Moving Forward on Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#911

Post by greedo » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

phil248 wrote: post #782

exabrial wrote: post #760

If the "pro basic income" people gave 5 mins of their time to charity for every hour they talk about being an online social justice expert, we would have already solved these problems. BI fixes the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is that people think that they're being charitable by demanding social programs. Wrong. Being charitable means getting your hands dirty, helping people, educating them, physical prese…

I think you're missing the bigger point that we have been giving out food for generations and it has not helped reduce poverty. You're basically telling everyone to go do all the stuff people have always been doing that never works.

We've spent $22 trillion (govt spending, not private) in the US fighting poverty since 1964, and arguably that hasn't worked. So lets spend even more money.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#912

Post by Zikes » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #909

grecy wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right to turn down a job is essential for a well functioning labor market, and for a civilized society. I agree 100%, and I must say having immigrated from Australia, it's probably the worst thing about America. It feels like Employers have all the power in America, and therefore all the Employees are basically slaves, and are treated as such. I think it's important for a functioning society to value it's workf…

if you loved austrailia so much, move back. you have to take the 'bad' with the good. we built a system that enables people with ideas to chase their dreams and succeed. that means companies have the ability to pay people with low skills and experience less than those with. honestly, if you are being treated like a slave, move to another company. if you cant, you don't have skills employers want. get them. during the…

Speaking as a native American, I cannot disagree more. The spirit and very origin of our great nation is to never accept the bad with the good, but to doggedly pursue the very best in everything.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#913

Post by anonymousiam » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

With basic needs met, how many people will strive for more? Will we see an increase or a reduction in the workforce? Many people seem to have no idea how a free market economy works, or what is the role of government. I believe that most people are in favor of the concept of "no taxation without representation". In other words, people want to have a say in how their government spends the taxes collected from them. How would this work out in the "basic income" system? Government taxes would be collected from those who were earning money (leaving out the fact that a large percentage of them may work for their government and thus are not actually adding value to the economy). The taxes then get distributed to the non-working, non-contributing people collecting their "basic income". As fewer people see the need to work, the economy collapses. (See "The Economic Collapse of the Soviet Union.") Aside from the honorable egalitarian intentions, how is this a good thing?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#914

Post by Sacho » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #42

stevefeinstein wrote: post #24

I think tis is a step in the right direction, but I can't help but think that raising the floor still leaves people there on the floor. Won't inflation, as well as increased demand for the things people need just raise prices of those things out of reach of those on the floor negating any benefit?

> "Won't inflation, as well as increased demand for the things people need just raise prices of those things out of reach of those on the floor negating any benefit?" Ideally you'd want UBI to increase with inflation. However, as the initial study is over 5 years the decrease in purchasing power by the end of the study is likely to be minimal. There is a risk that companies that service low-income people will increas…

> The only guard I know of for this is strong competition and disciplined consumers, people have to be willing to express their dislike of price hikes by shopping elsewhere otherwise the system won't work.

Why would you need BI if that existed in the first place? Then people would have the discipline to not work shitty jobs and strong competition would provide them the work they want! What has BI solved, then?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#915

Post by jug5 » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #909

grecy wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right to turn down a job is essential for a well functioning labor market, and for a civilized society. I agree 100%, and I must say having immigrated from Australia, it's probably the worst thing about America. It feels like Employers have all the power in America, and therefore all the Employees are basically slaves, and are treated as such. I think it's important for a functioning society to value it's workf…

if you loved austrailia so much, move back. you have to take the 'bad' with the good. we built a system that enables people with ideas to chase their dreams and succeed. that means companies have the ability to pay people with low skills and experience less than those with. honestly, if you are being treated like a slave, move to another company. if you cant, you don't have skills employers want. get them. during the…

Your excessively close minded "blind patriotism" approach is exactly what is wrong with america.

"If you loved austailia so much, move back."

