Denmark's Public Benefits Administration employs hundreds of people who oversee one of the world's most well-funded welfare states. The country spends 26 percent of its GDP on benefits—more than Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It's been hailed as a leading example of how governments can support their most vulnerable citizens. Bernie Sanders, the US senator, called the Nordic nation of 6 million people a model for how countries should approach welfare.
But over the past decade, the scale of Denmark's benefits spending has come under intense scrutiny, and the perceived scourge of welfare fraud is now at the top of the country's political agenda. Armed with questionable data on the amount of benefits fraud taking place, conservative politicians have turned Denmark's famed safety net into a polarizing political battleground.
It has become an article of faith among the country's right-wing politicians that Denmark is losing hundreds of millions of euros to benefits fraud each year. In 2011, KMD, one of Denmark's largest IT companies, estimated that up to 5 percent of all welfare payments in the country were fraudulent. KMD's estimates would make the Nordic nation an outlier, and its findings have been criticized by some academics. In France, it's estimated that fraud amounts to 0.39 percent of all benefits paid. A similar estimate made in the Netherlands in 2016 by broadcaster RTL found the average amount of fraud per benefit payment was €17 ($18), or just 0.2 percent of total benefits payments.The perception of widespread welfare fraud has empowered Jacobsen to establish one of the most sophisticated and far-reaching fraud detection systems in the world. She has tripled the number of state databases her agency can access from three to nine, compiling information on people's taxes, homes, cars, relationships, employers, travel, and citizenship. Her agency has developed an array of machine learning models to analyze this data and predict who may be cheating the system.
Documents obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED through freedom-of-information requests show how Denmark is building algorithms to profile benefits recipients based on everything from their nationality to whom they may be sleeping next to at night. They reveal a system where technology and political agendas have become entwined, with potentially dangerous consequences.
Danish human rights groups such as Justitia describe the agency's expansion as "systematic surveillance" and disproportionate to the scale of welfare fraud. Denmark's system has yet to be challenged under EU law. Whether the country's experiments with machine learning cross a legal line is a question that could be answered by the European Union's landmark Artificial Intelligence Act, proposed legislation that aims to safeguard human rights against emerging technologies.
[...] The documents obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED appear to show that Denmark's system goes beyond the one that brought down the Dutch government. They reveal how Denmark's algorithms use variables like nationality, whose use has been equated with ethnic profiling.
One of Denmark's fraud detection algorithms attempts to work out how someone might be connected to a non-EU country. Heavily redacted documents show that, in order to do this, the system tracks whether a welfare recipient or their "family relations" have ever emigrated from Denmark. Two other variables record their nationality and whether they have ever been a citizen of any country other than Denmark.
Jacobsen says that nationality is only one of many variables used by the algorithm, and that a welfare recipient will not be flagged unless they live at a "suspicious address" and the system isn't able to find a connection to Denmark. The documents also show that Denmark's data mining unit tracks welfare recipients' marital status, the length of their marriage, who they live with, the size of their house, their income, whether they've ever lived outside Denmark, their call history with the Public Benefits Administration, and whether their children are Danish residents.
Another variable, "presumed partner," is used to determine whether someone has a concealed relationship, since single people receive more benefits. This involves searching data for connections between welfare recipients and other Danish residents, such as whether they have lived at the same address or raised children together.
"The ideology that underlies these algorithmic systems, and [the] very intrusive surveillance and monitoring of people who receive welfare, is a deep suspicion of the poor," says Victoria Adelmant, director of the Digital Welfare and Human Rights Project.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Wednesday March 08, @03:22PM (5 children)
Most, if not nearly all, of those that get wellfare receive it with justification and at the amount that they are due. But there's always a handful of crafty crooks that know how to game the system who will then cash in big time and defraud the system of tens of thousands, sometimes even millions. And instead of now grabbing those crooks and throwing them behind bars for, let's just say a month per 100 they embezzled, with most that means jail for life anyway, the conservatives now lablel everyone who as much as dares to apply for social security as some sort of crook and thief.
For no other reason than to try to play yet another round of you vs. them, so you don't notice who the real crooks are who steal billions of your tax money with impunity. It's the old "poor vs. poor" game they play so their crooked billionaire friends stay out of focus.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @04:51PM (1 child)
Except farm subsidies, PPP bailouts, etc. that go to Congressmen/women which are perfectly normal and need to be increased and aren't welfare at all. Job creators gotta create jobs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday March 08, @05:02PM
That's a seemingly true statement, but it's not. Google says "The term welfare refers to a range of government programs that provide financial or other aid to individuals or groups who cannot support themselves."
Giving money to the poor is welfare. Giving money to the rich is dishonesty that sees to no one's welfare.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 08, @08:17PM (2 children)
The Republicans are the party of cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face.
"We can't have $GoodThing, because then those dirty *unworthy people* would benefit from $GoodThing! Vote it down!"
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday March 08, @10:50PM (1 child)
It's worse than that.
"We don't want you to have $good_thing, so we pretend it's $unworthy_people who would get it all".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, @02:18AM
And also: "We don't want you to have $good_thing, but we end up paying even more to deliver that thing (e.g. healthcare) in less efficient and effective ways".
a) People going to prison to get healthcare https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/on-purposely-getting-arrested-to-get-life-saving-surgery/273282/ [theatlantic.com]
b) People going to ER to get healthcare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act#Mandated_and_non-mandated_care [wikipedia.org]
Of course one "solution" to b) then is more ERs closing down: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9607.html [rand.org]
Which may cost you and your loved ones if an ER is actually needed.
A "solution" to a) is to to provide lower/worse healthcare to prisoners...
Even an intelligent sociopath who is forced to pay taxes would realize that if you like living in a civilized place someone has to pay for the civilization. And if you're one of the ones forced to pay, you'd want cheaper, better and more efficient ways of using your taxes. Delivering healthcare via prison or ER is not one of the good ways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday March 08, @04:27PM (58 children)
US system: no social security or healthcare worthy of the name. Voila! Spending curbed by virtue of not happening in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @04:54PM (7 children)
Even better - increase the national debt with abandon. Shriek about the national debt! Cut all spending. Live in a shithole. Profit???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @09:48PM (6 children)
Nobody ever says who that debt is owed to and what happens if you declare bankruptcy and don't pay it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 08, @10:02PM (3 children)
Actually, they [wikipedia.org] do [thebalancemoney.com]. Really [sofi.com].
And [marketrealist.com] they [nbcwashington.com] talk [bbc.com] about [thestreet.com] it a lot [americanprogress.org]. A whole lot [duckduckgo.com].
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, @02:33AM (2 children)
BUT why would the US not even be able to pay?
I could understand not being able to pay if the US owed mostly in Euros. But AFAIK most of the debt is in US dollars. The US can just create trillions of US dollars if it's forced to. They don't have to call it printing money - they could disguise it and call it other fancier and more acceptable names.
So the ones who should be the most worried are the ones who lent huge amounts of US dollars to the US.
It's not a big problem to the USA when oil, CPUs, wheat, etc are all bought and sold in US dollars.
Saudi Arabia should be careful of getting regime changed though if they head down this path: https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-accepting-yuan-instead-of-dollars-for-chinese-oil-sales-11647351541 [wsj.com]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday March 10, @04:59AM
Political posturing (in this case, refusing to increase the "debt ceiling") by members of Congress can stop us from printing those dollars to pay. And not just interest on the debt either. If such folks refuse to raise the "debt ceiling" the government will, essentially, shut down.
I'd note that the money involved in this are funds already appropriated and/or authorized by Congress.
