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Guaranteed Minimum What?

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Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#341

Post by adrianN »

clairity wrote: post #174
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…

we're so sophisticated now that we abstract the idea of work away from the idea of making a living (as in being able to be alive, as opposed to dead) and come up with concepts like UBI where we can simply not work, without realizing that not working correlates with not living. work is not some thing apart from ourselves. work is not something apart from play or recreation or relaxation or any such things. we move and…

I agree that work is very important for mental health. I disagree that the work has to be in form of a paying job. With UBI I could choose to work on open source, or create art or clean up my neighborhood. Without UBI I have to sell my lifetime and work on things that don't really interested me.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#342

Post by darpa_escapee »

brandonmenc wrote: post #19
e_d_e_v wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in t…

> When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Your smartphone gives you all of these answers now.

The ratings and reviews on my smartphone are often paid for or are artificially inflated by anyone willing to pay review sites or reputation management firms.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#343

Post by adrianN »

stevenwoo wrote: post #313
nfriedly wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only realistic way for a small player to beat Amazon at selling physical goods is to charge more and convince customers that it's worth it.

At this point, if one could guarantee that what one is selling is not a counterfeit, one has a leg up on Amazon.

Yeah no, if you go into a normal brick and mortar store you can be pretty sure that what you're getting is not counterfeit. Stores are still not competitive with Amazon.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#344

Post by prostoalex »

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…

> they just move money from rich people to poor people

That seems pretty cool if you're US, but what about Chad or Tajikistan where there are no rich people of the Forbes 1,000 variety and primary employment happens to be in government services?

The closest examples we have are resource-rich USSR and Venezuela, both of which did not do well inflation-wise. The jury is still out on Norway or Saudi Arabia.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#345

Post by dredmorbius »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #299
dredmorbius wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is expertise. If a consideration in employing someone at the ticket counter is that they have well-founded opinions or suggestions to offer on films, then , by way of their expert status, you've cause to believe them. Otherwise, this collapses to a general critique of the upstream assertion: that "low-value" positions, such as box-office worker, see no labour value add, whilst simultaneously a certain set o…

The person behind the counter in a movie theater is usually a high school aged teen. Their opinions as to what constitutes a good movie are almost certainly wildly at variance with my own. That said, Yelp-type reviews aren't much better. About the best you can do is find a professional movie or restaurant reviewer whose opinions match yours and go with that.

I'd applied a specific conditional to my response. You're disregarding it.

That doesn't address the case where the condition is satisfied.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#346

Post by prostoalex »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #113
DougBTX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure that the rich usually invest in terms of making loans available, so I don't think your concern will happen. What might happen is a decrease in investment, which might lead to a decrease in economic growth. (Or, alternately, to a decrease in the rate of installation of automation, which might preserves jobs...)

> I'm not sure that the rich usually invest in terms of making loans available,

Outside of the $100+ trillion bond market the examples are indeed hard to come by.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#347

Post by PeterStuer »

There isn't enough 'high value' work to be done. We don't 'need' so many people to feed or house or even entertain the planet. We have a distribution problem of affluence, not a production problem. Even much of our current value 'work' only exist because we are externalizing the disastrous impact it has on the planet and its inhabitants. Maybe VR will offer a way out. Keeping the masses 'occupied' with virtual labor that has less of an ecological impact. Grinding lvl 863 mining in an MMO, not for fun, but for life.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#348

Post by prostoalex »

PeterisP wrote: post #141
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.

Housing is one of things that can be solved by UBI - currently in many regions housing is scarce in places "where all the jobs are" and plentiful, cheap, and even empty and abandoned in places with few jobs. This imbalance happens in 'competition' between different centers, and also in the process of urbanization. We have people leaving their granparent's houses, and leaving them empty, just to go to the big city whe…

> UBI can change that by making it feasible for underemployed people to live in those cheaper areas.

Detroit or Baltimore are pretty affordable already, and some counties will give away free land if one agrees to settle there.

That did not seem to spur much economic development.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#349

Post by moxious »

the_gastropod wrote: post #67
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…

The best explanations I've heard effectively make the assertion that a country's land is collectively owned by its citizens. Its citizens can then charge rent (via taxation) to individuals or corporations using the land. UBI is the distribution of that rent.

In what way is the land collectively owned? The business would show a deed and prove they already own the land.

Also, if I already own a house privately, I would pay the commons rent on what I already own? This seems to pervert the notion of ownership.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#350

Post by prostoalex »

redahs wrote: post #187
vkou wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Housing is expensive because public spending is currently paid for using taxes on labor and its products rather than taxes on land. Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in. This subsidizes landholders and allows them to charge higher rent whenever these services are paid for by a tax on labor rather than a tax…

> Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in.

This sounds like how the property tax works today.

At municipal level, where a property tax bill is comprised of (a) land value, (b) improvements and (c) special assessments, which are voter-approved voluntary taxes to pay for things such as new tram line or a pump for the water district.

The land value periodically gets reassessed to account for improvements, public services, and general real estate prices in the area.

How does your system differ from the property tax status quo?

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