The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Campitor »

bigato wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 6:32 pm
I agree that if the basic income is universal, a part of it will go to waste and not only not benefit society as a whole but also not even benefit those it was given to. I don’t think anybody here is denying this, because it is obvious human nature.
I agree but more than just a small part will be wasted. Everyone 18yrs old and above who is a US citizen will get UBI -that means rich people and upper middle class people will get the money too. Considering that the rich are getting richer, you are just giving them more money - that is wasteful.

There are approximately 550K homeless people on any given night in the US. A lot of them are dying from drug overdose - it's an epidemic. Many are homeless because of drug addiction. Now you're going to hand the homeless $1000 per month without requiring drug addiction intervention (no strings attached right?). You've now exacerbated the homeless opioid death and addiction rate. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factshe ... iction.pdf.

How many other things are going to be negatively impacted that you haven't considered? Can we now agree that perhaps some type of requirements may be needed for UBI?
On the other side, I also know that part of the population will improve their lifes as a consequence and at least move the economy some more. Furthermore, having the income be universal will also guarantee that *every* genius will have at their disposal the possibility of living a spartan life or semi-bum without worrying about what they may see as the stupidities of earning a living, and they will be able to focus all their energy on whatever obsession they have.
That is no justification for taking someone else's money by force. That someone considers employment stupid is even more incentive not to give them money. We shouldn't be paying people to be lazy with money taken by force.
If you can step aside from the moral programming that was drilled into you, and if you know the bare minimum about innovation, startups and statistics, you’ll probably see that this would be of the biggest benefit for all in that it would not try to select for the best geniuses by some potentially flawed and gameable criteria. You just assume that the ones that will spend it all wasting themselves are a tiny price to pay for the benefit you get. Imagine some quirky weirdo like Tesla discovering cold fusion clean energy or something of that level. It’s pretty much the spirit of venture capital and startups, where they invest in lot of them knowing well in advance that almost all of them will fail completely, but some of them will create crazy stuff and make up for the losses. Now imagine that in a national scale. Or even bigger.
Start ups have a high failure rate; 75% and higher depending on the data set. It's not moral programming, it's facts and logic. Why would I forcefully take money from proven money makers and redistribute to people who have no track record in business? Let them fund their ventures via private loans and not forced redistribution of money. And I'm also against corporate welfare too.
Add strings and you’ll have a system that can be gamed. And according to the game theory and human nature, it will be gamed and thus benefit the best gamers in detriment of the rest.
But somehow UBI is immune to gamification just because there are no strings attached to it?

tonyedgecombe
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Campitor wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:46 pm
I agree but more than just a small part will be wasted. Everyone 18yrs old and above who is a US citizen will get UBI -that means rich people and upper middle class people will get the money too. Considering that the rich are getting richer, you are just giving them more money - that is wasteful.
I thought there was supposed to be a big cost to this, that implies the rich are paying more tax. Make your mind up one way or another :)
Campitor wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:46 pm
There are approximately 550K homeless people on any given night in the US. A lot of them are dying from drug overdose - it's an epidemic. Many are homeless because of drug addiction. Now you're going to hand the homeless $1000 per month without requiring drug addiction intervention (no strings attached right?). You've now exacerbated the homeless opioid death and addiction rate. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factshe ... iction.pdf.
Or you have eliminated $1000/month of drug fuelled crime, and got people out off the street. It could actually be an improvement for everybody else.
Campitor wrote:
Sun Jun 16, 2019 8:46 pm
But somehow UBI is immune to gamification just because there are no strings attached to it?
I'd be interested to know what your ideas for ramifying it are because there is nothing obvious to me. The big benefit of it is that it is universal, that you don't need any demeaning and bureaucratic gatekeepers. By definition it's small government because it's universal.

