A guaranteed income for every American

[Glorious Leader]

AEI firing Charles Murray in 3..2..1..

I am rather surprised that this racist ass-hat is proposing this.

Murray isnt suggesting this out of some love for people or the welfare state. Murrays proposal also eliminates other government programs in favor of giving the UBI. It ends up being alot less received. Its really just another way of shrinking the state cause my freedom.

UBI is great but not if UBI is a tool to undermine the social safety net. Thats also why the OP is in favor of it. Its a trojan horse to sneak in practically religious libertarian ideology. In the aggregate you shrink the government and people will be poorer for it.

[Tinykong]

I hope so, but I really don't think most conservatives are going to go for it. Smacks too much of welfare handouts.

Republican myopic thinking needs to change. It's probably cheaper to just cut everyone a check and do away with all the deductions and other welfare programs, similar to how it's cheaper to pay for the homeless to be housed and fed than clean up after them living on the streets.

[Glorious Leader]

Republican myopic thinking needs to change. It's probably cheaper to just cut everyone a check and do away with all the deductions and other welfare programs, similar to how it's cheaper to pay for the homeless to be housed and fed than clean up after them living on the streets.

Murray isnt suggesting that though. Hes arguing for a BIG and an elimination of the social safety net. This will make conditions worse but will have the effect of shrinking government which is ultimately the real goal.

Any UBI program needs to happen in a society where the social safety net is strong. Otherwise its just an excuse for a bigger tax cut. The US is incredible shaky in this regard.

[judgementofantonidas]

I have been re-reading Charles Murray's plan for a UBI. I used to find his proposal pedantic but after reading his book, Coming Apart, I am beginning to see the merits of it.

In Coming Apart, Murray argues that upper middle class and working class white Americans have been divided both economically and culturally to a point where the U.S. lacks the moral unification it once had that made it a unique country where people of different classes did not hold contempt for one another. While he doesn't offer many policy solutions, he thinks a UBI might help remedy this.

To quote Murray:



Edit: I am aware this proposal is politically unrealistic. This is hypothetical.

More info:

(This link has 60 second videos about Murray's UBI) http://www.aei.org/publication/in-60...harles-murray/



Would you support this proposal over the status-quo?

well. that comes out to what about 833 dollars a month. it doesn't sound huge but that is about one extra pay check a month for me. it would go miles.

[Stormdash]

Universal welfare with pleasant euphemism. Hard pass.

[Aeula]

I'm no economist, but wouldn't giving everyone free money just make prices rise to compensate?

[I Push Buttons]

Murray isnt suggesting this out of some love for people or the welfare state. Murrays proposal also eliminates other government programs in favor of giving the UBI. It ends up being alot less received. Its really just another way of shrinking the state cause my freedom.

UBI is great but not if UBI is a tool to undermine the social safety net. Thats also why the OP is in favor of it. Its a trojan horse to sneak in practically religious libertarian ideology. In the aggregate you shrink the government and people will be poorer for it.

Pretty much this.

We still need safety nets on top of UBI, though in my opinion after we transition to a UBI, they should be MUCH more restrictive, otherwise it would more or less encourage one to squander their UBI, because they can still get more from the safety net.

The safety nets (under a UBI) should be the absolute bare minimum. Basically communal housing, like a college dorm, a stipend that can only be spent on food, etc...

- - - Updated - - -

I'm no economist, but wouldn't giving everyone free money just make prices rise to compensate?

Sure if the money was created out of thin air. UBI isn't creating wealth though, its redistributing it.

Obviously there will still be inflation, there always will be, but not so much as just printing more and more money.

[Elegiac]

Universal welfare with pleasant euphemism. Hard pass.

So what are people supposed to do when the natural rate of unemployment hits 20%?

[Endus]

Murray isnt suggesting this out of some love for people or the welfare state. Murrays proposal also eliminates other government programs in favor of giving the UBI. It ends up being alot less received. Its really just another way of shrinking the state cause my freedom.

UBI is great but not if UBI is a tool to undermine the social safety net. Thats also why the OP is in favor of it. Its a trojan horse to sneak in practically religious libertarian ideology. In the aggregate you shrink the government and people will be poorer for it.

