Something that is missing from the basic income/poverty debate is the notion of "learned helplessness"; after a long time in poverty, people get used to the lifestyle and have difficulty adjusting to "regular" life.<p>For example, if you've been homeless your entire life, you've never had to lock your apartment door or carry a key around. My partner (a social worker) had a client who's apartment was always getting robbed because whenever she left, she never locked her door; it was not something she was used to doing. Another client was unable to set an alarm and follow a schedule. 20 years of living on the street, waking up whenever he felt like it, meant that he had completely lost his faculties for time management. He couldn't hold down a job and regularly missed appointments.<p>Part of my partner's job was carrying these people through their journey to "regular" life. She would show up to their apartments and take them to their appointments. She would call the woman who didn't lock her doors every morning to remind her to lock her door on her way out. Etc. Etc.<p>Basic income doesn't solve any of this. It just drops a load of money into a person's lap who has no idea what to do with it.
The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it down to 244 million people. If we left Social Security alone then that would cut another 46 million people out as well.
The article doesn't even attempt to explore cost savings by eliminating excessive management of all of the existing programs.
An absolutely key feature of basic income is the security it gives someone who is on breadline.<p>I can only describe the situation in the UK - but imagine this generalises. If you are on government benefits, and you accept some money to do a small or casual job, you face a choice. Not declare it, and face court and destitution if you are found out.<p>Declaring the income, on the other hand, is an administrative nightmare. Worse - it might trigger a recalculation, or removal, of your benefits. Most benefit seekers don't fully understand how their benefits are calculated, and, again, they could be destitute if benefits are removed or reduced.<p>So, for any long term unemployed person, it's often best to sit tight and not take any risks. Thus the person is trapped in poverty, plus of course the sense of self worth that comes from doing a job.<p>This is also true for an entrepreneur who decides to quite his job and build a business. Basic income can provide some security while you get that business going. This is not typically true of unemployment benefit.<p>Everything comes back to what unemployment benefits are - a payment conditional on not doing any work. That causes so many problems, and basic income can solve them.<p>On the cost: basic income, at substantial levels, is clearly very expensive. However, you simply tax that money back. This can leave pay after tax absolutely unchanged for everyone, while still delivering the advantages described above.
Keep in mind when discussing UBI, especially in the context of poverty, that it is <i>not</i> a solution to poverty. It is a solution to automation crashing demand by throwing earners permanently out of the economy.<p>Robots take the jobs so people have no money to spend even as the robots make more stuff, cheaper.<p>What to do with the people? Throw them in a volcano? "Hunger Games"? Let's just give them money and see what happens, okay?<p><i>That's</i> UBI.<p>UBI isn't for the bum. It's for <i>you</i> (okay, well, your cousin. You read HN, you're probably fine.)
>[...] Why not subsidize workers’ wages instead?<p>Sounds like a great idea! Companies get to save money and the tax payer effectively pays the companies profit.
Problem is with capitalism and it's founders that told us all that you can't live without work. In next decades we will need to change the system diametrical because robots will take all not creative jobs out there. If we want basic pay we will need to tax corporations that use robots at around 70-90%, money from tax will go for basic pay, money from people that receive basic pay will go to corporations etc. Thing that needs to be controlled is capital, it can't be taken out of the market like it's done now, companies are gathering billions of dollars which are taken out of the market. Capital taken from the market can not be redistributed again. One thing is for sure, current system need to be changed and adapted to robots revolution.
Relative poverty is insoluble without totalitarian levels of redistribution to a very low common denominator, and that is unlikely to include the inevitable oligarchs. Absolute poverty is rapidly being solved (<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_...</a>) by markets and globalization, and radical redistribution such as a basic income tends to interfere with that.
This article is yet another example of binary thinking.<p>Basic income could be started at any amount. It won't pay the rent, but an extra $100 a month makes a difference for people living on the edge. The first $100/month will make a bigger difference than anything added on top of that.
