Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Future of Not Working

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 279 posts

Re: The Future of Not Working

#31

Post by marmot777 »

I got to this on my reading list finally, realizing my first impression that this was a piece promoting an organization called GiveDirectly, wasn't a sound impression (lesson: don't comment till you read the article). This is a higher level than that, it's testing Universal Income, frequently called universal basic income.

Public policy whether implemented by governments or by organizations should test, innovate, change, not just pick an approach and run with it as seems to happen with the largest programs here in the U.S. As far as I can tell there's not been much innovation in the implementation of the safety net since Johnson.

Like anything else humans try to do, there will be bugs, there will be blind alleys, there will be mistakes. Small scale testing is a necessary step so that a working model is ready for larger-scale testing or maybe it'll be found that the implementation will have to have configurations that vary according to local conditions and even just preferences.

I'm a Pacific Northwest guy perhaps out of touch with what Silicon Valley is up to, sometimes I'm critical, but for this initiative, I say thank you. I have no clue how I'd thank anyone for this so just in case anyone involved is reading my comment I would like to express gratitude for doing work that has a high probability of playing a part in making the world a liveable place for my young son and the rest of humanity in the years to come.

By the way, if you've got the chops to beta test UI any chance you could save the Amazon Basin?! Please.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#32

Post by morgante »

Clubber wrote: post #6

The people with the wealth pay people for one reason and one reason only: they have to. Once they no longer have to, they will lobby the government to continue to lower taxes and squawk about laziness, welfare queens, and all that garbage. This will go on for a few decades until there is an uprising of sorts, then those with the money will return to giving everyone else crumbs, or just enough to quell the uprisings.…

> The people with the wealth pay people for one reason and one reason only: they have to.

Huh? In your worldview is charity just not a thing?

Re: The Future of Not Working

#33

Post by jakewins »

chrispeel wrote: post #28
harryh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious about the math on that $66 billion number. According to the world bank there are about 750 million people living in extreme poverty. We only need to give them $88/year to get them out of it? And that's just the people in "extreme poverty." It'll be even less if we move up the income scale a bit. The number seems low to me.

The doc [1] below agrees that there are about 700m in extreme poverty now, which it defines as living below $2/day. If we gave each of those people $2/day, we'd need $550billion/year. So yes, $66b seems low for the $2/day threshold. I wonder if this $66b is for those who are below $1/day. Looking at the plot in [1], we can guess that the number at $1/day is much lower; $66b would give 181 million people a dollar a da…

You need to take into account that these people are not living on absolute nil - they have some level of income, be it $1 or $.50 - so you don't need to give each of them $2/day.

The OP article noted the amount needed in the village in the beginning was $22/month, so $.75 a day, give or take 10c.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#34

Post by marmot777 »

spyckie2 wrote: post #8

The article's title is misleading - it is not about not working, it's about giving money directly to poor villages for 12 years to provide what is similar to basic income but meeting fundamentally different needs in a very different part of the world. That said, I think it is a fascinating anthropological read. We often do not realize how many layers of wealth we had to stand on to possess our current wealth.

As someone who occasionally publishes in minor publications, I know editors pick headlines and don't always do the best job of reflecting the content. I think editor's goal is to get as many people to read it as possible so they might take some liberties.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#35

Post by marmot777 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #23
paulpauper wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the subtlety is 'of', not 'is', which changes the meaning. Agree it's kinda a poorly written headline

It's not just the headline. This is essentially describing charity to poor communities. That's not new. The article's connection between it and "basic income" is tenuous. To be fair, that's not the fault of the article as much as the program itself. How is charity to poor rural communities with collectivist leanings a test of the vague notion of basic income? Or what will this program tell us about basic income in th…

Because it's cash on the barrelhead. Most aid of all sorts and most social safety net programs are not that straight forward. Also, universal basic income presumably won't penalize people for working or starting a business.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#36

Post by jimmywanger »

I think that fundamentally, the thing we're going to run up against is population growth.

I think history has proven that we can live in extremely wretched conditions. By giving money to people, are we going to be increasing their living standards or just creating more mouths to feed?

Note that the basic income only applies to whoever registers at the beginning of the program. Would that amount of basic income cause the population to explode, so that the per-capita amount of goods/money remains constant?

Re: The Future of Not Working

#37

Post by aaron-lebo »

marmot777 wrote: post #35
aaron-lebo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the headline. This is essentially describing charity to poor communities. That's not new. The article's connection between it and "basic income" is tenuous. To be fair, that's not the fault of the article as much as the program itself. How is charity to poor rural communities with collectivist leanings a test of the vague notion of basic income? Or what will this program tell us about basic income in th…

Because it's cash on the barrelhead. Most aid of all sorts and most social safety net programs are not that straight forward. Also, universal basic income presumably won't penalize people for working or starting a business.

Also, universal basic income presumably won't penalize people for working or starting a business.

There's no universal definition of basic income and it certainly won't be so straightforward once it goes through the meat-grinder of legislation.

It's cash on the barrelhead to the poorest of the poor from outside organizations. That's charity.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#38

Post by marmot777 »

mtrn wrote: post #12
Clubber wrote: post #6

The people with the wealth pay people for one reason and one reason only: they have to. Once they no longer have to, they will lobby the government to continue to lower taxes and squawk about laziness, welfare queens, and all that garbage. This will go on for a few decades until there is an uprising of sorts, then those with the money will return to giving everyone else crumbs, or just enough to quell the uprisings.…

You might like The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick[1]. In this 1964 novel the world has shifted slightly: Instead of giving "just enough to quell the uprisings", large parts of the population are just kept eternally busy to support the wealthy lifestyle of a few. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penultimate_Truth

Hey if you're a person receiving basic income so you have basic security, then you're free to work for more money or if that fails as it likely will at times, you'll really appreciate having that foundation of basic income.

Yes, there are huge disparities of wealth but when I look at the world my young son is living in and has to deal with, I don't want instability, revolutions, chaos as know enough history to know the failure rate of all that stuff's very high. If the underlying purpose is to "quell the uprisings" or because of pure motives does not particularly concern me. I'm interested in results.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#39

Post by marmot777 »

hackathonguy wrote: post #5

"One estimate, generated by Laurence Chandy and Brina Seidel of the Brookings Institution, recently calculated that the global poverty gap — meaning how much it would take to get everyone above the poverty line — was just $66 billion. That is roughly what Americans spend on lottery tickets every year, and it is about half of what the world spends on foreign aid." Love this.

That puts the problem in perspective. This is a solvable problem. I'm a fan of solvable problems and people who solve them.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#40

Post by marmot777 »

harryh wrote: post #17
hackathonguy wrote: post #5

"One estimate, generated by Laurence Chandy and Brina Seidel of the Brookings Institution, recently calculated that the global poverty gap — meaning how much it would take to get everyone above the poverty line — was just $66 billion. That is roughly what Americans spend on lottery tickets every year, and it is about half of what the world spends on foreign aid." Love this.

I'm really curious about the math on that $66 billion number. According to the world bank there are about 750 million people living in extreme poverty. We only need to give them $88/year to get them out of it? And that's just the people in "extreme poverty." It'll be even less if we move up the income scale a bit. The number seems low to me.

Let's say the number if 5 times higher that's still not out of reach, right? I doubt it's 100x higher.
Post reply on HN