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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#371

Post by ncallaway »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #300
ncallaway wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disag…

The point of BI is that you wouldn't have to worry about supporting yourself for the bare necessities. If it's only 10 years long you still have to consider your career prospects after you lose BI. If you tell an employer "I've been out of a job for 10 years because I got free money and didn't need to work" they aren't exactly going to jump at the chance to hire you. Plus your skills will be out of date.

> you wouldn't have to worry about supporting yourself for the bare necessities

I know very few people who only work in order to secure for themselves the bare necessities of life. I suspect, even in an infinite BI world, many people would work in order to be able to have more than the bare necessities.

However, anecdotal evidence such as "people I personally know" is terrible evidence for making drastic changes to our social welfare programs. Which is why we need small scale studies and pilot programs in order to begin to assess the data of how people behave when they receive BI.

> If you tell an employer "I've been out of a job for 10 years because I got free money and didn't need to work" they aren't ...

No, but if you really didn't want to work, you could easily take 6 years off and then spend 2 years on education, and another 2 years getting back into the job market. It would be really good to have this kind of data.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#372

Post by mac01021 »

turar wrote: post #210
chongli wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of emergency do you envision? Most of today's financial emergencies hinge on either losing your job or incurring extreme debt due to uninsured medical care. I can't speak for all BI proponents but I, personally, support universal health care in addition to BI. With health care taking care of medical expense emergencies, basic income is left to take care of job-related emergencies. Your example of "my car br…

In other words, can you really have BI without universal health care?

It depends on your definition of "basic".

I normally take "basic income" to mean "covers typical recurring monthly expenses that almost everyone has".

If that's the definition, then I believe you can.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#373

Post by aoeusnth1 »

ShellfishMeme wrote: post #333
Strilanc wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What if your washing machine breaks or your kids need new clothes or your car needs gas? It seems to me with this approach people would be stuck in perpetual poverty even more.

Wait what? How exactly would these people be OK in the current system? Why would it be worse?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#374

Post by stale2002 »

prodmerc wrote: post #189

This shit again. NO ONE has given me an answer to the question: what will happen when basic income inevitably raises the overall price of basic stuff because now "everyone can afford it"? It will be back to zero, people with basic income will not be able to afford both housing/bills and food. Moreover the ones without will be totally fucked. So, what gives? Run BI in a few small counties and call it a success? Gee wo…

Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply.

In a vacuum, UBI increases inflation by giving people more money.

You can counteract this inflation by doing the opposite. AKA, by taking that money away from someone else. AKA, by increasing taxes.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#375

Post by Jemaclus »

solotronics wrote: post #200
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.

Sure, the someone who makes the T-shirts is the someone who wants to earn money, as opposed to sitting "on basic." I'm not sure how you missed that part. It's in the 7th paragraph.

The point being that it doesn't take 7 billion people to provide for 7 billion people. It might take only 1 billion people, or 500 million people, or even 100 million people, to provide enough resources to cover everyone else.

Part of the reason we're not in a true post-scarcity society is that we as a society have decided that in order to get stuff, you have to have money, and in order to get money, you have to earn it, and in order to earn it, you have to have a job. So we have all of these unnecessary jobs out there that exist solely so people can make money without necessarily contributing to society.

And so the dream, such as it is, is two-fold:

The first part is that we provide a basic floor of services to everyone. That 100, 500, or 800 million people that are needed to provide resources will do so in return for money and will therefore have more stuff. The rest can work if they want, or subsist on the basic floor. That's not communism.

The second is that by providing that basic floor, we can eliminate the notion that you have to work and contribute to survive, That's true today, but it doesn't have to be. We could eliminate the busy-work that almost all of us are doing. We can get rid of paper-pushers and ditch diggers. We don't need them all. The laws of supply and demand would push people into more productive roles, rather than simply working for the sake of a paycheck.

Like I said, I'm not an economist, nor am I an expert on any of these things. I read a sci-fi book, and it made me think about it. That's it. :)

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#376

Post by shiro »

DawkinsGawd wrote: post #180
gshulegaard wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dec…

Can the cause and result be (at least partly) reverse? That is, poor people is poor not because of their poor decisions, but being poor let them make poor decisions. Or maybe it's a feedback cycle. I don't have first-hand experience, though; just an impression from a book[1].

If being poor is a part of a cause, then guaranteed safety net may break the malicious cycle. But yeah, just blindly betting it seems too naive. That's why we need social experiments, right?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Hand-Mouth-Living-Bootstrap-America/dp...

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#377

Post by Jemaclus »

clavalle wrote: post #267
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…

People can decide what they need. It is a lot less bureaucracy to say "Here's a check that should be able to get you shelter, clothing, and food -- go find it." rather than trying to place everyone somewhere.

I'm not convinced that's true, but I also don't know enough to dispute it, so... ok. :)

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#378

Post by robbiemitchell »

ncallaway wrote: post #321
acgourley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find there are two voices for BI, the liberal and the liberatian. The liberal would prefer to keep universal healthcare and food programs and put cash on top, making the total distribution to the poor larger. The liberatian would prefer to simply move the complex paternalistic safety net into a simpler cash payment which doesn't disincentivize work while not increasing it's size. As an aside, if you pay attent…

The thing I'd like to see is government services that will optionally replace portions of your Basic Income. If you're having problems feeding yourself, I would like to see an opt-in program where you can receive food, in exchange for $X out of your BI. If you're having problems housing yourself, an opt-in program for housing in exchange for $Y out of your BI. The same options should be available for all the necessit…

Why would it be better for the government to provide this than the existing food distribution and supply chain?

Not unlikely scenario: some department is created to handle these necessities, they hire a bunch of people for terrible admin jobs, and they still sub-contract a bunch of the specific work to private companies.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#379

Post by 1024core »

DawkinsGawd wrote: post #180
gshulegaard wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dec…

> But giving someone a months worth of rent/food/utilities/clothing in cash is going to be disastrous

San Francisco used to give out cash to homeless, and realized that it didn't work well. So Gavin Newsom (previous mayor) started the "care not cash" program, where cash was replaced with services.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#380

Post by aoeusnth1 »

senseless wrote: post #253

Good to see steps like this being made! As a slight aside, there are strong proponents who argue, based on Ricardo's law of rent [0], that any excess income above the basic subsistence level will inevitably be swallowed up by landlords in the form of rents. I'd be very interested to hear from the folks involved in this study if they have an opinion on such an assertion, and if you have any ideas on addressing that ef…

Sure, it will increase the value of land, which will increase rents. But part of the rent was also the value of the improvements, which will not cost any more and should have the same ROI as before.

Especially in the US, land is cheap and if rents are too expensive in the cities people will move elsewhere.

Property and land is already taxed, and an increase in the value of property will eventually be converted into an increase in those taxes.

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