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A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

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Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#491

Post by ryanx435 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #473
frogpelt wrote: post #362

The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income? The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should b…

"Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen." It doesn't matter if redistribution is inefficient in terms of dollars if it's efficient in terms of utility. The idea that a rich person gets less from money than a poor person does is cal…

good choice of examples: purchase a purse that costs as much as a used car or save a daughter (not a son).

I am seriously impressed: you've hit all the proper buttons to evoke the proper emotions in people reading your comment to take your side. How can anyone argue that a purse provides more value than someone's daughter? they can't, and so you've provided no room for any one to disagree with you.

congratulations! you are fluent in propaganda and argument framing!

how about using a different example, since the money would be taken from everyone, not just the rich:

3,433 is about 6 months rent for me. that does provide me a lot of utility.

or its about 8 months rent for someone else. that also provides them a lot of utility.

so why should I pay for them to be sheltered for 8 months instead of sheltering myself for 6? especially considering that the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy means that they will likely only be sheltered for 6 months: the exact same utility as if I had just kept my money for my own rent.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#492

Post by reb »

frogpelt wrote: post #362

The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income? The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should b…

>Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people.

That may not be a bad thing if we're talking about people who contribute nil to society.

>If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should be more? Not hard.

Not hard to argue, very hard to accomplish. Political change in many countries is slow and welfare recipients are rarely afforded much sympathy by the working and managing classes.

In any case, the real function of basic income is so much more than a moral institution (we've heard those reasons a million times and I won't touch on them here). The exciting thing is that it gets the useless and/or uncommitted to self-select out of the labor market. That means better productivity, higher quality services, a better work environment, lower labor supply and higher wages. They can continue contributing little-to-nothing, be provided a reasonable minimum by local standards, and leave the rest of us to accomplish what we want to in business, research, etc. That would be a HUGE weight off the backs of workers and companies, and I would gladly pay to keep people who can't be bothered out of work. Make no mistake, we're already carrying these people financially and professionally. Not having them gum up our operations would be well worth whatever instinctual annoyance their mooching causes.

That's the conclusion I've arrived at.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#493

Post by ryanx435 »

reb wrote: post #492
frogpelt wrote: post #362

The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income? The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should b…

>Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. That may not be a bad thing if we're talking about people who contribute nil to society. >If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should be more? Not hard. Not hard to argue, very hard to accomplish. Political change in many countries is slow and welf…

> The exciting thing is that it gets the useless and/or uncommitted to self-select out of the labor market. That means better productivity, higher quality services, a better work environment, lower labor supply and higher wages.

you're going to have to explain this logical leap as it is non intuitive and I don't see any sources on your comment.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#494

Post by sliverstorm »

ryanx435 wrote: post #491
JamesBarney wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen." It doesn't matter if redistribution is inefficient in terms of dollars if it's efficient in terms of utility. The idea that a rich person gets less from money than a poor person does is cal…

good choice of examples: purchase a purse that costs as much as a used car or save a daughter (not a son). I am seriously impressed: you've hit all the proper buttons to evoke the proper emotions in people reading your comment to take your side. How can anyone argue that a purse provides more value than someone's daughter? they can't, and so you've provided no room for any one to disagree with you. congratulations! y…

At which point we rapidly approach the theory of the "utility monster".

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#495

Post by undersuit »

Natsu wrote: post #453
Joeri wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a job is so unpleasant that people will only do it to avoid abject poverty and its miseries then something is wrong with that job. Probably that window manufacturing job could have been much more pleasant given the right process changes, but the factory owner was not incentivized to try because they could find someone willing / forced to accept that job as it was. In essence, basic income does away with wage slave…

I'll be honest: even if you gave me unlimited money to fix it, I wouldn't want to work there. It was already about as robotic as it could get and yes, there were definitely a few things that could have made it less bad, but I don't think that job could be good. Also, I'm not so deluded to think that it was the worst job in the world, either. I mean, in that world, who collects trash? There are a lot of necessary jobs…

Providing food and shelter versus cash makes the government have to solve all the distribution issues(something that I think we need a benevolent AI to do for us), making the dole actually be food makes entire groups eat the same food, countrywide chicken casserole nights will become a real thing.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#496