Here's a primer [wikipedia.org] on the history of the debt ceiling in the US. If you read the contents of the link, you'll likely find most of the answers you're seeking there.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday March 10, @06:27PM
In other words, they could just default and not pay. Inflation by massive printing of money is just another form of default with large collateral damage. There's all kinds of consequences to that. The biggest would be the destruction of the US's reputation. In addition, no one would ever lend them money again. Plenty of people would be upset because the US just destroyed the value of their savings or dollar-valued asset. Government workers (particularly that pesky military) would want to be paid in something more valuable than a rapidly inflation dollar.
And the US didn't get this way because it was in the habit of spending what it earned. That inability to borrow combined with the vastly weakened buying power of the US dollar will greatly reduce what the US can pay for.
Why would anyone trade in US dollars? Oil, CPUs, etc will not be traded in US dollars, if the US does this one weird trick.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @10:34PM (1 child)
There was an interesting article a few weeks ago that pointed out that we used to tax the ultra wealthy to pay for things, but now we borrow from them and pay interest on it. That is to say, we have gone from a system where the rich pay taxes to one where we pay them. Neat trick - how's that working out?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @06:57PM
We still do. This is a bit dated, but it illustrates [taxfoundation.org] what actually gets paid by the ultra wealthy.
[...]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 08, @05:24PM (49 children)
Yep, not worthy of the name, but constitutes roughly 1/4 of the federal budget, more than double what we spend on our military. Winning Bigly there.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/percent.html [ssa.gov]
https://executivegov.com/articles/u-s-defense-budget-2022-how-much-does-the-united-states-spend-on-its-defense-budget#:~:text=COVID%2D19%20pandemic.-,What%20percent%20of%20the%20US%20budget%20is%20spent%20on%20military,half%20of%20the%20discretionary%20spending. [executivegov.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @02:42AM
But do you truly know how much is actually spent on the US military? You can't really call it accounting when that much of it is made up:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG [reuters.com]
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-35-trillion-accounting-black-231154593.html [yahoo.com]
An optimist might believe there's actually quinjets or better hidden away under that mess.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @06:16AM (46 children)
Correction:
Social Security: 22% (from your link)
Medicare: 13% [pgpf.org]
Medicaid: 9.5% (in 2017 [kff.org])
Veterans Administration (incidentally a big part of the military budget and almost all medical care): 5.5% [va.gov] ($270 billion in 2022 over budget of $4900 billion)
For those counting, it's not a quarter just from the above programs, but 60%. That is, more than half the US budget.
Once again, this brings up a huge problem with modern, developed world societies. We have access to huge amounts of data. So why all this willful ignorance over what goes on in our societies when we can just look it up?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @08:25AM (1 child)
> half the US budget OMG!!1111111!!!onehundredandeleven
So pay for it. Income inequality is the highest in forever, fetid billionaires' children are running around in politics, what the fuck don't you see here?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @04:06PM
Several things:
This is what we don't see here: a rapidly growing menace to the future of the US (and to some extent has analogous programs in other developed world countries). It won't continue for long, but how much damage will occur before these entitlements are reined in?
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @11:11AM (43 children)
>a huge problem with modern, developed world societies
That we don't let our poor starve or leave our sick out to die, and it is expensive?
I'll stick with the human race, thanks. When the alien reptilia-sapiens come calling you can emigrate to their society.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @04:09PM (42 children)
By letting these programs grow so much out of control we will create many more starving poor and leaving more sick out to die in the future. The economy is like a fruit tree. If you nurture it, it will grow and provide plenty of fruit. If you harm it greatly (as the programs I note above do), it won't.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @04:13PM (41 children)
>The economy is like a fruit tree. If you nurture it
Actual reality: if you piss on the base of your citrus trees, they grow bigger sweeter fruit than if you don't.
What this all has to do with social spending? I don't know, are you still listening to KID 590 AM for your connection to "the real world" ?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @04:33PM (40 children)
To a tree, that is nurturing. Similarly, what is good for us and our economy is often counterintuitive.
Grow a brain, dude. First, your argument was that because this sort of spending was only a quarter of the budget then it was something we didn't have to worry about. Well, it's much larger than that. Consider the ratio of spending: it jumped from 1/3 of the rest of the federal government's spending to 5/2 of the rest of the government's spending.
Second, the only reason these programs have grown to 60% of federal government spending is because they're growing faster than the economy is - for generations! Where will the taxes come from to pay for these programs in the future? There won't be enough economy to cover it - even if we try to make Mexico pay for it.
The reality here is that what can't continue, won't. Benefits will be cut either through intent, inflation, or some other more loopy way. It won't matter in the least how much feelz we have about the poor or sick. Feelz don't pay the bills. The most successful president we've had in the past half century, Bill Clinton had a slogan for his 1992 campaign, It's the economy, stupid [wikipedia.org]. That never changed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @04:34PM
Sorry, math fix.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @05:54PM (34 children)
>the only reason these programs have grown to 60% of federal government spending is because they're growing faster than the economy is - for generations!
Oh, don't worry your pretty little head about that... since we're all rich and not having children anymore all we have to do is get through the Boomer hump and it's all smooth sailing from there to the end of days. /sarc
>There won't be enough economy to cover it - even if we try to make Mexico pay for it.
Orange tinted delusions: There's a 2024 Presidential Candidate out there who will "get Mexico to pay for it" - absolutely! Just after he delivers those flying cars he just promised.
Reality: money in pockets drives the economy. The people will have money, they will spend the money for things they need: food, shelter, clothing, etc. That is a productive economic engine: people get jobs producing the things that people want to buy, those jobs give the workers even more money to spend on more things for other people to work to provide.
Spending endless hours researching benefits programs only to travel to bureaucratic abuse centers to stand in line and then argue with case officers who intentionally misinterpret "the rules" just to keep their payout ratio for the month down, then living in terrified uncertainty that the benefits will be yanked away for any excuse: especially going and getting a job that pays income? - that is my definition of "Unproductive."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @06:02PM (33 children)
Reality: money in pockets won't drive the economy enough. Remember that bit about benefits rising faster than the size of the economy?
Sounds like you need a plan B. Maybe save some money next time?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @07:23PM (32 children)
>Sounds like you need a plan B. Maybe save some money next time?
Just to put some ol' Digg spin on this: Yo mamma shoulda used plan B.
Sounds to me like your plan A-Z: just don't be poor.
You can stand on your soapbox and pontificate from now to eternity about the hindsight "shoulda done X" wisdom for people to avoid the pain and suffering they are presently in. It doesn't change the facts that:
1) they're poor now, regardless of how they got there.
2) being too poor to pay, they're a drain on the economy.
3) being too poor to afford proper food, shelter, healthcare, they are actually creating increased expenses for whoever it is that eventually ends up paying for their situation.
4) making the poor suffer as "cautionary tales" to convince future generations to "make better choices" is about as effective as hanging pickpockets as a deterrent to current and future pickpockets. It isn't, at all.
5) not all poor become criminals, and not all criminals are poor, but there is significant overlap and reducing poverty does reduce real societal costs of: crime, security, police actions, criminal justice, incarceration, etc. No, for-profit prisons are not a net-positive economic contributor. Not to mention, quality of life for the rich is higher when there are less abjectly poor people around.
6) while some segments of the population may get their jollies "feeling superior to that welfare trash," that's not a tangible net benefit to the actual economy.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @07:26PM (31 children)
You have a better plan, you let us know.
[clueless list follows]
So the solution is to dump everyone, not just the people with the above "pain and suffering", into a costly program that just shuffles money around. It doesn't build roads, it doesn't save peoples' lives in an emergency. It doesn't protect the US from outside military powers. The problem here is that we have real needs that are sliding because the money goes elsewhere.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @07:38PM (30 children)
>You have a better plan, you let us know.
