The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#111

Post by woofyman » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:58 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #60

gyey wrote: post #49

I don't see how they would afford this. Rough approximations show that even giving $20 a month to India's 900 million adult population would mean an annual expenditure of 216 billion dollars, more than 4 times the country's annual defence budget. Where does all this money come from? Increased taxes from the middle class (so that they pay $40 to get $20)?

This is what I point out whenever BI is brought up as a possibility in the US. With 1/4 the population of India, higher GDP, and allowing for all the existing entitlement programs being retired, we can't afford it either. The math just doesn't work out. Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers. Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority).…

>Savings from shuttered entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies: $938 billion

You're proposing eliminating the health care of 120 million people? What we really need is universal, single payer health care.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#112

Post by pkaye » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #47

bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would demand for staple foods shoot up? Sure, there's some hunger in India, but AFAICT most people are already getting most of the calories they need. If anything, I would would think demand for basic staples would go down as people switch away from the cheapest of foods to better ones.

> Sure, there's some hunger in India, but AFAICT most people are already getting most of the calories they need. I'm pretty sure this is very wrong. Quick search brought up the following: http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-fac... > Hunger continues to take its largest toll in Southern Asia, which includes the countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The estimate of 276 million chronically un…

The average calorie intake in India is 2360. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener...) The minimum recommend is 1800.

That means either a vast number have an adequate calorie intake or there are a few "Bill Gates of calorie intake" in India. I think the first is more likely.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#113

Post by Jweb_Guru » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #60

gyey wrote: post #49

I don't see how they would afford this. Rough approximations show that even giving $20 a month to India's 900 million adult population would mean an annual expenditure of 216 billion dollars, more than 4 times the country's annual defence budget. Where does all this money come from? Increased taxes from the middle class (so that they pay $40 to get $20)?

This is what I point out whenever BI is brought up as a possibility in the US. With 1/4 the population of India, higher GDP, and allowing for all the existing entitlement programs being retired, we can't afford it either. The math just doesn't work out. Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers. Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority).…

Raise taxes on the wealthy (yes, including Silicon Valley programmers). It's really that simple. People just don't want it to be.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#114

Post by exclusiv » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #113

chiph wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I point out whenever BI is brought up as a possibility in the US. With 1/4 the population of India, higher GDP, and allowing for all the existing entitlement programs being retired, we can't afford it either. The math just doesn't work out. Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers. Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority).…

Raise taxes on the wealthy (yes, including Silicon Valley programmers). It's really that simple. People just don't want it to be.

Silicon valley programmers aren't wealthy. They have good salaries though.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#115

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #87

gyey wrote: post #49

I don't see how they would afford this. Rough approximations show that even giving $20 a month to India's 900 million adult population would mean an annual expenditure of 216 billion dollars, more than 4 times the country's annual defence budget. Where does all this money come from? Increased taxes from the middle class (so that they pay $40 to get $20)?

The money comes from sacrificing existing entitlement programs, which might actually cost more. Think about it like this in the US: Imagine giving everybody a basic income and eliminating minimum wage, social security, medicare, welfare, and so forth... Naturally some people would become wealthier (paying down existing debts) and some people would become poorer (spending money more rapidly and increasing their debt b…

> Think about it like this in the US: Imagine giving everybody a basic income and eliminating minimum wage, social security, medicare, welfare, and so forth...

What happens when someone inevitably spends their entire income on non-essential expenses, or bets it all on black, or gets talked into making a bad investment, leaving them with no money in the bank? Do we just tell them, "well, suck it up and get a job"? "Sorry, you can't feed yourself because you made your choice on how to spend your money"?

Replacing all other entitlement programs with a cash handout is a political non-starter.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#116

Post by JackdawX » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #60

gyey wrote: post #49

I don't see how they would afford this. Rough approximations show that even giving $20 a month to India's 900 million adult population would mean an annual expenditure of 216 billion dollars, more than 4 times the country's annual defence budget. Where does all this money come from? Increased taxes from the middle class (so that they pay $40 to get $20)?

This is what I point out whenever BI is brought up as a possibility in the US. With 1/4 the population of India, higher GDP, and allowing for all the existing entitlement programs being retired, we can't afford it either. The math just doesn't work out. Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers. Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority).…

What you've just calculated there is the cost of giving everyone, including middle class and rich people, a $20k tax break. Obviously this wouldn't work, as the amount of tax in and out of the system needs to be the same. The easiest method or distribution to understand is negative income tax:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

Would it work in real life? Dunno. Lets see what the outcome of the various tests are. The key question isn't the maths actually, but whether people will choose to work enough to support the system.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#117

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

surfmike wrote: post #84

jganetsk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can raise income taxes on the employed pay for UBI for the unemployed. Therefore, the cost would only be $20 * India's unemployed adult population, which is a lot less than 900 million.

