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

#311

Post by blackrock » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

I have difficulty believing that UBI will ever work, unless you get the basic problems solved first.

Namely, housing.

The problem actually boils down to democracy itself, where people vote for laws that favors themselves, and excludes outsiders, specifically the NIMBY crowd. These are the people that vote in housing regulations, environmental review injunctions to prevent construction, etc.

Regardless of whether UBI is given freely like welfare, these NIMBYs will continue to exist, and they will act as a corruption on society. They got theirs already, and they will prevent others from getting it too.

For all other things, technology should be able to help make things plentiful. Food can come from mechanized and automated mass farming. Medicine can come from mechanized and automated mass production. Clothing, cars, consumer goods, well, I guess there are factories in China that can mass produce that.

But either way, unless you solve the core problems first, then UBI is dead in the water.

Otherwise, with the low interest rates, and massive corporate stock buybacks, then this will just continue to inflate the stock market, and property bubble, and other asset prices.

Then, what is the end result? The rents will continue to rise, and it will just eat away at your UBI. Now, we’re back at square one.

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

#312

Post by xyzzyz » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #301

zozbot234 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is indirectly means-tested; if you make too much money, you end up giving back as much or more in taxes and/or partial UBI clawbacks than what you would get via UBI. This actually ends up working better and being cheaper than most alternatives (including the "guaranteed minimum"), because it's comparatively easy to structure a comprehensive tax system so that it minimizes distortions on people's behavior, and har…

It's actually a big bureaucratic problem to give people several thousand dollars and then demand most of it back later. Most people don't notice income taxes since it comes out of their paycheque. It would genuinely be tough problem to educate people to not spend their basic income, or to design a system where it's clawed back through paycheques.

> It would genuinely be tough problem to educate people to not spend their basic income, or to design a system where it's clawed back through paycheques.

We can use the system that we already have, that is, income tax. It has worked fine for quite a while.

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

#313

Post by uoaei » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #232

uoaei wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A higher velocity of capital ~= larger economy, which is good. However, a higher velocity of capital without commensurate economic value being created ~= massive inflation. This is a potential risk for UBI, and one that small-scale studies do not cover. Ideally, the additional economic value would be greater than the face value of the capital transferred every year, but there is no guarantee that is correct (nor is t…

Yes, taking things ad absurdum in either direction will lead to catastrophe.

The perspective of MMT is that government can and should tax out money at a rate that keeps the economy from inflating beyond the scope of our control, and inject it at a rate that sustains the velocity of capital. Making this perspective the dominant one in discourse, however, would require a lot more public trust in government before people got comfortable with the idea of governments taxing us for our benefit.

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

#314

Post by zozbot234 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #301

zozbot234 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is indirectly means-tested; if you make too much money, you end up giving back as much or more in taxes and/or partial UBI clawbacks than what you would get via UBI. This actually ends up working better and being cheaper than most alternatives (including the "guaranteed minimum"), because it's comparatively easy to structure a comprehensive tax system so that it minimizes distortions on people's behavior, and har…

It's actually a big bureaucratic problem to give people several thousand dollars and then demand most of it back later. Most people don't notice income taxes since it comes out of their paycheque. It would genuinely be tough problem to educate people to not spend their basic income, or to design a system where it's clawed back through paycheques.

> or to design a system where it's clawed back through paycheques.

It would be no different than e.g. the existing payroll tax, or income tax withholding. You'd just notice it as a reduction in your paycheck. And if your income is high enough, the UBI can simply be a tax credit.

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

#315

Post by snovv_crash » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #267

eanzenberg wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the tax be regressive?

Also, how can it be funded by vat anyways? We’re talking about trillions per year to fund. Are you taxing cars 1000%? It doesn’t add up.

I think you're overestimating how much would be paid out. Taxes can go up on the employed by roughly what they receive in UBI, unemployed get UBI instead of unemployment benefits. It all balances out.

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

#316

Post by badwolf » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:45 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.

Volvo's been working on building self-driving garbage trucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJSHXr8i-ZU

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

#317

Post by moduspol » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #222

Tiktaalik wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

UBI is indirectly means-tested; if you make too much money, you end up giving back as much or more in taxes and/or partial UBI clawbacks than what you would get via UBI. This actually ends up working better and being cheaper than most alternatives (including the "guaranteed minimum"), because it's comparatively easy to structure a comprehensive tax system so that it minimizes distortions on people's behavior, and har…

The idea of replacing existing social programs with cash handouts reminds me of Bitcoin's earlier days. Proponents were thinking of what it would be like if they were poor, and not what life is like for poor people.

