Or we could, you know, give free housing, healthcare and food to people who need them. UBI only works in a perfect society where the market doesn’t take advantage of it.
UBI only works in a perfect society where the market doesn’t take advantage of it.
Sorry, but that is simply not true. Alaska has had a form of UBI for decades funded by oil revenues. It decreased inflation. Canada also has a basic income for families that also hasn’t caused inflation.
With the introduction of this dividend in 1982, Alaska went from having the highest rate of inflation in the US to the lowest.
Source
Not to dispute it, but the sources for the Alaska argument are a Twitter post made by the organization itself (which just says that businesses will have discounts when the check goes out) and a Medium post.
And the source used for the argument in the Medium post is a link to another post made by the same author. His proof that UBI reduced inflation is… A line graph of CPI comparing Alaska vs the US.
If the oil dividend caused the decrease in inflation, you would be able to find many scholarly articles on the subject, yet the entire proof is a single graph.
I think its largely common sense that businesses would have sales to when money goes out. The same thing happens when refund checks come out. The author is of course biased, but that it not a reason to discredit the data. Are you suggesting he fudged the numbers for the graph?
If the oil dividend caused the decrease in inflation, you would be able to find many scholarly articles on the subject, yet the entire proof is a single graph.
No one is claiming the dividend caused it because causation is notoriously hard to prove since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation. The author simply provides evidence in a graph that the after the dividend (Alaska’s UBI) Alaska had a noticeably lower inflation rate compared to the rest of the US. Graph in question Take a look and make your own conclusions.
I wouldn’t really count the Canada one since it’s not truly “Universal”, but the Alaska one is interesting.
It honestly seems like it’s talking of some utopic society (“Businesses would continue to compete for our money by offering high quality at reasonable prices” - when has that ever happened in the past 20 years?), but it does bring some sources to the table so probably has a point, even if I still see that as overly optimistic.
Anyway mine was just a digression, I’m not going to vote against UBI or anything similar if it ever comes up, I think there’s better solutions but I’m definitely not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
We’re talking about vastly different sums of money and access to infrastructure.
Alaska’s 1600 per year is more akin to a tax refund. It’s not dramatically changing anyone’s income and if it is, they’re barely scraping by regardless.
Alaska is also so remote that everything is more expensive.
If 300 million people suddenly had an extra 24,000 dollars to spend in a year, you don’t think every business in the country would be scrambling to get their cut? Most companies see you as an obstacle between them and their money that you happen to be holding.
Alaska’s 1600 per year is more akin to a tax refund.
It may be on a smaller scale than is traditionally advocated for with a UBI like program, but it is a UBI. According to Wikipedia, the PFD(Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend) is a Basic Income in the form of a resource dividend. Any adult Alaskan resident is eligible for it whether or not they pay taxes. It’s not a tax refund.
If 300 million people suddenly had an extra 24,000 dollars to spend in a year, you don’t think every business in the country would be scrambling to get their cut?
Of course they would be. That is why a lot of business offer sales, when the Alaska dividend check go out. They want to convince you to buy their crap. When businesses want money, they have to convince people to buy their stuff via sales and promotions. That usually means lower prices.
Perfect is the enemy of good in this case. I would much rather have a $100 UBI just to test out the system than have no UBI ever happen because people argue it has to X amount. It is however very important to tie it to inflation so it doesn’t get effectively nickeled and dimed into continual cuts like the minimum wage largely has in many areas.
It is vastly simpler for the government to send everyone a check or deposit than to provide free housing, healthcare and food to people and decide who is ‘worthy’ of receiving them. And let’s be honest most social programs in America are the first thing on the chopping block. At least with a UBI, its very easy for the average person to tell when its been cut. If only a few ‘poor’ people participate in a program, it will be a lot easier for the government to cut it than if every legal adult in the country gets it.
Sadly, whipping on people who recieve benefits is a useful and convenient tool to have in reserve for politicians who are failing and need to deflect attention from that.
Yup. I recieve them because I am disabled with a progressive condotion and of course, poor. But I’m lumped in with those called “leeches”. I’m just trying to feed myself and my family. I will shamelessly swipe my EBT card as many times as I must.
I mean, free Healthcare is already being done in most of the first world and free housing is too, albeit in fewer places and with restrictions. Free food is trickier but I’m sure there’s a way to figure it out.
Imo the issue with UBI isn’t that it would get cut, it’s that it wouldn’t get raised according to inflation. It already happens with “conventional” income so I think just flat out giving the product with no adjustments needed is better, it’s not like as time goes on people are gonna need “more houses”.
It is not like it has to be either or anyway. I would certainly support healthcare and other similar programs but would caution against making them overly restrictive. The restrictions of the programs are the problem as they are excessively restrictive to stop people from using the programs. Effectively these restrictions mean only ~1/4 people eligible for assistance actually get it.
