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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

#201

Post by dwaltrip »

bsder wrote: post #183
noir_lord wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal. That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.

> That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'. We automate many things to squeeze the absolute last penny out of it. That can have deleterious effects, too. For example, many fruits and vegetables have been bred to be harvested by machine. These foods have been shown to have…

This is a reasonable point, but it isn't clear GP was making this point.

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

#202

Post by youngButEager »

ilaksh wrote: post #176
youngButEager wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

100% guaranteed some of your contractors used illegal labor and you know that.

Well, I only hire licensed contractors, including painters, but in the trades (at least in the Bay Area) people I've hired are happy for the work and since my first project in 1993, have complained about the flood of illegals taking work from them by undercutting on the price.

I would imagine that a lot of people don't realize the risk they take hiring an unlicensed contractor. So the law-abiding tradespeople lose work to that.

You cannot risk hiring unlicensed tradespeople unless you're just really, really stupid. The "loss of insurance" risk alone is bad enough.

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

#203

Post by stephengillie »

grizzles wrote: post #159

I hate to be critical because I love the core idea, and YCRs wonderful corporate generosity. However, this is path dependency in action, in all it's anti-intellectual glory. The only value that will be extracted here is the publicity/marketing value. If they can somehow leverage that into some kind of state or federal government supported largesse, I will happily stand corrected. But in the absence of that, as scient…

The financial side of the project is definitely...interesting. Another poster pointed out that tax-funded UBI would work like a redistribution of wealth. Almost any other way - funded by Angel/VC donations, Kickstarter, using another tax pool (having Congress pay for it), taking loans or increasing the US Federal debt, or even by pillaging other countries - would still just be a redistribution of wealth.

There is one other way - Expansion of the overall money supply. But this is well-known to result in nearly equivalent inflation. Humans somehow want a certain percentage of all money - not just an arbitrary amount. This percentage may be extremely small for some - 0.0000001% of all money, or less - but when the total number of dollars increases, each person wants an equivalent percentage increase in the total number of dollars they get. This may be Bitcoin or ISK or priceless paintings instead of dollars, or whichever currency of the day.

Has there been a UBI monetary-policy model produced that doesn't invoke large inflation or heavy wealth redistribution?

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

#204

Post by youngButEager »

ams6110 wrote: post #179
youngButEager wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you think sheetrock is supposed to be cut? You score it with a knife and snap it for long straight cuts. You use a hand saw for complicated or non-straight cuts. Or you might use a small rotary power tool but it really doesn't make any difference.

?? How do I think sheetrock is supposed to be cut? Did you really intend to ask that?

You ask me that after I said:

"Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw"

I think the point you missed was "he's insinuating using a hand saw is not the correct way, that's why he said Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw"

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

#205

Post by dwaltrip »

louprado wrote: post #63
WoodenChair wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal. Because that's really what we want in the 21st century: human machine cogs like we had in the 19th. No, let's let robots do robot things and we don't need humans to "compete" with them. Let's let humans do more human (and humane) oriented tasks.

"Let's let humans do more human (and humane) oriented tasks." The definition of "humane" keeps shifting over time and will always be a matter of perspective. To share a personal story, my father was unemployed while I was in college. Within a few months he looked like he had aged 10 years. Several months later he took a part time job as a landscaper and he started recovering. I remember coming home from college once,…

There are a lot of assumptions here. Why can't people learn to or be assisted in finding purpose and happiness outside of a job? I've done it twice myself, going 6+ months by choice without a job. Regarding isolation, I don't think it is that difficult to imagine ways people can stay connected and have a vibrant social life without full time employment. A big aspect of this is reframing cultural values so that people don't feel so strongly that there worth is determined by their employment status.

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

#206

Post by dwaltrip »

themartorana wrote: post #87

"I think that there’s a culture at YC that just making money isn’t that interesting." That's a tad disingenuous. I'm sure "anymore" might clarify it, but it's easy to say when you are rich.

I don't think one needs to be rich to find meaning in such a notion.

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

#207

Post by jrpt »

jacalata wrote: post #161
chronic81 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you're an individual, and obviously changes in one individual's income won't affect the housing market. If everyone in your community's income changed, things would be different. The amount of land in an area is fixed, and practically speaking so is the housing stock. Housing is priced at the margin, and if everyone still wants to live in the area, and is willing to pay more now (since even if they paid the exact amount of basic income more in rent, they'd still have the same amount of disposable income after paying the increased rent), then I would expect the price of housing to rise.

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

#208

Post by TeMPOraL »

pmorici wrote: post #196
TeMPOraL wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You presumably save the whole pay side of bureaucracy - some people argue that this alone could finance a significant fraction of BI.

If those people aren't employed by the bureaucracy aren't they themselves going to be on basic income?

Presumably yes (them or people they displace from the job market). But people are only a fraction of operating costs - you have databases, rents, material expenditures, etc. Also in case of top bureaucrats I'd expect their salaries to be higher than BI, so the delta is part of the money saved.

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

#209

Post by jrpt »

djrobstep wrote: post #158
chronic81 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

But I'm saying the effect could be a net transfer from taxpayers (people with medium to high income) to landowners especially real estate companies. Since much housing stock is owned by a business which may even be operated at 0 net income... which means the business would be paying no corporate income tax. And the property taxes are incredibly low in CA since prop 13 applies to commercial real estate as well. So it's likely to mean the personal taxpayer (income tax and sales tax account for the majority of the revenue) subsidizing the real estate companies.

I don't know how strong the effect would be, but if true, the effect of basic income would be a strong subsidy from taxpayers to real estate companies.

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

#210

Post by rogerdpack »

sjg007 wrote: post #192

It might take more than a year... And is this more than the dole? Basic income for me is 100k a year.. So that means starting a startup.

I guess the question they're trying to answer is "will poor people use this as a means to step up" because...for somebody already making 100K/yr I'm not sure how much effect the extra $12 or $15K is going to have, honestly. I mean nicer vacations? a slightly better house? The only real interesting data point to me is for the poor people, does it allow them to "step up". It might, today's US dole just provides at most food and shelter, so perhaps they'll use the money to ... get some education. Of course, if that were the case wouldn't they already be using their yearly "tax refund" to go and get education? Most people don't seem particularly adept at that for some reason...
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