
Universal Basic Income and the New Corporatist Democrats - jonbaer
http://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-131/universal-basic-income-and-new-corporatist-democrats/
======
visarga
Every political faction has an "idea" about UBI. That's the core of what's
wrong with UBI. People don't want their income to be subject to political
whims, and change every election cycle.

The problem is that, before automation, people had something to trade for
their daily necessities - their work. Work was tied to each individual and
that empowered people. Now, with automation, people will have nothing else to
offer, but still have the same needs as before. So people lose their influence
and become subjects to the whims of whomever decides the quantum of the UBI.
What if they set it too low? What can a person do against the state in that
case?

I have been thinking about this problem, and came to the conclusion that the
only way to assure people's future is agriculture and self-reliant industry.
If corporations won't hire people, people need to be "hired by the land". I
see cooperatives being formed where people buy land and cultivate their own
food, possibly using technology, even robotics, that is in the public domain
and can be used freely.

In the long term it will be essential that AI and robotics be implemented in
the public domain otherwise only the big corporations will reap the benefits
of automation. Remember what happens when a concentrated source of wealth
appears: with operating systems, the Windows monopoly; with search - Google;
with social - FB, with oil - arab countries (where huge social problems
appeared as a result). People need to be in control of their sources of
income. UBI is just a promise from the state and "the 1%" that we will not be
left to starve. But can we trust them? We need to become self reliant.

As a side note, a number of technologies will be essential for self reliance,
such as: solar, water filtration, 3D printing, robotics & AI, agriculture
(including the right to create seeds, that has been usurped recently by big
corps), open & free education, generic drugs and of course open source
software.

~~~
davesque
I would add that, with more widespread education and college attendance,
people also expect more freedom to decide what they do with their time. From a
psychological standpoint, they feel they've given themselves some authority by
becoming educated and expect to be able to exercise this authority. It's hard
to do this if you're forced to spend most of your time realizing someone
else's dream (by working for a living) and, due to a stagnant economy, this
servitude doesn't even net you enough to build a strong base.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I never thought about the education angle, but in a way yeah - what's the
point of being well-read, curious, interested in many things, if you never get
time to use any of that because you're tied to spending most of your life
working as a cog in an industry, often on things of dubious ethical value?

~~~
Joof
More time for science, art and entrepreneurship.

Probably resulting in a lot more indie game devs (artists), but it could be
worse.

------
Bartweiss
> An odd coalition of conservative, libertarian, and liberal intellectuals has
> advocated for Basic Income over the past 60 years.

This, of course, is the (political) downfall of UBI. That coalition will stand
together right up until someone has to draft an actual Senate bill
implementing the thing.

Then, the liberals want to phase out existing social programs gradually, or
implement it as a more-palatable negative income tax. The conservatives want
to drug test applicants, and add a "family bonus" to promote two-parent homes.
The libertarians want to set a low price-point to encourage work, and tie it
to ending student loan programs. And so on.

Basically, UBI has real value, but the current popularity is gained from being
all things to all people. WIC and SNAP are concrete enough to hate, but UBI is
still so ill-defined that people can 'agree' without having any overlap on
what laws they would actually support.

~~~
dTal
We need a word for this dynamic, which also surfaced in Brexit. You had the
"dey turker jerbs" crowd, the sovereignty crowd, the free market crowd, and
the racist crowd - and the only common element between them was "Brexit",
rather than any kind of unified vision. And now we're stuck with an a priori
decision with no idea how to go about implementing it in a sensible way. Cries
of "shouldn't we have thought of this before?" abound. Yes, we should.

I think a more successful democratic process should involve at least three
steps:

    
    
      1) Should we even consider doing this thing?
      2) What's the best way of doing this thing we can think of?
      3) Having given it our best, should we go ahead with it?

~~~
Bartweiss
I hadn't made the connection, but you're right. This pattern comes up
constantly when people become allies over some narrow point of convergence. In
some cases, like UBI, the alliance will probably fall apart before anything
gets done. In other, like Brexit, some huge change gets accomplished by a
coalition that all wanted it for different reasons.

