We'll need universal basic income – Geoffrey Hinton

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnd607ekl99o

by rntn • 2 years ago

66 69 2 years ago

I don't think it'll work. UBI is a dole. The Romans had that-- when they acquired enough slaves so that the farmer class were no longer running many little farms it turned the core the empire-- their capable farmers, into clients.

I think however, that UBI may be worse than the Roman bread doles. Those were after all only food, but money are every kind of resource. There was also still a need for the client class, since they were in fact still a source of soldiers of the empire.

The change that UBI makes in modern times is that it changes people who are important and who co-operate in order to make things and get them to others are turned into just a cost which never produces anything. Consequently it'll always be appealing to get rid of them.

The only way ordinary people can survive is by having power, and UBI is not enough. If you need UBI you should probably have already had a revolution and seized control because the rulers can always end it.

Consequently I don't see how UBI can be a solution. It must be something else. I believe a reduction in working hours could work for a while, at least a decade, but won't be enough in the long run and I'm far from certain that there is a solution.

Another problem we've had here in Sweden is that people try to fund these things by taxing successful workers instead of capital owners etc., so it's a rebalancing within the working class while the genuinely rich are unaffected. Because any rebalancing of tax from ordinary people to the rich will cause inflation and reduced investment due to the fact that ordinary people spend a larger fraction of their incomes on consumer products it'll always be appealing to make this purely a rebalancing between workers.

Thus there isn't just one failure mode, but two.

coldtea• 2 years ago

The only way ordinary people can survive is by having power, and UBI is not enough. If you need UBI you should probably have already had a revolution and seized control because the rulers can always end it.

The problem is not much that the rulers can end it, but that they'll continue it in perpetuity. Or if you wish, that they will only selectively end it, or threaten to end it, for some - as a punishment of disobedience.

UBI's allure from the point of view of those in power is it turns citizens into dependents. So people not working, and not having power, thus turning into "clients", is kind the whole point.

So, yeah, the version of UBI that doesn't have that drawback, is UBI in a society where the masses have seized the control and are actively exercizing it too (not eager to give it back).

lo0dot0• 2 years ago

All power originates from the people.

viraptor5• 2 years ago

are turned into just a cost which never produces anything.

The whole premise here is incorrect. Every time UBI is tried, this scenario does not happen. You can find study after study that finds the same thing. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/univer...

Economists found that it doesn’t make them work less. It does lead to improved education and mental health, and decreased addiction and crime.

DamnYuppie• 2 years ago

They have never tried on a large scale over a large timeline. Behavior changes will not happen over night.

rahimnathwani6• 2 years ago

Most of the schemes listed on that page fall short of what I consider to be UBI. In particular, most fail to provide enough money for someone to fund their basic needs (food and shelter).

Are you aware of any UBI experiments where the recipients are confident that both:

1) the amount will cover their basic needs, and

2) the scheme will last forever?

The reason I'm asking is that if either of these conditions were not met, the recipient would be crazy to stop working.

If someone were to commit to giving you $10k/month forever, increasing with inflation, you might quit your job. If it were only $500/month, you'd probably keep working. If it were $10k/month, but the payments might stop after a year, you'd probably keep working.

(Not 'you' specifically of course. I know nothing of your personal situation.)

pfannkuchen3• 2 years ago

You seem to be assuming that UBI qualitative effects are scale invariant for both population and time. Why do you assume that?

There is a tendency among many people to give precedence to a scientific study over pure reasoning even when the degree of relevance of the scientific study is tiny. It’s like schools don’t teach how to determine if a study is applicable and so people often do it very clumsily. This is a dangerous error.

thegrim33• 2 years ago

As an aside, linking to vox.com as proof of some claim doesn't really help your cause. If you want people to take you seriously try to at least cite data from a source that isn't one of the most biased and tarnished major media organizations in the country.

impossiblefork3• 2 years ago

That's not the sense I meant it in. Yes, people will of course not be idle while they get the UBI, but they are no longer likely to be these integrated cogs in a machine.

If you work in a team programming something or similar, then you are co-operating to produce a product, and if you've got a civilised company you'll all end up friends. You've had a common goal and you've worked towards it together in an honest way. Furthermore, you are necessary to society. Even if the political and economic elite are not in on this work, and are not participating in it in an honest way, the success of your work is something they need, thus they need you.

But here the reason why we're instituting UBI is that people are no longer necessary to production.

