A Guaranteed Income for Every American • Hacker News Board

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#331

Post by wscott » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 11:53 AM UTC

redthrow wrote: post #91

Tycho wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem like the same thing to me. Negative income tax means you still need to find someone who will employ you, and also you don't get any benefit if you are above the threshold so it's not universal.

> you still need to find someone who will employ you Not necessarily. Negative income tax is one way to implement means-tested basic income. One way to implement a NIT is you have a cutoff point (e.g. $20,000/year) and a rebate rate (e.g. 50%). So, using the above rate, if your income is... (a) $0/year ... you get $10,000/year (b) $10k/year ... you get ($20k-$10k) x 0.5 = $5,000/year (your total income is $15k/year)…

True, but this would be a very different feel that the one being proposed. This system would be public assistance and so only poor people would get it. So it would come with the usual stigma.

When EVERYONE gets the same check then everyone can talk about it freely and be happy about the money. It may be that with the change in tax rate, higher income people don't really get a net change to their income so the result in similar, but the "feel" is dramatically different.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#332

Post by danbruc » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:05 PM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #226

danbruc wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I obviously have to disagree with your analysis, let me offer an alternative. The difference between the two scenarios is the difference between value(X) + value(8 hours leisure time) and value(X) + 2 * value(3 hours leisure time). Therefore in case the value of 3 hours of leisure time exceeds half of the value of 8 hours of leisure time, i.e. the value of additional leisure time diminishes sufficiently quickly, the…

Because value(X) is constant, your observation boils down to a comparison of value(8 hours leisure time) and value(X) + 2 * value(3 hours leisure time). I did consider the value of leisure time, which I arbitrarily set to $100/hr (I just called this time, but unsold time can be exchanged 1:1 for leisure time). You seem to be objecting to my assumption that the marginal value of time is constant for the workers. I agr…

Okay, after rethinking it once a gain I will move a bit towards your position. By increasing the required work for one X from 8 to 10 hours we are definitely introducing an inefficiency so we are losing something somewhere, we are doing 2 hours of unnecessary work. Assuming both agents can share the X or get to use half the X in both scenarios, we can just leave it out of the equation as mentioned before. If one gets the same value from X in both scenarios, then working 5 hours is strictly preferable over working 8 hours and not working is strictly preferable over working for 5 hours.

So this looks somewhat like the prisoner's dilemma. Let A and B be the scenario that agent A respectively agent B works 8 hours and AB the scenario that both agents work 5 hours each. Then the preferences for agent A are B > AB > A and for agent B they are A > AB > B. But that doesn't help much, no matter which transition you consider, one agent will be better off and one will be worse off.

So there is still a conflict. I acknowledge that an inefficiency gets introduced when the work is split but also want to maintain that 3 hours of leisure time twice is more valuable than 8 hours of leisure time once. Surly value can not increase and decrease at the same time. I am more certain that the inefficiency is real than what the shape of the value function for leisure time is so I will pick the former one and conclude that 8 hours of leisure time are - contrary to my earlier comment - more valuable than 3 hours of leisure time twice.

So do I have to say that maximizing the total value is the wrong metric? Do I have to try to assign a value to the fairness of work distribution? Why wouldn't that already show up in the individual value functions? I am a bit stuck here. But I may have a way around that, I am just not sure how good the argument is. One obvious problem is that in case agent A does all the work, then agent B has no means to transfer some of the additional value from his additional leisure time to A. Maybe he could give away some of his share of X.

But now I can no longer ignore the value function for X and that hopefully saves my argument and I avoid the conflict between decreasing and increasing total value without the need to explicitly appeal to the value of fair work work distribution because it is in the two value functions for X and leisure time. But I am not sure, I did not think this fully through.

I think in the end it boils down to nonlinearities between the individual and the global view, i.e. we can globally waste 2 hours of work but still increase the total value because we have to take the global set of things, split it up for all individuals, push them through the nonlinear value functions and then sum it up again. Now it is no longer necessary that a global loss of 2 hours results in a global loss of value even if all the individual value functions are monotone.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#333

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:14 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #330

crdoconnor wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have. Have you seen the equivalents of McD's kiosks from 1890's Berlin? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat#/media/File:Stollwerck... Those things are bound to replace most food service workers by the 1920s at the very latest.

Indeed!. In the last 126 years technology has not progressed very much. Why should it be different today?

Indeed. The question clearly isn't "do people even want automat restaurants?" it's just "did the technology to push a button and have food delivered reach some sort of tipping point in 2016?"

Did you also know that original automats from the 30s mostly went bankrupt in the same decades (60s/70s) that the inflation adjusted minimum wage was at its highest and Americans had the most disposable income?

Funny that.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#334

Post by chongli » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:19 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #199

wildmusings wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area. There's a good argument to be made for a larger sum for the disabled who cannot work. But I'd be extremely opposed to any regional adjustments. If individual cities and states want to supplement the UBI, then that's up to them, but people moving out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones is part of the…

The problem of course with that argument is that people also need to move into higher-cost areas in order to find jobs for certain industries. If there was no regional adjustment that encourages individuals to stay put. Poor people congregate in low-cost areas with low job opportunities. A CoL adjustment for San Francisco isn't the problem, but rather the fact that San Francisco costs so much to begin with.

