Y Combinator Plans To Start Doling Out $60 Million Next Year to Study Universal Basic Income (gizmodo.com) 376
The research arm of Y Combinator plans to begin a study on universal basic income next year in which it will give unconditional cash payments to 3,000 participants. From a report: The test is partially intended to see if receiving routine payments will quell anxieties around losing jobs to automation. As Wired reports, the study will be called "Making Ends Meet." Under the plan, a thousand people would get $1,000 per month and the other 2,000 would get $50 per month to serve as a control group. Some of the participants would receive monthly payments for three years and some would get paid every month for five years. Sam Altman, CEO of Y Combinator, a highly successful startup accelerator that helped give rise to companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Reddit, announced the company's plans to research universal basic income -- or as he put it, "giving people enough money to live on with no strings attached" -- in a January 2016 blog post. Altman explained his belief that universal basic income will eventually be implemented across the nation as more jobs are automated and "massive new wealth gets created."
Speaking of bubbles... (Score:3)
Re:Speaking of bubbles... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does Y Combinator's money come from? How can their investors possibly benefit from this?
Re:Speaking of bubbles... (Score:5, Insightful)
By keeping their heads off pikes the day a neural network become cheaper than a highschool graduate.
Re:Speaking of bubbles... (Score:5, Interesting)
How can their investors possibly benefit from this?
By society not collapsing. It may well happen that the only other approach is a severe restriction on automation. An UBI could be an alternative to that that actually costs less. Bit this is _research_. As in "we do not know yet".
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if robots do the work, then why do only some people get to own them
Probably for the same reason that only "the rich" have cars, computers, cellphones, dishwashers, and clothes dryers.
Seriously, why in the world do you think robot ownership will be restricted, when that has never happened before for any labor saving devices?
You can buy a pretty good 3D printer on Amazon for $199.
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It will be restricted simply because most people won't be able to afford it.
A decade ago industrial robots were heavy, rigid and expensive, because that was the only way to make the repeatedly accurate. Today they are light, flexible, and cheap, and the accurate is achieved with low cost cameras and software. The cost of automation is declining rapidly.
Right now, there are no restrictions on industrial robots, but none of my friends have one.
This has nothing to do with "affordability". You can buy a nice industrial robot on eBay for the cost of a new refrigerator.
I am not "rich", yet I have a CNC mill, lathe, and XYZ router in my garage. Most people do not have any
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If the robots do all the work, then we should all own them.
That doesn't stand to reason at all. We don't care who does the work and who owns the machines that do the work so long as everyone's basic needs are met, and the work gets done. It's not about work, it's about profit. If the robots earn all the profit, then some mechanism has to return enough of that profit to The People so that their needs can be met. Otherwise the situation collapses into anarchy and the nation becomes an easy target for an external aggressor.
Let me get this straight (Score:3, Funny)
We need immigrants to do the jobs that robots won't do and a program to pay people to not care if they lose their job.
I figured this out when I was 5 (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was 5 years old I figured out that if everyone has $1,000,000 dollars everyone would be rich.
I realized when I was 10 why if everyone had $1,000,000 nobody would be rich.
Sure, this experiment will work because the source of the money isn't other people's money and it isn't inflation.
When the source of the money is inflation or other people's money, that $12,000 a year will be sunk into rent increases and increased home prices, amongst other things.
I figured this out when I was 25 (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was 5 years old I figured out that if everyone has $1,000,000 dollars everyone would be rich.
I realized when I was 10 why if everyone had $1,000,000 nobody would be rich.
Sure, this experiment will work because the source of the money isn't other people's money and it isn't inflation.
When the source of the money is inflation or other people's money, that $12,000 a year will be sunk into rent increases and increased home prices, amongst other things.
When I was 25 years old I figured out that $1,000,000 invested in an index fund would increase in value enough to account for inflation and give an income of $2000 a month in perpetuity.
Also when I was 25, I figured out that any reduction of the workforce would push wages up and make jobs better by way of competition from supply and demand.
Also also, I noted that you don't need to give everyone the income immediately. Having a lottery will take people out of the workforce gradually, which could be funded over time in a reasonable way. Each $1 billion spent this way takes 1,000 people out of the workforce.
I noticed many things when I was 25, including that if you took all the entitlements programs and simply gave the money out with no regulatory oversight, you could have 5 times as many people using entitlements.
Looking at the cost of entitlements [wikipedia.org], it's clear that we *could* start moving people off of welfare and related services and eventually get to UBI or something close to it, with no increase in taxes.
Individual productivity keeps rising, and it's pretty easy to see that UBI has to happen.
Or if it doesn't, then we're in for a world of hurt as all the goods and services needed by everyone are made by fewer and fewer people, while the people who can't find a job either starve or revolt.
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Do you understand that FREE MARKET works both ways? If everyone had $1M and they gave it to banks, banks wouldn't pay you such high interest rate. You can't play that game with the people that invented it.
