etc.

\- today most countries already redistribute money, in form of minimum wage,
tax cuts, food stamps, disability benefits, heath insurance, etc.

\- UBI is a dial, you can turn it up, or turn it down, redistribute 15% of all
value created is not unreasonable, some European countries are already at
10-15%

\- make sure every dollar earned, helps you move forward, benefits, UBI,
taxation, should never have jumps in scales, but always be linear (this is
horribly off in my country today)

\- drug misuse, poor that cannot handle money, is a problem today, and UBI
won't solve it, it's not on the agenda to dump all social workers ...

\- lazy hipsters, that is intuitive but likely wrong, ... UBI is not exactly
luxurious living, you'd want a job or no car, no nice clothes, no travelling,
etc ...

------
narak
I'm curious why UBI has become popular over Milton Friedman's negative income
tax. It seems to avoid a lot of the lack of incentive and cost issues.

~~~
krfsm
UBI will work even in an environment where many people have no marketable
skills, while negative income tax would just be the state sponsoring
activities with no real value.

We're not there yet, but the odds of ending up there sooner or later is very
high.

(Negative income tax could still be good if the activities themselves have a
positive social value.)

------
ssimoni
Small nit from article - "You don’t build a nuclear power plant (or even a
dam) without a plan for what to do if it goes critical."

Reactors going critical is a good thing.

From wikipedia: When a reactor's neutron population remains steady from one
generation to the next (creating as many new neutrons as are lost), the
fission chain reaction is self-sustaining and the reactor's condition is
referred to as "critical".

------
peshkatari
Wrong on many levels. Just plain wrong assumptions.

------
rapsey
My pessimistic conspiracy theory is UBI is just a carrot on a stick to keep
people pacified. Humanity does not take the high road on a global scale. A war
is likelier and the excess humanity will be killed off.

~~~
js8
That's a conspiracy theory, indeed. If you want to prepare a war, you don't
want "pacified" population. I can imagine somebody combining UBI with some
sort of fascism, just like leninism did it with marxism, but by itself.. I
don't see how alone it could be misused.

~~~
rapsey
I think the political climate is getting more heated up with every passing
year. The right/left rift is large and getting larger. In the US and EU. If it
keeps getting worse like it has been, a (civil) war is a distinct possibility
5-10 years down the line.

------
shams93
UBI has to be extremely aggressive to be effective. We're going to have to
stop wasting resources on wars and militaries. With the obscene amount spent
on the US military to maintain an empire could we instead give every US
citizen a 100k income? Not once the dust has settled, we're in debt for
generations and looking at 70-80% income tax on the small amount of people
left working not to provide income for those pushed out of the economy but to
provide income fr the rentier class who pay hardly or no taxes and live off
the labor of others.