At least in the case of Brexit, the awful error was giving a simple up/down
referendum. If the option to leave had been tied to a clear next step, it
would have shattered the coalition and probably failed.

I'm not sure if you can regulate something like this, or if you just have to
push the David Camerons of the world to not screw up so badly, but forcing
people to put whole processes up at once would probably force a lot more
movements to sort out whether they actually have any common ground.

~~~
gwright
This is one reason why representative forms of governance are better than
direct democracy/referendum. Bureaucratic inertia can be a good thing.

------
gedy
It's not 'automation' it's free/low-tariff trade pacts with cheap labor
countries supported by both corporations and politicians (both Democrat and
Republican)

Blaming tech and automation is all a lot of hand-waving and finger pointing
away from the real issue.

~~~
drabiega
The jobs lost to those trade deals are generally pretty crappy jobs. We'd be
better off if we captured some of the value those treaties create and
redistribute it to those negatively impacted... with something like UBI.

~~~
twblalock
> The jobs lost to those trade deals are generally pretty crappy jobs.

Not to mention, that if those jobs hadn't gone to Mexico because of NAFTA,
they would have gone to China, or southeast Asia somewhere. There is pretty
much no way they would have stayed in the US.

It's also the case that the US manufactures more goods now than ever before,
but with fewer people. We manufacture more goods per worker than ever before
-- that's because of increases in productivity, only some of which are due to
automation. Those increases in productivity almost certainly would have
happened with or without the various trade agreements we have put in place
over the past few decades.

~~~
Bartweiss
Pretty much all the "death of American manufacturing" stories neglect this.

You can find a lot of unemployed steelworkers and abandoned factories, but
those factories have largely been supplanted by newer, more efficient ones.
'Onshoring' is becoming popular because domestic production is actually cost-
effective once you factor in the low ongoing costs and defect rates for
automated production.

So NAFTA mattered, and it may have changed _how_ automation happened (I'll bet
automating still-running factories looks very different than offshoring, then
onshoring from scratch). But it didn't change the essential structure of
what's happened - manufacturing was going to move away from mass American
labor regardless.

~~~
twblalock
A recent NY Times article argues that NAFTA may have saved some American jobs
in the auto industry:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/economy/nafta-
may...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/economy/nafta-may-have-
saved-many-autoworkers-jobs.html)

The argument is that NAFTA caused low-wage jobs to move to Mexico instead of
to Asia. Suppliers in Mexico work closely with US suppliers, because they are
geographically close to one another -- therefore, the supply chain stayed in
North America. If the jobs had gone to Asia, the Asian suppliers would
probably have worked with other suppliers close to them, rather than US
suppliers. So the US suppliers would have lost their business partners, and
many would have gone out of business.

I think we should also keep in mind that trade happens whether you have free-
trade deals or not. Even with US tariffs of 2.5% on cars and 25% on trucks,
Japanese car companies did very well in the US and took a substantial amount
of market share away from domestic automakers in the 1970s and 1980s, back
when all of their cars were imported from Japan (they build many in the US
now, though). The Japanese cars were so competitive that Americans chose to
buy them even though they cost more than American cars, due to both the
tariffs and shortages -- Hondas sold substantially above MSRP for a while due
to demand, for example. So, unless you prevent imports from coming into the
country at all, you still have to compete whether you have free trade or
tariffs.

------
BigDaddyD
The UBI and this article are terrible.

First of all, it's expensive. Guaranteeing every American a certain sum of
money will cost a ridiculous amount.

Second, it's immoral. Taking money from one person and giving it to another by
force is wrong, especially when your justification is that you think they have
too much money.

Third, it's funny that he points to Social Security when it is approaching
disaster. [http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/ssa/social-security-
reti...](http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/ssa/social-security-retirement)

Fourth, the fear mongering about automation needs to stop. Automation will not
put everyone out of work and it will not spell the end of capitalism. At every
stage of technological advancement, you get people, like the UBIers, who run
around like chicken with their heads cut off, Luddite Fallacy. The fact is
that automation makes some jobs obsolete but compensates by creating entire
industries profitable. Did Software Engineering exist in 1920? No, so don't be
surprised if in 20 years a new field has arisen.

I really want to stress the point about automation because I think it is the
largest source of misinformation out there. In 1870, 50% of the US labor force
worked in agriculture. Today guess how many? 1.2%. Why hasn't the unemployment
rate skyrocketed due to the automation in agriculture that allows us to
produce more crops cheaper and with less people? Because the increase in labor
and decrease in food costs allowed other industries to flourish!

