The Case Against a Universal Basic Income (vox.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: A prominent think tank founder argues that a Universal Basic Income is more likely to increase poverty than decrease it. Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimates just in the U.S. the cost would reach $3 trillion a year, "close to 100 percent of all tax revenue the federal government collects... A UBI that's financed primarily by tax increases would require the American people to accept a level of taxation that vastly exceeds anything in U.S. history..."

In a long interview with Vox, he warns that "If you have big, very expensive, and therefore highly politically unrealistic proposals, then I worry that people will look at them and say, 'Okay, we can do one or two pieces,' and too often the pieces that get selected out are pieces where a lot of the money goes to the middle or upper middle class... even UBI's staunchest supporters say we can get there in 15 to 20 years. I am totally not comfortable with any policy prescription that says we wait 15 to 20 years to deal with very deep poverty." He suggests instead focussing on the neediest people first, possibly by subsidizing jobs programs and making housing more affordable.

Comments

Soros?

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the money. Soros is a big contributor with CBPP. Should raise some eyebrows already.

Re:Soros?

[guises]

And Soros hates Universal Basic Income, so this guy is acting as Soros' shill? Is that what you're saying? I don't know squat about what George Soros thinks, so that's a legitimate question.

I do know a little bit about Robert Greenstein though, just a little, and he's run the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities since well before Soros did the thing with the currency trading. He's been around for a while, and he can think for himself.

Re:Soros?

[Rei]

I don't know anything about Robert Greenstein. But I do know a straw man when I see one. So when someone writes:

There are over 300 million Americans today. Suppose UBI provided everyone with $10,000 a year. That would cost more than $3 trillion a year...

... and makes that a backbone of their argument, then it better represent what proponents of UBI actually want. Since when is UBI about "Let's change nothing else about the system except for adding a $10k per person per year payout on top of everything else"? UBI is supposed to replace all of our current, haphazard, inefficient patchwork welfare systems:

  * Government pensions / social security
  * Extra medical support
  * Welfare
  * Food support
  * Assisted housing
  * Unemployment insurance
  * Minimum wages (just basic income in a disguise, hoisted on the back of companies)

And on and on. And all of the overhead associated with all of those programs - both overhead on governments and corporations. We, as societies in many different countries, have already more or less come to the conclusion that we don't want people starving in the streets. So we have these patchworks of programs designed to roughly approximate the effects of UBI in this regard. And they're a waste and have gaps for people to fall through. Let's call a spade a spade, accept what we're already trying to accomplish and call it for what it is, and then replace it with a much simpler version.

After that point we can argue over how much money defines a basic standard of life that we don't want anyone to have to live below, wherein conservatives will argue for a lower figure and liberals for a higher one.

Re:Soros?

[thinkwaitfast]

Bet we get

What are you betting? Someone else's money?

Makework

[CRCulver]

He suggests instead focussing on the neediest people first, possibly by subsidizing jobs programs.

In today's world of increasing automation, how many of those jobs are essentially going to be makework? Or part of marketing efforts that try to convince people they need something frivolous that they don't have? Is the current economic system so inevitable or desirable that those things are preferable to just letting people stay home?

Re:Makework

[Anonymous Coward]

how many of those jobs are essentially going to be makework?

How many jobs are already makework?

It's been 30 years since Lotus 1-2-3 became cheap, available, accessible, and accurate. What the hell are all of these accountants still doing? I personally think a lot of it is work for idle hands, but makework if you prefer.

Re:Makework

[penguinoid]

What the hell are all of these accountants still doing?

I think they're busy deciding which country to set as their headquarters for tax reasons and what internal costs to invent so that the income is made where it should be to minimize costs. For example, having the headquarters in Ireland and paying them all their income to use their brand name elsewhere so they make no profit where it would be taxed.

Re:Makework

[ClickOnThis]

What the hell are all of these accountants still doing?

For one thing, they're keeping up with laws regarding taxation, and shepherding the flow of money in an organization.

Accountancy is not just about counting.

Re:Makework

[tomhath]

If we want jobless people to live and the economy to keep working, we need to give them money somehow.

Or figure out a way to control population growth. Because you can't continue to "give them money" forever; eventually the well will run dry. Then what?

Re:Makework

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual accountant here.

The industry has a fuckload less AR/AP. There's a lot less clerks. There's no typists. There are no filing clerks. There is a lot less of anyone other than a handful who run much larger books and much larger payrolls. A billion dollar business has one Director, a handful of managers and a handful of divisonal staff under them, rather than the hundreds that used to be

So there are in fact a HELL of a lot less employed in the accounts department than there used to be. You haven't noticed as Old Mabel who retired was never replaced. The remaining have a lot to do with shit like payroll, applying the lastest rulesets, budgeting doing the work that 10 - 20 people would have needed to do 40 years ago.

Lotus 1-2-3 was a fucking godsend and presented complex accounts simply. It took a whole tho for the mass of jobs the Accounts dept supported to disappear tho but disappear they did. What's left is actually quite minimal and VERY different to when I started.

Re:Makework

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the current economic system so inevitable or desirable that those things are preferable to just letting people stay home?

And that's the rub. You would think that if we need to do a lot less work to make the stuff to make all of our lives comfortable then we could find a way to spread the work out more or less evenly amongst those who can do it and consequently spend a lot less time doing pointless pointless make-work and a lot more actually living. Working 4 hours or less a day 5 days a week (or compressing that into 2-3 8 hour days per week) each should be entirely feasible and our lives could be richer for it. Instead we seem to be concentrating the work onto fewer and fewer wage slaves to concentrate the wealth into the 1% while the rest fall by the wayside.

