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Worth a listen.
Universal Basic Income
- Thread starter esmufc07
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Worth a listen.
UBI will be ineffective simply because it doesn't really address structural flaws in the process. All it does is distribute wealth from the rich to the poor. We need to address the cause of inequality, not just the effects.
Ask yourself the question, what causes Income Inequality? Possible answers range from:
- Ineffective tax structure. (Favours the rich and corporates now)
- Bad economic policies
- Lack of development around housing/education/infrastrcuture
- Automation
- Globalization
- etc.
Which of these does UBI solve? Nothing.
Try improving some or all of the above and you'll find income inequality evening out on its own without need for gimmicks like UBI.
It's not a question of ease of implementation as nothing is easy to implement, but rather which of those difficult ones we should focus on to get the best benefit at the end. And for me UBI is not it.
UBI has nothing to do with earning their keep. It is a welfare that is granted unconditionally. It is not a earned income but rather a granted benefit.
There is this default belief that all automation are somehow beneficial and advances the society. Like anything else, every single advancement comes with it's own share of dangers. Do we really need drones to deliver our packages and automated cars to deliver pizza? Yes, the technology advances and the companies benefit (no strikes, labour unions etc)...but what benefit does the society? We should be looking not just beneficial to company, but also at short and long term impacts to society before we jump down that cliff.
Income thresholds decide what the poverty line is. If a government came in and said it was below that line, they would be called on it. And since it is a benefit that everyone would get I dont see it being "someone elses problem" like the issues with current state benefits.
I get the feeling we are destined to disagree on this. I was hoping your post would be more compelling...
UBI is a huge undertaking... But not even as huge an undertaking as what you are suggesting. It's just soundbites, tell us why it fixes the problems that UBI cannot fix and how it does it? Those problems you highlighted, how do you fix them? How much does it cost? Compare and contrast if you like...
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None of these are fundamental structural changes though. For instance as long as you have privatized health care, both private business and city and state government entities are incentivized to cut corners by offering things like only part time 20 hour/week jobs.
And none of your suggestions address all the grey area profiteering that drains billions of wealth from the bottom 90% every year (HFT, real estate loopholes, weakening of banking regulations, dozens of corporate welfare schemes, changing ). All the structural changes to benefit the elites have to be undone and unwound. There have been 40 years of spiking the system for the top 1 percent. We have to get at the real structural changes to change that.
Now we’re back to government making the decision. And honestly it feels a bit naive to think public pressure would stop the Government playing political games with it. We’ll just get more “public spending crashes the economy” nonsense like 2010 all over again to justify “freezing” UBI rates for a bit.
There is so much wrong with your understanding of what UBI is for, frankly we wont get anywhere with me continuing to explain it, ive had many long posts in this thread trying to get across what its role is, and people are continuing to lump it together with the stigma of benefits, instead of the necessity of a fundamental living income when the room is there for it. Especially in a future where work as we know it is going to be completely rearranged and reduced in its scope.
Is that honestly your view on technological advancement? honestly mate? in the very specific examples given and even your mentions about Delivery services and automatic cars, that you would rather continue people doing these low skilled jobs that nobody wants to do, because it ticks an employment box on a sheet, at the detriment of everyone; the employer who has to pay more, the employee who hates the work and bad conditions, in addition to the net contribution loss to society. you cant see the value in a society where all the low income, low skilled labour is replaced by technology, and those people are free to do whatever they want work wise. if you don't have to worry about physically dying because you dont have the money to support yourself above the poverty line, it frees these people up to contribute to society in so many ways, they can become self employed, they can volunteer, they can do low hours community type work, they can retrain into sectors that urgently need bodies like nursing or care homes, they can paint or create music, participate in culture or media, literally thousands of ways to contribute to society other than driving trucks or working in industry. If there was no net difference, why would you not subsidise peoples income to improve the spread of wealth?
And it may not have been your point, but ill briefly touch on it because its been parroted about constantly, the argument of "well nobody will have an incentive to work" "free money" is just completely wrong. Yes technically you could sit on your ass and do nothing and live a life with feckall means to do anything because the UBI is literally a "you can feed yourself, clothe yourself and have a roof over your head" level of income to allow people to take a risk doing things they enjoy or contribute to society in ways that aren't purely GDP dependant. Nobody is going to be well off living off their UBI, the incentive to earn additional income is still there because people want things, they want a new tv, they want a holiday, they want a better home etc. you don't lose the worshipped Profit motive that capitalists circle jerk. Having 10 grand a year or whatever isn't a level of money that can support any decent level of living. Its a baseline. and people who do continue to work will only see benefits to their standard of living.
