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Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

Look, this whole argument is terribly messy-- made so by entrenched political positions and lack of constructive dialog.

The thing is, a terrible feature of current poverty programs in North America is the existence of cliffs, where the net resources of a household can decrease -- especially in the short to intermediate term-- if one pursues more lucrative careers. See https://www.atlantafed.org/economic-mobility-and-resilience/...

This is at baseline. Some of the pandemic response measures have further worsened the picture. Work, in the short term, is punished.

We need a (small) basic income, and to structure the rest of poverty programs to make sure these kinds of perverse incentives no longer exist.

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The cliffs are designed to divide the population on the issue of the benefits.

Making benefits universal is understood as a way to make the population unite behind them long-term, a political danger to capitalist elites who benefit from worker precarity.

Having no benefits at all is another political danger. The obvious cruelty of total economic exclusion results in social movements for reform.

Crippled benefits gate-kept by a punitive bureaucratic layer are the stable compromise.

> a political danger to capitalist elites who benefit from worker precarity.

This seems like an unusually pejorative way of describing the desire to have a functioning economy, where workers actually have an incentive to work instead of being paid to Netflix and chill.

And this article and its commentary are replete with examples that defy the usual straw men associated with arguments for UBI, if that helps. CERB at $2k a month is the prime example and the source of the original article.

I used objective, neutral language. You called it pejorative, then you used pejorative language.

Ideological defense of capitalism often takes the same forms as denial of interpersonal abuse.

Rather, “capitalist elites who benefit from precarious workers”, is not neutral or objective. That’s an editorialized and oversimplified view of what are the motivations and needs of people actually creating the jobs in the first place.

There are likely more unproductive (deliberately) workers on balance who are siphoning wages from companies than there are “capitalist elites” who prey on their workers needing a job.

The entire article and thread of comments demonstrate that people would prefer to stay at home and be paid than to work and be paid. It’s not hard to imagine why and see the negative downsides unless you’re one of the people trying to justify being paid to stay at home.

> That’s an editorialized and oversimplified view of what are the motivations and needs

I literally did not say anything about "motivations and needs."

I referred to "benefit," as in their interests.

Interests, motivations, and needs aren't all the same thing. You should know this and recognize it all by yourself!

I'm really not interested in refuting your sociopathic little distortions.

> people actually creating the jobs

ROFL

FYSA: one's "interests" are very, very similar to ones "motivations and needs."

But I agree to walk away. If you ROFL at the prospect of someone who is legitimately creating jobs being an interested party in the discussion of our economic structure, it's probably not worth the typing energy to debate with you.

Accurate neutral objective description of economic interests...

distorted by you into some offensive pejorative about "motivations".

Your dishonesty is disgusting.

> And this article and its commentary are replete with examples that defy the usual straw men associated with arguments for UBI, if that helps. CERB at $2k a month is the prime example and the source of the original article.

CERB does exactly what a UBI shouldn't do: phase out if you made more than a (small) income threshold. This creates an explicit incentive to not work. The "U"-- "universal" -- is important to not create these types of cliff where work is punished.

Right now in the US we have a mess of systems: tax brackets, EITC, SNAP, housing assistance, WIC, etc. I don't think we can quite "nuke them all" and replace them with a UBI, but a UBI with a flatter tax system, no EITC, less unemployment insurance, and a bit less SNAP could ensure everyone can still eat; would tide over people between jobs; would assist people in situations where they're voluntarily changing careers, etc... and most importantly, would remove the perverse disincentives to work that the cliffs on SNAP, WIC, etc, do.

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