From this angle, the problem with UBI is it doesn't really represent a clear win for a sufficiently narrow group of people. You're basically taking wealth from the top X of society and transferring it to the bottom 1-X, where X is probably somewhere in the range of 30-70%. This is too wide for the strategy to work effectively. Either no one really feels like they're winning that much, or the cost to the losers is so high that they're going to fight tooth and nail to stop it.
That's just the implementation challenge I see from the political angle. I also think there are a ton of problems with UBI and it would probably be very economically and socially destructive, but that's a separate argument from the fact that it's going to be very difficult to implement in a democracy.
Reforming the Civil Service would remove his life-support system.
It would kick away the ladder that's put him where he is.
While he's still standing on it.
The only way to reform the Civil Service system is to reform the political system.
No government's going to reform the system that put it into power.
- Sir Arnold Robinson
Do you have any source on that? One of the original welfare systems, in Imperial Germany, was introduced by conservative politician Otto von Bismarck to preempt the popularity of the Social Democratic party which was gaining popularity with its proposals.
Eastern bloc ( Soviets, Warsaw pact, Yugoslavia) were dictatorships that supressed any dissent, but had very decent welfare states. There were wealth transfers, of course, but they were to the state, not citizens, and welfare wasn't linked to it.
Mindlessly asking for a source on every claim or observation is one of the silliest and most annoying things people on HN tend to do. It’s an original observation, not some shit I regurgitated from a book. You’d swear 90% of the people here thought you weren’t allowed to have a thought unless you published it in an academic journal. If you read the thread under my comment, you’ll find plenty of people pointing out researchers and historians who came to the same conclusion, e.g. (apparently) Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, whose book I have ordered.
> Eastern bloc ( Soviets, Warsaw pact, Yugoslavia) were dictatorships that supressed any dissent, but had very decent welfare states
This is entirely compatible with my observation. They aren’t democracies.
The agendas that are most successful are those which are laser focused to benefit particular groups, or even worse, to ensure that certain vilified groups have it worse. In the US, higher taxes are a very controversial topic, even if they would benefit the majority of the people. Even worse, some of the most ardent opposition is from the social class would most stands to benefit from liberal policies.
The whole game theoretic aspect of rational actors is out the window. Instead we have ever more isolated groups of people who don't care that they have it bad as long as their presumed opposition has it worse.
In light of all that, I'm actually inclined to agree with OP that a campaign that would benefit north of 50% of the population could easily be unpopular as a punchy opposition riles up the throngs of temporarily embarrassed millionaires to vote against their own interests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectorate_theory
That doesn't make it correct, but it's not 'wild' at all.
Think subsidies. Industry specific subsidies (e.g. farmer subsidies) are popular, while industry wide subsidies (e.g. tax cuts for business) aren’t.
Attempts to shape markets tend to do this.
I don't understand how this follows. I was with you until then, but IMHO UBI might negatively affect middle/upper class who relies most on lower class paid labor (things like cleaning, delivery, cooking, repairs). But people who provide these services already can and have to do them themselves, I don't see how UBI causing rising labor costs hurts them.
I think this isn't true. The UK got single-payer healthcare (with the creation of the NHS under the postwar Labour government) because it was felt that a national regime could deliver better health outcomes, following the experience of WW2. The NHS was enormously popular, thus it was embraced by the Conservatives, who beat Labour in the next election.
This is normal: successful welfare policies do not grant the party that introduced them lasting popularity and competent politicians understand this. A better model is that they are introduced because the party base wants the party to do it.
Also, I want fun, cool, tech and if the masses are being put out of work by fun, cool, tech we will have problems, and thereby see far less fun, cool, tech.
You do away with those people and that power leaving gl everything else the same, what you are doing is giving more power to the other existing social structures and ensuring no single person outside them can check their power.
So? More outsized government official power and more power to faceless corporations no longer under individual control but an entity up for its own best interests at the whim of a complex social structure bound by law to do the best for that entity which often ends up very bad for the interests of individual freedom.
