Request For Research: Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#801

Post by toomanybeersies » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #558

toomanybeersies wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a very American thing to not have banking as a basic right (or at least assumed right). Here in New Zealand, there's pretty much no restriction on getting bank accounts. It's almost unheard of to not have a bank account. Transaction fees aren't really a thing either. Most people only have to pay to withdraw money from other banks ATMs. There's no fees for bank transfers (regardless of whether it's to t…

We certainly have a long way to go here. I found it endlessly frustrating trying to get an expense card for my nanny. I wanted her to have access to a set limit of my money to pay for things for the kids but not an endless supply. I wanted it to just be there. I never found any banks that had anything even remotely like that. I ended up just getting a reloadable debit card that I have to keep topping off for her. And…

That is crazy.

I have no idea if you can get expense cards here, but it's easy to just get another card and connect it to another account, and then load funds onto it as you need.

Several of my friends have their cards attached to an account that's usually empty, and transfer funds when needed to the card. It takes literally seconds to transfer the money, you can do it on your mobile phone in the store.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#802

Post by obrero » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

mkempe wrote: post #631

selestify wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet Union did pretty well in its early years, with GDP growth faster than that of the US for a time. Cuba is still doing pretty well compared to similar Latin American countries at the time of the Cuban revolution. Don't know too much about the others.

Soviet Union: 7-20 million deliberately starved to death. [1] 1.5 million people executed during The Great Purge. [2] "Did pretty well". Cuba: thousands executed for the ideas they held; forced labor camps; and more than 1.2m fled 1959-1993 (about 10% of the current population). "Doing pretty well". Cuba was one of the wealthiest countries in the Americas, before Marxists took over. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

USA: Extermination of natives, slavery, company towns and child labor, Jim crow etc.

England: English colonialism from Drogheda to Amristar, plus the domestic Peterloo, child labor etc. Also, how many millions did England deliberately starve to death in the 1840s?

Germany: I can list off what the Krupp/Voegler/Thyssen financed Nazi party did for a while, then go back to before that

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#803

Post by usaar333 » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

existencebox wrote: post #667

Let me bring front and center something that has gotten a surprisingly (to me) small portion of this discussion: ENABLE MORE REMOTE WORK. Why am I living in a high cost area? Because this is where the jobs are. Why are costs high? Because thousands of other engineers essentially _need_ to do the same thing. So to answer Sam's original question with another question, in addition to merely making this a one sided "busi…

From my experience working with remote workers, problems tend to be bucketed under "loss of context". The remote worker misses so many ad-hoc (e.g. lunch with a colleague) workplace conversations that they end up knowing less about what is going on. Time zone differences further complicate thing (misalignment of working hours).

Secondly, and something perhaps tech could solve, is difficulty of working on problems together. I haven't seen a good video conferencing solution that comes close to two people in a room drawing on a whiteboard.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#804

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

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…

Personally, I think this is a big part of the reason UBI will work.

Most people want to do something, and generally want to feel productive. How many stories have you heard about unhappy office drones leaving a job where they spent all their time on the internet to something more rewarding?

But where will this productive energy go? Plenty of people will still have jobs, likely doing something more in line with their interests. Others will volunteer their time and participate in the community. I think lots of people would love to spend more time mentoring young people, being with their families, etc. It could be a revolution in community participation and lead to a more healthy society.

Satisfying and productive work doesn't need to be paid work.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#805

Post by ph0rque » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:19 AM UTC

Ask HN: What can startups do to increase prosperity for everyone?

I've actually been thinking about that for quite some time now. Here's what I think will help increase prosperity:

* Inexpensive housing: something like the Tiny House movement, but more mainstream and less expensive.

* Automated food production, such as my side project, AutoMicroFarm.

* Inexpensive electric transportation.

* Universal health insurance.

The above four items would enable anyone to have the vast majority of their needs met. I plan to expand on the above in a blog post.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#806

Post by rorykoehler » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:21 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #592

This already happens in lots of setups: social security, pensions, allowances, annuities. So there's lots to look at without setting up some stilted experiments?

