[allovernow]

The fact that covid is screwing the world right now does not mean that we should all be getting UBI under non emergency conditions. Putting Romney's plan in with Yang's is a conflation here because one is only for a single unprecedented global emergency, not everyday life.

That said, UBI is quite literal wealth redistribution. You take taxes from the haves and give the cash directly to the hands of the have nots. There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

[lukifer]

Bear in mind, we already engage in significant wealth redistribution. There's an argument that it's more efficient to do by writing checks, rather than through complex federal bureaucracies. It's the reason that Milton Friedman favored a negative income tax, and that GiveDirectly.org is considered by the Effective Altruism community to be one of the best charities.

[dmix]

What hasn't been established and what I think is a fair question, is whether this could ever practically roll out while simultaneously shutting down the existing welfare/disability/etc systems. As others have mentioned if it doesn't work people (see: vested political interests) will want a way to roll it back.

So in almost any practical case they will have to be running at the same time and will never truly be a net-neutral fiscal operation (assuming this is the outcome in practice) for at least the first 1-3+yrs.

Adopting UBI means increasing taxes, period. Even under ideal situations where the fiscal and productivity gains of replacing the current overly selective and bureaucratic processes, which significantly favours full-employment or zero-employment/disabilities in a black and white way with nothing in between - as opposed to the broader spectrum that markets can support when monthly deposits are not limited (including self-employed, disability, welfare, [un]employment income, etc) via far more efficient distributions systems replacing top-heavy systems, start to really take effect.

The whole "we'll just tax the 1%" hand-wavy stuff is not a good enough answer here. The amount of times that excuse has been used during political campaigns without congress doing anything significantly different is enough to be skeptical. As it then is no longer just UBI but UBI + significant tax code changes.

I personally don't think some trial runs in small parts of Canada or towns in individual states will be enough to prove much of anything. Especially given the vast amount of disparate systems these UBI systems would currently encompass across both federal/state governments in a big spectrum of economic/political environments across a large geographic area - which can't realistically be tested without it being a truly national affair. Of course federalism was designed exactly for this type of problem (individual states experimenting with policies so the cycle of progress is not forever limited to a long series of impractical all or nothing proposals across of bunch of states who disagree with each other) but the US has long ago sacrificed states government power for top heavy federal/executive run systems and this is the reality in which UBI must operate within.

[lukifer]

Valid concerns.

> whether this could ever practically roll out while simultaneously shutting down the existing welfare/disability/etc systems

Yang's plan was for UBI to be opt-in, in exchange for waiving access to many existing programs (food stamps, etc). If he had gotten traction beyond 5%, we could've expected major pushback from the left on this; similar to M4A, in many ways it's more helpful to the lower middle class than the working class. But I suspect many would still vastly prefer check in hand, both due to the complex bureaucracy (and anxiety) of the existing system, and the elimination of poverty traps.

I think this is a reasonable way to shrink spending on existing "entitlements" without cutting them altogether; and would not only offset the cost, but grease the wheels of political viability (in a case of strange bedfellows, it aligns with the Paul Ryan / Steve Bannon "deconstruct the administrative state" playbook).

> The whole "we'll just tax the 1%" hand-wavy stuff is not a good enough answer here.

True: we'd have to raise more in tax revenue, full stop. I'd like to see a lot more enforcement and closing of loopholes within our existing tax code (Apple parking its cash in Ireland, etc). Easier said than done, I know. That aside, I think a micro-tax on high-frequency stock trades, and/or Yang's VAT, are both reasonable approaches.

My favorite strategy for raising public revenue, and wealth redistribution in particular, is the Pigovian Tax [0], which has an ancillary (primary?) benefit of setting a price on a negative externality. This is the proposed solution from "The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History" [1] on climate change; a sufficient carbon dividend could likely pay for a massive portion of UBI, though it would have to be ramped up gradually. I think there's a strong case for applying the concept in other domains as well (single-use plastics, for instance).

Finally, it's worth considering that all the hand-wavy trickle-down logic of "supply-side economics" might actually work when pointed in the other direction [2], like a stimulus package that never stops. In addition to reducing silent inefficiencies of economic struggle (addiction, short-term thinking, anxiety-induced low executive function), most of those receiving the dividend would spend it, increasing economic activity and therefore tax revenue. (There are potential problems with this model, the biggest being the risk of the lion's share going to landlords; but that opens up a whole other rabbit hole of Land Value Tax, Henry George, etc.; we arguably have a rent-seeking problem in that domain already, inducing a hidden tax on the working class with or without UBI.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

[1] https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_economics

[dmix]

Thanks for your answer, I’ll dig into your links tonight.

[dntbnmpls]

> That said, UBI is quite literal wealth redistribution. You take taxes from the haves and give the cash directly to the hands of the have nots.

Society is wealth distribution. Wealth doesn't exist outside of society. The US's existence is wealth distribution. Stealing land from natives to give to settlers. Stealing african's labor and distributing the wealth among slave owners. The rights to oil, resources, etc are wealth distribution.

Also, no wealth of any significance is ever earned by an individual. I hate how people say, Bezos, Gates, etc earned their wealth. Bezos didn't earn $100 billion. There is no way one person can physically earn that much. Bezos can't physically sell 100 billion items from the dollar menu. Wealth is generated by laws and cooperation and a fair/unfair distribution of value generated. Simple as that.

Also, don't give me the "great man" bullshit. Had bezos never been born, we'd still have an amazon of some kind. Jobs death didn't end Apple. There's always a "great man" to fill any void.

