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What If Andrew Yang Was Right? (theatlantic.com)
254 points by undefined1 on March 17, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 456 comments



The interview here is compelling. Yang's book is even more compelling.

But what Yang doesn't do here or in his book is make a powerful case to fiscal conservative spelling out just how universal income will avoid demolishing the economy through inflation. Until this happens, UBI is going nowhere.

Although COVID-19 is on everyone's minds right now, it wasn't too long ago that Venezuela, its hyperinflation, and empty stores were the topic of concern.

COVID-19 has brought with it store shortages, which no doubt is a massive shock to most Americans. Nobody knows when those shortages will end.

Imagine what could happen if you dropped a grand in everyone's pocket every month. Also imagine the humanitarian crisis that would result by trying to suppress consumer inflation through price controls.


There is nothing inflationary about UBI. It's interesting how people think the onus is on UBI proponents to justify why their policy wouldn't cause inflation. Even if it did cause inflation, ultimately it's just a redistribution of wealth, and it still helps those most at the bottom.

You mention Venezuela which is a totally different scenario. They had an economy overly dependent on imports paid for by the revenue from oil exports, so when the price of oil crashed, so did their economy along with it. With resulting large amounts of foreign denominated debt, their only options were to 1. default 2. print money to pay off those foreign-denominated debts. They went with option #2, and their currency collapsed. Furthermore their country has extremely weak property rights (eg. businesses being seized by the government), enormously high levels of corruption, and ridiculous price controls.

Now what does any of that have to do with UBI?


There is a large risk of inflation under UBI. You cannot make an honest argument about UBI without accepting this risk.

1. On the margin, UBI reduces employment and production. This contributes to inflation.

2. On the margin, UBI increases consumption of consumer staples. This contributes to inflation.

3. On the margin, UBI increases the velocity of money. This contributes to inflation.

4. Under most assumptions, UBI increases government spending. Either taxes will rise, increasing the real cost of goods and services, or the money supply will increase, contributing to inflation.

UBI advocates should not dismiss these effects outright but should argue that they are small in comparison to the benefits of UBI. The lack of proper consideration of these arguments (and other arguments) by UBI advocates is pretty dang spooky.


1. Early evidence of UBI reducing employment actually shows the opposite.

2. Increased demand for consumer staples, if met with increased supply won't lead to inflation, if suppliers and entrepreneurs see the increase in demand as stable, they will make investments to increase supply. As long as we allow the price seeking mechanism of the market reach equilibrium, inflation will be at most momentary.

3. Velocity of money doesn't, by itself create inflation. Said another way, it's not a sufficient condition to bring about inflation. Sometimes a massive increase in money is just hoarded and doesn't enter the economy in any real sense.

4. Taxes don't necessarily have to rise in a regressive way such as sales tax and instead could be redistribution. I suspect what we would see is less inflation in the luxury art and real estate market if taxes were increased and the proceeds redistributed.


1. Below is a summary of evidence that UBI reduces employment. The reductions of working hours are substantial, even in studies widely spun as "no change". Below that is also HN debate about it.

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2019/basic_income_reduces...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22493537

2. Assuming that the equilibrium point remains at the same price level is difficult. It requires assumptions about the elasticity of demand and the elasticity of supply. Generally, if UBI has disincentivized work, you would expect less work, less supply, and a higher equilibrium price.

3. Under a constant money supply, increased velocity of money does create inflation. This is fairly standard economic theory. Increased hoarding is definitively a decrease in the velocity of money.

4. Fair enough, but it requires you to trust the politicians to pass a tax that impacts only the extremely wealthy. This is not guaranteed or even likely.


That first paragraph is a hell of whipsaw. It's not inflationary, you need to prove it is inflationary, and even if it is inflationary it doesn't matter.

UBI as a policy is trivially putting lots of money into circulation, so it's not unreasonable for people to be worried that would be inflationary.

Venezuela is a great example of the problems of inflation, which is a big concern with UBI as a policy, that's what it has to do with UBI.


Seems pretty similar to a tax break though no? I think UBI and taxes need to be intertwined. I could get behind UBI if coupled with a flat tax as a simpler system than progressive taxation (that has the same effect, but without all the loopholes).


Irrespective of UBI, is the US similarly not highly dependent on imports paid for by debt issuance, demand for which is not guaranteed to persist in the future just as Venezuela's oil income was not guaranteed?


Two important points. 1. US debt is denominated in its own currency not the currency of a foreign government. 2. The US economy is not dependent on one volatile commodity. Worse for Venezuela is the price of oil is set for a large part by OPEC so they have little control of the price.

In fact, the crisis in Venezuela was driven by OPEC dropping the price of oil to keep market share and prevent US oil production from fracking and the like from being viable.

Every time you think of Venezuela, think of these issues because any model of economics without this complete picture will yield inaccurate conclusions and fear of inflation being right around the corner when that is not the case.


I’m so confused why this inflation argument keeps popping up.

If you’re paying for the Ubi with taxes then there’s no inflation. Net money supply hasn’t changed (0).

If you pay for ubi by printing money then yes, inflation would be a problem. But no one has suggested that.

(0) I’m willing to entertain an argument about the velocity of money increasing from ubi but I really doubt it would be too significant.


My understanding is that if it's known that every American adult collects $1000 in addition to their regular income, prices will rise in an attempt to capture some of that known financial excess, so that the net result isn't that everyone gets an extra $1000 in discretionary income, but that everyone ends up paying that extra $1000 back in inflated prices.

Similar logic to how raising tariffs doesn't hurt companies as much as they hurt customers because the cost is passed on (speaking from an American perspective, not considering tax systems like VAT).


> prices will rise in an attempt to capture some of that known financial excess

The assumes financial excess. The reason for UBI is that there isn't excess. If 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, then that's not excess. If 63% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $500 bill, that's not excess.

You're right that inflation happens when there is excess, but given these stats, I don't buy that part of the argument. Even if these stats could be explained away from being financially irresponsible (I don't believe this is the common case), it still wouldn't be excess because people are still spending. If we don't assume excess then this argument becomes as silly as saying that giving people jobs with an income will cause inflation.

So where could this money be captured? A person that couldn't afford a car can now. I person with a $1k beater car can now buy a $5k car. Someone that was living paycheck to paycheck can now take a breath, buy a TV and a Netflix subscription. Someone that was unable to invest before could use that money to invest. The money affects everyone in different ways, but supporters of UBI think it is clear that there are already avenues to "capture" this money without inflation and that different income groups will spend the money differently. Studies have also shown that when there isn't full market capture cash injection doesn't cause meaningful rises in inflation.


> A person that couldn't afford a car can now. I person with a $1k beater car can now buy a $5k car.

Wouldn't car dealers raise their prices some value up to $1k because they know anyone coming in that month to buy a car also just received a $1k check from the government?

> Someone that was living paycheck to paycheck can now take a breath, buy a TV and a Netflix subscription.

Netflix may raise their prices knowing everyone has a little extra cash to spend, and that people would rather pay a dollar or two more than cancel.

If your streaming subscriptions, phone bill, and everything else goes up incrementally because companies begin to factor UBI income into their pricing, then without making any lifestyle changes, you'll see that overtime you're spending an extra $1k a month due to higher prices (of course it won't work out exactly like that, but the point is that some portion of your $1k UBI will go toward paying for things you were already buying, but that are now more expensive as a result of UBI-aware pricing.)

If you believe that companies won't act that way or that other market forces (such as increased competition) will renormalize prices, I can see the argument, but I don't buy it personally.


> Wouldn't car dealers raise their prices some value up to $1k because they know anyone coming in that month to buy a car also just received a $1k check from the government?

There is still competition between car dealers, so I doubt this would happen.


It would absolutely happen. When I was in the military, the town I lived in had to pass laws preventing landlords from changing your rent based on your rank because everyone's pay information was public. It's naive to think dealerships would try to undercut each other instead of colluding to all get more money.


Colluding to prevent competition is and should be illegal in a market economy. We can't say we can't implement a viable and beneficial social policy because people will break the law. We should enact the policy and ensure the culture, norms and laws are in place to make it effective.


I disagree. Policy should be pragmatic. As an extreme example, self driving cars shouldn't ignore the possibility of jaywalking.

I don't think there would be this sudden collusion at such a large scale though. Would be pretty obvious and begging for a crackdown IMO.


Charging rent based on rank would be a form of discrimination... also this is anti-competitive behavior. It is pretty well understood that regulation should exist. It is just a question of how much and how to regulate.


In America, this is the problem that has to be addressed before we can consider rolling out projects like UBI. I agree with you that regulations have to exist for this to work, and we simply don't have the regulations in place right now to enable it widely.


I was suggesting that regulations have to exist in general. Over the entire market. But what you said just flat out confuses me. That we shouldn't implement something because we currently don't have regulations for it? Why would we? We haven't implemented it. I mean with that kind of attitude we can't get anything done.

Do I expect hiccups and bumps in the road? Yeah, why wouldn't I? Humans aren't perfect. Never have been, never will be. But just because there are speedbumps in my neighborhood doesn't mean I should never go to the store. I still need to eat at the end of the day.


> That we shouldn't implement something because we currently don't have regulations for it? Why would we? We haven't implemented it. I mean with that kind of attitude we can't get anything done.

I think before implementing UBI, we have to address the broader issue of anticompetitive behavior in American business, due largely to decades of ill-advised deregulation, coupled with regulatory bodies who refuse to prevent anticompetitive mergers. Once we have undone the damage of deregulation, then I believe it's prudent to start putting UBI proposals on the table, but not before. Otherwise we risk making the situation worse for consumers and better for rent seekers.


I mentioned something similar in another comment. But I'm confused why everything is becoming an "or" conversation. We're a pretty rich nation, we can have more than one cake. There's lots of talk about regulation, we don't have to focus on only one topic at a time.


I agree with you generally, but believe this is a case where the two events have to occur one after the other.

Putting UBI on the table today without already having a reformed regulatory framework in place from day one will result in a failed project, IMO. Opponents of UBI will use this to say that UBI is broken, instead of pointing to the real problem, that regulation is broken.


> Wouldn't car dealers raise their prices some value up to $1k because they know anyone coming in that month to buy a car also just received a $1k check from the government?

Why would they. They just got more customers. They already have a surplus of supply. In fact, you could make the argument that they could reduce car prices because with more customers you can operate on smaller margins. This is literally operating at scale. But it is hard to say, I'm just pointing out that the exact opposite could happen.

> Netflix may raise their prices knowing everyone has a little extra cash to spend, and that people would rather pay a dollar or two more than cancel.

Or look at Netflix's strategy. It is to corner the market. The classic Silicon Valley strategy. Corner the market, hemorrhage money, and then make a profit. More customers works into their plan perfectly without raising prices. In fact, now they have more competition. If every streaming service raises prices then people will have less of them and pirate more (this is already starting to happen). Even a lot of companies outside SV run a loss in the beginning, until they reach scale.

TLDR: More customers doesn't mean prices go up. Frequently it means the opposite. Scale.


For people who can afford cars today -- Why wouldn't they?

I'm not convinced economy of scale applies the same way in this case. Cars (and mattresses, etc) are large and infrequent purchases dominated by preference. Dealerships make most of their money through sketchy financing and tricks.

There's a large class of financially illiterate people who routinely make massive mistakes like monthly income spend planning. Given an extra thousand per month, two hundred more on a car is both feasible and justifiable. Lifestyle creep.

I would agree if the topic was commodities like eggs or rice -- sure, I purchase by efficiency. And I'm not sure about the SV strat and dealerships. It could work in theory, but as of today dealerships are basically fungible and signal the same way as each other. I have no idea how a dealership could signal their lower marginal costs, especially survive in an industry with insane scaling costs.


Because you're only applying economy of scale to a single market. What I tried to illustrate is that different classes would spend the money differently. So it isn't just everyone buying cars. Come on, that's idiotic and unreasonable. But what I'm saying is that new people are entering MANY markets. Not a single one. That there are so many markets and that we are no where near full market capture (this is the important part) that thinking just rent would go up is also an unreasonable assumption.


> They just got more customers. They already have a surplus of supply.

Um, wouldn't that be increased demand? More customers with more money. That's the definition of more demand.

Economics 100 forecasts a price increase under those circumstances.


I too think naive models are the most accurate. Linear fits for everything.

But seriously, no. I literally gave you examples of this strategy happening. Here's some more companies doing it: Venmo, Move Pass, YouTube, Google, Amazon (store), Facebook, Robinhood, Vanguard, need I continue?

Simple models are great to get the basics, but if they worked for most things in the world everything would have a O1 solution. Frankly the world is more complex and can't be explained in a 10 minute lecture. That's why we have experts in subjects and why basic knowledge is drastically different than expertise knowledge.


They would raise prices because their costs just went up, with a huge emphasis on rent.

Also, this has nothing to do with operating at scale


How did their costs go up?


>The assumes financial excess. The reason for UBI is that there isn't excess. If 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, then that's not excess. If 63% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $500 bill, that's not excess.

But if the core problem is that everyone is bidding away all their financial slack on rent, then they will still take any such windfall and do the same with it, pushing themselves right back to the same (low) level of slack they have today.

Earlier advocates for poverty alleviation noted this effect early on. Winston Churchill told of a time when they got the tolls on a bridge removed, and then rents advanced by the cost of using the bridge twice a day.

http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-...

(search for "bridge")


This is what bothers me most about arguments against UBI. They seem to have baked into them an assumption that any reduction of inequality will be eaten by rents. Then it follows that the only thing is to balance concentrated private economic power with concentrated public economic power. But what I want to see is more people with more control for themselves not planned for them by a program or economic happenstance.

So if it’s hopeless then what’s to be done?


So you're saying the argument must be wrong because it would imply things are hopeless? That's a textbook fallacy of appeal to consequences. You're not actually addressing whether it's true.

The point is that the UBI isn't going to fix things until you first fix the dynamic that's responsible for gobbling up all the economic slack, so that should be the priority.


I am obviously not addressing whether it's true or saying the argument must be wrong. I'm pointing out there's some circular reasoning here that's unexamined in most online discussions about UBI.

I am pointing out there is an assumed and implied argument that 1) inequality is a problem and must be corrected, but 2) straight redistribution of some wealth with UBI will fail because-inflation/rents, but 3) we should have less inequality though even if we did that would put us in the similar position as with UBI where costs rebalance.

And at the end I ask, rhetorically but still, what's to be done. So here you also assume it's true without addressing it and offer no answer to how to address the gobbling up of the economic slack.


>I am pointing out there is an assumed and implied argument that 1) inequality is a problem and must be corrected, but 2) straight redistribution of some wealth with UBI will fail because-inflation/rents, but 3) we should have less inequality though even if we did that would put us in the similar position as with UBI where costs rebalance.

I wasn't making anything like that argument. I was saying that, if you don't address the dynamics that gobble up household economic slack, then a UBI won't produce the additional slack you're trying to produce. Three's nothing circular about that.

>And at the end I ask, rhetorically but still, what's to be done. So here you also assume it's true without addressing it and offer no answer to how to address the gobbling up of the economic slack.

In fact, the link I gave was from (the aptly named) landvaluetax.org and is from an organization that has one theory and solution for how land rents eat up slack and a solution.

And even if I didn't, it's still a valid point that the primary problem is "things that extract household slack", and needs to be address before any UBI is piled on.


Hey, you're right :) I was talking past you because I didn't realize you were the OP that prompted my thought. Also I was thinking about a more general trend in points and not yours specifically. You've got a great point about land too. I'm in Texas so I hadn't considered some places don't have a land tax because while it has it's challenges (disagreements between state and citizen on land value) it's kind of backwards not to have one.

I'm not saying the argument fails because there is a circular loop. I am saying there is something more to the system and we shouldn't drop consideration for UBI based on the argument that inflation will gobble up all of the increase because that argument holds true equally if we improve equality to everyone gets a wage increase.

Which really makes your point even more important. Particularly the one about land having the strongest growth pressure.


They are saying you are wrong because there are other things in the market besides housing. If you inverse your logic it means lowering wages provides cheaper rent. And that just sounds ludicrous.


>They are saying you are wrong because there are other things in the market besides housing

They said nothing like that; that might be what you think, and I'd be glad to address that, but it doesn't help the discussion when you invent arguments that were never made and expect me to have already answered them.

Real estate, unlike cars or food, can't be brought on the market to rapidly respond to demand, and people don't keep raising bids to the point where they leave a certain amount of slack in their budget.

There are ways to get around this (like with faster building and scaling up of transportation infra) but it would need to be address before throwing on a UBI, which was my point.

>If you inverse your logic it means lowering wages provides cheaper rent.

Rents generally do decline when wages fall.


Disclaimer: I live in a relatively prosperous community. My perspective is skewed accordingly.

Your numbers seem fictitious to me. 78% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck? Look at what they are spending their paycheck on. One car per person. 2.1 people per house. 3.2 game consoles per person. A new laptop every 15 months. A new car every 36 months. A new $800 smartphone every 11 months.

Every low-income 10 year old I see is carrying around $1000+ of electronics and treating them like they're disposable. But our school district offers free breakfast to 100% of the students. We have student parking lots for 16 year old kids.

We're all living paycheck to paycheck, but I claim there is still huge excess. Giant houses for average families, computers, ATVs, boats, cars, TVs, 2 movies every night, 4 Amazon deliveries a week, direct access to Chinese suppliers, personal juice presses, occasional cruises.

Air-bnb and uber are not luxuries for 1%ers. These are basic human rights chiseled into the constitution.

There are, of course, truly poor people in the population. But our definition of poor sure has changed a lot in 50 years.

Show me any random collection of 10,000 Americans and I will show you $2 million/year of disposable income without sacrificing a single smartphone or smart TV.


Your view of people's buying patterns is not accurate. I own a home care agency with 500 employees that live on low income (the government sets the Medicaid reimbursement rate so we have no ability to raise wages). NO ONE is buying a new car, let alone every 36 months. Half our employees don't own a smart phone. We pay $10hr, in rural North Carolina, so lots of people live on even less. Please research this issue and go and meet people in this income bracket, you will see a different picture. I also encourage you to read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.

The truth is most American's wages have gone to Health Insurance, College, and Housing.

See https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/this-chart-i...


By definition, you're the one with a narrow perspective -- your employees are all low-income workers in a rural town. The parent never said NOBODY is poor -- in fact, he specifically acknowledged that there are poor people. His claim was that he doubted that 78% of the American population is. Additionally, many (many, not ALL) who technically are "poor", still find money to purchase expensive electronics.


1) It doesn't matter if you're rich and living paycheck to paycheck. This is argument actually supports the idea that UBI won't cause inflation because clearly there is still inefficiencies in market capture if people are rich AND living paycheck to paycheck. (like I said above, inflation doesn't really happen when you don't have full market capture).

2) Selection bias is a thing. While there are rich Americans living paycheck to paycheck, most of the people in this situation are not rich.

3) I'm not sure I'd consider a smartphone an expensive electronic. You can get one for under $100 and a plan that is <$20/mo. This isn't exactly breaking the bank...

