211–220 of 413 posts
Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work…
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People born into wealth aren't guaranteed that. After all, it's their parents' money, not theirs.
While this is true, it is the closest thing that already exists to a basic income, so it should be the first place to go for material to study before/while setting up a more controlled experiment (assuming a highly controlled, completely reproducible experiment actually can be set up in social/economic sciences). Even in a UBI setup, it's the government's/public's money, not the recipient's, right up until the point…
Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work…
Isn't that the whole point of the experiment? You need to understand how people react to the idea of "not doing anything and still get paid". Do they give up? Do they get depressed? Do they create things? Does entrepreneurship increase? Violence rate?... These are all interesting questions
That's not what UBI is about at all. UBI is about getting paid no matter what you do. Which could be doing nothing. Or it could be studying or practicing or learning a new career or even working. The fact that UBI doesn't disincentivize spending ones time in a certain way (whether that's economically productive or not) is hugely important.
This is an aspect of where there's a huge misunderstanding about UBI due to competing economic theories. There are some people, a lot of people, who believe very strongly that the economy is fundamentally coercive. And, more so, that coercive economies are natural, beneficial, and overall desirable. A lot of that thinking has certainly been baked in to a lot of conventional wisdom, culture, laws, and regulation in the economy of western countries for centuries. There are other people who believe that the economy is or at least can be fundamentally cooperative, and more importantly that a cooperative economy is more beneficial and desirable and no less natural than a coercive economy. And this is where UBI comes in, because UBI is essentially how you bootstrap a more cooperative economy. One where people work not because they are coerced to participate in toil due to the alternative being starvation and privation but instead because they enjoy the work or are fairly compensated for it and treated well.
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And, in my opinion, the test would be useless if it had a time limit attached to it.
I think we could get some insights even with a broken test. But it has to be made by open minded scientists other wise people will interpret it as final truth.
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The 'deadweight' administrative cost is itself an economic benefit - it's money paid to some administrator, who will thus have extra money and will be able to return it to the market in turn. It just means that the $500 of benefits isn't actually $500, and doesn't just go the end recipient: it's actually $550 (or whatever) and goes to the end recipient as well as the administrators and other intermediaries who delive…
Under your interpretation there is no possible way taxation, waste, or even fraud is ever a losing proposition. You fall into one of those holes Keynes said you could dig and fill up to help the economy. Unfortunately taxation itself reduces the incentive to produce and distorts the economy, and the Broken Window Fallacy is still a fallacy.
(BTW, Hacker News is simply terrible at discussing economics. This comment is hardly unique.)
> Broken Window Fallacy
The entire thread and discussion is a bit off-putting but it's worth noting that the question is, as always, what to do about unproductive assets. Nobody is advocating that healthy, able-bodied people should all receive free money from the government. That's why the Broken Window Fallacy is stupid. It's a fallacy against a straw man.
And yes, when it comes to unproductive assets there's good reason to believe that the government should step in and act as the "producer of last of resort." There's always work to be done. The government is never going to run out of money. And, in reality, you're going to end up giving these people money anyways (unless you want to see women and children starving the streets) so you might as well try to see some returns. I've never been a fan of basic income but a Job Guarantee[2] makes perfect sense. Finland would be far better off putting these people to work for the government. Basic income in this form (giving people free money while encouraging them to go to work for private producers) can, ironically, depress wages, unfairly subsidize badly managed firms, and ultimately hurt the economy. Unfortunately westerners are terrified by the spectre of communism so you don't get this sort of large scale public production any more.
[1] http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/07/mmp-blog-8-taxes-...
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Isn't that the whole point of the experiment? You need to understand how people react to the idea of "not doing anything and still get paid". Do they give up? Do they get depressed? Do they create things? Does entrepreneurship increase? Violence rate?... These are all interesting questions
> "not doing anything and still get paid" That's not what UBI is about at all. UBI is about getting paid no matter what you do . Which could be doing nothing. Or it could be studying or practicing or learning a new career or even working. The fact that UBI doesn't disincentivize spending ones time in a certain way (whether that's economically productive or not) is hugely important. This is an aspect of where there's…
refers to "not performing a comercial activity", which means the same thing in my native language.
If you read my whole comment you can clearly see that's my point:
>Do they give up? Do they get depressed? Do they create things? Does entrepreneurship increase? Violence rate?
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> do Dems really have no issue with illegal immigration >How many people have been deported under Obama? >President Barack Obama has often been referred to by immigration groups as the "Deporter in Chief." >Between 2009 and 2015 his administration has removed more than 2.5 million people through immigration orders, which doesn’t include the number of people who "self-deported" or were turned away and/or returned to t…
>which doesn’t include the number of people who "self-deported" But if you did include the number of people who "self-deported" then you'd find that the total number is not that great under Obama and in fact is lowest since 1970s. Now, I don't know what these two numbers from DHS reports actually mean and the DHS does not tell me, but I find it peculiar that the number of "returns" under Obama decreased 10-fold, whil…
Obama does not initiate self-deportation though, so it's not really relevant to a discussion on the democrat's immigration policy
>I don't know what these two numbers from DHS reports actually mean and the DHS does not tell me
It tells you at the bottom of that link