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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

#201

Post by minikites »

danielvf wrote: post #183
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 country of Nauru has had universal income since the 1970’s funded by mining resources. Unfortunately, it has not resulted in human potential being unlocked. Outside the mining, run by foreigners and with foreign works, economic activity in the country has gone down. Nauru now has the highest obesity rate in the world. 94.5% of the population is overweight, 71% obese, and 31% diabetic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w…

It's more likely that colonial-style abuses are to blame, here's what happens in a developed nation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

>Mincome was an experimental Canadian guaranteed annual income project that was held in Manitoba, during the 1970s.

>University of Manitoba economists Derek Hum and Wayne Simpson analyzed labour supply or work disincentive issues in Mincome during the 1980s and published their results in a series of papers and a monograph.[2][3][4][5] Their results showed a small impact on labour markets, with working hours dropping one percent for men, three percent for married women, and five percent for unmarried women.

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

#202

Post by sjg007 »

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…

>I don't think so. I don't believe his arguments are that cogent or compelling.

Ok, so how about a counter argument then?

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

#203

Post by tom_mellior »

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.

> 3k for military

That's an interesting point, especially concerning the US. My understanding is that many (not all) people join the US military mainly because they can't get other jobs or find other ways to finance college. With the UBI, this motivation will disappear, and with it a whole lot of military spending.

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

#204

Post by Diederich »

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, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness.

Citation needed.

EDIT: Provided by another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15918968

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

#205

Post by romwell »

ucaetano wrote: post #56

After deriding UBI for a long time, and believing it won't work, I came up with a trial model that, IMHO, would allow it to be tested out with minimal damage to the economy (even though I still don't think it would work): Take a country, US for example. Let's say that society determines that a reasonable UBI is $1000/month (ignore the number, this is about the process, not the amount). When I say "everyone", I mean "…

I disagree with this model.

A lot of positive externalities that UBI will bring simply won't kick in at low payout levels, whereas the negatives which will be brought in by diversion of funds will be apparent.

The externalities I am talking about are of this form: -Increased benefits to public health as people are less stressed about losing jobs -Increased entrepreneurship and all the benefits that come from it -Increased cultural output and the increased geopolitical influence

The whole point of UBI is that's it's not another handout.

It's giving everyone an option to not have to work a day job to survive (something that moderately well-off people, or people with upper-middle-class parents already have).

The impact of "what if most of the citizens didn't have to work to survive" can't be estimated with a small hand-out, because it will not achieve that.

In other words, UBI is somewhat binary in nature: either you have it, or you don't. It doesn't scale down beyond a certain point.

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

#206

Post by DoreenMichele »

sjg007 wrote: post #202
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…

>I don't think so. I don't believe his arguments are that cogent or compelling. Ok, so how about a counter argument then?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15918718

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

#207

Post by Suncho »

dahdum wrote: post #170
Suncho wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. And the reason is that by distributing the new money evenly, you're increasing the price elasticity of demand. Instead of increasing the amount of money people are willing to pay for goods, you're increasing the number of people who want to buy goods. So instead of having an incentive to raise their prices, producers will have more of an incentive to produce more. And as long as you're not coming up against resou…

So non-resource limited prices may remain low, but couldn't most of it be captured by those items that are limited? Like rent or health care? People could move out of the cities to avoid the rent increases, but then cost of services / taxes per person rise in those areas.

> So non-resource limited prices may remain low, but couldn't most of it be captured by those items that are limited?

Yes. And that's a very good point. For example, we might have the resources to feed the world, but we don't have the resources to feed the world meat 24/7. The price of meat would increase, so people would substitute other forms of food.

> Like rent or health care? People could move out of the cities to avoid the rent increases, but then cost of services / taxes per person rise in those areas.

Basic income allows people to move out of the cities because "proximity to jobs" is less of an incentive for them to live there. This causes the real estate prices in expensive cities like New York and San Francisco to drop as other areas become more desirable to live in.

People wouldn't be moving out of the cities to avoid rent increases. They'd be moving out of the cities because it becomes more affordable to live outside of the cities. That, in turn, would cause rent prices in the cities to decrease.

Health care prices are an issue that basic income doesn't solve. We need to address them regardless of whether we have a basic income.

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

#208

Post by Diederich »

Alex3917 wrote: post #194
aaron-lebo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> With Bitcoin, those who don't own coins can at any point vote to take away all the coins from those who do.

Can you expand on that?

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

#209

Post by dahdum »

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…

You make some good points. I'm not following the government spending portion very well but thank you.

Regarding the labor substitution:

a) Would you agree productivity per labor hour must go up under UBI to be successful? Sam believes this will come through automation / AI.

b) Actual labor hours will go down and wages up, due to decreased incentives to work.

Unless A outpaces B, productivity will decline. If it does outpace B, wages or taxes must capture all of the increase or inequality rises quickly as fewer "working" people are capturing the rewards. These wage/tax increases will then slow the growth.

I guess I don't see how UBI wouldn't decrease the labor participation rate, and then how a low participation rate economy would grow faster than a high rate one.

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

#210

Post by DoreenMichele »

Alex3917 wrote: post #175
ameister14 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Representation based on land ownership is close to the opposite of UBI

In the 1700s capital was considered to be land, because owning land was how you made money — either by working the land or by renting it to others to work. Whereas today capital is considered to be mainly money, because owning money is how you make more money. E.g. by investing in Google in the 90s, Bitcoin in the 2000s, etc. So giving people money today is basically the equivalent of giving people land in the 1700 a…

Whereas today capital is considered to be mainly money

No.

While money is used simply to purchase goods and services for consumption, capital is more durable and is used to generate wealth through investment. Examples of capital include automobiles, patents, software and brand names. All of these items are inputs that can be used to create wealth. Besides being used in production, capital can be rented out for a monthly or annual fee to create wealth, or it can be sold when it is no longer required.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capital.asp

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