[zozbot234]

This study has nothing to do with taxes, though. It's talking about unconditional handouts managed by GiveDirectly (a charity, and widely considered a highly efficient one), targeting households in extreme poverty. Much of this could be expected, BTW; since the grants were fairly large, the GDP-boosting effect was probably due to recipients acquiring some sorts of physical assets and kickstarting broader economic growth. These dynamics would only apply to a very limited extent in high-income countries where automation is a concern - even though UBI is quite likely to be a good idea for a variety of other reasons.

[iguy]

> This study has nothing to do with taxes, though. It's talking about unconditional handouts

Sure, but it's being read as a pilot study for such things "at home", where it would most certainly have to be funded by taxes. Or at least this reading is GP's explanation for why people get angry.

When people are only discussing how best to spend 3rd world development aid, then nobody gets all that angry.

[grok2]

Yeah, I was responding to why this generates anger. It's not directly about taxes, but about how the people who generate the taxes spend large portions of their day "working" to produce the income that gets taxed while the social net helps people who aren't"working" -- yeah the issue is more complex than that, but I think the anger is due to thinking of this simplistically in a cause-and-effect manner. UBI appears to be a form of social net which might encourage people to not work.

[zozbot234]

> UBI appears to be a form of social net which might encourage people to not work.

UBI is actually the only form of social net that tries its best to limit this.

(And it's not an easy problem to solve - a redistribution arrangement like UBI inherently involves some sort of "means testing" and must be phased out as one reaches the breakeven point where one starts "paying into" the system.

People who tell you that this isn't a thing and that UBI "gives money to everyone, or to the rich" are totally clueless. They fail to understand the basics about balancing a budget, never mind actual, non-trivial economics.)

[CuriousSkeptic]

Depends on where you put the emphasis. Most UBI discussion (amongst proponents) start from the assumption that it has to be a certain size with various disagreements of the proper sized vs budget concerns.

I think that is the wrong focus. If we instead start with deciding “just” financing options, an make a public dividend it would be a good start.

One study concluded that an unconditional payout as low as $50/month can help some people tremendously (IIRC this was in Sweden)

“Just” financing to me is to recognize that some resources are truly part of the commons, and any expropriation should generate rent for everyone. Land being the typical example, but also things like fishing rights, carbon emission rights, or why not ipv4 networks and dns-domians.

[marcusverus]

I'm not comfortable implementing any form of UBI. In my estimation, UBI will create an easy, explicit mechanism for vote-buying, which will be too much for politicians and voters to resist and would drive the benefit ever upwards.

If everyone gets $50 UBI bucks in the mail every month, and candidate A runs on the platform of raising it to $100 per month, they will guarantee themselves the support of some significant self-interested portion of society for whom this would be a net benefit. Other candidates would be pressured to make similar offers to compete. We already see this kind of thing (farm subsidies, student loan forgiveness, etc), UBI would be more explicit/immediate, and expand the affected block to include every eligible voter. Just how hesitant politicians are to make the needed reforms to social security, even though we all know that it needs to happen in some form. UBI would be worse.