> UBI is how you make sure everyone has Fuck-You money

Erm no, it's probably only barely what you need to survive, nothing close to what people refer to as FU Money.

I think the generous reading, and the one I agree with, is that it is on the scale of "FU money". Any reliable source of income that can satisfy needs means that you have more freedom to refuse to do X, Y, or Z.

This is the key to FU Money, an increase in freedom since your base needs are met and secure; agreed that in common parlance it usually is applied to people that have so much money they can live like a king and say no to whatever they want.

The article's specifically using the term to indicate "I don't have to take/keep a crappy job just to survive", rather than "I'm financially independent of all jobs for every monetary goal", and I'd say that UBI fits that basic idea pretty well.

> I'm financially independent of all jobs for every monetary goal

He's living "frugally" as described in his article. I don't think that what's people expect from UBI when they talk about it.

For some people, I imagine, enough to live on IS fu money. Not everyone needs the profligacy of a car, house, travel, etc., a large amount of personal space.

Enough for mental health without the great of losing everything and being homeless.

market will eat ubi by adjusting prices, and politicians will abuse ubi by promising more ubi

It's relative - it's FU money for anti-exploitation from bad bosses or abusive spouses you might otherwise be forced to work/live with; UBI could give you a decent living in a small town but not in New York City where the Landlord-Rental complex and gentrification is in full effect.

but with UBI you'd not be forced to live in NYC just to get any job.

Universal Basic Income is NOT Fuck You Money as it is totally reliant on government for a source of income. True "Fuck You Money" is having enough in diversified assets to a point you never have to work for anyone the rest of your entire life. It's also not maybe having enough money for a few years as some would seem to suggest here.

When I worked retail in college, “fuck you money” for my colleagues could be as little as $2,500.

One guy I worked with worked from 5am to 2pm in the mall bakery, took a nap in the backroom, the was a line cook from 4p-midnight. Mostly because of some debts and a situation that prevented his wife from working.

I think what the parent meant is no more wage slavery is required to survive, so fu to minimum-wage drudgery. Jobs will have to offer something besides survival

FU money implies never needing to work again...

...which is exactly what UBI intends.

FU money means you have more than what you need. Relying on UBI means you become slave to a system that does not depend on you (external) for your survival, which is the opposite of actually having FU money. It's a big old trap.

What you need is a function of what you have come to expect.

Electricity. Wifi. Fast internet. Air conditioning. Running water. Access to nutritious food and good medicine. Some of those are needs, others are not. The ones which are directly maintaining you in good health are needs.

Don't sacrifice your needs (8 hours of sleep a day, for example) for your wants (a shiny new iPhone or bigger apartment) over the years.

It's not black and white. As we give more and more UBI, we rebalance the power dynamic between employers and employees. It starts to obviate the need for minimum wage laws and unions, because people can start to ask for 30 hour work weeks, time off to raise their own kids, study a new career, contribute to science and open source software and so on. They'll be able to take more entrepreneurial risks, too. A society with UBI would have a lot more people contributing to gift economies.

The most serious proposal for UBI in the United States (serious in that people talked about it for a few minutes) was from Andrew Yang, who proposed $1000 a month for all adults. It would be difficult for most people to live on that without getting a lot of other free stuff to go with it.

$1000/mo is $6.25/hr at 40 hours per week. Minimum wage is only $1/hr more[0] and people are expected to live on that. $6.25/hr with no 40hr time commitment is a pretty sweet deal.

[0] US federal minimum wage

Isn't that like at least 3.8 trillion per year?

Only on paper. Taxes on the average income would increase by a compensating $1000/month making it essentially invisible to them and balanced in the government books. It's only on the rich and the poor where the effects would be noticeable.

In practice, it would have a similar impact on the books as a program that gave $1000/month to just the poor people. Giving the money to everybody and then taxing it back from most makes it seem much larger but makes it a wash in practice.

The fed currently takes in about 3.8 in taxes total spends about 4.2 (minus giant things being thrown about currently). About 2.3 is towards 'entitlement programs'. This 'UBI' I would assume would take over the 2.3? Leaving a gap of about 1.5 trillion to make it to the 1000 a month, minus what is given back to those who 'wash'. Plus whatever other deficit is going on?

The key here is the phrase, "currently takes in".

