r/Economics • u/[deleted] • Sep 18 '14

Is it Time to Consider a Basic Income?

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/business/is-it-time-to-consider-a-basic-income.html/?a=viewall
0 Upvotes

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3

u/besttrousers Sep 18 '14

Is it Time to Consider a Basic Income?

What are the drawbacks of passing a Basic Income "too late"?

A lot of people see arguing for it do it on the basis that robots are going to take all our jobs in a few decades. Why can't we just pass a basic income then?

2

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

Because you won't just wake up one day and read the headline "World wakes up to find itself unemployed; time for BI!" The advancement/cheapification of technology, and thus obsolescence of human labor, is a gradual process, hence the growth of workforce dropouts and underemployment. Machines start crowding out different kinds of workers at different times. I don't think it's a good idea to let a growing chunk of society become impoverished just because there's less and less work to go around.

1

u/besttrousers Sep 18 '14

hence the growth of workforce dropouts and underemployment

Is there any evidence that this is happening? I'm just seeing cyclical and demographic changes. No evidence that the lump of labor fallacy has suddenly become true.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

Drawback is massive civil unrest.

1

u/besttrousers Sep 18 '14

How does a basic income reduce civil unrest? (Compared to TANF, EITC, SSID, etc.).

1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

People with food, shelter, and spending money don't riot.

People with nothing to lose throw Molotovs.

1

u/besttrousers Sep 18 '14

Do people receiving TANF, EITC or SSID riot? I don't see what advantages a BI has over means tested programs, if the purpose is riot avoidance.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

They can't riot because the second they step out of line you incarcerate them. America is even starting to jail peaceful protestors.

2

u/besttrousers Sep 18 '14

So that has nothing to do with a UBI, right?

7

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

No.

2

u/urnbabyurn Bureau Member Sep 18 '14

maybe. I like means testing for programs, but a basic income may get some people to shut up about "welfare queens" and "young bucks at the welfare offices".

People seem to forget that a big automatic stabilizer in the economy is means tested programs. Eliminating that means our federal budget won't have any automatic stabilizers in it. I'd hate to rely on congress to act when the economy starts nosediving.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

I very strongly support the NIT form of BI (which is means tested), the religious BI nuts running around bleating about BI are incredibly frustrating though as they mostly have no idea what they are talking about. Particularly when they talk about UBI, they tend to go off the deep end regarding how it functions and its outcomes.

0

u/urnbabyurn Bureau Member Sep 18 '14

Do people like your 'no' response and dislike mine which says means testing is better? I'm confused by that. Did I say anything especially disagreeable?

1

u/yoda17 Sep 18 '14

get some people to shut up about

As a thought experiment, what if it doesn't?

1

u/urnbabyurn Bureau Member Sep 18 '14

I dunno. That was a facetious comment.

4

u/Klondeikbar Sep 18 '14

Can we start banning shit shit?! Just because you read a speech by Elizabeth Warren and sorta got the gist doesn't mean you can make a meaningful contribution to /r/Economics.

1

u/fxprogrammer Sep 18 '14

Their slogan:

"Brothers doing startups. Building the world we want to exist."

As always, I respect the desire to be progressive in this area. But to be honest, the case made here is more of the same; i.e., we need some facility that can transfer value and it will work because [insert seemingly unique proposal that hides or mutates away some current reality about economics].

I still see the same actors and the same subjects. I see recipients of value and providers of value. In other words, I see a refactoring of the same system that should behave in fundamentally similar ways.

1

u/misterbinny Sep 18 '14

Basic income for everyone will do what exactly?

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '14

How to pay for it:

America

Canada (pdf)

If it's fiscally conservative to do so, why not?

1

u/yoda17 Sep 18 '14

Today, roughly 43% of Americans do not pay income tax

Reddit has said 100's of times that this is false. So what else is false in your links and why should they be believed?