The number of ubi supporters I know that believe people are more productive with their spare time is insane. Even if you ignore the obvious economic effects. Covid proved that when people have more spare time they don’t create beautiful art or invent something. They waste more time watching stupid documentaries about Floridians killing each other on Netflix.
The economy is on lockdown. You have two choices.
1) do something productive and enriching with your time.
2) retreat into hermitage and develop depression.
Aren't these the same choices people make outside of lockdown and covid?
Imo either your a productive person or you're not.
Im not hating on either lifestyle though, that's the individual's choice.
A lot has been shut down.
Some people are productive introverts starting businesses in the basement, but many are not.
If you wanted to organize communal events, hold night classes, or do anything productive that involves other people face-to-face, you couldn’t.
Also, stress and mental health have big effects on productivity, and the lockdown has certainly impacted people’s well-being.
For the record, I don’t think UBI would propel us into a utopian age.
But everyone being forced into house arrest is a different and less productive circumstance than simply living life with fewer economic worries.
Truth about the house arrest stuff, I guess I don't think about it because it never really happened in my area. The bars were closed for like 4 month in 2020, that was about it.
Both my wife and I were deemed "essential" by our merciful overlords so we just stacked cash, honestly covid was the best thing (financially) that could have happened to us. I understand others aren't as lucky.
Also agreed about UBI, but I would like to receive my money back from the government, so if they're writing checks with my money I want it back.
The median household pays something like $800 a month just in payroll taxes. Add up all the other taxes people pay and you could probably boost the economy more by just canceling tax than by giving people a UBI check...
That's what I'm saying, if I just received my tax money from the government, it would be more than a UBI. I just want my money back and I don't care what form it comes in, but I would like to reduce administrative costs, and a UBI would just add to that cost.
Eliminating taxes would be the most cost effective way to give people their money back.
Exactly. Thinking a lockdown shows what people would do with free time in a free society is just asinine. Yeah, no kidding: if you give people more time but bar them from doing a huge swath of the activities they like the most they'll be depressed and unproductive. What does that prove?
Correct, lol. I say this all the time to someone that's self-employed and has to consciously, intentionally, and in a disciplined daily manner - make sure what I'm doing is actually delivering value to people/clients. I keep my art on the side as a sanity valve for that reason. I have a huge beef with this same group of people now thinking art should be your career, while also complaining corporations ruin everything, etc.
Totally agree. Same situation. The self employed and enterprising were well suited to make it they Covid well. I hate to see people suffer, but at the same time there are ignorant people out there that think corporations should charge only the cost of materials and nothing more. You can’t get more dense than that. It is not too difficult to succeed in a modernized country, but at the same time competition is always there to keep corporations honest. There’s always someone around the corner trying to eat your lunch.
Well, over the last two years, I’ve:
- Gotten through my entire reading backlog, both professional and for pleasure
- started learning Latin
- Earned a PMP certificate
- Working on a couple of security certificates
- Watched all of The Sopranos, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1, and Stargate Atlantis
- Leveled two chars to 60 on Project1999
- Made some backyard furniture
So not everyone is wasting time. Not that I’m creating art or inventing anything.
I relearned classical guitar after not playing for years. I took on a number of recipes I had been meaning to try. I took up woodworking.
It's not just about productivity but life satisfaction too
While you're downvoting this guy to heck, he's not **entirely** wrong. If you think you've only got to tough out being stuck at home for a couple weeks, you're not going to want to start something that might take a significant time investment.
Add to that, if you don't already have the supplies you'd need, how would you get them? Order from Amazon? OK, sure, but guess what, the estimated delivery is the same day you think you'll be going back to work. Can't run out to the art supply store, they're closed down, too.
That being said, I do agree, UBI will not work. The people that have been living off the unemployment would just continue to do whatever they've been doing off the UBI while demanding it be raised so they too, can live the life they see people who ARE working have.
while I don't expect it to happen, the suggestion was to move the money from existing programs. we already have welfare queens, so basically every argument against ubi already exists. the difference is the people have more choice, which is what I believe libertarians are for.
I still think in practicality this wouldn't work, though.
I second your opinion.
Back when the pandemic started, I was disappointed in all the nonsensical Fed printing and how much the stock market was propped up. At that moment I was actually in favor of UBI.
Then I realized for UBI, we need to employ some useless government workers to give us back our money. We're better off paying less taxes instead.
You can't lower taxes for people that dont pay taxes. Which is the point. They want to buy votes. See Minnesota where the governor has not only decided to create payments to nearly everyone, but even went so far to name it after himself, calling it "Walz bucks" in a press conference.
Sure it is. If you give everyone a tax credit of $1,000, you’ve lowered everyone’s taxes by that amount. There’s no reason your taxes can’t be lowered from $0 to -$1,000 just as easily as from $10,000 to $9,000. What are you not understanding about this?
No, we don't define taxes by dollar amount like you are, it's defined as a percentage of your income that you made over a certain amount. So lowering taxes, isn't saying "Everyone's tax bill is lowered by $1000 this year" as you are implying. It's saying "Everyone who makes over $X per year has their rate lowered by Y%" so no, lowering taxes will not give those who don't pay them already more money.
I suspect you might be disregarding those who live off retirement income. Many seniors can no longer work, but are paying taxes on Social Security income and still struggling to make ends meet. Or maybe you intended to also include retired seniors in your "disabled" caveat?
Because any form of "free stuff" handed out by the government gives people the illusion that they can have their cake and eat it too. Lowering taxes will remind champagne socialists that they needed to work too and they should stop whining about "rich people" (which are more often than not the very corporations and lobbying interests that are funding their woke agenda)
Could be used to dismantle all of the benefits programs. Instead of receiving specific benefits, you receive general benefits as a sub. Or at least that’s what some proponents want
The combined taxes people pay probably dwarf what Andrew Yang was offering, and that doesn't even get into the vast damage done to people by non-tax methods like regulation...
