Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 736 posts

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#681

Post by joe_mamba »

inglor_cz wrote: post #425
jasonkester wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure I'm on record here on HN complaining about receiving covid relief checks that I don't need, and that I would much rather that money went to people who were actually struggling. Personally, I want people on the high end of earnings (such as myself) to be taxed more so that a basic income scheme like this can be available for anybody who wants it. Charge me an extra $300/month and give it to some random…

"anybody who wants it" The extent of "anybody" is the detail that contains the devil. Anybody who? Citizen? Asylum seeker? A person who obtained asylum or other forms of protection? A 'tolerated' person who was not deported? (Duldung in Germany.) Europe is already politically ablaze, and one of the factors of this blaze is "too many foreigners from the Third World as recipients of welfare". If you introduce any basic…

Illegal mass unskilled migration to EU, only for them to leech off welfare and be an overall net negative to society and the state's coffers, is intentional by calculated design.

Here's how it works: You take 1000 Euros in taxes from a productive German/West-EU citizen, and then redistribute that to 5 migrants giving them 200 Euro each, so you lose one angry voter but you gain 5 happy new ones.

The government is using your tax money to buy and replace your votes, this way the mainstream politicians cemented in the status quo parties, can keep making your life miserable with no accountability or repercussions for them and their careers, because your votes now become irrelevant.

And for good measure, in case the citizens vote for the so called "extremist" parties that promise to counter this obvious scam, you just slander them as nazis/$-FOBES/Putin-supporters with no proof, and form a 'cordon sanitaire' around them to take away their democratic representation, or just ban those parties altogether from elections so you can rule undisputed while masquerading as democracy.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#682

Post by thenthenthen »

TitaRusell wrote: post #15

They had something like this in the Netherlands during the 80s. Basically everyone was out of a job back then so it didn't really matter. Worst recession since 1929. Artists had to make a buch of art which was then given to the government. The state ended up with entire warehouses filled with crap.

Is this something als than the (former) 1% rule? Every new state owned buildings budget was to be spend on art.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#683

Post by mike_hearn »

s_dev wrote: post #354
mike_hearn wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ireland already has a competitive economy Ireland's economic statistics are so badly distorted by US companies routing money there that there is an entire subfield of economics dedicated to trying to figure out what Ireland's real economic state is, called "Leprechaun economics". A common adjustment made by economics researchers when studying the EU is to just subtract Ireland entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

I'm 38, I was fully aware of this when I was 15 years old in Economics class. This is simply a problem for people who go around measuring everything with GDP and demand the world adjust to that. You've run in to the limitations of GDP. There is no single indicator of wealth, measuring wealth requires a number of measures to provide context and contrast. The Irish economy is largely comparable to the Danish economy. I…

If you know that you should make it clear when you talk about the Irish economy, because most people don't.

Danish GDP per capita is about $71k nominal. According to the Irish Central Bank mGNI per capita is a fair bit less than that at around $65k.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-mip/measu...

However, that assumes the modified GNI measure is accurate. If you believe these numbers the Irish became nearly 40% wealthier between 2020 and 2023. That would be a truly unprecedented spike in wealth never before seen in history, and I don't think anyone believes it. It's much more likely that their attempts to subtract the distortion of American corporate success from the Irish numbers aren't successful. Tech firms did great during the COVID period whilst the average person... not so much.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#684

Post by closewith »

jimnotgym wrote: post #548
closewith wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to…

> Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation? Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?

No, it’s not that we can only afford one. It’s that we’re choosing to ring fence funding for one while allowing the others to erode in real terms.

Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises.

The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#685

Post by bell-cot »

mantas wrote: post #679
bell-cot wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A problem for ideological purists, and an opportunity for performative offenders. Ordinary folks understand the whole "he who pays the piper" thing, and that "democracy" means the voters can choose to support the arts...or not .

It brings another problem that this may become sort of hush money government-at-the-time friendly artists. Here it's already a problem for culture-ministry-financed projects. When some artists get funding, others don't... And then some people cry foul that it's because they crossed ways with some politician. Wether that's true or not, when arts funding and politics go together, it's a recipe for some sour FB posts.

