Live data from Hacker News

I'm going to work full-time on free software

drewdevault.com

111–120 of 292 posts

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except your suggestions here ignore that the surplus given by UBI will be amortized into rent and staples costs. It's all well and good until you get into the weeds and realize that a lot of price fixing or pseudo price fixing needs to happen before UBI becomes realistic. If the argument is getting rid of legislative and bureaucratic bloat, it's definitely not quite so easy or quite so effective, choose one.

Why would you expect inflation to occur? As long as UBI is payed for via taxes and not deficit spending than the money supply isn't changing. And as economists say, inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Supply & demand aren't radically changing either. America's poor eat too much, not too little. And while there are homeless people in America, most sleep in shelters. If anything, you might expect the price of the cheap…

Money supply isn't the issue here.

If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars, the amount of money available for low income housing has strictly increased. Landlords are then in a position to raise prices proportionally.

The "America's poor eat too much" line is also not strong. You might argue that they eat the wrong things; this is the food desert/education argument that's commonly made. Regardless there is already artificial price fixing of many staple foods like milk and bread, which is a much better argument.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except your suggestions here ignore that the surplus given by UBI will be amortized into rent and staples costs. It's all well and good until you get into the weeds and realize that a lot of price fixing or pseudo price fixing needs to happen before UBI becomes realistic. If the argument is getting rid of legislative and bureaucratic bloat, it's definitely not quite so easy or quite so effective, choose one.

Why would you expect inflation to occur? As long as UBI is payed for via taxes and not deficit spending than the money supply isn't changing. And as economists say, inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Supply & demand aren't radically changing either. America's poor eat too much, not too little. And while there are homeless people in America, most sleep in shelters. If anything, you might expect the price of the cheap…

>And while there are homeless people in America, most sleep in shelters.

You'd be surprised.

https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-c...

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#113
post #34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could get away with a UBI which is substantially less than that. $12,000/person/year seems like it should be easily sufficient - since I live on that much excepting tuition in downtown Toronto (not cheap), in CAD (so really a lot less), just fine. Keep in mind that when you are counting per person that means you are allocating that much for people not in the workforce like children too. A 4 person househo…

That's a good point, the US population of people 18 years or old is ~252 million, so if you only gave people 18+ a UBI handout, you'd cut your costs to 7.862 Trillion dollars per year.

Also one could remove the UBI part already covered by pensions -- e.g. the millions of government employees getting X pension money, can get (X - UBI) + UBI (so the same as they already get).

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#114
post #30
post #18

Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…

I think you could get away with a UBI which is substantially less than that. $12,000/person/year seems like it should be easily sufficient - since I live on that much excepting tuition in downtown Toronto (not cheap), in CAD (so really a lot less), just fine. Keep in mind that when you are counting per person that means you are allocating that much for people not in the workforce like children too. A 4 person househo…

What will happen with the people who can't manage their money and blow their UBI other things?

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#115
post #18

Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…

UBI shouldn't be connected with "making a living in NYC" or whether. It should be enough to cover basic needs, even if it means having to move to a cheaper state. In that light, something like $10-$12,000 is more like it -- should cover rent, basic food, electricity, and so on. It's to not have homeless, destitute, left behind people, not to cover nice living expenses. For a family, $10 will be of course $20, and so…

Moving is expensive as well. When you hear about families being unable to buy diapers in bulk because they can't save the $50 needed for that and instead buy smaller quantities at twice the cost per diaper you realize that some people simply can't afford to move somewhere cheaper as crazy as that sounds.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#117
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could get away with a UBI which is substantially less than that. $12,000/person/year seems like it should be easily sufficient - since I live on that much excepting tuition in downtown Toronto (not cheap), in CAD (so really a lot less), just fine. Keep in mind that when you are counting per person that means you are allocating that much for people not in the workforce like children too. A 4 person househo…

What will happen with the people who can't manage their money and blow their UBI other things?

The same thing that happens now when people who can't manage their money blow their salary on other things, except that it's marginally clearer what the problem is.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will happen with the people who can't manage their money and blow their UBI other things?

The same thing that happens now when people who can't manage their money blow their salary on other things, except that it's marginally clearer what the problem is.

Right now those people get food stamps and welfare
Post reply on HN