Are we the baddies?

> make you comfortable while you exist

I don't think there are many proponents of that type of ubi.

The way, at least I, see ubi is absolute subsistence - with a right to earn above that without affecting your subsistence.

IMHO something along UBI is needed for a democratized market economy - and I think the Scandinavian countries are the support for this claim.

During the depression this was done with a job guarantee. Instead of paying people to sit on their ass they paid people to build stuff like the Lincoln tunnel, which was preferable for them (and even for us, we still use that stuff).

UBI is more like the grain dole which Roman Emperors used to temper mass unrest and "prove" their benevolence.

It seems to be in vogue among tech moguls who cant distinguish between abject dependence on the Chinese industrial system/systematic underinvestment in infrastructure and all jobs being automated thanks to their glorious genius.

> I don't think there are many proponents of that type of ubi.

Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime. If everyone has different ideas of what the thing is, it's very hard to make good decisions, and easy for the "wrong" UBI to sneak in.

Other commenters have already made this point, but there are other ways to guarantee "subsistence". I think the hard to answer question is why are the targeted methods currently available not good enough? If we want to ensure people have food, then food subsidies/support make sense.

Also, if unemployment is the problem, fix that. If unemployment isn't the problem and people who are working aren't getting subsistence wages, fix that.

I think part of the problem is that no one wants to stick up and define what we think every human deserves and what we want society to provide. Does every human deserve housing? Access to green space? etc. Trying to clearly define this will lead to really interesting discussions that lay bare the disagreements core to society.

I think my early point still stands, UBI is not needed (we're making do without it now), and if it ever is needed, it's a sign of a lack of dynamism in the economy/ineffective wealth distribution mechanisms (basically, taxation).

> Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime.

It will never be ready for primetime because the system under which we live requires an underclass of people that are coerced into working jobs that no one really wants to do for abysmally low wages. Because the only other option left for them is homelessness and starvation.

It is an inherently cruel system, but this cruelty is what keep things afloat. Any system that guarantees the basic subsistence of all would not do.

> I think my early point still stands, UBI is not needed (we're making do without it now)

It's important to qualify that "we" as "we that make six figures working in white collar jobs". Yes, "we" are making do without UBI just fine. This "we" does not include the vast majority of people.

Hopefully plummeting birth rates will throw a wrench to this system by making labor a lot more expensive.

If everyone gets an equal raise (whatever the UBI is), wouldn’t the entire market simply adjust to price that in, leaving everyone in the same relative position?

Price/income increases don't happen in a vacuum, it takes a while for it to become normal. If you got a £50 bonus and decide to get yourself to a McDonalds, only to find they've raised the price of their burgers to £50, would you still buy the burger? Your situation would be the same as before so logically you would, but of course you wouldn't. That price increase has overall lost Mcdonalds money, since now you're not buying anything (assuming everything else they sell also went up a proportional amount).

Obviously there are essentials that can effectively be at any price and you have to pay them if you can afford them, but everything else is fair game.

I don't know about the long term economic effects, but there are people who currently earn less than the subsistence amount who will be better off with UBI than without it.

No, because the money isn't being printed, it is being reallocated from whatever it would have been spent on either by the people we tax to get it, or by the government who would have spent it on other things. Proponents contend that the economy is better off when people have a baseline income so that they can invest their time in productive things which may be beneficial, like going to school, having more time to raise their children, or starting a business, or volunteering, whatever, without worrying about how they are going to feed themselves. This would be opposed to whatever tax breaks we would be giving that would end up in a trust, foundation, or a VC fund, or whatever the government would have spent it on.

Note, I have no position on whether or not it would work in this way, but that is my understanding of the position of the those in favor of it.

Only of positional goods. Ie. Houses in attractive quarters etc.

On the contrary, we would likely see non positional goods become cheaper as the market is alive and companies can continue to produce at scale.

Even at first order, it makes the people at the bottom relatively better off. If we go from Alice having 600, Bob having 0, and Carol having 0, to Alice having 700, Bob having 100, and Carol having 100, then Bob and Carol are still more able to buy things than they were before even if prices now increase by 50%.

This would sound like a good solution.

The main difference from then, however, is that it is difficult to give each man a showel to dig and each woman a kid to care for this time.

People need qualifications to operate heavy machinery, know regulations, etc. - we are not in 1934 anymore.

As such we also don't need 30% og the population in the farming sector.

