A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing • Hacker News Board

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#221

Post by xefer » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:06 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #130

Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income. The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess of programs losing their job is a silly concern.…

To paraphrase that XKCD comic, "14 benefit programs?! Ridiculous! We need to create one universal benefit program that covers everyone! Now you have 15 programs."

I get the sense that liberals and conservatives have wildly different conceptions of what a Basic Income would mean in practice.

Conservatives and libertarians may like the idea of giving a single no-strings-attached check every month to everyone and anyone and sending them on their way. Liberals I imagine expect a basic income will be enough to guarantee food, clothing and housing and perhaps some means of allocating portions to those categories, which is more or less what we have now.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#222

Post by AlisdairO » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:08 PM UTC

empressplay wrote: post #124

AlisdairO wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income could have the effect of flattening out demand rather - at the moment, people are forced to cluster close to where the work is available. If I want to just live on basic income, why not go somewhere more affordable?

...and all of a sudden these places that were previously unattractive are now attractive, and housing that previously had no demand now does. The point I'm trying to make is that it's not as simple as some might like to think.

I take your point, but if we remove the requirement for jobs to be present, a much larger range of locations become reasonable to live in. A broader range of acceptable locations spread amongst the same population is clearly likely to decrease overall competition for a given property.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#223

Post by treerock » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:08 PM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #184

arximboldi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that would actually be the case, but if it were, the question would be: is it actually a bad thing? I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste [1]. In fact, it is normal that as our society gets more educated and the supply of unskilled workers goes down, a lot of hard manual labor will become expensive. This is already the case with mining,…

"I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste" Garbage Disposal people earn over $100k. Software engineers earn about $80k. A job that can be outsourced or automated is not valuable. http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-h...

According to the article "Nationwide, the annual salary for a garbage truck driver is $40,000"

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#224

Post by mason55 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:08 PM UTC

Aoyagi wrote: post #210

mcv wrote: post #130

Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income. The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess of programs losing their job is a silly concern.…

10k? That's almost the average income (or more, depending on how you count taxes) of the Czech Republic. If I had to choose between living in a 2nd world country and working and living in a 1st world country and not working for the same money, guess which I'd choose?

Prices would be much higher here. I imagine your $10k goes much further in Czech

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#225

Post by lsaferite » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:08 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #185

yummyfajitas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

Funny thing happens when labor supply drops...prices for labor go up. In this case, the market would determine how much they'd need to go up by to get enough people doing things to meet demand. It may be more than many want to pay, but such is life.

A counter would be that when wage costs go up prices go up as well, right?

FWIW I'm in favor of a UBI to replace almost all other assistance programs.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#226

Post by MicroBerto » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #215

MicroBerto wrote: post #202

In the early 1970s, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a "mouse utopia" to see what would happen if he created the perfect world for mice, with unlimited food, starting with four males and four females, that could reach a population of 2500. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM What happened next is absolutely astonishing. When the mice had nothing to do and nothing to work for, their society collapsed upon…

Do mice have a concept of leisure? Exploration for its own sake? Cultural enrichment? Scientific endeavour? Also, in that experiment isn't there a complete excess of resources? We certainly don't have that, opulence would still be expensive and out of reach of a BI.

> a complete excess of resources? We certainly don't have that

You seen the obesity rates in America?

The people who truly enjoy "Exploration", "Cultural enrichment", and "Scientific endeavor" are not those that I'm worried about in this world. Most of the world does not operate like that, nor do they use (or even understand!) such phrases.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#227

Post by jackreichert » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

timlyo wrote: post #192

gjm11 wrote: post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

I think the article is talking more about the difference from the current system. > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 trillion. These retirees can be excluded from the calculation because they are already being paid, they wouldn't add any additional cost to the system.

Is it fair to say they're being paid if they paid into the system paying them for their entire working lives? Can someone please explain why people call Social Security an entitlement? Am I missing something?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#228

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #196

yummyfajitas wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The total amount of work hours decreased by only 13%." https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money... Either way, whether it's 13% or 5%, it makes us all poorer. The Namibia experiment is not remotely comparable. That was a) a transfer of wealth from outside the community into it (closer to imperialism than redistribution), b) poverty in Namibia is not remotely like poverty in the US, and c) a big c…

It only makes us poorer if the 13% work hour reduction is going to something less efficient than work, with regard to overall economic effectiveness. With mincome didn't they determine that the work hours decreased was dominated by 1) young males entering the work force later due to increased high school completion rate and 2) females talking longer maternity leave? If thats the case, then its possible that it made e…

One can always postulate hard to measure second order effects, such as the ones the Mincome study claims (note that it doesn't actually quantify them, but merely hints as to their direction).

However, it's a bit strange to expect that all the second order effects will happen to point in the direction of our preferred policy. The only quantified effect here - labor force disincentive - has been measured and agrees 100% with economic theory. It also agrees with other related (but not identical) results, namely that welfare/unemployment also has a huge labor force disincentive.

Why are we appealing to unquantified second order effects when the first order effects are measured and shown to be large, shown to be in 100% agreement with basic economic theory, and viewed by many proponents of BI as a desired feature [1]?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11619712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11619690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11619691

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#229

Post by _Understated_ » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

There is something else to consider too: The political party that brings this in will likely be in power for a really long time!

Think about the consequences: Even if it was proven financial suicide for the country (Governments can always print more money I suppose and let the next generation deal with the fallout), what political party would have a manifesto abolishing or reducing it? It would be political suicide.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#230

Post by n72 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

MicroBerto wrote: post #202

In the early 1970s, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a "mouse utopia" to see what would happen if he created the perfect world for mice, with unlimited food, starting with four males and four females, that could reach a population of 2500. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM What happened next is absolutely astonishing. When the mice had nothing to do and nothing to work for, their society collapsed upon…

"And it's exactly something that will happen to us..."

There's nothing in your mouse anecdote which justifes this conclusion. Humans are, as I'm sure you're well aware, quite different from mice.