4) I also wouldn't call a cell phone a luxury item in today's society. Even a smart phone. You can't get a job without a phone number, which now usually means texting included. A smart phone just means you have a single device that can also get you on the internet. Again, we're talking about a purchase that is well under $1k, has high utility, and is being held onto for years.

Sure, this isn't poor like poor in Africa, but does that really matter? We don't live in Africa. We live in a rich society, I'd like to live in a wealthy society. One where our poorest can get shelter and food. If our definition of poor becomes having constant access to housing, food, health care, and are able to do so on 40hrs/wk, and nothing more, I'd call that a success. But we're clearly not there yet. If we have that, I don't care if someone has a trillion dollars and can buy rocket ships because we're in a post scarcity society (maybe not world, but society).


Take it up with supportlocal4h. I never even used the phrase "paycheck to paycheck." Nor did I specify "smartphone" when mentioning electronics.


Except that my narrow perspective is a sample size of the large group at issue and is more accurate. Its the sample size that matters.

I also gave recommendations for a much broader sample size in the book that spans multiple industries and geographies.

Finally, I posited a specific theory as to why 78% of Americans are living pay check to pay check...the basic social mechanisms of survival, Health, Education and Housing, have risen at a rate far exceeding inflation and have actually exceeded average income levels. These rises are due to governmental policy and not some failing of individual citizen consumers.

I would argue that if a person can't afford basics like Health, Education and Housing, the are poor. In fact, they report feeling poor; their bodies and minds exhibit the stress and anxiety of being poor. We can and should create companies and governmental policies to work to reduce this reality, rather than blaming people for their condition.

If we as a society determine that it is necessary to have a car or cell phone to contribute in a productive manner we should ensure that as many people as possible have the tools to be productive. That's just a rational policy to boost GDP, the tax base, the total size of the Market for goods and services, and trade with other countries. You know, capitalism.


> my narrow perspective is a sample size of the large group at issue and is more accurate

You stated 1/2 your employees don't own a smart phone. That is simply not representative of the general US adult population. Additionally, all your employees earn $10/hour. Again, not representative.

Again, nobody is arguing there aren't poor people in dire situations. supportlocal4h's argument was that godelski's stats were exaggerated.


> Show me any random collection of 10,000 Americans and I will show you $2 million/year of disposable income without sacrificing a single smartphone or smart TV.

That's $200/year on average. Not exactly a compelling argument.


Surely McDonald’s already knows everyone has an extra two dollars but they don’t raise their prices because of it.

The thing is people would still shop around for the lowest price. The vendor with the lowest price gets the business. Even opec can’t raise their prices in unison without someone cheating.


> The thing is people would still shop around for the lowest price. The vendor with the lowest price gets the business.

But we know economically this isn't necessarily true. Some industries are more monopolized than others. Some people aren't in areas where they have good alternative shopping choices. Goods like toilet paper have many different price points and it hasn't been a race to the bottom among the brands to become the cheapest toilet paper. "You get what you pay for" is still a common rule of thumb. Veblen goods would also rise in price.

It's my opinion that UBI would give businesses an opportunity to raise prices in certain sectors, but I concede it wouldn't be universal inflation across the board.


If there are sectors where UBI gives businesses an opportunity to raise prices, then it follows that there is room for competitors to enter.

Competition will eventually drive prices down and lead to more consumer choice.


You could not be more wrong.

When everyone gets $1000 for sitting on their ass, wages have nowhere to go but up. Why go to work for minimum/low wage, if basic needs are met? Wages go up + inputs go up --> end prices go up --> even the "vendor with the lowest price" is charging much more than before.


Has this happened with the oil dividend in Alaska? https://www.aoga.org/facts-and-figures/permanent-fund-divide...


> prices will rise in an attempt to capture some of that known financial excess

Why is there no incentive to undercut one's competition in this model?


Because the most likely destination of excess cash flow is into the hands of landlords, not salt miners and bakers.


This assumes they aren't already squeezing every cent they can out of people...


> Net money supply hasn’t changed

But where it lands has. House prices and Ferraris might be cheaper. Milk and rents will be more expensive.


Poor people already have to live somewhere. It just paid for with rental subsidies and low income housing now, both of which also drive up rents for others.

Similarly, the US government already buys up milk to create a price floor, giving the milk away to the poor and to school lunch providers.


Housing would be a problem where supply is constrained, I can't see it being a big issue in the US.


I don’t buy that it’s a necessary consequence.

Even In your example if demand for houses goes down and demand for milk goes up, what prevents more land being used for dairy farming, more builders becoming farmers?


Rich people aren't spending all their money on stuff, they're investing it. If wealthy people were to take all that wealth and start buying stuff (themselves or via redistribution through taxes to UBI), there isn't magically more stuff, so the price of stuff goes way up => inflation.


What do you think investment is? That money doesn’t disappear. It still enters the economy.


Investing is just lending money to people who need to buy something, such as capital. That money is still spent. In fact it needs to be spent on production, in order to produce returns.

You can’t just store wealth in a vault and have it grow.


> there isn't magically more stuff

Most companies can easily ramp up production to meet increased demand. It's not magic, it's the modern world.

Most general goods companies are demand constrained, that's why they need to do marketing campaigns to make more sales. It's only if they had too many orders and couldn't grow production that we'd have inflation. So there may be some inflation immediately but not long term.


But there would be more stuff, the increase in demand would be met with an increase in supply. Thats the magic of the market.


out of curiosity, why not just tax people less rather than offer UBI?

either lower the tax or start offering monthly tax refunds?

would that work as an alternative or equivalent to UBI or am I thinking of something very different?


That’s just a UBI with a different mechanism. The problem here is most proposals for negative income tax pay out annually rather than monthly (you specifically do not), and fail to account for people who do not work but otherwise provide useful input into the economy like stay at home parents and adults taking care of elderly family.


Because the people who need/would benefit aren't paying anything remotely near 1k/month in taxes, that's the whole point. Your solution only works in a society where people already have a reasonable amount of income.


I'm not sure how one would manage to produce $1,000 per month per citizen over 18 without printing money. That's $2,500,000,000,000 per year. You'd have to raise taxes by more than 50% to cover the costs.


The average American pays $10489 in taxes each year. Double the taxes and give average Americans $12000 and they'll come out ahead. Median Americans will do even better. Even if you assume no efficiency improvements, no benefits from velocity of money changes, and no cuts to existing social welfare programs such that the average tax increase equals the $12000 expenditure, you can fund it purely on taxes and most people will still end up with more money in their pockets.


He doesn't do it all with taxes. He cuts a lot of welfare programs, as those would now be covered by UBI. He cuts spending in Social Security, as 12000 dollars a year of that is covered by UBI. There were some more overlapping areas he laid out that I heard him mention in an interview. It wouldn't be, "Oh, you get this program AND this program" unchanged, but more of, "You already get $12000 in UBI, now what more of a subsidy do you need? Not as much." At least, that's the way he was laying it out. He was far more conservative with spending than a lot of people were getting by just looking at the headlines, but that's one of the failures of our media structure.


The US govt has recently dumped trillions into the banking system in a matter of days. Last I checked they were talking about additionally cutting payroll taxes for the year.

Somehow they were able to do this without raising taxes by 50%... Turns out we have the money after all.


This isn't a fair comparison. That injection is a loan. I support UBI, but we can't be making bad comparisons like this. It doesn't help.


Yeah, no. When Greg Mankiw, probably the foremost conservative economist in the world, endorses Yang's UBI, then it's probably worth considering seriously:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/business/yang-warren-taxe...

https://youtu.be/HDKfdmbCuvw?t=31615


My quick read of the NYT piece is a comparison of Yang's plan and Warren's plan, and it concludes that Warren's is unworkable (e.g., how do you value the present value of Rihanna's future royalties? This has to be determined for Warren's wealth tax, but not Yang's VAT tax).

It does not read like an endorsement — just an assessment that Yang's plan is better than a plan he describes as unworkable (Warren's).

In the Youtube, he says: "My own view is that a universal income financed by an efficient tax, something like a value added tax, might well be worth considering" — hardly a full-throated endorsement.

Has he said anything else that is more positive? Or more specific with regard to the amount of UBI that he thinks would be appropriate/efficient? I wouldn't call either of these things an endorsement.


I feel like the quote you pulled out of Youtube is slightly unfair in the extent to which he endorses the idea. In my opinion, it sounds like he full-throat endorses the general method and aim of the idea just not the exact transfer amounts and the method to raise revenue (sales/VAT tax vs carbon tax). Here is the quote in more context:

"The plan is just a version of the negative income tax. Milton Freedom first proposed it...and as a student 40 years ago I thought it was a pretty good idea. And it turns out I wasn't alone in that judgement...In 1968 a 1000 economists endorsed a negative income tax along these lines. What Andrew Yang is proposing is a version of what these 1000 economists endorsed back in 1968. Could 1000 economists all be wrong? Laughs Well yes they could. But I don't think in this case they are. My own view is that a universal income financed by an efficient tax, something like a value added tax, might well be worth considering. And I'm one of the signatories...of a plan to do something similar with a carbon tax."


I don't hear the words you hear. At the end, he says "of a plan to do something in a smaller way with a carbon tax"

As in, the $1k/month thing is too big, and he thinks we should consider doing something smaller. How much smaller? We don't know for sure, but I doubt economists would support a carbon tax that would approach the level of $1,000/mo for every adult in the US. The primary purpose is to internalize the externalities of pollution, not to generate revenue.

The fact that an economist thinks a concept is worth considering is a far cry from saying they are endorsing a specific instance of one of those things. It's one thing to say he endorsed the concept. It's another thing to say he endorsed the plan. He didn't.


I agree that it needs to be addressed, but my worry is that it’s complete conjecture.

So many people were predicting massive inflation from quantitative easing but that never came to pass.

To me, the scary thought is implementing UBI without a mechanism to reel it back if our model wasn’t right


QE added ~$3 trillion cumulatively to the money supply at its peak. And most of it sat on banks' balance sheets because in a $200+ trillion global financial asset market ($300+ trillion today), $3 trillion doesn't do much to change banks' incentive structure for making loans, it just propped up the existing incentive structures so the whole system didn't collapse.

I can't fathom how adding $2+ trillion every year directly to working Americans' wallets wouldn't lead to greater consumer price inflation than we've seen with QE. That doesn't actually tell us much about whether UBI is worthwhile, but I don't see the point in denying it. In fact, it's important to have that discussion because there are ways we could mitigate it. For example, most of UBI would likely get sucked up by supply-constrained markets like housing, so it's probably a good idea to combine UBI with housing reform, such as development as of right for missing middle multifamily projects.

I agree, we should have an exit plan. But we should also have an entry plan.


You made very good points and I think we probably agree on the need for both good entry and exit plans. The larger point I was trying to highlight is how much of each side is based on conjecture, not data driven evidence. Which makes good planning that much more necessary


Why would giving everyone an grant a month result in inflation? That is entirely not clear, alluding to Venezuela does not make it an argument.

Essentially you seem to be saying that creating a more equal society results in higher inflation. I don't see your argument being supported by reality, I am not aware of studies showing that the North European countries have statistically higher inflation.


Unfortunately, many people equate "printing money" with inflation, which is too simplistic.

That said, all those monetary grants could lead to excessive demand which leads to inflation, especially in sectors of the economy that are not competitive. Whether it actually would lead to inflation and, more importantly, to how much is a question that needs to be answered empirically.


This Medium article that addresses this point has been pretty wildly shared throughout his campaign: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...


Inflation is a non-issue. Economic growth has largely been constrained by demand, not supply. And the modern economy is saturated with replacement goods. If the demand for milk goes up, I can switch to soy milk. If soy milk goes up, I can switch to Almond. And if all of them go up, I just drink water. Once most basic needs are met, inflation looses its power with a few exceptions. The financialization of our economy has resulted in crazy high house prices, education, and to some degree health care. And that was driven by excessive monetary stimulus. Giving working class folks an extra $1k a month is not going to cause houses to go up by $1M. But giving speculators access to absurdly low interest rates will.


> If the demand for milk goes up, I can switch to soy milk. If soy milk goes up, I can switch to Almond. And if all of them go up, I just drink water.

I don't understand how this example describes a situation where inflation is a non-issue. I used to be able to afford to drink milk; now, due to inflation, I can only afford to drink water. That sounds like inflation. What am I missing from this example?


There are 2 issues that I was attempting to demonstrate, but perhaps I conflated them a bit. Here is second attempt:

Inflation requires a persistent and durable increase in the price of a good. The first issue is that a large proportion of individuals in modern economies are barely making enough money to make ends meet. They are very sensitive to price. An increase in the price of milk would likely cause them to switch to alternatives, thus lowering demand for milk which would then bring the price back down. In effect, the constraint on the wages of the lower classes acts as a constraint on prices of goods. And the second factor, is that in these modern global economies, we have plenty of replacements for almost all types of goods. So if a drought in the mid-west causes soy prices to spike, people will just east less soy based products and switch to something cheaper for a while.

COVID-19 could disrupt that of course. But my hunch is that within a few months after the lockdowns are over, most supply chains will be back up and running. At that point we will be back to being demand constrained (perhaps significantly so if the economic impact is severe enough).


1) Real inflationary problems are always about money supply, not regular changes in supply/demand.

When Chavez goes nutty, people don't want his currency, it starts to crash, he prints to pay his bills, it really crashes. This is where all the inflation crisis comes.

2) The 'milk substitute' thing I think illustrates the opposite point you're trying to make. Having to give up Milk to drink water is a severely negative consequence! Projected across all of one's lifestyle and habits, it would be comparable to giving up a car to ride only the bus. Giving up Netflix for 'library books'. This implies a serious degradation in the quality of life.

If anything though, we've been concerned about deflation for a very long time, not inflation.


> Giving up Netflix for 'library books'. This implies a serious degradation in the quality of life.

If everyone gave up Netflix for library books, I think that’d be a massive societal win.

Other than that, I agree with your point.


Ah yes, shouldn't we all?

But we can choose books anytime, and we don't. So when you and I think about 'win' it must be different than what 'everyone else wants' at least in terms of how they actively chose to spend their time.


It’s a commentary about available options meaning that beverage makers can not exploit a market without shrinking their own market. If they want to maintain revenue the suppliers will need to ensure they retain their market.

In addition if it got to the point where someone priced milk so high that customers were abandoning that segment of the beverage market, an aspiring milk empire builder could enter the market with lower prices.

The assumption being made in the allegory is that water and milk fill the same role as “something to drink,” with no qualitative difference in consideration.


Uh, the housing market is more complex than you think. If the bottom of the market gets bid up because of an increase in purchasing power that will affect higher priced units too - if previously I was considering a shitty studio in a bad area for $500/mo vs a 1bed in a good area for $1k/mo, and now the studio is $800/mo, don’t you think the 1bed is going to cost more too?

Also everybody has low interest rates for their houses. It’s not only open to speculators- there are people getting almost 3% interest, which is quite low.


It's certainly more complicated than I understand, but I see it like this...

Case 1: With no UBI the person who works in food service has to live an hour or more out of town and commutes to work each day. This is because their pay is better in town than out of town so it's worth it financially overall. Or they simply are paying more in housing costs than they should, are feeding money up the rent chain instead of saving to say own their own house and have a tenuous living environment for a family.

Case 2: With UBI the person can just move to a place where housing costs are $300 a month and do whatever they want without worrying about how they'll support themselves in an emergency where they can't find work. They could start a business. Volunteer. Stay at home and raise kids. Take care of the neighbors kids and teach them gardening. Or work if the pay is actually high enough to justify it, which seems to push more money down to human workers over profit automatons. Hey, teachers could live and teach in cities with smaller school budgets!

Is that inflation? I suppose in the sense of rising buying power diluting the dollar some, but assuming it's paid for by a high progressive tax after a certain income amount, I think it's just wealth redistribution that levels out the overall geographical housing cost to income ratio.

I think it would reduce the power of landlords, though certainly doomsayers say it will just push up rental and house prices. I think this is possible to a point, but honestly seems too locally focused. I think a lot of people would leave where they are if they knew they could support themselves somewhere new.

$1000 a month would offset decreased pay more in an absolute sense in a lower cost of living area. This will make it feasible for a family to move safely to a new place without a job lined up. Or know that if they join a union and get fired they'll have baseline support. It's hard for me to see this as favoring anyone but lower income human workers even if it's not perfect in every way.


You make a good case why UBI might not affect rent in high-rent areas, but what makes you think there would be a place where housing costs are $300 a month when everyone has UBI? Why wouldn't the floor immediately become $1000 everywhere?


In the hypothetical case where the minimum rent in the entire US becomes $1000 (and the laws of supply/demand have not magically disappeared), then that means all of the livable areas in the country have been revitalized enough to demand such a price. Considering how poorly many rural and exurban communities have fared in the last few decades, that feels like a nice problem to have.

Its also worth mentioning that the US is very big and there are a lot of places that are just not that attractive to live in[1]. So I feel like it will be quite a while before we get to that point.

And a final point. UBI is not meant to provide free rent. It is a form of social welfare and safety net. The fact that the real estate market is so imbalanced in the US is a failure of capitalism (why aren't startups and companies moving to low-cost of living areas?) And the fact that UBI can help bring some balance to real estate markets is nice side benefit, but its main goal it to act as a counter weight to the ruthlessness of market economies.

[1] https://dimewilltell.com/free-land/


I don’t see how it would reduce the power of landlords. If more people want to live in an area than housing can support, rents will increase to whatever level they can sustain to find the equilibrium where fewer people can afford it. If fewer people want to live in an area than housing supports, rents will fall.


Right, a market where a lot of people suddenly have the ability to move to a less expensive town and not have to worry about finding a job or worry about commute times. They may do so eventually if they wish, but I think this is a huge amount of leverage over landlords and would reduce housing demand.

I'm not saying it's good for San Francisco tech workers, but I don't think rent costing two thirds of your take home pay is historically typical. Based on that history I do not think landlords could effectively collude to keep prices high if people are willing and able to walk away.


I disagree.

There are two kinds of goods. The ones like computers and phones which are steadily getting cheaper and the ones like housing whose price has got inflated enormously. Remember how we tried to fix the education problem by student loans and how we tried to alleviate the housing burden by mortgage tax deduction and subsidies of interests? I don't think the problem is people are unable to afford milk or a shiny iPhone. It is the price of housing, education, and healthcare.


> Remember how we tried to fix the education problem by student loans and how we tried to alleviate the housing burden by mortgage tax deduction and subsidies of interests?

I don't understand how anyone ever thought that making it easier to borrow money would make things with inelastic demand more affordable. People will pay what they must to get food and shelter. If you make tertiary education non-negotiable in getting a job, then people will pay what they must to get an education. If you loan them huge sums then you just reduce price insensitivity and create a massive pricing bubble.


And yet, people do fail to see this. The inflated price of college is almost entirely the result of easy credit and inelastic demand. And it creates a cycle: as college prices increase, more people need credit to access education, which puts more pressure on politicians to ease credit rules, etc.


My original comment could probably use an edit or two, but we are actually in agreement.