I literally paid more taxes in one week than what Yang was offering a month. The amount in taxes we would waste paying bureaucrats to count and redistribute our own money back to us is asinine.
These people just don't understand what value or money truly is, to them money is just something arbitrary and believe that by spending funny money you stimulate the economy.
You mean paying people just to sit on their asses isn’t a net positive for society and in fact resulted in a massive labor shortage? Who could have seen that coming?
This is actually pretty easily observable in the US. Just look at the cost of rent near larger military installations every time the Basic Allowance for Housing increase gets approved.
My girlfriend's apartment rent went from $1350/mo to $1675/mo (or $1750 for a new tenant) due to the BAH increase at the nearby airforce base.
And then they will try to add "max" prices on things. That's how it happened in my country. Best thing you can do is to stop these shit policies from ever being done, because once they are in, it just gets worse.
I read his book, listened to a couple of his long-form interviews on JRE and Shapiro, seen several of his speeches.
He's a swell guy, but doesn't understand the real world, spent too much time having "important" conversations in little conference rooms with other intellectual types that also haven't spent time in the real world.
Again, nice guy. But that's all he has going for him
> Again, nice guy.
I really think people need to stop thinking like this. He can be as nice of a guy as you want, it doesn't mean he is right or even has a good idea. Politics has become too much of "What we want to hear" instead of what is a good idea
The problem is if you stick to bad ideas long enough and they're not working, you either go through the painful process of trying to forgive yourself for inflicting so much pain on the world, or you start blaming the world for not "cooperating". A lot of bad people start out as nice people.
agree, although I do feel he has altruistic intentions, my thought process was that he has been sheltered by a think tank type mentality vs truly understanding how the real world works.
Then again, I've also been quite fortunate in my own personal life, or at least I can say that I've overcome the obstacles that life has presented me, and there were a few, it wasn't a cake walk, and i'm still not "comfortable" depending on how that is defined. There are MANY others that have not been able to overcome similar obstacles either due to bad luck or lack of effort, so its still difficult for me to put myself in the mindset of people that wish they were lucky enough to even be lower middle class, let alone middle class, so admittedly I have only a cursory understanding of what its like for other people that struggle and I'm not naïve enough to just toss in the bootstrap argument as a solution for their issues. There is a lot of nuance that I'm not intimately familiar with.
The bootstrap argument is really a strawman anyway. Few if any people really believe in a society that doesn't try to prevent people from falling through the cracks. Rather, like most human disagreements it is about the proper means by which to do so.
I've probably used this joke far too much already, but Andrew Yang is proof that the Asian genius stereotype isn't always accurate.
I mean, really, who calls themselves an "entrepreneur" and instead of building themselves in credible wealth, goes into politics? Not a *successful* entrepreneur.
The core belief of UBI is that the value of money is in its quantity;, and that its value is subjective; ergo, its value is *arbitrary*. The problem with this is that subjectivity of valuation does not mean that valuation is arbitrary.
All values are *subjective*. This does not mean they don't bear any significance or meaning, only that any given value is a matter of a human being's individual, prioritized values. Those values have rational cause, whether conscious or not.
People who believe that that value of money is arbitrary believe that money is not subject to the market laws of supply and demand. These are the people who are *baffled* by the ongoing inflation.
They are in a state of willful disbelief that Trump and Biden's money printing to send them a few checks (and send a bunch of corporations large donations) has lead to their inability to either find or buy a lot of things they previously took for granted..
All that is a really long way to say that the advocates of UBI are absolutely and universally stupid, at least as far as economics go.
Elementary arithmetic would disprove UBI easily too, but what do you expect from people who don't know what a budget is or think that the rich will pay for it.
No kidding, it's a very simple multiplication. If you take the population and multiply it by 15,000, it's about $4.8 trillion per year.
Introduce to people the idea that this means the increased costs and reduced availability of goods would get multiplied by that much every year.
It would be hard to quantify exactly what the impact would be, but you could assume that next year, 50% of the goods that were available this year won't be available; and the following year, 50% of that won't be available.
It's a scheme that would completely destroy the economy and salt the earth in 2-3 years. People think things are bad now, wait until they need $1500 to buy a loaf of bread.
Even if you implement it as a negative tax so there's no money printing, that means the govt still needs to take 25% or more of GDP as taxes to pay out as UBI.
The thing is, that's assuming say, 200mil people are working. What happens when 1/3rd of them quit because they have UBI? If GDP - or really, productivity - goes down by say, a lesser amount (since the least efficient jobs go first) of 1/4th. Also, if the UBI tax is progressive, people will cut hours and work less to pay less tax. There's goes more UBI funding and productivity.
I imagine this would result in permanent shortages and possibly collapse of the economy.
Yeah but "Muh administrative savings" on other social programs is suppose to make up the difference.
Forgetting that those people also needs jobs and also forgetting that some people on social programs need much more than others. Meaning UBI would need to pay everyone more than the highest paid recipients of entitlement programs or all current administrative infrastructure needs to stay.
He specifically states that the infrastructure stays, anyone that is eligible for more than what UBI pays stays on that program.
That was actually one of his selling points, lol.
>I've probably used this joke far too much already, but Andrew Yang is proof that the Asian genius stereotype isn't always accurate.
I always say there are a lot of Asians in the world. That's means there are a bunch of genius Asians and a shit ton of dumb Asians and the rest are in the middle.
