A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage • Hacker News Board

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#271

Post by vinceguidry » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

gknoy wrote: post #215

vinceguidry wrote: post #185

To give everyone in the US a basic income of $500 a month would cost ~$2 trillion dollars. Plus the cost of the inevitably humongous bureaucracy that will be necessary to administer it.

How would there need to be a huge bureaucracy to administer it? The IRS already handles annual funds-transfer (and validation) for citizens. Moreover, replacing welfare (which has bureaucracy to check eligibility) with a flat "everyone gets paid X" would remove the need for the bureaucracy that _currently_ exists to administer welfare programs. It seems to me that there would be substantially lower administration cos…

> The IRS already handles annual funds-transfer (and validation) for citizens.

The IRS is still going to have to do its job, unless the USGov suddenly decides to not collect taxes anymore. So we're going to need a new agency. Or a new department of an existing agency. Either way it's not free.

> since there's no need to verify whether people are eligible, other than filing tax returns.

What makes you think there wouldn't inevitably have to be eligibility requirements? You'd have both politically-necessary requirements, (would felons be eligible? Even the ones in jail? What about non-citizens?) and also requirements borne from the need to not create perverse incentives. How old do you have to be to get basic income? If there aren't any age requirements then Octomom will be a role model instead of a laughingstock. All of these requirements, including more that neither me nor anyone else will have thought about until a year or two into the rollout, will increase the administrative costs. I don't see why people think it will be easy or free to do this.

The whole thing reminds me of those "Things programmers believe about X" articles. Basic income is a good idea, but please don't pretend that it's going to be somehow different than every other welfare program.

Sure, Basic Income is supposed to replace welfare, but has any of the proponents actually thought through what that actually would entail? There are a lot of welfare programs that address lots of needs. Not all of them are pure cash transfers, some of them do things like provide counseling.

Some of them, like the food stamp program, provide greater value to the people they serve than if you'd just gave them a check. By replacing these programs with BI, you could be actually lowering their quality of life, like those people whose lives suddenly get awful after they get a raise at work because they no longer qualify for government assistance programs they relied on.

I suspect that a few years into replacing welfare with BI, we'll suddenly start appreciating welfare.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#272

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #65

harryh wrote: post #2

$10,000 * US_POPULATION ~= $3.2T ~= The total annual tax revenue of the US federal government. Just something to keep in mind when discussing this topic.

Many people would not receive this money from the government as their taxes would be more than the $10K payment. 160 million Americans work, and likely half would receive little or no money, and only the bottom two quintiles of income earners would earn the full or close to the full amount. So probably only cost around $2T, or about 25% more than Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid combined (although this would onl…

> Not sure what is an equitable solution for children, but giving the full amount per kid seems grossly unfair.

Why unfair? I sometimes get the impression that the mainstream culture values children at some degree lower than "human".

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#273

Post by randyrand » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #146

johndevor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't higher taxes here in the US drive more and more business overseas (specifically to China) and further exacerbate the problem of income inequality? We already see corporations keeping massive amounts of capital overseas because of high tax rates. That money should and could be here in the USA.

I agree, but the theory goes that eventually tax havens will disappear. Europe would probably adopt UBI along with us. So those lower rates would go away. China would do something similar or would be too scary for westerners to fully flee to. Right now many companies are fleeing to Europe for better corporate rates while their C level employees benefit from lower personal tax rates in the US.

Or any enterprising country will keep their tax rates low and take all the manufacturing business. Go figure.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#274

Post by merpnderp » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #254

merpnderp wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always the response to any libertarian argument of even mild government reform "If you don't like it, then go live in Somalia". As if rolling back government intervention in the economy to something like say the booming 1950's isn't a rational proposal.

It's because history shows that more government intervention, especially in the domain of education, health and labour, creates better societies. Two words: New Deal. Most of the US' prosperity since has been as a result of this. Then in the 1980's it was rolled back and guess what? Things are going to shit again. Maybe not in NY and California, but large swaths of the US are mired in poverty, poor employment prospec…

Only 6 European countries have a higher GDP than the US's poorest state, and none are close to the US GDP. And the US GDP has grown significantly faster than Europe's since the 1980's.

