I've noticed the number of articles on "mincome" or "basic income" ramping up quite a bit in places like reddit, and to a lesser extent on HN. I don't necessarily have a problem with this, but are there groups actively trying to get this idea out on social media, hence all of the articles that I'm seeing? It may be that the idea is gaining organic momentum, on top of that, but I've been wondering about this of late.
Maybe a bit of both? With income disparity growing, technology supplanting many "blue-collar" jobs, poverty not really being tackled effectively, it's natural for folks to think about alternative means of sustaining our economy.
You'll also notice that nobody advocating it has even the slightest whiff of an economic model that makes it work. In UBI schemes, money is treated like an endless well of fairy dust that can be sprinkled all over the population and magic will happen. Numbers are thrown out all over the place and realistic actor models on the micro and macro economic levels are never provided.
When challenged, they all point to Mincome, which wasn't a UBI experiment, as some kind of evidence. And the evidence from Mincome (when you read the writeup) is that it didn't work very well from the point of a UBI scheme, it achieved approximately zero of the proposed benefits of UBI.
> money is treated like an endless well of fairy dust that can be sprinkled all over the population and magic will happen
Money is an artificial resource meant to create a level of indirection between the buyer and the seller. The amount of money in circulation at a certain point in time does not explain why some people eat better than others. If you want to argue against UBI on the basis that resources are too scarce to be enough for all of us, you need to talk about the actual resources.
On the agricultural side, we have overproduction in Europe and in Italy the cultivated terrain is smaller every year.
No. The welfare system is incredibly expensive to operate! I mean, in terms of the administrative overhead, the armies of bureaucrats, etc. Scrap all that, make a simple, unconditional payment - nothing to administer, no fraud to investigate, and it becomes very affordable - without raising taxes either.
But it won't work in the real world, because it will be too easy to buy votes by promising more and more. This basic income needs to be fixed at a level of bare subsistence only. Like here in the UK we have a problem with government housing now - I don't begrudge anyone a roof over their heads, but it has morphed into, with at least one spare bedroom, in the area of you choosing for life even if you no longer need it, etc. Thats not fair on the people paying for it, and it's not fair on the people on the waiting list.
> No. The welfare system is incredibly expensive to operate! I mean, in terms of the administrative overhead, the armies of bureaucrats, etc. Scrap all that, make a simple, unconditional payment - nothing to administer, no fraud to investigate, and it becomes very affordable - without raising taxes either.
That's laughably naïve. I live in San Francisco. I have experience interacting with more than my fair share of homeless people. So let me ask you this: what happens when a person deliberately decides to be homeless? Do you just let him suffer on the streets? Or do you offer him shelter and food?
The point is: you will still need the welfare services. Things like Child Protective Services, emergency rooms, homeless shelters, etc. etc. So all that UBI does is add an additional $20K/year of taxes on top of what we already pay.
People in this country are opposed to universal health insurance, despite the fact that the beneficiaries actually pay into it. What makes you think that they will agree to just cutting $1.5K checks every month to every person?
And then: what happens to the immigrants? People will come streaming across the border in droves when word spreads that they can get 1000s of dollars per year for nothing in America! We can't even control the border now; imagine what'll happen then.
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That's laughably naïve. I live in San Francisco. I have experience interacting with more than my fair share of homeless people. So let me ask you this: what happens when a person deliberately decides to be homeless? Do you just let him suffer on the streets? Or do you offer him shelter and food?*
Deliberately decides? Well in that case I would say that he has made his bed, let him sleep in it.
So you keep claiming, but actual trials of mincome/BI/whatever haven't shown a significant dropout of labour. Do you have any evidence for this other than your gut feeling?
I read those comments. They're exactly what I meant by "you keep claiming this". Claiming it's so is not evidence. Perhaps you missed that in your weariness.
My question stands: Do you have any evidence for this other than your gut feeling?
You can read the Mincome reports yourself. They aren't exactly glowing and most of the reported effects are well within the margin for error in the measurements.
BI and UBI has never been tried anywhere in a fully form because it requires everybody on the planet to do it at the same time. The closest we have are economic analogs. For example, resource rich locations that produce wealth at multiples of the labor input. You can study the economics of these places yourself and look at the outcomes. But they basically sum to: people stop working, people collect their money, labor supply needs to be imported from outside the local economy, the people who've stopped working don't exactly spend this new free-time self-actualizing themselves into discovering cures for cancer or unifying the fundamental forces of the universe.