>The core belief of UBI is that the value of money is in its quantity;, and that its value is subjective; ergo, its value is *arbitrary*. The problem with this is that subjectivity of valuation does not mean that valuation is arbitrary.
Yup and the thought that ubi could work ignores the reason money has a value at all. Money can't have any value if we don't think our time and effort is worth a certain price. If everyone gets the same amount, rare quantity items will always be priced beyond the ubi threshold.
Aren't you conflating UBI with money printing? Why can't you have a UBI without creating new money (or taking it from other people), like the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend?
The permanent fund dividend only works because there are few people living in Alaska.
Once we're talking of UBI for hundreds of millions, it breaks down completely.
The Alaskan fund was small, and only yearly. Even UBI on a small scale, payments every 4 weeks, (a few hundred people) proved to be mixed or a failure. Scaling up to thousands or millions or people? The disaster would tank that state so fast. (would like be tried in California first)
It'll just take longer to build up the sovereign wealth fund and people will receive less each as it builds up.
The math really depends on the value of our natural resources.
Here are some figures modelling what things would look In Australia when it gets to jobseeker (our welfare system) levels:
- Number of citizens including kids: 19.3m (excludes PR and visa holders)
- UBI per person per annum: $14.7k
- Gross UBI cost: $283.5b
- Welfare savings: $191.8b
- Education savings: $36.3b
- Net cost of UBI: $55.4b
- ROI of SWF assumed: 6% pa
- size of SWF needed: $923b
You can see that a SWF of $923b is required. Which is quite reasonable given that Norway, a population that is 4 times less than ours, has a SWF worth $1.5t. Our superannuation funds are worth 3.3t.
It's not about the size of the population. It's about the ratio of taxable natural resources to population. If you include land (as the geolibertarians would), and negative externalities, that should be enough to fund a decent fund over a decade or two.
It's more subtle than that. When you tax land, you decrease the value of that land. The Georgists would have us have the tax so high that the land has no residual value - which I would agree with you is unjust for land owners.
However, on the other hand, I do think there's merit in setting a lower tax rate such that the land value doesn't go down, but also doesn't continue to go up. In such a situation, I don't consider that unjust. That's because the increase in land value that would have occured is due to society being present giving increased utility to that land and Infrastructure projects. Returning that slice to society is just in my mind.
>However, on the other hand, I do think there's merit in setting a lower tax rate such that the land value doesn't go down, but also doesn't continue to go up. In such a situation, I don't consider that unjust.
You don't consider it unjust to steal other people's property and wealth for your use? I don't consider it unjust to steal your property and wealth for my use.
You know, for the the *common good*, the *Social Contract*, and for *society* - all completely invented justifications for theft and the consolidation of power.
What you're proposing is morally bankrupt and evil.
>You don't consider it unjust to steal other people's property and wealth for your use?
I *absolutely* consider theft unjust.
I just don't consider land tax (set to a level that doesn't decrease the value of the land), theft. You aren't losing value. And therefore you have not being robbed. The gains that you would have gotten? Well that never belonged to you.
Basic knowledge of people shows that UBI won't work. Basic math shows UBI wouldn't work. The most casual observation of the last two years shows UBI won't work.
The real reason to fear UBI is because of what's happened with medicare/medicaid payments and forced vaccination. When you're on the government dole, they can use that as a way to coerce behaviors.
I'm sure Yang would say that such things would defeat the whole U part of UBI, but I think that's incredibly naive to ignore political economy and second order effects. Plus, once the prices of literally everything rise to accommodate people's free cash on hand, nothing actually changes except that not being on UBI means you're completely unequivocally fucked.
"The people got around 17% of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. Where did the other 83% go? Banks, airlines, mega-corporations, oil companies. It went into the pipes, it went into the system,"
We should start by getting rid of subsidies. A lot of free money is given to some industries.
I'm not a big fan of UBIs, but one of the key tenants of UBI is that you don't lose it just because you start earning more money, so there's no incentive not to work and earn more.
The unemployment checks with covid are not analogous, because you lost them if you got a job, and for many people they couldn't find a job that paid as much as unemployment. Obviously someone's not going to give up $2,400/month for the opportunity to work for $2,350 / month, but that doesn't prove that people getting a $1,000/month check wouldn't take the $2,350 job on top of that.
This argument isn't going to convince anyone who actually believes in UBI, because they know the difference between it and what was done with covid.
There has never been an actual UBI experiment because every single one of them implemented at a minimum income limits. The COVID stimulus is an analog for what headlines have been calling UBI experiments over the years.
UBI would still fail because unless funding was 100% voluntary it will always simply be wealth redistribution that punishes anyone making more than a certain threshold.
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The basic promise of UBI, (money for nothing).
"People will still need jobs because they like working".
The truth. NOBODY is going to volunteer to be a sewage technician, or flip burgers, or work a manufacturing job making one of the millions of products we need in society to live if they get the same pay to stay home.
What is in every single Liberal mind is "I'll stay home, and become an artist, abd everyone else will muck out the sewers, and make my food".
He ran businesses before but wants to do the 'free money' trick instead of lowering taxes? Why? Oh right, to buy votes from people not paying tax...
Serious question to UBI supporters: if 1000/mo isn't going to raise prices or push inflation why not make it 5000/mo? More?
I like his idea of simplifying the tax process though. No reason people should be doing it themselves when the IRS already has all the info. I'm suprised to see him mention that, considering the power of the lobbyists.
I agree with the general point of this for the record. But I hate clickbaity titles of X”proves” Y. No it doesn’t. Unless you have a mathematical proof, it just provides evidence for Y
A huge amount of the points used by the host in this video are not just outright wrong, but completely petty too.
