And this is a very misleading summary of the results.
Here are some actual quote from the study:
> Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers.
Almost half of people who stopped working did it in order to train for a better job. That's great!
> most of the respondents who were unemployed during the pilot reported experiencing health issues that made it difficult or impossible for them to work.
Receiving BI allowed sick people to not be forced into work to pay for a basic existence? That's great!
Take into account those two factors and almost no able bodied, employable person opted to not work.
You can argue that the only way to perform a completely accurate UBI experiment would be to run it for at least 60-80 years for everyone. Social experiments are very hard to do and have many flaws, but it seems unreasonable to say that the information gained by doing such studies should be "thrown out the window".
> You can argue that the only way to perform a completely accurate UBI experiment would be to run it for at least 60-80 years for everyone.
You could get decent results in less than 60-80 years by granting each participant a fully-funded fixed annuity guaranteeing them a specific income for the remainder of their lives independent of the continuation of the study. Of course, that would raise the cost of the study to something approaching a real (non-universal) BI program.
Yes, and a depressing number of lottery winners end up poorer than they started within a few years after burning through all their winnings and then going into debt to support their new lifestyle. Easy come, easy go.
This issue is not a "flaw". It's a root problem. We want to know the effect of permanent UBI, not of a temporary one, and we know (strongly suspect) the effect will be different.
Maybe the simple solution is that the researchers establish a dedicated
million dollar bank account for a participant and automatically withdraw $1000 for the participant every month.
But there is no such thing as "permanent UBI", though.
UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government.
The perspective of the participants makes sense. Whether they believe their access to UBI will continue or not, it makes sense to up-skill.
Besides, we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live.
"UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government"
If this is true than implementing UBI will be more problematic than I thought. All UBI proposals so far call for all other financial safety nets to be removed in order to finance UBI. Managing that will be a nightmare if you can just cut off UBI, then you have to spin up everything else again. I imagine UBI to be something similar to how the pension system is, once in place it stays there forever-ish (meaning that it can potentially collapse).
"we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live" - that's an excellent point.
Hmm, Yangs proposal did not eliminate all other safety nets. His program simply made people opt out of one or the other, and encouraged people to stick with whatever paid them more.
The knock on effect is that it'd likely reduce funding for other safety nets because they have an inherent safety net in UBI. But the existing welfare programs are either highly prohibitive or extremely difficult to qualify for and maintain even if you should be using them. UBI eliminates that barrier of entry if you only need 1k a month (using Yangs plan here).
So, yeah, less people would likely use food stamps because they can get more from 1k a month than from 1.2k in food stamps. Most people do not qualify for that much in food stamps as it is. With fewer people using that program, the government would funnel less money to that program, reducing net costs and allowing more money to go elsewhere. Eventually this would likely lead to the end of that program.
This could allow us to create new social programs that are more focused. With fewer people requiring other social safety nets, the new ones that are created would require less funding and can address root cause issues vs symptoms which are what we address today.
Most people just need money. A minority of people using a social welfare programs need something significantly more than just money. We should not leave those people on the street, but Yang never planned on that happening. He proposed a VAT tax to cover the costs. Whether that would actually work or not is debatable, but that was his plan.
Welfare isn't UBI. Give everyone the same amount and you'll have a hard time convincing the people earning 70k to vote against another 12k... That's the secret formulae.
People earning 70k will vote against "another" 12k if it reduces their taxes by 16k. That money isn't free—a minority will see a net benefit, with everyone else footing the bill. If you're earning 70k then you're unlikely to end up on the "net benefit" side of the equation.
This is why the "Universal" aspect of it is so important. It's ridiculously easy for people to vote for defunding services that "other" people benefit from, and politicians can always whip up support by scapegoating some minority group as the root of all of our problems. But if the benefit is shared by everyone then it becomes near political suicide to suggest cuts to it. How many politicians successfully can campaign to get rid of social security or medicaid? Those are programs shared with a significant percent, but not even a majority, and as such it's really hard to successfully push for cuts to such systems. With a total universal application of basic income it would be political suicide to push for cuts, everyone's life would be planned and organized already around such a program. Look at how hard it is for universal healthcare systems to be cut in nations that have such a benefit.
> But if the benefit is shared by everyone then it becomes near political suicide to suggest cuts to it.
