People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report • Hacker News Board

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#121

Post by mcv » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #101

pingyong wrote: post #95

I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math: In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many r…

Doesn’t Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?

Oil revenue. It's not enough to live on, though.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#122

Post by triceratops » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

Timpy wrote: post #73

camelNotation wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations. You can move to places with cheaper land and healthcare systems with less overcrowding. You can work less lucrative jobs in those locations and find customers for your work because everyone including the local residents of those rural areas, will have new money to spend. Local regions would see an influx in cash, allowing for small busin…

A lot of people rely on friends as non-monetary resources. If I get locked out of my car right now I'll call a family member to bring me a spare key. If my car is acting up I have a friend that will look at it for me. I do a lot of tech support in return, not necessarily in exchange for other services in a direct way. It's just being part of a community. At least in my world (midwest US) I cannot imagine moving to an…

But with UBI, maybe larger networks of people could move together. For example, a single mom can't move to a new city to take a job because she relies on her parents for childcare, and her father can't leave his job. But with UBI they could all move together if it made sense for them. Her extended family could move with her and pay for expenses with UBI until they all found new jobs.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#123

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

rayvd wrote: post #71

jimbokun wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These two things are supply constrained Health care yes, housing, no. It's possible to build more housing to meet demand, or for people to move to balance supply/demand vs. prevailing wages. Or to have a smaller home or more room mates. Housing is often constrained because of real estate owners controlling the political process and eliminating new construction to keep the value of their property high. Not due to ec…

Hence GP's comment about solving at the regulatory level. Housing is artificially supply constrained.

Especially in places where cost of living is high.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#124

Post by thomasfedb » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #87

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money . Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problem…

>Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount Good luck with that. UBI is barely tolerated by the left and progressives but only under the constraint that it doesn't replace any existing social welfare programs. The minute UBI advocates start pushing it as a replacement is the minute that progressives will squash it.

There are plenty of progressives who see UBI as a method of vastly simplifying social security by doing exactly this. One payment for all.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#125

Post by d0100 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

Timpy wrote: post #73

camelNotation wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations. You can move to places with cheaper land and healthcare systems with less overcrowding. You can work less lucrative jobs in those locations and find customers for your work because everyone including the local residents of those rural areas, will have new money to spend. Local regions would see an influx in cash, allowing for small busin…

A lot of people rely on friends as non-monetary resources. If I get locked out of my car right now I'll call a family member to bring me a spare key. If my car is acting up I have a friend that will look at it for me. I do a lot of tech support in return, not necessarily in exchange for other services in a direct way. It's just being part of a community. At least in my world (midwest US) I cannot imagine moving to an…

I disliked small towns. But I know several people who love them and would move back in a heartbeat if money and quality of life wasn't the issue.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#126

Post by whatshisface » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

spsful wrote: post #119

whatshisface wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end product…

The only thing I would want to add is a minimum wage increase would cause employment to decrease holding all else equal, so an increase in supply would not be observed unless something else were at play.

Oh, of course, I was talking about the two separate cases of wage increases due to productivity increases (the guy maintaining the widget machine makes more than the guy who used to hand-stamp widgets) and wage increases due to minimum wage increases (all factories must now pay workers $15/hour for making one $8 widget every two hours).

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#127

Post by stronglikedan » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #101

pingyong wrote: post #95

I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math: In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many r…

Doesn’t Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?

Possibly a simplified answer, but the way I understand it is that the citizens own the oil rights, and get a cut.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#128

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #80

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money . Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problem…

> The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end product…

> Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap.

That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not.

A jet engine factory that moves in and hires a bunch of people reduces local unemployment, but that doesn't mean any of the local workers are in the market for jet engines.

> Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end products might actually go up.

Same problem again. If a jet engine factory opens up in a place with already-low unemployment and pays better wages, people quit their lower paying jobs to take the higher paying ones, but that doesn't mean any of the productivity increase is relevant to local housing markets. The workers still aren't in the market for jet engines, but they'll bid up the local housing stock if zoning constrains any more from being built.

The premise that a UBI would increase housing costs is also basically assuming that the money comes from nowhere. If the money was printed that would be the case -- but that's an instance of "printing money causes inflation" rather than "UBI causes inflation." If it comes from collecting taxes then the people who receive it have more money, but the people who pay the tax have less, which more or less cancels out. (Especially when, as with the people in the middle, they're actually the same people and the UBI and the tax directly cancel out.)

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#129

Post by hinkley » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I’m proposing a 20% “disincentivization”.

Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#130

Post by ctdonath » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #38

throwaway13337 wrote: post #5

The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it's more of an auction for who can afford them. With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. This problem wouldn't appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals. We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to prov…

> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money . Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problem…

Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of "poor".

The US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US's vast welfare/entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $.

What constitutes "poor" keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of "nobody should go without X" (when X didn't exist not long before, broadband internet being the latest). Affordable housing gets overrun by population growth & attracting mobile opportunity-seekers, living space naturally going to the highest bidder; property taxes being a thing, there is no recognized natural right to real estate. Health care relentlessly advances, new lifesaving care objectively costing a great deal ... vs a public sentiment of a right thereto.

We need an objective redefinition of "poor", predicated on a baseline of nutrition, housing floorspace, basic tools (stove, disposal, etc), care (minimum optimistic odds of longevity), information access, etc and an understanding that the baseline cannot be shifted - that those doing better are not poor, that accessibility thereto is largely attainable (whatever the sociopolitical system), and acknowledgement that when/if all are above that line, poverty services are officially out of a job.

As it stands, "poor" is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.