Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#301

Post by zanny » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:19 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #272

Vivtek wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to work as an inner city teacher? Here's an extra 20% in your BI. So ... politicians would suddenly start to pay people to teach in the inner city? Those scoundrels! I can see why you're opposed to this concept.

One of the proposed advantages of BI is its simplicity (which among other things means few loopholes and lower enforcement overhead). The point the poster you quote is making is that no tax code will remain simple for very long. In fact you support that point. Many of the complexities we have now come from adding "just one more feature" to the tax code, until we end up with something so complex that there is an entir…

Why not? If you get BI out of any political process, you already had a majority in support of the simplification. It just requires vigilance, which our current track record for is terrible, but any economic system or any political process requires vigilance, and a BI isn't any different.

It is true that over the entire history of the United States, the American public has proven itself apathetic to the abuses of their politicians, but that is a cultural problem that needs to be solved regardless of having a basic income or not.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#302

Post by conanbatt » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:20 PM UTC

I actually think Argentina would be a great place to impose basic income.

Argentina has a long time standing issue with 'welfare' programs being abused in corruptive ways, such as government employees cashing in, their relatives, etc.

Middle class despises the way those funds are used because they are not regulated or productive: as a foreign national, you could get welfare within 6 months of moving in to argentina. Plus free college education.

Also, argentina has a long-time standing issue with inflation, which in this case could be worked to its benefit, which is it can fund this strategy. Currently, the government uses welfare programs to target vulnerable sectors and generate dependency, but if everyone got it, they wouldnt have that kind of edge anymore, and if they wanted to better one sector, they would be forced to help every sector.

But i will still think that although basic income is very forward-thinking, it has veery unforeseen consequences. We dont know what is going to happen to a city or a country if such a thing is implemented, for better or worse, in terms of sociology, more than economics.

I also wonder how to actually make it practical. By basic supply and demand, this should create a strong increase in demand, which raises prices and the very basic income would then become less effective.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#303

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:20 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #202

tokenadult wrote: post #174

I see no one in this active discussion has mentioned yet Charles Murray's book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 in which Murray goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone would cost in the United States, and some probable effects that would have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it was publi…

The other problem with "targeted social welfare programs" is that it is very easy to dislike programs that someone else (particularly someone that you don't like) benefits from. A program that you yourself benefit from tends to be less likely to get eroded by future politicians. Compare welfare and social security for a classic example of the difference.

Ah, but that is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#304

Post by jlgreco » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

alexvr wrote: post #152

JonFish85 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the government going to decide where to put people? The poor people get to live in the richest neighborhoods in NYC? Or do they get pushed out to the cheaper areas of Harlem? In the first scenario, the costs are insanely high. In the second, you're forcing the poor into a bad neighborhood. Food: who decides who gets what? Vegan options OK? Food allergies? Only organic? Whenever personal decisions are left to th…

No, I'm suggesting that the government should offer only the bare minimum with very little freedom of choice if anything at all.

Why is that better? That sounds much worse in just about every way that I can conceive.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#305

Post by adambard » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #223

cdoxsey wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money. The counter argument would be the existence of industries that people will already not work in. For example Italy has a 38.5% youth unemployment rate. It also can't get enough workers for the garment industry. So why don't the youth of Italy want these jobs? Maybe the work is seen as menial (so a cultural…

The question is: how many people currently working would stop working if they didn't need to? (particularly in the areas vital for the basic functioning of society) That question is so impossibly difficult to answer that I don't think any system we come up with won't have potentially disastrous consequences. I don't think it's all that difficult to answer. When I leave the office building I work at the end of my day,…

> When I leave the office building I work at the end of my day, the janitors are just showing up. They probably already only get paid the basic livable wage (probably less), so why would they show up to work if they were getting the paycheck anyways?

There's something that deeply bothers me about the notion that the above is a bad thing. Yes, you would no longer have access to low-wage janitorial services. But that's your problem, not your janitor's. Do you think he wants to be scrubbing toilets for a subsistence wage?

The world will not fall apart for want of janitors, or garbagemen, or baristas.