Some context that was left out, inflation has been stubbornly low this past decade[1]. For many of us, this feels counterintuitive based on our experience with housing, education and healthcare. But as you pointed out, globalization and industrialization has resulted in downward pressure on prices of a wide array of goods. And when you factor housing costs across the entire US population (and not just the high COL areas), the inflation math sort of pencils out[2].

And my original point was that inflation caused by UBI should not be a concern because a) the prices of iPhones and milk are constrained by forces that are beyond the impact of UBI (globalization, hyper-efficient capitalism, etc..) and because b) prices of housing, education, and healthcare have long since untethered themselves from needing to be affordable (so UBI, which largely benefits the working class and poor, will have little impact there).

[1] https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

[2] I disagree with how the Fed has handled monetary policy the past few years. Even if the inflation numbers support their moves, they seem to be willfully ignoring very large bubbles (real estate, VC) forming due to their policies.


I still don't think we can put out the fire by pouring more fuel.

For instance, rents are proportionally related to the income of the population. How can we prevent the extra cash flow from being translated into higher rent/housing prices? If I have that extra cash, I would certainly 'leverage' it to expand my real estate portfolio :)

That said, I don't object to UBI per se and I agree that the Fed's policy would lead to some undesirable consequences. But without addressing the problem systematically, UBI would go nowhere better, I am afraid.


I think you are looking at this from SF/SV centric point of view. The correct solution to the problem to high housing costs is to build more housing, not lower everyones income.

Here is another angle to look at the issue from. We have been relying on monetary stimulus for the last decade to keep the economy chugging along. The landlord class has been benefiting from that via cheaper interest rates. What if, instead of lowering rates, we did a UBI and in your proposed scenario, most of that money just results in high rents. Well, we would be roughly in the same spot we are in (stimulus largely benefiting landlords), but with the key difference that people who are really struggling (living in their car for example) can use that cash to get back on their feet. Also, because the money passes through multiple peoples hands before eventually getting sucked up by the wealthy, it will actually result in higher measured economic activity (because GDP is basically measure the velocity of money).

So I guess, that is what I don't understand. Our current policy is to just shovel money to the wealthy. They in turn just bid up the price of stocks, real estate, art, yachts, super bowl tickets, etc.. creating an inflationary bubble for rich people things. With a UBI, the working class gets first dibs on that stimulus, and every one up the chain will benefit (including small businesses, which also don't bet much benefit from monetary stimulus).


Rents should be limited by marginal utility of living in costly city. If you can have higher wage by living in costly city compared to small town, than it make sense to accept higher rent. But if you receive extra income regardless of where you live, then it is hard to say what effect it would have on prices. It may even cause people to prefer cheaper small towns as marginal utility from wage difference would be lower.


That has to assume that most people would choose lower-paying jobs if the extra income presents. But I don't think it is necessarily true. It is also unlikely that people would right away leave their current job if rents are on the rise, at least not until the net gain gets surpassed by the alternatives. The extra income probably gives the tenants more 'tolerance' to the rent increase and that is simply how subsidies interact with market.


Not sure I follow how the milk as a substitute for water analogy translates to housing. There are no substitutes for housing in desirable areas. When the entire working class suddenly has more income, it doesn't create more housing, it pushes up the price of housing. Sure we could build more, but why? After all, if the price of affordable housing goes up, so does less affordable housing, and luxury housing. And we end up in the same place, except with inflation.


UBI removes the geographical constraints that have been distorting the US housing market. There are plenty of areas in the country that would gladly absorb excess housing demand, but the lack the jobs and economic prospects of those areas make it difficult under current circumstances.


This makes no sense.

For example, even with UBI, a startup will still tend to want to locate in Silicon Valley than in, say, Amarillo Texas.

The sheer ability to grab a drink with someone who can change you life in tech does not exist in the same proportion in Amarillo as it does in Silicon Valley. Hence, housing prices will differ.

This is also why there are more oil companies in Houston than in Atlanta, despite the roughly same size metro area.


If people are moving to areas that lack jobs and economic prospects, because they can survive on UBI, you’ve just burdened a bunch of small towns with people who aren’t interested in making more money.

Towns need tax revenue, which doesn’t come in sufficient quantity from people happily volunteering on a UBI wage.


These places are already overburdened by people living off of social security and disability insurance. At least with UBI they will get a better mix of working aged and abled bodied individuals.


Right - UBI could be one of the best solutions to the housing issue. It would be even better combined with another libertarian idea, land value tax.


Yes. Also, first home owner's grants increased prices. Reduced interest rates increased house prices. Perhaps the great covid-19 WFH experiment will (partially) undermine the housing geography monopoly.

Would socialist free housing, utilities, food, medical care, education might work better than UBI? What incentives would make capitalism provide them?


Capitalism can't provide housing, utilities, food, medical care and education for free.

People would just quit their job if they got all that with no effort. Then how would the government be able to pay for the free stuff if it wasn't able to tax workers?

Edit: It occurred to me the government could lock people up in work camps in order to be able to tax them.


>Edit: It occurred to me the government could lock people up in work camps in order to be able to tax them

So people end up in a situation where they are forced to work in order to survive, the same situation they are in now.


Ah, but in Capitalism, they can choose not to work.


You could have the choice to refuse the UBI and end up in a similar position to homeless today, though most homeless did not make a choice not to work.


But, could you choose to not be one of the taxpayers to fund UBI?

I say if you want to do UBI, add a checkbox on the tax return where a person can choose to donate $1000 to the UBI program out of their tax refund. Let the UBI recipients all have an equal share of the funds collected from that checkbox.


If you don't make any income, you aren't paying for it. You can have your issues with UBI, but "the government could force you to work to pay taxes" isn't any scarier than the current situation, where not working can just kill you.

Your opt in situation couldn't be considered UBI.


Then why should I have to pay $1000 in taxes to get $1000 UBI?


> Capitalism can't provide housing, utilities, food, medical care and education for free.

> People would just quit their job if they got all that with no effort.

Citation needed. All previous experiments on ubi have shown the opposite. You are just painting a boogeyman, without evidence to back it up.


People still work in countries with free medical care and education.

I think the effect on motivation is the central issue of UBI. There might need to be an adjustment. I know for myself, it can be helpful to be compelled to do something that I've been putting off. Sometimes, people don't feel they have a reason to act, but having to go to work can help. It prevents inactivity and isolation.

Perhaps a focus on mental health and intrinsic motivation will be the answer.

But I think most will naturally aim at higher goals than survival... as they do now.


I was talking about the list of Socialistic welfare handouts the parent said should be free, not UBI.


>If the demand for milk goes up, I can switch to soy milk. If soy milk goes up, I can switch to Almond. And if all of them go up, I just drink water.

What happens when the water gets privatized and you can't afford that?

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/water-privatizatio...

>After privatization, water rates increase at about three times the rate of inflation, with an average increase of 18 percent every other year


I think the "financialization of our economy" => higher house prices is at best a part of the story. The other part is absurd zoning laws and restrictions on the supply of housing. This couples with people's expectations that house prices should always be going up and that housing is an investment.


>Economic growth has largely been constrained by demand, not supply.

This is the most basic misunderstanding of economics that I'm 95% confident you have never taken even an introduction to macro course. Demand shocks don't lead to growth, only inflation.


We are not getting any economic growth right now.


I'm not sure what would be worse, for this to be trolling or for you thinking what you just wrote makes sense.


I wonder if there are any economic studies on whether social security increased inflation when it was first enacted. It's not the ideal comparison because of the sheer scale of UBI vs social security but it would be something to get notion of the impact.


Why would it increase inflation? An equal amount of money is taken out of taxes. There’s no new money being created.


I don't know whether it would or wouldn't. I was just replying to the parent comment which said this:

> But what Yang doesn't do here or in his book is make a powerful case to fiscal conservative spelling out just how universal income will avoid demolishing the economy through inflation. Until this happens, UBI is going nowhere.


It's not just the net money supply that results in inflation, it's also the prospensity for it to be spent, and on what it is spent (inelastic/elastic demand curve goods and services) which determines the amount of inflation.

If you took 100 dollars out of the pocket of every American and gave it to Warren Buffett, that would most likely be deflationary.


Hard to tell. We'd have to ping similar programs in order countries because there was massive depression on the value of the dollar than.


Congress woman Tulsi Gabbard (the Clinton blacklisted presidential candidate) took on Yang's UBI initiative after he ran out of money and dropped out of the presidential race. Gabbard introduced HRes 897 last Thursday and has been vocal about providing an urgent $1k per month UBI payment for the projected 10 million US citizens who will lose their jobs.

The DNC in their wisdom have again chosen to blank Gabbard and focus on AOC and Romney thinking about doing the same thing, although I believe there are now co sponsors and momentum for HRes897.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/include-ubi-in-the-economi...


Tulsi is going on Fox to complain about not being allowed in the debates despite having ~0 support. She is not a good-faith actor, and blacklisting her is entirely appropriate.


Well, blacklisting is absolutely undemocratic.

But it is fair to not have her in the debates when she does not meet the requirements.


Bloomberg didn’t qualify for the debates either. They changed the rules at the 11th hour so he could participate.


I think they mean that if a Democratic candidate is going on the (known to the left wing as pure propaganda and lies) right wing network of choice to make their case then they are not arguing in good faith and simply looking to score points with people who will never vote for her anyway.

It's disingenuous and she had next to 0 support anyway.


Here's the sequence of events with Tulsi Gabbard's presidential campaign which is important if you believe in running a fair democracy, my fundamental point here.

Gabbard resigned as a rising star DNC VP in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders over Mrs Clinton who had bought the party off with a cash infusion (largely raised by Weinstein) on the agreement she had control of party strategy and messaging, and could include multiple super delegates at the convention. Congreswoman Gabbard announced her grass roots funded presidential campaign and has run it from a mini van with volunteers, a very small paid staff and ~$1m budget.

Gabbard got great traction - most searched for via Google - in the first two TV show Q & sixty second answer commercial TV 'debates' and destroyed the Harris campaign with her debating skills in November.

Throughout the campaign, and massively increased in 2020, the DNC media has either subsequently ignored her or run negative messaging to undermine her credibility. The DNC knows reform would come if Gabbard got control.

The DNC changed their debate rules to allow 55x billionaire Bloomberg to 'run' and debate as a presidential candidate, spending incredible sums to obliterate Sanders and others before pulling out again.

The corporate puppet candidates Buttigieg, Klobochar (and subsequently Warren afterwards) pulled out just before Super Tuesday - and after tens of thousands had cast their postal ballots - to endorse Biden, the DNC's preferred candidate. The debate rules were changed again by the DNC after Gabbard won two delegates to exclude her. The only media Gabbard gets coverage on is Fox News and internet shows and podcasts.

There is a massive disinformation campaign she is constantly fighting (Russian asset, Assad and Modi supporter etc) that undermines her fundamental anti war pro diplomacy platform.

My point: if the DNC give hundreds of millions in free positive media coverage to their preferred candidates and blacklist/ blackout positive coverage of other candidates is it any surprise Gabbard has done so badly, or other future and past candidates? Many many people don't even know she is in the presidential race on ballots that still list long suspended campaigns from Harris and others.

The DNC rely on name recognition and positive media messaging to amplify their preferred candidates. This is not democracy or a level playing field.

The Gabbard platform positions: www.tulsigabbard.org


Bloomberg is a nationally known politician who was willing to spend 230 million in a 4 week span. Gabbard isn’t comparable to that.


Correct. There needs to be campaign finance restrictions put in place, otherwise these media owning oligarchs and their networks will continue to have overwhelming control over democracy. Gabbard is just a congresswoman and army major with a very modest background.


My primary concern with UBI is not the concept itself, but the risk for people in power to use it against the people.

Once UBI exists, people will rely on it for survival. It will be the single most influential campaign topic.

Worse, if UBI were to get 'Obamacared' then we'd end up with a massive battle over implementation, followed by a much worse system than the one we had prior (worst of all worlds with numerous 'compromises'), and then followed by a repeal and whatever subsequent chaos comes out of it.

I don't want to imagine what would happen to the folks who find themselves reliant on UBI if it were to go down that path.


> but the risk for people in power to use it against the people.

As opposed to what, private undemocratic unaccountable authoritarian institutions controlling peoples' lives?

> nce UBI exists, people will rely on it for survival.

Anybody who's dependent on their employers' paycheck is dependent on their employer for survival. How is dependence on the government any more dangerous than being dependent on a corporation?

We already have UBI, but only old people can qualify for it, and the dividend amount is proportional to how much money you made in your lifetime. It's called social security.

Extending this dividend to the rest of the population is the next logical extension of this.


Exactly. This is akin to the argument that we shouldn't further nationalize healthcare because "do you really want some government beaurocrat making healthcare decisions for you?"

Compared to the current system where some combination of the numbers in your bank account and am insurance company beaurocrat are making the decision? Yes.


> How is dependence on the government any more dangerous than being dependent on a corporation?

Changing your employer is much simpler than changing your government.


Employers in the U.S. can fire anyone at any time for practically any reason, cutting off one's livelihood. That feels more likely than a government doing the equivalent of cutting off someone's social security. A company's goal is to maximize profits, not provide charity to people it no longer deems useful to its bottom line.


> Changing your employer is much simpler than changing your government.

Making changes at your place of employment is often impossible. We get direct chances to change our government every X years. And changing to a different employer often isn't that easy for many folks.


Changing your employment is individual and allows different offerings from different employers, matching the wants and needs of different people. Changing your government needs a majority consensus and at least some people will be in the minority who doesn't get what they want.

I don't think tying employment to healthcare is a good thing, but I don't think your argument gives a good reason, either.


Changing your employment is as simple as irritating your manager or missing some KPI, and getting fired in all these 'right to work' states. UBI would keep people who would otherwise live on the brink of utter chaos enough to sever their dependence on minimum wage slavery.

Your picture of people picking and choosing from enticing opportunities isn't remotely true for people at the bottom where this would help.


So fix your employment, minimum wage, etc. laws, too. UBI is a huge undertaking in terms of legal and social changes, we shouldn't consider it "either this change or no change".


Changing your government (at least in a democracy) is way easier than changing your employer, which are generally run with no input from employees (although some employee-run businesses do get to vote for their management).


A few points to unpack here.

1. "private undemocratic unaccountable authoritarian institutions" are a lot of buzzwords, which don't accurately describe your local businesses. If every company was google, we could go there, but in the current reality, you're presenting a false dichotomy. The balance of power between people and their local institutions is wildly different than people and the federal government and megacorps.

2. A person can freely look for work at any time. They can upskill and seek more gainful employment, transfer into a better paying position in another company, or find employment that is more suitable to their immediate needs (part-time work for those studying as example.) You can't do that with government - unless you compete directly against the megacorps who use their power and influencer to affect elections and legislation.

Example: We got rid of net neutrality despite it being enormously popular. That's massively undemocratic and demonstrates that large institutions, government or not, don't always act in the best interests of the people.

3. Social Security is its own creature and requires a more thorough discussion. What I can say is based on my own experience - my family didn't benefit from Social Security. By the time my father was eligible for benefits, he was already on his death bed. Spousal benefits are "up to" half, meaning my father worked his entire life and my mother only got to benefit from half the 'savings.' If he had just put that money away like he did all his regular earnings my mother would be much better off.

I can't imagine my family was the only one in such a situation.


> As opposed to what, private undemocratic unaccountable authoritarian institutions controlling peoples' lives?

Which is more authoritarian: 50%+1 of the people with the legal authority to imprison or kill you, or hundreds of competing firms bidding for your business or labour?

I can easily see a government abusing UBI, just like the U.S. federal government has abused highway funding e.g. to extort the states into raising the drinking age.


folks keep getting pulled into the false dichotomy of government vs corporation. the powerful and moneyed love this, as it obfuscates the real danger to liberty and freedom, which is themselves.

the truer, and more useful, dichotomy is the people vs unwieldy and overgrown institutions.

small institutions are great: your local government, your local bank, your local community center, etc. because the power disparity isn't so large that they can be kept in check and directed to do the will of the people.

large institutions, on the other hand, are irresistable to the power-hungry, and have no foolproof defense against corruption to their aims. they view people as resource to extract power from, not customers/constituents to serve.

UBI falls on the side of subjugating the people to the whims of government, reducing liberty and freedom, not extending it, as some like to argue.

(this is also why we should be against corporatism, and the favoring of capital over labor in general)


The 'Universal' part of UBI is the key here. The problem with our current patch work of social programs is that the constituencies for each program are fractured and disorganized. A child tax credit here, a food program there, it is easy to slowly whittle down a social program in those cases. But a Universal BI means that any changes or cuts to the program will impact everyone. It is much harder to play politics when the constituency spans both political parties.

Regarding Obamacare, there were a lot of issues, but a large one was the 'keep your hands off my health care' crowd. These folks were convinced they had good health care and that the government would ruin it (ironically, many of them were on medicare). So right off the bat, the constituency was fractured. And for this same reason, I actually think Universal Health Care will be a much harder sell in the US than a UBI. Despite our health care systems very obvious issues, too many people think their current plan is good enough (and may not even be aware of their plans shortcomings) and are too worried that any sort of change could put them in a worse spot. With UBI, its a blank slate and a pretty easy sell. Gov: Hey America, here is $1000. Us: Okay!


Sadly the majority of america that is uninsured has universal emergency room healthcare. And that is the most expensive kind. We have probably 100 million Americans on this universal healthcare plan.


That claim is circulated about but I don't think it's true as an overall cost, but only as a cost-for-value. A few ER visits is cheaper than actually providing lifelong preventive care and chronic disease management before they die. O If you don't have a high risks of dying for your condition at the ER, you don't cost money while you sit in the lobby.


That and Medicaid, which covers a significant portion of America already.


> ...it is easy to slowly whittle down a social program in those cases. But a Universal BI means that any changes or cuts to the program will impact everyone

Sure, because the effect will be permanent removal rather than slow whittling down of other programs people depended on, and the people that depended on them will have to make do with whatever lesser payment the government can afford to pay out to much larger numbers of net recipients of a UBI

"Hey America, here is $1000, and $2000 in extra taxes to fund all those people that didn't need welfare before" is also a surprisingly hard sell. It's only an easy sell when you assume everyone's a net beneficiary


Another point that opponents to universal healthcare would claim was that granting access to healthcare services to the entire US population would degrade quality forcing rationing of service. With inequality you can buy your way to good service when you wanted it. However, with universal healthcare, you have to wait in line like everyone else.


"you" == "a few wealthy people"


Just to make it clear to the down voters. I do not agree with the objection to universal healthcare! This is just an opinion I heard when congress was drafting the ACA.


I think something similar has happened with minimum wages. It appears to me that the natural next step is to make the minimum wage grow with inflation.

Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, so we're stuck with various government-mandated minimum wage levels that are tied to the value of money from several years before.

Companies can now point to the law, and use this obsolete number as a metric by which to set their own salaries. What was intended to protect the laborer is therefore perversely being used to protect their corporate employer.


> It appears to me that the natural next step is to make the minimum wage grow with inflation.

