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Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#211

Post by astrocat »

tptacek wrote: post #170

Things that would help everyone, regardless of income, without depending on a radical restructuring of entitlement spending, that seem like things startups could actually do: * Equally credible alternatives to university education for professions that don't involve students shouldering $100k-$200k in debt based on decisions they have to make when they're 18 years old. * Empirical, blinded, skills-assessment based tur…

on your last point, I've wondered if it would be within the scope of 18F or the US Digital Service to create a local.gov site/platform that is a repository for all local government information and vector for engagement. Figuring out who all the locally elected officials are and what they are supposed to do is nearly an impossible task.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#212

Post by alexmat »

superuser2 wrote: post #150
notliketherest wrote: post #13

When I talk with people about basic income, my gut reaction and primary argument is that it contrasts with that fundamental human nature that's been show time and again throughout humanity - given a guaranteed, fixed reward no matter how much or how little you work for it, disincentivizes work. It follows along the same lines as why government instituted communism fails. Or why the first version of the mayflower comp…

>disincentivizes work Why is this a problem? The market allocates work, the market has decided that a large and growing number of people's work is worth $0, the market is still producing enough to keep everyone happy and fed. Why should someone be incentivized to work when their work has no value? Put another way, we have made an amazing collective achievement: 100% effort from 100% of people is no longer necessary o…

> Why is this a problem?

It incentivizes breeding. The more resources are freely available the more our population will grow until we reach equilibrium. Although we usually overshoot and end up with a Malthusian outcome.

"Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong, that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition".

— Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_P...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#213

Post by sama »

surfmike wrote: post #97

"What can startups do to increase prosperity for everyone?" I think cheap quality housing is a huge area that would help everyone. Taxes and housing together eat up the vast majority of the earnings most people make. What could make a difference? - applying technology to building denser housing. for example, imagine cheap robotic excavation, so every house and building could bury all their parking lots and long term…

Yes--driving down the cost of housing is one of the things I think about the most. It seems so critical to the whole equation.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#214

Post by finance-geek »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #165
MCRed wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, if Basic Income were to be implemented, where would the money come from? Currently the rate of monetary inflation is quite high- we've gone from $11T to $18T in the monetary system during the Obama administration. If we were to start printing even more money to pay people a basic income, this monetary inflation would cause prices to rise to wipe out the benefit of the program, most likely. In fact, the re…

> the reason people are suffering now is the level of monetary inflation I don't think any respectable economist actually agrees with you on that. The increase in the monetary base during QE was paired with a collapse in the money multiplier. Most of that cash stayed in reserve at banks (see 'Repeat After Me: Banks Cannot And Do Not "Lend Out" Reserves'). Price inflation is nowhere in sight; inflation is below histor…

Depends on which inflation figure you count. When I think of inflation, I think of the largest costs first -- housing, which can easily be 30 to 50% of your earnings for most people. Check out the Housing Price Index -- does that look flat to you? http://us.spindices.com/indices/real-estate/sp-case-shiller-...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#216

Post by Riseed »

davidw wrote: post #151
Riseed wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having people sit around idle probably isn't Basic income doesn't aim for people to sit idle, and in practice basic income doesn't seem correlated with idleness. Some studies show an increase in work hours [0], and another showed a slight decrease in work hours among new parents and teenagers [1]. Loss of self-worth need not occur when people are given the freedom to say "no" to unfulfilling and unproductive jobs,…

The suggestion in the book is a negative income tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

One big difference between basic income and negative income tax is who receives them. Basic income is given to everyone, and negative income tax is only given to those below a threshold amount -- creating two classes of people: givers and receivers, us and them.

The negative income tax experiment in New Jersey showed that the negative income tax created a disincentive to work, and increased family breakups. [0]

Negative income tax, by virtue of being tied to the tax system, operates on a year-based system and pays retroactively. Regardless of whether the year's overall income would qualify for negative income tax, the individual still needs to self-fund any time off. A negative income tax does nothing to help those who are temporarily out of work, or who only want a few months off to help with childcare, learn a new skill, or address an illness.

[0] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#217

Post by sama »

finance-geek wrote: post #196

@sama - since so many people here are in The Bay Area, i'll give the obvious answer for the region -- high density housing. I'm from NYC and we support a lot more housing in a much smaller area. This is accomplished by stacking upwards towards the sky. I appreciate there are earthquake concerns, but I also understand that many of the barriers for high density housing are political and social. I'll bet many problems i…

Yep--I'd love it if we could fund some high-density housing work. I also think it's a (for me, other people prioritize different things) good way to live.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#218

Post by honksillet »

simonh wrote: post #88
TrevorJ wrote: post #17

I wonder what basic income would do to cost of living? If everyone ends up with x amount of guaranteed income, does the cost of living eventually rise by the same amount across the board and basically negate it? It seems like rent-seeking behavior would come in to play here.

I think the cost of a lot of basic goods and services would fall. Employers would only need to offer relatively modest wages because the marginal value of those wages would be so much higher. This could drive down labour costs without driving down net pay for low wage workers. Basically a worker on $1,000/Mo now might be on $600/mo basic income and $600 wage after (fantasy numbers). This could make low wage workers m…

This is exactly wrong. The cost basic goods would increase. Basic Income would immediately have an inflationary effect as the money supply for these good would be expanded drastically.

The Employer would not see as much benefit as you'd think as presumably he would be amongst the class of people/entities (including the middle class, upper class, and corporation) which would be paying for this indirectly in the form of taxes.

Alternatively, if Basic income is debt finance (and not financed directly through taxes), incurring more debt also has inflationary effects.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#219

Post by lars »

This seems a little myopic. What distinguishes basic income from the welfare systems implemented in, say, northern Europe? Seems like there are many countries that have had basic income for decades. Couldn't you look to them and have most questions answered?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#220

Post by samstave »

tptacek wrote: post #170

Things that would help everyone, regardless of income, without depending on a radical restructuring of entitlement spending, that seem like things startups could actually do: * Equally credible alternatives to university education for professions that don't involve students shouldering $100k-$200k in debt based on decisions they have to make when they're 18 years old. * Empirical, blinded, skills-assessment based tur…

Awesome.

A couple points:

Alternatives to patient-present doctor-mediated health care to cover the 80% case in which doctors are expensive overkill; some combination of telemedicine and nurse-practitioners.

We have police departments and we have fire departments. We should have "nurse departments" that are clinics but much more structured as are fire and PD services for each given area.

(I know there is a grey version of this with EMT/clinics/hospitals etc... but this is something that could be made better.)

---

Modern logistics-driven solutions for inexpensive high-quality child care.

We talk a lot about "getting more women in tech" for example...

Getting more women JUST TO BE ABLE TO WORK involves insuring child care!

Sending a kid to child care full time costs MORE than many women can make per hour! Its ridiculous.

If you have ever tried to look for child care services on Care.com or otherwise, sitters all want ~$25/hour in the bay area.

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