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The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

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Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#71

Post by maxerickson »

evanlivingston wrote: post #57
stcredzero wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math has never been the problem; it's always been taxing the wealthy that causes the conversation to die. The problem with taxing the wealthy, is that they generally have an outsized share of the political power. I think that a better solution, from a political and psychological standpoint, would involve a voluntary system. If just rent could be covered, this would be the equivalent of $12k per year in many parts…

I mean, maybe we could just tax the 5 wealthiest men in the U.S. who own about half of the world's wealth?

Your numbers are wrong. The 5 wealthiest people in the US are well below $1 trillion and in just the US there are tens of trillions of dollars of wealth.

Even if you did manage to tax all the wealth without destroying it, it'd only provide 10 or 20 years of basic income. Which is a lot, but it is hardly enough to make or break a BI as long term policy.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#72

Post by rev_bird »

sedtrader wrote: post #12

> America competitive in the world—lies in giving every citizen a regular allotment of money to cover basics like housing, food, and shelter. Out of curiosity don't we already do this? We have public/section 8 housing, food stamps, medical/dental, etc... If we are talking about handing out cold hard cash as basic income, as the statement implies, then that is a recipe for disaster. There would be no guarantee that pe…

>If we are talking about handing out cold hard cash as basic income, as the statement implies, then that is a recipe for disaster.

I've tried and failed to figure out a less confrontational-sounding way to ask this, but do you have any data to back this claim up, or do you just not trust the poor?

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#73

Post by geodel »

dougmany wrote: post #33
Danihan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math doesn't work and has never worked. UBI proponents will never talk math because it doesn't add up, even with the most casual analysis. $12k is the cited number that you see a lot in basic income discussions. That's just over the poverty level. That's not enough to live on and it's practically a bonus for some members of this site. It's not enough to do anything with. Even upon receiving that, many people woul…

>One of the things that people forget is that if the robots really do come, yes, they will eliminate or change a lot of jobs, but the cost of goods and services will just go down and down and down. So maybe $7000 can get you everything you need, including healthcare. People pay extra money for their house to be close to work. With no work, maybe that will open up places people will want to live.

India had tax rate of up to 93% in 1970s which was done all to support poor people. I am not sure it worked very well. But may be US is very different and 90% or so tax rate will drastically improve living conditions for everyone.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#74

Post by mcguire »

Sam: "The millennials looked around and said, “Damn, I’ve got $200,000 of student debt. I have no job prospects that are gonna let me afford a house, or a car, or three trips a year to Europe. I better decide to shoot for something else.”"

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-typical-household-wit...

"The average balance of outstanding student loan debt for households with some debt was $25,700. The median debt was $13,000, and seventy-five percent of borrowers had less than $29,000. These burdens are relatively modest given the annual earnings of these households. The average annual wage earnings among this population was $71,700."

Note: "for households with some debt".

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#75

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

remarkEon wrote: post #60

There's two issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed, or that I missed, in the banter over this issue. 1) What would stop us from recreating the inefficient welfare state that already exists on top of this new one when some people inevitably blow their UBI on drugs/cheetos/whatever and don't have money for rent? It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no"…

>1) What would stop us from recreating the inefficient welfare state that already exists on top of this new one when some people inevitably blow their UBI on drugs/cheetos/whatever and don't have money for rent? It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no" - and that to me sounds like a serious culture change in this country...which gets me to my next, perhaps more contentious, point.

Exactly! UBI needs to go on top of our existing welfare system. It's a problem of freedom. Say I give you $300 and tell you that's what you live on this month. Well with $300 you can find a (crappy) shelter. You could buy food, pay your existing debt obligations, etc. But you can't do all of them. The money gives you freedom but not enough to do everything you need. Our existing welfare system is a god awful patchwork but the existence of all these separate systems makes sure that someone who is poor is still free to buy food AND pay for shelter AND pay off debt. UBI is adding another AND on to the list. We've progressed as a society, wealth is abundant but not shared so now you can buy food AND pay for shelter AND pay off debt AND ... whatever you can do with $12k a yr (or whatever the figure is.)

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#76

Post by rev_bird »

vonnik wrote: post #32

I support some form of UBI. My concern is that UBI is a classic redistributive strategy, and redistributive strategies have done poorly in America's long and ongoing class war. The most recent tax plan is a good example the haves winning another battle in that war. So the basic question for anyone who believes in UBI and economic justice is: How do you convince the wealthy and powerful to give up some of their wealth…

>wealth and power are their own defense against redistribution

Right now, yes, that's definitely the case. But does it have to be? Our campaign finance system provides a direct and unlimited conduit between wealth and political power, but we can change that.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#77

Post by nightski »

drb91 wrote: post #19
Danihan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math doesn't work and has never worked. UBI proponents will never talk math because it doesn't add up, even with the most casual analysis. $12k is the cited number that you see a lot in basic income discussions. That's just over the poverty level. That's not enough to live on and it's practically a bonus for some members of this site. It's not enough to do anything with. Even upon receiving that, many people woul…

I mean, tax the hell out of wealth. The math has never been the problem; it's always been taxing the wealthy that causes the conversation to die.

Honestly if you are going to give me free money + tax the hell out of me for working hard and going above and beyond I'll just relax and play video games and work on personal projects on my monthly stipend.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#78

Post by coffeemug »

davmre wrote: post #30
babaganoosh89 wrote: post #11

Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.

One possible mechanism is a social wealth fund that would gradually come to own (and distribute the proceeds from) a nontrivial portion of the national capital. Matt Bruenig wrote a NYTimes oped about this idea: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-social... with some suggestions for populating the fund: > Wouldn’t the enormous wealth that our increasingly productive society is generating, which now…

Thanks for pointing to this; I've heard of the idea before, but never as cogently argued for. The NYT article is a really, really good read.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#79

Post by maxpupmax »

remarkEon wrote: post #60

There's two issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed, or that I missed, in the banter over this issue. 1) What would stop us from recreating the inefficient welfare state that already exists on top of this new one when some people inevitably blow their UBI on drugs/cheetos/whatever and don't have money for rent? It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no"…

For issue (1), the articles I've seen suggest that the vast majority of people just don't do this. Certainly some do, but I don't see why a couple bad actors invalidate a scheme which can work for most of the population.

I don't have an authoritative source on the above claims, but here's a 538 article which talks about the issue a bit. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-do...

"[reduction in cash assistance] has happened despite a burgeoning economics literature suggesting that direct cash transfers are in many cases the most efficient tool to fight poverty."

Issue (2) seems less cut-and-dry to me.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#80

Post by longerthoughts »

> "a bunch of people have guessed my email address and emailed me saying, 'I heard that you’re doing this. I’ll be in the control group just because I think this is important. I don’t need any compensation, I just believe in this idea, and I want to be part of the study.'"

This is hardly evidence that getting 2,000 control volunteers will be easy. Unlikely that the people who knew about the study and came forward are representative of the entire target test group on relevant criteria (e.g. income level). It's great to see support for the experiment and getting people to volunteer information without receiving money is a solvable problem, this answer just seemed evasive and promotional when a "you're right, it's going to be tough and we're working on it" would have been plenty justified.

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