Yeah how many of these have we had now? Literally every test and study about UBI comes back with similar data: it improves lives, reduces stress, and nobody becomes a drain on the system. It doesn’t matter. The people who oppose it aren’t looking at the data, they just don’t want "my tax dollars" going to support people struggling to get by.
That’s a generous interpretation of the results. This was a short term pilot and over one quarter of respondents stopped working, despite knowing it was a temporary program.
Did you read the article? Because it says that about half of the ones that stopped working stopped working because they were going back to school. That doesn't seem like a drain on the system...
It’s funny because it’s such a small amount for those who oppose it. I mean, capital gains doesn’t kick in until $48,350 in the US and you can survive off of that if you needed to. The issue is pulling that consistently for an income requires a bit of capital the average American doesn’t have.
We already have the EITC, which is frankly a better version of UBI (it incentivizes working more and literally goes up as you increase your earnings). Expand the EITC and tax capital gains as regular, inflation-adjusted income to pay for it and we've basically done it - a single Democratic administration could.
In fact, during COVID, an increase to the child tax portion of the EITC reduced childhood poverty by _70%_ at a relatively low cost. Guess why we don't do that anymore?
A large EITC is trivially converted into a UBI. Otherwise-unemployed people pay each other a salary to do whatever they were each going to do anyway and then the salaries cancel but they both get the EITC. Attempts to prevent this largely don't work against people who want to do the scam and just find a different way to structure it, but tend to be used as an excuse to e.g. screw legitimate self-employed workers out of the credit.
The only reason this doesn't happen at scale right now is that the existing EITC is smaller than the amount of payroll tax you'd pay by making a given amount of money, i.e. it's not a negative income tax at all. If you're going to make it larger than that you might as well make it a UBI.
I think the issue is there are a lot of welfare programs that haven't seen the same success. If you subscribe to the "taxes are to solve public goods problems" model, then welfare that doesn't come back around to help you isn't taxation, it's theft! When people talk about UBI, they're wary it's just a relabelling of the same-old "steal from the rich, give to the poor" Robinhood scheme. I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic (or, worst of all, "what would Jesus do?"). That's the wrong way of framing it (and this holds for most welfare initiatives too).
People are always going to care about different things. Some really care that everyone has clean water, others a good education, others freedom of expression. Some care more about their families, while others apply equal empathy to every stranger, cow, and tree. When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy. The proper way to fund your projects is to get everyone on board. Frame it so they see how it helps them achieve their goals, not just yours.
(Now, I know I'm ignoring that some people are just incredibly selfish; more accurately, some people's hearts are bleeding out on the floor, some are calcified into stone, and most are somewhere in between. I'm ignoring this discrepancy because 1. even very selfish people can get on board with welfare (like primary/secondary education), as long as it's framed properly, and 2. if a system relies on self-sacrifice, it's too easy to hijack that sacrifice into someone else's pet project.)
For example, with education, you can point out how much more economic activity is available when everyone knows how to read and write. I think the argument that actually worked, though, was "how can we avoid roving bands of teenagers in our city once we enact some child-labor laws?" (that's probably the reason highschool is compulsory, not just free to enroll in). For a universal basic income, you probably need to approach it from an entropy argument. The capitalist system tries to maximize GDP, but physical systems actually maximize the free energy (GDP - temperature * Theil index [entropy]). The capitalist system avoids this by artificially restricting free trade: for example, your boss makes a dollar, while you make a dime. There's fewer trades that could happen than if, say, you both made 55 cents (unless your boss is just reallly good at doing things with money). Or, more fundamental, your boss needs you much less than you need a salary. You have less freedom of movement than he has to remove you. A universal basic income fixes this entropy problem, which makes trades more frequent and the market more competitive. In the end, it can come around to help even a seflish centimillionaire.
You are of course right, and it is sad to see that the idea of "building consensus," now has to be explained in a long 4 paragraph post when it used to be just a normal way of doing things.
> When people talk about UBI, they're wary it's just a relabelling of the same-old "steal from the rich, give to the poor" Robinhood scheme.
You mean the scheme responsible for the greatest period of economic boom in American history, not JUST for the (unfortunately, primarily white) people, but the rest of the country as well? When we got the Hoover Dam, and the highway system, and wall to wall telephone coverage, and stable power grids in every state that isn't Texas? That scheme?
Yeah no I vastly prefer the modern one where like ten people get all of the money and our bridges collapse now. Makes the morning commute far more thrilling that way.
> I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic (or, worst of all, "what would Jesus do?"). That's the wrong way of framing it (and this holds for most welfare initiatives too).
I mean it's less an accusation of being unempathetic and more just an observation of the facts on the ground, isn't it?
> When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy. The proper way to fund your projects is to get everyone on board. Frame it so they see how it helps them achieve their goals, not just yours.
