Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#211

Post by pdonis » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #192

slg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you currently only working just to subsist? Because most people on HN work much harder than they need to and make much more than they need to just to subsist.

You currently don't have the option to not work. Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely o…

> Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely on very different things.

Where does this "trust fund" come from? It doesn't just magically appear.

What you are actually saying is: you don't want to have to exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future in your own life, so instead, you want the government to forcibly take resources from other people (like me) who do exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future, and use those resources to provide you a "trust fund" to take care of you. If I can't avoid having my resources stolen from me, my only other option is to stop producing any excess over my own minimum needs. Which means the "trust fund" you are counting on is no longer there, because now nobody has any incentive to exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future--because you punished all the people who did that by taking their resources away.

This is (a) incompatible with having a free country, and (b) a very, very bad idea in general, since society cannot survive if people do not have any incentive to exercise prudence and common sense and planning for the future.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#212

Post by xwdv » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

aintnoprophet wrote: post #189

xwdv wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is anecdotal but I haven’t seen guys hanging off garbage trucks in a long time. Around here it’s just one guy with a hydraulic arm on the truck that picks up the cans and dumps out garbage, and he does it very very efficiently. Pretty soon it should be possible to even replace the driver with a self driving truck that goes around pre determined paths in the neighborhood.

That may be true in populated areas. But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. I see people hanging off garbage trucks all the time in the midwestern low pop and rural areas.

Robot trucks are perfect for those areas; cheaper, faster, better.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#213

Post by z0r » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #199

aintnoprophet wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in populated areas. But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. I see people hanging off garbage trucks all the time in the midwestern low pop and rural areas.

> But, what about areas that lag behind? Rural america that is too poor to afford robot trucks. The robot trucks are cheaper than the humans that operate the non-robot trucks, so your argument doesn't make much sense here.

Need some evidence for that.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#214

Post by luckylion » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #166

zelly wrote: post #157

UBI only makes sense in the science fiction world that Andrew Yang and other non-technical journalists think is somehow imminent. We still need people to make things. There are still guys hanging off the side of garbage trucks every day and people still pick fruits by hand. If no one does these things, you will starve and die. We cannot survive forever on financial engineering by bureaucrats and importing all our nec…

This is anecdotal but I haven’t seen guys hanging off garbage trucks in a long time. Around here it’s just one guy with a hydraulic arm on the truck that picks up the cans and dumps out garbage, and he does it very very efficiently. Pretty soon it should be possible to even replace the driver with a self driving truck that goes around pre determined paths in the neighborhood.

It's the same here, but not where I lived a few years ago. It's just not practical in the densely populated inner city. Garbage containers can't be lined up at the street, are stored in back yards etc, and you still need people to pull them to the street and push them back.

Where I live now, that job now is done by the home owners or by staff of the apartment buildings. The job didn't go away, it's just no longer done by the garbage collectors.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#215

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #177

WalterBright wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government provided food, shelter, and video games, I expect quite a few people would see no purpose in working. Also the surfers and backpackers.

Good for them. The point of work is to not have to anymore so you can follow your passions. We've invented machines that can do basically everything it takes to support human life. Seems like there should be a lot more people following passions now.

> The point of work is to not have to anymore so you can follow your passions.

So Bob needs to work so Fred can follow his passion for surfing and video games?

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#216

Post by uoaei » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #162

Press2forEN wrote: post #110

Years ago, proponents of UBI claimed that it was a replacement for all other forms of social welfare. Now it appears by most proposals to be yet another means-tested add-on. What happened?

People studied the UBI idea and recognized the costs of giving money to everyone are so enormous that it's unworkable. That's there the means testing has come in to try to limit that. Something more like a "guaranteed minimum income" where you can't have less money than what is required to have a good standard of living is a cheaper and more effective idea that accomplishes the same goals of ending poverty.

If the rhetoric is solely around "government spending" then the perspective will always be that UBI is "too expensive".

But the money doesn't just vanish when it enters people's bank accounts. All of a sudden, banks have a lot more collateral against which to borrow and invest, by virtue of the fact that the bank accounts which store the UBI have money in them. People spend that money and it enters and moves through the economy. The government taxes it back out via sales taxes, income taxes, capital gains taxes, etc.

I think, in general, it's worth having an economy that keeps moving. If you let too few people have too much proportion of available wealth, the consumers won't have any to work with and your economy will be entirely dependent on luxury goods for a tiny proportion of the population.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#217

Post by smalltalks » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

Technically speaking , many European countries already have "Basic Income". ( France , Sweden , Norway...)

They are reserved for individuals "Not Active" though ( Unemployed and not looking for a Job ) over a certain age.

Those "BI" massively lower poverty , which usually massively reduce crime-rate , drugs related usage etc...

With 700€/Month you aren't gonna far anyway, you have enaugh for food and rent , and that's it...

For America it's different, America cannot technically afford "BI" because the entirety of the US economy has been built on having 20% of the population living under the poverty line in order for good & services to be cheap and consumed in mass.

Having "UBI" in US would create a skyrocket inflation because worker who are paid 10$/Hour would drop their work and stay at home and do something that is more profitable for them.

Hence , the American culture revolve almost entirely around production of good and services for happiness.

In France few workers drop off the "Industrial" economy , they buy a Farm and live of "BI" and their own agriculture and go back to the city to buy commodities ( Gas , Cosmetic etc... ), it's common in Italy and Spain as well IIRC.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#218

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

gist wrote: post #116

dang wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's Yang's answer about that? If he had a FAQ that would certainly be on it.

As a landlord [1] I can answer that question. Btw, I have not found any UBI proponent addressing it either (they tend to avoid that with economic speak if at all) [2] Rent will go up. All you have to do is look what happens in 'hot' markets (SFO/NYC/Bay Area) where there are so many dollars floating around. [1] Both commercial and residential but not in a hot market a 'normal' market. [2] Including Yang

[deleted]

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#219

Post by luckylion » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #211

luckylion wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You currently don't have the option to not work. Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely o…

> Most people work more than they need to because they realize that the future is uncertain and having savings will be beneficial if there's trouble at some point in the future. Give the same people a trust fund that takes care of them and that they trust to last for their life time, and most will stop working as hard. They may still work, but much less and most likely on very different things. Where does this "trust…

> Where does this "trust fund" come from? It doesn't just magically appear.

I agree completely. People work more than they currently need to because they don't have a trust fund. I'm not arguing that we should give everybody their personal trust fund, I'm explaining why people work and try to save up money even though they don't need those savings in the next 10 minutes.

Re: Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income

#220

Post by jdhn » Thu, May 21, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

mberning wrote: post #100

I seriously don’t know why people believe this will work and unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe. As far as I have read most experiments have had mixed results, and we don’t really know what the full impact will be if implemented in a nation of 350MM people. My suspicion is in a couple years people will notice that housing, food, and transportation has gone up commensurate with their “basic income…

>I seriously don’t know why people believe this will work and unlock the latent poet or artist within the average joe.

I completely agree. I feel that this is a narrative that's parotted by academics who believe that because they may have these latent abilities, everybody has this. I haven't seen a surge in poetry or startups in the Rust Belt, where lots of people are on quasi-UBI (disability payments).

>Then we will find ourselves in a vicious battle to justify raising or lowering it every couple years.

There's also the matter of having larger payments to people in certain areas in the first place. For example, I can see someone saying that there's a "flat" UBI for everyone, but that there's also a COLA payment on top of that for people in HCOL areas.