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Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#521

Post by notlefthanded »

termain wrote: post #501
arohner wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some people only need / can afford to acquire said skills, and so aren't a good fit for the college track.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#522

Post by kdamken »

nraynaud wrote: post #292

I hope It's not coming back to bite me in the ass to say that, but I have been slacking and collecting unemployment benefits in the last few years. During this time I have re-kindled my interest in mechanics and electronics, bought and changed the electronics of a CNC router, learned to use it, learned a bit of woodworking, created the control software and tool path planning system ( https://github.com/nraynaud/webgc…

Question - how did you collect benefits for so long? The two times I was able to collect, the max was 6 months.

I agree with you 100%. The time I spent on unemployment was very spiritually fulfilling and really helped with my career. I got into running, learned how to produce music, and taught myself to code.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#523

Post by dikaiosune »

termain wrote: post #501
arohner wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It shouldn't be, but there are a lot of people who don't give a damn about a liberal education for themselves, and just want a degree to improve employment opportunities. For them, I think it's kind of a sham to say that the only way to get the jobs they want is to sit through lots of non-employment-related material.

Would our society be better if more citizens were liberally educated and thusly enriched? Perhaps. But that doesn't invalidate the desire to offer students greater opportunities at lower opportunity cost.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#524

Post by jakeogh »

It's inevitable that the threat of withholding 'basic income' will be used to modify behavior. Didn't pay your fine? Didn't do your taxes? Didn't take the shot? Post "radical" comments on the internet? On the no-fly list? On the no-drive list? Don't have a gov-issued InternetID™? Don't like robots enforcing law? No soup for you. Just wait until China couples it with it's human scoring system.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#525

Post by fijal »

phrogdriver wrote: post #518
fijal wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College in Poland is free and there are options for very limited stipends which can sustain you (albeit on a poverty level). That did lift me from a poor, but educated, family into the world of computer software and a relatively successful career it seems. As it did for countless of my peers. Please don't discount free education as "not changing much", in the US I would be probably working at Mc Donalds or dealing cr…

Not to nitpick, but in my experience growing up in the Midwest of the US most "poor, but educated, families" like mine pushed children into state schools where they pay in-state tuition and graduate with $10-40k in debt. Most careers are open to them and you would almost definitely not be working at McDs or in jail.

So ok, we're comparing realities that might not be comparable. I also didn't have as bad as others, but in my case something like "in-state tuition" was essentially unthinkable as well as any sort of debt. If you have nothing, first it's unlikely someone would borrow you the money and second it's a terrifying prospect and a lot of money.

The US poverty line is about 15k for a two-person family. That would mean that earning that much would make 1-3 years of family income in debt.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#526

Post by lukasm »

fijal wrote: post #498
tptacek wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) un…

College in Poland is free and there are options for very limited stipends which can sustain you (albeit on a poverty level). That did lift me from a poor, but educated, family into the world of computer software and a relatively successful career it seems. As it did for countless of my peers. Please don't discount free education as "not changing much", in the US I would be probably working at Mc Donalds or dealing cr…

There are problems with free Uni in Poland

- people studying for 10 years just to extend the childhood. (government pay 15k a year to the uni)

- some Unis accept people just to get money off of the government (accepted 500, graduate 100)

- lack of quality due to poor funding

Uni should not be free, but cheap. (50% of yearly median salary)

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#527

Post by Omniusaspirer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #500
hourislate wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ultimately this is just mixing up definitions of "value" in disguise. It's the reverse of assuming price is tied to some kind of intrinsic "value" of the good. Here, you're assuming nothing can be free (in economical sense) because physics. But it's not true. If you give stuff away no strings attached, it's free, period.

In the specific example being discussed of government funded "free" college education it most certainly is not being given away with "no strings attached".

There's a very real stipulation that regardless of whether an individual actually attends a university or not they will be having the monetary products of their labor forcibly taken and used to pay the professors, construct the facilities, and heat the buildings.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#528

Post by laotzu »

Basic income is an idea which has been made practical due to electric automation.

Why is it then that everyone assumes the surplus created by electric automation should be distributed using such a primitive legacy paper based information system as the dollar? That's 19th century thinking

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#529

Post by silverlake »

logfromblammo wrote: post #485
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.

Factory-produce modular housing units that fit inside a 40' high cube shipping container. Factory-produce the 88"L x 40"W X 30"H modules and the 4"L x 80"W x 90"H bulkheads that separate them. Each unit would have four internal bulkheads and up to 18 room modules that aren't a 40" wide pass-through space. Each "room" would consist of three or six stacked modules, and each module is small enough to fit through the doo…

I looked into this for a weekend home in the country. It's just not cost effective, nor is it faster to build right now. I was in South Africa recently where they are building mass housing for those in townships (aka slums). They are building in the traditional on-site way. If it's faster and cheaper to do modular, than there might be an opening there.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#530

Post by Tsagadai »

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…

Housing is almost impossible to fix at this point. Housing is seen more as an asset class than a social requirement (although, not everyone thinks this way there are enough people with money that it doesn't matter what they think, it is an asset class). The majority of the issues you highlight are caused by the amount of capital moving into real estate and the amount of resistance to change is directly proportional to how much the house is worth. Almost any change in housing will be universally opposed by owners unless it improves their house values (sometimes a change may improve one set of owners while diminishing another but that just makes for more media friendly conflict).

Tenements and social housing have been tried and mostly failed. Interest rates and taxation only have a marginal affect until they reach extremes. Emigration from an area has been shown to lower prices but at great social and economic cost.

Then there is demand, everyone needs somewhere to live. Don't just consider local demand, consider international demand. How culturally, economically or socially appealing an area is to an international audience (that is, does nearly everyone want to live there).

I view it as almost impossible for housing to improve for everyone while it is an asset and there would need to be utterly draconian or utopian changes to switch high quality housing from an asset to something universally available.

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