
Stefan Molyneux on Universal Basic Income - MichaelBurge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxUzTW5dM4o
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aminok
Molyneux is right about almost everything, but forcible redistribution
programs like Yubi don't cause inflation unless they're paid for through
seigniorage.

An income tax, and in particular a corporate income tax, is mostly a tax on
profit. You're redistributing monies that would have been received as profit,
as welfare. This is a popular idea because "the rich/corporations are too rich
and don't need billions in profits etc".

The end result of robbing people of the profit that they earn from their
efforts is to get less effort, and in particular, less investment. This
results in a decline in the growth rate of the economy, or even a contraction
in the size of the economy (if the rate of capital formation falls below the
rate of capital depreciation - if this happens, then Molyneaux's statement
will become correct, as there will be inflation due to lower supply of goods
relative to currency units).

The last 40 years have overseen a massive increase in the scale of forcible
income redistribution, and thus serve as a good natural experiment in welfare
economics. The result of massively increasing the scale of forcible
redistribution will likely be the same as the effect we've seen over the last
40 years: slowing productivity growth, and consequently wage growth
stagnation.

Of course, people believe what they want to believe, so they ignore the
lessons of history and double down on a failed ideology that is the root cause
of almost all social ills.

~~~
scotty79
It's not like that new tax money will pay for a MRAP that'll be blown up in
middle east or shelved in Ducksville USA PD.

It will go straight back into the market and into the hands of consumers and
most of it into the hands of consumers that spend all of their money.

You tax the companies profits but you use that money to grow the market.

Companies don't grow because they earn more money. They grow when they have
more customers with more money to buy their products.

~~~
aminok
The US has tried massively increasing how much "free money" it gives people.

[http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-
is-...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-
growth-in-government-spending/?_r=1)

Annual inflation-adjusted spending growth on various components of social
welfare spending (1972 - 2011):

>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%

>Healthcare: 5.7%

>Welfare: 4.1%

Annual inflation-adjusted economic growth over the time frame:

>2.7%

By every broad-based objective measure, the scale of forcible income
redistribution has massively increased in relative and absolute terms. The
only thing the US has to show for it is slower productivity growth, lower wage
growth, huge trade deficits, and I would argue, an explosion in single
parenthood:

[http://pinetreewatchdog.org/500-rise-in-single-parenthood-
fu...](http://pinetreewatchdog.org/500-rise-in-single-parenthood-fueling-
family-poverty-in-maine/)

>You tax the companies profits but you use that money to grow the market.

You don't grow the market by giving people more currency to go shop with.

In a market based economy, the guy who buys the product is buying it with
something of value that he is producing. Any trade is a two way street.
Currency is an abstraction that obfuscates this fact. He might be giving you
some units of currency, but really he's giving you whatever good/service he
had to provide in order to get his hands on that currency. Without a
productive act on his side, the money he's giving has no value to the economy
at large. We are not better off just giving people currency to go shop with.
The only value is in the actual production of goods/services, which people are
incentivized to do when taxes are at their minimum, and they have to earn the
currency they receive through trade.

In other words, economic growth is not enhanced by redistributing income from
highly productive people to unproductive people to shop with.

The only process that increases the actual level of productivity is
investment, which grows the capital stock (factories, gas stations,
restaurants, kiosks, car dealerships, malls and IP) and forcible
redistribution, by reducing income earned on investments, reduces the
incentive to invest.

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h4nkoslo
UBI won't get rid of the rest of the welfare state, so it just ends up being
another transfer program.

SF is not going to give up their $250M / year in "homeless services", and no
government department is going to give up their special snowflake limited-
eligibility programs when that is the source of all of their employment and
power.

For context, in SF alone for one sector (homeless services), "Eight city
departments oversee at least 400 contracts to 76 private organizations, most
of them nonprofits, that deal with homelessness." I would be unsurprised if
employment from administering these services was higher than the number of
homeless "clients".

[http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-
record...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-
record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php)

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loorinm
I don't buy the whole "Raising taxes on the rich will cause general prices to
go up and inflation". He provides no explanation for why that is true.
Countries such as Denmark tax the rich heavily and do not have those effects.

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urmish
It looks like some alternate universe. Stefan Molyneux on the front page of
HN.

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wiz21c
"if you tax companies more, then prices will increase." I stopped there.

That's so "let's not change anything"...

~~~
scotty79
If I were a company owner I would be thrilled if I could drop salaries by
12000 dollars and/or have my customers have additional 12000 dollars of
additional disposable income. I'd gladly paid some more tax for that,
especially if my competition paid it too and especially if some comapnies that
are stealing my customers by driving the prices down thanks to exploiting
their employees would go out of business becouse their employees would finally
have enough comfort too look for another job.

------
scotty79
tl;dw?

~~~
turtleofdeath
tl;dw: Basic Income has been so thoroughly theorized and determined to be a
stupid idea that we shouldn't try it or we'll end up a welfare state forever.

~~~
scotty79
I don't see this guy citing any sources. I listened through some of his
arguments and they are very simplistic and only compelling be because he
selectively mentions some effects completely ignoring others. Nothing coming
out of any research. Just few thing you can pull out of your head after
hearing idea fo the first time while drunk.