The benefit isn't shared by everyone, though. The payouts may be equal but the taxes to support those payouts are not. If a majority of voters are paying more in taxes than they receive in payouts (as is likely) then it shouldn't be hard to sell them on the idea that reducing or dismantling the program would be in their own self-interest.
On the other hand, if it would be difficult to dismantle the program even knowing that it benefits a vocal minority at the expense of the majority, that should make us think twice about instituting it in the first place.
The study is meant to look at the effects of UBI, not provide a universal basic income to everyone. The study wouldn't be super useful if you included a billionaire, because nothing about their lives would change. They have limited money to do the study, so they have to draw a line somewhere.
I'm not sure how we went from $35k to billionaire, but I agree with your point. I am definitely curious though how it affects people earning 50k, 70k, 100k though. I suspect a chunky increase in index funds, retirement plans, and investing at some threshold, which affects the market at large. Social programs, children's sports (hockey equipment and ice rentals aren't cheap!), real estate, the list goes on. Obviously untestable, but interesting. Could be extremely transformational, or maybe cost of living simply jumps.
That would more accurately gauge the effect on how much it disincentivizes, and how it changes the lifestyle of the recipient.
It does very little to test economics. Perhaps UBI leads to a lot of people deciding to tend bar at the local tennis club, volunteering for the job. Maybe introducing UBI across a large area has marked effects on gym memberships.
Those seem easier to test if you put a large area on UBI for a short-ish term (though I admit I haven't seen any UBI research that analyses such social effects - perhaps somebody knows of some?)
Is that anything but conjecture? I see a study showing that UBI is a "good thing", and you didn't provide a source for your reasoning.
Edit: to all those saying that the parent comment is straightforward, or common sense, or whatever, it's not straightforward or common sense because I disagree that UBI would be a failure. No one knows what would happen under UBI, but these types of studies give some evidence as to what is going to happen.
Everyone saying the parent is correct is basically similar to saying we should stop studying fusion because it's common sense we'll never achieve it (there are people who say that, too).
It's a good first step to study this, at least, and goes to show we need to test UBI on a greater scale.
The main thing being said is there's a drastic difference between knowing the BI you're getting is temporary and it being a 'permanent' government program. There's no way to provide a citation for that because the only way to run that is to have a full UBI and study the results to see if these short term BI studies still hold water.
However it's not a stretch at all to say people will act different when they're temporarily receiving money than when they'll receive it 'forever'.
The main argument I, and I believe the OP, was making is because the period of these programs are limited, and not even the full period is guaranteed as this shows, it affects how people act. If it's a program I believe I can count on existing for 10-20 years I can make significant life changes around receiving the money, eg move somewhere super cheap and volunteer or something, but at just a few I know I'm going to have to go back to normal at the end so making those big changes is harder.
What I am saying is that a temporary UBI experiment cannot simulate the changes that a permanent UBI would bring. Especially when everyone is aware that this is temporary.
I think you'd then be skewing towards a sample that spends a lot of money on lottery tickets (certainly not something I do but maybe I'm the minority), and your sample size would be pretty small, and you wouldn't see how it affects a community.
Or keep the studies and make UBI non-permanent: much like cold-war brinkmanship - incentivizing recipients to always keep in mind the possibility of future work.
I understand it's much more stressful than permanent guaranteed UBI, but it's truer to the real intent of UBI (which I believe is reducing the friction when deciding to try new job or state or whatever in a pursuit of self-actualization).
Education does not equate to a successful job. I know a few career students that acquire one useless degree after another because every time they try to get a job they find no one is hiring.
Career academics are a tiny minority of the population. The median salary of a BS degree in the US is 2x over non-degree holders. The median salary of an advanced degree is 3x. Twice the salary for having a 4 year degree, that is enormous.
How much of that is correlation and how much is causation? How much is selection effect and how much treatment effect?
The average person who is capable of getting a Bachelor’s degree but doesn’t is very distant from the average high school graduate. And if you drop out of college after two years because you can’t cut it your labour market outcome is only very slightly better than a high school grad but your debt load of half of a college grad.
That study I put a link to is attempting to answer that very question methodically, and the answer in this study and others is it’s both correlation and causation. Some of the “income premium” you get for having a bachelor’s degree is cultural bias toward education (causation), some of it is having more and broader skills (causation), some of it is the many jobs that require degrees or pay higher with more education (causation), and some portion of it is due to things like whether your parents got degrees or have money (correlation).
