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

#321

Post by wooyi » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #33

One of the first pieces of advice I had when my company landed its investment was to pay ourselves a decent (not extravagant) wage so that my time went on worrying about the company rather than how I was going to afford to do things in my personal life. The same is true for employees - if they're paid a good living they will spend more time on thinking about problems in their job instead. If a government were to do t…

This assumes everyone is motivated, wants to improve their lives and do well in their jobs or in society.

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

#322

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #310

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's evidence on a national scale that birthrate is anticorrelated with wealth. The better off people are on average, the less kids they have.

is it a smooth relationship, or is it more of a step function with 1 steps? I always suspected that the reality was more like "people who are able to afford children and able to make long-term plans tend to have only as many children as they want, when they feel they are ready, but people who aren't able to afford children or who don't make long-term plans will tend to take a more devil-may-care attitude towards proc…

From what I heard, in very poor countries children are often treated as investment. A child can start paying itself off by working as soon as even 5 years after being born. As a parent, you want someone to take care of you when you're old, and given high children mortality, you're better off making more of them in hope at least one survives to adulthood. Basically, those people are too poor to afford not having many children.

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

#323

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #322

knodi123 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it a smooth relationship, or is it more of a step function with 1 steps? I always suspected that the reality was more like "people who are able to afford children and able to make long-term plans tend to have only as many children as they want, when they feel they are ready, but people who aren't able to afford children or who don't make long-term plans will tend to take a more devil-may-care attitude towards proc…

From what I heard, in very poor countries children are often treated as investment. A child can start paying itself off by working as soon as even 5 years after being born. As a parent, you want someone to take care of you when you're old, and given high children mortality, you're better off making more of them in hope at least one survives to adulthood. Basically, those people are too poor to afford not having many…

This is rapidly becoming ancient history. There's a wonderful youtube video showing all the countries on earth, moving on a multimensional chart by infant mortality and standard of living. The origin is ideal. All countries but 1 or two have shot like arrows toward the origin over the last century.

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

#324

Post by jlarocco » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 4:27 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #29

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 you are 20-something living on minimal income that barely covers food and a roof, would you take a job working as a gas station clerk in order to afford to go out and eat and socialize, buy a drink in a bar, or participate in the culture of everyone else around you? If you asked a anthropologist, I suspect you would hear a pattern of human beings doing all kind of work in order to increase their status in society…

Most of the time, I wouldn't.

To be more realistic, most of the time I wouldn't even take a job programming if I had food and housing covered. I might do a contracting gig here or there to buy a new bike or skis, or pay for a big trip somewhere, but it's very unlikely I'd work all the time.

I've considered doing something like that now. I have enough savings to pull it off for a few years, so why not take a few years off and play? With a guaranteed minimum income it'd be an even longer time.

I like the idea of providing for everybody, but people need to be realistic about what could actually happen. If it's just a plan to shame and guilt trip everybody into working all the time, I'd prefer we don't do it.

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

#325

Post by richmarr » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:04 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #307

richmarr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see that discussion about basic income I am always wandering, who is going to pay for that? The typical justification is that it pays for itself in simplified management, improved education, lower crime, etc. I haven't seen the sums, but given that the US incarcerates 1% of it's population at exhobitant (direct and indirect) cost, it doesn't seem that unrealistic. Let's forget about the question if this is mor…

> "given that the US incarcerates 1% of it's population at exhobitant (direct and indirect) cost" Isn't part of the problem there that the US Prison System is a for-profit industry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pz3syET3DY

Yep.

Poverty and the pathetically ineffective "War on Drugs" put them there, and the prison system's focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation keeps them imprisoned and/or reoffending.

Imagine the economic effect of having 1% of the population turned from being a cost-drain to being young healthy tax-payers. The reduced load on policing. The fact that people would be less afraid of crime. Imagine the economic boost if people could interact with their neighbours and build communities without fear.

Sure, in reality it wouldn't be as rosy as that, but chances are it'd be a darn sight better than where we are now.

