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

It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 761 posts

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#331

Post by ArkyBeagle »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #313
kalvin wrote: post #164

I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having…

...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,... Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone. Consider a…

What does "competitive" mean? Against what? More realistically, figure $20k to 15 million - much less trouble. A mere $0.3T :) But it'll go close to 100% to the Metric Formerly Known as M3 and dissipate.

My framework and Maslow-hammer is the PPST framework from Tyler Cowan by way of Arnold Kling - Patterns of Sustainable Substitution and Trade. In this, the bulls get bigger and the china shops get smaller; people don't have jobs for the reason that employers can't or won't figure out how to hire because business is too hard now.

I think (from interviewing) there's a strong element of laziness, narcissism and incredulous cognitive dissonance to this, but whatever. If we hire and they're good, then the story we told ourselves about how special we were fails.

The U6 gap since 2007 is real now for seven years. It harder every day to call it a blip.

If you give dole money to people such that it does not drive them from doing something productive, the money flows back through the economy and doesn't harm anyone. The accounting, however, is horrendous. I don't have an answer for that.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#332

Post by orthecreedence »

bcheung wrote: post #199
api wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real fallacy beneath the surface is that if we do something like this people will just totally stop working. A few will, but most will use their newfound flexibility to shift what they work on: explore other career options, create art and culture, etc. Overall there will likely be a lot more entrepreneurship, invention, science, art, literature, and music. It's tied into the far right's religious-based do…

You have heard of communism, right?

This is much more like capitalism, with the government investing in you every month.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#334

Post by hmsimha »

jbuzbee wrote: post #279
hmsimha wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing we would only need to divert a fraction of the money currently being used on weaponry and military to cover the difference.

You'd guess wrong. In 2012 the entire defense budget was $689 Billion. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

Good point. I don't know that I favor basic income when the enormity of the funding required is put in perspective. I'd rather see some kind of allotment for bill-pay for lower-income/no-income individuals, whereby things like their rent, health costs, cell phone bill, & transportation costs would be provided for up to a certain amount. Something like $5000 annually would go a long way towards helping out low-income people, and the paperwork necessary to receive benefits would serve as a disincentive for people who don't need the assistance to try to receive it.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#335

Post by bryanlarsen »

jaredgeorge wrote: post #18
robobenjie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It replaces minimum wage in that McDonalds is welcome to offer a job flipping burgers for $1 an hour if they want. However, because no one _needs_ a job to live (because they can just live on the basic income) someone would only take that job if it was worth it/fulfilling to them.

And this is why the model would not work. I don't believe that there are enough people who would find fulfillment in flipping burgers, unclogging toilets, roofing in AZ in July...

On BI, it would be very difficult to afford the latest iPhone. If you have no skills but you want an iPhone you can either skip a few hundred meals or you can flip burgers and clean toilets for a few hours.

Don't worry, the hedonistic urge is stronger than laziness in most people. Especially since lazy usually implies watching TV which continuously bombards you with advertisements to buy things...

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#336

Post by davmre »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #313
kalvin wrote: post #164

I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having…

...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,... Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone. Consider a…

Naturally you have to "raise taxes" (in a nominal sense) at the same time you add a basic income, so that the added income is cancelled out for middle-class and wealthy people, and the net amount of redistribution stays more or less constant.

It's still a big win, since you've taken all of the various benefits agencies and collapsed their roles into that of the IRS or equivalent tax agency, which has to exist anyway to fund other government functions.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#337

Post by orthecreedence »

MartinCron wrote: post #325
sesteel wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kindly disagree. I would prefer a system where a basic income is distributed (simply for the efficiency) and those that receive it are educated on how to spend it to meet their basic needs. This could be integrated into school curriculum, online courses, etc.

That makes sense, though I keep thinking about people who are (for various reasons) fundamentally non-rational actors. Those with mental illnesses or drug abuse issues, etc.

I think you'd find that drug abusers are much less likely to commit crimes once they have a steady flow of money. "Well now we're paying people to do drugs!" But we're doing that in the first place, through welfare and food stamps, etc. And if we don't pay enough, they steal. So in one instance we ignore the problem and it ends up costing us, in another instance we accept that there are people who are going to withhold contributing to society and we give them their check anyway because they'd just end up taking it.

As far as mental illness goes, that is an interesting problem I don't think GBI would solve. Sure you can give a schizophrenic person a check, but are they going to cash it? Or would you still have some sort of public facility for mentally disabled people? I would hope so.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#338

Post by bryanlarsen »

Retric wrote: post #242
encoderer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Personal income is about $13tn, so a 20% flat tax would currently provide about $8500/yr basic income. And that, of course, is on top of our current government spending. Also I'm not sure what you'd do w/ payroll taxes. You're just grossly understating what tax rates would have to be to accommodate this. You think there will be economies of scale that SS today doesn't already achieve that could somehow offset this…

First off children don't get the full amount only 1/2 which reduces costs by ~13%. $8500 / (1-.13) = 9770 / year which is rather close to 10k/year. A single person living on 10k after taxes is about the same as a single mother living on 15k hard but hardly impossible. If you add 10k per kid it creates a rather strong incentive to have a few kids. Also, the assumption is you cut a lot of government spending not just s…

The government currently spends almost $10K per child on public schools, so you can also shuffle in and out of that budget to make the BI cost for children "disappear" in your models.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#339

Post by orthecreedence »

ethana wrote: post #82
benched wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be tied to some indexes that reflect the cost of living. If it's impossible to actually live a very minimal life on the basic income, there's not much point, as you'll still have to work and be under stress about making ends meet.

So basic income is the minimum living cost? What if minimum cost of living increase every year as it does? What if you live in San Francisco where the standard of living is crazy high? Do the citizens of S.F get a higher basic income than say Milwaukee?

The point of a universal/general basic income is that it's the same for everyone. SF's cost of living is significantly higher, but nobody's stopping you from getting a job there still on top of your GBI.

If on top of having a job and getting GBI you still can't live in San Francisco, then you'd move to a cheaper area of the state/country.

What's interesting is that a lot of people flock to urban areas for the increased opportunity, but with a GBI, this may not be the case as much because there's less of a strain to make ends meet. This could reduce the cost of living in urban areas.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#340

Post by yummyfajitas »

davmre wrote: post #336
yummyfajitas wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,... Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone. Consider a…

Naturally you have to "raise taxes" (in a nominal sense) at the same time you add a basic income, so that the added income is cancelled out for middle-class and wealthy people, and the net amount of redistribution stays more or less constant. It's still a big win, since you've taken all of the various benefits agencies and collapsed their roles into that of the IRS or equivalent tax agency, which has to exist anyway…

Back of the envelope calculation please - that will clarify your vague words and reveal many arithmetic errors (if such are present).
Post reply on HN