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Sensible countries have controls on the basic cost of living. Rent, utilities, food etc.
$1000 per month? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the idea for UBI is that, while you may not be eating out buying filet mignon, you can at least survive on it.
Is $1,000 survivable? It is significantly less than minimum wage, which people already struggle with.
Re:$1000 per month? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:$1000 per month? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it can be done. You're probably taking public transportation, living in vary rural areas, making all your own meals, and splitting the rent with someone else. Would it be comfortable, no. But it shouldn't be. There should still be an incentive for those who want to and are able to work to earn additional money to live off.
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That fails when there are no jobs for most people anymore. Then it _must_ be comfortable. We are not there yet by a long stretch, but it is a good idea to be prepared and actually understand the options when the time comes.
Re:$1000 per month? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was making $1500/month in grad school as recently as early 2011, which was enough to afford a two-story apartment, eating out regularly, no lack of groceries, and still have a few hundred bucks a month that I was able to set aside to start building up a 20% downpayment for the house I bought in 2013 in this same area (Bryan/College Station, Texas). $1000/month is doable, at least around where I live now, but you definitely wouldn’t be able to afford a big city.
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I've been a proponent for a $6k annual BIG for a long time.
I think that what you are missing is household size. The federal poverty line is roughly $8k for a household, plus $4k per person in it. So a 1 person household has a poverty line of $12k. 2 people is $16k and 4 is $24k.
$1k/month each person for 4 people living together is the poverty line, and encourages efficiency.
Unlike current welfare plans, where living with somebody else may cost you benefits.
Finally, remember that you aren't penalized for
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$1000 / month may turn out to be worth next to nothing at all. If UBI is implemented by the process of the government printing more money, then inflation will rapidly devalue the UBI. That will also make the minimum wage worth far less, along with everyone else's wages for that matter. You can't arbitrarily create more fiat money unless it matches a corresponding increase in productivity and economic valu
Re:$1000 per month? (Score:5, Informative)
$1000 / month may turn out to be worth next to nothing at all. If UBI is implemented by the process of the government printing more money, then inflation will rapidly devalue the UBI.
That's why you don't implement it that way, or at least if you do, you continually increase the UBI payments to match inflation. A steady rate of inflation is useful because it encourages investment by devaluing cash reserves. Assets don't devalue because of inflation, only because of depreciation — which can be written off.
A better way to implement it, though, is simple taxation. You tax corporate income, not profits.
That will also make the minimum wage worth far less,
If you have UBI, you don't need a minimum wage. People's basic needs are met by UBI, so there's no reason not to let people pay any amount they want for work since nobody is forced to do it just to stay alive.
The only way UBI can "work" without inflation is if economic value is taken from those who produce it (in the form of taxes), and then redistributed.
You are making the classic blunder of assuming that those who collect the largest share of the profit do the largest share of the work, but that is provably false. The worker's share of the profit has been falling for decades. Most of the profit goes to the people at the top, even though they are not the ones producing the economic value. They absolutely should be taxed more, so that the wealth can be redistributed. If they had been willing to share to begin with, and paid workers a fair share of the profits, then we wouldn't need things like UBI because people would have money, and they would put it into their local economies, which is how jobs are actually created.
The UBI assumes that everyone who receives it will spend it wisely, hence eliminating dozens of other government entitlement programs, and that just won't happen.
It may be necessary to also teach household economics in school. We used to do that, but we stopped. We can start again. While we're at it, bring back cooking classes. Make them mandatory for all students. Cooking saves a lot of money. And hey, why not critical thinking, while we're at it?
UBI only becomes possible if we undergo an economic "singularity" where AI + robotics + cheap energy creates a society where basic food, clothing, and shelter become effectively "free".
We're rapidly approaching that point. We throw away about as much food as we consume, just for convenience's sake. Clothing costs pennies to produce per garment, unless it's made out of cotton which is now threatened by climate change. We know how to make excellent (not just adequate) shelters out of burlap bags filled with dirt, and barbed wire. (You still need a roof, but if you don't build large structures, roofs made of recycled steel are cheap.) It costs more in some locations just to get the permits to build a traditional 1-bedroom house than it does to buy the materials. And then, of course, there's shipping containers; they are literally a problem, stacking up at ports because nobody wants them, which is in turn a result of regulation as well — you need to do certain types of fumigation when going into certain ports, while other ports won't permit containers which have been treated in certain ways into their ports at all. So container re-use is at probably an all-time low... But that leaves them available to build homes with.
And in that case, you'll find that your government-produced commodities will be treated as undesirable assets because "only poor people accept them".
So what? In what way is that a problem? Poor people will still benefit from them.
The real long-term answer to making UBI or indeed any system work is education, but both parties (though mostly the reps) have deliberately attacked educa
How does handing out random money... (Score:2)
...increase the value of the money VC funders have put into the startup accelerator?