But, I’m curious, what does it actually matter in this context, if any non-zero portion of it is causation? This thread is discussing whether people are better off getting some education, whether they should spend their UBI income in search of opportunity via education, and whether going to school is a “work disincentive”. (Seem like the opposite to me.) They’re attempting to improve their lot via schooling, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that more education will, statistically, improve their lot at least somewhat.
If you’re interested in this topic you should read Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education. Getting more credentials can be individually rational but socially wasteful. So there are tons of people working as bank tellers now and there were tons of people working as bank tellers in the ‘70s. Now they all have college degrees. In the ‘70s they were high school graduates. Their degrees don’t make them more productive and they cost them four years of their lives but they couldn’t have gotten the job without them.
Some of education’s pay off is privately and socially useful, increases in human capital, some of it is privately useful but socially useless or counter productive, wasteful signaling in an arms race, like that which leads to people who would have stopped with a Bachelor’s a generation ago getting a Master’s now.
Insofar as education is socially wasteful we should discourage it, not encourage it, tax it, not subsidize it.
Lucky for us, social waste is not the criteria for taxation, or we’d be dead broke from sharing beliefs on the internet alone.
What is your metric of social waste, and why do you think education has enough to worry about compared all the millions of other socially wasteful things we do when not working?
Us GDP per capita is not going down, and education rates are going up. Both monotonically since the 70s, despite the supposed degree requirements of bank tellers. That alone — the economy — seems to squarely contradict the notion that school is somehow bad for us.
If you’re measuring social productivity in terms of capital, I think you’re failing to account for the increase in income tax the government receives from the average 2x higher salary of educated people. That extra income tax is so much money, it could fund education for every man, woman, and child in the US, and still have 90% of it left for the socially productive spending we do now on such things as maintaining the military industrial complex. We are being taxed for education already, and we are still better off.
It seems like you might also be ignoring the social evidence for education in countries where it is subsidized, like Norway, Finland and others.
US GDP per capita is going up at the same time as education for the same reason the size of the v average dwelling has gone up; Richer people consume more. Education doesn’t make people more productive. More productive people buy more stuff.
If you give everyone a Bachelor’s degree they will not become 2x as productive. The people are different. The education is less important than the difference in the people. Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive.
The evidence for the economic effects of evidence is really weak. Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way round. Ghana is a lot more educated now than 1950’s France, and a lot poorer. China’s massive economic growth from the 1980’s to the 2000s was based on a populace that mostly hadn’t finished primary school.
Regarding other first world countries the US is far, far richer than them[1] and has a better education system.
> Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive.
How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income premium is correlation and not causation of education’s effect on society. But education rates have been going up for the last 50 years and the income premium for education is stable, despite more people being educated. Why?
> Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way around
Your argument is that education is an economic drain. Where is the evidence of that? Even if true that wealth precedes education (and citation is needed there), your argument here is contradicting your earlier argument that education is socially wasteful - countries are getting richer and staying richer with increased education rates, regardless of whether it’s causation or correlation.
Ghana is an outlier with political issues not representative of most of the world, it doesn’t prove much about education. China’s massive economic growth coincides with an increase in education, framing it as being “based” on an uneducated populace because their education rate was lower at the start seems like it’s dodging the inconvenient fact that their education rates have risen while their economy has grown? Why are you so convinced that education is not even part of the cause for their economic growth, or anyone else’s?
You seem to be claiming that education teaches nothing of economic value, does not help people personally gain any skills, does not help people improve their productivity? Is that what you’re saying, and if so why?
>How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
That's the entire point. We can't quantify if education actually makes people more productive and if it does, is that productivity applied to helping or hurting society. For example, an aspiring software dev could get educated in computer science which would increase their productivity (provided they actually learned something which is not a given). However, they could become a white or black hat hacker with differing effects on society. Another scenario is that a person doesn't know what they want to do and so they take a variety of courses until they find something they like. A lot of that education is wasted energy that doesn't help anyone if they can't use it.
How do you define productivity? Why can’t you define it? Why can’t you quantify it? If you can’t quantify it, why do you believe it? Maybe it’s not quantifiable because it’s not true?
If you define educational productivity as GDP or income, or in financial terms, then the evidence is pretty clear and very strong that education doesn’t hurt. For education to not improve “productivity”, then you must be defining productivity some other way that you’re expecting me to intuit. I’m only hearing some rationalizing for why you’re ignoring the data we actually have.
