Well then you need to include that in the cost. You can't look at current costs and current tax revenue.

>As a basic argument of production, it's basically been proven that work disincentive is not actually a thing

Saying "this does not lead to a work disincentive" is a very different argument from saying "this leads to a work disincentive, but that's a good thing". Make up your mind. Above you argued that work disincentives were perfectly fine, and are the intended outcome, and anyone who doesn't like them is a monster that wants to enslave people. When I point out that there's a legitimate concern that production will go down, and possibly enough to make BI unviable, you turn around and say that there's no disincentive.

Also, "one guy here argues something, while quoting extensively from many people who disagree" is by no means a "proof" for that side. It's an argument. When there's an economic consensus, that would be closer to proof.

I also have a problem with this:

>However, if, as I have suggested elsewhere, the UBI is financed in part by eliminating middle-class tax loopholes (without changing marginal tax rates), Dave’s income would increase by less than the full $8,000 and he would reduce his annual work by less than 13 hours

This is saying that increasing someone's effective tax rate will increase the number of hours they work. That seems wrong, even if marginal rates are fixed.

That said, certain types of work that are more aggressively taking advantage of the lower class and those down on their luck will no longer have as an incentive staying just a hair above total homelessness and bankruptcy. Therefore they can pick their work with more dignity (goodbye Amazon warehouse pressures, hello treating people better).

I'm also saying that the work people choose may not be entirely typical, or fit within everyone's definition of "work" as they define it as a moral imperative.

I agree that's what you said in your most recent comment. But that's not how you started. I quote:

>What someone that trots that out is saying is that more people would be able to forgo wasting their lives in menial jobs and instead create art and new businesses, or stay home to raise a family or care for elderly parents

You clearly said that some people are going to stop working, and instead focus on things like art, and that's a good thing. Changing your argument halfway through and not acknowledging it is bad form.

In fact, you even said in this comment that there's a disincentive. It's beyond me how you can say "certain types of work ... will no longer have as an incentive" and still claim there's no work disincentive at all.

Make up your mind, choose an argument and stick with it.

>I'm also saying that the work people choose may not be entirely typical, or fit within everyone's definition of "work" as they define it as a moral imperative.

You're still straw manning your opposition, even after I pointed out that moral imperatives to work need play no role in opposing BI. So using your terminology, how would you respond to the concern that this "untypical work" would reduce output enough to threaten the viability of a society?

I don't think production and output would go down and I most certainly don't think it would lead to societal collapse, or I wouldn't be arguing for it. Obviously.

Redefining work doesn't answer any of the questions. Calling art work doesn't affect production, unless art suddenly becomes edible.

"I don't think production and output would go down and I most certainly don't think it would lead to societal collapse, or I wouldn't be arguing for it. Obviously."

You could say that about any position anyone takes. Nobody's accusing Bi advocates of trying to cause societal collapse. They say that BI might, in spite of the advocates best intentions, lead to problems. Your good intentions don't cause good outcomes, so just saying "I don't want society to collapse" is not a useful argument.

This is interesting. I can't speak for the parent; I would weakly guess that their response would be that they never specified that they were talking about "traditional measures of production" but were specifically objecting to traditional measures. If that's the case, they should have done so more clearly at the outset.

That said, I can see a couple ways that could happen that workers might opt out of traditional jobs without a decrease in "traditional measures of production and output". I make no particular claim that any of these is likely.

One potential outcome is that increased options for workers leads to increased upwards pressure on wages, leading to increased pressure for automation. Improvements to automation could mean increases in production in the medium term, at the cost of some production in the short term.

Another possibility appears if we consider the following model, which may or may not be related to reality:

1 Some workers are disgruntled.

2 Disgruntled workers, on average, have a negative marginal productivity.

3 Because of economic incentives, disgruntled workers must make themselves indistinguishable from regular workers along axes actually used when making hiring/termination decisions.

4 Given other opportunities, those most dissatisfied with their current situation will be most likely to leave.

In this case it would seem that on providing a basic income, we would see those negative marginal productivity workers leave first, which could mean an immediate gain in productivity.

I doubt this. There's plenty of pressure for automation now, and I don't see wages increasing as being the final straw to accelerate automation research.

The argument I've seen elsewhere is the other way around: that once we develop better automation, the demand for labor will drop enough that BI will be feasible. But until we reach that stage, I'm not convinced that BI will be sustainable.

>Another possibility appears if we consider the following model, which may or may not be related to reality:

I expect the group of workers that have negative marginal productivity (or, less marginal productivity than their salary) is chiefly those people that are good at fooling the system into thinking they're productive, and not necessarily intersecting heavily with the group of people that would leave under BI. But this is very low confidence.

> I can't speak for the parent; I would weakly guess that their response would be that they never specified that they were talking about "traditional measures of production" but were specifically objecting to traditional measures. If that's the case, they should have done so more clearly at the outset.

If that's what they mean, then I'd ask specifically about food and other essentials. How would those be guaranteed production? How much would the cost of those go up in response to higher wages, and how do you protect against a vicious cycle of "inflation->BI increases-> higher wage demand->inflation"?

And if they think that production of those won't go down, then which people are doing "art"? Who's doing their current job, etc?

It's not a question of final straws or dramatic thresholds, but of a constellation of smaller decisions.

If I have to pay my workers $X, it's worth investing in automation that amortizes out to less than $X. If workers demand $2X, then two things follow:

First, more existing solutions in the marketplace are likely to be worthwhile. There may be economies of scale, where this would help lower the cost of similar automation. At an extreme, there may be tools available that could cost <$X if they were being bought by the whole industry, but between $X and $2X in the case where no one is yet buying them.

Second, if I'm considering building automation tools, there are more things I can expect to successfully bring to market if workers are being paid more. And so I am more able to raise funds to do research into that automation.

These kinds of things should lead to an increase in automation as compared to the status quo. It may not be dramatic, but I'm not sure it needs to be dramatic.

> I expect the group of workers that have negative marginal productivity (or, less marginal productivity than their salary) is chiefly those people that are good at fooling the system into thinking they're productive, and not necessarily intersecting heavily with the group of people that would leave under BI.

I think that's plenty possible. But note that we don't require that most of the negative-marginal-product workers leave, just that a large enough portion of leaving workers be negative-marginal-product.

> But this is very low confidence.

Certainly, as was my example in the first place :)

> how do you protect against a vicious cycle of "inflation->BI increases-> higher wage demand->inflation"?

As I've said elsewhere, I think this is a concern. It's my understanding that the result of a BI that is too high for a society to support would precisely be rapid inflation. I propose protecting against the cycle you describe by refusing to raise the BI level in response to inflation, which lets the (real) BI fall to a sustainable level if we set it too high. Growing BI at (or slightly above) targeted inflation seems appropriate. Growing it with observed (or expected) inflation seems dangerous.

I could not disagree more.

(Or if you want to nitpick definitions and insist that you've defined BI the one true way, then we can be pedantic and say I strongly oppose BI and strongly support a system that is very nearly BI but for this difference...)

I believe that a basic income at an appropriate level will, over time, increase productivity. But I also believe that the result of a basic income higher than the economy can support is a high level of inflation. If we don't raise BI in response, that's naturally self-correcting. I don't want to remove that safeguard.

Increasing it at (or slightly faster than) targeted inflation sounds advisable. We should not increase it based on predicted or observed inflation.