Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#91

Post by manyoso » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #71

manyoso wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberals understand that we are the state as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Probably we remember this from grade school and also we don't instinctively fear the 'other' like you guys.

I am not the state. And when I look around, a lot of states certainly aren't 'for' or 'by' the people. Maybe you have to start thinking independently, rather than smugly reciting one-liners from school. The state is a large entreprise that gives us some things and forces us to do things and pay money under the threat of violence and incarceration. I argue for voluntaryism, the notion that people enter into contracts…

What you argue has been tried in the early have of the 20th century in the United States where workplace safety laws and minimum wages were ruled unconstitutional based on the theory of free contracting parties. It failed MISERABLY and by miserably I mean it left working people in ... literally ... misery.

BTW, my 'smug one liner' I learned in school was uttered by President Abraham Lincoln who is widely regarded as our nations greatest President.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#92

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

jerelunruh wrote: post #36

Let's say that currently rent is $1,000 per month, food is $500, and Alice is earning $2,500. Now UBI is implemented and Alice and all fellow citizens receive $1,000 per month. What will keep the market from easing the entry level rent up to $1,500 and food to $1,000 since the money is available? At first glance it seems like we'd just be choosing a different number representing "broke".

You would have to restructure taxation, such that incomes from rent-seeking behaviors and business activities are taxed at a higher (possibly punitive) rate than incomes from voluntary, equivalent-value trades between economic equals.

Otherwise, as has been seen countless times before, the value of the government benefit will be mostly captured by those best positioned to monetize it.

The alternative is to provide the housing and food benefit directly, rather than distributing dollars and employing a middleman. If UBI provided 3000 kcal of food per person per day directly, as pantry staples, rather than with a $500 check, it is much more difficult to skim rents out of that. Even restricted use food stamps fuel scams that convert them into cash. There may be people who rent out their government-provided housing as storage units, storefronts, or offices as they live in a non-gratis premium residence, but assigned tenement space is not quite as liquid as cash in the wallet, and therefore less able to be sucked out of the local economy.

Twice as much of the same apartment you already have is simply less valuable to you than twice what one apartment is worth to you, so anyone trying to rent it out cannot demand the same price as it might otherwise cost for the first apartment you live in. Imagine where you live now. Now make an exact copy of it. Would you pay twice as much as you currently pay to live in both places at once? Would you cook twice as much or twice as often if you had two identical kitchens? Would you sleep twice as long or twice as restfully if you had two identical bedrooms? If housing is a benefit guaranteed by UBI, rental prices for the non-gratis residences crash, because the only people willing to pay are now only those looking for a better place to live, rather than those looking for any place to live.

Whereas if the benefit is up to $500 in cash to the person who rents you an apartment, that's just fueling an economic bidding war where everyone in the auction has another $500 to spend.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#93

Post by warfangle » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

DiffEq wrote: post #44

hackuser wrote: post #5

A rarely discussed benefit to minimum income: The higher the social benefits, then I think the greater the labor market liquidity, for both employers and workers. Currently everything else depends on your job: Either you have one, and you have income, benefits, and all that goes with them in a society where everything costs money; or you don't and you have nothing (or very little). But if you don't lose you house, st…

Yet nowhere has this been "field tested" for any length of time. Unless one makes the case that it has been tested in the form of several countries in the 20th century. Places like the the Soviet Union, China, etc. We see that it failed in those places and in Soviet countries it failed fantastically. The fatal flaw in all of this...who is going to pay for it?

Soviet Union and China didn't really have a universal basic income. They had a state defined income, if anything. Which meant you couldn't make more than that, either.

It actually has been "field tested" - and in the US of A, no less.

The entire state of Alaska has a guaranteed minimum income.

Granted, it isn't much - on average it's been about $1,000 per anum.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#94

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

> No, because they would still have Milton Freidman's famous helicopter money drop. Previously, this took the form of quantitative easing.

QE was not the same as the "helicopter drop". The helicopter drop (HD) is much closer to basic income (BI), except that HD might be a one-time thing, whereas BI is ongoing.

QE is creating money to buy bonds. This raises the price of bonds, and injects money into the system. But where does it inject the money? To everyone? No, only to those who currently hold bonds - that is, to the wealthy, and to financial institutions. HD and BI, by contrast, give the money to everyone.

QE didn't do much to solve the problem of inadequate demand. HD and/or BI may do better. They may do it at the price of increased inflation, true. But under the current circumstances, the Fed would welcome a bit more inflation...

