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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#851

Post by creadee »

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…

A basic income is supposed to provide enough to live on. So if rents rise, so should the basic income to cover that rise. And the landlords would notice their taxes rising also.

More interesting is what would happen to wages and salaries. If someone's on a wage that's equal to what the BI will be, if it's introduced they could have their wage halved and still have a bigger income. And their boss will have halved their wages' bill.

A basic income would be revolutionary and I doubt anyone has a good idea on how an economy with one will behave.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#852

Post by arjun1296 »

Wondering how long is this experiment going to happen ? Giving basic income to cover their existential expenses like a good food,water, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare is fine. However, the happiness depends on how much more can they save(to plan their investment) and also "invest" for their future to uplift from their current social living status to something higher.

Until and unless some time is given for the subjects to actually "act on their free will" I doubt whether this experiment would be successful.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#853

Post by mattlutze »

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…

Basic Income doesn't necessitate eliminating all other social programs, though. That'd be, perhaps, a libertarian ideal, but as the minister above and at least many people discus it, BI allows a reconstruction, not the destruction, of the social welfare apparatus.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#854

Post by ItendToDisagree »

landryraccoon wrote: post #850
themartorana wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to free speech and religious expression at an evolutionary level is non-existent. What's your point?

Free speech and freedom of religion demands nothing of your neighbors except non interference. Basic income, on the other hand, demands their labor (at our current level of technology). In the future automation may change this, but right now there is a big gap between demanding free as in speech and free as in beer.

It in fact does not require their labor. It requires effective taxation of land and distribution of said taxation effectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism "... revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can reduce or eliminate existing taxes on labor and investment that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue back to the people through a basic income or citizen's dividend."

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#855

Post by ItendToDisagree »

pif wrote: post #832
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…

Comparing mafia and creditors is non-sense: mafia get their power from their choice to use unjustified violence, while creditors get their power from your choice to borrow in the first place.

Creditors also get their power from the ability to jail those who do not pay debts (threat of force). These debts are often unknown to the debtors. This is becoming an increasingly large problem in the United States.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#857

Post by creadee »

eru wrote: post #837
creadee wrote: post #835

A lot of people around the world have been receiving old-age pensions for quite a while. Many are still healthy and able, with some of those working and some not. Why will this study provide better data about how people will behave when given a basic income than the presumably huge amount of data available about how healthy people behave on a pension? Working out how to plug a basic income into an economy, how to arr…

In Germany, I think, you can only get your state pension when you stop working? (Or at least, there are severe restrictions on working.) But given these caveats, that probably exist similarly in other countries, it's a good field to study. Of course, the social expectations on people on old-age pensions are quite different from the ones on the working-age population.

> In Germany, I think, you can only get your state pension when you stop working?

I think that's the same in the UK, too. In other countries you can work and still receive the state pension, but most seem to be means-tested...

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

Denmark apparently has the best pension scheme which includes a "public basic pension scheme"...

http://www.thelocal.dk/20141013/denmark-has-worlds-best-pens...

> Of course, the social expectations on people on old-age pensions are quite different from the ones on the working-age population.

Which is why I said 'healthy', who should be the subset who are studied.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#858

Post by imarg »

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…

What happens now when someone receiving benefits blows all their money?

I guess the same would happen under BI.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#859

Post by adwn »

bcheung wrote: post #722
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…

I'm in favor of a much higher land tax and getting rid of income and capital gains taxes. Taxing income and capital gains seems counter productive to me as it creates a penalty for working harder and investing. Those are activities that make individuals and society more prosperous. Another possibility I think is worth exploring is having the government simply print money each year and use that to provide for services…

> Another possibility I think is worth exploring is having the government simply print money each year and use that to provide for services and basic income. That way we can get rid of the tax system entirely.

cough Inflation cough

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#860

Post by hellodevnull »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #807
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 regulat…

Same logic is used in free market arguments: Workers leaving jobs to go to other companies creates an incentive for employers to improve work environments.

In both scenarios the workplaces become better off, but what really happens in practice is less than ideal.

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