The Fed study I posted does attempt to quantify the causal effect of education, and so do quite a few other studies. I recommend doing some research about what has been done to find out how this issue has been quantified already. I have looked into quite a few of these studies and their methodologies, and I haven’t seen a single one claim that education has zero or negative causal effect, even when their summary leans toward the income premium being more correlation than causation. All of them conclude it’s a mix, and there’s a positive contribution from the act of attending school, learning history and skills, gaining independence, etc. I don’t think education is by any means 100% efficient, whatever that would even mean, but claiming it’s zero or negative is really extreme, especially if you can’t produce any evidence.
Education does correlate with a more successful job and it also correlates with a better functioning society. I believe that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is some causal relationship (note: this does not say that higher education leads to a successful job, but rather says that higher education increases the chances of you getting a more successful job).
No, because you can be educated in any topic up to and including the history of the Kardashians. This in no way contributes to a better functioning society. Your entire premise that education = more intelligence is completely wrong. Would you argue a person educated by extremists correlates with a better functioning society?
The only thing that betters society is the positive application of knowledge to creating something of value for others. It's not enough to learn a topic, you must actually apply it make a difference.
the point is a degree in a subject where there is no money to be made is a WASTE of money. A degree is not inherently worth the time & money spent earning it if you can't make a career with it. You'll also have student loans to pay for. Don't bother saying "free college" is the issue either. There's no such thing. Somebody is paying for that "free" college in the form of higher taxes.
This is a superbly short sighted and harmful perspective.
Education conveys benefits besides merely financial: a technician might receive no financial benefit from knowing about DNA, nuclear fission and distance to Mars. However, these people make life choices informed by their general knowledge, they vote on policy, they act when Covid-19 is in the news.
If we take your perspective far enough, we will have a society of idiot savants that are clueless outside if their narrow speciality.
Education in my opinion would be a bargain compared to insane levels of military spending, gas and oil subsidies, bank bailouts, etc. This is selfish though. One, I have to pay for my kids education some day, and two, I think it's overall a good thing for our species (depending on the quality).
Eventually we'll look back at college (including trades) education being free like we look now on elementary education being free.
I don't have kids and I'm happy to pay for your kids to go to school. I don't want to live in a country full of idiots. It's also selfish though. Because smarter kids result in better medicine, better inventions, etc.
GP's point seems currently the improvement of society is not guaranteed by a degree because either it's based on knowledge that is not applicable to improving society or their job applies that knowledge to something net negative to extract value.
It is unclear to me if you are being obtuse on purpose or on accident. But I want to reiterate that trolling is not allowed on HN and it is presumed that you are going to take arguments on good faith. So I will answer as if you aren't being needlessly obtuse.
We're talking about institutional education, not gaining more information. So in this discussion we're not talking about people spending their money to become more informed on Kardashians. We're talking about them going to school. As far as I'm aware, there's no school that teaches the history of the Kardashians.
At any rate, I believe the poster you responded to was using hyperbole to equate "history of the Kardashians" with some degree that he or she deems "equally as useless."
It was obviously a good faith response, and if you look at what people do versus what their degree is in, it's obvious that college education for many students might as well be studying the Kardashians. I think literally none of my relatives use their post-secondary education, except for a lawyer (who doesn't use his undergrad degree) and a guy who presumably went to culinary school. And a retired college professor, I guess.
It didn't misrepresent anything. If I was enrolled in a study where I was given free money, I'd stop working and pursue study or other interests too. Seems like these people knew the study was temporary, and took advantage of it. A permanent basic income would produce results no study is capable of measuring.
> First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion:
>> Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%)
> So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor market when its a short-term study is huge.
Child comment proved this to be misleading. I myself was misled. Anyone reading this would think that this study showed that UBI disincentivizes work. Child comment showed that this conclusion does not follow from the study.
You can speculate all you want on what permanent UBI would do but what the parent comment said is absolutely a misrepresentation of the study.
Parent was correct in quoting the study. 17% were unemployed. What were they doing instead? Studying, or not working (with a small minority on sick leave).
From this we can conclude that: UBI encourages people to leave the workforce, or this study encouraged people to leave the workforce. Studying is still a productivity activity in the right context, but you cannot pretend it is the same as being employed from the perspective of analysing the economic impacts of UBI.