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Jean
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Jean »

Today, monetary creation is made by bankers. I don't think that bankers are less wastefull when it comes to spending money than the average american. So, replacing FRB with UBI wouldn't really be a wastefull change.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Campitor »

tonyedgecombe wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:16 am
I thought there was supposed to be a big cost to this, that implies the rich are paying more tax. Make your mind up one way or another
UBI is expected to cost 2.3 trillion to 4+ trillion per year. Total tax revenue for 2018 was 3.9 Trillion which still required the US to borrow an additional 1.3 Trillion to cover government obligations. The costs are big enough that the burden to fund UBI will need to come from other income brackets.
Or you have eliminated $1000/month of drug fuelled crime, and got people out off the street. It could actually be an improvement for everybody else.
Buying non-prescription opiods is a crime. You cannot eliminate drug fueled crime when the activity requires buying illegal opiods. The gangs/cartels selling opiods will not turn into angels just because the money is coming from UBI.
I'd be interested to know what your ideas for ramifying it are because there is nothing obvious to me. The big benefit of it is that it is universal, that you don't need any demeaning and bureaucratic gatekeepers. By definition it's small government because it's universal.
Taking 2.3 trillion dollars by implied force isn't small government. That the money is distributed universally doesn't mean that government resources aren't required to manage the distribution of this money. If I was going to implement UBI, I would do a limited test in the poorest of communities to see what the results are. If the effect is positive, I would expand the program to the next income bracket. If the program is partially successful, I'd see what factors led to better outcomes and which didn't and adjust UBI policy accordingly. What I certainly wouldn't do is just hand out UBI to everyone and hope for the best. And I certainly wouldn't hand out UBI to people who make enough money that they can take care of themselves.

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Jean
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Jean »

It wasn't a poll, it was a vote.

latearlyFI
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by latearlyFI »

Banks & businesses had million dollar bailouts, but some people don't want to give people a small safety net?

If you're employed, imagine your job is gone and the unemployment rate is 50%. Would you agree then that UBI is a good idea. I'd bet most of your expenses are also wildly above the UBI. It's not to create a nation of Bums, it's to create a safety net which would benefit everyone.

Would we want to live in a country with massive shanty towns of unemployed people? Competing insanely for the very few jobs?

The amount of automation coming is staggering. The book, "War on Normal People", shows what is happening and thankfully proposes some solutions

latearlyFI
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by latearlyFI »

bigato wrote:
Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:48 pm
The detail that is missing in your narrative is that most of the new technologies are exponentially cheaper and profitable, and need less and less people to make it work. This leds to the version of capitalism that we are living were a handful of big tech have more power over the world than most governments. The differences between those that have a lot and those that have nothing is increasingly bigger. Technocratic Capitalism is failing us. And I say this as one of the few privileged.
Totally agree! Technocratic Capitalism is what it is. I hope we fix it to become Humanity Capitalism before it's too late.

latearlyFI
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by latearlyFI »

I think he say's UBI would only be for Citizens

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

In breaking news on this topic, "The Technology Trap: Capitol, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation" by Carl Benedict Frey was released today. It is now on the top of my stack along with jennypenny recommended "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" and "Plants from Test Tubes: An Introduction to Micropropagation"...bwah-ha-ha-ha.

Anyways, I was wondering if the discussion on this topic could/would be altered if instead UBI, it was referred to as UTD (Universal Technology Dividend) and somehow actually linked to that reality. IOW, some sort of analogy to tax rebates in states with large oil reserves, or the population of the U.S. being like unto the extended clan of Saud?

IlliniDave
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by IlliniDave »

No matter how you dress it up, it still comes down to the basic requirement that the government must first take money from someone before they can give it to anyone.

If the government wants to share their profits they first have to make profits which would require for-profit government enterprise. To hand out trillions they'd have to displace a significant swath of private enterprise. Even if the gov't overtook all US corporations and ran them as well as they have been, all the profit would at best barely cover the Freedom Dividend (e.g., US corps profited ~$2.1T in 2017). That's a big jump down the road to Soviet/Chinese-style Communism. Aside from a few natural resource boons on public land of a handful of states (Alaska comes to mind, which totals about 0.08 Freedom Dividends to the eligible fraction of the population per year), there's not a non-disruptive way to do it.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Well, we already have all sorts of income transfer programs in place. What I like about UBI is that it is "universal" rather than means based, thereby reducing disincentives at the margin (obvious motivation to earn less by those just above any hard cutoff.) Expansion of the earned income credit with some easy modern system for monthly stipend could serve similar purpose, but with advantage of sloped margin and incentives towards work. It works very much like the very common Dad teaching financial responsibility move of telling kid "If you save half the money for the bike, I'll kick in the other half." :lol:

