Finland’s basic income plan could change everything • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#131

Post by Alupis » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #122

stevesearer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Someone on benefits who spends all their money on alcohol will find themselves grinding their way through civil debt recovery - their landlord will sue for loss of rent and will evict them from the home; utility companies will sue to recover the debt and will cut off the utilities. and whether that's BI or benefit makes little difference to that. You get the money and it's up to you what you spend it on, once you've…

> Someone on benefits who spends all their money on alcohol will find themselves grinding their way through civil debt recovery

I think the point being made was, do we continue to provide other welfare services to an individual like this, or do we just cut them loose and let them fail?

Many people would argue we would still have to provide assistance to this individual... so then it begs the question, how is a BI any better than the slew of welfare programs we already run? At this point, wouldn't it be better (and probably cheaper long-term) for the government to just buy all the homes in the nation, and provide them free of cost to anyone? Perhaps food should be free as well.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#132

Post by vinceguidry » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #121

vinceguidry wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Basic income is a hot topic because forward thinking people who see what's going on in the world right now already see it. You say lets cross that bridge when we get there; that's the point, we're there, you just aren't looking very hard.

It's a hot topic on HN and in a few policy circles. In the grand scheme of things, it's a really small issue, far behind, say, gun control or national security.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#133

Post by beat » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

flubert wrote: post #113

beat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think you've captured the nature of the question. If you give everyone a cash handout, some percentage of them might spend all of their allowance on alcohol and lottery tickets, and not have enough left over for food or rent at the end of the month, leaving them hungry and homeless. Under BI, is this situation acceptable, because it is their own fault for "wasting" the money?

If someone is so disabled that BI alone won't save them, then yes, other things will step in. This is a great opening for private charity, in fact. Given BI as a baseline, the conservative dream of having private charity handle things might actually work, because it would be limited to the exception cases.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#134

Post by beat » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #128

stevesearer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more speaking to what I believe is the inevitability of some people making bad decisions (like buying a bunch of powerball tickets or betting your money at the racetrack or something.) with the money they receive and then not being able to afford the basics. There would obviously be many people who are benefitted by BI, but my question is more wondering what happens to the percentage of people that end up still n…

I question how a "BI" can be paid for long-term. Presumably BI is taxed like any other income, but of course that means the amount of tax revenue collected will not balance the amount of money paid to citizens... unless we really raise the rates on "wealthy" people (who's definition may shift if everyone is provided a free "comfortable" standard of living). In which case this "BI" becomes a Robbin Hood tax on the nat…

Are those people you mention actually productive now? Most of the people I know who would do nothing are already doing nothing.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#135

Post by gnaritas » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #132

gnaritas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income is a hot topic because forward thinking people who see what's going on in the world right now already see it. You say lets cross that bridge when we get there; that's the point, we're there, you just aren't looking very hard.

It's a hot topic on HN and in a few policy circles. In the grand scheme of things, it's a really small issue, far behind, say, gun control or national security.

The topic of this thread is that a "country" is experimenting with it, that's more than a little interest. It's a small issue in America, for now, for sure; that will change as unemployment creeps up with every new technology hitting the market, cars will start it.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#136

Post by pakled_engineer » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:00 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #12

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…

You would have to triple welfare payments in order to test if idle people do great things as currently most people can't live off the paltry payments welfare gives. There's also hoops galore to jump through every month like applying for X amount of jobs and getting the interviewers to vouch you did in order to receive another cheque.

BI means you can afford to live. Welfare gives you a spot on a waiting list to get into a SRO dump full of drug addicts and $100 remainder to eat, buy hygiene products, and transportation for a month. Nobody can live off that so going to loan sharks, doing under the table exploitative labor and daily hustling are needed at least here in Canada.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#137

Post by mikeash » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #111

mikeash wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers? It's not like everybody would stop working. The number of people content with $1,000/month is going to be pretty low.

I fail to see how that could possibly fly, politically. Everybody who works has to pay for everybody who doesn't want to work to just fuck around.

It's not qualitatively different than what we have now.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#138

Post by patmcc » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:05 PM UTC

flubert wrote: post #113

beat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think you've captured the nature of the question. If you give everyone a cash handout, some percentage of them might spend all of their allowance on alcohol and lottery tickets, and not have enough left over for food or rent at the end of the month, leaving them hungry and homeless. Under BI, is this situation acceptable, because it is their own fault for "wasting" the money?

People can do this currently with food stamps too (by selling them for 80% of face value or whatever), so it's not a new situation. So I'd say yes, we obviously can't give people unlimited funds.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#139

Post by ThrustVectoring » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: 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.

There's people willing to take cheaper and shittier accommodation in return for extra spending money. Like, community college prices haven't risen top cap out against loan amounts.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#140

Post by Grishnakh » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #87

vinceguidry wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of basic income is not as a means to enable anything; it's a natural byproduct of and solution to a problem, the problem of ever increasing automation removing the need for human labor. I disagree. Humans tend to create new market segments in response to this problem. Service jobs, creative jobs, people are remarkably effective at finding ways to be productive. Basic income almost seems like a measure foc…

> I disagree. Humans tend to create new market segments in response to this problem. You can disagree if you like, but you're relying on the past to make your presumption that humans will just create more markets; the future of automation isn't like the past, future automation will include AI and is already doing so. AI changes the game, the future is not like the past, humans won't just do something else. Labor base…

This is extremely optimistic. We don't have AI that advanced, or evidence that AI will get that advanced any time soon. People joke all the time about the crazy stuff that Siri comes up with.

What IS coming soon is automation of mindless, lower-level jobs. Waiting tables is a good example here: humans do a terrible job of it, and add 10-20% to your food bill in exchange for screwing up your order. Having a tablet computer on the table for you to place your own order would be better, and some restaurants already do this (like Panera) to some degree. Factory work is another: today's factories are filled with automation, and robots produce better-quality products than humans because they don't make mistakes. Taxi driving is another: we're working on automated cars, so pretty soon "Johnny Cab" will be a real thing, and all those cab drivers will be out of a job. This will extend to truck drivers pretty quickly, probably faster than cabs actually. Fast food cooking is another: McD's already has the job of cooking a Big Mac down to something that someone with almost no training can pick up right away because their machines do most of it, they just have to follow some pictorial directions. People have Roombas to clean their floors.

So what happens when you automate all the simple jobs that don't require an education? Now you have a large portion of the population that's unemployed, and they're really not smart enough to get an education and get a higher-level job, or there's not enough higher-level jobs to go around for them if they are.

It's going to be a long time before engineers, for instance, are replaced by robots (and maybe never), but you don't need smart people to cut grass and rake leaves, and jobs like that are going to go away before long.