Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#61

Post by scep12 » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #12

Here's some of my ideas: 1. CEO pay cap @ 20x(or some other similarly reasonable #) of the median salary of the employees. Median salary is 30k ? So I can only earn 600k ? Screw that, I'm going to get everyone closer to 75k, that'll put me at 1.5 mill, that's way better - and everyone profits. 2. Flat but fluid Nationwide Sales Tax (would mean anyone visiting, or staying illegally has to pay taxes -- way better than…

CEO Pay Cap: This would be tough to regulate due to the creative ways that executives get paid.

Luxury Taxes: Not enough volume to make a difference.

Roof: Wouldn't you still need welfare, then? Doesn't this defeat the purpose of basic income (e.g. eliminating the administrative overhead of welfare payments)?

Congress/Senate: They don't make big money from paychecks.

Automation taxing: The overhead of levying that tax in a fair and effective way is dizzying.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#62

Post by douche » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

rquantz wrote: post #40

DiabloD3 wrote: post #33

I am going to tell a story about the state I live in: Maine. We have many programs: HUD (to help pay rent), Food Stamps, HEAP (fuel/electricity assistance), and others. All of these have complex forms to fill out, and offices filled with staff that don't actually understand the complex rules, and the rules seem to change all the time. Hiring these people costs money. Due to the complexity of the rules and forms, many…

I have never heard someone talk about Maine as bleak. Seems like most people who live there or are from there love it. Are you really saying poverty in Maine eclipses the Deep South?

Purely anecdotal, but I took a roadtrip through southern Appalachia a few years ago, and the parts of West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina that I went through reminded me so much of rural Maine that it wasn't funny.

Maine is really two different states. There is southern Maine, centered on York and Cumberland counties (basically the Portland metro area), and then there is the rest of the state. The other half of Maine has very little industry, almost no white-collar work, and extremely low population density. There are entire regions of the state that are propped up by one or two paper mills that are still operating, or subsist off of tourism dollars during the summer months or the ski season. And even tourism and skiing took a beating during the recent financial crisis.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#63

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

spacehome wrote: post #21

I haven't really made up my mind about Basic Income, but one thing I never heard advocates of Basic Income talk about is that incentives matter to human behavior. BI will tax people who work more and give handouts to those who don't. This disincentivizes working and incentivizes not working. For example, the increasing numbers of people on Social Security Disability Insurance seems like a similar phenomenon and is no…

One of the key planks of basic income (and the similar negative income tax) is to better align incentives so that working more always pays more (which it often doesn't today for the poorest due to poorly designed schemes that phase out benefit too quickly).

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#64

Post by netfire » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:55 PM UTC

seahorse wrote: post #58

netfire wrote: post #47

Why not start with something smaller, like providing "basic food" for everyone, and see what the result is? You could reuse existing programs, like food stamps, where the infrastructure is already in place for most grocery stores to accept payment. (except without the application process) That seems like a less risky change than trying to provide enough income to cover housing, utilities, clothing, etc. all at once.

Is "basic food" enough without "basic shelter"?

Its better than nothing, isn't it? Basic shelter is a more complex and expensive problem to solve (due to varying costs and lack of existing infrastructure).

I think helping eliminate hunger (especially for children), is a good place to start, without having to make a massive change in how government is run without knowing how it will effect the economy.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#65

Post by karmacondon » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

Money doesn't disappear. If you give people a basic income, they'll spend it. On rent, beer, education, their kids, all the things people normally spend money on. And some of it is going to come back to all of us in one way or another. Maybe more people will have money to buy apps or pay for services offered by hn members' startups. Or they'll buy lottery tickets and the additional money that goes to education will be used to hire consultants or custodians for schools. Or they'll spend more money at Wal-mart, some of which will be used to purchase some kind of software from a tech startup. Money always trickles back up, especially when it's put into the hands of low income people who tend to spend more than they save.

This adds up to a discount on the cost of BI. Increase taxes by X% and you get back Y% in increased spending. Of course everyone won't benefit equally, but there will be plenty of good times to go around. Don't worry about moral judgements regarding who is working and who isn't. As long as they're spending it will mean more for you.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#66

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #37

feld wrote: post #7

Probably as expensive as giving the homeless free housing... which has repeatedly shown to be cheaper than not

If you believe that deeply in that idea, then turn it into a startup. Put your own money into it and I'm sure you'll see truly interesting results!

The money saved is in police time, emergency health care, etc. so you'd need a way for a private enterprise to claim the savings that result from housing the homeless to make this market work.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#67

Post by logn » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

treelovinhippie wrote: post #24

Best solution I've come across is a small This guy is giving the method a shot: http://www.basicincome.co/

Or the .5% tax on stock trades Bernie Sanders suggested. I like that better as it should have a smaller effect on consumer prices.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#68

Post by ebiester » Sun, May 24, 2015, 2:01 PM UTC

spacehome wrote: post #21

I haven't really made up my mind about Basic Income, but one thing I never heard advocates of Basic Income talk about is that incentives matter to human behavior. BI will tax people who work more and give handouts to those who don't. This disincentivizes working and incentivizes not working. For example, the increasing numbers of people on Social Security Disability Insurance seems like a similar phenomenon and is no…

1. A basic income doesn't mean that you have enough to fulfil all dreams. There will still be reasons to earn more income, especially with those who are capable of delivering value.

2. There is a fundamental assumption that we are at a technological stage where work can be automated. If there are not enough jobs that someone a standard deviation below average intelligence can fulfil, we could be coming upon a societal disaster.

If instead, we incentivize automation by saying, "no job is a superior alternative to an easily automatable, low value job where people are treated as disposable," there is no significant conflict. If people with low skill do not choose to work, and their skills are automatable, it is only our moral qualms that get in the way.

As it is now, significant portions of the population cannot provide enough value to ensure their subsistence, minimum wage or otherwise. Is it only our morals that require some work from them?

3. Incentivizing not working also means incentivizing spending a year on an idea that could advance society, or works of art and literature. Harry Potter was written by someone who decided not to work. There might be major value to society that we're losing because we don't have a basic income.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#69

Post by unclebucknasty » Sun, May 24, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #38

Unvoiced assumption #1: working is good. Corollary: Not working is bad. Unvoiced assumption #2: anyone who wants a job can get one. We know that #2 is false. Coupling the assumptions together produces a group of people who are considered to be bad for reasons that are entirely beyond their control.

Well, I think assumption #1 (especially the corollary) is voiced, for instance, as follows:

>Loafers could live comfortably without lifting a finger.

But, I do think that sentiment is a root part of the resistance against BI. People have bought pretty heavily into the current status quo that says, "you eat what you kill". So, if you don't work you are an undeserving freeloader or loafer.

Whereas, BI, for some, essentially acknowledges the common ownership of natural resources, etc., treating sustenance derived therefrom as more a natural right than something that must be earned.

Re: Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

#70

Post by akhatri_aus » Sun, May 24, 2015, 2:03 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #48

akhatri_aus wrote: post #20

I don't see how this is affordable. With the Swiss amount of $2700 per month ($32,400 p.a) it's $32bn for 1m people per annum (8m people in Switzerland). This is 45% of the annual federal budget last year ($70b) & doesn't even cover 13% of the population. What about everything else that needs government expenditure: roads, defense, education & research, regulatory oversight, police?

But you don't need all the people you are paying to control all sorts of things in a conditional system. So you would basically get rid of a lot of expenses that are currently being used to control the system.

I don't see how you could get rid of spending on roads, police, foreign relations, defense, regulatory oversight? It's a jump to assume crime would disappear with basic income and police would no longer be needed.

Also expenditures where economies of scale can be achieved are better off as government expenditures as an individual would get nowhere near the cost effectiveness (healthcare, education) or the incentive to build as an individual (roads, parks, water networks, cleaning, etc).

There's also the prime issue of how it can be afforded in the first place, besides all the consequences of reallocating existing expenditure.