All of the dissent is a fundamental non understanding of what the relationship between labour, capital and profit surplus at its root. The talk of wealth distribution is bad because its not your money is just wrong. Peoples labour has been subsidising capitalists and the richest in society since its inception, not taxes being the other way around. Calling for a more equal share of the surplus to improve the lives of 90% of the population from money earned by the workers in the first place has become so contested because of the level of effort put into manipulating people to act against their best interests.
No, they got away with that because people are arseholes. UBI affects everyone. Its not the same as how they were able to put the blame for 2008 on the disabled. Disability benefits have been under attack for over a decade and most people couldnt give a feck. That attitude wouldnt come in to play, because it wouldnt be "someone eles problem". The reason the government gets away with fecking the poor and disabled is because they are the few. Try fecking the majority and its a different story.
In any case, I still dont see that as being a reason not to bother. The current system doesnt work so why not try something else? And if that doesnt work, why not try something else? Sticking to the same shit show isnt going to solve anything. Neither is picking apart other ideas. If it doesnt work, it doesnt work. We move on and try something else. Instead, we still to the same shit that doesnt work voting for people that have no clue what they are doing past making themselves and their friends richer. Lets just try something else, and see what happens.
I’m in favor off it but can’t help thinking that landlords will use it as an excuse to push prices up, likewise shopping for goods
No one needs an excuse to raise prices, everyone asks for as much as they can get. Assuming it's something people want the limit to price rises is either someone else offering it for less, or the buyer unable to pay.
One does wonder about the effect on inflation though I must admit, maybe introduce it slowly to see what happens?
Not sure the argument all being in it together has ever stacked up tbh. There wasn't much outcry about child benefit being frozen after all. Likewise the Tories got away with freezing NHS spending for years.
On your other point, you can’t just have a go and see what happens with something as profound as the benefit system. Quite apart from it being the money they literally live off and therefore not being something you can just trial and error, these systems take 5 to 10 years to implement because they’re so complex. That’s why there’s only been two major reforms to the system in 25 years. So you have to analyse these things incredibly robustly before you commit, and more importantly, you have to know it’s better than what goes before it. In this case the problems with the current system seem like they’d be there with the new system, which is why I’m skeptical this change would solve anything.
Sorry, I get that part, what I'm not sure I understood correctly was where you said increased taxation making up the difference.
Reading again, I get it
I won't bother telling you what I thought you meant I'm totally for it, the employed get a nice little bounce, part timers or people training etc get a decent standard of living, and for the very very few who don't want to work, well, would you want them driving your bus or making your food? Let them be.
Again, that’s not “everyone”. Benefits are seen as scrounging, and come with a lot of shit that people don’t want to deal with. If you don’t “need” child tax credits you would be going after them.
Who said flip a switch now? I’m under no illusions that change won’t take time. But it’s better to start changes and pilot things, then sit shaking ones head looking for things to go wrong. There’s always going to be things that go wrong, if 100% effectiveness is finishing line for any idea to cross than we’re all fecked.
That’s just a strawman, no one expects 100% effectiveness before implementation. But a robust case needs to be made that shows clear advantages to the change, we’re nowhere near robust right now. Indeed, other than a very hard to prove claim that it’ll change the strivers vs scrounges debate, I haven’t really heard any advantages yet, when compared to simply fixing up what we have now.
What straw Man? All anyone is saying who is against ubi is bullshit straw men arguments that are based on nothing but personal opinion of poor people or that they don’t want to give up their bit of the pie. The positives have been pointed out various times on this board alone. Just because you don’t agree, or don’t follow it doesn’t change the fact that a UBI system would be far better than the shit show we have now.
