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Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#901

Post by maxerickson »

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…

If the necessity payments are biweekly or whatever, and actually scaled to necessities, and spending of them is actually limited to necessities, it shouldn't be possible to save many of them up, and not very beneficial either. So there isn't a huge benefit to making them survive bankruptcy (the court could even award an extra necessity payment right after adjudicating the bankruptcy).

So I think that is a good argument against them being, uh, necessary, and then there is the whole thing where if it is a real currency, it will be fungible, so people will still be able to use them stupidly on things that aren't necessities.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#902

Post by _archon_ »

jacalata wrote: post #792
derefr wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We could call it the Universal Black Market Dollar! Are you unfamiliar with the process of trading food stamps for money that already exists?

I am. How does it work? I assume someone with cash who really wants groceries buys stamps at a discounted rate so they end up having more grocery buying power?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#903

Post by jameshart »

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…

Trailer homes/parks are already a thing.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#904

Post by eyko »

Mz wrote: post #494
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…

So, you want communism or forced labor camps? I don't want Basic Income only to be told where and how to work. If I have to work for it, I want to go find work my damn self that I find palatable. Which is (part of) why I don't want Basic Income at all. (Edited for clarity)

The whole point of basic income is that you don't have to work for it, just like you don't have to work for access to universal health care.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#905

Post by ketzu »

thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #800
dschiptsov wrote: post #772

There is nothing much to research, because the concept contradicts to the most basic principles of ecology, economics and sociology. The first principle is that a population always outgrows its resources. As long as one create conditions to sustain a life it will start to reproduce exponentially. Rabits in Australia is a classic example. The second principle is the scarcity principle of economics. Everything which is…

This shouldn't be down-voted, quite reasonable and makes sense. Mostly, moving a zero on a scale.

The parent comment claims simple modles wont work based on simple models.

The "moving 0 on a scale" argument is brought into play with minimum wage (for example 2:[1]) but it most likely wont happen.

There are other points completely ignored by the parent post like welfare already in place (shouldnt this cause the same effect?), dimishing effects, etc etc.

The parent comment cites nothing and mixes basic income with "thats basically communism and communism has obviously failed".

I think there are reasons to downvote the parent comment, even though my comment does not provide much better quality.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2015/08/04/the_7_most_dangerous_myths_a...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#907

Post by nathan_f77 »

Damn, there goes another one of my "what I'm going to do after I make a lot money" ideas. I really wanted to run a study like this, especially after hearing about GiveDirectly and seeing their research. In fact, that's what GiveDirectly is already doing, at least in Kenya and Uganda. But yeah, it would be really interesting to see what would happen in the US, or another developed country.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#909

Post by logfromblammo »

jameshart wrote: post #903
logfromblammo wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Trailer homes/parks are already a thing.

NIMBY zoning also prevents them from appearing where they would be most useful. Separating the building architecture from the interior design is the same concept as office cubicles.

From the outside, it would look like an ordinary apartment building, which seems more palatable to most folks than a row of slightly angled transportable manufactured homes.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#910

Post by pc86 »

gldalmaso wrote: post #896
throwawaytime wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, the cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the increase. But those at the lower end suffered a 40% decline! The authors interpreted this to mean that scarcity impaired people’s ability to think clearly. The threat—even an imagined threat—of a large bill made it difficult for poor people to focus on the cogn…

>> When you arrive at 1pm because you have no memory of waking up and turning off all three of the alarms you'd set There are some apps that might help you in this regard that require increasingly complex tasks to disable an alarm. ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kog.alarmc... ) It also has an option to resound the alarm 5min after being disabled. I have used it and it was effective for me even on…

Narcolepsy is a neurological condition that is not solved by a puzzle alarm.
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