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by paulpauper·10y ago·view on hn ↗
But what about existing entitlement sending, which keeps growing? A UBI without preconditions will only compound that problem, because what is to stop people from wasting their basic income on frivolities while also drawing from existing welfare programs.

Many people may agree to work for less than the current minimum wage, and on more flexible terms, if they're supplementing a guaranteed income, not scrambling to avoid having to beg for food.

But this is not the case. What everyone seems to forget that despite the low labor force participation rate, the poorest are not starving to death; in fact, they're more likely to be obese than higher earners.

The assumption that a UBI, on top of existing welfare programs, will make people more compelled to work seems like a stretch.

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I would have thought that a UBI would replace most or all existing entitlement programs. But perhaps people have different ideas?

And you're right, of course, that the poor in the U.S. generally are not literally starving. Though their poor health and high obesity rates are themselves symptoms of their limited access to healthy food, and difficulty maintaining a healthy lifestyle that may be due to other poverty-induced stressors.

I think it would be politically difficult to replace most or all existing entitlement programs with a basic income.

When you get a bunch of disabled people up on stage and they say, "Wait a minute, we are genuinely unable to work most jobs, and we have special needs to just get through the day, and you propose to just give us the same amount of money you do to some 22 year old healthy slacker from a good family who wants to take a few years to play X-Box?" and you're already trying a very very contentious policy proposal, is that the hill you want to die on? If not, we still have disability.

What about the just genuinely irresponsible mother who blows her income on, whatever, in-app purchases, and then she and her children are homeless and starving. Do you say, "Well, tough break, you could've been more responsible" or do you have programs to keep them fed and off the streets? Food stamps and Section 8 are back.

Healthcare pretty much has to continue to be separately subsidized unless you want anyone who has enough bad luck to have an expensive health condition that exceeds the value of basic income to die.

At that point, is there a really significant entitlement program still off the table?

(Edit: Sorry, yes, of course there is one significant entitlement program not touched on above: Social Security. I think you might somewhat reasonably make a basic income essentially "Social Security for everyone," and avoid having a special carve-out for seniors by saying, "We're not taking away your social security, we're just giving social security to more and more people.")

I always thought it would replace existing programs, but you have made me realize this is not true.

I guess in the end it comes up to do we believe in personal responsibility or not, and if the state or parents are responsible for children. (It looks like I am in the camp that does not think children should starve because they have irresponsible parents).

This makes me wonder if food deserts would persist even in a UBI world. Within a traditionally poor community, with a lack of education about healthy eating as well as a lack of competition between grocery stores, could we see locations where all foodstuffs became more expensive, and people maintained their existing eating habits?

I'll need to do much deeper thinking on this.

I expect they would persist. The poor, ultimately, would remain poor unless we're talking about a UBI well above anything anyone has proposed for the United States. But UBI could help alleviate the significant stresses of navigating the byzantine U.S. entitlement programs, reduce the stigmatizing effect of poverty by eliminating the application processes for entitlements, and save money on the government side by reducing complexity and bureaucracy.
Yes, from the very limited research I've done, the key question in the UBI discussion is this: what the heck is it? It's a great slogan, but you have to add at least a dozen or two bullet points or it can mean so many things that it effectively means nothing.
Interesting. I have always thought that its simplicity was its primary virtue. The government winds down all of its existing entitlement programs (except, perhaps, for health insurance) and, instead, writes everyone a check for $x per month. The big question is just the right value of x.

But it sounds like you've looked at this harder than I have. What are the questions I'm overlooking?

I'm on the road right now, but here's an in-depth article I read awhile back.

Note that I'm not against the idea. In fact, I think it has huge merit. But just like everything else, the devil is in the details. Just like in startups, in policy an idea is mostly useless. It's the execution that matters. We really need to see several dozen different governmental entities give this a shot in order to start having any kind of intelligent discussion at all. Look forward to seeing that happen.

(PDF link follows)

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa773.p...

they are just a symptom of a very bad healthcare system. in many European countries the universal HCS takes care of everyone. My country, Italy, is quite bad in everything, except for good and the quality of the free healthcare (free as in paid by taxes)
I don't think your points are necessarily wrong, but I have a couple comments. These are from the standpoint of the USA, I don't know much about other countries.

1. Basic income + universal healthcare theoretically would be able to replace all other welfare programs, so there shouldn't be people "wasting" their basic income while drawing from existing programs. Also, I consider some level of frivolities as a basic need.

