Live data from Hacker News

Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

businessforscotland.co.uk

91–100 of 238 posts

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#91
post #15

This is all tied up in the Scottish independence debate, a "once in a generation vote" which is set to be replayed in the next few years because the "wrong" outcome happened. The economic argument for independence has collapsed since, especially with the collapse in the price of oil. That given this background the article could say things like there being benefits to the health system from "ending poverty" given the…

I can't believe how close Scotland came to that bullet. How are the independence camp able to have any credibility now?

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#92
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so. If it were socially acceptable for an artist, scientist or entrepreneur to fall back on "welfare" for some amount of time to work on a project, improve themselves or bootstrap a startup, I think you'd see that more often (including outcomes that end up contributing back to society. Which is…

>Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so Debatable. In the US, many welfare programs are designed to cut off anyone who actually gets a job...even if that job pays less than what you'd get from welfare. This problem gets even bigger as you factor in the fact that multiple welfare programs exist, making it nigh-impossible to preven…

One question I have about BI is if it replaces other forms of social welfare (food stamps, unemployment, etc...), what happens when some percentage of people inevitably make decisions and still cannot afford the basics of what BI should cover? Will a new set of social welfare programs replace the ones that were previously removed?

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#93
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you mean by "wind up being Just Another Government Program." $1,000/month seems like a highly reasonable amount. It's more than Finland is proposing.

I may have been too generous. By an order of magnitude. The US has 320 million people living in it. $1000/month * 320 million is $3.8 trillion/year. That, weirdly enough, is the size of the entire US budget for 2016. http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-republicans-pass-3-8-trill...

You'd want to look at state budgets too, since a lot of social programs happen there. Basic income is supposed to replace social security, unemployment, food stamps, and more. That's not a huge change to the number, but it's decent.

There's no doubt taxes would need to increase to fund such a program, of course.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#94
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people are on physical disability who could still be doing most of the things that basic income is supposed to enable. To the extent that it limits them in some specific ways, if the basic income elevator pitch is correct, one would think that it would make what they can do even more likely to come out. This is a very interesting point I hadn't thought of, worthy of some thought. (And that's all I'm saying. I ha…

I think this might be part of the issue though - I saw another article about this plan that said people often _don't_ try to contribute because their welfare benefits are subject to them not doing certain things. For instance - you get $X from welfare, you could make $Y doing some work despite your disability, but $Y Even if you don't have money, often if you're on disability anything that might show you aren't "so d…

"I saw another article about this plan that said people often _don't_ try to contribute because their welfare benefits are subject to them not doing certain things."

A good point.

But basic income is generally sold as an arts and hobby thing, where they're not going to make any money anyhow. Basic income participants who are going to take the money but not do a "real job" aren't going to go out and dig ditches or something.

Since this isn't a binary thing, we should expect to be able to find an effect if this is going to happen, even if disability isn't evenly distributed and even if certain categories are impaired due to welfare rules. Who's on disability making art or music or something who would otherwise be stuck in a job? Alternatively, show me a work of art or something from the cases of basic income that were tried that couldn't have been done without it.

(We'd really like to see a sufficiently strong pattern before we run this sort of experiment at scale, and we'd really like it to be somehow some appreciated work, but I'll start with asking just for one instance.)

If doing a little of this sort of thing does not produce a little of the desired result at this scale, there is no rational reason to believe that doing more is going to produce the desired result either. (Italicized words very important. It could indeed be the case that doing more would in fact produce the desired result, but there's no data to lead you to that belief rationally.) The rational belief becomes to discard the idea that basic income is going to be used for arts and music and stuff, because we can stop speculating about what people do under those circumstances and just look.

Because if basic income really is paying people to do nothing, it won't work at scale. We can't afford to pay everybody to do nothing. The economics would simply adjust such that the basic income is not a livable wage anymore via inflation mechanisms. (Which is basically one of my great fears; basic income combined with voting creates a one-way ratchet, and so far, I've heard no mechanism to even slow down the ratchet, let alone reverse it.)

