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Comment by sysread | Hacker News Reader

That's a misleading title. It's predicated on the assumption that, "conservative support for UBI rests on an approach that would increase poverty, rather than reduce it."

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"America has such massive problems that most programs doomed to fail"

This seems inevitable for a global political movement with a mission of discrediting government by kneecapping all its efforts.

Some might say that a white paper with a title about how UBI would increase poverty where the key assumption is "if it's sabotaged" is also part of a mission of discrediting government by kneecapping its efforts.

The state of California providing the living counterpoint that the other current alternative isn’t effective in solving the issues plaguing society.

Nobody talks about California more than Texans.

>The state of California providing the living counterpoint that the other current alternative isn’t effective in solving the issues plaguing society.

Maybe it's just been a long day, but I don't get your point here.

IIUC (I don't live in California, but I do live in the US), California has a thriving (5th largest in the world, IIRC, if they were separate from the US) economy based on capitalism and free (as in at least paying lip service to fairness) markets.

And therein lies my confusion. Are you saying that "This seems inevitable for a global political movement with a mission of discrediting government by kneecapping all its efforts."[0] California is not trying to discredit government and failing to do so?

Also, are there really only two options? Those being government control of everything or anarcho-capitalism[1]? Not setting up a straw man here (or at least not trying to do so), I just don't understand what you're trying to say, and it's an interesting topic I wouldn't mind discussing.

I hope you see why I'm confused by your statement. If you'd elucidate, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33157027 (the comment to which you replied)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Edit: Fixed grammatical error.

I agree. He's setting up a classic straw man. "The only way we can afford UBI is by letting the conservatives gut other necessary social programs."

That's not a flaw in UBI, that's just an assumption that the politics would work out poorly. UBI may be impossible in the current political climate, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea, or that it could never work.

Every time UBI comes up on any discussion in libertarian-conservative circles I participate in, UBI always gets grudging hypothetical support conditional on replacing all other social spending with UBI.

A lot of people see UBI as a small-government low-overhead libertarianish solution to current social programs, and the universality of it is seen as making it less unfair/redistributive.

Anecdata is not data, but I don’t think this is a straw man; you just need to talk to some conservatives.

On the other hand, it’s not fiscally manageable. It costs as much as we currently pay in taxes, and we still have to pay for defense and pork on top of it. So implementing UBI would exceed our income.

This would require dramatically higher taxes which are politically unpalatable (such taxes would last no more than two years before any representatives who voted for it got voted out). The amount of money is not life changing for anyone other than the poorest. And it would cost way more than estimated due to fraud (see Medicare for an example). Plus why wouldn’t businesses grab a share of it by jacking up prices on things that poor people can now afford? From the mindset that brings you slum lords.

The market for US sovereign debt is drying up so we’re not going to be able to overspend in the profligate way we have over the last few years.

For these reasons UBI is a pipe dream.

ignoring the political acceptance of it, UBI would end up tax neutral for many. You also have to change the way you tax and create a wealth tax. ie, if you imagine the wealth distribution in a country, and overlay income tax, you will see it doesn't match wealth distribution, so you need tax models that tax wealth and match your tax take to the wealth distribution (not that you can do this perfectly, but just need something that tracks better). This would make the majority of people better off, politically that's a good thing. Businesses follow market forces, more people with more money should create opportunities for more competition. Where it can be problematic is where there is a limited resource, like housing, it could push rents up, however, it may also give people more opportunity to move out of cities, so hard to know how that would play out.

I agree with almost everything you say. The area I break with you is that I don't think that fraud would be a major concern that couldn't be addressed with reasonable checks (and a decade or more of jail for intentional fraudsters).

It seems almost tautological to say that conservatives wouldn't approach it properly, and that any conservative approach would further poverty. Conservativism is interested in keeping the status quo. In general funding UBI in a progressive way and specifically reducing poverty are not compatible with the status quo.

The conservative approach seems to have reduced poverty worldwide

citation_needed

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