I'm not saying that capitalism is the problem, but our rigid adherance to certain extreme forms of free market economics and the woeful lack of creative or original thought on behalf of our leaders toward solving this growing problem is very worrying.

Re:Makework

[ShanghaiBill]

Or figure out a way to control population growth. Because you can't continue to "give them money" forever; eventually the well will run dry. Then what?

An obvious solution would be to give people a basic income in return for agreeing to be sterilized.

Re:Makework

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Of course you can give them money forever. You know money is spent, right? That the crops to feed them are a renewable resource? That, as automation takes over more and more jobs, we're rapidly approaching the point where 1% of the population working can support the other 99%?

I mean, why can't we keep unproductive people around? What's the limiting factor? We already give the computers, and internet access, and food and medicine.

That huge cost

[penguinoid]

We're already spending an awful lot of money on social services that won't be needed if people had a guaranteed basic income. It's rather duplicitous of this think tank to pretend that it would be an entirely new cost, rather than a replacement for other programs as it is intended.

Re:That huge cost

[sumdumass]

Are we spending 3 trillion a year on these social programs?

I don't think it matters with the existing spending. It is still more.

Re:That huge cost

[Alomex]

Presumably the basic tax deduction would go away and taxes would increase more steeply thereafter. In other words, people making over $30K would see no noticeable increase in income. This is a program meant for people at the very bottom of the wage scale, or about 40 million people at $10K each this is $400 billion which is less than social programs.

Re:That huge cost

[Rei]

Are we spending 3 trillion a year on these social programs?

Are people getting 3 trillion a year in benefits?

Obviously if you compare a higher net benefit level then you're going to have to have a higher income to pay for it. Stop the presses here. Nobody says you have to compare a higher net benefit level when talking UBI.

And while we're at it, can we stop pretending that all forms of basic income that we call by different names in our current systems are paid for by the government? What exactly is minimum wage if not for UBI on poor workers that we mandate that companies pay? Yeah, you won't see that figure on any government balance sheet, but it's a very real cost to the economy nonetheless.

Re:That huge cost

[penguinoid]

Are we spending 3 trillion a year on these social programs?

My point is, the 3 trillion supposed cost is a fabrication. The basic income level would be set to cost approximately the amount spent on the social programs it would replace. Despite being universal, it would only cost what goes to the poor -- those beyond a certain income level would pay it back in taxes (if basic income is more efficient than means-tested programs this could be done so that every single American is better off).

As for the amount spent on social programs, that amount might be higher than you think. For example, did you know you occasionally spend over $1000 to give a single poor person three crappy hospital meals? Some people will report in to the emergency room with "chest pains aka you need to keep me in for observation in case it really is my heart" when they get hungry. If they need a ride to near the hospital, they can call a really expensive "cab" with flashing lights to get them there really quickly. And if it gets too cold, they can get some longer-term accommodations by committing a minor crime. These people would prefer cheaper food and accommodations, but they take what they can get. Minimum wage is also a social welfare program, with difficult to measure cost or efficiency, which won't be needed if people have a basic income.

When poor people are given money, they will spend it, which would boost the economy. A lot of people would start new businesses if they had the ability to do so without fear of failing and going hungry, which would create jobs and improve the economy. Both these would increase tax revenue, meaning it would be as if the program cost that much less.

I'm not saying that I know basic income is a good idea. My main fear is the same as that of many others -- that too many people would simply choose not to work. This one problem could be the doom of the whole idea. But their 3 trillion dollar cost is totally bogus.

Re:That huge cost

[jezwel]

My main fear is the same as that of many others -- that too many people would simply choose not to work.

UBI should cover your needs. The incentive to get *further* ahead by working will have people wanting to work. The flip side is that automation needs to be removing jobs, drastically increasing productivity, and reducing consumer costs to that the UBI is sufficient.
The $3 trillion 'cost' will be taken from welfare, disability services, veteran services, social security, superannuation type agencies (all obsoleted under UBI), transportation (less traffic maintenance / expenditure on highways and roads as people are not commuting), DoD (more automation), IRS (lower requirements); the list could extend to every agency.
I'm not American, so not sure how many agencies/what names you have.

Re:That huge cost

[bluefoxlucid]

Want to do the numbers? I'll even put a tl;dr summary at the end.

In 2013, the cost was $1.678 trillion, with $1.276 trillion spent on Federal programs.

In 2013, retail for apartment rent in low-income areas spanned from $0.62 cents per square foot to $1.10, with a general median around $1/sqft. This included samples spanning from California and Washington to New York state (mostly Western New York, but also some of the ghettos of Manhattan, near the big city centers) and Baltimore.

Renting an apartment to someone with a low income poses business risk: empty units and tenant evictions are expensive, and low-income individuals are prone to lose their unemployment income or face reductions in working hours at their part-time jobs; these risks are offset by raising the rental pricing, which makes renting unaffordable to these income levels, and thus excludes the market. A stable, guaranteed income eliminates this risk and the associated cost-of-risk, allowing lower rental prices with the same profit margin (about 33%, typically, although I didn't account for anything but retail).

To that end, I estimate the housing cost in 2013 at $1.33/sqft, being $1/sqft plus a 33% risk reserve (i.e. I might be wrong about $1/sqft; I'm less likely to be wrong about $1.10/sqft; I'm approximately 100% guaranteed to be above the threshold at $1.33/sqft). Budget: $300/month, single-person, 244sqft. That gives a 6x9 bedroom, 6x10 main room, a bathroom (shower stall with corner sink integrated, plus a toilet outside the stall), and a small kitchen (I've lived in an apartment where the kitchen was ~6 feet wide, with only a 3 foot wide floor space). That can be shaved a bit at the edges (it's 255sqft), or fit as-is, or widened, to fit to budget.