UBI won't solve poverty for a very simple reason:<p>Every time government starts to subsidise something the price of subsidised goods goes up. I've seen this in Europe with wind farms, "eco" lightbulbs, farming equipment. etc.<p>And UBI is equivalent to subsidising all basic goods at the same time. So the only noticeable effect of UBI will be price increase, so that it would take your salary + UBI to purchase goods that now can be purchased by your salary alone.<p>Net result: increased bureaucracy, increased cash flow for the government (higher taxes), higher profits for corporations (higher prices), no benefit for poor, big hit for middle class (which is most heavily taxed).
We already have a basic income, at least in Europe, not sure about the USA. Unemployed people get welfare. Changing this system to what BI advocates propose is not a huge change:<p>- Simplification of the welfare system, you get money automatically, no need to ask.<p>- In the current system, if you get employed, you lose benefits, so the jump in your income is small, a disincentive to work. In the BI proposals, income vs income-plus-welfare curve is smooth. That's the main improvement I think.<p>- More money gets redistributed from the wealthy to the poor. Personally I think the current level of redistribution is fine.
It doesn't make to tax citizens only to give the money back to them.<p>Another way to implement a mincome is to have a flat tax rate and give every citizen a large standard deductible. If one's taxable income is negative, then one would receive money from the government, which is interpreted as a negative tax payment.<p>Furthermore, the purpose of a mincome is not to alleviate poverty, but instead to to replace current systems of welfare (food stamps, social security, etc).
I made the same submission here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11806509" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11806509</a><p>Maybe they should be merged.
I hope Switzerland votes for UBI, it would be interesting to see actual data rather than just conjecture. The point about people losing the will to work is interesting, as he also makes the point that jobs give us purpose and structure in life. If money is no longer an issue, or less of an issue, people may choose to do jobs because they provide purpose and structure.
It could also increase innovation. There have been lots of article on HN recently about the privileges white males have in terms of financial security, that make it safer to start businesses than non-white and non-males. UBI might allow more people to do this.<p>Another interesting aspect would be the economic effect of everyone having a minimum amount of money. I don't know enough about economic to say what the impact would be on basis good vs luxury goods and everything in between but I imagine it would have an effect.
This is nuts. Basic income is not to provide extra spending money for 100% of americans. It's help 10% of the most poor while everyone else ends up paying back the money in taxes. So we are talking about 300 billion. This is half of US military budget and will be instead of, instead of in addition to, current aid programs.<p>It is true that basic income will not directly improve lifestyle of the middle class. It can well result in indirect improvement by poor becoming more productive and government bureaucrats currently running the program getting more useful jobs. But we probably need to other things as well to improve lifestyle for the other 90% of the population.
In my country, there was a movement that tried to make education free of charge. One of their arguments was that it was going to be actually cheaper for the government.<p>This is what the logic was: the student loans system has a high interest rate, and when the loan is defaulted, the government needs to pay. So what the government ends up paying is not only the actual loan, but the loan with some accrued interest. Also, the default rate is high. So in this case it makes sense for the government to just pay directly.<p>Now, following the same mindset, how much does the government pay if there is people without a basic income? is it more than just giving away that money directly to people? If there answer is yes, then probably it's not a bad idea after all.<p>Now, of course there will be issues. The food stamps system imposes some restrictions that you will no longer have if you just receive basic income. Also some people might just do the minimum required to get that income and live at the expense of the government. There might be pros and cons that need to be considered.
Here's a thought experiment I've been been wrestling with... Imagine a dirty low skill job. Something that currently doesn't pay much and is generally considered low status. Assume it's a job no one really wants to do but do because it pays them a living. What would happen to that job under UBI? I would assume that due to vacancies demand for people willing to do this work would go up, and companies would need to lure in applicants by raising pay. Imagine that would indeed attract workers. How would this affect that company? It's costs would rise. Will it become less competitive? Will it raise price? Would the sector have to be subsidized to stay afloat? Would it start some kind of 'moral revolution'? I imagine new coping mechanisms would need to be devised and the economy would morph into something quite unlike what we live under today.
