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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#791

Post by AnthonyMouse »

danielweber wrote: post #670
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…

One of the reasons I like a boosted EITC is that it encourages work and particularly above-the-table work. If you are getting a $2 boost for your $6 job, you would make sure to report it.

Then instead of mowing your lawn and cleaning your gutters and dusting your furniture, you can do your neighbor's and vice versa and then make equal payments to each other and report it to the government to get free money.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#792

Post by ivanhoe »

Perhaps I'm missing something, but how BI accounts for the fact that not everyone has the same basic needs or expenses? Someone will need expensive medications, another in-home care services, parents will need to spend money on kids, pay for daycare/schools, etc. Writing the same check to everyone might save you from bureaucracy, but it will put vulnerable groups in a relatively worse position, while single healthy people will profit from it. Also how do you avoid just deepening the gaps between the poor and the rest? Poor will still be getting approx. the same amount as they do now, but the rest of the population will get extra money they didn't have before, so the difference will be even bigger? Also wouldn't this extra cash flow create inflation, raising all the prices?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#793

Post by chatmasta »

Why don't you hire someone who will need the basic income themselves? Do you want your team to be comprised of a bunch of PhDs who have never needed a basic income? Or is it more important to have PhDs on the program so it at least looks good, even if it doesn't scale or succeed?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#795

Post by brbsix »

namenotrequired wrote: post #242
haaen wrote: post #94

BI is immoral: why should anyone who can work get money for doing nothing?

Lack of BI is immoral: why should anyone have to work harder than they need to?

That's like saying:

Lack of sex and romance is immoral: why should anyone have to find a consenting partner?

The obvious answer is that rape is an initiation of force. It's immoral. Your needs or desires don't change that.

Lack of BI is not immoral. It's like saying lack of trust fund is immoral. It makes no sense. People don't have a moral obligation to provide you with things.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#796

Post by brbsix »

abalone wrote: post #665
vocatus_gate wrote: post #518

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

Same could be said for startups!

Only startups actually have to raise their capital in an entirely voluntary manner, with all the due diligence and stipulations that entails. Government just takes it. It's the difference between your wife shopping for groceries with your credit card and an armed gunman sticking you up the ATM telling you to comply or die.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#797

Post by AnthonyMouse »

danielweber wrote: post #675
douglance wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that we will develop such stunning abundance that living costs will be very inexpensive and a basic income will be a manageable cost for the government.

So my taxes will drop, right?

Net of the UBI? Sure. A UBI which is exactly as redistributive as the existing welfare system would reduce taxes (or increase the UBI you receive) by the difference in the administrative costs between the existing welfare system and the UBI.

And that's before the economic benefits of increasing the incentive to work for low and middle income people by not reducing their government transfer payments when they get a job.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#798

Post by AnthonyMouse »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #420
misja111 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, the very liberal Dutch unemployment insurance which I was talking about was not BI. It had some similarities, but also some differences. The liberal unemployment insurance became too expensive. So the question is: where is BI different so that it becomes sustainable for the tax payer? > Unemployment insurance reduces the incentive to work because it pays people to not work. It similarly incentivizes black marke…

I did some arithmetic on this a while back. Paying BI to people who work utterly destroys any cost advantage. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basi... This is why most BI proponents are so averse to arithmetic.

You're unjustifiably assuming that BI provides less incentive to work than existing welfare and then doing math based on that assumption to prove a conclusion which is trivial given the assumption. It's begging the question.

Calculate the marginal tax rates people would pay under a BI funded by a flat tax vs. the existing welfare system when disqualification from benefits is calculated as a tax. The existing system has low and middle income people paying absurdly high marginal rates. BI would increase their incentive to work.

BI would have high income people paying somewhat higher marginal rates (but not necessarily higher taxes net of BI because they would receive the BI), but high income people are extremely unlikely to give up their high income in exchange for a subsistence level basic income.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#799

Post by aianus »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #91
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…

Or we could teach them financial literacy. Kind of like how countries with socialized healthcare spend more on health education.

What makes you think a financial literacy class would succeed where math class and English class have failed?

Financial literacy is nothing more than reading comprehension and some grade 8 arithmetic.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#800

Post by cname »

greedo wrote: post #293
prokes wrote: post #105

Can anyone explain how this can be implemented mathematically? Assume 300 million people @ $12k / year, you are spending $3.6 trillion. That is already more than current government revenue, leaving all current government services unfunded.

Debt. The government will simply pump more liquidity into the economy. Not that this will cause any side effects, right? This idea is all a non-starter anyways, at least in the US. As a "pure" form of communism, there's little to no real support once the details are actually discussed. Redistributing this amount of money is impossible; we can't even run a balanced budget in the US. It goes against so much of the Amer…

Can you explain how a basic income equates to "communism"?
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