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The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

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Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#341

Post by specialist »

dahdum wrote: post #247
firethief wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what guaranteed monthly checks does to ambition Do you think it's a coincidence that that check is only guaranteed in the absence of ambition? You've seen the perverse incentives of means-tested welfare, not the effects of a UBI.

SNAP, section 8 housing, disability, and other programs are still necessary under UBI unless UBI is absurdly high. If is that high, then the sick/elderly/disabled are hugely disadvantaged relative to those who are not - not a desirable outcome for me. We should overhaul our existing programs to provide graduated phase outs instead of creating new entitlement programs. I see UBI in general as having far more perverse…

When you say "entitlement", I hear "progressive wealth redistribution".

Government is the source of all wealth. So administering cashectomies is a fine way to mitigate hoarding.

Once our Ginni coefficient is dragged back into the "democracy promoting" realm, we can talk about liberal over reach.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#342

Post by dahdum »

chesimov wrote: post #326
dahdum wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The other way is thinking of the billions of brains wasted every generation just trying to survive, exactly what humans did 2000 years ago. Now imagine if all these brains could be freed and god knows how much innovation, progress and intellectual output can be unlocked into a completely different kind of society. That's a vision." It's not so cut and dry. I don't believe that incentives under UBI will lead to great…

A friendly note: 'cut and dried'. As an aside are these kind of remarks welcomed or seen as pedantic?

I appreciate it!

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#343

Post by eanzenberg »

akvadrako wrote: post #315
eanzenberg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's even more basic then that. There are two competing theories for humanity. One is, do you have faith in society and the peoples of that society? The other, do you not have faith in society and the peoples of it? Many of the human-made constructs in our world were defined as a stop-gap for the lowest depths of humanity. Certain people are extremely selfish, narcissistic, care only for themselves? We have some l…

> So you need to ask yourself, do you have faith that UBI will "free brains enough to produce innovation, progress, and further intellectual output", or lead to massive work reduction, increased prices, and increased complacency? You don't need to know that yet. As long as you accept that work for the sake of work is not the purpose of life, you can study UBI to see how people behave.

>>As long as you accept that work for the sake of work is not the purpose of life

But I don't accept that! And I doubt I'm not alone in this country. I believe that you are the work you do. If you spend the majority of time doing it, then that's who you are and you should own it and be proud of it.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#344

Post by eanzenberg »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #325
eanzenberg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's even more basic then that. There are two competing theories for humanity. One is, do you have faith in society and the peoples of that society? The other, do you not have faith in society and the peoples of it? Many of the human-made constructs in our world were defined as a stop-gap for the lowest depths of humanity. Certain people are extremely selfish, narcissistic, care only for themselves? We have some l…

Reality is never as black and white as that.

It kind of is, and you can see how real-world countries behave when pushed more towards the UBI end-goal. You can then figure out whether to put faith in society or not.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#345

Post by eanzenberg »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #324
eanzenberg wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people who would agree with you are the ones who see this firsthand. The people who back UBI generally live in a bubble or see things from an ivory tower.

I'm not sure, there are a lot of perverse incentives in the welfare system in the UK, I assume they exist in the US as well. If you replace it with a system where the benefits don't disappear when you start work then there is more of an incentive to work. The main problem I see is most people promoting it want to set it so high that the figures just don't add up.

That's my current biggest problem with UBI. We are not even close to post-scarce.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#346

Post by heynonynony »

tom_mellior wrote: post #320
heynonynony wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry but $100K is not a lot of income these days, especially in places like CA and NY, so a 20% tax increase or a loss of $8K/year would be DEVESTATING! so, you just want to f' over all these perceived "wealthy" people (who are actually pretty f'ing middle class in CA or NY) for what? to let slackers play video games all day? F THAT!

> sorry but $100K is not a lot of income these days Did you click the link in the post you're answering to? Among many other interesting things, it says: "Of those individuals with income who were older than 15 years of age, approximately 50% had incomes below $30,000 while the top 10% had incomes exceeding $95,000 a year in 2015." The source it gives is this, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/…

bullshit. do you live in CA? do you have any f'ing idea how expensive it is to live in CA? $100K/yr does not get you very far.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#347

Post by heynonynony »

sjg007 wrote: post #287
heynonynony wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"nets you millions" probably not if "tax the hell out of wealth" ... right?

