What would be the alternative in your opinion, when the AI revolution in the corporate and industrial world makes the demand for human labor fundamentally obsolete?
I would disagree.
Hubert Joly, the former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy, said “work is love made visible” (which he quoted from the book How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen).
The Leadership Podcast #262:The Heart of Business
Is a work of art fundamentally different from labor types of human effort in exchange for income?
In my opinion it is ‘meaning’ and purpose that humans fundamentally seek to fulfil. From that perspective, people do not appear to be fundamentally inclined to laziness and wasting time.
I appreciate these arguments, and I’m sympathetic to them, but I think they’re mistaken, in fact and in the application values that I think we share.
1) As a starting point, consider how much the government is already spending to provide a safety net. At the federal and state level, programs that provide services to people in need are huge. Social security benefits alone are $1.5 trillion per year. We spend more than enough to fund a UBI, and a UBI could replace a ton of the programs we currently rely on, with lower overhead.
It’s hard to estimate the true cost of social spending programs, because they often act as investments, ultimately reducing other costs. The study tried to estimate cost savings, and while I think there are some issues with their methods (and more to be said about the results), it gives examples of expenses that are currently born by the government that could be reduced by a UBI.
2) I still think this point is mostly rhetorical, giving people money makes them free, not more dependent. If people choose to be satisfied with the money they earn from their UBI, that too is a choice. Alternatively, they could invest it, spend it on education, use it to cushion a transition between jobs, etc. Those are examples of the increased freedom it provides.
But it’s part of why I favor an unconditional basic income, so that people it isn’t used as a cudgel. Further along you argue that:
But none of these things depend on a UBI. If the government can do all these, it can do them all right now. The government can restrict your ability to fly or drive or make purchases or conduct business, all right now. And fighting government abuses also takes money, so giving people money can help the exercise their rights against the kind of oppression you’re concerned about.
3) Most people aren’t homeless. This study used a targeted basic income, and targeted towards a population that is presumptively least well placed to use it wisely, and it had significant positive effects! Imagine if they’d targeted the working poor instead of the homeless, people who are struggling but holding it together. How many of them would you expect to suddenly become irresponsible wastes, vs. how many who would use the money to get their heads above water and invest in their futures? That describes way more people than people who would just see more money as more alcohol and drugs and lottery tickets.
Also note that drug and alcohol treatment expenses fell significantly among those given the UBI, suggesting that either they were using less, or what they did use was doing less damage to themselves and society.
And finally, this isn’t a popular argument, but it’s one I endorse: if people use it to buy drugs, they should be able to. Freedom includes the freedom to be a self-destructive waste of life. I think you overestimate how many people would do this, but the people who do should have that right. And better they pay for their meth with a UBI that by sucking a drug dealer’s cock or worse.
To be clear, this is somewhat distinct from the UBI conversation, it’s consistent to reject this proposal and still support a UBI, or support this form of taxation and not spend it on a UBI. It’s independently good, but it works particularly well with a UBI, and it offers a strong moral case for a UBI.
First, it’s not a property tax, but a land value tax. The distinction is that it doesn’t tax the value of improvements on land (e.g. buldings), only the land itself. (This distinction isn’t always straightforward, but it’s one that’s commonly made in e.g. insurance.)
One reason for this is that taxing improvements effectively punishes people who invest in their land, because adding value would increase tax liability. Since we want people to invest in their land, there are social spillovers from people building things, we don’t want to punish people for doing it.
Another reason, the moral one, is that the citizens of a country should recoup the value of the land. Landowners currently reap unearned benefits from owning their land. When the city paves a road, or picks up trash, or polices the street, that increases the value of the land in the area. Land owners get a windfall at public expense. So too with e.g. international trade deals that benefit the country: the better the economy, the more valuable the land within it’s borders.
This exacerbates inequality, because land owners tend to be wealthier. Once you can afford to buy land, you get an endless stream of value from the land without having to do anything.
A land value tax recoups the value added to the land by the public. Land owners get to enjoy the use of their land, but they don’t get the windfall of the value added to their land by society. That’s fair.
And it’s economically efficient. Where other taxes distort the market by reducing the effective demand for the taxed good or service and so suppressing supply, a tax on land can’t reduce supply because the supply of land is fixed. Instead, taxing land incentivizes maximizing valuable use of land. And because you can’t live without being on land, everyone pays in proportion to consumption: the more they buy, the more they are exposed to the net tax burden of the land.
Don’t think of LVT as a new tax in the sense of expanding total tax revenue, think of it as an alternative way to lay taxes. Instead of taxing labor or sales or property, as we currently do, we could tax the value of land.
And it works well with UBI because it pays out to each individual the collective value of the society we create. That’s fair and just, and again incentivizes good citizenship and concern for the collective well-being, ennobling those whose activities add social value.
I have not been asked to admit that. Of course “some” people would choose to load and live of their UBI.
Can you admit that this study (and the many other studies on UBIs) suggests that it is a minority of people?
