It Is Time For Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#371

Post by ende » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:10 AM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #234

fishtoaster wrote: post #163

I haven't read much on BI, so I'm sure this has already been answered already, but: how do the numbers add up? The US poverty line for a single person is $11k. For simplicity, let's say BI gives everyone in the US $10k per year. Times 313.9 million, that's $3.1 trillion per year. The US government spent, overall, $3.45 trillion in 2013. How would we be able to afford basic income?

Some adjustments: People under 18, 25% Felons/criminals, probably 3% Removing social security, medicare, and most other government social welfare programs should remove a giant chunk of the federal budget. I think if you re-do these numbers that will appear a lot more affordable. Proponents of BI say it can't exclude anyone. That is silly. Things we consider the most basic fundamental rights: voting, free speech, are…

Actually rather than dock prisoners' basic income, confiscate it as part of their sentencing to fund their internment. That makes prisons a lot more self-sufficieny.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#372

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:11 AM UTC

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…

So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with?

Generally, any communal institution either develops rules and mechanisms to prevent freeloading, or has an authority who acts to prevent such. Almost all of them succumb to a "Tragedy of the Commons" dynamic in terms of some aspect of quality of life.

That said, there are some institutions that are identified as being communal that last and even prosper somehow.

Many also cite things like the Cabrini Green projects as an example of how removing the stake someone has in society by guaranteeing their rent/income is somehow inherently dehumanizing. To fully address such a hypothesis, one would have to control for factors such as social class and social stigma attached to such benefits.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#373

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

ahomescu1 wrote: post #352

bryanlarsen wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason that you can make the money you do is because you're standing on the shoulders of giants. Aristotle, Newton, Watt, Tesla, Von Nuemann, et cetera. Left to your own devices (and assuming that the other 7 billion people are in the same boat) you'd be starving as a subsistence farmer making the equivalent of about $1 a day. If you currently make $35K a year, that means that you owe 99.9% of your income to…

> Left to your own devices (and assuming that the other 7 billion people are in the same boat) you'd be starving as a subsistence farmer making the equivalent of about $1 a day. That's an unreasonable assumption. There are differences in productivity even among farmers. Some people are much better at farming than others. > If you currently make $35K a year, that means that you owe 99.9% of your income to society. So…

"There are differences in productivity even among farmers."

Not if you don't have access to machinery, modern seeds, chemicals, weather forecasting, tens of thousands of years worth of agricultural research and oral history, et cetera.

"So my own creativity, labor, skills, talents and education only matter for 0.1%"

Pretty much useless to the subsistence farmer. Basically the only thing that matters is luck and hard work. Not to mention that society provides the source of your inspiration, provided your education, an outlet for your talents, et cetera.

Obviously my argument is a little bit of reductio ad absurdum. But much less so than "taxation is theft".

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#374

Post by ende » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

tartuffe78 wrote: post #348

orthecreedence wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, take from everyone and give to everyone. In a non-biased way. Hey, the rich get their $1k check every month too.

But that's only getting back part of the $1000+ that was taken from them

Not if its funded by a land value tax instead of an income tax.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#375

Post by tsotha » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:14 AM UTC

orthecreedence wrote: post #307

tsotha wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because you don't live in a vacuum. Our society makes it possible so that you can earn a living. This argument doesn't hold water for me. Society makes it possible for everyone to earn a living, so people who aren't doing it should start.

> so people who aren't doing it should start But they won't. It's safe to say that lazy people are good at being lazy and will find a way to be lazy no matter what system they're in. Pretending we can build a system that eradicates laziness in an exercise in futility. It's better to accept the fact that a fixed percentage of people are only going to take while most others give (and take), and stop wasting the enormou…

>Pretending we can build a system that eradicates laziness in an exercise in futility.

Not at all. You know what eradicates laziness? Hunger.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#376

Post by llamataboot » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

rescripting wrote: post #222

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if said moral objections stem from a lack of imagination?

Cellphones and the Internet were adopted on a person by person basis. It became easy to imagine yourself with them once the neighbour got it. Basic Income takes much more buy in from more people to get off the ground. I like the idea of it being attempted on the city level though, I'd never thought of that. It's likely the smallest scale that would work with the least amount of individual buy in required.

It has been: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/1970s-manitoba-povert...

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#377

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

ahoy wrote: post #360

kaliblack wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A simple basic income implies that you provide everybody with the same minimum income and they cut back on public services etc to the minimum since in theory people can now buy what they want. I haven't seen the reduction in services implied anywhere. It may, however, be a reality when implemented, but the intention isn't simply to change how government funds are spent on the poor. Generally, the aim is to redistri…

I have only ever heard basic income proposed as the former implementation, never the latter.

The two formulations are similar. If you just print money to give to everybody, you cause inflation, which is a tax on liquid wealth. The wealthy have ways to hedge against inflation, so it's basically a tax on the middle class.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#378

Post by abraham_s » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

I have been thinking about the long term effects of automation (as in self driving car/trucks etc) and I think such a scheme will become necessary in the near future. How many job losses will be there in near future if all the vehicles become self-driven. Number of truckers is estimated at In 2006, the U.S. trucking industry as a whole employed 3.4 million drivers. Another 233,900 cab driver. Maybe 2X number in supporting jobs, like waiters etc. Can a society survive with so many jobless people with the current unemployment schemes?

Edit: spelling

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#379

Post by freefrancisco » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:18 AM UTC

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…

If it's really more efficient than the current system, it should be fundable from the existing entitlements. Just dismantle the programs, fire all the bureaucrats running them, and divert all these funds toward the basic income. If it requires another tax then it's not an alternative, it is an expansion of the welfare state.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#380

Post by conanbatt » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:19 AM UTC

gkoz wrote: post #81

conanbatt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many huge cultural and socioeconomic implication of Basic Income. Inflation is dependent on money supply, you don't need to print new money to apply basic income. You would worry as much of its inflation impact as you would for bailing out banks, if its the same printing. Its not a BI specific concern. Pricing, on the other hand, would probably change drastically, as there would probably be a solid market o…

Do you assume people would be spending their BI rationally? Spending everything on gambling and drugs would still be possible, having more than the least possible income by shady means would still appeal to some. It seems to me reasons for crime wouldn't be exactly destroyed.

Irrational spending of BI is not relevant. One could have irrational spending of your own salary as well. Thats not the problem BI tries to solve.

Theres always going to be money crimes as long as there is money, but its very different to take a risk on your monthly stipend to get 200 bucks. Its just a huge economical incentive not to do it, particularly in the lowest class, where violent crime is concentrated.

Gangs, Mafia's and drug organizations are based on a worker class that is super cheap to them, those out of poverty and desperation. It would deal a major blow to everyday regular crime.