A Guaranteed Income for Every American • Hacker News Board

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#141

Post by AJ007 » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

arbre wrote: post #73

Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically can't afford anything with the basic income?

At some level definitely.

The whole concept of countries creating way too much currency to pay their bills is a good reflection of this -- Zimbabwe and Venezuela being two recent and current examples. The irony is that all of that "extra" money actually means the recipients become substantially poorer as the supply chains get fucked up.

If it is just a little extra injection, the outcome would not be as extreme. In the most general cases, my guess is somewhere with a tight housing market would see a lot of the money just flow to landlords, in a renter's market the money might flow to consumable goods like drugs and alcohol.

If social & welfare programs are removed in exchange for BI, it is possible all the money would just have to be spent on medical and education. I don't really know the math behind everything but it could just be a restructuring of things that are already occurring. Do extra marketing and "profit" costs exceed government waste? Who knows. Certainly the ability for the government to influence social behavior would be reduced by a lot.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#142

Post by avatarlite » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #103

mac01021 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Actually, under Murray's proposal, she has to make do with 10k per year plus whatever she can earn. If she's earning very, then she's probably doing all the childcare herself and her living costs are not much more than a single, childless woman. If she works full time, then her total income (earned and unearned) will be 30k at minimum. I'm not saying I…

The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's poli…

From the article:

>Or consider the unemployed young man who fathers a child. Today, society is unable to make him shoulder responsibility. Under a UBI, a judge could order part of his monthly grant to be extracted for child support before he ever sees it. The lesson wouldn’t be lost on his male friends.

> Or consider teenage girls from poor neighborhoods who have friends turning 21. They watch—and learn—as some of their older friends use their new monthly income to rent their own apartments, buy nice clothes or pay for tuition, while others have to use the money to pay for diapers and baby food, still living with their mothers because they need help with day care.

The author seems to be proposing that child support for 3 children can/should be taken from their fathers' UBI grants. Therefore, the mother would receive a larger grant based on her number of children.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#143

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:11 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #72

trothamel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. The argument is that at some point, the skill level required to justify an income becomes so high, large portions of the populace become unable t…

>The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence. "We'll just automate your job away" is one of the biggest empty threats along with "we'll just fire everybody, causing mass unemployment". Emplo…

Have you seen the new McD's ordering kiosks? They're definitely there, and I find I prefer them to the previous cashier experience.

That combination looks bad for fast food front of house workers...

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#144

Post by stale2002 » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

arbre wrote: post #73

Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically can't afford anything with the basic income?

Only if the government added money to the system without removing it elsewhere.

Any sane policy doesn't involve just printing money and giving it to people. It involves taking that money from someone else, through taxes, and THEN giving it to people.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#145

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:14 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #93

dwc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're overthinking it a bit. What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough. Whether this "solves" anything depends. Initial experiments are very limited, but fairly positive. Giving money to people in rural India may not translate too well to giving money to people in…

What it does it remove the worry that you're going to starve or have no place to live, or take you from subsistence to a level that you can invest in the future. That's all. Perhaps that's enough. If your income drops below 404.00 Euro per month plus rent in Germany, you get the difference. Nobody will become homeless, nobody will starve. At least in theory. They will bug you to get a job as quickly as possible, make…

Much of the appeal of UBI is that there is no massive government pork program to determine eligibility, track compliance with rules, etc. The "U" is important to many of us, provided it allows the disassembly of the massive bureaucracy present today.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#146

Post by j4kp07 » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:14 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #144

arbre wrote: post #73

Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically can't afford anything with the basic income?

Only if the government added money to the system without removing it elsewhere. Any sane policy doesn't involve just printing money and giving it to people. It involves taking that money from someone else, through taxes, and THEN giving it to people.

Translation: Socialism

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#147

Post by dclowd9901 » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #57

dclowd9901 wrote: post #35

Not a fan of the decreasing benefits at $60k. That creates a huge donut hole for those making 59k and then get a 3% promotion. All of a sudden they've take a paycut. Make it a flat income. (Also, should be closer to $15 or $18k a year).

This proposal decreases benefits between $30k and $60k. The total delta in benefits would be $6.5k. Assuming this decrease occurs linearly, this comes out to a marginal tax of 21%. The current marginal tax rate for someone (unmarried) making between 37k and 91k is 25% [0] This means that over this $30k interval, people would be facing about a 46% effective marginal tax [1]. The current top bracket is only 39.6% and d…

My mistake. Still, I think it should be a flat UBI. The point shouldn't be to supplement income but to be income. Plus I think, politically it's a harder sell to provide levels is support ("WE DONT GET AS MUCH BECAUSE WE'RE SUCCESSFUL THATS BULLSHIT", etc.)

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#148

Post by brador » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #125

brador wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation. Second, under UBI a proportion of the population stops working and this increases over time as robots replace workers. Reducing earned income, lowering UBI cash availability. Solution? Print more money = inflation. With a land value tax you get a known relatively unchangin…

> In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation. This is... not really correct. It's true that expansionary monetary policy is often practiced in times of economic recession, but that's not really because there's 'less income to spread around'. And the reason expansionary monetary policy is practiced isn't to give peop…

Under UBI the payment and coverage of UBI would be one of, if not the, largest expenditures of government. Vital to getting votes will be keeping the amount received steady and high. And that might mean printing money if necessary.

With land tax the system is self correcting and balanced. With the taxes you mentioned you'd eventually get the inflationary spiral as a market correction.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#149

Post by Roboprog » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:19 PM UTC

harryf wrote: post #130

zanny wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get there by talking about it, and persuading people about it. There is no magical easy to way to bring about social change unless its profitable. And I'm not sure there are enough landlords foaming at the mouth for the legitimately juicy prospect of tenants with guaranteed paychecks to pay rent to push the issue against the tide of establishment profiteering resistance. But rather than talk about it on HN (like…

The consequences of making this change are huge and IMHO hard to fully predict - or at least it's hard to have a meaningful debate about what the impact could be. Walmart for example could have a disaster on their hands - a whole swath of jobs no one really wants to do could quickly find themselves lacking staff. And that's just one example

I mostly agree. A few people would stick around to get the check and BI, but a lot of people would just say "Take this job and shove it!"

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#150

Post by gizmo » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

avatarlite wrote: post #142

gizmo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's poli…

From the article: >Or consider the unemployed young man who fathers a child. Today, society is unable to make him shoulder responsibility. Under a UBI, a judge could order part of his monthly grant to be extracted for child support before he ever sees it. The lesson wouldn’t be lost on his male friends. > Or consider teenage girls from poor neighborhoods who have friends turning 21. They watch—and learn—as some of th…

Those quotes are about enforcing responsibility and repercussions for unwise decisions, and how that functions as deterrence. Taking money away from the father is framed as punishment, the mother getting money is just a happy coincedence (remember he excludes children from the UBI and then he sketches a scenario where a dad has to lose a lawsuit before having to pay). He doesn't concede that people in some situations simply need more money to live, because that concession would be fatal. After all, if some people need more money than others then you need to do means testing (oh wait, that's what every country is already doing and the root cause of all the inefficiency he seeks to eliminate), which is the exact opposite of the UBI.