
A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income - prostoalex
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/free-money-for-surfers-a-genealogy-of-the-idea-of-universal-basic-income/
======
tgv
< the Netherlands ... experienced a wave of “basic grant” militancy in the
1980s and ’90s

Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a
wave of basic grant militancy?

> Pilot programs have been set up in several cities and countries — Utrecht

There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare,
which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs.

Doesn't bode well for the article.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but
a wave of basic grant militancy

I know nothing about these events, but it's not hard to believe a large number
of people came to support UBI during a period of frequent strikes. With huge
groups working together for a common goal, you'd expect some of them would
start supporting more radical ideas

>There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of
welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs.

The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program, also
here

[https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-
expe...](https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-experiment/)

~~~
tgv
> The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program

That's what I commented on. The link is nearly 5 years old, and the policy is
nowhere near UBI.

------
danesparza
I'm glad to see Thomas Paine referenced in this article. So many Americans
don't realize that one of America's founding fathers championed the idea of
universal basic income back when the USA was just being created.

This was something that Andrew Yang pointed out, but was largely ignored.

~~~
innocentoldguy
I hear this a lot but in reading Paine’s writings, I can only find ideas
somewhat similar to Social Security payments for elderly people. I have not
been able to find anything in Paine’s writings that is synonymous with the
concept of UBI. I’m not saying it isn’t in there somewhere, just that I
haven’t found it.

Would you mind citing specifically where you found this information?

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
In Agrarian Justice he proposes to “ create a national fund, out of which
there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one
years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the
loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of
landed property”

He also makes it very clear that this isn’t some form of charity to help
people. But rather about justice

~~~
danesparza
Wait -- so did I misunderstand? Is this more like reparations to native
americans or slaves? I'm confused.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
You can read it in full here
[https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice)

But no he argues that “Every individual in the world is born therein with
legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent.”

------
Causality1
What always seems to happen with UBI studies is the proponents point to
results that say "the people we gave free money to are happier" but never try
to quantify whether that money would have done more good used in a different
way.

~~~
wjmao88
I don't think that's the right question to ask. It should be "Would they be
happier if the tax to fund UBI was not levied"

~~~
gonational
This question is insufficient, because, in most large economies, taxation is
insufficient to fund a UBI have any reasonable size. Therefore, new money
creation (a.k.a. inflation) is the means, and the timeframe for its ruinous
effects are too long to study within a single generation.

~~~
bsanr2
That's a false premise. One of the intended effects of UBI is to universalize
the kind of stability of cash flow that the wealthy tend to benefit from under
Capitalism. This effectively shifts the balance of both economic and political
leverage. In the same way that universal healthcare is less expensive than a
balkanized insurance system because the people who want lower prices suddenly
have a larger say in the marketplace, UBI would lower the amount of capital
wealthy individuals and entities have to put towards assets, and raise the
amount that, collectively, a much larger number of UBI recipients have.

Under these conditions, it makes a lot less sense to, say, build luxury
housing units that are bid up and up by the demand of wealthy investors,
compared to seeing that that demand has now been broken up and distributed
among lower income would-be buyers and renters and realizing that a lot of
money could be made expanding the housing base.

It's all about who has the money. Asset prices will fall as wealth is diffused
among people who don't stockpile capital, making the amount of income
necessary to survive lower.

Taxation is a cornerstone of making UBI work. Of course it has a higher chance
of failure if it's predicated on grabbing money out of thin air.

------
lazyant
No mention of the UBI initiatives in Canada
[https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-
pilot](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot) (scrapped by
the new Conservative government) and the older
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome)
(also "free money for surfers"? wtf)

~~~
rasalas
> (also "free money for surfers"? wtf)

I was curious about the surfers as well. It's a reference to something John
Rawls wrote in 1988:

"[...] those who surf all day off Malibu must find a way to support themselves
and would not be entitled to public funds." [1] provides context.

In 1991, Philippe van Parijs wrote "Why surfers should be fed: The liberal
case for an Unconditional Basic Income", which instead supports Rawls's
surfers. [2]

[1] [https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-
tw...](https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-two/) [2]
[https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Su...](https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Surfers.pdf)

------
franciscop
Spaniard here since this article[1] about Spain was prominently noted in the
linked article, there isn't a basic income plan here and nothing like that has
happened, please stop with making up this kind of stuff about other countries.

There is regular unemployment insurance and an unemployment plan targeted to
temporary job freezes (ERTE) that has always existed, nothing to do with basic
income. I would also like to see BI even if it's just a test, but what we have
here has nothing to do with it.

The government has just made the rules for these pre-existing unemployment
plans a bit more flexible (or arguably not). Also the rent situation has
become a lot better.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-
income-...](https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income-
coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4?international=true&r=US)

Edit: removed references to the future since I cannot predict it and moved
those to the present.

Edit 2: it's also interesting to see the original headline was "Spain is
moving to" (already false, there's no specific plan now) but in this article
the mention was "Spain decided to institute the program" (ridiculous).

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI
testing/experiments.

There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something
to clickbait/fakenews.

