UBI/welfare works very differently in a scarcity economy like the Pilgrims' and in a close-to-post-scarcity economy like ours. In fact, I wonder to what extent we're already post-scarcity, we just don't have the logistics worked out to make it realistic. I think that's a much more interesting question than whether UBI is a good idea in the abstract. It seems to me it's an obviously bad idea when the risk of people not working is an existential threat to your society, and an obviously good idea when it's not.

For instance, if wizards showed up tomorrow with the ability to create unbounded amounts of food, clothing, housing, and medicine, it would make little sense to deny those resources to everyone who needed them.

> Money is generally a proxy for the value of other things and one of those things is human labor. UBI actively discourages human labor and cuts the ties between money and the creation of actual value. I think this is enormously dangerous and a bad idea.

I agree with that, but I also think that this already applies to the rich. Once you own a certain amount of money, our existing systems already discourage human labor and encourage you to spend your time re-investing your money, paying other people for labor, etc. Once you own a bit more, our systems discourage even that and encourage you to spend your time moving your money to offshore banks, lobbying the government, etc. Once you own a bit more, our systems encourage you to spend money trying to just be the government.

So we need to figure out how to cope with a society of people who are disconnected from money in that way, independent of whether UBI is a good idea or not.

Alternatively, we need to find a way to prevent people from exiting the state of being dependent on their labor - no engineers with windfalls from their employer's IPOs, no business magnates, no trust funds or inheritances enough to pay for more than your college education, etc. Everyone needs to keep working until retirement, and nothing you do will let you retire early. I suspect that option is too politically distasteful to everyone (probably even to myself) to make it viable. (That said, most obvious way to do it is extremely heavy taxation, at which point you can afford a generous welfare state.)

Just for the record: This is not something I'm suggesting and I absolutely don't agree with it.

This is part of my mental framework:

Americans are slaves to the grind in part because cheap housing options simply don't exist anymore and our health care system has very serious problems with regards to the financial end of things. Addressing those two issues would give Americans real relief. Instituting UBI in the US without first addressing those things would actively discourage the US from trying to address those issues. If you don't address them, no amount of "free money" fixes our problems.

This is not argument. I just don't want other people to come through here, read what you have said and go "well, that must be what she means and I'm not for a system that denies people leisure time and retirement."

If people want to know what I think, they can ask me what I think (or read my writing elsewhere in some cases). Please don't rely on other people's mental models to decide what I supposedly think.

And I do actually think that's a coherent system, and I personally think that it is in some ways more humane than our current one, so I don't even mean that such a system is negative. I also don't think such a system needs to deny people leisure time and retirement: I did specifically suggest that such a system would involve retirement, just no early retirement. Since the vast majority of people in our current society have that option closed off to them in practice, this doesn't strike me as unjust.

As a straw man, let's say minimum wage is N, and taxes cause your net earnings to approach 1.2N asymptotically as you make more and more income. You can apply for government support if you make less than N for good reason, or if you hit retirement age. That puts strong pressure on housing and healthcare to be reasonably priced, because people can't pay more than a certain amount - nobody has it. But it also ensures that everyone, rich and poor alike, must work to eat. (That is, in this system there's no UBI; there should still be some sort of social safety net for people who can't work, but no support is provided for people who can work but won't, until retirement age.) At most, you can take a sabbatical every 6 years, in theory; in practice it'd be less than that. Such a system will strongly incentivize the richest among us to support generous labor conditions (vacations, leave for childcare, etc.) because problems will apply to them just about as much as to anyone else.

There are a bunch of practical flaws with this straw man proposal, but I would argue that if we genuinely value the link between how much money you have and your labor, we should be thinking about systems that more closely resemble it than the ones we have now. I'm just genuinely undecided on the value of that link, because I don't have enough information - we don't have a good idea of what a society looks like when you can set up that link and you have copious amounts of "free money" to go around.

I think there is value in doing work, but I don't think we need a system that ties your income to your labor per se. It's fine if the system ties your income to your ability to add value to the system in some way.

Education, know how and stewardship are all important ways to add value to the system. They are all ways to add value while reducing our own direct dependence on labor per se.

I'm fine with rich people owning shares in a company.

I'm fine with founders getting rich.

I'm fine with college grants and a system that actively encourages and financially rewards the pursuit of education.

I'm not okay with a system that cuts ties between human choices and financial outcomes because I think when you do that, you will eventually kill the goose that's laying your golden eggs.

People need to know "The goose is sacred. Don't kill the goose. This how the gold gets made."

And UBI sends the signal that it comes from nowhere for doing nothing and I think that's a fast track to cutting our own throats.

Insisting humans need to still figure out how to effectively interact with the system so the system produces things of value is intended to protect the ability of the world to keep producing things of value. I think UBI destroys that.

I think it is a superficial, inelegant answer. We need deep and elegant answers.

We aren't going to find them if we don't even bother to look because we went with UBI.

My personal vision of UBI is that it should provide what you need to live but not what you need to have a good life - i.e., if you so much as want a Switch with Animal Crossing, you have to contribute to the system and earn it (via labor or otherwise - in this system you could still get arbitrarily rich, and you can reinvest your earnings), but if you want (non-fancy) meals and (personal) housing and medical care, nothing is required from you, we treat that as an inalienable right. I think such a system still maintains the link you want to protect, right?

Maybe this is not really what people mean by UBI? (Perhaps I should call this "welfare without means-testing" or something?)

One of those is a good health care system. It benefits the public to make sure everyone can see a doctor if they need to, even if they are broke.

Letting poor people just get sicker and sicker tends to negatively impact other people and force costs up. When done well, universal health care doesn't inherently have adverse incentives. It doesn't actively encourage people to get sick so they can consume more medical care.

Another area that can simultaneously shrink individual burden and public burden is good housing policies that make it possible for people of limited means to find adequate housing that supports a reasonable quality of life.

In America, "affordable housing" has more or less become synonymous with slum housing. Slum housing tends to help trap people in poverty by limiting access to education, jobs, shopping, etc.

We have a nationwide shortage of affordable housing. I mean actual affordable housing, not slum housing.

Off the top of my head, health care is something crazy high, like 20 percent of GDP. For most households, housing is the single biggest household expense in the budget.

Transportation is typically the second largest expense because America makes it nigh impossible to live without a car. That fact is largely rooted in and tied up with housing policy.

If you provide universal health care and shrink the overall cost of health care while making it a lighter burden for individuals with health issues who are likely to have trouble earning an adequate income because of their health, you will remove a big chunk of the financial burden for America generally and especially for the most burdened Americans.

So just spitballing here, if you theoretically make health care free, you theoretically remove up to 20 percent of the financial burden from people -- possibly more for many people.

Some people are paying more than half their income in rent, and another like 25 or 30 percent on transportation. If they can have a life without having a car and can find a home for far less money, you begin to get to the point where a part-time minimum wage job can keep body and soul together.

If you have a small retirement check or something like that, intermittent gig work can be enough to make your life work adequately well.

That's currently out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. It shouldn't be.

It should be readily possible to find a small, cheap residential space, live without a car and get medical care even when you are flat broke. Then, you only need some really minimal income to get by and you can dream of better things and work towards them.

At that point, most people can find some way to muddle through.

I would be for expanding our military medical benefits such that any term of military service gives you access to the military medical system for life.

I would be for expanding and enhancing our Earned Income Credit on federal taxes.

I would be for being freer about providing food stamps with a lot less means testing, etc.

But a universal basic income makes no sense. Elon Musk doesn't need a check from the government for $10k annually.

Anyway, I'm running a fever, not feeling well and no longer sure where to go with this ramble. You have a good day.