Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Universal Basic Income pt. 1

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Universal Basic Income pt. 1 · Why We Do What We Do

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You're listening to Why we Do What we Do? Welcome to Why we Do
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what we do. I am your handing out host Abraham, and I'm your
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freebe host Shane. We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
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the things that people do and why they do those things, and like animals
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and policies, and sometimes we talk about hypotheses. I guess that maybe are
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good ideas or maybe not. Yeah, like kind of like possible human behavior
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that could work or could not work, depending on a lot of different variables.
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Like you know what, it's the idea of what could be. Yeah,
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and I think that's fun too, what we could do and what we
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could be, Yeah, what we might do, why we might do,
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why do we do? Yeah, there you go. We needed more syllables
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in the name, so we finally accomplished it. Yeah. We wanted to
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make our website really hard to get to exactly. So anyway, thank you
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We're gonna have just anyway. We're going to wish you a happy Amelia Earhart
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Day this day, July twenty fourth. Ah. Yes, and we are
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also going to celebrate with you Cousins Day. Yeah. The George R.
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Martin is big on Cousins Day. That's what I understand. I've never read
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it, but I understand it also Siblings Day. Yeah, it is International
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Self Care Day. This one is important and I fully or sit. Yes,
2:00
I love, love, love that. It is National drive through Day,
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which is fun. Whether it's a movie or a fast food or a
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liquor store, does all exist? Yeah, that is a fact, best
2:14
accompanied by Weird Owls Trapped in the drive through song. Oh man, I
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forgot all about that. What a great what a great tune? Does so
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fun? It's really it's really good. It is also National Tequila Day,
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speaking of drive throughs, Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't celebrate those two
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things together. Right. It's National Thermal Engineer's Day, which is a lot
2:36
of fun. All right, So we got Amelia Earhart, Cousins, self
2:39
Care, drive through Tequila, and thermal engineers. It is National Talk to
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Us Day, and the idea behind this one is advocating that people share their
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thoughts and feelings, that they open up to one another, they express themselves
2:53
honestly. You know, some people maybe you should button that stuff up,
2:58
but some of us we should agreed. Agreed. It is Pioneered Day,
3:04
which is a state holiday in Utah. Oh I see, we have a
3:07
Pioneer settlement here down the road from us, and that's where I learned how
3:10
to make candles. No fair enough, I guess, rather than oh I
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see, I should have said oh u t or just ot that makes sense.
3:19
I like that. It is tell an Old Joke Day, which I
3:23
think I just did. Maybe old joke, but it sounded like an old
3:28
joke. Yeah, yeah, it felt old. I mean you had to
3:30
do a Pioneers and Utah, so that felt old. That's fine. Yeah,
3:32
the subject matter was old. Uh huh. It's a National Independent Retailers
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Week, Okay. It is also National Moth Week, not for eating just
3:43
for appreciating. Yes, and not to be confused with National Mothman Week,
3:47
which is very different experience. It's also National Scrabble Week, so get your
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words out, and National zoo keeper Week those people who keep the zoos.
3:59
Yes, yeah, those who possess the zoos. It's also Restless leg Syndrome
4:02
Education and Awareness Week. Everything I know about restless legs syndrome comes from commercials
4:06
in the nineties. I actually think that we either did an episode on this
4:11
or talked about doing an episode on this. I think we just talked about
4:14
it. I don't think we've done it yet, but that is an interesting
4:16
one that would be worth unpacking at least for a mini if not a full
4:19
length discussion. I think, yeah, be on the lookout for our episode
4:24
on restless leg syndrome. Folks, Well, let's get to our subject at
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hand. Because although talking about holidays and recognizing them is fun and you know,
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playfully whimsical, I guess we are actually talk about psychology things. We
4:38
are talk about psychology things. I think what I meant to say is we
4:41
do talk about psychology things, and so we will do that now. As
4:45
I sort of discovered in a previous discussion of ours. It seems that we
4:48
may be more historically oriented of a podcast then we initially thought that we were.
4:55
And so let's talk about history a little bit, because that's going to
4:59
make up a huge chunk of our discussion today. It feels like our modern
5:03
memory anymore is pretty short. We're like yesterday, what was that? And
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so a few years ago is basically ancient history. But a few years ago
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something was going on, which was that there was yet another election, because
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those happened a lot, and at the time, this was for the presidential
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election. Politicians were vying for the nomination for the Democratic candidate to challenge the
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then incumbent President Donald Trump. Okay, and one specific candidate made a bold
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part of his platform, this idea that he called, well, i'll let
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him explain it. Actually, my flagship proposal is a freedom dividend of one
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thousand dollars a month for every American adult starting at age eighteen. So that
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means that you would receive one thousand dollars a month every month. As you
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heard in that clip, this was Andrew Yang, the candidate, and he
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was sort of rebranding this idea that had existed already called universal basic income as
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a freedom dividend. But yeah, it was this idea of one thousand dollars
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a month. Yeah, and so we have to ask a question of is
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this madness, is this genius? Or is this some well intentioned but misguided
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hypothesis or some legitimately effective strategy to improve people's lives and the economy. I
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mean, to be fair, if I got an extra one thousand dollars a
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month, that would be pretty rad. So yes, definitely many people would
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hear this and say, sure, you know, if you're offering, I
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will take it. So let's talk about this universal basic income idea. It
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goes by several names, but through much of this discussion you'll hear us call
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it UBI, which is how it's frequently referred to by economists and other people
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who sort of are in the sphere of discussion around this. We'll talk about
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the historical precedent for the idea of this universal basic income and the evidence that
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there is sort of for or against it, as well as just the arguments
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that people have made. And then I think a really important aspect is how
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likely is this to actually affect change? Will it affect people's behavior or the
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economy, What will it do? How does it do that thing? And
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so that that I think is is sort of our goal in this discussion is
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to understand the role that the policy of universal basic income or something like it
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would play. Absolutely so, universal basic income also called basic income guarantee,
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social dividend, national dividend, or freedom dividend, according to Andrew Yang,
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is the idea that all individuals who qualify will receive a no strings attached,
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regularly scheduled payment. It is really technically just could be any amount of money,
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but the idea most commonly floated around in modern discussions is one thousand dollars
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per month, as described by Yang. Yeah, that's that's sort of a
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very common number that you'll see. I saw much lower than that. I
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saw much higher than that, But most people and discussions around this in more
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contemporary I guess calculations really where we're landing on about one thousand dollars a month
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as a primary goalthough we'll see that in some of the instances where versions of
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this have been applied, it has been more or less and has been implemented
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in different ways. But that's sort of the idea, and this is an
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ongoing forever thing. This isn't like for a year you get this. The
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idea is that from now until you are dead, you are eligible to receive
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every month, at the beginning of the month, one thousand dollars to do
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with as you will. It is just a cash infusion straight into your hands
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or into your bank account. You are not told how to spend it.
