[rossenberg79]

Have any proponents of Basic Income policies ever proposed instead of handing out money, we hand out tangible assets instead? A basic house, clothing, food, access to education and healthcare (and maybe some transportation in less walkable areas) seems like it would cover everything a person needs to live without any other source of income, and through economies of scale these things could all become cheaper to provide as opposed to having to depend on sources of money to fund dividends.

[oscilloscope]

The issue here is there needs to be administrative mechanisms to match supply and distribution of assets to demand. If you give someone $20 worth of food, but what they really need is a place to sleep, then that's not an optimally distributed asset. They could maybe trade the food for a place to rest, but this will incur search, transaction, depreciation and negotiation costs. They won't get the full value of the asset.

With cash, the recipient gets $20 worth of value to spend on what they need most. They don't need to barter the asset they received, they can directly participate in consumer markets to get what they need. We also already have the mechanism to generate these cash flows, in the form of interest and dividends on capital assets.

[radicalriddler]

In Australia, the government has produced a debit card that welfare recipients receive 80% of their funds to. It turns out people don't like it when the government tells them where they can shop and what they can/can't buy.

I'm all for tangible assets, but I believe that a majority of people will be against it.

[Jedi72]

I think there should be much more focus on this kind of plan. People dont need income, they need housing etc. My concern is that if you swap out welfare and services for basic income inflation will eat away at it and sooner or later BI wont mean very much and we now have no services either.

[luckylion]

We have that kind of plan in large parts of Europe already. Germany guarantees housing, heat, food etc, but has at some point switched to distributing money instead of vouchers, so individuals have more freedom to decide where/how to spend it.

[ido]

Used to. There is dramatically less public housing today than in the past (a lot of the old stock was sold to private investors) & not nearly enough new stock is being built.

Having a WBS in Berlin is far from ensuring you actually get housing.

[luckylion]

It doesn't rely on public housing, the state will pay the rent for private apartments.

> Having a WBS in Berlin is far from ensuring you actually get housing.

That's true, but that's because of the limit of existing apartments, not because the government doesn't pay for it. Similarly, the government guarantees healthcare, but that doesn't mean that you will always be healthy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a change in the housing market (that is: more building projects in general, but primarily more properties + subsidies given to cooperatives), but it's another issue.

[ido]

Fair enough.

Regarding:

> the government guarantees healthcare, but that doesn't mean that you will always be healthy.

It guarantees you will always get treated if you seek such treatment (within reason, basically all actual medical problems will be treated for free here). I had spent 3 weeks in a hospital including numerous tests (MRI, CT, ultrasound) & concluded in brain surgery.

I paid next to nothing & despite nobody being able to guarantee the procedure would be a success I think this is as close as you can reasonably get.

I would be surprised if the same in the US will not have resulted in a hefty bill, even for most people covered under generous employer-backed health insurance.

[luckylion]

I don't know about the US version, it probably depends on the insurance company. My point is just that there's no guarantee of success, only of trying.

If we need 4 million apartments, but only 3.5m physically exist, we can't decree the remaining 500k into existance, they still need to be built. They are currently not built for unrelated reasons (city planning, permits, speculation etc), not because "we" (as a society) don't want them to be built. I don't see that changing anytime soon in the large cities, because the population is generally against higher population density, construction projects and longer commutes. Policies will not change that, unless massive changes in laws take away citizen's ability to protest and stop new development projects.

[rossenberg79]

Indeed, as housing becomes prohibitively expensive everywhere that people want to live in the US, I doubt someone living off basic income will even be able to afford any kind of home.

If however, we had government built apartment buildings that could be partitioned out and made available for free only to those who need it, that would actually help solve real problems, and wouldn’t even disrupt those who depend on their property values rising. Imagine such buildings right here in San Francisco.

[qqqwerty]

Those exist in SF, and some of them are colloquially known as the projects[1]. The nice thing about UBI, is it avoids the issue of the 'welfare trap'. UBI isn't meant to directly impact the housing situation in SF, it's meant to help in places like Detroit, where the collapse of the auto-industry could have been mitigated somewhat had there been a UBI to help support the affected individuals and keep money flowing into the local economy. And this would also have a second order effect of relieving pressure on the high growth economies like NY/SF/LA, as folks would not need to immediately migrate away from low/no-growth areas in search of work.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Life-at-the-bottom-S-F-s...

