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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#801

Post by brbsix »

alanwatts wrote: post #383
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.

What about a BI based on resources rather than the dollar? There already exists a renewable surplus of food, water, and shelter. There are around 4-6 empty houses in the US for every homeless person and around 40% of food goes to waste. So providing for the most basic physiological needs of the ~45 million impoverished people in the US is not a problem of production, it's a problem of distribution and waste managemen…

See the economic calculation problem as outlined by Mises. There's no way to efficiently allocate resources absent a price mechanism.

Also, how are you supposed to acquire all these resources in the first place? It's kind of an important detail.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#802

Post by dcosson »

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…

> Actually, I think the two main groups are both libertarian, though there's a left-libertarian and a right-libertarian viewpoint

That's an interesting distinction, I think of myself as pretty liberal but maybe I'm more of a left-libertarian after all.

I generally support UBI (at least for now, I'll certainly re-evaluate my position as more studies like this one are done). And there are other traditionally "liberal" ideas that don't sit right with me, like supporting the old guard of e.g. taxi medallion owners, hotel owners, landlords & property owners (by opposing market-rate housing development), etc. even when the new alternative is actually better for the average lower/middle class citizen.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#803

Post by lawpoop »

danielweber wrote: post #674
Namrog84 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But if in 20 years there are simply no jobs available to 60% of the population. It means we are living in paradise. There is nothing to be cleaned. There is nothing to be fixed. There is nothing to be repaired. There is nothing to be trimmed or maintained.

I think you misunderstand market economics. There might be things to do, but the owners would not be willing to pay people a living wage to do them. People without a living wage can't afford housing, groceries, etc. etc. etc.

Like how Ireland('s landed gentry) was exported potatoes during the potato famine. There was plenty of food; the locals just couldn't afford it.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#804

Post by lewisl9029 »

The most compelling case I've seen made recently for basic income is from Yanis Varoufakis (the infamous Greek finance minister who resigned after refusing to agree to the terms of the bailout that the Greek people voted against in a referendum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss

There were many gems in that talk, but this one stood out to me in particular:

"The right to turn down a job is essential for a well functioning labor market, and for a civilized society. And to have that right, a genuine right, to turn down a job, you must have an alternative: An outside option. Because desperate people will accept to do desperate things..."

"Libertarian economists, who claim that liberty is a driving force, define liberty in a negative sense, in the sense of an absence of constraints, of voluntarism: If you've said yes to some contract, that contract must be, by definition, a free contract, and therefore, it must be some act of free will... Well, it's not. The Mafia loves to give us options that we can't refuse, to make us offers we can't refuse. The fact that we say yes to them doesn't mean that they were chosen freely. The fact that the Greek government accepted the terms, last summer, of the troika, does not mean that it was a voluntary transaction. To have a free contract, to have a contract that is signed by both sides, representing and exuding the freedom of both sides, each side must have a capacity to say no. I said that before, and I am saying this once more: In essence, freedom in action requires a basic income."

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#805

Post by InclinedPlane »

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…

BI means that BI is the major form of monetary welfare assistance, but it doesn't mean it's the only safety net. Providing emergency shelter and food assistance for those who might otherwise starve or be homeless is actually pretty nearly dirt cheap, and there's no good reason to simply discontinue doing things like that (both privately and publicly run) even with BI.

Also, who cares about fraud? You can't solve the free rider problem so don't worry about it. It's an equivalent problem to letting the guilty go away because we're so concerned about avoiding incarcerated people or protecting people's rights. Yes, murderers absolutely do go free sometimes because we have a robust (sometimes) system of civil rights and legal protections, but that doesn't make the system worthless. Similarly, there will always be free riders who take advantage of any system of welfare more than they should. But realistically those people are not a serious drain on the resources of a rich, industrialized nation, and the benefit to the public at large from providing robust welfare support is more than enough to offset that problem.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#806

Post by MichaelBurge »

billmalarky wrote: post #262
Diederich wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not heard of or thought of this approach. It's pretty clever. Still possible to abuse, but it seems at least somewhat less likely.

You would need to outlaw "BI payday loans" for this to not be circumvented almost immediately.

Actually, you'd only need to classify the money from BI as not being subject to garnishment or collections. This is how Social Security is handled.

With this, they could loan the money to people and people would owe it, but they couldn't collect.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#807

Post by InclinedPlane »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #804

The most compelling case I've seen made recently for basic income is from Yanis Varoufakis (the infamous Greek finance minister who resigned after refusing to agree to the terms of the bailout that the Greek people voted against in a referendum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss There were many gems in that talk, but this one stood out to me in particular: "The right to turn down a job is essential for a w…

Basic income has a whole host of pretty interesting self-reinforcing feedback loops that seemingly would improve things overall.

For example, people would be more likely to leave jobs that were unsafe, treated people poorly, etc. Including situations where employers weren't following labor laws and regulations (which is a huge problem today). Meaning that maybe it'd be more likely that the fire code, sanitary regulations, etc. were followed consistently. Additionally, people would be more able to have the flexability to be able to train for new careers (whether on their own or through a school or program). Shifting the balance of power in the job market to labor would also generally improve the wage situation, which has stagnated for the last several decades due to the growing power of employers.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#808

Post by kylixz »

DawkinsGawd wrote: post #180
gshulegaard wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't a good riddle. First, Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT) work better than most people expect ( http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... ). As noted in the article, UCTs work surprisingly well in scenarios where lack of capital is the primary problem. A UBI (at least as usually is discussed in the US) is a de-scaling UCT. Second, most proponents of a UBI see it as more efficien…

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…

Serious question... By this logic have I plateaued in the middle class because I like to pay for and watch Netflix while having a few beers on the weekends instead of managing an investment portfolio for better returns or working on another startup idea?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#809

Post by kyllo »

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…

And how do you prevent this money from being siphoned off by the payday loan industry? Lots of people will be willing to trade their monthly government check (plus some usurious interest rate like 30% compounded monthly) for a lump sum today.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#810

Post by platz »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #804

The most compelling case I've seen made recently for basic income is from Yanis Varoufakis (the infamous Greek finance minister who resigned after refusing to agree to the terms of the bailout that the Greek people voted against in a referendum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss There were many gems in that talk, but this one stood out to me in particular: "The right to turn down a job is essential for a w…

"Take an IPhone - you find a variety of technologies - each one was created by some government grant... The collective production of wealth, which is then privately appropriated.. it's very easy to start thinking of basic income as a dividend that goes to the collective that was responsible for collectively producting the wealth."

"We need to create a system whereby society stakes a claim to the returns to aggregate capital, and this claim becomes an income stream that goes to everyone. I don't see why my children and your children have a right to a trust fund [or] why Paris Hilton has a right to a trust fund, when nobody else does, or very few people do.

Think of basic income as a trust fund for all our children - to be financed by dividends from our aggregate capital, which was after all, created collectively."

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