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

Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 1001 posts

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#481

Post by knodi123 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #110
colinplamondon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…

"Tough shit" sucks when parents blow their handout on lottery tickets and drugs, leaving their children in perpetual poverty.

"tough shit" sucks when your parents blow all their regular income, and their foodstamps, and still leave their children in poverty.

what part of the fact that money was handed out changes things?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#482

Post by [deleted] »

senseless wrote: post #253

Good to see steps like this being made! As a slight aside, there are strong proponents who argue, based on Ricardo's law of rent [0], that any excess income above the basic subsistence level will inevitably be swallowed up by landlords in the form of rents. I'd be very interested to hear from the folks involved in this study if they have an opinion on such an assertion, and if you have any ideas on addressing that ef…

[deleted]

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#483

Post by paul »

senseless wrote: post #253

Good to see steps like this being made! As a slight aside, there are strong proponents who argue, based on Ricardo's law of rent [0], that any excess income above the basic subsistence level will inevitably be swallowed up by landlords in the form of rents. I'd be very interested to hear from the folks involved in this study if they have an opinion on such an assertion, and if you have any ideas on addressing that ef…

That assumes a fixed supply of housing, which is only true in deeply dysfunctional places like SF. In most of the US, housing cost is close to replacement cost, so if landlords try to raise rents, people can just move someplace cheaper, especially since they are no longer dependent on a job to support themselves.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#485

Post by konschubert »

rsync wrote: post #478
colinplamondon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…

"Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help." But see, that's why his is a trick question ... If the answer is "tough shit" then it's a concession that implementing BI (or anything like it) is simply adjusting the "tough shit dial" to a relatively different value. There's still a benefits ce…

> It's all of the bullshit in-between that is totally unworkable - both practically and theoretically.

No. In most countries of the world, including the United states, limited social benefits exist. It is sometimes messy, it is sometimes unfair. But they are reality.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#486

Post by velominati »

Some interesting numbers:

  * The US Population is 320 million [http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html].   
  * Our federal budget is $3.9 trillion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_outlays_in_recent_budget_submissions].   * If every dollar of the budget went towards BI (no defense spending, no infrastructure, etc), that would be $12,260 / person / year. 
  * If you limit it to adults, it ends up around $15,000 / person / year (about 80% of the US population is 15 years or older [http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html]).
This actually lines up pretty closely to the official poverty rate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#R...]. It equals an hourly wage of about $6 / hour.

I wonder if there were a BI, if those at or near the poverty line would tend to get more efficient with their spending. For example, moving towards lower cost parts of the country.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#487

Post by elizabeth-ycr »

bsbechtel wrote: post #462

One thing I didn't see mentioned in the post was an attempt to understand macro economic forces are affected by BI. I understand there are limitations to what can be studied in a controlled environment, and teasing out cause and effect of macro forces can be very, very difficult, but any sort of R&D done at a company normally focuses on reducing the largest risks first, to determine if the project should move forward…

How basic income affects macroeconomic conditions (inflation, housing prices, demand for labor, etc.) is really important to figure out, but it’s honestly beyond the scope of this study. Unless BI is implemented on a macro level, we can't measure the macro-level effects. We’re focusing on the individual-level effects as a first step, but we'll be looking at more than happiness and well-being. We're using the pilot to help refine outcome measures, but we'll share those once they're finalized.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#488

Post by morgante »

notahacker wrote: post #318
politician wrote: post #299

> Oakland is a city of great social and economic diversity... Ok, here's an honest question. These days we often are told that increasing diversity is the responsibility of all successful healthy organizations, end-of-discussion (see: GitHub). Under what conditions would increasing _economic_ diversity be seen as a good outcome?

Few people complain when rich and middle class people start moving into historically low income areas (at least until the poor can't afford to live there) When it applies to companies, I think it's pretty universally suggested that hiring people from poor backgrounds who've worked very hard to get close to the hiring thresholds and are probably being overlooked by other companies is usually a good decision. You don't…

> Few people complain when rich and middle class people start moving into historically low income areas (at least until the poor can't afford to live there)

You must not be following the news much. If you even begin to move into a historically poor area, people will cry gentrification and start throwing rocks.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#489

Post by draugadrotten »

Jemaclus wrote: post #375
solotronics wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post scarcity doesn't exist. Someone has to make the T-shirts. If you think people would be better off if everyone had the same tshirt instead of a variety of choices that is the system we already have. The government making T-shirts at cost and distributing them is communism and it has not worked in the past.

Sure, the someone who makes the T-shirts is the someone who wants to earn money, as opposed to sitting "on basic." I'm not sure how you missed that part. It's in the 7th paragraph. The point being that it doesn't take 7 billion people to provide for 7 billion people. It might take only 1 billion people, or 500 million people, or even 100 million people, to provide enough resources to cover everyone else. Part of the…

> The point being that it doesn't take 7 billion people to provide for 7 billion people. It might take only 1 billion people, or 500 million people, or even 100 million people, to provide enough resources to cover everyone else.

There's plenty of empiric evidence from wellfare states like Norway, Denmark and Sweden that "enough" is not enough for the receivers.

The people who receive always wants to receive more. We are not talking about giving people food and shelter anymore -- the level of welfare includes TV and internet subscriptions, smartphones, brand name sneakers and junk food. Just to name a few of the "Basics". Due to human nature, the level of welfare demanded by the receivers will always be higher than the available welfore.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#490

Post by bryondowd »

xienze wrote: post #176
azernik wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends which BI fans you ask. The ones who want to completely eliminate other welfare programs are generally right-wing and/or libertarian - they're opposed to existing welfare programs for all kinds of ideological reasons. Left-wing BI fans (like me) are not so gung-ho about eliminating other welfare systems for the reasons you described, and I at least am totally willing to accept that BI will cost money. That sai…

> So for example, section 8 and food stamps might be phased out under a BI system (they're always going to get next month's or week's deposit) But my point is, when you hand someone a check and they must in turn be responsible for spending that money on food and shelter, they might not actually do that and then what? At least with Section 8 and food stamps you're earmarking the money for a particular purpose so as to…

To be fair, if the disbursements are frequent enough, you don't need to worry about food. It takes quite a while to actually starve, and a hungry enough person will buy food.

Shelter is another story, but as long as you provide a means to assign some of your BI ahead of time to a provider (landlord), this should also be a minor issue outside of the very mentally ill, who are going to be screwed in any system (including the current one) that doesn't take them under involuntary managed care.

When I say assigning your BI, I mean being able to go through a process on the spot that guarantees a landlord $x over y weeks from your BI in exchange for y weeks of tenancy, possibly with additional penalty fees the landlord can claim for any damage to the property. Essentially, a lease without the need for a security deposit or credit check. I'm certain you'd have quite a few places willing to take in renters with guaranteed rent coming in at regular intervals.

Post reply on HN