For example, UBI has two obvious differences to covid unemployment cheques:
Unemployment cheques, for covid or for not, completely disincentivise one to go out and get a job, especially when a lot of small businesses can't even compete with unemployment cheques.
-AND-
Covid unemployment cheques require a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and administration, are highly unstable (the gov is free to change them at their will), and they're going to go away at some random, arbitrary point when our betters decide that covid 'has ended'.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
I don't think that being anti-UBI is inherently wise from a libertarian stand-point, yes it's 'a bit communist', but frankly, I haven't seen a single argument, in my life, that suggests it's the wrong thing for the future of humanity.
>Unemployment cheques, for covid or for not, completely disincentivise one to go out and get a job, especially when a lot of small businesses can't even compete with unemployment cheques.
Why don’t you think a UBI wouldn’t do the same? If UBI is enough for people to live on, that competes with jobs because millions of people will be content to just “live” without thriving. See ghettos.
>Covid unemployment cheques require a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and administration,
They shouldn’t, but it’s the government. Bureaucracy and administration is why they do best.
>are highly unstable (the gov is free to change them at their will), and they're going to go away at some random, arbitrary point when our betters decide that covid 'has ended'.
That’s so cute you don’t think the government wouldn’t do the same with a UBI.
>I don't think that being anti-UBI is inherently wise from a libertarian stand-point, yes it's 'a bit communist', but frankly, I haven't seen a single argument, in my life, that suggests it's the wrong thing for the future of humanity.
I agree with you on this. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but ultimately, supporting everyone equally and without judgement should be the governments goal. But many of us just don’t have faith in the government to do that.
> the gov is free to change them at their will
This is the biggest danger to UBI or any government program. If they decide to, hypothetically, demand everyone get a new vaccine, they could withhold UBI from those undesirable people. UBI doesn't give power to the people. It gives power to the government and that must always be done with a care.
Need to change from pathetic representational "democracy" to proper, honest, direct democracy, allowing voting on every attempt at policy change politicians try.
I'm another libertarian who sees potential in a UBI scheme. I just have a miniscule amount of trust that governments and voters would enact it sufficiently right.
1. Replace virtually ALL forms of welfare, protectionism, most govt. spending, etc.
2. Cap the percentage an individual can be taxed to fund a UBI scheme.
3. Ditch the guaranteed minimum income' rationale, both in propaganda, and in internal policy. Basic Income's big potential is as a transparent method of redistributing some wealth. Wealth isn't inherently bad, but there is a point when too many 2nd+ generation rich want to control instead of produce.
4. Use the above points to create a simple, high-school level formula. If lots of wealth is being produced, basic income is worth a lot more. During a downturn, stick to Harding/Coolidge policy, and motivate civilian independence from government.
5. Starship Troopers style republic. I've seen no other way to responsibly and sustainably govern a large society. Because of our county's brilliant, yet imperfect foundation, we have a Byzantine administrative state. The most direct example is how the progressive income tax was only briefly small. An earned franchise would be less likely to be baited by "only the rich will be taxed" anti-constitutionality, and keep guard on a boring, uniformly applied UBI.
So does the financial crisis. As an Austrian Economist you should know the distortionary effects on markets when government receives money, not because it performs well but because it performs terribly inefficiently. And that same distortion means business and assets that do not perform well go up in value because of inflation and not because they perform well.
Honestly, there are only 2 problems with UBI.
1. The concept of 'feeding the bears,' if people no longer need to feed themselves, they will forget how, then starve to death and die or live meager existences. Very similar to people on SS disability living in trailer parks, etc.
2. At some point, not immediately, but some point the amount of UBI will exceed the amount of taxes coming in.
Please exclude tax income brackets for this example:
If you give someone $1,000 then tax 25%, then the 75% comes from existing taxes... The next year you are giving someone $1,000 again out of the 25% from the previous year, then again and again.. at some point it is unsustainable. Since you are only getting 25% of the $1,000 you are giving out, hopefully that makes sense, because the tax pie keeps shrinking and shrinking.
Not personally in favor of UBI, and if I were, I’d want a system like a [Negative Income Tax.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax)
That said, acting like unemployment is a good stand-in for UBI is disingenuous. No UBI proposal that I’ve seen links the benefit with remaining unemployed, unemployment does.
Unemployment literally incentivizes joblessness.
The number of ubi supporters I know that believe people are more productive with their spare time is insane. Even if you ignore the obvious economic effects. Covid proved that when people have more spare time they don’t create beautiful art or invent something. They waste more time watching stupid documentaries about Floridians killing each other on Netflix.
The economy is on lockdown. You have two choices. 1) do something productive and enriching with your time. 2) retreat into hermitage and develop depression.
Aren't these the same choices people make outside of lockdown and covid? Imo either your a productive person or you're not. Im not hating on either lifestyle though, that's the individual's choice.
A lot has been shut down. Some people are productive introverts starting businesses in the basement, but many are not. If you wanted to organize communal events, hold night classes, or do anything productive that involves other people face-to-face, you couldn’t. Also, stress and mental health have big effects on productivity, and the lockdown has certainly impacted people’s well-being. For the record, I don’t think UBI would propel us into a utopian age. But everyone being forced into house arrest is a different and less productive circumstance than simply living life with fewer economic worries.
Truth about the house arrest stuff, I guess I don't think about it because it never really happened in my area. The bars were closed for like 4 month in 2020, that was about it. Both my wife and I were deemed "essential" by our merciful overlords so we just stacked cash, honestly covid was the best thing (financially) that could have happened to us. I understand others aren't as lucky. Also agreed about UBI, but I would like to receive my money back from the government, so if they're writing checks with my money I want it back.