I feel that way too, but remember that indexing wages to inflation made the stagflation of the 70s significantly worse (I don't believe it was the cause, though it is often blamed). That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, in particular for the minimum wage, but some further thought is required.


Make them grow with productivity.


This destroys incentive to invest in productivity improvements, because the gains are eaten by wages. Most productivity gains in the economic sense don't come from people working smarter/harder, they come from investment in better machines and technology (capital). If you took the most productive worker today back two thousand years, their productivity would be massively reduced without access to any modern tools or equipment.


> This destroys incentive to invest in productivity improvements, because the gains are eaten by wages.

No, the share of returns that go to labor is constant, so productivity gains are split between labor and capital the same as returns prior to the gains are.

In the alternative, capital captures an ever greater share of the returns over time because they are incentivized to invest in those areas that creates the most return to capital.


That is only true if your only expense is labour, something that's true out-call prostitution and little else.


Productivity is defined as output per unit labour. This means any profitable investment the firm makes will increase productivity (assuming the number of employees remains the same). If the minimum wage was indexed to productivity, then any such investment would increase labour costs.


Indexing doesn’t have to be 1:1; the goal is to ensure some of the productivity gains go to the workforce, but that can be done while still allowing improvements to be a net benefit to the company.


Yes, so the only way to increase profits is to increase automation. A much better use of human brains then using them to flip burgers.


So automate away all the jobs? What are people supposed to do then?


The sewers have put all the nightsoil men out business, yet I say society is better for automated toilets.


It remains to be seen whether we will really have enough "creative" work for people to do.


Live humbly on UBI, grow vegetables in your yard and invent a better method of automation in your garage. If you succeed at the latter, who knows? To me the point of UBI+Automation is that we unlock the potential of more people following a muse without needing to spend too much time surviving.


Enjoy themselves.


Latte art and craft brewing.


Funnily enough, Australia employs more barristas than coal miners, but the coal mining sector gets more government subsidies than the latte industry.


Minimum wage doesn't grow with inflation because the point of inflation is to steal wealth from the working class:

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi...


That's not the point of inflation, and I don't think that article backs what you're saying up.


It absolutely does. Krugman comes out and says that it's a way to use policy to cut the wages of the working class. Read it carefully.


inflation is used to keep the "time value of money" working so that capital is incentivized to be reinvested, lest it lose all its value over time. this impetus leads capital to relentlessly seek returns, which over time compresses returns to labor in favor of capital.

so suppressing labor is certainly a consequence of our positive inflation policy. the intention can be debated, but note that various govermental units tolerated prejudiced efforts like mccarthyism and redlining too.


I think the intent is to 'keep employment numbers up at any cost'. But that there is a (predictable, and evidenced) unintended consequence to the prescribed method of attaining that objective is an indictment of the class-blindness of the liberal economic polity, and, secondarily, the brokenness of modern 'science' and 'scientistic' pursuits. (not saying the right is much better on that front)


i'm sympathetic to the original indictment that capital holders (like many hbs grads) realized, and then moved to solidify, this tilting of the board in their favor by supporting inflationary policy.

i'm not sure that the liberal economic polity is a distinct class from those same capital holders (but i generally disfavor left-right political framing anyways).


Yeah sorry to make it seem too much like a left versus right issue, I hate both sides, I just specifically pointed out "left" because the left purports to care about the "little people" (see Krugman) while very much actively pursing policies that are great for capital holders and rhetorically espousing policies tantamount to throwing bones to everyone else.


And the point of COLA is to give it back. You can't look at half a system in isolation.


You can't pretend a discontinuous system in continuous.


Inflation is a tax on wealth, not on labor.


It's a tax on wealth, but as the Krugman article points out it also allows real wage cuts without the psychological barrier facing nominal wage cuts, which facilitates corrections when wages have overshot their sustainable levels, assisting in reaching full employment (unsustainably high wages necessarily reduce employment levels.)

This is related to why minimum wage is inferior to UBI as a basic support: minimum wage is in tension with employment, especially at the low end, in a fairly direct way. UBI, while it had to be supported somehow, isn't directly in tension with employment specifically at the bottom.

I'd like to see minimum wage tied to inflation but UBI tied to a funding stream that grows with output, so that per capita benefits grow (over the long term) with per capita output. And I'd like to see minimum wage decreased from the level it is calculated at with inflation adjustments by the hourly wage equivalent of UBI (for simplicity, annual UBI/2000, so that a $12,000 annual UBI would reduce minimum wage by $6/hr from it's pre-UBI level.)


The prices of real things change in response to inflation. Inflation is only a tax on cash wealth.


And which social class has relatively more of their wealth tied up in cash versus investments?


I don't get it. Asset prices track inflation like clockwork. What's even funnier to me is that taxes on wealth rarely raise as fast as asset prices!

If anything it's a tax on income.


Wealth is accumulated income which is subject to income tax so wealth a different dimension, so even if you expect an additional tax that grows at the same rate? The units are incoherent.


  Wealth is accumulated income tax
That's only valid if you think "wealth" can only be a bunch of cash in a bank account you saved. You may own a piece of land that could even predate the government in some places. Or you may own a patent. That's "wealth" which is subject to different taxes to "income".

  so even if you expect an additional tax that grows at the same rate? 
I don't expect, anything I was just pointing a fact.

I live in a country that has experienced inflation over the last ten years and the reality is that income taxes have followed inflation but property taxes not, because the government doesn't update property book values as often. The result is that you can hold very expensive property while paying very low taxes. But this also happens in lots of other places: California and Proposition 13 come to mind.


This is one of the bigger leftist critiques of UBI - instead of enacting meaningful change to the system, gifting the people just enough money to keep them docile and prevent upsetting the ruling class and, like you said, weaponising for further political gain


One problem is the implication behind that critique, that the poor should rather be kept poor until their anger is useful for class warfare (the political gain of the left.)

I sympathize with the left far more than the right but both sides seem perfectly happy to consider the proletariat as sheep when it serves their purpose. As far as I'm concerned, UBI would be meaningful change to the system.


>the implication behind that critique, that the poor should rather be kept poor until...

I think it's more that UBI will result in at best a brief reprieve from poverty. It won't be a long-term or even medium-term solution as it only treats the symptom, not the cause.

While I can celebrate anyone promising/implementing welfare programs such as UBI and the huge social benefits they bring, I am cautious of how these will play out politically.

>both sides seem perfectly happy to consider the lower classes as sheep when it serves their purpose

Just want to throw out that I disagree with this


An at least brief reprieve from poverty would be better than nothing. We can treat the symptoms and the cause under UBI, just as we could do now, with the existence of welfare (such as it is in the US) and the minimum wage. I don't think these positions are mutually opposed.

Yes, UBI can be weaponized politically, and probably will be. But the current system is already weaponized. If it's turned against people hard enough, that only works in the left's favor. If not, it at least suggests that some degree of meaningful change is possible within the system.

>Just want to throw out that I disagree with this

Fair enough.


If that was true there would be more protests in the US than in France. I think the exact opposite of that is true.


Sorry, I don't follow. Could you expand?


My point was that, in France, where you have a strong social net that offers everyone to subsist, have a place to leave and health insurance, is not preventing people from protesting for more rights - at the opposite.


It is interesting that you frame it as 'leftist critique' instead of 'far-leftist critique'. As historically, exactly that kind of arguments were used by far left (communists) aginst moderate left (social democrats) and was a major reason for their split in 1910s.


I've seen realistic figures for my country on UBI and from what I've seen UBI at a realistic level does not seem to be affordable. It's insanely expensive. Moreover, without massive changes elsewhere in society, UBI would decrease social mobility and lead to a two-class society that keeps the poor even poorer than now.

I'd rather see reasonable minimum wages, and higher taxes that are spent on universal health care, free education and social welfare in the usual Prioritarian way, though with very loose conditions on eligible recipients. Make it the least bureaucratic possible and the most friendly to side jobs and transitioning to self-sustenance as possible, and it will works optimally. The current systems in most countries are horrible, because they are designed to punish people who are creative and try to make money on the side - they are based on the stupid and outdated idea that you're either a successful entrepreneur, or an employee, or get social welfare. In reality, the system should allow anyone to transition between those three roles with ease, as it fits best in the current situation, and without being bogged down by existential sorrows all the time.


> Moreover, without massive changes elsewhere in society, UBI would decrease social mobility and lead to a two-class society that keeps the poor even poorer than now.

Could you elaborate on that a bit? How and why would it do that?

What's your opinion on Negative Income Tax?

> The current systems in most countries are horrible, because they are designed to punish people who are creative and try to make money on the side

Agreed. The number of people applying for some program while trying to hide some of their income would go down a lot if the eligibility and payout were gradual. Plus the truly heinous criminal cases would be still there to prosecute. (Eg. if someone sits on a pile of gold and lies about it on some application.)


> > Moreover, without massive changes elsewhere in society, UBI would decrease social mobility and lead to a two-class society that keeps the poor even poorer than now.

> Could you elaborate on that a bit? How and why would it do that?

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on UBI myself and have merely been to a talk+discussion about it, so I'm happy to be convinced otherwise or hear opposing arguments.

I see two problems. First, a realistic UBI would be at an extremely low level, barely exceeding the existence minimum. However, it would diminish employer's willingness to treat people in unqualified low-wage jobs fairly and well (in small companies they do that a lot). They would fire and hire as they see fit, because someone fired supposedly could live easily off UBI. It seems to me that a consequence of this attitude is also that wages for those jobs would sink and some of these jobs might even degrade into unpaid "internships", based on the argument that people with UBI can take those jobs to have a purpose or for personal development, but don't need them to sustain their life. In reality many of them would still depend on those jobs, though, because UBI would be too low.

Second, UBI itself does not prevent massive capital accumulation and the continuously increasing divide between rich and poor, and it does not prevent the spreading of wealth by inheritance (as opposed to merits and work). There is no obvious reason (or at least I cannot see it) why UBI would change the current trend of increasing the gap.

Taking these two issues together, I don't see how UBI can solve society's main problem, which is this increasing gap between rich and poor and all problems that come with it regarding eduction, health care, political power distribution, social mobility, renters vs. land-owners, gentrification, etc.

I'm not an economist, but Negative Income Tax seems much better to me.


Neither am I an expert, so disclaimers all around :)

The problem of too low UBI seems the biggest practical one. And if we do it somehow needs-based, then it stop being universal, which is one of the supposed advantages - that it absolutely eliminates administrative costs/problems/etc. (But of course those are very fine straw men. Rationally none of those matter. Only that we somehow synthesize a long term (eg. sustainable) strategy to solve the problems that every kind of income/wealth redistribution aims to solve.)

Of course with that attitude we're quickly back to where we are now, needs based assistance programs. Plus a lot of recommendations on how to change them. One of them is that we should stop fucking around - to use the expert terminus technicus - and just give poor people money. Yes, they might even spend it on things that give them some pleasure on the very short term. They might even buy drugs. Not that they can't do that now with some extra steps. (Buy a-okay food with assistance program, sell it for cheaper, buy booze.)

And you are exactly right, the inequality is again completely independent of UBI. It depends on taxes, labor's share of income, etc.

UBI is a magical unicorn, it is assumed to provide everything good. Especially because it's so vague most of the time. (That's why talking about NIT is much easier, it's a rather concrete form of UBI.)


This is rare on the Internet nowadays, but I totally agree with everything you say. I often annoy economists by pointing out that due to the diminishing marginal utility of money any transfer of money from the rich to the poor increases overall utility. They don't like that at all. :)


I thought mainstream economists are/were fully on board with that. :o


What would reliance look like? People need a stable minimum amount to survive? Isn't that already the case for many? Isn't that the point of so many entitlement programs? Isn't that the reason for proposing UBI?


> What would reliance look like?

People adjust their spending/working patterns to account for the UBI - maybe they have a child they couldn't have afforded before, or take a long-term mortgage on a home.

Then the political winds change, a politician wants to show how tough they are, and of course we shouldn't be giving UBI to people in jail/drug dealers/anti-vaxxers/millionaire executives/people without photo ID/tax dodgers...

Basically, the same way the federal government can institute a national speed limit and a national drinking age, despite not having the power to do so directly, by making federal highway funds conditional on states having those limits.


M4A is similar as well. I guess all big social safety nets have this problem.

UBI and M4A would encourage me (and others) to pursue less lucrative pursuits (arts, research, gamedev, entrepreneurship, etc) but it would be hard for me to quit my nice tech job salary if there's the specter of the GOP potentially killing the benefits that enable my pursuit.

And that doesn't even compare to the effect that uncertainty has on the less fortunate.


Eh universal healthcare would probably increase 'drive' at a macro level as it doesn't chain the overqualified or highly productive individual to crappy jobs that happen to have good insurance.

Not to mention you lose the overhead of dealing with insurance, for you and your family.

But yeah, I could see a class of people who would use UBI to permanently slack off whereas they would be highly productive otherwise.

Edit: Note I'm from Canada and have taken healthcare for granted until I went to the US. My experience has been overwhelming positive with universal healthcare, and the only complaint is I've had to wait a few hours per emergency visit. Zero wait when serious though.


> But yeah, I could see a class of people who would use UBI to permanently slack off whereas they would be highly productive otherwise.

If you're highly productive, willing to live on a minimal payout, and highly prioritize time away from work, then by all rights you should already be on sabbatical eight months a year or something.


If more workplaces allowed that, I'd probably be less preoccupied with UBI.


Trust me, having a safety net isn't going to kill your drive.


I agree. My point is a safety net doesn't feel safe when it's one election away from being neutered.


That's a great point.

After the government shutdowns and lock-ins began, I started to think about our current political trends. If we keep voting for political leaders that tend towards fascism or socialism, we could end up with severe consequences.

Both camps were eager to close restaurants and stores without establishing economic fallback plans. Essentially, they indirectly removed the SMB owner/middle class. This seems like the first step towards making people solely reliant on IBU even it is promised only as a "temporary fix."


> My primary concern with UBI is not the concept itself, but the risk for people in power to use it against the people.

It's not a question of 'if' but 'when'. You can learn quite a bit from India's insane "reservation" policy where more than half of all opportunities (and in some cases > 80%) are 'allocated' to certain 'backward classes'. Never mind that these 'backward classes' dominate politics of the country, and are often quite rich (the 'creamy layer' in India is about $20k, in a country with per-capita GDP of 1/10 that).

The supposedly 'conspiratorial all-controlling' Brahmins are but scapegoats (like the Jews) in a propaganda story that only dates back to the British times (see Nicholas Dirks). It's depressing that the supposed 'liberal' Western media is creating a situation which very well might lead to widespread genocide and pogroms in India (this has happened before), like in Rwanda, Germany and elsewhere. The grand Hindu temples and all its wealth has already been looted by these supposed 'backward classes'; I wonder what else they'll come for next.


God forbid people get money to take care of their lives. Because we can afford it.


I assume you misread what I wrote, or implied some opinion that hasn't been stated.

I want people to have enough money to live reasonable and modern lives. What I DO NOT want is for UBI to become a political weapon and for the people who rely on it to have it taken away suddenly.

That is a serious risk to that system that doesn't get enough attention. It could happen due to financial collapse or for political reasons. But no matter why it happens, the damage would be absolutely horrific.


I read what you wrote.

Your opposition is actually an example of a logical fallacy. I'm struggling to find the exact name of it. But it has to do with that fact that you are against the adoption of something positive that you agree with because of some hypothetical negative externality.

Edit: It's called the "Perfect solution fallacy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

The perfect solution fallacy is a related informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented.[4] This is an example of black and white thinking, in which a person fails to see the complex interplay between multiple component elements of a situation or problem, and, as a result, reduces complex problems to a pair of binary extremes.


> I want people to have enough money to live reasonable and modern lives. What I DO NOT want is for UBI to become a political weapon and for the people who rely on it to have it taken away suddenly.

Personally speaking, as a proponent of UBI, I reluctantly accept that the first versions of it will have to be state-based. If only to be able to learn from its mistakes and iterate from them to refine them further.

This is one of the reasons I'm such a cryptocurrency enthusiast, after the wake of the financial crisis and massive unemployment in Iceland they deployed, and subsequently failed, with aurora coin to try and experiment with UBI. Had we gotten more information from it would have helped to be able to have a decentralized version of it by now, but it was too much for such a poorly backed project to surmount.

> That is a serious risk to that system that doesn't get enough attention. It could happen due to financial collapse or for political reasons. But no matter why it happens, the damage would be absolutely horrific.

I think this is inevitable and not a question of if but when it will occur, UBI will not be the biggest contributing factor to the 'system' failing, either: it will have been an outcome of centuries of needless war, currency corruption and Market manipulation, ecological destruction and climate change.

its just a matter of time. At least having this in place prepares us as Species for what lies ahead, the status quo cannot be maintained, this much has to be accepted.

The transition is definitely terrifying, but the idea of getting this right has so much potential and worth the sacrifice when you realize just how broken the 'system' really is.

I think this what most don't understand when they see the Greta Thurnberg led Gen Z revolts happening all around the World, and they're dropping out of school to protest; this system is already doomed if you cannot convince the future generation play along anymore.


We should also have a voluntary charitable UBI. Encourage a culture where everybody contributes what they can to the fund, and then all donations are split equally among all citizens. That money won't be subject to the same political pressures; people who donate will feel good about themselves; and the bureaucracy needed to do this would be minimal.


You can't rely on voluntary donations to produce a stable income. A charity doing this would have to vary the amount paid out based on receipts. In hard times, donations and payments will reduce. This will reduce the effectiveness of a UBI in smoothing out recessions.

It will also suffer a death spiral because every donor will know how much every recipient gets.

If I put in 500 each month and get 200, then I'm going to look for a better place to put my donation. Not because the 200 is a bad RoI for me, but because 200 seems like such a pointless sum for everyone to be getting. I'd rather have that money funding cancer research or more pertinently, I'd rather give all 500 of it to people who need it.

Everyone will have their thresholds for what seems "worth it". The lower the payment gets, the fewer donors there will be, and the proportion of the income used for admin will rise.


Well hang on, not necessarily. The donations could be to a sovereign wealth fund of some kind, so long as invested money produces a somewhat reliable income, it could be seen as an investment in the eventual utopia UBI fans envision happening once the fund's large enough. Not a terrible way to implement it privately if the state doesn't get around to it now I think of it.


I consider myself a fairly generous person but in a crisis like this my overwhelming concern is my close family. Charitable donations aren't on my radar right now.


amounts to a tax on conscience: https://youtu.be/m2q-Csk-ktc


I'm not sure there's a "what if" at all, more like a "when will".

At some point, a UBI will become a necessity. The most likely other options are a dystopian nightmare or a complete overhaul of our basic economic principles (i.e. a post-scarcity Star Trek-esque society)


For the most part I agree, but the important fact is that that point might not be now. Just because you might know the end point, doesn't mean you can skip the steps in between or try to get there too quickly. That can lead to disaster as you'll probably not have the right conditions or supporting structures in place.