This is similar to something about the resource curse. When countries need their workers for wealth they tend to need to ensure that their workers have good conditions, but if they can get away with just extracting oil or natural resources, then the good conditions disappear. AI will reduce the need for workers to the point of UBI, so it will become more like the extractive work in these states with less good conditions.

So my objection isn't to UBI as such, it's that I think UBI doesn't go far enough. Having thought some more since yesterday evening I think it may even be so that for the situation to be stable the people on UBI need to basically rule the country full-time. A mega-parliament with very great power. So as society moves away from work ordinary people need to move away from work and towards ruling.

kzurell• 2 years ago

UBI has already worked. We hunt and forage food and water, but air and gravity are supplied for free, the latter being inescapably mandatory (good luck ending it, rulers). They're not nothing, not "but that's different", there's wattage in all.

We talk about tax and money like they're natural theories, when we could easily pursue compatible, interoperable regimes that meet the UBI design brief. If price is value then change in price is a proxy for externalities, so tax transactions based on change in instantaneous price. The power to do so is in divide and conquer, between rentiers who value stability and those who cultivate volatility. The Not-In-My-Back-Office corporate leadership creates gigahertz iPads but never seems to buy their way out of overnight transaction clearing and filing labyrinthine returns for some reason.

I hate being livestock in the "incentive" farm. We almost all do. And while I appreciate insights about the Roman Empire as much as any white male...it's less the done thing these days. :)

petre2• 2 years ago

try to fund these things by taxing successful workers instead of capital owners

The capital will just flee to other places if they do that. In fact it already does.

But I agree, UBI will never work. It will just generate inflation and drive prices up, like the Biden Administration's America Rescue Plan did by giving away $1400 checks to people.

timschmidt4• 2 years ago

"While labor and nonlabor input costs have played a role in price increases, corporate profits drove 53 percent of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023 and more than one-third since the start of the pandemic. Comparatively, over the 40 years prior to the pandemic, they drove just 11 percent of price growth."

https://groundworkcollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/...

impossiblefork3• 2 years ago

Yes, but I believe that this can be solved if capital comes from wages-- i.e. large-scale mandatory savings as a fraction of wages, set by each country's central bank and raised in times of inflation, lowered in times of deflation.

slwvx• 2 years ago

I view payments to low-income people as the state "buying low", with the expectation that they will be able to "sell high" when those same people pay taxes later when they gain a higher income. Such payments are investment by the state in its people. Sure, not every investment pays off, but investors still invest in high risk ventures. Societies should similarly invest in low income people.

A UBI would go to everyone, but the benefits would accrue largely to low-income people, hence my focus above.

KptMarchewa• 2 years ago

Not really, it's an insurance against rebellion - just as Bismarck intended with first social programs. If you give people some low levels of safety, but consistent, predictable safety, they will happily hand the billionaire class the real fruits of their labor.

timschmidt4• 2 years ago

It can be both.

DrNosferatu2• 2 years ago

A better idea is just to more efficiently redistribute economic efficiency gains brought by new technology by a broader part of Society.

riwsky• 2 years ago

Tautological!

DrNosferatu2• 2 years ago

What we need is another Bretton Woods - serving the majority of the large population.

wizzwizz45• 2 years ago

The concept of a universal basic income amounts to the government paying all individuals a set salary regardless of their means.
Critics say it would be extremely costly and divert funding away from public services, while not necessarily helping to alleviate poverty.

I'm not sure why the reporter wrote this. Have there been any failed UBI studies, ever? (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/univer... purports to list all of them, and doesn't list any failed studies.) The illusion of balance should not come at the expense of truth.

jncfhnb7• 2 years ago

How about Alaska, using a link from your own article?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-...

The fund is running out of money and there have been cuts to public services to keep it going because it’s now a political must have

https://alaskabeacon.com/2024/02/19/permanent-fund-corp-boar...

rahimnathwani6• 2 years ago

And that's not even UBI.

Unless $2k is enough to pay for a year of food, shelter and heating in Alaska.

wizzwizz45• 2 years ago

The Alaska Permanent Fund funds more than just the Permanent Fund Dividend (their UBI initiative): it's a source of funding for the whole government. These issues seem specific to that. Per your second link, the budget issues are due to wider changes in the economy, and affect everything. Given how long the Permanent Fund Dividend existed without causing any issues, is there anything specific that can be blamed on the PFD?

Your first link is just about politics. Per the data table on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Fund_Dividend#Annual...), the massive increase described in that article didn't happen. In 2018, the PFD payout was $1600; in 2019, it was $1606. Not $6700.

