Request For Research: Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#311

Post by staunch » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #269

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.

Whether I agree or not with this (mostly, I don't), it fails my test of "being something a startup can do". Whereas a startup that had a really good solution for inculcating the kinds of skills and values white-collar employers are looking for could outcompete universities instead of legislating them out of the picture. When people discuss the value signaling provided by elite universities, their first example is usu…

> When people discuss the value signaling provided by elite universities, their first example is usually "the diligence and hard work it takes to get into the university"...

Graduation rates at universities for the elite are nearly 100%. Getting into the club is the only hard part and everyone involved knows that.

Empirically, what's required to get into the club is being wealthy enough to afford the private schooling, tutoring, and extra circular activities necessary to help your child game the admissions process.

As long as people value these prestigious brands, the elite will continue to buy them for their children. It's got nothing to do with education itself, which could be obtained any number of ways already.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#312

Post by ThomPete » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

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…

Problem is that a country like Denmark have all those things more or less and we still have more or less the same issues although to lesser degree.

The solution to the problem isn't hiding in what we already know although many of these things of course would be hugely beneficial to people.

The underlying problem. Technology is still going to be there.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#313

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #280

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…

> Products that offer serious competition for incumbents in the financial sector to bid down the 7-10% of the economy taken by financial services. The limiting factor here is the regulatory regime, which makes it all but impossible to move money around without using a bank as an intermediary. That gives the banking cartel effective veto power on all new financial services. The key reform here is to separate the movem…

I think you're reading this suggestion more ambitiously than I intend. I'm just saying that financialization has eaten up more and more of the economy while providing a dubious return on investment and creating a large NYC-based elite, and that anything startups can do to bid the costs of financing businesses down will probably help.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#314

Post by bradleyjg » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

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…

A good first step would be for governments to stop doing everything in their power to make sure the cost of residential housing increases every year more than the rate of general inflation. I understand _why_ they do so, homeowners are a big and powerful constituency, but it is an incredibly inefficient and counterproductive way to go about doling out pork. This means things like eliminating the mortgage deduction, property tax deduction, special cap gain rules, getting rid of Fannie, Freddie, FHA, forbidding the Fed from buying up MBSs, eliminating the homestead exemptions, and getting rid of no recourse rules. Not sure how much of a role start up can play in this sort of political reform.

A good next step would be decoupling education from housing so that the purchase or rental of a home doesn't implicitly include quasi-private school tuition. Here I see a good role for the private sector. While for-profit charter operators can be very controversial, excellent charter schools with scalable models are a necessary precondition to selling the public on a voucher system which implicitly buys you larger catchment areas and has the desirable decoupling effect. If the private sector can do that, godspeed as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#315

Post by marknutter » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #291

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…

Why not have startups have their employees work from home? Much simpler and easier to implement solution. I don't have the obsession of wanting to live in a city but I'm aware most people I know who don't have that obsession either still have to because their bosses does not let them work from home. If you only have to come in once a month or less you can live in a region where housing is affordable; I could buy a li…

Instead you have companies like YCombinator and Facebook requiring people to move into an already overpopulated area to do work that could just as easily be done over the wire.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#316

Post by chubot » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

dcre wrote: post #119

chubot wrote: post #46

My personal viewpoint is that you should be guaranteed survival and some opportunity by society, but not guaranteed income. That is, you should get food, shelter, medical care, and education for free (this also implies free child care). But you don't get to buy a cell phone or an XBox or whatever -- you have to work for that. In other words, I think basic income is jumping the gun a bit. Who is going to PAY for this,…

Seems like you're mixing up two arguments. Is the problem the cost, or the particular things provided? If the latter, who gets to decide what's essential and what's not? I'd be pretty useless without a cell phone and a laptop.

The problem is the cost... If we can't pay for people's health care, I wonder why we think we can pay for everyone's living expenses.

Suppose one person needs $100K to survive. Is it moral to let that person die, and instead give $10K to 10 people as basic income? That's a real resource allocation decision that has to be made.

I will consider the argument that the government would be less efficient at providing food and shelter than giving people the money to do so... that could possibly be true on a large scale.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#317

Post by thenipper » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #259

samstave wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 versio…

It was hard for me and Erin to do 7 years ago (our kids are teenagers now), and we're economically very fortunate. I can't imagine how hard it must be for people trying to provide for families on $15/hr to manage child care.

I've had friends who are reasonably well off compared to the rest of the country and in doing the math realized it was just easier for one parent to stay home for X years raising the children.

Of course then they are out of the workforce and 'unhirable' when they try to re-enter it.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#318

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #282

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes people on basic income without jobs are idle. What about stay-at-home spouses and parents? What about community volunteers? What about people who take care of sick friends and relatives? Furthermore, what is the economic benefit of the activities listed above? What would be lost if those activities were either abandoned or required to be paid at a fair market price? I know, charging grandma by the hour i…

Aaand, it is not currently the imperative of gov't to provide people with a sense of self-worth. That may be a worthy thing to shoot for, but it isn't currently a purpose of government. Even if one accepts uncritically the self-worth imbue-ing power of labor it's not necessarily the only way to impart a sense of self-worth to the individual.

Well, that's exactly my point. A lot of people do things that satisfy themselves and can often help others, but when you need to work to live you get greedy with your time and money. A state that provides basic income frees people to find their sense of self-worth, not assign it to them.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#319

Post by notahacker » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

newjersey wrote: post #272

I think that there ought to be a maximum wage that is linked to the minimum wage (we can switch over the baseline to the basic income if we ever get basic income implemented). The idea is anyone earning over the maximum income[calculation] will pay almost all of the amount over the maximum wage as income tax. Calculation: I propose that the maximum income be a hundred times the current federal minimum wage times two…

(not the downvoter FWIW) I think you lost most people when you suggested the status quo "mega rich" should get to keep all their assets whilst the tax system is redesigned to stop anyone catching up with them through entrepreneurial zeal and hard work...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#320

Post by surfmike » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

jib wrote: post #246

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…

I'm not sold on density. I think improving rural logistics is more key. Make more land attractive rather than making more use of current land. That is logistics both for people, data, and goods.

Logistics will make a big difference. But distance will always matter for transportation. Also, walking on foot will always remain a core human experience of cities and buildings (I hope)-- and technology can't change walking speed much. Finally, an increasingly large part of the population want to live close to a vibrant neighborhood -- and you need density for that.