Well, to play devil's advocate, one of the ideas behind basic income is that it WILL remove a lot of the need for basic social support systems, like unemployment and welfare, particularly. So the funding for those would largely no longer be needed. Same goes for things like disability; while that would likely warrant SOME additional funds, the bulk of what you should be getting is already covered. This removes the overhead of those programs, or at least greatly reduces it, because you don't need to evaluate candidates constantly to verify they still qualify; you would with the few who remain in need, but the majority would be covered by the basic income already. And the BI is easy to administer; you're a citizen? You're birthdate is what? You're alive? Here's your check. So it takes far less overhead to provide more support, essentially.

It's not meant to be as targeted, but the idea is that by shotgunning income into the economy, you fix most of the issues caused by poverty, and it costs you less than training to "hit the target".

It doesn't mean you wouldn't need those safety nets just in case, but you wouldn't see a significant percentage of the population falling into them in the first place to begin with.

To put it another way, the economy is a tightrope, currently. Those safety nets save lives, constantly. There's always people falling into them and crawling out. UBI is a nice, well-built bridge. Almost nobody will fall off it. But safety nets are probably still a good idea, for people jumping on purpose or the occasional crazy accident. You're just not expecting them to be in heavy use.

Universal welfare with pleasant euphemism. Hard pass.

Universal welfare doesn't need a "euphemism"; it's a good idea on its merits.

[Bullettime]

I'm no economist, but wouldn't giving everyone free money just make prices rise to compensate?

It's wealth redistribution and not creating money. Money that goes into other social programs like welfare and unemployment would be redirected into the new program, less required oversight and manpower would reduce additional spending, and most ideas about it come with increasing the corporate tax rate since one of the primary reasons for the UBI is to combat the inevitable unemployment spikes created by automation. Companies would have increased tax rates to help fund the system in place of them paying out labor costs due to automation the killing jobs. The payouts would increase with natural inflation. Money moving at the bottom also quickly circulates, meaning most of the money being issued would find its way right back into the economy.

[Toppy]

Well, to play devil's advocate, one of the ideas behind basic income is that it WILL remove a lot of the need for basic social support systems, like unemployment and welfare, particularly. So the funding for those would largely no longer be needed. Same goes for things like disability; while that would likely warrant SOME additional funds, the bulk of what you should be getting is already covered. This removes the overhead of those programs, or at least greatly reduces it, because you don't need to evaluate candidates constantly to verify they still qualify; you would with the few who remain in need, but the majority would be covered by the basic income already. And the BI is easy to administer; you're a citizen? You're birthdate is what? You're alive? Here's your check. So it takes far less overhead to provide more support, essentially.

It's not meant to be as targeted, but the idea is that by shotgunning income into the economy, you fix most of the issues caused by poverty, and it costs you less than training to "hit the target".

It doesn't mean you wouldn't need those safety nets just in case, but you wouldn't see a significant percentage of the population falling into them in the first place to begin with.

To put it another way, the economy is a tightrope, currently. Those safety nets save lives, constantly. There's always people falling into them and crawling out. UBI is a nice, well-built bridge. Almost nobody will fall off it. But safety nets are probably still a good idea, for people jumping on purpose or the occasional crazy accident. You're just not expecting them to be in heavy use.



Universal welfare doesn't need a "euphemism"; it's a good idea on its merits.

Its an incredibly hard sell is the biggest problem. Despite being capable of so incredibly much good, all you'd see people talking about is "Oh did you see that video of that scary gangster who spent their monthly check on booze!" because people just generally do not know how the economy works. Its as you said, an economy does not need a workforce to work. All it needs is money going into it. Someone spending a thousand dollars on booze isnt much different from someone spending it on groceries from an economic standpoint.

Its not money gets this magical properly to it once you work for it that makes it more valuable to the econemy. A thousand dollars made making calls on a phone is the same as a thousand dollars you are given. Yes in this case its coming from the government, but that doesnt matter, what matters is where the income is going. More spending means more growth means more GPD means more cash to the government.

But all people see if "Those lazy people are getting money?! THATS HORRIBLE."