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Campitor »

latearlyFI wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 8:57 pm
Banks & businesses had million dollar bailouts, but some people don't want to give people a small safety net?
The UBI proposal in its current manifestation would not only give 12k to the people who need it but also to the people that got the million dollar bailout. How is giving people UBI who already received millions a wise use of that money?
If you're employed, imagine your job is gone and the unemployment rate is 50%. Would you agree then that UBI is a good idea. I'd bet most of your expenses are also wildly above the UBI. It's not to create a nation of Bums, it's to create a safety net which would benefit everyone
.

The UBI being proposed would give those who have a job the same amount of money as those who are unemployed. How is that a smart way to divide up that money? Seems like UBI with some conditions would be a smarter way of allocating that money. We want to make sure that those who really can't get a job are being helped versus someone who can get a job but is being lazy; we owe it to the people who really need the money.
Would we want to live in a country with massive shanty towns of unemployed people? Competing insanely for the very few jobs?
You mean like Venezuela where taking from the rich to give to the poor was going to lead to a better life? Every economic decision creates incentives. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. Taking money from people who know how to maximize money and giving it to people that don't isn't going to suddenly make life better for the financially illiterate otherwise every Venezuelan would be bursting with money. The rich fled the country, took their knowledge and money with them, and now the people are struggling because they are uneducated in regards to what needs to be done to run a productive economy.
The amount of automation coming is staggering. The book, "War on Normal People", shows what is happening and thankfully proposes some solutions
When lawmakers propose artificial wage hikes (artificial in that the market doesn't support paying that wage), you incentivize the automation of unskilled labor. Paying $17k for a dishwashing machine that can run 24/7 is better than paying 1 dishwasher $15/hr (+plus tax) which costs $31.2k a year.

I'm not here arguing against UBI because I don't care for the needy. I'm arguing against UBI because I feel it's going to hurt the needy the most. Rich people have options and poor people less so. Start taking rich people's money in a punitive manner and they will leave or shutter their businesses. When costs exceed desired profits, people will walk away. Once the rich people are gone or throttling businesses so they don't get taxed at 70% to 90%, where is all this UBI money going to come from? Who is going to lend money to an impoverished nation in quantities that would make UBI possible?

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Campitor »

QE works as long as the banks are willing to lend out the cash provided by the Fed. What happens when the banks are afraid of lending out money? Is there no scenario where this wouldn't occur? What if banks were being taxed in a punitive manner - would they lend out money then? QE makes the rich richer everywhere because they are the first recipients of the money and decide who to lend money.

And I don't think anyone on this board is under the illusion that Government budgets are similar to household budgets. Regular citizens can't unilaterally take money from their neighbors and parse it out as they see fit nor do they have access to national treasures they can sell or rent such as the pristine wilderness areas that are now open to fracking/drilling/mining.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Campitor »

@bigato

I see what you're saying. But QE is taking money. It doesn't seem like taking because it's "invented money". How QE "takes" is by making money cheap thereby incentivizing stock purchases over savings. Anyone holding cash/savings is seeing subpar returns versus stocks/commodities so they are highly incentivized to become stock/bond investors to avoid inflation eroding their modest capital because of artificially low interest rates. The rich get access to cheap money and coerced investors (the little guy). What has been stolen is "fairness". :(

tonyedgecombe
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Campitor wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 8:15 am
The UBI proposal in its current manifestation would not only give 12k to the people who need it but also to the people that got the million dollar bailout. How is giving people UBI who already received millions a wise use of that money?
The clue is in the word universal. Of course you could try and sort out the needy but that wouldn't be any different from the various welfare schemes in place around the world right now. Part of the justification is that you can remove the bureaucracy and to some extent the stigma that comes along with traditional welfare. In reality those people at the top of the pyramid would end up paying out more than they receive.