There is a huge amount of taxes that the ultra-wealthy are currently NOT paying. In fact, the vast majority of income taxes are actually paid by the lower and middle classes, because once you hit a certain level of income you have enough money to pay professionals to help you shelter your money and avoid taxes.

For example, Warren Buffet only paid $1.8 million in taxes in 2015, even though his wealth was worth 72 billion at the time. His wealth literally grew 12 billion that year, and he only paid $1.8 million in taxes.

That means he paid only 0.015% in taxes, in terms of wealth growth vs income taxes paid.

Meanwhile, someone earning $100K would have paid around 20% of their income...

Looking at IRS data, top 1% tax payers in US in 2018 paid 38.5% of the federal income taxes. Bottom 90% paid 28.6%. So I don't think they're as good as hiding their money in the Cayman Islands as you think they are: https://taxfoundation.org/federal-income-tax-data-2021/

In comparison top 10% of the Danish tax payers paid just 31.3% of the total income tax, despite Denmark having rather high taxation (the OECD method that puts it as #1 is controversial, but I pay e.g. a 42% marginal tax rate on any capital gains).

There's a large difference between:

'share of the total taxes the rich pay'

And

'the percentage of their wealth the rich pay'

It may only take the rich 5% of their income to pay the 38.5% of total taxes because they're capturing so much of the value generated in America and hiding it whereever.

If I buy a bar of gold it may go up or down in value. Until I cash out, that value is 'locked up'. Do not confuse income with wealth. They are locked at the hip and are very closely related but are not the same thing. That is where most of 'the rich' keep their 'money'. They do not keep most of it in large bank accounts. Take the top 2 guys right now. Most of their 'wealth' is in stocks for 2 companies that have had their valuation go extremely high. Oh they are rich. But if they cashed out they lose control of their companies. You can clearly see what is more important to them. Even the warren buffet example from above is someone who keeps his money in a company that buys other companies and makes them profitable. Lives extremely modestly and plays with coupons. His wealth is locked up in companies that makes jobs. You probably could tax them another 10-20% more and not really move the needle on what they pay. Because they manage their wealth not their income.

You're right but you're discussing something totally different.

I have written about this before, but I believe this perspective is worth repeating.

UBI is a fantastic idea in theory. It is more efficient in terms of capital and human resources than the current system, probably by an order of magnitude or more. However, it does suffer one deep flaw that I haven't seen anyone promoting UBI address.

How do we ensure that UBI doesn't become weaponized against the people it's supposed to be helping?

If UBI is passed it becomes the single most important issue to the majority of voters. Someone running on a platform of 'more money' will (even if it's economically a bad idea) likely win elections based on it. If there is an economic need to decrease the UBI payments it will be the death knell of political careers.

But the biggest concern I have is this:

We've already seen big legislation like the Affordable Care Act come under attack and eventually get essentially removed (in that case overwritten by the American Health Care Act on Mar 4, 2017). What would the damage be to the people who come to rely on UBI as part of the general economic system, only to have it rapidly reduced or removed entirely?

>"What would the damage be to the people who come to rely on UBI as part of the general economic system, only to have it rapidly reduced or removed entirely?"

I think removing UBI if you already have one in place would simply cause mass revolt. It would be a suicide for any politician. So unless there is something like mass starvation caused by some catastrophe removing UBI will be off the table.

The solution is separation of powers. Let the amount of the UBI be determined by an independent institution (like a judicial body) based on predefined criteria, put that mechanism into the constitution, and obviously have any kind of corruption or bribery be a criminal offense. It’s certainly not a 100% foolproof, but would go a long way.

I believe some of the original proponents of UBI tended to be for balanced budget amendments. This perhaps yields some sort of equilibrium. Although I can think of some states with balanced budget constitutions that act only nominally to constrain spending, as they are based on abusable projections, so the impediment is not firm.

> Although I can think of some states with balanced budget constitutions that act only nominally to constrain spending, as they are based on abusable projections, so the impediment is not firm.

Most of the sources of misery in the US are economic, unfortunately. The political parties in the US have a long history of being poor trustees of the nation's wealth.

I make the comparison to Norway often because Norway has the world's largest social safety net in the form of their Sovereign Wealth Funds. Norway has $1.1T, roughly $200,000 USD per citizen, that can be used to maintain economic stability and secure social programs even in hard times.

The US absolutely could have accomplished the same thing, but instead we've racked up a national debt per citizen of over $70,000.

