Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty • Hacker News Board

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#181

Post by sounds » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:04 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #69

jbob2000 wrote: post #28

Something that is missing from the basic income/poverty debate is the notion of "learned helplessness"; after a long time in poverty, people get used to the lifestyle and have difficulty adjusting to "regular" life. For example, if you've been homeless your entire life, you've never had to lock your apartment door or carry a key around. My partner (a social worker) had a client who's apartment was always getting robb…

I was homeless for about four years, so I know exactly what you are talking about with people losing or never having the basic skills to cope with modern life. However, that's just not a reasonable argument against UBI. Consider: Having too much money is never a problem. Quoth the sage, "If it is money, it is good.", also "Too much is always better than not enough." Misspending that money is the problem. But if every…

While I was homeless I noticed how few people really made a difference. There are some, but you figure out pretty quickly which people to go to (and which to avoid).

Do you think crime will increase when every person receives money at the same time?

I think money management skills are going to be needed even more (but just receiving a deposit doesn't teach you how to master your money).

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#182

Post by sgnelson » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:39 AM UTC

arprocter wrote: post #150

Grishnakh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it doesn't, and it shouldn't. If it did, everyone would move to the high-cost locations because they'd get paid more, and then the BI would have to spiral upwards endlessly to pay for that. If someone demands to live in the most posh district of SanFran, for instance, why should society pay for that (esp. when it won't be just them, it'll be hordes of people wanting to move there)? If someone wants to live…

But wouldn't that lead to people living in the middle of nowhere where there aren't many jobs? Edit: also what happens to all the people living in projects in what would otherwise be expensive areas? Ship them off to a sparsely populated non desirable area? Good luck with that

See: Spatial Mismatch

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

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#183

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:40 AM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #126

kefka wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure about the German system... I've been on welfare here in the USA. The way it works is dependant on your income. The more you make by hard work, the less assistance you receive. That sounds fair... Until you realize that section 8 (housing) is the same way. Food stamps are the same way. At the time, there was a cutoff for the free clinic (which counted benefits as income).. I made $100 too much. When doing w…

This is clearly the worst aspect of our system and shows that it was designed by the mathematically uneducated. It needs to be done in such a way that the total-income curve is monotonically increasing, so recipients never have a disincentive to make a little more money in their job. This should be fundamental and obvious, but because doing it requires just the tiniest bit of linear algebra, our elected representativ…

I don't think math has anything to do with it. I think the narrative of, "if you're poorer, you need more assistance" is all that happens. I think most politics is about winning an argument about what is "fair" and not actually analyzing consequences or incentives.

Really wish we'd focus less on what is fair and more on what brings the greatest outcome.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#184

Post by sgnelson » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:42 AM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #66

funkysquid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He couldn't hold down a job and regularly missed appointments." I think this is part of the problem - right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment.

"Basic income removes that harsh penalty" The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it; it's how to convince regular people who get up every day and go work at jobs a lot shittier than most of us here have that that's a harsh penalty. There is enormous social momentum behind the idea that you should work if you can.

Not to disagree with your point, but shouldn't we examine the reasons behind and for necessitating that all people work? Not to get too existential, but does anyone really believe that's why we're here, or what we should be doing with our lives?

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#185

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:46 AM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #82

witty_username wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is correlated with happiness. Sure, people will still yearn for more money, but with the more expenses people will be more happy.

That is the least important point, but please keep in mind then that the decreased expenses (alternately, increased tax expenses) to offset the cost of BI will make others unhappy.

At this point we are just being handwavy. This is the problem with discussions like this, there aren't any hard facts to support the arguments. Are people being forced to pay .1 pct more of their income or 10 pct more? etc...

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#186

Post by sgnelson » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:48 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #59

RamshackleJ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and it doesn't even bother talking about the $21–32tn of untaxed assets( http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_R... ). Or that we tax the rich too little while we tax everyone else too much to keep public perception focused on taxes being too high( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_... ).

Or that we tax the rich too little The top 3% of income earners pay 51% of all income taxes.[1] You think that's too little? What should that number be? [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...

Income taxes... You realize there are more taxes than just income, yes?

Seriously, the whole "but rich people pay all the taxes, and poor people pay no taxes..." myth needs to die a horrible death.

But I live in a state which just lowered the income tax. And increased every other tax, as well as created a variety of taxes on services that were previously untaxed. And they then tell us our taxes have gone down. But somehow, the vast majority of people seem to be have less personal profit than the year before (assuming all income and costs sans taxes remain the same).

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#187

Post by sgnelson » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 12:54 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #145

drabiega wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that relevant?

Incomes taxes (not including payroll taxes) make up ~47% of all federal dollars coming in. Payroll taxes (Medicare, SS), make up 34%, but half of that is paid by the employer, so it's really 18%.[1] So income taxes represent almost 3x the income stream that payroll taxes do. So I'd say not paying income taxes is a pretty big break in my book. [1] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-source...

That's just for the Federal system, it ignores all state taxes.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#188

Post by sgnelson » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 1:03 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14

Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people are still homeless in the US. Calling that 'relative' poverty is abusing the term enough to become meaningless. The most enlightening thing about this debate is the idea that we don't care about peoples basic standards of living and are happy to pretend there is no problem. PS: Although the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in January 2012 annual point-in-time count found that 633,782 peopl…

There's probably a significant percentage of homeless people who are homeless because they have untreated mental illnesses. They'd likely be homeless even if they weren't monetarily impoverished.

And what if they could afford health care (or rather the state stepped in) to help with that addiction/mental illness?

A study just done about a year ago in the City I live in, housed a fairly large number of the non-temporary homeless people (between 20 and 50 I want to say, the numbers escape me) in an apartment complex that provided basic social services and access to health care. They found that in actuality, this helped solve many of the long term problems (even if it did not solve all the problems for all the people), as these people now had access to health care, _AND_ it saved money, because these people were no longer ending up in the emergency room or the local jail (and a few other cost saving measures as well)

I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#189

Post by mamon » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

UBI won't solve poverty for a very simple reason:

Every time government starts to subsidise something the price of subsidised goods goes up. I've seen this in Europe with wind farms, "eco" lightbulbs, farming equipment. etc.

And UBI is equivalent to subsidising all basic goods at the same time. So the only noticeable effect of UBI will be price increase, so that it would take your salary + UBI to purchase goods that now can be purchased by your salary alone.

Net result: increased bureaucracy, increased cash flow for the government (higher taxes), higher profits for corporations (higher prices), no benefit for poor, big hit for middle class (which is most heavily taxed).

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#190

Post by sgnelson » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

fiatmoney wrote: post #40

jbmorgado wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a lot of people in the USA that consistently starve. I'm quite sure that according to most definitions that's clearly absolute poverty, not a relative one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

"Food insecurity" is not remotely the same thing as starvation. I would wager a fair amount that no one in the US has starved to death due to lack of money (ignoring neglect of children, catatonia, etc) in quite a while.

I'm pretty sure he was talking about food insecurity and not actual starving to death, though his use of the word in this case is actually quite correct. Starve does not solely imply starvation unto death, Mr. Pedant.

And his point still stands, it's an issue in the US that has yet to be solved.