Request For Research: Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#951

Post by johnchristopher » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 10:01 PM UTC

nathan_f77 wrote: post #927

johnchristopher wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to miss the point. If you don't have a job, even if you have some kind of meaningful work or hobby on the side, your self-worth will still suffers from that.

How do you know that? That seems like an unfounded conclusion. For example, a lot of people here on Hacker News don't have a "job", but they're building startups and working on products. I wouldn't call that a job, in the sense that they're not performing work in exchange for money. It probably does have some effect on their self-worth, but I don't think it has anything to do with the lack of an employer. And to foll…

> How do you know that?

Because I read about it many times in the past ?

> That seems like an unfounded conclusions. For example, a lot of people here on Hacker News don't have a "job", but they're building startups and working on products. I wouldn't call that a job, in the sense that they're not performing work in exchange for money. It probably does have some effect on their self-worth, but I don't think it has anything to do with the lack of an employer.

That's because you are drinking the koolaid without reading the warnings all over HN about the entrepreneur porn lalaland echo chamber it is at time and succumbing to the game of redefining common words to fit a specific story. Also, very specific and small population sample here. You can't exclude the majority of the population to deny the fact that self-worthiness is linked to employment (edit: whether it is a good thing or not).

Here's some unfounded conclusion:

- http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2012/04/unempl...

- http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/09/19/the-long-un...

- http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/kay/2013/08/31...

- https://kar.kent.ac.uk/19046/1/abrams_unemployment_self.pdf

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222079910_'Unemploy...

- http://commonwealthmagazine.org/economy/016-the-hidden-injur...

- http://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/67151/_PAREN...

> And to follow on from that point, someone can be retired and spend 8 hours on art, music, writing, or any other creative endeavor. I don't think those are the kinds of people who live shorter lives after retiring.

But that's the thing. Retirees have a different status to hold than the unemployed. Plus, you forget that the transition from a working class member to a retiree can be really hard.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#952

Post by kamaal » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

throwawaytime wrote: post #632

mijustin wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial desperation squeezes the cognitive juice right out of you. In 2013, Harvard researchers did a study of how financial stress affects decision making. Denise Cummins, Ph.D. explains their findings in Psychology Today: "When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, a very different picture emerged: The cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the i…

"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…

>>It seems like no one else will learn a thing from any of this.

There is a ton to learn from your story.

Most people think retirement is what you do when you get old. Retirement planning begins on the day you get the first pay check of your life. In fact the whole purpose of working should be to eliminate the need to work.

If you are not doing this already. You are sitting on top of risky avalanche which will go downhill any day.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#953

Post by jhallenworld » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 12:24 AM UTC

Start a micro-investment company that allows people to invest in others to live and better themselves for some kind of cut of their future income. Do this at a huge scale.

The problem with basic income is where does the money come from? It's either loaned, taxed or invested. Loans are bad because you are enslaving the borrower. Taxes are bad because you are stealing work/labor from the taxed. Investments are best: you probably won't make your money back, but the possibility could provide incentive to give.

On the recipients side: perhaps there is value for them to promote themselves (in a Kickstarter kind of way) for more investments. Just the exercise might give them ideas of how to increase their own value.

Have the fed become the basic investor. This means inflating the money supply, but somewhat curtailed because successful investments have some payback. This is perhaps the fairest tax-like money source- it really hurts those with large amount of parked cash the most, which may not be such a bad thing. It encourages them to do something better with their money.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#954

Post by SkyMarshal » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

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

A general theme here is to identify every element of our current economy and society that we use debt to access, and find ways of disrupting that, of providing same or equivalent access without debt. Shelter, transportation, health, and education are all ripe for that kind of disruption.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#955

Post by ddod » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 2:40 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #813

ddod wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI isn't supposed to fix the problem of money mismanagement. If everyone was spending up to their means, that would be a success because the economy would be flourishing. If they were putting that money into savings, the experiment would be a failure. UBI is designed to solve for the future economy where human labor's value diminishes. In 20 years your brother's welding job may still be paying but whatever job you (…

My brother _is_ most of our economy. This was my whole point.

