Universal basic income to be tested in Wales • Hacker News Board

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#241

Post by chii » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

lexicality wrote: post #140

cbmuser wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need to approach those jobs differently? So you want to pay your cleaning personnel the same wage as a heart surgeon? Don’t you think that such high wages will eventually just raise prices?

Surely the point of the market is that you need to pay for things based on how difficult it is to get them? Contrived example. Say you have some toilets you want cleaning and you decide to offer the job for $5 an hour + tips from toilet goers. The only person that agrees to do it is some homeless dude. You're not very happy about this, but no one else showed up so you go with it. Then two weeks later the city offers…

> So why do we pay cleaners so little?

I'll counter with an example which might illustrate.

If you were at a desert, and dying of thirst, you would pay absolutely anything for water. You would not pay anything for diamonds at all.

But in normal circumstances, water is cheap, so cheap, that it's almost not metered. Diamonds, however, is still fairly expensive (even artificial ones).

Why do we pay so little for water, when it's so essential? Why do we pay so much for diamonds, when it's basically useless cept for being shiny?

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#242

Post by lexicality » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

hogFeast wrote: post #226

lexicality wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not exactly sure how paying everyone money helps people who need it more than a system that just gives money to people who need it I mean one obvious benefit is the monumental amount of savings in government services caused by getting rid of all of the bureaucracy involved in making sure only people who "need" the payment get it. You can get rid of all the job centres, all the review boards, all the DWP depart…

I agree. The UK has a serious problem with admin costs for these programs: UC rollout cost something like £12bn, which was a double digit fraction of the amount paid. The Tories also had an obsession with "work coaches", these contracts cost an absolute bomb, and had no effect on unemployment going to 3% whatsoever (the issue in the early 2010s was jobs not being there). But my counter-point would be that part of the…

I saw somewhere else in the comments a story about a disabled woman being kicked off UC because she put some of her disability payments into savings and crossed some threshhold.

This presumably means that some of my taxes went into someone auditing her bank acounts, going "yup that's too much money", then into all the paperwork involved in kicking her out, followed by a few months later all of the paperwork and auditing of her re-applying for UC once her savings ran out.

Obviously we would have saved a bunch of money by someone auditing her case, saying "yup still not got any legs" and moving on, but should we be paying for that in the first place?

I don't like the idea of the government looking into my personal affairs or deciding how I should be spending my time. Obviously they don't at the moment since I have a very nice job but what if I got hit by a car on my way to work?

If some kind of universal income lets us keep the government's nose out of our collective businesses and the cost of that is Amazon has to pay more tax or whatever I don't really see the problem.

Maybe a few wasters just live off the money and play games all day but they were probably going to do that anyway. Most people like having something to do in my experience...

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#243

Post by imtringued » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

hogFeast wrote: post #213

gandalfian wrote: post #40

In practice the UK already pays the price for a universal basic income. Most poor people get some sort of tax credit and/or housing benefit. What we don't do is allow people to use it to rise out of poverty. A disabled lady thought saving some of her disability was the responsible thing to do, despite further impoverishing herself, once she built up some savings she was prosecuted for fraudently claiming benefits whi…

> A disabled lady thought saving some of her disability was the responsible thing to do, despite further impoverishing herself ??? So if I earn £100k/year, and I choose to save all of my income then I am impoverishing myself. Do you understand what saving is? The UK has this terrible habit, like the US, where people are infinitely jealous of other people. Any benefit that someone else is getting, I want it. You get t…

>So if I earn £100k/year, and I choose to save all of my income then I am impoverishing myself. Do you understand what saving is?

You are still living the life of a poor person. You are homeless. You don't have a car. You don't have a smartphone. You have nothing except your savings. The crucial difference is that the disabled lady apparently didn't even own the savings she sacrificed her living standards for.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#244

Post by kebman » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #122

kebman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws are like that, because someone feels that it's not in their interest that people actually get out of poverty. The logic behind that interest is simple. You can't make people dependent on you if you simultaneously give them the tools to achieve independence. And these guys love dependent people, because it gives them power. However this attitude is ruining most Western societies.

The drive from this comes out of the right, who believe that work is the only valid route out of poverty. Regardless of actual capacity to work.

Believe me, this drive also comes out of the bureaucratic left too, because dependent people give them far more power then a liberated people with means of their own. Panem et circenses!

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#245

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #200

ItsMonkk wrote: post #63

Housing can’t be both affordable and a good investment. The price of a home should therefore equal its replacement cost. If the market value of the home with the land is $1 million, but the cost to build the home is $200k, raise taxes on the land until the new market value is $200k. Tada, Land Value Tax. Why am I mentioning LVT in a Universal Basic Income thread? What should we do with the money we earn through a LVT…

I don't quite understand. The land reduces in price because of LVT, requiring a smaller mortgage. But wouldn't we expect the smaller mortgage + LVT to be equal to the old higher priced mortgage? After all the intrinsic value associated with owning the property hasn't changed. My point is how is a buyer better off under this scenario if they would have to pay the same amount per year in order to have a home? In fact t…

