Hello, I’m not that informed about UBI, but here is my arguement:
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices? Also, do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?
I assume you don’t believe in capitalism then. Because you suggestion is that the companies set the prices rather than the market. Anyway im for it because if done properly to should cover just needs. food and housing essentially. and it should replace all forms of cash assitance. welfare, disability, social security, unemployment. since anyone doing well would pay as much additional tax as they get or more then it just becomes something that helps when you need it. Lose your job and you immediately look for work not muck around with applying for unemployment because its always there. Get injured and you immediately have it. Can’t work due to age and its there. work part time and its there to help if you can’t handle 40 hours for whatever reason. have a kid, go back to school. Go to college and you have the funds to pay for the dorms and just need to worry about actual tuition.
Let’s see, lemmy, let’s see if we can find one upvoted opinion against UBI.
Ah, no, we’re an echo chamber. But then what’s the point of AskLemmy, if you already know that everyone thinks the exact same way you do?
“Let’s see one upvoted opinion in favour of killing this healthy cat. Echo chamber!”
Here’s a good breakdown: https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/unboxing-universal-basic-income/
As for my thoughts, yes there would be a noticeable impact at first, but UBI would help stabilise and strengthen the economy in the long term because purchasing power and demand will increase. If supply can keep up, prices won’t go up. Companies can’t just raise prices as that’s called price fixing. Antitrust laws should be there to prevent that, but your mileage may vary depending on your country. That means that if some companies decide to raise prices because of more purchasing power, some smart company is going to charge less to gain more market share. So we’re still doing capitalism, but there’s a social safety net.
Also, people will still go to work to find purpose. Except “work” in this case could mean the freedom and flexibility to contribute locally, or take higher risks like entrepreneurship or becoming an artist.
That means that if some companies decide to raise prices because of more purchasing power, some smart company is going to charge less to gain more market share.
Here is how this turns out in reality: Company A raises prices because they are greedy bastards. Company B is then impressed with the sheer display of dominance by A and raises prices accordingly to “keep up”.
Your thinking is correct and that’s how it should work, maybe it even did in the 60s, but it just isn’t the case anymore.
You’re forgetting “customers see how much prices are up, and just stay home” or “company C, looking to break in, undercuts A and B and changes the market.”
A real UBI is a great fix for capitalism, since it makes “f it, I’ll just stay at home” possible.
Your first example only works for goods that are completely optional, which is very rarely the case. For example, smartphones. Nobody technically needs one, but almost everyone in western countries has one. If every company that makes a smartphone increases their prices, people will still buy them because they basically need them. I believe this is the principle of inelastic demand (or low elasticity) – car fuel is a more traditional example.
Your second example doesn’t work when the cost of entry into the market is really high. This is very common in high tech. Take semiconductors for example. There’s basically one big name in chip manufacturing (TSMC) and a few runner-ups (Samsung, Intel, etc.). The latest node is infamous for being very expensive and low capacity. Why aren’t there new competitors constantly breaking in to the market?
UBI is a great idea and will help things, but it’s not perfect so we shouldn’t expect it to just completely fix capitalism. The best way to fix capitalism is to get governments (which are all in charge of capitalism) to fix it with regulations. UBI will be a major regulation/step in the right direction.
Ita already working like that post pandemic.
Company A raises prices because they are greedy bastards. Company B is then impressed with the sheer display of dominance by A and raises prices accordingly to “keep up”.
When there’s a dozen manufacturers, they won’t all do it. As I mentioned, this is price fixing and illegal in a lot of countries.
Secondly, what’s stopping someone from creating another company to undercut all of those greedy bastards to corner the market?
When there’s a dozen manufacturers, they won’t all do it. As I mentioned, this is price fixing and illegal in a lot of countries.
They can’t coordinate together to fix prices, but there is nothing legally stopping them from watching each other’s public behavior and adjusting their pricing to match.
All B has to do is not raise their prices as much as A.
Yes, with the caveat that it will need to be coupled with a massive pendulum swing in favor of workers rights.
That is completely automatic. The “right”/survivability to say no is directly empowering to entire labour force.
In all honesty it could help loosen regulations on workers rights. Flipping burgers and the boss is on some shady shit trying to schedule you a ton of hours? Fuck it. You can quit and still survive, and possibly thrive.
Not that I’d advocate loosening those regulations. Just that UBI itself could alleviate some current issues.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
At first, maybe. But that’s the neat thing about capitalism and the free market: the first to lower their prices again has a huge advantage. There’s always an incentive to operate at minimal profit.
