Comment by throwawayjava
9 years ago
This idea is basically UBI couched in capitalist terms. If every American gets a share of GDP, and GDP is concentrated, then that means that either 1) the share of GDP that each person gets is tiny and inconsequential (see: GOP-style tax cuts) or else 2) you need progressive taxation.
Another difference, aside from wording/marketing, is that the UBI is implemented as a progressive redistribution of future wealth generation as opposed to a tax on existing wealth ("as the economy grows...")
> This idea is basically UBI couched in capitalist terms
"Universal Basic Income" is already a radically capitalist idea. It's often discussed using terminology borrowed from Marxism and socialism, but it couldn't be any more capitalist of a construct. We're just not used to hearing it discussed with that language.
Could you clarify what you mean? a UBI seems like pretty straight forward wealth re-distribution which I generally don't see described in most capitalist philosophies.
Everyone gets $10k. Obviously not everyone is going to pay $10k in taxes otherwise the system would be pointless and we could instead just eliminate taxes altogether. Those at the bottom would benefit, those at the top would pay more in taxes, and somewhere between is a break even point.
Each act of homesteading is an act of force against everyone else, who previously enjoyed free access to that land/resource. A UBI is a payment for the lost access.
1 reply →
It’s fundamentally Capitalist because its intent is to prevent workers from abandoning the authoritarian hierarchy of modern day corporate structures (which have served many quite poorly) and moving towards worker ownership through unions or other means. It’s paying off the poor and disenfranchised to prevent revolt against Capitalist ordering principles.
It is and isnt capitalist.
There's only a limited amount of stuff at any one time. Rarity and usage can make its worth different than other things. So it makes sense to track these things. Ideally, recycling allows recoup of most or all the material, which returning should provide the credits back.
It really then matters how much credits people get and thus how much resources and where. But then again, socialism and communism never talked about personal effects - but instead it talked of the machinery to create.
What the UBI enables is a migration that everyone gets the spoils of the machines of creation. The Story of Manna by Marshall Brain discusses more of how this might be possible.
This would address one (but not all) of my fundamental complaints about UBI though: What do you do when due to some disaster, you must pull back your UBI payments? Consider significant war losses, for instance. In this case the answer is that GDP would go down and so would the payment. (Though maybe we can't tie it to GDP per se, since in a war situation you can't afford to see your GDP rise due to forced construction and then also have to pay your populace more.)
That said, it addresses it structurally, but I still think the result would still be a disastrous political explosion if that ever did happen. UBI seems to be fundamentally predicated on the idea that growth and improvement are inevitable, the only possible way that things will develop going into the future, including any structural or societal changes that may develop as a result of UBI or GDP-sharing itself, and therefore there's no need to ask who starts swinging from trees the first time that UBI or GDP-sharing has to be cut back, and what disastrous decisions will be made on the basis of not wanting to be the one swinging from trees.
The currency inflates.
If the situation lasts long enough, the standard of living falls.
Money exists to move goods around. If all the money is in one place, goods cannot move.
Money is not limited. It is an information measure of, variously, debts, or bidding rights to production. What it can bid on is limited, and how currency-denominated asset valuations change as money supply and circulation do, can also change.
But the problem in the case of a national disaster isn't that money cannot be produced. It's that those who would rely on money to address immediate needs (water, food, shelter, medical care, transport) have no bidding rights (currency, credit, grants) to transact purchases. You're balancing the interests of those outside the disaster zone (assuming there is an outside) with those in it. (Though this generally is the case.)
If the disaster is big enough, and rescue or infrastructure needs sufficiently high, those may affect national accounts and economic activity for a time, but it would take an absolutely massive shock for the impairment of raw productive capacity alone to impact the economy. Far more likely that buying power is lacking amongst a segment of the population.
And for that, money is precisely the cure.
We reduce welfare spending when times are hard. Same deal. Not a substantial argument against welfare or UBI.
Bwuh? Citation needed; I'm pretty sure it went the other way around in the previous downturn.
3 replies →
well like many other attempts to inject more government control into our lives; usually to "get back" at someone who is "unfairly benefiting/abusing/etc/etc"; those with the proposal wrap it up in a grand egalitarian wording and market only the promises that sound good but are too good to be true. to sell it they sneak in seemingly related facts that are not debatable.
the one common response they all have when their plans are revealed for what they are and comparisons made to what others have done is always the same , we will do it right this time.
it is easy to prey on the greed of anyone by simply remaking it into the person having their stuff taken as being the real greedy one.