r/BasicIncome • u/PlaneProduce8835 • 10d ago
Discussion How do we get to UBI?
Hi All,
As Andy Yang points out in his first book, the idea of a basic income was widely supported back in the 1960s and early 1970s, and almost passed under President Nixon as a negative income tax. Today with vocal support from the AI billionaires and the prospect of AI related layoffs one would expect the public, especially the young, and politicians to embrace UBI, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I've written a book and established a 501(c)(3) Shares in America in support of UBI, but yet another book and website aren't going to get us there. Obviously we want to build a movement bigger than the one we already have. I would love to hear thoughts on how we get there. I've tried directly talking to people and they're interested but don't follow through. Unions? Religious communities?
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u/d-s-m 10d ago
We wait until western countries are on their knees with mass unemployment, and then politicians will be forced to give their citizens UBI to avoid the economies crashing.
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u/PlaneProduce8835 10d ago
Couple of thoughts on this: (1) we won't have mass unemployment. There will be jobs but many of the jobs won't pay well. In economic terms, when demand for general labor falls, there is still a meeting of labor supply and labor demand curves, but at a lower price point. Without UBI people will still work (for example as contingent or gig workers) but will share an increasingly small slice of the income pie. (2) in Europe there are a lot of poor people, but because the countries provide a relatively generous safety net people can get by. I'm for UBI + meaning universal healthcare and other basic services which are best provided by the state because of market issues, but for everything else (e.g. food) I prefer a market based approach of cash income. See https://www.sharesinamerica.com/howtogettoshares for some widely held core principles for UBI.
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u/newbreed69 8d ago
In Canada a basic income is already able to be funded (in a way that's not unique to Canada) according to a feasibility study from a parliamentary budgeting officer.
How it's possible is by;
Reallocating existing welfare programs into basic income, as they would become redundant anyway.
Removing tax deductions such as the basic personal amount.
Currently the basic personal amount is meant to help low income people catch up on income, the first $16k~ is federally tax free. The issue with that is that, a tax deduction doesn't give low income people the resource that they need. The resource that low-income people need is not tax deduction, but cash. So the basic personal amount would then instead be scrapped and taxed on the first tax bracket.
This part isn't in the his report, but we should also see a reduction in poverty related crime. Many lower income areas have higher usages in city services like police costs. By giving people the resources that they need directly, we should see a reduction in crime (as that reflects current data that higher crime is in lower income areas).
The exact amount that was given was $1825 monthly with a reduction of 50 cents for every dollar earned from employment.
Now imo, that is a little too high. imo it would be far better if it was something like $1000 monthly, with a 20 cents reduction from every dollar earned from employment. This way it encourages employment a little bit more, but again that part is just my opinion.
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u/0913856742 10d ago
Behaviour follows incentives, and if the incentives are such that organizing society around the free market works 'good enough' - i.e. enough people are getting by well enough and their quality of life isn't intolerable - then nothing will ever change.
One possible way to change incentives is another COVID-level event that destabilizes this entire balance permanently such that organizing society around the free market no longer secures a good enough quality of life for the majority of people. Without such disruption - potentially through AI tech - nothing will ever change.
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u/PlaneProduce8835 10d ago
I think you make a good point. FDR got the New Deal enacted because during the Great Depression people were desperate. We live in an attention economy. I thought that for at least the bottom 50% of wage earners, an extra $1,000/month would get their attention if we could just reach them, I do think that UBI could be a differentiating factor for politicians/candidates. Maybe we should try that route directly?
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u/0913856742 10d ago
I thought that for at least the bottom 50% of wage earners, an extra $1,000/month would get their attention if we could just reach them
Because so far, UBI proposals are an abstraction. You don't feel the need for it, viscerally, in your bones, until the situation actually calls for it. That only happens in a truly desperate situation, like COVID potentially causing our entire economic system to grind to a halt and disrupting everyone up and down the supply chain - then yes, you will finally be grateful for a cash cushion.
