[bsaunder]

This is the use case for universal basic income. Its largely not their fault for their current economic situation. They played by the rules. They worked hard. If we could only remove the "necessity" of a job and the puritan shame of unemployment to live a moderate life of meager means. People should be encouraged to contribute to society not to simply "get a job".

[microcolonel]

The solution to some people getting played by the system surely isn't to play everyone even more by that same system.

I figure UBI will look like it's succeeding for ~10-20 years, then we'll see what the real impact of it is (as people grow up with it). There's also little consensus on how comfortable the basic income should be; I get the impression that if it is too comfortable, you'd be a fool to work, if it's too uncomfortable, the bleeding hearts will call everyone a nazi until it's made too comfortable.

[slackingoff2017]

UBI is welfare with a different name. The results will be the same.

Some people will sit on their asses and never work a single day but the majority of the population would keep working. The extra money would become meaningless because prices would adjust to accommodate it.

We have to keep in mind that you can't just create money and hand it out and make everyone rich. If everyone had 10x as much money prices would end up going up 10x. The supply of real goods you can use that money for hasn't changed. The huge increase in demand would lead to a supply crunch and much higher prices.

The money we're giving out for UBI has to be taken from someone else. What UBI is calling for is wealth redistribution, something I'm in favor of. But people seem to think it's magic around here.

If we pillaged the top 1% and distributed their wealth evenly the entire rest of the population would get close to a 100% raise. That's how filthy rich the top 1% are.

[microcolonel]

> If we pillaged the top 1% and distributed their wealth evenly the entire rest of the population would get close to a 100% raise. That's how filthy rich the top 1% are.

The problem with this, of course, is that the rich would simply leave. They are the most attractive to rob, and the best prepared to escape.

In addition, "the 1%" is not an exclusive club; most people (currently) have a pretty good chance of entering the 1% at some point in their life, most in the 1% have a very good chance of exiting it.

[s_kilk]

> In addition, "the 1%" is not an exclusive club; most people (currently) have a pretty good chance of entering the 1% at some point in their life, most in the 1% have a very good chance of exiting it.

You can't be serious. Social mobility (to the extent it ever existed) is way down over the past 40 years, and there's no sign of that trend reversing.

[stephenbez]

I assume you meant the top 10%. In the US 56% of people will spend a year or more in the top 10%. 12% of people will spend a year or more in the top 1%.

http://www.aei.org/publication/evidence-shows-significant-in...

[slackingoff2017]

I had no idea that 12% of the population makes top one percent income for at least a year of their life. What causes so many of these people to fail?

How could there possibly be so many jobs that offer that kind of income. Or maybe it's that most jobs offering high income have short tenure..

[danielvf]

The 1% for the most part aren't billionaires. Last year in the US, the threshold was just under $285,000. Ignoring professionals, plenty of small business owners can hit that on a lucky year. (And get hammered other years). There are a lot of jobs in the US with companies with fewer than 50 people.

Confiscating the assets of the 1% to create economic prosperity has been tried a few times before, and usually turns out horribly in ten years. You've removed the people who risk their own money from society, and replaced it with only assest allocation by bureaucrats.

Plus, as soon as you removed the one percent, then you have a new one percent.

See Dekulakization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

[Unkechaug]

Are they counting income from inheritance, selling assets (houses), etc? I wouldn't be surprised in that case.

[icebraining]

The problem with this, of course, is that the rich would simply leave.

The rich can leave, but the profits their companies generate locally can still be taxed. And they can be taxed more when the money gets sent to wherever those rich people went to.

[lovich]

That's a pretty bold claim about people's chance to enter and leave the 1%. Additionally there are only so many places to run to and its not like peoples money is all tied up in gold that can be smuggled out of the country anymore. It's pretty easy for governments to just put a block on their accounts if for some reason the wealthy decided they could make all of their money off of a society and then bounce when it came time to share in that same society

[wott]

> most people (currently) have a pretty good chance of entering the 1% at some point in their life

I beg your pardon?

[nnd]

UBI is not welfare, it's by definition ubiquitous and unconditional. Welfare programs can and should exist in addition to UBI.

[GavinMcG]

> The extra money would become meaningless because prices would adjust to accommodate it.

That's not actually supported in the literature.

[slackingoff2017]

The value of any currency is how much real stuff you can buy with it. If there's 20% more dollars in circulation each one would be worth 20% less.

This is why UBI is wealth distribution. Too keep the UBI money from being worthless it can't be printed money, it needs to be money taken from someone else.