Clue to the clueless: UBI
Just because you bash it doesn't mean it's not the best plan going, and significantly better than our current situation.
You may be happy with your current situation. You may be skeered that things will get worse for you personally with UBI. UBI is change, change is risk, some people inevitably come out worse off after significant change. You may be in the tiny unlucky minority, in-fact I suspect you would be because with UBI there should be net migration out of the cities to lower cost of living areas - your little slice of paradise will get more crowded more quickly than without UBI. Welcome to Florida binky, sucks to be somewhere nice doesn't it? Ask the Hawaiians about that if you want the really bad news.
However, on the whole, even most people in your place/state should have a net benefit. Unless your whole existence is predicated on having some miserable poor people around to feel superior to - there will still be poor, but they won't be as miserable, so I guess you'll have to get your jollies kicking puppies instead.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @07:56PM (29 children)
I don't buy that any more. There's so many problems that you just ignore. The big ones are there's no need served by the program and no natural way to prevent voters from voting more UBI at the expense of the US's future. I see a lot of the problems I refer to with US Social Security and other public pension programs. Namely, it became an untouchable program that drains money from the US's needs. And that fundamental dynamic hasn't been fixed in almost 90 years of operation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @08:12PM (28 children)
>There's so many problems that you just ignore.
So many problems you just imagine.
>The big ones are there's no need served by the program
Show me the subset of the U.S. population that does not need a certain amount of money to live. Food, shelter, you don't get those for free in our country - even if you own your own land you pay taxes on that land, everyone needs a certain amount of hard currency just to continue existing in this country.
>no natural way to prevent voters from voting more UBI
Oh, you skeered again? Get the poor off of their welfare treadmill and they might organize and vote themselves more money? Like the retired currently vote themselves higher social security benefits? Benefits track cost of living increases: https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social-security/info-2020/colas-history.html [aarp.org] that's not actually more money, that's the same money just with higher numbers on it.
>at the expense of the US's future
naked assertion, ignored.
>it became an untouchable program that drains money from the US's needs
Define needs again? I'd start with food, shelter... The "New Deal" has financed itself from taxes on the workers and their employers for ~90 years. It is no more guilty of raising the federal deficit than military adventures, infrastructure programs, or any other thing the government finances.
>And that fundamental dynamic hasn't been fixed in almost 90 years of operation.
And here's your opportunity for change: no more games of "should I retire at 62 or 67." If you listen to Wang he'd finance the program on VAT, you know: that income stream used by all those other countries with high standards of living, reasonably good infrastructures, universal healthcare, etc. Simultaneously with a ramp-up of VAT and UBI, Social Security benefits should decline for a net-zero change of effective benefits (yes, VAT will factor into COLA and that will increase the numbers on the page, which are, after all, just numbers.)
A new New Deal is actually an opportunity to address those problem you bitch and moan about in a 90 year old system that was designed in a world far far different from the one we live in today.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @08:23PM (21 children)
Everyone. They need all kinds of things, but none of these are money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @10:11PM (20 children)
Show me the subset of the U.S. population that can get those necessary "all kinds of things" without money.
The government isn't good, or at least efficient, at many things. The one "killer app" to come out of governments from the late 1700s is "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." I would much rather the government deal with money (as they always will when they take your taxes: one of two certainties in life), and stay out of the businesses of building housing, providing food, and supplying the other necessities of life.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @01:22AM (10 children)
Just about everyone. A common approach is to work. Sure, money appears in an intermediate stage, but it goes from work to needs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @02:24AM (9 children)
And UBI is intermediate money which can provide those things.
Your pretzel logic is completely crumbled.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @05:04AM (8 children)
So is all the other money out there. UBI wouldn't be special in what it provides.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @04:01PM (7 children)
>UBI wouldn't be special in what it provides.
Clearly, you have no concept of: broke, with no source of credit, no place to turn for help other than the "department of anal inspection preliminary to potential relief payment".
Once people have cleared that gauntlet, they are deathly afraid to do anything that might put them through the process again, they've "turned on the tap" and God forbid they might trigger it to be turned off by doing something like working and earning money, saving more than $2000 in the bank, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @04:40PM (6 children)
Again, you use the language of need to describe the alleged benefits of a non-need-based program. The obvious solution is a needs-based program or two - which the US already has.
Doesn't sound like a genuine problem to me, much less one that requires government intervention.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @05:12PM (5 children)
>Doesn't sound like a genuine problem to me, much less one that requires government intervention.
Your perspective is certainly different, some might say: willfully ignorant.
A) the system we now have feels like a lot more government intervention, judging people, evaluating complex and evolving sets of rules.
B) as spoken in "The Aviator": "We don't concern ourselves with money here." "Well, maam, that's because you have it."
If it were 1789 and we mostly all grew our own food and built our own homes, I would agree with your perspective: you need something? You're healthy and able to work? Get your ass out there and work for it.
The system we have today is virtually completely mediated by money, and the people who have the money have been relentlessly pushing the system towards allowing them to accumulate more and more money/power in a few hands. The real golden rule? He who has the gold, makes the rules.
The "get your ass out there and work for it" floor no longer exists. It "takes money to make money" - to get even a minimum wage job, you almost always need housing and transportation - things that often cost more than a minimum wage can provide.
A challenge to you:
Take all the money and forms of credit from your wallet, put them away where you can't touch them. Turn off all automatic payments made from your accounts for everything. Zero cash, zero credit. Bring any IDs you like, DL, Passport, whatever. Hitch a ride to the nearest town where nobody knows you, get out and live there for a month - without using money. Just one month.
You might get a job and earn money, to pay for the things you need - but even that would be challenging with just the clothes on your back. You would most likely seek charity, assistance, etc. Tell me how invasive that process is before you have what you need to survive the month?
Now consider: you're not even in debt, yet.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @06:04PM (4 children)
All solid reasons to avoid UBI. Because I just don't buy that UBI won't evolve in the same way.
Which remains irrelevant to UBI. We have plenty of non-UBI money with which to mediate trade. It's a solved problem.
Here's my answer: fuck you.
Here's my one month challenge for you. How about you take that brain and think with it? You keep making the same mistakes over and over and over. If the problem is that people have needs that aren't being met, then that's justification for a needs-based program or two which we already have. The problems you keep bringing already have solutions.
This is why I no longer support UBI. The people arguing for it keep pushing the stupidest arguments and ignore the huge problems. It's better to just not do that with these glaring warning signs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @06:21PM (3 children)
>Because I just don't buy that UBI won't evolve in the same way.
I'm afraid, before it ever becomes reality, you may be right.
As stated: one payment, identical for all citizens, it is nothing like the system you fear. However, our legislative process of pork and graft will doubtlessly corrupt such simple concepts long before they reach implementation.
>We have plenty of non-UBI money with which to mediate trade. It's a solved problem.
You are speaking of the royal "we" and those without: let them eat cake, hm?
>Here's my answer: fuck you.
I don't like how you argue, either. It's as if you're willfully ignoring obvious points because they don't back up your chosen stance. Were you a master debater in high school?
>If the problem is that people have needs that aren't being met
There's a base problem: everybody has needs. We have a system that obviously gets by, but also obviously has glaring problems.
Circumstances change. Families are getting smaller and less dependable for support. People who have "everything they need" at one time can quickly fall on hard times and require charity. As you point out elsewhere, the aging "New Deal" has several tenets which are profoundly counterproductive in today's world - starting with payments for everybody who makes it to age 62 and the expectation that they will work hard until then, then turn around and sit on their ass until they die.
>This is why I no longer support UBI.
When did you ever?
>ignore the huge problems.
You seem to be pushing hard on vulnerability to fraud as one of the hugest - and from my perspective you're trying to push FUD about something that's already demonstrated as well (even if it could be better) under control by the current government programs.