But you say fixing up what we have now would be a better idea? Cool, let’s see your proposal. By the way, what we have now demonises anyone that claims, and stigmatises the very nature of the system. I’m very interested to see how you get around that, as that is one of the problems that affect poor people and has a detrimental impact on their self worth and mental health which in turn plays a key role in standing in their way of social mobility. We currently treat people on benefits the same way we treat prisoners, with contempt. The popular notion that those on benefits don’t deserve a certain standard of living, the same way that people don’t think prisoners don’t deserve one either. But the same question comes to both, if you treat people as a thing, how will they ever be anything else but that thing? “ I live in the shit part of town, therefore I must be shit.” That’s how it works. People get into a mid set and get stuck in it when that mindset is constantly reenforced by society. It takes either strong will, or luck to break out of that cycle. Or we could give everyone the same basic standard of living, remove the negative aspects benefits thus improving people’s views of themselves and others and improve the mental health of our society. But you were saying, you had a better idea?
The government
Spare me the rants please, and please refrain from the insults. None of the reservations i have are based on not wanting to give up "my bit of the pie" as you put it. I've made quite clear my objections, that UBI has many of the same problems as the current system, and then adds some more. It still needs a complex system of administration & public touch points, and it still needs political commitment to a level of funding that offers actual quality of life to claimants rather than mere existence. UBI will face these exact same challenges.
The other problems are tricky. Most importantly, it cannot include housing costs becasue of the vast disparity in housing costs in the UK. There is no level of UBI that is fair for a single parent renting in West London that is also fair for a middle aged couple with no mortgage. The LHA in some parts of London (basically the amount of Housing Benefit you can claim) is already £15,000pa for a two bed house, so UBI would need to somehow cover that and offer help with living costs. Similary the cost of living for disabled people is higher than non-disabled people, which is why we have disabled benefits right now. If a disabled single parent can currently get £25kpa in the current system, are you going to give unmarried couples that much, or are you going to give the single parent less than they get now? UBI has no answer to these issues.
My proposal would be to have a negative income tax system, so if you earn below a certain threshold the Government pays you instead of you paying them. That threshold is personal to you, based on your circumstances. If you're renting, have a mortgage or live with your parents, the threshold differs. If you're a carer or disabled, the threshold differs. If you're ill, the threshold differs. But whatever it is, your income is offset against that threshold. Earn less, the Governemnt pays you up to that threshold. Once you earn over that threshold, your benefit reduces, but at a tapered rate, so you still get a top up until you're earning, say, £10K more than whatever your threshold is.
This is not far from the system we have now, and can use the same infrastructure & wouldnt need new legislation. The difference is primarily the amount put into the system to pay to people. It needs the current IT system mess fixing, but that needs to happen in any case. Beyond that the only diffrerences are in how the personal threshold is calcuated.
Quite.
And how much do you estimate this actually works out to? Arbitrary or not, can you come up with a figure?
How much is too much to improve society?
I didn’t insult you or rant. You’re just being sensitive.
As for your proposal, it’s one that revolves around the same thing and will cost more money as it will involve paying private companies to means test, test disabilities etc and generally keep the system as it is under a different name while changing absolutely nothing. Not unlike universal credit that continues to send people to food banks every day.
Seriously? You do understand the concept of federal deficit, right?
Do you have a figure or not?
I don't recall you tackling my question... ?
Yeah, but no matter what number he says you’re going to poopoo it. So what number do you think is acceptable gets us there quicker, no? Or is there no number? And where is this number for? The US? The uk? And then which part of the us or uk? What works in Glasgow, won’t work in London for example. So it’s kinda hard to say a magic number and have it apply to everyone. For example I can get by just fine on a grand a month, could you where you are? I mean if you had to, like if this went south and you had to rely on the minimum?
As you said, we have to agree to disagree, so didn't reply. And yes, changing the tax structure or ensuring that companies don't avoid tax is easier than UBI. But hey, there is no real data to justify both ideas either way. So not sure what proof you are expecting.
Fundamentally this is the problem. Lots of grandstanding ideas, but ask for details and all you get is more talk.
OK, let me try to put up what I think this will cost and let's see if we can take it from there.
Let's assume that a UBI wage per person per year. $15/hour * 8 hrs/day * 25 days/month * 12 months/year = $36,000 p.a Imo this is still on the low side, but let's use this as starting point.
Contributors will be the tax payers.
Beneficiaries will be those below poverty line, i.e those who cannot afford basic necessities of live. A quick Google indicates there are about 40-45m people in US below poverty line.
So 45,000,00 * 36,000 = $1.62 trillion will be needed as a minimum to pay for UBI. And this would be in addition to the $1.17 trillion that is currently already being spent on welfare.
