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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#191

Post by Fede_V »

mattkrisiloff wrote: post #44
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…

In terms of data sets / analysis, we plan to be totally open and make them available.

Excellent. I look forward to playing around with the datasets as soon as they are released to the public.

Have you considered partnering with some differential privacy people and releasing the datasets to kaggle?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#192

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

prokes wrote: post #105

Can anyone explain how this can be implemented mathematically? Assume 300 million people @ $12k / year, you are spending $3.6 trillion. That is already more than current government revenue, leaving all current government services unfunded.

- To a large extent, it is expected to replace current programs like welfare and social security. So those budgets, in theory, would be reduced or eliminated and supplemented with Basic Income.

- It will be a taxable income. So a family including two adults would have an additional $24k on which to pay taxes. Those taxes help pay for the program by effectively reducing the additional funding that needs to be raised.

- Theoretically, it will increase wages and employment since there will be a lot more money spent, increasing economic activity. Increasing both wages and employment increases tax revenues, which would again offset some of the cost. I think this is really the biggest factor that needs studying, as it seems to have the most influence on the decision to deploy BI. Ultimately, it is a macro economic decision. It is also the most difficult factor to model and predict without actually implementing it on a large scale. The most important question, in my mind, is what is the extent of inflationary pressure applied by BI?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#193

Post by xienze »

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".

> 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.

In other words, exactly what I said originally. You'd be recreating the administrative overhead BI is intended to eliminate (section 8 for housing, food stamps for food).

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#195

Post by namenotrequired »

czzarr wrote: post #181

What I don't understand with BI is this: if you give everyone the same amount of money, won't prices and rents adjust accordingly by exactly that amount, thereby nulling the effect ?

Possibly (though many polities have some form of rent control). There's lots of opinions about what would or wouldn't happen. The difference is YC is going to test it empirically.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#196

Post by ncallaway »

simonsarris wrote: post #141

"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.

What are you quoting with the quotation marks?

I agree with you on that a BI that ends in 1 year isn't a good test. However, from the article their goal with the sort-term pilot is "to prepare for the longer-term study by working on our methods--how to pay people, how to collect data, how to randomly choose a sample, etc". So...who cares if the short-term pilot isn't a good study on BI? That's not their goal.

I disagree with you that 10 years of BI wouldn't count as BI. That is a long time for an individual to be receiving an unconditional income.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#197

Post by empath75 »

xienze wrote: post #107
jklinger410 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you tell them "tough shit, you've exhausted all your social safety nets" At that point we would need to investigate to see if this failure is being caused by mental illness. Treatment would be much easier if our current homeless shelters could use their infrastructure to help people like this. They take your UBI check and give you a place to stay, treat you for drug addictions, etc etc. Either that or you end up…

I think it's a bit of a stretch to lump "failure to budget properly" under "mental illnes".

If you're just blowing through money too quickly, then that's not really a crisis that needs intervention from the state, imo. You'll either learn to spend your money better or learn to like ramen.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#198

Post by xienze »

legulere wrote: post #162
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?

The attempt is at least made to earmark the money so it becomes more difficult to do so. There is a BIG difference between giving someone money earmarked for specific purposes and a check that can be used for anything. You will see a tremendous amount of that happening if BI is implemented in this country that way.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#199

Post by azernik »

xienze wrote: post #176
azernik wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If someone has that much difficulty managing money, I think social services need to get involved and take some control over the person's decisions away from them. I just don't think that should be the default.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#200

Post by solotronics »

Jemaclus wrote: post #120

There's a lot of skepticism about basic income, especially when it comes to how does it save money? The top comment as of this writing is questioning it: > 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 their money and now can't afford rent and/or food? Do you tell them "tough shit, you've exhausted all your social safet…

Post scarcity doesn't exist. Someone has to make the T-shirts. If you think people would be better off if everyone had the same tshirt instead of a variety of choices that is the system we already have. The government making T-shirts at cost and distributing them is communism and it has not worked in the past.
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