>It's better to just not do that with these glaring warning signs.
And continue peddling the broken bullshit from the 1930s. Check. Got your number.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @07:43PM (2 children)
Yet. Where's the safeguards to keep the negative aspects under control? Even my universal dividend has the same problem. Once the system is in place there are endless ways to game it - increase what is redistributed, control who has access, put all kinds of restrictions in, etc. My take is Social Security demonstrates these problems that any UBI would face. Further, the boosters for a program will promise whatever they need to promise in order to get it to pass into law. Then they'll walk back those promises or future generations will just move in other directions.
Given that we're trading now without UBI money, I can say that it's working already.
Like what? You haven't brought any of those obvious points up yet. So what are they?
Sorry, I don't buy an endless stream of needs-based argument for a non-needs-based program. Needs are addressed by needs-based programs. If there's a real problem here, then fix the program not force everyone into UBI.
I don't buy your assurances about how humans will respond because we already know from existing UBI-like programs how it'll turn out. TV and dope is the far more likely outcome than some magical wellspring of risk taking ventures.
And finally, this is a great taking from people who make things happen to people who merely consume. It's a waste of our time and resources. In isolation, it wouldn't be the worst thing ever, but combine it with the large variety of existing wastes we have and I think it would be the end of the US as a functioning entity. It's that big and unconstrained.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @08:12PM (1 child)
>Where's the safeguards to keep the negative aspects under control?
Same place as every other government program, ever. Inadequate, but workable.
>Once the system is in place there are endless ways to game it
Thus: simple rules. I'd like to couple it with a flat tax, every dollar every person earns, from the first one after UBI until Bezos levels: taxed at the same percentage rate, whatever that rate needs to be to fund the federal programs.
>Given that we're trading now without UBI money
We all "evolved" within the current system, the ones the system left for dead are no longer with us. You could say the same of Russia. Doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for improvement. My primary measuring sticks for improvement compare: simplicity, and transparency. Ironically, the Orange pompadour was pushing that simplicity agenda hard in his first year - even an idiot squirrel hangs on to a good nut once in a while.
>fix the program not force everyone into UBI.
I'm sorry, what part of UBI hurts anyone? You make enough money, you'll be paying your UBI back in taxes. People below that income level have a "net negative" tax rate, and as income increases (against a flat tax) net tax asymptotically approaches the rate that everyone pays on earned income.
>we already know from existing UBI-like programs how it'll turn out
That depends, entirely, on whose research you read. The serious studies which have set out to collect data on UBI programs have found significant net benefits for the UBI arm, benefits not only to the recipients but to society as a whole.
>TV and dope is the far more likely outcome
if you ask my idiot firefighter neighbor, it sure is, and his mind is pretty much made up on all subjects all the time. I think this is partly because TV and dope is what he and his volunteer firefighter buddies do most of the time while on duty. He and his wife also have relatively rich parents, rental properties, mountain cabin project in Missouri, etc. He doesn't really understand the motivation to work because you don't have what you need/want, he's never had to do it - that fat inheritance has been hanging there his whole life, and trickled down generously along the way.
>some magical wellspring of risk taking ventures.
Some will, many won't, and what's wrong with that? If you want to launch a risk taking venture, should you be required to be born to rich parents, or otherwise beg, borrow or steal money from old rich people?
>And finally, this is a great taking from people who make things happen to people who merely consume.
Let's make it like your dividend program: a tithe of GDP.
>It's a waste of our time and resources.
We're going to to feed and house these people one way or another. Same argument actually applies, successfully, to Universal Healthcare. If basic healthcare were provided to everyone, the total cost of healthcare would decrease and the population would be healthier and more productive as a result.
>combine it with the large variety of existing wastes we have and I think it would be the end of the US as a functioning entity. It's that big and unconstrained.
One of my main points for UBI is that it should wind down many of the existing wastes we have, particularly those highlighted in TFA: determination of need, interpretation of byzantine administrative codes, overly invasive surveillance, etc.
Sum total of federal programs are currently 7% of GDP (neglecting state and local - importantly: education.) If UBI can trim that 7% to 4%, for a net 14% of GDP into federal programs, I'm going to argue that turning our welfare dependent poor from unproductive members of society into more reliable consumers who more actively participate in the workforce could easily grow enough to make up that 7% increase in federal taxes.
Significant tangent: we all need to start working more like George Jetson: fewer hours doing what we're good at, rather than occupying a cube 40 hours a week for the sake of presenteeism and locking out that employment from others who could share in it and collectively do a better, more productive job. In other words: four people working 30 hours a week is both better productivity for the company, and better for the employees' quality of life, than two people working 60 hours a week.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12, @10:06AM
You're funkin' with the dude's religion. He won't listen.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @07:10PM (8 children)
The US had plenty of private currencies well after that period. Just because the federal government granted itself a monopoly on cash after that period doesn't make it a killer app. The unilateral use of government power is a killer app in the real sense of the word for tyrants, of course.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @07:47PM (7 children)
>Just because the federal government granted itself a monopoly on cash after that period doesn't make it a killer app.
All evidence to the contrary: ease of commerce, EU following suit even though they remain separate countries speaking different languages.
>The unilateral use of government power is a killer app in the real sense of the word for tyrants, of course.
Yep, thus the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear nuclear arms against your political tyrants, by some interpretations.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @09:54PM (6 children)
And several hundred cryptocurrencies.
We probably needed that tyrant anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @10:04PM (5 children)
>And several hundred cryptocurrencies.
I'm sorry, I don't count Las Vegas or Atlantic City as "net productive" - why would I value virtual gambling / Ponzi / pyramid schemes?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 11, @03:07AM (4 children)
Do you have any understanding of what "net productive" means? Or why you put that in quotes when no one has mentioned that phrase before in this entire discussion? Maybe the problem here is that none of us should care what you think "net productive" means?
Moving on, what gets ignored in the crypto is gambling narrative is that currency speculators do the same for normal currency. Someone is gambling with your dollars. Yet we don't term US dollars as "virtual gambling" (well, most of us) even though the same thing happens with that as with cryptocurrencies. What's missed here is that these are used just like normal currencies for routine trade, but with vastly less support infrastructure and government interference/surveillance. That's net productive in the usual sense of the phrase.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 11, @04:19AM (3 children)
It has to do with the volatility and manipulatability of the issues. Two bit twats like Sam Bankman-Fried can, and do, manipulate cryptocurrencies. It takes a lot more juice to manipulate the US dollar.
I sense fear of discussion about "net productivity" in your steering attempt. Net zero transactions where nobody wins more than somebody else loses are not net productive. Those net zero transactions include currency speculation, whether small time like crypto or big time banks playing with national currencies.
Vegas is a tourist destination providing guest services. The money that flows around the casinos isn't doing anything productive other than entertaining the guests, at a remarkably high price for the time they are amused.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 11, @06:32AM (2 children)
As someone involved in the hospitality industry I attribute a great deal of productivity to the entertaining of guests. And those guests show up for some reason. Perhaps rather than continue this pointless discussion, you consider why so many people go through this exercise. It's not like someone is sticking a gun to their heads.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 11, @02:14PM (1 child)
>since the people actually involved in the currencies feel differently
Do they, though? I mean, the ones that actually get rich, not the wannabe rubes pumping money in to the fraudsters who have swallowed their idealistic bait: hook, line and sinker.
>I attribute a great deal of productivity to the entertaining of guests.
Look at the money-flow ratios: Yellowstone vs "The Strip". Vegas is moving lots of money around, and I'll agree there is obvious entertainment value in that, but the money moving back and forth in the casinos isn't doing anything other than providing entertainment, and feeding the owners.
