Providing basic services should be more efficient than universal basic income | Hacker News Reader

Providing basic services should be more efficient than universal basic income

theconsequentialist.wordpress.com

11 pointselsewhen8 comments

I like the idea of providing services for free, but this is false:

> The state can use its centralized negotiating power to get lower prices

Governments are notorious for getting terrible prices for what they directly pay for due to incentives and political pressures increasing restrictions and complexity.

At least a ubi keeps market forces in place for services.

The thesis also completely ignores the logistics involved in it and the previous attempts. There is a reason why they largely dropped the literal government cheese distribution (processed cheese product really for preservation) down to food banks and pantries for dealing with the surplus dairy caused by their agricultural price-stabilization policies. It is far from trivial to maintain the logistics of just one good as an intermediary purchaser let alone many of them and allocating them properly without any price-signals to drive the process.

This, like most any other thing a government could conceivably do for the benefit of the population it should serve, will always be wrecked into dysfunction so long as the officials responsible are permitted to make and prioritize commitments to private industry instead.

The fact that this must be repeated so often on this website is why I no longer take seriously hardly anything I read on it.

But if you accept that problem, and don’t start with a theory of how you’d fix that problem, it sounds like we all agree the core assertion of the post is wrong.

Its worth mentioning that there are other desirable traits in a system besides efficiency. Robustness in the event of failure is useful with planes and automobiles even though it adds weight and makes them less fuel efficient. Similarly with government policy it might make sense to opt for a less efficient but more resilient or some qualitative attribute like more freedom of choice. This would be particularly true in a society where a basic income was needed because presumably society would already be extremely efficient at producing goods and services such that the demand for human labor is far smaller than the supply. I'm not sure if I'm pro basic income or not but I wish more discussion would go into what a healthy set of societal characteristics would look like before discussing how to get there.

One big advantage of universal basic income is that it could be used to simplify the tax code, and eliminate programs that are often gamed:

1) pay everyone the same UBI subsidy,

2) set income tax to a fixed percentage regardless of income source

3) eliminate most (or all) deductions.

If you don’t like (2), then add a second tax bracket at 10x median income. Note that even with a flat tax rate, (3) makes this proposal would much more progressive than the current US tax system.

Doing this would substantially reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, since welfare and social security could be eliminated, as could most of the IRS.

Instead, the government could focus on public health (and drug rehab) programs, job training, education, etc.

All of this would be less adversarial than the current system, since “gaming” the government would just lead to being healthier and more employable, which is a net positive for society.

You will always need the IRS. There are always cheaters when it comes to taxes. Even without deductions you would still see underreporting of income and under the table deals. Not to mention the brand new headache of cryptocurrency taxation.

Yes of course government organized socialism would likely be more efficient than UBI. UBI is only a thing being considered because allows us to maintain the narrative of capitalism and is more humane than "Just watch poor live in poverty when we have a labor surplus".

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