You also have to take into account a larger living arrangement, and that can cost a bit. Usually another bedroom to your apartment or home is going to be a few hundred a month.
$5000 a year doesn’t quite get you $100 a week. I spend close to that on groceries for two adults, and I shop pretty cheaply.
In our current economy, $5000 a year is not quite enough to support a kid.
People seem particularly averse to the suggestion of free or subsidized childcare. I’m not talking of the state confiscating kids to raise them! Just the opposite in fact: the state is now forced to remove certain neglected kids from their homes, kids who might be thriving with their parents if a safety net were in place.
The “child care” I speak of would be strictly voluntary, and would ideally take the form of nursery schools in local neighborhoods, with the parents themselves taking turn at baby-sitting duties. Lack of such free or cheap child care is already a major reason some people have great difficulty finding or keeping a job.
Everyone in the thread, I think (except those opposed to all socialist or non-libertarian activity), agrees that universal government-paid healthcare is a good idea (though wealthy persons would still be able to pay for private insurance or a higher standard of care). I’m just extending that idea to some others of life’s necessities. Subsidized higher education, government-provided internet, some subsidized access to food, clothing and housing — pretty soon there would be no need to cut UBI checks. (Those checks are not free — an expensive and intrusive national identity program needs to be in place to ensure everyone gets a check, and nobody gets two. This does not apply to free services — you don’t even need a driver’s license to get your free appendectomy in a free UHC system!)
People complain about the loss of freedom. George wants to spend his money on fancy clothes, not babysitters for his (non-existent?) kids. That’s what jobs are for — you earn money and are free to spend it as you choose. I’m providing a safety net to get people on their feet so they can get a job.
So they are strictly voluntary, but if you have no money and a child, the government will provide no other options. I think we’re defining voluntary differently. If we give people money, and let them make their own choices, that’s a voluntary thing. If we say “this one is free, and the rest cost money,” than someone who can’t afford a better option doesn’t really get a choice, do they?
Also, how do we vet these volunteer parents who we are trusting to watch our children? Are we doing full background checks? Or do we let Chester the Molester volunteer there too? That’s going to cost more money.
Fuck no. A two tier system is a recipe for disaster in a universal health care system. You are effectively taking resources away from the poor and giving them to the rich, which is the complete opposite of universal.
You keep ignoring this, and I’m going to keep hammering on it. Who decides which education is “worthy” of getting covered? Your traditional liberal arts college? Betty’s cooking school? The skeeviest diploma mill that ever existed? Trump University? Where do we draw that line? Are we going to pay for people to verify that those companies are actually offering the services they say they are? What about when people complain? Who investigates that, and who pays for that investigation? If a school knows the government will pay it no matter what it does, what is the school’s motivation to offer a quality education?
The same goes for food, clothing, pretty much any material good that you think should be free. This is my biggest problem with your idea, so I’d really like you to at least consider it.
I’m pretty sure the IRS/CRA/tax man could handle this. They already have the infrastructure including ID numbers, and they have people trained to audit financial records for fraud. I admit there might need to be a slight bump to their budget, but that would be tiny compared to an entirely new bureaucracy.
Also, are you aware on how much paperwork goes on behind the scenes of a universal healthcare system? Not needing a driver’s license to get services does not mean that they don’t require lot of people to administer them. I worked for one once, I know.
So people who can’t get jobs get no choices at all? Either due to disability or the fact that there simply are no jobs available for whatever reason? Under your system, they live where the government tells them to, they eat what the government says they get to eat, they wear what the government says you can wear, and they go to school where the government says they can go to school. I think people in prison get more choices than that.
It’s not even primarily about freedom, though I’d personally rather live on the street than live in government slums with zero choices like that. It’s about your system being ripe for corruption while being far less effective than the free market at actually improving the lives of people.
I missed this the first time around, and it’s so fucking true. Well said.
There probably is a better argument, but I’ve given up on making it. I just get tired of being lectured by people who have never slept on the street or eaten out of a dumpster telling me what it’s like to be destitute level poor.
Because in my experience, everyone who pulls out that argument has an explicit belief that poor people will make poor choices about money. They don’t think it was bad luck or horrible circumstances that made them poor, it’s because they where dumb/alcoholics/drug users/made bad choices. The US economy and the American Dream are both built on poverty shaming.
It’s possible I’m totally off base here, and maligning you improperly. However, given that you called yourself a coldhearted conservative, I’m doubting it.
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For reference, you could maybe expect 3.6 million adults to lose an average of $430/month if you allow child support to tap UBI directly.
