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

A Guaranteed Income for Every American

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 387 posts

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#361

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fzeroracer wrote: post #261
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That isn't a problem. You get a concentration of people collecting a basic income who move into a low cost area, then they have m…

This is far too simplistic, especially when you consider the issue of gentrification and the rise of housing costs associated with it. You ignore that this leads back to the same issue: Poor people are now living in a higher-cost area where their previously held job no longer suffices to live. So now you force these poor people out of homes that they used to be able to afford into even poorer areas with worse job sec…

> This is far too simplistic, especially when you consider the issue of gentrification and the rise of housing costs associated with it. You ignore that this leads back to the same issue: Poor people are now living in a higher-cost area where their previously held job no longer suffices to live.

A basic income would allow you to move to some town in Oregon or Colorado without having to worry about starving to death until you can find a job as a bouncer or the like. Once you do the presence of people like you creates some other jobs for plumbers and carpenters etc. The idea that this is going to turn every Podunk town in America into San Francisco or New York City and leave the poor with nowhere to live is clearly untrue.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#362

Post by ptaipale »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #360
ptaipale wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? What you would need to solve this is socialized medical care supervised by the government, who takes from those who can contribute and gives to those who are in need. It wouldn't have to be completely run by the government but would have to be supervised by it.

> Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? Medical insurance that works like Medicare obviously has the same problems. But imagine medical insurance where, instead of paying obscene premiums with a low deductible, you pay very low premiums with a deductible of several thousand dollars after which the insurance pays 80%. So if you get cancer you don't die of poverty but for pretty much anything else you…

However, this leave people still exposed to diseases where the thing that maybe helps you does not cost $10,000 but $100,000 (not uncommon) or $1,000,000.

For instance, recently I read about carfilzomib or sipuleucel, both cancer medicines; $100,000 doesn't get you there yet.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#363

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ptaipale wrote: post #362
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really Medicare, or medical insurance in general? Medical insurance that works like Medicare obviously has the same problems. But imagine medical insurance where, instead of paying obscene premiums with a low deductible, you pay very low premiums with a deductible of several thousand dollars after which the insurance pays 80%. So if you get cancer you don't die of poverty but for pretty much anything else you…

However, this leave people still exposed to diseases where the thing that maybe helps you does not cost $10,000 but $100,000 (not uncommon) or $1,000,000. For instance, recently I read about carfilzomib or sipuleucel, both cancer medicines; $100,000 doesn't get you there yet.

The only reason they can charge $100,000 is that there is a deep pocket to pay for it. It does not cost that much to manufacture the drug. It might cost that much to do the research, but if you want taxpayer funded research then do taxpayer funded research. There is no reason to launder the research subsidy through seven layers of bureaucracy.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#364

Post by dragonwriter »

ryanlol wrote: post #353
dragonwriter wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving fast enough to significantly affect CoL can be extremely difficult if you're poor, less so if your not.

Surely basic income should make moving much easier then?

Depends on how its implemented: one that is implemented as suggested in the source article here (below poverty level and replaces existing poverty supports with aid that is in many cases less valuable in total -- including replacing programs that are federal/state cooperative programs whose value currently is sensitive to local, or at least state-by-state, costs) may well not do so, and indeed may make it harder (as well as making it harder for the poor to even survive.)

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#365

Post by chillacy »

ptaipale wrote: post #280
avatarlite wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's author also wrote a book advocating a universal basic income, “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State,” which was first published in 2006. In that book he allows that services for the disabled would need to be retained and could not be replaced with a UBI.

Of course. The problems of the disabled, the mentally ill and so forth are obvious, and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI. But that's also the downfall of UBI, because it means that most of the other transfers will remain a necessity, and the bureaucracy to distribute it will remain a necessity, and the whole issue of welfare dependency is back with us, and so is the constant d…

> and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI.

I think that's where there are two camps within UBI supporters: those who want social security + UBI, and those who want to replace all or most social services with UBI. You can probably see how that maps to the political spectrum.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#366

Post by roblabla »

akx wrote: post #320
aminok wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a great solution, although I think the consequence for the tax havens would be the opposite of what you envision. >The irony being that most evaders' ancestors were the ones building penal colonies to send their debtors to. Difference is that those debt obligations were voluntarily assumed, whereas tax debt is an odd form of debt that is imposed on someone without their agreement.

They implicitly agree with the debt by assuming a nationality.

Did you really chose your nationality ?

I get the idea that to live, you will probably need the assistance of your government at one point or another. And that the government needs money. So taxes.

But saying it was something you could chose ? Say I want to live by my own rules, outside a nation. What are my options ? Similarly, can I "give up" my nationality and if so, what happens ?

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#367

Post by dragonwriter »

ptaipale wrote: post #280
avatarlite wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's author also wrote a book advocating a universal basic income, “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State,” which was first published in 2006. In that book he allows that services for the disabled would need to be retained and could not be replaced with a UBI.

Of course. The problems of the disabled, the mentally ill and so forth are obvious, and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI. But that's also the downfall of UBI, because it means that most of the other transfers will remain a necessity, and the bureaucracy to distribute it will remain a necessity, and the whole issue of welfare dependency is back with us, and so is the constant d…

> The problems of the disabled, the mentally ill and so forth are obvious, and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI.

The solution isn't to either remove all other benefit programs or to retain them all. in a static, unchanging way.

Its to build UBI in a way that it naturally grows with productivity, and keep existing means-tested benefit programs (whether general or targetted to specific narrow needs like disability) and count UBI income the same as earned income in the means tests for those programs, phasing the programs out as the UBI rises to a level where it is no longer possible to qualify for them. This does leave you with the administrative costs of those programs for some time, but with dropping caseload which reduces the total costs (both benefit and administrative) over time, eventually to zero when the programs are retired because UBI makes them obsolete.

This also lets you start UBI at a very level level, and reduces risks and provides opportunities to address unforseen consequences of the UBI implementation, because you aren't doing a big-bang implementation where immediately the entire social support structure depends on UBI alone.

(Essentially, instead of being obsolete and removed when UBI is first implemented, other programs are deprecated and to be removed in the future with defined criteria.)

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#368

Post by ericd »

pkaye wrote: post #264
ericd wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13k is still poverty level, I imagine most would not be fully content at that level.

That is why it is called basic income and not deluxe income. The goal is to put food on the table and a roof over your head.

Heh yep, I know, I was just trying to explain why I don't think it's going to suddenly cause everyone to stop working.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#369

Post by PhasmaFelis »

aminok wrote: post #295
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People already go to prison for tax evasion, if they're doing it systematically and deliberately. I don't understand the (apparently popular) argument that serious criminal penalties should only be handed out for direct physical violence. Look at all the horrible shit that happened during the housing collapse--taking someone's home away under false pretenses (and under threat of police violence!) is just as destructi…

Two wrongs don't make a right. No one should go to prison for refusing to hand over a share of the currency that they earned in a private trade. There is so much admiration for the covert mass surveillance that Edward Snowden uncovered and exposed to the world yet we seem to not blink an eye at the blatant and overt mass surveillance of private financial transactions - where we are legally required to totally surrend…

So we should completely abolish taxes, then? I assume this is one of those plans where we privatize all government services and the free market makes everything perfectly efficient and utopic, except for the people who can't afford to pay their police bill?
Post reply on HN