Yeah but that's just not scalable for society? Since I have been working, my taxes have funded wars in the Middle East that I certainly didn't give two shits about, and in fact opposed. My taxes support all manner of corporate welfare, some which is decent, a lot of which is horrendous and counterproductive to global health and climate change. Why is it we only start clutching our purse strings when it's about helping people, but there's always money for more fucking war and more oil subsidies?
Edit to respond to your reply:
> You talk about things not being scalable for society; well guess what, your version of empathy is one of them.
Not only is empathy scalable, it is the utter FOUNDATION of society. If we didn't give a shit what happened to everyone else who was in our tribe, we never would've progressed from the caves in the first place. Every moral code throughout history has been based on empathy. Every legal code is based in part on empathy. "I don't want to die, so we should recognize it's bad to kill people." It's the emotional bedrock of a social species; to see an individual that is like you, and to treat that individual as you would want to be treated.
> Like if I said, "everyone deserves chocolate ice cream", and you said "wow, how unempathetic, don't you care about everyone getting vanilla?"
That is just... flagrantly wrong. I'm not arguing for people to have a given flavor of ice cream, or a category of food. I'm saying people should have food, shelter, and all the basic necessities of life, because they're people, and by virtue of being people in a world with so much more than it needs, that they should be provided for. Why? Because we can. Because it hurts no one. Because it helps immense quantities of people who are in dire need.
And, additionally, if you are indeed not moved by the notion of "people should live, that's better than if they die" then I can give you an absolute TROVE of selfish reasons too!
* Reduced need and therefore cost of emergency services; houseless people make a disproportionate use of ambulances and ER services, and are uniquely unable to pay for them (not that anyone should pay for healthcare either but that's our world currently)
* Substantially lower costs for the penal and legal systems: houseless people commit a lot of crime, since their very existence in many places is a crime, and alongside that they suffer from chronic lack of resources. Giving them resources keeps them out of jails and lets police solve actual problems, not just harass people who have no options.
* Higher workforce participation: A whole ton of unhoused folks would love NOTHING MORE than to get jobs and improve their situation, something that is borne out by many UBI studies, because, plot twist, being houseless also makes it quite a lot harder to find work, even if you're skilled in an in-demand profession. And, in the odd event you do get work, it's harder to attend to that job to earn money because it's very hard to get ready for work on the corner of Sixth and Delton Ave.
* And, greater economic activity. Houseless people naturally consume far, far less goods and services than housed people and even if they do want them, they lack the ability to buy them. Giving them an even temporary living situation lets them establish themselves and become productive members of society.
And all of these points will also apply in varying degrees to everyone from destitute street-bound folks up through everyone who is living check to check. The fact of the matter is that poor people cost our society money, and a LOT of it at that, but currently that money doesn't go to those people to help them; it goes to the poverty industrial complex and makes a handful of people a LOT of money. I am merely proposing instead of doing that, we just give it to the fucking people who need it and then call it a day.
1. Keyword: "your". Your version of empathy is not scalable. It's literally, "my way or the highway," and a bunch of grandstanding on things pretty much everyone agrees on, but you must be evil and not if you don't agree with my more radical proposals.
2. I consider "I don't want to die, thus I shouldn't kill others," to have more of a Kantian/evolutionary genesis than an empathetic one. For the most part, all the people that failed to recognize this were killed off and weren't allowed to enter into the Kingdom of Ends. Unless you're talking about emotivism, I don't see how empathy has anything to do with morality/society, except as a quick symmetry trick to help you make smarter decisions (while you could logically deduce that the rational response to a member of your group being killed is to punish the killer to prevent more killings, if you just assume symmetry, then things that are bad for you are bad for others, and taking those actions will get you punished).
3. 5% as many people die from starvation or exposure as suicide in the United States (that's 1–2,000/year). If people want food, or want shelter, they can find it (99.8% of homeless people do), even if it's not the particular food or shelter they want. What do you actually want? "Food, shelter, and all the basic necessities of life" are available. Almost no one is arguing that we should let people just die. It really sounds like you're arguing for a flavor of ice cream, but you don't even know what flavor that is.
I feel like you're quoting me, but not reading what I said.
> > I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic
> I mean it's less an accusation of being unempathetic and more just an observation of the facts on the ground, isn't it?
> > When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy
Are these "facts" actually grounded, or are you just doing a POV play? Like if I said, "everyone deserves chocolate ice cream", and you said "wow, how unempathetic, don't you care about everyone getting vanilla?" You talk about things not being scalable for society; well guess what, your version of empathy is one of them. Not everyone is going to care about the same causes as you, and attacking people for that will not convince them you actually care about them. What will is if you tell them why they're better off funding your pet project.
Please cut out swipes and fulmination like this in comments. It's clearly against the guidelines, and we've asked you before to avoid using HN for ideological battle.