If adequate, long-term funding can be acquired, I don't see why a UBI initiative should have these issues. The general principle "money represents other people's labour" applies, so if UBI prevents people from performing valuable labour within the economy (i.e., working for money), that could cause problems (though my instinct says that performing valuable services for others should be enough to avoid problems, regardless of whether payment is involved). Is there evidence of that happening in Alaska? doi:10.2139/ssrn.3118343 (also from "my" article) argues not.

For somewhere that isn't Alaska, the money would presumably have to come from taxes. I don't know enough to design that, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible – especially if UBI has positive effects on the economy, as some theorists claim. (I don't tend to trust economic theorists.)

rahimnathwani6• 2 years ago

Those studies are testing 'unconditional cash transfers'.

Which of the listed studies actually test UBI (covering all basic needs, guaranteed to have no time limit)?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40403308

workphone1• 2 years ago

Has anyone ever explained how UBI would be funded? The US has 300 million people so at, say $500 monthly per person, it’ll cost $1.8 trillion annually just for this one program.

slater• 2 years ago

Implementing UBI doesn't mean everyone gets money. Those with jobs, for example, or those with millions in the bank, won't. But you likely know this already.

tpmoney• 2 years ago

If it doesn't go to everyone, it fails the first descriptor "Universal".

Never mind cutting off "those with jobs" would introduce all sorts of problems like we see with similar "benefit cliffs" for just basic welfare systems.

sowbug• 2 years ago

Part of the promise of UBI is lower administrative costs and reduced political pork. Adding in conditions like the ones you propose would be expensive and arbitrary.

brunoarueira• 2 years ago

In Brazil, many benefits occurs like that by age, gender, low-income or other discriminatory rule and multiple times to drive this group to vote into specific parties, perpetuating the low-income and maintain as maneuver mass or a ventriloquist dummy.

timschmidt4• 2 years ago

Couldn't do worse than the way fractional lending or quantitative easing are currently funded.

jltsiren2• 2 years ago

Pretty much every serious proposal, because that't the essence of the "basic income" part.

In a system with income-dependent benefits, poor people usually have the highest marginal tax rates. Often something like 70-90%, and sometimes above 100%. Not because of nominal taxes but due to losing benefits when their income increases.

Basic income can be largely cost-neutral. It would replace most common benefits, and it would be funded by most people paying a flat tax rate for all of their income. Typically you would see it only as an accounting trick: your nominal income tax is higher, but you receive a large automatic tax credit. People receiving benefits would have more incentives to work, which is the primary effect.

petre2• 2 years ago

So offer tax deductions if they have a family, for each kid they have, if they pay rent etc. France is already doing that for individual enterprises. No need to give away cash or checks and people do have an incentive to actually work. And don't call it UBI when it's not.

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

It does seem inevitable that there would be a UBI as there is continued centralization of wealth and power (see tech giants for example), increased automation (in factories now but soon in other things), and reduced need for human labor. We either find a way to make those people live good lives (not just bare minimum lives) or we can except destabilization in our societies - as in either people revolt or the country turns authoritarian. I’m not sure where all this leads - like do people have the “right” to keep having children that may not contribute economically but do create an economic cost? But I think we’ll need UBI before we confront those bigger questions.

throwaway22032• 2 years ago

The entire system as it stands exists because you are necessary to those with power.

When you're not, you will either revolt or die. To think otherwise is rank naivety.

pedalpete3• 2 years ago

I quite like Sam Altman's recent take on UBI being given a resource which has value rather than being given dollars directly.

He was suggesting the people could be given "compute" which they then decide how to use. Though I don't deny this could be a loop-hole to create value in something like WorldCoin, my hope is that it would change the considerations of the people who have it.

When we think of UBI, we don't often think of money as the resource, but rather as the thing people use to buy things.

If that conversation changed to providing a resource which the person could use to earn, does that make the recipient more of a farmer or fisherman, rather than just being given a fish.

We rarely think of UBI as cash payment as something that the recipient would use as an allocation to create something for themselves.

Though I don't think this is a simple answer, I'd like us to think in these terms more, and Sam Altman has recently opened this window to my thinking.

bick_nyers• 2 years ago

The issue I take with that is that it's another layer of abstraction that can be warped /inflated/etc. Similarly, mobile games often have a "game currency" that you purchase to obfuscate the true cost of a purchase.

