Moving Forward on Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#511

Post by usrusr » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #395

DawkinsGawd wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You might have a point there, daily payments could turn the best of us into daily drunks.

Personally, I learned being moderately frugal from having a large (for a kid) stash of cash in the bank (piggy and otherwise). "Do I want X more than I want to keep the money?" is a very different kind of question than the two separate "Do I want X? Do I have the money?" that I observe in people who never had that chance.

Maybe something like annual/1460 a day (for not starving) + annual/24 a month (for regular bills) + annual/4 once a year (to keep that long term thinking sharp) could be the best pattern. Somewhat foolproof, but not unnecessarily fool-creating.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#512

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #505

It just occurred to me that birth rate might go up on Basic Income, which wouldn't be very sustainable.

> It just occurred to me that birth rate might go up on Basic Income, which wouldn't be very sustainable.

IIRC, empiricially birth rate tends to go down with a stronger social support network (probably because people rely on children reaching adulthood less as an emergency support).

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#513

Post by naasking » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:05 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…

> Thinking back I do not know anyone in my neighborhood who was genuinely a hard working person with no vices.

You're mistaking correlation for causation, which many do and is why this debate is so polarizing. Many people develop vices because they are neglected, as a coping mechanism/self-medication for their hopelessness. With more resources, they have more opportunity and don't need to self-medicate as much. This effect has been studied.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#514

Post by unabst » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:05 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…

Insurance. There has to be insurance, and it should be part of BI. So Basic Income & Insurance. BII.

If someone keeps making claims, then they should be investigated for insurance fraud, and processed accordingly.

As for people wasting their income... This shouldn't be a concern for any BI system. The system distributes basic income. What people do with it should be up to them, just like they are free to spend their pay check as irresponsibly as they wish.

If there are specific cases where someone is mentally or physically incapable of responsibly converting income into basic necessities, we could let there be basic shelter and food (what homeless shelters are today) and have those expenses deducted from their BII.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#515

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #507

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 way I see basic income (BI) is like when you get money back after doing your taxes only with a BI you get it up front and more of it. It's not meant to be your only source of income but I can see how some people would chose to use it as such. At first it would be confusing since any social programs currently in place such as welfare, unemployment insurance would be phased out. The current government of Canada is…

The problem I see with your statement is that most Americans know that SS is not a retirement fund, but they treat it as such because they don't save. So, when you say "It's not meant to be your only source of income ... " I see millions of people using it as such if BI is enacted.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#516

Post by naasking » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

robbiemitchell wrote: post #414

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…

Not enough discussion to this effect. When everyone has more money, the prices of everything will probably go up.

Good thing everyone will not have more money then. The total money supply remains constant under UBI.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#517

Post by wcummings » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:10 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…

Given how bad Americans are at planning for retirement, I think you're right. BI is a terrible idea.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#518

Post by vocatus_gate » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:10 PM UTC

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#519

Post by brudgers » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:10 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…

Given that the project is at the privately funded research phase, questions about possible problems related to government implementations at scale are probably at the who-the-hell-knows stage.

As I interpret the YC Research's statements, it seems to be more a matter of adding a private basic income to the menu of existing public and private resources. If I had to predict, I wouldn't be surprised if the most problematic financial situations involved health care issues...i.e. Joe having a stroke. What does "basic income" mean for a person in the ICU?

So I guess the answer to the question is, the safety nets below basic income are whatever if any safety nets already exist.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#520

Post by JonFish85 » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:10 PM UTC

Is this truly going to be a basic income experiment, or is it going to be a charity experiment? To me it's only a valid experiment if somehow it is self-sustaining (e.g. it's funded by the same population it's distributed amongst, not by external donors).

Taking Oakland's population of roughly 450k, presumably this experiment doesn't cover the entire city (guesstimating a minimum income to be ~$1,000/mo for that area to cover rent + all expenses, that'd work out to be a $450 million per month price tag). So right off the bat it probably is going to be limited heavily in scope, which diminishes it's value as a test of "universal" basic income.

Even if it ends up being self-funded (which I'd be surprised if it actually is), you have to figure out how to get people to pay for it. People probably won't sign up to voluntarily give up more than they'll receive, which makes it tough. And you don't have the same enforcement that the IRS does (e.g. you can't forcibly take money/property from people). And on top of that you don't have the power to truly create money, although you can approximate it by taking charity donations from folks in SF.

I guess I'm just really skeptical of what any results might actually mean.