Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#761

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bkmrkr wrote: post #750
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 their money and now can't afford rent and/or food? They still get the BI check every week which they can still use to buy food and pay the rent, so homelessness or starvation doesn't happen. Now they may have some other bills they can't pay, so their cable gets turned off…

What if they borrow against that check and pledge next 10 years of payments?

Then they still get the check and can still buy food and pay rent with it, and the other debt gets sent to collections.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#762

Post by jrochkind1 »

jernfrost wrote: post #588
treehau5 wrote: post #479

Why is the underlying assumption always "as technology continues to replace jobs and generate massive wealth" in the world of BI? It seems like BI is an answer to a false dichotomy. What if we fix our society instead? What if instead of massive seeking of profiteering we actually double down on our efforts to improve lives today , right now in this very moment instead of some far distant realization of "when all jobs…

Automation is an absolute necessity to end poverty. Do you really think stone age people could have ended their abject poverty by just "fixing" their society? It is the immense wealth create through increased automation which has allowed the general well being of most people in the western world today. We can't simply fix the world today by some political decision. There simply isn't enough wealth in the world to cre…

> There simply isn't enough wealth in the world to create a good life for the whole worlds population.

That is far from obvious to me. I have no idea if it's true or not.

But analagously, many people are surprised to learn that most countries experiencing 'famine', historically, have been _exporting_ food, and that there is, unquestionably, currently enough food produced on the planet to feed everyone adequately and enjoyably. And yet people starve.

It's not obvious to me that there isn't enough wealth in the world to create a good life for everyone, too. Now, today.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#763

Post by jrochkind1 »

carapace wrote: post #649

A lot of the discussion here seems to revolve around UBI as a solution for poverty and homelessness, but I would argue that that's missing the point. As I wrote this this morning in re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807201 """ Keep in mind when discussing UBI, especially in the context of poverty, that it is not a solution to poverty. It is a solution to automation crashing demand by throwing earners permane…

Why do you feel the need to distinguish between "the bum", and "you", a victim of "automation crashing demand by throwing earners permanently out of the economy."

Can't some portion of current 'bums', or the homeless, be victims of "automation crashing demand by throwing earners permanently out of the economy" too? I would think they are. Hasn't the process already begun, a long time ago, if perhaps speeding up now? Some of the present poor and homeless definitely seem to have been "permanently thrown out of the economy" to me.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#764

Post by jrochkind1 »

morgante wrote: post #488
notahacker wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people complain when rich and middle class people start moving into historically low income areas (at least until the poor can't afford to live there) When it applies to companies, I think it's pretty universally suggested that hiring people from poor backgrounds who've worked very hard to get close to the hiring thresholds and are probably being overlooked by other companies is usually a good decision. You don't…

> Few people complain when rich and middle class people start moving into historically low income areas (at least until the poor can't afford to live there) You must not be following the news much. If you even begin to move into a historically poor area, people will cry gentrification and start throwing rocks.

> If you even begin to move into a historically poor area, people will cry gentrification and start throwing ro

Nah, when it's just one upper-middle-class you by yourself (how do you "begin to" move somewhere, anyway? either you move or you don't, the 'beginning' of moving is invisible to anyone but yourself), local people are confused or bemused or pleased or at most slightly annoyed. When a couple friends follow, and then all your peers follow because it seems safe and/or exciting now, and the people who lived there before realize that the neighborhood is finally getting safer and more amenities but _they aren't for them_, the amenities are things they still can't afford and the safer neighborhood is one they soon won't be able to afford -- that's when they start throwing rocks. Mostly metaphorically so far, but I'd expect literal physical rock throwing to pick up.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#765

Post by tsmffh »

tsmffh wrote: post #704
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…

There's no moral superiority when you're relying on the use of force to acquire funds. (i.e. theft)

Anyone who down votes, happy to be proved wrong. Very simple test: don't pay and see what happens.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#766

Post by mbostleman »

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…

It's unfortunate that the word liberal is used for the position you describe. And conversely that the word libertarian must be used to describe liberalism, literally.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#767

Post by soared »

paul wrote: post #483
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…

That assumes a fixed supply of housing, which is only true in deeply dysfunctional places like SF. In most of the US, housing cost is close to replacement cost, so if landlords try to raise rents, people can just move someplace cheaper, especially since they are no longer dependent on a job to support themselves.

There are plenty of 'dysfunctional' places just like SF. Plenty of cities have limited area to expand into. For example, Boulder local gov owns a ring of land around the city, making it impossible to expand outwards (or upwards).

Housing supply isn't fixed if you think people are willing to live in Wyoming - which they pretty much aren't.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#768

Post by jrochkind1 »

tim333 wrote: post #682
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

That theory is actually pretty challenged. Makes me want to find time to enhance the wikipedia article, but it would be a lot of work.

Among critiques are that the !Kung San people the study of which is at the basis of this theory _weren't_ actually exclusively (or possibly even primarily) engaging in hunting and gathering as economic activity at the time the anthropologists studied them, but those anthropologists just chose to leave out the wage labor as "atypical". And that the !Kung San at that period of history actually were a regional underclass -- if they didn't work much, that's because they didn't have many options, and is similar to the extremely poor in any society. See Edwin Wilmsen, _Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari_

That's just a start.

But anyway, I agree with you that it's ridiculous to think that people can't be happy unless extorted to work for others at threat of starvation.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#769

Post by wprapido »

tlb wrote: post #220
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…

Some of that is due to the traditional monthly nature of payments and expenses, which is beyond some people's planning horizon. How do you think it would change if everything (both BI deposit and rent payment) were weekly, or even daily?

UK/US/AU/NZ have weekly salaries, welfare, rent and it works pretty fine

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#770

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dragonwriter wrote: post #231
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…

> You'll find there are two voices for BI, the liberal and the liberatian. Actually, I think the two main groups are both libertarian, though there's a left-libertarian and a right-libertarian viewpoint, with the libertarians that aren't strongly left- or right- splitting between them. I personally prefer keeping the existing means-tested programs but counting UBI as income when considering eligibility, such that wit…

> I personally prefer keeping the existing means-tested programs but counting UBI as income when considering eligibility, such that with growing UBI [0] you eventually reach the point where the income floor is above the eligibility level for the means-tested programs, allowing them to be discontinued.

It might be better to directly subtract the benefits from any such program from the UBI. Then the only people who will even bother signing up for the other programs are the people whose total benefits from the existing programs exceed the UBI, which should be almost nobody. Then having demonstrated that fact in practice, those programs can be discontinued for lack of any real use and the savings can be used to provide slightly more UBI.

Post reply on HN