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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Receiving some extra money benefits people who get it, all other things being equal. Water is wet.
The question is what happens when you implement such a program widely. All things will not be equal then. How would it affect inflation, the labor market, etc.?
One might expect that even if it was implemented in a way that didn't increase the money supply, which would be difficult, it would increase inflation for at least two reasons. First, because working class people are more likely to spend it, increasing consumer demand. Second, because people who were approaching retirement would be incentivized to retire earlier, decreasing labor supply and production output. All these effects are inflationary.
This is a complex subject and I wish people saw beyond the simplest first-order effects.
Dude, they did it for an entire town in Manitoba for four years in the 1970s, and none of the horrors some people seem to love to predict with respect to UBI ever materialized. How big and long-lasting would a pilot program have to be to convince you that yes, this does work?
The experiment did not apply to everybody in the village, but to a small subset of people.
The experiment did show a reduction in the number of hours worked in the house, as expected.
The experiment wasn't in any way self-sufficient. The funds came from the wider province, and thus the cascade of "fewer people working leading to a loss of tax revenue, making it harder to continue funding the UBI" couldn't have materialized.
This isn't idle speculation: this loss of revenue is the reason why the age at which people are eligible to receive a public pension has been increasing in developed countries.
Lastly, the experiment didn't attempt to measure inflation in the prices of goods and services provided in the village, so we can't tell whether it materialized or not.
I don't know. The specific concerns about the ramifications of a UBI and hasn't been addressed properly by any UBI advocates. I would like future pilot projects to be designed specifically to address them.
I think the school of economics you're following here is wrong in what it values, but I don't have the energy to try to refute this on a point-for-point basis.
Profit margins are more important than humans.
- frost biker
You're wasting your time at this point, he's got a 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' attitude without a shred of empathy.
Okay, I'll put it in simpler terms: when governments implement unsustainable policies, it is the working class that ultimately pays the price. Just look at history.
And when governments ignore the economic needs of everyone except the rich for too long, the result tends to be violence. The US is perilously close to that now, and we're not doing much better. D'you really want a revolution, with all the blood-in-the-streets nastiness that entails? We need to change the game somehow, and UBI is one way of doing it. Not the only way, granted, but the political will doesn't seem to be there for any of the others either.
Only at extremes far beyond of what we are seeing today. Other places in the world have substantially larger Gini coefficients and that hasn't translated into violence.
What basis do you have to assert that?
A false dichotomy.
You are assuming that a UBI would be beneficial to the working class. I have presented multiple reasons why that is questionable, and you haven't addressed any one of them.
That's because your individual points all derive from focusing on the wrong things.
What people want is prosperity—the sense of flourishing and being successful at life. Unfortunately, that's very difficult to measure, because definitions of "success" are idiosyncratic and widely variable. So we measure money as a proxy for prosperity. The problem is, it's a very bad proxy, one that can actually pull in the opposite direction of the thing it's supposed to be a proxy for. Which is what appears to be happening here.
You're trying to look at this from the point of view of macroeconomics, which is the study of large-scale money flows. Money flows. Except that programs like UBI are not designed to optimise money flows, they're an attempt to improve median prosperity, even if that results in poorer mean financial outcomes.
I admit my previous post was a bit on the hyperbolic side, but you're treating this as though the situation were a case study in an economics class. Which it isn't.
Tax revenue isn't the only measure of success. If people take UBI, then stay home to raise their kids or support a sick relative, that work has a value to society that isn't accounted for -- savings in spending on old age homes for parents of people on UBI were likely missed or under-represented. Someone who stays home, but volunteers instead provides a service to society at large whose benefit is difficult to quantify when the impact may not be strictly monetary, or whose monetary impact may be delayed for several years.
The other side is that UBI means workers aren't exploited by making housing contingent on working... Employers will likely need to pay more and offer better benefits (that affect life/work balance) in order to find staff... Another intangible/incalculable improvement for society that doesn't show up in a small-scale study.
Consider just the labour market. You imply that taking people out of the labour market is a bad thing, but how?
If a person can further their education as a result, that sounds positive.
If a student is better able to focus on their studies, that sounds positive.
If a parent is able to stay home with young children or work only part time with older children, that sounds positive.
If an adult is able to care for elderly or infirm relatives instead of putting them into a long term care facility, that sounds positive.
If a worker is able to retire a bit earlier, opening up opportunities for those struggling to enter the workforce, that sounds positive.
Your "labour market impact" makes it sound like you think businesses are entitled to the labour of others.
As for the rest, much can be avoided by appropriately funding universal services, thus limiting the role of ready cash.
First, it decreases the production of goods and services, which leads to price increases.
Second, it decreases the tax base from which the UBI is funded in the first place. In other words, a UBI undermines itself.
Which goods and services? Cars and doctors? Or Big Macs and pizza delivery?
There is no shortage of legitimate experts who say a proper progressive tax regime will handle UBI just fine. And if it doesn't, then at least we failed honestly instead of sitting on our hands.
Eh, I don't think there's much of an argument for UBI to not be means-tested. If it's meant to be a basic support so that people can maintain dignity through their most difficult time, I doubt you're seeing people choosing early retirement. Besides, OAS and GIS are already means-tested basic income for seniors.
As for big inflationary force? Maybe? But the idea that lifting a limited portion of the population out of the worst of financial circumstances will cause problematic inflation is pretty laughable. Economists still don't know what actually causes inflation, apart from the expectation of inflation.
There are plenty of arguments for it not being means tested including not having the huge administrative burden and removing social stigma. I think people often don’t realize the time and finances required to administer means testing.
That would make it a basic income, but not a universal basic income. Just to clarify the terms.
Something similar to what you are describing is called a negative income tax, in case you want to learn more about that.