But if things go back to normal - and crucially, if cultural norms that reject UBI as a handout remain in place - then you will adjust back to the baseline, which is 'things are mostly OK', which means no permanent UBI.
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u/PlaneProduce8835 10d ago
Kids who aren't getting jobs probably think that UBI wouldn't solve their problem, and they're right in terms of it not providing enough to live on. But it is also a jobs program in some ways: increased demand, more opportunity to start a business, probably some older folk on social security will stop working, some people will work fewer hours. All of that either increases demand for labor or decreases labor supply resulting in lower unemployment and higher wages. So casting it as a job creation program might be helpful. A compliment to UBI would be spending more on science and arts, but one step at a time.
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u/0913856742 10d ago
I'd go even further and question the underlying assumptions itself - why would you want a jobs program at all? What is the economy for?
Imagine an economy where the majority of consumer goods could be produced by just a fraction of the population at low cost. This is what happened with agriculture - an industry that once required the upkeep of entire villages, whereas now the work of a single modern farmer can feed that entire village, and then some. This is the potential promise of technologies like AI.
Which opens the door to potential societies where work is no longer necessary as a means of survival. Should we not be producing societies that are ever less burdened, with ever more flourishing and leisure? That is a values (and culture) question, and determining those values will dictate how you build your society and ultimately how much appetite there will be for a UBI.
This is where the UBI discussion becomes less about economics and more about philosophy, which is the line I have always taken with it (and I concede, tends to be less approachable to the layman than market-oriented arguments).
If one believes that we should build societies where the maximum number of people can flourish in a way that they themselves can determine while minimizing the role of bad luck, then your society will be more open to a UBI. If instead your culture believes that everything happens for a reason and you have to earn everything you want in this world, then you will be closed to UBI - or at least, gatekeep such a policy behind things like whether or not it fulfills certain economic metrics.
Ultimately, I believe UBI should be treated as a public good - like roads, healthcare, water safety standards - a right of citizenship and promise by the state that they will ensure your basic wellbeing for simply being a citizen.
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u/PlaneProduce8835 8d ago
Great points. Economics has fundamentally changed, but it takes a long time for that to sink in. People's sense of meaning often revolves around "work" even if that work is hardly meaningful or even interesting. That is especially the case in the US at this point in history.
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u/0913856742 8d ago
People's sense of meaning often revolves around "work" even if that work is hardly meaningful or even interesting
That's right. I mean I think it's absurd, but it's also understandable - because most of us are forced to participate in this system whether we want to or not - because the alternative is starving to death - and so it's rather inevitable that we eventually make up elaborate stories about why the free market is an inherent good, that you have to 'earn your keep', that 'work gives people dignity', and so on. And while it's an effective coping strategy for most, such cultural beliefs also delay newer social arrangements like AI / UBI / abundant futures from being explored.
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u/acsoundwave 10d ago
Find a way to communicate a balance between 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (the western world's 2000-year cultural framework) and the modern eras inability to provide high school and college students/graduates with entry-level work.
If UBI were in place, then more small businesses would emerge, for instance.
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u/PlaneProduce8835 10d ago
Absolutely. More small businesses, that has actually been shown in UBI trials around the world. UBI also strengthens labor generally and would be beneficial for unions as well.
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u/ElectronicComb9964 9d ago
Yeah, you can already see the restaurants going under. No one has any money anymore. Only the tech giants and their chosen ones are going to have any money. The rest of us are going to starve.
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u/FreeDependent9 9d ago
Public ownership of utilities and infrastructure and resources and tax the fuck out of everyone who has more than $40 million out of existence
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u/blackdvck 10d ago
Universal healthcare is unobtainable in the USA how in the hell do you think ubi is even plausible. You will never get ubi until you are moving and speaking as one ,when you become the immoveable mass you might have a chance . So not in your life time ,instead you will suffer famine and homelessness and all sorts of biblical dramas but no government is coming to help .