Yes, and Ireland is not famed for its "all one big happy family" politics. That might be one of their reasons for drawing 2,000 winners at random from 8,000 applicants.

But in a democracy, gov't-selected art has a failure mode more fundamental than mere political bias - the voters may decide they're paying too much for really crappy "art". That's what killed the public art program in the city I live in. In hindsight, the city's Art Committee was dominated by cutting-edge academics, big-ego art snobs, and well-intended persuadables.

Though the fountain they built in front of City Hall - abstract, drearily convoluted, generally ugly, horribly expensive, and usually broken - could be seen as appropriate and spot-on symbolic political art.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#686

Post by the_gipsy »

int_19h wrote: post #671
the_gipsy wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who have to create "wealth" most people don't "create wealth". They're forced to serve up half of their awake time to someone that is "wealthy", most likely through inheritance.

Most people do create wealth. That is exactly how those wealthy people become wealthy - by having someone create wealth for them, and then appropriating most of it.

Let's be clear: the appropriation mostly consists of leveraging existing (inherited) wealth and other social privileges.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#687

Post by Schmerika »

themafia wrote: post #636
Schmerika wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. Do you have the money to pay me to research it for you? I shouldn't hurt my potential income like this, but the link is even mentioned elsewhere itt.

If you want to criticize my post, it would be best to actually provide the data you're being snarky about. You didn't need any money to start that did you? Why suddenly do you need it now? What a crappy and bad faith attitude.

> it would be best to actually provide the data you're being snarky about.

You mean the study you're complaining about without having read? ... The one that's not even a Google search away, because it's literally linked on the page you're already on?

Not being snarky, just really surprised at the expectation of being spoonfed data that's already right in front of you, and the apparent willingness to complain about things that you haven't even glanced at.

Many people worked hard to do this study. I believe if you want to complain about their methodology then you should probably take the time to actually look at what it was first. Is that snark? Is it snark to ask for payment when people ask you to do research (however basic) for them?

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#688

Post by closewith »

jmmcd wrote: post #655
closewith wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis. I'd love to see the breakdown on this, because in my experience with Government comms, if it was a straightforward economic win like an FDI or industrial…

I understand your point, but in response to GP (they should spend this money on houses for other poor people instead), the reduced reliance on other social welfare is totally legitimate to count.

I agree, but another commenter linked the cost-benefit analysis and it really is creative accounting to get to a positive net social return.

The net fiscal cost after accounting for increase tax revenue and social protection savings was €72 MM.

This was then offset to get to a positive net social gain by €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", as measured by a single survey question called the WELLBY test:

> “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?

The €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", which is the sole decider of whether this pilot was a net positive or a huge net negative to society, is because on average, the 2,000 pilot scheme participants had a very approximate 0.7–1.1 increase in score when asked the above question during the pilot as compared to before the pilot. Each 1 point was deemed to be worth €15,340.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#689

Post by dns_snek »

instig007 wrote: post #652
dns_snek wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping you? You've always had the option to move somewhere far away from society where you could keep 100% of what you make on your own.

> You've always had the option to move somewhere far away from society where you could keep 100% of what you make on your own. Ah the good old "if you're homeless just buy a house" argument, only this time coming from the mentality of a statist.

This is in no way a "if you're homeless just buy a house" argument, it's a "you can't have it both ways, pick a lane and stick to it" argument.

You want to unilaterally decide that you don't want to pay much tax on income, billionaires decide that they don't want to pay much tax on capital gains, yet both of you want to continue living in a society where you can buy cheap bread baked from flour milled from wheat grown on subsidized farms, heavily reliant on public infrastructure, and you want to drink clean water and drive on public roads, all of which is paid for through taxes that you want to opt out of, and somehow you don't see a problem with that?

You can't pick and choose parts of society that benefit you and opt out of your duties, that's not how society works. All of those parts that you don't see value in are essential to someone else.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#690

Post by tgv »

carlosjobim wrote: post #381
tgv wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people hardly pay for art, yet many consider it worth keeping the arts alive.

If they're not paying for it, then they lie if they say it's worth keeping alive.

I can't afford a painting. Noone in my neighbour can afford one. Together, we might, and we could put it on a wall in a communal building. Let's call it a museum.
Post reply on HN