Universal Basic Income sounds like a convenient way to prevent the various ways to create inequality and centralize wealth. Very curious how the experiments in progress will turn out.
UBI isn't the clear choice everyone makes it out to be. I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth. But, fundamentally, UBI is just a welfare program with way more money pouring in so it guarantees a livable income to everyone. We could achieve the same effect by just increasing the progressive welfare. We could remove those welfare cliffs where people lose money by making more money by smoothing out the curves. But, UBI does something more by taking money from those who need it and giving it to those who don't. Every dollar going to an upper middle class tech worker is a dollar not going towards uplifting the lowest of our society. We should care a little about efficiency because UBI will be CRAZY expensive and CRAZY anti-business when we increase taxes on them. There are less costly ways to achieve better income equality like better education or increased welfare which don't hurt business. Businesses could operate with way thinner profits sure, but other countries offer other options.
> I'm all for lowering inequality and spreading out wealth
I'd rather be for lowering inequality by spreading out the means of production, so people could be much more self reliant. This idea is called Distributism (the "Three acres and a cow" slogan of 1910) and stands in contrast to both capitalism and socialism. I see UBI as a demeaning form of help, that infantilises population and makes them state dependent, while self-reliance is based on one's own efforts and leads to better outcomes and increased self-esteem.
Remember, if big corporations won't give people jobs any more, we always have one job left - taking care of ourselves directly. Self-reliance is a virtue, UBI is the opposite of that.
We're headed in a technological direction that will empower self-reliance more and more in the future. By using solar energy, 3d-printing, agro-bots, community ISPs, credit co-ops, and automation in all forms, a small community could become self-reliant without backbreaking work. A social-network of skilled people (gigs) would replace regular jobs. We just need to keep these technologies very accessible and to help people develop solutions.
Self-reliance is connected to the startup economy, the bootstrapping mindset, the anti-trust doctrine and creativity. It's the way to a good life without the perils of financial redistribution.
This is really interesting. I wish more people were focused on this as opposed to basic income. It mentions Christian Democrats being proponents of it, is there a major modern political figure you can point to?
The populism that the Republican and Democratic parties ate up in the US from about 1890 to 1920 had a lot of similar ideas. Woodrow Wilson (ignore his racism for the sake of argument) had a similar belief about government, as I understand it.
i share your hope that a future where technology allows people to fire their boss rather than just allowing bosses to fire their workers is possible, and would be a wonderful outcome, but agrobots can't grow food without land. that's a problem. an even worse problem is that, given that self-reliant people don't kick anything up to anyone, they're vulnerable to the direct application of violence.
But, UBI does something more by taking money from those who need it and giving it to those who don't. Every dollar going to an upper middle class tech worker is a dollar not going towards uplifting the lowest of our society.
The tech worker will be paying a lot more in taxes than the amount of their UBI check. It's mathematically equivalent to them not getting UBI at all and having a somewhat lower tax rate.
True, why go through the motions of taking money then giving it back. Sounds like a great way to waste money through government inefficiency. It could possibly be efficient, but we should expect it not to be.
UBI is expensive, but it also looks more expensive than it is, because for many people it's basically a tax rebate. You have to look at what people would get net of taxes.
Basic income is bullshit that's getting loudly advocated from the top of society as a convenient way to tamper down social discontent while doing nothing about the unfair inequality at the root of many societies.
In the middle of Dallas is a small city never actually incorporated by the city called Highland Park. This is where George W. Bush and the upper middle class lives. The people who grow up in Highland Park will go to some of the best high schools in the nation. They'll be well trained and well prepared to go to colleges like Harvard and Princeton and Yale. These people end up running major corporations and dominating politics.
Meanwhile, if you drive ten miles south, you'll end up looking at public schools that look like prisons, that are desperately underfunded. These students, already having hard lives, will struggle to succeed, a large number will not graduate. There are no million dollar payouts or election victories for these people. They end up being the poor sods that the wealthy academics, politicians, and business people talk about when from their perch they are able to finally read about and observe human misery. But if you look at their actions, they will continue to take and take and take from these people. If not that, they benefit the most from talking about them.
Every city has a Highland Park (Detroit, certainly). Check out the people who run most major companies. They come from those places to a large extent. Name a major politician that doesn't have elite school roots. That's not to say these people are bad or evil, but if we're going to be serious about ending this charade of meritocracy, we've gotta stop rewarding that. Basic income is more of the same. It's bullshit that doesn't strike at the heart of the problem.