That is also no longer a Universal Basic Income.

[deleted]

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#118

Post by ssharp » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #75

probablybroken wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price inflation of basic necessities is my major concern with BI schemes, I get the impression that noone really wants to discuss the other systems such as price fixing, and nationalisation of many services that would need to be deployed in parallel with basic income to prevent this from happening.

Because for all that some people may still vigorously claim otherwise, we all have pretty much come to grips with the fact that Communism doesn't work. If BI only works with price fixing and extensive nationalization, that's equivalent to saying it doesn't work. "Price fixing and extensive nationalization" has been tried. A lot . The signal is pretty clear. (Note my "if". I'm only giving an "A -> B" statement, I'm no…

If you strip away the shell-game effect in BI (working people pay in $x and get back I'm not so sure an expanded welfare system and single-payer healthcare isn't a better alternative than BI. BI seems to support a privileged ideal that "I shouldn't have to work in order to pursue my interests" that I'm not certain fits into any sort of healthy capitalist economy.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#119

Post by rm2889 » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

shripadk wrote: post #85

rm2889 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why is it "morbid"? Did you call out the OP for associating the death of a 100 people due to an economic move like demonetization morbid?" I call it morbid because "not enough people died hence its a success" is a bad argument. What is your cutoff for the number of people to have died for it to have become a failure? How do you arrive at that cutoff? > "The displacement of people during the Partition was of a smal…

> I call it morbid because "not enough people died hence its a success" is a bad argument. What is your cutoff for the number of people to have died for it to have become a failure? How do you arrive at that cutoff? The cutoff was not given by me. It was given by the nay-sayers including the Supreme Court of India. Who speculated "financial emergency" and "large-scale riots"? Was it people who supported demonetizatio…

> The cutoff was not given by me

Yet you used that data point to call the move a categorical success.

> But you are again trying to tie an economic move like demonetization with something inherently negative

No, I'm not trying to tie anything. I'm just trying to make you understand the fallacy that might have inadvertently crept into your reasoning (happens to the best of us!) Also I'm not comparing demonetization to pollution, I'm comparing the policy of demonetization to the policy response against pollution. Or to make it even simpler, I'm comparing the government policy to curb corruption to government policy to curb pollution, or the government policy to prevent deaths during the partition. Just because one policy response led to more deaths than another, doesn't mean that the former response wasn't as flawed as the latter. Especially since there are so many differences between the initial conditions that existed during the partition and the conditions that exist today. I will repeat here that simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. Apples and oranges my friend.

> You are in the realm of speculation here

Unfortunately not. Will this data ever be publicly available? No. Did a black market exist? Most definitely.

> Are you actually comparing Nazi ideology with upholding the Constitution of India?

What if I don't agree with some of the articles of the constitution? Can I exercise my free speech rights to criticize the said articles without being charged with sedition? Can I express those free speech rights by not standing up for the national anthem and not be charged for an offence? Unfortunately not. I am being instructed by legislation to sit or stand or perform some other body movement to uphold the legitimacy of a document, or an ideology, which I may or may not agree with. That was true for the Nazi salute as well. There are very very subtle points that deal with things like burning the national flag and not "respecting" the national anthem. I urge you to check out the first amendment of the american constition and US supreme court rulings regarding their national anthem and national flag and what constitutes disrespect and what constitutes a criminal offence. Its fascinating stuff. The Indian constitution and the our Supreme court have a long way to go!

Anyway, time to get on with my life. Do definitely read up on the First amendment and try comparing that with the free speech as guaranteed by the Indian constitution. Its a good perspective to have.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#120

Post by geodel » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

kranner wrote: post #93

geodel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you are not in or have not been to India. Even minor situation can lead to deadly violence there. Associating those 100 deaths to demonetization is absolutely pushing a political agenda by media. Check how death of popular politicians can lead to 100s of ppl committing suicides in India. Or check how 1000s die every year in train accidents in just one city of Mumbai. The sad part is even most Indians I meet i…

The criterion for success for an economic intervention cannot be "riots didn't happen." The only word for this reasoning is absurd. I'm not sure where the rest of your argument is going. You seem to be saying that Indian lives are cheap anyway. The declared criteria for the success of demonetisation has shifted twice so far. It started as "we'll stop corruption", then it was "we'll go cashless" and now it's "we've co…

I do not see any contradiction in pursuing all of them together: stopping corruption", "going cashless", "cash saved at home to cheap loans". And corruption is not something that a single step or policy can fix. It would be rather stupid of government or politicians to put all effort on a single goal.

It seems to me critics show a deep disconnect with people when they claim failure due to inconvenience to people. In India riots can occur on far minor issues than demonetization. So yes people are willing to wait for results but critics are hastily jumping to conclusion that scheme has failed.