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It is not restricted to certain items. It is just here's a thousand dollars,
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go nuts, or you pay your bills as it as it turns out.
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Right, So, the general practice has has been around, likely as
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long as people have lived in communal groups at least, this idea of there
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being like unrestricted access to resources that is freely given. In these sort of
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small nomadic tribes that humans would have lived in a long time ago. Everyone
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had a role to play, and that role was not always procuring food,
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right. Nevertheless, everyone in the tribe was granted unrestricted access to that food
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when it was obtained by the people whose role it was to get in.
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There were many times children who were too young to really contribute meaningfully. They
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were just they were very small, They probably could barely walk. They were
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not going to be doing very much in the way of contributing to that tribe,
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they would eventually, but when they're very small, they wouldn't. And
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then you have older people who managed to make it to old age, who
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were too weak, too feeble, or too sickly to help. And the
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policy was not, well, they can't help, throw them in a ditch.
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It was we're going to take care of them. And so there was
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just the society carried the burden in these groups while they could of maintaining the
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people in the society who couldn't. And that was just an understood phenomenon of
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living any communal group, as not everybody can participate in the same way.
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And so the people who were not too old or preventing from taking part in
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this would contribute to the best that they could, and then the people who
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couldn't contribute still had access to that they were not prevented from accessing their you
10:13
know, the share of the resources that were made available to the entire group.
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Right. Capitalism was not always the thing that ran societies, and you'll
10:22
see that kind of as we go, you know, like it is one
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of those things where historically people have taken care of each other. And so
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the idea of giving back to folks that are part of the group is super
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important. So now more modernly in Athens, not Athens Georgia. At the
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pace Athens Georgia is very different Athenians. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very
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different, very different group of people. A small portion of money generated by
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the mind was freely distributed to citizens or what could be described as not enslaved
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elite males. So that's who got the money. Not everybody, but you
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know, the ones that they considered were the most important, which were not
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enslaved an elite and men. Yeah, the ones who were technically citizens were
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the not enslaved elite males who then had access to this version of it.
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But it was like a universal basic income and that they didn't have to do
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anything to earn that. It was revenue that was simply generated by activity,
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and so they just received that as citizens. Right in the seventeen nineties,
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this became more of a sort of conceptual idea that was written about by some
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people who were influential. One that maybe some people have heard of is Thomas
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Paine. He essentially argued that what had happened with private land ownership is that
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by specifically owning this land, people were then prevented from being able to support
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themselves because if they didn't own the land, then they didn't own the rights
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to hunt, fish, grow agriculture, or otherwise use the resources of the
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land to do what they want whatever they would do to live, because it
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had been doled out as private property to somebody, and oftentimes there would be
12:05
a someone who owned that who then collected some kind of rent or mortgage or
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whatever, and you know, because these people couldn't use their land themselves.
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Thomas Paine argued that the rents that were generated from these privately owned lands should
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therefore be redistributed to citizens as basically a stakeholder grant, like they would work
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the land more or less, and so they would just receive a general income
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that would give them additional money to support themselves because they couldn't otherwise support themselves
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because of private ownership, right, And so shortly afterward, Thomas Spence really
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expanded this idea into the idea of a full fledged UBI by suggesting that everyone
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received unconditional cash payouts from the revenue generated by taxes. So it kind of
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really quickly became a thing that people, or at least people kind of hypoth
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sized and generated as like a possible economic strategy. Yeah, I think that
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Thomas Spence might be the first comprehensive version of a universal basic income in a
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capitalistic society arrangement. Like I said, versions of this had existed before,
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but where there was functionally capitalism. This seems to be the first fully comprehensive
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idea put forth here. And this is again before the eighteen hundreds. Now,
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in eighteen forty eight, a Belgian socialist author named Joseph Charlier or maybe
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Josiv Charlier I'm just gonna butcher it again, sort of reinvented and repackaged this
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idea, suggesting that the proceeds generated by rent be redistributed evenly as a universal
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basic income. And this sort of kicked off a sort of reimagining and revitalization
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of this idea by economists and policy makers who really began to seriously consider a
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universal basic income to try and address the fallout of capitalism, which was extreme
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poverty. We had a lot of disease, death, homelessness, and poverty
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in these governments, in these systems, and so in an attempt to try
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and assuage that, they were trying to imagine what could do the trick,
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and this was one of the solutions that they sort of came up with by
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repackaging this idea. Right, And so as we continue along as timeline,
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I think this idea of UBI, I think is really fascinating. I'm so
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excited to get more into it. You know, in twenty twenty four,
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we don't have UBI. What we haven't said are ads, and that's what
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generates revenue and does not get redistributed. So I mean, as far as
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like the content goes, everybody gets ads, but not everybody gets paid.
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So continuing with that theme, here's an AD for everybody. Nobody gets paid.