Utilities for a space of that size range around $30. I know because I've heated a 700sqft apartment for $56/month utilities (gas and electric), and it had poor insulation. We may need to mandate better insulation standards for micro-units; the cost to insulate well when you're already doing demolition and construction (to subdivide for the new market) is cheap. Good R-23 stone wool insulation only costs like $50 for the whole apartment's 16 foot back wall; $100 if you have to do one of the side walls, and $200 if you have to do the side walls and ceiling. In-wall foam sealing would cost about $50 per apartment. A normal 1 bedroom costs around $58,000 to build; these smaller ones would cost around $25,000, including the replicated cost of stove, sink, and bathroom, so this additional cost is not onerous if implemented during already-planned remodeling. Such insulation stabilizes utility costs, thus decreasing risk of tenants coming up short.

Moving on.

I've run estimates on food as recently as April, 2016, and gotten as low as $25/month for 2000kcal/day 30day spans, including lots of beans, rice, frozen mixed vegetables, the occasional rotisserie chicken, bread, eggs, and so forth. This actually spans a fair variety of food (pancake vs bread, rice dishes, and so forth combine a surprisingly-consistent set of ingredients), although nothing luxurious.

My original estimate was $100/month per person in 2016, because of extreme risk if the food budget deviates (which can happen *easily*). While that remains valid, I also overestimated personal care ($35 in my original budget) and clothing (another $35). It turns out tooth paste and soap are pretty cheap, less than $5/month per person. To that end, I used a combined Food-Clothing-Personal Care budget of $170/month in my models: personal care is cheap and clothing is elastic; food is inelastic and volatile.

That all left about $56/month in the 17% figure of the time--another risk reserve. That gave a total of $546/month per single adult. Total inflation in the following two years was 4.24%, and per-capita GDP increase was 6.24%; that means the inflation-adjusted equivalent would be $569 in 2015, and the *actual* income per adult would be $580/month. That makes sense bec

Re:That huge cost

[bluefoxlucid]

When poor people are given money, they will spend it, which would boost the economy. A lot of people would start new businesses if they had the ability to do so without fear of failing and going hungry, which would create jobs and improve the economy. Both these would increase tax revenue, meaning it would be as if the program cost that much less.

It doesn't actually work that way. Money isn't wealth; money is backed by the productive output of labor. Every dollar spent goes to buy a product, and becomes the income of an individual (wages) or a business (net profits). More money without more production means inflation; more production without more money means deflation.

The gain from a basic income is the efficiency gain in reducing risks and reducing wage:income ratio.

Risk comes with unstable markets, unstable employment, and unstable incomes. To rent apartments, for example, you need to recover the loss in empty units, in tenant evictions, and in tenant damage. As income levels decrease, the stability of an income falls: resilience to financial emergencies, fluctuating hours in part-time jobs, loss of part-time work, and loss of unemployment. That means more evictions and empty units, increasing the cost per square foot charged for apartments marketed to these levels. Below a certain income level, the costs are more than the tenant can pay, so certain sized apartments marketed to certain levels of income just don't exist.

This is loss: evictions and empty units are worthless; they produce nothing, they do nothing to enrich society, yet they carry a cost. Evictions require labor for legal action, for moving action (removing all your stuff), and so forth; they also frequently destroy a person's possessions, as the evicted has nowhere to go, and thus said possessions can only be reclaimed by expending new labor to make more. An empty unit requires upkeep and consumes heat and electricity, yet provides no one a home; and it cannot be rented out for free, lest other tenants pay to cover the costs--the wealth represented by housing is the support of labor which produces other things.

As for wages, your employer pays your wage, your benefits, and payroll taxes. You might make $50,000/year, but your employer is paying $56,000/year; likewise, you only take home $42,000/year. For every dollar your employer pays to have you, you as a consumer receive 75 cents; yet, as a consumer, you must pay the wages incurred by the time invested in making any product you purchase. Narrow this gap and the consumer can purchase more.

These are mechanism. If you just handed out money, or just took more money from one place and sent it to be spent in another, you wouldn't increase labor time and, thus, produced output; you would only either exhaust the economy (make everyone spend until they're in deep, deep debt) or create inflation.

My main fear is the same as that of many others -- that too many people would simply choose not to work. This one problem could be the doom of the whole idea.

Modern welfare sharply reduces your wealth and devalues employment if you seek employment.

When I was on unemployment, I took in the equivalent of $10.25/hr. Would that Fedex offered me $10.50/hr, I'd have laughed them off; 40 hours a week for only $0.25/hr? I can stay home and get checks from the Government for near as much.

Any form of UBI has the advantage of continuing to provide income as you move into employment. The decision between $X and not working vs $Y and working has to compare ($Y-$X) to the effort of working; whereas the decision between $X and not working vs. $X+$Y and working only has to consider the value proposition of $Y in comparison to the effort of working.

This is bolstered by security: if you take a job when receiving welfare benefits and then lose it, you risk being denied further benefits. If you take a job under a UBI system, your benefits never stop. The individual doesn

UBI will reach 100% of tax

[Cyberax]

So what if the UBI reaches 100% of the federal tax? It will replace Social Security (25% of the budget), safety net programs like unemployment insurance (10%) and partially Medicare/Medicaid (25%). That's 60% of the budget that will be replaced by the UBI.