> It will never be ready for primetime because the system under which we live requires an underclass of people that are coerced into working jobs that no one really wants to do for abysmally low wages. Because the only other option left for them is homelessness and starvation. > > It is an inherently cruel system, but this cruelty is what keep things afloat. Any system that guarantees the basic subsistence of all would not do.

We're talking about how it might be about to not require the this underclass, and how we might need a UBI to fix that right? Can it be both of these things at once?

Also as a side note, I think that it's kind of arrogant to think we can create a society where no one does work they don't like, for wages that are always perfect. Nature is not that way, and creating those condition is basically asking for utopia. There is probably always a percentage of undesirable outcomes that every society must endure (and undesirable outcomes are a moving target).

I get your stance on the cruelty of the current system, but I want to note that in the span of human time we've had MUCH crueler systems in place. For example in the US despite the perceived high cruelty of the system, soup kitchens exist, governmental help exists -- there are a lot of things that exist that wouldn't exist in a maximally cruel society/one you describe. There are places on the planet we live on now where these safety nets don't exist.

The problem is the relative position of those with the most resources in society to those with the least. That, is fixable.

> It's important to qualify that "we" as "we that make six figures working in white collar jobs". Yes, "we" are making do without UBI just fine. This "we" does not include the vast majority of people.

I mean that we in the sense that no known society has collapsed because of a lack of UBI (would love to be corrected here). UBI is clearly, objectively not a need.

There are other ways to create a society that works for those with and without, what is probably most needed is clarity on those steps/what we want to guarantee people who live in the given society.

I would disagree that the "majority" of people in (for example) the US are against the current situation. The poverty rate (likely a reasonable proxy for an economic system that really isn't working) is not above 50%. People may

It's hard to quantify -- one of the things about sentiment polling is that people often just don't have a good grasp on how well or how badly they're doing. See earlier this year, when sentiment polling basically was incredibly negative, yet the "economy" as a whole is still mostly chugging along and unemployment has not spiked dramatically across all industries. Tech is in dire straits but "regular" jobs like HVAC, Plumbing, etc are doing fantastic AFAIK.

> Hopefully plummeting birth rates will throw a wrench to this system by making labor a lot more expensive.

Yes, except that is happening at the same time that we've turned what could be a huge corner on automation of both white collar and maybe eventually blue collar work.

I think the price of labor needs to go up, but this is only part of the equation. The more direct answer is simpler -- we need higher taxes on businesses or automation or both.

If you want to profit from US citizens (US company or not!), enjoy infrastructure and stability provided by the US, then the price for that can rise. Charge businesses for the jobs they don't create.

The classic refrain to the increased tax is that businesses will leave. I think that's absolute bullshit -- the US is where people want to be for many reasons, and it is incredibly unlikely that companies will unseat themselves to go run their headquarters out of malta or whatever. Also, incredibly unlikely that all the people who work at those companies will go redomicile. Also, INCREDIBLY unlikely that those companies will give up on the incredibly profitable American consumer they're targeting. What we lack is politicians who can/want to reign in corporate power.

Yes, IMO that's exactly what will happen, except companies that can best compete for their share of this $1000 will get a government funded revenue stream (think Amazon, Netflix, rent seeking enterprises, etc).

I have not heard a convincing argument the other way, would really appreciate a link to one if you find one.

A class of people would have a larger spending power.

Naturally, implementing UBI would require the entire financial sector to adjust. We would likely need to significantly raise interest rates (Which, IMHO would be great) and have a period to manage inflation.

But beside the initial recalibration phase, I have not seen any convincing arguments for why prices on non-positional goods would increase. Even with the increase interest rates, we would likely see that prices on positional goods / assets would stabilize as dead-cheap capital is not available.

> Also as a side note, I think that it's kind of arrogant to think we can create a society where no one does work they don't like, for wages that are always perfect.

I would agree if there were no billionaires in a country where people also cannot afford things such as housing, food, healthcare and basic education. With economic inequality this high, I don't think we are trying hard enough to create a more egalitarian society.

> I get your stance on the cruelty of the current system, but I want to note that in the span of human time we've had MUCH crueler systems in place.

That scaphism is more cruel than stoning as means of execution, it does not make stoning more humane.

I think you get my analogy.

> I mean that we in the sense that no known society has collapsed because of a lack of UBI (would love to be corrected here). UBI is clearly, objectively not a need

No society collapsed directly because of use of slave labor. Many actually thrived in such a system.

