Comment by Proziam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Proziam | Hacker News Reader

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I have written about this before, but I believe this perspective is worth repeating.

UBI is a fantastic idea in theory. It is more efficient in terms of capital and human resources than the current system, probably by an order of magnitude or more. However, it does suffer one deep flaw that I haven't seen anyone promoting UBI address.

How do we ensure that UBI doesn't become weaponized against the people it's supposed to be helping?

If UBI is passed it becomes the single most important issue to the majority of voters. Someone running on a platform of 'more money' will (even if it's economically a bad idea) likely win elections based on it. If there is an economic need to decrease the UBI payments it will be the death knell of political careers.

But the biggest concern I have is this:

We've already seen big legislation like the Affordable Care Act come under attack and eventually get essentially removed (in that case overwritten by the American Health Care Act on Mar 4, 2017). What would the damage be to the people who come to rely on UBI as part of the general economic system, only to have it rapidly reduced or removed entirely?

>"What would the damage be to the people who come to rely on UBI as part of the general economic system, only to have it rapidly reduced or removed entirely?"

I think removing UBI if you already have one in place would simply cause mass revolt. It would be a suicide for any politician. So unless there is something like mass starvation caused by some catastrophe removing UBI will be off the table.

The solution is separation of powers. Let the amount of the UBI be determined by an independent institution (like a judicial body) based on predefined criteria, put that mechanism into the constitution, and obviously have any kind of corruption or bribery be a criminal offense. It’s certainly not a 100% foolproof, but would go a long way.

I believe some of the original proponents of UBI tended to be for balanced budget amendments. This perhaps yields some sort of equilibrium. Although I can think of some states with balanced budget constitutions that act only nominally to constrain spending, as they are based on abusable projections, so the impediment is not firm.

> Although I can think of some states with balanced budget constitutions that act only nominally to constrain spending, as they are based on abusable projections, so the impediment is not firm.

Most of the sources of misery in the US are economic, unfortunately. The political parties in the US have a long history of being poor trustees of the nation's wealth.

I make the comparison to Norway often because Norway has the world's largest social safety net in the form of their Sovereign Wealth Funds. Norway has $1.1T, roughly $200,000 USD per citizen, that can be used to maintain economic stability and secure social programs even in hard times.

The US absolutely could have accomplished the same thing, but instead we've racked up a national debt per citizen of over $70,000.

What if the UBI came not from the treasury but from a big sovereign wealth fund, which could be built up over a period by giving companies the option of transferring a (perhaps non-voting) share of their stock into the fund, in exchange for exemption from corporate income tax?

I just commented a moment ago mentioning Norway. I believe such a fund is a promising idea so long as it is managed in such a way that no politician or political organization could raid it.

If the US had a wealth fund instead of a national debt I believe many of the biggest issues we face could be legitimately solved rather than turned into political footballs.

This doesn't work at the scale of the US. Where would you find sufficient investable assets? A sovereign wealth fund similar to Norway in the US would contain a large fraction of all wealth globally.

Scarcity of investable assets is already a problem. Increasing demand by $50-100T will make it worse. Part of the reason the US issues trillions in debt is to absorb some of the existing demand.

> Where would you find sufficient investable assets?

The land itself, all of the resources in and on it, the industries that operate within the borders, etc.

We don't necessarily need to set aside 200k per capita, but it would be wise to not be at -70k per capita and growing fast, in my opinion.

> A sovereign wealth fund similar to Norway in the US would contain a large fraction of all wealth globally.

If the rest of the world operated on similar principles we would inevitably reach a balance. Regardless, the US would have to clear an enormous sum of debt before we could realistically start filling up the piggy bank.

The US's national debt is someone else's wealth fund.

To be fair, having the world reserve currency is sortof like a wealth fund.

UBI fuels local economies, in long term this is actually more beneficial to economy and recovery from some market crash.

Even if the increase of UBI would be used to get votes, its better then what we currently have - lover taxes for mega rich. At least this way I get something.

Sounds like those politicians should find something else to cut.

May I suggest: their own salaries or perhaps military spending? I mean, if the country doesn't have the budget, that sounds an awful like it is _their_ fault, not their constiuents'. The constituents aren't elected to figure those things out, they are.

This conservative idea that we have to be all "Aw shucks, we don't have money" is absurd, yet they have enough to give themselves generous salary increases and universal healthcare.

> May I suggest: their own salaries or perhaps military spending?

Personal opinion:

I want to pay every politician even more than they get now - for life. In exchange, they are never allowed to work or own equity in a corporation. Shuts the lobbyists revolving door nonsense down almost immediately. Such an implementation only works if we hold corrupt officials accountable though, we don't want one-term do-nothings to get into office just for the paycheck. So, if you fail to represent the will of the people you lose 95% of the money, or similar.

Cutting military spending I'm generally in favor of. I believe this could be done to a huge degree before we actually have a negative impact on military capability at all. I also believe the military should only be used for actual defense, meaning that militia structures become a meaningful way to bolster national security without incurring an enormous organizational cost.

> This conservative idea that we have to be all "Aw shucks, we don't have money" is absurd, yet they have enough to give themselves generous salary increases and universal healthcare.

It's not conservative, it's corrupt. The conservative view is that we need to secure economic stability, not raid the coffers at every opportunity. But then again, the terms conservative/liberal have lost most of their meaning. I wonder what John Locke would think if he were alive to see how the world turned out.

It is hard for me to think of a situation where UBI would have be decreased that could not be handled better by simply taxing people more. One hand giveth, the other hand taketh away.

My biggest concern is inflation. Adding more cash without also increasing productivity can cause inflation. UBI might improve productivity in a number of ways, but it might not do so enough. I know that proponents of the job guarantee argue that this is the fatal flaw in UBI; that instead people should be guaranteed useful work to do, which in theory would increase productivity to offset the government expenditures to send them paychecks. I do agree that there is a lot of useful work that could get done under such a program (cleaning rivers and streams, etc.), but I'm not convinced that we'd see productivity gains reliably either.

But opponents also complain about wage growth getting too high, almost as if capitalism depends on a class of exploited poor ...

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