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YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

arstechnica.com

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Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#51

Post by LargeCompanies »

Avshalom wrote: post #44
LargeCompanies wrote: post #35

Can you live off of 2k in San Fran?

Oakland, and: probably not very well. but you can still work, you can stop spending every day stressed about how your entry level retail job isn't giving you enough hours, or you can afford to set two or three days of the week as "unavailable and take some classes. You can stop worrying that taking the day off to interview for a job will be the difference between making rent that month. Although for reference 2k a mo…

yeah or you could be smart and take that money and the time it gives you to either learn a skill that will make live a ton more comfortable and or start a business that makes you and employees money.

I am very happy living here in Maryland as cost of living is inexpensive and govt. IT jobs are plentiful and the pay is good.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#52

Post by tomjen3 »

pinkythepig wrote: post #43
matt2000 wrote: post #32

I don't understand how the math on basic income is supposed to work. If we gave this amount of money to every person in the US it would cost $7.2 Trillion dollars, roughly double the entire US federal budget. How is this supposed to work? Do only certain people qualify for basic income?

The basic premise is that everyone is taxed some percentage of their income and then they are paid back some flat amount. For those (probably) in the middle class, this tax/payment will be exactly the same. You pay X per year and gain X per year in benefits. For those who make less than that, they will end up earning more from the payment than they pay in to the system. Those who earn more money than that will pay mo…

On the pay side, sure. Presumably the IRS would still check that I payed my (now presumably higher) tax payments? So you don't really save anything there.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#53

Post by karmicthreat »

daveguy wrote: post #15
karmicthreat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might skew it, but YC is probably trying to answer a more fundamental question. If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. Or if people will just sit on the couch, have kids till they can't afford them, become addicted to drugs.

The former. The latter is a racist caricature of welfare.

Not racist, but perhaps a bit too coarse. I don't really consider BI to be welfare though. It's not need based, and generally has more possible upsides to it than welfare. Like being able to start a business with the money.

Point is it could be the wrong direction. We don't really know yet how it should be implemented. Experiments like this are what is going to tell us.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#54

Post by daveguy »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #40
daveguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former. The latter is a racist caricature of welfare.

Lets interpret the claim charitably - people on welfare have reduced work effort, increased fertility, and increased drug consumption. Do you assert that any of those claims are false?

The assertion is that none of those are inherent qualities of a group. Reduced work effort is a chicken egg issue. Of course people on welfare are going to have reduced "work effort" -- joblessness is probably what made you have to get it in the first place.

Same with drug consumption. I would question any "higher drug use" measure as selection bias -- investment bankers aren't generally being drug tested are they? That doesn't mean the overwhelming majority are not eager to earn a productive living.

I think it would be great to drug test for it (but damn expensive and not very libertarian). I bet you'd see a lot of well off people not opting for the free income because they "don't need it" whereas they'd line up for it without a drug test.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#55

Post by Avshalom »

LargeCompanies wrote: post #51
Avshalom wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oakland, and: probably not very well. but you can still work, you can stop spending every day stressed about how your entry level retail job isn't giving you enough hours, or you can afford to set two or three days of the week as "unavailable and take some classes. You can stop worrying that taking the day off to interview for a job will be the difference between making rent that month. Although for reference 2k a mo…

yeah or you could be smart and take that money and the time it gives you to either learn a skill that will make live a ton more comfortable and or start a business that makes you and employees money. I am very happy living here in Maryland as cost of living is inexpensive and govt. IT jobs are plentiful and the pay is good.

That would be the take some classes option, yes, and in many places even 1k a month before taxes would be enough to say "fuck work" entirely and focus on learning. I suspect 2k in Oakland is only enough to say "fuck full-time work".

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#56

Post by jlg23 »

logicallee wrote: post #18
jlg23 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you are one who would benefit from a basic income. Why is a "living stipend to work on [your] own projects" better than a basic income which too would allow you to work on your own projects?