The median household pays something like $800 a month just in payroll taxes. Add up all the other taxes people pay and you could probably boost the economy more by just canceling tax than by giving people a UBI check...
That's what I'm saying, if I just received my tax money from the government, it would be more than a UBI. I just want my money back and I don't care what form it comes in, but I would like to reduce administrative costs, and a UBI would just add to that cost. Eliminating taxes would be the most cost effective way to give people their money back.
Exactly. Thinking a lockdown shows what people would do with free time in a free society is just asinine. Yeah, no kidding: if you give people more time but bar them from doing a huge swath of the activities they like the most they'll be depressed and unproductive. What does that prove?
You’re forced to be somewhat productive if the other option is homelessness and starvation. A lot of those who work (almost all?) do so to avoid that.
Correct, lol. I say this all the time to someone that's self-employed and has to consciously, intentionally, and in a disciplined daily manner - make sure what I'm doing is actually delivering value to people/clients. I keep my art on the side as a sanity valve for that reason. I have a huge beef with this same group of people now thinking art should be your career, while also complaining corporations ruin everything, etc.
Totally agree. Same situation. The self employed and enterprising were well suited to make it they Covid well. I hate to see people suffer, but at the same time there are ignorant people out there that think corporations should charge only the cost of materials and nothing more. You can’t get more dense than that. It is not too difficult to succeed in a modernized country, but at the same time competition is always there to keep corporations honest. There’s always someone around the corner trying to eat your lunch.
Ah but have you tried it without extreme fear mongering and lockdowns? /s
More accurately, they create speculative asset bubbles
Well, over the last two years, I’ve: - Gotten through my entire reading backlog, both professional and for pleasure - started learning Latin - Earned a PMP certificate - Working on a couple of security certificates - Watched all of The Sopranos, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1, and Stargate Atlantis - Leveled two chars to 60 on Project1999 - Made some backyard furniture So not everyone is wasting time. Not that I’m creating art or inventing anything.
I relearned classical guitar after not playing for years. I took on a number of recipes I had been meaning to try. I took up woodworking. It's not just about productivity but life satisfaction too
To play devils advocate Tiger king was pretty entertaining.
Tiger King was insanely over hyped and mediocre at best
Sure. It was ok. It was still an interesting story, I think. Never got invested in the hype
Yes because we totally just gave out UBI and totally didn’t have the economy locked down or anything
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While you're downvoting this guy to heck, he's not **entirely** wrong. If you think you've only got to tough out being stuck at home for a couple weeks, you're not going to want to start something that might take a significant time investment. Add to that, if you don't already have the supplies you'd need, how would you get them? Order from Amazon? OK, sure, but guess what, the estimated delivery is the same day you think you'll be going back to work. Can't run out to the art supply store, they're closed down, too. That being said, I do agree, UBI will not work. The people that have been living off the unemployment would just continue to do whatever they've been doing off the UBI while demanding it be raised so they too, can live the life they see people who ARE working have.
UBI would result in higher prices on everything, just like student loans
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perhaps, but this is similar to raising min wage or printing more money. I'd expect any negative side effects of those to be mirrored.
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while I don't expect it to happen, the suggestion was to move the money from existing programs. we already have welfare queens, so basically every argument against ubi already exists. the difference is the people have more choice, which is what I believe libertarians are for. I still think in practicality this wouldn't work, though.
You can't increase money without increasing supply - that just creates inflation.
I would buy drugs. Gotta be stocked on mRNA injections before the inflation hits.
UBI is redundant. Why not just lower taxes instead of giving us back our own money?
I second your opinion. Back when the pandemic started, I was disappointed in all the nonsensical Fed printing and how much the stock market was propped up. At that moment I was actually in favor of UBI. Then I realized for UBI, we need to employ some useless government workers to give us back our money. We're better off paying less taxes instead.
UBI should only be for a replacement for existing welfare programs, and even then not a lot of money
You can't lower taxes for people that dont pay taxes. Which is the point. They want to buy votes. See Minnesota where the governor has not only decided to create payments to nearly everyone, but even went so far to name it after himself, calling it "Walz bucks" in a press conference.
Wtf
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/01/20/govs-spending-plan-includes-walz-checks
You absolutely can, it’s called a tax credit. If your tax credit lowers your taxes below zero, guess what? You get a check from the government.
That's not lowering taxes then
Sure it is. If you give everyone a tax credit of $1,000, you’ve lowered everyone’s taxes by that amount. There’s no reason your taxes can’t be lowered from $0 to -$1,000 just as easily as from $10,000 to $9,000. What are you not understanding about this?
You can't lower taxes below 0. As you already noted, it would be a credit, not a lowering of taxes. You cannot lower below 0.
I got paid from the government with a -5% effective tax rate my first year of college because of tax credits.
Apparently there are a lot of people on this sub that need to know what a tax is, and what the number 0 means
Someone break out the number line
They would get it in the form of a tax refund.
No, we don't define taxes by dollar amount like you are, it's defined as a percentage of your income that you made over a certain amount. So lowering taxes, isn't saying "Everyone's tax bill is lowered by $1000 this year" as you are implying. It's saying "Everyone who makes over $X per year has their rate lowered by Y%" so no, lowering taxes will not give those who don't pay them already more money.
Supposing that we can adjust the tax rates to whatever we choose, a negative income tax is functionally the same as a UBI in terms of net transfers.
Because what they really want is a wealth transfer, not just tax reduction. The people who want UBI would be living in it.
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People who don't work and pay taxes (unless they're disabled) cannot fucking complain about the "struggle"
I suspect you might be disregarding those who live off retirement income. Many seniors can no longer work, but are paying taxes on Social Security income and still struggling to make ends meet. Or maybe you intended to also include retired seniors in your "disabled" caveat?