>It's not like someone is sticking a gun to their heads.
No, but they are tickling the "baser instincts" that I would say come much closer to "moral hazard" than people having food and shelter security. A significant portion of the population have impulse control issues around these stimuli, they'll make self-destructive decisions just to get another hit of the "I'm gonna strike it rich with this next bet." Of course, Vegas is also famous for stimulating other "baser instincts" for a fee. Last time we were there the purveyors would hand out business cards in the street and all you had to do was call the number when you got back to your room and they would come join you, join you cumming, or whatever else you might want. The acts themselves aren't a problem (if you can afford the losses, use proper disease protection, etc.) The problem is: people over do it, lose money they need for more direct "needs of life", violate vows of fidelity and thereby destroy family relationships, etc. and they cover this up even while they continue to spiral down in a self-destructive pattern.
Again, Transparency is always the answer. While I was between marriages I met a German woman in the Swiss Alps, she informed me she was married but her husband didn't mind and had similar affairs of his own. We had fun. 8 months later, she and her husband were in Miami and called me up to have a nice lunch together with my new girlfriend of the past 4 months - who was not ok with such relationships ongoing but understanding that a man in his 30s has had prior relationships, as had she. Out in the open, no problems. That girlfriend and I married, had children, and took a family trip to Vegas when the kids were 12 and 14. I went down to the tables in the Bellagio fully ready to lose up to $500: out in the open, no problems. Stories of similar things being covered up, escalated, and run until the characters are miserable, or dead, are all too common - and the righteous basis of the label: "moral hazard."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 11, @02:59PM
In other words, we're to ignore the vast majority of cryptocurrency users - most who don't invest in crypto at all? How about we not do that?
Let's ignore the one or two billion people who routinely use dollars, and focus on that hypothetical gnome of Zurich who's giggling right now. Isn't he mean? Let's blow away critical infrastructure for a billion or two people because some imaginary person I don't like has feelings I don't like!
Why should I care about money flows? Is it a structural problem for the casino buildings? If we move money back and forth too fast, it'll cause the building to tilt over?
Or maybe money is moving faster than man was meant to move? That is unnatural and God will smite us for it. You must really hate HFT then.
We probably shouldn't let those people make any sort of decisions in their life, right?
If transparency was the answer, what in the world was the question? Seems that cryptocurrency comes out way ahead, if only because you don't have to wonder where seven trillion US dollars went in some vague quantitative easing process.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @08:59PM (5 children)
Since I'm on this subject, we have the idiocy of justifying an explicitly non-needs based program on the basis of needs. The obvious rebuttal is that for the much greater majority it won't satisfy peoples' needs because they already satisfy their own needs without UBI. Thus, you need a better argument than that especially since we already have needs-based programs that are better justified and better focused by your own arguments.
I have an alternate suggestion here. Instead of a universal income, have a universal dividend. The financial meaning is a share of profits to be paid to the shareholders. That's the intent here. The voters would be the shareholders and they would be rewarded for a US economy that does well.
It would vary from year to year, depending on how well the US fared. For example, ten percent of all federal revenue acquired from fees and taxes on activity and property in the US (no tribute payments to make Mexico pay for it), minus that year's interest payments with a minimum of 2%. We have two effects. First, even if the US continues to rack up debt, at least 8% of those interest payments will come directly from the voter (turning a $300 per year per US citizen dividend payment into a $1500 per year per US citizen payment). That's incentive for voters to clean up the present mess. Second, there's long term incentive for voters to help make the US better economically which would be absent with your UBI since we have a long history of growing the US economy faster than inflation.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @10:34PM (4 children)
>The obvious rebuttal is that for the much greater majority it won't satisfy peoples' needs because they already satisfy their own needs without UBI.
Do they - satisfy their own needs? How many are dependent on family? Charity? The kindness of strangers? How many of those sources of "needful things" are reliable?
As for your "can't eat money" tangent - maybe you and your buds party like it's 1799, but 99.999%+ of U.S. citizens satisfy their daily caloric requirements via money mediated channels. In plainer english: they buy their food - whether from restaurants or stores. Even the ones who grow their own spend significant quantities of money on things they use to grow that food. Want to "live off the land" hunting? First off, you'll need hunting rights on land worth several decades of UBI. Secondly, please introduce me to this large population of bow hunters in America who make their own bows and arrows, then use them to supply all their caloric requirements, year round? Better still, those gunsmiths who use no money to produce their rifles and ammunition?
>Instead of a universal income, have a universal dividend. The financial meaning is a share of profits to be paid to the shareholders. That's the intent here. The voters would be the shareholders and they would be rewarded for a US economy that does well.
Like the Alaska fund. Noble, "fair" from a certain perspective, and nearly worthless if it can vanish unpredictably. I hear a "save your pennies" argument coming, and I might remind you that economies don't run on savings, they run on spending. If a hundred billionaires move to your town and all they do is rent little apartments and eek by on public transportation and cooking their meals from low cost groceries, they're not adding anything more to your local economy than a hundred people on UBI would.
>It would vary from year to year, depending on how well the US fared.
By whose measuring stick? Is this your strawman, soaked in gasoline, holding a 4th of July sparkler in an outstretched arm? It would sound like you are suggesting that such a dividend might have been paid back in 1835, and possibly again for a few months during the Clinton administration.
>That's incentive for voters to clean up the present mess.
The voters can barely tell when election rigging news is fake, you would expect them to manage us to a surplus budget?
>there's long term incentive for voters to help make the US better economically which would be absent with your UBI since we have a long history of growing the US economy faster than inflation.
The US has a long history of population growth, particularly during the fossil fuel exploitation decades. Managing the economy will be a new sort of challenge if we ever reach decreasing population, and if we don't reach decreasing population the whole shithouse will be going up in flames [youtube.com] shortly anyway.
UBI provides security. Looking around the world at secure vs unsecure population (food security, housing security, freedom from arbitrary arrest and killing security, etc.) it would seem self-evident that secure populations have relatively thriving economies as compared to those who are unsure where their next meal is coming from.
You want to make a quick buck? Take a risk, go buy a lottery ticket, or go invest in some emerging 3rd world economy. Odds are (strong) that you will lose, but there certainly are those rare, lucky individuals who hit it big.
At risk investment, unreliable returns, etc. make a few rich, but not everyone who plays. UBI (and all social programs) serve the whole population.
Unless you're thinking of recycling the poor into Soylent Green when they can't pay their debts or find a way to feed themselves... that could address both the economy and population problems.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @01:48AM (3 children)
Economies run on satisfying wants via trade and cooperation. That is neither savings or spending. For a glaring example of how that breaks, hyperinflation destroys the value of any sort of cash equivalent that you don't immediately get rid of. That gets rid of savings and it will similarly devastate any spending that isn't done immediately. But an economy in hyperinflation is still an economy.
You can babble about "money mediated channels", but it's still not money that feeds people.
Except when they don't. As I noted, you ignore the drawbacks - the biggest which is simply taking wealth from someone and giving it to another. Once the government can take, then it can take more, it can attach strings (such as your threat earlier to withhold UBI from people who allegedly commit UBI fraud), and it gets a pass on corruption and bad math from UBI-dependent people.
Further, there's no real value to UBI here. We don't get anything, for example, out of just giving you money. After all, we could just not give you money and you do whatever anyway. It's not like spending on roads or national security where you get a road or a nation that's better defended against attack and conquest. The people with needs are already addressed by needs-based entitlements. And the people without, are similarly addressed by having jobs, savings/investments, etc.
Yes.
