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

A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

bloombergview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 840 posts

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#91

Post by LukeB_UK »

toyg wrote: post #79
microtonal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste [1]. In general I agree. However, besides education costs (I have quite many friends who have a sizeable loan), software engineers also enter the workforce quite a bit later. E.g., taking Netherlands as an example: - Waste collector: age 12-16 VMBO - Software engineer: age 12-18 VWO, age 18-23 BA+MA university Also,…

In the brave new world of guaranteed income, why would you need a pension?

Because while the basic income would suffice for the basics, the pension allows you to live your retirement in comfort.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#92

Post by ww520 »

The Fed engineers a slow inflation every year via interest rate control and gives the benefit of the newly created money to banks, the loan borrowers, and asset holders as rates lower than keeping inflation at zero. Since the money supply increases anyway, might as well give the new money as basic income to ALL people. At least the money will be spent directly by the people for economic activities, instead of indirectly via the loans and asset inflation.

The Fed can raise interest rate to shrink the money supply for banks and borrowers while give more direct cash to expand the money supply via basic income. This can be in addition to the government's budget spending on basic income.

An interesting outcome is the deflation of the asset bubble as rate increases. The money supply expansion via direct cash counters the deflation in economy. This should reverse the trend of the great wealth transfer to the asset holders in the last 20 years.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#93

Post by panic »

empressplay wrote: post #82
panic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As costs go up, consumers buy less. There's a certain price which maximizes profit: that's where it ends.

Exactly. I have 5 apples. There are 5 people willing to pay at least $2 for them, so I sell them for $2. That's basic economics. With a basic income, now most of these people have more money. So I can charge $3 per apple, and even if I only sell 4 of them I still make $2 more than I made before. I eat the last apple myself, and the person who only has the basic income doesn't get an apple at all. I think universal we…

If you have a monopoly on the only five apples in the world, why were you charging only $2 in the first place? In a competitive economy, somebody else will be happy to sell an apple to the last person.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#94

Post by empressplay »

crdoconnor wrote: post #80
empressplay wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think that until the real estate question is resolved it's all a moot point. Already-inflated property markets will just become more inflated.

Actually it will probably depress property markets. Our inflated property markets are caused by the ultrawealthy hoarding their wealth in property. A large dose of cost-push inflation will drain that wealth, causing them to sell off their property, causing the price of it to drop.

While what you say might be true to some extent, the upper-middle class will then have the additional UBI income with which to spend on buying property from those who are selling it. So while there may be less property hoarding on the extreme end and some selloffs, the drop caused by an increase in supply will be absorbed by an increase in what people are willing and able to pay in competitive markets.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#95

Post by adynatos »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #81
nihonde wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to think that if you've got a civilization that people feel is worth keeping, the "dirty" jobs become a shared responsibility.

Low-skilled dirty jobs should either be automated, or they should be treated like taxation. Everyone, without exception, has to pitch in and do them - to a reasonable standard, with doubled time for slacking, and serious punishments for avoidance - for [very small number of days a year]. If that sounds authoritarian, consider that's how work already functions for most people - except they're compelled to do it all th…

are you insane? can you see any way a trained neurosurgeon will want to pitch in sweeping the streets instead of using that time to do his highly specialized job and make enough money for it to hire two people to do the sweeping for him? this is absurd! take your totalitarian socialist society and get off my lawn.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#96

Post by corin_ »

thiagoperes wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #5

I'm still wondering about one thing: if everybody has a basic income, then who will be doing the dirty jobs like collecting our waste? Will the price for waste collecting go up? And will there then be a kind of economic "inversion", where the intellectual people prefer to work on interesting stuff at the expense of money, while the "non-intellectual" (need a better word here) people will make all the money doing the…

First of all, no job should be considered dirty. Second, if you go to places like Netherlands, Norway and Japan you'll see that it's not about money. Higher education prepares workers to do more complex, more efficient and more productive jobs. Also, the society is more conscious about not having someone to do stupid things for them like collecting their trays after they eat at the McDonadls, this is YOUR responsibil…

> First of all, no job should be considered dirty.

Some jobs, such as cleaning, and collecting waste, literally deal with dirt. I don't think he was using "dirty" as an insult.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#97

Post by empressplay »

UVB-76 wrote: post #64
T-A wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Financial_Fable

This only applies to our global economy if every country were to implement UBI, and with similar amounts.

Right, so as long as Chinese slaves make our junk, it's all good right?

Lovely.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#98

Post by cromulent »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #25

The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math. Take for instance the amount spent on the bank bailouts, which were supposedly done to help stimulate the economy. If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody a check for somewhere around 20K (the number is debatable). Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the las…

As it is such a massive societal change, some sort of testing and experimentation would have to be done, I think.

The recent Freakonomics episode on the topic talked about a Canadian experiment "Mincome" from the 70s. There were some interesting results. Worth a listen.

"FORGET: One of the findings was that high-school completion rates had increased, and we discovered that boys, in particular, in low-income families had been under a fair amount of pressure to become self-supporting as quickly as they could. When mincome came along, some of the families decided that they could allow their sons to stay in high school just a little bit longer. So instead of quitting school at age 16 and getting their first full-time job, these boys stayed in school until they were 18, until they graduated from high school and took their first full-time job a little bit later."

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#99

Post by gjm11 »

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc.

And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like

> But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 trillion. And if the benefit is phased out for households earning more than $100,000 (that would be 20 percent of the U.S.'s 115 million households, or about 70 million people, assuming three to a household), the cost declines to about $2 trillion. You could confine the program to adults and shrink the price tag even more, possibly to as low as $1.5 trillion.

Yes, you can reduce the amount paid out by making it not a universal basic income scheme any more. But that rather misses the point.

(The correct thing to say here is: Yes, a universal basic income sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty would be really expensive. Taxes would need to go up a lot, which would leave wealthier people less well off than they are now. If you don't want a large-scale redistribution of wealth, then you don't want a BI scheme sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty. But you might still want to consider a BI scheme that's not sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty, to simplify and to reduce poverty traps. No one would have to be much worse off then. But it wouldn't be enough for anyone to live on, and would still need supplementing by other safety nets.)

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#100

Post by empressplay »

panic wrote: post #93
empressplay wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I have 5 apples. There are 5 people willing to pay at least $2 for them, so I sell them for $2. That's basic economics. With a basic income, now most of these people have more money. So I can charge $3 per apple, and even if I only sell 4 of them I still make $2 more than I made before. I eat the last apple myself, and the person who only has the basic income doesn't get an apple at all. I think universal we…

If you have a monopoly on the only five apples in the world, why were you charging only $2 in the first place? In a competitive economy, somebody else will be happy to sell an apple to the last person.

In practice that's not true and I suggest you research the amount of fruit that's left to rot in fields because companies decide it's not worth selling it.
Post reply on HN