15:03
Okay, so yeah, universal basic punishment. That's what adds seem to
15:07
be universal basic gads. Yeah, all right, So let's go back to
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this whole policy here, this idea of a universal basic income. Now,
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although this is largely seen as sort of a progressive policy, the idea has
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been generally embraced from both left and right wing politicians. Now I'm gonna mostly
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list some just from the United States, but this actually has spanned other governments
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and other countries as well, again across both versions of sort of liberal and
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conservative ideology. So let's take, for example, Martin Luther King Junior,
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who said, quote, the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by
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a now widely discussed measure, the guaranteed income end quote. And as you'll
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recall, another name for the idea of the universal basic income was a guaranteed
15:56
income or a basic income. Guarantee is another one with the acronym BIG,
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which is kind of fun. Yeah. And then similarly, an economic advisor
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to Ronald Reagan of all people wrote of a guaranteed income said quote, it
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would provide an assured minimum to all persons in need, regardless of the reasons
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for their need. Even Richard Nixon said, quote, I propose that we
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abolish the welfare system and that a basic federal minimum would be provided end quote.
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So like it sounds like there are people who have like a general idea
16:30
of what this might look like and how this might apply, you know,
16:33
while they're trying to also abolish other systems, but like having that conversation around
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this is something that we could do that might be helpful. Yes, And
16:42
so I think you know, people might hear this idea of the universal basic
16:48
income and think, isn't this what welfare already is, and I think that's
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that's a legitimate question, like isn't that just welfare? Like is aren't they
16:56
describing welfare? It does have some things in common with welfare, but it
17:00
is very different in some important ways. One is that welfare is actually has
17:07
a lot of conditions apply to who earns it and how much they can earn.
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It has complicated, overlapping and sometimes contradictory requirements, sometimes including work,
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sometimes not, that differ by state and may only be granted if, and
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to a certain extent, based on what you contributed to the welfare system through
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previous work or previous work history, as well as a lot of ways actually
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discourages work because if it's dependent on, for example, a certain level of
17:37
income, people who might exceed the threshold for income by working then no longer
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qualify for welfare, but also still don't have enough money to pay their bills
17:47
versus. And so instead what they'll do is not work, even though they
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would prefer to work, and then that's the only way they continue to qualify
17:55
for the welfare or they might again be required to work. But another thing
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that happens that welfare specifies how the money can be received and spent, so
18:03
the money is only available for specific food, specific housing, specific medication.
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It's like directly guided by the state or the government in terms of what that
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money goes to and how it's used and so instead with the UBI system is
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just has none of that. That is part of it, right, So
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the UBI system is streamlined, it's simple, and it actually might and a
18:30
lot of people actually see it as a fairer system. So in the UBI
18:33
system, people who receive an income can still choose to work, and in
18:37
fact doing so allows them to greatly increase their income. So not only do
18:42
they get to continue to work, but they have this extra cushion that exists
18:47
underneath this type of program. This might feel a little bit like a non
18:49
sequitur, but this it reminds me of a story that's a personal story I
18:53
have of. I remember once talking to someone who expressed frustration at people who
18:59
are sort of panhandling, the people you see on corners with signs asking for
19:03
some change or some money or something. And they said something to the effect
19:07
of why don't they just get a job, And of course, to me,
19:10
this is really silly, because that specifically means you have to then think
19:15
why don't they just get a job? Means that the people who are on
19:18
the street asking for money find it easier, faster, and more lucrative to
19:23
get money that way than to get a job like that, that would be
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the implication of that, right, they could get a job instead, they
19:30
choose to panhandle because that's easier, faster, and more lucrative. No,
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that it is not to those things right. The problem is people are always,
19:41
I mean often, but so often that it's basically always required to have
19:48
an address to get a job. So if these are people who are unhoused,
19:52
they cannot they often can, well again always, they can't get a
19:56
job if they don't have an address, and they can't get an address if
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they don't have a job. So it becomes the cycle where it's like they
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can't work even if they want to because no one will hire them because they
20:07
don't have an address, which they can't get because no one will hire them,
20:11
and so they're kind of stuck. You know what in these situations,
20:15
what are they supposed to do? They can't do anything, and so it's
20:18
just a silly piece of logic just to even ask the question, why don't
20:22
they get a job. I mean because they can't like they would if they
20:26
could, right, exactly, And just for our folks that listen to Australia
20:30
if you're not sure what panhandling is, what we're talking about is humbugging.
20:34
It's called it's it's called humbugging on that side of the world. Oh okay.
20:38
Basically just asking for change on the street, and not like busking,
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which is performing for change on the street, and not like advocating, be
20:45
like, hey, we need to change our behavior everybody. Climate change is
20:48
a problem, not like asking for that kind of change. Yeah yeah,
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yeah, no, not that kind of change, not like, you know,
20:53
change the world. It's like give me quarters now. A UBI system
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means that people can choose how they spend their money in a way did they
21:03
feel benefits them the most, or save it, or pay their bills or
21:07
do whatever it is. Again, no strings attached, no requirements. Here
21:11
is money. Do with this money what you will. And this is often
21:15
appealing to many conservatives because, as it's proposed, it is fair to everyone.
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Everyone gets the same thing. It is simpler, and in most cases
21:23
replaces the current welfare system. So a lot of folks that are kind of
21:26
more conservative, right leaning tend to like it because it's equal across the board.