The rest is military (24%) and "everything else". Military should be curtailed, but we probably want to keep the "everything else" stuff since it includes funding for NASA, NIH and education and other stuff.

So yeah, UBI is definitely doable but it will require significant adjustments in multiple programs.

Re:UBI will reach 100% of tax

[Orgasmatron]

We rule the seas, nearly from pole to pole, and we enforce free passage of commerce almost everywhere.

When Rome collapsed, global trade went into the shitter within a generation or two. Ruins in England show top quality pottery, nearly as good as anything you could buy today, buried under stuff much closer in quality to the ashtray your kid brings home from kindergarten art class.

Trump thinks we should get some payment from the rest of the world for providing that service, or at least some appreciation. Hillary thinks she should get some payment for it. But in the end, there simply isn't anyone else we can trust with it. Do you see a line of countries keen to behave responsibly with their own neighborhood, much less global trade?

Re:UBI will reach 100% of tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump thinks we should get some payment from the rest of the world for providing that service, or at least some appreciation.

Trump is right. We should get some payment for the rest of the world for providing that service. Of course payment takes many forms, but tribute was once a regular part of diplomatic relations. Perhaps it's time to revive an ancient custom? The practice of reviving old customs seems to be in vogue these days, especially in the Middle East. If they want to behave like barbarians then perhaps we should treat them as such.

tax the rich

[TheGratefulNet]

they have more money than god, at this point in time. what they stock pile, many of us could live on for the rest of our lives, in the thousands and 10's of thousands. the disparity is disgusting.

take money from the churches, too. they should work for the people but they hoard and don't do SHIT with it, for the most part. sell their land and their assets and give it to the people. we need it. what does god need with a starsh^Hall that money?

stop spending on military. defund 90% of it. its bullshit and its not needed in the way it once was.

truly remove about half of the government offices and jobs. they suck up funds and don't give much back for it.

tax those who are leeches the most; like the wall street motherfuckers. they don't create anything (nothing built, nothing written, nothing really created in any sense other than virtual) and they take so much. tax those who do nothing and collect so much for doing nothing.

we could easily READJUST ourselves so that its more fair.

but we won't unless we fight. and oh boy, I see a fight coming on in the next 50 or less years if we don't fix things soon.

Re:tax the rich

[LynnwoodRooster]

Interesting little factoid - about 100% of Federal receipts go straight to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, and interest on the national debt. Cutting those other spending issues won't really do anything other than slow down how fast our debt is growing (over $100 billion a month so far, this fiscal year - about $1.22 trillion so far).

The Federal Government already spends all its receipts (and thus, about 70% of all its spending) on the bottom 50%. I guess we need to spend even more?

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[bkmoore]

Correction...they want to make everyone who's not independently wealthy work. UBI already exists for those who can afford not to.

Try to do some math

[melted]

You can't directly compare how much other countries spend on their militaries. For one thing, their soldiers make a lot less, and their benefits (such as, you know, treating them if their extremities are blown off) are much lower. That alone is about half of the entire military budget. It's also not like you have a choice to buy foreign military gear, it all has to be designed and made right here, at great expense. And even so, 5% of GDP is a small price to pay for having your children die on someone's bayonets. If you want to tell me this can't happen, this has happened multiple times in just recent history to countries which also thought this couldn't happen. In fact, US military (and US in general) is a major reason there hasn't been another major European war. What you now recognize as the EU, was created with heavy prodding from post-war US diplomats.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[bigpat]

Using taxes to provide a UBI is stupid. The only way it works is to have the Federal Reserve create the money to pay out through the Federal government. This is not about wealth redistribution, but providing some basic level of capital that isn't zero.

The only question is what that does to inflation and whether that creates a de facto "tax" on the economy. As long as increases to the basic income are inline with increases in inflation then it is manageable. So the basic income should be enough to live on in the most affordable places, but not so much that it acts merely as an inflation causing subsidy.

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[Phydeaux]

As an American, you should never allow it either. If you haven't figured out, the founding mantra of the USA is "equal opportunity, not equal outcome". By forcing successful and contributing citizens to pay for someone else's income encourages mediocrity and abuse. Just look at all the failed socialist countries who had this as their main goal, with Venezuela as the latest example.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[dgatwood]

The GGP is, though possibly not intentionally. The only way to enforce the "a person who does nothing deserves nothing" rule would be to eliminate the stock market, eliminate corporations, and basically throw out the entire system as it is now. After all, the people at the top of our economic system make money by doing basically nothing other than loaning out their money.

In fact, capitalism in its purest form can best be described as "Those who have get; those who have not get bent." It is basically the exact opposite of the fanciful notion that people should be rewarded for their hard work; the people at the bottom invariably work the hardest (to the point that they get home from work physically exhausted) and get the least benefit from that work, and the people at the top do the least work and reap the biggest rewards.

A universal basic income is really the only way to make it possible for people to be rewarded semi-equally for equal amounts of work. It takes away the necessity to work for your most basic needs, thus freeing up time for people to learn new skills and improve their abilities so that the time they spend working is actually valuable to society instead of just continuing to do things that a robot will soon be able to do for less money. And whether they choose to improve themselves or not becomes entirely under their own control, rather than having menial labor forced upon them by the need to eat and have a roof over their heads.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[ThosLives]

What?

No, you have to fund UBI by taxing productive assets - that's the whole point: ensure everyone in society is getting the benefits of productive assets, not just the owners of the productive assets. The only way to do that without wholesale socialism (state ownership of productive assets) is by taxing the productive assets.

