A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory • Hacker News Board

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#11

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:17 AM UTC

mtsr wrote: post #8

jlarocco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, b…

Depends. If every euro you earn there adds to your unconditional minimum income, instead of replacing a euro from welfare, the motivation to work for that new car, or whatever, becomes pretty tangible. Note that €900 (or €1300 for a family) is pretty barebones. You won't be putting much more than bread and potatoes on the table using that. And you'll probably live in a rather small house too.

Yeah but at the same time, it would allow people to be more picky about where they work. "I need money so I'll take any job" is a different mindset than "I am financially independent and I'm looking to make more monies in a job I like"

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#12

Post by jkarneges » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:18 AM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #6

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

I wonder how much you'd need to save and to own in order to conduct this experiment on yourself? I've wondered about what I would do day to day if I didn't 'have to work to live'. I honestly think I'd be doing very similar things. I'd still be programming, and I'd be wanting to make things that'd help people do their jobs better, but I wouldn't feel like I 'had to'. That alone would improve my sanity immensely (I thi…

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, b…

If nobody is required to do the "shitty jobs", I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them? Maybe having a waiter at a restaurant would become a luxury.

Perhaps all the jobs would continue to exist but there'd be some very interesting rebalancing.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#13

Post by maehwasu » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:20 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

I wonder how much you'd need to save and to own in order to conduct this experiment on yourself? I've wondered about what I would do day to day if I didn't 'have to work to live'. I honestly think I'd be doing very similar things. I'd still be programming, and I'd be wanting to make things that'd help people do their jobs better, but I wouldn't feel like I 'had to'. That alone would improve my sanity immensely (I thi…

I sort of ran this experiment on myself this year.

The answer is that I have actually probably learned more about coding than I had in the 3-4 previous years when I was working a lot, since I had more time to delve in to topics in depth, rather than rush to ship.

It feels great, and I've come out the other side much more productive in the projects I have kept working on.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#14

Post by gohrt » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:21 AM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #6

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

I wonder how much you'd need to save and to own in order to conduct this experiment on yourself? I've wondered about what I would do day to day if I didn't 'have to work to live'. I honestly think I'd be doing very similar things. I'd still be programming, and I'd be wanting to make things that'd help people do their jobs better, but I wouldn't feel like I 'had to'. That alone would improve my sanity immensely (I thi…

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, b…

people with shitty jobs will be willing to do less-shitty jobs that pay less.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#15

Post by moonchrome » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:22 AM UTC

mtsr wrote: post #8

jlarocco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, b…

Depends. If every euro you earn there adds to your unconditional minimum income, instead of replacing a euro from welfare, the motivation to work for that new car, or whatever, becomes pretty tangible. Note that €900 (or €1300 for a family) is pretty barebones. You won't be putting much more than bread and potatoes on the table using that. And you'll probably live in a rather small house too.

Income has a diminishing return, once you're out of "minimum income" the ammount requred to take the shit job is not linear.

You can either lowball the minimum income to the point where you can't realistically live on it for long or a lot of services get more expensive + tax hike to support it = lower standard of living for normal people (unaffected by minimum income but not rich enouh to ignore the costs)

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#16

Post by vog » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:22 AM UTC

Can this really work when applied just partially? This experiment is about ~250 people with basic income in a large city. (The text mentions 300 people, but some of them form a control group that doesn't receive basic income.)

So if any of these selected people will try to find a job, they will probably voluntarily "lose" it to somebody to really needs that job. Even without that moral issue, this makes still sense from a business point of view: All else equal, hiring a poor worker is probably perferable to hiring a wealthy one, as the poor worker has more incentives to work really hard.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#17

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:26 AM UTC

jkarneges wrote: post #12

jlarocco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, b…

If nobody is required to do the "shitty jobs", I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them? Maybe having a waiter at a restaurant would become a luxury. Perhaps all the jobs would continue to exist but there'd be some very interesting rebalancing.

yeah what I fear it would happen is either all wages go down of an equivalent amount, or an inversion of wages according to job satisfaction, or a cycle on inflation with prices surging and minimum wages following

in this experiment they can test the latter, since the scale is too small to affect global pricing.

I wonder how far the 'unregulated' goes: could one pocket the monthly allowance and then live on a cheap city abroad while maintaining citizenship and privileges?

at the very least this should promote entrepreneurship: given social security that what I'd do. I can't risk anything now as I have no savings and live in a country that offer zero (monetary) supports to startups via neither private nor public capitals.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#18

Post by GigabyteCoin » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:28 AM UTC

vog wrote: post #16

Can this really work when applied just partially? This experiment is about ~250 people with basic income in a large city. (The text mentions 300 people, but some of them form a control group that doesn't receive basic income.) So if any of these selected people will try to find a job, they will probably voluntarily "lose" it to somebody to really needs that job. Even without that moral issue, this makes still sense f…

>somebody to really needs that job.

That somebody would not "really need that job" because they would be guaranteed a basic income no matter what in a real world scenario.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#19

Post by lucaspiller » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:30 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

I wonder how much you'd need to save and to own in order to conduct this experiment on yourself? I've wondered about what I would do day to day if I didn't 'have to work to live'. I honestly think I'd be doing very similar things. I'd still be programming, and I'd be wanting to make things that'd help people do their jobs better, but I wouldn't feel like I 'had to'. That alone would improve my sanity immensely (I thi…

I am kind of in this situation so I'll chime in: I quit my full time job nearly two years ago and since then have been freelancing and contracting remotely. I'm now taking a 'sabbatical' for a couple of months over the summer to recharge and hopefully start my own business.

I've had a lot of people asking me when I'm getting a job again, as I assume they aren't in a financial position to be able to do this so wonder how on earth I could afford it. Although I have been lucky to have some jobs that reimburse me well, I also don't have a car, house, wife (that's happening next month!) or go out drinking. The amount I have in savings is equivalent to what friends who own houses have in equity - which is about enough for me to live off for two years, so I'm definitely not retiring yet.

The plan for the business is to build something (I'm not 100% sure what yet, but I've been following the bootstrapped community for a good few years) that will bring me in a couple of thousand dollars a month with a lot less stress than a full time job, so it's pretty equivalent to a basic income. I will probably end up moving to somewhere where the cost of living is cheaper (bonus: the cheaper parts of Europe also have much better weather than the UK), and then 'work' on whatever interests me - to start with I'll probably take a break from tech and do something more creative and hands on.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#20

Post by Dzidas » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 7:36 AM UTC

jkarneges wrote: post #12

jlarocco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there is that you have a cushy programming job. The bigger question is what about the gas station clerks? Or cleaning people? Or wait staff? Or any of the people working the millions of other jobs that just totally suck. Having done it in the past, I'm 100% sure nobody wakes up totally stoked to go bus tables or wash dishes. So, maybe people who have awesome jobs will just keep doing what they're doing, b…

If nobody is required to do the "shitty jobs", I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them? Maybe having a waiter at a restaurant would become a luxury. Perhaps all the jobs would continue to exist but there'd be some very interesting rebalancing.

Robots and automation. I think in near future (put your number here) only cool jobs will be available for humans and shitty jobs will be done by robots. So, we need to find a way how to feed and entertain let say 90% of population.