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Basic Income Research Proposal

basicincome.ycr.org

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Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#241

Post by Romanulus »

mfoy_ wrote: post #54
laser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government guarantees a basic income, you're really only guaranteed (at best) until the next election cycle. Just recently, seven years after its passing, the ACA was nearly reverted, which would have kicked millions of people off government-subsidized health insurance plans.

That's why I have approximately 0 faith in the pension plan my government(s) have in place. I'll save for my own retirement so I'm not high and dry when they mismanage the funds or change policies or whatever.

Which is also _another_ reason UBI is a terrible idea that is bound to fail.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#242

Post by NickLamp »

chimeracoder wrote: post #175
NickLamp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. And I don't disagree with those last two points.

> I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. Huh? No, the point isn't what the richest people would think - they have an incentive to oppose either welfare or cash handouts. The point is that currently, welfare only targets the people with the lowest voting power, b…

I don't think I said richest...

Also I don't think it's hard to see how this thought would come about (not saying I'm advocating it). But there are plenty of ideas that would help society in general (lower college tuition) that many Americans are against whether rationally or irrationally.

If you fail to see how the American public would have a negative reaction to some kind of redistribution of wealth I think you should think about the average American's reaction to the idea of a socialist politician.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#243

Post by bduerst »

maxerickson wrote: post #239
bduerst wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you assume UBI is based on an income tax, then that's not universal basic income, that's negative income tax. Even so, if you hypothetically see a decrease in income for 3% of the population and an increase in income for 97%, you still have inflation. 100% of the population purchases housing, which is income-elastic, meaning housing prices will increase because 97% of the population's income will increase.

I'm not assuming it would be distributed through the tax system, I'm insisting that it is either funded by taxation or inflation. Maybe it would be funded by magic fairies, who knows. I guess funding it with inflation would be close enough to that. The point I'm making is that the "universal" or "unconditional" just means that everyone gets it. It doesn't mean that everyone is better off after it is put in place, bec…

And the point of this thread is that if everyone is to get UBI, economic principles like inflation need to be addressed first.

This is why traditional welfare programs tend to limit the type of spending - i.e. medicaid or food stamps.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#244

Post by godelski »

hueving wrote: post #192
godelski wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate how much the average person prepares for the future. Look at the number of people who have emergency funds. 62% of Americans have So with this time frame I believe initial ideas of "I'm going to put this to savings" will quickly disappear. Five years is a pretty long time, especially when considering at how bad humans are at preparing for the future. What I think will be interesting is to see…

That's still not the same thing. Failing to save is partially because people think jobs are stable. That's unrelated to knowing you will need to get a job in 5 years after your extended basic income vacation.

Saving $1k has nothing to do with your job being stable or not. That's a safety net for life. It is the basic emergency fund. Cars break down, people get sick, life happens. So to extend your premise, "Failing to save is partially because people think expenses are stable." Which is clearly poor planning. We know humans are bad about estimating risk. I'm not sure why this is such a controversial idea.

What I'm saying is that if even those above the 50% income level are bad about saving a basic emergency fund, I don't expect those receiving this kind of grant to be any better at preparing emergencies. I do think they will be able to handle them better, but I do not expect them to plan better.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#245

Post by billmalarky »

bduerst wrote: post #229
billmalarky wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a misunderstanding of how both macro inflation occurs (money supply growing faster than true value of wealth it abstracts), and how price is set (supply and demand). UBI does not "create" new money and just give it to everyone (which would cause inflation). It's a wealth redistribution. That is, many people will see their income go down under UBI (probably most HN readers for example). The money supply will r…

>UBI does not "create" new money and just give it to everyone (which would cause inflation). It's a wealth redistribution. UBI is Universal Basic Income , meaning that income is increased for everyone universally. Nobody is claiming that money is created out of thin air. What you're thinking about is a negative income tax or some other disproportionately weighted welfare program.

Not true see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15306562

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#246

Post by billmalarky »

greedo wrote: post #230
billmalarky wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a misunderstanding of how both macro inflation occurs (money supply growing faster than true value of wealth it abstracts), and how price is set (supply and demand). UBI does not "create" new money and just give it to everyone (which would cause inflation). It's a wealth redistribution. That is, many people will see their income go down under UBI (probably most HN readers for example). The money supply will r…

The idea of UBI at $1K per month shows that UBI advocates don't know how to do math. The US tax revenues (combined Fed and State) are roughly $6 Trillion. Giving 150 million people $12K per year is $1.8 Trillion. Unless you raise taxes by 1/3, you're going to cause inflation.

This is a strawman attack. Everyone knows UBI will require an increase in taxes that's fundamentally how the wealth redistribution will work.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#247

Post by vorotato »

eanzenberg wrote: post #167
jacalata wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't assume they'll take a 5 year vacation at all. It's the difference between deciding to become an artist because you know you'll never worry about money, and deciding to study accounting so you can eventually have an accounting job you don't care about that will support your evening art practice.

Most will take a 5 year vacation.

They said without any research backing their statement whatsoever...

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#248

Post by roceasta »

anovikov wrote: post #49
roceasta wrote: post #35

I like the idea of basic income but I confess that my ideal of a basic income recipient is someone akin to the 19th-century amateur scientist subsisting on a private income whilst making original contributions to human knowledge, and, as a side effect, to society. Whereas the reality of people receiving free money might be somewhat different. There's the drip, drip welfare payments of just enough money to survive wit…

It means putting 99% of recipients, or more, into illustion which will result in nothing but a severe depression in a few years. Suddenly being able to contribute to the world in a 'larger' way, they will quickly realize that they can't - just as many startup founders. Maybe, need to meet the bills by mind-numbing work is really a blessing for most people - i had stable income almost without work for years and i got…

Having to work to survive keeps people engaged with reality and I think this may explain why people in the past and in developing countries today seem to be at least as happy and mentally resilient as modern westerners, maybe more so. In spite of hardship, disease and early death.

Whereas many of us spend our limited freedom chasing pleasurable (and unpleasurable) illusions that lead only to disorder and despair. That said, there are plenty of sane, wealthy people in the West who do important work for the sake of it, because they wish to. How do more of us become like them?

Also, despite apparently comfortable conditions, there are plenty of survival problems which remain. For example, meteor strikes, super-volcanoes, cancers, toxic ideologies/religions. Plus an unlimited number of as yet unidentified problems.

These problems are more abstract than working for a pay packet to buy food but they are nonetheless real. And they are not being sufficiently addressed! Universal Basic Income could turn out to be an important breakthrough in this regard, I think, if we also address the question I posed at the end of paragraph 2 above.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#249

Post by badestrand »

canjobear wrote: post #82

A huge part of what makes basic income appealing is that it is unconditional and guaranteed. Otherwise it seems like it would create unsafe levels of government control. For many people, BI would end up being a large portion of their income, such that losing it would be catastrophic. Now those people would become beholden to any government demand made on penalty of revoking BI. If a government enacts unconditional BI…

You could e.g. require a national poll for any change to the BI. Or it would not be introduced nationwide but per state or even communal so individuals have more control over what happens.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#250

Post by rconti »

jgalt212 wrote: post #75

It blows my mind that the allegedly smart SV elite think Guaranteed Basic Income will solve more problems than it creates. But maybe there much smarter than I, and they secretly want to create these problems so they can capitalize on them. Or maybe, they want to sap the proletariat of their drive so that the elite can remain the elite forever.

Or maybe they want to do a study to figure out how it all pans out, rather than making wild claims with nothing to back them up.
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