
Basic Income is an illusion - sharemywin
If we pay $20,000 to 300 million people = $6 trillion. If we still need to do or get done all the work that needs done. We pay $13 trillion each year out to labor. So how do people become incentivized to do the jobs that need done?(Think low end service jobs.) simple prices raise until people need more money than the basic income provides to survive.
======
plurinshael
Consider the fact that for some time, the quantitative easing program has been
"printing" $80 billion per month by buying US treasuries from wealthy people /
firms. Say what you will about the necessity to print money, strategies about
monetary policy, etc, this unequivocally creates an artificially high demand
for these assets in a way that wealthy firms are able to generate profit from.

If we're giving away money, let's give it to people whose marginal propensity
to consume goods and services is double or triple to whom we're giving it now.

I realize we have now "tapered" our buying down to $65 billion a month. For
reference, using US census data for adults 18 and over, 65bil / 240mil = $270
per month. It's not a living wage, but a great majority of recipients would
immediately inject that money back into the economy.

~~~
sharemywin
...consuming goods which would increase prices. prices would go up because
they would need paid more to do their jobs(think service industry cause they
ain't doin' it cause they like it).

~~~
ThomPete
Again, technology drives prices down not up.

------
pm24601
You got the Basic Income concept wrong.

If someone takes a job, they get the income from that job IN ADDITION to the
Basic Income.

Basic Income is paid out _unconditionally_ \- i.e. no means testing. Rich or
poor, employed or unemployed: you get the money.

This is similar to what:

1\. Alaska does with its oil tax revenue.

2\. U.S. and some states do with the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Why have Basic Income?

It would replace:

1\. Food stamps.

2\. Unemployment insurance

3\. WIC

4\. Section 8.

... and related bureaucracies because the money is _unconditional_ , no
government agency is needed to "validate" the person is poor enough to get the
money.

There would be no stigma attached to receiving the money, no requirements on
how the money was being spent. Just like Alaskans can spend their oil money
how they want and people getting the fully-refundable EITC can spend that
money how they want.

~~~
sharemywin
I get that. My point is the service industry disappears. retail clerks, wait
staff, gas station attendants, cleaners. Nobody does that work because they
like it. Most of the people in the service industry work to get by. By choice
or because they have to.

~~~
ThomPete
Much of that is going away because of automation, which is one of the reasons
UBI is beginning to be seen as a potential solution to that problem.

I.e. you are going to see an increasing number of people who have no
background in tech, design, science, engineering, math etc. and therefore have
no new potential of jobs and those they can get are Walmart which doesn't pay
it's employees enough and thus put a big portion of the economic burden back
on society.

------
ThomPete
You have to deduct the overhead to control targeted welfare, plus the fact
that most people will be paying most of that back in taxes.

Alse keep in mind, removing stuff like capital gains will also help bring in
even more.

With Unconditional Basic Income it is always beneficial to work. Even if you
only work for a couple of months a year it's still beneficial to you.

~~~
jcalvinowens
> With Unconditional Basic Income it is always beneficial to work.

Exactly. A UBI would encourage people to work, since working just means you
make more money.

The biggest drawback of the current system in the US is that it penalizes you
for working: if you start to make more money, your benefits go away and you
might as well have not started working.

~~~
dllthomas
Strictly, a transition to UBI _from conditional assistance_ would encourage
people _currently receiving conditional assistance_ to work. People who are
not currently receiving assistance would have a smaller incentive to engage in
paid work than at present. This probably has both positive and negative
consequences.

~~~
ThomPete
It's not the purpose of UBI to get EVERYONE to work.

The purpose is to get as many as possible to work and not have to deal with
controlling who "deserves" what, who cheats etc.

It's totally fine that some people don't work as long as the majority of
people will.

In many ways we already have a form of BI today, it's just conditional and
have the negative effect of branding people, keeping them in their social
status.

~~~
dllthomas
_" It's not the purpose of UBI to get EVERYONE to work."_

Never made any claim - or implication, so far as I can see - that it was.

 _' The purpose is to get as many as possible to work and not have to deal
with controlling who "deserves" what, who cheats etc.'_

I think the purpose is to ensure that everyone has some basic resources to
build upon, to stabilize consumption, to shift power a bit toward labor in the
jobs market, and to provide something of a safety net. It is _preferable to
conditional assistance_ because it doesn't have any cliffs and there's less
room for political nonsense than with targeted assistance, but that's not
really the _purpose_ of the program - those are equally attributes of a system
with no UBI but also no other welfare programs.

 _" It's totally fine that some people don't work as long as the majority of
people will."_

I agree with the sentiment, not the precise formulation. It is totally fine if
some people don't work as long as _enough_ work that we can produce enough to
meet demand. What portion of the population that is depends on a whole lot of
factors (and in the longest term will probably shrink). I don't see that it
has any particular relationship with 50% ("the the majority of the people") -
currently it probably needs to be quite a bit more than that.