This will create no jobs and no value. If I were backing Y Cabinator, I'd want to pull all my money out and invest in something that actually creates jobs for Americans (and comes with the possibility of my money earning a profit), rather than waste it handing out welfare.
(Psst: Universal basic Income failed when they tried it in the SIME/DIME experiments, where it discouraged work. Try reading Losing Ground instead of repea
Like this (Score:2)
Well, look at it this way. As automation increases, due to these very startups and their peers, the available number of jobs will decrease. So now, do you want your neighbors robbing you, or hanging out relatively peacefully, painting watercolors or whatever? Seems like a very good time to test these waters (not that this instance is a decent test, it's not, $12k/yr is ridiculously low in th
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So now, do you want your neighbors robbing you, or hanging out relatively peacefully, painting watercolors or whatever?
A capitalist might want to see neighbors painting watercolors for paid commissions.
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There are only two real solutions, less people or a viable welfare system. Any conscionable society would ignore the first option.
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> Do you realize that the driving force of UBI in today's environment is to actually allow people to survive without working?
You realize there's no reason to assert that?
There's nothing published or publicly said, by the organizations running these experiments, to that effect.
Can you explain why you imagine UBI is to allow people to survive without working?
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There are only two real solutions, less people or a viable welfare system. Any conscionable society would ignore the first option. While encouraging reduction in population growth might be good, actually restricting it would be dangerous from a moral standpoint. That only leaves the second option. UBI alone may not be enough, or even the best way. But, it's better we work towards a solution before it's needed.
Actually, the first option is already implementing itself, and has been for a while. We're just not quite yet to where we'll be seeing the effects without having to check the parts of the demographic data which actually is predictive of what you can expect for the population--it turns out that while restricting it is harmful (not just from a moral standpoint), it pretty much happens of its own accord as basic sanitation, universal basic education, and (very) basic medical care becomes widely available.
The
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Firstly, The vast majority of UBI experiments have not shown any definite evidence of discouraging work, except among individuals who opt into training to improve future prospects, or start their own business.
Secondly, SIME/DIME were NOT UBI experiments in the sense generally discussed as such:
From the overview of the Final Report: (https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/overview-final-report-seattle-denver-income-maintenance-experiment)
The cash transfer treatment tested in SIME/DIME, as in the previous income maintenance experiments, consisted of a series of negative income tax plans. A negative income tax is simply a cash transfer program in which there is (a) a maximum benefit (called the guarantee) for which a family is eligible if it has no other income and (b) a rate (called the benefit reduction or tax rate) at which the maximum benefit is reduced as other income rises.
So basically,they clawed back a substantial amount of every additional dollar reci
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So basically,they clawed back a substantial amount of every additional dollar recipients earned - to the tune of 50-80% if I'm reading correctly. That's not a UBI, that's just a welfare program with a slightly gentler benefit cliff, from which one would reasonably expect a reduced but still appreciable disincentive to work.
Indeed. When I've looked at the issue for my proposed $6k UBI, I've set the "clawback" at a relatively gentle 30-33%. It was even "Reverse progressive" because I did it by eliminating the lowest income tax brackets, so the $4k exemption was gone, as were the 10 and 15 brackets, everything was 32%. The UBI wasn't completely eliminated until about $30k of income if you considered previous tax rates, though becoming "tax neutral" happened sooner, at about $18k.
Bottom line (Score:2)
Where does this money come from? All the people touting UBI all say to watch this video or read this paper yadda yadda. Bottom line is taxes will go up for middle class.
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Where does this money come from?
Sales of Unicorn Farts.
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The problem with UBI (Score:2)
How could it push wages down? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious as to how you think that this could reduce wages. My line of thinking is that with a substantial portion of people looking at just staying home if the pay isn't worth it, that pay will have to increase to lure people out.
As such, businesses that assume they can pay less because of the UBI will discover that said potential employees decide that just staying home is better.
I figure that market forces will tend to adjust such that living on just the UBI sucks enough, and working improves that enough, that most people still end up working.
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People expecting to live on a UBI will find that their UBI pays for nothing they expected and need.
Time to set a new gov system to fully support people who cant live on the UBI?
Tax people more to make the UBI larger for everyone?
What? (Score:3)
as more jobs are automated and "massive new wealth gets created."
If more jobs are automated that means more people without jobs. Who is going to pay them this income? Those getting massive new wealth?
All you've done is make the masses dependent on a select few continuing to give them money and in doing so create a redistribution of wealth (such that it is ).
I'm not the smartest person in the room, but how is this even remotely feasible and sustainable?
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's eminently feasible - We're currently producing X amount of real wealth (goods and services, not money) and distributing it among Y people without trouble. If technology changes so that far less labor is required to produce the same amount of wealth, that doesn't inherently change anything - you can still distribute the wealth in the exact same way without any physical problems.