Now this is a very arbitrary number and does not include housing/cost of living between metropolitan cities vs other rural places for example.
Currently US federal tax income from individual and corporates is somewhere around $1.5 trillion. You are effectively looking to double the current tax revenues plus extra just to provide for bare minimum of UBI.
Am I going in right direction?
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I’m not American and don’t know what your current wages look like, but that to me that looks like a lot and would never be that much, at least not in the current value of money. Unless I’m wrong about the value of the dollar. It wouldn’t be a regular wage, it would be enough to pay for basics, a no frills existence. So what ever the number is to pay for food, power and a roof. It’s not for phones, cars, or other luxury items. You want those things you’d have to get a job.
The current tax system is losing trillions every year to tax loop holes, and other more naferious means to avoid paying. So cut that shit out and how much would that be worth? Amazon for example pays about 1.7 mill in 2017 after deferrals having an income of 2.5 billion in just one quarter. That was the uk. In the US they made a profit of 5.6 billion and paid zero tax. The 5 years before that they paid just 11% tax. That’s one company avoiding paying millions in taxes in two countries. So in my opinion the money is there, governments just need to go get it and stop letting big corporations away with murder.
No, not really.
First you assume far too much. Most UBI proposals I see are more around 1,000 a month. Its not supposed to be equivalent to a minimum wage salary. So you are overestimating by three times there. Second, you are mistakenly just adding the number to existing costs when most proposals are using UBI to replace things like welfare and unemployment. So you aren't adding up the numbers correctly either.
Also I find it funny how whenever its a social welfare proposal to help the people the balanced budget police always come out of the woodwork saying no no you can't do that, cost too much.
Were you poo-pooing the costs of the Iraq War in 2003? of both Bush and Trump tax cuts as too expensive? Arguing against the financial bailouts from the top down which cost hundreds of billions in 2008?
Well obviously my suggestion will cost more money than the current system since we’ll be paying people more, that’s true of UBI as well.
Your point about universal credit is a key one one though, why so you think universal credit is sending people to food banks?
Because it’s run by fecking idiots. People aren’t getting what they are supposed to be getting because of bureaucratic bullshit. Ubi wouldn’t need the same oversight. It would just be a payment, and while ubi would cost money it would also draw in other benefits to off set some of the costs, that’s on top of getting rid of the private companies doing the means testing that your solution would bring in. Ubi would also dispense with uncertainty. People would know where their money was coming from and not worry that any minute a letter was coming through the door to take it away.
Your solution requires more over sight and bureaucracy, ubi cuts that shit out.
I think there’s one thing we can agree on, and that’s that no matter what happens in the future, corporations need to start paying their taxes. The brunt of the cost of whatever we do can’t just come from the people, it needs to come from those making massive profits and paying nothing back in to the economy.
Ok just as an aside, the spend on bureauracy is peanuts in the UK. Total DWP department costs are about 3.4% of total spend and that includes many things that are nothing to do with benefits administration, like encouraging people to use pension auto-enrollment and encouraging apprentice programmes in the workplace. Even if you slashed that budget by a third, which would be miraculous, you'd only be adding about £2bn into a total spend of £173bn. That's not a transformational amount of money.
But, yes, the system is run by fecking idiots, that's precisely the problem. What's made Universal Credit fail is two things. That the Government doesn't know its arse from its elbow when it comes to IT, so when they tried to create the Universal Credit database they messed it up. And that they also basically don't care about benefit recipients, so they've underfunded the whole scheme. UBI doesn't stop either of these issues.
UBI requires both a national identity register and a reform of the taxation system. Both are incredibly complex, and both are costly to implement. There is every chance the Government would mess these things up too.
And on the other point, if the Government decides that they want to screw people at the bottom, they can do. Freezing UBI would be simple enough. Or they could simply change the methodology for calculating the poverty line in the first place. Or they could change the tax bands to bring more poor people into a higher tax band, raise the tax rate itself or lower the personal allowance, in doing so giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Or indeed, they could simply do it by stealth - cut funding to deprived local councils further, lower subsidies for public transport in poor areas, increase prescription costs, remove free school meals, etc. There are many ways for the Government to squeeze the poor.
If the system is being run by fecking idiots, then the new system will be run by fecking idiots too. UBI will not stop the Government being either incompetent or malicious. The answer is not to change the system, the answer is to stop it being run by fecking idiots.