Our current pandemic and the economic consequences certainly will make more people open to UBI. Once the recovery starts, look for businesses to invest heavily in automation so they're not caught in a labor crunch again when their human labor get sick, quarantined, or ineffective due to social distancing. This may cause a permanent shift in labor demand that never again comes close to matching the labor supply. Or maybe it'll end up like other revolutions with new currently unknown jobs opening up over time.


Check out the "Future of Work" where they cover the top 5 most popular jobs and how they are in danger. The self driving trucks shock the human truck drivers in the diner.

Makes me sad to see their faces when they realize just how far along and how good the self driving trucks have become:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iaKHeCKcq4

UBI will become a necessity because the alternative will not be pretty.


Self driving trucks probably are going to be considered a national security issue going forward. We can't have cargo sitting around waiting for humans in a health crisis. That will indeed be a huge gut punch to that segment of the labor market. The only slightly silver lining is that trucking has very high turnover so the number put out of their jobs will be less than you might think. What will hurt though will be the loss of opportunity to be a truck driver, even if only for a few years.


Have you seen all the homeless people in SF or NYC lately? I'd love to see the reaction to some cushy FAANG engineer telling them "the time for UBI might not be now".


The other option is, that as we progress towards a post-scarcity economy (arguably we're almost there in some areas, e.g. food in the West/US), prices will decrease towards 0. Now, if we could only get rid of those pesky rent-seeking real estate landlords...


UBI is fundamentally right, my biggest issue with this approach is that this is the last step before eliminating support for the poor altogether. No longer hampered by the intricacies of providing a service, it now becomes a debate over "how much do people need to survive? Why do we need this in the first place? This is redistribution!" This is a battle "the people" not only have lost typically, but failed to even take up an interest in defending for themselves.


Yeah I'm afraid that the trickle-down grifters will always cook up some soundbites to knock any no-strings-attached benefits by pushing the freeloader fallacy and people will fall for it. Which brings us back to square one, but without anything needs based, causing a massive surge in poverty again.

Of course this has to be balanced with the utter paternalism of determining "needs" in the first place. It clearly isn't enough on its own, and is also ripe for abuse in different ways.


Didn’t George W Bush send a cheque out to every American? I figured that’s what Romney had in mind more than full scale UBI.


Yes, there were a tax rebates in 2001 and 2008 which served as a natural experiments for studying consumer spending in response to a fiscal stimulus. The timing of cheques sent were pseudo-randomized on last four digits of social security number. See [1] and [2]. They're sort of dreary reads, but the TLDR of both is that consumption on non-durable goods increases the most, and has the largest impact on those with low-income or don't have access to credit.

[1] Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w10784.pdf

[2] Consumer Spending and the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008. https://www.nber.org/papers/w16684.pdf


Yes and most of it was spent on paying off debt rather than buying tvs and iPods to stimulate the economy. I know I put my check into my savings account and didn't think about it again.


Isn't that the biggest goal right now? Maintaining a healthy banking and housing system by subsidizing rent, mortgages, debt payments etc? $1000 a month doesn't seem like a stimulus, it seems like a bridge to the other side.


Better than $1000 would be codified protections for tenants or borrowers. Yes, this doesn't have to be an either-or thing, but I'd still want to have the law on my side.

I guess what I mean is that in order to fix, as Yang says, the biggest winner take all economy, you have to do something different than just throw money at it (lest the winners take that, too). The goal should be to address why we're here in the first place to make sure it doesn't happen again (at least not to this level), and not to just barely get by and bounce right back to being one inconvenience away from ruin.


The problem with UBI is that most versions of it would essentially liquidate social services that people would normally receive. UBI only makes sense in addition to the other parts of a comprehensive safety net (universal housing and healthcare), not as a replacement.


Why would I choose to jump through bureaucratic and degrading welfare programs for vouchers and discounts when I can opt-in to a superior UBI program that gives me cash which I can use for anything? I'm the one who best knows how to effectively allocate those resources in my life. E.g. What good are food stamps when I have no gas (or car) to get to the store?

There are some social services that are necessary and beneficial but these should be built on top of a UBI foundation for maximum effectiveness.


Ohh, but then the UBI recipient may use it to purchase something that Big Brother doesn't want them to buy... like using SNAP to buy hot food.

On a more serious note, yes. Beyond basic necessities like healthcare and education, that the government would like to micromanage lives of welfare recipients feels demeaning in the extreme.


> I'm the one who best knows how to effectively allocate those resources in my life.

Some people do not get good enough education and do not know how to effectively allocate resources.

> There are some social services that are necessary and beneficial but these should be built on top of a UBI foundation for maximum effectiveness.

Do you mean the other way around? Necessary social services should be the foundation with UBI built on top of it. Social services can do some things better than UBI can even when assuming everyone uses their UBI completely rationally.


Exactly. If you knew how to best allocate resources in your life, you probably wouldn't be in a situation where you need UBI.


> Why would I choose to jump through bureaucratic and degrading welfare programs for vouchers and discounts when I can opt-in to a superior UBI program that gives me cash which I can use for anything?

Because we'll have an issue when you spend your UBI on anything and then need assistance with rent, food etc pp.


UBI still does not provide health care.


Right. It also doesn't address climate change. Or gay rights, regime-change wars, or gender discrimination.

It just provides every American with increased economic freedom. It's a good thing my doctor accepts USD :)


> It's a good thing my doctor accepts USD :)

That $1000 check will only cover the ride to the hospital before tax.


How many people would take UBI, buy drugs, alcohol, hell go down to the casino every month and blow it all in 30 seconds....


Most people receive far less than $1k/mo. Yang's plan was to allow the option so that if you were one of the few that did receive more, you wouldn't have to give that up.


Median income in the USA in 2017 was is $31,099/year.


you don’t explain why. i think the opposite. that it should only work as a replacement. part of the draw is it’s more efficient than existing programs


The conservatives into UBI are hoping for that but at least with Yang's plan there was the choice of continuing with old benefits if they are higher.

Although this choice is probably pretty easy mathematically, it's kind of a terrible choice to have to make, so after a while the plan changed to saying it would stack on top of some other benefits.

(But none of this matters because whatever Congress might do would be different.)


Yang was right in the sense that UBI is going to make more and more sense moving forward. I am still unclear how this would intersect with e.g. healthcare needs, which I believe is fundamentally an easier problem to solve for greater immediate effect.


I think the idea here is that people that are sick can actually take time off. If you've worked in these kinds of jobs you show up to work sick because you can't miss a day, because you can't have a smaller paycheck. So a little more money eases this and gives more leverage to workers.


$1000/mo gives you some leverage, but at the end of the day, not being tied to your job just so you can have decent and affordable health insurance gives you more. This doesn't even talk about stuff money can't buy, like mandatory paid sick leave.

Instead of trying to just "ease this", why not try to eliminate it?


I get frustrated with answers like this. It sets up an __OR__ question when one didn't exist. I mean the discussion is about Andrew Yang's UBI. He also supported single payer. Why is this an __OR__ discussion? We don't have to fight when we're on the same side.


We don't have to entirely speculate, we can look at existing evidence.

Australia has the most liberal welfare in the world. Anyone over 18 can get $984 per month, and up to another $242 in rent assistance. [1]

It has nothing to do with your previous employment history, or being fired, or anything like that. In fact, you can get it if you've never had a job in your life. You need to be "actively looking for work" which in reality means fill out a few job applications and forms every week. It's easy, I've done it.

You can't live a glamorous life, but you can certainly live. Especially if you get 3-4 people in a cheap rental, you'll have enough money to surf everyday, or watch TV, or smoke weed or do whatever else you want.

Yes, there are people that do exactly that, and probably will for all time. Has it ruined the Australian economy? nope. Has there been rampant inflation? nope.

I know it's not exactly UBI because if you have a paying job you can't get this money. So it's not "extra" money for everyone, but money for those that can't/won't or don't find paying work. It's interesting because it shows what percentage of people choose to sit around and do nothing with their lives and get free money - not that many [2]. When you dig into the numbers and take out age pensioners, people with disabilities and students (who get paid to go to university), you see that about 1.2 million Australian get welfare payments, which is just less than 5% of the population.

Keep in mind Australia has extremely low violent crime rates, and has one the highest happiness indexes in the world, and Melbourne is often voted the world's most livable city (or it comes in 2nd). [4]

Here's a great breakdown of how Australia spends it's welfare money [3]

Please, look at what other countries are doing and learn from it, don't just endlessly speculate about all the terrible ways UBI (or something like the above) might destroy things.

[1] https://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the-world-h...

[2] http://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-half-to-two-thirds-o...

[3] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/australia...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking


The Australian government forces you to do unpaid work if you spend more than 12 months on the dole[0]. They've trialled drug testing. Turning up to Centrelink is more degrading than going to the DMV in the US. It's not intended nor commonly used as a UBI, with the exception of youth allowance and austudy for uni students. Once you're at the threshold for the dole your effective marginal tax rate climbs well over 50% because it's not a real UBI, disincentivising recipients from working more hours.

Australia is also incredibly rich in mineral wealth and has profited immensely from digging up ore and selling it to China during their construction boom. These profits haven't been enough to stop it slipping out of the top ten of the happiness index, and Melbourne lost its most liveable city spot to Vienna in 2019 because the embarrassingly high property prices prevent most people from buying a home.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_the_Dole#Basic_Work...


Good post. Yang provides additional answers in the FAQ he prepared for his POTUS run:

- https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/

Aside from COVID-19, we have the 4th industrial revolution in progress now. Just take a look at these truck driver's faces once they realize just how far self driving trucks are:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iaKHeCKcq4


Another similar video - a PBS special on AI, showing Embark's technology in action: https://www.limitstogrowth.org/articles/2019/11/06/pbs-front...


You can do that in the USA on social security. You don't get quite as much but our money goes farther.


OK. Then why not any of those places become the innovation engine of the world? I heard people would become more creative and innovative under those circumstances.


You might now know this if you live in North America because Australia hardly enters our consciousness or our news cycles, but in many parts of the world Australia has a reputation of being a very innovative country, especially in physical engineering and software. Part of it has to do with their anti-authoritarian heritage and survivalist mindset--they don't take hierarchy too seriously. Whether their creativity is helped by a generous welfare society or not, I'm not sure, but you definitely can't say Australians aren't innovative.


My question is "why not any of those places become the innovation engine of the world". I didn't even mention Australia.


Who gives a duck? If people are well taken care of, I'm take less innovation, since usually it's useless customer goods innovation these days.


So none of those great welfare countries gives a duck? Only the despicable USA cares those useless customer goods innovation. Good explanation.


We've banned this account for flamewar posting. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22606977.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.


> I heard people would become more creative and innovative under those circumstances.

That could be one of the possible outcomes, yes.

Remember too that Australia only has a population of 25 million - only 7.5% of America. So even if Australia was twice as creative and innovative as America, it can still only innovate and create 15% as much as America can simply because of the size difference.

Another outcome from all this might just be that you create one of the best places to live on the planet... i.e. one of your cities has been voted world's most livable city (or second place) for decades.


Australia is doing pretty damn well. The pay there is fantastic, and it's one of the few countries where you can work any honest job and still get paid well (I can attest that this is not the case in the U.S.). Many foreigners flock there in large part for this reason. 1 month+ vacation, strong healthcare system, good benefits, etc. And remember their population is only 24.6 million.

I'd say having a higher standard of living is more important than being the "innovation engine of the world", however arbitrarily defined that is.


It's literally not a UBI, did you not see the OP spell that out?

Means-tested welfare is misaligned with productivity because the money stops coming once you make more. A UBI is a more pragmatic, efficient approach to reducing wealth inequality.


Have you heard of Jira, perchance


Where have you heard that?

This is a textbook example of a strawman argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man


> Yes, there are people that do exactly that, and probably will for all time. Has it ruined the Australian economy? nope. Has there been rampant inflation? nope.

It is besides the point really isn't it? Why should the tax payer pay for someone sitting on their behind?

Why should I pay for someone else doing nothing? I am close to paying 40% of my income to tax at the moment and I've been saving for a property for years (I earn too much to have any help on buying a flat). What the studies say is absolutely irrelevant because I cannot abide the (lack of) principle itself.


> It (inflation) is besides the point really isn't it?

Rampant inflation or the idea that nobody would go to work are commonly held up as big reasons not to have a UBI (or something similar) so it's important to address those.

> Why should the tax payer pay for someone sitting on their behind?

There are a host of reasons, here's a few off my head:

- We accept there will always be people we will pay to sit on their behind (disabled, elderly, mentally ill, students going to university, veterans, retired government employees, etc.). It's important to recognize we already pay a huge number of people (about 5 million, or 20% of Australians according to one of my links above) to "sit on their behind"

- It gets them off the street and therefore not out committing crimes.

- Because you're happy doing what you're doing (going to work, I presume) and those people are happy doing what they're doing (nothing). So everyone is happy right now. If you force them to go to work you'll be unhappy because you'll spend all your time forcing them, and dealing with other massive societal problems like crime, and they'll be unhappy because you're making them go to work when they don't want to. So you would reduce happiness by forcing them to go to work. Also likely they'll do a terrible job at whatever work you force them to do, which is not good for society.

If you want to rebut that last point by saying "but I'm not happy (going to work)" then there is an extremely simple answer - Quit. Get the free money and do nothing all the time. Of course I already know you won't do that because it won't make you happy, and you don't want to live on $1k a month (it's good enough, but not great). Plenty of people actually do try it for a while (I did)... and then they come back to paid work again because overall for 95% of people (as proved by evidence) life is better.

Everyone is already doing what makes them happy, so leave it alone.

Remember, US tax payers are spending literally trillions of dollars on wars and bailing out banks (again)... would you rather the Australian government spend those tax dollars that way, or spend it on improving the lives of Australians who are in Australia?


America is not spending trillions on their military, and even then it's still barely affordable. To give every American 12k per year would cost about 10 times the military budget (7 trillion versus 780 billion).

And that's before we even discuss shenanigans like debt jubilees and free healthcare.

Even dramatic cuts to the us military barely make a dent to these kinds of spending proposals.


The military budget isn't the entirety of military spending. It doesn't include the VA budget, the DOE budget (maintaining those nukes), the actual cost of wars themselves, etc.

Adding up all the parts, it's pretty close to a trillion a year - about 933 billion.

https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-military-budget-components-ch...


The money paid as UBI doesn't disappear from the economy. People on low incomes spend everything they have and that money supports local shops, bars, restaurants, factories, etc.


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Would you please stop it with the flamewar comments? We had to ask you about this just recently. That last sentence is completely unacceptable regardless of how wrong someone is or it feels like they are. Being right matters less than destroying the commons here.

And nationalistic swipes, which we've also had to warn you about before, are emphatically not ok.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


> It fascinates me that so many countries on the planet do things like liberal welfare and 'free' healthcare, yet the richest country in the world by a very wide margin calls it shenanigans.

Have you ever considered that it would contribute to why it is the richest country in the world?


> Rampant inflation or the idea that nobody would go to work are commonly held up as big reasons not to have a UBI (or something similar) so it's important to address those.

You completely missed the point. I am against the principle of me (a tax payer) paying for someone else not working unless they can't work (unable to work). The inflation argument is completely irrelevant.

> If you want to rebut that last point by saying "but I'm not happy (going to work)" then there is an extremely simple answer - Quit.

It is besides the point. The principle is that I earn my way and I stand up on my own two feet. It not about liking work or not liking it. It is entirely besides the point.

> Get the free money and do nothing all the time. Of course I already know you won't do that because it won't make you happy, and you don't want to live on $1k a month (it's good enough, but not great). Plenty of people actually do try it for a while (I did)... and then they come back to paid work again because overall for 95% of people (as proved by evidence) life is better.

This is why it is irritating arguing with people like yourself. It isn't about the facts. It is about the principle. When I am working I don't want to be paying my tax for someone sitting on their behind.

> Remember, US tax payers are spending literally trillions of dollars on wars and bailing out banks (again)... would you rather the Australian government spend those tax dollars that way, or spend it on improving the lives of Australians who are in Australia?

Just because banks got bailed out in the past (which was wrong) doesn't mean it is okay to do something else that isn't ethical.


> It isn't about the facts. It is about the principle.

What you're saying is that your personal "principle" is more important that facts. And it seems you're saying it should be that way for all time because you think your principle is just and right - even if automation replaces a ton of jobs, or even if something else happens so people don't really have to work much anymore, your moral principle demands that everyone work.

Don't you think the world changes and that what worked before isn't necessarily going to work for all time? I mean, read a book about being a good housewife in the '60s if you want to see how far we've come in just 60 years.

I understand you're a bit put off by people getting "money for nothing" but as I said, maybe the facts here are showing you live a better life because you do pay a little for people to get money for nothing. i.e. crime is lower, people are happier, etc.

As I showed with facts, it's only 5% of the Australian population who live that way, and of course some of those would only get it until they do find a job. Certainly not all of them are slackers (of course, some are)

> When I am working I don't want to be paying my tax for someone sitting on their behind.

As I said, you need to keep it very clear in your head you are already paying for millions to do exactly that, and society as we know it would utterly crumble if we didn't. Who would pay for prisons, the elderly or handicapped?

The part I find most fascinating of all about this is how the media has conditioned people to be outraged about real and everyday people getting "money for nothing" and how they're slackers and are ruining the economy. Two pages later we learn the banks have another multi-billion dollar bailout, large companies are pay extremely little tax.

Do you honestly think it's the 5% of people who choose to be slackers to the tune of $1000 a month who are causing a problem? or are you just outraged they are actual people who get to sit and do nothing while you go to work, but you can't feel that same outrage at a faceless corporation?


> What you're saying is that your personal "principle" is more important that facts.

What uk_programmer's original argument was that even if it worked, even if we could afford it, it would be wrong to make uk_programmer work for $5000/mo. and then take $1000/mo. of their money and give it to someone else.

Having a factual discussion about the implementation may be interesting, and may be worth discussing, but the argument has already been laid out on moral grounds. If you're going to continue answering the "How?" question and ignoring the "Why?" question, you're going to keep finding that you're talking across purposes from the GP.

(BTW, I think your "factual" case is severely flawed as well, but that's a story for another time.)


> What you're saying is that your personal "principle" is more important that facts. And it seems you're saying it should be that way for all time because you think your principle is just and right - even if automation replaces a ton of jobs, or even if something else happens so people don't really have to work much anymore, your moral principle demands that everyone work.

They said back in the 80s and 90s The computer revolution would stop end all the office work. Now there are probably more people in offices than ever. I think automation will just create different jobs. Neither you or I will know what those are likely to be.

> Don't you think the world changes and that what worked before isn't necessarily going to work for all time? I mean, read a book about being a good housewife in the '60s if you want to see how far we've come in just 60 years.

The fact of the matter is that it isn't ethical to rely on the good people in the population to work and pay for people that can't be bothered.

> I understand you're a bit put off by people getting "money for nothing" but as I said,

No I find it to be completely unethical.

> maybe the facts here are showing you live a better life because you do pay a little for people to get money for nothing. i.e. crime is lower, people are happier, etc.