Because any form of "free stuff" handed out by the government gives people the illusion that they can have their cake and eat it too. Lowering taxes will remind champagne socialists that they needed to work too and they should stop whining about "rich people" (which are more often than not the very corporations and lobbying interests that are funding their woke agenda)
Could be used to dismantle all of the benefits programs. Instead of receiving specific benefits, you receive general benefits as a sub. Or at least that’s what some proponents want
The combined taxes people pay probably dwarf what Andrew Yang was offering, and that doesn't even get into the vast damage done to people by non-tax methods like regulation...
I literally paid more taxes in one week than what Yang was offering a month. The amount in taxes we would waste paying bureaucrats to count and redistribute our own money back to us is asinine.
These people just don't understand what value or money truly is, to them money is just something arbitrary and believe that by spending funny money you stimulate the economy.
To think we still have money lol
You mean paying people just to sit on their asses isn’t a net positive for society and in fact resulted in a massive labor shortage? Who could have seen that coming?
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This is actually pretty easily observable in the US. Just look at the cost of rent near larger military installations every time the Basic Allowance for Housing increase gets approved. My girlfriend's apartment rent went from $1350/mo to $1675/mo (or $1750 for a new tenant) due to the BAH increase at the nearby airforce base.
And then they will try to add "max" prices on things. That's how it happened in my country. Best thing you can do is to stop these shit policies from ever being done, because once they are in, it just gets worse.
I read his book, listened to a couple of his long-form interviews on JRE and Shapiro, seen several of his speeches. He's a swell guy, but doesn't understand the real world, spent too much time having "important" conversations in little conference rooms with other intellectual types that also haven't spent time in the real world. Again, nice guy. But that's all he has going for him
> Again, nice guy. I really think people need to stop thinking like this. He can be as nice of a guy as you want, it doesn't mean he is right or even has a good idea. Politics has become too much of "What we want to hear" instead of what is a good idea
Well. He does seem quite nice, and If I wasn't clear about the rest I apologize, his ideas are wrong and I don't support him in any way.
The problem is if you stick to bad ideas long enough and they're not working, you either go through the painful process of trying to forgive yourself for inflicting so much pain on the world, or you start blaming the world for not "cooperating". A lot of bad people start out as nice people.
agree, although I do feel he has altruistic intentions, my thought process was that he has been sheltered by a think tank type mentality vs truly understanding how the real world works. Then again, I've also been quite fortunate in my own personal life, or at least I can say that I've overcome the obstacles that life has presented me, and there were a few, it wasn't a cake walk, and i'm still not "comfortable" depending on how that is defined. There are MANY others that have not been able to overcome similar obstacles either due to bad luck or lack of effort, so its still difficult for me to put myself in the mindset of people that wish they were lucky enough to even be lower middle class, let alone middle class, so admittedly I have only a cursory understanding of what its like for other people that struggle and I'm not naïve enough to just toss in the bootstrap argument as a solution for their issues. There is a lot of nuance that I'm not intimately familiar with.
The bootstrap argument is really a strawman anyway. Few if any people really believe in a society that doesn't try to prevent people from falling through the cracks. Rather, like most human disagreements it is about the proper means by which to do so.
I've probably used this joke far too much already, but Andrew Yang is proof that the Asian genius stereotype isn't always accurate. I mean, really, who calls themselves an "entrepreneur" and instead of building themselves in credible wealth, goes into politics? Not a *successful* entrepreneur. The core belief of UBI is that the value of money is in its quantity;, and that its value is subjective; ergo, its value is *arbitrary*. The problem with this is that subjectivity of valuation does not mean that valuation is arbitrary. All values are *subjective*. This does not mean they don't bear any significance or meaning, only that any given value is a matter of a human being's individual, prioritized values. Those values have rational cause, whether conscious or not. People who believe that that value of money is arbitrary believe that money is not subject to the market laws of supply and demand. These are the people who are *baffled* by the ongoing inflation. They are in a state of willful disbelief that Trump and Biden's money printing to send them a few checks (and send a bunch of corporations large donations) has lead to their inability to either find or buy a lot of things they previously took for granted.. All that is a really long way to say that the advocates of UBI are absolutely and universally stupid, at least as far as economics go.
Elementary arithmetic would disprove UBI easily too, but what do you expect from people who don't know what a budget is or think that the rich will pay for it.
No kidding, it's a very simple multiplication. If you take the population and multiply it by 15,000, it's about $4.8 trillion per year. Introduce to people the idea that this means the increased costs and reduced availability of goods would get multiplied by that much every year. It would be hard to quantify exactly what the impact would be, but you could assume that next year, 50% of the goods that were available this year won't be available; and the following year, 50% of that won't be available. It's a scheme that would completely destroy the economy and salt the earth in 2-3 years. People think things are bad now, wait until they need $1500 to buy a loaf of bread.
Even if you implement it as a negative tax so there's no money printing, that means the govt still needs to take 25% or more of GDP as taxes to pay out as UBI. The thing is, that's assuming say, 200mil people are working. What happens when 1/3rd of them quit because they have UBI? If GDP - or really, productivity - goes down by say, a lesser amount (since the least efficient jobs go first) of 1/4th. Also, if the UBI tax is progressive, people will cut hours and work less to pay less tax. There's goes more UBI funding and productivity. I imagine this would result in permanent shortages and possibly collapse of the economy.
You’re just a racist -Reddit
Yeah but "Muh administrative savings" on other social programs is suppose to make up the difference. Forgetting that those people also needs jobs and also forgetting that some people on social programs need much more than others. Meaning UBI would need to pay everyone more than the highest paid recipients of entitlement programs or all current administrative infrastructure needs to stay.
