So, bailing out the rich is good, feeding the poor causes an inflation crash.

What a world we live in.

I don’t think OP argued to bail out the rich. They only argued that UBI doesn’t make sense.

Maybe UBI makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t. I’m on the fence, personally. But bailing out the way we did in 2008-2009, where CEOs and other saboteurs got massive bonuses instead of jail time, was highly immoral. Some of believe that that caused latent inflation.

Bailing out the rich has nothing to do with UBI.

I’ll welcome an UBI scheme that doesn’t wreck personal agency and responsibility. But the onus is on the proponents to prove that it isn’t a terminal civilization’s 21st century version of the Roman “bread and circus”

Btw, a great implicit UBI is to

- reduce the work week to 30 hours. Shares existing jobs with more people

- change the “part time” rules to discourage hiring “part time” employees to avoid benefits

- increase minimum pay. Yes, that too. But it has to be local government in a manner that makes sense to their local economy. Alternatively the federal imposed min. wage should depend on geography

- Bring back weekends to low wage earners (my wife’s entire family works at Walmart or similar places. I see how weekend instability wrecks their ability to enjoy being together). Either close on weekend, or have workers choose a week day they always get off. Mandate 50% overtime for work on weekends.

- Put a 15% tariffs on all goods (no exceptions!). This acts like a sales tax (counter cyclical to the economy. Big plus one) that isn’t as regressive as a sales tax since it encourages local jobs for cheap things and for fancy things the rich pay).

Didn't want to imply or criticize OP in any way, just make an observation.

I think your arguments against UBI make sense, I also know a lot of good pro arguments.

But ultimately, whatever the arguments, as long as we bail out the rich, I don't care about potential downsides of UBI. Nobody cares about the downsides of bailing out the rich, so why should I care about the downsides of bailing out the poor?

In short, if: "UBI wrecks personal agency and responsibility", than so does QE, bailouts etc. for the rich. So these points aren't the real reason why the one thing happens and the other doesn't.

Fully agree with all your points, a better labour market is better than UBI.

The poor would soon learn their one shot out of poverty is keeping their job and throwing their UBI income straight into the stock market. This would propel the prices of equities to even greater stratospheric heights, and as the investor class gets richer eventually the prices of all commodities rise to capture this easy money flowing around. So now the poor have more money but it still buys less or equal to what it did before, so it’s a wash.

Meanwhile anyone who isn’t putting all their UBI into stocks and is instead using it to live and pay bills will fall behind and be comparatively poorer to everyone else. It will happen.

Any UBI is not going to be "in addition to" whatever other money you might earn, but is more likely to look something like a minimum income, below which you cannot drop (even if you stop working).

That drops the U in UBI, most it’s merits, and creates a poverty gap.

UBI only makes sense when it’s universal. It makes most sense when it replaces other entitlement programs.

I don’t think UBI is necessarily doomed to an inflationary spiral, but the onus is on its proponents to prove otherwise.

Come up with a scheme that won’t become a bread and circus, and wont cause inflation, and I’m all for it!

But I’d rather just smash the machines (that’s ultimately what UBI aims to solve) and solve the automation problem by giving ppl the dignity [1] of work.

[1] my local grocer employees a few folks with Down syndrome at the cash register. They’re super slow, but otherwise good at their job. I love them. They value their job so much, and they have by far the best attitude. Their job gives them the dignity of knowing that they aren’t mere consumers, but also (in their limited way) contributors. That’s very powerful for the soul.

I don't see why inflation is necessary. UBI doesn't have to change the amount of money flowing through the economy; one option is heavy taxes. Wealth redistribution, effectively. That does beg the question of whether incentives will remain high enough to maintain the technological forward momentum we have been making, and whether that slowing down is even necessarily a bad thing.

> [1] my local grocer employees a few folks with Down syndrome at the cash register. They’re super slow, but otherwise good at their job. I love them. They value their job so much, and they have by far the best attitude. Their job gives them the dignity of knowing that they aren’t mere consumers, but also (in their limited way) contributors. That’s very powerful for the soul.

That's very different from smashing the machines to me. They really and truly are contributing something to the world; we need people to check people out and bag their groceries. If we built a machine that could check people out and bag their groceries, smashing that machine so people can get the "sense of pride and accomplishment" of having needlessly manually bagged the groceries seems a little... patronizing? I mean, at that point why don't we just keep using the machines and send everyone to school for the rest of their lives to keep them busy like we do with children?

I think people will gravitate towards work on their own, it just won't look like what you're accustomed to. With that amount of automation, we can support a lot more work that isn't strictly industrial. Arts and culture, artisanal goods, baskets woven underwater, etc. Is it going to propel us forward? Probably not, but I think it will make people a lot happier than pointlessly bagging groceries. If we accept that the value of the work is intrinsic (i.e. the value is in doing the work, not in the product of the work), we might as well let people work on what makes them happy.

Wait what? Isn't that the whole point? It's UNIVERSAL.

So we don't have to have bureaucracy to run it bla bla.

How is it UBI if I stop getting it if I'm working? Then it literally is just another form of government help to the unemployed and a massive disincentive to work.

And you don’t think people getting UBI with a bunch of free time aren’t going to occupy that time by taking unofficial jobs and getting paid under the table to earn more income? Get real.

You’re right, of course, that if the UBI is giving any meaningful amount of money, then ceribus paribus, (massive) inflation is the result. It’s a basic argument too.

Of course you don’t have to keep the “ceribus paribus” condition, Although I’m skeptical any leader in the USA will break the ceribus paribus.

Not really. It's a mechanism by which UBI could turn out to be futile, but it's only a qualitative mechanism. Whether UBI actually becomes self-defeating via inflation is a quantitative question which nobody can honestly answer today because (a) a lot hinges on what the tax regime is like and (b) nobody has ever done the experiment, and we need the experiment to gather quantitative data. (Yes, there have been UBI experiments. None of them were large enough for macroeconomic effects.)

is it?

UBI is really a strange beast. I wish I had more time or fitting frameworks / mental models to understand better the consequences.

UBI...

- might be the only solution out of the crazy money printing and MMT

- seemed to me initially (!) strangely similar to communism/socialism, but actually is very different (for example there is something to be gained from being innovative or creating stuff (instead of doing the minimum you can), which was not (!) the case in communism

- might be the only solution when most (current) jobs will be replaced by robots (if all agriculture gets 99% automated, can we not have basic (!) free food for everyone? And additionally just a simple roof... both would cover most of your basic needs)

I am not sure about UBI, I also see problems with it too, but could solve more of those than it creates... maybe?

edit: formating