Why wouldn’t UBI and capitalism be able to coexist? It makes MORE capitalism possible, as it were, expanding its principles of supply and demand to fields such as employment. Right now, people need a job, any job, and if there’s no job that fulfills your needs, tough - you take the shitty one and you’ll like it. With a UBI, you could shop around for the perfect job, choosing the best offer, or not “buy” at all right now because the market doesn’t offer what you want and it’s not like you’re going to starve without a job. Employers would be forced to make YOU an offer that YOU can accept and if they can’t operate under these circumstance, tough. Capitalism in a nutshell, really.
It makes MORE capitalism possible, as it were, expanding its principles of supply and demand to fields such as employment.
A better way to word this is that it makes the labour market free and fair. conditioning healthcare and starvation on employment is oppressive.
True, I just wanted to phrase it in the terms of capitalism.
You explain this as if you’re not just describing basic UBI lol
That’s the same logic opponents of raising the minimum wage use to justify their position
Sure, eliminate billionaires to pay for it
This is completely unrealistic.
A UBI of just $10,000 a year, and only to all working age Americans, would still cost several trillion dollars, every year.
Even if you could wave a magic wand and convert the combined net worth of all of the US’s billionaires to cash 1:1, that cash wouldn’t fund even that meager amount of UBI for more than a couple of years.
Sorry we don’t allow simple math in lemmy.
Are you in support of UBI?
I don’t think that it’s a terribly interesting question as a yes-or-no question for all UBI policies.
The thing about UBI is that the devil is in the details: UBI covers a broad range of policies. You really need to know the specifics of a proposal to know what it entails; UBI policies may be very different.
For example, there are a number of left-wing groups who like the idea of UBI, because they see it as a way to redistribute wealth. Normally, they tend to want something like keeping spending policy more-or-less where it is, adding UBI, and increasing taxes on some groups that they’d like to shift wealth from.
There are also a number of small-government right-wing groups who like the idea of UBI, because they see it as a way to reduce the role of government in setting purchasing decisions. Normally, they tend to want something more like a revenue-neutral form of UBI; there, one does something like cutting spending policy (on various forms of subsidy, say, like for food or housing) by $N and then shifting that $N to UBI so people can choose how to spend it. Here’s a right-libertarian take on UBI:
https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income
Of course, as with any policy proposal, the details matter a lot. And the Swiss proposal is problematic in a number of ways. For starters, 2,800 USD a month means that a married couple could get $67,200 per year for doing nothing. And while it’s true that Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income, that’s still an awful lot of money. Furthermore, the Swiss proposal seems to involve implementing a basic income in addition to their currently existing welfare system. Few libertarians would be willing to sign up for that deal. But as a replacement for traditional welfare programs, there is a lot for libertarians to like about a basic income.
So, okay, both our wealth-redistribution guys on the left and our small-government guys on the right are talking about UBI policies…but they are talking about policies with very different implications due to the specifics of the policy. The left-wing guy probably isn’t especially excited about the form of UBI that the right-wing guy wants, and the right-wing guy probably doesn’t like the form of UBI that the left-wing guy wants. So I’d really need to know the specifics of a given UBI policy before I could say whether I think it’s a good idea; I wouldn’t just be across-the-board in favor of or against any UBI implementation, but would need to see a specific UBI proposal and consider it individually.
Musk, of all people, put into vernacular UHI (universal high income), which is similar to Andrew Yang’s “freedom dividend” in that the goal is not to provide “basic” just above slavery/desperation survivability, but instead leverage the huge economic growth from automation that can provide a dividend to every citizen, who by equal vote, deserve an equal share in the surplus/output of the country.
The Swiss proposal you quoted does seem like crack, for purposes of appearing like crack and not getting accepted. Freedom dividends can grow to that ammount without it being the initial implementation
left vs right
The left tends to offer crack. The crack part that the left distorts UBI with is keeping all of the stupidity of current system. 50%-100% clawbacks on low incomes. Keeping existing welfare systems. Some right wing versions, Milton Friedman from Nixon era, also offer 50% clawbacks on low income. The only other right wing version of UBI is a cardboard box housing alternative that replaces all current government conditional aid with cash for all. The Charles Murray proposal is the least stupid of all of the above.
Centrist/true UBI can leverage above the Charles Murray model, higher UBI for slightly higher tax rates, that leave people with better than cardboard housing far better off than without the UBI/tax rates. People who don’t like slavery (nominally left voters) could prefer higher taxes and higher UBI than (right wing) people who love slavery, but left and right politicians want misery (maybe one day the miserable will vote left if Israel first rulership is not dominant left objective) in order to appeal to voters, and so tolerating existing politician/electoral power has 0 chance of getting UBI.