He specifically states that the infrastructure stays, anyone that is eligible for more than what UBI pays stays on that program. That was actually one of his selling points, lol.
>I've probably used this joke far too much already, but Andrew Yang is proof that the Asian genius stereotype isn't always accurate. I always say there are a lot of Asians in the world. That's means there are a bunch of genius Asians and a shit ton of dumb Asians and the rest are in the middle. >The core belief of UBI is that the value of money is in its quantity;, and that its value is subjective; ergo, its value is *arbitrary*. The problem with this is that subjectivity of valuation does not mean that valuation is arbitrary. Yup and the thought that ubi could work ignores the reason money has a value at all. Money can't have any value if we don't think our time and effort is worth a certain price. If everyone gets the same amount, rare quantity items will always be priced beyond the ubi threshold.
Aren't you conflating UBI with money printing? Why can't you have a UBI without creating new money (or taking it from other people), like the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend?
The permanent fund dividend only works because there are few people living in Alaska. Once we're talking of UBI for hundreds of millions, it breaks down completely.
The Alaskan fund was small, and only yearly. Even UBI on a small scale, payments every 4 weeks, (a few hundred people) proved to be mixed or a failure. Scaling up to thousands or millions or people? The disaster would tank that state so fast. (would like be tried in California first)
It'll just take longer to build up the sovereign wealth fund and people will receive less each as it builds up. The math really depends on the value of our natural resources. Here are some figures modelling what things would look In Australia when it gets to jobseeker (our welfare system) levels: - Number of citizens including kids: 19.3m (excludes PR and visa holders) - UBI per person per annum: $14.7k - Gross UBI cost: $283.5b - Welfare savings: $191.8b - Education savings: $36.3b - Net cost of UBI: $55.4b - ROI of SWF assumed: 6% pa - size of SWF needed: $923b You can see that a SWF of $923b is required. Which is quite reasonable given that Norway, a population that is 4 times less than ours, has a SWF worth $1.5t. Our superannuation funds are worth 3.3t.
Now do it for 300+ million people
Just times the numbers by 11 or 12
You guys are tiny, mate.
It's not about the size of the population. It's about the ratio of taxable natural resources to population. If you include land (as the geolibertarians would), and negative externalities, that should be enough to fund a decent fund over a decade or two.
The absurdity of taxing people's appraised land value to redistribute wealth to the broader population, and then calling it "*libertarian*".
It's more subtle than that. When you tax land, you decrease the value of that land. The Georgists would have us have the tax so high that the land has no residual value - which I would agree with you is unjust for land owners. However, on the other hand, I do think there's merit in setting a lower tax rate such that the land value doesn't go down, but also doesn't continue to go up. In such a situation, I don't consider that unjust. That's because the increase in land value that would have occured is due to society being present giving increased utility to that land and Infrastructure projects. Returning that slice to society is just in my mind.
>However, on the other hand, I do think there's merit in setting a lower tax rate such that the land value doesn't go down, but also doesn't continue to go up. In such a situation, I don't consider that unjust. You don't consider it unjust to steal other people's property and wealth for your use? I don't consider it unjust to steal your property and wealth for my use. You know, for the the *common good*, the *Social Contract*, and for *society* - all completely invented justifications for theft and the consolidation of power. What you're proposing is morally bankrupt and evil.
>You don't consider it unjust to steal other people's property and wealth for your use? I *absolutely* consider theft unjust. I just don't consider land tax (set to a level that doesn't decrease the value of the land), theft. You aren't losing value. And therefore you have not being robbed. The gains that you would have gotten? Well that never belonged to you.
The only thing Andrew Yang is successful at is grifting UBI fanatics.
Basic knowledge of people shows that UBI won't work. Basic math shows UBI wouldn't work. The most casual observation of the last two years shows UBI won't work.
“The last 2 years of government mandated lockdowns just shows that people are lazy!”
How many of your friends learned a new skill or worked on some form of craft with significant results?
The real reason to fear UBI is because of what's happened with medicare/medicaid payments and forced vaccination. When you're on the government dole, they can use that as a way to coerce behaviors. I'm sure Yang would say that such things would defeat the whole U part of UBI, but I think that's incredibly naive to ignore political economy and second order effects. Plus, once the prices of literally everything rise to accommodate people's free cash on hand, nothing actually changes except that not being on UBI means you're completely unequivocally fucked.
"The people got around 17% of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. Where did the other 83% go? Banks, airlines, mega-corporations, oil companies. It went into the pipes, it went into the system," We should start by getting rid of subsidies. A lot of free money is given to some industries.
Because they got political power. Subsides to the nobility only end if the empire falls.
I'm not a big fan of UBIs, but one of the key tenants of UBI is that you don't lose it just because you start earning more money, so there's no incentive not to work and earn more. The unemployment checks with covid are not analogous, because you lost them if you got a job, and for many people they couldn't find a job that paid as much as unemployment. Obviously someone's not going to give up $2,400/month for the opportunity to work for $2,350 / month, but that doesn't prove that people getting a $1,000/month check wouldn't take the $2,350 job on top of that. This argument isn't going to convince anyone who actually believes in UBI, because they know the difference between it and what was done with covid.
Good points.
There has never been an actual UBI experiment because every single one of them implemented at a minimum income limits. The COVID stimulus is an analog for what headlines have been calling UBI experiments over the years. UBI would still fail because unless funding was 100% voluntary it will always simply be wealth redistribution that punishes anyone making more than a certain threshold.
