[ChrisLomont]

It's not the purpose of a company to pay enough to completely cover an employees life costs. It is the role of governments to help those in need. Companies pay taxes (profits, part of social security, wages which support taxes, property taxes, and on and on) which helps fund this role of government.

If you require companies to pay enough to support the lifestyles of employees, than any person unable to generate enough value for a company will not get a job, will not have the opportunity to gather job skills to maybe get to that point, and will require full support from the government. And mandated higher wages leads to inflation, which puts the most vulnerable even further behind.

It's fairly reasonable for the least skilled to get a job that pays accordingly, with society picking up the slack. If that person ever increases in skills to move out of this, then they too will pay more in taxes to support the new group in need or least skilled.

[lovich]

I'm pro UBI and think we'd all be better off if everyone got enough to live and then companies could offer a penny a week if they wanted, since employment would not longer be tied to your ability to live.

Regardless of any of those arguments, I was responding to someone who said they hoped wealth redistribution didn't happen in his lifetime, and gave examples of it happening right now

[ChrisLomont]

I'd be pro UBI, but I've never seen the math where it works without violating one of: 1) insane tax rates that traditionally kill economies, 2) lower benefits for those most in need, or 3) simply wanting richer to hand money to poorer so they can not work much.

As such, I'm much more in favor of targeted assistance to make the most use out of limited resources.

And every one I've looked into will suffer from terrible inflation, probably defeating any gains. For example, if a person is willing to work a crap job to pay rent, this will not change no matter the money scaling. Give enough free money, then rents will simply rise (along with all other things for the same reason), to absorb the excess, and the same people will still end having to do the same work to keep their standard of living.

Free money is almost always inflated away by markets.

[lovich]

I don't know that our economy and technology is actually advanced enough to handle full UBI but there are places we could start. A food allowance for everyone would be good for instance and possible. Just no checks, here's x amount of money which will buy you enough food whether or not you use it on food.

Housing is another example. We don't have more empty house than homeless people in America. We don't necessarily have more house in downtown SF or NY but if we could set up a system where you could accept a house, with no real control over where, it would relieve some pressure off of people as a number of the population would accept that offer

I agree on the free markets inflating away free money. University costs are a perfect example where demand was artificially inflated with federal student loans, but the supply was not equally increased so the price just went up. If we started providing basics I'd believe they'd have to be controlled more like a utility. We try not to let market forces control water because weve decided that basic for everyone. So we give a company some garunteed profits in exchange for them not being able to wrong every last dollar out of the economic niche. We lose some efficiency, but gain stability

Targeted assistance might help better, but it's extremely difficult for the government as a single entity to try and provide help on the demand side without constraining the actions on the supply side. The increase in beuracratic costs also eats up much of the benefit

[ChrisLomont]

>A food allowance for everyone would be good for instance and possible.

This would likely just be absorbed into inflation. It's hard to simply give people free money without prices increasing to make the time/work tradeoff for the good simply remain constant.

> you could accept a house,

If you've ever been a landlord, you'd realize people would likely destroy the properties. Many homeless are not homeless because they don't have a dwelling; they're homeless because that have fundamental other issues that make them owning and maintaining any property impossible.

>If we started providing basics I'd believe they'd have to be controlled more like a utility

Any country in history that tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of their economy failed. It's a sure way to get massive shortages and corruption and cronyism.

[lovich]

The houses wouldn't just be for homeless who do have a high incidence of mental illness, it would be for everyone. As for the food money being destroyed by inflation, it might but giving general funds are a lot more likely to stimulate consumption than a targeted stimulus like college loans.

>Any country in history that tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of their economy failed.

There's problems and it wont go perfectly but we should still try to improve everyone's lives. I also disagree that anyone who tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of the economy has failed. Look at water and electricity, those are massive industries that are centrally planned. Central planning is not as efficient as a market based economy and is not the way to grow an industry or develop new technologies. It does work better than a market based economy when it comes to uninterrupted coverage which is why it's used in the utility model

[ChrisLomont]

> it might but giving general funds are a lot more likely to stimulate consumption than a targeted stimulus like college loans.

And vastly lower on total return. Investing in education will likely increase output overall. Investing in food and alcohol and TV will not.

And consumption will not even be increased if inflation eats the money, which it likely (and historically) will. It will simply rescale the dollar to make no one better off.

>There's problems and it wont go perfectly

Ignoring that it has spectacularly failed and destroyed lives and countries is not simply "problems." Repeating things that have been demonstrated to be terrible ideas is again a terrible idea.

>but we should still try to improve everyone's lives

Then let's use targeted use of scarce resources instead of wishful thinking and ignoring history. Otherwise we repeat ideas that sound good but fail such as rent control. The things you present are not new ideas. They have been tried and failed. Ham-handed allocation of scarce resources is almost always worse than targeted allocation. This is simple economics.

>I also disagree that anyone who tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of the economy has failed.

List a country that has succeeded at planning as large a piece as you're suggesting.

>Look at water and electricity, those are massive industries that are centrally planned.

No, they are not. They are locally planned, compete with each other, trade resources, and have plenty of free-market features to trade futures, trade stocks, and compete. They are absolutely not centrally planned.

Venezuela is an example of what happened when the central government takes over such markets.

[DoreenMichele]

I'm pro UBI and think we'd all be better off if everyone got enough to live and then companies could offer a penny a week if they wanted, since employment would not longer be tied to your ability to live.

This will never work.

First, it is a myth that X amount of money provides adequately for everyone, in part because there is no standard issue normal person.

Second, money reduces friction in trade, thereby providing valuable efficiencies. But if income is entirely unrelated to creating or husbanding some kind of value, the entire system can rapidly come unraveled.