Request For Research: Basic Income
blog.ycombinator.com
Request For Research: Basic Income
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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#2Ask HN: What can startups do to increase prosperity for everyone?
I think basic income is important to do but decreasing the cost of living is a critical component as well. I'd be very interested to hear thoughts from the HN community about what we could be doing here.
Edit: please respond in the main thread so we don't get an unbalanced comment tree. I'll be in the discussion here for a couple hours, but if it feels like there's momentum in the ideas we might do a proper Ask HN about it next week.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#3It's worth reading about the Canadian experiments with basic income in the 1970s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/colby-cosh-what-th...
The experiment allowed households to opt out, and after a while most did. However this result is convoluted by the fact that the income was not inflation indexed, and inflation rates in Canada in the 1970s got quite high.
The main conclusion from this is, basic income is going to have to be VERY carefully implemented to work at all.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#4$10,000 * US_POPULATION ~= $3.2T ~= The total annual tax revenue of the US federal government.
Something to keep in mind when discussing this topic.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#5There's a very relevant section in this book ( The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies - http://amzn.to/1KFJ1Iu ) , that I just read last night:
> "His view is strongly supported by the work of economist Andrew Oswald, who found that joblessness lasting six months or longer harms feelings of well-being and other measures of mental health about as much as the death of a spouse, and that little of this decline is due to the loss of income; instead, it arises from a loss of self-worth."
The idea being that a basic income is fine, but having people sit around idle probably isn't.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#6This is awesome. This is my favorite interpretation of a basic income and how it might fit in a capitalist society:
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#7The Thiel Fellowship is a data point of basic income for 18 - 22 year olds, in lieu of continuing education in college.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#8There's a very relevant section in this book ( The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies - http://amzn.to/1KFJ1Iu ) , that I just read last night: > "His view is strongly supported by the work of economist Andrew Oswald, who found that joblessness lasting six months or longer harms feelings of well-being and other measures of mental health about as much as the death of…
I think this is one of the most important components to study.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#9A few good ones here - another really interesting, current initiative is Bolsa Família, a Brazilian assistance program that functions similarly to a basic income subsidy - the main difference is that it requires families to demonstrate up-to-date immunizations and good school attendance rates for children.
Re: Request For Research: Basic Income
#10There is non-profit startup in Berlin trying to do this, they mainly fund themselves by raising the money from the crowd. It's a lottery system where one can win 1000€ per month for one year, which in most parts of Germany gets you somewhere. They already funded 29 people analyze and blog about who won. Most people actually didn't do dramatic life changes, which also could be because it's just one year.
Warning German: https://www.mein-grundeinkommen.de/start