I am not living a better life. Things are largely the same for me. Those unwilling to work are living at the taxpayer's expense.

Also I don't care about happiness. There are other things that are more important than happiness. I don't care about my own happiness. Happiness is for children. This is a deeper philosophical question that I will admit I don't have the tooling for. However you keep on saying happiness like I care about it.

Also if you making arguments about Happiness isn't the best way to go on it. There are accounts of slaves being happier being slaves than being free.

> As I showed with facts, it's only 5% of the Australian population who live that way, and of course some of those would only get it until they do find a job. Certainly not all of them are slackers (of course, some are)

I've told you the "facts" are irrelevant to me (and many others). Even if it was 0.01% of the UK I still think it would be wrong. I don't want to pay for people sitting on their behind. So you are forcing me to pay almost half my income for something I deeply disagree with, because not working isn't an option for me and never will be. It has nothing to do with enjoying work or not enjoying it.

> As I said, you need to keep it very clear in your head you are already paying for millions to do exactly that, and society as we know it would utterly crumble if we didn't. Who would pay for prisons, the elderly or handicapped?

I am fine for paying for those things. Because that is what/who the state should be providing for. I am not okay for people sitting on their backside.

I don't care that theoretically there would be less crime. I couldn't care less. Also not having free money doesn't allow you to break the law.

> The part I find most fascinating of all about this is how the media has conditioned people to be outraged about real and everyday people getting "money for nothing" and how they're slackers and are ruining the economy. Two pages later we learn the banks have another multi-billion dollar bailout, large companies are pay extremely little tax.

I haven't been conditioned by anyone to think this. It is incredible insulting to be told by you that I have a problem with something because I been somehow brainwashed. Please keep on having this attitude though because it won't do you any good.

> Two pages later we learn the banks have another multi-billion dollar bailout, large companies are pay extremely little tax.

I agree they shouldn't have been bailed out.


you are a cog in a economic system, you just ( as many here have ) fit into a spot in the machine that generates wealth at good levels. Your personal principles don't really make any difference. It's a system. There are a number economic principles at play. Worrying about individuals sitting around is not even a factor worthy of consideration, it's a simplistic layman reaction to quite a complex system. Even IF it was a problem, it's a problem to be addressed in other ways. Economically speaking, there are far bigger contesting problems to be dealt with.


> Why should I pay for someone else doing nothing? I am close to 40% tax at the moment and I've been saving for a house for years (I earn too much to have any help on buying a flat). What the studies say is absolutely irrelevant because I cannot abide the principle.

You're gonna pay one way or another... Some costs will be more monetary, some will be more health/crime-related, etc, but very few of us live in countries where there is a general desire and will to force people to work.

What exactly do you suggest as the alternative?


> You're gonna pay one way or another.

Only because nonsense like this is allowed.

> Some costs will be more monetary, some will be more health/crime-related, etc, but very few of us live in countries where there is a general desire and will to force people to work.

You should be looking for work. If you haven't tried looking for a job you get your benefits removed. Obviously the Elderly and Disabled should get help but healthy people should be looking for work if they aren't employed.

> What exactly do you suggest as the alternative?

Get a job.


What if there aren't enough jobs and they've automated everything they can? What's your answer when a hundred million jobs are gone to robots?


They said that computer technology would eliminate boring office jobs back in the 1980s and 1990s (when most unskilled labour was still manual). This didn't happen. In fact 100% the opposite happened.


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You must be new here.

Two things: the people you're replying to can't downvote you, and complaining about downvotes will earn you downvotes.


There is a precedent to this situation.

During the Great Depression/Dust Bowl in the 1920's, government officials were adamantly opposed to giving cash or food to citizens. Moral hazard, and all that.

The result was that:

- there were food riots

- some Americans starved to death

- Washington, D.C. was occupied by protesters living in tent cities, and the military had to intervene to prevent government buildings from being stormed.


I was trying to think of parallels with the programming world, and perhaps this analogy might make sense to some people.

Sometimes, the software we maintain accumulates so much tech debt that it becomes very difficult to make any headway. By setting aside some development time to address these issues, we enable developers to gain velocity again.

In a similar way, sometimes we see poor people make illogical economic choices, simply because of a cash crunch. When people are poor, they have too many competing priorities that require urgent attention, and they find themselves caught in a series of wicked choices. A Harvard study suggests that poverty causes 13 point drop in IQ.

The right level of UBI may actually improve the way energy and capital is deployed. It also protects a lot of small employers from economic shocks by smoothing out the velocity of money.

Many readers are rightly concerned about the moral hazard introduced through redistribution of wealth. However, seen through the lens of tech debt and investment, UBI is relatively straight forward way of investing in the future.


This would be a kind of monetary stimulus. Helicopter money. Could be more effective than lowering interest rates further.


He was right. He was right before the pandemic and he’s even more right now. Whenever this ends, it’s going create even more incentive for employers to automate. Some of these jobs are going to disappear over the next few weeks and they may never come back.


UBI ... providing direct services for/to the poor ... or a blend, will never resolve some people from "being poor" or adding "burden" to the system despite the system giving them "a minimum of what they need to survive." You can give a mentally ill person $1,000 a month for years and every time he gets the check, maybe he hands it over to a slum lord who secretly threatens the safety or has "tricked" the mentally ill person into giving him the money instead. Bottom line: Giving that person the money every month doesn't "fix" the mentally ill person's problem(s). It's just another roundabout way to try and minimize poor-dom.

All of these solutions are potentially workable, or a blend. I think if anything what we should focus more on is which methods (or blend of methods) works to minimize poor-dom the "most" compared to many of the others, while also balancing the overall cost to deliver said methods on society.


Except that most people that are poor are not mentally ill. In fact most people that are poor can handle money and their life just fine...they just don't get paid enough.


The combination of UBI and universal health care would mean that combating a pandemic would be much easier than it currently is. Everyone stays at home and self isolates for 2 weeks. Curve flattened. Bills payed.

Ah well, it's a pity the side effects apparently include some McCarthyist caricature of communism /s


I think his most compelling policy is not UBI, but giving the people money to spend on politics. This country is suffocated by special interests, which create draconian laws for all of us to follow just so that they can collect a little bit ore money. Just filing the taxes alone is a monumentally frustrating experience. This needs to be streamlined, but it will never be until corporations are stripped from their lobbying.


Yes, his idea of Democracy Dollars is great. Wash out the lobbyist money and allow politicians to run a campaign on popularity without pandering to donors or special interests. Not sure why this idea hasn't gained more traction tbh.


In several states small political donations (up to $50 or so) are tax deductible. More money spent is not deductible.


I'm happy to learn that but the cap seems pretty low. :/


Half what democracy dollars are, but a good start. Check your state to see if you can take advantage of this. If you can, you have no reason to not donate (I didn't know until I did my taxes. But first time in this state).


The only real way to fix this in the U.S. is to allow rank-based voting, otherwise it is practically impossible for any third-party candidate to get elected.

So long as we have a two-party system, we will have dumbed down political policies pandering to the brainless masses with little room for innovative progressive ideas.


Anything that generates a feedback loop where politicians give you tax money to spend on politicians has an instant smell to me. There may be other ways to accomplish this, but that feedback loop stinks to high heaven on initial examination.


You might want to try a neti pot, because you seem to be missing the smell of the government giving billions to large corporation in a way that accomplishes the same feedback loop you're mentioning.

That is the way the system has been working for decades. For example, airlines have been doing stock buybacks with all their profits for the last several years, and now they don't have the money to weather 2 months of coronavirus, so they'll need a bailout. Then, watch for more stock buybacks and executive bonuses.

You're right it smells, but it's time that graft was extended to the people of this country, who will actually spend it and help the economy a bit, rather than sending it indirectly to the bank accounts of the wealthiest people in the country.


Nowhere in what I said have I defended similar feedback loops. They stink no matter what form they take, and two wrongs don't make a right.


You mean the entirety of corporate America? All those tax loopholes? Agreed, I think they stink as well.

Good thing Yang's Democracy Dollars idea has no strings attached unlike that sticky lobbyist cash.


You seem to be injecting opinions I don't hold into what I said.


Just build more homes!

Build apartment high rises and condominium complexes, that people can own, with 15 years of work. Why should we be forced to work for 30 years as a slave to pay off some bank’s mortgage?

It’s not our damn fault, that politicians are inept and can’t do the right thing, by providing affordable homes.

Socialize the housing market. This is a basic human right, but the greed of capitalism is forcing everyone to pay insane prices for their housing.


The problem with UBI is what others have already pointed out. My conclusions are from personal observation, so it is anecdotal and it is a generalization as most societal woes are.

There will always be a group of individuals who are content with the minimum without making any effort. This group will not work to gain more. They are just content at not working and getting the minimum wage and additional government handouts.

My experience is from a communist country. The shoddy craftsmanship for buildings, cars, services all around in my opinion was direct result for all the promised universal basic "something". In the beginning it all seemed good and well, but as more and more people got on the UB something, the less and less production/service was done.

This is not a communist/socialist economic problem, but a human nature problem in my opinion. We always go for the least amount of effort, for the most amount of reward.

To this effect, I cannot see how to prevent UBI pushing the lowest common level of participation in the society as a producer.


Definition of work and productivity is arbitrary. You can think of these people taking the monthly UBI, shopping for groceries and eating it as meaningful work in quest for continuation of human race. I wouldn't see that as completely zero value add.

As long as others work more than basic subsistence we'll be fine.


One day we will look at all the homelessness and blatant poverty in our society we allow in absolute disgust, similar to the repulsion people feel about slavery.

UBI isn't just about liberty and accelerating ourselves forward (though it's also about that), it's a statement that no matter how dire your circumstances, no matter how useless you are seen to our corporate overlords and private employers, that you belong to society, you are deserving of a modest respectable standard of living, and you are entitled to some of the proceeds of the wealth generated by the land with which you've been excluded.


I believe you haven't worked with homeless people much, but the problem with homeless is NOT poverty. People that have the tendency be homeless are people that don't find their place in society, the lack of order actually brings them relief.

Hard problem to solve and it wouldn't be fixed by universal income. We tried convincing homeless people to go into shelters or to at least care a bit for themselves ( free self catered infrastructure like showers ). Best solution so far is a social one where people help them find a new sense of achievement and a place in society. Drugs is also a big problem and probably where all the money from universal income would go to.


You are talking about a small percentage of the homeless, plenty of poor people would be helped by this and saved from becoming homeless. They could afford to stay in their rural hometown instead of making their way to the cities where they can currently get help.


Yes UBI would not "fix" homelessness or poverty, but it dramatically improves things.

> People that have the tendency be homeless are people that don't find their place in society, the lack of order actually brings them relief.

What an insulting generalization of homeless people. Is that how you rationalize it in your head - these people find "relief" in sleeping on the sidewalk because they couldn't find their place in society?

Did you ask those homeless people why they didn't want to go to the shelter? I remember speaking with a 60+ year old homeless woman in NYC once who told me she refused to go to the shelter because it was filled with crazy people. Also you have to check out of the shelter every day, and if you don't check back in by a certain time, then they can't let you in. It shouldn't come as a surprise that many would prefer to sleep on the streets than deal with that.

> Best solution so far is a social one where people help them find a new sense of achievement and a place in society.

This is why I'm a proponent of a jobs guarantee. Anyone who wants to work should not be denied the opportunity to do so.

> Drugs is also a big problem and probably where all the money from universal income would go to.

Yes, because all homeless people are drug addicts right? /s


While I agree I think Ubi would help regardless.


I look at it from a selfish perspective. These "lowlifes" actually drag society down. It benefits me if they are helped.


Yup. I don't agree on the perspective but you're totally right. My wife works in a state with issues like this, and her very modest city (capitol, but not as big as SF or Seattle) has enough homeless people that all sorts of crime is on the rise. Restaurants were closing (before COVID..) because people wouldn't go to the restaurant anymore. There were literal camps in parking lots and the police did nothing.

I personally think it's a sad state of our society that we let this happen. These people are either in need of help, or mental help. This is not an acceptable way of living.

1. Give help to all those who simply need some help. 2. Give mental help to those who cannot see living in filth is not a healthy state of being. 3. Let the people who just want to live "free" go live in the woods and form a co-op or something.

I unfortunately see no reason why camping on the streets or next to interstates should not be strictly enforced. But to manage this, we need social programs for #1 and #2. These people aren't all criminals, we can't simply lock them up in jail/prisons. It would also exploit them to do so. We need human programs focused on helping people, and fast.


Poverty and homelessness will not be solved by throwing money around. It only can be solved if society is willing to understand some people need to be told what to do each step of their lives. It will only be solved if people realize that we will actually have to build housing and make people live there. It will only be solved when people realize that once you get them housed you may need to insure their dietary needs are properly met which means someone else choosing what food is provided. Then after the basics of housing, food, and health, are taking care off, then you can just hand them money to do with as they need. The real bugaboo is when someone realizes that China's one child rule may have been too utopian in a future world, as in assistance may come with restrictions on even starting a family or curtailing family size.

All UBI programs tested or suggested really are nothing more than allowances and cannot solve the problem. The problem is not cheap nor universal. The universal part should be, you cannot fall below this threshold, not that everyone gets the same benefits. That is only being done to sell it when people should just be told, some people need no help currently. It will be there should they need it but right now they don't.

We have many of our problems for two reasons, governments which do not respect the property rights and personal rights of their citizenry and also that there are just people in this world who cannot operate on their own.


Can't go below a threshold. Cool. So threshold is $12k or whatever. Person could work, and get $200 a week. So they get $50 a week in benefits. Or they could not work, and get $250 a week in benefits. So why work? Working more or less in the very low income range doesn't make any difference. So they won't. Not at a 100% income tax rate.

That's the point of having it being a fixed amount: you can tax the regular income, so the effective amount they get decreases as they work more, but you don't have perverse incentives to not work.


Especially in our time now when the relative cost of these things is so low. And worse even still is the atrocious conditions in jails and prisons in the U.S. wherein we often end up depositing people who need not be there if simply supplied necessities at a much lower cost without incarceration.


We have UBI in France "RSA" (€556 with no kids, €839 with one kid and €1000 with 2 kids and then €223 per extra kids), we also provide free lodging (logement sociaux) with free healthcare, transportation, electricity and more. We still have a huge amount of homeless people. I believe it is more of a mental issue for people who chose to remain on the street, at least in France but I know it's the case in the US too. Most sane people can find a job and a cheap room to survive. Those who don't usually have mental issues no UBI can solve. I don't know how this can be solved, maybe force people to go to mental institutions? Doesn't sound super glamorous either. The only countries that seem to have solved this problem are either super cold countries or countries where they jail them away.


Agreed that everyone deserves a basic standard of living as a human right but disagree that UBI is the path to that.

Giving money to people instantly creates a class of beggars. Beggars with voting rights will vote for people who give them more and more and more for no more work. It's the road to ruin.

My suggestion is a set of hospitals, schools and housing that is super basic but sufficient to give people dignity and opportunity. These would be free for anyone, paid for via taxes on capital gains.


It's funny that you say a class of beggars would be created, when most UBI scenarios I've read about show that people tend to try to improve their situations in whichever way makes the most sense...

some who can finally afford basic water food and housing start seeking medical/psych help they couldn't afford.

Some get more schooling to improve their employment prospects.

Some buy a car to start saving themselves hours a week on public transportation and therefore have more time to live.

And a small percentage don't get it and squander it.

You see the policy turning into a UK-style dole... I think you don't see the enormous benefits that reaching the point of 'having enough' can provide.

I've recently started making more than I have in the rest of my life... and besides finally paying down our household debt, and accomplishing the cash-starved household repairs, I'm starting to look at volunteering and truly giving to charities _because I can_.

Just providing basic services doesn't give people the same options, the mobility to do with their lives what makes sense in their circumstances.


I really want capitalism to give you a wage to do all those things. I understand it's been cronified and monopoloies have fucked over a whole lot of people.

The real fix is to fix capitalism, not write you a check every month for being born. We need to enforce fair markets, fair wages etc.

For those at the very bottom, I want dignity, a free education, and if still unsuccessful access to a low skill job that can pay basic bills.


Should we pay people to dig ditches and then fill them just so that they're working? The relative gap between high skilled and unskilled labor will only increase. At some point, a large portion of society's labor will become worthless. What then?

Capitalism is about the accumulation and use of capital. It's amoral. It doesn't care about the unemployment rate, poverty rate, or health outcomes. It is just fine with child labor and seven day work weeks. It will offshore labor, hire contractors, and use money for buybacks before investment if the numbers make sense. Capitalism is not the answer here. Policy is. And that's fine. We can have both.


And what about when automation makes more and more human work obsolete? And when will the power imbalance in capitalism actually produce fairness? Ever?

You are going to have to find a different way to solve those problems than wage slavery.


> The real fix is to fix capitalism, not write you a check every month for being born.

You write that as if it's some kind of natural law, as if the second clause is _obviously_ more absurd than the first. It's that the case and, if so, why?


When you decouple income from output or wages from work, you're essentially devaluing work and incentivizing people to work less or (more destructively) work worse.

It's not an absurd thought at all, it's a very natural solution to propose in environments like we have today. It's also been tried in many different countries in many different time periods. Leads to failure every single time.


I don’t understand why people with more money should have such outrageous levels of power over those with less. That’s all capitalism is. Coercion through artificial constraint.


> Giving money to people instantly creates a class of beggars. Beggars with voting rights will vote for people who give them more and more and more for no more work.

I don't know if you realize this, but beggars already exist. There are literally people standing by the road with signs asking for money. Presumably many of them can also vote.

UBI just eliminates the physical and emotional toll of standing outside all day holding a sign, asking for money. Does that make the road to ruin you envision more likely, or more dire?


I grew up in India, I know beggars and begging better than most. I even helped one sell books on the road and now he has a bookstore and his kid is in college. I handout food all the time. But never, ever cash.

UBI will not solve begging, as much as you want it to. But giving people a clean room to stay in, good basic healthcare and a free education might.


1. Everyone already has voting rights though, and those in poverty are already incentivized to seek welfare, so how would UBI "create" that?

2. How does your suggestion prevent that?


There's a big difference between money and money that can only be spent on a certain set of services.

As far as I know welfare is still food stamps etc i.e. not cash.


People know what they need to spend their money on. Telling them what they can and can't do with it is both patronising and counter-productive. Let the person who is affected by the choices make the choices.


Patronizing and counter productive is giving people money for nothing. It's telling people that they're useless.

You should read up on the beggar networks in India and the exploitation that occurs when you handout money for no work.


If everyone is getting a set amount of money every month, its the opposite. Its telling them that they are valued and that society knows they are a human being and is trying to at least provide them with a roof and food. It allows them a base from which to improve themselves. It gives breathing room.

Study after study have proven that the greatest indicator of where you end up in life is where you start. Start in poverty odds are you will end there.

Its pretty hard for a single mom with 2 kids that works 2 jobs to also go to school, interviews etc. and make a better life. Especially when so many of the low skilled jobs provide no benefits. If she slips once, she is homeless.