The idea of LVT is that it replaces some of your taxes. So you're paying the same as you would on a mortgage (except it would be less, because land use would be more efficient) but saving on what used to be your tax bill. And, sure, you can't really "pay it off" but that's true of any tax. This would also shift quite a bit of savings towards more productive endeavors than opportunistically betting on the future appreciation of some piece of real estate.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#246

Post by hogFeast » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #239

hogFeast wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A disabled lady thought saving some of her disability was the responsible thing to do, despite further impoverishing herself ??? So if I earn £100k/year, and I choose to save all of my income then I am impoverishing myself. Do you understand what saving is? The UK has this terrible habit, like the US, where people are infinitely jealous of other people. Any benefit that someone else is getting, I want it. You get t…

> Yes, if you have £18k in savings...you don't need help. Do you understand what being poor is? You are not poor if you have £18k in savings. Savings is not income. One is a stock, the other is a flow. People might be in need of income support even if they've been saving responsibly for a while.

Yes, you can use your savings. Savings are income. The only reason for savings is to consume in the future. Believing that you should have permanent savings that can't be used for consumption is just out of this world...I would speak to someone who has no money. The welfare state exists for people who need help, not those who wish the state to keep them in a luxury to which they have become accustomed.

EDIT: most benefits pay out £4-5k/year, saying £18k is "peanuts" is...a little sickening...it is a monumental amount of money to people on benefits. I would talking to someone who is homeless and tell them that £18k is "peanuts" to you. What an utterly middle-class/greedy sentiment.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#247

Post by ItsMonkk » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

smaryjerry wrote: post #218

ItsMonkk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that this community can both have this stance and find nothing wrong with the FIRE movement. What is a $1000/month UBI? Using the 4% rule, it's equivalent to having investments worth $300000. I have a feeling that a lot of people on HN have a portfolio worth $300000. Are you still working?

It’s not just employees but my close friends. They refuse to work because they will make more on unemployment. Making less by working means they are essentially paying someone to work. What is FIRE movement?

> Making less by working means they are essentially paying someone to work.

Note that this is one of the benefits of the UBI. As it is universal, if you get a job you will keep getting your UBI. So there will never be a time where this occurs if we switch. Work would always be incentivized.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#248

Post by mrow84 » Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #227

growse wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't think of any, do you think that means that those who can't work (disability, illness, dependents) deserve to be poor forever?

i'm not saying the deserve to be poor, but they cannot be rich - and at best, society can keep them alive and provide the minimal, necessary sustenance for survival. While they wait for technological improvements to cure them of their illness (if such tech comes to pass). What would be a viable alternative? If this had happened in the jungle pre-historic times, they'd just be dead. So is it not an improvement?

> at best, society can keep them alive and provide the minimal, necessary sustenance for survival

There is no constraint on a society enforcing this level of support as an upper bound. A society can dedicate as much or as little of its resources as it chooses to supporting those unable to support themselves, each possible amount having a different set of consequences.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#249

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, May 15, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #240

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand. The land reduces in price because of LVT, requiring a smaller mortgage. But wouldn't we expect the smaller mortgage + LVT to be equal to the old higher priced mortgage? After all the intrinsic value associated with owning the property hasn't changed. My point is how is a buyer better off under this scenario if they would have to pay the same amount per year in order to have a home? In fact t…

It's a bit hand-wavey logic in the OP. He's saying the cost of a home should be affordable, therefore any intrinsic value of the land (versus the cost of building the structure) should be taxed very heavily, such that 100% of the value of housing spending goes into the structure and not the land. Land is merely a vehicle to produce tax revenue, if anyone has extra land, they must pay for the privilege. This would be…

> This would be disastrous for our house, we have a large wooded plot, it would presumably be heavily taxed beyond our means to pay.

A house with a "large wooded plot" is likely in a rural fringe area where pure land values are extremely low. LVT will mostly be borne by highly-productive urban centers that can easily afford it.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#250

Post by ryukafalz » Sat, May 15, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #76

kebman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws are like that, because someone feels that it's not in their interest that people actually get out of poverty. The logic behind that interest is simple. You can't make people dependent on you if you simultaneously give them the tools to achieve independence. And these guys love dependent people, because it gives them power. However this attitude is ruining most Western societies.

Yup, people who actually lift their way out of poverty are not a reliable votebank. You see this happen a lot in the U.S. where minority groups have been trapped for decades by the Democrat party especially. First with sharecropping and segregation then with class warfare, either way they're kept down on the farm.

Although there's much we likely agree on (as you can see downthread), I downvoted this comment due to your use of "Democrat party" as an epithet. I think there's room for substantive conversations about these policies that cross partisan boundaries, but epithets are going to work against that. Even if you mean "Democratic politicians" and not "Democratic voters," that's not necessarily how Democratic voters are going to interpret it, and you're reducing the chance of communicating effectively across party lines.

Related: I think many Democratic voters would be highly receptive to discussions about how policies they might support or that they haven't thought much about contribute to structural racism and class inequality. I'm one such example (registered Democrat and typically vote Democratic, but I've been reading a lot about the effect of these policies lately), and I've had such a discussion very recently within my friend group. It's not a message that's lost on us. Just don't present it as a partisan battle against the people you're talking to, because you will get tuned out quickly if you do that.