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But wouldn’t 3.6 million different adults gain an average of $430 / month then? It’s not lost wealth, we’re not burning it. It’s just redistributed for the benefit of those adult’s children.
Sorry, but how is a paltry $1610 per year going to reduce the poverty rate?
That’s less of what a person would already get the equivalent of in food stamps alone, assuming that they receive a $200 per month stipend; plus with food stamps there’s at least safeguards in check to prevent it from being use illicitly such as on drugs.
That shows that the ‘poverty rate’ itself is arbitrary, since if you use common sense for more than a second, you’re going to realize that a person working part-time at McDonald’s raising 2 illegitimate kids on welfare isn’t going to benefit in any significant way from measly extra $1600 per year; nor will they no longer be ‘impoverished’ just become an arbitrary ‘poverty rate’ completely detached from reality says they aren’t.
This is the point you keep missing. The UBI boosts the financial outcomes of not only the people out or work with no jobs, but also the people who get a job or have a job that happens to be a shitty job with awful pay.
The myth of the meritocracy and CONSERVATIVE ideology is that if everyone works hard enough they too will be able to rise to whatever heights they desire… maybe some luck and chance thrown in but the VAST majority of emphasis is on what YOU put into something.
I take a darker and more realistic view than conservatives, and apparently you Septimus.
I look out into the current economy and job landscape and see different tiers of employment for different tiers of people, those who have higher skills, a consequence of a mixture of what they put into their studies AND WHAT APTITUDE THEY WERE BORN WITH !!!, and those with lower skills. Having higher aptitude meant less decades ago because there was plenty of lower skilled work that paid well. Where is that now Septimus? You want us to pretend everyone is going to get a college degree or graduate degree to get past the HR degree REAPERS to get a better job? It’s not going to happen. I want it to happen, but look around you. Who are the people stuck in lower paying jobs?
Some of those people will move higher, but having lower aptitude and skills is a DRAG on the outcomes of those people, it creates a lower floor of outcomes for those people compared to the median and average of the more gifted among the populace. A UBI plus some targeted social services like healthcare not ONLY lowers the costs of living and subsistence for such people, it also boosts their income to have a more prosperous and less impoverished life.
That is one of the great perks that your paradigm does NOTHING, literally NOTHING to address.
According to statistics, it costs an average of $11,000 per year to raise a single child from age 1-18 (not including any future college expenses).
So I’m not seeing how giving an extra $1600 per year to a single mother living on welfare with 3 kids is going to “eradicate poverty”.
Best way to ‘eradicate poverty’ via legislation would be to implement a 1-child policy on those making under a certain income level, and no one wants to touch that subject; I’m not sure I do either, I’m just stating the facts; if the government subsidizes unemployed single mothers who have 5 kids with 5 different fathers, then there’s no way to eradicate poverty through legislation; only way to so without resorting to draconian methods like population control would be to teach people personal responsibility.
I think you need to consult professor Rosling before going for that line of argument:
Since it’s MLK Holiday in the US, I feel obliged to post his views on a UBI DECADES ago.
"Up to recently we have proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils: lack of education restricting job opportunities; poor housing which stultified home life and suppress initiative; fragile family relationships which distorted personality development. The logic of this approach suggested that each of these causes be attack one by one. Hence a housing program to transform living conditions, improved educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create better personal adjustments were designed. In combination these measures were intended to remove the causes of poverty.
While none of these remedies in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or similar rates of development. Housing measures have fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies. They have been piecemeal and pygmy. Educational reforms have been even more sluggish and entangled in bureaucratic stalling and economy-dominated decisions. Family assistance stagnated in neglect and then suddenly was discovered to be the central issue on the basis of hasty and superficial studies. At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived. As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.
In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.
I’m now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."
He was clearly ahead of his time, and his rationale was separate and apart from robots and automation taking jobs. So, what’s keeping some of YOU laggards back?
Salvor,
Any specifics on how much you think an adult ought to receive, or what formula we ought to use to derive that answer?
My target of what I think might work best is around 12k per year per person over 18-21. But this needs to be tested. Go too high and the disincentives to work get stronger. Go too low and the thing you are trying to help address is barely touched. One thing experiments could shed light on are the “minimum effective doses” of universal basic income. Maybe only 6k could achieve 90% of the effects we are going for at half the cost. We just don’t know. I suspect there will be different effects based on different populations, again, we need to see experiments to find out. If for example we found out that upon receiving 1k per month, 25% of the people getting the UBI who otherwise would have worked stopped or dramatically cut down on the time spent working, I’d consider that a problem. But if it was only 5% less people choosing to work full time? Less of an issue for me, particularly if some of the reductions were a function of mothers spending a few extra months out of the work force because she was one of the many mothers who do not work in jobs that require paid maternity leave. I consider that kind of drop off a social good.
