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

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

yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 746 posts

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

#651

Post by Frondo »

WalterBright wrote: post #640
Frondo wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you answer the question directly? This glib response does nothing except, I guess, reveal your dislike of surfers (?).

If you follow my suggestion, you'll know the answer. If you don't like surfers, think video gamers, artists, chillin' with the boys (as another poster mentioned), hanging out at the mall, going fishing, hanging out in front of the drugstore, watching TV, etc. Now, I might make an exception if they were into drag racing :-)

I think you either haven't thought about this hard enough or you're embarrassed at being asked to spell it out. Again avoiding any kind of actual answer isn't nearly as clever as you seem to think.

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

#652

Post by Frondo »

WalterBright wrote: post #639
Frondo wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Plenty of people will voluntarily give food to a hungry person." Not enough, with the amount of hunger that's present in the richest country in the world.

I encourage you to give generously to your local food bank. You'll be doing the right thing.

Charity has never adequately addressed social problems in America.

signed, a surfer

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

#653

Post by zhoujianfu »

timwaagh wrote: post #503
zhoujianfu wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why they don’t do this at $1K/mo for life for 30 people (and then study them qualitatively) instead of $250 one-time for 20,000. What is a one-time payment of $250 going to tell us about a UBI?

because it would cost 18 million.

(I was assuming you could get a 7% annual return on the $5M, which is $350K, or about $1K/mo times 30.)

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

#654

Post by zhoujianfu »

mason55 wrote: post #472
zhoujianfu wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why they don’t do this at $1K/mo for life for 30 people (and then study them qualitatively) instead of $250 one-time for 20,000. What is a one-time payment of $250 going to tell us about a UBI?

The biggest problem with UBI is political. Even if you manage to implement it you have no guarantee that the next administration will continue it. If you can't guarantee that your $1k/mo will really be for life then you can't take the risks on things like starting a small business because you might have to go back to work one day and if you have a large employment gap that's going to be tough.

In this case you would set up a trust and fund it with the $5M so legally the only thing that could happen with the money would be $1K/mo to the recipients for life. I just meant in terms of what to do with this $5M that might be more useful for studying UBI.

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

#655

Post by [deleted] »

klmadfejno wrote: post #283
Reedx wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't replace people making things, though. You'd still want to work and create value to improve your situation. It'd just function as a floor and provide some stability. Bearing in mind the increasing rate of job destruction and creation. We're no longer in a world where you can rely on being able to have the same profession your whole life. Having that floor would be useful to smooth those transitions out, and…

> It doesn't replace people making things, though. You'd still want to work and provide value to improve your situation. Doing shitty jobs usually doesn't improve one's situation though. If you earn minimum wage you're going to be better off just trying to gain a marketable skill and living off your income. You say 'easier for people to take risks'. Well, yeah. So who's gonna be dumb enough to keep scrubbing grime of…

[deleted]

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

#656

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #252
jedberg wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But probably less "meaningful" work, in however society defines meaningful. Typically in these experiments the people start small businesses. When the risk of failure has a floor it makes you more likely to take on the risk. > At some point, if enough income is withheld at that level, what's the point? Most UBI proposals are VAT taxes. The more you consume the more you pay. So if you're a wealthy person, you will s…

Why would the tax be regressive?

Because the combination of UBI + VAT will be progressive for the majority of US citizens.

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

#657

Post by fastball »

luckylion wrote: post #647
fastball wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Not really though. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/58-americans-less-1-000-09000...

That really says very little. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you're unable to save for the future, because all of your income goes out to pay for rent, food etc. It's a different story if those 58% contain plenty of SV SWEs who make half a million a year and still only have $1000 in savings. My intuition tells me that there are very few of them in the 58%.

It's not really supposed to say very much. It's just a data point that directly contradicts your assertion.

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

#658

Post by sytelus »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #631
sytelus wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at $1500/mo, this will cost at least $150B/mo. That’s almost additional $2T/yr. This is still not taking in to account free medical care and education. How do you think govt will pay for this? I think UBI is possible sometime in future when US GDP grows by another 50% and if somehow not all gains gets concentrated to top 1000 richest people which ironically UBI proponents like Dorsey, Altman etc are part of.

Remember that you get the money back. You're sitting there in the middle saying, $150B/mo? I don't want to have to pay that in taxes. I'd have to pay like $1500/mo more in taxes! But then you'd receive $1500/mo. It cancels out, so it doesn't matter. You're really only making net transfers to the bottom half, and even most of those aren't for the entire amount. Someone at the 25th percentile gets $1500 but would be pa…

That looks like very bad math. If you are paying $1500/mo in taxes, you are not in majority. And if you get back that money then who is really paying government bills? The UBI is additional expense and needs to come from extra income to government. I can see the argument that top 1% should pay for it by taxing the hell out of them. Unfortunately that back fires as we have seen in heavily taxed countries and still I don’t think even those extra taxes would be enough to cover it.

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

#659

Post by luckylion »

fastball wrote: post #657
luckylion wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really says very little. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you're unable to save for the future, because all of your income goes out to pay for rent, food etc. It's a different story if those 58% contain plenty of SV SWEs who make half a million a year and still only have $1000 in savings. My intuition tells me that there are very few of them in the 58%.

It's not really supposed to say very much. It's just a data point that directly contradicts your assertion.

But it really doesn't in that extract.

Do they have the option to work more to make more? Is more work available? Are they already working close to or at maximum capacity and their current level of wealth is the result? Without the contextual information available, that's hardly useful. I'm sure somebody that's unemployed and wants to work would work more than they currently are, but can't, because, well, they don't have a job to work at.

Some random singular statistic doesn't say anything.

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

#660

Post by WalterBright »

Frondo wrote: post #652
WalterBright wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you to give generously to your local food bank. You'll be doing the right thing.

Charity has never adequately addressed social problems in America. signed, a surfer

I'm not aware of any social problem that has been adequately resolved by any organization, government or private. There's always someone who thinks it's not good enough.

Certainly UBI isn't going to do it, either.

Post reply on HN