The perfect opportunity to go from “barely above slavery” UBI to UHS, is that even more programs can be cut with higher UBI, and economic growth means higher tax surpluses that we can demand as dividends. At your “Swiss proposal” level of UBI, IDGAF about automation taking my job, I will either play videogames or take whatever useful job I get harassed into accepting all the pay for, but it is very easy to get a $12k-$18k UBI level that is paid for by taxes, and leaves 80%-90% of all taxpayers better off.
UBI would have some inflationary effects, but if you stuck it through, it would be less than the UBI payment in the first place.
The problem is getting people to stick to it because unfortunately, for Americans, if you give them $2000 a month in UBI but their purchasing power doesn’t go up by what they perceive as what $2000 is worth; they will punish you in the next election.
I think the expanded child tax credit in 2020 could be a good example to follow for what the roll out of UBI would look like. But we let it expire despite it lifting so many kids out of poverty even if just temporarily and freaked out about inflation so hard that I have my doubts that our American society would ever have the fortitude to be able to implement a permanent UBI
Well I’m on Lenny so sure I’ll pick a fight.
No.
My autism doesn’t know how to vote on your comment.
Yes I’m in favor of UBI.
I think capitalism would survive just fine with UBI.
I don’t think prices would automatically cancel out the money, because prices are still subject to competition.
As for whether people would still work after their basic needs are met, obviously. The evidence is people who are beyond subsistence and still seeking more money.
Your theory about companies raising prices to offset UBI is actually undercut by historical and present evidence.
There was a time when the United States had welfare. The United States still has food stamps. But nobody is seriously pretending that these things did or do drive up grocery prices.
Similarly, over time various states have raised minimum wage, and if your argument were accurate, then the prices in those states would have immediately risen to match minimum wage, but they didn’t.
In other words, you’re repeating a conservative talking point that has been repeatedly debunked by reality. I think you could try to improve your argument by arguing that inflation happens across the board, to everything, and therefore it would also happen to UBI. But what we’ve actually seen is that’s not true.
my country has started a program a few years ago that gives a lot of money to couples that produce children, primarily to be able to afford buying a house. it has contributed to many problems, from convenience marriage, to parents literally not caring for their children, but maybe the worst of all is that it has raised property prices by the exact amount of aid received for producing 2-3 children.
The only counter to this argument I’ve seen play out in real time (at least to the best of my knowledge, it could be propaganda) is the fact that when the government offered tax credits for EVs, Ford raised the prices of their EVs to essentially absorb the tax credit and profit off of what was supposed to benefit the people making the switch.
I’ll see if I can find the article I’m remembering.
I think that’s a difference between subsidizing specific things vs subsidizing all the things.
So you’re saying just by sheer volume they would be less likely to do it?
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices?
As someone planning on starting a B2B company, I don’t see a problem with that. If companies make a ton of money, tax companies more and redistribute again. The curve can be made to fit.
But there’s a bigger reason for doing UBI: It’s cheaper and more effective than existing welfare. And more people will like it.
I support it. It’s an insanely expensive policy though and should be implemented carefully and be based on income. An example would be:
- No income $1000 a month
- Min wage $500 a month
Combined with better tax policies that don’t tax poor people. Health, education and other basic services should be almost free while having a strong social housing programme.
This way nobody gets priced out of living and there’s still plenty of incentive to get a job while having some funds to invest in hygiene and clothing to land the job.
This amount and threshold should be increased in the future.
I really support UBI since you can better model the demand curve with externalities instead of making things free while having it accessible to poor people. Free school might be too low of a cost when calculating benefits to the individual and society so giving people money to afford a heavily subsidised cost would allow for more accurate economics.
That’s not UBI, and might incentivise people to not work.
With UBI everyone gets Eg. 1000$ a month, no matter what you earn or have.
(taxes would have to go up to pay for this, which is fine, tax the rich)
You don’t have to lower UBI by income. Tax does it for you.
Pulling numbers out my arse, you band your tax until an income of 100k means they pay 12k in tax, essentially reclaiming the 1k/pcm they are paid by ubi. All while insuring they are never worse off than taking no pay rise, as they still have 88k to spend on luxuries.
Numbers subject to bitter argument.
Ugh, why give them money and then tax it again? That makes no sense.
We do that on America’s Unemployment Income, and it seems ridiculous. Why give it, if you’re just taking away some later?
That’s true. People shouldn’t be discouraged financially from working. I haven’t done I proper calculation of all cases of this and the total tax cost but for sure you could use the tax system to get the desired distribution.