If you're accustomed to thinking in terms of wealth in terms of money, payed in exchange for man-hours of labor, then if technology lets you produce 10x the real wealth per man-hour, then that hour is now worth 10x as much if it's paid in terms of value created. So, let everyone work 4 hours a week instead of 40 and get the same paycheck. The economy continues as it has, except everyone has a lot more free time on their hands to enjoy what they're buying.
Alternately you could pay one person 10x as much, and let the other 90% eat cake. That has a problem though, even if you can handle the riots to your satisfaction - because now there's only 1/10th as many people with money to spend on buying your goods, and odds are very good they're not going to buy10x as many things - in general, the more money people have, the more they invest. Say they buy 5x as much - now your factories only need to build half as many widgets, so you lay off half your workers. And so the number of people with money to spend halves, so you halve production again... And the whole time, the income of the investors is crumbling.
It's a vicious downward spiral that demonstrates the fundamental truth that jobs are created by consumers, not investors. The wealth of the top is sustained by the spending of the masses, any serious disruption of that can bring the entire house of cards falling down.
As for the masses being dependent on the few giving them money - why? Make them investors instead, up front. It's not like the few are inherently worthy of the wealth they lucked into - for the most part if they had been switched at birth it would be someone else sitting in their position now. They don't also don't generate any wealth themselves - investing only leverages wealth - the wealth is always ultimately created by the laborers - if your hard work made it possible for the company to amass enough wealth to automate away most the jobs, why shouldn't you own a share of that new equipment?
One mechanism I like to implement such a thing is to require that X% of the stock of all corporations or other such liability limiting/wealth concentrating legal tools always automatically and irrevocably belongs to the country's citizens, with control distributed equally, as just part of the cost of being able to hide behind legal fictions when shit hits the fan (it would also greatly discourage the use of shell corporations to dodge liability, as every shell would cost you another X% of asset dilution)
State capitalism in Red China (Score:2)
One mechanism I like to implement such a thing is to require that X% of the stock of all corporations or other such liability limiting/wealth concentrating legal tools always automatically and irrevocably belongs to the country's citizens
You mean like state capitalism [wikipedia.org] in the People's Republic of China?
Here, have some candy and STFU (Score:2)
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Not the first time this has been done (Score:2)
Back in the seventies a firm did this in the Seattle area, though back then it was something like $600 a month. The guy I knew who was in the program spent all his money on turquoise jewelry.
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Well your anecdotal claim has certainly convinced me. Have a copper bracelet, because you know, I know a guy who swears up and down it cured his arthritis.
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Convinced you of what? I wasn't trying to convince you of anything, just informing you of my experience. Take it or leave it. I don't give a shit.
Restrict it, and it might work (Score:2)
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Restrict recipients *only* to people that have lost their job to automation.
You might want to look up the word "universal" in the dictionary. Then again, so might the guy at Y Combinator.
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It could eventually become universal, as more people lose their jobs to automation. The entire point of it is to enable people to survive large scale unemployment due to automation anyways, so why not restrict recipients to that group?
Because it's just "welfare" if you do that. UBI has to be fundamentally different than welfare programs to work, if it even can work. But simply handing money out to people who "need" it is what we're doing right now, and it's a terrible way to go about trying to help folks.
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Citizens who are working do not get a UBI as they are working and paying new taxes to pay for the UBI.
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Whoops - check your numbers! (Score:2)
Under the plan, a thousand people would get $1,000 per month and the other 2,000 would get $50 per month to serve as a control group.
Sam Altman, CEO of Y Combinator, a highly successful startup accelerator that helped give rise to companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Reddit, announced the company's plans to research universal basic income -- or as he put it, "giving people enough money to live on with no strings attached"
So $12K is a living wage?
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The "fair tax" is a regressive tax though, taking a higher proportion of income from the poor than the rich, for the simple reason that the poor spend more of their money than the rich (who can afford to invest much of it instead). And as such, it is hardly what most people would consider "fair".
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A $12K/yr UBI with a $40K/yr job taxed at a flat 30 percent is effectively a 0% tax. How is that regressive?
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The manipulatively named "Fair Tax" is a flat tax, which is always regressive because the poor spends a larger percentage of taxes on necessities. A graduated tax scheme with no loopholes or exceptions is barely more complex to manage than a flat tax scheme. UBI, however, eliminates numerous social programs which are complex to administer, so long as you also have a national health care program. NH is probably mandatory for UBI to work. However, we already have multiple national health care programs; one fo
Wasted money (Score:2)
Unless the goal is to kill the idea of UBI, this is wasted money.
UBI enable people to make projects if the income is high enough that you do not have to starve for a paid job, any shitty paid job, to make a decent living. And it works if you do not have to bother wbout when it stops.