Simply creating money like you suggest, without tying that money creation to increased production, is a textbook case for triggering runaway inflation.

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[Anonymous Coward]

Swiss voters said Hell No to UBI.

The first three have small, and up until recently very homogeneous. If they start hading out $50k to the legions of Islmofacists flooding those countries, they get even more refugees and then go broke.
 

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[cryptizard]

Unfortunately there is no such thing as equal opportunity, we have well and truly fucked that concept in the US. If you are born poor, you go to shitty schools, eat shitty food, have reduced access to educational materials, don't have the connections to get a good job, don't have a safety net to be able to make long-term beneficial decisions with high short-term cost (i.e. college), etc. It is not impossible to be successful, but the deck is highly stacked against you. That is the definition of unequal opportunity.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[binarylarry]

Hey it worked for Zimbabwe!

Irrational fear of numbers again

[iamacat]

10K/year basic income for 300 million people is not going to "cost" 3 trillion. 14.5 percent of americans are considered poor. UBI will be structured in such a way to to supplement income of these individuals to the level where they can purchase food, shelter and other basic human needs. The other 95.5% will be paying the basic income they received and extra to cover the poor in taxes. So the net income transfer will be around 10% of cash flow (not all poor have zero income), or 300 billion. This is about half of 2015 military spending.

But wait, there is more. Basic income can replace most other assistance programs like food stamps and homeless shelters. These programs employee a large number of government bureaucrats and enforcement officers. If the value and overhead of these other benefits are saved, we can substantially reduce additional taxes needed or alternatively provide more substantial basic income for the same cost.

But wait, this is not all. Since basic needs of everyone are now taken care, you no longer need to pay "living wage" to your nanny or gardener. You can now hire people for a dollar per hour so long as that's the best money they can get at the moment. In fact poor communities can jump-start their economy by first providing services to each other and gradually attracting wealthier customers and raising their profits.

Re:added benefits

[kqs]

And then are still in desperation because of poor choices.

So what you're saying is "we cannot trust people to decide where best to spend money; instead, we must trust the government to spend it for them"?

I'm not a huge fan of a nanny state myself, but if you cannot trust people to make good choices...

"you’re redistributing income upward"

[MettaBen]

As proponent of Basic Income, I disagree with much of the analysis offered in the linked article. However, I wanted to sink into this one point in particular: "If you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them." This is a seductive line of reasoning, and appealing to liberals. But it misses the point about HOW taxation must be structured to take this into account. While basic income must NOT be means tested, taxation almost certainly must be. Poor ppl shouldn't be burdened by having to prove or disprove wealth and income. Having grown up poor I can assure you that that IS a huge burden. Let those most benefiting from the system be the ones who fight for the most fair tax rate possible, because they have all the tools and expertise at their disposal to do that. Poor ppl do not. So to the extent that basic income hurts ppl on the bottom, the taxcode must to that extent raise revenue from the higher economic classes to compensate for it. Easier said than done, of course, but the practicality of moving forward is an entirely different issue than the theoretical underpinnings of the idea in the first place. http://www.cbpp.org/poverty-an...

Kinds of work? Ekronomics strikes again

[shanen]

https://slashdot.org/journal/2... is an intro to the topic, but to reword it in terms of this article:

What if there is NO work that actually needs to be done? Why should people be forced to work just so that filthy rich bastards like Robert Greenstein can get a little more money that he doesn't actually need?

The ekronomic answer is threefold:

(1) The nonessential investment work that they willingly do will help reduce the required amounts of essential work in the future, which is basically a nice thing. (No insult intended to the people who enjoy doing the essential work and more power to them. Actually, they are lucky to enjoy doing what needs to be done anyway.)

(2) The nonessential recreational work on the creative side will remain as bottomless as ever. Still not possible to force anyone to do it.

(3) The nonessential recreational work on the consumption side also remains as bottomless as ever, and they also serve who only sit on the couch and consume entertainment. However, if they have some money to spend, then it's an important metric what sort of entertainment they want.

What greedy bastards like Robert Greenstein can't understand is that ambitious people will be ambitious no matter what, and those ambitious people will eagerly invest their time in increasing their own personal productivity (rather than recreation). Creative people will be creative no matter what, and if they can get paid enough money to survive longer, then they will eagerly create more things (without wasting precious creative time on grunge work).

It is ONLY the money-loving greedy bastards like himself who desperately need to get more money no matter what. From Robert Greenstein's perspective, slavery is just as good as anything else that gives him the same amount of money. Unfortunately, his personal problem is fundamentally unsolvable because there is NO amount of money that is sufficient.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[Deadstick]

You're ignorant propaganda

Pretty well speaks for itself...

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[TheMeuge]

That's bullshit. My family came into this country as refugees with almost nothing. We depended on social services while my parents were learning English. I earned my way into school, got a scholarship to go to college. I worked my ass off in college to have a high GPA, worked 20+ hours a week in a lab in addition. I earned my way into an MD PhD program and didn't have to pay for medical school... worked my way into residency and fellowship. In the meantime my parents are earning 5 figures.

United States is the most amazing country in the world, where opportunity is still pretty open. I am so thankful to be here.

For duck's sake, please don't turn it into the country I ran away from.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[cryptizard]

We depended on social services while my parents were learning English.

This is the exact argument for expanded social services. Thank you for making my point for me.

Lots of bad assumptions here.

[duckintheface]

Greenstein "suggests instead focusing on the neediest people first, possibly by subsidizing jobs programs and making housing more affordable."

