Moving Forward on Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#391

Post by LordKano » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

acgourley wrote: post #123

colinplamondon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…

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…

I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disagree with you on Libertarian philosophy.

Anarcho-Capitalists are not in the business of advocating that we take money, in the form of taxes, from one group to give it to another.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#392

Post by jfoutz » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

socalnate1 wrote: post #334

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…

The best answer that I've heard to this question (when I asked it on HN a year or two ago) is that you give people their money on a weekly basis. If they blow it and have no money for food, well they are going to get another check in a week. This doesn't totally solve the problem of course, but makes the "I blew all my money on a new car and now I can't eat" issue much more manageable.

Yes, just like a job.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#393

Post by stale2002 » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

kauffj wrote: post #106

stale2002 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the whole game is zero sum, then thats great! The solution to a zero sum game is easy. Redistribute wealth from everyone so that everyone is equally happy. There is no need to worry about innovation or discouraging people from working. Its zero sum, so we may as well go with the fair solution of 100% income redistribution and 100% basic income.

If you were optimizing for happiness only and had no ethical concerns about methods, then yes, a very flat or close to flat distribution is likely optimal. Like you, I believe that there are things more important from the perspective of society than mean happiness.

Well then why do you bring up happiness in the first place?

Alright, fine, happiness doesn't matter it's these other things that matter, like preventing starvation.

UBI seems like it would do a great job of solving starvation, and is certainly not zero sum.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#394

Post by chris_va » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

I am worried that this study will just confirm the local benefits of BI (which have already been pretty well documented, e.g. Mincome) without addressing the unanswered questions regarding BI.

The real unanswered questions mostly revolve around large scale changes to the economy, not localized improvements. Some questions I really want to see answered are:

- Will UBI create large price inflation for basic goods (which is what traditionally happens when you give everyone free money)?

- If so, do we think that this will still be net beneficial for alleviating poverty? Often price inflation is regressive since it hits commodities harder than something scarcity priced.

- I would also like to ask this question slightly differently: What happens if we were to give everyone the equivalent of 6 months of unskilled labor each year? That's more or less what traditional UBI proposes, and phrased that way who is going to provide the labor (or goods/services)?

Money can be thought of (roughly) as debt owed to you by society. When you think about it that way, doing localized BI seems like an easy win. Doing universal BI seems like a potential catastrophe. Does this study address the latter?

(Edit: my awful spelling)

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#395

Post by criddell » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

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…

Somebody else suggested that payments should be divided into smaller amounts and disbursed more frequently. So instead of getting $1200 one a month (or whatever the amount is), you would get $20 every morning and $20 every evening. How do you think that would work in the neighborhood you grew up in?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#396

Post by aetherson » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #355

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 liberal would prefer to keep universal healthcare and food programs and put cash on top, making the total distribution to the poor larger." I'd definitely say I look at it from a liberal (non-libertarian perspective) but I don't agree with your statement. I believe universal, free health care should be available but not a food program. The money you get as your BI should cover basic living requirements - rent…

Health care is a fundamentally different kind of expense. Housing, food, clothing, basic necessities are pretty stable expenses in the short run. An income of a particular size could be judged to be more or less sufficient for the needs of that expense or not.

Healthcare is a lottery. If you're 30 years old, your healthcare needs for the year might be $0 or $1,000,000. Trying to make basic income cover that doesn't make sense.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#397

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

I'm really, really happy you're going forward with this!

That said, I have just one question to this experiment - how it's going to handle media exposure?

What I worry about is that the interaction with the greater world through mass media will blow the entire thing up and make it useless. I expect at least:

- prices going up for rent and some stuff in areas where owners know population is on BI

- people getting increasingly targeted by scams

- deliberate attempts to mess up with the experiment

Come to think of it, the first two could be solved by random enough sampling of candidates over a large enough population. But I'm sure others here could come up with several other potential failure modes that the huge attention and "uncommonness" of the situation could bring.

Part of me thinks that such experiments should be done in secrecy and revealed only after they're finished, but that's not how science is usually done, for obvious reasons.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#398

Post by IanCal » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

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…

The vast majority of welfare systems in the UK are already just some form of giving people money directly but for various different reasons and with an enormous list of complicated rules about who is eligible.

Just giving the people one bit of cash rather than several, and without the strings, wouldn't add the problem you're describing.

Are there particular programs in the US that are different and you think would be broken if they were changed to just cash?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#399

Post by misja111 » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #365

misja111 wrote: post #317

What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work. I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The r…

Unemployment insurance is not BI. BI goes to everyone, Unemployment insurance only goes to people who aren't working legally. Unemployment insurance reduces the incentive to work because it pays people to not work. It similarly incentivizes black market labor. BI does not do that. It does (if we get replace minimum wage with basic income) allow people to do work that pays nothing or very little. However, I would see…

True, the very liberal Dutch unemployment insurance which I was talking about was not BI. It had some similarities, but also some differences. The liberal unemployment insurance became too expensive. So the question is: where is BI different so that it becomes sustainable for the tax payer?

> Unemployment insurance reduces the incentive to work because it pays people to not work. It similarly incentivizes black market labor.

I'd say that BI also reduces the incentive to work, but I agree that it does this less than unemployment benefits. Same for black market labor. So a win for BI here.

But there is one other difference where BI is far and far more expensive than unemployment benefit: BI is also paid to people who work. Maybe some BI advocate should try to convince me but to me it looks like this will far outset the advantage above.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#400

Post by darawk » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

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'd say you absolutely say 'tough shit'. Learning to manage a scarce resource effectively should be one of the goals of the program. It should not be the job of the state to take care of people who, of their own volition, regularly and repeatedly screw themselves over. That isn't to say that nobody should care for them, but I think that should fall to private charities, family, or other institutions.

If a person's issue is drug addiction for instance (probably the most common type of person who would blow all their money and not have enough for food), i'd like to see free treatment offered to those people. I would not, however, like to see more resources given to them other than that. They can keep getting their BI check and blowing it on drugs until they decide they're ready to stop, or they die. They will have their habit financed which will probably net to a far lower social cost than them stealing to pay for it or whatever else they may be doing.

The other major potential financial stress is healthcare. Healthcare is essentially a random high variance cost. For this reason, I think it makes sense for society/government to socialize high-cost healthcare problems for people. I think this is a true public good in the sense that it allows people to be untethered from their jobs and to pursue more risky enterprises without fear of harming theirs or their families health in so doing. This is ultimately a net good for society far above and beyond the health benefits that it gives to the actual end-recipients of the funds. Smoothing ultra-high variance, random inelastic expenses is critical to promoting innovation and keeping an economy running effectively.