That should not be an argument in favor of slavery.

Just because the lack of UBI does not cause society to collapse ot does not mean that a society as inequal as ours cannot be improved.

> Yes, except that is happening at the same time that we've turned what could be a huge corner on automation of both white collar and maybe eventually blue collar work.

I don't think we turned this corner. But if we did, then perhaps it's fine we head towards extinction. With no humans there will be no inequality eh?

> we need higher taxes on businesses or automation or both.

Agreed.

> The classic refrain to the increased tax is that businesses will leave. I think that's absolute bullshit

I always say the same. If businesses leave, but the demand for goods and services in that society still exists, other businesses will occupy that space. Either existing businesses will seize that opportunity or new businesses will spawn.

> What we lack is politicians who can/want to reign in corporate power.

In no small part because our current system favors capital above all else, and excessive capital concentration allows its owners to distort institutions to their will. Excessive economic inequality is a bitch.

Note that I said excessive. I am not against some economic inequality. I think it's alright for a surgeon to have a nicer house and a better car than, say, a store clerk.

I don't think it's alright for one to have a mutiple yachts and mansions on ski resorts, while the other fights starvation.

Not that I think surgeons have multiple yachts or mansions on ski resorts. But I think you get my point.

> A class of people would have a larger spending power.

Spending power with no real alternatives (i.e. in monopoly/oligopoly conditions) isn't actually very useful IMO. It's mostly just more guaranteed money for the current monopoly/oligopoly -- you're just guaranteeing revenue streams.

In a pre-UBI world, you can at least assume that companies can't completely shaft employees because then no one can buy anything. If the government steps in to make sure people can still buy stuff, that has almost the opposite effect.

I think walmart & it's treatment of employees (with employees reportedly needing to ALSO depend on food stamps) as a perfect example of the system kind of working against itself. The fix for that problem is within our reach right now, but it's just unpopular for the usual reasons with the people with the ability to make the fix.

> Naturally, implementing UBI would require the entire financial sector to adjust. We would likely need to significantly raise interest rates (Which, IMHO would be great) and have a period to manage inflation. > > But beside the initial recalibration phase, I have not seen any convincing arguments for why prices on non-positional goods would increase. Even with the increase interest rates, we would likely see that prices on positional goods / assets would stabilize as dead-cheap capital is not available.

OK, so then how about we do this without the UBI bit and just raise interest rates? I'm not seeing where UBI actually has a material benefit here, and there are other real problems with raising interest rates, because losing access to cheap credit also hurts those at the bottom of the economy (arguably even more) -- the solution there is political, likely (i.e. lower income borrowers could somehow be advantaged, but then we have shades of 2008 all over again if excessive greed/moral hazard sets in).

> I would agree if there were no billionaires in a country where people also cannot afford things such as housing, food, healthcare and basic education. With economic inequality this high, I don't think we are trying hard enough to create a more egalitarian society.

Agreed -- the ratio is a problem. The problem is not that billionaires exist, because that is a slippery slope IMO (you could say the same thing about millionaires, or people who make money WITHOUT working at all -- i.e. wealth). The problem is the ratio. We need to decide what disparity is acceptable for our society, and then enforce that.

Not full on regime change to whatever new government might be better than the current. Just a clear stating of what our values are as a nation, and some numbers.

> That scaphism is more cruel than stoning as means of execution, it does not make stoning more humane. > > I think you get my analogy.

True, but if I had to pick a way to be executed, I don't think it's a hard choice. The analogy has to imply that you have to pick a poison -- there's no utopia.

> No society collapsed directly because of use of slave labor. Many actually thrived in such a system. > > That should not be an argument in favor of slavery. > > Just because the lack of UBI does not cause society to collapse ot does not mean that a society as inequal as ours cannot be improved.

UBI was proposed as a "need". It is not a need -- it is a want, or seen as a moral imperative.

Of course society can be improved, it's a question of how, and UBI is not a convincing how, that's my problem.

I'm not really sure the comparison to slavery here is relevant. I did not imply that the lack of UBI is desirable, just that UBI is not present and not a necessity for any government that exists.

> I don't think we turned this corner. But if we did, then perhaps it's fine we head towards extinction. With no humans there will be no inequality eh?

I think we did -- even if AI stopped where it is right now we already have created a pretty insane new tool. Even if it's only use was surfacing knowledge 5x/10x/100x??? faster than current search engines can, in a way that is more natural to humans. The knock-on effects are profound and likely going to be immeasurable.

