My own private basic income • Hacker News Board

Re: My own private basic income

#231

Post by dude01 » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 2:44 AM UTC

xienze wrote: post #116

pg314 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse than you describe. For the part he doesn't sell, no taxes are owed on the capital gains. Only when capital gains are realised, are taxes owed. If he holds onto that stock forever he can keep compounding forever, without every being taxed.

Well you also can't spend paper gains, you have to sell and therefore pay taxes. And you could, you know, lose money in the stock market.

Not always true about paying taxes - inherited assets are "bullet-vested" to the time of inheritance, with taxes only on increase in value after death.

Re: My own private basic income

#232

Post by pishpash » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 3:01 AM UTC

ssambros wrote: post #196

pishpash wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Begin with fallacies and you shall conclude nonsense. As a species, once we reached apex predator status, we were already born with the entire Earth's resources as our inheritance, not nothing. Somehow those got divided up and almost never was it via the mechanisms of an open market economy -- only in exceptional circumstances did those mechanisms provide a modicum of mobility, especially during technological transit…

My guess is that a lot more people would support the redesign of how the land and natural resources are being distributed, but for some reason only redistribution of income generated from work is discussed in such conversations.

Land redistribution is indeed what drove many communist revolutions in the third world, more than philosophical differences about economic systems.

Re: My own private basic income

#233

Post by jpatokal » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

dota_fanatic wrote: post #174

jpatokal wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mixing social class with quality of life. Despite being at at the top of the social pyramid, kings of the past did not have many things that most of today's poor (in the US) do, like electricity, running water, air con, motor vehicles, antibiotics, the Internet etc.

Because they are strongly tied; we are social animals. Are you saying for millions of years, our ancestors on average had lower quality of life than the developed world's poor? It turns out electricity, air con, motor vehicles, and the internet are not the source of happiness, as much as advertising would like us to think otherwise. I bet your average homeless person in America would happily trade for a life in time…

I'm measuring quality of life in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. For most of recorded history, the poor often lacked the absolute basics like water, food, clothing and/or shelter, and they continue to do so in many parts of the world. But in the developed world, these problems are largely solved, and issues of social belonging -- Maslow's third layer and above -- come to the fore.

The New Republic has a pithy way of putting this: money doesn't buy happiness, but poverty increases sadness. In other words, you may not be happy just because you have 3 square meals a day and a roof over your head, but you would be a lot less happy if you didn't.

https://newrepublic.com/article/120859/money-doesnt-buy-happ...

Re: My own private basic income

#234

Post by aoeusnth1 » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 3:28 AM UTC

mojoe wrote: post #227

closeparen wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pretty sure most of the improvements we have made for the common man, at least in the US, have come at the behest of those born with nothing standing up and saying "we won't work unless the rewards are distributed better/we get a 40 hour work week/we get cleaner and less dangerous work conditions/etc." Yes. These improvements were won through the most thoroughly and deeply market behavior possible: raising the price…

> Labor price-gouging capital is a beautiful sight to see. Usually only capital remembers it can do that. This was a pleasure to read, although it made me wonder what the optimal unit of labor is to still have a functioning competitive market. If all capital was controlled by one entity, no market could exist -- that's basically why the US has anti-trust laws. The same is true for labor. Seems like for each market th…

Yes, the problems that monopoly creates are analogous problems to the problems with large unions. The union management seeks to increase their own power, and the larger the union, the more possibility to abuse that power. However, the upside of having an institutional way to apply political pressure for the benefit of the worker can definitely outweigh whatever abuses and inefficiencies most unions create.

Re: My own private basic income

#235

Post by ethereumnomad » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 3:40 AM UTC

wturner wrote: post #219

tqi wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector "...predicts that employment in this industry will increase 7 percent, adding 9,400 new jobs by 2024... Median Salary $33,800" If we assume median salary ~ average salary, then $33,800* (9,400/.07) = $4.5bn. Oprah net worth is estimated at around $3bn.

@tqi So when you get down to the numbers and the prevalent value assumptions we all have, Oprah Winfrey (one person) provides more value to the country than 2/3's of the nations garbage collection workers. Even though that is apparently what the numbers say, I can't help but believe it is divorced from reality in terms of practical day-to-day life. In other words, if the average person was forced to choose to either…

All of this time, I guess, people have just mistaken Oprah's value and you have finally figured it out. Go tell them! Then they can reallocate their money towards more garbage workers!

While you are at it make sure to let these fools know to sell all their diamonds and trade them for water. After all, water is necessary for life and diamonds are useless. They simply don't understand that the water has more value!

How lucky we are to have you, the ultimate judge of value, to run around and tell everyone how goods and services and peoples time should be allocated.

To put this another way, you are a fucking moron.

Re: My own private basic income

#236

Post by samnwa » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 3:50 AM UTC

There can only be so many people at the top.