[SubiculumCode]

I do not see how UBI and a program to increase the housing supply are mutually exclusive. Indeed, housing is one of the few areas of real concern for UBI because the shortage of supply can lead to inflation in house prices with UBI present. Therefore a good plan to increase the housing supply plus a UBI to provide financial stability would seem to be the way to go.

[SubiculumCode]

Yes, this has been proposed. However, I do not like it. I believe people know and should have control of how they spend a basic income. Basic assets sounds to me a lot like "everyone gets a Lada" the horrible car of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, I do not see how this is better than just giving an income. Income is more flexible and fungible. There are already economies of scale in a free market.

[grahamburger]

But what if someone gambles away their basic income, or has it scammed from them? Tough luck, back to the streets?

[SubiculumCode]

They get some more next month.

The idea of basic income is not equality of outcomes, its equality of opportunity.

The problem I have with most socialist policies is not that funds shouldn't be provided to help the poor/everyone, but because the plans often are designed around the belief that individuals should not be trusted to make decisions about their own lives.

I believe in a fiscally liberal libertarian policy..Federal money should be distributed to individuals and local governments without any strings attached, because only the Federal government has the power of printing currency to meet the public good.

In aggregate, I do trust people to make good decisions, and those that do will get rewarded.

[luckylion]

> They get some more next month.

So no food for them for the rest of the month? Good luck with that.

[zensavona]

> But what if someone gambles away their {salaried | welfare | annuity | retirement | pension} income, or has it scammed from them? Tough luck, back to the streets?

Either people are treated like adults and manage their own finances, or we are all wards of the state to some degree.

[grahamburger]

> But what if someone gambles away their {salaried | welfare | annuity | retirement | pension} income, or has it scammed from them? Tough luck, back to the streets?

This is exactly what happens today, and it's ostensibly the problem that UBI is attempting to solve. If UBI doesn't solve that problem then it's just a very expensive waste of resources.

[luckylion]

> Either people are treated like adults and manage their own finances, or we are all wards of the state to some degree.

If they were adults with the ability to manage their finances, make smart decisions etc, only a tiny fraction of them would have to rely on the state in the first place, so that's not convincing to me.

[tuukkah]

If you lose all your money so that you have nothing to eat for the month, then you need social care for sorting out issues.

[luckylion]

That's kinda my point: UBI is supposed to replace all other welfare programs. There won't be anything else.

[SubiculumCode]

Perhaps after having little to eat, they'll spend their $1,000 freedom dividend on some food on the 1st of the month. Lesson learned.

[carlob]

In many European countries gambling is essentially a public monopoly. Gambling away your income is the same as volunteering to pay more taxes.

[pawelmurias]

They can then apply to the potatoes + a bunk bed plan.

[rossenberg79]

> I believe people know and should have control of how they spend a basic income.

Why? If it’s not being spent on those things anyway isn’t the person just making a financial mistake?

[SubiculumCode]

Because I believe in a free people. I believe in market solutions. I believe people should be allowed to take risks. I believe people often know what they need more than someone who lives far away.

[mantas]

They're not free people if they live on UBI handouts.

[SubiculumCode]

Its not a handout in my American Centric opinion. It is a dividend or inheritance from our forefathers building a kick-ass country the likes of which earth has never before seen.

[mantas]

IMO it's handout if it's government deciding how much someone gets. And when it's not based on the person's contribution.

You can't be a free man if your wellbeing 100% depends on someone else's decisions regardless of your actions.

[luckylion]

And when they make a mistake, do we just give them new money because they've put all the old money into the lottery?

[basicplus2]

Lottery takings should go to help paying for welfare

[jdblair]

Yes, next month we do.

[luckylion]

I personally have a few extra calories that can last me through a few weeks if need be. What about those that can't? Let them starve? Create a welfare service to save them? Hope for charities?

Sounds a lot like we'd just push the problem a few meters away and then run into it again.

[Jedi72]

Believe away Dorothy, reality is a small % of the population, i.e. millions of people, are pretty much screw-ups. Welfare is the blanket solution for how we deal with it. Giving everyone BI and taking away peoples welfare is going to fail in all these cases, so will fail generally. Even here in Australia where we have good welfare we still have government housing, soup kitchens and tonmes of other real-assistance programs.

[SubiculumCode]

Having lived poor, known a lot of poor people, and having lived on welfare as I got my PhD. (first gen college student), I can say that you are wrong about most poor people. They generally make good decisions, given their situation and means. Those that don't are usually addicted to drugs, and they already trade their food benefits away for those drugs.

