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Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#931

Post by namenotrequired »

scottmp10 wrote: post #471

"We’re looking for one researcher who wants to work full-time... who are driven and talented but come from poor backgrounds." (please read the entire paragraph to understand the context of this) The combination of hiring researchers that come from poor background with the author's stated belief that a basic income would likely be a good thing makes the entire set up seem very biased. I like the idea of promoting rese…

So hiring someone from the same rich or middle-class background as every other researcher will somehow mean they're less biased?

You won't find people without bias, but you can restrict your own selection bias in finding them.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#932

Post by namenotrequired »

narrator wrote: post #832

Just a brainstorm, not even sure if this is a great idea: Perhaps a good thing to do with a universal basic income is tell people they can collect it from anywhere. This is what people do with social security and such. They go live in cheap countries where they can get dental and medical work done for 1/10th the price. Cheap food, cheap rent, etc. The lowered demand for these things in the US would lower prices here.…

Except the people in the cheap countries who see their prizes rise because of the influx of relatively richer people.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#933

Post by Lawtonfogle »

pcmaffey wrote: post #265
theseatoms wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's also ban previous-employer based discrimination. ;)

And skill-based discrimination.

Interview based discrimination is really where it is at. Also, since it is almost impossible to remove indicators of protected statuses such as gender or race, it will help ensure no such discrimination occurs. Best we couple it with a ban on performance based discrimination once hired.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#934

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Riseed wrote: post #216
davidw wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suggestion in the book is a negative income tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

One big difference between basic income and negative income tax is who receives them. Basic income is given to everyone, and negative income tax is only given to those below a threshold amount -- creating two classes of people: givers and receivers, us and them. The negative income tax experiment in New Jersey showed that the negative income tax created a disincentive to work, and increased family breakups. [0] Negat…

>creating two classes of people: givers and receivers, us and them.

You get the same effect with basic income. Those who pay more in taxes than basic income gives and those who don't. You could effectively create a negative income tax that gives the exact same payouts as basic income.

x is income, b is basic income, F(x) is tax someone has to pay at x income under the basic income scheme, G(x) is the tax scheme someone has to pay out without basic income that includes some negative taxes.

If G(x) = F(x) - b, then x + b - F(x) = x - G(x). Yes, they are coded up on law a bit differently, but the outcome on everyone's pay would be the same. All that is different is the talking points. Kinda like how people are charged higher tax rates for not having children currently in the US.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#935

Post by jqm »

usrusr wrote: post #928
jqm wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that is the solution to the problem and I'm not sure why others don't see it. Stop taxing labor. It's counterproductive. Tax what really does belong to everyone... the land and raw materials. This approach (in addition to more morally just in my estimation) would have the added benefit of built in environmentalism. There would be a financial incentive to do more with less, to conserve and to recycle.

I certainly see why the idea of putting the whole tax burden on land and raw materials could be appealing to people who are making software. It's difficult to make a compelling argument for change when one is so clearly on the winning side of it (which I dare to assume, given the HN demographic).

Agreed on benefit to the group. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't also be a vast improvement for society in general.

Because one stands to gain from an idea doesn't in and of itself make the idea a bad one.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#936

Post by Lawtonfogle »

ryandrake wrote: post #354
Riseed wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "idle" exactly, but in the Canadian Mincome experiment, teenagers and new parents decreased work hours (to focus on studies and childcare, respectively). http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf

But studying and caring for children is not idleness. We're talking about "sitting around idle" which, admittedly needs to be defined, but I'd argue doesn't include productive activities.

Productive is really hard to define because we all value what we produce differently.

If I'm playing minecraft and optimize a factory in an hour, that is a productive hour of gaming. But to my father, that entire time was wasted because he cares naught for video games and would instead be out working his farm. But I look at the small scale farm and realize that for what it produces, it would be cheaper to just buy the produce and thus don't see it as productive.

Is watching football and prime time TV productive? What if you have someone who doesn't like either but is doing so only so they can be a better culture fit at work since that is what everyone else at work is doing?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#937

Post by tomcam »

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…

  You can't really economically 
  disincentivize addicts from 
  seeking a fix; that's basically 
  definitional.
Not sure I agree. Seems like we cut down smoking drastically in the USA through heavy taxation? Not an expert in that area, however.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#938

Post by mercer »

param wrote: post #696
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…

What do you do? I am hiring and we have remote roles and a global team so everyone keeps their own hours.

I'll second that. I'm not 'hiring', but as a freelance web developer I'm always open to people working with me for an hourly rate.

EDIT: and while I don't currently have a steady stream of work available, when I do, I favor working with people who for whatever reason have trouble finding or keeping 'normal' work (having dealt with my own share of issues in this area).

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#939

Post by mercer »

pc86 wrote: post #910
gldalmaso wrote: post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

I suppose another person would solve this issue? Or is it an even worse condition than I think it is?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#940

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Bud wrote: post #257

Did anyone else read this post, and think, "Wow, what a dream job. What an opportunity to actually study something in real-life with real people that could make a fundamental difference in the evolution of humankind." It is harder to conceive of a notion more beneficial to the fate of humans than the notion that all humans deserve the basic essentials of life, and that the first task of a civilized society must be to…

>It should be assumed that everyone gets to eat and have shelter.

Would this include intimacy?

Consider that babies who aren't physically touched suffer extremely high mortality rates even though all other needs are provided (to the extent that even studying the effect is banned as unethical). This alone shows that physical touch should be considered a need.

And then there is the topic of needing human emotional intimacy, where loneliness is shown to be very unhealthy.

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