You ignore moral hazard here. That's where next quarter/too-big-to-fail thinking comes from. When government provides a comfortable safety blanket, then people naturally make decisions that require that security blanket. It's not even human nature, but standard game theory. My take is that we already have UBI-like systems in place that show this particular flaw - such as US Social Security and the widespread acceptance of do-nothing retirement. But go tell me how much you like that idea, and thus, how much Social Security has normalized this thinking for you.
And my take is that this security would be an illusion - because it doesn't make the economy in question any better and it isolates people from the information of the economy. What will happen when UBI stops flowing because the government can no longer provide it? If you never had it in the first place, you can't miss it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @04:39PM (2 children)
>Economies run on satisfying wants via trade and cooperation.
What percentage of your wants were satisfied via trade and cooperation (with strangers outside your family / household / closest friends) wherein absolutely no money traded hands?
If you've got a number higher than 10%, you're an extreme-outlier freak in the U.S.
>For a glaring example of how that breaks, hyperinflation destroys the value of any sort of cash equivalent
So does global thermonuclear war. We try to avoid these things in the U.S. - fairly successfully of late.
>it's still not money that feeds people.
Money is how people get food.
Said money is paid to (Corporations first, then) people who grow, harvest, transport, package and sell the food. Without money, that system falls apart, you're not going to go barter with Monsanto for a share of their planting seeds, a major agro-conglomerate to grow the crops, the migrant farmworkers to harvest the crops, the autonomous truck driving corporation to transport the crops for you, etc... Money, in the hands of individuals, is what drives that system so each gets the share of it they need/want.
> simply taking wealth from someone and giving it to another.
Oh, I thought money had no value, money isn't what you eat, sleep under, etc. Wait, now that there's taxes involved money becomes sacred? To be held sacrosanct above petty concerns like starvation, exposure, disease, violence, etc.?
> Once the government can take
I think you're a little late to be complaining about that, like 7000 years too late.
>it can attach strings (such as your threat earlier to withhold UBI from people who allegedly commit UBI fraud)
Yep, that's called population behavior modification. Without it, baser instincts like fraud, theft, rape, murder, etc. tend to become more of a problem. Are you suggesting that we are free of such behavior modification, anywhere in any human society?
>it gets a pass on corruption and bad math from UBI-dependent people.
Losing me here (again) what is it about having a dependable source of food, shelter, the time to pursue education instead of constantly seeking sources of the necessities of life, that makes people more likely to ignore government corruption, or bad math?
In 1750 idle hands may have been the devil's workshop. I contend that in 2020, idle hands have the means to better their own lives and the lives of others. There are bad people in this world, yes, but there are - on balance - far more good people. Empowering all the people, empowers more good people than bad. Good people with security are far more likely to speak out against injustice, corruption, and whatever else bothers them, than good people who can barely make ends meet.
>there's no real value to UBI here
The value of a nation is embodied in its people. Roads and tanks and guns enable those people to do things, but without people roads and tanks and guns have no value at all.
>The people with needs are already addressed by needs-based entitlements.
All people have needs, that's the core argument here: needs-based entitlements entail meaningless, valueless needs testing. Waste of time and money that they purport to protect. Everybody has needs, provide for the Basic needs of everyone and let those who earn or have more, have more.
>>you would expect them to manage us to a surplus budget?
>Yes.
That's past crack smoking, deep into peyote trance delusions.
>You ignore moral hazard here.
You've been reading Steve Forbes, haven't you? The hypocritical critic of UBI who denigrates a few thousand dollars a year to the poor as a "moral hazard" while in the time it takes him to speak those words his personal fortune has increased by several thousand dollars.
>When government provides a comfortable safety blanket, then people naturally make decisions that require that security blanket.
And my contention is: that is a Very Good Thing.
Look at great success stories, what do they have almost universally in common? The people who had those great successes took big risks because they had a strong safety net. They weren't concerned about where their next meal would come from today, or ten years from now, that was taken care of and they could focus on their goal, manage their passion, and build their dreams into reality.
>widespread acceptance of do-nothing retirement
I agree, that's a flaw of the 1930s "New Deal" - and this idea of "making it" until you can draw that SS check is screwed up. It was designed at a time when most people didn't make it to that age: "Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was only 58 for men and 62 for women". It's time to evolve that system into something more appropriate for the 2030s and beyond, and with a constant UBI, retirement comes when you feel like it, not when you've crossed some finish line. If you never earn enough to buy that yacht and private island or whatever your childhood dreams were, you retire, or semi-retire when you find work and the extra income from it less attractive than what you can do with the time and money you have left - and there's no such thing as "outliving your savings."
>this security would be an illusion
Because the bogey man will come take it away?
>it isolates people from the information of the economy.
Come again? Are you picturing everyone "retiring" at age 22 just after they leave school and smoking dope while watching endless Netflix? Some will, no doubt, follow that path, and I ask you: are those the kinds of people you want as co-workers, anyway?
>What will happen when UBI stops flowing because the government can no longer provide it?
I guess we'll go back to growing our own food and building our own houses.
$600 per person per month is $2.4T/year, 10% of GDP, a tithe. If 10% isn't too much for God, it isn't too much for your fellow citizens to have the money they need for food and shelter, or cocaine and hookers if that's their priority.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @05:45PM (1 child)
Zero UBI money changed hands - it's a non-program for everyone you and I know and yet we manage just fine.
In other words, you don't feed anyone with money as I've been saying all along. Thanks for the agreement.
Only if you're not paying attention. Over 60% of the US federal government's budget grows faster than the economy does, even the global economy for that matter. There aren't enough rich people in the world to pay for it, should this continue. Hyperinflation is a natural outcome.
That's because you're clueless. Money is a medium of exchange. Wealth is what actually gets taken. And I'll point out here that my take on that is that UBI is a classic example of a program that takes from wealth producers and gives to wealth consumers. It'll be a net drag on an economy that already has a bunch of anchors and albatrosses.
The fact that voters have been doing it with US Social Security for longer than you've been alive. I think it's instructive to see how the promises of Social Security were violated in short order.
The point here is not that Democrats are bad, but that this UBI-like program gradually reneged on a huge list of promises. Voters went along with that. I think this slow-boil-the-frog approach can only be avoided by just not having UBI in the first place. Because there's no way I can hold you or anyone else to promises that can be easily broken when it's convenient.
And now we have a wealthy class of elderly taking from a poor class of young and middle aged.
They took big risks and were really good at what they did is the real universally common. Some of them really did need to worry about where their next meal came from. For an interesting example, we have John D. Rockefeller [wikipedia.org] who is commonly thought to have been the wealthiest US citizen ever (as well as the wealthiest person who wasn't of royalty or a head of state). He started life in a large, broken family with an absent con man as father. He went to work at 16 as a bookkeeper and started his first business four years later. Two years later at 22 he was wealthy enough to buy substitute soldiers for himself to serve in the Civil War. By 31 he created Standard Oil, the monopoly by which he became so wealthy.
My take is security is way overrated. One good roll of the dice and security is taken care of, sometimes for life.
And it will be the flaw of UBI as well. Advertisers and marketing will work on that just as easily to extract the value of UBIers.
As to not having the chance to "outlive your savings"? I see that as a non-problem that I just don't care about. Save/invest your income instead of spending it, and you too can have savings that last your whole life.
Yes actually. I think we would build a generation or three that would be great at cashing UBI checks, but not much else. No work experience means they lose their number one way to learn how to deal with other people and how to do things.
How many generations it would be would depend on how long the situation lasts before the wheels come off.
As to "isolates people from the information of the economy" here's my take. In the business world we have a lot of that. They routinely take ridiculous gambles and ignore obvious signs of impending recession because someone will bail them out. At the personal level, if people don't have to plan for their personal circumstances or pay attention to what's going on in the world, then they won't. That's been shown again and again. I think dope and Netflix will be a natural outcome for a large portion of US society as a result just like do-nothing retirement is today. And I'm just not interested in using our money to support life styles.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 11, @06:49AM
And given that those rolls of the dice tend to benefit a bunch of employees, it's a significant boon for a lot of people not just the dice roller.
