Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#81

Post by bayesianhorse » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:02 AM UTC

oskarth wrote: post #42

bayesianhorse wrote: post #39

One reason why I am currently not so much in favor of UBI is immigration. I have three uncommon beliefs about immigration: First, I don't believe the idea of human rights allows a state to tell people where they are allowed or forbidden to live. Secondly, I don't believe immigration controls are ultimately feasible. In the US this is obvious in the big population of illegal immigrants, other countries are also discov…

I agree on 1 and 2, but don't see how 3 follows. If you live as an "illegal immigrant" you are playing life on a higher difficulty level already. UBI wouldn't apply to non-citizens. Of course you might argue that it very well should , but that to me is a different argument that comes at a way later stage. EDIT: I believe this argument is confusing how the world should be with how the world can feasibly be at this poi…

The biggest problem with paying welfare to immigrants is that it has to be paid upfront, long before there is a profit or cost reduction compared to not paying it.

The problems with not paying are manifold: They are an underclass, without most rights and very poor. A proper healthcare system can't refuse them treatments, for all sorts of reasons, and poverty and lack of rights just increase health care costs. Then there is the lost potential: Those people do have children, often naturalized, or not, living in the country, but not getting the care, food and education they need, which also means they don't fulfill their potential benefits to society.

I think refusing children basic welfare is about the stupidest thing a society can do. Both for financial and for humanistic reasons. It is completely irrelevant whose children they are.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#82

Post by mirimir » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:02 AM UTC

vlasev wrote: post #25

cm2187 wrote: post #8

I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies. To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I f…

The idea of Basic Income goes hand in hand with the process of automation. There are millions of jobs that will go away due to automation. The counter-argument to "will basic income lead more people to stop working" is not "people are working too hard anyway" but rather "most people won't have a job...coming soon". What are all those people going to do once this happens? Find another job? Yeah right. Here [1] is an a…

Yes, automation.[0,1] We're approaching the knee in automation uptake. It can take decades to implement policies like this. Time flies.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555295

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561068

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#83

Post by moonchrome » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:04 AM UTC

vlasev wrote: post #25

cm2187 wrote: post #8

I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies. To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I f…

The idea of Basic Income goes hand in hand with the process of automation. There are millions of jobs that will go away due to automation. The counter-argument to "will basic income lead more people to stop working" is not "people are working too hard anyway" but rather "most people won't have a job...coming soon". What are all those people going to do once this happens? Find another job? Yeah right. Here [1] is an a…

One problem of minimum income is that it will make it very expensive to find people willing to do "dirty" work. Unless you think robots will take care of nursing (which is grueling and dirty when dealing with disabled people and it doesn't pay well), farm work (they already have trouble finding workers), cleaning, etc.

Automation isn't nowhere near to eliminating those and I'm guessing it would increase labor costs very disproportionately - diminishing marginal utility of income and all that. This would then make related products/services more expensive and further lower your global competitiveness.

This can be mitigated by immigration (ie. not granting minimum income to immigrants) but that has a bunch of issues on it's own.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#84

Post by alexbecker » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:04 AM UTC

kalvin wrote: post #37

I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the vast cost (in time, energy, money) 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,…

> unintentional side effects, edge cases, and bad incentives.

I'm reminded of Department of Agriculture v. Moreno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Agriculture_v._Mo...). Congress passed a law refusing food stamps to people who lived in shared housing with non-relatives. Of course this was targeting hippies (which is illegitimate in itself--to quote the majority, "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest"), but it naturally hit the very poor especially hard.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#85

Post by Zirro » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:04 AM UTC

hurin wrote: post #21

cm2187 wrote: post #8

I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies. To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I f…

You couldn't actually not work in former socialist countries though. At least in the Soviet Union this was actively persecuted. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_%28social_offense%2... ) But I do think think that countries which offer a great deal of socialized benefits (such as Finland, Sweden etc.) have a significant problem with a unemployment in the youngest generation of the labor force.

