Silicon Valley Continues To Explore Universal Basic Incomes (siliconvalley.com)

A Silicon Valley Congressman "is pushing for a plan that has been described as a first step toward universal basic income...a long-shot $1 trillion expansion to the earned income tax credit that is already available to low-income families." An anonymous reader quotes the Mecury News: Stanford University also has created a Basic Income Lab to study the idea, and the San Francisco city treasurer's office has said it's designing pilot tests -- though the department told this news organization it has no updates on the status of that project... The problem is that giving all Americans a $10,000 annual income would cost upwards of $3 trillion a year -- more than three-fourths of the federal budget, said Bob Greenstein, president of Washington, D.C.-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Some proponents advocate funding the move by cutting programs like food stamps and Medicaid. But that approach would take money set aside for low-income families and redistribute it upward, exacerbating poverty and inequality, Greenstein said... Jennifer Lin, deputy director of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, is skeptical that basic income can do much lasting good in Oakland. What the city needs is more high-paying jobs and affordable housing, she said... The idea, [Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator] said at the Commonwealth Club, tackles the question not enough people are asking: "What do we as the tech industry do to solve the problem that we're helping to create?"
This summer Y Combinator is expected to announce a larger Universal Basic Income program, though the article also describes "small pilot studies" in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada and in several U.S. states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana, where "Some studies showed improvements in participants' physical and mental health, and found children performed better in school or stayed in school longer. But some also showed that people receiving a basic income were inclined to spend fewer hours working."

Comments

Re:The Republicans will never....

[houstonbofh]

allow this to happen since they want to force everyone to work, which is slavery.

Verses the Democrats that want to redistribute money from the people who work for it, against their wills, which is theft.

Perhaps instead of one line sound bites, we should look at the actual problems?

Equilibrium

[DontBeAMoran]

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.

The real problem is jobs being replaced by machines, A.I., etc. This should decrease the costs of those goods and services. But instead, it's making the rich richer and the poor unable to afford those goods and services because they're out of work.

Universal is bad, specifics is what matters.

[Tyr07]

Okay this universal basic income is too generalized for what needs to be taken care of. It needs to be a specialized approach to be economically viable.

You can't just give money away, and let people spend it on ipads.

What you need is to take care of the most abundant things in the world, that tend to be the most lacking, that are the most essential and cover those.
Universal food program. Everyone is entitled to a certain amount of food per month.
Universal housing program. North america, massive land space, utilization is low, but somehow you can't find a place to live.
Universal transit - Public transit shouldn't have execs making huge bonuses, it should be a non profit system run by the government. Need it for work and getting around with huge stores pushing out stores to be spread instead of small towns having everything close by.
Universal utilities - Basic amount of energy and water allowed to people at no cost.

I give you - Universal essentials. Besides the transit, land is huge and cheap, food is tons, cheap, and tons thrown out, and renewables are driving down utility prices.

This works out way better as it puts in more effort at reducing the cost of these items, so the government doesn't have to spend a ton of money for someone to have the essentials while a company rakes in the profit. Maybe costs + 10% or something for items part of the program.

Want to do business in north america? Your company in these sectors will have to offer at cost prices for the basic amount for individuals. It won't take money from you. Your profit is on non essential items, premium items. People who choose to purchase beyond their basic allotted amounts.

Companies will go "Fuck you I'll go elsewhere since I won't make as much and you'll have no food etc!"
Go ahead, the more companies that leave, the more business for the ones that stay, so they'll still be quite profitable.

Re:Universal is bad, specifics is what matters.

[timholman]

You can't just give money away, and let people spend it on ipads.

I give you - Universal essentials. Besides the transit, land is huge and cheap, food is tons, cheap, and tons thrown out, and renewables are driving down utility prices.

While I agree that just handing everyone a check every month would be a recipe for disaster for a significant percentage of the population, I also shudder to think of the government bureaucracy that would be required to administer everyone's "free" housing, food, transportation, etc. Furthermore, those who already own a home, own a car, etc., would find such handouts useless.

If you're going to institute a UBI, you have to give everyone the choice to use the money as they see fit. On the other hand, you have to prevent some of them from taking the money and blowing it on drugs, alcohol, or gambling in the first 24 hours, and then begging in the streets for the rest of the month. Western society has never tolerated such extreme social Darwinism, and I don't think we're going to start now.

One possible solution would be two-fold: (1) make the UBI a daily , rather than monthly income, and give approved parties the ability to put a lien on your UBI, so that essentials get paid for first. In this scenario, you'd be given your government credit card, and every day a certain amount of money would be added to it, less the daily cost of rent, meals, etc., according to whatever contracts you have signed for your day-to-day living costs. Even if you go and drink or smoke away the rest, the maximum damage you can do is limited to 24 hours of income. You won't starve or sleep in the streets.

Of course, this still ignores the myriad ways that people will still come up with to abuse the system, just as current government handouts are already abused. But it might mitigate some of the very worst abuses.

Re:Universal is bad, specifics is what matters.

[Ichijo]

On the other hand, you have to prevent some of them from taking the money and blowing it on drugs, alcohol, or gambling in the first 24 hours, and then begging in the streets for the rest of the month.

When everyone knows that all of your financial needs are met and so the only possible reason you're begging is because you blew your money on booze and hookers, will people still give you money if you beg for it?

Here is another thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Money = work. Make people work to earn it. Universal basic work. IE you can always get a job even if we have to hire people to do something silly like rebuild our infrastructure. All money should represent work. Giving it away devalues it and it has to come from somewhere (taxes) and that is theft.

EITC is not universal

[Pfhorrest]

I was a desperate poor single young man wisely not having kids or getting married while I was shit poor, and I never qualified for EITC.

My equally poor divorced father stopped qualifying for it as soon as I moved out to go to college.

Mom is on disability so doesn't file taxes but I doubt a single woman not supporting a kid would qualify for it either.

There's a "family" of three desperately poor people not filing taxes together because we don't live together and none of us see a lick of this EITC.

A first step toward making a universal basic income would just be making EITC universal. Make poor people, not poor families, get the credit. Then, yeah, expand it from there and it makes a great start. Give every single taxpayer a tax credit of a fixed amount, tax every single taxpayer a fixed percent to fund it (a percent equal to the credit amount over the mean income would make it immediately revenue-neutral), and there you go, you have a universal basic income. Then make tax refunds paid out monthly instead of all at once (and allow tax payments to be made monthly too, to be fair about it) so people don't blow their whole basic income at once right after tax season.