[Zarc]

From the perspective of social liberalism I support a basic income, though it would be great to see it tried out on a smaller scale before making a broader reform of the welfare system, which I believe is happening in several places at the moment, like somewhere in Finland and also in Switzerland or something like that. You'd also have to do a lot of math before being able to say where the initial amount of the income should be at, and given that Charles Murray is a libertarian conservative I would be inclined to be very skeptical of the number he came up with and his means of financing it. No love lost for that ideology and while I'd love for them to be on board I wouldn't want them in the driver's seat on this. But I believe that even one of the most crazy right-libertarians of all time, Milton Friedman aka the father of anarcho-capitalism and whose economic ideas influenced Reaganomics and Tatcherism and who deserves a healthy dose of credit for the Great Recession, supported it at som point so I know it somehow exits within that ideological tradition. But of course some version of basic income has support from all kinds of ideological traditions, like British economist Guy Standing who I guess is a democratic socialist.

Anyway, I'd probobly call it a citizen's salary and I'd probobly mandate a minority part of the amount to participation in the civic duty of voting in elections, even if you vote blank. Because I kind of like mandatory voting like they have in Australia but I can't quite justify having mandatory voting from a liberal point of view, so this is like a clever way around that ideological block. I'd also want higher education to be free throughout life, like it already is in very many Western countries but of course in this kind of society that would be an even bigger enterprise, so that we get a culture where going to a place of work is always a possibility for everybody, whether that be your conventional workplace or whether that be the workplace that is a school, a university in this case. Every city of a reasonable size would have a university full of life where people can gather and go to learn new sets of skills throughout life so that they have the opportunity to go after the jobs that are needed and of course make more money than what the basic income gives you, as most people would want.

[Endus]

Its an incredibly hard sell is the biggest problem. Despite being capable of so incredibly much good, all you'd see people talking about is "Oh did you see that video of that scary gangster who spent their monthly check on booze!" because people just generally do not know how the economy works. Its as you said, an economy does not need a workforce to work. All it needs is money going into it. Someone spending a thousand dollars on booze isnt much different from someone spending it on groceries from an economic standpoint.

Its not money gets this magical properly to it once you work for it that makes it more valuable to the econemy. A thousand dollars made making calls on a phone is the same as a thousand dollars you are given. Yes in this case its coming from the government, but that doesnt matter, what matters is where the income is going. More spending means more growth means more GPD means more cash to the government.

But all people see if "Those lazy people are getting money?! THATS HORRIBLE."

The biggest issue is there's been no real long-term implementation of it in practice. The few tests they've run, like the Mincome project in Canada, worked well, but due to their smaller scope and duration, people call their results into question (somewhat without warrant, but still).

Ontario's got a BI pilot running now, with province-wide implementation planned if it works out well. Hopefully that works out and we can get some broad-scale information on functionality.

[Glorious Leader]

Well, to play devil's advocate, one of the ideas behind basic income is that it WILL remove a lot of the need for basic social support systems, like unemployment and welfare, particularly. So the funding for those would largely no longer be needed. Same goes for things like disability; while that would likely warrant SOME additional funds, the bulk of what you should be getting is already covered. This removes the overhead of those programs, or at least greatly reduces it, because you don't need to evaluate candidates constantly to verify they still qualify; you would with the few who remain in need, but the majority would be covered by the basic income already. And the BI is easy to administer; you're a citizen? You're birthdate is what? You're alive? Here's your check. So it takes far less overhead to provide more support, essentially.

It's not meant to be as targeted, but the idea is that by shotgunning income into the economy, you fix most of the issues caused by poverty, and it costs you less than training to "hit the target".

It doesn't mean you wouldn't need those safety nets just in case, but you wouldn't see a significant percentage of the population falling into them in the first place to begin with.

To put it another way, the economy is a tightrope, currently. Those safety nets save lives, constantly. There's always people falling into them and crawling out. UBI is a nice, well-built bridge. Almost nobody will fall off it. But safety nets are probably still a good idea, for people jumping on purpose or the occasional crazy accident. You're just not expecting them to be in heavy use.