“Of course “some” people would choose to load and live off their UBI.”
Whatchu do is have levels of income options. People would get UBI amount x if they did work y, amount b if they did work c, and so on.
You’d set a minimum UBI amount that would be so low, nobody would opt to have it unless they were already working a job so didn’t need a big source of income.
But now at the same time, u gotta BE ABLE to employ people who have very few skills and who may be disadvantaged or handicap, in order for that to work. So proportionate to the number of UBI recipients should be job opportunities.
This way the gov isn’t givin out completely free money without getting some kind of return.
But u got the right idea, boss. Instead of spending a trillion on welfare services, send individuals a portion of that money and encourage them to want more by providing work incentives and higher incomes to those who choose to work rather than sit around on the bare minimum amount.
If UBI is $1000 a month, x260,000,000 adults in the US, comes to $2,600,000,000,000 per month. x12 = $31,200,000,000,000 per year.
That’s 31 trillion dollars per year. Compared to 1.5 trillion for social security. We can’t even afford social security long term. Now you want to add a new expense 20x greater? Oh sure, we can stop paying out social security. Great, now the cost is only 29.5 trillion dollars a year. More than the entire GDP of the U.S. Wonderful.
I will respond to the rest later, but I felt a need to address this most obvious of errors first.
What is the total US debt? 35 trillion? What is the total unfunded liabilities? Who knows, somewhere in the quadrillions or something.
The US is already a gigantic Ponzi scheme because it admittedly cannot even make interest payments on its existing debt without first finding new people to lend it new money. That’s the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Once interest rates rise, and they will at some point, the debt will be even more impossible to pay off.
Not at anyone cares. Let’s give free money to everyone! It definitely won’t lower the already struggling productivity of the American workforce. Covid killed a lot of our productivity as people became lazier and don’t want to work as much anymore, now we can complete that by giving everyone free cash so they really don’t work. Smart.
And yes I don’t really care if the UBI numbers I came up with have an extra 0 in them, it doesn’t even matter. No way we can pay for our existing bills, but you want to add a new bill larger than all the others which also has the fun side effect of causing even more drain on American productivity i.e. how many hours people want to work?
I just don’t get it. When did everyone become so silly? Somehow the answer to every problem is always “print more trillions of dollars, what’s the worst that could happen?” Meanwhile the growth of the welfare state since the 1970s hasn’t even been able to bring down the percentage of people living in poverty. It’s basically the same as it was before we wasted all this money we can’t afford. But it’s easy to have some feels + money machine go brrrrrrrrr and somehow that’s supposed to equal having an idea or dealing with the real world. Hm ok then.
Like I said, UBI is only inevitable, not a good thing. Corporations will put all of us out of work, then they can keep trying to kill us off and those who remain will need to be sustained like little babies on UBI payments. Like little kids who can’t take care of themselves, because they actually can’t. We will have ceded over our autonomy and productivity and very lives and futures to mega-corporations that already bought out the political process on both sides, again something no one seems to care about either.
America is already doomed, in effect none of this debate really matters. I doubt this silly failing civilization would even survive long enough to need UBI payments. But sure, let’s feel good by promising helicopters of free money for everyone! Why not? Yay! You get a UBI and you get a UBI and you get a UBI, freeeeee moneyyyyy for alllll!!!
Actually I take it back, you’re right. UBI is the perfect thing for American society.
The Federal Reserve creates trillions of dollars out of thin air, gives it to the government, then the government gives is to the people to spend in the economy. Perfect and self-sustaining economy.
Govt creates free money, govt gives free money to the people. Simple, logical, perfect. Why has no one else in history figured this out yet? Economics is so easy, all you need is print endless free money and hand it out to the people to spend in the economy. Duh!
There are a couple problems with this. One is that drastically increases overhead without clear benefit: you reduce payouts, and spend that money on the apparatus to figure out who gets what, and the people you don’t pay end up being a drain on society anyway because they consume more police or medical resources, turn to crime, etc. You’re doing it just to punish them, and you’re hurting everyone to do it.
Another is that making it unconditional removes insanely high effective tax rates for benign or positive choices. If someone loses their job and as a result the also lose their UBI, they’re getting doubly punished for something they want to avoid anyway. If they leave a bad job to spend more time with their kids, or to work on a novel, or to unwind before they go on a shooting spree, those are socially positive things that would be harshly penalized. People are best placed to know what they need to do in their lives, and they have all the incentive in the world to do it without docking their UBI.
Thanks for this.
You’re thinking about the question wrong. The government does in fact spend lots and lots of money. It tries to accomplish a bunch of things by spending money. UBI is a better way for the US to spend the money it already spends. Imagine going through the federal budget and looking at each dollar we spend and asking if it would be better spent as a UBI, keeping total outlays the same.
Every government salary we currently fund to figure out if someone’s making too much money go get welfare stamps or whatever, or to arrest people who try to sell their welfare stamps, or to police stores that take welfare stamps for the wrong things, or to classify every item in the grocery store into welfare stamp eligible and non-welfare stamp eligible.