You want to take away multibillionaires you have to start with structural changes to prevent mergers and pseudomonopolies, you need ten companies fighting for what two or three have now.
If you don’t you end up further encouraging next quarter profitability targets and megacorp best interests.
in other words there is probably something to fix, but you can’t just target a few of the symptoms or trying to make things better you drive us further into dystopia
Yes, exactly 2755. I’m having two and a half men flashbacks.
https://rentabasicaincondicional.eu/
Can't find a decent, detailed description of the proposal. They have an intro video, a translation of the same one in the main page:
https://rentabasicaincondicional.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/...
which is mostly gross oversimplifications, I suspect, to trigger emotional responses. Around 2:00 they mention funding. Basically, more and higher taxes, and the critical point, IMHO: replacing current subsidies and other public services with UBI. The devil is in the details, though, and wording is critical: they seem to say, but don't clearly state, that they're getting rid of everything else, and thus saving all that money to spend on UBI.
E.g. for countries with a public healthcare system: does UBI mean all public healthcare becomes private, and you spend UBI on your provider of choice? Does this mean people/enterprises no longer need to pay healthcare taxes?
E.g. for countries with unemployment insurance: does this mean it fully goes away, so people/enterprises no longer need to pay the unemployment tax?
E.g. what about pensions? Does UBI become your pension, thus no more taxes paid for your retirement? We all know what you need to live when you're 20 is a fraction of what you need at 70.
I'm extremely skeptical of any of these initiatives because they tend to be scarce in basic details. Which is likely done on purpose.
The obvious problem here is that UBI only makes sense if you take those other programs out (no public healthcare, no public pensions), but it will be unthinkable for most europeans to loose those. There’s no way to sell a change that requires people to take that amount of personal responsibility, especially when they’ve enjoyed life without them.
I also hate that what was a good economics idea has become into a meme, and has been modified in a way that defeats the purpose.
All the current talk about UBI started with people discussing back the concept of NIT (negative income tax), and the on-paper benefits of removing poverty traps from the system.
In theory, if a member state implements a directive in a way that is not faithful, it might risk a fine from the EU, but member states generally do not care much about it, I am not even sure if all of the fines that have been issued in the past have been paid...
The amount of UBI will most likely depend on how much money an individual needs to buy food, pay rent and pay basic utilities, in a given country.
I suspect there are all kinds of interesting pros and cons worth study, but without trials everything is just a wild guess.
The study to do is why existing programs don’t work better.
Some people… have a best possible outcome of at best not contributing anything to society for big chunks of their lives. This is just a feature of humanity. You get the most people out of this situation by taking away the fear of not having enough to exist. A big chunk of people don’t need to be in prison or institutionalized or in elaborate programs to “help”, they just need time and shelter and good food, with enough freedom to pursue happiness in their own way. Drugs, crime, and mental breakdowns always have a component of desperation as cause. You can take that away and help all of those problems without needing to do anything else.
I have known people in social programs to “help” and my god were they terrible under constant threat of losing support and filled with perverse incentives to not try to be better.
This is a huge issue and one that UBI might make easier to address. The person suffering from addiction or mental health issues would not be dependent on the job which could help prevent homelessness and further degradation of their state. Friends and family being able to temporarily leave the workforce to care for each other could help get that person the help they need.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-toxic-dru...
To qualify, they must establish that they're unable to do any job which could earn them about $1200 a month, they can never have more than $2000 in assets, and they basically can't work.
With UBI, they just... get the $700 a month (for the sake of argument). If they can work a little, well, then they do. If they get a gift, inheritance, any sort of windfall, good for them.
There isn't ever a choice between continuing to get the lifeline check or trying to reenter the workforce, also known as the poverty trap.
This is one of the basic arguments for UBI over means-tested benefits, in fact.
Since I am from the EU this initiative concerns me, but I would fully support an US or Chinese experiment.
This is just FIRE without the money. Did you read the actual proposal? They explicitly want to give a middle class life to everyone, with zero obligation from the individual.
