A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing • Hacker News Board

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#331

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:54 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #301

yummyfajitas wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you do a back of the envelope calculation to figure out how large those "more valuable but also more difficult to monetize" effects would be? As I noted in the blog post you cited, most of this discussion is just meaningless verbiage. No one even attempts to quantify the the effects they claim are so important. (In the HN comments on that post, many people suggested such effects; the minute you crunch numbers the…

Non-empirically-validated numbers obscure a lot more than they clarify. The scarmig comment you link to shows that almost all of the effects you included were irrelevant and this whole exercise was worse than useless. Using this much precision at this level of accuracy can only ever mislead.

It's not about precision, it's about knowing if we are even in the ballpark. And it's an incredibly valuable exercise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

It's also about knowing what facts need to be true for a BI to work. Then we know what facts we need to verify to determine if it's true, in contrast to all the meaningless verbiage in this thread.

Also, Scarmig's comment was quite valuable. It showed exactly what the driving effect is - that's precisely why you should do a back of the envelope calculation. And as all the non-quantitative comments show, it's also why any comments suggesting an effect but not doing such a calculation are worse than useless.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#332

Post by bane » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:54 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #265

bane wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would she do that? She'd just watch her own children at the same time.

Depends what level of income disparity you're operating on, rich people don't share nannies - the nanny's kids go to a nursery or more likely are looked after by a grandparent (maybe in a different country).

I can say this with some experience, rich people definitely hire nannies with children, and those children definitely often stay with the rich kids. Rich people get free playmate service for their child, nanny gets to raise their child in a nice environment and their child gets access to a wealthy social network.

It's even a common trope that shows up in literature fairly often.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#333

Post by howeyc » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:55 PM UTC

dilemma wrote: post #268

epaga wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. $10,000. 2. $10,000 3. Yes. 4. They would be. 5. All of the proposed benefits of UBI.

1. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in San Francisco? 2. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in Detroit? 3. Why? 4. See 3. 5. What are the proposed benefits of UBI?

No, it's about having enough to live in the USA. Not about having enough to live where you want at your special snowflake standard of living.

Yes, you may only get enough to live awesome in "the middle of nowhere" or whatever. So what? If you want to live in San Fran, find a way to get the money to live there.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#334

Post by blurbleblurble » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:55 PM UTC

nkohari wrote: post #262

blurbleblurble wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery. People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me? If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you expect some stranger to do it ex…

There will always be work that some find unglamorous but has to be done. I doubt that garbage collectors see their job as a higher calling or a passion, and yet without solid waste collection society would literally collapse. Somehow, you're assigning lesser intrinsic value to lawn mowing than you are to (eg.) jobs in STEM. Society may have assigned a lesser monetary value to it, but that's a function of supply and d…

I bet you anything there are people who love collecting garbage. Driving huge trucks, being in tune with the scale of human life, seeing the guts of the city, routine... some people love that kind of thing. Where I'm from, there are people who go around picking up trash at the local park out of personal fulfillment in their spare time. They enjoy making the park beautiful.

Where do you read me assigning more value to STEM work? You're totally injecting that into what I wrote.

On the contrary, I'm saying that all work can be fulfilling, not just STEM work. But all work can also be degrading if it forces people to compromise themselves unreasonably.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#335

Post by atom-morgan » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:55 PM UTC

mrottenkolber wrote: post #150

weddpros wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste" That's because moral justification isn't at the center of our society. The market is. Many attempts have been made to switch from the market to something else, not many were brilliant. The "lucky historical accident" you cite isn't one... It's just the way our society was built. Also you could argue on many differ…

Who or what is your society? Moral justification is absolutely at the center of European society. Sure, we have lots of criminal capitalists here as well, but morals is our way to deal with those people. You seem to suggest letting these American-style gangsters go unchecked. Why though? You also seem to be suggesting that studying until 23 is less enjoyable than working 9-17 from 17/18 onwards. This all leads me to…

All they said was morality doesn't set prices for labor. Buyers of labor do (market).

