Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI • Hacker News Board

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#151

Post by dwiel » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

JorgeGT wrote: post #135

grecy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if automation isn't coming for people's job, isn't it time we moved away from this idea that every single person has to work for 40 hours a week for 50 years of their life just to survive? What about spending time with family, or learning a new language or just enjoying one's time? When do we reach that magical future where we actually have leisure time and can enjoy the fact we're more advanced than we were a h…

Answer is: never. The average person in the West has already surpassed the comfort and standard of living of the average monarch a couple centuries ago, but instead of settling we want more: traveling, more and more advanced tech, vast amount of entertainment, etc. Consider the multi-billion dollar media productions (games, TV series, movies, music, books, etc.) that you can access at the command of your voice vs. th…

I disagree. Try to actually settle down (without winning the startup/rich parents/literal lottery first) and see how it goes. If you haven't raised a nice safety fund and you get sick, you are screwed. If you dont want to live in the middle of nowhere, land owners are going to want a huge chunk of money for that priviledge. Also good luck finding a part time job that pays much better than minimum wage. I know a lot of people who try to do this and there are definitely ways it can happen, but our society is definitely structured to make it difficult.

Tell the person working two jobs, paying more than half of their income to rent/mortgage and living paycheck to paycheck that they should just relax and settle down ...

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#152

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

maehwasu wrote: post #90

dragonwriter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payroll tax, including the nominally “employer” portion, is really a tax on worker pay (the employer portion just makes the rate seem lower; for an honest accounting, it would be counted in both employee pay and employee taxes) as it comes out of what the employer is willing to pay for the work.

It effectively raises the price the company has to pay and thus lowers profits.

> It effectively raises the price the company has to pay and thus lowers profits.

Just like any other tax on employee income does, yes; unlike taxes on company profits, and like other taxes on employee income, it's effect on the company can be minimized by finding (or developing) and adopting less labor-cost intensive business methods even if they are higher (before tax) total cost.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#153

Post by rpedela » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #148

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI just doesn't solve that Doesn't it though? You create a floor, so that anyone with a miserable job can say "screw you" and quit and go start their own business without having to worry about how they're going to make rent before the new business starts making money, and you get a lot more competition. More smaller companies instead of fewer bigger companies. And the big companies would have to pay more to get so…

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a…

There are plenty of places in the US with rents in the $100s and you could start a business whether that business is a hotdog stand or a software business.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#154

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

kyledrake wrote: post #50

"Altman, who favors UBI, said in exchange for a floor, he’d like to see no ceiling on earnings, as some, like presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have suggested. And like Friedman, Altman suggested tying the amount of the basic income to a fixed percentage of GDP. “Right now, because people are rightly angry that there's no floor, and that most people have no real chance to be super successful, we sort…

how exactly is a ubi not solving rampant poverty? Maybe someone's implementation is flawed but to make an extraordinary claim like UBI can't solve poverty will require extraordinary proof.

Likewise, how is ubi regressive? What would a progressive solution to poverty be?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#155

Post by atq2119 » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

gnarbarian wrote: post #14

realtalk_sp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the rationale for a flat tax over progressive? I believe that an ideal tax system should properly reflect that the value of a marginal dollar is inversely correlated with income/wealth in a nonlinear fashion. But I'm open to having my mind changed.

One point is that "fairness" is highly subjective. One can perform many contortions to justify their own definition of what they perceive as "fair". Personally I like a flat tax because it drastically simplifies the tax system and removes the loop holes that wealthy people who can afford accountants use to achieve the lower effective tax rate stated in the root comment. It also deletes the tax prep Industry and a sig…

The loopholes and complexity you mention are completely orthogonal to the tax progression, though.

The tax progression is pretty much the simplest part of any tax code anywhere in the world already, so targeting that as the thing to simplify is either stupid or hypocritical.

The loopholes and complexity lies in the fact that, in order to account for people who are self-employed, you typically want to allow subtracting certain kinds of expenses from people's incomes for the purpose of tax computations. That's where the mess starts because then people start playing games with how those expenses are classified and structured, and wealthier people can afford to employ expert players of those games, making the whole game unfair from the very beginning. That in itself should be justification for a progressive tax code.

