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

Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

demoshelsinki.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 182 posts

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#101

Post by jonkho »

andarleen wrote: post #87
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problems with such UBI experiments is the limited time of the experiment. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOR 2 YEARS, i'd be happier than before, and use that money to pay off loans, buy a new car, go for a vacation, etc., and keep my curent job. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck…

You will probably want to spend your time doing fun things, but the moment you need to upgrade your car, your tv or buy that sweet new tool for your hobby you will need to take a job. But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitt…

I imagine for most people, and I’m talking about the ones that would continue keep at their their existing job, if there was an extra $2000/month spare cash coming in or $4000 for a couple, it wouldn’t be a difficult stretch of imagination to say they would spend the money on the two most immediately obvious things: 1) upgrade their car 2) upgrade their shelter. If everyone is now affording a new $1000/month car payment and a $2000/month in extra rent budget, how would this ultimately not lead to people trying to outbid each other and cause inflation, especially rent? Wouldn’t rent or mortgage payments essentially rise to absorb this new quantity of money? Would this be essentially a transfer of wealth to landlords?

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#102

Post by mercer »

jonkho wrote: post #94
mercer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOREVER(!), i'd probably quit, and live off UBI, and do other stuff (fun for me, but litle of value to to wider society, and with probably zero tax money to feed the UBI system). ...or, probably move somewhere, where I can get more for that amount of money. While I do think this might be what some people will do,…

Fair enough, but I’m more concerned if UBI turned out to be a bad policy, would it be repealed? Practically speaking, the government has a poor track record of back pedaling on bad policies once they are in place.

Possibly. it's an interesting point.

I'd say no, though. My experience so far has been that my government has had no problems repealing (to various degrees) things like health care, education/student loans, or public ownership of various things. From my limited knowledge this has been similar in much of the Western world, at least.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#103

Post by ajsnigrutin »

andarleen wrote: post #87
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problems with such UBI experiments is the limited time of the experiment. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOR 2 YEARS, i'd be happier than before, and use that money to pay off loans, buy a new car, go for a vacation, etc., and keep my curent job. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck…

You will probably want to spend your time doing fun things, but the moment you need to upgrade your car, your tv or buy that sweet new tool for your hobby you will need to take a job. But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitt…

With 80% of an average finnish paycheck, you can live a really great life in one of the southern or eastern european countries, with a car and tools too.

> But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitting around doing nothing, and ubi leading to inflation.

How many "normal" people, above 40, with minimal education, currently packing meat, cleaning the streets, or picking up produce will spend that time to build a new product? You and your 'startup buddies'.. maybe. Most, not.

> Imo the best way to implement ubi is by automating as much as possible, to increase productivity > If a robot makes 10 times more shoes, then taxing that bot the equivalent of 5 full time workers is fair.

But we're already doing this.... a washing machine cost a couple of paychecks here (former yugoslavia), and now i can buy one for less than 20% of an average paycheck (not yugoslavia anymore, but i haven't moved). If we tax the automation "difference", then we have to go back to old, pre-automation prices.

How much profit does VOX make on this: https://www.mimovrste.com/pralni-stroji/vox-wm-1051-pralni-s... 221.90EUR washing machine? 22% of that is VAT, a part of the price pays for "free" transport to the home, then the seller has to earn something, import duties, transport from china(?) to slovenia, manufacturing, raw materials, testing, development + 5 year guarantee (anything happens, a technician comes to your home to fix it... just the cost of that is probably more than the whole washing machine profit). + all other cost (loss, items destroyed in transport, returns, etc. I don't see a lot of profit for the manufacturer here... and and tax would just be moved onto the consumer who'd have to pay a higher price (so they'd need higher UBI, higher tax, higher price,...).

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#104

Post by qwe098cube »

I get the appeal of UBI, more self determination, personal fulfilment etc.

Whenever I hear the arguments for UBI, the arguments for personal fulfilment are usually predominant and financial aspects are usually left out. I'm always interested in "how to pay for all this?", which proponents of UBI often classify as a conservative talking point, but that is clearly not the case.

