by julbaxter on 9/11/16, 12:53 PM with 202 comments
by jnbiche on 9/11/16, 2:33 PM
He didn't spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me some of the strongest arguments for BI:
1) He worries about division and polarization. Well, BI is the only solution that I'm aware of that draws on support from both the libertarian right (strong support, mostly) and liberal left (many support, but some are suspicious like this guy). No other solution to the jobless future can boast of support from both sides of the political spectrum.
2) Oddly, the quote from Olaf Palme he offers up as a critique of basic income reads to me as strong support:
"An efficient and stable welfare state must be based on universal social programs,
such as health insurance, pensions, and child-support allowances-programs that are directed to all citizens.
Official “poverty lines” or “means-tests” would not have to define “the poor” (which would minimize the need for bureaucratic controls).
At the same time, people in difficult financial circumstances would not have to put up with the degrading classification of “poor.”"
In fact, it's completely unclear to me after reading this whole damn essay why he is so strongly in opposition to the point where he wants people to stop discussing it altogether, other than it's not the favored solution of his team.
by teraflop on 9/11/16, 1:58 PM
Funny how the article zeroes in on this as a criticism of basic income, even though it describes the biggest way France's system is totally different from what basic income advocates are talking about.
by anexprogrammer on 9/11/16, 2:18 PM
I didn't vote for Blair, or support many of his policies, but his governance utterly transformed the NHS for the better. It was adequately funded for the first time in a couple of decades, at the time of this speech, and they were now searching for ways to measurably improve care, especially in comparatively neglected areas such as mental health.
Quality goes down when governments start bringing political ideology to the fore - eg "we must bring the efficiency of the market to the NHS" neatly ignores the fact the NHS is actually pretty damn efficient, and is one of the strongest buyers on the planet getting significantly better pricing from all the drug companies. Adding managers and market aspects actually worsened this.
The French example of basic income isn't. It's a means tested benefit which is utterly incomparable to UBI.
I'm starting to doubt everything he's written by this point.
by SmellTheGlove on 9/11/16, 1:50 PM
I don't think we're there today or anything like that, but it may be within our lifetimes that we're seriously approaching post-scarcity. Renewables are getting cheaper, for instance, which may bring about nearly limitless cheap energy. I won't assume mass scale fusion, but we may tackle the energy issue in other ways (this is my handwaving). Food security is already within reach - most of the issues around it are political (meaning kids in Africa aren't starving because we don't have enough food). The main threats are overpopulation and politics, as tech seems to be ticking along quite nicely.
I am obviously an optimist, oversimplifying a lot, and believe that we won't nuke ourselves into oblivion. I also think that we'll eventually solve our political problems - many of which are based on energy issues. Even if I'm wrong, though, I don't see an issue with UBI experiments and seeing how it goes. We shouldn't use economic theory as a reason to not try something radically different, as economic theory is wrong often enough to warrant the experiment. It may be worth a look at UBI to look at behavior on a macro level, since I think we're eventually going to get there globally and we'll need to know what the hell to do to occupy ourselves in some way that is still productive in that context.
by vitno on 9/11/16, 1:54 PM
"So enough already. Grow up now, study history..."
Regardless of the actual content of the article, I found the style of so many unnecessary ad hominim attacks offputing.
The actual content of the article isn't really backed up. It mostly seems to say that engineers are seduced by the elegance of Basic Income and that they should really just focus on making the existing social system have less friction. Not a bad opinion, just not really in line with the many statements that "Basic Income won't work".
by wilwade on 9/11/16, 2:07 PM
Entrepreneurship is at about 14% working age adults in the US (1). I would say that the number of people who would be entrepreneurs is higher, but limited by risk. Entrepreneurship is very high risk. Reducing that risk would enable more people to become entrepreneurs (a good thing). Removing the risk that being an entrepreneur will make you loose the shirt off your back, will allow more people to start companies.
It is not limited to entrepreneurship. How many more amazing painters would there be? Writers? How much more creative common good would there be in the world if basic needs (via UBI) was taken care of?