What if the UBI came not from the treasury but from a big sovereign wealth fund, which could be built up over a period by giving companies the option of transferring a (perhaps non-voting) share of their stock into the fund, in exchange for exemption from corporate income tax?

I just commented a moment ago mentioning Norway. I believe such a fund is a promising idea so long as it is managed in such a way that no politician or political organization could raid it.

If the US had a wealth fund instead of a national debt I believe many of the biggest issues we face could be legitimately solved rather than turned into political footballs.

This doesn't work at the scale of the US. Where would you find sufficient investable assets? A sovereign wealth fund similar to Norway in the US would contain a large fraction of all wealth globally.

Scarcity of investable assets is already a problem. Increasing demand by $50-100T will make it worse. Part of the reason the US issues trillions in debt is to absorb some of the existing demand.

> Where would you find sufficient investable assets?

The land itself, all of the resources in and on it, the industries that operate within the borders, etc.

We don't necessarily need to set aside 200k per capita, but it would be wise to not be at -70k per capita and growing fast, in my opinion.

> A sovereign wealth fund similar to Norway in the US would contain a large fraction of all wealth globally.

If the rest of the world operated on similar principles we would inevitably reach a balance. Regardless, the US would have to clear an enormous sum of debt before we could realistically start filling up the piggy bank.

The US's national debt is someone else's wealth fund.

To be fair, having the world reserve currency is sortof like a wealth fund.

UBI fuels local economies, in long term this is actually more beneficial to economy and recovery from some market crash.

Even if the increase of UBI would be used to get votes, its better then what we currently have - lover taxes for mega rich. At least this way I get something.

Sounds like those politicians should find something else to cut.

May I suggest: their own salaries or perhaps military spending? I mean, if the country doesn't have the budget, that sounds an awful like it is _their_ fault, not their constiuents'. The constituents aren't elected to figure those things out, they are.

This conservative idea that we have to be all "Aw shucks, we don't have money" is absurd, yet they have enough to give themselves generous salary increases and universal healthcare.

> May I suggest: their own salaries or perhaps military spending?

Personal opinion:

I want to pay every politician even more than they get now - for life. In exchange, they are never allowed to work or own equity in a corporation. Shuts the lobbyists revolving door nonsense down almost immediately. Such an implementation only works if we hold corrupt officials accountable though, we don't want one-term do-nothings to get into office just for the paycheck. So, if you fail to represent the will of the people you lose 95% of the money, or similar.

Cutting military spending I'm generally in favor of. I believe this could be done to a huge degree before we actually have a negative impact on military capability at all. I also believe the military should only be used for actual defense, meaning that militia structures become a meaningful way to bolster national security without incurring an enormous organizational cost.

> This conservative idea that we have to be all "Aw shucks, we don't have money" is absurd, yet they have enough to give themselves generous salary increases and universal healthcare.

It's not conservative, it's corrupt. The conservative view is that we need to secure economic stability, not raid the coffers at every opportunity. But then again, the terms conservative/liberal have lost most of their meaning. I wonder what John Locke would think if he were alive to see how the world turned out.

It is hard for me to think of a situation where UBI would have be decreased that could not be handled better by simply taxing people more. One hand giveth, the other hand taketh away.

My biggest concern is inflation. Adding more cash without also increasing productivity can cause inflation. UBI might improve productivity in a number of ways, but it might not do so enough. I know that proponents of the job guarantee argue that this is the fatal flaw in UBI; that instead people should be guaranteed useful work to do, which in theory would increase productivity to offset the government expenditures to send them paychecks. I do agree that there is a lot of useful work that could get done under such a program (cleaning rivers and streams, etc.), but I'm not convinced that we'd see productivity gains reliably either.

But opponents also complain about wage growth getting too high, almost as if capitalism depends on a class of exploited poor ...

I've always thought UBI and Universal Health Care could be huge boons to the start-up economy. Loosing health insurance and all of their income has to be a major hurdle for many people taking the step to start their own business.

> Loosing health insurance and all of their income has to be a major hurdle for many people taking the step to start their own business.

If that was even remotely true then France would the most active center in the world in terms of business creation. I hate to break the news for you, but it isn't.

I don't think the person you were responding to argued that removing those hurdles would create the most active business creation in the world. Enabling successful business creation is a worthy goal, one I think you'd agree France does accomplish. Not being the superlative isn't the same as failure.