~~~
craigsmansion
I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US
citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in
various European countries.

These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in
the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about
repercussions and side-effects.

I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a simple answer to the
various social wrongs within your country, and focus on your healthcare;
that's where various European models _could_ be used as a partial model, and
it's a very good and achievable first step towards a fairer and healthier
society.

~~~
daenz
We never hear about the downsides of other countries models either. It's
always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any
trade offs. That kind of disingenuous promotion doesn't do any favors when it
comes to convincing people.

~~~
franciscop
Interestingly enough, 5-10 years ago in Spain you could hear some proponents
of private healthcare to compare it with the US. Now I think there's enough
understanding that the US model doesn't work that the proponents instead talk
about Singapore or other private models, no one compares them to the US
anymore.

Some arguments against universal health care I have heard in Spain: • Not
enough choice, since you cannot e.g. pay more to get better treatment. • It's
more expensive, since there's no free market to move prices down. • It's more
efficient, since people are not paid to do nothing and impossible to fire
(common complain about gvmt jobs here).

No beef here, just relaying what I've commonly heard

~~~
mcv
My impression is, if you compare health care costs across various wealthy
countries, it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than
privatised health care. Netherland has universal but privatised healthcare,
and has one of the most expensive health care systems in Europe, costing more
than half that of the American health care system. And it's not particularly
better than the more socialised healthcare systems of the surrounding
countries, as far as I can tell.

And the only place in health care where you can have a free market at all, is
in elective treatments. Treatments that you can choose not to use when they
are too expensive. For everything else, it's your health and possibly your
life at stake; you can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it
takes, and that's a situation that's easily abused by profit-seeking
companies.

~~~
zozbot234
> it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised
> health care

Causation goes the other way. If your healthcare is cheap, you might as well
socialize it, and it will _mostly_ be OKish; if it's too expensive (as in the
U.S.) you have no chance of running a satisfactory socialized system.
Switzerland has largely private healthcare and mandatory ("universal") health
insurance, but its costs are not too high despite it being a comparatively
small country with inherently higher costs of providing such services.

> For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you
> can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes

This is not really true. There is such a thing as pointless overtreatment, and
the right balance of benefits vs. costs can only be reached with increased
price transparency on the part of providers.

~~~
erpellan
The mistake we all make is thinking the market includes us, the patients. If
there is anything resembling a 'normal' (price discovery) market, it's between
hospitals and other care providers and the government. The entity with the
funds can foster healthy competition between the entities with the
product/service. If you need medical attention, you need medical attention. A
treated patient is not the customer, they are the output.

------
raincom
UBI works well in developed countries, whose currency others desire.
Developing countries who spend more on imports, can't afford that.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
Given the results in developing countries I’m not sure you can say that. It
could very well be that the increase in GDP more then makes up for any costs
of such policies.

[https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-
changin...](https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changing-
debate-giving-cash-poor)

------
mikedilger
I don't think there is any sort of unanimity regarding UBI. Being compensated
for staying home is not UBI, because it is not ongoing.

I'm against UBI for reasons that became apparent while playing MMORPGs. Stay
with me here and I'll explain.

Players of an RPG want a fun game. But they also want to succeed/win. These
goals partially conflict. If they prioritize winning too highly, and pester
customer support to make the game easier (nerf), the game loses it's fun. Even
(in my estimation) to the people who pestered customer support. Because some
people aren't self aware enough (kids) to realize that the challenge is what
makes it fun.

In life, we want to be lazy. I certainly do. And that desire makes me think a
UBI would be quite nice. But I also realize that I most certainly would be
lazy. I'm already working less than 20 hours per week (pre-COVID) because my
mortgage is paid and I don't really need the money anymore. With a UBI I might
stop work completely. But as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off
more, the real economy will suffer. Less hours will be worked, prices will go
up, and the economy will be more depressed and sluggish.

Robots could save us but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Maybe we
are there in very specific manufacturing industries, but no robot is going to
install a new roof on my house (for example).

So I think we should wait until after all the jobs are taken by robots (rather
than thinking it's imminent when it's most certainly not) to institute UBI.
Eventually. But not any time soon.

OTOH I'm perfectly okay with a means-tested payout to people who really need
it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> In life, we want to be lazy.

Therea plenty of evidence that this isn't really all that true, and that if
there is even a modicum of apparent reward for extra labor, people will
continue to put extra labor in for that reward, often even past the point
where that extra nominal reward seems to provide any additional real utility
for them.

> . I'm already working less than 20 hours per week (pre-COVID) because my
> mortgage is paid and I don't really need the money anymore

Very few people, even well into the income range where research shows no
additional subjective utility to additional earnings, ever reach the point
where they recognize that they don't need any more money. So, you aren't
typical and your entire argument seems to rest on assuming your atypical
attitude holds generally.

> But as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real
> economy will suffer.

Anthropomorphizing the economy here obscures rather than aids understanding;
what would happen if abstention from additional effort were excessively common
is inflation, bringing down the real value of the UBI and reducing the number
of people who found it sufficient to not exert additional effort, pushing
people back into the workforce. It's a self-controlling negative feedback
system.

