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?

#121

Post by vixen99 » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:36 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76

205guy wrote: post #64

I like the idea of a basic income on principle, and this article has some great arguments for it. (Though I agree it is far from being paid for--and a land tax essentially means it only gets paid to the landless, so you'd need to exempt "reasonable" owner-occupied land). But let's simulate how it would look in the real world. I think mindless consumerism would go way up, especially in the lower classes. Advertising i…

In the UK the government has recently being trying to increase the birthrate by giving more money to those who have kids, so its interesting to see you suggest this would be a problem with BI. I assume this is a general problem with advanced economies as I read an article recently that said kids in school were being given better info on how to get pregnant in some countries, in another attempt to lift the birth rate.

This is simply wrong & it is not government policy moreover UK is the most densely populated country in Europe after Malta. There is a benefit payment given in respect of all children under 16 who have parents earning less than around 60K pounds pa.

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

#122

Post by tinco » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:37 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #101

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…

> it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. Why is that? There wouldn't be any more money in circulation. It's not like a state would print money to supply basic income. It would have to be tax funded, so most likely other public spending would have to be reduced, and taxes would be increased. If the basic income represents a progressive transfer from high-income to low-income (most lik…

Although I really like the idea of minimum income, elkanjos point has to be addressed. Just yesterday there was an article about trailer parks ownership. They will simply increase rent to what their clientele can afford.

In the end you'll still be filling the deep pockets.

Perhaps instead of providing minimum income or in addition to minimum income government should just compete in basic needs market. I.e. government provided low income housing with capped rent.

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

#123

Post by 4ydx » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:39 AM UTC

Sadly I think that UBI supporters tend to the false impression that everybody would be:

1) Frugal. 2) Responsible.

I just don't have that much faith in (roughly) half the population. What happens when people have too many kids and are still too impoverished? Is there going to be a "reasonable limit" to the number of kids you can have? Women could have as many as 20 kids or more. Is that really going to work? What happens when they are drug addicts (or worse free-to-play video games addicts) who cannot control their spending?

For me personally I love the idea of UBI, but I just don't think that it can work on a practical level. The examples that explain how to generate the required money to pay for it don't seem very feasible to me. You cannot add VAT. That is borderline "perpetual motion machine" logic right there. At the most basic level you will just have to tax the wealthy more one way or another. That is it. The only option. The question is: are they ok with that?

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

#124

Post by learc83 » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:41 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?

The reason trailer park owners can keep raising prices is because cities won't allow new trailer parks to be built. This artificially restricts demand. Local governments artificially restricting the supply of affordable housing isn't necessarily going to be fixed by a basic income.

However, if people have an extra $1000 a month, many of them can afford other types of housing. Increased demand for this newly affordable housing will drive up the price, and developers will move in to build more housing. The increase in supply would then drive down prices until they reach an equilibrium.

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

#125

Post by conanbatt » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:43 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #105

alkonaut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. Why is that? There wouldn't be any more money in circulation. It's not like a state would print money to supply basic income. It would have to be tax funded, so most likely other public spending would have to be reduced, and taxes would be increased. If the basic income represents a progressive transfer from high-income to low-income (most lik…

> Why is that? Because the market adjust prices based on an equilibrium between what people usually earn and how much they are willing to spend. If you increase the money supply (not talking about nation-wide, but individual base) then there is nothing preventing manufacturers from raising their prices up and take advantage of it, while still being fair ("after all, everyone has minimum income now so they should be a…

Pricing is decided mostly by supply and demand not by will. Your rent doesnt increase when you get a payraise and your landlord finds out about it.

Food is a very competitive industry, and unless you are suggesting that to keep it balanced we need some people to not eat, its unlikely that people spending more money on food will raise food prices to a point where it is unattainable.

I dont get this "prices go up" argument at all, is there a name to it? (dont say its inflation because that is related to money supply, not market supply/demand)

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

#126

Post by pg314 » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:44 AM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #83

vlasev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

Maybe the "dirty" work should be better paid. It is convenient to have a large supply of workers that have to take any work to survive, so the "dirty" work gets done cheaply, but that doesn't make it right.

