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

Guaranteed Minimum What?

granolashotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 446 posts

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#91

Post by Normal_gaussian »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #63

I hate to say this, and this is in no way a troll, but I believe the solution for this will eventually be to kill the poor. Not directly, at least I don't think, but through lack of health care, lack of shelter, lack of education, poor diet, use in waging war, incarceration, and probably once they get desperate and try and get theirs, being labelled terrorists. People who have money, and therefore power, in the Unite…

>> inadvertently, remove them

I think this is the 'natural' progression and it is well understood by the key members of the major social improvement movements. The intent of these movements is to change this, to improve the human condition.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#92

Post by vkou »

nugget wrote: post #56
chris_va wrote: post #33

I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…

Look at Alaska which has a long-term state-run form of UBI. It's about $100 per person per month. Even at such a low amount, to your point, it creates some measurable inflation and other distortions in the market. UBI may only work as a low, supplemental amount to start, so it could be a fair analog. The idea that we'll start with UBI that's enough for each individual to rent a studio, cover transportation costs, and…

Distortions in the Alaskan market happen because everything in the far north costs a lot more labour/energy. This is due to economies of scale, the inhospitable environment, and the need to ship in pretty much everything necessary for human life.

Government handaouts are not why a head of lettuce in a small town in Nunavut can cost ~$15.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#93

Post by DougBTX »

CJKinni wrote: post #66
bryanlarsen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people. If you're a Friedman disciple, then "inflation is a monetary phenomenon" and we can stop there. If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up. The vast majority of stuff poor…

> All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people I'm not very educated in this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that while UBI doesn't create money, but it can move money from people with a lower ratio of money-spent to money-made, to people with a higher ratio. If that's the case, the money that's actively being used should increase.

What do you mean by, "actively being used" though? The rich tend to want a return on their money, "invested" seems like a type of use, even if it is passive. Crazy hypothetically, if it reduced the money available for investment, it might raise the interest rate on loans, reducing the rate of lending, so reducing the total money supply.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#94

Post by mamon »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #50
chris_va wrote: post #33

I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…

Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people. If you're a Friedman disciple, then "inflation is a monetary phenomenon" and we can stop there. If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up. The vast majority of stuff poor…

The problem with taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor is that you undermine riches' motivation. If you limit the prize, then you also limit amount of effort that one is willing to make to get it.

Therefore, after UBI is introduced on mass scale we might see a slow but steady decline in economic activity: fewer new companies started, fewer investments made, riches focusing on tax evasion and moving their business abroad instead of just running and developing it, resulting in recession.

Of course you can go with nuclear option and forfeit all their properties at once, in the name of social justice (does that ring a bell?) but you can only do it once, and eventually will run out of the money seized this way.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#95

Post by WalterBright »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #68
maverick_iceman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big companies get blindsided by new tech all the time. Think IBM vs Microsoft.

More accurate to say "Big companies have traditionally been blind sided by new tech..." I'm not aware of any major example of this since the introduction of the iPhone.

The demise of Kodak?

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#96

Post by bluehazed »

chris_va wrote: post #33

I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…

UBI generally has the implication attached to it that creating a proper safety net allows for savings in other areas, simplifies other social services, and reduces costs through net social benefit - not just the upfront costs.

So health care savings, the ability to quit your job and go back to school (or other kinds of re-training, generally a diversified workforce is a beneficial one), reducing the need for shelters, etc.

This is aside from the fact that a reduced engagement in the workforce doesn't have to be a negative thing - plenty of money is being made, it's just not being distributed very well :) UBI just intends to right that inequality in a productive way.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#97

Post by ghaff »

dsacco wrote: post #13
bluedino wrote: post #9

>> I noticed iPads on the tables They're tablets, from Ziosk. iPad is the Kleenex of this generation. I rather like those, nothing like paying (and leaving) when I want instead of trying to track down the waiter for 20 minutes

Yeah, those are the best of both worlds when you're not dining at an upscale place. Don't have to use cash, don't have to wait for them to complete two round trips just to leave. I never understand why waiters don't give me a chance to hand them the card immediately when they drop the check. I don't need to sit with it for 10 minutes, especially after it took 10 minutes to flag you down for it. Years ago I was a wait…

if I'm actually done and it was a simple meal, I take a quick glance and hand over my card.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#98

Post by marcosdumay »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #44

I really don't understand why ideas like the Negative Income Tax aren't being considered before Universal Basic Income. In that scenario, the government just sets an income floor and pays the difference ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax ). UBI makes little sense whenever someone making 500K a year still gets it unconditionally. The marginal utility of that is nil, but its tax implications are massiv…

Because it is a tax of 100% of the income for everybody making between 0 and the floor. So it causes poor people to not seek jobs, and stay poor.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#99

Post by bitJericho »

haltingthoughts wrote: post #57
bryanlarsen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people. If you're a Friedman disciple, then "inflation is a monetary phenomenon" and we can stop there. If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up. The vast majority of stuff poor…

Housing, Education, Healthcare are supply limited and pretty important to the poor and UBI doesn't fix that.

Ubi does fix that. If ubi isn't enough to cover those then it's not high enough.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#100

Post by haltingthoughts »

vkou wrote: post #89
haltingthoughts wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing, Education, Healthcare are supply limited and pretty important to the poor and UBI doesn't fix that.

There is no law of economics that says the latter two have to be supply limited, to the grotesque extent that they are. I'll give you housing though. One of the reasons housing is expensive, though, is because it is closely tied to job opportunities.

Exactly, there are many laws that result in those being very supply limited.
Post reply on HN