None of the current social risk insurance, are directly reducing this loss to us all.
(1) http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reache...
by geomark on 9/11/16, 1:51 PM
Should I even bother to continue reading after that? After all, what we actually know is that technology creates jobs, like the ones that I and a large number of people I know have had.
by Dwolb on 9/11/16, 2:06 PM
I struggled with this example on the RMI/RSA in France.
>So you could argue that the “RMI/RSA” is basic income, except maybe for the paperware frictions that it inflicts on those who are eligible and that could be removed thanks to technology. Accordingly, those in favor of basic income should pay attention to the “RMI/RSA” and draw appropriate lessons: it’s not simple (at all); it has adverse economic effects; and it is widely denounced, notably on the right, as “assistance” (assistanat) that deprives those who claim the benefit from any incentive to look for a job, thus making them live off the middle class taxpayers.
The author holds this example up as why UBI might fail. But the reasons listed why the RMI/RSA failed are all either driving forces for UBI or solved by UBI.
1) RMI/RSA is complicated to administer due to high burden of proof for the individual to demonstrate no income. UBI solves this by allowing everyone to have an income, not just those without a salary.
2) RMI/RSA has adverse economic effects because it disincentivizes people to seek jobs. Part of why people are thinking UBI could be a good idea is there will be fewer jobs in the future and so disincentivization to look for a job for a subset of the population is partially a good thing.
3) RMI/RSA is politically difficult. That's why people involved in the UBI movement are running private, small scale experiments. They want to prove/disprove their hypotheses to provide evidence in favor of or against UBI.
by WheelsAtLarge on 9/11/16, 3:42 PM
The fact is that the only reason we endure a job day after day is that we need to get paid to pay for our needs and wants. We get up everyday and race to work not because we owe someone a favor or because we love our work but because if we don't we'll get fired and have to deal with the consequences.
I would hate to live in a society where people show up to work at will. Think about it. The fireman, or name your specialist, decided not to show up today. Yikes!
I can see why the idea is attractive but money is what makes the world go around. Cliche but very true! If we decide that everyone can get it and not have to work for it, we are asking for a society that loses a prime motivator to get people moving towards a career and even to get out of the house.
The Utopian idea that if we don't have to work we'll be free to create a wonderful world. Is wishful thinking. All we have to do is look at what a group of rich young adults do when all their needs are filled. They become self absorbed and look to fill their own selfish wants. How many of them become nurses or doctors? Yes, rich is an extreme way to look at it, it's not "basic income" but it gives a clue to what happens when people lose a basic motivator.
We are scared that technology will suck up all the jobs but if we don't have people thinking about how to get people jobs and keep them busy we are in real trouble. Basic Income does not help in the long run.
Also it will never be enough. Basic needs will be fulfilled but people will always want more. One example that comes to mind is the introduction of the white phone by Apple. Apple introduced it and some people were falling over each other to get it. Not because it was white but because they could own something that others wanted. Human wants are infinite. Basic income will only create a never ending spiral that will keep people unhappy because they can't get what they want.
Money is a societal tool that's used to keep society fed and safe but it has to be used correctly. Giving it away, while attractive, is not the answer.
by onli on 9/11/16, 1:57 PM
by tmvphil on 9/11/16, 2:29 PM
by MichaelBurge on 9/11/16, 2:31 PM
A Basic Income program is unrepealable after enough time(say 20 years) has passed. People are terrible at making decisions: They don't save money, they run up their credit cards, they don't invest. A BI program limits the damage that their bad decisions can cause.
Even $800/month would wildly distort decision making. I don't think that a lot of people who've been receiving it their whole life are going to be in a position to function independently if you try to repeal it. There are going to be too many single mothers crying "How will I make my rent?" if you take it away. Even if they otherwise would've managed without it.
A law that's a one-way ratchet requires extraordinary evidence before you even consider it. It doesn't matter if it has a positive expected value, or the models say it will probably work; the risk that it won't deliver on its promises is too high, and we'll be stuck with it forever.
by sixhobbits on 9/11/16, 3:05 PM
Argument 1 looks at BI on a practical level and asks questions such as: Is BI feasible? Will it ever be feasible? Who should administer it? What would it mean for the economy?
