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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#271

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #110
colinplamondon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…

"Tough shit" sucks when parents blow their handout on lottery tickets and drugs, leaving their children in perpetual poverty.

Michigander here. AFAIK, you can't just turn your Bridge card into cash. How does one purchase lottery tickets and drugs with welfare payments? The one way I can think of is hanging out with the high-school kids outside the liquor store and saying "I'll go buy you X if you go buy me lottery tickets and alcohol/go to your dealer and get me an O"

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#272

Post by chimeracoder »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #192
prokes wrote: post #105

Can anyone explain how this can be implemented mathematically? Assume 300 million people @ $12k / year, you are spending $3.6 trillion. That is already more than current government revenue, leaving all current government services unfunded.

- To a large extent, it is expected to replace current programs like welfare and social security. So those budgets, in theory, would be reduced or eliminated and supplemented with Basic Income. - It will be a taxable income. So a family including two adults would have an additional $24k on which to pay taxes. Those taxes help pay for the program by effectively reducing the additional funding that needs to be raised.…

> Theoretically, it will increase wages and employment since there will be a lot more money spent, increasing economic activity.

At a macroeconomic level, that money comes from somewhere (generally taxes), which means that it's also decreasing consumption and/or investment by an equivalent amount. You can make the argument that collecting the taxes to fund a program is still desirable in the end, but it's mathematically incorrect to say that it would have a net increase in economic activity.

To put it another way: what would the money be spent on if it weren't collected as tax revenue? Some portion of it would be spent on consumable goods, and the rest would be saved (invested). Money saved is very important to the economy, because that's how society gets access to capital for long-term investments (whether public works projects or private investments).

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#273

Post by mercer »

empath75 wrote: post #197
xienze wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to lump "failure to budget properly" under "mental illnes".

If you're just blowing through money too quickly, then that's not really a crisis that needs intervention from the state, imo. You'll either learn to spend your money better or learn to like ramen.

I'd say if you blow through your money consistently to the point of having to eat ramen all the time, that is a problem. And it's caused by bad decisions your mind makes. So while it might seem like a bit of a stretch, it could be considered a mental illness.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#274

Post by namenotrequired »

prodmerc wrote: post #189

This shit again. NO ONE has given me an answer to the question: what will happen when basic income inevitably raises the overall price of basic stuff because now "everyone can afford it"? It will be back to zero, people with basic income will not be able to afford both housing/bills and food. Moreover the ones without will be totally fucked. So, what gives? Run BI in a few small counties and call it a success? Gee wo…

Honest question: no matter how much confidence you have in your own predictions, why would you oppose privately funded research into it?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#275

Post by tn13 »

xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

Most of our government programs are screwed up because they suffer from "over-fitting". Just like in statistics you can some up with a higher order polynomial that fits all your known data points but in practice it is going to be horribly broken if it is to be used to understand the nature of the curve.

The fact is: 1. We cant prevent all plane hijackings and incidents. 2. We cant prevent a lone wolf attack for whatever reason. 3. We cant help all people in all their difficulties 4. We can not come up with a government program or many programs that will help all needy 5. We can not prevent all frauds

Coming up rules like checking people shoes in TSA lines because of a past data point is overfiting.

The best way would be to come up with a very uniform welfare program that includes everyone without a racial, gender,handicap and any other bias.

Encourage private charity to help people get through exceptional situations.