Of course it will not solve poverty. That's not the point. The point is that it will solve the self-destruction of social wealth. In particular, it will prevent the expansion of poverty to include the vast majority of currently wealthy persons.
At a minimum, we need free universal healthcare that shouldn't be replaced with basic income, because poor sick people often need more expensive healthcare than a reasonable basic income can pay for. Similar for education, the current system of loans just sucks compared to universal free education which was achieved by the frigging USSR.<p>Also it seems pointless to give basic income to well-off people. On top of free healthcare and education, why don't we just top up everyone's income to the equivalent of the minimum wage? Sure, that will disincentivize jobs that pay close to minimum wage, but such jobs are dying due to automation anyway, and good riddance.
The way you fund it, of course, is to further tax the higher end of the income bracket. It's an innocuous way of redistributing wealth. It helps everyone but the very wealthiest, which are the ones who need it the least. Jobs are not the answer, at least in my mind. A universal basic income would allow people to spend some time possibly developing a passion that they love, not slaving away at a job which is at best given out of pity, and at worst a waste of time which they are obligated to attend at a negative cost to everybody. A universal basic income is upfront and direct about its purpose.
The biggest concern that I have with UBI is how do we avoid the Basic Income Trap? It's pretty widely accepted that we fell prey to the Two Income Trap [1]. If we institute UBI, how long will it be before a person needs their UBI <i>and</i> another job (or two, or three) just to scrape by?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap" rel="nofollow">http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap</a>
I'd be interested to hear more about the last part concerning "subsidizing wages".<p>Welfare for many in this country basically is a subsidy for their wage (cue memes of "walmart welfare").<p>Take for instance when the big layoffs started in the tech/housing sector, you would hear stories of people staying on unemployment because it paid MORE than a new job in the same field would pay. And we kept extending benefit timeframes which just resulted in a vicious cycle.<p>That's a pretty big incentive to not work.
> <i>Almost a quarter of American households make less than $25,000. It would be hardly surprising if a $10,000 check each for Mom and Dad sapped their desire to work.</i><p>Ah, but a transfer payment which <i>targets the poor</i> is worse in this regard. A $10,000 check <i>that you lose</i> if you work saps your desire to work more than a $10,000 check that <i>augments</i> your income.
UBI would also provide entrepreneurs and small business owners with a safety net so they'd be able to take risks they wouldn't be able to before.
> Where would that money come from? It amounts to nearly all the tax revenue collected by the federal government. Nothing in the history of this country suggests Americans are ready to add that kind of burden to their current taxes<p>Taxes would have to go up, in some cases drastically. It's an easier sell if people immediately get a good chunk back.<p>> A universal basic income has many undesirable features, starting with its non-negligible disincentive to work. Almost a quarter of American households make less than $25,000. It would be hardly surprising if a $10,000 check each for mom and dad sapped their desire to work.<p>Except if they keep working the money just adds up. I certainly wouldn't want to stop working and give up my lifestyle.<p>Maybe instead of working to make enough money to just get by you keep working and put a chunk of that money into savings, or upgrading your lifestyle a bit. Maybe moving to a better area, fixing up some stuff around the house, get your kid a couple toys, etc...<p>Yeah, people in situations that make working hard might quit but maybe they should be allowed to. Or maybe they should quit for a while and come back when it makes more sense.
In every debate, there are people on the wrong side of history. Mr. Porter, welcome to that list. Granted, the point that it won't happen today is true enough, but it is an inevitability (assuming we don't blow ourselves up beforehand), so it's important to start thinking about it now.<p>What frustrates me the most with these articles is that they don't base any of their information on actual fact. Take, for example, the argument of disincentivizing work. This is one of things that seems "logical" if you're a pessimist or an asshole, but past experiments with basic income have proven it to be untrue (look at the "Mincome" experiment in Manitoba for proof).