- By simply cutting every citizen a monthly check and getting rid of most of the welfare state and tax code complexities we use today, everyone could be better off tomorrow, rich and poor alike. If machines are laboring in our stead, and aren’t buying any of the fruits of that labor, should we not receive the paychecks that aren’t going to them or us, so as to buy those fruits?
From every logical perspective, a universal basic income (UBI) makes sense, and has been proven to work everywhere it has been implemented.
But some essentially American core thing in me continues to rebel against it.
Sure. Call it a "pension", and I'm fine with it.
Call it UBI, and it bugs me.
Despite the fact that it works, it is logical, it is efficient, and solves many of the problems of complexity and gerrymandering we experience with the US tax code today.
This article is a longread, but definitely a thought-provoking one.
Ok, it did fail once.
The Speenhamland system of UBI was tried in 1795, and was ended 40 years later. But it was a scheme to keep rural farmers on the farm and farming for the rich landlords, rather than moving to the city for the new jobs provided by the industrial revolution. And it wasn't applied equally to everyone. And the value was set to a "subsistence" level, not to a "basic income" level. And there were many other problems with the implementation as well.
This is the single case where a UBI has failed, and it quoted in every study and article on the topic. (Every modern instance of the UBI has worked, unequivocally.)
My issue with a UBI is very simple. If we cut the food stamp, WIC, Section 8, earned income credits, dependent credits, head start, school lunches, and most of not all of the redundant programs and funds and trusts that help poor people, and replace then withe the UBI? I'm all for it. Simplify the means of helping poor people get back on their feet, help the dependent poor not starve and turn to crime and you save the taxpayer money, actually help out those in need and take some the stigma from anti-poverty programs.
The problem is that every one of those programs has a lobbying group and as soon as you start striking at sacred cows you will be labeled worse than Trump who wants poor people to die in the streets and wants people to resort to cannibalism etc. When all you are doing is handing out checks to people who meet certain income levels, no need for a whole class of people who do nothing but campaign for more programs. The author even makes the case that a UBI will eliminate minimum wage laws, which I have also seen argued. So much for Union support.
Robots are taking jobs away. As has been said elsewhere on Hubski, it is not the Chinese and Mexicans that 'took er jerbs' it is technology and robotics. What are we going to do with 200 million people who do not have any work outlet to earn a living because the jobs are redundant? What is going to happen when you have millions of very idle people living handout to handout, not because they are lazy but because the other pursuits of life that took all their time are gone? There are only so many waitresses, Walmart greeters and line cooks after all. And even those jobs are going to be radically altered by technology. Oh, and you think we have wealth inequality now just wait until only 10% of the country is earning 80% of the income.
Like you, calling it SSI like my parents have, or a pension like my grandparents, and we are all fine with it. The next step for guys like us who have that need to work is why is it different?
I think people are clever. And I think people want to do shit.
If the poor in Appalachia had a UBI, then a bunch of them would come up with cool ideas, and pursue them. Because, it has been proven that once the stress of meeting basic needs is met, people's health improves, their outlook on life improves, their creativity improves... just, everything gets better because they are not constantly in a heightened state of stress.
Will some people be lazy and never lift a finger again? Yeah. Sure. There are those people today, even without UBI.
But skimpy handouts and stop gaps (WIC, food stamps, Section 8, etc) don't cut it. They aren't guaranteed, they require certain hoops to be jumped through, etc, so they miss the key element that makes a UBI work: security.
I have no idea what someone in rural Appalachia, or the wastelands of Detroit might come up with, if they had a UBI and the gumption to make something... but I sure as hell want to see it! I want them to do something they are proud of, and that makes even more money, so they aren't totally reliant on the UBI.
That'd be cool...
- I have no idea what someone in rural Appalachia, or the wastelands of Detroit might come up with, if they had a UBI and the gumption to make something... but I sure as hell want to see it! I want them to do something they are proud of, and that makes even more money, so they aren't totally reliant on the UBI.
NASCAR.
And on a serious note? Environmental Tourism is starting to be a thing. People want to go to West Virginia because there are dark skies, mountains, pretty trees and streams and creaks etc. Someone in WV woke up one morning and realized the natural beauty of the place is something they can sell.
Maybe with a UBI more people can travel and look at stuff.
- Because, it has been proven that once the stress of meeting basic needs is met, people's health improves, their outlook on life improves, their creativity improves...