21:32
Yeah, and essentially, you know, that was kind of Andrew Yang's
21:36
thing as well, is like this would be a replacement, and that really
21:38
is an important consideration if you're thinking about this, and I imagine many people
21:42
who are listening to this are asking the question, how would the government pay
21:48
for this? How would they come up with the money? Because the back
21:52
of the envelope calculation is that if we were to give all of the citizens
21:56
of the United States twelve thousand dollars a year this is the thing, thousand
22:00
dollars a month, that comes out to twelve thousand a year, this would
22:03
cost the US government over three trillion dollars trillion with a t trillion, it's
22:10
a lot of money. Yeah. The strategy then to cover the cost is
22:15
primarily to abolish the current systems that this would kind of replace. That means
22:21
that, in the sort of most conservative way of looking at this, no
22:26
more welfare, no more social security, no more retirement, no more government
22:30
funded medicine. Like all those programs, or at least many or most of
22:33
those programs are completely acted right now. The problem here is that even acting
22:38
all of those still would not cover that amount of expense. We're not spending
22:41
that much of the government's money on those services. So there would also likely
22:48
need to be some kind of restructuring of taxes that would close some of the
22:52
tax loopholes. It would force the wealthiest people to pay a lot more or
22:56
pay anything at all. Yeah, and potentially all so could increase the deficit
23:00
by forcing the government to borrow more money to pay for this program. So
23:06
as an example of what that could look like, there was this UBI experiment
23:10
in Finland, and had they continued that experiment or been able to continue that
23:15
experiment, it would have increased the national debt by five percent or more to
23:18
continue doing it. So, if you imagine in the United States with a
23:22
debt of one point seven trillion dollars in twenty twenty three, five percent of
23:29
one point seven trillion is a mega shload amount of money. Yeah, it's
23:36
too much, it's a lot. The overall reduction in cost that a universal
23:41
basic income would incur, though, is not just in terms of dollars and
23:45
cents, but also like it would essentially eliminate the deep, complex bureaucracy that
23:52
has the potential to be a substantial savings because of what's not being spent on
23:59
that bureau chrisy in a UBI system. And on top of that, as
24:03
we continue to expand the automation the technology brings the jobs, there is an
24:07
increasing or there are an increasing number of libor hours that will be streamlined and
24:11
available to be performed by robots and AI. And on one hand, this
24:15
might make it so that people have more free time and spend their time doing
24:18
things that they are interested in or supporting themselves, but they will still need
24:23
to buy food and pay bills. So how do we squared that? Well,
24:27
perhaps we tax the people who are making all of the money from jobs
24:30
that are now populated by robots and redistribute their gargantuan profits by using a UBI
24:37
type of system, so that people don't necessarily need to worry if they can't
24:40
find high paying jobs. They can work fewer hours at jobs and don't need
24:44
to pay as much but get along just fine. And this might even help
24:47
those companies because they can then afford the higher taxes by having lower salary expenses.
24:52
So in that space we're talking about, the money is all there.
24:57
It does exist it's just a matter of reallocating how it's used. Yeah,
25:02
exactly. The proposal basically is shift things around so that they're better like it,
25:07
Like, we have the resources we need, they're just misallocated. Is
25:11
sort of the argument that's being made here, right, Okay, So what
25:15
you might hear in this, and what I feel like we've more or less
25:18
attempted to communicate, is that everyone's on board with this idea. Republicans like
25:23
it, Democrats like it, Conservatives and liberals all like it. The poor
25:26
people like it, the wealthy people like it. Everybody's happy here for the
25:30
most part. So why isn't this a thing? It's rare that we get
25:34
any kind of universal agreement on anything at all, let alone something gigantic like
25:40
this. What is standing in the way. So let's spend a little time
25:45
and I'll go ahead and say, now, the amount of discussion we have
25:49
on this is so massive that we're pretty much going to have to turn this
25:55
into a two part episode. So I think what we'll do for this next
25:59
part is we'll unpack the arguments for and against And this is not the evidence,
26:03
but the arguments people have made for and against a UBI system and we'll
26:10
probably have to close it out there and then come back next time and actually
26:12
dig into the actual evidence and some more of the sort of underlying theory,
26:17
if you will. Yeah, I mean, and so you asked the question
26:19
of what's standing in the way of UBI. I think one of the things
26:22
is ads. Okay, let's go ahead and get to essentially the objections that
26:34
people do have to the universal basic income system. And I want to preface
26:40
this by ensuring that I point out these are not our objections on the podcast.
26:45
These are communicating. We are communicating what others have raised as objections about
26:49
this. Okay. Yes, First of all, if it is truly universal
26:53
in that system, that means that all adults are eligible, and in some
26:57
cases in some proposals, children receive a smaller amount, but they do some
27:02
or the family receive some on their behalf as well. Then the argument is
27:06
that this would be wasted on the people who are already wealthy, who don't
27:10
need any additional supplemental income like they're already getting. They already have plenty.
27:15
Why give them more? Sure? Another argument against it is that it wouldn't
27:21
be fair to grant this type of income to illegal immigrants. Who weren't paying
27:25
into the system but benefiting from it. God, I've heard that argument so
27:29
many times about so many things anyway, Like it's just absurd. Yeah,
27:34
we have some rebuttals to these, Yes. Yes. Another argument here is
27:38
that in a universal basic income policy that affects everyone, right, that this
27:45
can be used by companies to further justify not paying their employees a living wage.
27:52
If the burden of income is shifted to the government, then people who
27:55
can afford to be paid less can actually outcompete other people for the same job
28:00
by offering their own labor and their time at a lower wage, and that
28:03
could make it more difficult for people who might have greater expenses or other reasons
28:08
beyond their controls, such as medical complications or sudden unpredictable things that happen like
28:15
car accidents or fires or what have you, or like a sudden death in
28:19
the family of someone who was a major contributor financially. Those people might need
28:25
those wages more. But other people are sort of undercutting their job by accepting
28:30
lower wages on their behalf because those companies don't need to pay as much because
28:36
they know that everyone's receiving this guaranteed income. Right. This could also be
28:40
used to justify charging more for certain services and rent, because the expectation is
28:45
that anyone would have sufficient income to cover their expenses, and everyone charging them
28:49
will want a piece of that universal basic pie or the UBP as we're going
28:53
to call it. Yes. Yeah. Basically, the idea that like,
29:00
people are like, well, why can't you pay rent? I know you
29:03
receive this universal basic income, so like, I'm going to raise the rent,
29:06
and I know that you're good for you should be able to cover it
29:07
because you are making so much this way, right, all right. Another
29:11
one is that the universal basic income is would essentially have to be paid for
29:17
by, among other things, by poor people, right, that they would
29:22
be people who contribute into the system as well, because this would be collected
29:26
by taxes and other things. Taxes not only paid like income tax, but
29:30
also as you're buying goods, you're paying taxes on those goods. And so
29:33
the people who are the worst off are still paying into the system, which
29:37
they are receiving money, but like they had to pay that money in the
29:41
first place, so it doesn't really do anything, is the idea here.