Another point I usually bring up is "how much is necessary to achieve that? and why?" is $1000 each month enough and how should this be adapted over time.

My biggest concern with UBI and I haven't heard a convincing answer to it yet, how to prevent the baseline from being moved permanently and eating up all the additional income. If you make low income jobs less attractive, employers must pay more to keep their employees so they have to raise prices accordingly or go bust. So how to avoid that UBI is not just massive inflation in the long run.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#105

Post by ajsnigrutin »

bluntfang wrote: post #99
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had periods of years in my life where I didn't have to think about money. After a short period of faffing off, I started doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it of direct value to society (volunteering) and some of it perhaps indirectly so (teaching myself new skills, working on 'products' that could be useful). I mean, even just spending time with others who themselves had it in short supply and valued my compan…

>Do those activities generate enough money, so that government collects enough taxes from you, to cover your UBI + all the other costs (roads, schools,...)? If not, you're still a net burden on society. I challenge your assumption that someone's worth to society can be accounted for by tax revenue.

If you provide something that the society wants, they're willing to pay for it. If you make good beer, people will buy it, if you make good music, people will pay for tickets to listen to your shows, if you make great art, people will buy it,...

Tax revenue is just a percentage of the income you make.

Is your work/activity/service really worth anything, if noone is willing to pay for it?

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#106

Post by Drakar1903 »

101404 wrote: post #92

Open borders and UBI are mutually exclusive. There, I said it.

You're right. We gotta push for Global Universal Basic Income. Someone surely has "X% of people live on less than 5 dollars a day" stats available on hand. If it makes their lives better over there, they have less incentive to uproot their life to go over here.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#107

Post by kwhitefoot »

syockit wrote: post #74
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, if you have some essential resource where supply is constrained then you might expect inflation. On the other hand goods that are readily available like food or oil shouldn't see any significant difference.

I can't argue for oil, but for food, unless everyone agrees to eat only processed food or cook by themselves, it's still going to see some inflation.

> eat only processed food or cook by themselves,

Surely that is what the vast majority of people already do?

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#108

Post by peteretep »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #67

Meta: countless fiscal policy changes are made in weeks. But for UBI, decades of experiments and data-driven validation seem to be required. Why is it acceptable that UBI requires such huge burden of proof? Don't tell me that it's more radical than other reforms: when used as a replacement for welfare and other subsidies at comparable cost, it is pretty mild.

> But for UBI, decades of experiments and data-driven validation seem to be required.

Because it costs so much, and is so radically different.

> when used as a replacement for welfare and other subsidies at comparable cost, it is pretty mild

Buzzocks. UK over 18 population is ~52m. Give them each £1,000 a month, and you get a cost of £624,000,000,000, which is 3 times what the UK currently spends on "welfare"[0], and is about 3/4 of the overall UK budget. And you're cutting the payments of a sizeable number of current welfare receipients.

Sure you can find more recent figures, or play around with how much you claim you're going to give, but let's not entertain the fantasy that this is a "mild comparative cost".

[0] https://fullfact.org/economy/welfare-budget/

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#109

Post by qwe098cube »

phaemon wrote: post #40
moralsupply wrote: post #34

Where's the money for the UBI experiment coming from? There's no free lunch, folks...

Where do you think money comes from? Seriously, how do you think it's created?

money is debt.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#110

Post by ajsnigrutin »

mercer wrote: post #102
jonkho wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but I’m more concerned if UBI turned out to be a bad policy, would it be repealed? Practically speaking, the government has a poor track record of back pedaling on bad policies once they are in place.

Possibly. it's an interesting point. I'd say no, though. My experience so far has been that my government has had no problems repealing (to various degrees) things like health care, education/student loans, or public ownership of various things. From my limited knowledge this has been similar in much of the Western world, at least.

Better question is, after they took away/shrunk down the service, did they lower the taxes because of that cost saving?

In slovenia, we still have the "financial crisis" (2008) 22% VAT, which we "temporary" increased back then (from 20%).

Post reply on HN