@profoundlynerdy @changaco

Utilitarian: to reduce income disparity in the society beyond levels at which they threaten stability.

Based on Christian/Muslim ethics: because it's the right thing to do.

@profoundlynerdy Thomas Paine's “Agrarian Justice” contains one of the many possible answers to your questions. He wasn't advocating for a full UBI, but his reasoning can be used to justify this kind of policy.

Link: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice

@kravietz

@changaco @profoundlynerdy

Also worth adding that in terms of general "why benefits" there was a significant discussion among early economists on that subject back in 19th century. One of the most systematic voices on that topic was... Adam Smith, who is today associated with laissez-faire market - incorrectly, and mostly by under-educated neoliberals. In his "Inquiry ..." he lays ideas that today would be probably classified as "socialism", especially in the US. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#chap35

@kravietz @changaco While not the ~~droids~~ math-y response I'm looking for, citing Adam Smith is helpful; thanks!

Is that his first book *Wealth of Nations* or his other work? I can't remember the title of his second book. Too much blood in the caffeine stream at the moment.

@profoundlynerdy

"Inquiry..." is what I linked, the other is "Theory of moral sentiments" and goes even deeper into the ethics of free market.

@changaco

@kravietz @changaco That's the name of the book I was blanking on. Thanks.

@profoundlynerdy

Probably the best modern retrospection into that work of Smith - Tomas Sedlacek

@changaco

@profoundlynerdy

And yes, the full title is "Inquiry into the wealth of nations"

@changaco

@kravietz @changaco @profoundlynerdy Worth repeating indeed. Adam Smith's views on the role of the state are still relevant today.

@wim_v12e @kravietz @changaco I'm mostly a night-watchman state guy. I want to see the State do as little as possible beyond providing for the common defense.

@profoundlynerdy @kravietz @changaco
Adam Smith envisaged a rather greater role for the state, but there is no reason why you should agree with him.

@profoundlynerdy @wim_v12e @changaco

The power of capitalism lies in its flexibility and "whatever works" pragmatism. If you start artificially limiting what is allowed and what is not then it's not, then it loses this pragmatic approach at the cost of dogmatism. Smith specifically did not come up with his ideas for public schooling (as an example) from ideological position, but he built an evidence-based argument for it.

@profoundlynerdy @changaco @kravietz Every European country is a social democratic mixed economy with a welfare state, and with social benefits.

A system of social benefits is in practice setting a minimal level of income, but it's an awkward one. It requires a heavy bureaucracy, the purpose of which is to deny social benefits to an appropriate number of people, and it introduces a benefits trap where you might not be able to afford to take a particular job, because you would lose more in benefits than you would gain in salary.

A UBI turns this on its head by not having any conditions on the minimum level of income. You can maintain the same money supply through income taxation instead, and this eliminates the benefits trap.

@profoundlynerdy @changaco @kravietz Why social benefits?

Some people like Otto von Bismarck, the conservative who invented the welfare state, want it because it undermines support for communism and stops the poor from overthrowing the state.

Others want it because they don't want to live in a country where some people don't have homes and/or cannot find a better means of survival than begging.

Many people don't think capitalism needs to apply all the way down to not having any income at all to be an effective way to promote productivity and entrepreneurship.

@clacke @changaco @kravietz

> Many people don't think capitalism needs to apply all the way down to not having any income at all to be an effective way to promote productivity

This is why voluntary mutual aid societies need to exist. They're local to the community and understand who can be helped and who cannot be helped. They have an incentive to provide the most efficient forms of aid and keep overhead low.

@clacke
Yes, we cannot underestimate the ills of the #bureaucracy. In many cases they get things wrong. In #Australia one need only find the #robodebt problem, but there is a long list of way they get things wrong. And people are not reimbursed for the hundreds of hours they spend clawing back what they own, because they can't show actual losses, being #unemployed.

Its quite vicious.

Also #FutureWork of the #AustraliaInstitute found that…(1/2)
@profoundlynerdy @changaco @kravietz

@clacke @profoundlynerdy @changaco @kravietz
(2/2)…Also FutureWork of the AustraliaInstitute found that the bureaucracy surrounding #UnemploymentSupport including #enforcement and other auxillary services costs around 100 billion per annum, and that a #UBI would cost around the same amount.

Also removes a perverseIncentive to buy property as a nestEgg for the kids and the need to pump a country with more people to boost house prices etc.

(Also see our Progressive #LandTax (on #RentalValue))

@dsfgs

To be honest, having this discussion here at this level of evidence-based argument is one reason why I love Mastodon.

@clacke @profoundlynerdy @changaco

@kravietz @dsfgs @clacke @changaco Indeed!

I've had some very deep conversations with people on this site, often over disagreements just like this.

@clacke @profoundlynerdy @changaco @kravietz

and, of course, the costs of bureaucracy itself are not to be underestimated. in one case in florida, where welfare payments required drug-testing, the drug-testing part cost more money than the amount that was "saved" (and, of course, it ran on a rather dubious idea that people who have a drug addiction shouldn't get welfare).

@clacke @changaco @kravietz

Right, but I have yet to see hard math that says (a) this will work as described and (b) the "cure" isn't worse than the disease.

I understand you have your eye on the poor, but I'm worried about the opportunity cost of helping the poor *in this specific way* with UBI.

See "Economics in One Lesson" (Kindle/Audible) for a deep dive on opportunity cost concerns.

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/

@profoundlynerdy It's impossible to prove with “hard math” that UBI would work as hoped. We can discuss the issue until we're all blue in the face, and run lots of simulations, but the only way to know for sure is to take the leap.

@clacke @kravietz

@changaco @clacke @kravietz You're correct and you're not.

The ability to simulate human economic choice runs into hard limits. Just look at New Coke: it was focus grouped to death and everyone thought it was the next big thing. A sizable percentage were *pissed* and flipped people in the middle. There is no way to simulate when that kind of thing will occur.

But "does enough wealth exist to make this a viable possibility?" I think we can answer with hard math. I strongly suspect the answer is, "No."

@profoundlynerdy The answer to “can we afford a UBI?” is almost trivial. You can easily compute how much money is needed to fund a UBI of a specific amount in a specific country, and compare this gross cost to the country's GDP and any other relevant metric.

If I remember correctly the result for France is a gross cost of approximately 25% of GDP for a UBI with an amount similar to the current benefits. The net cost is almost exactly half the gross cost, and of course UBI would replace most of the existing benefits, so in this scenario transitioning to a UBI would increase public spending by 12% of GDP at most.

@clacke @kravietz

@profoundlynerdy @clacke @kravietz Errata: it was 25% of the sum of taxable incomes, not 25% of GDP, so the numbers in my previous message should have been 15% and 7% of GDP respectively.