29:45
So, according to an economic analyst, Robert Greenstein, this would redistribute wealth
29:49
up and would actually create greater disparity in wealth allocation rather than alleviating this disparity,
29:56
because the people who need it the least are still getting it, the
30:00
people who need it the most are still paying into it, and the people
30:03
who don't need it at all are also still receiving it, and so it
30:07
sort of forces the overall distribution up towards people who need it less and would
30:11
create a bigger gap as his argument right. Another argument against UBI is that
30:18
UBI doesn't cure addiction, poor health, lack of skills, or other factors
30:22
that are relevant for understanding why poverty might exist in the first place. Now,
30:26
as far as the addiction stuff goes, we did do a whole suite
30:29
on that, and when we kind of talk about how complex that is in
30:33
itself, and I would make the argument real quick, and I got to
30:36
say it because it's just like, this is one of the things that drives
30:37
me nuts. They're entirely different problems, that's true, Like, I think
30:41
it's really important when we talk about financial problems versus addiction, versus poor health,
30:45
versus lack of skills, and those factors they are. I mean,
30:48
they play a role, they interlock with one another, but they are different
30:52
problems. It is worth understanding, as we talked about in this series,
30:56
like, it is a multifaceted issue. I mean, but I guess to
31:00
points that they're making here because it's multifaceted, a universal basic income is unlikely
31:04
to change those reasons. Right, But yeah, people with money, you
31:07
get addicted to Yep, exactly, all right. Another argument against this idea
31:14
is that if the universal basic income was high enough to ensure sort of comfortable
31:18
and sustainable living conditions, then this would really deincentivize people working because they could
31:25
easily live without working. They wouldn't go to jobs to try and spend money
31:29
on things, but they wouldn't necessarily need to work. So the argument is
31:33
essentially, if you pay people for nothing, you get nothing. That's sort
31:37
of the catchy, quippy way of talking about what effect this could have on
31:41
people's working and other world contribution to the growth of the economy. Yeah,
31:47
which I feel like is silly because I would work even if I had a
31:52
steady paycheck. Outside of that, like if I were independently wealthy, it's
31:55
still work. But that's just my own that's me. The last objection they
31:57
make is that making this continue per person would incentivize greatly expanding family sizes to
32:04
maximize potential household income. So if everybody's getting paid, then we need more
32:09
people to get paid. If everyone's getting paid, everyone's getting laid so that
32:14
they can get paid more. Yeah, that's an argument apparently. Okay,
32:17
So that sort of rounds out the list of reasons that people have sort of
32:22
argued against this idea of the universal basic income. So there's a lot of
32:28
arguments for it, and when to largely structure these as rebuttals at least at
32:31
first. There are more arguments for than there are need for rebuttals, but
32:36
we'll at least structure it at first as rebuttals for the first one. So
32:39
the first one here was this idea of wealthy people receiving it who don't need
32:44
it. Well, the thing is that to restructure taxes to pay for this,
32:47
the amount that wealthy people would pay into taxes to fund this program would
32:52
be far greater than the money that they receive from the program. So it
32:55
really would not be making any additional money, wouldn't be adding a lot to
33:00
them. They'd just be getting a small amount back, so sort of similar
33:05
to the like five or ten cents we might get for bringing our own bags
33:08
to the grocery store or bringing our own mugs to coffee shops. It's nice,
33:13
but like hardly makes a dent in the six dollar plain black coffee that
33:16
we just bought, you know. Sure. The argument that this would be
33:20
unfairly granted to illegal immigrants is, like most of these arguments complete nonsense.
33:25
You have to sign up for the program to receive income. You can't sign
33:29
up if you're not a citizen. You aren't a citizen if you're undocumented or
33:32
here illegally. So the rebuttal to that is duh, with the would work,
33:37
Yeah, that's just a nonsense argument, Like how would you get this?
33:42
If you want to sit? You have to enroll in it, Like
33:44
they're not just gonna there's not like a dispensary machine. You go up and
33:46
press a button and you get one thousand dollars, right, Like, you
33:50
have to be enrolled in the program, which means that they have to know
33:52
who you are and where you fit in society. So people who were here
33:57
illegally wouldn't have access to it. So it's just silly, right, Okay,
34:00
exactly. Some economists have calculated that just one thousand dollars per adults and
34:05
three hundred dollars per child would virtually eliminate poverty and would significantly reduce homelessness.
34:12
So essentially, one argument here is that we could get rid of homelessness with
34:16
a program such as this one. Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty
34:20
good argument for it. It is unlikely that minimum wages would be abandoned,
34:24
so people would still be guaranteed whatever income they can get from their jobs,
34:28
but it would be safe against sluggish growth, low wages, inconsistent work,
34:32
and the volatility of the gig economy. Further, it would allow people to
34:37
wait to take jobs until they were better jobs, and we saw this with
34:42
COVID relief, and they wouldn't be forced to take a job just because it
34:45
was available, forcing employers to compete for labor by offering better jobs, better
34:51
pay, better benefits, or any combination of those things. So essentially,
34:55
the minimum wage thing is going to exist, but employers are still going to
34:59
have to compete for having good employees. Yeah. Essentially, the argument initially
35:05
was, well, then they could justify not paying people, and then the
35:08
sort of rebuttal is those people could choose not to take those jobs because they
35:13
can, they don't have to, Like, they could either find better jobs
35:16
or wait till a better job comes along, or wait until those companies change
35:20
their policies so that they pay better. Right. Okay, So there was
35:22
the argument that this would essentially allow people to sort of charge whatever, right,
35:29
in effect, the hypothesis is that it would drive inflation. But I
35:35
think the rebuttal is that allowing the economy to remain a free market, at
35:38
least to the extent that it is a free market, would mean that if
35:42
prices were to get too out of control, then other companies could basically easily
35:46
swoop in and outcompete those high prices, and then people would go to those
35:52
services instead, and that would force those other companies to maintain lower prices.
