It'll be really interesting to see how this basic income thing plays out over the next few decades. Basic income is most easily testable in small, high income, relatively homogeneous societies that agree on a more communal way of governing. So, the Nordic countries, see Finland.
What is most interesting is how many optimistic and as yet untested claims that basic income advocates make. See this article. Paragraph after paragraph about how this program will work, what the advantages will be, but we don't really have any hard numbers, and even once we get them in a limited setting in Finland, or with random people across the US, we have studies that aren't generalizable, and we have very few. If n=29 means anything in this context, we've got like 2.5 (not a rigorously considered statement, don't hurt me).
The really cynical part of me notices how basic income is like the ideal political promise. "Hey, we're gonna give you money so you don't have to work, and when we do, society is gonna transform into utopia". We'll all be living in Truman Burbank's world, apparently. Because of course people won't squander their basic income (maybe on Bitcoin?) and if they do, so much for a social safety net.
The general populace (not those at the top) are seeing a bad economic situation, so of course their response is yes, meanwhile the people who are the biggest proponents of this as of currently are people like Altman, Zuckerberg, and Musk. The first two have political ambitions, the last is a utopian.
Of course when you break down the numbers, it doesn't work. How do you make up the 3 trillion a year it would take to give everyone $12k when you almost had healthcare repealed? What programs do you decide to cut and how do you expect the two parties to have a fruitful discussion about it (lol)? These guys will never talk about any rigorous plans because they don't have any that would make it through legislation. They also won't talk about how crushing and depressing and difficult it is to live on 12k (they have no clue).
It sounds like a future where the super rich throw pennies to the peasants and at that point it'll be a great excuse. We give you money, why can't you pull yourself up by your bootstraps?
Will someone lay out a realistic plan detailing how you'd implement BI in the US?
The reality is that if you want to cover everyone's basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That's the conversation we should be having.
But that than becomes a painful and complex conversation, talking about huge changes in the structure and possibly quality of real-estate, healthcare, transportation and roads, universities, etc and maybe some core tenets of capitalism.
But there's no way for this conversation to be fruitful and have really big changes - until we have a real crisis - because that's how democracies work in general.
but here's a starting point, anyway:
1. Transforming real-estate, from a system largely aimed at profits, into a system that is focused on offering decent living conditions as cheaply as possible.
2. Inserting disruptive innovation and real cost reduction into healthcare. And yes, like all disruptive innovation , it probably means lowering quality, at least for some time.
> The reality is that if you want to cover everyone's basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That's the conversation we should be having.
Why even insist on that $12K number in the first place, isn't that like approaching the problem from the wrong end?
It's something that always puzzled me about economic policymaking, regardless of which country; Changes seem to happen at a pace of years and only with static values, which makes reacting to our modern volatile and interconnected markets, in any useful way, impossible.
Case in point the basic income: Ideally the amount of money people get could be linked to the general living costs, adjusted to their area of residence, and some national economic index.
Sure the first one could be abused by people registering in more expensive areas while living in cheaper ones, but in the long run, and economic big picture this would only lead to rising prices (and basic income) in the cheaper areas, generated through the spending by the "cheaters".
Imho something really underestimated is how much of an economic boost a basic income would be, it'd be like the government directly subsidizing general purchasing power, and lot's of that will come back to the government in the form of taxes. It's like the opposite end version of corporate bailouts and tax giveaways.
Looking at a number like 7 trillion from that side, suddenly makes it way less intimidating and way more appealing. It's not like money is some finite resource that has to be mined in deep and dangerous caves; When it's about saving banks, Big Whatever or waging wars, against something or somebody, there always seems to be more than enough of it?
It would be even easier if a 'basic living standard' could be established. Something measured in terms like quantity of food & size of housing.
Money & markets are a fantastic system for taking the limited resources we have as a society and splitting them up. We haven't found a system that is more effective at increasing the average living standard.
Basic income screws around with some fundamental structures of the markets. It would be easier to reason about if we knew what resources were being guaranteed by the government back in the real world. It happens that physics cannot be legislated into existence; so we will need some planning to be done to make sure that the spirit of the law can be identified and met practically.
