Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Guaranteed Income for Every American

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 387 posts

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#111

Post by Mz »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #110
paul wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the world were zero-sum, which it's not. Remember how only rich people used to have cell phones, and now billions of people have them? The price of most goods is close to the marginal cost of production, which means that giving more people money may actually lower the cost of many goods (by increasing volume). Artificially scarce goods, such as an apartment in SF, may get more expensive however since their pr…

I guess apartments in San Fransisco already cost more than what someone living off basic income could afford, so the prices should not be driven up at all. Indeed, people living there would presumably get a net reduction in income (from tax increases to pay for the BI), so the prices should go down.

If you read the article, the BI being proposed would drop off after you began earning more than $30k and the drop would stop at $60k in earned income. I imagine a rather high percentage of people living in San Francisco already earn well above $60k annually.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#112

Post by Tycho »

sambe wrote: post #66
Tycho wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're not talking about 'most' people. We're talking about all people. What about the people who think to themselves, I don't want to work, I want to live off welfare. Now there will be more of those people (especially since technology satisfies more and more leisure needs for just the price of an internet connection). Also as people grow up in such a society, they don't have that driving motive in the back of th…

I would expect them to get bored and find something interesting to do. Could be quite a positive. Regardless, most existing small studies and surveys show few people behave like this or intend to.

I worry that the small studies and surveys tell us nothing about the real dangers - from interaction and scale effects in a complex system.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#113

Post by mentos »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare." How the hell does that happen politically? I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs in the stat…

Can anyone explain what planets would have to align for a UBI to replace all of these programs?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#114

Post by gozur88 »

Mz wrote: post #111
vilhelm_s wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess apartments in San Fransisco already cost more than what someone living off basic income could afford, so the prices should not be driven up at all. Indeed, people living there would presumably get a net reduction in income (from tax increases to pay for the BI), so the prices should go down.

If you read the article, the BI being proposed would drop off after you began earning more than $30k and the drop would stop at $60k in earned income. I imagine a rather high percentage of people living in San Francisco already earn well above $60k annually.

That's not a UBI scheme. That's just welfare.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#115

Post by chimeracoder »

hkmurakami wrote: post #76
maxerickson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it won't. The $10,000 left after the mandatory health payments would be a cut for many social security recipients, and many of those same people are also probably getting more than $3,000 a year in health care out of Medicare. Similar problems with Medicaid, it's worth a lot more than $3,000 to the people that are getting it (mostly because children). This is basically taking the desire to cut entitlement progr…

Not only will the voting public oppose many of these cuts, corporations (and lobbying groups representing professionals such as doctors, or AARP) will oppose them. And the latter is more ominous to me since they have the lobbying muscle in place. >create/fund residency programs Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and…

> Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice?

Not really. The AMA is often blamed for limiting the number of medical school slots available, but they have nothing to do with that - it's capped by the AAMC, which has been very deliberately raising the number of medical school positions in the US for over a decade now.

But even if that cap were lifted altogether, the number of practicing physicians would be completely unaffected, because we already have more MDs than we have residency slots available. Increasing residency programs would require funding, and currently Medicare is the source of funds for residency programs. Hospitals would typically make a loss on residency programs otherwise; contrary to what some people believe, they're actually quite expensive to operate.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#116

Post by Mz »

gozur88 wrote: post #114
Mz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article, the BI being proposed would drop off after you began earning more than $30k and the drop would stop at $60k in earned income. I imagine a rather high percentage of people living in San Francisco already earn well above $60k annually.

That's not a UBI scheme. That's just welfare.

The article proposes that we replace welfare programs, social security, etc, with this UBI. Then, at some point, it says this:

Government agencies are the worst of all mechanisms for dealing with human needs. They are necessarily bound by rules applied uniformly to people who have the same problems on paper but who will respond differently to different forms of help. Whether religious or secular, nongovernmental organization are inherently better able to tailor their services to local conditions and individual cases.

I find it ironic that this individual is for the so called UBI.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#117

Post by derwiki »

Mz wrote: post #111
vilhelm_s wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess apartments in San Fransisco already cost more than what someone living off basic income could afford, so the prices should not be driven up at all. Indeed, people living there would presumably get a net reduction in income (from tax increases to pay for the BI), so the prices should go down.

If you read the article, the BI being proposed would drop off after you began earning more than $30k and the drop would stop at $60k in earned income. I imagine a rather high percentage of people living in San Francisco already earn well above $60k annually.

Seems like the median income is about 77k:

> .. Our own San Francisco Association of Realtors says that the city’s median household income is a mere $77,700

http://sf.curbed.com/2016/2/23/11101182/11-percent-of-househ...

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#118

Post by zanny »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare." How the hell does that happen politically? I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs in the stat…

You get there by talking about it, and persuading people about it. There is no magical easy to way to bring about social change unless its profitable. And I'm not sure there are enough landlords foaming at the mouth for the legitimately juicy prospect of tenants with guaranteed paychecks to pay rent to push the issue against the tide of establishment profiteering resistance.

But rather than talk about it on HN (like this) talk about it on Facebook or when talking to friends and family IRL. That is how you actually spread these ideas.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#119

Post by danbruc »

mac01021 wrote: post #97
danbruc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. That is only a real problem if the population does not keep up with this development. I can not tell whether requirements are (now) growing faster then capabilities but both certainly grew ever since. The other thing is that it seems to…

> I meant to let no viable jobs die or automate. Are you saying you'd outlaw self-service gas pumps and checkout stations? Robotic assembly lines and autonomous vehicles? A large fraction of the population has no distinguishing skills. That segment of the population is going to find itself with ever fewer ways to earn a living.

That was meant to read »non-viable«, i.e. if customers are not willing to pay enough for a product or service so that a full time worker can live on the salary, then efficiency must improve, the job must be automate away entirely or the business must go out of business. I consider neither simply exploiting the employees nor subsidizing the business and customers by giving benefits to the employees a good solution.

Besides that I am not sure about you comment, I am not sure how you interpreted my comment with the spelling error. I am especially confused because your first paragraph sounds like you are arguing for automation, the second paragraphs sounds like you consider it harmful for unskilled workers. I don't want to outlaw any automation, quite the opposite, I would consider the ultimate goal a world where all work is done by robots and nobody has to work.

Post reply on HN