I think there are many other factors that effect this, including the culture itself. I just don't think France has the same culture of entrepreneurship that the US does. Places like Germany or Taiwan are probably better examples.

Right, because for it to be true that fear of losing health insurance is a barrier to starting one's own business, it must be true that it's the only factor at play here.

There is UBI in France? How one is protected from loosing the income there? Let's say I give nice warm and fuzzy F-U to my boss and quit. Where do I get money then?

If you're over 25 with no income, you're eligible for the RSA (~500€/month). Healthcare is free if you don't have any income.

If you had place to live in then it'll be like paradise but I suspect that one will be living in the street on that €500 right?

Why France in particular? Sweden is consistently rated one of the top countries to start a business and they have universal healthcare

Not only that, but maybe people closer to retirement would take it earlier and not wait for Medicare to turn on. Opening up positions for the next wave of folks.

All that happens with UBI is that prices meet demand and rise. Dollars are worth less. There is never going to be a situation where we just hit the printing press and everybody gets to live a leisurely good life. Living a good life really comes down to national production and logistics more than money distribution (the rich have piles of money but they dont typically consume in line with their wealth, like Jeff Bezos is not taking up 50 nurses or buying 100 single family homes or eating 100x his share of food).

For example if I gave everyone 250k and told them to all go out and buy a ferrari, its actually impossible. There are not enough cars and prices would rise substantially to box out people again. The same principal goes for homes, healthcare, education, etc. The best way to increase standard of living is to increase production and efficiency to meet everyone's needs in all service and product categories.

This is inaccurate.

Money has worth because of the value a region generates.

If you have 10 units of currency and then 10 more are printed with no more value generated you have inflation.

If you keep 10 units of currency but more value is generated you have deflation.

If you just change who has the 10 units of currency that's not inflationary or deflationary, that's redistribution of the value.

UBI is just giving workers back some of the value they have generated that has been capture by the owner class.

It's funded not through 'printing press go brrr' (deficit spending) but through actual redistribution of that value more equitably.

Does no-brr-UBI that imply that a program would have to be fully funded each year by taxation of some sort?

Well to start it would eliminate MASSIVE amounts of gov't beuracracy.

The entire disjointed and bloated gov't safety net apparatus of food stamps, WIC, Rental Subsidies, EITC, disability, unemployment, and more. would go away along with the bloated salaries of the people who run all of those programs.

So massive amounts of tax money would be saved at the start.

UBI is actually a small government conservatives dream.

Then there's also the possibility that the jobs it creates from increased demand due to an economy with a much higher flow of money, could have a deflationary aspect which would allow the money printer to go brr a little bit.

Then also, who know what kinds of new innovation would happen from smart people free to pursue their own goals without worrying about financial insecurity.

Taxes would go up on the rich probably moderately.

But it's doable and affordable and the country would be so much better off in my opinion.

Citation needed.

Assume rent was your only expense, and your landlord currently charges you $1000/mo rent. He cannot charge you $1200/mo because you can't bear it. If he learns that you started getting $200/mo for free, he can easily raise your rent to $1200/mo. Now in the real world, we have multiple expenses, so prices rises will happen proportionally among them. The consumers with UBI can bear price increases, so the producers will soak it up.

Alternately, UBI allows you to quit your job, move to WV and pay $200 for rent.

What constrains your landlord from jacking up rent is competition. If he jacks up rent by $200 but the landlord across the street has an empty apartment he'd be glad to rent out for $1000 he'll think twice about jacking your rent.

The housing crisis in America is a supply issue. UBI has nothing to do with it.

Inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. If they pay for UBI with deficit spending it might crank up inflation, but if it's fully funded it won't.

So being a current homeowner, do I have a financial interest in preventing new houses from being built?

I remember, back around 2008, houses were popping up everywhere. You don't really see much of that anymore, at least in my experience. ALSO, lumber prices are HIGH and its not as profitable to build new houses, at the moment. But what if this is a larger lumber shortage/sustainability issue? What then?

Could it be a mix of material supply issues and interest groups that are maintaining a housing shortage?

> So being a current homeowner, do I have a financial interest in preventing new houses from being built?

Only if you're using your home as a financial instrument rather than a place to live. But that has the same problems as eg, farmers and/or grocers having a financial interest in engineering a famine in order to drive up food prices.

