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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#731

Post by ksou32 »

colinplamondon wrote: post #67
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…

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…

As is people sell food stamps.

Single payer healthcare + UBI and the rest is up to you.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#732

Post by ksou32 »

colinplamondon wrote: post #67
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…

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…

As is people sell food stamps.

Single payer healthcare + UBI and the rest is up to you.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#733

Post by tmalsburg2 »

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…

They are not partnering with academia because they think that academia is a joke and needs to be disrupted. I'm genuinely curious to see how that's gonna work out.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#735

Post by kcorbitt »

dmoy wrote: post #729
kcorbitt wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal idea of a solution is to make basic income a "stream" of income instead of a lump sum once or twice a month. We have the technology to make a transfer happen hourly, or even minute by minute. By apportioning the income in that way it becomes impossible to "blow all [your] money" to the point where you can't afford food, because if you just wait half an hour or whatever you'll have enough on your card agai…

There is a problem with that though. For instance, if you're on foodstamps right now, and gas is not cheap, or it's very time-expensive to make it to the grocery store too often, then you're making single large trips. A continuous stream doesn't gel as well with that situation. You'd need a more comprehensive solution, like getting rid of food deserts in poor areas. Or at least, if you're going to do this, you'd have…

> For instance, if you're on foodstamps right now, and gas is not cheap, or it's very time-expensive to make it to the grocery store too often, then you're making single large trips. A continuous stream doesn't gel as well with that situation.

Sure it does. Just save up for the 3 days before you go or whatever. There's nothing forcing you to spend every cent as it comes in, and a financially stable and responsible BI recipient would do well to save up, buy in bulk, and have a rainy-day fund anyway. Making the income into a stream would just save you from being kicked out on the street hungry if something unexpected happens and you hit 0 at some point.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#736

Post by nl »

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 on the Liberal side here, and I think there should be (actual, real) universal healthcare, but no food programs.

Not from the US though (not sure if it matters).

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#737

Post by seanc »

kcorbitt wrote: post #727
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…

My personal idea of a solution is to make basic income a "stream" of income instead of a lump sum once or twice a month. We have the technology to make a transfer happen hourly, or even minute by minute. By apportioning the income in that way it becomes impossible to "blow all [your] money" to the point where you can't afford food, because if you just wait half an hour or whatever you'll have enough on your card agai…

Plenty of people would just borrow against their BI stream, effectively blowing it all at once.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#738

Post by _rpd »

tehchromic wrote: post #724

One important component that should not be overlooked is how BI is tied to basic occupation. People do need something to do, no matter how automated the future becomes, and that thing ought to be something they are well adapted to do. It should not be entirely left to chance. Unoccupied people will find every avenue for their unspent energy, and too easily this becomes competition, and conflict. Farming is a good exa…

Why, groups of like minded people could collectivize their efforts and manage their kolkhoz according to the principles of self-management, democracy, and openness, with active participation of the members in decisions concerning all aspects of internal life.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#740

Post by chris_va »

ffwd wrote: post #687
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.

I think you misunderstand my concern.

Going from a system where everyone needs to generate $20k of economic value "to eat" (yes, oversimplification of benefits, but bear with me) to one in which no one needs to generate economic value may have some macro scale inflation issues.

Those are the issues a study of UBI needs to cover.

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