let's work with separate headings
Philip Vergragt
Friends, these are fascinating discussions. Actually, there are different lines in the discussion:
1. Jean’s question about the 60ies and 70s, and the discussion about public and private ownership and financing
2. Halina’s critique on UBI and the related discussion about social justice and climate change.
3. The discussion about innovation, and how to direct and control it, and the benefits and pitfalls.
Of course they are all related; but I propose to give them different headings in the discussion to make it easier to follow.
From: sco...@googlegroups.com [mailto:sco...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Michael Howard
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2019 7:38 PM
To: Halina Brown
Cc: Richard Rosen; sco...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [EXT] Re: [SCORAI] public amenities instead of basic income
Halina,
Your points about the pharmaceutical industry are well taken. My reference to cheese was not meant as an analogy with public ownership of the pharmaceutical industry, but with giving people food in kind rather than trusting them to make their own choices with cash. Your objection was to giving people any amount of unconditional cash income because they might spend it unwisely. There is hunger today in America. I don't see why we can't address inadequate income (whether as a UBI, or the Tlaib's proposed conversion of the EITC into a negative income tax), at the same time as we address the lack of collective provision of public goods.
Michael W. Howard
Department of Philosophy
The Maples
The University of Maine
Orono, Maine 04469 USA
tel. 207-581-3861
fax 207-581-2928
On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 4:19 PM Halina Brown <HBr...@clarku.edu> wrote:
Michael,
Reducing my reflections to this single question: “do you really want to address the climate crisis by keeping people in poverty?” misses the point of my reflections or, worse, is disingenuous. And comparing the idea of public ownership of the pharmaceutical industry to providing slabs of third grade cheese is ridiculous.
My point is that right now poor people (and not only the poor) in this country spend a large proportion of their income on corporatized healthcare, including medications as well as other basic amenities such as housing, etc. Giving them cash does nothing to change the system that produces these exorbitant prices and transfers wealth from the poor to the well-to-do and the rich. To the contrary: it indirectly subsidizes that system and keeps it more stable. It treats the symptoms, not the cause. And it is the system that needs to be fundamentally changed.
This is why (among other reasons I articulated earlier) I do not think that basic income is a good idea.
If these basic amenities become easily affordable (or perhaps free for the poor of this country) will allow these people to buy whatever they wish with the meager income they have and thus regain some dignity of which poverty strips them.
Halina
From: Michael Howard [mailto:mho...@maine.edu]
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2019 3:28 PM
To: Richard Rosen <rrose...@gmail.com>
Cc: Halina Brown <HBr...@clarku.edu>; sco...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [EXT] Re: [SCORAI] public amenities instead of basic income
The net cost to taxpayers of a UBI (the extra taxes they pay, minus the UBI they receive) need be no more than the cost of a negative income tax, if the marginal tax rates match the phaseout rate of the NIT. So the gross figure of $3.2 trillion is misleading. The net cost is more like 1/6 of that, and certainly affordable.
While redistributing income form those with a lower propensity to spend vs. save ( the rich) to those with a higher propensity (the poor) is likely to result in higher consumption, do you really want to address the climate crisis by keeping people in poverty?
While the US could certainly use more public services, there are many things that poor people need, for which they need cash. Their needs are too varied to be all covered, or covered well, by services. Better and more respectful to give poor people enough cash for their food, then to provide surplus blocks of cheese, as was done in the Reagan administration.
The way to address spending that is needless and environmentally damaging is to combine UBI with other incentives. Funding the UBI partially with a carbon tax, for example, would discourage the use of fossil fuels and encourage a shift to renewable energy.
I agree that it is possible to have a mix of basic income and basic services. At the very least, we should add universal health care to the list of what is now provided.
Michael W. Howard
Department of Philosophy
The Maples
The University of Maine
Orono, Maine 04469 USA
tel. 207-581-3861
fax 207-581-2928
On Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 3:09 PM Richard Rosen <rrose...@gmail.com> wrote:
Halina, I agree with you, and you did not mention that taxpayers will have to pay for a basic income scheme, though presumably that would be only upper income tax payers. But it would be a non-trivial change in the tax rates for them. At only $10,000 per year basic income per capita, the total would be about $3.2 trillion, or about 16% of the entire GDP. That is about two times total corporate profits. --- Rich Rosen
On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 8:20 PM Halina Brown <HBr...@clarku.edu> wrote:
Dear SCORAI’ers,
Some of you may find the attached document about the public alternative to Big Pharma interesting. It is a fine report issued by the Next System Project in the US. The proposal in it focuses on the US but it can be just as well applied in other advanced economies with a strong research sector.
https://thenextsystem.org/medicineforall?mc_cid=9bc87732e4&mc_eid=e81c2d3d7d
I find this proposal to be an important alternative to guaranteed basic income proposals. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of guaranteed basic income because I see it as a massive indirect subsidy for the private sector that wants people to spend money on more and bigger stuff. This sector will surely devise the cleverest of ways to extract that extra income from citizens.
At the risk of sounding awfully patronizing, I believe that many people will spend that extra income not on better housing, live necessities, education for their children or other such “wise” choices, but on other things.
A better solution, other than distributing cash, is to create access to affordable high-quality housing, high quality free education, low cost or free healthcare, and low cost or free medicines, etc. This is why I find this report interesting.
Halina S. Brown
Professor Emerita of Environmental Science and Policy
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610
http://halinasbrown.comAssociate Fellow
Tellus Institute
2 Garden Street, Cambridge MA 02438
Co-founder and Member of Executive Committee
Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, SCORAI
www.scorai.org
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