Request For Research: Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#501

Post by termain » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

arohner wrote: post #434

tptacek wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* There are limited seats available at the highest-status universities, so admission to those schools will remain a privilege disproportionately available to wealthy parents who can pay to game the admissions process. * Simply attending a 4-year university has costs beyond tuition and books; there are plenty of people who don't go to college because they can't afford 4 years out of the workforce. * The 4-year univers…

Yes. I'll also add the 4-year education is incredibly inefficient, in terms of skills added over time. Even in highly technical STEM degrees, you probably don't need 4 years "full time" to gain all of the skills an employer expects a fresh-out-of-school STEM graduate to have. The same is even more true of less technical degrees.

"Yes. I'll also add the 4-year education is incredibly inefficient, in terms of skills added over time"

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that a university degree is entirely about workforce skills.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#502

Post by eanzenberg » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

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…

Money becomes devalued when you flood it to spend on non-productive things. You sure you want that?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#503

Post by CWuestefeld » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #293

firloop wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the parent is saying that if someone can demonstrate they can handle a physicist position for R&D, does education even matter? It would really depend on the criteria used to determine the ability to perform at the job. If the criteria is good enough I see no reason why someone without a PhD could take the job.

Can you devise a filter that's as rigorous as all the tests and projects that a student would have successfully completed over the X years it took to earn the degree?

Seeing the degree is a shortcut to verifying that the basic level of knowledge in the applicant's major has been satisfied. The testing necessary to verify that independently (and redundantly - one for each company being applied to) seems prohibitive.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#504

Post by jakeogh » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #433

jakeogh wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take issue with the idea that government should use violence to take from some people and give to others, the "You have to" (or we throw you on a cage or worse) is the problem. The money and time wasted is the huge infrastructure to enforce the ever growing list of restrictions.

And I take issue with the idea that taxes are theft. Without society, you'd be a subsistence farmer. Any income you earn above that of a subsistence farmer is enabled by society.

Society exists independent of taxes, for example we didnt always have a federal income tax, and there are states without state income tax now. There are other ways gov can raise money.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#505

Post by liamcardenas » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:52 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #225

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…

Does a 0% public sector job growth necessarily indicate a failure, in and of itself? To me, that's not probative at all. What if Sweden had simply reached a level where everyone who was employable and wanted to have a job, had one? "Removing red tape" has been tried quite a bit, as a sole means of stimulating growth. Not only has it failed over and over again, but the negative consequences dwarf even the fantasies of…

I edited the main post. I meant that there was no private sector job growth.

When has lowering taxes and removing red tape not worked?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#506

Post by boxy310 » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:53 PM UTC

robto wrote: post #160

larsiusprime wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is giving a blanket benefit to every citizen in an area not a public good?

A public good is a technical term in economics. One useful way of categorizing goods is to place them along two axes - excludability and rivalry. Public goods are categorized non-excludable and non-rival. Non-excludable means you can't stop people who don't pay for the good from consuming it - like clean air. Non-rival means that one person's consumption of a good does not affect another person's. Digital goods are t…

Agreed. Another way of looking at it is that a pure cash exchange would filter through the market demand for all goods, and as a result the nominal value of all goods would increase through the mechanism of inflation, not just land rents per the Henry George Theorem. However, there is an input consideration of identifying where this cash infusion is coming from, whether from printing money or from selling accrued assets on the open market (as what the YCombinator crew would probably be doing, if they don't already have liquid assets devoted to this endeavor).

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#507

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:54 PM UTC

clavalle wrote: post #413

Spooky23 wrote: post #120

The problem with basic income is that people need purpose, not charity. Look at the success of programs in Africa that give people the ability to make a living, not a bag of rice. One particularly moving story was about a group that got foot-powered water pumps into the hands of subsistence farmers, who subsequently were able to send their kids to school. At one point, the core purpose of monetary policy and central…

> The problem with basic income is that people need purpose, not charity. > I think we need to figure out how to empower people. I don't think anything you've said is incompatible with something like basic income. What could be more empowering than knowing your basic needs will be taken care of? From that position of strength you can negotiate with others based on mutual benefit rather than avoiding the consequences…

You're missing the point and reading thing that I didn't write. People don't want your charity. They want a chance to earn a living.

When you give people everything they need to subsist, but nothing to do, it doesn't give them "freedom". It creates dependency.

Nobody in Silicon Valley has basic income. They have ripe opportunity for productive employment. That's the safety net that facilitates risk.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#508

Post by beat » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

jdreaver wrote: post #420

mikeyouse wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Everyone bemoans the increasing in tuition and increase in admin staff.. these things are intimately tied. The cost of education on a per-student basis hasn't increased very much in the US. Most of the cost burden has just shifted from taxpayers to students (for better or worse). Much of the admin staff is necessary to handle all of the financial aid, grant applications, etc. Simply providing tuition-free educat…

Much of the increase in admin staff and university spending has come from all of that free government aid money we keep giving them. If we make tuition "free" for everyone, then universities will get a bottomless pit of money to spend on useless things. They will be almost totally divorced from the incentive to keep costs low. Right now, universities don't compete for funds on the basis of the quality of education. T…

The rate of college attendance and graduation increased dramatically with the introduction of state universities and financial aid programs - it was no longer just the province of the wealthy. This obviously had good effects on the economy, and on society.

When my daughter was attending a private university, she had an enlightening conversation with a professor who worked on pricing for her university. He told her their prices were not going up in response to increased costs, but rather to maintain a certain price relative to in-state tuition. Of course, in-state tuition has been steadily increasing because it is becoming less subsidized.

In other words, the cost increases are a response to cutting government funding, both for private and public.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#509

Post by marknutter » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

ascorbic wrote: post #465

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.

The money for the basic income comes from taxation. Even though everyone would get it, higher tax rates on people with middle or high incomes would mean they were no better off, or worse off. This isn't supposed to be a way to make everyone $x per month better off, it's a way to change incentives and replace welfare.

What I'm curious about is what's stopping a large portion of the population from simply quitting their jobs to live off basic income, thus decreasing the potential pool from which taxes to pay for basic income can be extracted?

If it really worked out like you say it would, where people with middle or high incomes are no better off, I wonder what they would think when suddenly large swathes of the population are able to live off the dole without busting their humps.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#510

Post by notahacker » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

marincounty wrote: post #427

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…

Oswald's research was published on 2004. Andrew Oswald is a British economist who earnestly tried to study happiness with statistics, and government data. The study tries to corollate government data, excludes detailed information on black wages, and tries to draw conclusions based an statistics, and questionable government data. What jumped out of the paper(around page 25) was that Europeans have been just Happy! Wh…

The thing is, the subsidised poor already have a huge system of entitlements in most developed countries. Governments combat homelessness with social housing (net value far more than $10k per annum where I live) and direct despondent former Fortran programmers into jobs or onto retraining schemes whilst paying them enough to live on.

Arguments for universal BI (as opposed to tweaks to benefit entitlement rules) are in effect a suggestion that people on those programmes should have less so that we can afford to extend subsidies to middle class stay-at-home wives and twenty-somethings on gap years, because rich people that don't want to work obviously deserve the same as people with nothing going through a crisis. And you have the temerity to intemperately accuse anyone that questions it of being elitists.

And yes, BI is something which has been chiefly advocated by privileged white men.