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Request For Research: Basic Income

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#691

Post by bufordsharkley »

rhino369 wrote: post #258
larsiusprime wrote: post #32

What I want to know is whether Basic Income implemented with our current housing and laws about land ownership will just run afoul of the Henry George Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem IE, the aggregate value of public spending in an area tends to soak into the land value -- give everybody $X,000 a year and the landlords will dutifully raise annual rents by $X,000.

Won't that only work if the land is in high demand?

It works as long as the land isn't effectively free.

The theorem's theoretical basis is pretty spherical-cow: a government that governs land centered on a single point with people trying to minimize distance to the space. (Which is to say, it models best to the idea of a city-state rather than a federal government.)

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#692

Post by flubert »

surfmike wrote: post #346
ThomPete wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that a country like Denmark have all those things more or less and we still have more or less the same issues although to lesser degree. The solution to the problem isn't hiding in what we already know although many of these things of course would be hugely beneficial to people. The underlying problem. Technology is still going to be there.

I'd say the bottom 50% live much more prosperously in Denmark than in the US.

Is there a good way to quantify that?

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#693

Post by saganus »

throwawaytime wrote: post #632
mijustin wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial desperation squeezes the cognitive juice right out of you. In 2013, Harvard researchers did a study of how financial stress affects decision making. Denise Cummins, Ph.D. explains their findings in Psychology Today: "When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, a very different picture emerged: The cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the i…

"When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, the cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the increase. But those at the lower end suffered a 40% decline! The authors interpreted this to mean that scarcity impaired people’s ability to think clearly. The threat—even an imagined threat—of a large bill made it difficult for poor people to focus on the cogn…

I'm truly sorry to hear that.

I don't see why narcolepsy should be a problem, especially in our area. I mean sure, meetings and stuff like that might be harder to do, but our industry is/should be lenient to things like office hours. There have been tons of times where I go to the office at "late hours" (e.g. 1+ PM), and as long as I turn in my deliverables on time (or let my lead know I won't be able to), there is no issue.

So again, very sorry to hear that.

Also, if I may, I would like to give you the following suggestion.

What about, instead of porting something and then writing about it for the PR, why not take the lowest hanging fruit you can find and do some local web dev/mobile dev, even if you only get a small fraction of the money you need each month.

I am saying this not without reason. I have a friend that is doing bad financially, and doing only one gig that got him around 1k USD (different country and situation of course, but at the current exchange rate, it's about that amount) gave him some hope.

And the thing is that he got a big relief when he saw with his own eyes that he could basically turn code into money. Not enough money necessarily, but at least some amount. That in turn lowered his stress and things started to look less bleak.

Just to tell a bit of his situation: he has kids and a wife that for medical reasons as well, can't work, so he is the sole wage earner at home. His job is very likely going to end soon, and has about 1 month runway.

So just in case you check back the comments, and if you are willing to take some random advice from a random guy on the Internets, why not try this? Just take a gig, very very simple one you can find through friends, your local laundromat/liquor store/etc, family, that consists of doing a simple but sleek-looking webpage or something very low hanging-fruity, and after you get your first few bucks, rinse and repeat.

Hopefully the boost in morale will be enough to get you to try maybe a bigger gig, etc, or at least buy you some time while you get to find another job.

Sorry if this is of no use to you, since I know that this route might not afford you the medical care you need and that definitely sucks. But I truly feel you and I was hoping I could chip in at least a very very minor idea in case it's helpful in any way.

Not sure what else to say except to try to keep going as hard as you can, and that I can definitely lend an ear if you are so inclined (let me know and I can send you an email or something). If not, I sincerely hope things get better soon.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#694

Post by AlexWest »

Thank you for doing this. This is truly the kind of thing the tech industry needs to be doing in order to make a net positive impact on society and promote a more agile, results-based social super-structure.

EDIT: So many of the comments here are obviously ideology driven. I am ideologically in favor of full automation and UBI but doing this kind of research will help us move forward in an informed and scientific way.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#695

Post by wesleyfsmith »

mikeg8 wrote: post #549
sama wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YCR is a non-profit; we just think this is important and interesting. Though if it does turn out, years down the road, that basic income happens, I suspect we'd get more people starting companies and that would obviously be good for YC.

