[roc]

> "i prefer universal essential services (healthcare, education, etc.) over a guaranteed basic income."

If we believe in the market's ability to efficiently find the path forward, identifying "essential services", even if it were possible, is wasteful at best and more likely counter-productive over time.

Twenty years ago we'd have locked in home phone service and missed internet. 10 years ago we might have locked in cell service, but missed mobile data. We'd have propped up "bad" products, at massive profits for the benefactors, for years beyond their relevance, instead of allowing the market to evaluate and react to changing conditions.

And while we might agree that it's logically possible for efficient and effective government to correct mistakes like those, the "money is speech" reality in the US gives such outsized power to lobbying interests that even an optimist has to rate effective "steering" of any definition of "essential services" as "unlikely".

Never mind the basic question of whether it's at all desirable to force a youth from an underprivileged family to "buy" government-guaranteed education, instead of allowing him to spend even a fraction of the equivalent on a laptop, smartphone and developer tools -- or a 3d printer and amazon hosting services. Or even allowing him to look outside the box of lobbiest-approved education providers, and allowing him to "spend" his assistance on developer conferences or workshops or online learning or just moving to another town that has a better local program.

Would some people inevitably spend a guaranteed income poorly? Of course they would. They also sell food stamps for cash -- at 50% of their face value -- to make their bad decisions regardless of what we might prefer.

It isn't worth the cost to try to enforce "essential services" spending at the micro level. It's too rich a target for corporate lobbyists to define approved services at the macro level. And at the economic level, there's little reason to believe it will give us better outcomes.

[gautambay]

Fair points, all.

However, markets fail when there is a misalignment of incentives and/or lack of information/education. I view the government's job primarily as aligning people's incentives with the desired long-term direction.

In India (where I'm from), there have been decades of dole-outs for the poor (especially farmers), but it has failed to create any long-term economic benefits for those communities. On the other hand, education (both for the farmers and their children) has been far more effective in uplifting people out of poverty.

I realize that the average American is more educated and has better access to information that the average Indian farmer. But still, you can be assured that some of that "basic income" will be going into a slot machine.

Perhaps the solution is a basic income with some restrictions / incentives around how to spend it?

[scarmig]

I doubt that the basic income bears much resemblance to the dole-outs for the poor in India. "For the poor" is the kicker: by far the most economically appealing aspect of the basic income is that it's provided to everyone. If it's only provided to a particular type of person, that offers opportunities for corruption, administrative costs, and, most importantly, a very sharp disincentive against improving yourself and working harder, sometimes amounting to implicit marginal tax rates that are higher than 100%.

Another aspect is simplicity of administration. Providing some restrictions is a bit paternalistic, though I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand: for me the biggest issue would be how you can implement that with a minimum of cost, administrative overhead, and opportunities for corruption. And there's a bunch of areas that'd result in vindictive political debate. Sure, slot machines and vodka might be things we'd agree to restrict. But liberal arts MA programs? For-profit colleges? MLM schemes? Online class certificates via Coursera? Internet connectivity? Reddit gold? Gym memberships?

If you doubt that this kind of item by item trench warfare is what would happen, just look at the furor in the USA over something as obviously {good,bad} as providing {cost-effective,immoral} birth control to the insured.

I have difficulty imagining a system where the government picks and chooses what's good and what's bad for people to use that's not rife with corruption, sclerotic from past decisions and bureaucratic rules, and easy to use for the actual citizen it's intended to enable. The value recovered from preventing "bad spending" would almost certainly be outweighed by the cost of policing the billions of purchases that happen every day.

[gautambay]

Valid points on the complexity and the ensuing corruption.

I suspect that as real-time data-gathering becomes cheaper and more prevalent, the costs of policing will become trivial. That's certainly some years away though.