India floats the idea of a universal basic income • Hacker News Board

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#241

Post by jjoonathan » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 1:45 AM UTC

felipeccastro wrote: post #215

jjoonathan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human desire may be infinite, but that doesn't mean there is an infinite source of jobs if we just try hard enough. Problem 1: the economic notion of value is weighted by wealth, but the notion of "human desire" you discuss is not. Entertaining a king is valuable, in the economic sense, but feeding and housing a poor is not. It doesn't matter if there are plenty of things that people want to be done, it matters if th…

About the capitalist dystopia, I really don't see it that way. What you described as its weakness is actually its strength. It's the natural mechanism that balance demand and supply, and ensure we'll always have enough food for everyone. It's the natural incentive that draws more people to an area that is under-served (e.g. IT) and away from another that is over-served (e.g. farming). The examples may not be the best…

> What you described as its weakness is actually its strength. It's the natural mechanism that balance demand and supply...

I understand how markets balance supply and demand and I consider the injustice of its methods to be a necessary evil for which I have no substitute. That wasn't my original complaint, however. Rephrased in terms of supply and demand, my complaint was that the market's insistence on weighting demand according to wealth made it inherently inept at addressing unweighted demand (i.e. the actual needs of the people). I have no trouble believing that the market will continue to meet wealth-weighted demand. I am much less certain that it will continue to meet unweighted demand. We've seen it fail before, but only in pockets. I fear that automation may eventually see it fail on a much wider scale.

> monopolies aren't all created the same. The kind of monopoly that Facebook or Google have is not the same kind of a state-enforced monopoly which rules out competition by force of the law.

We are in agreement then. Perhaps not on the relative magnitude of the various problems, but it's a start.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#242

Post by ouid » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 3:00 AM UTC

suraj wrote: post #238

ouid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only tangentially related, but I remember there was a problem some time ago where India simply did not have the infrastructure to count all of its citizens. How is Aadhaar sure of its 99% figure?

Adhar relies on biometric data. Iris & fingerprint scanning is done when you get your Adhar card.

that is not even remotely an answer to my question.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#243

Post by knightofmars » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 3:20 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #219

knightofmars wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more likely due to lack of design than thoughtful malicious design.

If a person make errors some times, and then never bothers to fix any error (because of incentives), but keeps making other actions, some of them being errors that will never be fixed... Or if a person makes errors in two directions, but then only bothers fixing the ones in a single direction. I'd say that person is malicious.

The government isn't a person. If you were hired to "fix" the problem described how well do you think you would do?

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#244

Post by stubish » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

lngnmn wrote: post #155

India is very special, traditionalist society. As person who have spent a considerable time living in North India, I would say that people will turn this free money into gold and garments and other status symbols, like mobiles, which in turn, will cause inflation and soaring of prices of gold and other assets. The analogy could be a land in the great plains of US. In San Francisco or New York the value and the price…

Yes, give people money and they will spend it. Which means other people are selling things to them, giving them more money, which can also be spent. Stimulating the economy like this is a touted benefit of schemes that redistribute distribute wealth to the poorer segments of society, like UBI or minimum wage increases.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#245

Post by erik14th » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 7:08 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #115

bitJericho wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubi should never be about owning anything. It should be about providing housing, food, healthcare, clothes, and nothing more. It should be for all citizens, including children. This way you can have a family. But if you want a tv, phone, car, you're going to have to work. Since people are living to their 70s plus, lounging around isn't a big deal. I think you'll find people become very creative too, or focus on high…

In theory, making UBI only provide 'essentials' is a good idea, but in a large country like India (or the US, or China), the cost of living in different localities varies wildly. A person receiving UBI who lived in San Francisco proper and got free housing would essentially get 5x - 10x effective benefit than someone living where rent is $500 / month. Cue the inevitable conflicts over who gets to live where, and caps…

A location based value would never work. If people could choose to live in a more developed area for no cost at all, they will most certainly move there, increasing the demand for goods there and thus increasing the cost of life there which would result in a snowball effect.

A "low-income slum" is not a problem so long as people can live decently. It's "universal" so everyone receives it, what differentiates people in low-income areas will be that they inherited no capital and have no means of acquiring capital which is a problem that already do exist, so I don't really see your point.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#246

Post by erik14th » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 7:13 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #83

whack wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasoning you're using is very flawed. Yes, we'll never get to a state where a small number end up with 100% of the wealth. Yes, there will be an equilibrium reached between the wealthy and the middle class. But this equilibrium point can shift more and more towards the wealthy. In fact, this has already been happening in the past few decades, as illustrated in books such as Capital. And as this equilibrium shift…

I think you are ignoring some bad things that could come out of UBI. The greatest danger is that people may be comfortable near the BI level until they are about 30, and not really work or educate themselves much (lacking motivation). Then, they want to have a family, and all of a sudden their desires for consumption skyrocket. They can't just join the workforce then, because it will be 10 years before they advance e…

People can already get comfortable living an "easy" life of party and shitty jobs till a child happens and then they're screwed.

Worse than that, lots of people have no choice, they inherited no capital and thus can't afford to educate themselves to get a good job since they need to work to supply for themselves and their families, effective UBI would give those people breathing room to work/study what they want and actually achieve enough to have a good family.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#247

Post by tejas1mehta » Thu, Feb 09, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

This is a very one-sided article. I would have hoped The Economist would do a fair analysis of the pros and the cons of such an implementation. The cons in this case are very clear.

