Request For Research: Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#451

Post by FrankyHollywood » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

stouset wrote: post #430

FrankyHollywood wrote: post #424

A lot of people see problems in getting basic income funded. But is there is a simple solution :) Generate the money, just print it! Everyone on earth will get an equal quantity of money, every month. Now this money can be used in two different ways. 1) Buy natural resources 2) Buy services This distinction is important: When somebody provides a service, like fixing your bike he gets money and can keep it. When you b…

Doesn't this mean the person selling natural resources to you get shafted?

well, he has to destroy a certain amount by using the earth resource, but he can raise the price of the resource with his 'service' part.

How much a resource is actually worth is the most difficult question. Perhaps environmental factors like CO2 and ecological damage should be incorporated?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#452

Post by hourislate » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #347

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…

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. Why not just free university education for people who have the prerequisite academic qualifications?

This word "Free" amuses me. I am curious why you think that something can be offered for free with no payment associated with it? Will the Professors work for free? Who will pay the electricity bill to heat or cool the buildings? What about the course material?

Free? There is no such thing. Someone will always end up paying for it.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#453

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

firloop wrote: post #234

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.

I disagree. While college is becoming less of an important step for many careers, education, especially post-graduate, is vital for many others. For example, if I were a large tech company hiring physicists for R&D, I really don't think it's unfair to expect some sort of post-grad education, nor do I think these instances really contribute to any sort of problem right now.

What's important is that the skillset exists, not that a university has been given a considerable sum of money to provide certification that it exists. University was not the normal way to establish credibility until very recently. University is too expensive to sustain in its current form -- the whole thing has to be reworked to be affordable.

So don't ask yourself "What degree does this guy have?", but "How much physics research has this guy done? Can I see his body of work? Is it high-quality stuff?" The latter is performed anytime a competent person performs a hire anyway. It's fine to skip/ignore the education when someone can demonstrate competence. The problem really comes in "soft" degrees like business, marketing, communications, etc., where it's not really possible for a body of work to be presented as evidence that the individual knows what he/she is doing.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#454

Post by Hermel » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

sebii wrote: post #10

There 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 Germa…

Switzerland has a lottery where you can win 4000 chf per month for 20 years.

https://www.swisslos.ch/de/informationen/spiele/lose/sortime...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#455

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #303

grb423 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>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.

Unfortunately this is not the case. What do students who live on student loans and/or parental stipend as a "basic income" do? You can expect more of that when the government becomes the parent doling out the stipend.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#456

Post by panglott » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #350

xixi77 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting list... To me, improving provision of medical service and education definitely seems possible, as a lot of current problems are due to the fairly artificial constraints in the system. Removing them, or going around them, can really do a lot. Things like child care and finance are not as obvious to me though: these are already competitive industries, with very price-sensitive clients too, and (IMO)…

Childcare is dying for some automation. 1 person can care for ~3 very young children( Worse, these are all minimum numbers. You need extra staff to cover someone being sick, or turn people away.

Why is child care something that should be automated? Doesn't it make sense to spend a lot of high-value human attention on small children?

Humans are not a product. They are an end in themselves. It's like trying to automate your friends or your spouse.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#457

Post by Eridrus » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #314

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, p…

I don't think eliminating subsidies will make housing much more affordable or accessible, but it is probably still a good idea (since tax deductions tend to favor people in higher tax brackets).

Conversely, I don't think that eliminating subsidies should really be a first priority, since I don't believe it will have a large impact, though I can't really say I know what should be beyond relaxing zoning rules.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#458

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

panglott wrote: post #447

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…

Sorry, but all of those sound like things that are going to help people who were already going to be successful to be even more successful. College debt, for example, is a problem for those who were successful enough to get into college into the first place, and who, simply by getting into college, are already increasing their lifetime earnings by millions of dollars. Technological services for K-12 ed is pushing a s…

I'm not a big believer in minimizing college debt. I'm a believer in minimizing college.

People who grow up in wealthy families naturally find themselves on a college track that seamlessly routes them to elite schools when they're 18 years old.

People who grow up in poverty aren't on that track and might not even have much agency (due to their circumstances, requirements to work young, entanglements with the law) until they're in their 20s.

The fastest growing stable white collar jobs all require a 4-year degree. Even if college were free, people of reduced means wouldn't have equal access to it, because taking 4 years off the workforce isn't an option for most people. Meanwhile: a 4-year degree has actually not much value in predicting one's ability to perform as e.g. an HR director.

So what I'm suggesting is the startup that finds a way to turn smart, enterprising 24 year olds working in retail jobs into HR directors, credibly enough that they'll be competitive with Russian Lit majors.

(I'm not picking on Russian Lit; it's just, that's the undergrad degree my sister got at UChicago before becoming a lawyer, so it's the first one that pops into my head).

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#459

Post by boxy310 » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

hitekker wrote: post #146

davidw wrote: post #5

There'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…

Related though not necessarily helpful section from Brave New World (1956): > of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the…

I don't like it, but it's definitely relevant.

In a broad sense, the shift towards a services-based economy is a type of "make-work" in the shadow of heavy automation in first agriculture then manufacturing. This is very much Parkinson's Law writ large: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#460

Post by liamcardenas » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #134

liamcardenas wrote: post #95

I recommend this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Unexceptionalism_... From wikipedia: "Allister Heath, deputy editor of the The Daily Telegraph, wrote that the book shows how the “remarkable work ethic” of Scandinavians has been eroded by large welfare states over time." (Of course, don't take wikipedia's word for it-- read the book yourself) My take-away: Heavy socialism has absolutely stifled econo…

"Doesn't technically have a basic income" is doing a whole lot of work, here. The key component of it is that it doesn't phase out with higher income, which would otherwise cause a strong disincentive to work. How strong compared to no phase-out is a good question, but that's exactly what research like this is good for.

Very good point. However, I do not believe that the welfare cliff argument applies to job creation and entrepreneurship.