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#336

Post by Unklejoe » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #260

dalore wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can see it now. Pop out more children, get more money. This incentives baby making. Which might actually be a good thing in countries with declining birth rates.

If you think it's so rational to have children for cash, you can go do it. I've never met anyone who actually thinks it's a good idea . It's always a hypothetical to malign the poor. Because people who malign the poor know exactly how poor people think, or something.

Do you really not believe that some people would start having children for the sole purpose of income if there was suddenly a program that provided people with $10,000 per year in cash for every child they have?

Having children for financial benefits is a real thing.

It's not just something people accuse the poor of for the purpose of hate (although it is commonly used in such a way).

It's usually not as direct as "let me have this kid so I can get my rebate check", but it's certainly a consideration for many people who are poor. The mentality is more along the lines of "I can't make it by myself, but as a family, we might be able to sustain ourselves".

Most people are aware that it will probably end up costing them more in the long run, but people do crazy things in desperate times.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#337

Post by amelius » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

gjm11 wrote: post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

Can't we just taper it "on" and see what the effects are? For instance, in the first year everybody gets 10% UBI, second year 20% UBI, etc. until 100% UBI.

If by year 10 the economy still functions as desired, we keep UBI. Otherwise we taper it off again.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#338

Post by notahacker » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #283

notahacker wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The savings from laying off a few bureaucrats and jobcentre employees aren't going to change the fact that the £250bn needed just to give a $800/£550 per month BI to working age adults in the UK is a lot more than the £3bn spent on unemployment benefit. (eliminating tax credits, disability benefits and housing benefits will net another £110bn, but also render a lot of poor people poorer or even homeless, which is the…

>> "eliminating tax credits, disability benefits and housing benefits will net another £110bn, but also render a lot of poor people poorer or even homeless, which is the opposite of what BI is generally proposed to do)" I don't see how that's true. Isn't the UBI supposed to replace ALL of those programmes with a single number for everyone that is sufficient for everyone? If the UBI provides enough for food and shelte…

Sure, as I acknowledged in my above post, if you're comfortable with a situation where everybody living in social housing in London is forced to relocate to a different part of the country and severely disabled people are substantially poorer in pure cash terms than before, then you can replace all those programmes with a flat subsidy of £550 per month (or slightly less than the average London room rental in a shared house) and find some way of recovering the remaining additional £140bn cost through increases to gross taxes that leaves lower middle class single people at least no worse off.

Otherwise you need a flat subsidy much higher than £550 per month to properly replace the existing subsidy in all parts of the country, which would cost an awful lot more in taxes and make it a very comfortable living in other parts of the country.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#339

Post by adwf » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:57 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #286

adwf wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well putting aside that you might be making a kind of post-hoc fallacy there with your equation; Is reducing labor supply really a bad thing? Most developed countries have unemployment permanently somewhere between 5-10% or even more during recession. Some, like Spain, have closer to 25%. Reducing labor supply may be the only answer. It's not that I don't agree with you in principle. But you can only gain productivit…

Really? Child care is easily available to working mothers? House cleaning services are cheap and readily available to all skilled workers? Professionals sit in the back of their car working on their laptop while a driver watches the road? There are lost of things to do. We have a situation of labor scarcity, not a surplus. Complaining about a labor surplus right now is like a 350lb man eating french fries on the theo…

For the correct pay, yes.

Some jobs aren't paid enough for people to do and still afford to live. Basic income actually fixes that by giving people a baseline to live off, upon which their salary can build.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#340

Post by discardorama » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:57 PM UTC

OK, so you introduce UBI. Yay! Now what happens to all the social workers employed by the city (say, SF)? Remember: SF spends ~$35K/homeless/year. Who pays when a homeless guy ODs and needs hospitalization? Right now government housing is subsidized for the poor (some people in SF pay $35/mo for a 2BR government apartment). Do we still have these subsidies after UBI? What about food stamps? And the 10M+ illegal immigrants?