~~~
elicash
Can't believe you're making the nutty "taxation is immoral" argument. We all
have a say in the laws. That's why it's fair we all have to live by them.
Disagree with the laws? Change them. Or in this case, argue against them ever
being implemented. But you won't get far arguing taxation is immoral.

~~~
BigDaddyD
> the nutty "taxation is immoral" argument.

I agree that argument is nutty! That's why I didn't make it. Where did I say,
in fact you supposedly quote me, "taxation is immoral".

I said taking money from some and giving it to others by force is immoral for
the reasons people like him give.

Taxation is moral so long as it is spent on programs that benefit everyone.
The military, roads, a court system, the post office, police, etc.

Taxation is immoral when you take from someone you "feel" has to much money
and give it to someone you think "deserves" it.

I know it's easy to make emotional arguments and I know it's easy to feel
charitable with other people's money, I'm in no way rich btw, but you have to
see the problem with that?

> We all have a say in the laws. That's why it's fair we all have to live by
> them.

Tyranny of the masses is a thing and something our founders tried to prevent.

~~~
Kevin_S
> Taxation is moral so long as it is spent on programs that benefit everyone.
> The military, roads, a court system, the post office, police, etc. >
> Taxation is immoral when you take from someone you "feel" has to much money
> and give it to someone you think "deserves" it.

Dude... you're just framing it differently. You can easily look at UBI and
taxes as they currently are as moneys from individuals that go into a large
pot which is then spent to help the greater good. Roads do that, police do
that, and so does public assistance programs like social security and welfare.
But somehow UBI is different because it is cash? It's all the same. It does
the same basic thing: lower income inequality.

It isn't "feeling" they have too much money and "deserving" it. It would be a
calculated number that is used to maximize total utility of the economy.
You're the one making the emotional argument here.

Not sure why anyone these days would oppose a system that would lower income
inequality from the absurd point it has reached.

~~~
BigDaddyD
I'll try and be more specific.

If there are ten people in a country and money is dispersed in this way:

Bottom 2 each have $10 Middle 6 each have $20 Top 2 each have $50

I would support a system that takes say... 10% from everyone.

Bottom 2 are taxed $1 each == $2 Middle 6 are taxed $2 each == $12 Top 2 are
taxed $5 each = $10

They then put all of the money in a "pot" to be spent on a military. This
benefits everyone because a poor homeless person in Alabama will be defended
equally as well as a middle class secretary in Georgia.

However, if you tax the Top 2 for an extra 10% which comes out to $10 more and
then put it in a "pot" that will only be spent on the Bottom 2, we have a
problem.

This is a problem because you are treating 20% of the population unfairly
simply because they have more money than the other 80%. This is being
charitable with their money and not letting them decide to do with it as they
please. I support the poor in my own way by donating money, volunteering for
charity, etc. but it is wrong for you to take a larger percent of my money and
give it to another group of people for arbitrary reasons.

> It would be a calculated number that is used to maximize total utility of
> the economy.

I would love to see the geniuses and God level economists who can make those
calculations and factor in every aspect of the economy. You can't, it's
impossible.

~~~
ebalit
Riches have more to gain from a working society and more to loose from a
failing one.

Or as Adam Smith puts it: "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for
the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich
against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have
none at all."

In that sense, it's quite natural that the richer you are the more you
contribute.

It's interesting that in your example you seem to tax wealth and not income. I
don't know of any country in which the tax system is based around wealth and
not income.

And indeed, a flat tax on wealth would probably be the fairest tax, but I
imagine that it's a lot harder to do than taxing income or consumption.