Almost completely separate from that, robotics is really progressing. We have self-driving cars, just casually running around right now. We've turned some pretty big corners.

And IMO it's not an ideal outcome to head towards extinction, but it's a possible one. It's arrogant to think that humanity will live on forever, no matter how much we want that to be true.

Very against people who explicitly want extinction though -- pretty anti-human thing to say, and I can't think of something more worthy of suspicion. We worked pretty hard to survive this far.

> I always say the same. If businesses leave, but the demand for goods and services in that society still exists, other businesses will occupy that space. Either existing businesses will seize that opportunity or new businesses will spawn.

Yup, that's an even more compelling argument. Imagine all those companies vacating the space. The absolute explosion of entrepreneurship and new innovation would be transformative, if the interim can be managed through and the right incentives put in place.

> In no small part because our current system favors capital above all else, and excessive capital concentration allows its owners to distort institutions to their will. Excessive economic inequality is a bitch.

I'd agree, except I'd replace "capital" with "power". No political/social system seems to be immune to excessive power accumulation, but IMO current representative and direct democracies are the closest we've ever gotten.

Real politik is a bitch.

> Note that I said excessive. I am not against some economic inequality. I think it's alright for a surgeon to have a nicer house and a better car than, say, a store clerk. > > I don't think it's alright for one to have a mutiple yachts and mansions on ski resorts, while the other fights starvation.

Yup, while I like leaving it up to a market to decide that, I do think markets need to be controlled/have guard rails.

Agree though, the ratio is the problem.

I often think there's a really simple solution that sounds amazing -- just cap the discrepancy between total comp of the lowest employee at a company and the highest one (including the board). Super simple solution that broadcasts values, and is relatively easy to understand.

People might argue that the "most productive" people would lose motivation, but IMO it wouldn't do a thing -- they'd keep their same motivation because the drive (put overly simply, greed) will always be there.

> In a pre-UBI world, you can at least assume that companies can't completely shaft employees because then no one can buy anything. If the government steps in to make sure people can still buy stuff, that has almost the opposite effect.

In my first comment I referred the Scandinavian countries. Read up on the flexicurity model of Denmark.

> OK, so then how about we do this without the UBI bit and just raise interest rates?

You cannot within the confines of the responsibility of the monetary systems (Eg. The FED). What you are seeing now is that the FED "prints" money that accumulate at the top because the fiscal powers (Eg. the government) are p*sies who do not dare to redistribute - this is called the velocity of money. And there is a higher velocity of money when they are in the hands of the people than in the pockets of the rich.

Regardless, proposing UBI on American forums is generally like setting fire to a wasp nest. Americans have been conditioned to support the oligarchy in quite some decades now.

In 1934 people were trained on the job. This was as true in the WPA as it was outside.

What changed is not the newfound impossibility of doing that, just the reluctance of employers to pay for it and the willingness of the government to indulge their insatiable demand for cheap, pretrained labor.

I find it difficult to believe that the price of training has not gone up.

I am not as convinced as you. When training is 7 year degree to achieve some specialization it simply is not for everyone.

Also, ubi is not anti work - it is merely the acknowledgement that not everyone have salary worthy things to do.

The alternative it havy financialization as in you receive a tip when you bring down you neighbors garbage.

> In my first comment I referred the Scandinavian countries. Read up on the flexicurity model of Denmark.

Denmark does not have UBI. They "just" have a good welfare system, good income redistribution policies, and strong labor policy.

They do not make the case for UBI, they make the opposite case -- that the problems of present can be solved without UBI.

> You cannot within the confines of the responsibility of the monetary systems (Eg. The FED). What you are seeing now is that the FED "prints" money that accumulate at the top because the fiscal powers (Eg. the government) are psies who do not dare to redistribute - this is called the velocity of money. And there is a higher velocity of money when they are in the hands of the people than in the pockets of the rich.

You can, and they have. In fact, much of the US wants the FED to lower rates right now, but they have not.

I agree with you that people lack the wherewithal to redistribute more effectively, or at least as a stated goal.

Trying to make sure I'm hitting the points you're noting here but the FED is not "printing" tons of money right now, they have tightened monetary policy, especially relative to the last ~6 years.