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Apologies, been a busy couple of days. You can claim other benefits if you're studying, regardless, even if you could, it would be creating a very expensive policy to legislate for a very marginal constituency of people who have kids, for example, and want to go to university. But on a point of principle, I dislike that idea, all it is doing is externalising the costs of individual life choices on other people. You want to study? Great, but you should bear the costs and understand the sacrifices needed to do so. The government's job is not to bail people out whenever they feel like they've worked themselves into a corner.
Secondly, 'full employment' is ridiculous abstraction made by amateur economists, it literally means nothing. People working less hours should be celebrated, it allows them to redirect their time and labour to other problems. As I keep saying, this argument is wildly ignorant of history; go back long enough, and the vast majority of men were subsistence farmers who worked 12 hour days, 365 days a year. And the women spent the vast majority of their day on shit domestic work. Industrialisation and the development of technology hasn't meant those people are 'unemployed' - they were just redirected to new industries. AI will be the same, it will simply change the mode of employment, civilisation will not end.
'Accelerating very quickly' and causing mass unemployment are two very different things. AI already exists, we all have Siri on our phones.
Finally, 'social mobility' is another one of those weird abstractions that we all like to use that don't offer much information. An optimally mobile society should, in theory, have as few roadblocks to upward movement as possible, and also allow you to fail and fall as your actions dictate. For some reason we only talk about people moving up.
I don't want to divert this into a discussion about economic 'theory', but to be honest, experimental economics is a waste of time. It's on the same level of academic rigour as election polling (not very much).
I was obviously being facetious.
Mate, this might sound a little harsh but... if you don't have 400 dollars of savings, that is your fecking fault. People on here like to go on about the US healthcare system as if it's a good example of a marketised healthcare system, it's not. Health insurance being tied to work is caused by legislation, not because that's what would happen. Making health insurance tax deductible has made the costs of healthcare in the US balloon to ridiculous heights, because it allows corporations to absorb the costs since they have better economies of scale. Lower paid people struggle because of it.
Perhaps you're right, but what evidence do you have that this time will be different? I'm not basing my argument on that anyway, just using it to illustrate my point. AI is a tool, one that will open up new opportunities for people, and there are historical examples of such things... whereas in your case, there are not.
Not at all, it is the central pillar of UBI. That the reason other people are not 'self-reliant', is because they haven't got the resources to be. Which is just a recursive loop. Self-reliance is a learned behaviour, and giving people money will not affect those behavioural changes in a positive way at all, why would it? All that will happen is that the people who already have those qualities will become even further entrenched in their positions because they have an even bigger leg-up than they already do. And all this talk of 'social mobility' will just get louder, again blaming capitalism, where it barely even exists.
haha, no such thing can exist.
And how do you propose that? We’ve seen first hand that uk population are mostly made up of “I’m alright jack” cnuts. They not only sat by and watched the government abuse the sick and disabled for five years, they voted for another five years of it and then did it again. So how do you propose making people give a feck outside of making these things affect them? There’s people in this very thread that don’t seem to understand that their life experiences aren’t not universal. “I made it, so everyone else should too”. Honestly, if the last decade has taught me anything it’s people won’t lift a finger unless it impacts them directly. So yeah, stick everyone on ubi and the government won’t get a mandate to keep taking money out of everyone’s pocket. Because everyone will kick up feck because it impacts them, and not just some shitty subset of people that the majority don’t care about.
As for rolling out ubi, it’s a simple process. You reach a certain age, you start getting payments into a bank account. Maybe it costs a lot as an initial start up, but over time it won’t incur more massive outlays like constant means testing.
I feel that at this point we might be going in circles, we obviously don’t and won’t agree. One of the things I see ubi doing is improving the general mental health of the population. Setting people free from the fear of being able to put food on the table. You can pick it a part until the cows come home, but we can do that with anything. Nothing will ever be the perfect solution. Maybe if it was put into practise, it’s issues could be addressed. Your idea while addressing some of the same issues, doesn’t address as amany as ubi, IMO. And not the most important one, to me anyway, which is the mental health aspect.
So I guess we can just leave it at agree to disagree. And we can both stop typing the same things out again and again
If you think Paul Glimcher and Colin Camerer's research is equivalent to election polling then you must not understand what I am referring to.