I don't consider my state that rich, but we're 4 places above Germany.

https://www.aei.org/publication/us-gdp-per-capita-by-state-v...

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#275

Post by Lawtonfogle » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #101

paulpauper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of the UBI make the generous assumption that recipients will be as careful with money as they (the proponents) are . Choosing between food & housing credits vs. cash, the former has less room for abuse. Its like "I would never use my UBI on alcohol"...well you're not "most people"

Why do you care if someone spends it on alcohol? Where does this paternal instinct to tell someone else how to spend money come from?

I don't much care where people spend their own money. But welfare money isn't the same as their own money.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#276

Post by RivieraKid » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #141

RivieraKid wrote: post #81

Negative income tax makes more sense to me. (NIT is a system where you either get or give money from/to the governement, depending on your income.) First it's both a simple welfare and tax system in one package. Basic income as typically understood is only half of the story. It's also easier to reason about, the money flows are way more obvious, it's immediately clear whether you are a net contributor or receiver and…

NIC is analogous to basic income. At a certain point, the taxes you pay in a basic income scheme are equal to the basic income you earn. Those who earn less than you are earning a NIC, those above are paying income tax. It is the same thing.

Equavalent to basic income with a specific tax system. But the whole system would be harder to understand and have 1 redundant parameter.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#277

Post by partiallypro » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

Even Milton Friedman argued that a basic income was better than a minimum wage, but a negative income tax would be better than that. Minimum wages cause labor misallocation and hurt small businesses. It's often that larger companies will push for a minimum wage hike because it will destroy the margins of their small competitors; then they can use their pricing power later to offset their margin loss.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#278

Post by randyrand » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

tangent128 wrote: post #60

johndevor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't higher taxes here in the US drive more and more business overseas (specifically to China) and further exacerbate the problem of income inequality? We already see corporations keeping massive amounts of capital overseas because of high tax rates. That money should and could be here in the USA.

What value exists in bringing that capital back "in" to the USA if it provides no benefit to US citizens in doing so?

Its almost impossible to bring in wealth and not have it benefit people.

People dont keep their trillions of dollars under the mattress. Its invested.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#279

Post by cortesoft » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

dandermotj wrote: post #163

Nogwater wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we'd all agree that increasing employment is a good goal I don't agree, and I'm not sure why people would see employment for its own sake would be a good thing. I want to increase some of the things that employments brings (purchasing power, a sense of purpose, etc...) and not others (loss of time, feeling trapped, etc...).

I suppose from an individual standpoint examples like yours are very relevant - a big fear for myself is working a job we're I am unfulfilled - but from a broad view we must agree increasing employment is a good goal. The more people working, the greater the output and the cheaper it costs, from which everyone benefits whether we are employed ourselves or not. A highly employed nation is a bountiful one.

Shouldn't our measure be productivity, then, instead of employment? At least as far as what a society should care about?

In terms of social benefits, not all employment is equal. We could hire all un-employed people to move rocks back and forth, but that won't contribute to society anything that simply giving those people cash for nothing wouldn't solve just as well.

There are two separate goals we are trying to accomplish, and traditionally they have both been solved through employment - the need for productivity and the need for resource allocation. If you want to keep trying to meet both goals through employment (instead of meeting the second one through something like basic income), then we need to make sure we continue to address both needs.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#280

Post by Overtonwindow » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

My primary concern about instituting a basic income is that these things have a tendency to always want to rise. It then becomes a voting platform for politicians. Vote for me and I will get your basic income raised. I think anytime you promise a populous something for nothing, you create dangerous precedents that can spin out of control. I'm for increased minimum wage and price caps, but not a minimum income with no commitment.

On the other hand, if the federal government did not give away all of the profits from American natural resources, and instead took a percentage like most developed countries - and the state of Alaska - that money could be turned around into a basic income for all. That I believe is where a basic income should come from: use a nationally produced commodity sold abroad and the profits therein to give back to the citizenry.