It's easier to splurge with a card than it is with cash because it feels more abstract, particularly if it's credit.

lesuorac2• 2 years ago

If that conversation changed to providing a resource which the person could use to earn, does that make the recipient more of a farmer or fisherman, rather than just being given a fish.

Tieing UBI to working pretty much is counter to the word Universal.

Existing schemes which aren't UBI but are tied to working have caused a lot of problems where an individual is unable to work for some reason (possibly dealing with keeping access to the scheme) lose the benefits from the scheme and not cannot work as they needed those benefits.

Although I think the larger issue is that whatever resource you need to have enough of it and fungible enough to distribute. Distributing just one fish to 300 million Americans is actually nearly impossible. There's a reason the stimulus checks were done through the IRS; it's pretty hard to do things at this scale.

pedalpete3• 2 years ago

I may not be understanding what you mean by "working". The Universal is that everyone gets a guaranteed amount, maybe every month, which they can allocate. They can use it themselves to earn, or they can be paid by others to use theirs.

Money is actually no different really, except that we trade money directly goods. I look at this as a layer of abstraction which provides a re-framing. I don't think we're going to get rid of money, and will money move to be an allocation of AI credits? Maybe, but I hope not.

When someone is given $500/month, I believe the reaction for most people, outside of covid times when spending was a challenge, is, what will I spend this on. Given a resource that has an intermediate step and could be valuable to many people, the mentality may change to "what should I sell this for?".

The person can chose to donate it to a cause they feel valuable, sell it to the highest bidder, or multiple options in between.

That's my hope anyway, but if it was just dropped in tomorrow without the right social guardrails in place, I doubt it would work out like this.

As far as scalability, with hundreds of billions being spend on compute in order to train AI, I doubt scalability of distribution would be a major issue.

stubish2• 2 years ago

I was thinking about UBI the other day, and was unable to reconcile how it could work given people have different needs. For example, 'the poverty line' here is just under $24,000/yr. But someone on disability support may well be getting $70,000/yr or more to pay for special needs (real example of MS sufferer). With a 'proper' UBI, other forms of welfare would disappear to help pay for it, which would require giving everyone $70,000/yr (or leaving the disabled to their fate). And at triple the current poverty line UBI, getting the in-home help necessary to survive independently would likely be impossible as care industry workers are already in short supply. So we would need to retain at least disability support, and have a much lower UBI, probably below the poverty line. And we would likely still need everyone not on disability support to work, to drag their income up to at least the poverty line so they can survive with some dignity. So without full employment, we would need unemployment benefits as well. In which case, what has the UBI given us? Maybe we just need less wasteful and more compassionate unemployment, disability and aged care support?

Or maybe things change when we consider hereditary wealth? With a below poverty line UBI, middle and upper classes could survive and maybe live quite comfortably with the income boost from investments, with the lower classes having to work to earn enough to pay their landlords.

mistrial9• 2 years ago

no this is unconstructive as it gets even worse than your example with special medical needs .. the way this evens out in that case is to expand the capacity of medical treatment such that they can provide acceptable intervention and monitoring for the special needs person.. A different angle is that somehow, in the West, the family unit has been morphed into something in the background.. many places in the world with dense populations rely on extended and long term family definitions to accommodate basic needs and special circumstances for individuals

stubish2• 2 years ago

So keep disability and aged care support, but drop all other welfare in favor of a UBI at around the poverty line or higher if budget allows? I can now see that working, and needing to pay care workers much more to get enough willing participants is probably a good thing.

I don't think we can rely on family or extended family any more. Even in countries with strong extended family and community support structures, people get left behind. And usually the people who need the most support, with mental illness or addiction or social problems driving others away.

mcswell• 2 years ago

As usual, the science fiction authors have thought about this lots. Here's one example from before most of you were born:

https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781481483063/9781481483063___...

Of course you don't need to agree with the conclusion!

binary132• 2 years ago

I’m not commenting on this way or another, but if we went to UBI, what would the incentive be for me to work, presuming a basic income is suitable to raise my family on in safe, clean housing, and also presuming that the resources to implement a UBI will be extracted from people like me whose labor is more valuable?

DGCA• 2 years ago

Wanting more than the bare minimum, I imagine.

euroderf• 2 years ago

While we're at it, how 'bout vending machines for sufficient free food ? Insert an ID and get a day's supply of fortified biscuits, not guaranteed to be particularly tasty, resale/arbitrage value is low, manufacturing cost is low. In less dense areas, an autonomous bot shows up like a bookmobile or the ice cream truck.

We'll need universal basic income – Geoffrey Hinton

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