[_heimdall]

The author seems to effectively argue for UBI as a solution to bullshit jobs. People waste a lot of time today in jobs that produce no real value, instead the government should pay people a similar wage to not do those jobs.

> There is no such thing as a UBI trial. There is no such thing as a UBI pilot program. Instead, there are cash transfer experiments being branded as UBI.

More strange to me, the author includes a quote arguing that UBI can't be tested at all, it must be fully implemented to test it. That really starts to sound like snake oil to me, and a huge risk as the argument is then that we should upend the economy based on an untestable hypothesis.

What I never see mentioned in arguments for UBI is also telling though. Namely that the whole idea for UBI is based squarely in Marxism. I'd rather not try out untestable ideas based in the fundamentals of Karl Marx. Read about the man's life at all and you'll really begin to question why anyone listened to such a person.

[jeltz]

UBI is not at all based in Marxism. The idea is older than Marxism and almost entirely unrelated to it. That's probably why you never see it mentioned.

[_heimdall]

My point isn't that Marx invented the idea of a UBI, I don't actually recall him specifically writing about the concept. My point is that the idea of a UBI is rooted in very much the same arguments as what Marx wrote so much about.

[fuzzfactor]

"These are my principles. If you don't like them, well, I have others." -- Marx

BI is not for work, it's for when there is not enough opportunity for work that is productive enough to both better the worker measurably plus provide a return for the master.

Regardless of whether it's a shrinking economy everywhere or just one of the selected demographics or career fields which opportunity can be found receding from, or even "just" creeping credentialization with its growing exclusionary effect.

Plus what if there was never enough opportunity to begin with in one way or another?

What BI is really for is so that nobody ends up with absolutely nothing. On a regular basis while the rest of the world has descended into a situation where it's not enough to be fully out of debt and ahead of the game quite well at any one point. Not that many decades ago this had been enough to gain a secure enough foothold along the path to upward economic mobility. The need for cash outlays on a monthly basis has skyrocketed, just to be able to participate in the same society as those millions having only barely-productive jobs. And the threshold between productive vs barely-productive can be a faster-moving goalpost that can provide a distorting illusion to "smart" people no different than anybody else.

A country can't even afford the most minimal "welfare" payouts to a small minority of the most disenfranchised citizens if the country itself is a "poor" country in a serious way that would need to be remedied beforehand. But beyond a certain point any country that was successful as a whole to a certain extent would be able to afford to fix it at least for a minimally significant portion of citizens whom it would help the most. And the most detrimental effect it could have on the overall economy would naturally be minimally significant. And that's the cost for a place that is not a rich country at all and can barely afford anything like this. Some people are just better at math than others.

In a truly rich country you have overwhelming resources compared to that, so you can draw the line where a lot more significant percentage of citizens can be kept away from the zero mark. How rich are you capable of being anyway?

There's not much difference between now and over 50 years ago when the continuous devaluation of currency was commenced. Other than scale. Back then only a small minority of citizens was left with absolutely nothing on a regular basis whether they had a job or not and whether that job was nearly as financially beneficial to others more so than the worker. A handful of people would be using food stamps at the supermarket, now it's every single cashier multiple times per hour.

People paying the workers are so heavily in debt now it can't work the same any more, and the workers themselves are even worse off at the same jobs.

But it's the same system, only the balance of wealth has changed and the buffer that has been increasingly absorbed is the citizen's resource level needed to avoid being pushed to zero by ever-more-prevailing forces.

Now no matter how you do the math, it's not a small minority of the most opportunity-denied citizens who need something on a regular basis to keep from going to zero. It's getting to be a serious majority who are increasingly at risk and the sooner something is done about it the better since it could take quite a while to take effect and the first salvo might not have enough smart people making the decisions.

UBI is not some new concept, it's just regular BI all grown up since it seems like everybody is at risk now, no differently than only the worst-off were facing before so much of a country's wealth had been extracted from the citizens to who knows where. It took a while but it's just about squeezed dry.

A valid argument against UBI is that everybody doesn't actually need it yet, but you've got to remember that for things to continue trending in the direction having the greatest financial momentum, more people will be needing it if the true beneficiaries (rent-seekers) are to continue experiencing the growth prospects they have in mind.

[_heimdall]

Sure, I don't disagree with you about what the concept of a (U)BI is. I am arguing, though, that fundamentally a UBI maps very well to Marx's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" writings.

Basic income on the scale of welfare programs for a small minority of the most poor aren't quite the same. A UBI is a much more broad program, even if it doesn't help every single person it does attempt to prop up a large chunk of the population. At that point we're solving the wrong problem.