If you make $7tn from thin air and inject it into the economy, consumer price inflation will drastically rise, which for the most part ends up being a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the owners of capital. All you will have done is make the rich richer as the cost of living rises by about $12k/person.
If you look up "Quantitative Easing" you'll see that making trillions from thin air is exactly what the world's central banks do. But instead of giving it to people, they buy securities from banks, who are, as a result, the primary beneficiaries. QE-scale market activities aside, this general method is also standard monetary policy and the means by which new money is created.
Seen in that light, BI provides the opportunity for a whole new economic policy lever, by channeling new money to people rather than banks.
"If you look up "Quantitative Easing" you'll see that making trillions from thin air is exactly what the world's central banks do. But instead of giving it to people, they buy securities from banks, who are, as a result, the primary beneficiaries."
This is not an apples-to-apples comparison since QE (so far) has been "sterilized" so as not to increase the money supply in the same way as you are suggesting BI would:
"Also, the Federal Reserve has mostly "sterilized" its bond purchases by paying interest to banks for reserve deposits. This removes money from circulation previously added by the Fed's bond purchases. The net effect is to raise bond prices, lowering borrowing rates for mortgages and other loans, without an inflationary increase in the money supply"[1]
Yes, the useful message here is that we can indeed inject trillions into economies without overheating them, if the right conditions and structures are used.
A lot of economists are freaked out about the effect quantitative easing might have on our economy going forward. But even the highest, recklessly dangerous levels of QE3, that only amounted to about $1,500/yr for each US citizen. BI people are advocating for 10x that, for the smallest proposals under consideration.
Excuse me being naive but why? It would be a unique situation and as such any predictions of what's gonna happen are purely hypothetical.
Your last point is kind of moot as it could be used to argue against any kind of wage or income increase for poor and middle class "They just all gonna spend it paying their landlords".
If the basic income accounts for "average living costs" then ideally the average rent should be calculated too and factored into it, so landlords can't just jack up rents and expect their tenants to "reach through" their UBI.
A UBI would give the poor and middle class at least some bargaining power with employers, that's already progress. The whole situation about affordable living space becoming rarer and protection of tenants are valid concerns, but you can't expect a UBI to fix everything, different issues need different approaches and solutions.
But that's not an issue with UBI but rather with landlords having such free reigns over the rents they are charging.
Rent control and protection of tenant rights are ongoing issues, especially in countries where renting is the prevalent mode of living, as such many countries governments are trying plenty of approaches.
The issue with the US being that it's a rather touchy subject to discuss, but its nonetheless relevant because more U.S. households are renting than at any point in the previous 50 years [0]
So a discussion about that particular topic is most certainly needed, but you can't expect UBI to fix every single problem on its own, no solution is ever as simple as that.
The US free market has been very successful at radically reducing the cost of goods and services. Where it has failed to do so are in areas that are not free market, like health care.
It seems like the health care system has been gamed in the USA so that health insurance companies and big pharmaceutical companies get a huge profit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this is the case anywhere in Western Europe/Canada or most other countries that have a functional health care.
Is that really true? I was under the impression when people talk about the cost of healthcare they aren't talking about the cost of insurance. Unless you're saying the taxation somehow subsidizes healthcare in addition to providing insurance?
For example, medication is more expensive in the US right?
> Where it has failed to do so are in areas that are not free market, like health care.
Alternatively, the free market has failed to work in certain areas forcing the government to get involved to attempt to fix things. If the free market worked for health care, we'd be using it.
Not disputed, so what? What point are you making? That we need to give the free market another try so it can fail again? Healthcare lacks basic price transparency, consumer choice, even the ability to know what you're buying before you need to buy it. The free market solution to something like healthcare is insurance, how's that worked out? It's not something that can work well in a free market.
I'm a capitalist, I believe capitalism is awesome, however capitalism doesn't work on everything, just most things. It's not a golden hammer that will solve all problems.
You stated that if the free market worked with healthcare, we'd be using it. But we don't know if it would improve the situation since it's been so long since the market was free in any sense.
Look at Lasik eye surgery for a counterpoint. Yes, this is regulated by requiring licensed practitioners, but it's not controlled by insurance companies, Medicare/Medicaid etc. The cost for this procedure has dropped dramatically, while the procedure itself has improved in the last decade.
