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The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

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Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#191

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Suncho wrote: post #162
dahdum wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By giving people money to spend, it unlocks the economy's potential to produce wealth for the people. We won't produce wealth that people won't buy and basic income allows more people to buy more wealth." Doesn't UBI reduce the economic productivity by both driving up the cost of labor through increased taxation and lowering the supply? Until (if) we are in a post-scarcity world how will lowering productive output e…

> Doesn't UBI reduce the economic productivity by both driving up the cost of labor through increased taxation No. First of all, there's no reason that basic income has to have any taxes associated with it. A common mistake people (including the government) make is to assume that government spending must be funded by taxation. It doesn't have to be. If the government spends and the economy responds productively to th…

> If the government spends and the economy responds productively to that spending, then you're fine. Taxing is a separate issue. You should only really tax when you want to remove money from a specific part of the economy.

Or when you don't want your government to run a deficit. Or when you don't want to finance your government by printing money. That always ends badly, no matter how clever the mechanism is this time, or how many people say "it's different this time".

> To put it succinctly, increasing taxes does not increase the amount of money the government can usefully spend unless you directly taxed the use of some resource and the spending is going to put that particular resource to use in a more desirable way.

I don't think the economy works the way you think it works...

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#192

Post by sleighboy »

Suncho wrote: post #10
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #5

What astonishes me is how often I see a BI proponent is also a bitcoin proponent. The government can’t be trusted not to devalue our currency but at the same time we should introduce a system which makes our livelihoods dependent on the whims of bureaucrats.

> The government can’t be trusted not to devalue our currency Governments can often be trusted to maintain a stable value of currency. That's why fiat currency out-competed gold and why Bitcoin will never be able to compete with a well-managed fiat currency. > we should introduce a system which makes our livelihoods dependent on the whims of bureaucrats. There are robust ways to implement basic income that don't depe…

When did a fiat currency win out over gold? It requires government manipulation by price fixing, outright debasement and mechanisms like legal tender laws for worthless tokens to win out over a precious metal such as gold.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#193

Post by eanzenberg »

dahdum wrote: post #165
tobbyb wrote: post #128

The UBI debate is fundamental to how we perceive society and what kind of society we want to build into the future. If one's idea of human society is people working to earn money. Fullstop. And those who are better at it are the be all and end alls of human civilization and progress and the ultimate aspiration. Then words like lazy, people will not do anything, arguments that are generic enough to block any action, a…

"The other way is thinking of the billions of brains wasted every generation just trying to survive, exactly what humans did 2000 years ago. Now imagine if all these brains could be freed and god knows how much innovation, progress and intellectual output can be unlocked into a completely different kind of society. That's a vision." It's not so cut and dry. I don't believe that incentives under UBI will lead to great…

I think the people who would agree with you are the ones who see this firsthand. The people who back UBI generally live in a bubble or see things from an ivory tower.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#194

Post by Alex3917 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #186
Alex3917 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just grab any U.S. history book. The original drafts of the Declaration of Independence talked about the importance of property, because the founding fathers spent an enormous amount of time thinking through the implications of what would happen if citizens just voted to take all the property away from the wealthy. (Democracy was basically Bitcoin of the 1700s.) And they came to the conclusion that the only way to pr…

Democracy was basically Bitcoin of the 1700s History books don't say stuff like this. You are making ahistorical arguments about men who owned slaves.

With Bitcoin, those who don't own coins can at any point vote to take away all the coins from those who do. That's exactly the same problem that the founders were worried about. There isn't any sort of fancy historical imagination that's needed.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#195

Post by neonhomer »

Suncho wrote: post #120
DoreenMichele wrote: post #109

The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential? Last I checked, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness. Then he goes on to compare YC to basic income. Seriously? They take a share in your company and help you develop it. That isn't money for nothing. If he weren't a millionaire and the current president of YC, would we keep seeing articles…

> The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential? > Last I checked, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness. It depends what you mean by "human potential." I agree with you that "human potential" is not the right way to frame what basic income unlocks. By giving people money to spend, it unlocks the economy's potential to produce wealth for…

What are the pointless jobs you're referring to?

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#196

Post by DLarsen »

It seems naive to think that the "universal" aspect would be maintained absolutely. At some point, the "bad people" don't deserve a share, and when it gets to the point that "happiness" can't be bought without UBI, you potentially have a very powerful means of near-universal coercion.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#197

Post by Suncho »

neonhomer wrote: post #195
Suncho wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential? > Last I checked, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness. It depends what you mean by "human potential." I agree with you that "human potential" is not the right way to frame what basic income unlocks. By giving people money to spend, it unlocks the economy's potential to produce wealth for…

What are the pointless jobs you're referring to?

> What are the pointless jobs you're referring to?

They're everywhere. We could have let GM die. We could abandon all tariffs on imports. Any time a policymaker uses "job creation" as a selling point for a policy initiative, that means jobs that exist for the purpose of providing people with incomes.

Even the Fed has "full employment" as part of its dual mandate. The private financial sector funds small businesses that probably shouldn't exist. We still have local farms producing food when large-scale farming is far more efficient. Now that's fine if it's your hobby and that's how you want to spend your time, but we actually subsidize farming.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#198

Post by tom_mellior »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #113
babaganoosh89 wrote: post #11

Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.

I thought the idea is that as you earn more from working / investments your UBI payment would be decreased, so that only those who earn below a particular threshold receive the full rate.

No two people agree exactly on their preferred UBI model, but I think the mainstream idea is giving everyone the exact same amount. Those who have higher income will then pay more in (progressive) taxes. This way there is no need for an extra means testing bureaucracy.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#199

Post by badminton1 »

Universal basic income is a complex issue.

First, you need to see it as a part of the existing system: healthcare, education, law enforcement, prisons, etc.

- A hospital cannot deny care to a patient in an emergency situation. Many medical emergencies occur due to poor living conditions. If you give money to people, their living conditions improve, improving their health and reducing their chances of getting in a medical emergency situation.

- Law enforcement spends a lot of resources and time handling crime. Given money to people is a deterrent for crime.

- Did you know that having a person in prison is more expensive than having them on a hotel? Since giving money to people deters crime, it also prevents them going to prison.

So, in this respect, just by having people do absolutely nothing, you can end up saving money. This is unintuitive.

Now, universal basic income can be bad in some cases. Many people in the economy do whatever it takes to have an income, however low. They will risk their lives, their health, do things they don't want to do. Universal basic income gives people an option to not engage in those activities.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#200

Post by guelo »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #109

The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential? Last I checked, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness. Then he goes on to compare YC to basic income. Seriously? They take a share in your company and help you develop it. That isn't money for nothing. If he weren't a millionaire and the current president of YC, would we keep seeing articles…

> Last I checked

How did you check? Most research I've seen shows that welfare reduces poverty but does not drag down gdp.

Anti-welfare people tend to ignore the positive benefits of entrepreneurs being able to take more risks when they know that a bankruptcy won't be catastrophic and that they could still send their children to school and get treatment when they're sick.

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