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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#161

Post by zodiac »

xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

I'm not a "BI fan" and I'm curious what they think too, but I think it could be done. I think it depends on the kind of emergency.

For not-really-critical ones (eg Joe's car broke down), you could just do nothing - if Joe wants to he can wait and use his next BI check to fix his car.

For life-threatening emergencies like can't afford food or rent, that's trickier. I would say that if we can afford to give a BI, we should also have soup kitchens and homeless shelters that don't have means testing, so while that does create a kind of social safety net "below BI", it should be much cheaper to run and harder to abuse.

The biggest source of financial emergency for most people is unexpected health problems, and I'm not sure what a solution is. Maybe free insurance for everyone? What would insurance fraud look like in such a world?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#162

Post by legulere »

xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

which welfare program gives people more money if they already blew the welfare money they got?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#163

Post by djschnei »

xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

Also my concern. It's only justification is that it's a more efficient alternative to all other welfare. That would put a LOT of bureaucrats out of work. It'll never happen. Also, it's hard to buy votes with something that doesn't expand.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#164

Post by carapace »

siphor wrote: post #18
tomp wrote: post #12

> In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we’re going to give it to participants for the duration of the study, no matter what. This is omitting one crucial detail: for how long will the basic income last. At least for myself, my decisions would be completely different if I was to receive unconditional income for e.g. 10 years (or less), vs. for the rest of my life.

It's 5 years. Outlined in the link below https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income

So this isn't basic income at all, just a very very long vacation.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#165

Post by _rpd »

thoth wrote: post #143
xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

> flat-out blows all their money and now can't afford rent and/or food? Well for starters I'd imagine a future BI system to handle something like rent via direct transfer to the landlord. Food handled the same way, some prepaid debit card that only works at grocery stores, etc. I don't envision a system where people pick up a stack of 20's with a post-it note on it that says "remember to pay your rent".

Isn't the whole point to eliminate administrative overhead?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#166

Post by nostrebored »

mattkrisiloff wrote: post #59
djschnei wrote: post #31

Setting aside whether or not redistribution is ever justified, I do respect the pragmatism of the UBI granted it replaces all other forms of welfare. Faced with a choice between the current welfare state and a UBI, the latter is a no brainer. While not specifically a UBI, the negative income tax seeks to accomplish the creation of a similar safety net while still maintaining a strong profit motive for the people bene…

I think it's important to some degree to be agnostic about what we mean by 'basic income'. We're planning to test the version coloquially closest to 'universal basic income', but something along negative income tax could make sense -- we need to find the answers (hence doing the study!), not just prescribe what we think is right.

But the study doesn't actually study UBI. The problems with UBI are heavily rooted in the U -- what happens when an entire society is now making (X + Income)? Using any reasonable economics we'd assume that the price of goods would scale accordingly, especially at the bottom of the curve.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#167

Post by Strilanc »

xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

Delivering the money in small chunks might help. Instead of 70$ every week, make it 5$ twice a day. So no matter how broke you were yesterday, you'll have enough money to eat in a few hours.

Another "make it easy to get food even if you really screwed up" option might be to give grocery stores 'first dibs' on the money. Basically, let people spend the money a couple days in advance if they do it at a grocery store. A foodstamp micro-loan.

The really tricky stuff is probably cases involving debt, where the debt-collector wants to pressure the person into paying them before buying food.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#168

Post by Fomite »

sama wrote: post #33
Fede_V wrote: post #5

I think it's great YC is funding some interesting research. I'm a bit curious as to why they didn't partner with some established academics in this area (there's plenty of economists who have done excellent research here) rather than start a new program - but it's YC's money, and they can choose how to spend it. How open do you plan to be about things like datasets/analysis plans and so forth? I think this would be a…

We did consider it, and we are working with some established academics. However, I think it's a good idea to push forward alternative models of doing (and funding) research. Frankly, most of the existing institutions we thought about partnering closely with were somewhat bloated, and it would have made the whole study significantly more expensive and slower.

I'll be interested to see if this actually works. As an established academic, we constantly interact with private companies that seriously underestimate how much research actually costs.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#170

Post by stared »

dustinmoorenet wrote: post #101
nirmel wrote: post #78

I've recently been researching the structured settlement (annuity) industry. It seems like as soon as someone has a guaranteed set of future payments, you will get structured settlement brokers reaching out, offering to buy out their future payments for a (often low-ball) lump sum today, and many will take it. Will you permit these kinds of side deals?

You can't sell your social security benefits, so I would guess the same restrictions would apply.

You can - by taking a loan.
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