> There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

Agreed. It's probably impossible to reach a happy medium since people always want more and whichever side gets a slight advantage will use it to further advantage themselves until society skews to one side and collapses.

Also, the other side of the coin is at what point does wealth accumulation become unethical and/or counterproductive.

[nikofeyn]

are you seriously arguing that heavily taxing insanely wealthy people is unethical? i mean, we're literally living in a moment in which public school closures means many kids don't have reliable access to food anymore. there are plenty of other examples in which people are seriously struggling. and somehow taxing the wealthy is unethical. the fact that you bifurcate people into the "haves" and "have nots" speaks volumes.

and of course UBI is literally wealth distribution. what would you consider public schools, roads, infrastructure, and other things paid with taxes?

[frobozz]

> are you seriously arguing that heavily taxing insanely wealthy people is unethical?

I don't think that is what allovernow is saying at all.

> There's a point where it becomes unethical and/or counterproductive...but where that point is perhaps remains to be seen.

So, potentially

- Tax the billionaires down to 999millionaires. Not unethical or counterproductive in the slightest.

- Implement a tax that makes every worker's net income identical. Probably both counterproductive and unethical.

- Implement a tax/UBI system that puts a worker's net income below that of a non-worker. Definitely counterproductive, unsustainable and unethical.

The point that allovernow is describing is somewhere between those extremes.

[sokoloff]

Not GP, but I think there’s a reasonable argument that taxing income for the purpose of funding essential government services is on stronger ethical footing than taxing wealth for the specific purpose of wealth redistribution.

The latter is IMO not ethical if it excessively punishes productive activity. In this case “impractical is unethical”, even as I’d prefer a UBI world in many ways.

[skybrian]

Yep, it's redistribution. To tell what's really going on (like how progressive it is) you need to combine it with the revenue side and what the net gain or loss for each person is.

Everyone getting the same amount is symbolic equality. Symbolism can be important, though!

UBI looks far more expensive than it actually is because for many people, they'd be getting some of their own money back, similar to a tax refund. It's still expensive, though.

[manigandham]

Technically Yang's UBI plan is that everyone receives it, regardless of wealth. Also there are plenty of entitlement programs already and replacing them with UBI would probably yield less total cost from simpler implementation and less bureaucracy, while making it more available.

[jariel]

"Also there are plenty of entitlement programs already and replacing them with UBI would probably yield less total cost from simpler implementation and less bureaucracy, while making it more available."

This is a fundamental flaw in the argument.

1) That a 'single program' will be cheaper. Maybe, but maybe not. My government spent more than $1 Billion implementing a simple 'gun registry' for police to store gun records.

(They spent $100M on a 'judicial assessment' of Aboriginal community's historical crimes - not a single study or dollar was spent on scientific analysis, research. Just lawyers.)

2) That any way shape or form those 'other programs' will disappear or a single government worker will lose their jobs.

The most powerful bodies in the world are Public Sector Unions. Tell me, what is the turnover rate for such jobs? How often are people laid off? Fired? What salary do they earn compared to private sector peers? How often are government agencies that have lost their material relevance shut down?

So aside from all of the regular arguments about UBI, social impact, cost, redistribution ... all of the arguments about 'efficiency' are completely moot. Government projects are generally extremely inefficient - they tend to work best through regulation, and/or competitive bidding for work that can be independently assessed, or when there's a social element. For example, road work and construction: we can roughly estimate cost, there are many bidders, and it's outsourced, not done directly by gov staff. This is efficient. Public schools are roughly efficient. Garbage collection. etc.

[manigandham]

Your first example shows that government is terribly inefficient so a single program that just writes checks should be better than many programs with complex requirements and giant overhead.

As for the second, just because some labor unions are notoriously rent seeking doesn't mean we don't have mass changes in govt organizations. Programs are shutdown all the time. I doubt those labor unions would have a good argument against this anyway. What are they going to say? We're keeping our jobs so we can keep you from getting paid?

[dls2016]

Some would argue quantitative easing is wealth redistribution (or directly leads too it). And many more believe we’ve reached the point where it’s useless, if not counterproductive.

[PopeDotNinja]

All taxation and spending is wealth redistribution.

[atq2119]

Heck, almost everything anybody does related to the economic sphere is wealth (re)distribution.

Property rights are wealth redistribution away from the commons and towards a relatively small number of individuals. Does that make them bad? Well, I'd say maybe, it depends on the details...

We need to work against the effectiveness of this rhetoric trick where only some things are labelled "redistribution" to show them in a negative light.

[PopeDotNinja]

How about calling it legacy building. We'll need to find some way to credit them to make it feel legit. Maybe let people pay a premium to bid on certain projects.

"This year's interstate highway funding brought to you by the Koch Brothers."

[sesteel]

In order for capitalism to work, money has to change hands. Typically, money changes hands for an item or service of perceived value. Again, typically, there is a profit calculated into that transaction. That small fraction which constitutes the profit is often wealth transferring from one person to another. Over time, that wealth coalesces into fewer and fewer hands. There are many ways to combat this pooling of wealth into the hands of the few, but none of the traditional ways appear to work in the face of automation. Capitalism will fail if people do not have money to spend.

[lukifer]

We exchange value based on price discovery; but prices are determined by leverage, which is heavily tilted by pre-existing capital. One doesn't notice this at a micro-transaction level (how many shoes for how many chickens), but once one zooms out to the balance of power between labor and capital, one clearly holds all the cards ~90% of the time.