No. What we fail to understand is that taxes are fair when they are proportional.

taxes are fair when everyone gets taxed the same rate. that is logically fair, not emotionally fair. I prefer the former so do most people with half a brain.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#348

Post by Suncho »

dahdum wrote: post #263
Suncho wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So non-resource limited prices may remain low, but couldn't most of it be captured by those items that are limited? Yes. And that's a very good point. For example, we might have the resources to feed the world, but we don't have the resources to feed the world meat 24/7. The price of meat would increase, so people would substitute other forms of food. > Like rent or health care? People could move out of the cities…

Doesn't moving out of the cities, and as you state, away from jobs exacerbate the number of people who will no longer be employed? These new UBI based communities won't be able to provide the same economic/educational opportunities or efficiency of services that the cities can.

> Doesn't moving out of the cities, and as you state, away from jobs exacerbate the number of people who will no longer be employed?

Depends on what you mean. A couple questions:

1. Is it a problem for people not to be employed?

2. How do we define employment? Does the pay have to be above a minimum wage? Does it have to be full time? Does volunteer work count? Etc.

We presumably all want people to find interesting and fulfilling ways to spend their time. Basic income gives people the freedom to spend their time in a meaningful way. But it doesn't directly provide meaningful activities to people.

If, after implementing a basic income, we discover that everybody's bored, then I agree with you that this a problem that we'll have to address.

But we should keep in mind that many people are miserable in their jobs already. I have a feeling that people will find interesting ways to spend their time on their own, but if they don't, it's not the end of the world. Freeing people from jobs doesn't automatically make them happy, but it's a first step.

> These new UBI based communities won't be able to provide the same economic/educational opportunities or efficiency of services that the cities can.

I don't know what you mean by UBI-based communities. It's not that the world will be segregated into UBI-based communities and non-UBI-based communities. It's all a continuum. As in today's world, there will be a continuum of people at different income levels. UBI just puts a floor on income.

As is the case today, some cities will be more desirable to live in than others. Maybe those cities have better economic/educational opportunities, as you say. But that's true already today. And because basic income will make it more affordable to live in those cities, it increases everyone's opportunity across the board.

As far as educational opportunities go though, if everyone has the freedom to spend their time how they choose, there are plenty of educational resources available out there for anyone, no matter where you live. I wrote a blog post about this a while ago:

http://www.suncho.com/blog/20140219_too_cool_for_school.html

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#349

Post by rev_bird »

Suncho wrote: post #126
rev_bird wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you try to do this using conventional budget math, you're not going to get the right answer. I'm very curious about this part, particularly in light of your comment elsewhere that "It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support." I feel like there are very interesting answers being alluded to in your posts but none actually presented.

Sorry. I'm scattering everything around. You can read more about my basic income project here: http://www.greshm.org If you don't feel like clicking the link, I'm developing a USD-backed basic income system that does the equivalent of deficit spending to fund a basic income. If you think that sounds crazy, then most people agree with you.

Thanks for linking to this, looking forward to checking it out.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#350

Post by rev_bird »

ameister14 wrote: post #181
rev_bird wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no" - and that to me sounds like a serious culture change in this country. I'd argue that the culture is currently overwhelmingly biased toward saying "no," usually under the guise of "freedom" -- if we couldn't say "no" to the chronically homeless, we probably wouldn't have a half-million of them on the streets. If we couldn't sa…

There is significant debate over the causes of maternal mortality and in particular its recent rise in the us; almost noone thinks it has to do with income.

I agree there are lots of reasons to be discussed, but it's my understanding that access to postpartum healthcare is certainly one of the factors, one that varies widely by insurance company. Medicaid, for example, only covers two months of care for mothers after they give birth,[1] and even then care compares poorly to other countries with more equitable healthcare systems.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-du...

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