It's unclear if the use of "velocity of money" is right here -- I think you're referring to propensity to spend, which would increase velocity of money. Yes, poor people spend more of their income than rich people, and that is stimulative to the economy, and so arguably policies should be crafted that encourage productive work for pay rather than rent seeking or pure accumulation of capital. I'm not sure if that's your point, but that's what I take away from it.

> Regardless, proposing UBI on American forums is generally like setting fire to a wasp nest. Americans have been conditioned to support the oligarchy in quite some decades now.

Welp, that's kind of an unproductive way to end, but sure. Conditioned or not (I'm American), I'm still looking for a good argument for UBI and haven't found one.

Good arguments for better redistribution are easy to make, good argument for higher taxes are good to make, good arguments for better social safety nets are easy to make -- but still can't really find one for UBI specifically above the other options.

I don't hope that this is a latent argument pro corporate slavery?

Are you seriously proposing that we need people who are paid below subsistence?

Or was this more an argument for ubi?

> but still can't really find one for UBI specifically above the other options.

There are a lot of good arguments: stability of monetary systems, democratized marketeconomy, equality, etc.

Just like with other things there is an infinite number of solutions for a given problem.

I stick to Occams razor.

there are many reasons to be against a job guarantee but the presumption that every potential job nowadays requires a 7 year degree is a particularly bad one.

> Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime. If everyone has different ideas of what the thing is, it's very hard to make good decisions, and easy for the "wrong" UBI to sneak in.

This is not a reasonable bar for a policy being "ready for primetime". Some version of this is true for practically all policy proposals. The details will always matter, it will always be possible to get details wrong in critical ways, and people will (likely) always disagree on what those are.

It's very funny that you snub UBI in favor of "wealth distribution mechanisms". What do you think UBI is?

That is not the presumption - I trust that you are enough of a non-LLM to properly understand the message behind the words.

Yes, being shortsighted ignores the rubber band effect that then disproportionately hurts those people down the road.

The arguments against UBI are pretty much the same against rising minimum wages. That being, the baseline just moves, so everything gets more expensive, so the situation doesn't improve at all.

It intuitively makes sense, and like most economic reasoning it's horribly simple. But economics is comprised to two parts: theory, and practice.

Practice always trumps theory. If practice defies your theory, it doesn't mean that the market is broken, or that there's over-regulation, or that your theory will eventually come true. It means your theory is just wrong. All economic theory are predicated on thousands or millions of underlying assumptions. If even just a few of those are not true, or aren't true in the way you think they are, then the theory can be wrong while simultaneously being logically perfect.

When it comes to the arguments against minimum wage, the theory is just wrong. Rising minimum wages do help people making minimum wage. If it does raise the COL, it's slowly, and not in the same degree as the minimum wage shift. In addition, a flat minimum wage still results in a rising COL. You can't simply pin the COL like that.

So knowing what we know about minimum wage, I think it's arrogant to claim the UBI would just result in a rising COL to eat up all the UBI.

This is what you wrote:

>When training is 7 year degree to achieve some specialization

>properly understand the message behind the words

You should probably say what you mean if you want people to hear what you mean. I dont have the patience to listen to metaphors.

My intuition is that it wouldn't change the ranking of people's wealths, but it would make a big difference in the ratio between a top 10 percentile income and a bottom 10 percentile income

Edit- although even that is an oversimplification because I think in some cases it might encourage people to make more money. I know a handful of people who intentionally limit their income because of gaps in means testing. eg there's a window where you start making too much to take advantage of some govt social services, but not enough to pay for those services yourself (healthcare is a big one)

A descriminator between minimum wage and ubi is location.

UBI (if people trust that it will continue) will encourage people moving out of the cities as they don't need to be close to jobs.

I would hypotheses that this would 1) create new more local economies (where people can earn money) and 2) reduce pressure on the hyper metropols.

I would even hypothesize that because of this, it would have an adverse effect on the cost of living.

Butnthese a theories.

People that admit "yes" to this (or similar ones: subsidization causing increasing rent to match, etc) are acknowledging that prices aren't really set by supply and demand, nor were they ever, nor will they ever be.

Prices are as high as companies can get away with charging, and they can collude to get these prices higher if need be, or lie about a product, or spend decades as an industry convincing you that you need something you don't.

If the market worked as economists always scold us that it does when they want less socialism, it wouldn't matter a lick what someone's salary is. That doesn't affect supply and demand, after all.

I also wrote

> I find it difficult to believe that the price of training has not gone up.