Its the people who place blind faith in the anti-empirical beliefs of von Mises and Hayek that are the ones that lack any degree of academic rigor.
This is just repeating Rush Limbaugh propaganda. If you actually believe that 80% of the US population not having 400 dollars of savings is always the fault of that 80% it shows you don't understand the structural incentive problems with the US economy. No foundation in that academic rigor you are talking about. Even when honest libertarians looked at US health care they conclude that government should be providing a safety net to cover catastrophic accidents, terminal illness and to cover the poor.
The problems with current US health care are the direct result of allowing the HMOs and pharmaceutical companies to write most of the laws.
We have historical examples of massive failures and problems caused by laissez-faire policy suggestions so we also know that just relying on neo-classical assumptions that the free market is the answer to everything is a lie (Roaring 20s Great Depression through Friendman's failed suggestion to post-Soviet Russia).
I think you might be misunderstanding the objection a little in the same way the term Luddite is slightly misapplied these days. Its not solely an objection to new technology but how that technology is being organized from the top down.
"But it's important to remember that the target even of the original assault of 1779, like many machines of the Industrial Revolution, was not a new piece of technology. The stocking-frame had been around since 1589,
The knitting machines which provoked the first Luddite disturbances had been putting people out of work for well over two centuries. Everybody saw this happening - it became part of daily life. They also saw the machines coming more and more to be the property of men who did not work, only owned and hired. It took no German philosopher, then or later, to point out what this did, had been doing, to wages and jobs. Public feeling about the machines could never have been simple unreasoning horror, but likely something more complex: the love/hate that grows up between humans and machinery - especially when it's been around for a while - not to mention serious resentment toward at least two multiplications of effect that were seen as unfair and threatening. One was the concentration of capital that each machine represented, and the other was the ability of each machine to put a certain number of humans out of work - to be ''worth'' that many human souls. What gave King Ludd his special Bad charisma, took him from local hero to nationwide public enemy, was that he went up against these amplified, multiplied, more than human opponents and prevailed. When times are hard, and we feel at the mercy of forces many times more powerful, don't we, in seeking some equalizer, turn, if only in imagination, in wish, to the Badass - the djinn, the golem, the hulk, the superhero - who will resist what otherwise would overwhelm us? Of course, the real or secular frame-bashing was still being done by everyday folks, trade unionists ahead of their time, using the night, and their own solidarity and discipline, to achieve their multiplications of effect."
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html?
Still a strawman of what the actual argument is. The arguments I hear are that the structure itself inhibits social mobility and traps people in negative feedback loops. You are solely focusing on money amounts rather than the structural problems.
When futurists talk about "post-scarcity" they don't mean that the concept of scarcity won't exist at all, they just mean that the basic levels of human sustenance are no longer victim to scarcity economics. In other words food and shelter are not scarce but abundant. Its only Maslow's first level of needs that they mean are post-scarcity. As I said a good example is the Doctorow novel Walkaway.
Yes, two of the most influential economists of the 20th Century (one of which is a Nobel laureate) can be dismissed so glibly. 'Experimental' economics has the same conceptual and practical problems as psychology: they run interesting experiments, which are ultimately not illuminating.
I don't think you read that article to be honest. I never defended the US healthcare system either, I just gave you part of the problem:
"All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions."
That's from your article, and I fully agree. The jist of that article is that the US healthcare system sucks for a variety of reasons, and here's how to slowly introduced some market elements to it so we can get a better system... wish we could do that in the UK!
Now you're just being silly, free market policy caused the Great Depression? Come on...
Not sure what your point is here, a lot of people were wrong in 1779 just like a lot of people are going to be wrong if they think AI is going to end civilisation? People who have entrenched benefits will always oppose something that threatens them: walk around New York or London and ask the Medalion owners or Hackney Carriage drivers what they think of Uber and it'll sound mighty similar to your little tale of the stocking-frame. However they feel about it, they are wrong.
I think you don't understand libertarians very well - we think there are structural problems, we just disagree with you on what those problems and how to solve them.
What is the most scarce and most important thing in the world, in your opinion?
Ironic.
You glibly just dismissed the entire fields of behavioral and neuroeconomics based on nothing more than your personal bias. You are also "glibly dismissing" the work of multiple Nobel Laureates (Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky*, George Akerlof and Richard Thaler).