> Could it be a mix of material supply issues and interest groups that are maintaining a housing shortage?

Probably, yes, plus various other factors in varying amounts.

1 word: zoning

UBI is a sham that only drives inflation. At first it looks and acts like a stimulus. Over time it just drives inflation. Rent will go up proportional to your UBI and your landlord will make more money but you won't, for example.

The point is the relative effect is has between people to counteract inequality. If Alice has a job, and Bob is unemployed and broke, Alice has infinity times the purchasing power of Bob. Bob may only need a tiny bit of purchasing power to start his economic engine and get ahead, but his battery is at 0% and he's screwed. The point is to get enough juice in the battery to start the engine. And yes, the cost might be some inflation, but predictions of inflation have lately failed: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970595276/bond-voyage

The issue really is wages have been flat for nearly 50 years.

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

We need to fix wages, not provide handouts. I'm for helping people that need but UBI isn't the way to do that.

True, wages haven't kept up with inflation that resulted from foolhardy monetary policy. Mandating increased wages is a bandaid on a gushing wound. We cannot continue debasing our currency and hope it makes a robust economy. A thriving economy requires a stable currency. Fiat by its nature is unstable.

Gold was even less stable.

That is false. Over the long term the value of a full reserve gold backed currency is stable. When politicians print more money than they have in gold is when things start to go wonky.

I'm referring to the wild historical fluctuations in gold price that happened every time there was a gold rush, war, and / or run on gold.

How do you fix wages without gov't intervention?

Because if what you're saying is true..with any unnatural gov't interference ...there will be inflation.

(which is inaccurate by the way)

I think we are going to have inflation. But it doesn't need to be Venezuela-style.

Doesn't really answer my question.

Thankfully there are more than two people on earth and this edge case won't happen. Because many people are nearly at zero there are a number of also-poor merchants selling low-end goods, and Bob is able to trade a small amount of labour for the goods he needs, and can work his way up.

> yes, the cost might be some inflation, but predictions of inflation have lately failed

For a time, anything may remain out of sync. But you can't get more money from less workers. You can't redistribute to provide UBI, you have to print it, and that devalues the currency.

Even sillier, most UBI proposals are tied to a consumer index, such that when the currency was devalued you would print and distribute more, but with zero concern for the actual workers whose salaries are not also being inflated to match. Eventually the premium for working will be small enough that you'd be a fool for having a job.

And of course "predictions of inflation have lately failed". Because nobody is giving out UBI on a large enough scale. It's suicide. Even tax-and-spend bread-and-circus providing pols still want to be in power next year, so there's a limit to what they can print, and how widely they can distribute it.

Great, so give Bob a scholarship, or a grant, or welfare, or just a gift. Something that gives him that hand-up but without turning into a permanent right.

If UBI becomes a right, and you raise a generation who doesn't need to work, what do you do when there's a recession? Cut UBI and watch the riots start? Or drive off the cliff at speed because the non-working class can't be denied?

During a recession, we eat the rich.

But Carl, the rich are where UBI comes from!

relevant username

Where does the UBI money come from? How do we pay for UBI?

In year 1, Bob has extra money. By year 3 Bob's rent goes up. Did Bob's UBI go up proportionally to his rent? After a few years, Bob ends up in the same place - unless we keep injecting more money over time, which creates inflation.

Actually, inflation is not as simple as you have described it. There is a great NPR's Planet Money episode touching the waters of why the inflation does not behave as we think it is [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/20/958854717/modern-monetary-the...

The newer episode, which I linked to in the grandparent of your comment, is also fascinating.

The money, as always, is made by a combination of the machines which actually do all of the required production, and the treasury, which prints little game tickets you can use to make other people dance for you.

Like most social-engineering plans the solution is more social-engineering - price controls, standardized rent, etc.

In theory, the cool thing about UBI is that you can dismantle all that other stuff and just have the one safety net that covers everybody, replacing the piecemeal safety nets that are supposed to catch people in certain situations.

Yeah, it lessens the risk of falling through those nets and is probably cheaper, per dollar dispensed, to administrate.

You avoided the questions.

well those are simple questions to answer. MORE TAXES!

Turtles all the way down?

The people you're talking to literally believe you can print value.

> The money, [...] the treasury, which prints little game tickets you can use to make other people dance for you.

