A Universal Basic Income Approach

Demos' Policy Shop ^ | September 15, 2015 | Matt Bruenig

[CurlyDave]

It’s a replacement of all the forms of welfare with an income. It’s brilliant, in a way. Why pay for all of those gov’t bureaucrats to administer all these different programs, determine eligibility, negotiate contracts, look for cheaters, etc....

We can already see the effect of this kind of thinking in another area. The government has made student loans and grants available to all. The net result is that the cost of higher education has increased to meet the availability of funds. And the performance of free basic education has decreased.

A guaranteed basic income will do nothing but increase the basic cost of living. Rents and food prices will go up, while quality will go down. We have already done the experiment and it is a failure.

[TexasFreeper2009]

And what happens after they blow the $30,000 on crack and then claim to still be “hungry” ?

[ReaganGeneration2]

Charles Murray proposed this a few years ago. Direct deposit of $10,000 per person, $3000 must go toward health insurance.

Problems:
- That’s well over $3 trillion; still have Social Security commitments
- That requires loss of thousands of jobs by bureaucrats and lobbyists - and without special interests to fuel their campaigns, Congress won’t go for it!

[Lou L]

What a creative use of a blue pen to doodle a line on a chart.

Notice how the author inserts, and I'm paraphrasing, "I don't see the basic income replacing all other forms of welfare, no. We'd still have Social Security, disability, unemployment, and various other leave and sickness benefits."

Please hurry with a follow-on post to describe how all this "mincome" would be funded, I'm dying to find out. The "productive class" would have to pay 150% of their incomes to fund such a scheme.

[Plain Old American]

Did you read the post?

“As I’ve noted before, I do not see the UBI as totally replacing all other welfare incomes.”

Maybe it could be brilliant as a replacement - but his proposal is not to replace all welfare payments - therefore it will replace none.

[truth_seeker]

“I’ve seen this advocated by Charles Murray, a libertarian sort of guy, believe it or not. The idea being to replace the bloated “welfare system”, that is, ALL of it, with a basic income. Overall it would be cheaper than what we have now, and should have some interesting (good) side effects. Of course the law of unintended consequences would rear its ugly head somewhere, but its not that crazy of an idea.”

Indeed Murray did propose it in “The Bell Curve” wherein he writes about the genetic differences between race and IQ.

Others have made similar proposals, as well.

[Myrddin]

Where is the forest of money trees to provide this "universal basic income" without concern for productive labor to EARN the income? There is no value proposition. Nobody as a right to "free shit" on the backs of others who have worked to earn that money.

[SoothingDave]

That is so if you consider disability and unemployment insurance as “welfare.” I don’t.

This particular proposal I didn’t look at too closely. It’s the concept that should be given some thought.

[SoothingDave]

The government has made student loans and grants available to all. The net result is that the cost of higher education has increased to meet the availability of funds. And the performance of free basic education has decreased.

That is always a possibility. Remember that in this case there would be housing and other living expenses at all prices. Most people would not accept a house that you can get with the gov't minimum.

For college, there really isn't price competition cause most people pay with 3rd party money.

But, yes, goods and services will arise to capture whatever money is made available. But is that really that much different than what happens today with COLA on all of the other gov't welfare payments?

Cut out the middleman. Decrease gov't size. Empower people to make their own choices. Don't discourage people who want more. Simplify.

[SoothingDave]

Where is the forest of money trees to provide this "universal basic income"

The same place we get the money for welfare programs now.

We already do it. Let's do it more intelligently.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Utter bovine scatology.

And destined to become reality sooner rather than later, I fear.

[LonePalm]

So who is going to pay for all this?

What do you call someone who is FORCED to work for the benefit of someone else? A SLAVE!

"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[2ndDivisionVet]

Then you’re already a slave.

[LonePalm]

Tell me about it.

"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[jwalsh07]

What is the UWR for the UBI?

[Rodamala]

[Myrddin]

QE and borrowing from China to pay the slackers? That's why we're going to collapse soon. The "thin air" theft of our wealth by QE is running out of value to steal.

[Nowhere Man]

I think your prediction will happen at some point and it isn't quite a bad idea on some things such as cut out the welfare beaucracy and so on. The basic income would pay for things like a basic apartment, a basic car, food, some of it will go to medical care, utilities perhaps and maybe enough left over for a small hobby or to go out to eat every so often. I can see us go this option as jobs become more automated. It will be like Star Trek, The Next Generation and beyond where if you want more, you'd have to find your niche and work at it. Captain Picard's family has their vineyards in France as Commander/Captain Sisko's (of Deep Space Nine) father has a restaurant in San Francisco. Of course Star Trek has replicators that take care of 99% of scarcity so that enters into the equation as well.

One side of me thinks this is not a bad idea, really. Employers will not have to pay as much for labor. Say if the minimum income is like $18,000 a year and the job would pay like $22,000 a year under the old (our) system, under this system, they'd only have to pay $4,000 a year. Even so, it would require a huge restructuring of our system so that would really have to be worked out.

[SoothingDave]

Or maybe with more people loosed to do productive work, we don’t have to borrow from China.

Yes, I used “loosed” correctly on the internet.

[dearolddad]

I bet this has never, ever been tried anywhere before!

It' a great idea, it's just that it hasn't been tried by the right people yet. I'd almost be willing to bet that Mat firmly believes that he is just the right guy to make it work.