Ensuring she has at least her basics met allows her to drop the second job and figure out a way to go to school or learn a skill. Or at the very least it allows her to spend time with her kids each night working on their homework and giving them a chance to break the poverty cycle.


Patronizing and counter productive is giving people money for nothing. It's telling people that they're useless.

I would disagree that a person "use" is defined solely by the type of job they have.


People need purpose to find fulfillment. Free money does not give one purpose or meaning. That's what I took GP to be saying


Sounds suspiciously like a centrally planned economy. Hmmm... Where have I heard that vilified before...


"Food Stamps" these days is a debt card that can only be used for certain food items. Very similar to an HSA. It is actual dollars in an account now.


Thank you for articulating this. Outside a crisis, I don’t think we should have a standing policy like this in the United States. If you consider the issue from a first principles argument, each citizen of the United States is essentially an equity owner and the government are the managers. Power of the managers comes from its owners. We are unique in the world in this regard. There are other democracies sure but none that I know of who get their power from the people. It’s universally the other way around. Government is given all the power and whatever rights the people have come from the government. It is because of this, that in the US, an individual must be an independent self governing being. If the individual is not self governing then it is impossible for the individual to confer rights to the government. If the government becomes a source of universal income then the sovereign individual is potentially weakened and here’s how: ubi is not economically sustainable. At the beginning it may be available to everyone but eventually it will be curtailed. Means testing may be one way but social credit scores may be another. What stops of government from saying if you go to that protest your income eligibility score could drop and you might not receive an income next month or at all? Income without doing something to earn it is a form of coercion — a coerced people cannot be free. And while I have no problem with folks in Australia who want to try it, for myself, a citizen of the United Stares, I have grave concerns that ubi is but a gateway to less freedom rather than more.


> Beggars with voting rights will vote for people who give them more and more

Given that UBI increases would be coupled with tax increases, I don't actually see that being the case.


I also disagree with UBI for the premise that it does not fix any of the underlying causes of wealth inequality - in essence, it is a free ticket for the corrupt to continue business as usual. We need to address the nepotism and the crony-capitalism that maintains the status quo in the same families generation after do-nothing generation.


No, it is not a human right. It might be the right thing to do but it isn't a right you have.


A very strange and inaccurate philosophy.


Its allowed to continue because some are mentally Ill and refuse to get treated (and we can't force them into treatment) and some make poor life decisions like having multiple children with no means to support them (you have the freedom to do this).

You can't just give money to someone mentally Ill or will just squander the money and continue to make bad decisions. We will still have just as much poverty and homelessness.


Just as much? Mental health crises are exacerbated by desperate conditions like not having a home. The two are linked and keeping someone with bipolar disorder who has just lost their job from ending up on the street in the first place would head off a lot of cases of individuals going off the deep end in the face of despair and nowhere to go.


Do you have proof that not having a home causes mental Illness and not the reverse?


Are you kidding me? We literally dump our mental health patients on the streets. [1]

How many of the homeless in SF/NYC that you see have kids with them?

The mental gymnastics people go through to justify homelessness and poverty is sickening.

https://www.kqed.org/news/10737399/nevada-to-pay-san-francis...


"In a national survey, 60 percent of homeless women and 41 percent of homeless men had at least one minor child, but only 39 percent of women and 3 percent of men lived with any children (Burt et al., 1999)" [1]

Most homeless people have had children, they just get taken away from them.

[1]https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/homeless-children-update-researc...


You didn't read my post.

We should be forcing the mentally Ill into treatment, not giving them a choice to stay on the streets.


1000$ a month to every adult wouldn't reduce poverty and homelessness _at all_? Not a teeny tiny bit? Economics sure is unintuitive.


It might help for a short time, until inflation catches up and that $1000 wont go very far.


You seem to be suggesting that everyone stuck in poverty is there because they are mentally ill or are incapable of making good life choices... which is outrageously false.


I guess a third option is that they dont have the mental capacity?

I've lived on minimum wage for many years. It takes discipline to not buy booze, drugs, and electronics, and not have children that I know I can't afford.

I know many people that would be considered poor and they refuse to stop buying luxuries.

I would consider these poor life choices and the cause of a large percentage of poverty.


Many will turn right around and spend it on drugs.


Honestly, so what? Most will not and those that do will have less car stereos to steal to get their fix.

The real problem is that some people just can't get over the fact that some other people are just going to use drugs no matter what, so we might as well reduce the total harm involved for society.


Shame on you. Your hateful and ignorant stereotypes are defective victim blaming and based on myths. The US has almost no mental healthcare system because JFK was assassinated before the transition to community-based residential treatment centers could be stood-up. Reagan destroyed what remained and condemned the mentally-unwell to neglect and misery.


I agree 100% with your world view but downvoted you due to the unnecessary hostility. That kind of rhetoric is not debate or discussion, it is ring-fighting theatrics to get the crowd cheering for you.


I agree. My point is to force these people into state hospitals and get them help.

Shame on the liberals for getting rid of these facilities.


No surely a trickle down would work better?


Taking a long-term view, UBI is a good idea, full stop.

Societies' advancements in technology & productivity decrease the effective cost (as percentage of GDP) of meeting the very base needs of a human being. Food, cheap medicines like tylenol & antibiotics, most facets of human life are dirt cheap from a production perspective, and this trend will continue from automation.

This means someone who is currently unproductive can be subsidized to survive for 10 full years, and if there's even a small chance they become a high-productivity individual afterwards then society comes out ahead on net value. The actual numbers depend on how low we can push production costs with automation, but in the limit as human survival cost approaches zero relative to the economy, the only rational decision is to subsidize all human survival and work within that framework to encourage citizens to be even more productive. After all, if someone dies of lack of healthcare, or starves, or lives in the streets and doesn't know how to get back off the streets, that's a net loss to humanity in opportunity cost. If that person had just been subsidized through their hard times, there's a non-zero chance they become high value to society.

UBI allows us to reap these benefits in an efficient manner: using the free market. But, speaking today not in the long term, there are exceptions to the low cost of human survival which would hamper UBI from being effective.

In our (American) society, there are a few base needs that we haven't adequately driven down costs. Shelter mostly, also any healthcare that is more involved than taking a pill a day (notably: seeing a doctor). Humankind in general CAN make these costs low for the most part, but American society in particular has NOT made these costs low.

We need to address the housing & urban development crisis, and we need to address the healthcare crisis.

The housing & urban development crisis is a system of regulations and inaction that have simultaneously limited the amount of housing near desirable locations, while failing to provide efficient transportation to bring people in from less desirable locations. In other words, housing costs are dominated not by the cost to build a house, but the cost of land. This can be addressed by reforming our awful & piecemeal zoning, construction, and transportation systems and their respective regulations. Optionally, some might suggest that we try to fight against the ongoing trends of urban consolidation; if people have a reason to move to upstate new york or the midwest, instead of to NYC, then housing costs aren't a problem. But right now all economic incentives point to moving to NYC metro, given the choices, and personally I don't like to wage war against the tide of the free market.

The healthcare crisis is one of rent seeking by insurance companies upon our awful half-assed nearly-free-market approach to healthcare. Quite simply, people don't have choices (your healthcare options are restricted by your insurance, which is restricted by your employer), and no prices on anything are known ahead of time. This adds up to an ultra-inefficient system. By doing just about anything that stops the rent seeking of the insurance system upon the healthcare system so we can more efficiently treat a healthy society (there are free market solutions, but personally I would put my weight behind medicare-for-all).

In conclusion, if we give everyone $1000/mo, that's going to get funneled into bidding up rent in big cities or surprise healthcare bills. We need to solve these issues with our free market before we take a free market approach to the common welfare; until then I would advocate more targeted approaches that are less likely to invite rent seeking behavior (foodstamps and such).


>> Seventy-eight percent of Americans are already living paycheck to paycheck; almost half can’t afford an unexpected $400 bill

On big part of this is Americans a whole need to get better with their money.

I know many people can't save because of low income (or lack thereof), but 78%? Don't forget about all those people making six figures who can't get it together.


The median household discretionary income -- i.e. money you can waste on whatever -- in the US is more than $1,000/month. Per the official government statistics. That is after all ordinary household expenses. People in higher percentiles have considerably more.

I am skeptical that 78% of Americans are "living paycheck to paycheck" unless that has been defined so loosely as to lose all useful meaning.


I assume that it means they’re spending rather than saving that discretionary income, and don’t have a buffer available of more than a single pay period (usually 2 weeks). That money may also be committed to long-term contracts with service providers and not readily available for redirection. It’s sometimes a reflection of financial priorities rather than raw income.


While a significant portion of that 78% might be people who think a monthly income of X means they can service debts with monthly costs of X, there are also people for whom basic cost of living (mostly rent) is most of their income. An example would be someone working in the valley area who doesn’t earn enough to afford to move to cheaper accommodation (along with associated increase in commuting costs). It’s not their inability to control spending, it’s the requirement to be geographically close to their place of work.

If there were more jobs available in the backwoods, there would be the real possibility of moving there to reduce the cost of living to a smaller portion of income.


I'm kind of skeptical of the number. It also doesn't really gel that well with his 50% can't afford a $400 bill. It seems to be based on survey data from CareerBuilder which could be misleading for whole hosts of reasons.


The best source I know of for statistics like this is the Federal Reserve's most recent "Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households" [1]. It's a survey of about 10,000 people and, as far as I can tell, is the source for many claims like "40% of American adults cannot meet an unexpected $400 expense", which has been consistently true for several years, although it used to be more like 50% in 2013. Note that “cannot meet” here means anything other than “would pay the expense in full before next month”.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-repor...


Again, blame the poor for their poverty.

Gives a nice tummy feel but does nothing good for society.


It wasn't a particularly deep comment, but your reply breaks the site guidelines. That's heading in the wrong direction. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. Note this one:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."


Yeah. Fair enough


I say you set up a system where a large number of people are poor by design, you can't blame those that end up poor. You blame the system and the people implementing it.


I agree. Yang says it pretty well. The US is a near winner-take-all capitalism. It only awards and invests in people at or near the top.

Can you make it from bottom to top? Sure! But it is very unlikely, and not really something the US system is designed for. If you go from rags to riches in the US it is in spite of the system and not because of it.

Disclosure:

I live in a capitalistic society with government paid education, health care and child care. My parents are low-wage workers and in the US, they would definitely not have afforded an education for me. Here, I got a high quality masters degree paid by society _because it is a great investment_!

I will gladly pay every penny and more back into society, so that many others, like me, can have the same opportunities as me in spite of their parents income.


Again, absolve the poor of all personal responsibility.

Gives a nice tummy feel but does nothing good for society.


The fact that covid is screwing the world right now does not mean that we should all be getting UBI under non emergency conditions. Putting Romney's plan in with Yang's is a conflation here because one is only for a single unprecedented global emergency, not everyday life.

That said, UBI is quite literal wealth redistribution. You take taxes from the haves and give the cash directly to the hands of the have nots. There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.


Bear in mind, we already engage in significant wealth redistribution. There's an argument that it's more efficient to do by writing checks, rather than through complex federal bureaucracies. It's the reason that Milton Friedman favored a negative income tax, and that GiveDirectly.org is considered by the Effective Altruism community to be one of the best charities.


What hasn't been established and what I think is a fair question, is whether this could ever practically roll out while simultaneously shutting down the existing welfare/disability/etc systems. As others have mentioned if it doesn't work people (see: vested political interests) will want a way to roll it back.

So in almost any practical case they will have to be running at the same time and will never truly be a net-neutral fiscal operation (assuming this is the outcome in practice) for at least the first 1-3+yrs.

Adopting UBI means increasing taxes, period. Even under ideal situations where the fiscal and productivity gains of replacing the current overly selective and bureaucratic processes, which significantly favours full-employment or zero-employment/disabilities in a black and white way with nothing in between - as opposed to the broader spectrum that markets can support when monthly deposits are not limited (including self-employed, disability, welfare, [un]employment income, etc) via far more efficient distributions systems replacing top-heavy systems, start to really take effect.

The whole "we'll just tax the 1%" hand-wavy stuff is not a good enough answer here. The amount of times that excuse has been used during political campaigns without congress doing anything significantly different is enough to be skeptical. As it then is no longer just UBI but UBI + significant tax code changes.

I personally don't think some trial runs in small parts of Canada or towns in individual states will be enough to prove much of anything. Especially given the vast amount of disparate systems these UBI systems would currently encompass across both federal/state governments in a big spectrum of economic/political environments across a large geographic area - which can't realistically be tested without it being a truly national affair. Of course federalism was designed exactly for this type of problem (individual states experimenting with policies so the cycle of progress is not forever limited to a long series of impractical all or nothing proposals across of bunch of states who disagree with each other) but the US has long ago sacrificed states government power for top heavy federal/executive run systems and this is the reality in which UBI must operate within.


Valid concerns.

> whether this could ever practically roll out while simultaneously shutting down the existing welfare/disability/etc systems

Yang's plan was for UBI to be opt-in, in exchange for waiving access to many existing programs (food stamps, etc). If he had gotten traction beyond 5%, we could've expected major pushback from the left on this; similar to M4A, in many ways it's more helpful to the lower middle class than the working class. But I suspect many would still vastly prefer check in hand, both due to the complex bureaucracy (and anxiety) of the existing system, and the elimination of poverty traps.

I think this is a reasonable way to shrink spending on existing "entitlements" without cutting them altogether; and would not only offset the cost, but grease the wheels of political viability (in a case of strange bedfellows, it aligns with the Paul Ryan / Steve Bannon "deconstruct the administrative state" playbook).

> The whole "we'll just tax the 1%" hand-wavy stuff is not a good enough answer here.

True: we'd have to raise more in tax revenue, full stop. I'd like to see a lot more enforcement and closing of loopholes within our existing tax code (Apple parking its cash in Ireland, etc). Easier said than done, I know. That aside, I think a micro-tax on high-frequency stock trades, and/or Yang's VAT, are both reasonable approaches.

My favorite strategy for raising public revenue, and wealth redistribution in particular, is the Pigovian Tax [0], which has an ancillary (primary?) benefit of setting a price on a negative externality. This is the proposed solution from "The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History" [1] on climate change; a sufficient carbon dividend could likely pay for a massive portion of UBI, though it would have to be ramped up gradually. I think there's a strong case for applying the concept in other domains as well (single-use plastics, for instance).

Finally, it's worth considering that all the hand-wavy trickle-down logic of "supply-side economics" might actually work when pointed in the other direction [2], like a stimulus package that never stops. In addition to reducing silent inefficiencies of economic struggle (addiction, short-term thinking, anxiety-induced low executive function), most of those receiving the dividend would spend it, increasing economic activity and therefore tax revenue. (There are potential problems with this model, the biggest being the risk of the lion's share going to landlords; but that opens up a whole other rabbit hole of Land Value Tax, Henry George, etc.; we arguably have a rent-seeking problem in that domain already, inducing a hidden tax on the working class with or without UBI.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

[1] https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_economics


Thanks for your answer, I’ll dig into your links tonight.


> That said, UBI is quite literal wealth redistribution. You take taxes from the haves and give the cash directly to the hands of the have nots.

Society is wealth distribution. Wealth doesn't exist outside of society. The US's existence is wealth distribution. Stealing land from natives to give to settlers. Stealing african's labor and distributing the wealth among slave owners. The rights to oil, resources, etc are wealth distribution.

Also, no wealth of any significance is ever earned by an individual. I hate how people say, Bezos, Gates, etc earned their wealth. Bezos didn't earn $100 billion. There is no way one person can physically earn that much. Bezos can't physically sell 100 billion items from the dollar menu. Wealth is generated by laws and cooperation and a fair/unfair distribution of value generated. Simple as that.

Also, don't give me the "great man" bullshit. Had bezos never been born, we'd still have an amazon of some kind. Jobs death didn't end Apple. There's always a "great man" to fill any void.

> There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

Agreed. It's probably impossible to reach a happy medium since people always want more and whichever side gets a slight advantage will use it to further advantage themselves until society skews to one side and collapses.

Also, the other side of the coin is at what point does wealth accumulation become unethical and/or counterproductive.


are you seriously arguing that heavily taxing insanely wealthy people is unethical? i mean, we're literally living in a moment in which public school closures means many kids don't have reliable access to food anymore. there are plenty of other examples in which people are seriously struggling. and somehow taxing the wealthy is unethical. the fact that you bifurcate people into the "haves" and "have nots" speaks volumes.

and of course UBI is literally wealth distribution. what would you consider public schools, roads, infrastructure, and other things paid with taxes?


> are you seriously arguing that heavily taxing insanely wealthy people is unethical?

I don't think that is what allovernow is saying at all.

> There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

So, potentially

- Tax the billionaires down to 999millionaires. Not unethical or counterproductive in the slightest.

- Implement a tax that makes every worker's net income identical. Probably both counterproductive and unethical.

- Implement a tax/UBI system that puts a worker's net income below that of a non-worker. Definitely counterproductive, unsustainable and unethical.

The point that allovernow is describing is somewhere between those extremes.


Not GP, but I think there’s a reasonable argument that taxing income for the purpose of funding essential government services is on stronger ethical footing than taxing wealth for the specific purpose of wealth redistribution.

The latter is IMO not ethical if it excessively punishes productive activity. In this case “impractical is unethical”, even as I’d prefer a UBI world in many ways.


Yep, it's redistribution. To tell what's really going on (like how progressive it is) you need to combine it with the revenue side and what the net gain or loss for each person is.

Everyone getting the same amount is symbolic equality. Symbolism can be important, though!

UBI looks far more expensive than it actually is because for many people, they'd be getting some of their own money back, similar to a tax refund. It's still expensive, though.


Technically Yang's UBI plan is that everyone receives it, regardless of wealth. Also there are plenty of entitlement programs already and replacing them with UBI would probably yield less total cost from simpler implementation and less bureaucracy, while making it more available.


"Also there are plenty of entitlement programs already and replacing them with UBI would probably yield less total cost from simpler implementation and less bureaucracy, while making it more available."

This is a fundamental flaw in the argument.

1) That a 'single program' will be cheaper. Maybe, but maybe not. My government spent more than $1 Billion implementing a simple 'gun registry' for police to store gun records.

(They spent $100M on a 'judicial assessment' of Aboriginal community's historical crimes - not a single study or dollar was spent on scientific analysis, research. Just lawyers.)

2) That any way shape or form those 'other programs' will disappear or a single government worker will lose their jobs.

The most powerful bodies in the world are Public Sector Unions. Tell me, what is the turnover rate for such jobs? How often are people laid off? Fired? What salary do they earn compared to private sector peers? How often are government agencies that have lost their material relevance shut down?

So aside from all of the regular arguments about UBI, social impact, cost, redistribution ... all of the arguments about 'efficiency' are completely moot. Government projects are generally extremely inefficient - they tend to work best through regulation, and/or competitive bidding for work that can be independently assessed, or when there's a social element. For example, road work and construction: we can roughly estimate cost, there are many bidders, and it's outsourced, not done directly by gov staff. This is efficient. Public schools are roughly efficient. Garbage collection. etc.