They think there's a printer somewhere, and some jerk sitting next to it who just won't print enough money. If only he'd print more, we'd all be billionaires!

inb4 gov tract housing without landlords to increase rent? Now that would mess up the real estate market

Yeah but that money will come FROM the landlords and big business to pay the UBI.

IT's not inflationary. Its redistribution.

Its universal and the landlord gets UBI too, right? That isn't redistribution, just distribution.

There's way more poor people than rich people. So in aggregate it's redistribution.

Also, the option for some sort of scaled UBI would be great too imo.

Take from the few to give to the vast hordes. No chance that'll go wrong.

Quick question, why do I want to keep producing when I just get taxed to pay for those who refuse to work? So next year you've got one more mouth to feed and a lot less resources to do so.

But it's okay, print more money to give to the last guy working, quadrillions of dollars, and tax him at 99.999999% and redistribute (totally not print, not at all) those inflated dollars to everyone. We'll all be rich!

Why do rich people keep producing now?

Why did the they keep producing in the 50s and 60s with a 90% tax rate?

Because they know that if they don't.. someone else will.. no matter what the tax rate.

Sure, even at 90% you're still only doing the work of nine others, but at seven nines there'll only be a handful of productives in an entire country, each doing the work of millions and collecting only a single share. When collecting UBI pays as well as working to pay into UBI, why would anyone work it?

See the Wikipedia article for basic income experiments.

I'm not going to explain to you why people would work instead of settle for 12k a year.

And your first statement isnt clear how it's correlated to taxes.

That's the theory, but once UBI is a right it'll be easier to demand more than to supplement with a job. The experiments show nothing about the lasting effects of mass UBI. The two main problems that make the experiments meaningless are that they don't impact the whole city, which would clearly drive prices up either making the UBI less useful, or require tying it to a housing-price index which means it'd just go up endlessly, and that the experiments also don't last long enough for these systemic changes.

Further, the UBI experiments don't produce any benefit beyond one-time grants, as seen in other experiments, perhaps even less because the trickle payment doesn't give you the capital to move to find better work or anything.

Lifetime welfare has proven harmful, how will super-welfare be better? If anything has destroyed American cities its welfare ghettos and the malaise and crime that comes with it.

That's interesting, never thought of it that way.

Upon ruminating on that concept, I think at the core, fuck you money and UBI are - I can express myself and nothing can financially ruin me or make me homeless.

I consider the private healthcare market in the US to be the same sort of impediment as a lack of UBI - except that when it comes to healthcare it's an even bigger burden to remain with your current employer if you're going through stressful times (i.e. have cancer).

Yes. People are desperate to keep their health insurance through their job, and this is also an impediment.

I can relate - I am about to get married, kids will follow soon, and I am already anxious. I have a couple of ideas for indie hacker-type side hustles but not enough time bc I am prepping for tech interviews at FAANGs.

get a 15-yr mortgage. the 30-yr one is a scam. Buy a small condo, hopefully work remote from lower COL (Sacramento even). Live small for a few years, then upgrade incrementally over time. Most importantly, don't max out your budget, especially in rent/30-yr mortgage situation.

Don't have your MS? Get it.

Why would we want to give money to people who won't work? And how would it be a benefit to those whose money would be used?

Welfare attempts to uplift people, but UBI is never ending and would come to be seen as a right, not a gift. Welfare makes people and communities stronger, UBI would not.

This made sense 30 years ago when we needed humans. Now we don't really need that many humans. "Work harder" is stupid advice when there is no work.

The obvious solution is to pay 50% of the unemployed population to dig holes and pay the other 50% of them to fill the holes in. Because, clearly it's a huuuuge problem if someone gets money without working for it.

No, it's a huuuuuge problem when people become addicted to easy money and never work again. Why would they, it's their right to get paid not to.

Welfare is better than UBI because welfare ends. Welfare encourages competence and self-reliance. And welfare can be extended in cases where there really aren't any jobs. It can do what UBI does, but without the fatal flaws.

Anyone who currently receives sufficient passive income gets "easy" money, reducing their need to work if they don't want to. Should we end dividends, royalties, and pensions?

Which would reduce their drive to work because you took away the fruits of their labor.

People need an incentive - something they don't have, which they will attain. UBI takes away one of those, your proposal would eliminate the other.