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

#326

Post by foota » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:07 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #221

ajuc wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would competition increase?

For basic goods there would be more demand (people who can't afford even basics would enter the market making the total market larger) in turn making it more attractive to compete there. People always go where there is opportunity. We are also on a long term trend of prices coming down in any case.

This is not how economics works. There are supply curves and there are demand curves, then there is the quantity supplied and quantity demanded. If the demand for a product shifts up (increases) due to basic income, then the quantity demanded increases. Then inventories of that product decrease, indicating that the firms could start producing more and still be able to sell it. They do this, but there costs go up, since each unit that they produce now costs them more on average. [assuming they are producing with increasing marginal costs, which is generally true]

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

#327

Post by brobinson » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #293

Merovius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood, why this is a problem. We live in a society of abundance. Tying coverage of living expenses to work done, just leads to people doing pointless work. This is at least the reality in Germany: There aren't enough jobs for everyone, people live under the illusion that it is wrong to just subsidize people living, thus the government rather subsidizes jobs, that are not profitable to be done by people (…

We need to get rid of the myth that everybody needs to work. Better would be to automate all the work so nobody has to work anymore.

Who owns the machines in that system? The government?

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

#328

Post by JesperRavn » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #175

dantheman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That money has to come from somewhere, it will either reduce the consumption from where it was taken or it will reduce capital stocks that can be used for investment.

Look at, eg, the English "Working family tax credits" system. People on low wages pay some tax on those wages, then apply to have some of that tax returned. There's a lot of bureaucracy involved. It's not great to be on those benefits because you can't budget your money. Scrapping that system and then just reducing the amount of tax that everyone on low wages pays would probably be better.

That may be true, but dantheman was simply correcting jokoon's implicit claim that paying people money is good in itself ("since it's injecting money that increase consumption, which in turn also increase business and growth.")

I think there are good arguments for basic income, but they get obscured by the fact that it has become a political campaign, so people like you argue for their own side rather than correcting people who support basic income but for the wrong reason.

You are correct that there are reasons why basic income be more efficient than other redistribution measures. But this doesn't contradict the fact that the money has to come from somewhere, and it isn't relevant to this particular thread of discussion.

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

#329

Post by s_kilk » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

just_had_tea wrote: post #218

314 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking the latest figures for 2016: 155B for pensions and welfare 56B. I assume the point is to replace both of those completely with the basic income so the net cost is not 240B, it is 29B. Not cheap, but not pie in the sky either. Sell a bank or two :)

Cut defense wastage. Uh, sorry, I meant defense spending.

Less bombs, more bread.

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

#330

Post by JesperRavn » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

ed_blackburn wrote: post #187

Basic Income is sometimes dogmatically derided as 'socialist' thus evil. Proponents of Basic Income - or varieties thereof - can be found on the left and the right of the economic political compass. Even Milton Freedman was a proponent of some guise. Personally I think it is lazy to dismiss the thinking behind Basic Income as merely communism.

There is one subtle difference between basic income and welfare systems, which is that welfare systems (even if you remove the requirement to look for work) place a higher effective marginal tax rate on the lower end of the income scale. This might seem like a bad idea, since it reduces the incentive to work for those people. E.g. in Australia, at some levels of income, you lose $5 of welfare for every $10 you earn, making the effective marginal tax rate 50%. However, every redistribution system reduces the incentive to work for some people. Basic income (plus progressive income tax) would make this disincentive gradually increase with wealth. Welfare systems have a high marginal tax rate up to the point where people no longer receive welfare, then the marginal tax rate drops sharply, and gradually increases with progressive income tax.

When viewed in this holistic way, it's not clear which system is better. Some might say that it's not worth "wasting" incentive to work on people who might, for all number of reasons, not be willing or able to work anyway. This is the argument for the welfare state. On the other hand, basic income advocates might argue that poor people are just as willing to work as anyone, and that creating very high effective marginal tax rates for them results in welfare dependence.