35:57
So that essentially the idea here is that people could choose not to engage those
36:02
markets and that those companies would then be forced to maintain the lower prices rather
36:07
than jacking them up. Now, of course, this can be circumvented in
36:10
some grossly nefarious ways that companies will do price fixing and all of that,
36:15
but that is another discussion. We actually talked about this a little bit a
36:20
long time ago when we talked about the funeral industry and specifically in coffins,
36:25
how there'd been some price fixing going on there, But we should revisit that
36:30
at some point in the future. Oh, I can't wait to talk about
36:32
coffins again. Another argument for is that the UBI would be, for all
36:37
intentsive purposes funded by taxes. In one way or another. People who make
36:40
the least, own the least, and consume the least would pay the least
36:44
amount of taxes. Thus, although they pay into the system they pay,
36:49
they get much more back than what they put in. As wages, private
36:52
ownership, and consumption size increases, so too do their contribution to the system,
36:57
and the less they quote unquote may from the UBI. Three models created
37:01
by researchers at the Roosevelt Institute found that in all scenarios of UBI, increased
37:07
employment, wages, output, and prices would actually grow the economy. Yeah.
37:13
Another one here is that there's this discussion about addiction and medical problems and
37:19
like, okay, yes, UBI will not cure the problems that people have.
37:23
What it might do is for some people is it does mean that the
37:28
reasons that people might use drugs might decrease a little bit. Those situations where
37:32
people are stressed, they're in poor neighborhoods, that sort of thing. If
37:37
they have more general support and are better able to seek and successfully complete addiction
37:44
programs, then although it might not address it directly, it might help alleviate
37:49
some of the factors that contribute to addiction and maintain addiction in the first place,
37:53
or at least can help contribute to remediation of that situation once it has
37:59
arisen. Further, people who have health problems could better afford medical bills to
38:04
treat their problems so that those problems are less debilitating, making it so that
38:07
they can more easily participate in societies such as maintaining a job, caring for
38:13
others, volunteering, etc. And then, of course, there are actually
38:17
specific examples of this and the evidence that we'll talk about that when people receive
38:23
a universal basic income, the people who have the least amount of money could
38:28
actually then commit to things like college. They can complete their college degrees or
38:32
go to trade schools, which means that when they are in the situation where
38:37
they don't have very much money and they also don't have very many skills that
38:40
make them a valuable labor market asset. They can overcome that lack of skills
38:45
by receiving training, the training that they would need to then be competitive in
38:51
the labor market and allow them to be successful. And that would be because
38:54
they could afford to successfully attend those training programs without necessarily needing to have a
39:01
full time job the entire time that they're there. The thing that I always
39:05
hear in that argument is that money doesn't buy happiness. And sure, money
39:09
does not buy happiness. You cannot buy something that's intangible, period, but
39:13
at least as far as an emotion goes. But I would say that,
39:16
and I've heard the arguments like it doesn't buy happiness, but it does make
39:20
life easier. Yeah, right, So like that seems to be the moral
39:23
here. Yeah, removing a financial stress makes things a little bit better for
39:28
people, So like why wouldn't we do that? So another argument is that
39:32
the models that demonstrate that UBI is too expensive, because that's a big thing,
39:37
a UBI is too expensive, and that people won't work, actually put
39:39
the UBI at a much higher than any legitimate proposal in any way. So
39:45
the suggestions specifically indicate the amount provided by UBI would be insufficient to fully cover
39:51
bills, rent, and any other expenses that people have. They would need
39:53
to work to actually have sufficient income to manage their expenses. And the UBI,
39:58
in every version of it to imagining, is intended to provide a support,
40:02
not replace wages from working. So I think it's really important to kind
40:06
of pinpoint this is that every single time they've run the model for UBI,
40:09
it is not as a replacement for work. It is not to say,
40:14
hey, you don't have to work anymore. It is, hey, you've
40:17
got a little bit of a wiggle room here, and here's additional support to
40:22
kind of take the financial burden and stress off of you, at least enough
40:25
so that you can focus on the things that you need to focus on.
40:29
Yeah, Essentially, the people who are arguing against this that it would deincentivize
40:34
work and would cost too much. We're kind of making a straw man argument
40:37
by pitching a UBI that was more than what the actual proposals entailed. You
40:45
know, most of them maxed out at one thousand dollars a month, whereas
40:49
some of the models that said this wouldn't work. We're actually putting at a
40:52
two thousand dollars a month or hires, they're doubling it or more, and
40:55
the thousand dollars was a maximum, and so they're sort of saying, well,
41:00
we're going to give them so much money that they have no incentive to
41:02
work. Then I would say, yeah, that probably is what the outcome
41:07
would be of that program. So right, but that's not the proposal that
41:10
we're making, or that I guess we're not the ones making it that the
41:14
people who are pushing for universal basic income are making, right exactly. Okay,
41:19
So this argument here that people are basically going to just have as many
41:22
kids as possible to maximize their income, what's first of all, accept and
41:28
consider that kids are extremely expensive, Shane, can you verify this? I
41:31
can verify twice at least. Okay, great, kids are expensive citation achieved
41:38
citation Shane. You got to consider that, like, they'll have these kids,
41:44
and they'll have then eighteen years of those kids earning nothing, or in
41:47
some of these models, they had them earning up to three hundred the family
41:52
earning up to three hundred dollars a month per kid. Three hundred dollars a
41:54
month nice hardly puts a dent in the cost of actually supporting children, how
42:00
much it costs to feed, clothe, diaper, keep them alive, all
42:02
that sort of stuff. It is more expensive to have a lot more children
42:07
than it would be even remotely reasonable to have that covered by UBI. It
42:13
would help soften the blow for those people who don't make very much and would
42:16
like to have a family, so like they could afford it more, but
42:22
it would not be a money making scheme. It would not be a luminative
42:27
strategy to like, have more kids to get an extra three hundred dollars a
42:31
month when the cost of children is exponentially more than that. Yeah, so
42:37
let's consider that for a second, three hundred dollars a month. In Florida,
42:40
the average monthly childcare just to have like a like a daycare type of
42:45
program or something like that is seven hundred dollars a month on average. So
42:50
having more kids and still getting three hundred dollars a month just adds an extra
42:53
four hundred dollars per child to your bill every month. Like, right,
42:58
that's not including food, diapers, you know, anything else that comes along
43:02
with childcare, clothing, any of that stuff, right, is crazy?
