Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 251 posts

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#131

Post by krisdol »

simbalion wrote: post #101

"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play. Like it or not it is a force of nature.

I was a refugee of war that immigrated to the United States and survived off of food stamps and public housing until we got on our feet. we'd be considered pretty well off today, certainly in the top 5-10% of income earners.

Natural selection... More like dumb luck your ignorant persona was born privileged and not having to work your way up through the social structure of a foreign country several times. If it wasn't for public assistance we'd be dead or arrested for god knows what we would have done to put food on the table.

Social services exist to keep you safe from the poor just as much as they exist to keep the poor able to move upward through socioeconomic class

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#132

Post by jnbiche »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #127
daveguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertion is that none of those are inherent qualities of a group. Reduced work effort is a chicken egg issue. Of course people on welfare are going to have reduced "work effort" -- joblessness is probably what made you have to get it in the first place. Same with drug consumption. I would question any "higher drug use" measure as selection bias -- investment bankers aren't generally being drug tested are they? T…

A further claim is that increasing welfare reduces work effort. Is this disputed? I don't know why we are discussing drug tests for welfare, but simple arithmetic provides a very low bar for them to be cost effective. Google suggests a drug test costs $10-30. If welfare costs $15,000/year, then you only need to have a 0.2% positive rate for it to be worth it. Do you think folks on welfare do drugs at a rate lower tha…

> A further claim is that increasing welfare reduces work effort. Is this disputed?

Yes, it's disputed. Assuming that you/the GP are correct, and that data do exist that people on welfare have reduced "work effort" (how is that measured?), increased fertility, and increased drug consumption, then you of all people know that correlation doesn't mean causation. It could be that their increased fertility and/or drug consumption caused them to go on to welfare. Or vice versa.

Either way, it would be very hard to draw any conclusions from such data outside of correlation.

In addition to confounding, you also run into lots of statistical biases in such data. As someone else pointed out, poor people are screened for drugs at much higher rates than non-poor, because the jobs that poor people work in are much more likely to require them. As such, even if such data exists, it would be very suspect.

Furthermore, drug testing the general population, even one that has marginally higher drug use rates (and I've seen no convincing data of this either way) runs into the problem of predictive value and false positives (for the same reason screening the general female population under 40 for breast cancer results in massively high rates of false positives).

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#133

Post by turar »

simbalion wrote: post #120
jwdunne wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement. It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to…

Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice. Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes. Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you…

You don't need to ride a bike to get crippled by a car accident. You can choke on a piece of food while eating dinner. You can fall in the shower awkwardly and get paralyzed.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#134

Post by itake »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #125

I'm confused. Isn't this already being done various places around the world already? (e.g. Alaska, Puerto Rico) Why not study people in those places? Better yet, nearly everybody in those places is getting the benefit, so the experiment isn't poisoned by the culture (you're the only one in your neighborhood getting a benefit - others treat you differently)

I think they are interested in delivering a basic income such that it should be enough to live off of. Alaska [0] only offers ~$2,000 for the entire year in compensation. I am not sure what program you are referring to for Puerto Rico...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Annual_i...

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#135

Post by dmix »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #125

I'm confused. Isn't this already being done various places around the world already? (e.g. Alaska, Puerto Rico) Why not study people in those places? Better yet, nearly everybody in those places is getting the benefit, so the experiment isn't poisoned by the culture (you're the only one in your neighborhood getting a benefit - others treat you differently)

I made a similar point in the original YC basic income thread.

I questioned the value of doing this when something like public healthcare is working very well in Canada, where it operates much more cost effectively than the US public/private mess, and it has been for a long long time. And we're right next to the US. Yet there has been little progress adopting a similar system in the US.

I'm not sure if just getting examples of it working will be a sufficient motivator that they hope it will be. But I guess public healthcare is old hat now and not in need of scientific study for it's efficacy, just political will which is much more expensive and involved than running social experiments.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#137

Post by unclesaamm »

ThomPete wrote: post #136

I hope they will be taking the Hawthorne effect into account here. I am fundamentally a proponent of UBI but the last thing we want are experiments in pseudo environments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

This is a huge issue that is very hard to solve at this point. The obvious solution, not telling people about the experiment, is out. It reinforces the skeptics who think of this as a way for YC to brand itself more philanthropically, because from a research perspective it's just expensive, grandiose hogwash.

Edit to say that I too support UBI, and actually helped pass a resolution at my Congressional District's Democratic Party convention in favor of UBI.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#139

Post by ThomPete »

unclesaamm wrote: post #137
ThomPete wrote: post #136

I hope they will be taking the Hawthorne effect into account here. I am fundamentally a proponent of UBI but the last thing we want are experiments in pseudo environments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

This is a huge issue that is very hard to solve at this point. The obvious solution, not telling people about the experiment, is out. It reinforces the skeptics who think of this as a way for YC to brand itself more philanthropically, because from a research perspective it's just expensive, grandiose hogwash. Edit to say that I too support UBI, and actually helped pass a resolution at my Congressional District's Demo…

Yes.

Sounds like we have the same concern despite our support.

The last thing I want is useless data. The hawthorne effect is actually at play in many other situations and is generally an underestimated issue with qualitative research.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#140

Post by kzhahou »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #109
saulrh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer: Life gets better. We have proof of this from history. When was the last time anybody here ground their own flour or washed their laundry using a rock and a river?

We are gonna end up in the future that Wall-E has predicted. Machines do everything and humans are fat slugs. Our minds are lazy and want to do the least amount of work. If given the option, we will do the least amount and occupy ourselves in entertainment. Now is that living? Thats up to you to decide. A good book to read on experiments done to understand human behavior is Daniel Kahnemans Thinking Fast and Slow.

That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit.

Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive.

Wall-E got it totally wrong.

Post reply on HN