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Moving Forward on Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#671

Post by djrogers »

danielweber wrote: post #658
colinplamondon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…

You could create basic income as a family of associated benefits. For example, give everyone a housing voucher. They can only spend it on housing, with the assumption they will need to top up from other funds It would still be "universal" because everyone has it and you don't suffer clawbacks.

This would lead eventually to the system we have now, only larger (because it's not means tested). It also has huge supply-side economics problems:

If you stipulate that every family can spend an extra $1000 on housing, rent will go up by $1000 pretty quickly, and housing prices will go up by whatever $1000/mo in mortgage payments will allow.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#672

Post by vespergo »

Let's call this what it is. Any system that short circuits the basic human need for hard work and reward compensation will never be a success. You can sugar coat it and re brand it any way you want to. Humans need that feedback loop of blood, sweat and tears before they receive a 'reward'.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#673

Post by inopinatus »

haaen wrote: post #133

The YCR statement says: "We think everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs—no matter what, especially if there are enough resources to make it possible." Why give free money to people who are too lazy to work?

Not all work provides regular, consistent cashflows.

Examples:

* Launching a startup

* Developing a vaccine

* The performing arts

* Solving math problems

* Fruit picking

* Writing your first book

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#674

Post by danielweber »

Namrog84 wrote: post #533
misja111 wrote: post #317

What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work. I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The r…

I think you miss the point of why we actually need BI research and one of the foundational reasons for it. I know predictions could be off. But if in 20 years there are simply no jobs available to 60% of the population. What are they gonna do? Just all starve to death? BI is the inevitable step towards a post scarcity society. When majority of people not only don't want to work but that there are simply no jobs for m…

> But if in 20 years there are simply no jobs available to 60% of the population.

It means we are living in paradise. There is nothing to be cleaned. There is nothing to be fixed. There is nothing to be repaired. There is nothing to be trimmed or maintained.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#675

Post by danielweber »

douglance wrote: post #359
misja111 wrote: post #317

What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work. I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The r…

The idea is that we will develop such stunning abundance that living costs will be very inexpensive and a basic income will be a manageable cost for the government.

So my taxes will drop, right?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#676

Post by jsprogrammer »

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…

What do you mean "save us money"?

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#677

Post by inopinatus »

tlholaday wrote: post #313
dragonwriter wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any papers addressing the issue "basic income increases the returns to owners of scarce goods" issue? I don't know what the correct name is. The correct name is "inflation", the effect to which this is effect is present for suppliers of any particular good is measured by "price elasticity" -- both price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply play a role (in a real tax-funded BI, which is redi…

"Inflation" occurs when the money supply increases but the supply of things money can buy does not increase. If basic income is funded by taxation, then the money supply does not increase. Every dollar distributed to the set { A, B, C ... } is taxed away from the set { A, B, C ... }, so the purchasing power of the set is unchanged.

It doesn't have to be funded by taxation.

Basic income could become the primary lever of the money supply or of monetary policy generally.

e.g. imagine if Quantitative Easing had been implemented via an adjustment to a basic income, rather than buying bonds from merchant banks.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#678

Post by danielweber »

star0zero wrote: post #659

I'm a complete armchair economist and realize that a lot of really smart people are tackling this, but, in my limited understanding of supply and demand, my concern would be that a new floor for basic goods and services would materialize due to the new buying power of those on Basic Income. Doesn't that artificially inflate the base price of those goods and services without ever having a natural (market-based) opport…

There wouldn't be a problem delivering goods, because companies would still compete to deliver those goods using price signals.

The problem is that a lot of goods delivered to the poor are delivered by low-skill workers, and since demand curves slope there will be significant inflation here, along with a lot of things undone.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#679

Post by tim333 »

MicroBerto wrote: post #632
misja111 wrote: post #317

What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work. I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The r…

What I've found here on HN is that there is an extremely large amount of "wishful projection" and selection bias, in that many people here are young and promising entrepreneurs-in-training, and they believe that basic income will allow them to work on their startup dream without having to worry about paying the bills. While that may be true, they fail to realize that they are in the extreme minority of actually-motiv…

The mice in the video bred rapidly and filled the space until it became too crowded. Humans however have contraceptives and entertainment systems and so the population stabilizes before that.

Re: Moving Forward on Basic Income

#680

Post by charliemagee »

Amazing how quick this jumped into extraneous "what-if" comments and liberal vs. libertarian and so on. It appears that the premise that YC is moving forward on is very simple: "give them the money and see what happens."

I would imagine it would be monthly because that is how our culture works on necessities like shelter and water. If they run out of the money on day one, or do a deal with a payday lender, it doesn't become "tough shit." It will be answered with a big silence. There won't be somebody to call and complain to.

Once a month money will appear in your account. End of story. The funders aren't also attempting to solve health care and pay day lending. They aren't creating a bureaucracy of people waiting by the phone to listen to sob stories.

What happens after the money hits your account is the focus of the research. Thrive or fuck up, your choice . . . and not the problem of the suppliers of basic income.

Many here are jumping immediately to the worst case scenario stories. Those will comprise a tiny minority. They're playing the hunch that basic income will be a net plus and they want to find out how and how much so they can tweak it and propose it to best impact the future.

This seems like a great use of some of the wealth that has been steadily trickling up.

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