Re: My own private basic income

#237

Post by jhall1468 » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:03 AM UTC

Mz wrote: post #162

jhall1468 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mine is a criticism of the actual article. No it wasn't. You literally claimed the author had a mental break down. That's not an attack on the article, it was a direct attack on him. I literally formed my comment exactly as you did to relay that point. You seemed to have taken such issue with the idea that the guy is lucky, you attacked him personally rather than attack his point. I don't entirely agree with the au…

Existential crisis and mental break down are not remotely the same thing. And noting that he seems to simply feel he somehow doesn't deserve this or feels guilty and his article is also not really well backed is a valid criticism. This piece looks to me like someone venting emotionally about their guilt at feeling they don't really deserve more than others. This is not really a good argument for creating basic income…

> And noting that he seems to simply feel he somehow doesn't deserve this

At no point in the article does he say that. He simply stated he was lucky. He was born in a country that made it such that he would NEVER be able to end up like the workers he encountered. Thats absolutely true. That makes him (and you) lucky and certainly more successful relative to them.

> his article is also not really well backed is a valid criticism

This is a story about something personal, its not a scientific piece. His "backing" is simply that being born where he was, in part, is the reason he is where he is. That's not subjective, that's an absolute fact.

> This piece looks to me like someone venting emotionally about their guilt at feeling they don't really deserve more than others.

You are free to interpret it that way, but he never actually indicated anything you took from it. It seems your own perspective on basic income highly skewed your perspective before you started to read it, and everything he said was used to justify your preconceived notion.

> Many people feel guilty for being born into wealth and privilege.

I would imagine the majority don't.

> That guilt is not some kind of objective evidence that basic income will solve the problems we currently face

No, studies (some of which have recently began) will indicate whether or not basic income will work. This is an article about someones personal experience, once again, not a scholarly article or study.

> It's fine for people to think basic income will be a good solution to the situation before us. I don't happen to agree with that position.

Unlike you I think it's something that needs to be studied before I draw any conclusions. The irony here is your just as guilty as what you accuse the author of: you emotionally respond to something with zero evidence for (or in your case against) it.

Re: My own private basic income

#238

Post by int_19h » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:33 AM UTC

drewcon wrote: post #96

opportune wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree more. As a society (and this goes from a community to a global scale) we should make it a priority to give everyone the resources to meet their maximum potential. I don't mean that we should give everyone a million dollars to invest of their own. What I mean is that we should ensure that everyone gets provided with a good education and food/water/shelter, etc. The author specifically mentions the…

> keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a cheap source of grunt labor. Poor, underfed, and uneducated is the default position for human beings. We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing. There is no conspiracy to "enslave" anyone, nearly all public health and wealth measures over the last 100 years are overwhelming up and to the right. That growth did not happened throu…

Most of the growth was being appropriated by "the 1%" of its time - see e.g. the Gilded Age - right until the point where the governments started forcing some redistribution through taxation and welfare programs. Until that happened, the social benefits were extremely meager.

Re: My own private basic income

#239

Post by int_19h » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:38 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #222

xxSparkleSxx wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing. Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible. It is nigh impossible to live in this world like the birds do, flying from one food source to the next, roosting wherever you find comfort. Those with means have entire departments to police the u…

>Pretty sure most of the improvements we have made for the common man, at least in the US, have come at the behest of those born with nothing standing up and saying "we won't work unless the rewards are distributed better/we get a 40 hour work week/we get cleaner and less dangerous work conditions/etc." Yes. These improvements were won through the most thoroughly and deeply market behavior possible: raising the price…

Don't forget that the initial response to labor price-gouging capital was to hire armed goons (like the Pinkertons) to break the strikes. The fight between capital and labor that ultimately led to something more balanced wasn't a purely voluntary economic transaction - there was plenty of violence involved on both sides.

And don't forget that a big part of why many Western countries started to invest more into welfare is because after 1917, their governments realized that the alternative could well be an armed uprising, and that they need to keep their citizens sufficiently content to prevent that - even if that means they have to force the wealthy to share more of their income.

(Note, I'm not saying that Soviets somehow achieved better results. The point is solely that the threat of a socialist/communist revolution was a significant factor in capitalist countries shifting away from unregulated capitalism and towards welfare state.)

Re: My own private basic income

#240

Post by int_19h » Thu, Jun 29, 2017, 4:45 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #155

cortesoft wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are totally ignoring the crux of his argument, which is centered on ownership; how we decide who owns what, how we tax owned things versus earned-through-work things, and how we tax the things people do with what they own. Yes, a piece of property earns rent because it has 'value' to someone else; however, who gets to earn that value? At some point, this piece of land was 'unowned', and then someone came along an…

>Do they have to pay society a fee for being able to claim it as their own? In most areas, yes. There is a property tax that is charged as a percentage of the land's value. If the owner fails to pay this fee to society, society revokes his ownership, forcefully seizes the land if necessary, and resells the property to another person who is willing to pay the imposed fee.

One problem with property taxes is that they do not capture the ability (or inability) of the property to generate income - basically, whether and to what extent it is capital.

We also do have taxes on income produced by capital - that's capital gains - but, as the article points out, we tax them significantly lower than regular sweat-of-the-brow income, and offer more loopholes. In effect, our economic system incentivizes rent-seeking over labor.