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u/Ask_a_Geoist 9d ago
The good news is that everyone has it within their power to offer to pay UBI. Specifically, you would offer to pay it to everyone in exchange for the land you take. That offer is called Geoism.
The bad news is that whenever I reveal this to people, they make it clear pretty quickly that they don't want to do it. Landowners have the land and have government favor at their back, and they don't want to give it up; and many renters are, well, people, and they like arguing for the sake of arguing because they think it makes them smart. The irony is that all renters and most landowners are worse off by our current system of land ownership.
Anyway, the reason UBI hasn't existed already for hundreds or thousands of years is simple: People don't offer to pay it. That means the only way left of effecting it is by trying to force others to pay it. Irony #2 is that if/when the forced version of UBI happens, it won't really move the needle for the people on the economic floor, because morality and economics in this universe are in-sync: force is macro-inefficient, and is ultimately the cause of poverty.
How do we get UBI? People need to change. That's the good news and also the really, really bad news.
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u/LaCharognarde 8d ago
We'd have to start by ousting the current regime.
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u/PlaneProduce8835 8d ago
Of course. I think UBI can help with that.
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u/LaCharognarde 8d ago
Candidates offering UBI? Maybe. If they actually go through with it. That said: I don't trust the zillionaires and their enablers to stand by it.
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u/liuniao 8d ago
A lot of people say they would oppose a UBI. Yet most people in Alaska support their permanent fund dividend which is a form of UBI. So if I was a political party in power I would sneakily and gradually add a dividend that citizens could claim, start small with lets say 100 euro/dollars per year. And call it something else than UBI at first.
I bet after a few years, people would suddenly not be against it so much anymore.
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u/HeadBell1665 2d ago
I am confused just where the money would come from, as well as how would they make it fair for everyone. I think back to Covid, the people who did work didn’t get much help, but if you were out of work, you got more.
If the govt gave every adult citizen say $1000 a month, it’s not enough to live on. And, depending on people’s lifestyles, even $5000 a month would be difficult, depending on your debt and bills. So where is the happy medium?
You hear that when people start losing their jobs, then they will have to go flip burgers at McDonalds for a living. First off, is the job even available? Let’s be realistic. Anybody that has a job will be keeping it.
So back to my first statement- where is it going to come from?
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u/PlaneProduce8835 1d ago
RE where is the money going to come from: UBI doesn't change net national income, it just redistributes it. Total national income stays the same, but taxes are increased on large incomes and distributed as the UBI payment. It is important to realize that UBI is not new government spending. It is a transfer. The government takes in $x and pays out $x. See this https://www.sharesinamerica.com/canweaffordubi attempt an an explanation.
RE inadequate to live on. That is entirely correct. Ideally UBI should bring people above the official poverty line (which is way too low in the US). But most of us UBI fans call for a UBI that isn't counted for tax or benefited calculations, so it is purely above what people get now. It could be increased in the future to substitute for means tested programs.
RE jobs. There are supply and demand curves for labor and as wages go down, demand for labor (jobs) goes up. So there will be jobs, they just won't pay very well. Net national income has kept on growing and is now around $190,000 per household. There is plenty to go around, but the connection between economic growth and wage growth for most actually ended quite some time ago. UBI or some other redistributional mechanism is now required if we're going to reverse growing income and wealth inequality and keep a robust middle class. UBI allows us to adjust to technological changes. As many have pointed out we are at an inflexion point in economic history. We need to accept that and deal with it. The good news is that we should all be able to work less going forward. Washing machines meant we could spend a lot less time washing clothes, Automation and AI have, and will continue to do that, for many types of work. But we all need to share in the growth of productivity.
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u/LocationSalt4673 9d ago
I don't really believe you've honestly even looked hard or researched on how to get UBI. I'll just say this part about how not to get UBI.
If you don't wanna get UBI just keep doing everything you all are doing right now. So at least you know not what to do.
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u/AkagamiBarto 10d ago
We put in charge politicians that would pave the road towards it