This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours • Hacker News Board

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#11

Post by kfk » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:02 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #8

kfk wrote: post #7

I will never support this idea. This is kind of thinking is extremely nationalistic: I am entitled to free money because I was born in XYZ. On top of this, this idea has very weak economics fundamentals, there is no prove that growth comes from redistributing wealth. There is plenty of prove growth comes from innovation and innovation comes from people actually working. We are in denial. The whole Europe is in denial…

[deleted]

And let's not forget how racist we (Europe) become when it comes to immigration from these poor countries. I have a proposal, let's open the gates of Europe to everybody that doesn't have a criminal record.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#12

Post by luckyisgood » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:08 PM UTC

SanderMak wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm missing something, but if they want to gather signatures - why not add a link to the petition so people can actually sign?

Because you need to be focused on one goal only. This campaign's goal is to reach 15,000 EUR. The target audience for this particular campaign are people who already signed the initiative and who are mostly informed about the Initiative.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#13

Post by SEMW » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:08 PM UTC

KiwiCoder wrote: post #9

I'd not heard of the basic income concept until now so my reaction might be naive, but what benefit could possibly justify the collection and redistribution of a fixed amount of cash to everyone , regardless of their situation? For example, if 1 person in 10 is thirsty, what benefit derives from giving water to all 10 versus the 1 - isn't that simply a wasteful distribution of resources? Even in the extreme case wher…

Distribution based on need (means-testing) seems to scale poorly. You need a system to determine means, which at governmental scales is inevitably bureaucratic, resource-intensive, and prone to cheating.

Point is, it is always possible to take a means-tested system and turn it into a universal system without changing the final distribution.

Take your thirst example. Say nine people have 100 units of water and the tenth has 0. A means-tested welfare system might involve taking 5 units from each of the 9 people and giving it to the tenth, leaving the nine with 95 and the tenth with 45. Now, instead, we increase the 'tax' from 5% to 50%, and give everyone 45 units. The resultant distribution is the same (the nine have 95, the tenth has 45), but this way involves no means-testing.

OK, so the numbers here are a bit unrealistic, but the point is, given any means-tested system you can always make it universal and just make the tax system more progressive to cancel out the benefits paid to the non-needy.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#14

Post by jrkatz » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:10 PM UTC

KiwiCoder wrote: post #9

I'd not heard of the basic income concept until now so my reaction might be naive, but what benefit could possibly justify the collection and redistribution of a fixed amount of cash to everyone , regardless of their situation? For example, if 1 person in 10 is thirsty, what benefit derives from giving water to all 10 versus the 1 - isn't that simply a wasteful distribution of resources? Even in the extreme case wher…

To construct a trivial example, say we give every citizen $2000 a month in post-tax basic income. Of course, most citizens have jobs and other sources of income. To make math easier, assume this government has a flat income tax of 20% If you earn $0, you are pay $0 in tax and get $2000 in basic income. If you earn $9000, you pay $1800 in taxes and get $2000 in basic income, netting you $200. Basic income washes at $10,000, and after that serves only to defray your tax costs until it is hardly noticeable.

I can't speak to what levels of taxation and basic income might be useful -- these ones have been selected for convenient math -- but that's the general idea of it.

Or, in terms of your water metaphor, if one person in ten is thirsty, we give water to all ten, but we also take from the nine, so they actually see a small loss. The water didn't come from nowhere.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#15

Post by Kliment » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:11 PM UTC

KiwiCoder wrote: post #9

I'd not heard of the basic income concept until now so my reaction might be naive, but what benefit could possibly justify the collection and redistribution of a fixed amount of cash to everyone , regardless of their situation? For example, if 1 person in 10 is thirsty, what benefit derives from giving water to all 10 versus the 1 - isn't that simply a wasteful distribution of resources? Even in the extreme case wher…

Basically, it's super-expensive to check actual need, and by removing the administrative expense related to it you end up getting a much more efficient system. There's also the side effects of making part-time employment easier and speculative/entrepreneurial projects safer. To match your analogy, if it costs 11 units of water to determine who is thirsty, then giving water to all ten costs 10 units, and giving water to just the one costs 12.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#16

Post by sz4kerto » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:13 PM UTC

jaibot wrote: post #5

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citi…

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .

I might agree. However, most people will want basic income as an extra, not as a replacement. I would bet a significant amount on that (i.e. basic income being popular only until poor people figure out what are they going to lose).

The masses don't like taking care of themselves. Not even if they get 'free' money for that.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#17

Post by jiggy2011 » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:13 PM UTC

jaibot wrote: post #5

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citi…

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .

The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income.

Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there.

The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#18

Post by SEMW » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

jaibot wrote: post #5

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citi…

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .

Correct link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income. GMI is different.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#19

Post by SanderMak » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

luckyisgood wrote: post #12

SanderMak wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm missing something, but if they want to gather signatures - why not add a link to the petition so people can actually sign?

Because you need to be focused on one goal only. This campaign's goal is to reach 15,000 EUR. The target audience for this particular campaign are people who already signed the initiative and who are mostly informed about the Initiative.

Hence you post it to HN, who have all obviously signed the initiative? Sorry, but that seems like a missed opportunity.

Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours

#20

Post by berrypicker » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

jaibot wrote: post #5

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citi…

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .

For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs.

Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.