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Universal Basic Income Programs Arrive (theguardian.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the money-for-nothing dept.

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.

14 of 1,052 comments (clear)

  1. What I think? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:What I think? by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 5, Interesting

      IMHO it has nothing to do with robots or anything like that. Barring a full-fledged singularity where robots become better than humans at everything, humans will always end up moving into whatever fields robots are worse at. It's happened with every wave of automation throughout history.

      You would think, but this time is different...

      Humans Need Not Apply:
      https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

      Well worth your time to watch...

      ---

      Note: Don't react emotionally or with what you "think" you know, watch it and pay attention to the numbers. Numbers and math don't lie.

    2. Re:What I think? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, I think a relatively stable population is a better choice than trying to force a decline.

      If everyone gets "one birth credit" which is a child that they get full benefits for, then a "traditional" married couple would get benefits for 2 children - replacement. Beyond that, you're on your own - no additional economic assistance for additional children. It would give Catholic charities something to do...

    3. Re:What I think? by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1) the huge majority of people that are poor today are poor because they made/make shitty life choices.

      That's a very strange assumption to make. Do you have evidence to back it up?

      I'd contest that the huge majority of people that are poor today are poor because they were born into poor environments, and that being born into poor environments have well known socio-economic effects that result in people incapable of making good life choices.

      You have the right correlation, but the causation is backwards.

  2. Luddites? by Herve5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    (...) 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.
    1. Re:Luddites? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Economics took a turn which the luddites did not anticipate. They thought that greatly increasing the productivity of an individual worker would allow the demand for labor to be satisfied with a fraction of the number of workers. Instead the increased productivity lead to a decline in the price of goods that greatly increased consumption - it lead to the consumer age, where many people lived lives that would be the envy of any pre-industrial king. The mass purchasing of wanted-but-not-needed tat fueled the new economy.

      There's no assurance it would happen again: People can only want so much stuff. The environmental consequences of a society where everything is disposable are also quite bad enough as things are.

    2. Re:Luddites? by hughbar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes agree, 'tired of owning crap' is a very positive development, countered by the advertising industry 'selling you crap since 1600, or so'. We really need to think about life goals, the shape of decent societies, circular/repairing economies rather than spending all our free time mooching through shopping malls. Buy nothing day is a start: http://www.buynothingday.co.uk... but we need to go further.

      And yes, my suggestions will change the shape of the economy and employment, but the status quo isn't making us that happy either.

      --
      On y va, qui mal y pense!
    3. Re:Luddites? by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You confuse rich people with flashy people. There are plenty of wealthy people who don't flaunt their wealth in this manner. It's never good to rub people's faces in the fact that maybe you have something they don't. Nothing good ever comes of it. And there are plenty of people who own the "bling" and can't really afford it, living beyond their means for as long as they can keep up the juggling act. Never judge a book by its cover.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    4. Re:Luddites? by Memnos · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No. To each of your points, quantitatively, no. Perhaps not yet, but at some point, a basic income is likely to become the norm. If you are worried about low wage earners quitting jobs you are just mistaken, a worker gets the free money IN ADDITION to his/her job. Having and working at a job just gets you more, simply and without bureaucracy, which is the point. Work still has its benefits pecuniary and otherwise, though there might no longer be a minimum wage for it. Incentivization does not go away. Economists as conservative as Hayek and Freidman espoused this idea (both of whom taught at Chicago, where I graduated in Economics.) This is an idea which may fail now, for many reasons. But it a concept that will eventually succeed. Or we won't

      --
      I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
    5. Re:Luddites? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not only that but a consumer driven economy needs consumers. And those consumers need money. It does not matter whether what you want to sell is priced at 100 or at 10 if your potential consumer has nothing to buy with, and those that could buy already have bought.

      Money is irrelevant to the equation. In fact if you try to route a UBI through money, it's doomed to fail. All you'll do is inflate prices to where stuff becomes unaffordable despite everyone getting a UBI, just like the widespread availability of student loans has inflated the price of college tuitions to where you can't afford if despite the loans. When you increase people's ability to pay (demand-side economic fix), prices just rise to compensate. It's like trying to climb out of quicksand by pulling one foot up, then putting your weight on that foot to pull your other foot up. Then someone says "let me help you" and pulls one foot up even further. The net effect is no change in your position, except you and the person trying to help did a lot more work for the exact same results.

      Money is not wealth. Money is a bookkeeping tool we've invented to represent wealth. Actual wealth is productivity - the goods and services which are actually produced by the labor we do (or the labor the machines we operate do). As a representation of productivity, its value fluctuates to equalize the cost (in productivity) to produce something, and the value (how much productivity someone is willing to swap in exchange for it). If people you give people money for free (no productivity needed), then that decreases the value of money, leading to increased prices, but the wages of people doing productive things (working) rises in lockstep with those prices. So even though prices go up, wages go up the same amount, and the affordability of stuff remains the same if you're working.

      Not so if you're receiving a basic income - since the amount of money you receive (for free) is fixed by some government decision, the amount of stuff you can buy decreases against this inflation. The market is literally adjusting prices and wages to represent the true amount of productivity that went into the money you're receiving. People who receive a UBI are affected because they aren't doing productive work, and the market adjusts prices to reflect that. People who do productive work and receive wages are unaffected because they're being productive, and the market adjusts their wages to offset the higher prices.

      To make UBI work, you must decouple it from your market currency. Make it a supply-side fix, instead of a demand-side one like with student loans. You can allocate rations (government buys a bunch of food, gives everyone a card each month which entitles them to pick up x pounds of it from a distribution center). Or you can create a parallel currency which trades in only UBI goods (no steak and lobster dinners for sale). There will be leakage - some people will sell their UBI food ration for cash, or convert the parallel currency into the primary currency. But it won't be anywhere near as bad as if you just distribute UBI in your primary currency.

      For a consumer driven economy you cannot accumulate the whole capital in the hands of a few, that does not work out. The net result is what we experience today, lots of capital available for investment and nothing to invest in because there is no viable business you could open, lacking the ability to sell to anyone because nobody who would buy can, lacking the funds.

      That's not what happens. Since money is just the representation of wealth, if it becomes so concentrated that it actually impedes people's productivity, it doesn't stall the economy. What happens is the market sees that inefficiency and attempts to correct it - by creating a new form a money to add fluidity to trade. A black market pops up. At first it'll start with bartering and I scratch your back, you scratch mine

  3. Re:Inflation, anyone? by tricorn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Inflation, anyone? by tricorn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:Inflation, anyone? by lurker412 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:Y Combinator experiment by stereoroid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    (this is not a .sig)