Argument 2 deals with BI more on a social level and can even be modeled as a thought experiment: What would people do if they had basic income? Would it remove the incentive to work? Would it reduce inequality? Would it offer more freedom to recipients or less?
Many people (including the author of this article) make grand claims like "It's obvious that it'll fail"; "It's obvious that people will stop being productive members of society if they have BI"; "It's obvious that it's not feasible".
I think that the most persuasive argument, and one advocated by the YCombinator experiment, is "We need more data". This holds true especially for argument 2 (how will people react if they received BI). Argument 1 for me is less interesting, but my rudimentary understanding of economics and politics is enough for me to be sure that anyone who declares a black-and-white position on the idea probably needs to spend some more time thinking and reading about it.
No matter whether you are for or against BI, you should be happy that these experiments are being done. If you're against it, they will provide evidence that you are right and then people can "Just stop talking about it already". That's not going to happen because you wrote an overly long rant against it. If you are for BI, such experiments might confirm your hypotheses that BI will be beneficial to recipients and will allow us to move more towards argument 1 (is BI feasible? where will the money come from?).
by josu on 9/11/16, 2:38 PM
by chx on 9/11/16, 2:02 PM
Oh there will be many jobs left but they will all require a certain level of education, let's call that university degree for the sake of simplicity. Also people will need to have some degree of mental capacity to attain this level. It is pretty much natural to presume not everyone will have this mental capacity. Already this is showing everywhere. What will society do with those who have the physical capability but not the mental to work? BI is one of the answers. It may not be the best answer but do have a better one? We need an answer right effin' now because long range trucking will be automated away Real Soon Now(TM) and that's (at least in Canada) is one of the most populated occupation and society level answers are never reached quick.
by mindslight on 9/11/16, 6:36 PM
The idea is basically just creating even more "stimulus" money, but distributing it just a little further from the centralized bankster cronies. Don't doubt for a second that they will still end up collecting it as rents on financialized assets (chiefly housing).
Our fundamental economic problem is being in a Keynesian death spiral - now that production has gotten insanely efficient, the incentives that were forcing people to overwork are now battering those who can't find work. Turning up the treadmill even faster yet will not get us out of it!
by jkot on 9/11/16, 2:05 PM
Right now SF is not even capable to host 450 homeless arriving every year. What would you do if that number of people arrived every day or every hour?
by totalcrepe on 9/11/16, 2:23 PM
For example, I knew a vet in college who came very close to dropping out, where a few hundred bucks the safety net never knew he needed made all the difference. I can only imagine what percent of their lifetime writeoffs come from having these condescending "shutup, we know what you need" safety net systems.
by k-mcgrady on 9/11/16, 2:07 PM
>> "The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as professionals."
The only reason this is a problem is political. We have the NHS but we also have private options - get rid of those. Then there would be more staff available for the NHS, a huge some of money would not be wasted on locum staff, and therefore more money would be available to the NHS. Some of that could be used for funding and some could be used to pay staff a fairer wage. The fiscal austerity argument is nonsense. We have plenty of money - it's just spent poorly. We don't need to spend £30bn on nuclear missiles we'll never use (and if we ever do need to use them it'll be too late anyway). We don't need to spend £30-40bn on the military. Of course defunding these things is political suicide but you can't tell me we can't afford decent healthcare when we're wasting money on missiles we don't need, a huge military we don't need, and locum staff which shouldn't be a thing in the first place when you have a public health care system.
by andyewilliams on 9/13/16, 9:44 AM
by taylorscollon on 9/11/16, 8:30 PM
"It is broadly true that the more people who benefit from a government program, the more popular the program usually is. Social insurance programs that benefit the middle-class and the poor are usually politically durable.
American social security, for example, is less politically vulnerable than food stamps, in part because food stamps will never benefit most middle-class people. UBI, however, is more like social security than it is like food stamps. The middle-class may not need UBI, but UBI would still benefit them.