> The US free market has been very successful at radically reducing the cost of goods and services
At the expense of generating poverty either in the form of people working two or three part time jobs (so that "costs" like healthcare can be avoided) to barely make rent or abroad, in factories where one needs to extend nets to prevent suicides.
The US has been the greatest bootstrapper of poor people into middle class and wealth history has ever seen. The US was populated by poor immigrants with little more than a suitcase. Wealthy people didn't immigrate to the US. Look at the statistics on height, longevity, and infant mortality from 1800 to today. It's a little hard to argue that the free market impoverished people.
As for healthcare, that has not been a free market in the US at least since WW2.
The linked PDF talks about how, 50+ years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America."
Yet as of the publication date, 31st December 2006, data indicate that more than 12 percent of U.S. residents still live below the poverty line.
For 2006, a family of four was considered in poverty if its annual income fell below $20,444. For a couple under age 65, the poverty threshold was $13,500, and for an individual living alone, it was $10,488.
For another example, West Germany turned to the free market from about 1948 to 1970, resulting in an incredible rise from the devastation of WW2. East Germany did not see any results remotely similar.
Before you say "The Marshall Plan" most of the MP money was given to France and Britain.
In support of this, have you happened across Deirdre McCloskey, and her tomes Bourgeois Dignity and two books that follow.
She does a decent job of thrashing out, at length, why the dignity to participate in the free market by innovating and bringing those innovations to market is the thing that created the modern world. In her own words she gives a "full scale defence of capitalism."
The suicide rate at Foxconn was less than that of the general Chinese public. The people in poverty in America are well-off as measured by consumption rates.
Note that a social safety net is not inconsistent with free markets.
Only because we live in a weird generational "reset" society, for lack of a better term. Instead of parents passing off their house/savings to their progeny, it's expected that each person must start off from zero when they come of age. We should be promoting solid wealth creation and stability, and the passing of it to future children.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's why in developed societies capital (and most forms of wealth) tends to accumulate in the hands of the few over time.
A "reset" society would have, at the very minimum, something like a 90% inheritance tax and much much higher capital gains tax, as well as provisions on land value tax so high value scarce land cannot be hoarded as well.
I'm honestly not sure how one can look at the countries who are doing well right now and say what you said. It's like opposite land.
Because we're not concerning ourselves with the plush lives of the top few percent.
The parent comment is referring to the majority of middle and low income families who's children come of age with zero wealth.
All of the countries doing well have a problem, right now, where middle income earners can't afford to buy homes in the cities people want to live in, while the top income earners are saying things like young people can't afford to buy houses because they're blowing all their money on smashed avocado on toast.[1]
I don't see any reason why you can't do both? Then the problem becomes one of how to "promote generational wealth transfer" while "keeping people health and living longer". I don't buy the whole "you need to work yourself to death in order to get ahead" stuff.
Also, no need to make your children "rich". Just make sure they have things quantitatively better than you had. Just having a home for their children to subsequently live in without worry is definitely attainable for most people if they don't do anything stupid.
I was trying to imply “live forever” without saying it since that results in a bunch of ignorant responses (not yours). If you don’t die — which should be the end goal, no? — how do you leave a sufficient amount to your kids while keeping enough to live well yourself? If you never move into a nursing home — because you are as healthy at 65 as you were at 25 — then how do they stay in your house?
I’m against burdening our young people with debt, for sure, but I don’t see generational wealth as a long term solution to that either.
> Transforming real-estate, from a system largely aimed at profits...
I think profits from productive use of land (rent, farming, logging, tourism, etc.) is fine. It's the speculation on family residences as if it they were an appreciating commodity (like gold or oil) that seems to be the current issue.
The free market meets demand better than any planned system.
Let it find a way to make a profit with allow free people to decide how to spend their minimal viable income.
Then again, I think the minimal viable income needs to be $30k/year to everyone. A reverse income tax if you will. This would spur more economic development than any other program the government has ever tried.
How would that make land affordable to everyone? Seems like the opposite to me - since the tax would have to be high enough to replace all other taxes, land would be incredibly expensive.