Another problem with separate welfare programs is the massive wastage in overhead + the total lack of empathy among the people who actually run it. Encouraging private charity would solve that problem to a very large extent, a church group often achieves more with less money. Not to mention when there is more money in private charity companies like Watsi can come up which will bring in more innovative ways to help people. Currently federal government's welfare money will not promote innovation.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#276

Post by [deleted] »

colinplamondon wrote: post #67
xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…

[deleted]

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#277

Post by orthecreedence »

clavalle wrote: post #218
prodmerc wrote: post #189

This shit again. NO ONE has given me an answer to the question: what will happen when basic income inevitably raises the overall price of basic stuff because now "everyone can afford it"? It will be back to zero, people with basic income will not be able to afford both housing/bills and food. Moreover the ones without will be totally fucked. So, what gives? Run BI in a few small counties and call it a success? Gee wo…

>what will happen when basic income inevitably raises the overall price of basic stuff because now "everyone can afford it"? That is the kind of question that experimentation like this sets out to answer. There are a lot of theories. My personal theory is that, in general, stuff is not going to get more expensive because of basic income. Providers know that people have more money to spend but there is also still comp…

I thought this about landlords as well, but landlords are also subject to the same economic rules. Many landlords are just trying to cover the payments on the their property + a little extra. If the landlord has BI as well as the renter, then the baseline doesn't really move at all. The landlord doesn't have to charge more to cover expenses because they get BI too.

That's the theory, anyway. I really have been on the edge of my seat to see how this idea works out and what the details will be like.

My biggest concern with BI is the abolishment of state healthcare. With healthcare expenses as astronomically high as they are in the US, I think the only real path to a workable system would be universal healthcare + universal basic income, and then getting rid of welfare, food stamps, etc. I can't see this working if people have to spend all their money on health costs.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#278

Post by FLUX-YOU »

DawkinsGawd wrote: post #180
gshulegaard wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't a good riddle. First, Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT) work better than most people expect ( http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... ). As noted in the article, UCTs work surprisingly well in scenarios where lack of capital is the primary problem. A UBI (at least as usually is discussed in the US) is a de-scaling UCT. Second, most proponents of a UBI see it as more efficien…

You completely side stepped the question. I find it absolutely amazing how naive BI supporters are. I grew up poor in a ghetto in New York. Studied, went to university, became an engineer and am no longer in that socioeconomic bracket. However it is very apparent that the people in my current bracket (the one's that support BI), have no idea about the issues of the poor. Poor people are mostly poor because of the dec…

>But giving someone a months worth of rent/food/utilities/clothing in cash is going to be disastrous

If the poor can destroy our society because we cut them a check, we're fucked as it is. Who knows if BI is implemented "no strings attached cash", but it's not impossible to imagine outreach groups to get people to spend their money more wisely.

And despite the help, some of them will continue to buy vices. You cannot help those people until they decide they want to change. But this small waste of BI is not a strong argument against BI.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#279

Post by simplify »

rtkwe wrote: post #254
simplify wrote: post #156

Has anyone considered "subsidizing jobs" as an alternative to BI? Would it work better if the government gives $X to a company when they hire someone?

Then you get into a whole mess of determining what's actually a company and what's a job and lose one of the (hopeful) benefits of BI which is allowing people to explore creative endeavors like the arts which aren't totally job based or allowing people to study for a better job without having to compromise and basic living standards.

Well it wouldn't be 100% subsidized, meaning that the company has to payout some money. With a subsidized payout, I imagine companies would hire even more people. And, even if someone gets away with not actually "working", there's a cap on the number of dollars the government subsidizes.

As much as I like the idea of programming side projects by just relying on BI, I'm not sure how realistic that is; I think cost of housing and food – both of which are increasing – needs to get much lower for that to be possible.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#280

Post by chimeracoder »

crdoconnor wrote: post #238
acgourley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find there are two voices for BI, the liberal and the liberatian. The liberal would prefer to keep universal healthcare and food programs and put cash on top, making the total distribution to the poor larger. The liberatian would prefer to simply move the complex paternalistic safety net into a simpler cash payment which doesn't disincentivize work while not increasing it's size. As an aside, if you pay attent…

Universal healthcare is simply more efficient. The NHS delivers the same outcomes (longevity, infant mortality, etc.) as the American health system at less than half the cost (healthcare spending / % GDP). Fully private provision of insurance for any events that follow a non-normal distribution (as most, but not all healthcare costs do) simply does not work, has never worked and will never work.

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