~~~
Supermancho
>> In life, we want to be lazy.

> Therea plenty of evidence that this isn't really all that true

"All that true" doesn't mean anything and is ostensibly misleading, ie false.
There are segments of the population (pareto) that try to excel, but they
generally do not do it sustainably (burnout). Common terminology...scams,
shortcuts, work smarter not harder, are all colloquialisms centered around
basic human behavior. Even working in ANY industry, people do everything in
their power to either accrue wealth simply and/or make their work easier,
without taking on additional work and asking for more compensation for doing
more with their time.

------
lostlogin
Below is an article arguing that New Zealand has been testing a UBI for
decades with its pension scheme which is available to everyone aged over 65.
Be warned - Gareth Morgan has some interesting politics.
[http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-
super/](http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-super/)

~~~
mikedilger
UBI to people outside of the workforce is entirely different. My argument
against UBI is that it erodes the desire to work, and we still need nearly
everybody of working age to work... until the robots catch up (they still have
a lot of catching up to do).

~~~
ineedasername
I'm not sure how much it erodes the desire to work: Having a minimum wage job
that that keeps you at the the poverty level doesn't really dissuade people
from _wanting more_ and trying to get it. The entire culture of having a
"career path" with an upward trajectory runs counter to the idea that people,
given something like UBI, will suddenly stop wanting & being willing to work
for more.

~~~
_curious_
"I'm not sure how much it erodes the desire to work"

Probably about to the amount of working time and thus income it replaces? That
could be an hour a day, a day a week, or a week per month depending again on
how much UBI we're talking?

"Having a minimum wage job that that keeps you at the the poverty level
doesn't really dissuade people from wanting more and trying to get it."

That's because the job isn't keeping someone at the poverty level, they are
keeping themselves at the poverty level by choice. Sometimes, some people
choose to change that because they realize they are the only thing holding
themselves back, not the other way around.

"The entire culture of having a "career path" with an upward trajectory runs
counter to the idea that people, given something like UBI, will suddenly stop
wanting & being willing to work for more."

Agreed...although many in America are already choosing to reject the notion of
a "career path" and have relinquished their desires for "upward trajectory" \-
and that's before UBI.

------
rodolphoarruda
Quick conceptual question from a noob in the subject: does the UBI entirely
replace social security for elderly individuals or is it added on top of it?

~~~
ineedasername
That seems more like an implementation detail. It certainly could replace
social security, but then again in the US social security payouts are tied to
how much you've paid into it over the years. Then again, UBI would be paid
for, albeit less directly, but tax payments as well so it might not be an
important distinction.

And of course it would be important to peg the UBI to different costs of
living for different regions.

~~~
zozbot234
I'd do the opposite. Peg UBI to the _lowest_ cost of living, and have separate
short-term insurance-only programs (on top of UBI) for folks living in higher-
cost areas. That way, those who are unwilling or unable to work in the longer
term will be incented to move to low-cost areas and relieve pressure
elsewhere.

