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

It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 761 posts

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#391

Post by noenzyme »

redler wrote: post #330
bitkrieg wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side note, businesses, in general, could significantly reduce their labor costs if a BI was in place.

This might not work out the way you think. With more money in everyone's pocket, for example, people in subsistence circumstances working minimum-wage second jobs while their children sit alone at home would no longer be compelled as strongly to take or keep such jobs. Some would stick with them, but surely there would be a cohort for whom it's no longer necessary, or who could now afford to be pickier about the natu…

We would then have come full circle. Robots/AI remove jobs, which causes basic income legislation to take root, which cause people to stop working the jobs the Robots/AI took away in the first place!

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#392

Post by ende »

demoncore wrote: post #306

I just spent a year living in South Western France which is the most socialist part of France. (I'm a US citizen based here most of the time and I'm a CEO). If you want to see the result of wealth redistribution, go check it out yourself. You'll meet young men and women in the prime of their lives who spend their entire day in a coffee shop and later a bar, sipping a beverage discussing art, culture, poetry, how busi…

I agree with you. So don't tax the innovators and entrepreneurs. Leave their income alone. Tax the land owners who generate wealth for themselves while contributing nothing to society. Tax the unproductive rent-seeking wealth of those who attain their position not through innovation but through dependence on and manipulation of the political class. Institute a land value tax and leave productive incomes free from taxation. Let the landlords pay rent to society in the form of a basic income for all.

Also, ban French.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#393

Post by [deleted] »

freefrancisco wrote: post #379
davmre wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naturally you have to "raise taxes" (in a nominal sense) at the same time you add a basic income, so that the added income is cancelled out for middle-class and wealthy people, and the net amount of redistribution stays more or less constant. It's still a big win, since you've taken all of the various benefits agencies and collapsed their roles into that of the IRS or equivalent tax agency, which has to exist anyway…

If it's really more efficient than the current system, it should be fundable from the existing entitlements. Just dismantle the programs, fire all the bureaucrats running them, and divert all these funds toward the basic income. If it requires another tax then it's not an alternative, it is an expansion of the welfare state.

[deleted]

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#394

Post by ende »

bcheung wrote: post #265
softatlas wrote: post #35

I once stumbled upon a YouTube video consisting of a woman who received ~$1,400/mo entirely supplied by Government Assistance Programs. I once saw a job posting for a Web Developer/Python position where the client stated: "$1,000/mo is enough in Belarus." I stopped to think for a bit: "I hardly made $800/mo when I was freelancing, and I was happiest when I was not working." I think the biggest argument for Basic Inco…

You actually raise a good point about testing it. If you have heard of the Sea Steading Institute they are proposing that we establish a bunch of "startup" style countries to examine which policies and solutions will work and which won't. The problem with basic income though is that it relies on captive individuals (value producers who pay tax) and given the choice they are most likely going to move to somewhere that…

This assumes that a basic income is funded through income taxation. Instead, fund it through a land value tax (a rent on land ownership paid to society). The LVT is just the cost of investment, like any business owner renting space to run their business on.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#396

Post by yummyfajitas »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #331
yummyfajitas wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,... Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone. Consider a…

What does "competitive" mean? Against what? More realistically, figure $20k to 15 million - much less trouble. A mere $0.3T :) But it'll go close to 100% to the Metric Formerly Known as M3 and dissipate. My framework and Maslow-hammer is the PPST framework from Tyler Cowan by way of Arnold Kling - Patterns of Sustainable Substitution and Trade. In this, the bulls get bigger and the china shops get smaller; people don…

"Competitive" means "against alternate policy proposals". For example, Basic Job/Employer of last resort, or the current welfare state.

...people don't have jobs for the reason that employers can't or won't figure out how to hire because business is too hard now.

People don't have jobs because they are unwilling to work at low wages. This is pretty well established empirically, is the foundation of Keynesian economics, and is even accepted by both Cowen and Kling.

Further evidence for this: US companies are still outsourcing and expanding overseas.

If you give dole money to people such that it does not drive them from doing something productive...

The little data we have about BI suggests it reduces productive work hours by about 10%. For comparison, the great recession resulted in a 1% drop. As usual in articles on this topic, original sources uncited.

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money...

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#398

Post by stormbrew »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #369
mberning wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only about 200m people are over the age of 18 and 20k per person seems high. 200M at 10k per year is around 2 trillion. Seems doable if we are willing to scrap things like social security.

10k/year for 50m is 500b. Throw in 100% overhead and targeted welfare providing equivalent benefits is still half the price of BI. Note that the current level of welfare is $20k/person so you are advocating a massive reduction of consumption for the welfare class. (I don't object, just pointing it out.)

It didn't say people on welfare get $20k/person. They don't get anywhere near that. That's how much the government spends to administrate giving them welfare (including managing means testing to prevent people from abusing it) as well as the welfare itself.

I'm pretty sure US welfare is somewhere around $500-900/mo, and if you get a job (thus, work towards becoming a 'productive member of society') you may lose it.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#400

Post by CamperBob2 »

bcheung wrote: post #362
saraid216 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy? Scale it down? Seems pretty obvious to me. If you can make it happen in one city, you have a foothold.

Check out the Sea Steading Institute. They are pushing towards colonizing the ocean and allow groups to form their own nations. If we can form tons of new nations to test out new ideas of government we will quickly learn what works and what doesn't.

Mostly we'll learn what governments are better at taking over others.
Post reply on HN