A Guaranteed Income for Every American • Hacker News Board

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#201

Post by wildmusings » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

newjersey wrote: post #193

wildmusings wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area. There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the…

> There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the natural ebb and flow that keeps the cost of living reasonable. And can you imagine what a CoL adjusted UBI for…

My preferred approach for health insurance is to eliminate all of the regulations about what insurance plans must cover, and any other rules that prevent high-deductible catastrophic insurance from being available on the market. You could then buy a very cheap plan that covers everything once expenses exceed, say, 20k, and be responsible for everything before that out of your pocket. Then, unlike now, people would actually factor in cost into their decisions about which doctors and hospitals to visit, which would hopefully drive down wasteful spending.

The other thing I'd support is removing medical licensure from the law. People would still be free to visit only AMA-approved physicians, but there's no reason to give that guild a monopoly on providing health care. The artificial caps on medical school seats, imposed by the AMA, is one of the biggest reasons for the absurd cost of medical care in the US.

>I don't know what the solution is here but if in this hypothetical reality, the garden state didn't supplement but California did then I'd move to California in a heartbeat. I am sure I'd be broke even with any supplement in San Diego but at least I'll be broke in San Diego.

Sure, and when the people of California realize that they're attracting all of the deadbeats from around the country, they'd be forced to adjust.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#202

Post by DennisP » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:38 AM UTC

sambe wrote: post #61

brians wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI isn't a plausible replacement for those, because extreme medical care, and care for the disabled, is priced so far out of range with the rest. I expect part of the steps towards UBI to involve further evolution of our systems for allocating those resources.

But insurance for those isn't.

Just checked healthsherpa plan prices for a 64-year-old, and it came to almost $900/mo with a $5000 deductible. Maybe it's possible to radically reduce healthcare costs, but we should probably do that first before eliminating Medicare.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#203

Post by newjersey » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:41 AM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #201

newjersey wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the natural ebb and flow that keeps the cost of living reasonable. And can you imagine what a CoL adjusted UBI for…

My preferred approach for health insurance is to eliminate all of the regulations about what insurance plans must cover, and any other rules that prevent high-deductible catastrophic insurance from being available on the market. You could then buy a very cheap plan that covers everything once expenses exceed, say, 20k, and be responsible for everything before that out of your pocket. Then, unlike now, people would ac…

I can support letting the bottom fall out like this provided we had full single payer coverage for everyone. Any additional coverage can then be whatever you want with the only protection from law being protection from false advertising.

I can also support removing the ama-fia's control on licenses but I'm afraid we'll just replace it with something similar when it comes to which providers are eligible to reimbursements from the new single payer healthcare system.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#204

Post by prostoalex » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:52 AM UTC

newjersey wrote: post #193

wildmusings wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area. There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the…

> There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the natural ebb and flow that keeps the cost of living reasonable. And can you imagine what a CoL adjusted UBI for…

> if in this hypothetical reality, the garden state didn't supplement but California did then I'd move to California in a heartbeat.

I am guessing so would a lot of other people, which would create an opportunity of a lifetime for California landlords, adjusting the rents to the point where UBI would only offer marginal incremental benefit.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#205

Post by danbruc » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:53 AM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #178

danbruc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This introduces inefficiency. One worker working 8 hours is more useful than 2 workers working 4 hours. While this might end up being a good trade off (as workers might be willing to sell 4 hours of work for less than half the price of 8 hours), attempting to legislate this would be a market distortion. What does inefficiency matter if there is not enough work for everyone anyway? It may be a problem during the trans…

>What does inefficiency matter if there is not enough work for everyone anyway? I am using the term "efficiency" in a technical sense. An inefficiency means that there exists an alternative way of distributing resources (including time) such that no one is worse off, and at least one person is better off. By this definition if their is an inefficient, then we would have a strictly better world if we could remove that…

I obviously have to disagree with your analysis, let me offer an alternative. The difference between the two scenarios is the difference between value(X) + value(8 hours leisure time) and value(X) + 2 * value(3 hours leisure time). Therefore in case the value of 3 hours of leisure time exceeds half of the value of 8 hours of leisure time, i.e. the value of additional leisure time diminishes sufficiently quickly, the second scenario provides the better total value.

