It Is Time For Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#591

Post by chongli » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #586

nkoren wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

How do you decide the "50M who actually 'need' it" with vastly less overhead? There is a cost to run the IRS and determine (correctly) peoples income. Furthermore, a 4k tax on 250M of the U.S. could be crippling to a good chunk of them. If your true point is redistribution of wealth, our tax system already does that and can do it more. But that's a different discussion..

How do you decide the "50M who actually 'need' it" with vastly less overhead?

We already do this with income tax forms.

Furthermore, a 4k tax on 250M of the U.S. could be crippling to a good chunk of them. If your true point is redistribution of wealth, our tax system already does that and can do it more. But that's a different discussion..

That's what this is. It's very similar to Milton Friedman's negative income tax bracket.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#592

Post by chongli » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

ja30278 wrote: post #526

yummyfajitas wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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…

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.

Excellent! Give everyone a shovel. Half the people can dig the hole, the other half will fill it in again!

Seriously, make-work is a horrible idea and a gigantic waste of resources. Basic income frees people to live their lives and contribute to society in ways that are undervalued by the labour market such as writing, creating art and music or caring for children, the elderly or chronically ill.

How many people might choose to start a small business if they have the security of a basic income? It seems to me like a potentially staggering number of people.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#593

Post by gshubert17 » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #497

BvS wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs more on a nominal basis but if implemented right nobody will have less money in their pocket even after taxes. If you didn't earn any money before you will get what was spend on you before + the saved overhead (+ a lot of wasted time and hassle). If you made a lot of money before you will still get a free handout but you also have to pay higher taxes so in the end you should have about the same amount. Obvio…

Numbers, please. And see my other comments on the disincentive to work - in the pilot projects, BI was a massive work disincentive.

In this Canadian experiment [1], initial results indicated some disincentives, but a lot of data was not analyzed, until many years later. Some of the surprising results include a reduction in medical costs.

[1] http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#594

Post by SkyAtWork » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:20 PM UTC

msellout wrote: post #422

atom-morgan wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...that eliminates money all together You can't eliminate money. It's a natural creation of human interaction. Even prisoners have money.

This "natural instinct to truck and barter" only showed up about 200 to 300 years ago. Before then there was feudalism, chieftains, etc. Humans have had other technologies for distributing social assets.

I think I'm missing what you're saying, can you expound on this? There are records of mercantile law going back to Hammurabi; there's been paper fiat currency in China since the 7th century or so. Coinage and trade has plenty of historical record in Phoenician and Roman era.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#595

Post by TrainedMonkey » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #584

yummyfajitas wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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…

Can you be fired from your basic job? What happens then?

You are basically out of a job.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#596

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #578

scotchmi_st wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

False. BI would not provide increases to science nor art. It would dilute them. I get enough emails as it is from whacko's who think they've upturned Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, or created some perpetual motion machine. If society valued these people's output they would be financially rewarded already. There's already incentives in present society, called capitalism and competition! There's a reason why only a tin…

>I get enough emails as it is from whacko's who think they've upturned Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, or created some perpetual motion machine. If society valued these people's output they would be financially rewarded already. There's already incentives in present society, called capitalism and competition!

If you can't differentiate between capitalism and scientific peer-review as separate processes for separating wheat and chaff, why should I take your word on the ethics underlying fundamental economics, ie: that "he who does not work deserves not to eat"?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#597

Post by moggflunkies » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:28 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #554

yummyfajitas wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly and better yet - don't take the money you ultimately "save" from the people in the first place.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#598

Post by chimeracoder » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:31 PM UTC

31reasons wrote: post #421

richardjordan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's not more net taxes. It's a change in the tax rate so the basic income is clawed back at the high end. Doesn't change tax out of pocket.

Its like applying plaster to an uneven wall. The dents gets filled with plaster but the bumps stays at the same level! Its much better than giving tax breaks since you need income to begin with.

Two things:

> Its much better than giving tax breaks since you need income to begin with.

1. There is a difference between refundable and non-refundable tax credits. A big misconception is that tax breaks only help those who already have income exceeding the size of the credit, which is not necessarily true.

Second,

> Its like applying plaster to an uneven wall. The dents gets filled with plaster but the bumps stays at the same level!

In this analogy, where is the plaster coming from? It can't just come from nowhere[0].

[0] ("Just print more" isn't the answer, because that increasing the money supply doesn't actually "create" money (in the colloquial sense) - it's just a redistribution method that redistributes by changing the relative value of outstanding debt.)

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#599

Post by whyme » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:38 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #273

whyme wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption? I didn't make any claim to suggest why poor nations are poor, did I? I simply suggested that as poor nations evolve, their people will consume more.

What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption? You said we would need 5 planets worth of resources if everyone lived at an American standard of living. That would only be true if it took a full one planet's worth of resources for everyone at the standard they are living at now. But it doesn't; we aren't using the full productive capacity of planet Earth now, not even close, and a…

I think I'll skip the debate over "the size of things" and just suggest there's a significant problem with our current rate of utilization and fair distribution. If your argument is simply that we have room for optimizing the worlds resources, then sure I can agree with that, but frankly I doubt that's going to work very well under a model that's really dog eat dog and has a hoarding, power hungry society that uses money as the means to manage the distribution and ownership of things.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#600

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 3:39 PM UTC

bcheung wrote: post #359

jgj wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery > in most countries you get a wage AND you are free to look for jobs everywhere around you, and to get them At some point, there will not be enough jobs to keep everyone gainfully employed doing meaningful work (in even the loosest sense of the word). With a basic income, rather than having immense swaths of poverty, each person would have the freedom of any pursuit they desi…

You raise an interesting and valid point. As technology increases the amount of time it takes to produce a certain effect goes down though. This means people need to work less. It's not that visible to most though because the definition of surviving has gone from not being eaten by a tiger and not knowing when your next meal will be to having a large screen TV with 5000 channels, air conditioning, and free food. If w…

>the definition of surviving has gone from not being eaten by a tiger and not knowing when your next meal will be to having a large screen TV with 5000 channels, air conditioning, and free food.

It really hasn't. I don't know anyone my age (24-ish) who considers air conditioning or cable TV to be surviving. They're considered luxuries. Food is a necessity, but most of us, you know, pay for it.