= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
The_Gentleman comments on Open Thread June 6 - June 12, 2016 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (126)
It's actually a bit worse than that.
The GBI is a guaranteed income stream, right? So, can I sell it? Can I put it up as a collateral for a loan? Can I get that shiny car right now if I sign over my GBI to you for the next ten years? Deal!!
It's actually not that bad.
People on welfare can already borrow money on credit cards and so on. If they get into default the only legally enforceable repayment arrangements are ones where they are not forced below subsistence levels. Yes, lenders can end up getting pennies a week. Yes, it is basically their fault,
You can get the situation where someone borrows against their livelihood in some kind of libertopia where the lenders right to their money overrides the borrowers right to eat.
Also, if someone is using GBI to start a business, borrowing to buy equipment is pretty reasonable,
And what happens if the business fails?
Your picture of people on welfare seems a bit rosy. You think everyone has credit cards?
Correct. However that generally involves declaring personal bankruptcy, at which point you're locked out of all credit (including credit cards) for a few years.
It is, of course, possible to make GBI, to use a legal term, "non-garnishable" meaning it cannot be collected to satisfy a judgement against a person. But that would make it impossible to use it as collateral for a loan to buy equipment, for example. The child support payments also could become an issue.
Does it? I didn't say it was a good thing.
I don't need the premise that everyone has credit cards to support the conclusion that some people on welfare do. I hear news stories about it.
But you could set a non-garnishable component that is less than the whole GBI. I am still not seeing a novel problem.
I'm not saying there is a novel problem. I'm saying there are old problems that GBI does not magically solve, mostly revolving around the very old observation that a fool and his money are soon parted.
Did anyone say it solved those problems?
Penicillin doesn't cure the common cold either.
It's up to the willingness of the country giving out the loan to regulate whether it wants to enforce those loans. Many countries have a legal system where you can't collect money from people who need that money to live.
Generally speaking yes, it does. What particular kind of contracts do you think a country wouldn't want to enforce in this context? As to subsistence-level income not being collectable, see my answer to TheAncientGeek.
Welfare payment in Germany aren't basic income because people need to active look for a job to receive them.
Those payments are also non-garnishable. The don't exist to finance loans. The point of basic income isnt to give people collateral for loans but to provide them with money to cover their basic needs.
If you want a higher income of say 1500$ you can make 1000$ non-garishable so that the person can always cover their basic need and make the rest garnishable.
True, but Germany has big tax breaks for entry-level, low-income jobs - what they call MiniJobs, MidiJobs etc. So the combination of unemployment insurance (the 'welfare' you describe) and easily available work acts much like a UBI as far as low-income folks are concerned.
The United Kingdom is now trying the same strategy, but with less success: though entry-level work is untaxed and quite widely available, many people there are still living on the 'dole' and not working, perhaps because the economy is still in bad shape and this lowers wages/worsens working conditions. A low-level UBI would be a nice solution to this issue.
No, UBI means that you get money even if you decide against working. That's inherently different than conditional welfare payments.
There nothing unconditional about receiving money from an entry-level low-income job.
That's an often-quoted reason, but it's far from "generally-agreed". For one thing, there is the obvious retort to it: we'll consider UBI when the robots actually make people unable to "support themselves even by working" and not before that.
A lot of people (e.g. Charles Murray) support UBI as a less-painful alternative to the metastasizing bureaucracy of welfare, etc., and with less mis- and disincentives, too. It is basically seen as a welfare equivalent to the "taxes on a postcard" (or maybe flat tax) movement.
Various people support UBI for different reasons. It's not true that nobody in Germany calls for UBI. You might personal oppose UBI in a country like Germany but that doesn't mean that other don't want it.
Milton Friedman also wasn't concered about growing use of automation when he proposed UBI as negative taxation.
Why do you think so? What I've seen from GiveDirectly and the conversations I've had with poor people don't bear this out. I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have factual support for this I could see?
GiveDirectly and the direct transfer RCTs in Africa/Third World countries don't answer the question about First World poverty because almost everyone, including the industrious and drug-free and high functioning people, in those countries is dirt-poor; in the First World, there is a much stronger correlation of pathology and poverty. To give an example, the direct transfers in Africa work because people there really are in poverty traps where $100 can make a big difference in letting them buy a cow or a motorcycle, and this is why the direct transfer RCTs show benefits; no one in America will show big benefits from a few transfers of $100 because poor people there have problems which can't be solved by some cash.
The upcoming YC-funded experiment will help test the generalizability of basic income results, and the original American experiments decades ago suggest that a basic income wouldn't cause lots of self-destructive behavior (or at least, wouldn't make things noticeably worse), but on the other hand, the natural experiments of lotteries in the USA and elsewhere like Sweden show minimal benefits to random shocks of wealth (which could've been invested for income). So I wouldn't be totally pessimistic, but I also wouldn't be surprised if BI experiments in the USA do worse than one would predict from the earlier GiveDirectly results.
I hadn't thought of that, good point. It still rings of the best example I have, but maybe not by as much. I have zero experience with actual people dying on actual streets so I use what I've got.
Yeah, I hope if experiments are done they're done well. A half-baked experiment could easily do more harm than good.
Hmm, that's interesting data, thanks. None of that is true in my nearest city but that in no way proves it's not the norm. If a person is actually mentally incompetent you're probably quite right, and organized crime could be a wrench in a lot of systems if it's organized enough.
Though maybe economics should - if you'll forgive the allusion - remove the log from its own eye first, and maybe then if it has any spare juice move on to solving health care problems and law enforcement problems. I haven't given this enough thought to be sure about it, but it's a thought.
This probably depends a lot on local laws. Essentially, what does the law say about people who are so insane they are unable to handle the basic economical tasks, but who refuse to be institutionalized.
In some countries, the consent is not required, insane people are institutionalized against their will. They are removed from the streets, and average people don't see them anymore. This was e.g. the situation in my country during communism.
In some countries, as long as the person is not clearly dangerous to themselves or to others (i.e. not agressive nor suicidal), they have a right to refuse institutionalization, which usually means they will leech off their relatives, and then end up begging on the streets. Sometimes they starve or freeze to death, but the idea is that if they choose this way of life, they have a right to do so. This is e.g. the situation in my country now.
Some countries may allow them the freedom to do what they want, and provide for them enough free food and free accomodation, so they will neither starve nor freeze. But that requires money and organized help in every city. Not sure if there is a place where this system works well. It's probably easier in places where freezing isn't a big risk for geographical reasons.
Yeah, we have "Code Blue Saratoga" in the winter (branding, nothing to do with respiration) to provide extra shelter to the homeless when it gets below a certain temperature, so temperature is a factor.
It's actually quite a bit overfunded (charity, not taxes). I really hope it moves into some other ways to serve the people it's there to serve, even if not exactly in the way intended. I don't expect a "Red Cross didn't give my disaster relief check to the right disaster!" outcry here. Food is pretty much at equilibrium, but there might be some comfort items possible.
Are you talking about poor people, or the fellow dying in the street. There's a difference.