Imagine a world where, at some time t=0, there are zero people filling these jobs because of a basic income. It truly doesn't take all that much enterprise to see an opportunity in a world with no janitors. At t=1, there would still be janitors, but there would be fewer of them, the ones that exist would be better-paid, because they're now working for something approaching the wage that you might demand if someone asked you how much it would cost to clean their office.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#306

Post by hackinthebochs » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #297

mynewwork wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a waiter, cook, barista, janitor, retail floor worker, or cashier are all 'working for the man' that few people really enjoy. So restaurants, coffee shops and basically all stores disappear in your proposed only "do things they enjoy" world. Which is good, because no one would work construction, or do plumbing, or review building permits for safety in a basement office in city hall for fun either, so there woul…

What people seem to be missing in this thread is the fact that the concept of the basic income is that it's _basic_. Construction already (surprisingly) pays pretty well, so does plumbing, etc etc. More tedious jobs will either be automated (which is far more efficient) or if they absolutely require a human brain, there will be a rise in the cost of that labor until the work is worth the money for enough people. Mone…

You're right about your point in the short term. My comment was considering the extreme (though inevitable future) where the majority of labor is obsoleted by automation. Usually discussions about basic income have a component about the increasing obsolescence of unskilled and even skilled labor and the necessary changes to society to accommodate such a future.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#307

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

absherwin wrote: post #271

dragonwriter wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why tax by proxy and not wealth directly? If by "wealth" you mean "net worth", then because that is even harder to administer than income taxes. If by "wealth" you mean "income", we do that, but earning income through an entity with separate legal entity whose income is not taxed and retaining it in that entity becomes an effective tax dodge if it is permitted. Which is why corporate "income" tax (which is effec…

Given that the vast majority of wealth in this country in held in liquid assets or in real estate which is already taxed based on value, why do you suppose that a scheme to tax it would be more complex than the corporate tax system which employs on the order of ten thousand people and generates returns that are often thousands or even tens of thousands of pages and has been shown to be amenable to a wide variety of g…

> Given that the vast majority of wealth in this country in held in liquid assets or in real estate

Source?

> There will be some complicated edge cases but there will be relatively few and the ability to game them is less because wealth is a simpler concept than income.

How is wealth a "simpler concept" than income. AFAICT, income is far simpler (and, in fact, involves a strict subset of the assessments necessary in assessing wealth.)

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#308

Post by Jd » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

danbmil99 wrote: post #270

Nursie wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> large swaths of the population already do this. They do indeed. And why not let them? Most of what they could do with their time is being automated away, and the front-line service industries (restaurants, coffee houses) can only take on so many. Does there not ever come a point when we can say we're rich enough as a society to support those who can't meaningfully contribute? That even without their effort we have…

> Does there not ever come a point when we can say we're rich enough as a society to support those who can't meaningfully contribute? You are free to support those who can't meaningfully contribute, but where do you get the moral authority to demand that I do so as well, with my own money? Besides the moral argument, isn't there a good chance that a permanent underclass with a guaranteed welfare income will overpopul…

In fact, you already see this in places like Israel and the perpetually "studying" ultra-orthodox who refuse to do military service, have lots of kids, and, of course, take massive state subsidies.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#309

Post by dannypgh » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

spinachthrow wrote: post #244

VMG wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, the studies show that corporate taxes are essentially a proxy for the taxing the ultra-wealthy - a cut in the corporate tax rate is very similar to cutting the highest marginal income tax rate. So why tax by proxy and not wealth directly?

What do you think inflation is?

As you mention, inflation results in people losing real wealth proportionally to the amount of total (nominal) wealth that they have. On the whole, it's a fairly progressive form of redistribution, as long as wages are able to rise with inflation.

It would seem to me that an unconditional basic income could therefore be paid in part through this mechanism, with the inflation caused by simply increasing the amount of money in circulation. That is to say - the money could simply be created by the government. You can frame this as deficit spending (if you'd like) or you can frame it as the equivalent printing of money. This could (by act of Congress) be done without floating bonds to cover the deficit, but that might cause some conservatives to freak out.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#310

Post by johnksawers » Thu, Jul 11, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

cdoxsey wrote: post #126

summerdown2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. Everyone I've ever seen argue this has had strong opinions about how other (more greedy and venal) people would act. They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money. I suggest, instead, we try specifics. Given a basic income, I wouldn't be lazy. Nor would…

They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money. The counter argument would be the existence of industries that people will already not work in. For example Italy has a 38.5% youth unemployment rate. It also can't get enough workers for the garment industry. So why don't the youth of Italy want these jobs? Maybe the work is seen as menial (so a cultural…

Many of these arguments assume that in (say) 50 years, all the janitorial/toilet cleaning/fruit picking jobs (i.e. shitty) jobs won't have been replaced by robots. I think this will happen whether it puts people out of work or not, so maybe we stop people from needing these jobs in the first place. Sure there will be some manual labor left to do, but it'll be highly paid so you can do it 5 hrs a week instead of 50 for some extra cash for your house party.