Slashdot Mirror
Universal Basic Income Programs Arrive (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Y Combinator will give 100 randomly-selected families in Oakland between $1,000 and $2,000 each month as a test, continuing the payments for between six months and a year. And The Guardian reports that Finland and The Netherlands also are preparing pilot programs to test Universal Basic Income, while Switzerland will vote on a similar program this week. One Australian site is now also asking whether the program could work in Australia, noting that currently the country spends around $3 billion on their Centrelink welfare system, "so simplification can offer huge potential savings."
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction to improving technology. "In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements... In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about the possibility of a government-run Universal Basic Income program.
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction to improving technology. "In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements... In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about the possibility of a government-run Universal Basic Income program.
I think that universal basic income is inevitable, and probably sooner rather than later.
Simple fact of the matter is, that you're not going to be training an average 45-year-old factory worker in how to write the AI for the robot that took his job. And even if you did, after the AI's in place, he might not have much work. While some people have cited that every technological revolution has ended up producing jobs to replace the ones lost to the automation, they are increasingly other jobs, for other people, and "other people" will often include people who are not in a position to acquire the necessary skills.
I'm pretty certain that there would be very negative consequences for society overall if the population is left to starve because of increasing automation. As such, basic income will be required just to keep the country stable and productive.
NOTE: I am generally conservative in my views on a lot of things. and I am definitely not a socialist. But this is how I see things playing out, and I can see that there may be some very negative consequences that accompany it. But still, at this point it seems inevitable.
(...) I'm pretty certain that there would be very negative consequences for society overall if the population is left to starve because of increasing automation.
I'm definitly not accurate on History things, but at some point in the past there was an event in Britain's history called the Luddite's revolution, featuring a (finally failed) anti-machinism attempt...
Maybe we could gain something by looking at what happened at the time, although I fear the relative dimension of the event was different from now (a much smaller population among others)
Herve S.
There is an old Soviet joke, "We pretended to work, and They pretended to pay us". These days the UBI drops even the pretense of work. This is the wet-dream of Collectivist 'elites', the guys with massive salaries and power who 'look after' the 'common man' (who these elites look down on as unable to run their own lives).
This same 'UBI' system is just a rebranding of what didn't work for the Soviet Union, didn't work for China and North Korea and is now causing oil-rich Venezuela to starve.
The promise of "something for nothing" is not only unsustainable, it is deeply immoral and State force must be used to extract resources from the productive and give to the politically favored indolent in return for power. Yes, it can work very temporarily as the stored wealth of previous generations is consumed, but then the Second Law of Thermodynamics takes over and everyone lives in equal misery.
Of course, many of the rich and smart have already foreseen the triumph of Collectivism (achieved through Fabian Socialism and propagated via Cultural Marxism) in both Europe and the USA. The Cold War was won by Collectivists over the Individualists. Thus, many of the rich are fleeing places like Chicago for places like Texas, and the mega-rich have been quietly building bolt-holes in Free Market Chile and my own New Zealand.
The UBI is really about power. People adapted to the end of agrarian society to industrial society by changing skills - but the elites believe you are not competent to prepare for the future in a Free Society based on voluntary exchange and charitable works for your fellow citizens. Their contempt for you shows in their lack of confidence in your abilities, all of which justifies their increased power and massive gouging of the taxpayer (in the EU, over 10 thousand bureaucrats are paid more than the British Prime Minister, for example). The UBI is simply another way to turn Free Citizens into slaves subsisting on the breadcrumbs handed down by the State when the bureaucrats have had their fill.
The UBI is merely a rebranding of Marxism, and inevitably leads to the increasingly powerful State oppressing citizens to try and sustain an unsustainable economic model that fails to understand two things:
1) people can never be equal as they are UNIQUE, with unique goals and desires and tolerance for deferred gratification.
2) wealth is created. It is created through innovation and perspiration, and in the Internet Age someone can get rich without someone else being poor by creating value through ideas (software). The old industrial era idea of Marxist inequality only arising through exploitation is as antiquated as the steam engine in the Internet Age.