Oh no, the system people have been chained to (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh no, the system people have been chained to (Score:5, Insightful)
What would you do if you got a UBI ? (Score:3)
If I could count on my rent being made and some or all of my monthly expenses I would start making beef jerky on a more than pastime basis. I'd also volunteer more than 1 day a week at the animal rehab preserve, I specialize in snakes and lizards. I also spend one day a week as a library volunteer reading to kids and indexing the books in their book store. I think most people would not just quit doing things but would find more personally fulfilling things to do with their time that wouldn't normally make enough money to warrant or allow them to devote the effort. Imagine musicians, writers and countless other creative pursuits which could arise.
Why not invest that $60M in 500 more startups? (Score:2)
The real question (Score:3)
Blah blah blah ..Good idea!,, blah blah ..Bad Idea!.. blah blah...
Could someone just post a link where I can sign up to get $1,000 a month?
I already make good money, but an extra grand would certainly help.
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Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Insightful)
But you will be forced — at gun point, which is how all taxes are collected — to pay for somebody else doing it.
Re:Sounds great (Score:5, Insightful)
But you will be forced - at gun point, which is how all taxes are collected - to pay for somebody else doing it.
The implication is that you wouldn't be paying for "somebody else" otherwise, but reality is that you do. Like our little eGamer wacko recently, I bet he didn't have the assets to cover all the medical expenses he caused, much less if he had to pay restitution to everyone from the inconvenienced to the deceased's relatives. Even if there's health insurance and whatnot that just means the costs gets smeared broad and thin. And anything but anarchists wants law and order so somebody's paying cops and judges and prisons and it's not the penniless perp. Heck it could be simple things like theft, or even if not theft then the cost of the anti-theft system you need to keep thieves away. Maybe you think UBI is a poor strategy of appeasement, but taxes is far from the only way you end up with the bill. Less desperate people do less desperate things, of course it's no miracle worker but it helps.
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Same here. And I am sure it will be a very significant tax hit, which I will duly pony up. I like the idea of everyone having enough to live on, a comfortable and climate-controlled place to shelter, food on the table, and medical care.
Re: Sounds great (Score:3, Insightful)
That's usually how it goes. You like the idea of everyone having everything they need, so you support a guy who says he can make it happen. Next thing you know you're wiping your ass with worthless $1,000 bills and killing feral dogs in the streets to feed your family for dinner.
And then you wonder how it could possibly have happened when wealth distribution has worked out SO well every other time it's been tried ....
Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Informative)
This. I've known a few people who didn't pay their taxes and the U.S. government never used a gun to force them to pay taxes. I've never even seen them arrested. What the government did do was to garnish their wages. In one specific case they sold their home to get current; they actually sold it to one of their kids who then rented the home to them. I don't think it's really worked out well for either of them but they did mean well.
The reality is that if a government starts demanding taxes like that then things start to break down and everyone is worse off.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not UBI (Score:3)
The results aren't relevant anyway, as at its best, $12000/yr isn't enough to live on unless you live under a bridge, so the whole "will people still work" and "what might they do otherwise" bit falls flat on its face. This isn't a UBI test. This is an "auntie Sarah died and left you a tiny bit of money which you can't get at all at once anyway" test.
It's not basic. It's not universal, either. It is income, but so is that $100 bill you got for xmas.
It amazes me how often these "tests" get the whole idea com
Re:Not UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
It is basic because it's minimal. The idea isn't that you get a check and don't work. It's that you get a head start to supplement a job. The problem with welfare is that those on it don't look for work because it effects their benefits. This doesn't, so while the 12k isn't livable, the 12k+ minimum wage job is.
It is universal because everyone in the control group gets it, regardless of their situation.
It will fail because you run out of other peoples money.
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A full-time minimum wage job is perfectly "livable" for a single person. Poverty line for a single person in the US is $12,140. Full-time minimum-wage (federal) is 2000 hours at $7.25 is $14,500.
It is not "livable" for a single parent with one or more children...the poverty line for parent+1 child is $16,460. In a very real sense, children CAUSE poverty.
A person living on minimum wage should never procreate, because they take one person who was not in poverty and put 2 people into poverty.
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A full-time minimum wage job is perfectly "livable" for a single person. Poverty line for a single person in the US is $12,140. Full-time minimum-wage (federal) is 2000 hours at $7.25 is $14,500.
Pre-tax.
Post tax you're looking at about $11,000.
FYI, having been that poor before (way back when I was an "overpaid government worker"), I can assure you that's not what any first-world inhabitant would consider "perfectly livable" - it's shit. A shit way of living.
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$13,388.
You need shelter, so let's put you in a studio hovel for a fair $500/mo (serious lowball figure); so that's $6,000/yr for housing, leaving you with $7,388. Oh, but wait - you probably need utility service too... well the national average [genxfinance.com] is about $200/mo, so there's another $2,400 for housing, so once that's all paid for you're looking at $4,988 left.