IlliniDave
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by IlliniDave »

bigato wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:59 pm
So is it problematic taking from the rich to distribute to the poor (UBI), but it is somehow ok to take from the poor to give to rich (QE)? What about distributing those same trillions to the overall population equally and letting inefficient companies and banks crash and burn and let the free market take care of that, let chips fall where they may? Wouldn’t that stimulate the economy just the same or more?
It isn't necessarily a problem for the government to redistribute "rich"->"poor", In the US we already do that, explicitly to the tune of approaching $0.7-0.8T/yr in social safety net programs, but also through a graduated federal income tax system where the top ~50-ish percent of households (by income) pay 90-ish percent of all the federal income tax (and iirc the top 10% pay 50% or so).

The problem with Yang's Freedom Dividend, which he wants to fund by taxing corporations, is that it hands out more money per year than all the corporations added together make as profit in a year (or at least made in 2017, might be a wash now with the new tax laws). Taxing corporations at ~100% is tantamount to a government takeover of corporate America. If it takes the form of a VAT it gets passed on to the consumer where the low and middle income people will pay disproportionately. It should be apparent to a frugal-minded person that we can't afford it.

Printing money devalues the money of people who already have money which is essentially taking money from them. I tend to think of it as a sneaky wealth tax--so a little different than income tax, but not much.

I don't have an educated opinion on QE or the bail outs. It's frustrating that the country as a whole has had to pay for the mess created by a few. Ironically part of the underlying problem was the federal gov't exerting pressure on lenders to extend mortgage loans to borrowers down the income continuum into the gray area where reasonable likelihood of repayment was dubious. There was more to the crisis than the existence of questionable borrowing/lending, to be sure, but it was the combustible material that was mishandled. The whole 2008 saga is a reminder that well-meaning government social engineering programs can have unforeseen adverse side-effects. And the response to it (elites circling the wagons to protect their own/themselves) was a real life example among the various reasons why the slogan "drain the swamp" resonated with a wide swath of voters a couple years back. UBI expands the swamp to be an ATM for all.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Another rather depressing thing to keep in mind, is that anybody who can at least perform their own personal care, is a huge savings to society over all the Baby Boomers who will soon be losing that functioning. Paying some lazy kid $12,000 a year to stay out of trouble is NOTHING compared to the Medicare bill for somebody like my mother who currently, awaiting extreme need for high-risk hip replacement, needs somebody to help her take a shower. Robot senior scrubbers is where I would invest my pennies now.

So, if there is any possibility that UBI would reduce the ranks of those currently trying to fade out of the workforce on disability, that would be another upside.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Dream of Freedom »

There are good and bad things with ubi imo. It would be quicker to stem the financial damage when facing tough times. People would have increased negotiation power with their employers since they could more easily quit. I could spend my days lounging in a hammock. All good things.

I'm just not convinced that it would help the poor more than the current system. Wellfare recipients aren't exactly known for great decision making skills. You would be giving them cash. Who's to say they wouldn't just use it to gamble or buy drugs and alcohol while leaving themselves and their kids homeless and malnourished. Wellfare ensures they use it for food and subsidized housing ensures they use it for housing.

tonyedgecombe
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by tonyedgecombe »

If they were just going to use it for drugs an alcohol then they will sell whatever goods you let them buy with tokens. No doubt some do that but I’m yet to be convinced it’s the majority.

EdithKeeler
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by EdithKeeler »

I'm just not convinced that it would help the poor more than the current system. Wellfare recipients aren't exactly known for great decision making skills. You would be giving them cash. Who's to say they wouldn't just use it to gamble or buy drugs and alcohol while leaving themselves and their kids homeless and malnourished. Wellfare ensures they use it for food and subsidized housing ensures they use it for housing.
There are quite a few studies out there that show that when poor people are given cash, they mostly spend it just like middle class people do—some buy better food, some upgrade the cable package, some move to better places, and some buy booze and drugs.

Personally, I’m convinced that if UBI was in place, people would just figure out a way to get their paws on it.

On “on the media” today the story was devoted to how rich landlords, particularly LLCs, sort of prey on poor people. Of note, rents for crappy apartments aren’t generally significantly less than good apartments, and poor people are quick to be evicted, with lots of fees tacked on. (As a landlord, I can see both sides on this one....).

But I think whenever there’s a big pool of money out there, whether it’s Medicare or Medicaid dollars or student loan $$ or welfare or UBI, someone’s gonna be trying really hard to get their hands on it. I think I’m realistic, not necessarily cynical about that.

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