Isn't one's outlook on life subjective to their values?
do you have proof showing that creativity improves when basic needs to sustain life are met? Not necessarily to disagree - but creativity is a different beast of psychology than operating to maintain homeostasis. Often the absence of sustaining infastructure is the seed for the creative mind to improvise - to retain a sense of value despite a loss of presence (at least I've observed often)
I can't give you the direct link due to mobile viewing, but the relevant topic is under "Opinions on Psychological Effects". So far, both of you stated differing, (in your own words) subjective beliefs on what engenders creativity. Clearly, experience gives different opinions, and theven closest thing I could find was an opinion on the matter. That said, I'd welcome you to join me in searching for supporting or opposing evidence. That's what discussion is all about, right? :)
- My issue with a UBI is very simple. If we cut the food stamp, WIC, Section 8, earned income credits, dependent credits, head start, school lunches, and most of not all of the redundant programs and funds and trusts that help poor people, and replace then withe the UBI? I'm all for it. Simplify the means of helping poor people get back on their feet, help the dependent poor not starve and turn to crime and you save the taxpayer money, actually help out those in need and take some the stigma from anti-poverty programs.
Know what else these programs do besides just give people money? Knowledge and encouragement. They teach people how to feed themselves properly, how to apply for and keep jobs, to know what labor laws and tenants rights are and how they can protect you. Do they always do an amazing job? No. But these programs and the agencies that run them do more than just cut paychecks and if UBI becomes a thing, I think these organizations will find ways to continue to justify their existence.
Edit: Now that I think about it, if UBI becomes a thing, this lifts a huge burden off of these programs and agencies, allowing them to focus more on other problems, hopefully making them more effective.
- Know what else these programs do besides just give people money? Knowledge and encouragement.
That is why I think we need a national service program. Are you 17- 20 and have no clue what you want to do with your life? Give us 3 years and at the end we will pay for either college or a trade school. Make it like the Civilian Conservation Corps, or some of the New Deal programs that put people to work. Build friendships, build ownership in the country, build opportunities.
- Know what else these programs do besides just give people money? Knowledge and encouragement.
to me, that is a dangerous relationship people see in how they value money - and it will change before the end of the century.
Money, in its basic form, was not recognized as a medium for empowering any condition of self-worth. It was simply agreed upon in basic principle as a medium for exchanging goods and services.
Money today is being used by everyone - for means beyond what it's most effective at doing.
Before you start empowering the people, the people ought to have a chance to exchange their values freely. The hidden baggage behind fiat currencies today are beginning to show up at the checkout line.
- Know what else these programs do besides just give people money? Knowledge and encouragement.
Right!
Now imagine if those programs could just focus on knowledge and encouragement, and not have to worry about basic monetary needs like food and housing being met! Imagine how much more effective these trainings and personal development courses could be...
Here is a book on the subject by Charles Murray, of conservative fame. I have it in my Amazon shopping cart but it's not at the front of the line. The first 30 pages I previewed on Amazon promise a plain and unonstentatious treatment of the merits of UBI, though the rest remains to be read.
- I get asked often about the potential downsides of basic income. One of the first questions people seem to have is if all prices will rise as a result, nullifying the entire point of it all. This is actually the first question I confronted in-depth. The answer is basically that it depends on a lot of variables, but for the most part not in any way to the degree people fear.
Not with any utility or intelligence, though. "It's not new money, it's existing money" and "remember that one time they gave that one payment of a lot of money to Kuwait" and "Alaska sort-of" are the sort of non-answers that don't advance thought.
Here:
- Now that we know more about what gives money its value, and how we actually want a small amount of inflation, we need to understand that basic income is not the idea of printing $3 trillion new dollars every year and dropping it on everyone from helicopters.
So... just for comparison's sake, that's six times the defense budget, and 3/4ths the entire budget of the United States. So... existing money means we either slash all government spending by 3/4ths or we tax everybody by an additional 75%.
And then we're talking about Alaska, where a big mac combo is $9. By the bye, "minimum basic income" speaks to the defense industry, too - land of mythical $60 hammers.
Down to my very bones I love the idea of MBI. But I also know that $1000 a month is approximately 1/2 the price difference between "My family's life in Seattle" vs. "My family's life in Los Angeles." $1000 a month goes a fuckton further in San Antonio than it does in San Francisco and set aside that whole "increase our tax revenue by 75%" there are going to be some deeply-fought structural upheavals from that.
Because let's look at real numbers. My family of 3 paid $14k in taxes last year. This scheme says we're owed $36k and we're a six-figure family.
How are you going to structure that in any sort of way that seems even vaguely equitable to anyone?
Hell, man. $12K a year out here? You can find decent apartments for $300/month and although not eating steak and caviar, you can live, have heat in winter, food on the table and tons of free time. What happens if/when we make it so comfortable to barely live that people have no ambition to do, well, anything? If everyone has that security floor, would the way people with ambition but previously no means pursue their goals in life change.
The cynic in me sees more wanna be musical artists, avant-garde painters, terrible fan fiction etc.
This is a great topic, and I am still wrapping my head around the long term consequences.