~~~
ineedasername
I'm not sure I agree... literally not sure. It's an interesting idea though.

------
ralusek
I am a free market advocate, libertarian-lite, that believes that UBI is the
correct social safety net. I am clearly not unique in this regard, as this
actually seems to be the most common type of UBI advocate I've encountered.

That being said, the one lingering question I have comes down to a variant of
inflation. I think most people think of inflation as something that only
happens as a result of monetary policy, but that's not entirely true. Let's
say that UBI could be entirely funded through taxation, no new money is
introduced into the system. There is still a form of inflation on certain
goods. For example, let's take an extreme example of redistribution: we take
all of the money from a billionaire and redistribute it. One billionaire
doesn't buy 100,000,000 TVs for their house, but 1,000,000 people with $1,000
might each buy a TV. 1,000,000 people with an extra $1,000 has a much larger
impact on demand for typical consumer goods than having that wealth be more
concentrated. Of course stricter taxation of the uber-wealthy would have
impacts lessening demand for large investments, so it's not a blanket
inflation in the same way that just printing money would be, but it still has
all of the same characteristics of inflation within certain consumer markets.

It's all very complicated, and I would like to see it modeled. If I'm a
landlord, and I know that my tenants now have an extra $12,000 a year, do I
raise rents? I think the natural argument is that because the scarcity or
value of my real estate didn't actually change, I open myself to being
undercut by competition if I try to arbitrarily raise the value of my property
to reflect increased demand. But the problem is that it might not be entirely
true that the value of my real estate didn't change. When I have to call a
plumber, or gardener, or construction worker for a remodel, are their rates
going to be the same? Are rates going to go up or down? It's very hard for me
to know for sure.

It reminds me a bit of debt. Debt shouldn't necessarily produce inflation, but
it definitely does. Do you think houses would cost hundreds of thousands or
millions of dollars if the average person didn't have access to debt? Would it
cost 50k+ in order to attend college? No. Access to debt dramatically
increases the prices on the things purchased by the available debt, regardless
of whether or not this theoretically is meant to produce inflation. My concern
is that, as with access to debt, the increase in wealth will be met with an
increase in cost across the board, and not due to exploitation, but because
the effects are that most consumer products and services actually just end up
costing as a natural reflection of increased demand.

~~~
zanny
In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate
uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond
production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely finite
supply like land.

TVs keep getting cheaper because economies of scale keep growing and the
industrialization of billions of people in the last 40 years has produced
enough supply to more than meet rising demand combined with technological
innovation and automation efficiencies dropping the resource and labor
requirements substantively. There are probably orders of magnitude more TVs
made and sold today than in 2000, but the cost per unit has fallen in that
time (or you get a radically more complex / better product for comparative
prices).

Insulin, college, rent, etc prices rise uncontrollably because they are supply
constrained by monopolists. But dealing with those anti-competitive markets
and industries needs to happen for the health and wellbeing of society
regardless of the institution of a UBI or not.

~~~
Gibbon1
> In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate
> uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond
> production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely
> finite supply like land.

It's felt to me like we've gone from

Pre 1800: A world where material inputs were very expensive. Complex
manufactured goods ditto. And labor cheap.

1800-1980: Where where materials were cheap but complex manufactured goods
were still expensive and labor not cheap.

Post 2000: Where materials are moderately expensive but complex manufacturing
is dirt dirt cheap. AKA this is a micro controller with a million transistors.
And this is a power transistor. The latter costs more because it requires more
metal, silicon and packaging.

~~~
zanny
While we keep pipe dreaming about full AI or home automation the number of
people required to extract a ton of lumber, iron, oil, etc has dropped an
order of magnitude in the span of decades. Likewise the number of people
required to participate in the refinement of materials into, say, TVs has
fallen by a similar order. And it _keeps_ falling. More industrialized
automation begets more as the pipelines scale up and justify the investments
in maximal "dumb" automation.

One thing people miss out on is transport - the cost to transport goods has
also dropped astronomically thanks to computerized and networked navigation
systems for rail and naval lines. You would never reliably insure the traffic
volume of many docks, shipping lanes, and rail lines globally without
computers controlling and often operating them. Thats how you get ludicrous
quantities of goods crossing oceans for a few percent of its overall cost to
consumers.

