241–250 of 251 posts
Can you live off of 2k in San Fran?
$2k before tax is about 1500 after. $1200 to share a bedroom with someone. $100-200 to eat, $53 muni pass. The rest to cover a litany of other things like cell phone, medical costs, "entertainment", etc.
I'm concerned about bias in this in form of the Hawthorne effect for one group and something akin to Learned Helplessness (or self-fulfilling prophecy) for the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect The Hawthorne effect can apply if they tell the group receiving the money about the expected benefits of basic income. They know the spotlight is on them. They're also getting special treatment. They might…
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It might skew it, but YC is probably trying to answer a more fundamental question. If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. Or if people will just sit on the couch, have kids till they can't afford them, become addicted to drugs.
If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. If only there were a group of people with sufficient money they never had to work! We could study them and see what they did to amuse themselves.
I'm concerned about bias in this in form of the Hawthorne effect for one group and something akin to Learned Helplessness (or self-fulfilling prophecy) for the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect The Hawthorne effect can apply if they tell the group receiving the money about the expected benefits of basic income. They know the spotlight is on them. They're also getting special treatment. They might…
too late now but in future ones maybe they could do 3 groups and pay 2 groups in various amounts. One group gets the "full amount", another a "half amount" , the third nothing. Tell the first two groups they're getting the Full amount. see if there is a difference in responses.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of? If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and…
> 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'.
There are a lot of low-paying jobs here that involve doing little else than basic customer service: answering questions and directing people where to go. Similarly, there are also a lot of low-skill labor jobs focused on parts of the national infrastructure.
Imagine, in the United States, if we pulled a page out of FDRs playbook and started putting the underemployed to work on our national infrastructure. Helping out road crews, cleaning up parks, cleaning up trash, that sort of thing
Government offices are part of that infrastructure, so people could also learn to answer phones, guide citizens through navigating the maze that is most civil service agencies, and so on.
It would take a lot of work to get there, but all that money goes right back into the economy, and it makes life better for their entire community, which I think should at least be a point of pride.
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"...they don't replace them entirely..." Tell that to the thousands of people who have lost their jobs on assembly floors. In fact, BI is a hedge against the future where there simply won't be enough for all of us to do. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-wi... http://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/04/rise-machines-future-l... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/what-happens-when-rob... ...and…
There is no such thing as a factory with zero workers. Fewer workers, but not zero. This is not a paradigm shift; the cycle of increased efficiency destroying jobs has been going on for hundreds of years. There are so many problems that need solving. I don't think we are anywhere close to a world where there is not enough for people to work on. There is currently a mismatch between the skills needed and the skills av…
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Oakland, and: probably not very well. but you can still work, you can stop spending every day stressed about how your entry level retail job isn't giving you enough hours, or you can afford to set two or three days of the week as "unavailable and take some classes. You can stop worrying that taking the day off to interview for a job will be the difference between making rent that month. Although for reference 2k a mo…
Unfortunately the study, even at 5 years, doesn't seem long enough, in my mind, to gauge if people under it would "just move to Albuquerque where the cost of living is cheap" (or perhaps UBI could/should be adjusted based on location dunno...)
But still something of a worthy experiment, since it's at least slightly different than the yearly tax refunds.
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I concede, under different economic conditions a program like this might be very successful, but in America it will attract lazy people like flies to shit.
You've already posted many uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. That's not what this site is for, so please don't do that. Instead, please read the site guidelines and post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
I dont recall ever being 'uncivil'. My problem is usually being too kind, in fact.
Most places won't let you rent without making 2.5 times the rent. So for 2k that's $800. In Oakland that gets you an SRO, a single room, or you can live in a box truck. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/eby/apa?query=oakland&ma...
Yeah I thought that too somehow...they say "$1-$2K" and I'm like...is that really a basic income wage?
overall the experiment is "slightly different" than giving the poor yearly tax refunds (ex: it gives money to the rich and the poor) so...maybe useful :)