The whole reason for a UBI is that automation has changed the work paradigm. There are no longer enough jobs for everyone, no matter how much people may want to work. Jobs programs are useless if there are no jobs. Affordable housing is a great idea, but how is that different from a UBI? Whatever housing subsidy you apply is just part of the UBI. And of course you start with the neediest people first. There is nothing in the definition of a UBI that prevents that.

What is the point of claiming a $3 trillion per year cost? If it costs that much, then scale it back to a level that can be supported. This is someone who started out with an agenda and is manufacturing reasons NOT to have a UBI.

Re:Lots of bad assumptions here.

[ShanghaiBill]

There are no longer enough jobs for everyone

That is certainly not true. Try to find a plumbing contractor, or an electrician. The problem is that these are skilled jobs, that often require licensing, and the jobs are often geographically separated from the jobless. There are no assembly line jobs for people that have no ability other than to turn a screw. You can't make a living by trying to compete with a servo motor.

Affordable housing is a great idea, but how is that different from a UBI? Whatever housing subsidy you apply is just part of the UBI.

Affordable housing does NOT require subsidies. It just requires sidelining the NIMBYs and BANANAs that are obstructing construction. If we expand the supply by building new housing, the price will go down.

Re:Lots of bad assumptions here.

[tburkhol]

There are no longer enough jobs for everyone, no matter how much people may want to work.

There have never been enough jobs for everyone. Well, maybe in 1942, when 12% of the population were in the military and the rest were trying to build airplanes faster than they got blown up. The US isn't built on an image of "come to the US because our factories need drones," it's built on the image of "come to the US and build something for yourself."

India is trying hard to take the title "land of entrepreneurs," but there's a reason so many great companies have started in the US. Do something for yourself. Don't sit around waiting for someone else to "give" you a job; much less to just give you money. Look around, find something you can do for other people, and do it.

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[cryptizard]

I never said it was impossible, just a lot harder for some people. You had to work substantially harder than a trust-fund kid, that is not equal opportunity.

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[rickb928]

All I did to collect rent and interest was take the risk of a mortgage, empty units, damage, maintenance, taxes, insurance, and fees.

In exchange for that, I get to collect rent most of the time, deal with tenants that destroy my property, answer to the police when tenants do stupid things, and assure my lenders that I'm not in need of their 'homeowner retention experts' when THEY withdraw my payment late.

Other than that, and the occasional midnight call, I just sit on my fast ass and collect rent. And work my day job.

Stupid gits. You have no idea do you?

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[rickb928]

People can determine their own needs already.

If they CAN'T meet them, assistance to those makes sense.

If they WON'T, I'm lost as to why we should for them.

Or they are UNABLE, we must be compassionate. Of course.

Money the Fantasy

[rtb61]

The lie inherent right from the get go, money is a resource, it is not, capital is an illusion, an imaginary parking spot for the resource access it represents. We either have the resources to sustain the population or we do not. No amount of imaginary capital can create resources or distribute them, capital is simply the currently chosen means to distribute access to the available resources, however it is broken, because it purely aligns with greed, rather than need ie some have millions of times as much a they need, whilst others not only have nothing but due to capital debt, less than nothing.

Basically what they are really saying, is their needs, their psychopathic ego, demands poor people (a capital fabrication) they can exploit to feed the insatiable ego of psychopaths. The demand to have more, they must have more, the demand to be able to order other people about, not just some but as many as possible, in fact they fight amongst themselves for total control and absolute power over everyone else.

The resources are there, an administrative means of allocating and distributing those resources just needs to be found. However rewards come into play, extra for those who contribute more (not just take the credit for the contribution of many others or manipulate capital to no advantage of anyone except themselves). So having more than others by being wealthy but wealth is only fun if it is based upon fairness and generosity otherwise it is just harmfull and no fun at all (greed destroys it never builds). There in is the catch, they actually want that power to harm and destroy, to choose whether others live or die, it feeds there genetic anti-social cerebral disease. Going to them for solutions is like the chicken going to the fox for solutions on how to be safe, the foxes response, every single time, you can only be safe from the attacks of others, inside my belly.

Going to the current rich psychopaths for solutions, those who parasitically prey upon the rest of society, is just as stupid. Look at the response, it can't be done, we don't the capital. What the fuck does that even mean, when we obviously have the actual resources to do it, they are going to purposefully starve to death as many as they can for fun, they are going to stick as many as they can in labour camps for fun, they will lord it over us peasants yet again for fun (this after millions died stripping away that power, the current gutless generations will give it back, pathetic).

Re:Money the Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not broken because of greed, it works because of greed, or more accurately because people behave in a way that is in their own self interest. This is inescapable. You say we just need "an administrative means of allocating and distributing those resources" as if that is an easy task. Nobody has figure one out yet that works better than the market. The demand on such a system is that it knows what everyone wants, what everyone needs, and can predict the future with reasonable accuracy. The market is a terrible system, except for all the other ones.

Re:Money the Fantasy

[dave420]

It's not socialism. You really struggle with words, huh?

Also, the source of that quote is unknown, but it appears to be based on a 1951 article in a Labour magazine from London. So no, it wasn't written by anyone who lived under your idea of socialism. You also seem to struggle with facts... No wonder you always pop up spouting some demonstrable nonsense or misunderstanding.

Re:Money the Fantasy

[HeckRuler]

What the fuck are you smoking?

The lie inherent right from the get go[; that] money is a resource[. I]t is not, capital is an illusion,

First off, "money" and "capital" are separate concepts. You're talking about money. Capital actually DOES refer to real things. Goods, machines, roads, schools, and ALSO money. I get what you're saying, you're just technically wrong on this.