If you want evidence, I suggest you open a high-school level history book and start on page 1. If you aren't aware of these cases on your own, but willing to promote nonsense like UBI, you're just being willfully ignorant of history and basic economics.
No amount of handwaivery and ignoring poor outcomes based on this or that technicality or goal post move will make cause and effect bend towards making these schemes work.
So here's your test: find somebody who's working poor, offer to put them up in your house and feed and clothe them no strings attached. How long before they self-actualize into a high-paid white-collar degree? Repeat this experiment 10,000 times. How many people, given this options, would rather just sit at home all day and surf the internet/watch TV/gossip vs. going out and challenging themselves into a better life?
I don't have to answer this, BI advocates do. And they need to present the outcome of this experiment as a real economic model that accurately predicts labor participation and real-world situations. This has never been done and anything outside of this is hand waivy nonsense built on fairy dreams.
I have. And the Namibian ones. And the Indian ones. None of them saw a significant dropoff in labour.
> For example, resource rich locations that produce wealth at multiples of the labor input. You can study the economics of these places yourself and look at the outcomes. But they basically sum to: people stop working, people collect their money, labor supply needs to be imported from outside the local economy
Like Norway, you mean?
> If you want evidence, I suggest you open a high-school level history book and start on page 1.
How will a history book help me if "BI and UBI has never been tried anywhere in a fully form"?
> And they need to present the outcome of this experiment as a real economic model that accurately predicts labor participation and real-world situations.
These were "real-world" situations. They actually occurred in the real world. That's generally considered more "real-world" than economic models are.
I think I'll stop here. I'm starting to get too amused with this conversation.
The Mincome studies don't show a labor dropoff, and that's because Mincome was not a BI program. If you didn't work and tried to live off of Mincome, you'd live at about 1/2 poverty level income. Basically you'd starve or freeze to death.
What Mincome did show was negligible effects in almost all other areas, it neither showed significant increases or decreases in almost any measurable area. The reason Mincome was dropped as a program was that it was expensive and virtually worthless. It wasn't worth doing because it doesn't provide any positive benefits.
Please please please, if you do anything, don't cherry pick favorable studies and read all of them with critical thinking. Read the unfavorable ones and read the favorable ones and figure out what they aren't saying.
"Mothers spent more time rearing newborns, and the educational impacts are regarded as a success. Students in these families showed higher test scores and lower dropout rates. There was also an increase in adults continuing education."
When you say "Indian ones" do you mean the experiments with distributing casino revenues unconditionally amongst a Native American tribe, or something that happened in India that I missed.
Not trying to nitpick labels, just want to be clear as to the referents.
I meant in the country India. I didn't even think about the Native American situation, though now I consider it, it does seem to illustrate the dangers of making payments that are socially exclusive (similar to the problems Australia has faced with its aboriginal people).
I think the following links has more details on India, but I've not read through it as it's late on Christmas Eve for me and I'm worried about collapsing the Santa wave-function so I won't get any presents!
"Children who were moved out of poverty by the UBI saw their behavioral problems decline by 40 percent. Minor crimes declined. On-time high school graduation rates increased. Children who started receiving the UBI earlier in life had better mental health in early adulthood than those who started receiving it later in life. In particular, they were 33% less likely to develop substance abuse or psychiatric problems."
I don't seem able to reply to your last comment. Sorry I haven't done very well with your comments; it's not been through deliberate ignorance, just lack of time. I hadn't been previously aware of UBI in Native American tribes and had thought you were referring to social problems and welfare.
I will have a read over the link you provided when I have more time. Thanks for letting me know about it.
Labor dropout is more likely to be higher under current welfare schemes than a basic income, because of the high marginal tax rates present under the current system vs BI.
I knocked one together for the UK, if it helps. But it is 'back of napkin'. There are all sorts of details you'd want to fill out. Here:
[There were requests for "back of a napkin" calculations, so I've done some for the UK. To convert to USD, just add 50%, as a rough measure.]
tl;dr - About £80 a week seems roughly achievable as a starting point.
Firstly, I'd like to say I prefer thinking of this as a "Citizen's Dividend" rather than a "Basic Income", as the latter suggests it's useless if it doesn't cover a persons cost of living. I think even a small start is better than nothing, and it can be increased up to become a Basic Income in time. I'll refer to it as BI (Basic Income) here though. So, let's see what we've got...
The UK government spends £732 billion. If we subtract £222 billion for Social Protection (we're replacing all of it with our BI), we get £510 billion required. If we add up all government income except Income Tax - Business Rates, Excise, etc - we get £481 billion.