~~~
Gibbon1
Over my career I've noted that the 'knee' on the mass production curve gets
lower and lower. The NRE for design, molds and tooling keeps dropping. Out of
my keester 30 years ago you needed 100,000 units to justify a set of injection
molds. Every ten years after cut that number by 10.

Now if you want a 1000 plastic parts, not too complex, NRE is a couple bucks
each.

------
twblalock
The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we
have now.

Let's say we pass a truly universal basic income bill -- every person gets the
same amount of money from the government, every month. It wouldn't take long
before politicians propose giving more money to teachers and single mothers,
or taking benefits away from convicted felons and sex offenders.

Over time, bit by bit, we will entitle certain groups of people to more or
less money than others. That will happen for the same reason our existing
welfare system is the way it is - the voters believe that some people are more
deserving of help than others. UBI would not remain universal, or basic, for
very long.

Given that we can't actually end up with a universal or basic income system,
and that we will end up largely re-creating the same kinds of entitlements
that characterize our current welfare systems, we might as well just improve
and extend our current systems.

~~~
Jedd
> The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system
> we have now.

That's not a problem with UBI.

IMO that scenario is not likely, let alone guaranteed.

I appreciate a pessimistic outlook as much as the next guy, but I don't think
we should abandon UBI because you think it may change in the future.

~~~
twblalock
It is actually a problem with UBI: UBI does not line up with most people's
beliefs about who deserves help, those beliefs are so powerful that they
resulted in the creation of our existing welfare systems, and they aren't
going to go away overnight.

~~~
Jedd
Even if your claim is true, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem with
UBI -- it could be a problem with 'most people's beliefs'.

Consider that 'most people', in the west at least, consider it normal to work
~8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with 1-4 weeks holiday per year, and do this
for ~45 years.

Where did all those numbers come from, and how long have we (as either a
culture, or better yet as a species) thought this is normal?

I don't think anyone's suggesting that most people are inclined or capable of
changing their beliefs, or rather habits, overnight -- but that's also not a
reason to abandon the consideration of UBI.

------
rriepe
Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?

~~~
devit
The fact that UBI should not be about giving an amount of money, but rather
about giving essentials like housing and food or the equivalent in money, and
"doubling" essentials doesn't make as much sense, since you don't have much
use for two beds or twice the food.

~~~
jariel
What constitutes 'basic necessity' changes every year.

Is a car a basic necessity? What about a mobile? Broadband? Netflix/Cable
wouldn't be an obvious choice but many will argue it is. Washing machine? What
about food delivery for those over 55?

You know those 3-wheel motorized chairs, between scooters and wheelchairs for
the elderly ... they are definitely a 'necessity' for some but really quite
'in between' for others.

Once UBI is initiated, the arguments to increase UBI will be unyielding.

The next generations' youth will make arguments about the 'inhumanity' of such
and such. They may have a point, but we will be the 'old timers' thinking they
are mostly ridiculous and actually voting.

~~~
rafd
If we could afford to live in a world where everyone was given $5000/mth,
would we want such a world? (where work was optional) I think yes.

...can we afford that? At this point, probably not. But is it something to
strive for?

I think it is eventually possible to get the costs of providing basic needs to
everyone (say, through automation) to the point where they can be easily
covered by taxes on those who choose to work.

I fear though, that housing is an obstacle to this vision, because in many
countries, people rely on housing to be an investment (ex. my parents house is
the majority of their retirement), and so the politicians protect it as such,
and developers have weird incentives... and so the prices don't go down.

~~~
Kaiyou
I do not think such a world is desirable. It would just distort markets.
Everyone will charge more for everything, starting with rent.

If you cover the basic needs of "everyone", the number of everyone will just
go up and up and up until you can't cover the basic needs anymore. Do you
think earth can sustain infinite people? There has to be a mechanism
preventing people to increase their number to unsustainable levels. The
current world already does a really bad job at that, I don't think we have to
make this worse.

I think the most desirable world is one with a build-in pruning process, where
only the most adapted people survive, thus preventing the number of humans to
reach unsustainable levels, while still progressing to greater heights. After
all, if you just put a cap on the number of children people are allowed to
have you're just going to stagnate. It's better to have a large pool to select
the fittest and prune the rest, resulting in the same number at the end, only
with much better quality. Historically, war was such a pruning process. But I
don't think it was an especially good one.

------
pryce
This article might have been more informative if it had placed these ideas in
context - the rise Marxism and Communism, which tie the state's mandate to
preserving the interests of labour rather than those of capital, provoking in
the west the rise of social democracy, which proposes that a balance can be
achieved between workers and capital while still preserving capitalism.