Post by Natsu »

lotyrin wrote: post #470
Natsu wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to assume you haven't worked with glass much. Maybe artisan glassblowers enjoy it, but at the factory level it's pretty miserable. It's pretty easy to get injured in spite of safety gear. There are the minor cuts, scrapes and splinters one might experience when dealing with (literal!) tons of broken glass, to say nothing of the times it breaks in your hands. And I was grateful to work on the tempered side. Raw…

I think these sorts of things can still find solutions under BI. By eliminating wage slavery, only those that are compensated proportionally to the risks will take on the work. If manufacturers cannot afford that level of compensation, or cannot afford to automate the risky kinds of labor, then they cannot function, and that's a good thing, because if they can only do so now because they are allowed to externalize th…

I can really sympathize with that having been one of the people subject to those externalities, but at the same time, I have to wonder just how many such goods there are and which industries would collapse.

I'd be glad if crappy industrial jobs could be made less so, but if suddenly computers are no longer affordable to anyone due to the inability to find anyone willing to work in the myriad industrial processes that feed the semiconductor industry, I'm not sure that society will actually progress as a result and perhaps there could be less socially disruptive ways that better achieve the goals of basic income.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#498

Post by Natsu »

galvin wrote: post #481
Natsu wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest: even if you gave me unlimited money to fix it, I wouldn't want to work there. It was already about as robotic as it could get and yes, there were definitely a few things that could have made it less bad, but I don't think that job could be good. Also, I'm not so deluded to think that it was the worst job in the world, either. I mean, in that world, who collects trash? There are a lot of necessary jobs…

Basic income would only cover essentials such as shelter and food. While some people would choose to work because they enjoy their jobs, many would work to be able to buy a nice car, dishwasher, TV and other non-essentials. Unpleasant jobs might be the only choice for some people, particularly for unskilled workers.

Basic income is only money, though. You don't control whether someone pays rent or buys $x worth of beer with it.

I say that not to be mean, but because of the times I watched my coworkers get their paycheck, walk or bike[1] straight to the gas station to buy lots of beer (estimated cost ~10% of paycheck), and call in sick the next day.

[1] This was mostly due to being unable to afford a car, though I was aware of a few with DUI convictions. In one case, they were able to bike there because I helped them replace their bike after it was stolen around Christmas time.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#499

Post by undersuit »

rconti wrote: post #486
jbuzbee wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"America will be about the last place to attempt this" In a small sense, the US is already doing it. 60 minutes did a story on an area in Kentucky and West Virginia where they estimated 10-15% of the population, 250 thousand people, are on social security disability. Local lawyers guaranteed, and the Social Security Administration agreed, that they could get anybody classified as "disabled" to get benefits. http://ww…

Yup, I'm well aware of how the disability system is being used. But we all know increasing social services has been pretty much a toxic idea since at least the early 90s.

It's a toxic idea in the media, but it's not toxic enough for the bills and laws to be brought up by politicians in the first place.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#500

Post by notahacker »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #435
notahacker wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most galling implicit premise of all is that every proposal for basic income I've ever seen accepts that BI isn't practically feasible with open borders, and therefore nothing changes at all for the class of people who work the longest hours in the worst conditions (indeed their wage slavery becomes even more essential to ensuring future riders of the purple wage can still buy consumer goods) An argument for impl…

Arguing for suppressing the Western working classes on the basis that this will somehow help the working classes in the developing world doesn't make any sense. Labor is labor, around the world. You strengthen the working class in one place, and you've strengthened it everywhere. Pay a basic income in the West, and consumer spending can rise, aiding a rise in demand, leading to a tighter hiring market for developing-…

Seriously, you consider me to be "arguing for suppressing the Western working classes" because I suggested that any right to earn more than the average global labour income even after cost-of-living adjustments probably ought to be incumbent upon them to actually doing some work? That's got to be the most intellectually dishonest characterisation of my arguments I've seen on HN.

Labour isn't labour when it's sitting with its feet up enjoying the privileges of accident of birth, and any benefits from their additional consumption that might trickle down to the developing world poor can easily be cancelled out if unconditional redistribution happens to have side effects on the Western economies in question. Not to mention the likelihood of barriers to entering Western countries getting a lot higher...

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