[lambdapie]

UBI might be a great policy, but your argument makes no sense from an accounting point of view.

Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Basic income is no different in this regard. So to say that basic income is different because the right and poor both receive it is pure sophistry.

[bandrami]

Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people.

Only if it has no impact on monetary velocity. Redistributing money from people who are not going to spend it to people who will (or vice versa) is not zero sum.

Lemma: redistribution is itself a monetary policy, given the velocity differences of different money holders.

[lambdapie]

You use the term "monetary velocity" as if it was some term of trade, but I have a PhD in economics and I've never seen it used this way. Are you referring to a specific school of thought or author when you use this term?

Redistributing money from people who are not going to spend it to people who will (or vice versa) is not zero sum.

This is the essence of (neo-)Keynsianism but it only applies during recessions. In the long run, redistributing money to people who are going to spend it has zero effect.

Of course redistribution has a positive effect on welfare as defined by the sum of total utility, but it doesn't increase, for example, GDP.

[dragonwriter]

> You use the term "monetary velocity" as if it was some term of trade, but I have a PhD in economics and I've never seen it used this way.

"Monetary velocity" is not the usual phrasing I've seen, but from the context it was presented in and the description fo the effects attributed to it (and, well, the name -- even though its not exactly the usual term) its fairly obviously the same thing as "velocity of money" [0], a fairly basic economic concept covered in most introductory economics courses.

> Of course redistribution has a positive effect on welfare as defined by the sum of total utility, but it doesn't increase, for example, GDP.

That's debatable. Redistribution to a group more likely to expend money within the domestic economy can increase the velocity of money in the domestic economy even if it has no effect on overall velocity (which it can also have), increasing GDP, in either case.

In any case, measuring economy health by aggregate measures like GDP is not done because those are real fundamental goals, its done because measuring the sum of utility isn't practical. Improving the some of utility without increasing one of the headline proxies isn't "zero effect" in the first place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money

[chrispeel]

> Every kind of redistribution must sum to zero across all people. Basic income is no different in this regard. So to say that basic income is different because the right and poor both receive it is pure sophistry.

I agree with the zero-sum idea; I should have been more clear that the point was only that making basic income universal might help psychologically. Here's my comments to a different post along the same lines above: People are foolish. That's the whole basis of behavioral economics. The point is not that a rational homo economicus would be any more comforted by the fact that the basic income is universal, but that normal people would be. I don't think this universal nature is essential to the basic idea, and would be happy to have a negative income tax.