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

#127

Post by nothrabannosir » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:46 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #105

alkonaut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. Why is that? There wouldn't be any more money in circulation. It's not like a state would print money to supply basic income. It would have to be tax funded, so most likely other public spending would have to be reduced, and taxes would be increased. If the basic income represents a progressive transfer from high-income to low-income (most lik…

> Why is that? Because the market adjust prices based on an equilibrium between what people usually earn and how much they are willing to spend. If you increase the money supply (not talking about nation-wide, but individual base) then there is nothing preventing manufacturers from raising their prices up and take advantage of it, while still being fair ("after all, everyone has minimum income now so they should be a…

there is nothing preventing manufacturers from raising their prices up and take advantage of it, while still being fair

Yes, there is: Competition.

Bread is now $1 a loaf. If everyone starts selling bread at $2 a loaf, and I can keep it at $1, I'll be making bank.

Sure, for $0.01 to $0.02, that doesn't count. But UBI is not a lot of money; $1k / month, without any other welfare programs. It's not like everyone wins the lottery.

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

#128

Post by learc83 » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:46 AM UTC

nightski wrote: post #107

learc83 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a situation where fewer people are working more productively?

Wouldn't that be orthogonal to basic income? i.e. You'd get that anyways so it would cancel out?

No way to know without looking at the data, but I can see a few methods where a basic income would increase productivity.

One talked about in the article is that workers who choose to work, tend to work harder/more productively than workers who are forced.

The whole point is almost moot though because the data in basic income experiments show that employment rates tend to go up not down.

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

#129

Post by Atropos » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:47 AM UTC

fizzbatter wrote: post #24

akhatri_aus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see all the arguments for it, but I always find this to be the argument against it which I believe would be the issue myself. If one had basic income why would they need to work? The incentives favour against the need to work. That income could be saved up and used in countries where the PPP value is much higher. Or just live and not work (which would decrease tax revenues forth). If people started to work less the…

I'm not going to pretend to know the complexities of this type of issue, so don't infer too much from my following comment.. With that said, specifically replying to your comment: I would work, because the income levels i've seen in this thread ($1k/m) would barely be enough to live on. Hell, my existing debt alone (car), and current housing cost, keep me working. The idea of having to sell nearly everything to survi…

The "not going homeless" already exists in European welfare states, you do not need Basic Income for that. The main difference with basic income is that it would be paid to people who could work, but choose not to. This might not make a difference in most cases, but the edge cases could be really expensive: If you are 63 and can retire at 65, wouldn't basic income give you an incentive to travel the world for 2 years? Same for a high school student delaying college for 1 or 2 or 3 years...

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

#130

Post by alkonaut » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:49 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #105

alkonaut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. Why is that? There wouldn't be any more money in circulation. It's not like a state would print money to supply basic income. It would have to be tax funded, so most likely other public spending would have to be reduced, and taxes would be increased. If the basic income represents a progressive transfer from high-income to low-income (most lik…

> Why is that? Because the market adjust prices based on an equilibrium between what people usually earn and how much they are willing to spend. If you increase the money supply (not talking about nation-wide, but individual base) then there is nothing preventing manufacturers from raising their prices up and take advantage of it, while still being fair ("after all, everyone has minimum income now so they should be a…

On some products, there may be increased demand, but the idea is that the basic income should be small enough that those products are very essential (basic food, housing, ...). We would have to assume that people eat both before and after BI reform.

From my perspective (inside an expansive welfare state) the idea of basic income is a simplification rather than an expansion of the welfare state. The de-facto minimum income in Sweden today is probably higher than the would-be unconditional basic income. Today, the "minimum income" in Sweden is earned by people on minimum pensions, or those who have been unemployed longer than the unemployment benefits last. The income they actually receive is a very complicated combination of at least four or five different programs (social assistance, minimum pensions, disability, unemployment benefits, housing support, government child support, ...). The total for a single parent is around what a full time US (federal) minimum wage job pays, and I don't even want to think about what the administration overhead cost is on that.