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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.
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.
Follow the money. Soros is a big contributor with CBPP. Should raise some eyebrows already.
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?
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
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.
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?
See that "Preview" button?
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.
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.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
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.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's all their fault for being successful.
Can we please quit referring to theft as "success"?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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...
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!
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.
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.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.