- If everyone has that security floor, would the way people with ambition but previously no means pursue their goals in life change.
But the people without ambition are not going to pursue their non-existent life goals anyway. Giving them a basic income at least ensures they live like human beings, have health care, and aren't a further burden on the system by becoming homeless, etc.
"But think of the FREELOADERS!" is what we all want to grasp on to, but... there will always be freeloaders, regardless of whether they get a UBI/MBI or not. (Right now they have phenomenally huge and byzantine and expensive government bureaucracies supporting all the programs they need for support. With UBI all that goes away and they just get a check. Or maybe just a deposit into the Federal Government bank account.)
And, how long can someone really be passive and bored? They are going to eventually start cooking. Or playing guitar. Or writing poetry. Or picking up a job at the Circle K to have something to do for 8 out of the 24 hours of the day. Or they might walk down their local park or beach and pick up trash.
Who knows what they will do?
I don't.
But I know they won't starve. They won't place an undue burden on our systems due to homelessness, or whatever. And we can ditch oodles of stupid and ineffective government programs.
And yeah, someone may freeload. For a long time. And maybe die without having produced anything of meaning. So what? There is zero impact on you, because you have the same UBI, and on top of that, you have a job you LOVE (because you don't have to make $x/mo any more, so you do what you want to do), and a life in which the monthly panic of balancing the books and making sure you can make rent and buy food is eliminated.
Does it really matter if someone else doesn't take the opportunity and run with it like you did?
- And yeah, someone may freeload.
It is not so much that they are going to freeload. To go back to childhood religious programing for a moment, "idle hands are the devil's tools." If they want to waste their very brief existence watching TV and not doing anything, that is on them. But not having people starving and homeless has other benefits, which you went into. One of the reasons, and man, there are reasons, for the suicide epidemic is that there are a lot of men out there that have lost their purpose. They have no direction, or have been shoved aside due to the massive changes in the economy, society etc over the last 25 years. There is a reason that the two biggest triggers for suicides in men are loss of job and divorce. Some people cannot handle that, and to show this is a human thing, women in the US and Europe are now starting to kill themselves in increasing numbers. Look at Belgium and Finland, nations with some of the best social safety nets and welfare programs out there. They have double the suicide rate of the US, and ours is not anything to be proud of. If nations with some of the best social programs, guarantees, housing allowances etc can't keep people content enough to not off themselves, is this something we need to correct before a UBI?
This is my mental hurdle. We all have one, and it will be different in each of us. And I really love this debate because the world where a UBI is needed is coming faster than most realize. But what happens when there are not enough jobs for all these guys who now have a basic income? We can't all be artists and musicians. We can't all be WalMart greeters. Hell, I have people in my extended friend circle that do fuck zero all day, only work enough to keep the lights on in the shitty apartment and play games and get fatter every year. I hate to see that happen, but they are only hurting themselves, so... yea. Idle people tend to not be happy people in my experience. And despite leaving the church multiple decades ago, that programing of a Puritan work ethic and fight against sloth is there in my head. I said this in other posts on Hubski: men are programed to build things. We build families, friendships, communities, nations as well as the physical things like buildings, roadways, cars, water delivery systems, computers, etc. If some sort of purpose is not put into the bargain that a UBI brings to the table, what are the mental impacts of that?
Maybe we will have to have a draft, but instead of military, you need to do 2-3 years of national service. Drag young men and women out of their family, put them to work building the nation (monuments, tour guides, rangers, infrastructure, even teaching and medicine and the government kicks in for your schooling). This builds social circles, builds the idea that "hey, I helped build this place!" and shows you a world beyond the tiny little space you grew up in. SOMETHING of the like is going to be needed to create an ownership of the country otherwise you get a class of people who demand entitlements and none of the responsibilities related to receiving them.
- And, how long can someone really be passive and bored?
Some men die at 25 and are not buried until they are 75. I've abandoned friendships due to this sort of attitude. It exists, but how prevalent/rare is it? I have no idea.
- Does it really matter if someone else doesn't take the opportunity and run with it like you did?
Absolutely not. And those are the words I should have used, I think. But I would like to not see so many people waste away and contribute something to the place we live in. And that may be my bias showing in this debate.
We are having all the same thoughts, and on the same page.
There are big questions and big issues that need to be thought about in a big way.
And our public discourse is down to 140 characters and two-second sound bites.
How/where does this conversation happen, if not here?
- How/where does this conversation happen, if not here?
The neat thing about here is that although we are a left-leaning circle jerk, we are all in different places and bring something unique to the table. Stuff like this helps me process thoughts, so when I get the chance to talk to someone in the local Dem. party I have a concrete pro and con argument that I can use to engage.
I've also been telling a few smart people here and there about this place. Hopefully they sign up and become a part of the community.