Every government salary that does similar things for Social Insurance. Or medicare or medicaid or the affordable care act. Or student loans. Or farm subsidies. Or unemployment, workers comp, parental leave, etc.
Trying to target this spending is expensive, it doesn’t work well, it creates lots of perverse incentives, and a bunch of the money we’re spending is actually going white collar workers, lawyers, lobbyists, government contractors, etc.
Instead of thinking about increasing spending by adding UBI as a new expenditure, think of it as a more efficient way achieve many of the outcomes government spending is trying to achieve: people know more about their problems that government bureaucrats do, give them money and they’re solve their own problems.
That is a transition in spending that puts the spending power in the hands of individuals instead of bureaucrats. It would decrease the size of government.
“The Federal Reserve creates trillions of dollars out of thin air, gives it to the government, then the government gives is to the people”
I thought u guys were sayin u were gonna take the tax money currently collected and spent by the government on social welfare programs and distribute that money to the people (the tax payers) in the form of recurrent payments, instead.
That’s what your homeboy emcee carleas was sayin i think. Prolly says it again i haven’t read that last post yet.
That was @HumAnIze, who doesn’t like UBI because of voibes (not a typo, he spells it with an extra zero).
I would be interested to hear a good faith response to this claim: holding all else equal – wherever the money’s coming from, given that we’re spending the money – spending some of it as UBI would be better than spending it the way the government currently spends the money.
Talking about the Federal Reserve and the national debt and whatever is a red herring.
If you are operating on the assumption of modern monetary theory, why not just throw money at everybody’s debt that other states don’t let people acquire because they have state funded education and healthcare? People don’t need freebies. That is enabling learned helplessness. Only reward those who contribute and don’t violate (golden-rule calibrated) laws—tax the hell out of wealthy hoarders globally to pay for it. And don’t require registration into a digital database that brands the herd while the branders go unaccountable, per usual.
You’re misusing this term. Giving people money makes them less helpless, so whatever they learn from it, it isn’t helplessness.
How much of the money we have to help the worthy should we spend on figuring out who’s worthy? Let’s consider a hypothetical, as an intuition pump:
Suppose we have $1000 to lend and our society has 100 people. 10 of these people are golden-rule violating pieces of shit who deserve our scorn.
a) We give everyone $10, but then the PoSs also get $10.
b) We spend $250 to figure out who those pieces of shit are, so we only have $750 to give the decent folk, but at least we know that 0 pieces of shit are getting a single undeserved dime.
I (b) better than (a)? If it only costs $101 dollars to identify the PoSs, so the good people only get a smidge less and the PoSs get nothing, would that be better than (a)?
We can debate all these numbers, but for me, and I think most supporters of UBI, I am fine with the undeserving few getting more than they deserve, because the upside seems well worth it.
Targeted programs like the ones you propose have much more intrusive databases than universal programs.
“Worthy”? Only those who need it (so def not profiteering hoarders). Pay as much as a reasonable person would charge (¿no more than a living wage?), if the AI who writes the algorithm is not treated as slave labor—which, in a self=other system, it wouldn’t be.
If money goes digital without a digital passport database, no form of currency will survive on the black market. If your data stays with you anonymously, and yet the actual data itself has certain markers, then whatever dispenses money to people who need it doesn’t even need to know who you are. If you don’t need the money, it will not dispense it. And you have to be where that money is dispensed, which is not in jail. And no one can mark you the way the IRS (etc.) marked people (ref: Operation Vigilant Eagle).
But. Honey. The situation is FUBAR. You can’t fix this.
I use this tongue-in-cheek, I only mean deserving of government handouts in your model where the government should only give money/services/support to certain people. I’m calling those people “worthy”.
Again, how are we supposed to determine who “those who contribute and don’t violate (golden-rule calibrated) laws” and “wealthy hoarders” if we don’t have system that tracks people and how they behave and how much money they have? You’re critical of UBI for implying an official set of recognized individuals, but it seems like that has to exist in your proposed alternative as well.
No — all the system needs is the markers of the data. The data stays anonymous & not in a database. The markers would be things like—Is the person disabled? Are they working? What is their income whether they are working or not? Does their income equal an amount that can afford the cost of living where they are requesting money? When is the last time money was requested and dispensed? It doesn’t need to know who they are because everything is digital. You can’t get away with illegal jobs when everything is digital, if the laws are done that way. But if people wind up in jail because all the lawyers are like Kamala Harris, well there you go. That’s why I’m not advocating for this. Besides that the people who do the technology might get their foot in the door with anonymous but down the road the whole thing switches. But I’m pretty sure anonymous is impossible in this day and age. Which is why it’s so surprising there is still so much corruption, & of 37,000 missing kids we only found 200 recently.
Like I said. FUBAR.
Theme songs for the thread:
pink Floyd “wish you were here“ & “welcome to the machine“
Heart of Business
