Why we should all have a basic income • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#371

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 12:50 AM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #364

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't want just any cheap housing. They want proximity to their work, in a good school district for their kids, with quick access to transportation, cool restaurants and coffee shops within walking distance. The supply of those will still be constrained. The supply of those is artificially constrained. There is no practical limit to housing density when you can build vertically. The problem is you have peopl…

> There is no practical limit to housing density when you can build vertically. Why not? Higher structures require deeper and more complex foundations, more reinforced concrete and steel, extra precautions for strong winds and earthquakes. Setting up proper elevator systems, plumbing, air venting, noise isolation, electrical wiring and natural gas hookups is also subject to more restrictive building code (and for a g…

> Higher structures require deeper and more complex foundations, more reinforced concrete and steel, extra precautions for strong winds and earthquakes. Setting up proper elevator systems, plumbing, air venting, noise isolation, electrical wiring and natural gas hookups is also subject to more restrictive building code (and for a good reason). This is before we get into the costs of underground/overground parking, which has additional weight and reinforcement requirements of its own.

None of which is insurmountable, as evidenced by the fact that such buildings actually exist. Now compare the rent in a high rise in Chicago with the same style of building in San Francisco or NYC. The cost difference isn't because of the cost of the building.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#372

Post by alexqgb » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 12:55 AM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #328

jondubois wrote: post #323

If I had basic income, I would go back to study, get a PhD in Computer Science Majoring in AI/Machine learning and then I would try to do something meaningful with it. I am tired of doing pseudo-intellectual software 'engineering' tasks - I would like to use my intellect to tackle difficult problems instead of trivial problems like building UI components and managing databases. Unfortunately, I can't afford to go to…

The fact that someone is paying you to do these jobs shows that the things you do do have a lot value to someone (your boss, the company's customers etc.). So your existing job is far from being meaningless. Instead of crying for a UBI you should better cry for people not to buy software that does "trivial stuff". If people were willing to spend a lot of money on software that does highly not-trivial stuff, there pro…

No, this is not what you "should better" do, largely because your approach is so demonstrably inefficient when applied to multiple problems. After all, what you propose is a a particular solution to a particular problem. UBI is a general solution to a vast number of particular problem.

For reasons of efficacy alone, UBI > your idea.

QED

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#373

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 12:55 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #323

If I had basic income, I would go back to study, get a PhD in Computer Science Majoring in AI/Machine learning and then I would try to do something meaningful with it. I am tired of doing pseudo-intellectual software 'engineering' tasks - I would like to use my intellect to tackle difficult problems instead of trivial problems like building UI components and managing databases. Unfortunately, I can't afford to go to…

I would say similar, which is why at one point I actually sent in PhD applications. PhDs in computer science usually come with a stipend and a tuition exemption. Why do you need to wait until retirement?

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#374

Post by unstatusthequo » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 12:57 AM UTC

As a payor of six digits of taxes, this sounds expensive and likely to be taken advantage of by the lazy.

When I grew up my basic income was something called "wages," for which I worked to earn.

Someone has to fund shit like this. Handouts do not promote self help, but the opposite: dependence on the government. Is that something to be proud about?

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#375

Post by dingo_bat » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

According to very quick Web searches, $1000 is about 80% of the median personal income in the usa. I calculated the same rate for India and it comes to ₹2751 per month based on a median income of $616 per annum.

If I were to get ₹2751 extra every month, it wouldn't make a difference for me at all. In fact, my monthly expenses are 10x this amount and I'm only spending less than 50% of my income.

So this measure surely isn't meant to have any effect on people like me. I would imagine it's a similar calculation for most people on this website. For this reason alone, we are very badly positioned to react in an emotional manner. The only decisions that should be taken should be taken on the basis of trials and hard statistics. Otherwise the "free money for slackers" sentiment is too strong when it may not be the truth.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#376

Post by throwaway729 » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #323

If I had basic income, I would go back to study, get a PhD in Computer Science Majoring in AI/Machine learning and then I would try to do something meaningful with it. I am tired of doing pseudo-intellectual software 'engineering' tasks - I would like to use my intellect to tackle difficult problems instead of trivial problems like building UI components and managing databases. Unfortunately, I can't afford to go to…

PhD programs typically pay 20-30k a year, and you can get close to doubling that by taking summer internships. That's at or above a lot of basic income proposals, especially because many top CS universities are located in places with very low CoL.