Netflix has a new series called Dirty Money. I thought the first episode about VW was pretty damn good, but the second is fascinating and sad. It's meritocracy in action. We have lots of practices in society which are business as usual which are basically scams. The poor are the most vulnerable to these scams.
"It's bullshit that doesn't strike at the heart of the problem." - so what is the heart of the problem and what would strike at the heart of it? I don't see any convincing answers in the rest of your comment. You rile about Highland Parks - but what about it is that really the root of the problem? And what you propose to do about it?
There are many problems with UBI - one is the cost, another one is that it is only for citizens - but at least it would give everyone a safety net enabling them to think less hand to mouth and maybe take some risks, maybe make some longer term plans. If it worked it would be an improvement.
What is basic income? If you asked 15 people on HN, you're gonna get 15 different answers, because it is a vague belief that throwing money at a system that does not serve the people is going to serve the people.
I've done this math before on HN, so people are probably tired of hearing it, but if you want to give 300 million Americans $10k a year it's going to cost about 3 trillion dollars. The federal budget this year was 4 trillion dollars (and that is a bloated budget).
The suggestion is that in the middle of implementing the largest spending program ever (we shutdown over passing a budget), we are going to manage to get rid of entitlement programs. This is pie in the sky. Why would either major party do this? Their constituencies are tied to those programs. This 10k a year also does not assume healthcare and removes any true fallback for the poorest of the poor. You spend your 10k somehow, you're straight out of luck. If you don't remove those safety nets, then you're neglecting one of the major arguments for basic income.
This is ignoring how much it would suck to live off of 10k a year. It might let someone middle class buy some new stuff, it's not lifting people out of poverty, many of whom, if you look at the numbers, actually receive much more than 10k in value a year off existing programs. It's taking money from them, bloating the budget, for what exactly?
Why increase the budget by 3 trillion dollars (the bigger question is how), when we have a whole range of options, some targeted, some not, that are much cheaper? Would proper healthcare improve many people's lives? Of course it would. How do you propose increasing the budget that much if not by greatly increasing taxes on the wealthy and big business (and remember, they have the power)? If you're gonna goto that trouble, why not do things like busting up some monopolies first and increasing competitiveness in marts? this is a tried and true tactic.
More importantly, do you believe the major parties and the leaders of those parties serve the people or serve themselves? Unless you're very idealistic, the answer seems obvious. If we reformed government to actually serve people better, maybe that would have some good outcomes, and it wouldn't cost 3 trillion a year to find out someone was selling us a dream and not reality. Has any political plan ever gone as well as advertised? Why would it be different this time?
Basic income has very limited testing at scale. That should make you immediately skeptical of claims about it. Nobody really knows what impact it would have. Most software devs for good reason would not advocate for rewriting an entire system in a new language, they'd advocate gradual refactoring (we've all been young though). Basic income is a blind rewrite in a new framework. We've got many smaller things to try, why not those, instead of dying on the hill that is passing basic income through Congress?
I like the idea of basic income, it's just I've yet to see anyone propose a way of doing it that actually makes sense, that is realistic about political realities. One of those realities is the notion of political capital. You only have so much to spend. Basic income is super expensive and it distracts from solvable problems.
To pass basic income you have to reform the system. Figure out how to reform the system first and then worry about basic income. If you reform the system, maybe basic income isn't necessary at all.
Basic income is that everyone is guaranteed not $10k/yr, which is a measly pittance that just entrenches poverty, but a living salary, enough that nobody has to work.
It also certainly does NOT involve getting rid of existing programs like public healthcare, public education, public transport, etc.
That's one of those many definitions of basic income.
It's not a wrong definition, but if you want to keep safety nets, add healthcare, and add basic income, you're looking at an absolutely massive budget. Would the libertarian proponents of basic income be for that? Not sure. But again, the question is: how do you do that?
It may be a screed. We could get into the numbers of why basic income doesn't work and talk about the realities of implementing it, but nobody needs to hear me blabbering more than I have.
If the tone sounds exasperated, it's because I don't believe "basic income" is a panacea that is a real or considered answer to what the article is addressing which is inequality due to a "meritocratic" system. It's become a meme.
Here's a UBI debate for the interested: https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/universal-basi...