By restricting the entire world to the two actors wanting to produce one X one can keep money out of the equation. I argue your analysis fails or at least may fail because you don't assign a value to the leisure time. Also the assignment of monetary values obscures things, where is this money coming from? From selling the X to the society? In that case you will have to take into account that producing one X may take either 8 or 10 hours - will this raise the price or decrease the monetary value of an hour of work?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#206

Post by TACIXAT » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:57 AM UTC

Kind of a meta comment, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if the basic income movement was (for the most part) started and promoted by an intelligence agency.

After reading about the literary magazines and abstract art that the CIA funded I started thinking what a current program would look like. I think it would look like how basic income is developing.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#207

Post by prostoalex » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

leepowers wrote: post #190

fzeroracer wrote: post #164

I am all for Basic Income but the way the author wants to implement it would be a disaster. My mother is fully disabled and unable to work as a result of her stroke and she relies on Medicaid, Food Stamps and SSI to live. $13000 per person would be lower than what she gets right now and that's without considering the insurance issues. These changes would quite literally kill or leave homeless a large amount of Americ…

Under the Murray UBI plan recipients would be required to spend $3000 per year on health insurance. That would be your mother's replacement for Medicaid. However, that doesn't factor in co-pays, deductibles, balance-billing, and the myriad other costs of private insurance. A health care premium of $3000 is going to have a high deductible. My premium is close to $3000 a year, and my deductible is $5250. Under this pla…

> Under the Murray UBI plan recipients would be required to spend $3000 per year on health insurance. That would be your mother's replacement for Medicaid.

"Annual premiums edged beyond $17,500 for an average family." http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premium...

And this is in the marketplace that purposefully excludes Medicare recipients, who are older and are disproportionately more likely to have health problems and pre-death expenses.

Here's data on per capita spending on Medicaid, there are very few states where non-disabled adult spending is less than $3k http://kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/medicaid-spending-pe...

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#208

Post by yuhong » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

leepowers wrote: post #191

nugget wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can have either basic income or open borders/mass immigration -- but I don't see how we can have both.

Any UBI plan would need to require some form of citizenship verification. E-verify to get your 13k. We could then dial up or dial down the number of naturalized citizens per year to make the UBI program sustainable.

I think it is better to have eg Canada/US do it at the same time.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#209

Post by greedo » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:02 AM UTC

JorgeGT wrote: post #54

bkeroack wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who are likely to drop out of the labor market are almost certainly not the motivated, high-productivity workers that actually benefit society. High achievers tend to be motivated by things like passion, creativity, need for recognition, etc, not purely income.

> The people who are likely to drop out of the labor market are almost certainly not the motivated, high-productivity workers that actually benefit society The people who are likely to drop out of their job are plumbers, dishwashers, garbage collectors, miners, mail carriers, highway maintainers, taxi drivers, manual fruit pickers and the rest of those performing soul-crushing jobs that actually allow society to keep…

Can't really lump plumbers in that group; they're very well compensated, and I wouldn't describe their jobs as soul-crushing. There are a lot of trade jobs that won't be easily automated; plumbing, electricians, welders, landscapers (it's really an art) etc.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#210

Post by wildmusings » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:10 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #199

wildmusings wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area. There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the…

The problem of course with that argument is that people also need to move into higher-cost areas in order to find jobs for certain industries. If there was no regional adjustment that encourages individuals to stay put. Poor people congregate in low-cost areas with low job opportunities. A CoL adjustment for San Francisco isn't the problem, but rather the fact that San Francisco costs so much to begin with.

The blame for the high cost-of-living in SF lies with the people of California, and especially the people of SF. It'd create a massive moral hazard to have the federal government subsidize that. Run your city like a gravy-train and everyone else will bail you out. People will, I hope, never stand for that. I'm very wary of insulating people from the consequences of their decisions, especially entire political units.