We don't yet live in this fantasy utopia where magical AI robots do everything, so you need a job, and to get a job in Average America, you need a car.
Re:Not UBI (Score:5, Informative)
You can squeak by miserably on 12k /year. Maybe not where you live but you probably live somewhere with a healthy economy. I know plenty of places where 1000/mo is enough for an apartment or a room, some bus fare, and groceries.
I'm one of them. Just a few hundred or so over $12,000 for me. It's not much, but it works for the basics.
I'm on disability and I don't work, but if I had UBI instead, I could try getting a job again or even try starting my own business. I don't know if I can handle working because it's been a long time since I've worked. Unfortunately, if I start working again right now, my disability will be cancelled. Before anyone starts chastising me about work ethic or being a leech or whatever, just read on for a bit to understand why this could risk ruining my life.
If I were to have my disability cancelled, I would be giving up guaranteed money (which I need for rent and food), plus basic dental coverage, plus prescription drug coverage (which saves me about $1,500 a month) and trading it for the possibility of a little bit more money (which I don't need, but would be nice), minus all the benefits that I would have to start paying for out of pocket. If I were to lose my job or if my business were to flop before it ever gains any momentum, I'd have to go through months of waiting for approval after reappling for disability. Sometimes this process can take over a year if my application is rejected, because that would force me to go through several bureaucratic stages of appeal. During all of that time I'd have no means of paying rent or eating food.
The end result is that I could become homeless as a result of trying to get employed. That terrifies me, so I'm going to stay on disability and let the rest of my country feed and shelter me until we get a better solution. The idea of UBI doesn't just sound interesting or appealing to me, it feels like my only way back into the work force. I miss work. I'd like to go back to actually earning my money again. It felt really good. This was over ten years ago. The stigma of being unemployed is terrible. Those of you who have a job -- or better yet, a career you enjoy -- consider yourselves fortunate, and please think of the complexities before you harshly judge someone who doesn't work.
I may not be employed, but I'm not stupid. I can do the math and assess the risks. Working simply doesn't make sense for me. It's too much of a gamble.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, it isn't permanent. If it is only 3 to 5 years, you can't drop out of your career. People will behave differently than if it was a real permanent UBI. So it isn't a good test.
UBI is addressing a problem that doesn't actually exist. We are in a full employment economy, and there is no evidence that robots are "stealing jobs". Machines don't automate "jobs", they automate "tasks", making workers more productive, more valuable and increasing demand. This is an example of Jevon's Paradox [wikipedia.org].
UBI is also
Re: UBI (Score:2, Insightful)
Please stop believing Fox News and Trump. We are FAR from FULL employment. Many people are under-employed, barely able to keep themselves afloat in the current economy. Millions have yet to back peddle from the crash of '08. Many more, whose numbers are NOT counted, have fallen through the cracks entirely. Speak only for yourself.
Re:UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is more permanent than 3-5 years because that's how often governments change.
Re: (Score:3)
I would argue that the country has to be wealthy enough to support it in the first place. However the USA does have the resources.
Sure UBI may not work but it may we should be willing to try new things. People are complicated, there are just to many factors to take into consideration to be certain of what the outcome would be. A small trial maybe not be perfect but it may give some insights into whether it would work or not.
There are plenty of things about people that are counter intuitive such as pay
Re: UBI (Score:2)
Sure Moviepass may not work but it may we should be willing to try new things!
UBI funding (Score:2)
I disagree, it is only if the UBI is excessive, if we don't eliminate other forms of welfare at the same time, etc...
I figure that a modest UBI can be funded with existing welfare spending combined with eliminating the lowest tax brackets. You don't need them if people are getting about $6k/year up front.
Re: (Score:2)
That "other forms of welfare" is not going to people who now work...
No tax system can pay all its citizens free money without large new tax rates.
Tax rates with UBI (Score:3)
Well, good thing I had a tax increase to pay for the UBI in the post you replied to, right?
The important point is that, once you eliminate other forms of welfare and plow that money into the BIG, the additional taxes only need to more or less neutralize the BIG for middle class and above income earners.
So, while technically a tax increase, actually revenue neutral to most people.
Re: (Score:3)
"So, while technically a tax increase, actually revenue neutral to most people"
So there is no people that would be financially better with UBI than without it (including today's welfare)?
Because if there is people that are better off with UBI, and obviously they will be at the lowest side of the scale, they'll be buying more necessities than they do now. Increasing demand of necessities will mean inflation by the exact quantity of money injected.
This, in turn, will mean two things:
1) UBI will not be Basic
Re:Tax rates with UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not (only) about the monetary situation, it's more about a feeling of security and safety. If I feel secure, I can take higher risks, quit my job and start a business myself even if I am unsure whether it's gonna take off. If there's nothing to fall back on, people would rather stay with a job that's probably not as productive but at least safer.