One thing that repeatedly gets short shrift here is that we already have plenty of opportunity to take relatively safe risks - that's not the hard part of risk taking. If we aren't doing it now, then we likely won't do it with said UBI. UBI doesn't add much to the safety of risk taking since the risks described are only early stage and wouldn't apply to later risk taking.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 09, @10:04PM (3 children)
WTF? Show me where he said this?
The first several steps of this tree (I'm not reading all the way to the bottom) is a farce of the both of you arguing against things the other isn't saying.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @05:24AM (2 children)
Here. [soylentnews.org] I even quoted it. Get with the program.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 10, @03:15PM (1 child)
Yes, he said it's a quarter of the budget. No, he didn't say "it wasn't something we didn't have to worry about".
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @06:10PM
Ok, I reread it and you are right. I thought otherwise from the dismissive tone and the complete skipping of medical services.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, @03:02AM
They somehow think it's the patriotic thing to do etc.
But they not happy on spending to defend their own people against malnutrition and sickness.
Prolife!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday March 08, @04:55PM (1 child)
I don't know if it's deliberately misleading or just poorly written, but:
More than any of them, or all of them put together? Considering that America's welfare was gutted in 1996 and now you have to be a minor, disabled, working, or prove you're actively looking for work to get any benefits at all, EVERYBODY but the third world spends more on welfare than the US.
Is Wired the new Rolling Stone? I always saw Wired as hipsters who wished they could be nerds.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @05:17PM
Arbeit macht frei has become the national motto. Working for free is the highest ideal, serving those who own capital particularly if it was not earned - inherited is the preferred acquisition method.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 08, @05:20PM (18 children)
Universal: every citizen gets it, no needs test.
Basic: enough to live, not luxuriously, but safe and healthy with access to education if you want it.
Income: reliably provided all the time.
This wouldn't eliminate the disability benefits system altogether, but it would slash the need for surveillance of the bulk of aid recipients. Flat amount given to all citizens, they just need to make sure that you are alive - and not complaining that somebody else is stealing your benefits somehow. If you are "entitled to" (needful of) higher levels of benefits, that system would continue as a supplement over and above UBI, and you can play your surveillance and fraud detection games with those people.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday March 08, @09:10PM (3 children)
I agree a UBI is probably the way to go, but you've got to be careful with supplements or you just leave all the expensive overhead and fraud potential in place anyway.
Though I suppose low-income assistance is probably most of the overhead, you hopefully only need supplements for people who are actually incapable of working. And that only if the UBI is not enough to maintain whatever minimum level of comfort we think people should be entitled to
I tend to lean towards universal medical care, plus enough UBI for room and board at a clean boarding house, plus other essentials, as a starting point. Well, assuming we made boarding houses legal again anyway. And have free schooling, at least up through trade schools, to make it easy to increase your value to society. A perfectly comfortable life if you're stuck there, but lots of room for improvement, and the resources necessary to do so.
It looks like there's around ~14 million Disability claimants in the US, compared to ~38 million people below the poverty line (as a stand-in for the perfect-world number of welfare recipients, which I couldn't quickly find). So just replacing welfare with UBI should theoretically remove maybe 73% of the combined administrative overhead. That's not too bad.
Adding the rest of Social Security claimants (70M total) would tilt those numbers dramatically, reducing low-income assistance to 35% of total claimants. But it's not immediately obvious that we want to replace earned benefits as well.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 08, @10:16PM (2 children)
>you hopefully only need supplements for people who are actually incapable of working.
In the U.S. there's a sort of two tier system, one: designed and administrated to humiliate and shame those who need benefits. UBI would be a great replacement for this - just have UBI instead.
Then there's a sort of insurance model where you pay into the system and if you ever become disabled or otherwise qualified (retirement age, among other things like death of spouse, etc.) then you receive "elevated" benefits based on how much you were paying in before you became needful. This one is a godforsaken mess, but millions and millions of people live off of it, you'll find lots of them out in rural areas where there aren't any real jobs - other than providing services to these disability check recipients.
>Well, assuming we made boarding houses legal again anyway.
I think if the poor had UBI, clean well run boarding houses would become a very successful business model, again (Making the country Great Again?) As it is, the poor have nothing, they're a terrible credit risk, and they really are incapable to come up with the rent a lot of the time, but with a reliable regular income, even a small one, you could rent rooms for 2-4 occupants for a very reasonable rate, and the people occupying those rooms really would be capable of being reliable payers.
>remove maybe 73% of the combined administrative overhead. That's not too bad.
Not bad at all.
>But it's not immediately obvious that we want to replace earned benefits as well.
Yeah, if UBI were $600 per person per month, I'd lean toward replacing the first $600 per month of earned benefits with UBI, there are good arguments against that, but all in all I'd like to see UBI as more of a deflationary agent in our consumer economy than inflationary. If we convert those 38 million below the poverty line into capable payers of small amounts, I would hope that the market would "come down to meet" their ability to pay. As things are, there's no reason to market to the poor because often as not they have negative amounts of "disposable income" to pay with.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @08:32AM (1 child)
Bro, at some point we've got to recognize that all this humanity - thousands of pounds of human flesh - is just unwanted. It costs so much to take care of them, more than cattle, and in return all we get is their deep need sucking on our souls. Better we exterminate them like vermin. I await your better suggestion.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, @05:09AM
That's a great idea. Let's start with you.
(Score: 1, Troll) by dwilson on Wednesday March 08, @10:40PM (2 children)
I used to believe that UBI was something worth trying, but then I realized that Canada has been running a UBI test for 50+ years using a sizable subset of it's population [sac-isc.gc.ca].
The results are not encouraging.
- D
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjames on Wednesday March 08, @11:07PM
That seems a little disingenuous. From your link:
Really? Calling $5 every other year a UBI? To be fair though, according to This link [sac-isc.gc.ca] from the page you provided, some receive the princely sum of $4 annually.
In reality, those are payments negotiated by treaty and have nothing to do with UBI. They were worth a bit more nearly 100 years ago when they started, but even then, they were FAR from a basic income.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @12:04AM
Canada is just as bad, sometimes worse, than the US in their treatment of Native Americans, even as recently as 50 years ago... Native Americans are not a representative population for any entire modern nation, the issues run deep and are more profound than even African Americans in the US South.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @04:10PM (10 children)
By creating a vast new category of aid recipients that need to be surveilled. /sarc
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @05:46PM (9 children)
>By creating a vast new category of aid recipients that need to be surveilled.
Universal: everyone gets it.
We're already surveilling everyone anyway, this way receiving the aid wouldn't throw anyone into a special attention class.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @07:02PM (8 children)
Even fake people invented for the purposes of scamming the program. Notice the people in this discussion who complain about scam-based criticism argue from ignorance. Because they aren't looking for fraud, then there must not be any.
It'd just throw everyone into a special attention class.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @07:26PM (7 children)
>Even fake people invented for the purposes of scamming the program.
Well, shit. You know: people use guns to rob banks too, better ban guns to cut that down, right?
>It'd just throw everyone into a special attention class.
Helen Parr: "Everyone is special."
Robert Dashall Parr: "Which is another way of saying nobody is."
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @08:18PM (6 children)
It'd make the usury people happier if we banned banks instead. Keep in mind that people have robbed banks with knives and angry notes too. I guess we better ban knives and writing too, right? To cut it down...
