Comment by twblalock
10 years ago
I think Tyler Cowen's post, "What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?" is one of the better analyses of why basic income is likely to fail even if it is implemented: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...
The bottom line is that we have our current mess of welfare systems because social, moral, and political forces have made it that way. Those forces will warp basic income into something resembling the system we have today by adding all kinds of exceptions and supplementary programs to it -- most of which will be politically popular and morally justifiable to most people. Think of it as Mostly Universal Complicated Income.
Along the line of relevant analyses, there was an insightful post by Brad DeLong recently: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of...
Apart from the clunky title, the bottom line is this: Most people don't want to be taken advantage of, but they also don't want to feel like they are taking advantage of others. This is a useful heuristic for living in small social groups. But most of the value that is being produced today is not really down to individual contributions, but results from our collective inheritance of technology and productive networks in society. This completely messes up the built-in heuristics of humans.
It's basically a different angle from which to view what you wrote and sama is stated as saying in the article.
The larger point of that article is an important frame for this discussion: Everyone's income is based on the total economic surplus. No one's value to society is equivalent to their income.
Universal income is so complex and transformational that we have to assume that before it can be implemented in scale in the US, the prerequisites such as a welfare state with single payer healthcare will seem as a minor obstacle along the road. I guess what I'm saying is that "those forces" will have to change first, and that's the small problem. UBI is already a realistic possibility in some places but I think it's a few decades out (at least) in the US.
The places that can make realistic attempts to implement it now are those with large cradle-to-grave welfare systems and and an economic outlook that requires stimulus, which is why Finland is such an interesting example.
So essentially universal basic income will fail because it won't be implemented universally or basically.