Why do people need an incentive? Why can't people just raise their kids, maintain their communities and generally just live a simple life?

Why do they need to strive? They don't. They totally could be happy as you describe. But you know they won't be. They aren't wired to be happy with a little because they won't value it because they didn't work for it.

For a depression-era farmer even a little success was still survival and so it mattered. But for someone who doesn't do anything to produce their own goods and so never feels accomplished because of skill or effort, anything less than what the other guy has will be intolerable. They won't work for anything, so they won't accept hard work as a reason why the other guy deserves to get to keep what he produced, and they'll steal it, killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Robots taking manufacturing jobs allows a reallocation of people, it doesn't make them obsolete.

But UBI would definitely support that line of thinking. "Dad is given a stipend by the government because there are no jobs for him, so why would I strive?"

Striving to become the best Uber driver one can be (before self driving cars make even that obsolete) sounds like a waste of time.

If people are the common resource then customer service will be the career of the future. You may not drive the car, but you could be the voice of the fleet. There will always be a chance to make the lives of those around you better in some way and you can use this to provide for yourself.

But, that aside, why should the productive care whether you do or not? Let's say self-driving cars do put you out of business, but we acknowledge that you didn't really do anything to make yourself employable. Why do you deserve any resources, let alone a comfortable amount, for not doing anything? And deserve, shmerve, why should I be so stupid as to let you take it from me? If I work I'll simply horde a bit of food and then stop working until the UBI stops and you starve, then I'll start producing again. So why not admit this up front and treat you like an excess coyote population? Spay/neuter you, or maybe leave poisoned food(-stamps) around?

Welfare at least is intended to help people become self-actualized and productive, but UBI is designed specifically to remove all incentive to ever help anyone else. UBI is what someone would come up with after reading the CIA manual on sabotage and thinking - how do I apply this to my entire civilization?

I for one am certainly not ready for humanity to stagnate. There are a lot of improvements left to made, and a lot of work left to be done.

There will be a few very intelligent people who will make the improvements while the rest of humanity does... Something. TBD.

Whatever the massez do, it'll be while force-fed soma. If we do have a huge privileged class who doesn't need to work we can't risk them getting uppity and continually demanding more so we'll keep them on a short leash.

And even if something like UBI ever happened, don't imagine that the productive will share power. It'll be a box, VR helmet, drugged soylent, and you'd happy with it.

It can't be anything else, and everyone should realize it. There's no UBI-topia out there for people, should they simply come to consensus and demand it from their pols. It's wishful thinking and the simple concept hurts more than it helps.

Be afraid of the person who offers you this nonsense.

UBI will just be hugely inflationary and people will vote in the politicians who promise them the most money every election cycle until the currency debasement causes economic instability. Nothing will change in peoples well being because that rests on logistics, not how much money anyone has. Theres only so many homes, nurses, spots at schools - giving people a paycheck that is more worthless every time its issued changes none of that. I can give every single person in the country 1 million dollars and there are still only so many nice homes. Nothing changes.

Not true. UBI is a redistribution policy, not an inflationary policy.

UBI is a path to government dependence for everybody. Making the government bigger and making everybody rely on it to survive is very likely to turn out worse than reducing the size of government and letting people keep their earned money.

We do not need a larger government!

UBI removes massive amounts of gov't bureaucracy in the bloated and disjointed safety net programs in the US and the bloated gov't salaries of the people running them.

It's actually a small gov't conservatives dream.

I would need proof of that claim. As it has been proposed UBI is in addition to existing welfare programs. We cant even pay for the current budget. How are we supposed to add more?

UBI is a social safety net, the goal is for it to replace those other social safety net programs.

Replacing other social safety net programs is not how UBI has been proposed. It has been sold as a guaranteed income for all. Not once has discontinuing other social safety net programs been included in UBI proposals. It is always "we could replace all programs with UBI". If the end of other programs is not included in a UBI bill then we will end up with both... forever.

So, I will ask again. We can't afford what we have. How can we add more?

We can afford the current social safety net we have pretty easily.

We spend around 2.3T to entitlement programs and takes in around 3.8T.

What's putting us in debt is massive tax cuts for the rich and insane health care costs.

I don't think there's been a comprehensive bill for UBI floated yet.

> We can afford the current social safety net we have pretty easily.

Really? Taxes havent covered the budget in years.