Your first example shows that government is terribly inefficient so a single program that just writes checks should be better than many programs with complex requirements and giant overhead.

As for the second, just because some labor unions are notoriously rent seeking doesn't mean we don't have mass changes in govt organizations. Programs are shutdown all the time. I doubt those labor unions would have a good argument against this anyway. What are they going to say? We're keeping our jobs so we can keep you from getting paid?


Some would argue quantitative easing is wealth redistribution (or directly leads too it). And many more believe we’ve reached the point where it’s useless, if not counterproductive.


All taxation and spending is wealth redistribution.


Heck, almost everything anybody does related to the economic sphere is wealth (re)distribution.

Property rights are wealth redistribution away from the commons and towards a relatively small number of individuals. Does that make them bad? Well, I'd say maybe, it depends on the details...

We need to work against the effectiveness of this rhetoric trick where only some things are labelled "redistribution" to show them in a negative light.


How about calling it legacy building. We'll need to find some way to credit them to make it feel legit. Maybe let people pay a premium to bid on certain projects.

"This year's interstate highway funding brought to you by the Koch Brothers."


[flagged]


You realize the top 1% already pay for a disproportionate amount of the taxes? Also they own businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of people.

To tax people's wealth on top of the standard tax is plain evil, and will end up driving all the wealthiest people out of the country...


> You realize the top 1% already pay for a disproportionate amount of the taxes?

In absolute terms maybe (though there are some glaring exceptions -- Amazon famous literally pays $0 in taxes), but not relative to how much they make.

> To tax people's wealth on top of the standard tax is plain evil,

I don't see any reason why taxing net worth is at all less sensible than income. If anything I think it makes more sense; why should someone who's had a lucky break but is still not rich have to pay taxes like they are?

> will end up driving all the wealthiest people out of the country...

I don't take seriously the idea that any of them are going to give up living in the US over a couple percent of their income (which is what the wealth taxes folks have been talking about would take, at most).


> Amazon famous literally pays $0 in taxes), but not relative to how much they make.

because they took every penny and reinvested it and lost money for a long time because of such heavy investment.

just a few months ago everybody was complaining about companies not investing enough and returning money to shareholders - there was even legislation floated to force more investment.

companies cant win with people like you - invest and get assulted for tax reasons, don't invest and get yelled at for that.

you have this Utopian view of how you want everything to work, and don't even realize it isn't even possible most of the time.


I'm not really interested in judging Amazon; they're a for profit company, they're going to do what's best for their bottom line. And I'm sure they don't care what I think. This is more about the systemic issues with the tax code itself.


It worked exactly as it is supposed to: it incentivized long tern investment where amazon lost a lot of money because they invested so much.

if you want to tax them on those losses that they rolled forward, you would basically have far less investment.

make up your mind - do you want them to invest and take losses or not invest and pay taxes - you can't do both.


The devil is in the details; a lot of the things they're getting tax breaks for don't benefit the public. Why are they getting tax breaks for building warehouses and data centers for themselves? Stock based compensation for executives?

Also, regardless of what breaks are available for what activities, their baseline tax burden ought to be much higher. We should be drawing funding from people who can afford it and use it to lift the burden on people who can't.


> Why are they getting tax breaks for building warehouses and data centers for themselves?

Are you fucking kidding me? They get capital construction break like every other company gets. If you don't see that as the literal definition of investment you don't deserve to have an opinion on this.


I don't think we should be giving them tax breaks for investments that are only for themselves. They're going to do that anyway because it expands their business. If they were doing something that had a genuine public benefit, that they otherwise wouldn't do, that would be a different story.


> because they took every penny and reinvested it and lost money for a long time because of such heavy investment.

No, my understanding from press reporting is that the heavy reinvestment was to avoid taxes in the first place


that's the same thing. we set up tax structures to encourage long term investment precisely because we hope companies will try to invest to avoid taxes.


Bill Gates once talked about money no longer having a utility for him. The utility of money goes away at a certain point when you accumulate too much and there is no longer something you cannot buy. The utility would be most efficient when applied to a better use such applied as the needy, perhaps in a UBI, or some other strategy, which would free up their time to do something more productive for society.

Unfortunately people don't like to help each other in many capitalist countries, and laws are designed to not be easily changed, resulting in a great majority of the population either not heard or reluctant to voice their opinions.


It took Bill a long time to get there too. But it's the same for any billionaire. They can't possibly spend their money, neither can their children or grandchildren so the only thing you can do with it is give it away. Be that to charity, good works, monuments to yourself (art museums, university buildings) or politicians and think-tanks in an attempt to bend the world to your will.

The money is just one scoreboard among billionaires and not great one. Murdoch would be far more self-impressed with his power he weilds through media than someone with an additionall couple of hundred million.

Gates is more interested in being the great philanthropist. It seems his scoreboard is how much positive effect on the world he can have. It sounds ideal and I don't like to be cynical about it.

Koch Brother(s), Soros also can't spend their money on more houses, cars and private jets. More money is only useful to get more power. Do you like the way either or both weild it? Do you think they should have a bigger say than you purely by virtue of cash rather than making a convincing case?


That's actually the point of the wealth tax. The reason the pay a disproportionate amount is because the own a disproportionate amount. The current system is also a redistribution of wealth, just from the bottom to the top. That's what a wealth tax is supposed to change.

Regarding the argument about companies, I'm sure the French king also employed a lot of people, we still got right of the system of absolutism.


I'm guessing the vast majority of "wealth" is in assets/stocks. That isn't money just sitting around. The value is only realized when those are selled off. They also would owe capital gains tax. So now they gets taxed twice?

> The current system is also a redistribution of wealth, just from the bottom to the top.

I think that capitalism/free markets has been the biggest driver in bringing people out of poverty.

> That's what a wealth tax is supposed to change.

This is also hugely immoral. Property is a fundamental human right. There is no "right" in having as much money as someone else. In the US at least, there is supposed to be equal protection of your rights. Taking money from one person and giving to another is immoral. Besides, wealthy people are also people that donate enormous amounts of money. Let them figure out how they want to give it away.

> Regarding the argument about companies, I'm sure the French king also employed a lot of people, we still got right of the system of absolutism.

You will have to provide me some more evidence on how these are connected.


> So now they gets taxed twice?

I don't understand this argument. I've seen it so many times among a certain crowd of people, but I still don't get it. Yes, we, mere mortal humans have to form our systems of government using a patchwork of heuristics as we try to approach a more perfect system.

Sure, an omnipotent being that knew all outcomes in advance could set a perfect single-tax rate for each person's individual circumstance that only affected their income. Is this somehow more valid than trying to approximate this same outcome by taxing wealth as a correction on top of what income-tax and other taxes were supposed to accomplish?


>> So now they gets taxed twice?

>I don't understand this argument. I've seen it so many times among a certain crowd of people, but I still don't get it.

Wealth tax makes no sense because if you earned that money, then you have already paid taxes on it. Taxing assets/stocks makes no sense because the value is constantly changing. One day you could have millions and the next you could be broke. Plus, if you had zero cash on hand, you would have to liquidate an asset just to pay the taxes on it?

> Sure, an omnipotent being that knew all outcomes in advance could set a perfect single-tax rate for each person's individual circumstance that only affected their income.

A flat tax would work fine too, and be the most "fair".

> taxing wealth as a correction

I don't think the main purpose of taxation is redistribution. Who says there needs to be a correction in the first place? I don't think people really care about equality, because no one cares about the inequality of the rich vs. the super rich. They care about the lowest end, and if they have at least enough to support themselves. Which if you're making under a certain amount and have kids you pay basically zero taxes. In fact, you may even get money from the government.


>Taking money from one person and giving to another is immoral

Basically every society in the world does this, how is it immoral? I think it is immoral not to do that, considering that there is no way that any society can guarantee absolute equality of opportunity for all citizens.


> Basically every society in the world does this, how is it immoral?

The difference is taxes should be paying for public goods, to which everyone is equally entitled and able to use. Taking money from one person to give directly to another person is stealing, how is that not immoral?

> considering that there is no way that any society can guarantee absolute equality of opportunity for all citizens.

It's impossible to guarantee that. Some people are born rich, some are born poor. What can be guaranteed is equal protection of your rights and your individual freedoms. There is no right to equality in the economic sense, because it requires infringing on the rights of others.


Taxation is not stealing. In the ECHR for example your right to property is completely superseded by anything the government decides is in the best interest of society:

>(1) Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.

>(2) The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a state to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.


> No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest

As I mentioned, taxes for public goods makes sense. If they are just going directly to someone else's pocket then it's not exactly for the "public" at that point.

The ECHR is missing the freedom of speech, so I wouldn't look to that as a leader in individual rights.


Do they, in real terms? Like, in terms of percent-of-net-worth-per-annum rather than dollars-per-individual? Because I highly, highly doubt that.


> The Pew Center’s analysis of IRS data showed that in 2014, people with an adjusted gross income, or AGI, above $250,000 paid 51.6% of all individual income taxes, even though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed. These “wealthy” individuals paid an average tax rate (total taxes paid divided by cumulative AGI) of 25.7%.

> By contrast, while people with adjusted gross incomes below $50,000 filed 62% of all individual returns in 2014, they paid only 5.7% of total taxes collected at an average tax rate of 4.3% per person.

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/who-pays-the-most-us-income-tax-33...


So:

- If those with AGI above $250k paid 51.6% of all individual income taxes, what did they each pay per year in individual income tax?

- What did those with AGI above $2,500k pay? What percentage of annual revenue is that compared with someone on a decent professional wage, or on minimum wage?


Billionaires need your country more than you think. It's just a bluff.


Thousands of millionaires fled France [0]. Also, according to CNN 30 years ago 12 European countries had a wealth tax, today only 3 [1].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tax/macron-fights-...

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/17/opinions/wealth-tax-is-bad-id...


Some billionaires may, but at least in the US this often isn't true. Off the top of my head, the Collison brothers or Sergey Brin don't need the US in any fundamental sense; they weren't born here, but came here because they thought the US was a great place to build a valuable business. If we decide that we don't like this as a matter of policy, maybe the existing crop of billionaires will be too enmeshed to leave, but the next set of foreign entrepreneurs with billion-dollar ideas won't show up in the first place.


If you renounce your US citizenship you still owe income tax for a decade. They can leave if they want, I don't really want billionaires running our country


I'm not sure what you mean by this. Could you explain and/or provide a source? I can't seem to find anything about this.


Do you have any source or proof that the wealthy pay a disproportionate amount of taxes compared to the rest of us?


Percentages and dollar amounts don't matter. A low income person paying taxes hinders their ability to buy food and housing and clothing. A billionaire paying taxes means they have 6 megayachts instead of 7. It's apples and oranges.

It is unethical to allow billionaires to thrive while people die from poverty.


So do you think the current system is working well?


There's some point between "take nothing" and "take everything including your family home, dog, and toothbrush" where most people would believe a wealth tax to be unethical. I think this is what GP was trying to say, without picking a spot on the continuum.


There are several founders of YC companies that are self-made billionaires and they post on this very forum.

Do you really think they made it on the "backs of society" through "corruption and bribery" rather than building a company that provides value to those willing to pay for it?


If they made their money in a vacuum with no interaction to society then they would owe nothing to society. That isn't the case. They absolutely made their money on the back of society, including the decades of wealthy lobbying/bribery that came before them that has allows them to keep their immoral gains


We all interact with, benefit from, and pay into society.


Whether that value is real or whether that value was created just by the founders is something that needs to be discussed.


What does "value is real" even mean?


The internet was created by governments, much of its technical infrastructure through open source projects, and I’m pretty sure most of those billionaire companies had at least some employees (many of whom I assume were also educated in public schools and state universities).

So, yes, quite obviously, they made it on the “backs of society.”


We all pay taxes and benefit from "society". There's nothing special about it, and you too have the freedom to start your own company.


This presumes that societies are run and tax so as to provide equal benefits to all. This is disproven by, I dunno, the history of every society.


Taxes are not equally paid either. I'm not sure what your point is. Do you want to limit wealth? Do you want to ban entrepreneurship? Do you want communism?


You’re right. Workers now pay a higher tax rate than Capital owners:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/16/us-now-ta...

What I want is for the value workers create to be returned to them, not hoovered up by the wealthy in some distortive, unjustifiable scheme that prizes Capital ownership over everything else, including the lives and well-being of the majority of citizens.


Sure, I agree with removing capital gains taxes. Remove corporate income tax too. That would eliminate a lot of the discrepancy and tax loopholes.

But tax rates are meaningless otherwise. The top 1% pay as much as the bottom 90% combined, and the bottom 40% pay nothing at all.


>Do you want communism?

Yes

>Do you want to limit wealth?

Absolutely


No thanks. No need for an ideology that has killed hundreds of millions while keeping the ones the survived in poverty.

Any wealth inequality that exists in capitalism is only magnified in communism where an even smaller group of people have both political and monetary power.


Billionaires skim like .5-2% in margins off the top of the companies and relationships they build. People get paid throughout. This is nonsense.


If we had real wage growth, maybe I'd feel bad for them, too. When people can't afford to live on what they make, taxing them into oblivion is stupid.


In order for capitalism to work, money has to change hands. Typically, money changes hands for an item or service of perceived value. Again, typically, there is a profit calculated into that transaction. That small fraction which constitutes the profit is often wealth transferring from one person to another. Over time, that wealth coalesces into fewer and fewer hands. There are many ways to combat this pooling of wealth into the hands of the few, but none of the traditional ways appear to work in the face of automation. Capitalism will fail if people do not have money to spend.


We exchange value based on price discovery; but prices are determined by leverage, which is heavily tilted by pre-existing capital. One doesn't notice this at a micro-transaction level (how many shoes for how many chickens), but once one zooms out to the balance of power between labor and capital, one clearly holds all the cards ~90% of the time.


I don't see how a universal basic income could be sustainable in any way.

You either have debt hyperinflation, or you have taxes high enough that the universal basic income is meaningless.


"you have taxes high enough that the universal basic income is meaningless."

Not true. You should read the UBI policy proposal that Yang created for his POTUS run. You can find them here:

- https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/ - https://www.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/


This article [1] is one of the few to have taken Andrew Yang's UBI policies seriously and on their merits (unlike most others that summarily dismiss them), thought through some of their implications, found shortcomings, but still ended up still largely acknowledging that they could work.

I think a well-designed UBI could work. The tricky part is that UBI is one of those experiments that has to be done on the large, and pulling back if it doesn't work out is challenging. Any errors in implementation and design are potentially very expensive.

[1] https://theweek.com/articles/858097/andrew-yangs-ubi-problem


I think some are advocating for a value added tax with certain categorical exemptions. My limited understanding is this would make necessity purchases more secure while making discretionary “luxury” purchases more expensive


VAT is kind of a bad tax scheme. It's regressive and discourages consumption (which, like it or not, is the engine that drives our economy).

It's better just to have income and wealth taxes.


> which, like it or not, is the engine that drives our economy

no it doesnt. the US consumes a lot, but you are mistaking an accounting identity with something causal. if people decided to consume less, that means they are putting off current consumption for future consumption and saving those resources for investment to allow that to happen. don't worry - they'll consume at some point when they feel it is in their best interest (and if they don't, they basically just gave us a bunch of free labor).

all economies everywhere are driven by production. human desire is pretty much endless - you rarely have to incentive consumption. when people have the resource (ie, they produced), they will naturally consume.

the only way that long term standards of living improve is by increasing productivity (this is something virtually every economist agrees to). that is done by increasing capital stocks, machinery, technology. those are all production oriented activity.


Isn’t the point of the categorical exemptions to avoid it being regressive? I.e., it skews the tax toward those consuming non-essentials?

I agree that it may discourage consumption. It’s not clear to me that this is fundamentally a bad thing, at least in terms of conspicuous consumerism


It's easy to structure taxes such that the UBI is extremely meaningful—it helps the people at the low end a lot, the people in the middle a little, and the people at the upper end end up paying more. But guess what? They weren't using that money anyway (except to make more money for themselves).


The people at the top don't have much money (as a percentage of their holdings), they have "wealth", where wealth means productive enterprises like e.g. toilet paper factories. The people at the bottom work in toilet paper factories and are given money which they use to buy toilet paper from the people at the top, and thus there is a productive equilibrium between the wiping masses and the owner of the means of wiping.

When the people at the top make less money, they invest less money into new toilet paper R&D and new factories. When the people at the bottom make less money, they spend less on toilet paper, and the people at the top make less money. The balance is fragile, and if your end goal is that your citizens have access to the finest and most luxurious bathroom experience they can, then you must take care to balance the engine of capital with great precision.


> When the people at the top make less money, they invest less money into new toilet paper R&D and new factories.

This (and its inverse, "when the people at the top make more money, they invest it so it does good for the whole economy") is the foundation of trickle-down economics.

It's been empirically proven not to work over the past 40 years.


No, trickle-down economics is the idea that you should reduce taxes on the people at the top because they'll invest more, which only works if the balance is skewed too far towards the people at the bottom, which is clearly wrong right now.

If you had a dial labelled "wealth redistribution percentage", trickle-down economics says you that if you move it towards "0%" everything will get better. What I am saying is that if you start moving it towards "100%", everything will get better, but if you keep moving it for a long time, everything will get worse again. It is not clear to me that this has been empirically proven to be false.


There are lots of different plans: https://ubicalculator.com/

But the main point is 99% of people are already spending more than $1000 a month to survive, so we can afford it without spending more. It's just about how the books are balanced.

For high earners it means $1000+ in taxes. For the poorest it replaces conditional welfare.


Why he isn't:

Suggested income: $12,000

US Population: $327,200,000

Total cost for first year: $3,926,400,000,000

Total government expenditure for US: $3,800,000,000

So we would need to shut down everything the government does to afford his UBI. I personally don't feel like going for free market ICBM solutions is the best way to run an army, but each to their own.


The first source I could find puts 2008 crisis programs at 5.7% of GDP (it says output I assume gdp), and New Deal at 40%. [1]

Call it 130MM households in the US. Exclude top 5% ~123M.

For 6 months stimulus 1k/house = 738B.

Doesn't sound like enough really for what we're facing. Less than 2008 stimulus. only ~3.6% of GDP.

This interview with Jason Furman has some other good comparisons+context and other back of napkin maths [2]

If we're talking permanent UBI lowering or even cutting benefits programs (to be replaced by UBI) could get it somewhat close to budget neutral - if you cut a lot [3]. But IMHO would never be able to cut social security etc enough to make a difference, gross tax revenue would have to be raised somehow - but not by a shocking amount.

1 https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/may/which-big... 2 https://www.vox.com/2020/3/13/21177850/coronavirus-covid-19-... 3 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/budget-neutral-universal-bas...


Aren't there restriction like only for citizens 18+ and under Yang's policy it'd be you either take UBI or other subsidies you qualify for.


UBI only works when it isn't universal, basic or income.

At that point you have invented a worse welfare state.


wow, what a strawman you've built there.

that US government expenditure is a constantly changing number, when the government wants to buy some ICBMs they don't go cut food stamps correspondingly, they just increase the amount of government expenditure.




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