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

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

#331

Post by dageshi »

chi-sq wrote: post #232
ajuc wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a government were to do that for everyone Inflation would eat it up.

> Inflation would eat it up. As discussed above, funding for UBI can be mostly reassigned from existing welfare & pension budgets. Demand for basic food and shelter is more or less a constant (unless you can argue otherwise), regardless of people's income, so as I see, prices for non-luxurious items could stay about the same under UBI. It's a simplistic overview and there are tons of important factors e.g. farming su…

I don't see that demand for property/shelter is constant because people can and do buy it as investment. My assumption would be that rental prices would rise to the point where BI barely covers shelter and the money is effectively transferred via rental to "investors".

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

#333

Post by rhino369 »

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

While for profit prison is a pretty dangerous conflict of interest, 94% of prisoners are in public prisons. And even private prisons only profit a few people, and cost the rest of us money.

The US doesn't have so many in prison because it's for profit.

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

#334

Post by gregjwild »

paulhauggis wrote: post #303
onion2k wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. That isn't their personal project. That's all they have the choice of doing. Most people do those things because they're tired after working hard all day for a wage that doesn't give them enough money to do anything but sit in front of the television. If people had the opportunity to work a bit less in their job so they could do something worthwhile and fulfilling in their spare time, most people would t…

"a few of them end up just enjoying themselves" The studies about people that win money that I've seen paint a different picture: 75% lose it all within 5 years by not spending wisely. It's the same with professional sports players and it's gotten so bad, they have started getting them mandatory professional money managers. I believe there is a Netflix documentary about it called "broke". People that inherit money al…

> In the very beginning, it might be okay in terms of economics. However, as the years go on, more and more people will start relying on this basic income and we will have entire generations of people depending on it to live.

The problem here is the rate of job automation vs. job creation right now. There's a lot of indicators suggesting we're reaching - or have reached - the tipping point here. We need a strategy for giving people breathing space to adapt to job destruction. That might be a basic income, or a government backed re-training program perhaps. But the latter supposes that there are enough jobs to go for when they re-train. And the one big growth area, IT, is really limited to those with some some degree of innate talent. Think about all those truckers and taxi drivers who are going to see their jobs eliminated by maybe 2030.

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

#335

Post by rhino369 »

chi-sq wrote: post #240
TeMPOraL wrote: post #215

I'm a strong supporter of the concept and motivation behind universal basic income, but I admit I don't understand one part of the calculations - what's the solution for the problem of prices universally rising to the point of cancelling out the UBI? I mean, if everyone suddenly gets additional $500 a month to spend, how do you prevent the market from correcting for that?

IANAE and would like to hear an expert's answer as well. But as far as I can see, the demand for basic food and shelter is not elastic, people need roof and bread always. And the capital is mostly reallocated from existing subsidies, not created. With UBI, prices for non-essential goods and services would maybe increase a little, and there would be a revolution in employment market, but my guess is that potatoes and…

I think basic income is a bad idea, but if you liberated people from seeking jobs, many of them wouldn't live in overcrowded cities. If rent is too high in the bay area, you'd go live in Madison, Wisconsin. Or in a pre-fab house in the middle of nowhere.

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

#336

Post by MSM »

Retric wrote: post #304
TeMPOraL wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I think I should have written "international scale", I apologize for the confusion. I don't know of any study on national level, i.e. of families in a single country. The only thing I know of are anecdotes and stories about very poor families having 5+ children.

I have seen this stat from a few studies. EX: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/kids_are_normal.... Higher income > more kids, Higher education > fewer children. This seems fairly obvious as people are less likely to have children and stay in school. But, as I understand it the effect is larger than that.

I have heard the opposite from many studies as well. You linked a post that spawned many, many rebuttals by various organizations.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-w...

http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-a...

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

#337

Post by gregjwild »

The main thing to remember with this is that even if you do end up with a % of people who do just bum around on basic, a lot more still would rather earn enough to live a more interesting life. And wages will probably go up to incentivize people to do the crap jobs - or encourage someone to find a way to automate it.

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

#338

Post by noarchy »

Who are the groups driving all of the mentions of basic income/mincome on social media? Or is it a coincidence that we're seeing more and more discussion of the topic on places like reddit and HN? I'm genuinely curious to know how organic this topic is, versus whether or not there is a concerted effort to "get the word out".

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

#339

Post by s73v3r »

dharmach wrote: post #281
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…

A company will hire and keep only those who are able and willing to worry about company's issues. For such employees it makes sense to pay them decent wage so they are free to worry about company. How should government fire citizen who are not performing well?

Why should they bother?

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

#340

Post by flycaliguy »

noarchy wrote: post #338

Who are the groups driving all of the mentions of basic income/mincome on social media? Or is it a coincidence that we're seeing more and more discussion of the topic on places like reddit and HN? I'm genuinely curious to know how organic this topic is, versus whether or not there is a concerted effort to "get the word out".

I'm not sure if there is a conspiracy, I've observed a slow increase in it's coverage over the last few years. Much in line with the mainstreaming of ideas about robotic work forces and other technological advances like uber which are bringing unpredictable disruption to the labour market.

My guess would be a more so organic reaction to labour predictions.

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