> All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work.
When the parent invokes the detractors, it brings up the arguments that all the detractors use, saying that UBI will turn people into lazy freeloaders that do not want to work. That it will lead to people just living off the government and contributing nothing. Going back to get an education for the purpose of work does not fall under that category.
The thesis of the parent is not that they're simply leaving the workforce. They're quoting the same old claims that UBI will make people lazy and not want to work. That frame is why quoting the study as a means to further that claim is so misleading.
You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "Disincentivizing work" can be interpreted to mean more likely to study than work. This doesn't mean lazy. Nothing in the parent comment called people lazy for leaving the workforce, just that it disincetivized participating in the workforce.
> You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "
No I did not. That the THE primary argument detractors make when they say that UBI disincentivizes work. Read enough on the arguments against UBI and you will realize that for yourself.
Your interpretation indicates that you have not been steeped in debates about UBI, otherwise you would know this already.
Interpreting the parent's remarks, ESPECIALLY when they bring up the existing "detractors" as simply meaning "not working", instead of what is the primary argument the existing detractors make is absolutely disingenuous.
> > You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "
> No I did not. That the THE primary argument detractors make when they say that UBI disincentivizes work. Read enough on the arguments against UBI and you will realize that for yourself.
"If you've read enough comments, you can predict the arguments people use. So I wasn't assuming anything."
> "If you've read enough comments, you can predict the arguments people use. So I wasn't assuming anything."
"If in an argument, someone brings up the people that debate policy and write essays on it and they invoke them and the conclusion of their argument, a reader can choose to interpret that someone as having a different argument than those people that policy debaters they invoked and that's completely legitimate".
Yea OP totally was referring to internet comments instead of politicians or people in think tanks that debate policy, especially given that they quote statistics from studies, when they wrote "detractors" /s
I like the concept too, but we have to be careful what we wish for.
If, somehow, UBI becomes real there will be a huge push from the libertarians and far-right to dismantle whatever is left of the social safety net. They actually would love the idea of replacing medicare, social security and other programs with a quick 1000/month that would enable even more shrinking of government.
I mean, part of the allure of UBI to me is that it is a social safety net except it benefits everyone. Because it's universal and not means-tested, it removes the stigma of being 'on welfare' which IMO is incredibly discouraging and makes it harder to rise out of your unfortunate situation. So yes, I would love if UBI replaced some programs while augments others.
At the end of the day it's the most direct and effective way of combating poverty and goes a long way towards closing the wealth gap. Especially when we can divert those funds from corporations into the hands of the people.
I do generally favor shrinking the government but not at the expense of the people's safety, liberty or well-being.
> At the end of the day it's the most direct and effective way of combating poverty and goes a long way towards closing the wealth gap.
Where do you think all this Income is going to come from? The middle class will shoulder the bulk of it which will widen the wealth gap. You will end up with 1k in UBI and 1500 in taxes to pay for it.
Under Yang's plan even if you made $100k/yr (single person household) you'd get an increase[0]. You'd be having to make roughly $140k+/yr to see a decrease in total income (140k results in -$66/yr). (If you were the norm of 2 adults and 2 children your household income would need to be north of $315k/yr to "shoulder" his UBI)
So I'm not sure why you think the middle class will shoulder the bulk of the cost. Do you think $150k/yr earners ($300k/yr families) are middle class? The median household income int he US (2018) was $62k/yr[1]
Yang's plan also involves one of the highest deficit spending proposals of any of the UBI plans listed on that calculator.
It's all very well and good to say "look, virtually everyone would see a net income increase!" until you realize that's only possible by literally just printing money.
The costs of such high deficit spending are pretty certain, but the benefits meant to offset those costs are only speculative (and highly speculative, at that).
You're right and this is the criticism I have of Yang, though I supported him. I'd rather have a higher VAT and other methods to gather revenue than through deficit spending. Especially since it is inflation tied and deficit spending leads to inflation.
Though I'm also not an economist and lots of economists seem to like deficit spending. So I'm just going to say I'm naive here.
I appreciate your perspective. The problem of course is that a higher VAT would also reduce the effective purchasing power granted by the UBI.
I get that one of the benefits of UBI is that it's supposed to empower people to use the money in the way that satisfies their needs best, rather than rely on inefficient bureaucracies to determine what needs are worth subsidizing and who qualifies.
