Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 1001 posts

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#821

Post by rorykoehler »

branchless wrote: post #598
Eridrus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of basic income, fixing housing is super important since it's one of the biggest drains on everyone's income and the fixed nature of it suggests that just giving everyone more money will cause a lot of that money to just end up in landlord's pockets. I think a lot of the change must be policy change though and cannot be purely free-market oriented since there is a public interest in seeing more housing sto…

So much this. We've see this over and over. If we get more productive the rentiers take it. We need to squash the rentier starting with land value tax. And stop taxing labour. Then you have the true choice because you can achieve financial autonomy through work and then tell the man where he can stick his job if he refuses to pass on enough of your value added. Cheaper land will see less people forced to work which w…

I think BI could mean the end of homes as an asset class. Mortgages will become a super low risk loan meaning that interest rates will go through the floor, in turn making home ownership supremely affordable. If everyone can afford a mortgage then why would anyone rent?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#823

Post by adg »

Tycho wrote: post #810

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 pe…

A lot of people think Gladwell created the 10,000 hours theory, but he merely popularized it. The original research comes from K. Anders Ericsson. Here's a link to the original paper, which is actually quite accessible, if you're interested: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#825

Post by JoBrad »

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…

That is a crazy complex system. Compare this to the current Food Stamp system where the government loads money on a pre-paid card (for free - no transaction fees), and that card can only be spent on certain types of goods.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#826

Post by phrogdriver »

superuser2 wrote: post #763
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…

American banks seem unable or unwilling to follow the simple algorithm "process the transaction immediately, if the sender does not have enough money to complete it, decline it." Instead we depend on forms of payment which have latency measured in days (checks, direct deposit) and we process debit card transactions on a delay of hours to days. If you are playing close to $0 it's very easy to make a mistake and then f…

I've often wondered about the reasons someone might be unbanked. I've only ever considered the lack of immigration status or proof of address, as most unbanked people I've come in contact with were Latin American immigrants to the United States. I've never considered the "playing close to $0" and the effect it could have if your account was closed and you were placed on a blacklist. That would seem to underline the parent commenter's assertion that money transfer should be treated as a right.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#827

Post by PKop »

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.

Can you provide an example of a "stuff" that is given away for free, and also specify who is "giving" it, and to whom?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#828

Post by Thomas_Lord »

mkempe wrote: post #614

Not a single comment so far has mentioned Karl Marx. This "research" proposal is merely a technocratic rehash of Marxism: the inexorable forces of materialism and technological improvements entail endless progress driven by a Hegelian spirit. This will free humans from labor and eliminate the power of capital. Thus, somehow, unlimited production will enable people to live according to the motto "from each according t…

mkempe has written a very false description of Marx's work. It is a poor basis for a discussion of basic income programs in relation to Marxian thought.

Furthermore, mkempe has pointed to six historic nations as example of "basic income" gone wrong. None of the six examples he chose offered a basic income guarantee.

I won't dwell on this much but take for example this falsehood:

"This "research" proposal is merely a technocratic rehash of Marxism: the inexorable forces of materialism and technological improvements entail endless progress driven by a Hegelian spirit."

Marx made fun of the idea that history was driven by something like a "Hegelian spirit" (see Critique of the German Ideology).

Although Marx did use the word "materialism" in the phrase "historic materialism", it has no real relation to what mkempe describes here. (See Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)

Marx argued that competition among capitalists, not "spirit" was driving technological improvement in the productivity of labor. (Many places but Capital for example.)

One might say that "Marxism" is not "Marx" and that's fair enough. But Marxist thought, though it often wanders away from Marx, does not involve "Hegelian spirit" or "inexorable forces of materialism". The opposite, actually.

Realizing that the "forces of materialism" DID NOT entail "endless progress", both the Soviet Union and China set out to raise their level of development from agrarian to industrial. Both did so, and quickly.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#829

Post by Thomas_Lord »

mkempe wrote: post #757
ZenoArrow wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Marxism has been tried, and has failed, in so many places with such bloody results." This isn't Marxism, that's a lazy comparison. At its core, Marxism is about shared access to the means of production. Basic income has nothing to do with changing who owns the means of production (or at least, it could mean that, but it doesn't have to mean that). Furthermore, whilst Marx had some interesting ideas, he also had at…

Actually, at its core Marxism is about this motto: (take) from each according to his ability, (give) to each according to his needs. The abolition of private property and other horrors of Communist implementations are simply means to that redistributive goal. The notion of Basic Income is rooted in Socialist theories intended to implement the vision of Marx and Engels.

regarding: "Actually, at its core Marxism is about this motto: (take) from each according to his ability, (give) to each according to his needs."

In a communist society there is no state to "take" or "give" in that way.

Nor is Marx's thought or marxism "about [that] motto" "at its core".

If you have arguments to make about a basic income, can you please make them without so badly misrepresenting the thought of others?

I happen to agree that a UBI is silly, bad goal but I'm offended at how falsely Marx is being described here.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#830

Post by NamTaf »

flubert wrote: post #692
surfmike wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the bottom 50% live much more prosperously in Denmark than in the US.

Is there a good way to quantify that?

A cursory search doesn't reveal a where-to-be-born [1] or human development [2] index for the lower half or quartile of a given nation's population. It would indeed be an interesting thing to view. I suspect that there's something to be said about the mean score vs the spread of values across the various quartiles of the populations of the countries.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

Post reply on HN