So if it's just lack of basic income that's preventing you from going for a CS PhD, you should apply for programs next year (unfortunately you just missed the typical application deadlines...)

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#377

Post by prymitive » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #289

Koshkin wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort. I find this hard to believe. Why would a job "in communistic days" be different from, well, a job?

> I find this hard to believe. You don't have to "believe it". Just buy and read a few historical accounts, and/or biographies of people that lived through those regimes. In wasn't that a job in "communistic days" was different from a modern job, it was that in those days productivity wasn't that high anyway neither was purchasing power, so there was little use for jobs to make things or offer services that people co…

At the heart of the communist was the belief that the entire country with all its people can be managed and orchestrated. This translates to a very static universe, where you are born, given an assignment and are suppose to stay in the same place until you die or the state changes their mind. Everything was a number in a spreadsheet, how many doctors given are will have, how much bread you need to bake and how much toilet paper shoul be produced. The last one turned out to be the symbol of communism failure, they did some math and decided X amount of toilet paper should be produced, but sadly people wanted more. Huge shortfall of toilet paper began and it started being a valued asset. Such over-planned world doesn't really work well with human ambitions, it doesn't really matter if you job is meaningful or not, having very little choice will likely cause stress and make you unhappy. To make things worse promotion was only possible if you were a party member and was seen as valuable and loyal. The whole thing was more than just automatically giving people jobs, it's been about total control, job creation was one of the tools. I don't think it's easy to directly compare it with UBI if someone wants to make such analogy. UBI doesn't restrict you the same way, it might even be seen as opposite - liberating people from being forced into low paid jobs where you generate very little value and it's hard to progress your skills and income.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#378

Post by protomyth » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 1:05 AM UTC

lg wrote: post #277

protomyth wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from the article you cited: Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.” Minimum guaranteed income is different than basic income.

... which also disincentivizes work more than UBI, because why work a low-wage job for that minimum income when you can get it for nothing instead? whereas with UBI it's always in addition.

I would have to see something backing that up since unpaid internships would not be just the province of the well off and employers would have some incentive to raise wages where I don't think UBI would do that. You also assume for every $ I get from work would be deducted from my payment which isn't true for a lot of negative income tax schemes.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#379

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 1:05 AM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #348

neltnerb wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I get where you're going with this, but the businesses are still competing with one another in a free market. So yes, you're right that if all the avocado farmers in California decided to engage in price fixing because they know that more money exists and that they can get it, they probably can. But it presupposes highly monopolistic behavior that doesn't seem very likely to work for most markets. Especially if it…

> But it presupposes highly monopolistic behavior that doesn't seem very likely to work for most markets. Higher education costs expanded to absorb the extra money from the student loans thrown at them, healthcare costs increased as more consumers started competing for a fixed supply of appointment slots, hospital beds and medical services.

> Higher education costs expanded to absorb the extra money from the student loans thrown at them

That's because they're catastrophically stupid industry-specific interest rate subsidies. A dollar for tuition is then less expensive than a dollar for anything else, so everyone conspires to buy things with the cheap government money that isn't available when used for anything else. And that process is highly inefficient because it's basically a huge implicit fraud scheme to redirect subsidized student loan money to things that aren't strictly education, which no one can admit to out loud or explicitly negotiate for because it's illegal to use the money for that. Then it's, look how expensive "education" has become!

A UBI doesn't do that because it doesn't restrict what you can use the money for.

> healthcare costs increased as more consumers started competing for a fixed supply of appointment slots, hospital beds and medical services.

In part this is the same thing (here is a huge pile of money that you can only use for healthcare, now everyone go swamp the doctor's office at the same time). And the rest of it is temporary because no one knew the law was coming ahead of time so now we need some time to increase the supply of healthcare providers.

Re: Why we should all have a basic income

#380

Post by throwaway729 » Mon, Jan 23, 2017, 1:05 AM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #335

ycmbntrthrwaway wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work.

> Street promoters make me sad. If they can find no job they better stay at home and learn something new, but they have no time for it, so they are stuck doing useless, maybe even harmful, work. If these people really have such a large earning potential if they were just learning something new, why not let coworkers get together and finance a fund: The worker (let's call him John Doe) will get his existing income for…

You need a really big group of people to make that happen, because there will be failure cases at every stage of the process. In fact, you might even need an entire country to buy in.

Which is basically a description of what happens when countries provide free uni education...