Before the pandemic even hit, 13 million Americans were living in poverty entirely disconnected from all federal assistance programs. The best functioning program is our food assistance program which reaches 2 out of 3 people in poverty, and lasts for 3 months every 3 years. Our worst is our temporary assistance for needy families program which varies by state, and in my home state of Louisiana reaches only 4 out of every 100 families living in poverty. Our disability assistance reaches 1 out of every 5 Americans with disabilities, and the average waiting time to qualify is two years. Our housing assistance reaches 1 out of every 4 Americans who qualify. Our unemployment insurance reached about 1 out of every 4 unemployed people in 2019. Over and over again, with targeted program after targeted program, our safety net tends to let three out of every four people fall right through it.
I would just prefer a UBI like program over other alternatives since its focus is on eliminating burdensome restrictions that serve to discourage people from using the existing programs.
I have a progressive illness, my brother in law moved in with myself and my husband. They are both disabled as well, but only one of us can work full time. We would be absolutely fucked without EBT. I am so thankful for it.
Inflation and generally every market trying to push the limits of how much they can exploit their customers in every possible occasion.
I mean, if I have to choose between the current situation and UBI I’ll obviously go for that one, I’m not 100% sure it’s not going to work. But if we have to try and radically change society with a very expensive procedure, I’d rather they do it in the most foolproof way possible.
Imagine the quality of life of the disabled population if they didn’t have to try so hard to get these things. It’s so fucking hard when you can’t work or can only work a little bit.
You and everyone you know has an extra $2k dollars per month from UBI. Your landlord raises rents because he knows everyone has 2k more.
In a perfect world your landlord would not be greedy and take that money. He would have actual competition from other landlords willing to rent. We don’t live in a perfect world.
In the present day, the vast majority of the money created (over 90%) is created by banks when they give loans (I kid you not: you can read all about it in the paper “Money Creation In The Modern Economy”, from the Bank Of England) so it actually makes sense what seems to have happenned in Alaska (as pointed out by others) that in overall UBI reduced inflation if UBI ended up reducing the number of loans people took.
This effect exceeding the inflation from UBI is probably only possible because it’s a fixed amount per-person rather than a percentage of all the money in circulation, so it’s a small percentage of all the money in circulation (a $660 UBI for every man woman and child in the US would be 1% of M3) and a tiny percentage of all the money in existence (i.e. including wealth held in various non-monetary forms).
So yeah, UBI would create some inflation, but not as much as you seem to think it would and it has side effects that work in the opposite direction which, judging by the experience in Alaska, are strong enough to offset the direct inflactionary effects of UBI.
Or we could, you know, give free housing, healthcare and food to people who need them. UBI only works in a perfect society where the market doesn’t take advantage of it.
Sorry, but that is simply not true. Alaska has had a form of UBI for decades funded by oil revenues. It decreased inflation. Canada also has a basic income for families that also hasn’t caused inflation.
With the introduction of this dividend in 1982, Alaska went from having the highest rate of inflation in the US to the lowest. Source
Not to dispute it, but the sources for the Alaska argument are a Twitter post made by the organization itself (which just says that businesses will have discounts when the check goes out) and a Medium post.
And the source used for the argument in the Medium post is a link to another post made by the same author. His proof that UBI reduced inflation is… A line graph of CPI comparing Alaska vs the US.
If the oil dividend caused the decrease in inflation, you would be able to find many scholarly articles on the subject, yet the entire proof is a single graph.
I did do some more digging and found that the graph from Scott Santens is supported by data from the stlouis Federal reserve. See stlouisfed graph
I think its largely common sense that businesses would have sales to when money goes out. The same thing happens when refund checks come out. The author is of course biased, but that it not a reason to discredit the data. Are you suggesting he fudged the numbers for the graph?
No one is claiming the dividend caused it because causation is notoriously hard to prove since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation. The author simply provides evidence in a graph that the after the dividend (Alaska’s UBI) Alaska had a noticeably lower inflation rate compared to the rest of the US. Graph in question Take a look and make your own conclusions.
I wouldn’t really count the Canada one since it’s not truly “Universal”, but the Alaska one is interesting.
It honestly seems like it’s talking of some utopic society (“Businesses would continue to compete for our money by offering high quality at reasonable prices” - when has that ever happened in the past 20 years?), but it does bring some sources to the table so probably has a point, even if I still see that as overly optimistic.
Anyway mine was just a digression, I’m not going to vote against UBI or anything similar if it ever comes up, I think there’s better solutions but I’m definitely not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Graph showing the last paragraph of my answer. I had to reply with another instance as lemm.ee has disabled images.
Graph from stlouis fed showing same data as embedded graph
Scott santens blog with graph
We’re talking about vastly different sums of money and access to infrastructure.
Alaska’s 1600 per year is more akin to a tax refund. It’s not dramatically changing anyone’s income and if it is, they’re barely scraping by regardless.
Alaska is also so remote that everything is more expensive.