I also would not consider people that were already not working, not jumping in as big of a problem. And in fact, for the homeless population I think this makes it easier to crack down on public loitering and encampments as the excuse of them not having anywhere else to go because no jobs or skills or prospects is diminished. I want to see the effect of a UBI on crime and recidivism, if you lost a UBI income stream while in prison or convicted of a crime, but got it while not in trouble, what effect (if any) would this have on crime rates? There are so many things to test and find out, so many things we do not know. I want more experiments to we can test out these new ideas and potential effects on society.
I like the idea but there are issues to br ironed out. For example; should the payments vary by location? The cost of living varies enormously from place to place. Another issue is whether or not a basic income can be attached, for example by creditors or for child support.
EXCELLENT podcast on the topic from more economically right leaning host and libertarian guest Michael Munger.
If that was how most libertarians spoke and argued, I’d respect them more. He did not dismiss the real challenges people have and come across as having this “not my problem” attitude you are on your own stance (live, die, what’s it to me).
No it shouldn’t vary by location. Move with some of that basic income. Or earn more. And yes it should be garnished if there is a proper claim on it. Money is fungible.
This is an interesting discussion. It just occurred to me that we’ve been discussing this with an assumption in mind that may no longer be applicable. In your last sentence, why would that be a problem? Let me explain…
Our economy is currently based on the idea that every able bodied adult must work and produce in order to support society. Actually even communism is based on that idea. That’s because we’ve always had (until recently) an economy based on limited resources, everyone had to work to get those resources and process them for consumption.
But now we’re moving into a post-scarcity economy. Automation is doing more than manual labor to collect resources and process them for consumption. If this continues as it seems to, we’ll need fewer human workers to maintain the economy. So then we come back to… if the UBI allows some people to live comfortably without working, that may NOT be a problem. What if they want to do other things with their lives that don’t add to the GDP, like making art or music? What if they just want to spend their time working for non-profit charities? I would suggest that would actually be a good thing for society!
I think the more likely scenario would be that many people, wanting to be able to do more than just eat and pay the rent, would take part time jobs.
Didn’t see any mention of this here, though I didn’t read the whole thread: Finland is testing this in practice.
Long term that might not be a problem, I just think that in the short term that would spook people and scare them off the idea. Also, currently most of our revenue comes from income taxes for the federal government, if we had substantial chunks of the working population drop out of work, I’m not sure the transition would be smooth and we could get into a UBI version of the death spiral mentioned for healthcare.
Now it might be that none of that came to pass, more goods and services might continue to get cheaper and often free (email communication, long distance communication, wikipedia, etc) such that long term even if the tax base began to shrink, so too would the economic need to live and thrive…
But that possibility seems so far out It’s difficult for me to envision how we’d get there anytime soon.
The results that would look most promising to me would see very little reduction in total work, and perhaps only a shift in the kinds of work people engaged in. And as long as the work we did continue to do remained productive and did not drop as a consequence of a UBI, I’d consider that a success and greenlight to go forward. So minor drops in working would be the easiest tell tale sign short term.
Also, I do worry that while many jobs that have terrible pay are awful and soul killing, there might be a great deal of soul killing but useful jobs that needed to be done that paid well, and if we made it too easy to get by with something less maybe we’d get less of that necessary work.
Now it’s easy for us to worry about such things if we are not digging through sewage tunnels to clean out blockages, but this is a real worry. This is why I do not want the UBI too high, just enough for the bare essentials, and if that makes the less desirable work less attractive, maybe we pay a little more for it to keep people at it and make it easier to not just survive, but thrive with that kind of work.
Salvor, thanks for your answer on some specifics. I really like the idea of testing it first on a smaller scare before trying to roll out something nation-wide. Do you think we should be advocating for a state or a county to try this first? Could we get a #CalUBI movement going? Or maybe in Connecticut? Are there any particular pre-conditions or circumstances that you can think of that would be necessary to make it successful? Some reasons it might be desirable to test in one state but not another?
IMHO Hawaii is the natural place to do this.
If I as a homeless ne’er do well, I would beg borrow and steal to get my ass to Hawaii where I could live on the beach with a better standard of living than the working poor in most other states (it would suck with a family but if I was single…).
But their geographic isolation prevents then from being flooded with these ne’er do wells and they already have a fairly robust welfare state. Hawaii has a very low unemployment rate so we could see what sort of negative effects UBI would have on employment.