Request For Research: Basic Income

Look at the most basic need: food. Demand is relatively constant - you need enough to eat, and shouldn't eat too much (obviously in practice there is a certain amount of elasticity and differences in demand for different types of food). Supply of food already exceeds demand (look at food waste, supermarkets tossing out ugly produce or burning unsold items to maintain their profit margin). So - demand for food barely goes up, supply continues to exceed demand.

What if some companies experimented with basic income? I mean, sure, people working there are probably already getting paid pretty well, and 'basic income' at that point might just seem like a small bonus to their salary, but what if it was implemented like we implemented life insurance? Hear me out:

So, you work at Company X. You and one person of your choice are now entitled to basic income. It will come as a separate check, paid for by the company. You can put your spouse, your family member, or a friend--etc. as a beneficiary of the basic income, or choose nobody at all and miss out on this "free money".

That person would have to agree to accept the money of course, and the check will be written directly to them, not you (you are not a proxy).

One main difference between this and an actual implementation of basic income is that these individuals will only receive the basic income as long as you work at Company X (unless, for some reason, the Company agrees to continue the program beyond your employment).

Another difference is that it's linked to the success and failures of this company, instead of the successes and failures of society as a whole (the latter seems less risky).

Anyway, I'm posting this more as a prompt.. What if? Do you think it's a reasonable experiment for a company to run? I know big names like Google and Facebook have some interesting perks, so why not basic income for all your employees plus 1 person of their choice, paid for by a flat % of everyone's income at the company?

Except that like everywhere else on the globe that isn't Antarctica there were already people there that needed to be displaced. Someone else's asset was stolen and sold (for very little initially, but sold nonetheless). Land (in absolute terms) has little to do with property prices compared to where the land is geographically, politically and socially.

Land tax will help marginally with inequity but the majority of the cost will just be passed on to renters (like what happens now). Taxing vacant buildings higher will increase supply which should depress rents slightly. None of that stops housing becoming an investment and a financial asset though which is the root cause of unaffordability.

> Much like IQ testing, requiring a college education is already illegal under "disparate impact" arguments

This is the first I'm hearing that IQ testing is illegal as a basis for employment. AFAIK the military and many police forces employ IQ/aptitude tests as part of their hiring process.

> decreasing the cost of living is a critical component as well.

Hi Sam,

I'm going to not read through 747+ comments, I'm sorry.

Right now, in the best cities in the nation, the cost of living is rising significantly. These cities have a deep job pool, they are making serious efforts on sustainability, have wide and varied culture and are generally more efficient (and often better) ways to live[0].

However, because of the cost of living is rising so steeply, it is forcing people of median income and below to spread out into the suburbs, increasing commute cost (and pollution), as well as the variety of issues suburbia causes for the environment and sustaininable living[1]. Among the contributing factors here is childrearing, which takes extra space - space which is extremely expensive to rent or purchase in a city. This is an incredibly significant issue as we iterate this game several times.

I'd like to bring to your attention several interlinked aspects that play out here:

- higher housing density is more sustainable

- highly effective transit networks decrease pollution

- dense housing suitable for long-term family residences is very hard to find.

I'm not persuaded that a start-up (a rapidly growing, high growth company) will be able to achieve success in these areas, because of the time horizon needed for these problems to be dealt with is on the 20+ year timespan. However, I'll argue that a company could make a dent in several of these areas:

- mixed use high-rises that are designed for families: offices, schools, playgrounds, etc included[2]. This would be a shift from the typical luxury condo build and, I'd argue, would find a very solid niche in the modern urbanist movement. I would argue that an affordability policy could go hand in hand with this, with certain entities eating some of the rental/purchase cost of these properties.

- Increase transit effectiveness. YC is already making a play in this area with Remix[3], but I think that doubling down on making transit costs and benefits more effective could really be a game changer. Demonstrating the very real cost of commuting would assist in the people inclined towards Green thought; figuring out how to make transit a pleasant experience would assist in getting the people not inclined to deal with the occasional horror story to support and vote for transit.

- In the same vein, platforms and tools that directly support pleasant densification will help. An example of this for someone in a dense neighborhood is Walc[4]. But, looking at policy and assisting policy becomes a major political play here.

Ultimately, what I fear the actual solution will look like here a broad-based housing price/rent control system, where everyone who isn't a multimillionaire who wants to live in a city has to be in a rent-controlled system, paid out by the local government. What we're seeing in Seattle is a bit of a tulip situation: people buying are buying at high prices because the sellers are aware they can sell at high prices, this ratchets the next unit price up; the demand is so high that it's forcing prices up very fast.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.ht...

[1] http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/1/26/second-life-cyc...

[2] An arcology, yes. :-)

[3] http://getremix.com/

[4] http://www.walc.me/