I am Swedish and my impression is that the avability of benefits is not the cause of the unemployment. Instead, there appears to be very few jobs left to go around for those who can not or choose not to go through a higher education. Many industries have become significantly more effective through the use of computers, eliminating much of the need for manual labor, for example.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#86

Post by zxyzzxxx » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:06 AM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #77

One thing I've always wondered about the basic income is wont it just mean prices go up because people are greedy? Take the article about trailer parks that was on here a week ago: The business owners said that they had to be careful when raising prices to make sure tenants can still afford it. If their tenants suddenly get an extra $1000/month, what's to stop them putting the rent up by $1000/month?

People that wouldn't work wouldn't have to live in highly contested areas with a high rent. Workers could afford them, others would live outside of those expensive areas, keep their guaranteed income and decide what to do with their lives.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#87

Post by DanielBMarkham » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:07 AM UTC

I am interested in this idea. As I understand it, it's a long-held idea with some support from the center, left, and right.

Having said that, last week I read through an analysis piece -- 6-8 page pdf -- that I found on a financial site. I found out some interesting things that supporters don't emphasize.

The problem, as I understand it, is that UBI is fine in theory and as a high-level idea. Once you start actually thinking about applying it? The words could mean dang near anything. Is it across the board? Are there exceptions? Would you use a reverse income tax, direct payments, or other mechanism to deliver it? What sorts of incentives does it provide to the working poor? If you really wanted to eventually replace hourly occupation, wouldn't it make more sense to begin providing it to those who have worked their entire lives? Begin direct payments to retirees and then slowly decrease the retirement age as the years pass?

Those are just questions I made up after reading the article. Apologies if I botched it. But I was impressed with the fact that there is a ginormous gap between the slogan of UBI and whatever it actually might end up becoming. A big enough gap that politicians could say they support it and actually give you pretty much anything. There's also not a huge amount of real-world data here.

So my position is "cautiously optimistic". Let's do some limited experiments with this to see how the real-world politics play out and what the difference between the PR package and the actual deliverable is. In the U.S., the states have traditionally been the "laboratories of democracy", but if folks don't like that, there has to be other ways to do a bunch of limited trials.

What I am not in support of is some huge national movement built around a slogan where I'm forced to make a yes-no decision for the rest of the citizenry. Here's hoping it doesn't play out like that.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#88

Post by blumkvist » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:07 AM UTC

Xixi wrote: post #69

cm2187 wrote: post #8

I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies. To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I f…

I also found the idea very interesting, but I don't necessarily agree with all the risks you have identified. - "at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits": mostly agree, except for benefits related to disabilities. I would still make a distinction between people who are able to work, and people who not only cannot work but need help (sometimes costly help) just to stay alive, and everything in-be…

As every other basic income supporter you seem to pay attention only to good things that might happen. Complete disregard for the bad things that might happen. Basically you believe in unicorns and utopias. This is extremely vain. Vanity is the Devil's most favorite sin, as you might have heard from Al Pacino.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#89

Post by jberryman » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:08 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #55

Have the economic consequences been studied on a deeper level? There are so many complex correlations in economics that I'm afraid Basic Income can lead to some kind of disaster that's not so obvious at a first glance. How does it affect the national export/import, monetary value, growth, tax income, GDP, housing market, demand/supply on jobs/goods in different sectors etc etc? This article touches those things, whic…

Not trying to be glib, but you can probably find lots of papers over the past few decades that try to tackle those questions

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=basic+income&btnG...

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#90

Post by blumkvist » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:09 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #80

ekianjo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems. You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward s…

"Ever heard of minimum wage? Yeah, that one did not work as expected either (and created massive unemployment when the threshold was set too high as well)." Citation needed. Your assertions do not match my understanding of the facts about the result of the minimum wage. (Though I would have agreed with you ten years ago, a better understanding of it has altered my opinion significantly.)

Or perhaps you read a bunch of pretty words that seem to make sense? They got citations and proper syllogisms and all that jazz. Communist rhetoric always makes sense. It makes sense to your feelings, at least.