It Is Time For Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#551

Post by drabiega » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:10 PM UTC

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…

That's not the cost of the program. The net cost of a BI is actually much lower than the net cost of the targeted program. The actual cost of the program is the expense of administration, how much resources are used by the government in running the program.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#552

Post by scotchmi_st » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:10 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #522

nkoren wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the immediate cost. It's about the fact that conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. Listen to this investigation into Disability benefits.[1] Listen to how the people who receive these benefits genuinely need the stable income that they provide, but are then prohibited from working part-t…

...conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. There are cheaper policies than BI which don't do this. One example is Basic Job - if you need a job real bad the government gives you a really bad job. This has no poverty traps, and (unlike BI) has no disincentive for work. You also get to avoid spending money…

Basic Job will likely leave you little time to train in an area where you could be more productive for society. Basic Pay is designed to provide you the time to do that. Sure there has to be a bit of trust that you're going to not just sit on your arse, but very few people actually want to do that (despite what a lot of people think), and it's psychologically healthy to want to make the most of your life.

A lot of the comments here also ignore a lot of the factors that Basic Pay would provide which aren't directly measurable- increases to areas such as science and the arts which, while not tied to anything concrete like GDP or a country's economy, are indisputedly important to society.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#553

Post by nkoren » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:14 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #522

nkoren wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the immediate cost. It's about the fact that conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. Listen to this investigation into Disability benefits.[1] Listen to how the people who receive these benefits genuinely need the stable income that they provide, but are then prohibited from working part-t…

...conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. There are cheaper policies than BI which don't do this. One example is Basic Job - if you need a job real bad the government gives you a really bad job. This has no poverty traps, and (unlike BI) has no disincentive for work. You also get to avoid spending money…

Of course it has poverty traps. I live in the UK, where I get to see how the "workfare" programme creates poverty traps all the time.

If you want to get out of poverty, a good way to do that is by getting more education and practicing skills that are valuable to employers. A Basic Job often conflicts with that.

If you want to get out of poverty, a good way to do that is by taking part-time and piecemeal work to build up your experience. A Basic Job often conflicts with that.

A government study of workfare programmes in the UK, Canada, and US[1] concluded that: "There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers."

Oftentimes the poor are those who most need to spend time taking care of children or the elderly -- types of work which are tremendously valuable to society despite not being part of the wage labour system. A basic job conflicts with that.

Furthermore, Basic Job programmes have vast bureaucratic overhead and are far more expensive to implement than Basic Incomes. What you consistently miss in your argument against Basic Income is that it is something which everybody receives. Most people contribute to it, but all people receive a benefit from it. The "cost" is not the total cost of the programme, but the difference between what you pay and what you receive.

1: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130128102031/htt...

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#554

Post by nkoren » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:15 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #538

3pt14159 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic Job is stupid because it leads to silliness like building bridges with hand labor instead of machines.

If labor is abundant and machines are scarce, why is this stupid?

Because it would be cheaper to use a machine to build the bridge, give the money you save to the people, and then let them add value to society in some other way.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#555

Post by drcode » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:15 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #126

The real problem is all the tax loopholes that almost exclusively benefit the upper/upper end of the income spectrum. I am looking at you carried interest loophole. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carried_interest And the low rate dividends are taxed at. Dividends should be deducted at the corporate level as a cost, and taxed at the shareholder level as regular income.

Hey! This thread isn't meant for ideas that are sane and would actually improve things. Please move on to another thread.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#556

Post by boomlinde » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:27 PM UTC

ethana wrote: post #111

brenschluss wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anecdotes != data

The 47 millions food-stamp recipients disagree with you.

I am glad that someone is speaking up on their behalf, but I don't get your point. Have you spoken to each of these 47 million individuals? Are you one of them? Are you just letting your butt do the talking? We'll never know.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#557

Post by eftpotrm » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:27 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #269

ekianjo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses), thus negating the positive effects of basic income. Then you know what would happen next... people…

> Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? Yes, it would be expected to shift the demand curve somewhat, because you'd be redistributing income to people with a higher propensity to spend, increasing demand. > If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses…

>> Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities?

>Yes, it would be expected to shift the demand curve somewhat, because you'd be redistributing income to people with a higher propensity to spend, increasing demand.

Which also has the happy effect of raising money velocity int he system. By substantially reducing demand constraints you increase overall economic activity, push money through the system faster and grow the overall economy significantly. The economy doesn't work like a household budget; the affordability of this sort of measure is rather different from what one might otherwise expect.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#558

Post by platform » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:35 PM UTC

I do not agree that "Combining income redistribution and decentralizing spending would solve poverty today. "

I would argue more individual wealth that's based on

a) cumulative and legal earnings b) penalty-free inheritance c) a system that rewards individual greed d) a system that rewards equal opportunity

would solve poverty today.

For that to work, though -- those have to be world wide rules. Making an individual country as a test ground will not produce repeatable results.

The above also has one more built in assumption -- vast majority of the people are 'good to other human beings' and act 'rationally'.

The definition of 'legal' is of course vague, but must be uniform across the world (not in individual country) and would include things like

a) equivalence of genders/race/religions/ethnic/disability/political/financial/marital/law-enforcement status in the eyes of a law and competitive bidding

b) law of contract

c) uniformly standardized legal language around contracts that does not require legal council to initiate and resolve disputes

e) criminal penalty system that treats qualified threat of a physical or financial harm, with 80% of equivalence to posterior event

(this it to prevent wide spread racketeering )

f) criminal system that requires non-cirmustantial/independently verifiable evidence to result in conviction

g) largely uniform across country criminal law

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#559

Post by nkoren » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:43 PM UTC

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…

Actually, your math is entirely wrong.

Let's use the same numbers as you: 300M people, $20k each, only 50M people who actually "need" it.

In the BI scenario, 250M people are paying for the cost of program (since the 50M who actually "need" it presumably can't pay). That's $6B / 250m = $24,000 per person. However, each of those people is also receiving $20,000 worth of BI. Therefore, the cost to them is $24,000 - $20,000 = $4,000 per person. $4000 * 250M = $1B -- exactly the same as your conditional benefits program, except now there's vastly less overhead and no poverty trap.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#560

Post by chilldream » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #328

adekok wrote: post #229

I'm reading the comments, and surprised at what's missing. What happened to the business approach? The US government is delivering a large number of products with wildly varying costs, efficiencies, and price points. e.g. unemployment, welfare, food stamps, etc. There is a proposal is to replace those products with only one. The new product fills (mostly) the same need as the existing ones. It will do so at less cost…

>>Who the hell cares about random welfare guy ripping off the system? If you're making over $40K per year, you're getting ripped of by the system. By your system, that you demand to keep in place. The USA is a deeply individualistic society. For most people, the default mindset is "me vs. those other people," and your average American will do anything (including tolerating a grossly inefficient system) to make sure "…

If anything many people are pushing harder in this direction. For instance, consider the push for mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients even though the places have tried it have discovered that:

1) Almost no one fails them 2) They cost more money than they save (in cancelled benefits)