I hope with a little thought, you can come to see the difference between formally investing in a startup which is trying to get off the ground, and handing someone an income no questions asked... To put it in simple terms, you get what you pay for. If you invest in someone's startups, they'll deliver a startup (or fail); if you invest in someone's lifestyle, they'll deliver a lifestyle (or fail). It's what makes a br…

> To put it in simple terms, you get what you pay for. If you invest in someone's startups, they'll deliver a startup (or fail); if you invest in someone's lifestyle, they'll deliver a lifestyle (or fail).

Whether this is true or not is exactly what needs to be figured out. So far, this is just a prejudice.

> When a programmer becomes homeless and needs money, then that money is different from when someone who got out of prison for beating someone up has no money.

And if that person just out of prison was a programmer? Would that change something? What exactly makes a programmer better than anyone who served his time and deserves a chance?

> I hope with a little thought [...] you can disagree, but please do so eloquently

Sorry, neither thinking nor eloquence are my forte. But I did indeed work with homeless people and ex-convicts. Try it and you might see they are people too.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#57

Post by kiba »

gjkood wrote: post #17

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of? If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and…

You're giving a man enough fishes so he can learn to fish.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#58

Post by JonFish85 »

matt2000 wrote: post #32

I don't understand how the math on basic income is supposed to work. If we gave this amount of money to every person in the US it would cost $7.2 Trillion dollars, roughly double the entire US federal budget. How is this supposed to work? Do only certain people qualify for basic income?

I've found that doing the math absolutely doesn't factor into this. That's where it falls apart--it's not the most efficient if you're giving money to people only to have to reclaim it from 90% of them. It's a fun thought experiment but at a national scale the math really falls apart because there isn't an external source of funding to grab money from.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#59

Post by jwdunne »

Avshalom wrote: post #34
laksjd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already lots of great free (or very cheap) ways to educate yourself but all of them require time and energy. If you spend most of your time and energy working an awful job just to survive you can't take advantage of these opportunities. Take away the need to invest time and energy into basic survival and you can suddenly take advantage of a lot of cool things that were previously not accessible to you.

even ignoring the grind that is an awful job: Community College is cheap and has all sorts of vocational training... if you can take Monday Wednesday Friday off between 9:30 and 10:15 then again between 1:00 and 1:45. The intersection of Jobs-That-Can-Work-With-That-Schedule and Jobs-That-Can-Pay-Enough-For-CC-AND-Food-AND-Shelter is tiny and flooded with existing students.

There are people out there that wouldn't be able to cope with that. If you're on low income and have a family to support and, equally as important, nurture, then you are gonna struggle to find time, money and energy for community college.

With the strains of poverty, health issues increase. Sometimes this could lead to involvement via social services. At this point, education is a pipe dream.

I've been there. Still am there. I could spend the evening reading educational books. Sometimes I do but always at the expense of what needs to be done. Always st the expense of the little family time I have (I see my kids perhaps one hour tops weekdays - that is a luxury compared to what I used to have).

This is with a system where the state, currently begrudgingly, helps me out a great deal. I whince thinking about countries where the social security net isn't as helpful.

It requires a lot of optimism to keep yourself a float in a situation like this. College, through my eyes, is a wonderful idea that is a bit too on the optimistic side at the moment, even for me.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#60

Post by loceng »

tim333 wrote: post #42
loceng wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This experimenting may give them insight into what life and how behaviours present themselves when people are being supported, and then give them a heads-up knowing where people are then willing to spend their cash - on necessities as well as extra spending money (if they are given it). That's invaluable data and if they can use profits from their ecosystem to support a growing community/ecosystem that supports this,…

>In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings Not necessarily. Part of the reason for this research is figuring what to do if the robots replace us for the most part. In that situation wages would likely be low and a lot of the value would move to the market cap of the leading tech stocks that controlled things. The government could tax that, as cgt or wealth tax or similar, rather than wages.

Right, thanks for clarifying - I had meant earnings of a company as well (or any task that gets done and has a 'profit' associated); perhaps earnings wasn't an appropriate word to for me to use.
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