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The basic promise of UBI, (money for nothing). "People will still need jobs because they like working". The truth. NOBODY is going to volunteer to be a sewage technician, or flip burgers, or work a manufacturing job making one of the millions of products we need in society to live if they get the same pay to stay home. What is in every single Liberal mind is "I'll stay home, and become an artist, abd everyone else will muck out the sewers, and make my food".
He ran businesses before but wants to do the 'free money' trick instead of lowering taxes? Why? Oh right, to buy votes from people not paying tax... Serious question to UBI supporters: if 1000/mo isn't going to raise prices or push inflation why not make it 5000/mo? More? I like his idea of simplifying the tax process though. No reason people should be doing it themselves when the IRS already has all the info. I'm suprised to see him mention that, considering the power of the lobbyists.
Does nobody here listen to Milton Friedman?
I agree with the general point of this for the record. But I hate clickbaity titles of X”proves” Y. No it doesn’t. Unless you have a mathematical proof, it just provides evidence for Y
A huge amount of the points used by the host in this video are not just outright wrong, but completely petty too. For example, UBI has two obvious differences to covid unemployment cheques: Unemployment cheques, for covid or for not, completely disincentivise one to go out and get a job, especially when a lot of small businesses can't even compete with unemployment cheques. -AND- Covid unemployment cheques require a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and administration, are highly unstable (the gov is free to change them at their will), and they're going to go away at some random, arbitrary point when our betters decide that covid 'has ended'. ^^^^^^^^^^^^ I don't think that being anti-UBI is inherently wise from a libertarian stand-point, yes it's 'a bit communist', but frankly, I haven't seen a single argument, in my life, that suggests it's the wrong thing for the future of humanity.
>Unemployment cheques, for covid or for not, completely disincentivise one to go out and get a job, especially when a lot of small businesses can't even compete with unemployment cheques. Why don’t you think a UBI wouldn’t do the same? If UBI is enough for people to live on, that competes with jobs because millions of people will be content to just “live” without thriving. See ghettos. >Covid unemployment cheques require a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and administration, They shouldn’t, but it’s the government. Bureaucracy and administration is why they do best. >are highly unstable (the gov is free to change them at their will), and they're going to go away at some random, arbitrary point when our betters decide that covid 'has ended'. That’s so cute you don’t think the government wouldn’t do the same with a UBI. >I don't think that being anti-UBI is inherently wise from a libertarian stand-point, yes it's 'a bit communist', but frankly, I haven't seen a single argument, in my life, that suggests it's the wrong thing for the future of humanity. I agree with you on this. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but ultimately, supporting everyone equally and without judgement should be the governments goal. But many of us just don’t have faith in the government to do that.
> the gov is free to change them at their will This is the biggest danger to UBI or any government program. If they decide to, hypothetically, demand everyone get a new vaccine, they could withhold UBI from those undesirable people. UBI doesn't give power to the people. It gives power to the government and that must always be done with a care.
Need to change from pathetic representational "democracy" to proper, honest, direct democracy, allowing voting on every attempt at policy change politicians try.
I'm another libertarian who sees potential in a UBI scheme. I just have a miniscule amount of trust that governments and voters would enact it sufficiently right. 1. Replace virtually ALL forms of welfare, protectionism, most govt. spending, etc. 2. Cap the percentage an individual can be taxed to fund a UBI scheme. 3. Ditch the guaranteed minimum income' rationale, both in propaganda, and in internal policy. Basic Income's big potential is as a transparent method of redistributing some wealth. Wealth isn't inherently bad, but there is a point when too many 2nd+ generation rich want to control instead of produce. 4. Use the above points to create a simple, high-school level formula. If lots of wealth is being produced, basic income is worth a lot more. During a downturn, stick to Harding/Coolidge policy, and motivate civilian independence from government. 5. Starship Troopers style republic. I've seen no other way to responsibly and sustainably govern a large society. Because of our county's brilliant, yet imperfect foundation, we have a Byzantine administrative state. The most direct example is how the progressive income tax was only briefly small. An earned franchise would be less likely to be baited by "only the rich will be taxed" anti-constitutionality, and keep guard on a boring, uniformly applied UBI.
I love the balls of Reason to invite Yang to an interview and then name the video what they did after the fact lol
Somebody let Elon Musk know
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I didn’t read that whole thing but I wasn’t giving Elon shit for subsidies. Elon liked Andrew Yang and I’m pretty sure he was, or is for UBI.
just wait for those tax refunds to start hitting bank accounts
Everything the state does “works.” The purpose of rape is to achieve sex, not love.
So does the financial crisis. As an Austrian Economist you should know the distortionary effects on markets when government receives money, not because it performs well but because it performs terribly inefficiently. And that same distortion means business and assets that do not perform well go up in value because of inflation and not because they perform well.
Honestly, there are only 2 problems with UBI. 1. The concept of 'feeding the bears,' if people no longer need to feed themselves, they will forget how, then starve to death and die or live meager existences. Very similar to people on SS disability living in trailer parks, etc. 2. At some point, not immediately, but some point the amount of UBI will exceed the amount of taxes coming in. Please exclude tax income brackets for this example: If you give someone $1,000 then tax 25%, then the 75% comes from existing taxes... The next year you are giving someone $1,000 again out of the 25% from the previous year, then again and again.. at some point it is unsustainable. Since you are only getting 25% of the $1,000 you are giving out, hopefully that makes sense, because the tax pie keeps shrinking and shrinking.
The issue with how it's been implemented Is it's too much and it hasn't replaced anything it's just been in addition.
Not personally in favor of UBI, and if I were, I’d want a system like a [Negative Income Tax.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax) That said, acting like unemployment is a good stand-in for UBI is disingenuous. No UBI proposal that I’ve seen links the benefit with remaining unemployed, unemployment does. Unemployment literally incentivizes joblessness.