Request For Research: Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#151

Post by davidw » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:02 PM UTC

Riseed wrote: post #137

davidw wrote: post #5

There's a very relevant section in this book ( The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies - http://amzn.to/1KFJ1Iu ) , that I just read last night: > "His view is strongly supported by the work of economist Andrew Oswald, who found that joblessness lasting six months or longer harms feelings of well-being and other measures of mental health about as much as the death of…

> having people sit around idle probably isn't Basic income doesn't aim for people to sit idle, and in practice basic income doesn't seem correlated with idleness. Some studies show an increase in work hours [0], and another showed a slight decrease in work hours among new parents and teenagers [1]. Loss of self-worth need not occur when people are given the freedom to say "no" to unfulfilling and unproductive jobs,…

The suggestion in the book is a negative income tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#152

Post by DominikR » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:02 PM UTC

> 50 years from now, I think it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people.

Is this really a problem in Western societies? I haven't heard of famines or people starving to death here.

I believe that most people work for social status, so they can keep up with the people surrounding them.

> I also think that it’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income.

Is this a good way to recruit researchers? After all you wouldn't want the researchers just to produce a paper that reinforces what you believe already.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#153

Post by SilasX » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:02 PM UTC

Related to the cost of living factor: what about research on the interplay between guaranteed income and rents? I get the impression that rents will increase to take up most of the guaranteed amount, based on how people allocate for living vs. discretionary expenses, but would like to see something rigorous.

Example of the dynamic: Winston Churchill liked to give a story [1] about do-gooders who saw that a bridge's tolls were a burden on the poor, so they bought out the owner ... only to find that rents right afterward went up by the exact expense of crossing the bridge twice daily.

Considering the necessity of this crossing, that was like a sudden basic income of the cost of crossing the bridge, and got eaten up by rents. But I'd like to see something more rigorous and what can be done about that phenomenon.

[1] ctrl-f for "bridge": http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-...

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#154

Post by Nadya » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #76

Bernie Sanders at the recent town hall meeting asked for someone to tell a story of their struggles. A woman in tears told of how hard it was to get by on $10k to $12k a year. It makes me wonder. How happy will people who only get basic income be? How easy or difficult will it be for them to get simple work for a little extra income? Now there is a big difference in getting $10k for free vs scraping it together from…

The idea of basic income is to provide something. Enough money to ride public transport. Enough money to rent a room (location dependent, but even in my neighborhood rooms can be $300-$600/mo). Enough to buy food.

It is a lot easier to look for a job when you aren't spending your entire day trying to stay out of the sun and scrounge up enough money to eat. It's a lot easier to look for a job when you don't have to choose between food and public transport.

It is very difficult to scrounge up enough money to take care of the basics while job searching. It isn't impossible but it is very, very hard.

Basic income helps to prevent people from falling that low. If you were moved by a woman struggling on $10k~, try listening to the struggles of the homeless in your area. If you are fortunate not to have any in your area - go to somewhere you know they are. Just talk to them for an hour, it'll change your perspective a bit.

My biggest issue with BI is the logistics behind it. To get it to work is complicated, seemingly prone to corruption, and possibly not sustainable. But it is going to be necessary to figure it out in the coming decades, IMO.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#155

Post by samstave » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #109

jdoliner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered if its actually the joblessness that degrades people's self worth or the job search that must not be going to well and thus keeps them jobless. Would a person without a job but with a basic income and thus not feeling pressure to get a job experience the same hit to their self worth?

There's not going to be an answer, of course. I think a good source of data could be the population of retired people. I'm pretty sure if I could afford to be retired, I could easily keep busy the rest of my life.

And busy is relative.

Some stay busy napping. Some stay busy zoning on TV/internet. Some stay busy actually creating stuff.

All of them may believe themselves to be "busy"

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#156

Post by zmanian » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

There are lots of interesting questions in an effective basic income system.

Sybil and fraud resistance come to mind immediately.

If I were in the top 0.01% of wealth, I'd really like to see research into basic income. It would help with deflationary spirals, social order in an automated future and increase the supply of good ideas because it would free more people to explore high risk areas.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#157

Post by johnchristopher » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

thinkingkong wrote: post #93

davidw wrote: post #5

There's a very relevant section in this book ( The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies - http://amzn.to/1KFJ1Iu ) , that I just read last night: > "His view is strongly supported by the work of economist Andrew Oswald, who found that joblessness lasting six months or longer harms feelings of well-being and other measures of mental health about as much as the death of…

We have to clearly start differentiating between "work", and a "job". You can work hard at something which provides immense satisfaction and personal value (perhaps even value to others). But a job is strictly something you do in exchange for money. A job doesn't necessarily contribute to your self-worth. Meaningful work, does.

Way to miss the point. If you don't have a job, even if you have some kind of meaningful work or hobby on the side, your self-worth will still suffers from that.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#158

Post by GordonS » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

notliketherest wrote: post #13

When I talk with people about basic income, my gut reaction and primary argument is that it contrasts with that fundamental human nature that's been show time and again throughout humanity - given a guaranteed, fixed reward no matter how much or how little you work for it, disincentivizes work. It follows along the same lines as why government instituted communism fails. Or why the first version of the mayflower comp…

It could be argued that there are many other aspects of human nature that would drive many (but certainly not all) people to work and earn increase their income - such as altruism, ambition, personal goals, greed, vanity, wanderlust, nest-building (e.g. wanting a bigger house), etc

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#159

Post by mosquito242 » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

chubot wrote: post #46

My personal viewpoint is that you should be guaranteed survival and some opportunity by society, but not guaranteed income. That is, you should get food, shelter, medical care, and education for free (this also implies free child care). But you don't get to buy a cell phone or an XBox or whatever -- you have to work for that. In other words, I think basic income is jumping the gun a bit. Who is going to PAY for this,…

My assumption about basic income was always that at it's core, it provides the money for food and shelter. This reduces bureaucratic overhead in terms of trying to provide people those goods, and gives them the freedom to make their own choices and not have to work to survive, and the government is no longer forced to create the infrastructure to try to find ways to provide food and shelter. This may, however, require work in terms of providing affordable housing options to everyone, but I don't think you have to solve one problem first to solve the other.

Health Care and Education are a separate (but still related and important) set of problems. Both of those require greater infrastructure on the part of the government to provide effective solutions, so again this is a problem that also requires a lot of thought and effort, but providing basic income doesn't seem like it would preclude health care/education reform. Nor does it seem like solving health care and education reform would change the structure or overall effects of a basic income program; they're simply additional solutions that would certainly improve our quality of life and possibly the efficacy of the program.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#160

Post by robto » Wed, Jan 27, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

larsiusprime wrote: post #66

gizmo686 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Henry George Theorem talks about spending on public goods.

How is giving a blanket benefit to every citizen in an area not a public good?

A public good is a technical term in economics. One useful way of categorizing goods is to place them along two axes - excludability and rivalry. Public goods are categorized non-excludable and non-rival. Non-excludable means you can't stop people who don't pay for the good from consuming it - like clean air. Non-rival means that one person's consumption of a good does not affect another person's. Digital goods are typically non-rival.

A cash transfer doesn't really meet these conditions - it's excludable, in that you can restrict access to citizens or to whomever. And it's rival - there are only so many dollars to go around.

That said, I think inflation is a very real concern for any basic income scheme.