No, most of the US economy is service and office based. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf (see chart 3)

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#956

Post by soared » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 3:42 AM UTC

jgord wrote: post #478

danieltillett wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what happens in remote communities here in Australia the result is not pretty. We basically have a basic income here in Australia via our welfare system. What we have found when everyone is jobless is there are huge levels of drug use, domestic violence, child abuse and general criminality. Other than this it works quite well.

I think the packaging is incredibly important - negative income / social welfare are packaged in a way that telegraphs dependency and low self-worth. [ I would also be really interested in seeing an economic analysis of how much money and time is spent on administering social welfare ] Basic income needs to be marketed as a positive way : here's some money - it is your share of the basic wealth from the land/resource…

I think this is a really good point I haven't heard in the discussion before. I would imagine that simply changing the name from "welfare" to something that implies motivation would make a difference.

Imagine: You're 18 years old and your Dad gives you $500. He says, "You don't make any money and have to rely on me. Here is your spending money" or "You'll be making a lot of money (value) later on in life, this will help you kickstart it."

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#957

Post by soared » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 3:57 AM UTC

ultramancool wrote: post #330

aggronn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) How is this more inefficient than our existing welfare system? Seems a lot more efficient to give everyone money rather than spend $100M on bureaucratic infrastructure for verification and employment tracking. 2) It benefits society because you no longer have to work to live. This affects how you make decisions about your employment. You would be more likely to change jobs when you're unhappy, for example. This is…

> Whether you make $40k, $100k, or $500k, the $10k isn't there to prove "additional income support". The system could be set up so that after basic income is implemented, your disposable income is the same as it was before--people making $40k wouldn't have $10k in free money to spend, because their taxes would go up $10k a year, for example. > So if you make over $100k a year, you might be taxed $15k more than you we…

The idea is that the taxes scale, so for the middle class the tax is negligible. You get $10k, and your taxes are increased by $12k if you're making less than $100k.

As for teenagers sitting in their parents basement - The thought is that $10k lets them live and do anything they please instead of being tied to a shitty job or their parents basement. In theory they will choose to contribute to society in some way and not just play video games all day.

But that is what we need to test - Will people choose to play video games and watch TV all day, or choose something fulfilling and 'productive.' Then we have to redefine productive, some other comments in this thread speak about that.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#958

Post by saturdayplace » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:13 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #840

patcon wrote: post #284

Based on my own experiences of transitioning voluntarily into homelessness, I am very excited by the focus on lowering the cost of living. Living more simply, and getting there by a slow and intentional process (NOT coercive or painful), leads to more enjoyment of life, and less fear of failure. Funny how living in the presumed failure state of western society recalibrates your instincts. I find myself wishing that s…

You should write a longer description of these experiences and post it to HN. It seems likely to interest people.

Moved and seconded

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#959

Post by MaricopaArizona » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:35 AM UTC

(Cross-posted from a similar thread)

Has anybody studied the outcomes on American Indian reservations from having basic income guaranteed for generations? I'm not an expert or well-read in this field, but I think anybody advocating basic income would be interested to visit a reservation and observe the lifestyles, dreams, goals, and successes found there.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#960

Post by rorykoehler » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 6:02 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #916

rorykoehler wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now you're just being stubborn. Regular incomes that happen whether you work or now, are almost identical to the BI. How are those example different? Constructive arguments are more interesting than "No they aren't, neener neener".

Hi Joe, sorry to come across that way to you. They're not the same because:

-Social security (means tested, dehumanising and bad for self-worth/esteem) -Pensions (only handed out to older people who are probably in a less creative phase of their lives) -Allowances (whilst close it is unlikely to be completely unconditional and usually tied to an emotional/familial bond which comes with it's own set of baggage) -Annuities (this is the closest of the lot but generally only rich people experience this so it would be interesting to see what happens when given to less well off sections of society).

Unconditional basic income deserves to be studied from a scientific perspective. Too many of our major political decisions are based on anecdotal evidence and they therefore don't achieve what they presumably set out to achieve. Unconditional basic income is a unique concept with it's own unique set of inputs and outcomes just as the concepts your mentioned are. We cannot just assume outcomes as that is bad science. We have to implement, test and analyse our results.

If you are interested in this approach to governance I highly recommend reading this article to stimulate your interest: http://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/2015/12/08/this-is-why-finlan...