A comparable case is the status of single-payer health insurance programs in countries that have them. Most middle-class and rich people in these countries don’t need single payer healthcare — nearly all of them would have employer coverage if single payer didn’t exist. And yet there is broad support across classes for single-payer in these countries, in part because it (like UBI) benefits the middle-class. Universal healthcare is in these countries what conservatives would malign as “a sacred cow”.
None of this is to say that UBI would be politically invulnerable. Even the most durable social insurance programs are often put at risk.
[...]
But Colin appears to think UBI would inevitably become means-tested to only benefit the poor. Financial pressures, he says, would cause voters to limit the program. But Colin doesn’t make it clear why middle-class voters would react in this way, stripping themselves of a direct cash benefit. This is certainly not typical voter behaviour, and I am skeptical that a popular turn against UBI is inevitable or likely."
by caente on 9/11/16, 7:45 PM
by sharemywin on 9/12/16, 6:18 AM
so your supposed to replace: housing assistance, social security, medcaid, medicare, tuition assistance,food assistance, among others with $497/mo. Also, a strong incentive to have children without a job.
Now you could not give it to children but they seem like the neediest group of people to give it to.
Now you could leave out medicare and social security but now your left with 615B / 272M = $188/mo but, why bother?
by transfire on 9/11/16, 2:29 PM
Read as "continue to serve the oligarchs who pretend to care, pandering their endless bullshit solutions that serve only their own interests".
Nicolas Colin eat your own.
by AdrianB1 on 9/11/16, 3:11 PM
by overgard on 9/11/16, 4:55 PM
by TheRealPomax on 9/11/16, 4:12 PM
by wiz21c on 9/11/16, 2:26 PM
he's right when pointing at lack of a political argument. But form me it's quite clear. The argument is : redistribution. I know it's a simplistic left-wing argument but wealth redistribution is what basic income is. And unfortunately it's way too simple. I'd prefer a complex system because it offers many places for negotiating redistribution.
by JabavuAdams on 9/11/16, 2:16 PM
TL/DR:
> Basic income is to the social state what the flat tax is to the tax system. It flatters the engineering mind with its apparent simplicity. But in fact it is impossible to implement; it’s also politically suicidal; nobody’s ready to die for it; and even if it existed, it would probably trigger extraordinary political tension and the highest level of inequality in modern Western history.
by westvaflamer on 9/11/16, 7:32 PM
by jrbapna on 9/11/16, 2:02 PM
Whether this happens 20 years from now or 100 years or 1000 years from now is beside the point. It will happen. And therefore thinking about and preparing for this future is worthwhile.
by aminok on 9/11/16, 2:22 PM
Likewise, the author's arguments for social welfare are bullshit:
>There are two reasons why those four risks call for social state intervention. The first is their high criticality. A risk is critical if it is highly probable: for instance, most of us are bound to get old (dying young, fortunately, remains a small probability). A risk is also critical if, however improbable, it can have a devastating impact on your life: having cancer can ruin you if you don’t have health insurance; losing your job can plunge you into a devastating spiral towards poverty, etc. By definition, criticality is probability times impact.
That does not explain why we have to resort to state intervention.
>The other reason why these risks are not well-covered on the insurance market is that they are all affected by what economists call market imperfections. Moral hazard, a well-known imperfection, “occurs when one person takes more risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks”: it plays a key role when it comes to covering the unemployment risk.
This does not explain why we need state intervention. It sounds like market insurance doesn't want to cover these things for sound economic reasons, so he wants the government to cover it instead (even though it faces all of the same micro-economic problems, like moral hazard).
>Another frequent imperfection on insurance markets is adverse selection: if given the choice, an insurer will refuse to cover those who present signs of a high level of risk, thus providing insurance only to those who eventually don’t need it.
False. An insurer will cover a person who pays a premium that accounts for the risk.
This has the economically necessary effect of encouraging people to get insurance before they get sick and need it.