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UBI Is Your Productivity Dividend – The Only Way to All Share What We All Built

https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/universal-basic-income-is-your-productivity
53•2noame•1h ago

Comments

shahmeern•46m ago
Does UBI really solve the problem, wouldn’t it just make everything more expensive?
Detrytus•41m ago
Yes, it does cause huge inflation, but that's not even the biggest problem with it. That would be: people do not really like to share fruits of their labor with strangers, so UBI would significantly undermine the motivation to do anything other than bare minimum.

UBI is not possible until robots and AI take over most jobs (but then we risk that one day the AI decides to just get rid of "those useless humans")

satvikpendem•35m ago
Isn't UBI just a sort of tax, which people pay already, whether they like it or not? I agree with your second paragraph though.
xantronix•22m ago
I don't think we should worry about the advent of AGI deciding to get rid of us; I'm more worried about the people who own the AI current AI infrastructure, as well as the current US regime, who don't see the value in the pesky humans beyond revenue and votes, respectively.
ambicapter•39m ago
"Solve the problem" probably not, but trigger inflation, probably not, since the amount is so low, it will have very little impact on the behavior of the richest, but it would have a massive impact on the behavior of the poorest, and their purchase habits generally don't impact inflation as much.

UBI is just a band-aid on not taxing the rich, though.

bryanlarsen•35m ago
Not necessarily. It's straightforward to make it revenue neutral.

You make it revenue neutral for the average tacpayer. If you want UBI to be $1000/month, you increase the average tax by $1000. The average taxpayer still benefit because even though they don't get more money, they have a safety net.

People making less than average get more UBI than the tax increase, and those making more pay more.

Most people get more money because the median income us a lot lower than the average.

nostrebored•27m ago
This assumes all goods are wanted and consumed equally. Housing, milk, meat, eggs, etc. do not see downward pressure from this.
lotyrin•25m ago
Right, but people with lower incomes spend, and mostly on necessities, I think the idea is that most of those necessities would become more expensive (naturally or artificially due to price-fixing) if the poorest suddenly had more financial power. In the system as it stands, it seems to me like it'd just result in a bunch of money going to grocery giants and their suppliers, landlords, medical, etc.
shahmeern•8m ago
Yeah this is the downstream effect I had in mind. You could say we'd increase supply to meet the demand but that hasn't really worked out with housing for example
Galaxeblaffer•33m ago
Not everything, only stuff that are suddenly in higher demand that can't increase supply. If you take food as an example i don't imagine demand would increase? And if it did we could probably just produce more? And also it's not like everyone will have unlimited money, so you'll still have to prioritize and luckily we don't all have the same priorities. I'm pretty sure the idea is to fund this by taxing production and not by printing money, so inflation shouldn't be a problem.
recursivecaveat•20m ago
If the only money is UBI money then things start to get weird. If UBI coexists with regular income in moderation then it doesn't change much. Consider that about 1/3 Americans receive some form of government assistance. There's already a kind of fallback UBI distributed across SNAP + Medicare + Medicaid + Unemployment + Social Security + etc, and no one on those programs is clamoring for them to be shut down so that lentils become cheaper. Giving money to everyone does increase inflation (though you can play with the tax rate to offset that), but the important effect is it transfers purchasing power to net recipients. Basically: the economy wide money supply would at worst go up by a modest factor, the income of the poorest goes up by an absolute amount (or a massive factor if you want to view it that way), which is a huge benefit to them.
ambicapter•40m ago
The only way? What about built out infrastructure? What about universal health care? What about enforcing laws? What about enforcing truth in advertising? What about punishing various types of crooks in the various markets and transactions, financial and otherwise, that ordinary people take part in?

The only way? Like a silver bullet? Like that thing that the common idiom says doesn't exist?

wartywhoa23•37m ago
When someone says something is "the only way", that's a sure sign they either have some vested interest in that only way, or have an idea fix.
Spooky23•4m ago
[delayed]
randerson•35m ago
I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (unconditional and for all residents) so its all theoretical.

Musk's idea of a Universal High Income (where money is no longer necessary because robots and AI give us anything we want) sounds great too until you consider scarce resources like land. Who decides who gets to buy the best properties on Earth if money is no longer a factor? What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to? We would lose the human touch in our lives, and that sounds awful.

lotsofpulp•32m ago
> I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year?

This does not have to be the case if higher taxes decrease purchasing power for some.

nostrebored•29m ago
This does not address the relative purchasing power change on the left of the bell curve.
lotsofpulp•7m ago
The whole purpose of UBI is to increase the relative purchasing power on the left of the bell curve.

But inflation (sum total) is a moot point if total supply of dollars for total demand stays the same. Prices might temporarily increase for staples, such as shelter and food, but that should incentivize sellers in the economy to supply more staples, and fewer luxury goods.