If 300 million people suddenly had an extra 24,000 dollars to spend in a year, you don’t think every business in the country would be scrambling to get their cut? Most companies see you as an obstacle between them and their money that you happen to be holding.
It may be on a smaller scale than is traditionally advocated for with a UBI like program, but it is a UBI. According to Wikipedia, the PFD(Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend) is a Basic Income in the form of a resource dividend. Any adult Alaskan resident is eligible for it whether or not they pay taxes. It’s not a tax refund.
Of course they would be. That is why a lot of business offer sales, when the Alaska dividend check go out. They want to convince you to buy their crap. When businesses want money, they have to convince people to buy their stuff via sales and promotions. That usually means lower prices.
Ok and little league and MLB are technically the same sport but 8 year old Billie Jr isn’t going to be throwing a no hitter at Fenway any time soon.
Technically being the same thing does not mean it will function the same way.
Perfect is the enemy of good in this case. I would much rather have a $100 UBI just to test out the system than have no UBI ever happen because people argue it has to X amount. It is however very important to tie it to inflation so it doesn’t get effectively nickeled and dimed into continual cuts like the minimum wage largely has in many areas.
It is vastly simpler for the government to send everyone a check or deposit than to provide free housing, healthcare and food to people and decide who is ‘worthy’ of receiving them. And let’s be honest most social programs in America are the first thing on the chopping block. At least with a UBI, its very easy for the average person to tell when its been cut. If only a few ‘poor’ people participate in a program, it will be a lot easier for the government to cut it than if every legal adult in the country gets it.
Sadly, whipping on people who recieve benefits is a useful and convenient tool to have in reserve for politicians who are failing and need to deflect attention from that.
Yup. I recieve them because I am disabled with a progressive condotion and of course, poor. But I’m lumped in with those called “leeches”. I’m just trying to feed myself and my family. I will shamelessly swipe my EBT card as many times as I must.
I mean, free Healthcare is already being done in most of the first world and free housing is too, albeit in fewer places and with restrictions. Free food is trickier but I’m sure there’s a way to figure it out.
Imo the issue with UBI isn’t that it would get cut, it’s that it wouldn’t get raised according to inflation. It already happens with “conventional” income so I think just flat out giving the product with no adjustments needed is better, it’s not like as time goes on people are gonna need “more houses”.
It is not like it has to be either or anyway. I would certainly support healthcare and other similar programs but would caution against making them overly restrictive. The restrictions of the programs are the problem as they are excessively restrictive to stop people from using the programs. Effectively these restrictions mean only ~1/4 people eligible for assistance actually get it.
See this paragraph from the post authors blog.
I would just prefer a UBI like program over other alternatives since its focus is on eliminating burdensome restrictions that serve to discourage people from using the existing programs.
I have a progressive illness, my brother in law moved in with myself and my husband. They are both disabled as well, but only one of us can work full time. We would be absolutely fucked without EBT. I am so thankful for it.
Says who?
Inflation and generally every market trying to push the limits of how much they can exploit their customers in every possible occasion.
I mean, if I have to choose between the current situation and UBI I’ll obviously go for that one, I’m not 100% sure it’s not going to work. But if we have to try and radically change society with a very expensive procedure, I’d rather they do it in the most foolproof way possible.
Imagine the quality of life of the disabled population if they didn’t have to try so hard to get these things. It’s so fucking hard when you can’t work or can only work a little bit.
Put free education there and we are Gucci.
I am considering skipping trade school, which would be valuable, because I can’t even afford the $10k program.
Please expand.
You and everyone you know has an extra $2k dollars per month from UBI. Your landlord raises rents because he knows everyone has 2k more.
In a perfect world your landlord would not be greedy and take that money. He would have actual competition from other landlords willing to rent. We don’t live in a perfect world.
Increasing the money supply causes inflation.
That’s just a repackaged argument against minimum wage. It’s wrong there, too. Market competition is a thing, even for shitty landlords.
In the present day, the vast majority of the money created (over 90%) is created by banks when they give loans (I kid you not: you can read all about it in the paper “Money Creation In The Modern Economy”, from the Bank Of England) so it actually makes sense what seems to have happenned in Alaska (as pointed out by others) that in overall UBI reduced inflation if UBI ended up reducing the number of loans people took.
This effect exceeding the inflation from UBI is probably only possible because it’s a fixed amount per-person rather than a percentage of all the money in circulation, so it’s a small percentage of all the money in circulation (a $660 UBI for every man woman and child in the US would be 1% of M3) and a tiny percentage of all the money in existence (i.e. including wealth held in various non-monetary forms).
So yeah, UBI would create some inflation, but not as much as you seem to think it would and it has side effects that work in the opposite direction which, judging by the experience in Alaska, are strong enough to offset the direct inflactionary effects of UBI.
Spoken like someone who has studied large-scale implementations of UBI. Oh, what’s that? There aren’t any? Hmm.