You do realize that the entire Austrian school is not only not based on empiricism but they go so far to deny that empiricism even applies to economics right? You talk about lacking academic rigour? Austrian lacks academic rigour more than anyone else.
The contributions of the four I just named plus Glimcher and Camerer vastly exceed the debunked contributions of von Mises and Hayek.
Sounds like you didn't read the article because you are missing my point. The point was that even people who are die-hard libertarians (who advocate for "pure" market solutions" still admit that government has a role in health care
"focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition)"
Also you do realize that it was the for-profit HMO entities and pharmaceuticals that wrote all the current laws right? And they wrote those rules specifically to benefit themselves.
You can't just "blame the government" on bad health care policy without realizing that it was the for-profit entities who wrote that bad policy. The problem is that it was the for-profit entities who created all the misaligned incentives in the first place because they profit a lot more from them.
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I should just clarify this further. I fully realize that Goldhill never argues for a complete European single payer. But my point is he is an honest libertarian looking for what he believes is the best system overall (not a corporate lobbyist trying to spike the rules solely for the benefit of the for-profit entities). And even he concludes there are "things that only government can do" such as "(protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe,etc"
You'd never hear Rush Limbaugh or Fox News ever admit there is anything "only the government can do" let alone protecting the poor or covering everyone against true catastrophe.
If you think the decades of laissez-faire unregulated wild west capitalism had nothing to do with the Great Depression then I think you probably haven't read up much on history. It was clearly a complex issues that, like the Great Recession of 08, has a number of different causes and exacerbating circumstances but the core weaknesses of the economy all came from unrestrained laissez-faire ideas without the appropriate social safety nets in place.
But this should be fun. Let's hear your idea for what caused the Great Depression (although I am pretty sure I already know exactly what you are going to say - arguments long ago debunked by economists like John K. Galbraith among others)?
I think you don't understand behavioral economics and neuroeconomics at all. So let's start at the beginning.
Are you believer in the Austrian school (a denier of empiricism) or Chicago school (you accept empirical research)?
That's a weird way of framing a question that is ultimately too vague.
My point on post-scarcity is that with the our current level of knowledge and resource capacity things like food are not and could be even much less scarce in future. We don't have a problem with too little potential food for 15 or even 20 billion people. We do have a problem with distribution networks and efficiency of food distribution. Misplaced profit motive is one big problem there. (Buckminster Fuller debunked the Thomas Malthus overpopulation theory long ago)
A related problem is energy efficiency. We have enough knowledge and technology right now that its within current human capability to construct extremely energy and waste efficient cities. But transitioning from the system we have now to what would be the most scientifically and technologically efficient city design is more difficult the more free market morality permeates a society specifically because profit motives and greed create misaligned incentive problems in many areas (esp. in health care, education, research and development and distribution networks)
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Delivery for Andrew Tilde
I find it amazing that anyone can dismiss the inevitable impact of AI (and AR etc) on employment on the basis that Siri already exists.
Are you always this childish?Delivery for Andrew Tilde
Also, I thought UBI would be for everyone and not just those below the poverty line?
Once again, apologies for the slow replies, busy week unfortunately. This debate is getting a little awkward because I was trying my best not to move the discussion away from UBI, but hey-ho.
Besides the point really, I could sit here all day and say X debunks Y, that's merely a claim, you claiming it so voiciforesouly doesn't add to it's truth or detract from it. I would suggest you engage with Mises and Hayek directly, because that argument is incorrect; they are not opposed to empiricism, but merely question how prominent that kind of research should be when relating to the social sciences.
There is nothing more contrived than an academic dick-waving contest, because as you know, there are numerous nobel laureates who fall into the Hayekian sphere. If you have an argument, I would be able to engage with it more if, rather than throwing out names, you presented it rather than tell me the famous name it is attributed to. I didn't tell you I disagree with experimental economics because Mises and Hayek said so, I told you that because that's what I think. You may think I'm wrong, but at least do me the courtesy laying out the arguments rather than just saying "oh this rube disagrees with these economists I like" - as I hope I've done to you.