A lot of Basic Income schemes also propose a flat tax and/or a VAT (for simplicity, the UBI itself isn't taxed as income). The regressiveness of those taxes is offset by the UBI.
The UBI offers a good way of managing the money supply. You're putting money directly into the economy, then adjusting the tax rate to control the inflation/deflation rate.
The benefits are reduced costs to administer support services, eliminating negative incentives to work (UBI doesn't decrease when you work), increased mobility, improved economy. People can take more risks starting businesses or going to school or trying something new.
Maybe rents go down because people can move to less crowded places, which increases building and new business elsewhere.
Everyone gets the same monthly payment, everyone pays the same tax rate. Why do you think that's not fair?
It has a long history, you might try reading about its conservative roots.
Financing UBI with VAT is still regressive and a flat tax would have to exclude UBI or it would simply be idiotic. A more rational approach would impose new taxes on capital itself, not income. The long-term trend is that labor will have ever decreasing importance in the creation of wealth as robotics and AI become more productive and widespread. The creation of wealth will largely be a function of capital alone, directed by a tiny minority of the world's population. While UBI may offer some short-term efficiencies compared to current disjointed redistribution programs, its main advantage is that it addresses the long-term problem.
What part of "experiment" was unclear? You might think you know what's going to happen, based on your jaundiced, deterministic model of human nature, but in a world of network effects and unintended consequences, we don't actually know.
One caveat I do have, personally, is that people should not get extra money just for having children. We don't want to encourage procreation for the sake of money. The world is overpopulated world, people should not hve children unless they can cover the cost.
(this is not a
In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income
Nations, i.e. governments only get their "wealth" from 2 sources: taxation or selling government bonds.
Any nation that doesn't want to get into hyper-inflation would never fund a day-to-day cost by borrowing, so this UBI would have to be paid for from the tax take.
However, the amount of tax: income, corporate, sales, that a government extracts from its citizens depends to a very large extent on them earning salaries and then spending their pay on the non-essential items that attract sales taxes. Also, corporation taxes are levied on the profits that companies make, generally from selling their goods and services. Once you have a population that chooses not to work, not to produce stuff and doesn't have the discretionary income from UBI to buy "luxuries", your corporate tax income takes a dive, too.
I doubt that a 1-year study is long enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. Certainly it wouldn't attract a representative enough group of subjects to be able to say how an entire country's populace would react. I'm just glad that this experiment is being tried somewhere else. Personally, I think that the money would be better used to ensure everyone had a job - that way they'd also feel like they had some worth to society, rather than just accepting handouts.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"What happens if someone spends their money poorly?"
Honest question.
What would you do to, say, your children? Would you give them, say, $1K/month and then say, "there: buy your food, rent a room, etc. and come next month for more" or would you provide them food, shelter, education and healthcare for free and then, maybe some pocket money on top of that for they to expend as they see fit?
Why shouldn't be exactly the same case for the population in general?
Problems - too many workers, workforce needs better education or retraining, population living longer is increasing healthcare costs while making it harder for younger generations to move up the ladder of career success, population and politicians are incentivized to raid future savings for spending today
Solution - Not UBI, it doesnt really solve problems and it has side effects that might make it a net negative.
Instead:
- Encourage older workers to mentor younger ones and leave the workforce earlier while encouraging younger workers to spend more time getting a rigorous and real education before working- How? not free public colleges (government already has history of destroying education), find a way for older folks to have a direct investment over long term in younger employee performance - students pay portion of future earnings for 20yrs as soc security type payments rather than take college loans?)
- reduce social programs for those in their prime working years and not disabled, while increasing incentives for older workers to retire earlier, e.g we take care of you if your under 25 or over 55, but not for more than short term emergencies with those in between
- The only ubi type payments would be in the form of some kind of national profit sharing plan. As long as government has a deficit, no one gets a dime. payments also reduced while government has debt. Automatic refund if income greater than expenses and no debts. Simplified flat tax or vat type tax system while keeping some incentives for kids and home, building communities.
- Somehow citizenship needs to be more important with greater benefits and also be harder to get. Maybe everyone really shouldn't have an equal vote. More national and state incentives to limit population growth, especially illegal immigration.