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

#241

Post by mseebach » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:54 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #213

mseebach wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

The top 1% of americans are about 3 million people and have an average income of 1 million. They already account for just short of half of all income taxes.

Every time you want to raise enough revenue to give the 99% another $1,200 ($100/month), you need to raise taxes on each single member of the 1% by $120,000. And that's on average incomes of a million.

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

#242

Post by rorykoehler » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

jimmyk wrote: post #233

rorykoehler wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the amount we waste is enough to feed the rest of the planet, no we don't really have scarce resources and resources are becoming less and less scarce every year.

I'm talking about economic scarcity. In economics, scarcity does not mean you don't have enough of something to fulfill some particular purpose. It means you have to make trade-offs. If I spend my day chopping wood, I can't spend my day cutting grass. Our time is fundamentally scarce. If I use a gallon of gas to drive to the store, I can't use that gallon of gas to light a huge fire. If we're using farmland and labor…

With technology there is no upper limit on productivity. We will always be able to produce more than enough. Take your growing weed example. We could do it indoors in skyscrapers with robots. You could grow enough weed for the whole world to chain smoke, in one building in the desert if it came to the point where that made sense (which it might in the nearish future). Capital is essentially imaginary and therefore limitless given the right incentives.

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

#243

Post by pmontra » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 7:53 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #153

yummyfajitas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and if I redefine all errors as successes my program has no bugs. Back in reality, my application is not meeting business needs, and BI is still wasting a bunch of money on people who don't need it. Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme creates an incentive for fraud where the benefits of fraud outw…

> A Basic Job Guarantee (if you need a job real bad, the government gives you a real bad job) does not create incentives for fraud. No one needs a job. People need good and services, which (in a system that is basically market structured) income is a means to provide. A job isn't a need, its multiple steps removed from needs. A "Basic Job" labor army programming is a reasonable means of providing stability in income,…

> No one needs a job. People need good and services

This. We've been brainwashed by historical circumstances and the morals derived by them. A job, or theft, or theft disguised as a honest job, has been the only way to get those goods and services but this is becoming less and less true. We can automate the production of some goods and there is little need to work to make them. Hence there is less and less need for money to pay them. We can almost give them away. So basic income is a way to acknowledge this change and give everybody a share of the new commons that our automated factories can build. Do you want more than the basic? Then work, or create, or be special in any way people will acknowledge you.

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

#244

Post by pmontra » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #235

yummyfajitas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People exploit basic income to rob us when they consume it without needing it. Why do you think having zero oversight and giving benefits to everyone, including those who don't need it, is somehow better than the current system? If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.…

>Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us. There's a simple solution that all BI advocates should embrace: you take BI money and you give up your vote, because it is a conflict of interest.

Like people working for the government, or elected politicians? They get all their income from somebody's else taxes (), have obvious conflict of interests as they make laws that affect their job and income, and I see no chance they won't be allowed to vote.

() Actually most of those money goes back to the state, minus the ones going into savings, private properties or leave the country to pay for imported goods.

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

#245

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 11:27 AM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #234

gwright wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit dismayed at the lack of imagination in this thread. How about designing public policy that provide incentives to work rather than incentives not to work? (earned income tax credits) How about decreasing the cost of labor in order to increase employment while simultaneously providing programs that assist during periods of unemployment? (e.g., make it easier to hire and to fire and switch jobs while providing…

How does an incentive to work accomplish anything if the only jobs that are available (if any for a given person's skillset) are ones that pay far too little to live on. ("decreasing the cost of labor" == "reduce or eliminate the minimum wage") Most poor people work very hard to earn enough to survive; much harder per $ earned than most people on this website. They don't need an incentive to work, they need jobs that…

No. Most people don't work hard. Most poor people don't work at all and are not looking for work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382336

They also disproportionately engage in other behaviors that also keep them poor (e.g. drug use, beating their wives, etc).

Also, assuming you were right, EITC would immediately solve the problem of "the only jobs that are available...are ones that pay far too little to live on." EITC solves the problem of "I want to live at a western middle class standard of living, but the value of my labor is too low to support that". The only problem it doesn't solve is "I want to sit at home smoking weed and playing video games" (that's what BI solves).

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

#246

Post by CPLX » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 11:56 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #245

DougWebb wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an incentive to work accomplish anything if the only jobs that are available (if any for a given person's skillset) are ones that pay far too little to live on. ("decreasing the cost of labor" == "reduce or eliminate the minimum wage") Most poor people work very hard to earn enough to survive; much harder per $ earned than most people on this website. They don't need an incentive to work, they need jobs that…

No. Most people don't work hard. Most poor people don't work at all and are not looking for work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382336 They also disproportionately engage in other behaviors that also keep them poor (e.g. drug use, beating their wives, etc). Also, assuming you were right, EITC would immediately solve the problem of "the only jobs that are available...are ones that pay far too little to live o…

> Most people don't work hard.