1. First of all, diverting funds from vital food and fertilizer supply to the poorest of the poor in order to fund this scheme is a self-defeating idea.

2. Corruption in cases involving direct money would be far higher than schemes involving food.

3. The poorest of the poor would not have a bank account and therefore, would not be able to benefit from this scheme. A large population of India happens to live in slums. This is the population that is in the most need of such a program but would not receive its benefits. Just because of these conditions, UBI is far more likely to help the rich than the poor.

Fundamentally, UBI would only work for advanced societies. For poor societies, there just wouldn't be enough wealth to be distributed amongst everyone. This is the reason why UBI has worked well in the Scandinavian countries - their GDP per capita is already in the $50K-$70K range compared to India's $3K-$5K.

It is far more likely that the politicians floated this idea to appease the citizens after the hardship they faced during the demonetization scheme.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#248

Post by aminok » Fri, Feb 10, 2017, 8:01 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #228

aminok wrote: post #112

People being able to exercise their right to freely contract and control their own private property is sickening? You'd prefer people being thrown in prison for refusing to surrender their private property rights, or for engaging in a voluntary economic interaction that some other party created a prohibition against? Please help me understand your preference for authoritarian violence against peaceful people.

> You'd prefer people being thrown in prison > your preference for authoritarian violence We've banned this account for egregious ideological flamewar and repeated incivility. Indeed, you've been using HN for almost nothing else. That's a serious abuse which destroys the culture we're hoping to build—thoughtful discussion—and stokes the flames the rest of us are working hard to damp down. It's not a matter of the pol…

He called my vision of people not being imprisoned for engaging in voluntary interactions "sickening". You want me to not call him out for having a preference of imprisoning peaceful people? You're stifling real debate, and sheltering people from the realities of the world. I have not, at least in this instance, been uncivil.

And my political commentary is confined to threads about political issues. If you are going to allow posts on HN that relate to a forcible income redistribution program like UBI, but not allow people to describe the punishment dealt to those who don't comply with the tax mandate and pay into the UBI as a form of "authoritarian violence", you're taking an ideological stance about what kinds of state violence and limitation on liberty are socially acceptable.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#249

Post by winstonewert » Fri, Feb 10, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #239

winstonewert wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Entertaining a king is valuable, in the economic sense, but feeding and housing a poor is not. No, actually. The economic notion of value is subjective. Economic thought, despite popular perception, does not view value in purely monetary terms. Instead, value is seen as subjective: something is valuable because humans value it. Human desire is the very definition of what makes something valuable.

According to who? Googling "economic value" returns a litany of definitions in terms of money (or, more generally, exchange). I don't deny that there is a notion of value apart from the economic one, in fact I would even go so far as to argue that the terms "economic value" (and "market value" etc) give markets entirely too much credit by suggesting that economic value and market value do a halfway decent job of appr…

For example, see this presentation which discusses the history of economic thought regarding value:

http://www.efi.int/files/attachments/e45/meetings/31hanemann...

Yes, it is often defined in terms of money. That is because if you actually value something you would be willing (but not neccessarily able!) to pay for it.

But let's not get bogged down in an untractable argument over the meaning of words. My point really boils down to: economics does concern itself with value which is different than the market value. They study the cases where the market value will refect people's true perferences, and when it will not.

Re: India floats the idea of a universal basic income

#250

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #220

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "work" I mean you take some money from upper income people, give it to lower income people and by and large leave the middle class alone. Having the middle class pay $100 in tax and then receive $100 in UBI works perfectly well for that. Changing that so the middle class pays $75 in tax but receives no UBI is exactly how you bring about the sort of hollowing out of the middle class we've seen recently in the US. I…

Ok, I guess I don't really care about redistribution for it's own sake - I only care about fixing poverty. I guess that's why we disagree. Incidentally, your scheme wouldn't work so well in India. In India there are far fewer rich people (proportionately) than in the US. Europe needs to tax the middle class for much the same reason. If you want to have massive wealth redistribution that skips the middle class, the on…

> Ok, I guess I don't really care about redistribution for it's own sake - I only care about fixing poverty. I guess that's why we disagree.

But that's the same thing. The only way you can get people out of poverty is by either causing them to legitimately have jobs that without-subsidy pay wages above the poverty line (the problem being they aren't qualified for those jobs), which if anybody knew how to make happen we would already be doing it; or to to subsidize them by taking money from wealthier people and giving it to people in poverty.

Doing this by taking money from middle class people instead of wealthy people only pushes the middle class people towards poverty and exacerbates the problem.

> Incidentally, your scheme wouldn't work so well in India. In India there are far fewer rich people (proportionately) than in the US. Europe needs to tax the middle class for much the same reason.

This is a problem that solves itself. Where there is less inequality you can pay a smaller UBI. If everyone had exactly the same income then you wouldn't need one, but neither would you have anyone in poverty. (Or everyone would be, but in that case you have no options.)

It isn't that you never take money from "middle class" people, it's that it makes no sense to take money from them at a higher rate (via a phase out) than you do from people who make more money than they do.