~~~
mistermann
Mark Blyth is an economist who focuses quite a bit on this topic (labor vs
capital).

Also Thomas Frank (journalist and).

Both have good videos on YouTube.

------
jillesvangurp
Most countries already have programs to prevent people from starving or
freezing to death and those countries also tend to have elaborate health care
programs, and provisions for those not able to work. Even the US has programs
like this in most states though you could argue that compared to other
countries they are a combination of expensive, inefficient, and ineffective.

Basic income is formalizing the status quo that there's a minimum standard for
all that basically translates into everybody receiving those same guarantees
but simply with less bureaucracy & moralistic BS around it. Basically it gets
rid off or vastly simplifies the business of collecting and handing out social
security insurances and different types of benefits. The cost for this in some
countries actually rivals the benefits handed out. E.g. unemployment benefit
programs have amazing amounts of bureaucracy associated in many countries.

For those who work, what changes is that part of their income now comes from
basic income and they pay taxes over the rest. For their employers, they pay
less salary and have less bureaucracy around things like insurance programs
and social security (all taken care off). Also things like minimum incomes go
away: they pay market prices for what somebody does for them. State pensions,
unemployment benefits, sick leave compensation, etc. all basically fold into
this basic income. If you want more, you work and pay for extra insurances
yourself. If you don't, basic income is there for you.

For those that are not part of the labor market, i.e. approaching (or already
over) 50% of the population in many countries, what changes is that their life
becomes a lot simpler. Either they are happy enough to get by on basic income
or they secure some additional source of income. Either way, we're already
paying for their health care, housing, and food as as society. It's a much
less radical change than people think.

IMHO this could actually unlock the labor market in lots of countries. There
are a lot of weird rules around unemployment that actually make it
unattractive or hard for people to work. E.g. people close to their retirement
age are expensive to fire and therefore unattractive to hire in lots of
countries. People on benefits are actually would risk losing their benefits if
they take some job on the side. So, they don't work until they find something
"proper", which for some never happens.

Of course this kind of debate always raises the question "who pays for this?".
The people that ask this never look at the other side of the debate: how much
do we save by eliminating and dismantling the byzantine bureaucracy
responsible for the current system. Nobody has actually run that experiment.

Also, we have plenty of taxes left and plenty of wiggle room with things like
VAT, fuel tax, profit tax and income tax. It boils down to a quite simple
formula: total cost = X*#people. If you have say 17M+ people (NL, my home
country) and assume 500 EURO per person, the total cost would be about 100
billion/year for absolutely everyone. Sounds like a lot but as part of the GDP
(around 900 billion) it's not that bad and the that's completely ignoring the
fact that this would make hiring people lower risk and lower cost for all
companies; which tends to do wonders for their profitability (and thus profit
taxes). The cumulative budget for existing programs in NL is actually similar
to this.

Sadly, doing this is not feasible not for economical reasons but for
political/moralistic reasons and ingrained (wrong/naieve) assumptions that
many people have about how economies work (e.g. that they are balanced and
circular). It's simply too radical for a majority. Even socialist/communist
countries never went there and in fact had a lot of moralism and ideals around
the notion of labor with the state actively trying to control who was allowed
to do what and for how much.

------
burlesona
I don’t know what’s wrong with that website, but visiting it heats up my phone
to the point of being uncomfortable to hold.

~~~
daenz
Based on the load time, they must be proxying all requests through your phone.

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0x8BADF00D
I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank
accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.

~~~
jedberg
Most reasonable UBI proposals draw the funding primarily from a VAT and a
reduction of benefits that it replaces (like food stamps and welfare).

The beauty of a VAT is that while normally regressive, by redistributing the
funds as a UBI, you essentially make it a tax on only upper-middle-class/rich
people.

For example if the VAT is 10% and you give people $1,000 a month, they would
have to spend over $10,000 a month on VAT taxed items (ie. not rent and
probably not a lot of food) before they were paying more than they were
getting back.

