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

Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

universiteitleiden.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 786 posts

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#731

Post by seba_dos1 »

tekknik wrote: post #724
seba_dos1 wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until you do that you won’t understand. I already said that I don't even have a degree. All you did in this thread was proving the point of my original comment.

No, I haven’t. You are assuming people give out info for free. What you’re saying is essentially that your degree was free. Someone had to pay for it. For me it was buying books. Did those authors help me with free books? No they charged me just the same. How is this getting help from others? Unless you believe that if you gain knowledge at all even with compensation from someone else is help. But that’s just commerc…

> You are assuming people give out info for free.

They do. I learned a lot thanks to them.

> What you’re saying is essentially that your degree was free.

My degree that does not exist?

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#732

Post by CraigJPerry »

tekknik wrote: post #718
CraigJPerry wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need GDP growth? Is there no other point on the spectrum which is sustainable? E.g. instead of “grow” - which is inherently unsustainable, you run out of materials and labour to feed the economy - i mean we can continue to kick the can down the road for a few generations yet and pretend we don’t understand what “grow” means in the context of finite resources. Instead of “shrink” which is also unsustainable.…

Because that’s why our money is worth anything in the first place. Unless you’re trying to make arcade tokens worthless outside of the arcade.

>> Because that’s why our money is worth anything in the first place

The reason most currencies are worth anything are because you get thrown in jail if you fail to pay tax levied upon you denominated in that currency.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#733

Post by thegrimmest »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #682
tekknik wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this makes everybody poorer. Nobody is being lifted up here. If things cost more then your money doesn’t go as far. That’s called inflation. UBI seems like a great idea on paper but you’re pointing out its problem as a feature.

>> everybody poorer The people who are currently not able to make ends meet are suddenly succeeding. So not everyone is poorer. You’re confusing “things will be vastly different” - which is not disputed. The richest today will be relatively less rich.

> are suddenly succeeding

How are you quantifying this success? If people have "more money" but are suddenly unable to afford things they previously could (those same strawberries), wouldn't they be worse off?

> The richest today will be relatively less rich.

Isn't this just communism with extra steps? Why do you think these things have always worked out poorly, economically speaking, triggering runaway inflation and material scarcity?

My thesis is that the the threat of abject poverty is the only thing keeping much of our economy functioning. If we remove this threat, then the economy shrinks significantly and we all end up in poverty anyways.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#734

Post by CraigJPerry »

tekknik wrote: post #714
CraigJPerry wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> everybody poorer The people who are currently not able to make ends meet are suddenly succeeding. So not everyone is poorer. You’re confusing “things will be vastly different” - which is not disputed. The richest today will be relatively less rich.

No, you’re either taking from the rich and killing innovation, and thereby jobs, or you make everything state owned and go full on socialism, or you cause inflation. All of these make everybody poorer.

Or - you do the other thing, the UBI thing, which is none of those things you mentioned.

Anarchist capitalism is probably the closest as far as i can see so far.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#735

Post by caskstrength »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #412
respondo2134 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?

It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. And for the record, I would appear to be in the group bankrolling it rather than receiving from it, and I'm completely cool with it.

> It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in.

I haven't "got mine" yet and tend to disagree when people propose to lock me out of upper-middle class lifestyle by taxing the hell out of my income. It is more like people like you who "got theirs" want to pull the ladder up.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#736

Post by RussianCow »

tremon wrote: post #305
RussianCow wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would take a job for significantly less than they receive from the government?

The U in UBI stands for universal: everyone gets the same amount, regardless of whether they have a job. Taking a job is additive with UBI, there is no "significantly less money". Under UBI, a government could do away with minimum wage completely because there is no coercion by necessity. The employer only needs to pay enough to make it worthwhile for the employee to show up.

> The employer only needs to pay enough to make it worthwhile for the employee to show up.

That's exactly my point—why would you show up to a job that pays you less than you receive by default? It doesn't make sense to go from working 0 hours to working 40 for a less than 50% increase in income.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#737

Post by nec4b »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #711
nec4b wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also no evidence of pink unicorns not existing.

What evidence we do have says that people are not going to mass-flee a country just because taxes go up to benefit the lower classes at the expense of the higher earning ones. I therefore assert that inglor_cz's assertion is baseless. Feel free to provide a counter-example.

Actually that happened in every socialist country before they prevented their citizens from emigrating.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#738

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

tekknik wrote: post #719
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody earns what they have in a vacuum. There is a society that exists around you and enables what you do.

And we pay taxes to cover that.

Right, and that's what would be supporting UBI: taxes. So either you're arguing that taxes are unjust because they take what is rightfully yours, or you're just saying that UBI will cost too much. It very much seems like your argument is the former.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#739

Post by Natsu »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #605
Natsu wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish, this was more about working several summers near a large, hot furnace with no AC.

Oh, that's no fun. Sorry to hear it. Fortunately people are working to make that kind of thing less necessary (though it can't be eliminated completely of course; someone still needs to watch and maintain the machines).

I mean, this isn't completely unsolvable--better AC would've made things better. But it probably wouldn't be that economical, because industries like that are rather price sensitive.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#740

Post by Dylan16807 »

caskstrength wrote: post #729
Dylan16807 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So go use those arguments you already mentioned, about redistribution and buying houses, against current taxes. You can even use the same complaints about freeloaders. You made it sound like this caused new objections, rather than being one more bout of business as usual tax griping.

You seem to be upset with my arguments for some reason. However, if you read some other comments here and multitude of previous UBI-related discussions, you will see that there are a lot of people who (naively) assume that UBI will be somehow financed by taxes on corporations (from one of the comments: "Really, you'd just want to tax corporations over a certain size that are both highly automated (i.e. high revenue p…

I'm not upset, I just think that particular argument doesn't support keeping the status quo. And because of that, I don't find it very convincing as an argument against making a change.

And I would prefer not to get into the details of who gets taxed or how to optimally structure a tax today.

Post reply on HN