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

541–550 of 761 posts

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#541

Post by growupkids »

thehenster wrote: post #478
yummyfajitas wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Can you provide a back of the envelope calculation to explain your thoughts? For a BI to be bad from the perspective you're talking about it has to actively make people less productive. You mean like a 10% reduction in work hours? https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money...

It’s the redistribution that you’re missing. 300M * $20k does equal $6 trillion but it is returned to the tax payer who stumped up the $6 trillion. The 50M who aren’t contributing tax represent an actual cost of $1 trillion. The remaining $5 trillion is redistributed. 250M people contribute $20k. 300M people receive $16.6k. 300M * $20k - $6 trillion == $0

I'm sure you didn't mean this, but let's be clear the 6T is not returned to the tax payer that stumped it. Since this isn't generated wealth, just redistributed, it's a cost to someone. Someone's getting 20k, and someone's paying for it. And some people are going to be paying a lot more than 20k, and some people won't be paying in anything.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#542

Post by whatevsbro »

contingencies wrote: post #523
whatevsbro wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally, the aim is to redistribute wealth from the 'rich'. What if they leave? Should people be punished for being rich?

They are welcome to leave. Yes, they should be punished because society needs a disincentive for gross personal hoarding.

Do you realize that the more rich people leave, the fewer rich people there'll be left to plunder?

That, in turn, means that the remaining rich people would have to be taxed even harder to compensate for some of them leaving, which would then motivate even more of them to leave, and there you have a feedback loop that leads to the Basic Income party being over.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#543

Post by growupkids »

jes5199 wrote: post #414
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…

okay, I have a pitch for an MVP. It's an independent organization that functions as a voluntary tax collection. Everybody who believes in basic income signs up for it, and makes a monthly donation. At the end of each month, we divide the total pot of all donations by the number of users: if you need the money, you withdraw your portion. If you don't need it, you can leave it in, so that the next month's pot will be b…

I like this idea, it certainly makes it fair. If you support the idea, you pay for it. I suspect this would likely fail though, if you didn't have some disincentive for withdrawals then it only takes a tipping point of free loaders to bankrupt the system.

Still, I love the idea of making it's voluntary. It certainly would allow the BI proponents to put their money where the mouth is. I suspect what makes BI unlikely to succeed is when it's proposed as mandatory wealth redistribution, since it's never as far as I know been done successfully and the consequences of failure are potentially massive, the risks would seem to outweigh the hypothetical rewards.

Would a voluntary pay in system, you could prove it works or doesn't work without forcing anyone else to take the risk. I wonder if a local community could do this for it's residents?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#545

Post by boomlinde »

sliverstorm wrote: post #123
conanbatt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be true in the US, where both political parties are right-wing and flaunt "socialist" as a curse-word every day. I think BI is something that cant and shouldnt happen country-wide one day to the other. Cities should start doing it first. Cities like.. SF? which have a ridicolous surplus of money the city squanders, while still having a lower class without medical care.

SF already tried giving homeless people a stipend.

Which has what to do with basic income?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#546

Post by growupkids »

contingencies wrote: post #523
whatevsbro wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally, the aim is to redistribute wealth from the 'rich'. What if they leave? Should people be punished for being rich?

They are welcome to leave. Yes, they should be punished because society needs a disincentive for gross personal hoarding.

Define hoarding.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#547

Post by yummyfajitas »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #537
ja30278 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly so. I don't understand why the 'Basic Job' idea doesn't get more traction. For all of the talk about a 'post work' world, I still see plenty of work that needs doing, every day.

Well, Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing. There's a fundamental conceptual problem with it: Imagine I, for whatever reason, accept a Basic Job from the government. The job is, by design, bad. I'd rather not do it. So my dream scenario is that I officially hold a Basic Job and draw its meager salary, but instead of doing whatever work it supposedly entails I sit at home and watch TV. This…

Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. BJ is work that is not worth doing at current market prices. I.e., picking up garbage in the park might be worth $4/hour, but minimum wage is $7.25/hour. If we spend $7.25 more and get $4.00 worth of value out of it, we lost $3.25.

If we are already spending $7.25 on welfare/BI and getting nothing in return, we are losing $7.25. If we demand that recipients work for their money we lose only $3.25. As long as the BJ workers are not destructive, we lose less money than we otherwise would with welfare or a BI.

Also, the jobs need not be "dig a hole and fill it in" - they can also be "walk around town and find potholes to fill tomorrow" or "there is garbage on the streets, go clean it up". It's not as if we have a shortage of things that would be beneficial if we did them. They just might not be worth doing at current prices.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#548

Post by growupkids »

boomlinde wrote: post #527
sans-serif wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so appalling. If your wife is in labor and needs to rush to the hospital, the cab driver ought to charge you outrageously because you're richer than him?

The cab driver is a really bad example because the cab driver isn't providing a service that people argue is a human right. In terms of healthcare I think that it's reasonable that those who can should pay more to cover for those who can only afford to be grateful. That is usually how the cost of public services is distributed using taxes.

Ok, so make the example "your wife is bleeding out". Should the can driver charge you outrageously because you are richer than he is?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#549

Post by growupkids »

dragonwriter wrote: post #456
stcredzero wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you tie it to a dedicated revenue stream and set the benefit amount based on the revenue divided among the eligible population, you establish a control mechanism. How do you keep some demagogue from campaigning on abolishing this mechanism and just giving people more money?

> How do you keep some demagogue from campaigning on abolishing this mechanism and just giving people more money? You don't. People can run with any platform they want. Of course, pretty much this idea has been raised against even the idea of democratic government for centuries -- that if the masses could just vote for people to give them money, they would. Strangely, that doesn't seem to happen. There'll be plenty o…

Of course it happens. Entitlement spending essentially never goes down, it always goes up or when proposals are floated to reduce it they almost always fail. People do vote to give themselves money, and they always vote to protect their entitlements.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#550

Post by contingencies »

bertil wrote: post #534
contingencies wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest example of something similar that I can think of are Nordic countries: there is very little verification on your claims Late last year I was in Denmark, where ATMs are rare and plastic is king. I was reliably informed that the government didn't like people using cash and that as a business owner if you used more than a few thousand kroner per year you were audited. Furthermore, when you put in tax returns…

Use a few [hundred dollars] -- for what?

I dunno, something liberating and non government approved, like binge recreational drug consumption or anonymous object/service acquisition?
Post reply on HN