43:07
Sure, Yeah, exactly it is absurd to think that having kids the money
43:13
making scheme like that. That the fact that that people think that blows my
43:16
mind. Having kids the money making scheme. Good lord. Yeah. And
43:22
plus you know, just the stress, you know, just the stress.
43:25
It alone is not worth three hundred dollars a month. I love my kids.
43:30
Just to be clear, there is some additional things too that go along
43:34
with like race and gender inequality. So UBI actually reduces gender and race inequality
43:38
and pay because everybody makes the same amount and has to say in how they
43:43
share and how their money is used specifically, right, So it enables and
43:47
even empowers people in bad living situations to escape those situations because they would at
43:52
least have some amount of money to support themselves and not be dependent on an
43:55
abusive partner. So they have independent access to money that they can use to
44:01
help themselves in a situation that they would have in a current situation. We'll
44:06
talk more about some of that when we get to some of the actual evidence
44:08
that has been collected in places where they've tried versions of this. Right.
44:13
Another I think talking point that people have made is that if you look,
44:17
versions of a universal basic income exist in sort of small pockets of at least
44:24
the United States, arguably in many countries I think in this first example I'm
44:30
going to get to here, in most, if not all countries, the
44:34
children of extremely wealthy families already sort of experience their own little microcosm of a
44:39
universal basic income because they often have access to sometimes unrestricted, but even if
44:46
it's restricted, they'll still have access to large sums of money that they did
44:51
not earn that they then get to use as they please. They are essentially
44:55
have a credit card or a cash influx, infusion whatever it is that they
45:01
can kind of do with as they please, and many of them go on
45:05
to run their families company or start their own company, or invest their money
45:08
or whatever you know. But whatever tends to happen, they do tend to
45:14
in most cases maintain comfortable, successful lives. So if UBI is working for
45:19
them, wouldn't we expect it also to work for people who are in desperate
45:23
situations and in more need of support. Makes sense? Right? And then
45:28
finally, the last argument for it is that retirement is essentially a universal basic
45:32
income. Many retired people continue to work, or will volunteer, or just
45:37
spend time and money participating in society and contributing to the economy. We have
45:40
already granted the people of a certain age may stop working but be guaranteed money
45:46
and have seen positive effects from that exact type of program. Granted, many
45:51
of them have saved and saved that money themselves, but then they still later
45:55
get that money without being directly earned as part of their daily activities. So
46:00
there is kind of a it does exist in some way for certain age groups.
46:05
Right, So those are essentially the arguments for and against. I think
46:10
we maybe missed some ads. I mean, we didn't miss them, but
46:14
we didn't specifically make space for them. Nobody really misses them, Yeah,
46:19
so I guess we'll specifically make space for them. And then this is our
46:22
basic income again, five cents, ten cents back whatever here it is all
46:35
right. So I think that's a good place to sort of cap off this
46:37
conversation because we still have a lot to unpack and talking about the specific evidence,
46:43
the examples where this has actually been applied or people have used this,
46:46
as well as I think some some caveats to those examples that we'll talk about,
46:52
and also just generally talking about how we understand and what we think about
46:57
with behavior psychology, right, it happens in these spaces. So I do
47:01
want to leave with that. We're not specifically advocating anything. We'll get to
47:07
our conclusions when we finish talking about sort of what the evidence is, but
47:12
we did want to sort of say I think, at the very least without
47:15
committing to a particular position, I feel okay saying that this is an interesting
47:21
idea. I am curious about it. I would like to know more.
47:24
I am. I don't know. I think it's at least a cool thought
47:29
experiment, right, But we'll be able to unpack it more once we have
47:32
some evidence to speak to, and I think that's reasonable. I am not
47:38
an economist. I've got some friends who are, and I don't understand them,
47:43
but I do. I will say that so far, the arguments for
47:47
this make more value sense to me than the arguments against this. It does
47:52
seem compelling. That's where I would say right now is like I tend to
47:57
with the information that I've got Right now, I would tend to lean for
48:00
versus against based on what I've seen, But we've got another episode in my
48:05
mind may change. Yeah, I mean, and I think that is the
48:07
idea here is that we want to essentially weigh our understanding of this as thoughtfully
48:13
as we can in an approach it with a nuanced position, not just a
48:17
everything needs to be one extreme or the other. Most of us fall in
48:21
the riddle somewhere, and I think this will be maybe one of those.
48:24
Maybe we'll completely agree, maybe we'll completely disagree. Right now, we have
48:28
some basic arguments and rebuttals for those arguments, arguments for and against, and
48:32
as I said, we'll get into some evidence next time, but I think
48:36
that we will go ahead and pause this conversation here. Join us next week
48:40
where we will pick up on this discussion and further elaborate what there is to
48:45
know about universal basic income. Before we close up this episode, I would
48:50
like to first say, if you have stuck with us this whole time,
48:53
thank you for being here. We do appreciate it. If you liked what
48:57
you heard here today, you would like to support what we do as show,
49:00
we could always use your generous support over on Patreon, where you get
49:04
all kinds of bonus content, ad free episodes, early episodes, that sort
49:07
of thing. And there's a group of people who do that already, and
49:10
we really appreciate them. And that is Mike, m Megan, Mike T,
49:14
Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian,
49:16
Ashley, Kiara and Michelle. And even if you didn't want to support us
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financially but you wanted to be part of that awesome group, you can head
49:24
over and join us for free and just be a part of the free version
49:28
of that group. And that's fine too. Yeah, we do specifically want
49:30
to acknowledge those who have been so generous with us and helped support what we're
49:35
up to today. Yep, absolutely, thank you all so much. We
49:37
love you. Yes. In addition, of course, I need to thank
49:40
you everyone for listening today. And I really could not do this without my
49:44
wonderful team of people writing in, fact checking from Shane and myself, audio
49:49
engineering, producing, and just general goodness made happening by Justin, who is
49:53
our audio tech guy, our editor, yeah, our wizard and social media
50:00
coordinating is done by Emma Wilson. Shane, is there anything else that you
50:04
would like to add or anything that I'm missing before we transition to our recommendations?
