Slashdot Mirror
VC, Entrepreneur Says Basic Income Would Work Even If 90% People 'Smoked Pot' and Didn't Work (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader cites a story on TI: The chief complaint people lodge at universal basic income -- a form of income distribution that gives people money to cover basic needs regardless of whether they work or not -- is that it'll make them lazy. Sam Altman doesn't buy it. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast, entitled "Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?" Altman argued basic income could support huge amounts of productivity loss and still carry the economy on its shoulders. "Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win," Altman says. "And the American puritanical ideal that hard work for its own sake is valuable -- period -- and that you can't question that, I think that's just wrong." [...] The complaint Altman addressed on the Freakonomics podcast is a common one. Study after study, however, has shown that giving people extra money makes them feel financially secure. That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
Except you are confusing this and welfare. It is not the same thing. It is also not "free" it is basic. Everyone gets it, even those who work. There is a lot of overhead that could be saved in managing welfare systems by doing something like this.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Right now, when the government wants to expand the money supply, the Federal Reserve just sort of dumps money on the biggest financial institutions. Then it pays them a small interest fee for their service of having use of the money (0.25% according to this Investopedia article).
If the government really must inflate the money supply, then it seems to me that the best way to do it would be to spread the new money evenly among the citizens. It's just part of reality that when you have lots of money, it's easier to get more money, so almost all the time when we are talking about the economy, everything benefits the rich more than the poor. Here would be a direct payment that would definitely benefit the poor more than the rich.
Inflation effectively steals part of the value of the money. This is hardest on the poor, and people trying to live on a fixed income. Directly paying the inflation to the people would offset the harm, at least partially.
P.S. I'm a minarchist libertarian, so I don't really like seeing the government messing with the money supply at all. I'd rather just see prices deflate, so that maybe a hamburger would go back to costing a dime, and even a small income would be enough to live on. However, I'm not a trained economist, and apparently Milton Friedman believed we need to inflate the money supply as the economy expands. If you have to bet on whether Milton Friedman was right or I am right, you should bet on Milton Friedman. And if we accept that we need to inflate the money supply, I'd just as soon do it by paying the new money out to all the citizens.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Robots. Every time raising the minimum wage comes up, people are quick to claim such a raise in labor costs will just accelerate adoption of automation. But if we had basic income in lieu of a minimum wage, then such automation would be unequivocally positive.
If UBI feels anything like being on disability, nobody wants it. I am constantly on the brink of insolvency because, although the money will always be there, allowing me to use it on some frivolous bullshit, it stops if I do something sensible, like try to save some of it to get something that might actually improve my life or cushion against setbacks. So too for taking a job, during those periods when I feel I'd be able to handle it. If I went to work for the two or three months at a time I'd be able to manage it, my disability payments wouldn't restart for another six months, assuming that they don't decide I'm ineligible due to having worked. Making the size of "contribution to society" that I know I'm capable of would therefore leave me starving and homeless, rather than just stuck in a terrible house and scrambling to stretch my resources every month. To make matters worse, disability payments aren't enough to cover market rent anywhere at all. You have to get section 8. No problem, right? You automatically qualify if you're disabled. The waiting list is several years long, assuming it's even actually open. Good luck. Also, 100% of new programs are unit-based rather than voucher-based, meaning you basically can't move, ever, like you might want to do if you manage to find some kind of work you're actually capable of. You are tied permanently to the place you already live, just as peasants were in the feudal era. Overall, living off SSI is degrading, frightening, and awful. It is the opposite of what the studies say UBI is like. And I believe the studies. It is clear to me that as more jobs are replaced by automation, the People in Charge want the people "they're" feeding with "their" money to live like I do, rather than feeling secure and empowered. If anything like UBI is instituted in the United States, it will be carefully calibrated to provide as little and have as many rules as will be tolerated. In twenty years, they will literally own you. The only way to stop this is revolution.
I'm getting rid of my moderations to reply to this, but I think I need to...
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the government would just 'give' money to anyone. It doesn't. Food Stamps and medical care in my state requires that your either: a woman, pregnant, or have kids. Or... You work a job with no less than 15 hours a week, but make less than a certain amount (I don't recall the cutoff right now). Welfare actually has higher requirements. So if your a man who didn't sleep around? Not getting money. A woman with a partner? Not getting money. A single woman with no children? Not getting as much money. Want money? Sleep around and have lots of unprotected sex and keep at least some portion of those kids.
Also this wouldn't create money, it would remove programs like welfare and the hassles that go with it to simply distribute funds evenly across the population. It might need a slight increase in taxes, or we could just stop pissing away money on being the world's police and use that money to help our own people. That's not to mention carious other 'half-baked' programs we have that have requirements we could do away with. Telecom taxes just recently came up because the FTC wanted to use it to support low income broadband. If anyone could afford broadband their is no 'low income' to worry about.
I've always found it funny how the world sees us as so rich, yet I can drive into almost every city in this country and find homeless people in conditions as bad as any third world country. I mean we have people who live in service tunnels, under bridges, and in sewer outlets because we just don't give a shit for our own people. If we could just get money to where it needs to go maybe we could stop being a first world country built on top of a third world one. I'm all for basic income. Welfare and other support systems are rife with abuse because we pick and chose who we help and who are 'garbage' to be thrown away by society.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise