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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#541

Post by tyrust »

bbarn wrote: post #499

Here's a serious question. I'm like, 50/50 with whether or not I believe BI could work or not, but I really believe it can NOT work without being universal in nature. By doing it in a small geographic area only, aren't you're already skewing your results? These people have now an additional incentive not to leave the area, when otherwise there may have better opportunities for upward social mobility. Now you've got a…

I'm not sure about your other questions, but regarding your claim that "these people have now an additional incentive to not leave the area", I don't think that's true:

>In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we’re going to give it to participants for the duration of the study, no matter what. People will be able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country—anything.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#543

Post by ticviking »

1024core wrote: post #379
DawkinsGawd wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely side stepped the question. I find it absolutely amazing how naive BI supporters are. I grew up poor in a ghetto in New York. Studied, went to university, became an engineer and am no longer in that socioeconomic bracket. However it is very apparent that the people in my current bracket (the one's that support BI), have no idea about the issues of the poor. Poor people are mostly poor because of the dec…

> But giving someone a months worth of rent/food/utilities/clothing in cash is going to be disastrous San Francisco used to give out cash to homeless, and realized that it didn't work well. So Gavin Newsom (previous mayor) started the "care not cash" program, where cash was replaced with services.

[Citation needed]

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#544

Post by bryondowd »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #444
cbr wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> worked for black money and collect the social benefit at the same time This one doesn't apply to BI, since you get the same amount of BI money whether you work or not and regardless of how much you earn.

Yes. And it's paid for with higher progressive taxes. As taxes go up workers are increasingly incentivized to get paid under the table.

There are already lots of people willing to work under the table at low end positions, to avoid having taxes taken out of their pay. There's plenty of incentive. Seems like the way to curb this is to target employers rather than employees. That's why it's generally harder to find an under the table job than a legal one, because it isn't worth the risk to the employer to pay you off the books.

It still happens, but I doubt a BI would significantly impact this one way or the other. Right now, people in the bottom percentiles of pay get most or all of their taxes refunded, but still like to have under the table jobs to maximize what they take home every payday, and under BI, they would still likely remain unaffected by tax increases. The middle class would likely be affected, but they tend to work jobs that aren't as easy to do for unreported cash, and have more to lose from an audit if they get caught, so its still safer to work legally. The richest would naturally get the highest absolute burden, but they are likely already doing all they can to avoid taxes, since they can have a lot of effort put into it relative to the potential gains, so I don't see a huge migration to illegal undeclared income there, either.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#546

Post by vasilipupkin »

mikeash wrote: post #100
xienze wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the money is generally earmarked. Your Section 8 voucher goes towards housing, food stamps go towards food, etc. That creates a limit on how the money can be spent.

Social Security isn't earmarked. Food stamps have pretty trivial workarounds for converting them into cash.

the problem would be exacerbated. Food stamps do have workarounds, but the fact that it's not cash makes the problem much less severe

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#547

Post by [deleted] »

mikeash wrote: post #100
xienze wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the money is generally earmarked. Your Section 8 voucher goes towards housing, food stamps go towards food, etc. That creates a limit on how the money can be spent.

Social Security isn't earmarked. Food stamps have pretty trivial workarounds for converting them into cash.

[deleted]

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#548

Post by [deleted] »

xienze wrote: post #60

So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…

[deleted]

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#549

Post by EGreg »

greedo wrote: post #319
EGreg wrote: post #213

People wonder "where is the money going to come from?" On a national level it could be newly issued fiat currency, which silences the "it's theft!" argument but then raises the crucial question: what about inflation? Well, there are two issues here: 1) If the people are freed up to learn or take jobs (I wish minimum wage would be abolished in any jurisdiction that UBI is given out) then more dollars would be chasing…

"newly issued fiat currency" is theft. Forced inflation is theft from people with savings etc etc etc.

I handled the inflation issue in my comment. In scenario #1 there is no theft from anyone even in your sense.

And frankly, when you open a store in a mall, it's not theft for the mall to use your rent money as it sees fit. It might build a toy train ride for kids that you disagree with, or spend on a promotion of itself. Same with a state you register your business in. We are talking about abstract entities here, but you are applying a word to equivocate with the visceral feeling one gets in a personal setting.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#550

Post by treehau5 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #508
treehau5 wrote: post #479

Why is the underlying assumption always "as technology continues to replace jobs and generate massive wealth" in the world of BI? It seems like BI is an answer to a false dichotomy. What if we fix our society instead? What if instead of massive seeking of profiteering we actually double down on our efforts to improve lives today , right now in this very moment instead of some far distant realization of "when all jobs…

> It seems like BI is an answer to a false dichotomy. [...] > What if we fix our society instead? What if instead of massive seeking of profiteering we actually double down on our efforts to improve lives today, right now in this very moment BI is usually presented as a right now improvement, that also gives more improvement as technology advances. So, the false dichotomy I see is yours: between "improvement right no…

> BI is usually presented as a right now improvement

Not as far as I've seen, and not in this article this discussions about, or any of the articles it subsequently links to in it's body.

" Although basic income seems fiscally challenging today, in a world where technology replaces existing jobs and basic income becomes necessary, technological improvements should generate an abundance of resources and the cost of living should fall dramatically."

That is what I am questioning: what most view as an inevitability and BI is solution for.

I am happy to read BI articles about solving the current socioeconomic problems. The few I have read all make this "automated utopia" assumption. I read exactly one that talks about implementing it with today's constraints.

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