It'd be awesome if we could remove those subtractions from the tax code, because that would be the way to really simplify things. Unfortunately, it's also a really bad idea because it would severely punish low-margin activities, and from a societal point of view, we actually want most economic activity to be low-margin (because that provides the highest value to the end-user/consumer).

So we're stuck in a world where we'd like to simplify the tax code, but doing so requires diving deep into the nitty-gritty details of how it all works. And for people who have that knowledge, it's more profitable to play the game by selling their knowledge to the aforementioned rich people so most of them end up doing that instead of taking up the thankless political work of actually simplifying things. At least, that's how the incentives are playing out today.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#156

Post by anovikov » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

jononor wrote: post #150

anovikov wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a…

Internet makes possible lots of businesses where one does not need to be based in a particular location to be successful.

But it is already a fantasy for >99% of those trying. Competition is too tough and most people are absolutely unprepared and can't be prepared - it means competition with mega corporation and the insane amounts of data and brains they have to optimize themselves. Will be even more of a fantasy if new tens of millions will join.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#157

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #148

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI just doesn't solve that Doesn't it though? You create a floor, so that anyone with a miserable job can say "screw you" and quit and go start their own business without having to worry about how they're going to make rent before the new business starts making money, and you get a lot more competition. More smaller companies instead of fewer bigger companies. And the big companies would have to pay more to get so…

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a…

How are you accounting for the increased economic velocity of a sustained cash injection across the entire country?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#158

Post by analognoise » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #23

keiferski wrote: post #19

I haven’t read all of the literature on basic income, but my (admittedly semi-educated) impression is that one potential downside is that it fosters dependence on the state and is thus not anti-fragile. I’m just thinking out loud here, but: what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs. For example, a small greenhouse device that can grow enough f…

> what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs What if, instead of yammering about UBI, Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, went out and started a company to make such technologies? The way to innovate is to innovate, not to try to milk money out of the government. The whole discussion about UBI misses this basic point: to make it easier for people to…

"while rigging building codes so the only method of construction that's feasible is two by fours and drywall, instead of letting innovators and entrepreneurs figure out cheaper and more durable methods of construction for homes."

It turns out that 2x4 construction on a slab is one of the cheapest and most durable methods of construction around. Building codes are built from lives lost, and are not trivial to replace or improve on (similar to lessons learned in aircraft design).

Building codes are purchased in lives. It would of course be cheaper to build favelas.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#159

Post by sethammons » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

I like the idea of freeing people to be able to quit and get a new job any time, where quitting today means a real threat of losing one's home, transportation, or ability to eat (never mind fueling the cycle of debt that keeps so many down). I think it would be a net benefit if people could tell oppressive employers to fuck off without fear.

However, a welfare state is a real thing to be worried about. My sister works up in Alaska. Tribal members up there have exactly what UBI promises: a baseline check every month. This has not stirred people to innovation. It has led to a gluttony of drug and alcohol addition and a forgetting of the ways to live off the land. There are a few elders who would like to teach the young how to do so, but they are not interested. Nobody wants to do better and there is high resentment towards the federal government.

I've seen it in other places. When you are outside the balance of exchange with someone (or some organization), resentment breeds. I can see UBI causing more resentment on both sides, the receivers and the payers.

Economically, we would have to produce enough "extra" that a full, regular distribution of that wealth could continue to work with producers continuing to produce, and a growing collection of people who would lose all interest in contributing. We would have to have a way to deal with a dramatic rise in apathetic people. We would have to have a way to deal with producers just leaving the country.

In The Expanse, Earth has a UBI like thing. The whole planet. You get subsistence living, and if you want to be a producer, you start by doing menial work for a period of time to prove you are willing to work hard. It is also sci-fi for a reason :).

Again, I would love to free people from tyrannical employers and the fear and stress of not knowing what next month brings due to finances (I've lived that the majority of my life). I don't see how UBI can work.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#160

Post by dwiel » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

douglaswlance wrote: post #117

grecy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if automation isn't coming for people's job, isn't it time we moved away from this idea that every single person has to work for 40 hours a week for 50 years of their life just to survive? What about spending time with family, or learning a new language or just enjoying one's time? When do we reach that magical future where we actually have leisure time and can enjoy the fact we're more advanced than we were a h…

You can have that. Acquire more assets.

yeah, and if you are lucky, you'll only have to work 40 hours a week for 50 years to acquire them.