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YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

arstechnica.com

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Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#161

Post by jacalata »

chronic81 wrote: post #153
konschubert wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying the study is a bad thing, but if basic income were implemented in an entire community, it would have a different effect than just a small slice of a community. In particular, wouldn't it just raise the price of housing and rent? There's only so much land and housing to go around, and if you're competing with everyone else to buy a house or rent an apartment, if everyone else can afford to pay that mu…

This is incorrect. The rent will precisely increase by 1000 Euro. Yes you can compare percentages all you want, but at the end of the day, 1000 Euro basic income is 1000 Euro more for everyone. That will be directly plowed into everyone's (for example) personal rent/housing budget or tolerance, which translates to inflated rental prices. If I make $15K/month and receive a $1K/month basic income, I'll gladly pay $1K/m…

You can give me all the money you want and I won't spend any of it on housing. In fact my income has gone up 50% in the last five years and my housing expenses haven't changed at all.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#162

Post by mathattack »

Great idea. I hope it works. Even if it doesn't work, if it provides experimental data, that will be valuable.

One line I didn't like from the article:

It’s obviously difficult to lift people out of poverty. According to the White House, as of 2012 (decades after President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty"), approximately 15 percent of Americans (or 49.7 million people, including 13.4 million children) live below the poverty line. Worse still, "only about half of low-income Americans make it out of the lowest income distribution quintile over a 20-year period." (As the old saying goes: "It’s expensive to be poor.")

I think this can be very misleading. Is the poverty line a good definition? And if everyone's standard of living rises over 20 years, is it an issue to be in the bottom quintile? I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that it's very shabby statistics. (Maybe I just shouldn't read articles like this)

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#163

Post by djrobstep »

chronic81 wrote: post #160
djrobstep wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make $160K a year, your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all. And this is the way it's supposed to be: High earners will be net losers, people with low/sporadic/zero market income will be net gainers.

> your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all. This will never happen (through government legislation). If it does happen, then the policy will encourage individuals not to work, since the income to work ratio is better if you make less money. This would be a disaster for a country's economic development.

Having the choice to work a bit less is actually good. And the economic gains from increased distributive efficiency would be huge.

In reality, there is already a large basic income program, it's called Social Security.

I'm sure you probably think that giving millions of elderly the freedom to retire is terrible for economic development, but it is no doubt a great advance for human decency.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#164

Post by honkhonkpants »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #40
daveguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former. The latter is a racist caricature of welfare.

Lets interpret the claim charitably - people on welfare have reduced work effort, increased fertility, and increased drug consumption. Do you assert that any of those claims are false?

Drug consumption is definitely wrong. Poor people can't afford drugs. People on welfare in states that require drug testing of welfare recipients have much lower rates of drug use than the population at large. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-dru...

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#165

Post by toomuchtodo »

kzhahou wrote: post #140
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are gonna end up in the future that Wall-E has predicted. Machines do everything and humans are fat slugs. Our minds are lazy and want to do the least amount of work. If given the option, we will do the least amount and occupy ourselves in entertainment. Now is that living? Thats up to you to decide. A good book to read on experiments done to understand human behavior is Daniel Kahnemans Thinking Fast and Slow.

That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.

> Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive.

Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anything close to keeping in shape with sports, running, and so on. Not that that stops people from fucking, but the proportion of athletic, attractive people fucking is far lower than you might make it out to be.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#166

Post by prawn »

kzhahou wrote: post #140
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are gonna end up in the future that Wall-E has predicted. Machines do everything and humans are fat slugs. Our minds are lazy and want to do the least amount of work. If given the option, we will do the least amount and occupy ourselves in entertainment. Now is that living? Thats up to you to decide. A good book to read on experiments done to understand human behavior is Daniel Kahnemans Thinking Fast and Slow.

That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.

Have you been to a Walmart recently?

I don't think the Wall-E scenario is entirely off base.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#167

Post by prawn »

gjkood wrote: post #17

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of? If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and…

More than just training, I think a lot of people could be helped by very regular motivation of some sort.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#168

Post by e12e »

youngButEager wrote: post #142
ilaksh wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not the immigration its the illegal pay and lack of benefits that they are given. The construction industry is based on underpaying migrants. If you have been rehabing homes then you certainly took advantage of this too. Look in the mirror.

Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that. If you're rehabbing properties in this area (Silicon Valley) you cannot give work to people unless they have a Contractor's license, which you can verify here: http://www.cslb.ca.gov/ There are many reasons for only hiring licensed contractors: 1) your homeowners or commercial insurance will not be abl…

I'm not sure about California, but eg. in Norway, the problem is usually that contractors will hire sub-contractors, that'll pocket the difference between what on paper might look like a "living wage" (although, often when you factor in materials and look at actual time spent, the offers start to look suspiciously cheap) - and hire someone unaware of local conditions, and pay what ends up being effectively slave wages.

There was recently a case where the local government had contracted for all the electric and cabling for a new hospital - and it turned out that after calculating the expected pay due to the hours in the offer, there wasn't any money left for the actual cables and electronics the company was supposed to install (also included in the offer). Usually this is all accompanied by fake work contracts that lists higher wages than what's actually paid to the workers.

So your line of:

> Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that.

reads a lot like "I do take advantage, but I'm wilfully ignorant, so I'm not the bad guy". Not saying that's the case, just saying that's the impression you give.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#169

Post by Fomite »

jasonwen wrote: post #9

One year is too limited in my opinion. If you want to see what people will do with basic income, you have to give them the feeling the money is near infinite. One year looks to me its not enough to drop everything, as you will know it will soon come to an end. The paychological barrier for me would be at least 5+ years. Then again if I know it will come to an end in xx years, I will feel more inclined to work harder.…

There are all manner of logistical and ethical issues that need to be ironed out for a study like this. Doing small, limited-time, "This is not exactly going to produce the same results as the larger planned study" is extremely common.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#170

Post by Fomite »

kiba wrote: post #49
chirau wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they don't tell the people when the income is going to stop coming in?

Doesn't seems all that ethical thing to do even though it would give a better picture of how it would work.

They've said they're working with an external IRB. Not telling them would be a massive issue for informed consent, and at least if I was sitting on said IRB would generate a pretty firm "Um...no."
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