The problem is, there's no free lunch. It seems to me like any sensibly funded UBI is going to probably negatively impact many middle-class folks. Politically that's just a non-starter in the U.S.
While you're right in that a higher VAT __can__ reduce the effective purchasing power, it doesn't have to. 1) Yang's VAT was at 10% which is under half the rate of most of the European countries. So I'd feel confident that we could follow similar procedures, which would halve the deficit spending (if the carbon tax was doubled to $40/ton, there'd be a surplus). 2) VATs don't have to be applied uniformly. I'm also not opposed to a wealth tax. But from my understanding, it is harder to avoid a VAT. This is probably an easier loophole to close (and Republicans like consumption taxes, so easier to pass). But you are right in that things would need to be reformed dramatically to actually capture a wealth tax.
I still do not buy the argument that a UBI will be shouldered by the middle class. I have yet to see evidence that it will be shouldered by anyone but the 1% (really the 0.01%).
I was waiting for this reply. The obvious answer to that being that it doesn't make printing money for a UBI any better of an idea. It's completely irrelevant.
Let's not try and justify bad ideas by pointing out that people currently do bad things.
> Where do you think all this Income is going to come from?
As I mentioned:
> divert those funds from corporations into the hands of the people
To be fair, it's true that won't cover the entire bill. However, between reducing spending in other welfare programs, the increase in economic output and implementing a VAT, the gap closes pretty quickly.
As a sibling comment mentions, the math is pretty straightforward. Let's also not forget the second- and third-order benefits to society and the economy that will result from most of the population having more purchasing power and economic freedom.
Do you think it's fine that Amazon and friends pay next to nothing in taxes by exploiting the tax code? Why are we (taxpayers) subsidizing mega corps who are making money hand over fist?
>> divert those funds from corporations into the hands of the people
There's a limit to how much you can tax corporations until they just up and leave. Just ask Sweden in the 70's.
> To be fair, it's true that won't cover the entire bill. However, between reducing spending in other welfare programs, the increase in economic output and implementing a VAT, the gap closes pretty quickly.
All UBI programs I've seen also require deficit spending. And good luck canceling other welfare programs.
> Let's also not forget the second- and third-order benefits to society and the economy that will result from most of the population having more purchasing power and economic freedom.
People will have more dollars, but between increased taxes and inflation from deficit spending, I'm very suspect that people will have more purchasing power.
> Do you think it's fine that Amazon and friends pay next to nothing in taxes by exploiting the tax code? Why are we (taxpayers) subsidizing mega corps who are making money hand over fist?
I have no idea what Amazon should pay in any moral sense, but I'm fine with taxing them more so long as
1) A marginal increase in tax rates would increase net revenues (and not drive jobs/business offshore)
2) The increase in tax revenue was for a compelling public interest (not merely because "they're not paying their fair share") OR because it involved closing a tax exemption that was not available to their competitors (so that the market stays competitive)
Medicare isn’t going anywhere. Once people get the taste for single payer healthcare, they don't give it up.
Social security should be replaced with privately held accounts, just like superannuation in Australia. But in the transition people would need to be paid out their entitlement. So no problem there.
But if UBI replaced all normal welfare (excluding disability etc) is that such a bad thing? As long as the UBI is high enough and indexed to cost of living, welfare that’s broadly targeted at the poor should be unnecessary. Not just unnecessary, it tends to have the effect of making poverty stickier. Any time benefits are inversely tied to how well you're doing, you reduce the incentive to do better.
> But if UBI replaced all normal welfare (excluding disability etc) is that such a bad thing?
Part of the problem is that some welfare is not about the money, but the support. UBI is less likely to help someone with mental issues than someone who hates working at 7/11 while studying. Generalised, UBI likely helps those who have an impermanent problem over those that have longer term issues.
Society likely would still need welfare services for those people who struggle with the multiple travails of existence.
Personally, I'm less interested in UBI in the first world, where welfare is pretty good already and the negative affects are unknown and complicated. I'm more interested in what affect it would have on the third world, where the downsides - disincentives to work etc - seem far less of an issue. https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi-study/ is a good example.
Nothing wrong with that. The government is severely bloated. Also nothing wrong with reducing or replacing horrid, administratively wasteful, degrading, stigmatized, means-tested social safety nets with UBI.