That were we definitely agree. A growing number of people in the US are falling behind. We need to fix the root cause of that though, the lack of money is only an obvious symptom. If our social, political, or economic systems are the underlying problem then let's fix those. Throwing a UBI at the problem creates even more chaos in the system and we simply don't know what the side effects will be.

Worse, if a UBI isn't the right answer we will have wasted all of our attention and political capital forcing it through. We almost certainly would walk away feeling like we solved it and end up in a worse spot when we're blind to the still growing problem. Roe v Wade comes to mind, we hung our hat on the victory of one supreme court decision when what was really needed was legislation codifying the decision.

[fuzzfactor]

Snake oil is snake oil, but what if the economy is already upended?

Plus after all recommended remedies have been tried, the only possible solution is to implement something that is not recommended.

You're going to need a different kind of oil . . .

Not my downvote btw, corrective upvote actually, you're making a lot of sense all over the place, along with many others.

[_heimdall]

Do you think we have tried all the recomended remedies? And who do we look to to define what is and isn't recommended?

We're in uncharted territory here, at least in modern history. At best experts can hypothesize about different interventions but they are ultimately making assumptions that frequently go unspoken.

The biggest category of remedies that I rare, if ever, see recommended is removing interventions from a complex system that has gone awry. In this case, instead of adding more layers to the economy by having the government give most people free money, potentially by racking uppre debt, maybe we should be reducing costs and liabilities. I wouldn't pretend to know what can or should be removed, but I would love to see honest research and consideration going towards what a remedy may look like if we come at it from the angle of subtraction.

[fuzzfactor]

>we should be reducing costs and liabilities.

This is the only real answer and the ongoing failure there is bad enough, but it's getting worse not better at a growing rate, and the few that do benefit when the majority suffer have had the upper hand financially for so long now, there may never be any possible reduction. I think this underlies a lot of the confusion about a solution since there's been increasing doubt for generations that there even is a solution to costs that didn't used to exist. It's been over 50 full years since I saw this accelerate through the roof and I already thought how was all of this bearable before that? It was plain to see it was unsustainable or we would end up like we are now. The only fair and predictable way to reverse never-ending wasteful costs that end up being imposed universally (to all citizens whether they own any currency or not), would be to roll them back in the reverse order in which they were imposed. And go back as far as it takes for the US to be as "rich" as it once was.

That was then and it already seemed impossible :(

>Do you think we have tried all the recomended remedies?

Even back then I never thought all sensible remedies would be tried in my lifetime and it was more of a shock then compared to a gradual boiling since.

>And who do we look to to define what is and isn't recommended?

There is no answer when everybody who says they have one can only be lying.

>We're in uncharted territory here

That's so true, in spite of so many similarities and logically expected negative outcomes for an increasing majority, it's still not supposed to be this way by this time at all, and surely never been quite like this before. It's been awry for so long it can only get weirder.

Plus those actually acting in decision-making positions have never been as intellectually incapable of making sweeping changes, and everybody knows it, especially changes for the better. There is no end to the decline in brainpower. Politics only gets in the way further since smart people are limited to the same choices as dumb people.

Now a lot of the financial decision-makers are billionaires, but if they are so wise with money why is the whole country not as "rich" as it used to be?

UBI does seem a little communist being a "mandated wealth redistribution" but I think there are complete free-market capitalists who are OK with it when they do the math for themselves. At their scale it's not wealth being redistributed, it's a pittance.

It's like UBI could be huge and apply to everybody which really adds up, but too late, that's not sweeping changes any more. It's actually more likely and less disruptive to the powers-that-be compared to fixing the real problem which I'm sure some very sophisticated financial institutions have calculated would be even more costly, for them. By untold amounts, so don't go there. Everything unspoken may not be an assumption.

>I would love to see honest research

Your eyes would have to be very privileged for that :)

Citizens be damned, let them eat cake, or soylent green, whatever they can get their hands on. Maybe not, if you do give enough for the population to have cake every month, they might be revolting anyway, so why bother ;)

[frankharv]

Don't we already have Marxism-Socialism though?

It been called many things from social safety net to welfare.

You can look at Social Security and its money woes as an example.

That system is going insolvent with people contributing.

It is mandatory to contribute if you are gainfully employed..

[_heimdall]

Programs that truly are needs based don't really fit into the Marxist approach. UBI is much closer to, or just is, Marxism because its universal. You get the money simply because the government decided that is the amount of money everyone needs and deserves.