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Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#301

Post by thinkingkong »

johnchristopher wrote: post #157
thinkingkong wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to clearly start differentiating between "work", and a "job". You can work hard at something which provides immense satisfaction and personal value (perhaps even value to others). But a job is strictly something you do in exchange for money. A job doesn't necessarily contribute to your self-worth. Meaningful work, does.

Way to miss the point. If you don't have a job, even if you have some kind of meaningful work or hobby on the side, your self-worth will still suffers from that.

My point is that if we're going to introduce a concept like basic income then we need to start being really clear about the difference between effort in exchange of money, and effort which contributes to your satisfaction. Not sure how I'm missing the point.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#302

Post by maxerickson »

endriju wrote: post #288

Basic income introduces a few drawbacks: - talented people will not need to do consulting or daytime jobs to support their startups or side-project, which can lead to them living in a bubble - there will always be people who spend all their income on gambling, drugs, sex, whatever - with basic income they just have more cash to waste (although this could be controlled somehow) - low-skilled jobs aren't going anywhere…

Garbage collection doesn't need to be a low paid job. 1 garbage truck can service thousands of homes with just 1 driver (and bins that are designed to be grabbed by a mechanism on the truck). So you could pay a fantastic wage with a very modest contribution per home.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#303

Post by jacalata »

grb423 wrote: post #242
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…

Would we still need child-care if we were playing video games all day while the some elite did all the productivity?

Joke answer: totally, if you're going to play seriously!

Serious answer: besides the ongoing need of the 'elite' for childcare, most proponents of basic income argue that people would not just play video games all day. If you think about everything you or other people might want to do in your free time today, even - how many of those would you prefer to do without simultaneously minding children?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#304

Post by djrogers »

theseatoms wrote: post #105
jdoliner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered if its actually the joblessness that degrades people's self worth or the job search that must not be going to well and thus keeps them jobless. Would a person without a job but with a basic income and thus not feeling pressure to get a job experience the same hit to their self worth?

The reduced sense of self-worth is likely a result of the cultural stigma against joblessness. Hopefully, merely collecting a universal/basic income will not be similarly stigmatized.

> The reduced sense of self-worth is likely a result of the cultural stigma against joblessness.

And is this a problem? Societally speaking, shame and stigma are great motivators. If we remove them as motivation for work, will society really be better off?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#305

Post by digitalneal »

vijayr wrote: post #238
avip wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a more trivial alternative to "equally credible alternatives to university" - just ban education based discrimination. Same way US so nicely enforces regarding race or martial status. Make it illegal to ask. Simple change with 100% guaranteed positive outcome.

just ban education based discrimination I am not sure I understand this. If you are going to a doctor, you would want to make sure she is qualified, isn't it? And the only way (currently at least) to make sure is that degree that proves she knows what she is doing. Of course this doesn't apply to all professions.

Guess what the person who graduated last in medical school gets called? Doctor.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#306

Post by lxmorj »

PabloOsinaga wrote: post #263
sama wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if we are thinking about the housing cost problem properly. I live in NYC and there are a lot of affordable options. That's certainly not the case about the most desirable locations. But ipso facto those locations will continue going up in price. Perhaps the problem is not so much about housing cost but transportation and access to services (eg uber, doordash), which seem to be advancing and making a lot of…

I think it's absurd that there are millions of kitchens in NYC. There is a project in my old town - Syracuse - that I think has a lot of benefits: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/coliving...

It's kind of a modern take on boarding houses. Actually, I think that the optimal situation is much closer to a boarding house.

Take 10-15 units, remove the kitchen and laundry entirely. Use the savings to pay a full time cook and laundry staff (2-3 people) to cook at-cost meals and do laundry.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#307

Post by abawany »

* In my opinion, the US healthcare system is a horrifying impediment to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. To answer your question: I wish startups would disrupt the healthcare industry in the same way Lyft/Uber disrupted transportation, AirBnb did for short term rentals, and Amazon did for online purchasing. These are controversial examples but all I ask of you is to go back a month before these respective services were announced and examine the convenience factor of your life vs. what it became after the existence of these services.

While I liked how refreshing Health Sherpa was to use compared to healthcare.gov of the early years, I think a more fundamental disruption of the healthcare industry is needed. All the various middlemen with their high overheads, the plethora of paper pushers, coders (what a travesty of a fine word), etc. Some examples of healthcare niches that are ripe for disruption include supplies for disabled individuals, building provider networks not beholden to the Hades of the regular insurance industry, enabling medical tourism, etc.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#308

Post by jfaucett »

maker1138 wrote: post #260
jfaucett wrote: post #140

"Ask HN: What can startups do to increase prosperity for everyone?" I think we need a way to have a faster iteration cycle for trying sociopolitcal ideas. The problem is, its almost impossible to change the laws necessary at a governmental level in any reasonable time scale. This is exacerbated by the fact that you are inside a "monolithic legacy codebase" in which you can only afford to make minor changes over many…

Hong Kong has become a Special Administrative Region of China and has it's own justice, education, and political system (mostly). I think it would be a great idea to have several of these regions across the us to "beta test" different policies to see whether they would be good or bad. Changing a policy or law of an entire nation is hard and risky; trying these things out in special regions, where you have a known tri…

I don't see why we aren't doing something like this. Especially when you start looking at how much it might cost.

Birmingham, AL has a population of 212k and a yearly budget of 390 million. (https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America's_la...) When you consider the USA govt spent about 70 Billion on R&D in 2016 (http://www.aaas.org/page/historical-trends-federal-rd). That would be about 0.5% of total R&D spending.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#309

Post by dublinben »

samstave wrote: post #65

I want to add the following idea, which I have mentioned here on HN several times: I humbly submit this as my solo-founder, idea-only HN application; The Standard Pantry. The standard pantry is literally just that - a pantry of a set of basic ingredients that go along with a range of standard recipes and a weekly menu schedule. Provide this standard pantry as a partially subsidized offering and teach people how to ma…

It can be hard to cook a proper meal for yourself when you work three jobs, don't have a full kitchen in your home, move on a regular basis, etc.

If only it were so easy.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#310

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

Here are 7 pages which you may have already read, but may even still wish to read again while considering ideas such as UBI; especially if you are a critic of such things.

By Keynes' estimation, those who are discussing such things right now are right on schedule.

John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930) http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

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