Second, yes, money is just a placeholder. A tool to help mange it all. The US$ is backed by nothing but hopes and dreams and 11 carriers and a bunch of nukes.

The resources are there, an administrative means of allocating and distributing those resources just needs to be found.

...We HAVE that. The "administrative means" we use to figure out who gets what is called "capitalism"*, with a healthy dose of taxes and socialism and welfare because we're not the monsters from the robber-baron era. You even mention this because you know that it's the

*The -ism portion is important. Capital and capitalism are two different things. Related, of course, but it's the difference between saying a friend is fucked up, and saying friendship is fucked up.

but wealth is only fun if it is based upon fairness and generosity

HohoHO! Said like someone who has never been wealthy. No kiddo, the vast majority of history shows us that most wealthy people have PLENTY of fun regardless of how fair and generous you'd consider their source of wealth.

Sweet jesus. ALL of that rant can be boiled down to "I don't like capitalism". The rest is a mad ranting of a laughable caricature of rich people. Even the actual robber-barons weren't that monstrous.

It's not constructive. Do you get that? This sort of stark-raving-mad soap-boxing doesn't help tear down capitalism. It doesn't support socialism. It doesn't feed the hungry or raise up the poor. (Poor as in actually physically poor. The group that don't have the resources they need and not some pseudo-intellectual "everything is a metaphor and the fault of capitalism" sort of poor). To be blunt, you're hurting the cause. The catch phrase "Eat the Rich" is supposed to be humorous.

No, not all rich people are psychopathic monsters. There are certainly monsters out there. Real-deal psychopaths that are so focused on climbing that corporate ladder that they don't pause to think about what the thousands of unemployed will do when they liquidate. There is a sector of business where those people excel. But they do not represent all rich people any more than dirty hippies strung out on heroin represent all socialists. The vast bulk of all of us want a stable functioning society. A good swath of them, they vote republican, they don't want to hand out money to people who aren't working for it. Another good swath of people, like you and I, see that we are really wealthy as a whole and there's no real reason people should be so screwed by technological improvements and shipping jobs overseas, and helping people down on their luck will end up helping all of us in the long run. There's currently a debate about which group is more correct and what kind of society we want to be.

But the answer is not to tear it all down. We've seen how that goes in the communist states. But the current system of welfare and subsidies and grants and scholarships and services are CERTAINLY not in the philosophical camp of capitalism. We've ALSO tried a more pure form of capitalism in the late 1800's. It sucked for most people. Dear god man, we've got to learn from the big lessons of the past. Take a look at the Nordic countries. Very socialist, but they STILL HAVE MONEY and they still operate by people working and getting paid in cash. MONEY, as a placeholder for wealth, WORKS.

Get your shit together. You're making us look bad.

There they go again!

[Ol Olsoc]

This universal basic income idea is a fraud. The path to prosperity is to eliminate the minimum wage, tax cuts for the job creators, and complete and total deregulation.

How in the hell will job creators create jobs if the money they need to create the jobs is in the hands of the people they are creating the jobs for?

Re:Tax The Rich, Feed the Poor

[subk]

It's all their fault for being successful.

Can we please quit referring to theft as "success"?

Yes it is a straw man argument

[ranton]

You are certainly correct this is a straw man argument, but not really in the way you describe. The US government (federal, state, local) spends just over $400 billion on welfare per year, and $1.2 trillion on pensions and social security (94% of that on SS). That only comes to half the $3 trillion figure, and certainly not all of this would go away. I'd say its reasonable 2/3 of it would go away, leaving $2 trillion of the author's figures left over. Take away another $500 billion by removing children from the calculations, and you still have $1.5 trillion of increased government payments.

Then comes the real problem with the author's argument. No one claims everyone's net income would increase by $10k per year, just that they would all get a $10k check. We already have a progressive federal income tax, so it would be easy to adjust the brackets to ensure only the needy would receive an increased net income from UBI.

To simplify math, lets say 1/3 get $10k extra income, 1/3 pay the same in extra taxes that they get in UBI payments, and 1/3 pay for the lower third. Considering the top 40% of earners already pay 97% of federal income taxes, this wouldn't be much of a change in the status quo.

So now we are down to $500 billion in extra costs, which is a much more realistic figure. The federal government collects $2.4 trillion in income taxes, so the 50% of households and companies which pay any incomes taxes today would need to pay 20% more. I pay a little over $30k per year in federal income taxes, so this would mean almost $6500 in extra taxes for me personally.

But I would get something for this money. Reduced crime is hard to quantitatively measure, but removing the minimum wage would significantly impact the costs of basic services. If my food, daycare, house/lawn care, haircuts, etc. dropped by just 10% that would save me $6000 per year so this would be a wash for me.

These figures are all obviously very rough, but they at least show UBI is not as drastically unrealistic as this article suggests. It may still not work, but it is a very reasonable alternative to a future where technological disruptions make the status quo impossible to maintain.

Re:Moronic argument

[vakuona]

Now what happened when people smoked away their food stamps? Did we cut them off? No, that would be cruel to the kids. We had to come up with other money from numerous other sources, and the bad behaviors still don't change.

This only seems to be an American problem. Here in the UK, people on benefits are given money. They are even given their rent money and mostly manage to pay their rent rather than drink or smoke it away.

If you treat people like children, they will behave like children. If people can't notice they are hungry or thirsty, and have nowhere to live even when they could afford it, then you have to let them deal with the consequences.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[EricTDuckman1414]

Social Security had a total administrative expenditure of .7% in 2014, the most recent year for which I could find statistics. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS...