50:08
No, I think that covers it on my end. Great. If
50:13
this is your first time here, I've said that sentenced so many times,
50:15
but we like to recommend some things, so surprised. This is a tag
50:20
on the end of this. At the end of every every discussion we have
50:22
will recommend something. It's usually like not directly related to the topic at hand,
50:28
although it can be. So we're gonna go ahead and do that now,
50:30
Shane, I'll let you go first recommendations. I'm going to recommend a
50:43
publication called The Flow Trip. So The Flow Trip is a new magazine that
50:49
has started coming out. Historically it's been called it was called Whalebone, and
50:53
I know I've recommended Whalebone magazine before you have, yeah, I remember this.
50:57
So recently they came under new ownership. They change kind of the format
51:00
of the magazine, but I think it's still done really well. The first
51:05
new magazine that's come out is about Happiness. It's called the Happiness Edition.
51:08
And for those of you who are like more science oriented, I think that
51:13
you're going to have maybe a little bit of a hard time because it is
51:15
a little bit hippie granola. It's very much so like it's got that kind
51:17
of vibe that's a little crunchy, little bit spirituality, like kind of like
51:22
dig your feet into the sound and feel the power of the earth type of
51:24
things. Right, But I actually I actually really enjoy reading that stuff because
51:29
like and like completely like not even from a judgment standpoint, Like I just
51:32
am fascinating with like how people find peace. Sure, I like this edition
51:37
of the magazine as it is, but I do also appreciate kind of the
51:42
art direction of it. So it's like a really well curated, really beautifully
51:46
designed magazine. Very few ads, a lot of really cool articles. There's
51:52
an article in this one about surfers with disabilities like limb differences. There is
51:58
an article about mycology, so there's some cool stuff inside of it that's like
52:01
worth reading about. Like some cool interviews with people that do it, like
52:06
are like because one of the questions they ask a bunch of people is what
52:09
is happiness to you? And like their interpretations of happiness and whatnot. There's
52:13
some recipes in there that are really cool about like my favorite quote, and
52:16
it says that you may not be happy before you have a cookie, and
52:22
a cookie may not solve your like your problem with happiness after you've eaten the
52:27
cookie, so like you may still have the problems that exist but nobody is
52:30
miserable while they're eating a cookie. And it gives you kind of a chocolate
52:34
top cookie recipe. So it's fun, it's light, it's not a heavy
52:37
read. It gives you some activities, and it's well curated, and I
52:40
think it's worth checking out, all right, fair enough for those looking for
52:45
a sort of a crunchy granola read, or at least are happy with those
52:50
reads. Yeah, I mean they do. They do all kinds of stuff,
52:52
like I mean the Whale Whalebone would do, like the pizza edition and
52:55
the photo edition, and like they have like every magazine has its own theme,
53:00
and so in the entire all of the content, all the pictures,
53:04
everything is centered around that theme, which is cool, got you, Yeah.
53:07
Right now, I am living in the midst of a place that is
53:12
experiencing some of the extreme heat, not as extreme as other parts of the
53:16
country, so I understand that it's a lot worse in other places than where
53:21
I am, but it has been over one hundred degrees for more than a
53:24
week and it is just it is just quite tosty. Unfortunately, our ac
53:30
is very old and really struggles to keep up with the temperature, and we
53:36
actually had a tech come out and said that it was only pushing about fifty
53:38
percent of what it was supposed to be able to push because there was something
53:43
wrong with it. So we're probably going to have to replace it. But
53:45
in the meantime, we went out and bought this little portable air conditioning unit
53:51
to just try and help alleviate the amount of work that our AC was doing.
53:54
We picked up this Toshiba portable air conditioner and this thing was a game
54:00
changer. I was extremely impressed. It is on the price here end,
54:04
but they had several models and it really depended on the square footage you needed
54:07
to fill. Yeah, we needed one that had a pretty decent amount of
54:10
square footage, and so we got this. I know what it's called,
54:14
exactly fourteen thousand BTU A Shrey. Well there's a link in the notes anyway,
54:20
so it's it is a Toshiba portable air conditioning unit. That thing really
54:25
hauls its weight. I am incredibly impressed. It's one that you hook a
54:29
host on the window for sort of the exhaust. Yeah, the in taken
54:31
the exhaust, but wow, is this thing if it is incredibly effective.
54:37
I've just been really impressed. So if you need one and you can afford
54:42
it. I think Tashiba makes a very good portable ac I like it,
54:45
I support it awesome. All right, Well, I think we've already given
54:49
our credits, we've already said our thanks, So unless there's anything that I'm
54:52
forgetting, I think we can close this one out. So, Oh,
54:57
what I will say that I did forget is that if you would like to
54:59
talk to a about universal basic income, or air conditioners or magazines, I
55:04
guess you can reach out to us directly by emailing us at info at wwdwwdpodcast
55:08
dot com, or on any of the regular social media platforms and we'll be
55:14
happy to discuss with you there. So feel free to contact us. We
55:17
like to hear your thoughts, and we even will read the listener mails sometimes
55:22
when we get some good juicy ones. So send us some of our way.
55:24
We like hearing from you. Yeah, I love it. Okay,
55:27
So with that I can finally close this. That's all that I have to
55:30
say. This is Abraham, and it's a shamee catch us next week,
55:32
but for now we are out. So. Yeah, you've been listening to
55:37
why we do what we do? You can learn more about this and other
55:39
episodes by going to wwdwwdpodcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope
55:46
you have an awesome day.