Generally people who can afford to spend $10,000 a month on non rent items are
usually making over $180,000 a year.

~~~
karpierz
VAT+UBI is still regressive, you're just subtracting a constant factor. So
instead of hitting the poor the hardest, you're hitting the middle class the
hardest and creating a valley around where the break-even point is.

In addition, since VAT taxes don't apply to capital transactions (as there's
nothing added when you buy or sell a stock), the vast majority of transactions
conducted by the upper class won't be hit by this.

~~~
akvadrako
Which is add it should be. VAT is a tax on consumption which is how resources
get used up. Capital transactions just move money around.

------
zhoujianfu
There are two questions to answer first.

1\. Do you think people can best decide what’s best for themselves?

2\. Do you care about other people?

The Democratic Party answers no and yes.

The Republican Party answers no and no.

The Libertarian Party answers yes and no.

A UBI is the solution to yes and yes.

------
gonational
“Universal basic income” of any reasonable size in, e.g., the US, requires the
creation of new money, because taxation is insufficient for its funding.

New money derives its value, subtractively, from the value of existing money
(“WEALTH”), which is held by individuals who earned that money (“WORKERS“).

Some individuals decide not to work because of reasons OTHER THAN retirement,
inheritance, disability, and child bearing; these individuals do not
contribute directly to production (for convenience, we’ll call this group
“LAZYS”).

Therefore, giving UBI to LAZYS intrinsically takes WEALTH from WORKERS,
regardless of whether not WORKERS also get UBI.

In other words, universal basic income can be correctly defined as “transfer
payments from WORKERS to LAZYS“.

~~~
geddy
Sounds about right. Like everything in the US, some group is trying to figure
out a way to siphon money from those to earn to those who “need it more”. I
don’t care to support this, I want all the money I make, thank you very much.
I’ll decide who to help with it. Or, I’ll help no one at all with the money I
worked for, which according to college students and other people who have no
skills and have paid no taxes, makes me “greedy”.

Now if you want to fix the screwed up healthcare system, I’m all ears.

~~~
ineedasername
So you'd pay for your own private guards, private fire department, pave the
roads you use to drive to work out of your own pocket, and countless other
things that are currently tax-payer funded resources? You'd need to be
exceptionally wealthy indeed. Or maybe you still think there's some basic
things the government should do, and therefore needs to collect taxes for
them. In which case we're not arguing over whether or not money gets siphoned,
we're just arguing over where you draw the line.

------
ineedasername
I think UBI as a single monolithic program for providing minimum resources to
provide the basics of food/shelter etc can be much improved on by other means:

[0]Instead, I think a constellation of smaller, targeted programs (think best-
of-breed) might be more effective and provide a more robust effect: If a
society provides universal healthcare, comprehensive unemployment benefits
that don't have absurdly low caps, housing & food subsidies for those close to
the poverty level, comprehensive disability benefits, and probably a few other
things I'm missing, then the need for a "universal" UBI is diminished: That
too can be targeted towards people not otherwise covered by the above. The
advantage is that each program can be highly tailored to the specific needs &
nuances of those seeking that specific benefit, rather than just throwing a
larger block of money at people.

[0]Note: I'm not particularly attached to this idea. I think is has merit, but
my goal is to start a conversation about the idea, sort of pressure-test it,
not proclaim it as _the_ way to do things.

~~~
zozbot234
A patchwork of "targeted" programs is unsatisfactory for many reasons. It lets
people fall through the cracks, and it results in unintended effects as the
programs are not designed or managed in a consistent way. The need for some
sort of minimal income floor is universal, and it should be addressed in a
universally-applicable way.

~~~
zhoujianfu
Exactly.. my personal genealogy for discovering UBI was:

The government should provide for a base level of food, medicine, housing, and
education.

But let private industry compete for it, so just provide vouchers for each of
those things.

But, how to efficiently allocate the amounts for each individual? How much
health care voucher vs. food voucher vs. housing voucher vs. education
voucher?

Ah, just have a universal “health or food or housing or education” voucher!

Oh, but what about transportation!

Okay, a universal “housing, food, medicine, transportation, and education”
voucher.

Oh wait, we have one of those already! The dollar.

~~~
limomium
Yes. And the "universal" part makes it UNCONDITIONAL on receive, which is the
important part. It removes the necessity for a government institution to
decide per individual how much they are eligible for. Much money is saved.
Since the government already has an institution for checking taxes, the
conditionality is merely moved to the end - they check not whether you get
UBI, but just how much taxes you owe.