[tpallarino]

It's not quite equal due to factors such as money velocity and liquidity. There's also the question of improved productivity/etc. to be had from this redistribution, which would increase effective buying power.

[microcolonel]

I mean, it is the case if UBI contributes to inflation, which it clearly would. Literature or no literature, if the money supply increases, prices will increase unless efficiency improves faster.

[icebraining]

The lack of inflation following QE casts doubt on such a simplified model.

But in any case, you don't have to inflate to have UBI. Just tax money a bit when it gets distributed to shareholders.

[lazulicurio]

There's been plenty of inflation post-QE, just not in the CPI[1]. Housing prices post-crash are higher than ever, fueled by still-easy access to financing. Healthcare is up. Education is up. People are just taking the money that was shoved into the economy by QE and low interest rates, and using it for capital expenditures and investments instead of consumer goods. There's so much supply of consumer goods that the money is flowing to places where demand can't be met as easily.

[1] For example, the CPI tracks "owner's equivalent of rent" instead of raw housing prices https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheet-owners-equivalent-rent-and...

[microcolonel]

> Just tax money a bit when it gets distributed to shareholders.

Well, that would factor in as a depression of dividends for all stocks; that would only reduce the value of holding stocks, sounds like it would backfire tremendously. Then you have the issue of whether or not to tax dividends to foreign-held stocks: if you tax disbursements, it would compound some countries' taxes and ultimately reduce the value of holding american stocks; if you don't tax foreign disbursements, then the people you're looking to tax would set up their holdings somewhere without a dividend tax.

I'm wondering how you think this could work.

[enraged_camel]

>>Literature or no literature, if the money supply increases, prices will increase unless efficiency improves faster.

No. This is one of the pitfalls of economics: overly simplistic models that don't (can't) properly account for external factors, and assume everyone has perfect information and behaves rationally.

The real world does not work that way.

[bsaunder]

I think for UBI to work, it has to be paired with a VAT/sales/transaction tax. Its also not a boolean: no UBI or gushing UBI. In fact it seems much more reasonable and palatable to start small with periodic up/down adjustments to keep the economy running (perhaps very similar to the current fed interest rate adjustments).

Surely at some modest level UBI is likely to greatly benefit the bottom (who will likely immediately inject the money into the economy). As with anything in life, yes, people will argue over it. That's probably a good thing.

[darod]

I think UBI would be unsustainable without additional investments in education. If you are going to be taking public monies, that time should be used to educate oneself or provide some form of public service.

[int_19h]

What's the point, if the jobs keep getting automated? Why should we force people to do "public service" that robots can and will do better?

[darod]

so what do you do with the people?

[int_19h]

"We" don't do anything with people - we don't own them. They do whatever they want to do with themselves. Maybe art and crafts. Maybe some meaningless but interesting research. Maybe just live a life of pleasure. I suspect there'd be a lot of different answers. None of them are wrong.

[enraged_camel]

Why do you have to do anything with the people? Certainly they will find something to do themselves, either hobbies like gardening or more serious endeavors like trying to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars.

[bsaunder]

As others have mentioned, I think requiring education would be a bit of fighting reality (with eventual automation outperforming humans in many tasks). I think, as in the current world, some people will naturally choose to produce and contribute while others will not. Largely this is okay... (open source software, wikipedia, school PTA groups, hacker news, ...). Encouraging people to contribute to society seems like an undebatable good thing, requiring them to do so, not so much.

[nnd]

In this case that won't be UBI, but rather a scholarship grant.

[jpindar]

Which is itself a rather interesting idea.

[base698]

By some estimates we have 20 million opiate addicts. What happens when the opiate addict runs out of his basic income on day 5 of a 31 day month?

[devrandomguy]

What's the difference between running out of a UBI stipend, and running out of a paycheck too early? Either way, that addict is in trouble. At least UBI won't put them on the street when their addiction renders them useless for work.

IMO, long cycles in pay (weeks or a month) are suboptimal. If the money streamed in continuously, slowly, then it would only "run out" for a matter of minutes, although it would still take a while for a useful amount of it to re-accumulate.

[base698]

I definitely don't follow the logic that they won't be on the street. If they run out of money they'll be evicted whether it comes from a job or the UBI.

[bsaunder]

Opiate addiction is an important, yet unrelated problem. With regards to UBI, its no different than a million other addictions (gambling, alcohol, social media, etc)... We, as a society should look at reasonable ways to address addiction issues of all sorts, coupling that solution with UBI implementation doesn't seem like a great idea.