One problem I’ve thought of with UBI is that it may very well make everything more expensive. Since people will have more money they will not need to work as much. When people don’t work as much, of course the amount of goods and services decrease. And when supply decreases, prices go up.
To me UBI is basically a simplification of how paperwork is done, and how things are paid and what is paid. It doesn't mean the state gives more money overall.
People and companies pay taxes, which are then redistributed across each other. There are several department who take care of all that money. It's immensely complicated. The accounting of all that is horrific.
The UBI stems from the negative income tax, meaning that instead of paying X and getting paid Y, the government just make a calculation and you get a result of what you owe or are owed.
One could go even further than that and consider salaries. If everyone gets the UBI, that means companies only have to pay for the difference in salary, and the state pays the rest. Company taxes may increase, but they would have to pay much less in salary, so it evens out.
Overall the UBI might seem a little utopian, but the goal is to make things simpler in term of paperwork so that people don't end up with nothing when their paperwork is not in order. It would also make it much, much easier for everyone to understand who pays what and why. Tax accounting is awful. The negative income tax tries to levy this problem.
But in general, I totally agree with you, implementing the UBI is a gigantic project that has huge consequences, both political and economical. I don't know how it would be done, because I know nothing about tax accounting and the legislation around it. But at least that means there is are work to do and a will to do it, so that's a good start.
Excerpt:
"The state will have difficulties in replacing the huge reductions in income tax returns with other forms of taxation. But there are also other things that the nation state can continue to tax in the future. For example, property consumption and different steering taxes aimed at changing people’s behaviour, are possible new avenues of income. There are considerable opportunities in steering taxes, as the data available and ideological resistance against absolute bans increase their importance. The heightened discussion in recent years about the expansion of tax co-operation between nations could also lead to actions that strengthens the tax base in the future global and digitalised economy."
I think we've all been duped into upvoting a completely AI-generated article based on a catchy title and a bunch of positive fluff thrown in.
The problem is that's very light on specifics. It's a bunch of hand wavvy suggestions about how we'll figure it out. The entire article had that kind of fluffiness to it, as do most discussions of basic income. These substanceless articles get posted over and over again and heavily upvoted and discussed in various places. I'm honestly hoping for something with more content, which is why I posted that.
I'm guess if I'm making obvious errors in logic, someone will point them out.
Yeah, I think there are real discussions to be had about basic income. I'm extremely skeptical of it, I don't see how welfare without any means-testing is politically sustainable long-term. So we'll have welfare on top of it, and the cycle repeats.
That said, do you agree the article was written by AI? Try to read it again. It reads like a markov chain of ideas loosely chained together.
Me too, I don't see how something that assumes a lot of good faith is going to work when many countries have trouble with popular support for their current restrictive and measurably effective programs. The only way I see it happening is with some sort of sovereign wealth fund. But that usually requires control of a resource or technology. Which most countries don't have anymore and probably won't have for many decades.
"With digitalisation, increasingly precise data is recorded about almost all activities. In other words, our activities are registered and measured in more and more detail. In principle, this opens an entirely new opportunity to tax, for example, work performances and collect payments for the use of different commodities such as roads. Thanks to digitalisation, all exchanges in society can be made transparent and taxed fairly in real time. "
Basic income as the smokescreen for an invasive state panopticon that uses taxes to monitor and control personal behavior will be the result, more or less.
I can already tell you how and why it will be bad:
By living on a basic income provided to you by the government, you become dependent. That dependency is a weakness that gives the government greater power over you. What recourse do you have if the government removes your basic income? If we eliminate all other forms of income, say via automation, so there are no jobs you could turn to - what choice do you have? Go on to a rural agrarian existence, or die?
What delightful power and leverage a basic income gives the government over its population.
Do you believe automation can have no net benefit for society, then? Is there no future where increasingly all of the basic needs of people can be taken care of by automation, freeing up humans to do creative work?
The point is I think: Problem is somebody invests in the automation (algorithms and hardware) and then own all the results from the automation.
You seem to assume that the proceeds from automation would be evenly distributed. Why would it? The reason most people today can eat is because they (or people close to them) are needed as a workforce.
