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Moving Forward on Basic Income
171–180 of 1001 posts
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#172Will recipients of Basic Income payments be allowed to move to somewhere with a lower cost of living where their payments will go further? Handcuffing people to a location - especially one with a rising cost of living like Oakland - seems like it would not be in the best interest of participants receiving such payments.
I think they can.
> 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. People will be able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country—anything.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#173Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#174BI is immoral: why should anyone who can work get money for doing nothing?
Jobs are for machines. Not so distant future. Only a few percent of people are then needed to do actual work, and mostly because they freely choose to do so... Like agriculture in the past: only .0X of people can feed us all, so to speak. 80% of all Jobs in the western world are already bullshit jobs, that can be eliminated without any disadvantage.
Ultimately one is truly free when he can decide what to do with his time on earth without any pressure.
Or, to put it into perspective: why bother about funding for a tech startup, when a few friends can choose to Code stuff they want, just for fun, without any risk or have to live on ramen? Its a whole new level of entrepreneurship that would be enabled.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a BI fan, this is a great question. While BI does simplify welfare distribution it does put more responsibility on the receiver. If we wanted to protect from misuse of funds we need a way to restrict how they spend their BI, like how food stamps work. BI should be spent on life necessities while earned income should be disposable and/or go into savings.
The whole point of BI is that it's unrestricted, so I would say you're not actually a BI fan but instead broadly in favor of well run social programs.
No, the whole point of BI is that it goes to everyone, so there is no disincentive to work.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#176So, 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…
Depends which BI fans you ask. The ones who want to completely eliminate other welfare programs are generally right-wing and/or libertarian - they're opposed to existing welfare programs for all kinds of ideological reasons. Left-wing BI fans (like me) are not so gung-ho about eliminating other welfare systems for the reasons you described, and I at least am totally willing to accept that BI will cost money. That sai…
> So for example, section 8 and food stamps might be phased out under a BI system (they're always going to get next month's or week's deposit)
But my point is, when you hand someone a check and they must in turn be responsible for spending that money on food and shelter, they might not actually do that and then what? At least with Section 8 and food stamps you're earmarking the money for a particular purpose so as to make it much harder for the money to not be used the way it was intended.
> WRT things like the car breakdown case you described...
Keep in mind "my car broke down" is a metaphor for any unexpected event that impacts someone financially (and commonly as an excuse for "I spent my money foolishly and now I'm broke"), so I didn't mean for that to be some single concrete case I wanted a specific answer for. But again, if we decide that we need to help someone on BI who had some particular financial hardship beyond what their check allows for, how do we police that?
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#177"Basic Income that ends in 1/5/10 years" is not basic income at all. For some of the population they will literally be studying the effects of a temporary salary increase that follows a person if they change jobs. For some of the population they will be studying a don't-have-to-work sabbatical.
Realistically a Basic Income wouldn't be guaranteed forever either, as it'd rely on a government, which tend to be replaced every 4 - 8 years. The main difference is perhaps that they know how long it will last.
Edit: rephrase because I didn't express myself very well
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's 5 years. Outlined in the link below https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income
So in other words, a long enough time to make people think they can draw reasonable conclusions about the viability of BI, when in actuality it's not long enough. You have to study the generational effects of this sort of thing. People are going to behave very differently when they know this will be around for a very short time versus the rest of their lives, nevermind how people behave when they're second or third g…
Of course we will never reach any conclusions, because after 100 generations of BI there must be some unpredicted effect.
Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#179Will recipients of Basic Income payments be allowed to move to somewhere with a lower cost of living where their payments will go further? Handcuffing people to a location - especially one with a rising cost of living like Oakland - seems like it would not be in the best interest of participants receiving such payments.
I think they can. > 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. People will be able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country—anything.
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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income
#180So, 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…
This really isn't a good riddle. First, Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT) work better than most people expect ( http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... ). As noted in the article, UCTs work surprisingly well in scenarios where lack of capital is the primary problem. A UBI (at least as usually is discussed in the US) is a de-scaling UCT. Second, most proponents of a UBI see it as more efficien…
You completely side stepped the question. I find it absolutely amazing how naive BI supporters are. I grew up poor in a ghetto in New York. Studied, went to university, became an engineer and am no longer in that socioeconomic bracket. However it is very apparent that the people in my current bracket (the one's that support BI), have no idea about the issues of the poor. Poor people are mostly poor because of the decisions they make. At least that is my experience. Drug addiction, gambling, alcoholism, poor budgeting, mental illness, etc, etc, etc. Thinking back I do not know anyone in my neighborhood who was genuinely a hard working person with no vices. Hard working people with not vices don't live in the slums and generally can support their basic needs. Yes there are those occasions were an acute emergency happens and support is need but that is an atypical story. Giving $1200 check to someone without food and shelter most definitely isn't going to provide them food and shelter. It will more likely go to a stamp bag, scratch off, 40 ounce, etc.
Yes, we need to help these people. Mental health, substance abuse, etc do not make people "bad". But giving someone a months worth of rent/food/utilities/clothing in cash is going to be disastrous