Aside from the non sequitur conclusion here, a huge thing ignored here is that UBI fraud would be like shooting fish in a barrel, vastly easier and less risky. And the ROI would be vastly better (billions possible instead of thousands for that lower risk) for than the little bit you could get out of a physical bank.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @10:03PM (5 children)
>UBI fraud would be like shooting fish in a barrel, vastly easier and less risky.
Oh, think about this for one moment: penalty for UBI fraud? How about loss of UBI? Too poor to live without UBI? I guess then we resort to jail, like we use for Medicare and all the other common (though rare, by the percentages) fraud problems in the system.
Catching UBI fraudsters? Sure seems a lot easier than catching income tax evaders.
>And the ROI would be vastly better (billions possible
What world are you living in? Remember Richard Pryor in Superman whatever it was? You wouldn't have to be that stupid to get caught, just touch any bank account which fraudulently claimed UBI is delivered to.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @01:20AM (4 children)
What if you're not even a US resident? Can't hold up a bank from Pakistan, but you can milk the UBI machine from that far away.
"Rare, by the percentages". Whose word are we taking on those percentages again?
My take was already given. You can't even commit income tax evasion if you're not a US resident and your income wasn't earned in the US. That makes the IRS's job easier. Meanwhile organized crime from the entire world is going to work on that UBI bullseye. Sure, you'll have mules in the US handling some paperwork and such, but those guys are cheap and disposable.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @02:22AM (3 children)
>What if you're not even a US resident
I believe the test is US citizen. We count those when they are born, or pass their test.
Alaska has a six month per year residency requirement for their fund, again: get caught defrauding the system face the same kinds of penalties Alaska imposes.
>organized crime from the entire world is going to work on that UBI bullseye.
At $7200 per year per impersonated person, I think there are much easier targets. Consider also that the money flows in a constant slow drip, every $20 per day putting you at risk of being traced / uncovered.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday March 10, @02:43AM (2 children)
Paperwork says that Bob_1 through Bob_1000000 are all US citizens. Who are you to disagree?
Assuming you live in Alaska.
A million impersonated people would be $7.2 billion per year. Could be worth someone's while.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10, @03:56PM (1 child)
>Paperwork says that Bob_1 through Bob_1000000 are all US citizens. Who are you to disagree?
This also works when requesting income tax refunds. Every so often a day trader "misinterprets" the tax codes and sends themselves millions in refunds. They claim they catch these on a regular basis.
>Assuming you live in Alaska.
If they can verify you are in Alaska or not, I'm pretty sure verifying residency status in the other 49 + territories is somewhat easier.
>A million impersonated people would be $7.2 billion per year. Could be worth someone's while.
Smoke your crack, believe what you want. There's no more potential for fraud with impersonating a U.S. citizen than any of the other systems already in place. Not per case, not in total, if you want to defund the Government until there are no humans auditing the outflows, then yes, this is a problem with absolutely every government program authorized to issue payment on anything - particularly military contracts with their shrouds of secrecy. Ordinary citizens are quite a bit more transparent.
Transparency is always the answer. With our borders controlled as they are, every entry/exit to the country should be logged in a central database - that alone should be sufficient to validate residency on 99.999% of the population. The other few hundred thousand? You look closer at them. As they do with IRS audits, etc. today.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday March 10, @06:15PM
The obvious rebuttal is the day trader and some portion of their assets lie in the US and the particular scam is well known by the IRS. What happens when the instigator for Bob_1 through Bob_1000000 is somewhere in western Pakistan, maybe? And the scammer already has a completely new angle with Bob_1000001 through Bob_2000000 collecting when the UBI cops finally catch the first million?
(Score: 2, Touché) by oumuamua on Wednesday March 08, @05:36PM (2 children)
The homeless on the street have no privacy.
Every single passerby can surveille exactly what they are up to with no technology at all!
This gross invasion of privacy needs to be delt with.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @08:38PM (1 child)
Dumb. No expectation of privacy, dipshit. Try again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @09:58PM
not sure whether they were being sarcastic, but no need for name-calling bro
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 08, @08:13PM (4 children)
Ah yes, like how the perception amongst certain people here is that widespread voting fraud took place, completely without evidence, of course.
Why would an IT company be involved with this?
ding ding ding
Sigh. Yup, everybody submit to Big Brother because a handful of idiots Feel that people just Have To Be committing fraud.
Now bend over and lift your sack, Mr. Chappelle.
--
P.S:
Well, at least there's that hope, that those EU lawyers who are a bit too obsessed with personal rights (cf. Right To Force People To Forget You) can get put on the case.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Wednesday March 08, @09:53PM
The obvious answer would be that "IT" companies are the current experts in surveillance technologies and they are promoting their business.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @04:51PM (2 children)
Here's some evidence [msn.com]. When government allows utterly present day massive fraud, then the perception of future fraud is well-founded.
These accusations didn't happen in a vacuum.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 09, @09:55PM (1 child)
I don't think this source is making your argument quite how you think it is. Considering this is COVID relief, of course the numbers are going to be bigger than usual.
Yeah, but what you tactfully omitted was the paragraph right before that:
You can't point to a tsunami and say, "see here, the ocean is always a dick!"
This also doesn't exactly have much to do with either welfare in Denmark, or voting fraud in the U.S. :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 10, @02:00AM
To be fair, this is probably the only once-in-a-century fraud scheme that Mr. Scott will ever had to apologize for. There will be many other talking heads to apologize for the rest. I don't take his assurances seriously that it somehow only happens once a century. Instead this is evidence of a criminal underground with the infrastructure,mobilization, and experience to defraud these governments of the US instantly. It didn't spring out of some criminal Zeus's forehead. Someone was feeding the criminals before this. I'd say it's evidence of massive and of course, unacknowledged fraud in US government programs well predating covid.
But on the other hand, if that tsunami shouldn't have caused that much damage (after all covid wasn't that big a deal economically), then that demonstrates a systemic problem not a tsunami problem. After all, you will have more tsunami. You don't want the same wipe out every time.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Mykl on Wednesday March 08, @10:07PM
The Australian Government implemented a scheme back in 2016 which was designed to identify and recover "overpayments to welfare recipients". Some of the methods used were questionable, and the system delivered what we now know to be hundreds of thousands of incorrect debt notices.
The beauty of the scheme was that it shifted the burden of proof from the Government (proving that you did owe that amount) to the individual (proving that you didn't owe that amount). A lack of human interaction in the system made it even more difficult for people to resolve problems.
It didn't end well [wikipedia.org] - for the welfare recipients, for the Tax Department, or for the Government of the day.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 08, @11:15PM (2 children)
Americans will call universal health care, communism. But they give that to their military who fight against things like communism.
Weird.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @12:08AM
The military acronym SNAFU Situation Normal: All Fouled Up, pretty much sums up the US military and anything related to social issues.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @05:15AM
And there's all kinds of exciting [wikipedia.org] problems [govexec.com] with the Veternans Health Administration too because of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @01:25PM
Identify the low hanging fruit in the benefits system. What are the known scams? The ones posted on the internet for other idiots to follow. Chase down the easy schemers, deal with them, and claw back some savings.
Who is helping the fraudsters? Identify weaknesses in your own system, with your own people, and with your methods and means of claiming.
Identify immigrants who have broken the law and kick them back to where they came from
Fire anyone involved in the system who does not have a clear role or purpose. This is the public service, not welfare.
Data match payments against the tax system. Identify people who are claiming who have unusual or erratic tax issues.
Poll your own staff for ideas on system improvement. Review the information provided.
Increase the penalties for fraud.
Prevent new people from joining the system automatically or without merit. Specifically, anyone who comes from another country or for whom should not be able to claim like say rich people.
If you have substantial evidence that 5% of payment are fraud then put 1% of money into eliminating the fraud.
Call other countries for help. Compare notes. Identify means and systems.