Re:The Republicans want to make everyone work

[EricTDuckman1414]

You obviously aren't doing it right. I only met the owner of the last I apartment I rented once in the eighteen years I lived there. All of my dealings were with a property management company. They collected the rent and took care of maintenance... eventually. And this wasn't some multi-million dollar building in a big city, but a converted furniture store/warehouse located in a small suburb of a rust belt city.

The county I lived in put their property tax info on the web, and you could look up any property and see how much taxes were paid on it, where the tax bill was sent, who owned it, and how much was paid for it for every transaction since they computerized their records. A search of the building I was living in showed that it last changed hands for the grand sum of $1, paid by the current owner to his father.

If you want to believe that most landlords are hard working schlubs like yourself, be my guest. I think a lot more are like the guy above; I'm damned sure Trump never had to unclog a toilet in his life!

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[Dr_Barnowl]

So, your parents depended on social services to get started, and you got a scholarship.

You are the very definition of not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but benefiting from the kindness of strangers. The bequests that paid for your scholarship and the taxes that paid for your parents to integration in your new home are as responsible for your success as your hard work is.

Well done for your hard work, but for every guy like you, there's a bunch of guys in the same situation who fought for those opportunities and came second, didn't get the scholarship, couldn't go to med school. Just because their story didn't resonate as well with the scholarship board doesn't mean they are any less talented, or any less talented than the rich kids who's parents paid their way - why don't they get your opportunities too? Because equality of opportunity is a lie.

Re:Moronic argument

[dywolf]

want to talk about actuall current welfare?
fine.
first educate yourself about it instead of posting BS.

-Welfare is known as TANF, and it doesn't move anyone out of poverty because it was created in 1996 by the welfare "reform" law created by Clinton and the republican congress. TANF eliminated welfare, even though conservatives still act like it still exists. TANF, aka workfare, is not an entitlement , runs out after 2 years, and requires you find a job. TANF is a 16.5 billion dollar block grant divided amongst the states, and it is the state's reponsibilties to administer it. now heres the reason why it doesn't help poverty: because most states don't spend it on poverty . instead the states get to spend it however they want, as long as they can claim (without any proof needed) that the intent is to reduce poverty. so most use it to plug their own budget holes, particularly in education. nationally only about 12% of those who need/qualify for TANF actually receive it. that's why it hasn't done squat for poverty: because welfare reform was ultimately a lie . the old actual welfare system was an entitlement like SS: if you were below poverty line, you qualified and got money. period. the new one has instead had the opposite effect, of increasing poverty instead of decreasing it. meanwhile the rest of the western world still has a basic entitlement form welfare, and the result is their poverty rates went down. but then the point behind their systems isn't the same as our "welfare reform" really was: welfare reform was simply racism, a means of denying minorities a way up as they were perceived to be undeserving.

-the abuse is largely a myth as always has been. the famous "welfare queen" Reagan talked about? a single middle class white woman who was caught and sent to jail. though the image in most conservatives minds is an unmarried black women with a dozen kids (re: racism). in reality, for the reasons state above, she actually isn't like to be receiving any TANF.

-SNAP moved to cards because its cheaper/easier to administer, and because it makes it even easier to detect fraud. not that fraud was rampant before: it wasn't. but the elimination of paperwork, paper stamps, and addition of computers reduced overhead and administration costs, and computers can sort quickly though the data much quicker, and the result is fraud, already low, was reduced to less than 4%. which, compared with the economic stimulus effect (every dollar spent on SNAP generates over 2$ in economic activity) means its practically negligible while the program actually helps boost the economy.

-the list of eligible food items never changed. enforcement was always essentially the job of the cashier to ring up the items properly. cards/computers make that task easier. your "extremely large" comment is nothing but "extremely large" pile of BS. no, the money was not going to alcohol or cigarettes. cashiers who allowed such transactions lose their jobs, because companies that allow such transactions risk losing the privilege of participate in the program.

-the idea behind the basic check is that there are no restrictions. you spend it on whatever. so again your comment is ignorant.

-and then you devolve into some typical ignorant strawman comment on communism, china, etc, building another mountain of BS, once again ignoring what REAL welfare states look like, and how they are not only higher than the US on the freedom index, but the economic and poverty ones too.

oh btw, as China's economy has improved, so has the status of their citizens, including the poor. their poverty rate is comparable to the US's. and if the trend continues, within 20 years it be less than ours. their social support programs are stronger than ours, and their minimum wage is far higher, being pegged to 40% of the average urban salary.

so as I said: learn what youre talking about.
and maybe stop picking china as your strawman while youre at it.

Greed is not self interest

[Medievalist]

It's not broken because of greed, it works because of greed, or more accurately because people behave in a way that is in their own self interest.

Ah, the Big Lie of the post-Reagan age.

Greed is when you want more than what self-interest demands. Greed is excessive desire that exceeds what is reasonable, healthy or meaningful.

Many, if not most, of the rich are greedy. They want more than what is best for themselves; they don't understand that impoverishing others also harms them.

As Adam Smith figured out a long time ago, a viable economic system has to work despite the existence of greed. This is not in any way the same thing as rewarding or encouraging or worshipping greed, as lassiez-faire capitalists want to do. In fact the principal function of government in a market economy is to provide regulation that will restrain the destructive effects of greed on social structures (such as the market itself).

As you say, a market should work best for those who behave in their own self interest. Greed is by definition excessive and thus not in one's one self interest; it is a character flaw and not the virtue that greedy folk wish you to believe it is.