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#95
post #88

The US had this from the 1935 to 1996 - a broad welfare program. During the first Great Depression, the US was the employer of last resort, with the WPA hiring millions of people to do public works. During WWII, there was a labor shortage, and that ended. After the war, large public housing projects were built. There were people who spent much of their lives on welfare. Until the Reagan years, there were very few hom…

No, we did not. Again, that welfare program is very different from the basic income described here in many ways. Those differences are crucial to understanding the benefits of a basic income in comparison to the broad welfare program you reference.

One such difference being that everyone in a society gets the basic income with no strings attached meaning that there is no perverse incentive not to work. With a basic income people are free to work and gain additional income on top of the basic income and to do so for whatever motivations best inspire them free from the fear of starving.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#96
post #27

I'm cautiously enthusiastic about basic income. I want to believe that it really can change everything, until that nagging doubt of "but human nature just doesn't work that way!" inevitably kills the buzz. The idea behind basic income is to remove day-to-day struggle from people's lives. If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from, then potentially a huge groundswell of human capital…

The people who receive checks from the government every month are already preselected for failure. You don't get a government check at random, you get it for being disabled, for being too old to work, for being incapable of holding down any sort of job, etc. Looking at them to see how the population at large might react to basic income is not going to be informative.

Right, so the new check recipients will be people that were otherwise capable of sustaining themselves, as those who aren't are already accommodated. I suspect that the 'human capital' liberated by basic income will mostly find its way to level 400 World of Warcraft Death Knights and 40 000 word critiques of Breaking Bad episodes.

Should the legions of working folk try to actually use their new liberty for anything with more impact we'll ban it.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#97
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so. If it were socially acceptable for an artist, scientist or entrepreneur to fall back on "welfare" for some amount of time to work on a project, improve themselves or bootstrap a startup, I think you'd see that more often (including outcomes that end up contributing back to society. Which is…

I don't think he's referencing welfare but programs such as disability. It's not a knock against those with serious disabilities that prevent them from working, but the individuals who sham the system to collect $3k /month in disability pay for their diabetes, and refuse to work. We ALL know someone with diabetes who doesn't sham, but there are lots who do.

The people shamming the system have the ultimate incentives not to have income. If you are shown to be able to work, you have to pay back all the income you've ever received from it.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so Debatable. In the US, many welfare programs are designed to cut off anyone who actually gets a job...even if that job pays less than what you'd get from welfare. This problem gets even bigger as you factor in the fact that multiple welfare programs exist, making it nigh-impossible to preven…

One question I have about BI is if it replaces other forms of social welfare (food stamps, unemployment, etc...), what happens when some percentage of people inevitably make decisions and still cannot afford the basics of what BI should cover? Will a new set of social welfare programs replace the ones that were previously removed?

If BI isn't enough to replace existing welfare systems, then it isn't enough. You can't half-ass something like this.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#99
post #29

Yes it will guarantee housing prices for rent rise to the guaranteed income. Just like college prices magically rise to the amount of available loans.

Why? It doesn't change supply, and I don't think it would have much of an effect on demand, either -- it's too cold for Finland to have much of a homeless population.

When people are able to pay more, businesses charge more.

Also, demand is affected, because people will have the means to buy more, at least until inflation kicks in.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#100
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may have been too generous. By an order of magnitude. The US has 320 million people living in it. $1000/month * 320 million is $3.8 trillion/year. That, weirdly enough, is the size of the entire US budget for 2016. http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-republicans-pass-3-8-trill...

You'd want to look at state budgets too, since a lot of social programs happen there. Basic income is supposed to replace social security, unemployment, food stamps, and more. That's not a huge change to the number, but it's decent. There's no doubt taxes would need to increase to fund such a program, of course.

> There's no doubt taxes would need to increase to fund such a program, of course.

Who would pay them?

Post reply on HN