Universal welfare doesn't need a "euphemism"; it's a good idea on its merits.

Lets say murray or whomever gets a law passed that grants a UBI for 10k. Everyone celebrates. Then a bunch of politicians decide well you folks are getting a basic income now so you dont need healthcare, a min wage, rent geared to income, food assitance, and whatever other social services becase we gave you 10k and you should be good to purchase those on a market now. All those programs hit the chopping block and in real terms people receive less because UBI is a justification to shrink the government and eliminate social assitance.

Its tojan horse libertarianism. It doesnt have to be. The ontario government is increasing social assistance ( kids are getting free prescriptions for example)while testing a UBI but when murray or some other right wing clown pushes for it hold on to your wallet.

[Toppy]

Lets say murray or whomever gets a law passed that grants a UBI for 10k. Everyone celebrates. Then a bunch of politicians decide well you folks are getting a basic income now so you dont need healthcare, a min wage, rent geared to income, food assitance, and whatever other social services becase we gave you 10k and you should be good to purchase those on a market now. All those programs hit the chopping block and in real terms people receive less because UBI is a justification to shrink the government and eliminate social assitance.

Its tojan horse libertarianism. It doesnt have to be. The ontario government is increasing social assistance ( kids are getting free prescriptions for example)while testing a UBI but when murray or some other right wing clown pushes for it hold on to your wallet.

The world is quiet the bleak place for you innit?

[Endus]

Lets say murray or whomever gets a law passed that grants a UBI for 10k. Everyone celebrates. Then a bunch of politicians decide well you folks are getting a basic income now so you dont need healthcare, a min wage, rent geared to income, food assitance, and whatever other social services becase we gave you 10k and you should be good to purchase those on a market now. All those programs hit the chopping block and in real terms people receive less because UBI is a justification to shrink the government and eliminate social assitance.

Its tojan horse libertarianism. It doesnt have to be. The ontario government is increasing social assistance ( kids are getting free prescriptions for example)while testing a UBI but when murray or some other right wing clown pushes for it hold on to your wallet.

Right. I know Murray's goal. I'm making the "it doesn't have to be" counter-argument.

[Glorious Leader]

The world is quiet the bleak place for you innit?

meh. I'm naturally suspicious when my political and ideological opponents adopt a position I share. Murray is not in favor of UBI out of any progressive or charitable notions.

[Bullettime]

meh. I'm naturally suspicious when my political and ideological opponents adopt a position I share. Murray is not in favor of UBI out of any progressive or charitable notions.

Eh doesn't necessarily have to be tbh. At least if both sides can agree on it being something we need down the line, that's still progress and there's time to iron out the kinks.

[Glorious Leader]

Eh doesn't necessarily have to be tbh. At least if both sides can agree on it being something we need down the line, that's still progress and there's time to iron out the kinks.

Its less about kinks and more about fundamentals. They see UBI as a means to shrink the state so they can cut taxes and ultimately offer less assistance to everyone who isnt mega wealthy and elite. UBI as a progressive concept is quite far removed from that.


@Didactic said it best a couple posts ago and im sure Murray and the so called right libertarians would be offended by this but the UBI should cover cost of living so folks dont have to work and labor markers can actually reflect costs. Libertarians actually should be in favor of this because their is nothing more liberating then being able to tell your master/boss/priests to fuck off but the Us libertarian (rightfully called propertian imo) is naturally against this proposal. These are diametrically opposing and i have no interest supporting propositions that fulfil these ends. Its really a matter of intent because thats how legislation will be crafted. In the same way i have no interest in ron paul or.koch brother politics even if it comes with a bong.

[Tinykong]

Murray isnt suggesting that though. Hes arguing for a BIG and an elimination of the social safety net. This will make conditions worse but will have the effect of shrinking government which is ultimately the real goal.

Any UBI program needs to happen in a society where the social safety net is strong. Otherwise its just an excuse for a bigger tax cut. The US is incredible shaky in this regard.

I'm fine with cutting the other programs, provided the UBI amount is basically just whatever it costs to live. Medical care, housing, food, utilities, maybe a small transportation stipend, plus whatever else a person needs to just exist in a housing unit.