2. Many poor people stay on welfare instead of getting a job because there is a "gap" where if you get a job you actually are bringing in less income than on welfare. Basic income should remove this gap, which may potentially increase employment.

3. Most poor are not starving to death due to private help like churches and food banks in my experience. I know when I went through a small period of being below the poverty line we got a small amount of food stamps + wic and ended up needing help from those private entities too despite the fact that I had an above minimum wage job. However, cheap food is often bad for you food which is why a lot of them tend to be obese(food banks and the like often don't have the money to get very much good for you food). Combine this with a tendency to binge eat when you have food then have periods where you have no food to eat.

As I understand it, that gap is a myth. You don't lose benefits as soon as you cross some imaginary threshold, they are phased out as your income increases. So you don't have as much incentive to make more money, but you never lose money in the process.
Take a look at this chart http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user9218...
Do you have the source for this, because it looks suspicious as heck. It has someone making nominally $20,000 receiving $43,000 from the state in assistance. Is it due to a "you are living in a city with sky high rents" adjustment?
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Eri...

It's amazing what you can do by typing in the name of a graph on Google. I guess that's why my school teachers marked down my score if I forgot to label my graphs.

Two problems there:

1. If it is a myth than poor people need to be educated on it because it is pervasive. Similar to the myth poor people generally have that if you get a ticket it is better to not show up than to show up and tell them you can't pay.

2. I believe it is not a myth but I don't have any proof available. While benefits are phased out as your income increases, I think the phasing out happens quicker than the increase. The chart the other commenter posted looks good but who knows.

It's not as clean-cut as it sounds. Especially when it comes to saving money. If you're really good about saving but your income doesn't rise or rise quickly enough, those benefits start drying up faster than you might expect.
>But what about existing entitlement sending, which keeps growing?

Universal Basic Income removes existing welfare, and everyone gets the same amount.

>the poorest are not starving to death; in fact, they're more likely to be obese than higher earners.

Because the poorest do not have access to high quality food, fruits, vegetables and eat preprocessed food that is an absolute catastrophe for your health.

>The assumption that a UBI, on top of existing welfare programs, will make people more compelled to work seems like a stretch.

Once again, UBI removes existing welfare programs. As to why people would be compelled to work, you can pick from:

* Actually liking their jobs. * UBI doesn't allow you to live like a king, the amount you get is pretty low. * Why should they work anyways ? Filling more pointless jobs, which are getting increasingly replaced by machines ?

Theoretically with UBI there is no need for a social safety net beyond catastrophe insurance (Medicare).

In practice I'm not so sure. Many social safety net programs have restrictions because it's too easy for an alcoholic to pick up his entire family's check and spend it on booze.

Also, UBI is political poison for the people who wring their hands in worry that someone is mooching off of their had work. And make no mistake, there is a sizeable segment of the population that will be perfectly happy to sit at home and do nothing all day, wasting their lives and the public's resources. They will show up in papers and angry up the old folks. What the paper's won't have is the story of the charitable work people can do without the need to constantly work to eat. It won't have the story of the artists who are breaking new ground and doing exciting things in their tiny studios. It will have the story of the 300lb lazy asshole who watches TV all day long.

This is why we can't have nice things.

So the alcoholic takes their entire check and blows it on booze? Don't care.

I specifically have to not care, so as to not erect a gigantic, wasteful government program designed to protect someone from their own short-sightedness (in my high-and-mighty opinion). In order for UBI to work, we have to give up substantially all notions of controlling what other people spend THEIR money on. That's the most appealing aspect of UBI to me. As someone who works hard and would end up shouldering the expense, I'm not particularly enamored of it, but the "get out of everyone else's business" aspects really do appeal.

Yes, but what about when the alcoholic's wife and adorable child show up on the news because they're starving and don't have heat? Or when someone's grandma gets scammed and ends up living on the street?

Most people are not willing to tell them "tough luck." So you're back to having all social programs that try to prevent people from doing stupid, short-sighted things.

The wife has her own UBI presumably. I leave it to the family to work it out. Trying to get a UBI on top of all existing handouts seems doomed to failure to me.
You missed the whole point. Said abusive drunk takes all of the money for the household. It happens in real life. You might say "just leave the bum already!", but it's not that simple. People get trapped in shitty situations all the time due to family or religious or mental conditions.