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#95

Post by warfangle » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

xrange wrote: post #30

Here's something I like to see some discussion on from Basic Income proponents. Does BI need to be rolled out everywhere-all-at-once, or is it possible to do small scale experiments to look at the effects? If you think it is possible to have meaningful smaller scale tests, how small can it be? 1000 participants? 100,000 participants? 10,000,000 participants? And then the big question, would there be any outcomes from…

Alaskans have been receiving a guaranteed income of ~$1,000 per anum for the past 34 years.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#96

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #70

hackuser wrote: post #5

A rarely discussed benefit to minimum income: The higher the social benefits, then I think the greater the labor market liquidity, for both employers and workers. Currently everything else depends on your job: Either you have one, and you have income, benefits, and all that goes with them in a society where everything costs money; or you don't and you have nothing (or very little). But if you don't lose you house, st…

1. UBI can be thought of as large-scale debt forgiveness. You are simply giving people the means to escape (often, but not always) self-imposed debts. 2. UBI would lead to a huge jump in inflation (as a %, nearly as much as the initial UBI stimulus % of total money in circulation) as the vast majority of UBI recipients would have a large propensity to immediately spend that money, thereby simply releasing it into cir…

My impression is that many people, given more money, would use most of it to pay down debt, rather than to spend on new stuff. (That may reduce the probability of bad debt, which may increase the safety of the financial system. On the other hand, it may not increase consumption to the degree expected, and therefore may not work as well as expected to "get the economy moving again".)

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#97

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #70

hackuser wrote: post #5

A rarely discussed benefit to minimum income: The higher the social benefits, then I think the greater the labor market liquidity, for both employers and workers. Currently everything else depends on your job: Either you have one, and you have income, benefits, and all that goes with them in a society where everything costs money; or you don't and you have nothing (or very little). But if you don't lose you house, st…

1. UBI can be thought of as large-scale debt forgiveness. You are simply giving people the means to escape (often, but not always) self-imposed debts. 2. UBI would lead to a huge jump in inflation (as a %, nearly as much as the initial UBI stimulus % of total money in circulation) as the vast majority of UBI recipients would have a large propensity to immediately spend that money, thereby simply releasing it into cir…

> UBI doubled the amount of money in circulation? Bread, milk, eggs, and rent cost 2x as much.

This assumes that production of these things won't rise - almost certainly false.

For milk in particular, we've recently had price supports.

And for rent, a basic income inherently increases the supply of "real estate near enough to sufficient income".

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#98

Post by VLM » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

sbuttgereit wrote: post #80

DiffEq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet nowhere has this been "field tested" for any length of time. Unless one makes the case that it has been tested in the form of several countries in the 20th century. Places like the the Soviet Union, China, etc. We see that it failed in those places and in Soviet countries it failed fantastically. The fatal flaw in all of this...who is going to pay for it?

That and what economic activity will be suppressed as capital moves away from prior uses. Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. The seen and the unseen indeed. Unless there's more than hand-wavy dismissive talk about the negatives such schemes bring, one is foolish to think that this does anything positiv…

Capital investment and production are effectively dead sectors in our economy. Central bank manipulation that theoretically used to create both, recently has only created financialization bubbles and corruption. That operation model is dead, but still shuffling like a zombie... for awhile. If the factories ARE never coming back, there is no point in being concerned about financing them or goosing the economy to try to encourage them. Its kinda like the transition from agricultural economy to industrial economy, economic terms and theories and S.O.P. and problem areas that used to work are simply obsolete.

If an economic system exclusively rewards the lucky and the corrupt, like ours, then it deserves its destruction. Wealth has no virtue if its source is exclusively non virtuous. Or rephrased, where did the virtue come from that wealth supposedly has? Certainly not from honest labor and skill, not in this economic system, not in the future we're headed toward.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#99

Post by scrupulusalbion » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #93

DiffEq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet nowhere has this been "field tested" for any length of time. Unless one makes the case that it has been tested in the form of several countries in the 20th century. Places like the the Soviet Union, China, etc. We see that it failed in those places and in Soviet countries it failed fantastically. The fatal flaw in all of this...who is going to pay for it?

Soviet Union and China didn't really have a universal basic income. They had a state defined income, if anything. Which meant you couldn't make more than that, either. It actually has been "field tested" - and in the US of A, no less. The entire state of Alaska has a guaranteed minimum income. Granted, it isn't much - on average it's been about $1,000 per anum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#100

Post by nmrm2 » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

sbuttgereit wrote: post #80

DiffEq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet nowhere has this been "field tested" for any length of time. Unless one makes the case that it has been tested in the form of several countries in the 20th century. Places like the the Soviet Union, China, etc. We see that it failed in those places and in Soviet countries it failed fantastically. The fatal flaw in all of this...who is going to pay for it?

That and what economic activity will be suppressed as capital moves away from prior uses. Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. The seen and the unseen indeed. Unless there's more than hand-wavy dismissive talk about the negatives such schemes bring, one is foolish to think that this does anything positiv…

Life isn't fair. So either it isn't fair because a poor person can't claw their way out of poverty while a lazy dullard skates through life doing easy work for Father's friends, or it isn't fair because an enterprizing capitalist who scraped his way up from the bottom is taxed heavily to pay for another's laziness or stupidity. (to fairly characterize both side's straw men.)

Appeals to fairness as an argument for or against various wealth redistribution schemes always strike me as odd for this reason. Neither side gets an exclusive claim to fairness. Both situations can end up equally unfair for equally reasonable definitions of fairness. No society-level policy -- especially doing nothing -- can possibly hope to be remotely fair in at least an infinitely of possible senses of the word.