The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income • Hacker News Board

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#51

Post by sigmar » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

AmericanOP wrote: post #6

In ancient Rome there were a few honest reformers who felt bread subsidies (classical UBI) were deserved by the people. It was an economic argument (as is Sam's) since Roman conquest generated massive wealth that did not reach the masses who made it possible. It was an honest attempt at economic reform by a few forward thinking leaders. Within a generation the movement was captured by politicians who used its popular…

>The program morphed to the infamous bread and circuses, subsidizing a city of a million people that ultimately collapsed.

Rome did not collapse because of UBI, if that is what you are suggesting.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#52

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:27 PM UTC

astrocat wrote: post #28

cm2012 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BI would get marginally smaller the more money you make. Not a steep cutoff like current services for poor, but it would probably be taxed as income so someone making 20'l,000 gets the full 7k, someone making 150k makes 3.5k.

Isn't the whole point of UBI that it isn't progressive, but rather universal ? Otherwise, it's essentially just another form of progressive income tax, where the bottom of the scale is a negative income tax. Right?

Well UBI is going to be funded by a progressive income tax regardless. We can toss "Universal" around all we like but the reality is that the rich are going to net lose and the poor will net win.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#53

Post by elmar » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

kevin wrote: post #4

We did this interview with Sam a few weeks before he posted his recent essay on the topic. Not having to coordinate illustrations definitely helps with publishing speed. :) During the interview, we realized it was the first time I had heard him talk about the GDP idea as an answer to the branding problem of bringing UBI to America.

Kevin, I just love the graphical look of Spectacle, hope you and your team have the greatest success on this passion project.

Regarding the UBI personally I think if someone manages to make it work without the government I am all for it.

It's a hard problem in some ways similar to a working decentralized currency that seemed impossible and took forever to crack, maybe even cryptocurrencies/blockchain technologies are part of an elegant solution to this UBI implementation problem, maybe a Startup can make it work.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#54

Post by vonnik » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

Danihan wrote: post #20

Suncho wrote: post #7

I largely agree with what's being said in this interview, except for a few comments: > "But in countless ways it’s much harder to convince lawmakers and politicians to give every person in the country cash gratis than it is to guide a start-up to a nine-figure valuation." You don't have to convince lawmakers to do it. It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support. > "The question I’m i…

> It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support. How's that? > The right question is "how do we unlock the economy's prosperity-maximizing capacity?" Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally.

> Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally.

Kind of. Free-market capitalism has advantages in some situations. But you also have markets that "freely" tend toward monopolies or oligopolies, which end up leaving the majority of consumers in the lurch.

Over time, most systems including markets will be gamed so that certain elites reproduce their privilege at the expense of their fellows. This is true of free markets just as it is true of command economies.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#55

Post by chrishacken » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:29 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #37

Sam makes an interesting analogy with Y Combinator as providing a form of "basic income" to people trying to start startups. However, this analogy ignores a huge difference in the two cases: the people who are trying to start startups with Y Combinator's help are a highly self-selected group. Giving them "basic income" often turns out to be highly productive, yes. But that does not imply that giving basic income to e…

"Sam makes an interesting analogy with Y Combinator as providing a form of "basic income" to people trying to start startups. "

These two things aren't even close to the same thing. If Y Combinator accepted every single applicant, than yes, it would be equivalent to UBI. They obviously do not.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#56

Post by ucaetano » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:29 PM UTC

After deriding UBI for a long time, and believing it won't work, I came up with a trial model that, IMHO, would allow it to be tested out with minimal damage to the economy (even though I still don't think it would work):

Take a country, US for example. Let's say that society determines that a reasonable UBI is $1000/month (ignore the number, this is about the process, not the amount).

When I say "everyone", I mean "every US resident who has been a US citizen for at least X years".

- Year 1: everyone begins receiving $10/month, conditioned to willing to have employment and spending tracked by researchers. Everyone who receives a payout and also receives social support funds, sees the social support funds reduced by $10 per month.

- Year 5: if researches see no significant negative results and the economy continues to grow, etc. the payout is increased to $50/month. Otherwise, if there are significantly negative outcomes, the payout is eliminated.

- Year 10: repeat, payout increased to $100/month.

- Year 15: repeat, payout increased to $200/month.

- Year 20: repeat, payout increased to $500/month.

- Year 25: repeat, payout increased to $750/month.

- Year 30: repeat, payout increased to $1000/month. All other social payouts are ended.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#57

Post by evanlivingston » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #36

drb91 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, tax the hell out of wealth. The math has never been the problem; it's always been taxing the wealthy that causes the conversation to die.

The math has never been the problem; it's always been taxing the wealthy that causes the conversation to die. The problem with taxing the wealthy, is that they generally have an outsized share of the political power. I think that a better solution, from a political and psychological standpoint, would involve a voluntary system. If just rent could be covered, this would be the equivalent of $12k per year in many parts…

I mean, maybe we could just tax the 5 wealthiest men in the U.S. who own about half of the world's wealth?

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#58

Post by Suncho » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

babaganoosh89 wrote: post #11

Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.

> Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with.

The government doesn't face what we would think of as a typical budget constraint. There is a limit to how much money the government can spend, but that limit is determined by how much spending the productive economy can absorb without causing inflation or interest rates or taxes that are too high. It's the amount that closes the output gap without attempting to push past it.

The only way we can discover the appropriate amount of basic income by gradually ramping it up until further incremental increases no longer provide a benefit.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#59

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

Danihan wrote: post #20

Suncho wrote: post #7

I largely agree with what's being said in this interview, except for a few comments: > "But in countless ways it’s much harder to convince lawmakers and politicians to give every person in the country cash gratis than it is to guide a start-up to a nine-figure valuation." You don't have to convince lawmakers to do it. It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support. > "The question I’m i…

> It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support. How's that? > The right question is "how do we unlock the economy's prosperity-maximizing capacity?" Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally.

>Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally.

But prosperity for whom, most people aren't satisfied with a system that drastically increases the GDP of their country but where they as an individual don't increase their standard of life at all. As globalization and technological progress increase, prosperity will result but it will become more and more concentrated. When you totally sacrifice 10% of peoples wealth (say Detroit auto workers) to make the other 90% better off and you do it over and over again, you're going to end with an extremely wealthy elite of people who snuck past ever being part of the 10%.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#60

Post by remarkEon » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

There's two issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed, or that I missed, in the banter over this issue.

1) What would stop us from recreating the inefficient welfare state that already exists on top of this new one when some people inevitably blow their UBI on drugs/cheetos/whatever and don't have money for rent? It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no" - and that to me sounds like a serious culture change in this country...which gets me to my next, perhaps more contentious, point.

2) What role do immigrants play in this? Google's telling me there's 11m illegal immigrants in the US right now (though I've seen higher estimates from more hawkish folks). What about people on a visa who pay taxes? Would they both get UBI from Uncle Sam? My view for both would be no, but some of my peers who support UBI have argued that they should, pretty emphatically.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm detecting, at least in my circles, a lot of overlap between people who believe in the "global citizen" model and those who support this. Perhaps Altman's idea of basically just issuing shares of USG is meant to get around this, but that sounds still half-baked at this point, even if it is just a branding strategy. This, at its heart, is more of a rights question and I don't think we've been thinking about it that way.