It is not the case that you can reasonably just give large groups of people with histories of poor financial literacy cash as a replacement for food, shelter, or other necessities. Many people will make bad choices if just given money. That's why many of these programs were built this way: to ensure people can't spend all their cash and be unable to afford baby formula or rent.

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

#318

Post by slg » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #278

slg wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a binary option between work and not work. Most people on HN make much more money than they need to subsist. If the goal is to only subsist, there is an option to reduce hours worked in exchange for reduced pay. The exact form that could take varies as not everyone works at a company that would support either a shorter workday or workweek. However other options exists that don't rely on your employer such as…

> If the goal is to only subsist, there is an option to reduce hours worked in exchange for reduced pay. No. You need to factor in the future. The whole passive income/early retirement crowd is a great example of it. They want to create regular income (from projects/businesses or investments) to allow them a simple life for all of their future years, while they go do whatever they please. Few people do that, because…

Maybe I didn't explain my point well enough since you are just talking past it. People generally don't stop once they get to a level that would guarantee them subsistence living for the rest of their life. Most of us could buy a combination of annuities and long term care insurance that could provide for ourselves for the rest of our lives well before we actually retire. Very few people actually pursue this path and most of us continue to work until a point that would provide a higher standard of living in retirement.

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

#319

Post by alexbanks » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

grayfaced wrote: post #293

nogabebop23 wrote: post #256

>> Yang says Humanity Forward plans to immediately distribute Dorsey’s contribution in the form of small cash grants of $250 to nearly 20,000 people who’ve lost their jobs or taken an economic hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic So money based on certain non-universal conditions? Isn't this one of the root problems? People cannot accept a truly universal system - you've already got too much; that guy lives in th…

Even universal has winners and losers. How do you deal with different cost of livings between Bay Area and Mississippi? If the UBI is not adjusted and covers living expenses in cheap areas but not expensive areas, then people might decide to live cheaply without a job. That risks creating slums. If it's adjusted to locality, then areas will grow and dwindle based on accuracy of those adjustment tables. Which would tu…

I haven't spent a ton of time thinking about UBI. Can you explain how our current society doesn't already have slums? Or how UB would increase them?

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

#320

Post by kerkeslager » Thu, May 21, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #295

kerkeslager wrote: post #257

While I think UBI is one of the better solutions to the poverty problem in the US, I think almost any solution to poverty will fall prey to inflation if we don't address income inequality. One way to do this is pay ratio caps at companies. It's pretty hard to argue against this: if you really believe that wealth trickles down, then you should have no problem trusting but verifying that.

I don't see the connection between inflation and inequality. Inflation is relative currency growth vs true economy size and productivity. Pay ratio caps don't seem that productive in several ways. For one humans are tricky in that they don't just lie down and accept the laws you want that go against what they want and instead undermine and loophole it in ingenius ways. Trivially that would encourage "nesting doll tie…

> I don't see the connection between inflation and inequality. Inflation is relative currency growth vs true economy size and productivity.

If you implement UBI, you're essentially also implementing a minimum wage, since companies will have to pay significantly more than UBI. Rather than accept a cut in their own pay to pay workers more, executives will raise the price of goods and services. This effect, across the economy causes inflation. So if you don't find a way to prevent executives raising their own pay to maintain inequality, you get inflation any time you give money to the poor.

Economic conservatives tend to overstate this problem, in my opinion--there's nothing preventing you from just raising the UBI proportional to inflation. But historically, minimum wage hasn't tracked inflation, and I worry that UBI would suffer the same problem.

> For one humans are tricky in that they don't just lie down and accept the laws you want that go against what they want and instead undermine and loophole it in ingenius ways. Trivially that would encourage "nesting doll tiered" subsidary companies and contractors to bypass the limits.

This problem exists in any solution, including all the ones that already exist. It should be addressed, but I don't think that's a reasonable criticism of any solution if it applies to all of them.

> Second the high end of income wouldn't even be affected as they make their money largely from investments not salary or wages. Even if they got the seed for investments from their high salaries - like every retired athlete who managed to stay rich and even get richer after endorsements dried up.

Yes, we'd have to find a way to treat investment income as equivalent to pay in order for this to work.