But in an economy that thrives on exploiting workers, something like this is anathema, I know.
Re: Tax rates with UBI (Score:4, Interesting)
2) Even if it's true that technically UBI is financially neutral for most people, in practice, due to inflation, most people will be worse off.
If a majority are revenue neutral then there wouldn't be massive inflation. Everyone would still have approximately the same amount of money to spend. It's basically a restructuring of welfare for people on welfare and a tax and give back for people working and if a person loses their job there is no need to apply for welfare as they are already receiving it.
That being said, I find these 3 year studies stupid. Either study existing income for life lottery winners or work with an existing lottery to set up your exact criteria. Income for life lottery winners would be much more accurate than a short term study. 3 years isn't even long enough to quit your job and go back to college.
Re:UBI funding (Score:5, Insightful)
The funding is simple, every share of stock in publicly held companies goes into a non-voting public trust, every new share issued thereafter is duplicated with a share going into public trust. No matter how many layers of paper or indirection are used the same is applied to foreign arms and interests of companies held by US citizens so that folding and reopening in another nation doesn't escape the policy.
In this manner as society phases out work and automated away jobs, centralizes, takes advantage of foreign labor pools, etc. Those who actually built all that technology and processes, efficiencies etc and their children are taken care of and their interests and support remain tied to progress and innovation even if their contribution isn't directly in the form of labor. Additionally, the net result may result in some shift of wealth but maintains proportion of wealth so that it doesn't trample upon the portion of wealth which has followed merit.
Re: (Score:3)
6k/yr, seriously? Where can you live on 6k/yr? You'd need to increase that at least five fold.
Very few places. But you have to remember that it is $6k/year per person, not per household. A household of 4 people together, because the BIG is agnostic of that stuff, is $24k/year, which is right on the federal poverty line for a household of 4.
If you're completely unemployed and dependent upon the BIG, living alone is a luxury you don't get.
As for your funding proposal, I agree with the concept of having what amounts to a sovereign wealth fund, but I'd prefer to fund it with a 1% or so income tax. Ma
Re:UBI funding (Score:5, Informative)
I unfortunately believe that UBI won't end up being the utopian approach to welfare that many seem to think its aimed at being.
In the UK, since the 1990s there has been a big rise in private landlords who refuse to rent to "DSS recipients" (although its not been called DSS for years, the term these days refers to anyone receiving housing benefit). Yes, its illegal discrimination, but it still happens and its on the increase rather than the decrease.
And you can't really blame the private landlords for doing it, as they have some very good reasons.
Coupled with the rise of refusal to rent to housing benefit recipients is the various changes that successive governments have put in place - and the biggest of them all was the switch from local governments paying housing benefit directly to the landlords to instead paying that benefit to the tenant, who is supposed to pay their rent just like anyone else. It was done as a means of "empowering" those on welfare, to give them more visibility of their money and let them feel more in control.
Unfortunately, it led to a massive rise in evictions for non-payment of rent. A lot of those tenants stopped paying their rent and instead bought big screen TVs, holidays, luxury items etc and then used the courts to stall eviction processes (which can take months), leaving landlords with huge debts that were never going to be cleared.
Housing benefit also hasn't risen in line with other government changes which have made owning property to rent significantly more expensive - for instance, landlords can no longer claim tax relief on income that covers the mortgage payments, so to cover that loss rents have to rise, but housing benefit has stayed stagnant meaning more tenants cannot afford to pay the market rate.
So now its hard to find property to rent if you are on housing benefit, either because no one wants to rent to you or because you are priced out of the market by the very government that is supporting you.
UBI might benefit some astute people, but I think using it to replace normal welfare without checks and balances in place will simply lead to more of the above - a lot of people will treat it as free money for luxury items and we are back to square one.
Re: (Score:3)
So the idea is to take the people who are working now, earning 60-150k/yr as middle class citizens and when all their jobs disappear we replace it with taxes on those who have ended up with all the wealth, knowledge, invention, and processes the middle and lower classes have almost exclusively generated over the past couple hundred years set at a rate that fixes them at the federal poverty line?
You'd say fixing them at 0 money due to not having neither a job nor an UBI is better?
Re: UBI (Score:2, Informative)
MONEY DOES NOT GROW ON TREES!
Two possibilities here. You are unfamiliar with fiat currency or you are unfamiliar with lumber as an enterprise.
One certainty: Your mind is made up, and you don't want to consider how you might be wrong.
Re:UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
This is stimulating the economy on the low end. As someone who is a productive member of society, this benefits me in the form of my company's profitability selling goods and services. As an added bonus, there is less incentive for the poorest to commit crime. The homeless, destitute, and drug addicted can afford to get treatment and stop harassing me on the street and scaring my small children. There are less evictions, less repossessions and the economy becomes much smoother. A bolstered middle class benefits everyone in the short term, medium term, and long term.