Correction: 2 decades

I didn't realize all 4 trillion of our budget went to paying for social safety nets!

That's news to me thanks for making me aware!

People on this website are so smart!

I didn't imply that at all. If the government already can't pay their bills then adding anything to the budget should be untenable until the deficit is covered.

Citizen, you have watched a video featuring Benjamin Shapiro. Your UBI has been deducted by $1

What happens if everyone says Fuck-You, though? I mean, at the end of the day, we need farmers, truckers, grocery store workers, and a whole host of people in between to make sure we don't starve. How do we make sure people keep working these necessary-but-sometimes-grueling jobs in a world where they could just quit and be on the UBI?

Does that appear to be the case for the millions of people already receiving checks from the government?

They don't understand redistribution vs inflation.

You've made this comment a lot in this thread.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, UBI is implemented by the pure redistribution of wealth. No debt. No draining some capital reserve. Steady state redistribution.

The act of distributing wealth to new people will shift demand in accordance with their demands. The newly UBI-ed masses won't be chasing the same rich-men goods as the rich men they soaked. The aggregate demand for not-rich-man goods will go up. So then those prices will go up.

When the price for goods goes up without any increase in their quality, all else constant, that's inflation. At least by my layman's understanding.

Why do you keep insisting that redistribution won't cause inflation?

Youre only looking at demand.

There's another factor you're missing.

SUPPLY and demand.

If supply is static then yes, you are correct.

But the supply for most 'not-rich-man goods' is made of commodities and is highly scalable and economic productivity will increase to match demand.

And the increased productivity/value from the economy will have a deflationary aspect that you're not considering.

This as a side effect also creates jobs and just generally increases the well being of the middle class and poor as a whole not just from the UBI.

This will also distribute the population throughout the country more evenly so rent prices will go down as well... as people don't have to live in certain areas that happen to have jobs and can afford to innovate in B.F.E without the risk of becoming homeless if they fail which in aggregate will have some businesses succeed and stimulate those areas of the country.

> economic productivity will increase to match demand

True, but not instantaneously. The lag there is inflation at work.

> But the supply for most 'not-rich-man goods' is made of commodities...

Desireable housing near good jobs, high quality education, effective health care, child care in a regulatory environment, convenient transportation. These are not highly elastic. That's a lot of most people's expenses if they can be afforded.

> And the increased productivity/value from the economy...

How does paying people not to work increase available labor to apply to productive endeavors?

> ...have a deflationary aspect that you're not considering.

How does handing someone $5 increase the intrinsic value of any good?

UBI is meant to replace government safety nets. It's meant for survival, not for education healthcare and all those other things you mentioned.

>How does handing someone $5 increase the intrinsic value of any good?

You should go back and re-read what I wrote. Might be beneficial to check out an econ 101 book so you kind of understand deflation as well as inflation, and just generally how the value of money works.

> UBI is how you make sure everyone has Fuck-You money.

Which is partly why there's so much opposition from the powers that be. Similar for universal healthcare - these things reduce the amount of power employers have over employees.

I’ll leave Naval Ravikant’s reasoning why UBI is a terrible idea since he should have much more clout here on HN than me. I am honestly dumbfounded that HN always seems to be so absolutely pro-UBI, like it’s a magic bullet that will end poverty and all of human suffering. People want to earn their money. It feels better, it promotes self-confidence and also is part of the ethos of America.

“The moment you start having a direct transfer mechanism like that in democracy, you're basically doing away with capitalism which is the engine of economic growth. You're also forcing the entrepreneur out, or telling them not to come here."

"People who are down on their luck, they're not looking for handouts. It's not just about money, it's also about status and meaning. The moment I start giving money to you, I've lowered your status and made you a second class citizen.”

I think the idea is that a UBI would provide only enough money for subsistence, and the human drive for greater wealth and status would continue unabated. Status and meaning are certainly important, and people would continue to seek those out.

It's possible that many more people would want to become entrepreneurs, given that there would be a social safety net if they failed. Right now, most entrepreneurs come from an upper middle-class background, often with financial assistance and cushioning from their parents.

$1000 a month is not going to reduce anybody's drive to work. It'll pay for food and rent if you have a roomie, but nothing else. If you want a new phone, you need to work. If you can't stand having a roomie, more work. Et cetera.

And the thing about UBI is that everybody gets money, even Bill Gates. So nobody's a second class citizen.