None of those are basic income or even offer remotely the same benefits as a basic income.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#807

Post by xamuel » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #785

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…

* 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. Doctor salary only makes up ~8.6% of overall Healthcare spending. Since, right or wrong, people want to see doctors rather than nurses when they bother to go into the hospital in person, I predict this tech will actually increase healthc…

One thing to consider is prescriptions. In some cases doctors provide no value and are only present because of laws governing who can and can't prescribe medicine.

Another thing is liability. There are cases where a triage nurse could easily tell a patient "you're fine, go home and rest". But that can't happen right now because everyone's scared petrified about liability issues.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#808

Post by astrocat » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

andrefrancisco wrote: post #423

astrocat wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on your last point, I've wondered if it would be within the scope of 18F or the US Digital Service to create a local.gov site/platform that is a repository for all local government information and vector for engagement. Figuring out who all the locally elected officials are and what they are supposed to do is nearly an impossible task.

That's probably outside 18F's scope, as they are cost recoverable and must be hired by a federal agency. So getting that done would require convincing a federal agency to spend the money to hire 18F to build the platform. USDS could do it if it were a presidential priority, but while creating a one-time snapshot of that list would already be an incredibly huge task, actually keeping it updated would be very difficult…

Absolutely - it is certainly a HUGE undertaking. Though the value to the society/community/voters would be equally enormous it's unlikely we'll ever find the resources to have such a thing executed in a thorough, responsible (unbiased) manner. I suppose this is the part where I motivate myself to design and build it because nobody else will...

Sidenote - high-five for the stuff going on at 18F :)

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#809

Post by davidgay » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #764

tptacek wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about that, and about the story of Ferguson Missouri, where some huge portion of the (largely African American) population had arrest warrants over petty fines that had blossomed through late fees and default judgements into financial catastrophes levied by the (largely middle class white) municipal government, with the last few suggestions.

Instead of Universal Basic Income, how about Universal Basic Food Stamps? It feels like, rather than a basic income, we need two orthogonal currencies: one for necessities (food, rent, utilities) and one for niceities. Everyone would just have two numbers in their bank account, for each of the country's two official currencies. Basic income would be paid in one, while all income from trade in the economy would be in…

To my mind, Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the most radical attempt to address the complexity that is introduced by trying to only give benefits to the "deserving": there's often a view that social benefits (food stamps, income support, child benefits, health care, etc, etc) should only be given to those who "need" it. So then you need to:

- decide who actually "needs" the benefit

- figure out how to recognise these people ("means-tested" benefits!)

- catch the people defrauding the system

Instead, you could just say, e.g. for the case of child benefit, that every child receives $400/month and get rid of:

- the complexity in deciding who gets $400/month

- the enforcement of fraud

The "underserving" middle- and upper-income will receive this money too, but it doesn't matter - it's effectively coming out of the higher taxes they are paying already.

UBI is just a generalization of this idea to all benefits.

Introducing two kinds of dollars smacks, to me, of the same mindset that introduced means-testing/etc in the first place: "we don't want fraud", "we want this to only go to deserving purposes". Lots of complexity, hard to manage, and for no convincing benefit.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#810

Post by Tycho » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 4:28 AM UTC

Today I was thinking about the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. That's his theory from the book Outliers (which I haven't read) which argues that to become a true expert in something requires 10,000 hours of practice.

Now, say I wanted to become an expert in programming. To the point where I was an elite 10x developer. If I quit my job and lived off my savings, I could conceivably work on programming 100 hours per week. So after ten weeks I'd have 1000 hours, and after 100 weeks I'd have my 10,000. So that's two years or so at a minumum.

But living off savings for two years would be incredibly costly. Working full time would let me squeeze in say 20 hours a week, so I'd now take 10 years to reach the golden 10,000 hours or experience. If I cut down to a part time job, it would take 20 years.

I think the latter two are unrealistic because they take so long. The 100 hour per week option is more of a possibility. With universal basic income, everyone would have the opportunity. If lots of people pulled it off, the productivity gains for society would be enormous.

Obviously there's lots of people in society who have this sort of spare time and simply do not use it. However I think there's an argument that the people most likely to achieve this 10,000 hours goal are people who are gainfully employed and wouldn't pursue it without some sort of income support.