Yeah. The solution is to property tax those businesses out of the high cost of living areas. If basic income were paid for entirely by a new progressive property tax (or even better, a land value tax) it could ratchet down the wealth inequality, not just the income inequality.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#335

Post by danbruc » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:43 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #258

danbruc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is, and I'm sorry to say, but the required IQ to be economically relevant is increasing every year. Your plan doesn't work because you can't spread out the work that way. That is only a real problem if the population does not keep up with this development. I can not tell whether requirements are (now) growing faster then capabilities but both certainly grew ever since. The other thing is that it seems to…

> If people are not willing to pay enough for getting their lawn mowed - not sure if that is a good example - to make a living from it, then there never was a market for lawn mowing. You are actually in favor of outlawing lawn mowing as a job? My 14 year old kid can't take a $20 from my neighbor to get some fresh air and weekend spending money? Are you serious????

If you are a professional lawn mower, there should be a minimum wage that ensures that you can live on that income. What is the point of mowing lawns all day long and not ending up with enough money to live? So kids mowing lawns bellow market rates because they don't have to live from that income are creating downward pressure on the price. And why wouldn't you pay market rates in the first place, same work, same pay? There seems also not to be such a huge difference to black labor - you cut some of the costs, taxes and insurances or living with your parents, and harm others trying to make a living with that job. It seems actually pretty difficult to have a balanced solution and as I acknowledged in another comment, this might actually be one of the stronger arguments for a universal basic income because it may allow to sidestep some of those difficult gray area problems.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#336

Post by mamon » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

mac01021 wrote: post #84

gizmo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are exactly the right observations. It's no coincidence that a lot of advocacy for the UBI comes from the far right who want to use it as a pretext to dismantle the welfare state. Conventional social programs are not perfect, but they exist to address specific issues and mostly do their job well. The efficiency gains to be made here are minimal. The real cost savings are made by simply paying the needy…

> a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Actually, under Murray's proposal, she has to make do with 10k per year plus whatever she can earn. If she's earning very, then she's probably doing all the childcare herself and her living costs are not much more than a single, childless woman. If she works full time, then her total income (earned and unearned) will be 30k at minimum. I'm not saying I…

Sorry, but isn't the premise of UBI that it is paid for everyone, including children? That mother of 3 would receive $40.000, wouldn't she ?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#337

Post by chimeracoder » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

opo wrote: post #171

chimeracoder wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't several medical lobbying groups actively coerce the government to limit the number of new doctors that can be minted, both overall and in given areas of practice? Not really. The AMA is often blamed for limiting the number of medical school slots available, but they have nothing to do with that - it's capped by the AAMC, which has been very deliberately raising the number of medical school positions in the US…

>...Hospitals would typically make a loss on residency programs otherwise; contrary to what some people believe, they're actually quite expensive to operate. How does that work? Residents make very little money and do a lot of work. How are they not a profit center for hospitals?

> Residents make very little money and do a lot of work. How are they not a profit center for hospitals?

Residents start their first year knowing literally nothing about practicing medicine. Medical school teaches the foundation, but you learn the practice during residency. In addition, the ratio of attending physicians to residents is capped by law (i believe it's 3:1).

Would a startup want to hire three fresh-out-of-high-school interns for every full-time employee? I can't think of any company that does this. At some point they'd get up to speed, yes, but in the short term they'd be a huge drag.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#338

Post by ryanlol » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #301

aminok wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If UBI is to be instated, we would also have to implement harsh laws to prevent the upper classes from evading taxes. Moving wealth to a tax haven should be made a criminal offence (with jail time). How about you don't instate something that requires harsh authoritarian penalties against non-violent behavior to work.

A better punishment would be to strip them of their nationality, and then send them after their money. British overseas territories would become overcrowded hell-holes in short order. Treasure islands become penal colonies. The irony being that most evaders' ancestors were the ones building penal colonies to send their debtors to.

That wouldn't be any kind of a punishment though, people would be queuing up to leave.

The world outside of the US does not consist of "overcrowded hell-holes"

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#339

Post by ryanlol » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #164

I am all for Basic Income but the way the author wants to implement it would be a disaster. My mother is fully disabled and unable to work as a result of her stroke and she relies on Medicaid, Food Stamps and SSI to live. $13000 per person would be lower than what she gets right now and that's without considering the insurance issues. These changes would quite literally kill or leave homeless a large amount of Americ…

>If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area.

What's the point of that? Moving isn't difficult.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#340

Post by ryanlol » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 1:45 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #262

I like the idea of UBI, but the problem with schemes to improve wealth equality is that usually the middle class ends up footing almost all of the bill. If a rich person feels that their wealth is threatened, they can evade the negative consequences of the scheme (taxes) by relocating their head office to the Caymans. On the other hand, if a middle class family is negatively impacted by the scheme - They cannot evade…

>If UBI is to be instated, we would also have to implement harsh laws to prevent the upper classes from evading taxes. Moving wealth to a tax haven should be made a criminal offence (with jail time).

Moving out of the country should be a criminal offence? Pretty strong North Korea vibes right there.