In some ways UBI is the most libertarian of the social safety net options (as weird as that sounds), but it assumes that people act in their rational self-interest or if they are self destructive that there is no collateral damage. That's just not true in the real world.

Like I said, this is why we can't have nice things.

> the poorest are not starving to death; in fact, they're more likely to be obese than higher earners.

That isn't because they're eating well, it's because of the opposite. Malnutrition, poor sources of food(fast food) and lack of time to adequately exercise(beyond standing) cause this, not an understated availability of food to the poor in the US.

Most of the UBI programs I've seen suggested drastically cut entitlement spending. The UBI _becomes_ the social safety net.
There's one school which argues for that (the Libertarian / Friedman argument typically runs along these lines).

My view is that UBI could substitute for many safety-net expenditures, but not all. It turns out that there are people with special needs or circumstances. The sick, disabled, mentally ill, children, military veterans.

Some specific targeted assistance will likely still remain.

But yes, the bulk of it should likely not be necessary.

Things you couldn't cut: (1) Medicaid and Medicare spending and (2) all social security payments greater than $10K per year [of which there is a lot].
> what is to stop people from wasting their basic income on frivolities while also drawing from existing welfare programs

> a UBI, on top of existing welfare programs

Most proposals see UBI as replacing the existing welfare programs. No more means-testing, etc (and a cost-saving in reduced administration). How practical that is has yet to be seen.

You would still need programs for people with mental and emotional problems, but that would be a small subset of current welfare recipients. And with far fewer people to focus on, we might be more effective with that care.

So, yeah if you spend your year's stipend on a week in a Hilton suite, then can't afford to eat, you might get additional help, and lose complete control over your BI.

I knew a homeless guy in Anchorage that did this with his PFD and disability money. He needed more help than a check every month.

> if you spend your year's stipend on a week in a Hilton suite

Most countries pay benefits on a weekly/monthly basis. Perhaps not to avoid this precise scenario, but simply to aid budgeting.

You're right to say that some people might blow all their welfare cheque in one go. In the UK, that was at one point mitigated by paying housing benefit (the largest part of welfare) directly to the landlord, which at least minimised the chances of the tenant being evicted for not paying rent. That however has changed not that long ago, and a lot of other protections have also been withdrawn.

I think UBI is a good idea, but I also think it could use some protections to address issues that might be faced by more vulnerable claimants.

Being obese is not the same as being well fed.

Also, I'd never propose universal basic income as a complete solution. UBI doesn't make our complicated world suddenly simple without any effort. It requires a certain level of economic especially agricultural productivity for us to even consider ubi as viable for a large economy like ours.

Firstly, ubi like single payer universal healthcare will not be free of cost. I expect full cooperation from my work force in this matter. Taxes will have to go up, at least in the short to medium term and incentives and deductions must come down. The economy will likely suffer a slowdown in the short and medium term as well. We can't turn back and run away. We need a clear commitment and mandate to stay the course even if it send incredibly stupid do so.

Secondly, in my mind universal basic income requires a certain level of community support. As the saying goes "man can't live on bread alone". People need a reason to live. Perhaps indoctrination is to string of a word but we'd need a support structure to motivate people. While I strongly believe people are inherently good and not evil, it will be a difficult challenge to motivate people without the easy monetary benefit.

Thirdly, I think ubi requires a certain level of automation in what we shall term as essential goods and services. This means these guys and services should continue to flourish and flourish highly efficiently even if the workforce shows low participation. In other words, we will need a way to keep our utilities like water and electricity, our infrastructure like roads and Internet connectivity, our food supply and so on to pretty much work on autopilot.

What do you think?

Edit: in my mind, ubi replaces most if not all other entitlement and welfare programs. An important premise of ubi is we will save money on compliance such as trying to make sure wic money only goes to qualified people. If we extended wic to all children, we would not have to determine eligibility. This I think will help adoption and help remove stigma of welfare.

I don't think it's actually a problem if people receiving basic income are 'wasting it' on 'frivolities'. If we don't start redistributing wealth, the economy is going to freeze up. There's only so much stuff that computer programmers in silicon valley can buy.
there are nearly three thousand Federal assistance programs, 1800 that are domestic - meaning families and people in general, and 1200+ just to states, cities, and localities.

Not many are going to be willing to give up on any of them. There is too much power involved here to easily give it up.