In the past once things got too bad then people went on strike etc. and taxes were raised and wages improved. But if the basic need of the robot-owners are met without any humans working for them, strikes fail to be efficient. One can only trust in the benevolence of the people owning the capital and the inertia in the current laws and the democractic system to keep things somewhat stable...
They only would need to sell to other robot owners. In a borderline case, a small group could own and operate a whole tree of technology required for a modern living standard, like a self-sufficient farm that buys nothing from the outside.
While possible, this is usually not efficient, though.
We are medieval creatures, we long for a purpose, no matter how small, no matter how trivial. If the machines take the purpose, all the fruit-baskets in the world wont fill that hole.
Is "machines taking all the purpose" a logical conclusion? I don't see a future where machines will create all of the popular culture in the world. I choose to support human-powered culture now, and increasing automation would not change my mind on that.
A UBI would enable humans to do more work that society either can't or won't automate. Care of other humans is an example. Yes, machines may be able to take on some of that role, but never all of it.
Automation certainly can benefit society (the majority of whom are workers), but in the way in which it is used at the moment does not benefit them in the fullest sense; they can take advantage of lower prices, but they can't take advantage of having much more free time to pursue creative hobbies, science, education and entertainment.
There are at least two possible solutions offered; the first is UBI in which everyone gets sufficient money to live off. Where exactly this money comes from and from what profits is up for question, and raises interesting questions about profitability in industries where there is higher organic composition of capital. The second option is one in which automation isn't used for profit at all, it is used simply to reduce working hours via ceasing commodity production and instead only the manufacture of use-values. In my opinion this second option (frequently called Socialism, endorsed by the likes of George Orwell, Einstein, Oscar Wilde, Marx and Engels) leads the way to an even greater emancipation and heightened productive capacity of society, given that there would no longer be any need to ensure high employment (high employment across industries is necessary for workers to buy back the products that they make, which generates profit). The second option also deals quite well with the psychological issues of living in a commodity-producing society brought up by the likes of Marcuse and Adorno.
Although the UBI solution to the problem of rising automation has rightfully earned the interest of many, I do not believe it goes far enough to ensure a more free, equitable and democratic society for all.
Edit: Regarding UBI, what is the incentive to stop companies from "offloading" the duty to pay a fair wage onto the state? I'm not really up to scratch on UBI details, so a response would be appreciated.
The problem with socialism without free market is that it has been tried many times, and it drastically lowers productivity, leading to deficits. People start spending their copious free time in lines waiting for the rare and insufficient goods to arrive. If you think USSR was long ago and this time it will be different, look at Venezuela.
This was not a problem with Socialism, it was a problem with the form of economic planning used. We must also bear in mind that there are forms such as market Socialism. Neither the USSR nor Venezuela paid attention to cybernetic planning; scientists in the USSR were repeatedly shut down by bureaucrats for suggesting it.
There exist modern planning methods, though still academic, such as those elaborated by Cockshott and Cottrell in Towards a New Socialism, it's worth a look if you haven't seen it already.
Nobody is suggesting rigid five year plans any more.
Currently I have to pay the government if I work (taxes). If I don't pay, I go to jail. So my only other choice is not work and go on "rural agrarian existence, or die".
So, let's see, work and pay the man, or don't work and the man pays you, hmmm...
One is total dependency in which you can't exist without the government giving you an income. The other is the government being dependent on you and taking part of your income as their revenue source. In the first case, you're the dependent; in the second case, the government is the dependent.
Further, keeping with your example, it's not: don't work and the man pays you. It's: don't work and become entirely owned by and dependent on the man (who is the source of everything you have).
You're forgetting something, you can still choose to work and collect the basic income; that's rather the point. BI does not make you dependent on government, it simply allows you the option, which by the way gives you more control in your life as it allows you a safety net thus allowing you to take more chances in your pursuit of work because you can now turn down bad work.
A lot more people would be taking a crack at running their own small businesses with such a safety net in place.
I'd rather be dependent on someone I can talk to, and whose personal wealth is a function of my ability to produce than the State who I have basically no influence over. Both ultimately have their own interests at heart, but the first situation is more likely to turn out better for me if I do good work.
