The feminist argument for a universal basic income | Hacker News Reader

The feminist argument for a universal basic income

nytimes.com

13 pointspavornyoh26 comments

I am actually convinced that men (especially a specific class of men, defined by a certain level of income and education) will be more likely than women to need assistance from a UBI program, as their jobs will be replaced by technology at a higher pace.

In addition, women (at least heterosexual women) are likely to have the significant advantage of having more choice when selecting a partner, because of the global imbalance in the male/female ratio; this gives them a stronger position than their male counterparts within their relationships.

References

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21652323-blue-collar-m...

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21645759-boys-ar...

http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2015/03/24-gender-...

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2...

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/04/ec...

What do you mean more likely? Like two men for every one woman who needs assistance?

I have very serious reservations about the UBI. (I have blogged about that a bit.) I keep reading these articles that give glowing reports about how it fixes things for women or whatever, and I am incredibly skeptical of that fact. Historically, when you infuse a system with more cash without that cash being connected to increased productivity, the result is inflation. In fact, that is basically the definition of inflation: Needing more money to pay for the same goods and services.

I realize that people are arguing that machines and the like are producing labor, thereby infusing the system with productivity, and the problem we have is redistributing the wealth it produces. But I am very skeptical that a UBI is a good solution to that problem.

I have a lot of half formed thoughts in reaction to reading this piece. I don't know how to begin to back up my opinions when they are based on decades of reading books and articles that, in many cases, I no longer recall the titles of. It is not like I kept a written list of everything I ever read. I was reading these things for personal reasons. But I really am not comfortable with some of the premises of the arguments being made, such as "Basic income helps undermine sexism." I see no reason to believe that. They did away with slavery in the American South and, from what I have read, blacks had it worse in the years after slavery was abolished. They couldn't get jobs, laws were written to deny them the right to vote, etc. We are still, to this day, trying to redress the matter. Blacks in America still, overall, make less money, get arrested more, etc.

I have also known women who had jobs who struck me as more enslaved than I felt as a homemaker. Their jobs did not significantly relieve them of the "women's work" at home, so their jobs were often more relief for their husband, who no longer felt 100% responsible for paying the bills, yet did not see any real reason to buck up and do housework.

I have seen many stories over the years where people thought that giving money would right some social ill, only to see it not work. Money seems to never be able to really fix social ills. Those battles are fought in the hearts and minds of the people, in the establishment of new cultural norms, and in the courts where we determine rights.

Everything I have ever seen suggests to me that financial security or wealth grow out of rights/privilege, not the other way around.

UBI proposals typically do not print new cash for distribution, but rather pay for it with taxes. I actually do expect some inflationary pressure from a BI, but not because there is more money.

It's revenue neutral, if used as a replacement of existing benefits when the recipient doesn't work (e.g. child benefit, unemployment benefit, and old-age pensions), and paid for by raising taxes by the same amount as the basic income when the recipient does work.

I don't think I follow. I've read over your comment a few times, and come away either with a statement that seems incorrect or a proposal that isn't UBI... The failure may well be mine, but could you clarify?

I'm assuming the existence of some kind of welfare state. I'm also assuming, at least initially, basic income is the same as existing benefits.

Everyone gets basic income: children, to replace child benefit; people in work, paid for by increasing the tax they pay by exactly the same amount as their basic income; unemployed people, to replace their unemployment benefit; and those above retirement age, to replace their non-contributory pensions. I should also have included dependent spouses and full-time students. Their BI can be paid for by further increases in taxation, as well as by administrative savings, rather than by printing money.

If all you're saying is that tax increases will be less than they might be, if we repurpose money currently spent on other programs, I certainly agree. The repurposed money is still presumably funded through taxation, though, so this doesn't conflict at all with what I'd said.

If you were saying more, then I'm still not clear on what it is.

What he is trying to say is that it will be financed by removing benefits that were given (before UBI was introduced) to people who did not work (and thus removing administrative overhead to handle individual cases) and by raising taxes.

There's a lot of work that I do free of charge. Wash my car. Go grocery shopping. Do my laundry. I walk my dog out of a sense of love and duty. Shouldn't I be paid for this? Why isn't the government paying me for this invisible labor that I chose to do?

I cut back my hours and quit my job because I have so much to do so, what the hell society, where's my compensation?

That is why compensation for unpaid work is not a good argument in favour of basic income.

Better arguments: it's a safety net no one can fall through, it's simpler and less demeaning than the existing system, and unemployed people are always better off when they take low-paid or part-time work.

The difference is that the state has the duty to care for elderly people and children, so when they are not cared for by relatives, it has to pay professionals to do it.

I have not decided whether or not I support a basic income, but I do think that people, who take care for elderly relatives should get paid some reasonable fraction of the costs that the state would have to pay anyway. If these elderly people do have the funds to care for themselves, I think they should be responsible to pay this fraction, before the state has to do it.