 _" In many ways we already have a form of BI today, it's just conditional and
have the negative effect of branding people, keeping them in their social
status."_

I wouldn't call it "a form of BI", but I would say that many of the supposed
evils of BI are already present in our current system.

~~~
jcalvinowens
> It is totally fine if some people don't work as long as enough work that we
> can produce enough to meet demand.

That's precisely the point: it creates a market for labor that does not
currently exist. If there were not enough workers to meet demand, the
suppliers would have to increase salaries until enough of them decided the
money was worth going to work.

A UBI allows natural market forces to do things that we have to do with
regulation now. Minimum wage could be eradicated with a UBI, for example,
since everybody enough to live on. Real wages for unskilled workers would be
forced much higher, which I think would be a very good thing for the economy
as a whole.

~~~
dllthomas
I mostly agree, I think.

 _" That's precisely the point: it creates a market for labor that does not
currently exist."_

I'm not sure how there is not currently a market for labor, it's just
presently tilted in favor of employers because employees have too much trouble
"going out of business" when there isn't sufficient demand for them.

 _" A UBI allows natural market forces to do things that we have to do with
regulation now."_

Right.

 _" Minimum wage could be eradicated with a UBI, for example, since everybody
enough to live on."_

With a sufficiently high UBI, this is clearly the case; I'm not completely
convinced that "a sufficiently high UBI" is not so high that it would cause
other problems, though that seems likely.

 _" Real wages for unskilled workers would be forced much higher,"_

Real wages for unskilled workers would certainly rise. Whether they would be
"much higher" doubtless depends on the size of the UBI.

 _" which I think would be a very good thing for the economy as a whole."_

Possibly. It would certainly motivate more automation, which is probably good.
Forcing them too high too fast would likely mean some significant problems as
society figures out how to adapt.

------
fit2rule
I'd rather see an effort to scratch all forms of income tax, which is the
_real_ problem with the worlds' economy today: plain theft of income.

If we had a more aggressive movement to eradicate income tax and tax SPENDING,
we'd have far less need for the welfare classes to be kept in their
debilitating position ..

~~~
ThomPete
Theft? Your property "rights" (and other rights) are guaranteed by the state.
If you remove the state you will have to defend it yourself. Do you really
think you would be able to do that?

~~~
fit2rule
Da, Komrad.

I do believe that the state can still protect me without having to rob me
first.

~~~
mcv
How would they pay for it, if you deny them any income?

A civilized society costs money. Police costs money. Roads costs money.
Inspectors for all sorts of safety standards cost money. Education costs
money.

Without some form of tax, anyone would be free to rob you, you wouldn't be
able to go anywhere without roads, you wouldn't know if the house you want to
buy is actually safe to live in, and everybody would be stupid.

Go try it out. There are countries where you don't have to pay any tax. Go see
how you like it there.

------
dllthomas
Basic Income directly makes labor more expensive (by lowering the opportunity
cost for other activities). It would also increase the price of scarce
resources. There are inputs to production that are neither of these. Even so,
it's undoubtedly true that we could set so high a basic income that it would
impact production enough that we'd see runaway inflation rather than any
positive outcome. I'm not necessarily convinced $20k/yr is that high, but I
personally favor a much lower number (~7k/yr).

~~~
sharemywin
Most of the service industry would disapear over nigiht. you think if you paid
people more than they make now that they show up for a fex bucks more: dlivery
drivers, wait staff, hotel cleaning people, gas station service personel,
grocery stores.

~~~
dllthomas
A lot of people in the service industry are presently working two jobs.
Basically replacing one of those jobs doesn't seem to mean they'd be likely to
quit the other. Without question it would substantially effect the supply of
labor there, though - particularly if it's as high as $20k/yr.

------
rprospero
I'm not sure that I follow your argument. Specifically, you asked the
question: "So how do people become incentivized to do the jobs that need
done?" Most proposals I've seen for basic income operate under the idea that
people are encouraged to perform jobs by being paid, as it is under the
current system. Would you quit your job for a guaranteed 20k a year? I
wouldn't. I'd like to have money for travel, which would be more difficult on
that salary. Besides, I rather like my job.

~~~
sharemywin
My point is the service industry disappears. retail clerks, wait staff, gas
station attendants, cleaners. Nobody does that work because they like it. Most
of the people in the service industry work to get by. By choice or because
they have to.

~~~
ThomPete
Given that it will always be beneficial to work if you need extra money you
take those jobs. It's always beneficial to work. But those jobs are
disappearing anyway.

------
jbb555
>> Would you quit your job for a guaranteed 20k a year? I wouldn't.

Probably yes. I've worked for 25 years. I have a good amount of savings. But
not enough to retire on. If you gave me $20k a year I'd have enough to retire
on right now.

So it would cost you $20k a year to pay me not to work, plus probably 50% more
than that in lost taxes.

Not a chance of this working.

~~~
dllthomas
It doesn't rely on there being no one in your position, so it doesn't follow
from your example that there is "not a chance of this working." We _want_ some
people in your circumstance - able to comfortably step aside when we don't
know what to put your labor towards, ready to rejoin the work force when we
figure it out (as determined by whether you want what we're offering to pay
you). Though, for the record, I think $20k is high for our present situation.

