India floats the idea of a universal basic income • Hacker News Board

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#181

Post by johndoe4589 » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 11:46 AM UTC

harigov wrote: post #17

In other developed countries, I think universal basic income makes sense, but not in the case of India. India has several systemic problems and a significant portion of the population has little to no education. Any income that can sustain a household without any pressure to grow as people will probably hinder their progress more so than help them. For a country with no lack of problems to solve, they are much better…

And people are going to learn when they are trying to fill their belly from day to day? You are putting this backwards. [Maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs) comes to mind.

I travelled to India for 3 months some years ago. I could live there with 300 EUR a month in a nice little hotel in Himachal Pradesh no less. I could have gotten a room for just 1 EUR a day which I saw with my own eyes, simple room clean in a Tibetan run building. But this hotel had wifi downstairs which they changed the password only every few days, I had a TV, full size bed, private bathroom and toilet with running water (no carrying buckets or rationing like the people living in the area), etc.

I remember back then, 2010 is not so long ago, I could eat plenty for less than 300 INR a day (so approx. 2-3 EUR). Like a nice bowl of Tibetan noodles was 80 INR if I remember, and that was filling for a third of the day, and that's not even 1 EUR (Of course if I bought a coca cola then I would have paid 100 INR or more).

When a foreigner can live there with 300 EUR a month and be quite comfortable;, just imagine the change of quality of life it makes to people in poverty if they had just 100 EUR a month.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#182

Post by oxide » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 11:51 AM UTC

hashhar wrote: post #50

RangerScience wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any income that can sustain a household without any pressure to grow as people will probably hinder their progress more so than help them Are you basing this off of any familiarity with poor Indian culture? Why do you expect "free money" to translate into "lesser progress" rather than "progress of their choice"? Here's a different question: Have you learned more through self-directed learning, or other-directed lea…

Most of the poor (and the rich too) here (I mean in India) look at such social programs as nothing more than cash-grabs. I have known people who make money by registering for multiple CNG connections and distributing them to other people in return for full price of the CNG cylinder (the cylinders are subsidised and the subsidy is paid by the government directly into the bank account of the person with whom the connec…

There will always be abusers.

You hear this same thing about food stamps in the US, to the point that Republican lawmakers start calling for big-government style drug testing (at the taxpayers expense) of welfare recipients.

Wasteful spending and big government bullshit coming from one hand, while the mouth can't stop talking about cutting back on both.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#183

Post by lngnmn » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 11:53 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #174

lngnmn wrote: post #155

India is very special, traditionalist society. As person who have spent a considerable time living in North India, I would say that people will turn this free money into gold and garments and other status symbols, like mobiles, which in turn, will cause inflation and soaring of prices of gold and other assets. The analogy could be a land in the great plains of US. In San Francisco or New York the value and the price…

As person who have spent a considerable time living in North India, I would say that people will turn this free money into gold and garments and other status symbols, like mobiles, which in turn, will cause inflation and soaring of prices of gold and other assets. Simply distributing money to a bank account will obviously eradicate some corruption, the problem is that, perhaps, a third of population in some areas hav…

Skipping the "people types" nonsense, the "yes if" disconnected from reality assumption is the mark of an utopia, be it Platonic society or communism or extreme liberalism, which is always based on some unrealistic "ifs" instead of taking into account "what is".

Evolutionary and social dynamics, caused by environmental constraints and necessary following competition for everything related to passing genes to a future generation, and so called human nature, which is, basically, the behavioral answer to these fundamental challenges, cannot be dismissed by any amount of empty hipster's "progressive" rhetoric, used to gain attention.

Any proposal should be viewed as a constraint-satisfaction problem against the closest possible approximation to the actual reality. This is the only valid approach - to perform reality checks first, and it is habit for a scientifically inclined, trained mind and almost unknown skill to hipsters obsessed with their feelings and abstract, based on disconnected from reality oversimplified views and theories, like that naive "ethical" philosophy based on theology, wrong premises and naive assumptions.

In other words, I did some simplest constraint-satisfaction checking, and the idea seem to fail to pass the first few fundamental social constraints. According to laws of logic, a single flaw is enough to destroy the whole thing. I found at least two.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#184

Post by onion2k » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:03 PM UTC

lngnmn wrote: post #183

onion2k wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As person who have spent a considerable time living in North India, I would say that people will turn this free money into gold and garments and other status symbols, like mobiles, which in turn, will cause inflation and soaring of prices of gold and other assets. Simply distributing money to a bank account will obviously eradicate some corruption, the problem is that, perhaps, a third of population in some areas hav…

Skipping the "people types" nonsense, the "yes if" disconnected from reality assumption is the mark of an utopia, be it Platonic society or communism or extreme liberalism, which is always based on some unrealistic "ifs" instead of taking into account "what is". Evolutionary and social dynamics, caused by environmental constraints and necessary following competition for everything related to passing genes to a future…

Any proposal should be viewed as a constraint-satisfaction problem against the closest possible approximation to the actual reality.