> we just think this is important and interesting. Not trying to kiss ass here but it's this type of thinking that sets YC well above the rest, IMO.

I had the exact same thought.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#696

Post by param »

throwawaytime wrote: post #632
mijustin wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial desperation squeezes the cognitive juice right out of you. In 2013, Harvard researchers did a study of how financial stress affects decision making. Denise Cummins, Ph.D. explains their findings in Psychology Today: "When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, a very different picture emerged: The cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the i…

"When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, the cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the increase. But those at the lower end suffered a 40% decline! The authors interpreted this to mean that scarcity impaired people’s ability to think clearly. The threat—even an imagined threat—of a large bill made it difficult for poor people to focus on the cogn…

What do you do? I am hiring and we have remote roles and a global team so everyone keeps their own hours.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#697

Post by abawany »

throwawaytime wrote: post #632
mijustin wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial desperation squeezes the cognitive juice right out of you. In 2013, Harvard researchers did a study of how financial stress affects decision making. Denise Cummins, Ph.D. explains their findings in Psychology Today: "When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, a very different picture emerged: The cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the i…

"When the cost of [a car] repair was increased to $3,000, the cognitive performance of those at the upper end of the income distribution was unaffected by the increase. But those at the lower end suffered a 40% decline! The authors interpreted this to mean that scarcity impaired people’s ability to think clearly. The threat—even an imagined threat—of a large bill made it difficult for poor people to focus on the cogn…

I am not sure of your location (US, etc.) but I would imagine that you might be able to get unemployment benefits, which I hope would help tide you over financially at a minimal level while you focus on the next steps. Again, assuming US location: you might be able to use COBRA or a plan from healthcare.gov to help you continue the medications that you need.

Regardless, I hope you are able to recover from this setback and do better than ever. Please don't lose hope - there is always an option.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#698

Post by miguelrochefort »

There is no such thing as Basic Income. There is no universal set of basic human needs. People will never be satisfied, no matter what you give them. We can't even agree on the purpose of Basic Income:

- Is it an investment/bet that's expected to result in increased productivity?

- Is it a way to preserve humanity?

- Is a way to entertain the elite?

- Is it just "the right thing to do"?

To me, all of this feels like a primitive defense mechanism. People anticipate that they will become obsolete, rightfully so, and they come up with crazy strategies to preserve their relevance. Some even go as far as believing they can avoid this fate through fantasies such as "friendly AI". By letting their animal instinct take over, they miss the big picture.

Rather than slowing down progress, we should all aim to make the universe more efficient. Namely, we should aim to preserve consciousness, with as little resources as possible. Think "The Matrix". The physical world is just too rigid for the mind.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#699

Post by dmoy »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #673
samstave wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome. A couple points: Alternatives to patient-present doctor-mediated health care to cover the 80% case in which doctors are expensive overkill; some combination of telemedicine and nurse-practitioners. We have police departments and we have fire departments. We should have "nurse departments" that are clinics but much more structured as are fire and PD services for each given area. (I know there is a grey versio…

Re:ChildCare Solution: Childcare Visa. Many women in other parts of the world would LOVE to come to America. We need a special visa for them, and perhaps they can take care of your children from 8 to 6PM M-F in exchange for room and board and weekends, or some type of arrangement.

This already exists. J-1 visa (I think?) satisfies this, there are a lot of companies set up to do this, e.g. Au Pair in America.

It's not free, but it's significantly less than the aforementioned $25 / hr.

Re: Request For Research: Basic Income

#700

Post by david927 »

flubert wrote: post #677
fsloth wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland already has a quite thorough social welfare system - no-one is homeless unless they have a bag of other problems than a lack of income. Mental health - not so good. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide... You will notice Finland has way more suicides than US.

Rates of homelessness: US: 633782 / 314000000 => 202 homeless per 100,000 Finland: 7877 / 5363000 => 147 homeless per 100,000 Based off of numbers from (YMMV): http://www.housingfirst.fi/en/housing_first/homelessness_in_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=population+of+usa+in+20... https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=population+of+finland+i...

I don't about those numbers. My only guess is that Finland's is vastly over-stated and America's vastly understated. The wealthiest countries of Europe, which includes Finland, really don't have any homeless to speak of. Whereas in America, it's a huge epidemic, including even small towns.
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