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Comment by psaintla | Hacker News Reader

The problem is, when you scrap all of those programs you immediately create more unemployment. There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.

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I suspect one of the side effects is that UBI would lead to a decrease in full time employment and an increase in part time employment. Basically, having a job would become a matter of making enough to live the lifestyle of your choice rather than a matter of having a roof over your head and the ability to eat.

It's one of the reasons I mentioned scrapping the minimum wage when implementing UBI.

The job market becomes much more of a market where work is paid for what it's worth because it's an actual market and employers don't have the undue leverage of simple survival over employees.

Just for once, I want to hear a truly honest conservative politician: "We need to drastically shrink the government, which is why when I'm elected, one-eighth* of my constituency will be immediately unemployed!"

(Not that there isn't a good case for eliminating federal waste; but the reality I never hear uttered in the conservative bubble is that the largest government expense is federal employees and subcontractors.)

By that measure, the "truly honest" progressive politician would say: "we need to drastically raise social program spending and taxes, which will dramatically increase unemployment!"

(Not that there isn't a good case for improving federal social programs; but the reality I never hear uttered in the progressive bubble is that the largest government expenses are social programs like social security, medicare, and medicaid.)

I don't understand your rebuttal, how does increased spending on social programs lead to higher unemployment? Are you suggesting that increased social spending leads to people tactically becoming unemployed in order to gain benefits while not working?

Romer and Romer showed that higher taxes lead to lower growth and vice-versa; the additional taxes required to finance the social program spending will sooner or later lead to reduced opportunities for employment.[1] Others have shown that a larger "social safety net" leads to higher unemployment for a variety of reasons.[2][3] It is also logical that people's aversion to unemployment is proportional to its cost (to them), and that if it is less costly, they will expend less time and effort in the stressful, taxing, and unpleasant task of looking for work.

[1] http://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/RomerandRomerAERJune2...

[2] http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr646.pdf

[3] http://time.com/9009/unemployment-is-worse-than-death/ (the point is made more thoroughly in the author's book)

Yes, a lot of people employed to make unemployed people feel guilty. (And make them jump through hoops.) Inefficient and mean-spirited bureaucratic overhead.

Removing jobs is viewed as an upside of a policy like that, not a downside (by economists only, pretty much, but they're right about it).

> There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.

You phase it in by starting it at a low level without replacing/reducing existing programs, and then as you ramp it up you start eliminating other programs.

That won't be the hard part about phasing in UBI without wrecking the economy. All those people that are now unemployed are now earning the UBI.

Except it won't necessarily match their previous salaries. There are a lot of high 5 digit and low six digit incomes in the social services job hierarchy.

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