Secondly, if economics has taught us anything over the last century, it is that whenever government tries to regulate an industry, it is always the corporate lobbyists that write the law. They have the ear of politicians, they have more of an interest (and therefore motivation) to spend money lobbying and ultimately, understand how the regulations play out better than most people (especially politicians). You're American so you'll understand this analogy: Al Capone loved prohibition because it allowed him to make more money, and it allowed him to get close to politicians, pay them and beat out competitors to entrench himself as the biggest player in the game. A similar, but less extreme, version of this plays out in almost every other heavily regulated industry from banking to taxis. If the answer to healthcare is to have single payer systems, why not those?
Whether one guy who is a 'die-hard libertarian' advocates something is quite frankly of no interest to me. I agree with all of his criticisms of the US healthcare system, and I think what he suggests is the most politically expedient solution, rather than being the most optimal. But let's not let perfection get in the way of good enough, shall we?
In this thread, you've said I argue against straw-men a lot but... simultaneously keep telling me about Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
That's not to say the market is always right, just that it will get things the least wrong, of all the other methods. The market is just a synonym for society, and human society is never always right, we are wrong plenty of times. However the market allows us to learn faster and change faster.
Besides the point really, I could sit here all day and say X debunks Y, that's merely a claim, you claiming it so voiciforesouly doesn't add to it's truth or detract from it. I would suggest you engage with Mises and Hayek directly, because that argument is incorrect; they are not opposed to empiricism, but merely question how prominent that kind of research should be when relating to the social sciences.
There is nothing more contrived than an academic dick-waving contest, because as you know, there are numerous nobel laureates who fall into the Hayekian sphere. If you have an argument, I would be able to engage with it more if, rather than throwing out names, you presented it rather than tell me the famous name it is attributed to. I didn't tell you I disagree with experimental economics because Mises and Hayek said so, I told you that because that's what I think. You may think I'm wrong, but at least do me the courtesy laying out the arguments rather than just saying "oh this rube disagrees with these economists I like" - as I hope I've done to you.
There's rather a lot to unpack in this section. On the highlighted point, he's not an 'honest libertarian' - he's just one that vaguely agrees with your preferred end-state. I am not in the pay of any healthcare corporation so what the hell do I have to gain by representing them in an argument against someone I don't know on the internet? Agreeing with you isn't the barometer of honesty and it's incredible you seem to think that.
Secondly, if economics has taught us anything over the last century, it is that whenever government tries to regulate an industry, it is always the corporate lobbyists that write the law. They have the ear of politicians, they have more of an interest (and therefore motivation) to spend money lobbying and ultimately, understand how the regulations play out better than most people (especially politicians). You're American so you'll understand this analogy: Al Capone loved prohibition because it allowed him to make more money, and it allowed him to get close to politicians, pay them and beat out competitors to entrench himself as the biggest player in the game. A similar, but less extreme, version of this plays out in almost every other heavily regulated industry from banking to taxis. If the answer to healthcare is to have single payer systems, why not those?
Whether one guy who is a 'die-hard libertarian' advocates something is quite frankly of no interest to me. I agree with all of his criticisms of the US healthcare system, and I think what he suggests is the most politically expedient solution, rather than being the most optimal. But let's not let perfection get in the way of good enough, shall we?
In this thread, you've said I argue against straw-men a lot but... simultaneously keep telling me about Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
Again, you're making claims and throwing out names. Recessions are incredibly complex things and to some extent, are a natural part of economies. These 'great depressions' though, are a different beast, and almost always come directly after a period of monetary expansion. Which, I believe is the primary cause for them.
As I said previously, this is a false dichotomy. Austrians don't deny empiricism, and the Chicago school doesn't dismiss the Austrian school either. I read widely in economics, but I do believe that Mises (along with Menger, Marshall etc) should be the foundational texts for economics and everything else needs to be looked at in that context.
As I said before, I don't like throwing out names in discussions but, in this case I'll make an exception: I think it would be a good idea to check out Hayek. Put simply, food does not have a scarcity problem. It has a coordination problem. What does this have to do with Hayek? Well, Hayek was awarded the nobel prize because of one of the key insights about economics: it is primarily a 'knowledge' science. That is, knowledge is very dispersed so it's incredibly difficult (he would say impossible) to coordinate centrally, and that the only coordination mechanism human beings have hitherto discovered, is the market.
That's not to say the market is always right, just that it will get things the least wrong, of all the other methods. The market is just a synonym for society, and human society is never always right, we are wrong plenty of times. However the market allows us to learn faster and change faster.