I’m confused. Is “means-tested” supposed to be a degrading adjective? Because I think the fact our existing social safety nets are “means-tested” is exactly why people have doubts about UBI.
> Is “means-tested” supposed to be a degrading adjective?
Yes. People who are on means-tested social safety nets are subject to these test which often make you feel degraded. They often make people fear they will lose their benefit. And in many cases they encourage people not to improve their lives (e.g. I better not take that part-time job, because then I will lose unemployment benefits.) It also creates an incentive to falsify information so that you can continue to receive said benefit.
UBI solves all that because it isn't means-tested, you just get it no matter what (Oh you improved your situation? You got a job, got healthy, etc. That's great! You will continue to get UBI.)
This is why Yang wanted to make it a choice. The average welfare recipient is getting less than $1k/mo in help and are limited in how they can use it (food stamps can't buy the car repair you need to keep your job).
But I do think that is is an overstated concern __because__ most welfare recipients are already receiving less assistance. Btw, there's capitalist oriented arguments for single payer options that libertarians are in favor of (tldr: health care operates under a network effect and single payer can minimize individual and public costs).
The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education. It's to support people who would otherwise be starving or homeless without a job.
Regarding "sickness", the severity is important to know. If UBI enables people with slight depression issues to just give up working entirely, UBI could be entirely counterproductive by accelerating depression's spirals of inactivity.
And this completely ignored the issue of inflation that comes with society wide UBI.
The whole notion of UBI is nonsense. Rather than throwing money at people to spend on broken institutions like Education and Healthcare, let's reform these institutions in the first place to make them more affordable and effective.
> The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education. It's to support people who would otherwise be starving or homeless without a job.
Who gave this strict definition. In my opinion, the point of UBI is to benefit society. I do think people being more educated benefits society as a whole, and thus I think people using their UBI on this is beneficial.
Perhaps if you're a person who looks at your cleaners or servers or cashiers as people with no potential for self-betterment; as people who are unable to expand their horizons.
> […] its value as a signaling mechanism, which is where the majority of modern education's value lies in the first place.
I’m not sure education is a very high-resolution or effective signal for much, and I think its dilution as a signal would help force us to find a better one. I’m curious though, given how self-assured you seem: what do you think education signals right now?
Education signals that you are "better" than those with worse education. Smarter, harder working, etc.
We need to create better options for students. We can do this by refocusing education on learning practical skills for real world jobs rather than maintaining an educational system built upon a foundation over 1000 years old that up until 100 or so years ago was intended for the elites and scholars, not the average person looking for a job.
That would not be "better", that would be myopic: Practical skills are only a part of what an education is or can be; information and skills which are not practical are still quite significant for us and for society at large; practicality changes over time; and the determination of what is and isn't practical is itself quite contentious.
A lot of our education - practical or otherwise - may be useless fluff, or even ideologically biased. But that's mostly not because of the chosen discipline.
> The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education.
That is YOUR OPINION of what UBI should be. It happens to be wrong.
What people do with the money isn't the point of UBI at all. The point is to improve their lives, and boost the economy. Who cares what specific the money is spent on if it is making people healthier, less stressed, and happier?
>Who cares what specific the money is spent on if it is making people healthier, less stressed, and happier?
And here, in one sentence, is why we will NEVER see UBI in the United States of America. There is no ability to be the moral whip and maintain control over someone else's choices to make sure they don't 'waste my money'. Therefore, it will never happen.
In the US, at least, it's not about doing what's right. It's not about making sure people are healthier, less stressed, and happier. It's about making sure they live the 'best' life they can, as defined by groups like the "moral majority".
> If UBI enables people with slight depression issues to just give up working entirely, UBI could be entirely counterproductive by accelerating depression's spirals of inactivity.
What if it enables those same people to take the time off work they need to treat their depression? Getting help takes enormous energy that a depressed person likely doesn't have if they're spending all their energy just trying to survive.
Of course the UBI is for personal growth and development even if it isn’t a guaranteed success. People have a fallback and would be more likely to take risks.
Here are some actual quote from the study:
> Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers.
Almost half of people who stopped working did it in order to train for a better job. That's great!
> most of the respondents who were unemployed during the pilot reported experiencing health issues that made it difficult or impossible for them to work.
Receiving BI allowed sick people to not be forced into work to pay for a basic existence? That's great!
Take into account those two factors and almost no able bodied, employable person opted to not work.
Sounds like a success to me.