With children it is a bit more complicated, because a society generally benefits if people of higher education reproduce, which generally have a higher threshold to do so because of financial incentives. Also you decide to have children, because you want to have children. You do not decide to have parents who need care.

All the things you named are things you are doing for yourself in order to have a clean car, to have something to eat, to have clean cloths, to have a dog. Having children is certainly to some extend also something you do for yourself because you enjoy raising children but beyond that it is also a service to the society because this is what keeps it running in the long term. In the past having children was probably more driven by selfish motives, e.g. having someone to care for you when you are old and the like, but nowadays this is no longer true and you can quite easily forgo the costs associated with having children. Therefore it seems not unreasonable to me that a society supports the part of it that takes the burden to sustain it.

In the past, having children was probably more driven by lack of birth control.

I won't argue against that, it is certainly true, but I think my point still stands that it was beneficial to have more children even if it was not always a concessions decision because of the lack of birth control.

Everything I have ever read suggests that birth control and limiting the number of children you have improves quality of life. Having scads of kids is generally the mark of a culture that a) either has no means to prevent conception (and people are screwing anyway) or b) has very high child mortality rates because the culture as a whole is poor, uneducated, lacks infrastructure, etc. Across the globe, as child mortality rates go down, birth rates fall following the fall of death rates. From what I have read, this is statistically consistent.

If there is anything "selfish" going on, it is "sex feels good, so I am going to get laid, and the consequences be damned." I have met damn few people who were able to have exactly as many kids as they wanted, exactly when they wanted them. The vast majority of the time, kids seem to fall into one of two categories: 1) "Oops" or 2) "We tried for this one forever."

What time frame are we talking about? The last hundred or three hundred years? The last two thousand years? The last million years?

What part of my comment are you asking about?

The falling birth rates following falling death rates is a global trend in my lifetime. Limiting kids to keep you out of poverty and keep you middle class is an observation that goes back at least a few hundred years in Europe. The "most kids are a case of Oops or We tried forever" is personal observation of discussions I have had with people: Any time you get the back story, it is typically one of those situations (tbf, my second child was a case of "we skipped birth control 2 or 3 times" -- which almost felt like an Oops because I was surrounded by people talking about how very long it took them to get child 2 or their latest).

Does that help clarify any?

I'm pretty much for universal basic income, but in light of how our society functions it won't fix anything structurally.

People will realize that the potential for demand is greater, they will rise their prices and then the cost of live will raise accordingly. Then the rich will get richer quickly and the poor will stagnate, all proportions maintained.

If you want to diminish the gap, you would also need to regulate how people determine prices in order to maintain a reasonable cost of living, I'm not sure that hard capitalists will enjoy this.

Essentially this argument equates women to being disabled and deserving of payment due to their gender.

Problems with this argument:

1. They assume that women don't choose to do this work and are forced to.

2. Women should have no reason to work (As that they should be paid without any outcome expected)

3. Women are always honest and productive workers. (Thus deserving of the money)

This isn't equality. That's blatant sexism.

I don't see how you get all that at all. How are they suggesting women are disabled? They suggest women do a lot of work valuable to society but not historically paid and not only paying women but both sexes would help breaking out of traditional work roles.

"The feminist argument for a U.B.I. is that it’s a way to reimburse mothers and other caregivers for the heavy lifting they now do free of charge. "

Also why isn't the post the title of the article? So clickbaity now.

They are suggesting that women should receive funds on the condition that they are women. (I did not intend to infer that women are disabled, but for the argument that they're trying to justify is that the person should recieve money because they have a condition, not because they did something).

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"Breaking out of traditional work roles" So that means that you're asking a handout to change social roles in a society?

I suggesting we give funds to people who raise children, who are traditionally women, because they preform a very important role in society without any financial compensation. And the article suggests this can (or has) lead to worse gender imbalances. It is certainly a job and rewarding it wouldn't be a "handout".

The quote I even referenced included "and other caregivers". This isn't "let's just pay women cause they're women" even if people want to get all up in arms about that and make a strawman. I'm thinking you didn't even bother to read the article.

"They are suggesting that women should receive funds on the condition that they are women."

This is not the case. Did you read the article?

It is calling for a universal basic income, not one contingent on gender. It says: "It’s an odd kind of reparations, you may object, that goes to fathers as well as mothers, the unattached as well as those with family responsibilities. But entertain this radical proposition: The universal basic income is a necessary condition for a just society, for it recognizes the fact that most of us — men, women, parents and nonparents — do a great deal of unpaid work to sustain the general well-being."

You seem, particularly in 2, to be understanding the article demanding payment only to women. That doesn't seem to be the case:

"It’s an odd kind of reparations, you may object, that goes to fathers as well as mothers, the unattached as well as those with family responsibilities."

A core issue behind ubi is that fear of "future shock" may make the population ungovernable and it will be a small price to pay for continued public support of social, business and technological innovation.

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