Welfare (at least in America) has all the wrong incentives that make it difficult to improve your situation (e.g. lose benefits and all your time if you get a minimum wage job, and who is going to watch the kids now).

[Jedi72]

Yes there are poor people who work hard. There are also rich people who become crackheads. I never actually mentioned poor people I just said some people are screw-ups, which is true.

[atmosx]

There are currently two main approaches, the libertarian approach who says that social welfare should be exchanged for money, which is exactly what you are proposing and the social approach which supports the idea that both are necessary, so BI should come on-top of social welfare.

The argument for the first approach is that people know better their needs and that money is not enough to cover both while the proponents of the second approach say that it's a false dichotomy, giving money to a poor family without access to healthcare or education is likely to increase the gap between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, etc. So the current cycle we're trying to break, will become more vicious.

I took for granted that we should hand out both, unconditionally.

[AnthonyMouse]

> while the proponents of the second approach say that it's a false dichotomy, giving money to a poor family without access to healthcare or education is likely to increase the gap between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, etc. So the current cycle we're trying to break, will become more vicious

Which is a silly argument, because anyone who needs those things and is given the equivalent money can use it to buy them.

Indeed, it gives them less opportunity because it deoptimizes what they can use the money for. If you need education, there are merit-based scholarships. There are creative solutions like your father taking a job as a janitor at a university where the children of full-time staff pay no tuition. Or getting a two year degree at a community college which gets you a lower middle class job instead of minimum wage which gets you enough money to pay for a bachelor's degree over a few years in night school. And then you can take the government money as money, save it up and use it to start your own business.

But if the money has to be used for school, then you use it for school, any ingenious alternative method of paying for school is for naught, and you graduate still poor and have to take the first job offer you receive in the rat race because as soon as you get kicked out of the dorms you immediately need first and last month's rent plus the security deposit.

[atmosx]

> Which is a silly argument, because anyone who needs those things and is given the equivalent money can use it to buy them.

Nothing about BI is silly, BI could make or break our future. All assumptions should be double-tested and nothing should be taken lightly.

> [...] because anyone who needs those things and is given the equivalent money can use it to buy them.

Cancer treatment for example in Europe is mostly mostly free. In Cuba is totally free. In India can be cheap. In US is very expensive.

> Indeed, it gives them less opportunity because it deoptimizes what they can use the money for. If you need education, there are merit-based scholarships.

Scholarships are for the 1% of the population. I am not sure we should take them into account. Plus scholarships are based on scores. A kid growing up in a troubled family has much smaller chance of getting one compared to his peers.

> There are creative solutions like your father taking a job as a janitor at a university where the children of full-time staff pay no tuition.

I'm not sure we're on the same page here, what problem do you think that BI is trying to solve???

[AnthonyMouse]

> Cancer treatment for example in Europe is mostly mostly free. In Cuba is totally free. In India can be cheap. In US is very expensive.

Healthcare is a debate unto itself, but the short version is that all else equal a given amount in cash to buy health treatment/insurance should be no worse than the same cost in tax dollars worth of government health coverage, and better because it gives the individual the choice between how high of a deductible they want vs. how much of the premiums they get to keep in their pocket etc.

> Scholarships are for the 1% of the population. I am not sure we should take them into account. Plus scholarships are based on scores. A kid growing up in a troubled family has much smaller chance of getting one compared to his peers.

Every individual thing is for 1% of the population. The point is there are a hundred different things. One person gets a scholarship, another needs food money more than housing money because their aunt lives near the school, another has a brother in the same major and can share books etc.

> I'm not sure we're on the same page here, what problem do you think that BI is trying to solve???

Among other things, it's trying to solve the problem that the only way to get ahead with low resources is to make efficient use of what you have, but assistance that is required to be spent in bureaucratically-specified ways is a de facto prohibition on that.

[fastbeef]

[flagged]

[rossenberg79]

Not really, all property is still owned by the individuals exclusively.

[dgellow]

But you then have no freedom concerning the choice of good. With a basic income you’re free to use the money as you want, so for example if you don’t want some goods and want to instead invest everything in a business idea while sharing your parents house, living almost naked, without spending on education, you’re free to do so.

With your suggestion you assume what people want and provide something that kind of match that (people don’t want a house, they want a specific kind of house at a specific location, same for the clothes), while the basic income approach is just a tool to help people participate in the market, without any guess of what people actually and the full logistical process required to distribute those goods.

[luckylion]

That is, until you tax it to finance the basic income ;)