It's the same general concept that's pushed on outsiders and people with outside ideas of how to make america better. You are so deeply indoctrinated with your tiny world view that even debating other ideas is too much for you.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#916

Post by quadrangle » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #909

grecy wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right to turn down a job is essential for a well functioning labor market, and for a civilized society. I agree 100%, and I must say having immigrated from Australia, it's probably the worst thing about America. It feels like Employers have all the power in America, and therefore all the Employees are basically slaves, and are treated as such. I think it's important for a functioning society to value it's workf…

if you loved austrailia so much, move back. you have to take the 'bad' with the good. we built a system that enables people with ideas to chase their dreams and succeed. that means companies have the ability to pay people with low skills and experience less than those with. honestly, if you are being treated like a slave, move to another company. if you cant, you don't have skills employers want. get them. during the…

non-sequitur. The whole topic here is about a Universal Basic Income. You're the only one who said all that nonsense about "force employers to treat everyone like stellar employees" etc. If you want to never learn anything, these sorts of straw-man statements are a good approach. Alternatively, you could actually engage fairly with what people are actually saying.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#917

Post by librvf » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

skoocda wrote: post #596

librvf wrote: post #564

It seems to me that a limited, 5-year Basic Income experiment is fundamentally flawed and will, at best, fail to predict anything important about what system-wide BI would have on society and at worst will be disastrously misleading and have an incredibly adverse effect on public policy. What I'm reading scares me. Oakland is a city of great social and economic diversity, and it has both concentrated wealth and consi…

There needs to be some sort of action, though. Pondering all the possible effects has been going on for some time now, and simulating a perfectly spherical BI in a vacuum is not going to be any more useful than a 'fundamentally flawed' empirical experiment. >What kind of science is this? It's the normal scientific method. They have a hypothesis. They're going to test it in the real world. And the results will be anal…

Well, it's "not the normal scientific method." Although it's arguably a part of it. My objection may have been a bit strenuous, as the key word here is "pilot study." This is a pre-study study. Their only "hypothesis" here is "is a basic income experiment with real people even at all feasible"

They don't yet have a real hypothesis about basic income, at least not that they have presented. The questions here (https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income) are rhetorical and vague, which make for very bad hypotheses.

Personally I do not believe this study, as I see it described now, will yield any useful scientific knowledge. The results, if they seem favorable, will be used to influence public policy without regard to actual scientific merit and society will be subjected to the real experiment.

I would be much less concerned if I saw someone with a rigorous background in mathematics and economics developing an actual predictive model that could be falsified with specific tests. When the inputs are vague ("people") and the conclusions are subjective ("are people happy?") it is not scientific method.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#918

Post by danielweber » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:30 PM UTC

lawpoop wrote: post #803

danielweber wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I think you misunderstand market economics.

I dunno, this doesn't sound like what I learned in my official concentration at MIT.

Hey, how about a real argument, instead of one that doesn't rely on accusations of ignorance or appeal to credentials? That would be awesome.

> There might be things to do, but the owners would not be willing to pay people a living wage to do them.

The proper response is EITC or NIT. This takes the work that is below the worker's reservation wage and puts it above the worker's reservation wage.

Saying "there are no jobs available to 60% of the population" is a solution (BI) looking for a problem (no employment). If you were to actually come across this problem in the wild, where there was lots of work to be done but it was all below labor's reservation wage, the obvious answer would be to subsidize labor.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#919

Post by danielweber » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:35 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #791

danielweber wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I don't see the problem with this. If you don't like "free money" then a UBI would be horrible.

An EITC keeps people engaged with the economy. So sure it starts with me hiring you to clean my gutters and you hiring me to clean your gutters, but eventually I discover that my comparative advantage is cleaning gutters, and then I can provide value to my neighborhood cleaning other people's gutters, and maybe even grow that into a business.

Sociologists and economists have measured what happens to people on unemployment, and while the overachiever population of HackerNews might be the kind to do more exercise and do more home repair, most people don't.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#920

Post by marknutter » Wed, Jun 01, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #916

autokad wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you loved austrailia so much, move back. you have to take the 'bad' with the good. we built a system that enables people with ideas to chase their dreams and succeed. that means companies have the ability to pay people with low skills and experience less than those with. honestly, if you are being treated like a slave, move to another company. if you cant, you don't have skills employers want. get them. during the…

non-sequitur. The whole topic here is about a Universal Basic Income. You're the only one who said all that nonsense about "force employers to treat everyone like stellar employees" etc. If you want to never learn anything, these sorts of straw-man statements are a good approach. Alternatively, you could actually engage fairly with what people are actually saying.

> It feels like Employers have all the power in America, and therefore all the Employees are basically slaves, and are treated as such.

How is it a non-sequitur when it was in direct response to this quote?