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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#681

Post by maerF0x0 »

MicroBerto wrote: post #623
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…

I've brought this up in the past, and am always met with arguments that just don't seem to dent the problem statement. My simple question I always pose is this: "If everyone has $X dollars, then wouldn't $X become worthless?" I fail to see how there won't be some kind of inflationary situation amongst the lower class, especially in the form of rents over the course of a year as leases reset. I also refuse to accept a…

My understanding is that money doesnt become worthless (inflation) so long as there is excess capacity. If a bag maker has 10 excess capacity at the $100 price mark, then the first 10 customers will not cause any inflation. Clearly there will be some inflation with BI as previously nonparticipants in a market begin to participate (homeless begin to rent for example).

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#682

Post by tim333 »

vespergo wrote: post #672

Let's call this what it is. Any system that short circuits the basic human need for hard work and reward compensation will never be a success. You can sugar coat it and re brand it any way you want to. Humans need that feedback loop of blood, sweat and tears before they receive a 'reward'.

It's been theorised that hunter gathers in good times did ok without blood, sweat and tears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#683

Post by djrogers »

Namrog84 wrote: post #533
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…

I think you miss the point of why we actually need BI research and one of the foundational reasons for it. I know predictions could be off. But if in 20 years there are simply no jobs available to 60% of the population. What are they gonna do? Just all starve to death? BI is the inevitable step towards a post scarcity society. When majority of people not only don't want to work but that there are simply no jobs for m…

> in 20 years there are simply no jobs available to 60% of the population

Said people in the early 1800s. And early 1900s. Look, it's just not gonna happen. Jobs will change, but there will always be work for those willing to do it. You may not like the job - hell, you may not like your current job either - or it may be a better job than any that exists today.

Look around you, how many of the jobs you see people doing in your office existed 100 years ago? How about 50? 20?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#684

Post by danielweber »

anonyfox wrote: post #174
haaen wrote: post #94

BI 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…

> 80% of all Jobs in the western world are already bullshit jobs, that can be eliminated without any disadvantage.

Any disadvantage to whom?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#685

Post by shostack »

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.

Exactly. What is also missing from the post on this test is any sense of if/how they plan on addressing this piece of the puzzle as it seems a rather large one. When your experiment group is small, it simply won't cause a big enough impact at a macro level to move the inflation needle, but that is what many predict would happen.

How can we measure that or get any sense of how realistic that outcome is before a large scale program goes into effect? Don't get me wrong, you have to start somewhere, so I commend this effort, but I have yet to see a good proposal for how to test and deal with this.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#686

Post by diogenescynic »

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…

Same thing that happens now when you use all your SNAP benefits in the first week of the month.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#687

Post by ffwd »

chris_va wrote: post #394

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 (whic…

Regarding inflation of prices - if feeding everyone leads to inflation of prices then in principle we can't feed everyone. That says more about resources than it does BI, if I understand you correctly. I think if we were to do this, we would need the capital and infrastructure to handle the increased demand, maybe outside the traditional economic system so that prices didn't increase so much.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#688

Post by maerF0x0 »

tim333 wrote: post #679
MicroBerto wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've found here on HN is that there is an extremely large amount of "wishful projection" and selection bias, in that many people here are young and promising entrepreneurs-in-training, and they believe that basic income will allow them to work on their startup dream without having to worry about paying the bills. While that may be true, they fail to realize that they are in the extreme minority of actually-motiv…

The mice in the video bred rapidly and filled the space until it became too crowded. Humans however have contraceptives and entertainment systems and so the population stabilizes before that.

and with BI can 1) afford education which is related to lower childbirth and 2) wont worry so much about retirement, also correlated with lower child birth.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#689

Post by greedo »

velominati wrote: post #486

Some interesting numbers: * The US Population is 320 million [http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html]. * Our federal budget is $3.9 trillion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_outlays_in_recent_budget_submissions]. * If every dollar of the budget went towards BI (no defense spending, no infrastructure, etc), that would be $12,260 / person / year. * If you limi…

Relocating doesn't seem very easy if you're on the short end of the cash spectrum.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#690

Post by antisthenes »

greedo wrote: post #319
EGreg wrote: post #213

People wonder "where is the money going to come from?" On a national level it could be newly issued fiat currency, which silences the "it's theft!" argument but then raises the crucial question: what about inflation? Well, there are two issues here: 1) If the people are freed up to learn or take jobs (I wish minimum wage would be abolished in any jurisdiction that UBI is given out) then more dollars would be chasing…

"newly issued fiat currency" is theft. Forced inflation is theft from people with savings etc etc etc.

Newly issued fiat currency is an incentive to keep more money in circulation for goods and services.

You could just as easily make the argument that in a near-zero inflation economy, people who are ardent savers are also thieves of economic mobility, because they keep the vast majority of money out of circulation, which stifles economic activity (making it not just a zero-sum game, but actually a negative-sum game)

I mean, you have complete freedom of speech, so you can call an apple an orange for all I care, but labeling things like inflation as theft (and generally people like you also call taxes theft) just doesn't serve your argument and betrays a complete misunderstanding of basic economics beyond supply/demand.

Issuing fiat currency is a monetary policy tool, no more no less. It can be harmful or useful depending on the context it is used.

Assigning terms with a moral imperative like "theft" to a tool is alike to assigning the word "murder" to anything that can be used as a weapon.

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