That leaves us a shortfall of £29 billion. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to assume that reductions in crime, the increase in VAT revenue, better health, etc are going to cover that. Let's call it close enough for government work. At the end of the day, we currently borrow £84 billion anyway, so at worst I've slashed the deficit :-)
Income Tax brings in £167 billion. UK population I'm going to take at 60 million. So, as a starting point, that gives us a BI of £2,783 annually, or £54 ($80) a week. Well, that's not a bad start! Let's consider what it means for actual people. Thus far:
Who loves me:
- Right-wingers. I've eliminated (or vastly reduced) the deficit, effectively increased the income tax allowance by £2,783 and given them this amount in cash, while reducing welfare payments to lazy, single-mother immigrants. I should be head of the Conservative party.
- Most people on Job Seekers Allowance (unemployment benefit). While I've cut the amount they actually get, I've also cut out all the paperwork, visits to the job centre, taking money off them if they happen to earn something that week, etc etc. Money without the hassle.
- Low wage workers. This is a big boost above Working Tax Credit and is hassle free (you don't lose it by earning more). It also allows some degree of security in the event of losing their job.
Who hates me:
- Left-wingers. While I've helped some low paid workers, I've also slashed benefits, there's no housing support...in short I've cut welfare while giving more money to wealthy people. I should be head of the Conservative party.
- People who're claiming several benefits. People who're on sickness benefit. Basically, all the folk who've had their income reduced below a living wage.
- Pensioners. The state pension has been cut significantly (and illegally).
Ok, I think I need to balance it a bit more. I'm going to reduce the Income Tax allowance from £10,000 (current) to £6,000. This should balance out at the end. I'm going to assume this increases income tax revenue by 25% (I've no idea if this is remotely close. If anyone can be bothered finding out, please let me know). More controversially, I'm also going to increase income tax by 25%, so the basic rate is now 25% rather than 20%.
That should give me a total revenue increase of 50% from Income Tax which gives me a BI of £4,175 annually or £80 ($120) per week.
And I think I'll leave it there. We'd need to borrow (or cut spending elsewhere) to make up other shortfalls (such as pension payments), but as long as it's less than £50 billion we still come out ahead. It might be more natural to cut the payment to £70 for everyone in order to free up some cash for other payments. In the real world, you wouldn't exclusively reserve Income Tax to one specific spending area anyway, but it makes things simple enough to get a rough measure.
"If we subtract £222 billion for Social Protection (we're replacing all of it with our BI)"
I think that's a fallacy with all these calculations. You can't just disband Social Services/Protection. You'll still need to take care of the kids whose parents drink all the basic income at the local pub or blow it at the casinos. And you'll need to take care of the parents and other reckless people as well. We won't just let them starve on the streets because they spent the money on cigarettes and booze.
> I think that's a fallacy with all these calculations.
All what calculations?! The whole point of me bothering to come up with these figures was that there were multiple comments that no-one had bothered to do even a simple sketch of what it would cost. I did.
If you've got better figures, then show them. Better still, find out what the essentials are on Social Services/Protection and include them. I'd be happy to include your amendments for the next time this topic is discussed. Consider it an open source comment :)
Sorry - I wasn't targeting your specific sketch. I was just trying to refute the basic idea that lots of people make when they state that we'll pay for the Basic Income program by re-allocating all the funding that is currently used for social services and use it for basic income payments. My point is that you can't do this. You'll still need a large "safety net" and associated government organization for reasons stated above and more.
Fair enough. I suppose it doesn't take too much work to add another couple of paragraphs. What about:
"Having increased the BI up to £80, I'm now going to cut it again, down to £60 a week. This is to cover pensioners, people claiming benefits which are currently in excess of £60 and support for vulnerable children (not child benefit: that's paid as BI for the child).
I'm assuming that 20% of people fall into one of the above categories, so cutting £20 off the BI gives us £140 a week to help these people. This is more than the current basic state pension (£113.50/week) so that's a fairly big increase. I don't want to complicate the calculations any further, so the small number of people who require more than this will have to be paid out of the £50 billion we haven't borrowed."
No. Some folks or kids will still need help after the basic income is spent on booze or gambled away. And some people will choose to live on the streets. Society won't just let them starve in the gutter.
It's likely mostly due to the positive feedback loop. I've become interested in the idea of a basic income from reading stories via HN, and I posted this because (which I agree it isn't really a test of basic income) it is related, and I hadn't heard about it before.