I hear this "dependency" argument over and over again, and it rings so very wrong in my ears. Survival depends on so many other people. Just ignore the flow of money for a moment and consider who depends on whose work most.
UBI is discussed mainly as an alternative means-tested welfare (at least in Europe). Which of the two makes you feel more dependent on government if companies don't offer you enough for your labour: A) you have to explain to some official that you are in need, prove that you are actively looking for work, open your financial situation and report what you are doing; if you don't comply with their suggestions your benefits will be cut; or B) you have an unconditional right to the money, they don't get to judge your situation, and you won't lose the money if you find paid work.
In addition, the assumption that government will somehow impose its own will against the majority of citizen and cannot be controlled implies that democracy is corrupt, in which case there is no point to debate its policies.
A proper income tax credit system, which adjusts based on income, is also the solution to eliminating the regressive, backward minimum wage approach that simultaneously punishes low skill labor and small businesses the higher you raise it.
It's also vastly superior to the basic income, which is extremely regressive as it gives money to everyone, including the very well-off top 1/3.
This is a bit of a silly conversation. UBI would obviously have to come with a restructuring of the tax levels, so UBI and Negative Income Tax are mostly the same in terms of outcomes. The difference is in presentation.
By the way, negative income tax is not the same as a tax credit. That's quite different, since a tax credit can only be offset against taxes you owe, and is therefore very regressive, since the poor already pay little income taxes.
That is a striking perspective. While I was already hesitant about UBI, I had never considered that it effectively expands the power of the government.
There's no reason that government can't be vastly reduced in a world that is capable of sustaining UBI. The only way UBI works is with massive increases in automation and productivity. At that point, why is a large, powerful government needed?
And further to the point, why can't collection of taxes and distribution of UBI be fully automated, taken away from governments altogether?
"Will someone lay out a realistic plan detailing how you'd implement BI in the US?"
I have been open-minded about BI, however, the so-called "opioid crisis" in the United States has made me more skeptical.
The accounts I have read in books and periodicals have confirmed my own experience growing up in a poor, semi-rural town: poor whites in the United States already have resources that are effectively equal, or greater than the basic incomes being proposed.
Poor white people in rural America have a roof over their heads (perhaps not their own) they have some amount of disposable income (walmart, unemployment, disability, whatever) and they almost always have access to grandmas Buick or dads Chevy truck. They are very likely to be obese. These people killing themselves with Heroin have food and shelter and cars.
Their problem is that there is no point to their lives. They have no narrative to attach themselves to and no meaning to their days. I don't see how Basic Income solves this, since they have what amounts to a (admittedly, precarious and haphazard) basic income already.
What is most interesting is how many optimistic and as yet untested claims that basic income advocates make. See this article. Paragraph after paragraph about how this program will work, what the advantages will be, but we don't really have any hard numbers, and even once we get them in a limited setting in Finland, or with random people across the US, we have studies that aren't generalizable, and we have very few. If n=29 means anything in this context, we've got like 2.5 (not a rigorously considered statement, don't hurt me).
The really cynical part of me notices how basic income is like the ideal political promise. "Hey, we're gonna give you money so you don't have to work, and when we do, society is gonna transform into utopia". We'll all be living in Truman Burbank's world, apparently. Because of course people won't squander their basic income (maybe on Bitcoin?) and if they do, so much for a social safety net.
The general populace (not those at the top) are seeing a bad economic situation, so of course their response is yes, meanwhile the people who are the biggest proponents of this as of currently are people like Altman, Zuckerberg, and Musk. The first two have political ambitions, the last is a utopian.
Of course when you break down the numbers, it doesn't work. How do you make up the 3 trillion a year it would take to give everyone $12k when you almost had healthcare repealed? What programs do you decide to cut and how do you expect the two parties to have a fruitful discussion about it (lol)? These guys will never talk about any rigorous plans because they don't have any that would make it through legislation. They also won't talk about how crushing and depressing and difficult it is to live on 12k (they have no clue).
It sounds like a future where the super rich throw pennies to the peasants and at that point it'll be a great excuse. We give you money, why can't you pull yourself up by your bootstraps?
Will someone lay out a realistic plan detailing how you'd implement BI in the US?