Sure, but with the understanding that "actual reality" is not some fixed point that can never be changed. You're saying that Indian people will always spend this money unwisely because that's what they do now and it's what they've always done. I'm saying that Indian people living in povery are intelligent and can understand a rational argument that basic income would be great for them if they use it well. People can change, especially if they're give the incentive of, say, free money.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#185

Post by lngnmn » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:17 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #184

lngnmn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skipping the "people types" nonsense, the "yes if" disconnected from reality assumption is the mark of an utopia, be it Platonic society or communism or extreme liberalism, which is always based on some unrealistic "ifs" instead of taking into account "what is". Evolutionary and social dynamics, caused by environmental constraints and necessary following competition for everything related to passing genes to a future…

Any proposal should be viewed as a constraint-satisfaction problem against the closest possible approximation to the actual reality. Sure, but with the understanding that "actual reality" is not some fixed point that can never be changed. You're saying that Indian people will always spend this money unwisely because that's what they do now and it's what they've always done. I'm saying that Indian people living in pov…

I have not said anything about people living in poverty. I only said that there exist an ancient tradition and related social norms, which are very real and very strong factors.

Perhaps, I failed to emphasize, that in India the "social" is much stronger aspect than Western "personal success". In India it is about finding one's place in society, instead of outperforming everyone else. That is a fundamental difference. Even the decade of third-rate western satellite TV still failed to create a significant shift into western consumerism and obsession with the cosplay of success (and the cosplay of absent intelligence, which we call hipsterism). There are some converts, of course, but not that many.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#186

Post by thrgyuhlko » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:22 PM UTC

It's amusing how India has always aspired for Sweden like 'socialism' with a Zimbawbwean economy.

I can't wait to see the ways the state will now find excuses to impinge on my freedoms.

It's also rather spooky how India has followed the NWO playbook. It has only accelerated under Modi's term.

Does anyone believe that a state which can barely provide education/ healthcare can really take this forward ?

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#187

Post by aninhumer » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:29 PM UTC

ropeladder wrote: post #175

aninhumer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My vote goes to redistribution of wealth, by means of a progressive tax that starts negative. Just to note, Negative Income Tax is mathematically equivalent to UBI, in that given any NIT scheme you can produce a UBI scheme that results in the same income function. However, I think the framing can make lot of difference here, in terms of expectations, and likely implementation.

"...and likely implementation." It's true that you can make UBIs and NITs equivalent, but I think it's important to emphasize the implementation part: they are very unlikely to be implemented the same way. This is because, for them to be equivalent, you need the drop-off rate as incomes increase for an NIT to be equal to the increase in taxes on income earners below 2x the UBI level. In other words, an NIT is likely…

Yeah. And additionally, how people get access to the money may also be different. With UBI, most likely people register once and then receive the income without incident indefinitely, and only need to work out taxation if they're employed. Whereas NIT likely requires people to continually submit tax returns stating their lack of income (which is potentially more stigmatising).

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#188

Post by piyush_soni » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:40 PM UTC

lngnmn wrote: post #155

India is very special, traditionalist society. As person who have spent a considerable time living in North India, I would say that people will turn this free money into gold and garments and other status symbols, like mobiles, which in turn, will cause inflation and soaring of prices of gold and other assets. The analogy could be a land in the great plains of US. In San Francisco or New York the value and the price…

You say as if there are temples offering free food on a daily basis in every nook and corner in India. The reality is so different from your experience.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#189

Post by piyush_soni » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:43 PM UTC

lngnmn wrote: post #155

India is very special, traditionalist society. As person who have spent a considerable time living in North India, I would say that people will turn this free money into gold and garments and other status symbols, like mobiles, which in turn, will cause inflation and soaring of prices of gold and other assets. The analogy could be a land in the great plains of US. In San Francisco or New York the value and the price…

One of the major efforts of the current (Narendra Modi lead) government has been to accelerate bank account opening for poor people, and has been quite successful. This will continue, as the benefits of having a bank account and an 'Aadhaar card' (something like SSN in US) keep on increasing.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#190

Post by aninhumer » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 12:45 PM UTC

aembleton wrote: post #168

ozy wrote: post #151

My vote goes to redistribution of wealth, by means of a progressive tax that starts negative. It is the human thing to do. But it also aligns with economics and politics. Redistribution: because more money at the bottom, means a larger overall market, and I think a more stable economy. Progressive tax: any paying work will always improve your situation. (So people stay motivated to work.) Taxing wealth creation (and…

A negative tax subsidises employers so that they don't have to pay so much. If everyone got the money whether they worked or not then the low wage employer would need to improve the incentive to go and work for them. It would also reduce the amount of administrative work required.

I think it's an interesting question as to what effect NIT/UBI would have on the labour market.

On the one hand, it's a labour subsidy, so employers theoretically don't need to pay as much to offer a decent quality of life as an incentive. But on other hand, people no longer need a job to survive, which reduces the incentive to work.

I think the end result here might be a notable improvement in job quality. When you're not struggling to survive, it's much easier to weigh job quality in your decisions, and take less money in exchange for a more pleasant job. In particular, I think a lot of service jobs, could be more enjoyable if companies actually had to care about work environment.