This is complete insanity.
Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful. Kids are idiots (past me included), and if they knew they had the option to do nothing productive, then that's what a very significant proportion would do: nothing.
So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.
You know what, why NOT be a teenage parent and never do anything productive? There's no downside.
Or if you're one of the ones being productive, when you hit 30 and get a child, suddenly why bother going back to work ever?
Do you know how many people would be "artists" or "authors" if they could? They really believe in themselves, and write poems their whole life, publish books, paint stuff. But it's all shit. Literally nobody wanted what 99% of them did. But they had no obligation to produce anything anybody else wanted.
I'm for a strong social safety net and reducing inequality, but UBI is insanity until we actually have achieved Star Trek level of abundance.
UBI assumes that everything that people want that gives them fulfilment is actually useful to anybody else.
Neil Breen is funny because there's only one of him. Europe has what, 800M people? There would easily be 5M Neil Breens, but even missing the mark on unintentionally funny.
And NONE of them would be forced to "get their life together". Their life IS together, they're "film makers".
So we would have like 25% otherwise productive people dropping out completely, and another 50% switching to something that makes them fulfilled, but contributes nothing.
And we can't keep the world running on the backs of the 25%.
Another problem is that UBI becomes a level of power. People start planning their life after not needing it, and then politicians decide to not make it grow by inflation. Or they bump it up and make future generations pay for it. C.f. pension systems, medicare, and BBC funding for some unintended political side effects.
UBI is absolutely bananas.
Lots of people do lots of things for reasons other than money and we’re heading towards an economy where living a middle class life doesn’t require everyone to work.
People will run factories and do science and make art without just needing to do it to eat.
Humans before civilization didn’t work anywhere near so hard to survive as people today.
Go look at github and tell me about how money is necessary to get everything done.
We’re not in a post scarcity economy but it’s nearby.
Currently people decide how much work they are willing to do - want more stuff, earn more money to buy more stuff
We are already seeing the disaster of Social Security benefits not being enough to fund retirement - how will this work when people don’t even work to save for retirement
Yes, but most do earn some money. Or in other words they provide some service to other people in exchange for others doing things for them. Literally doing their part to be in a society.
But with UBI there is no longer any obligation for even a base level of doing service to anyone else.
> and we’re heading towards an economy where living a middle class life doesn’t require everyone to work.
No, but we are hundreds of years from Star Trek utopia where basically nobody has to work.
I don't think you get my point about just how unproductive society would be if everyone had FU money. Literally anybody could say "Oh, I can't take a month off, starting tomorrow? Ok, then I quit. Bye".
> We’re not in a post scarcity economy but it’s nearby.
Not even remotely close. Nothing in the world is not scarce. Hell, they say water is going to be the next big expensive thing.
With the growth we have, in people and resource consumption, if anything we are further away from post scarcity now than ever.
I love how you framed this as a bad thing. As if FIRE was something one has to earn after years and years of wage slavery.
> Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful.
> So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.
That assumption has been disproved time and again.
> I love how you framed this as a bad thing.
No, not at all. I'm a Star Trek fan.
But for the 21st century it's a complete fantasy to think it's realistic.
You need money to do this. To just skip that step is disconnected from reality.
Or to put another way: You can't just take. In Star Trek you can, because food replicators, and extreme abundance.
In Star Trek people would give away a house because they can just get a new one.
We're hundreds of years away from that.
FIRE is about really intensifying your production (your "giving"), in order to then get back your fair share as others give back to you.
If you create a world where nobody has to "give", but everyone is allowed to "take", what exactly do you think will happen?
> That assumption has been disproved time and again.
Oh? How, where? I don't think we're talking about the same thing.
Yes, some wealthy people in history have used their time to make great things. But the vast VAST majority, like 99.9999%, have not.
Just look at royalty. The only productive thing they do is through their wealth and power. Who actually contributed, as opposed to have their wealth contribute?
But I also like your cynical take on petitions. :-)