The additional supply will eventually bring prices down, but end result is more people have more of the basics.

throwaway94275•31m ago
In places that consist of many people with subsidized incomes, like elderly housing complexes, why aren't local grocery stores and gas stations higher than elsewhere?

Also, aside from that question, prices will only rise if there's no competition. In a working market, if more people can afford a higher rent more apartments will be built.

nostrebored•30m ago
Because “many” is different than all and these stores would otherwise not exist?
estearum•10m ago
Because the subsidies aren't on top of base income?

The subsidy isn't the problem per se, it's the net increase in income.

It is obviously self-evident everywhere that high incomes create high cost of living, which can be traced through higher costs all the way down to the land rents (the rent someone is willing to pay to have market access to the high local incomes).

SoftTalker•30m ago
It would not be inflationary if it's paid for with a tax on real value or income. Maybe somewhat inefficient, and prone to political meddling, but it's not introducing new money into the economy.

If it's just printed money, it would be.

randerson•20m ago
It would be in a sense, because that money is otherwise mostly hoarded by the wealthy, whose spending would look the same whether or not they are taxed. If money is saved and not spent, it is not really part of the economy in this sense.

But if the money is transferred to others and spent on additional goods & services that is when it increases demand and raises prices.

alpaca128•15m ago
If UBI is so high that people can afford paying extra without working for it then maybe, but I don't think that is the idea behind UBI. There still needs to be an incentive for people to work, they should just be in a place where they actually have a choice instead of living in survival mode every day.
estearum•11m ago
Doesn't matter at all how much it is. It'll be (almost entirely or entirely) eaten by landlords.

I am a landlord.

I am setting prices for renewal.

I have come to learn that 100% of my possible customer base now has $200/mo more to spend.

I raise prices $200/mo with absolute certainty that I will find a renter.

Congrats, mission accomplished.

iso1631•7m ago
Unless of course that UBI is funded by a land value tax.
SoftTalker•1m ago
How does land value tax help in particular here? Landlord pays land value tax, which is distributed via UBI, and then paid back to the landlord in higher rents (in the above scenaro).
SoftTalker•6m ago
How do you control what other landlords do? Why won't any undercut you by $200 and get your tenants?
kbelder•4m ago
In a normal market, they would. But housing is highly regulated with artificial shortages, so that pricing is very distorted.
Spooky23•6m ago
That’s one of the flawed arguments used against minimum wage. The answer is, no.
georgemcbay•5m ago
> What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to?

I have no faith in Musk's vision of an abundance utopia for many reasons, but I suspect a lot of people would still want to do the job of being a human therapist or hair stylist even if they technically didn't need to for money.

They may want to work less than 40 hours a week, but most people do have an inate need to feel like their life has some sort of productive value beyond just base level existing.

clhodapp•1m ago
[delayed]
wstrange•33m ago
UBI will require a more progressive tax system. The Oligarchs are having none of that.
wartywhoa23•32m ago
Communists shared alright 110 years ago in Russia, tens of millions of people failed to cope with that much prosperity and wellbeing, and then even more with unbearable freedom and peace.
ciwchris•26m ago
I recently came across the idea of Universal Basic Capital (UBC): "granting every person a meaningful ownership stake in productive assets from birth." UBC would be enormously difficult to implement, as well as have its own weaknesses. It doesn't seem realistic, but introduces a new idea into the conversation.

https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=...

neversupervised•5m ago
UBI will likely be necessary but that won’t appease society. Everyone wants to have a chance to climb the ladder. If it becomes self evident that humans can no longer have a meaningful impact on their outcome, there’ll be riots whether they have a roof and food or not.
K0balt•3m ago
Unions the actual solution, and is well understood enough now to know that most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods.

Unfortunately, with regulatory capture at near 100 percent and electoral capture almost as bad, there is no incentive structure with sufficient influence to make it happen. Wealth will continue to be funneled to the top, and taxation schemes that act as a de-facto sales tax create incentives that favor even more centralized systems.

But wouldn’t it be great?

An interesting aspect is that I am constantly observing innovators with significant technical and technological skills that are employed in fields outside of their expertise as a “temporary “ measure that often becomes permanent if they get further encumbered, simply because they can keel out an existence while trying to build the next cool thing. So we are wasting probably trillions of GDP in talent because people need to go work in a labor job to support their wife and child instead of continuing his very promising project in training data for humanoid robots, which could easily net 100m+ in the next decade. (Actual example. I offered him $1000 a month to keep on it, but he unfortunately needs more to survive and he has eaten through his savings over the past two years of working on it.)

softwaredoug•1m ago
What if we build UBI but we turn out not to need it? Thats my worry. AI might possibly be “just another technology”. If we put in UBI we may disincentivize the economy from adapting to an economic shift.

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