Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#211

Post by fweespeech » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 8:56 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #203

fweespeech wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A mature BI (one providing an above-poverty-line benefit) is an expensive proposition That was below-poverty-line benefits as defined by existing law. Its $10k income with a $3k mandatory payment for the equivalent of Medicaid/insurance. The poverty line at the moment is ~$11k + Medicaid. https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-FP...

> That was below-poverty-line benefits as defined by existing law. Its way above the poverty line for any household size greater than 1. ($11,880 + $4,140-4,160 per additional member) [0] [0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines

You are ignoring Medicaid which the article plans to cut.

http://kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/medicaid-spending-pe...

That is ~$6k of benefits per person.

So lets say two adults for $26k with $12k in lost benefits is ~$14k.

The poverty line is $16k.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#212

Post by majewsky » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

jimmyk wrote: post #202

rorykoehler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have against your brother putting $500 back into the economy? That's good for everyone (except for him in the example you gave). If you were smart you would have sold him the weed and made yourself a few hundred bucks. Then you could easily feed him with the profit. The local grocer can then feed his family with the extra money he made because you bought more from him due to your sudden windfall and so on…

What do you have against your brother putting $500 back into the economy? That's good for everyone How is it good for everyone else? Everyone else now collectively has $500 less to spend on other goods and services. Instead of scarce resources being used to create those other goods and services, they will be used to grow weed. That sounds to me like it's decidedly bad for everyone else.

Exactly. Because there's only so much money to spend every year, and when it's used up, the economy shuts down until New Year's Eve. /s

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#213

Post by majewsky » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #105

1123581321 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen it in every discussion. Some of the forms of evasion include: * focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses * focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish * focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial fa…

The most common evasion is in the handwaving around the size of the proposed UBI check. Total US tax revenue per person comes out to just over $20000/year, that's $1666/month (in comparison, a 40 hour workweek at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, no holidays, comes out at $15080/year or $1256/month). If you abolished every single government program and fire every single government employee, right from the DoD dow…

Or you raise taxes for the rich 1%.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#214

Post by jimmyk » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #212

jimmyk wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have against your brother putting $500 back into the economy? That's good for everyone How is it good for everyone else? Everyone else now collectively has $500 less to spend on other goods and services. Instead of scarce resources being used to create those other goods and services, they will be used to grow weed. That sounds to me like it's decidedly bad for everyone else.

Exactly. Because there's only so much money to spend every year, and when it's used up, the economy shuts down until New Year's Eve. /s

Do you not believe there are scarce resources? Or do you not believe money is used to direct how those scarce resources are used?

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#215

Post by kamaal » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

parenthephobia wrote: post #210

kamaal wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The answer is, unsurprisingly, everyone who pays taxes. 1. Not every one would work to pay taxes, when there is a way to not work and still get paid. 2. Lesser the number of people who work lesser the pool of money to share among the remaining. 3. Those who still continue to work feel cheated all the time to be working and making up for everyone. While they push insane hours to make a living, punished all the time…

I'm not aware of any socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment. Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war. They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better. Not that it necessarily matters, since most "socialist" economies didn't really have anything like a basic inco…

>>socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment

The problem here is not underemployment. Underemployment is a situation where people want to work, but don't have jobs. The situation I mentioned systematically disincentivizes working making it very easy to get by life without work. The net situation is people feel they are entitled to free stuff without doing any work for it. And its always somebody else responsibility to provide for them, while they do nothing at all to contribute anything back.

>>Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war.

Cold war was the perfect test of which country could retain their best. There were barely any incentives to stay in socialist countries. At any given point of time a minority was slogging till death to feed the remaining mouths in their countries. Why do think you so many people from countries like India(Largely still socialistic society) want to move to US?

Robbing Peter to feed Paul only works that long.

>>They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better.

That's strange since none of the socialist economies did better even those which didn't participate in the world wars.

>>The fact of the matter is that there has never been a country-scale attempt at implementing a basic income.

Sorry, you say- since nothing like it with 100% match existed before we should discard cases with 99.99999% match.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#216

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #215

parenthephobia wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment. Most socialist ex-economies collapsed primarily due to the effects of the end of the cold war. They were generally already devastated by WW2. It is by no means certain that a capitalist economy would have fared any better. Not that it necessarily matters, since most "socialist" economies didn't really have anything like a basic inco…

>>socialist economy collapsing simply due to mass underemployment The problem here is not underemployment. Underemployment is a situation where people want to work, but don't have jobs. The situation I mentioned systematically disincentivizes working making it very easy to get by life without work. The net situation is people feel they are entitled to free stuff without doing any work for it. And its always somebody…

Today we have automation on a scale never before experienced. Ultimately we will need approximately 0% of our population to work. This is not a problem; its actually the goal. We are not there yet, but a BI is a step.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#217

Post by majewsky » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #127

clavalle wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domestic abuse is not limited to the poor. But, back to the point, assuming they are not as rational as the rest of us, somehow sub human, is a harmful position to take -- it precludes any positive action to change the incentive structure of the poor -- in your view, no matter what is done, they are still broken creatures beyond help. That you admittedly take that position with other more useful hypothesis still wort…

The poor commit 4x as much domestic abuse as high income people. And I single out domestic abuse because unlike robbery or selling drugs, "stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry children" is a nonsensical excuse for beating one's wife (or spending one's money on drugs and tobacco) But, back to the point, assuming they are not as rational as the rest of us, somehow sub human, is a harmful position to take -- it p…

> And I single out domestic abuse because unlike robbery or selling drugs, "stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry children" is a nonsensical excuse for beating one's wife (or spending one's money on drugs and tobacco)

Your fallacy is the same as of microeconomics: You try to explain human behavior with only one tool, rational maximization of return on investment.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#218

Post by kamaal » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #102

jackcosgrove wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a third option which always costs $0.

There's never an option costing zero as long as the brother in question has the ability to punch you in the face and take your food for leaving him to starve.

https://www.google.com/#safe=active&q=define+extortion

the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#219

Post by kamaal » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #169

yummyfajitas wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After sleeping on the street for one night, the brother might also choose to spend his money on rent rather than weed the next time around.

Do you have any evidence for that? I would wager it leans in the other direction: sleeping on the street leads to other negative behaviors, in aggregate.

If a person is sleeping on streets and still hasn't learned the lesson that food/clothing/shelter is more important than weed. Something tells me the person deserves it.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#220

Post by moron4hire » Mon, Aug 29, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

IsaacL wrote: post #76

moron4hire wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least some of the budget would come from realizing reductions in bureaucratic overhead from eliminating the welfare apparatus and costs associated with crime (which poverty is the biggest predictor of). We also always seem to have enough money to bomb the ever living shit out of brown people in all the far flung regions of the universe, so I don't understand why cost should ever be an issue. I don't think need is…

The right to life implies you have the right to earn an income. This also implies property rights on your earned income. (The original formulation was "life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness").

Your property is not more sacred than another person's life.