Doubtless. I've even heard rumors that some miscreants collect healthy software developer salaries but just post on HN all day.

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

#247

Post by jimmyk » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 12:07 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #242

jimmyk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about economic scarcity. In economics, scarcity does not mean you don't have enough of something to fulfill some particular purpose. It means you have to make trade-offs. If I spend my day chopping wood, I can't spend my day cutting grass. Our time is fundamentally scarce. If I use a gallon of gas to drive to the store, I can't use that gallon of gas to light a huge fire. If we're using farmland and labor…

With technology there is no upper limit on productivity. We will always be able to produce more than enough. Take your growing weed example. We could do it indoors in skyscrapers with robots. You could grow enough weed for the whole world to chain smoke, in one building in the desert if it came to the point where that made sense (which it might in the nearish future). Capital is essentially imaginary and therefore li…

  With technology there is no upper limit on productivity.

But it will never be enough to satisfy all human wants and needs.

  We will always be able to produce more than enough.

More than enough for what purpose?

  We could do it indoors in skyscrapers with robots. You
  could grow enough weed for the whole world to chain
  smoke, in one building in the desert if it came to the
  point where that made sense (which it might in the
  nearish future).

Surely you understand that if we're using those robots and that skyscraper to grow weed, we can't also use those robots and that skyscraper to produce some other good. Surely you understand that less of some other goods would be produced because we chose to use that particular productive capacity to grow weed rather than to produce those other goods. Surely you understand that the raw materials, including human labor, used to build the robots and the skyscraper were not available to be used to produce other goods, and that the energy needed to grow the weed could not be used for other purposes. Surely you don't believe that human desires have already been fully sated, except for more pot, and that resources are just sitting around idle until jobless stoners get UBI money to buy pot.

  Capital is essentially imaginary and therefore limitless
  given the right incentives.

This is the first I'm hearing that capital is "essentially imaginary". What do you mean by that? What do you mean by 'capital'?

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

#248

Post by randall » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 12:41 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #91

randall wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another data point: I became an entrepreneur while my wife worked fulltime. Many don't have this option.

I want to become an enterpreneur, but can't afford it. I'm not interested in "make money fast" schemes just for the sake of making money. I have ideas, things I want to try to build, but building my product would not happen overnight no matter how f *ing hard I work. More likely a minimum of anywhere between 6 and 12 months is required before it's feasible to start selling the product, and from there on it could take…

I disagree that you can't afford it.

I've learned how that if you can't make a business that's generating 10k / month in 3 months it's probably the wrong market. You could keep iterating through markets until one of them sticks.

That's what I'd recommend, anyway.

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

#249

Post by gwright » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #234

gwright wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit dismayed at the lack of imagination in this thread. How about designing public policy that provide incentives to work rather than incentives not to work? (earned income tax credits) How about decreasing the cost of labor in order to increase employment while simultaneously providing programs that assist during periods of unemployment? (e.g., make it easier to hire and to fire and switch jobs while providing…

How does an incentive to work accomplish anything if the only jobs that are available (if any for a given person's skillset) are ones that pay far too little to live on. ("decreasing the cost of labor" == "reduce or eliminate the minimum wage") Most poor people work very hard to earn enough to survive; much harder per $ earned than most people on this website. They don't need an incentive to work, they need jobs that…

Earned Income Tax Credit

A situation in which assistance is given to people who are working (albeit for a lower wage) is a much better situation than assistance being given to people who aren't working at all.

There is value in enabling people to have jobs, even low paying jobs.

Many workplace laws and regulations effectively increase the cost of labor in the aggregate. So "decreasing the cost of labor" is not all about lowering pay. Think of things like overtime rules, mandatory benefits, onerous compliance rules, shifting various legal burdens to the employer rather than the employee, making it more difficult to fire someone.

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

#250

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 1:07 PM UTC

gwright wrote: post #249

DougWebb wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an incentive to work accomplish anything if the only jobs that are available (if any for a given person's skillset) are ones that pay far too little to live on. ("decreasing the cost of labor" == "reduce or eliminate the minimum wage") Most poor people work very hard to earn enough to survive; much harder per $ earned than most people on this website. They don't need an incentive to work, they need jobs that…

Earned Income Tax Credit A situation in which assistance is given to people who are working (albeit for a lower wage) is a much better situation than assistance being given to people who aren't working at all. There is value in enabling people to have jobs, even low paying jobs. Many workplace laws and regulations effectively increase the cost of labor in the aggregate. So "decreasing the cost of labor" is not all ab…

The EIC awards a max of ~$6,200 to people with 3 or more children.

How many people with 3 kids do you think are going to stop working if they get an unconditional government benefit of $6,000?

I think the EIC does a good job of addressing the need some people have to moralize about the sanctity of labor, I doubt it has much of any impact on the labor market (it mostly just makes the lives of some kids better).