I will happily pay more taxes for higher wages, less suffering of the poor, less fear of my kids being a victim of violent crime. I'm not even sure UBI would raise my taxes substantially, but I am happy to give it a try. One thing is clear, the current system is failing, income inequality is getting depressingly worse, and while I have a good job, life is getting worse every year for all those around me. I see no future on our current path. I think a well implemented UBI program will protect the masses from the job losses that are coming due to automation and ensure a healthy flow of income to buy goods and services and keep our economy running smoothly. I want people to be able to afford my company's products.
To me, UBI is not a charity program, but an investment that looks like an inevitability.
Re:UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sure.
Did the free money we pump into banks increase inflation? Or where do you think the bailouts come from? When you deposit 100 bucks with your bank, your bank lends out 1000 of them. Yes, I'm not kidding. Where do you think that money comes from? You don't pay back? No worries, here's a loan of 1100 to cover the 1100 you owe us. Of course you don't get that money, it's just now in your book as debt. And you suddenly owe us 1100 of the 1000 we gave you. Did that free money increase inflation?
Money is numbers on an account. Nothing else. Inflation, like pretty much all in this economy, is artificial. A tool to direct money and its flow. Your economy, like any economy in the developed world, relies mostly on services. Services, like money, can be multiplied at will. At least as long as you have available workforce. So unless your unemployment rate is very close to 0 (and please don't try to bullshit with the "official" numbers, you know as well as I do that the "official" unemployment numbers of the US have nothing to do with how many people are looking for a job), you can easily multiply your service offer ... which only happens of course if there is demand, since you can hardly store services.
Poor people are now also the demographic that gladly and very willingly spends money on services. In other words, here's your chance to drive your economy forward.
Of course, if your goal is just to have a cheap, dependant workforce to maximize your own profit and to hell with the general economy, this would certainly be not in your interest.
Re:This again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you my forecast: Someone will figure out that since there are no strings attached, they can offer these people loans at high interest, paid for by the $1k per month. So they'll be just as poor as before, but perhaps have a car for a while, and someone else gets richer.
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I can tell you my forecast: Someone will figure out that since there are no strings attached, they can offer these people loans at high interest, paid for by the $1k per month. So they'll be just as poor as before, but perhaps have a car for a while, and someone else gets richer.
The only people who'd get $1k extra are the people earning $0 today - not including those already on welfare programs as they'd be reduced/cut - which means they're either dependent on somebody else, living off savings, accumulating debt or hobos living under a bridge. That deadbeat son/daughter you haven't got the heart to kick out? Well now they got money to pay rent or to get a shabby room somewhere else. The stay-at-home mom and dads have a family economy. UBI for retirees would essentially be a public
Re:This again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm from Argentina. We don't have universal basic income. But we have high taxes and the previous administration left 22 million "passives" (government employeees, retirees and especially "social plan" benefitiaries). And 8 million "active" workers.
The fiscal hole is so big we're heading to another economic crisis.
The crisis in Venezuela makes people from there come here and easily get a job. People from here don't work. You see them outside the government-owned post and government-owned banks making huge lines. Young people in good shape and health. Perfectly fit to work. But the just, you know, don't.
And inflation is eating away their benefits. Instead of getting jobs, they are now protesting. They demand more free money.
This does not end well. All of the "universal income" programs ignore one simple fact: people are shit and they abuse every system they can abuse.
Common workers (Score:2)
You'd still see them coming into work, but you'd probably have to pay them more to do so.
There was recently an article about human feces having become such a problem that San Francisco was hiring human poo cleaners. Wage? $75k/year each.
If the potential plumber wants more than a very modest life, he still has to go out and work.
Re: (Score:3)
>People need meaningful work to do which is appreciated in some form by others. Depriving them of that need is part of the current economic problem, and giving them free money does nothing to fix that.
I think you've missed something important. As you say, people need meaningful work to do which is appreciated in some form by others. You can't deprive them of that need - it's inherent. All you can deprive them of is the additional motivation of the fear of starvation and homelessness.
And there's always
benefits cliff makes people not want to work (Score:3)
benefits cliff makes people not want to work
Re: (Score:3)
You're not going to continue working when you get about 500 bucks a month? Well... ok, if that's enough for you, great. Where I live this might even allow you to survive. Somewhere outside a town, without infrastructure, without a car, with ... maybe ... electricity and the closest store about 5 miles away. But hey, since you don't have to waste time to work, you have plenty of time to walk there.
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This country wasn't built by people who depended on government handouts. It was built on hard work and independence of government.
That is ever so much horse shit. The people who built the country into what it looks like today depended on the government to genocide the natives and subsequently grant their land to those who ultimately profited. Then they depended on the railroads, which were built atop government land grants (and sleazy sales) to transport goods for sale. Later, they depended upon the interstate highway system to enable commerce, which was also built by the government. Absolutely nothing in this country today would be h