13 ms·

Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income?

82 points by joeyespo 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- trentmb 11y ago
  > like population control I don't think many people that support a UBI oppose better sex education, greater availability of contraceptives/birth control medication, and abortions.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    That's still population control doesn't matter how you dress it up. There is nothing wrong with sex ed and abortion should be a basic medical procedure accessible to all but that's not the point. UBI has never been tested on a large scale it works great in small scale experiments but those are balanced by the existing open market. Communism also works great on smaller scales like communes and kibbutz's but it doesn't really work on national scales that well. If you implement UBI in a single city the fact that it's only confined to that place makes things like potential inflation untestable even local resources like rent can be controlled in such cases where in reality they'll run amok. Rent control for example was also posed as a great service but in pretty much all cases it either resulted in an extreme shortage of housing or a huge price inflation over time because government funded rent set the low bar as far as pricing goes regardless of the actual worth of the tenancy in an open market. If you implement UBI on a national scale the open market is quite likely to adjust fairly quickly which will make most basic goods and services out of reach of low income families again. It also can come at expense of other projects like vocational training and tuition grants. And if you want to control the adverse effects of inflation you usually start to step in into the realm of planned economies which never has ended well so far.
    - trentmb 11y ago
      > That's still population control doesn't matter how you dress it up. Yes, apologies I wasn't clear.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    There seems to be a strong correlation between total fertility rate per woman and the probability of survival of infants. I don't know if there is a direct link here but a low infant mortality rate seems to correlate to a low birth rate as well. In any case, I fully support better sex education, greater availability of contraceptives and birth control, and access to voluntary abortions.
- cronjobber 11y ago
  Yeah, evolutionary... what's our planning horizon on this supposed to be, a thousand years? (Fun fact: The European Central Bank (ECB) once bought bonds off Portugal due on... wait for it... 9999-12-31.)
- spikels 11y ago
  Whoa there Moshe! While there are undoubtedly counterproductive incentives created by a basic income program most governments already have numerous programs with arguably worse incentives that are less effective. In most conceptions of basics income it replaces all the other assistance programs for the poor. Although in practice this would be difficult for two reasons: (1) some people are simply incapable of budgeting their income across their needs and (2) the poverty industry would resist any reduction in their role. Eugenics and forced sterilization are as unnecessary with basic income as with the modern welfare state.
- cma 11y ago
  Would hate to hear this guy's thoughts on caring for the disabled.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
aklemm 11y ago
Something ought to be done to: A) take advantage of our technical advancements to provide better for all B) decrease hoarding of wealth at the very top (that's not to say inequity can/should be solved for all). That said, I don't see how a UBI works as long as people's appetites remain, basically, insatiable. Providing a UBI would seem to end up increasing inflation of basic goods and services.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  > Providing a UBI would seem to end up increasing inflation of basic goods and services. Seems like that would be good for investors, bad for everyone else.
- spikels 11y ago
  Hoarding = saving and investing. Almost every point you make is confused about basic economics.
  - aklemm 11y ago
    But you can't be bothered to explain where I've gone wrong? That's too bad. Regarding hoarding, do you think I meant they're keeping it under a mattress? Hoarding (which I'll admit is poor word choice and inflammatory) means they're allowed by policy to keep more than they ought to be if we want a UBI, or to raise up the lowest end of income spectrum.
- GavinMcG 11y ago
  How would that inflation work, exactly? UBI doesn't mean creating new money. This article [1] addresses that concern in a little more depth. Basically, the evidence we have from places that have tried this is that it might decrease inflation, and that in any case, the value of the income would far outstrip increased prices. [1] https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7#.qbg5o78cq https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
  - aklemm 11y ago
choxi 11y ago
I'm excited for this idea to hit the mainstream, it's compelling enough to warrant a public discussion.
jsnk 11y ago
Are the proponents for basic income willing to cut other social programs related to food, housing, child care, unemployment, etc and cut down costly bureaucratic infrastructure supporting government programs?? Or are they trying to double down on basic income + all these government programs?
- aklemm 11y ago
  I would guess they'd be willing to do whichever one is most equitable and effective.
- seba_dos1 11y ago
  As far as I understand it, the whole point of basic income is replacing most of other social programs, especially those related to unemployment.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    Sadly, it will be difficult to explain why we will give Donald Trump and Warren Buffett a basic income of the same amount we will give to a homeless person. It seems we don't discuss the details of any plan and all the news outlets want sound bites that they can repeat every hour. Even NPR hourly news seems full of sound bites.
    - JonFish85 11y ago
      The explanation would go something like this (I think, but I'm not a proponent of the system): You'd give them the same payment, but you'd take back a much higher payment in taxes. Giving people $40k just to send a bill of $100k seems inefficient to me.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        It's just an accounting movement, you don't need to actually transfer them the money so that they can pay it back. You calculate their balance and just tell them to pay $60k.
seba_dos1 11y ago
Is there some transcript available or is it only in audio form?
edward 11y ago
See also: Silicon Valley's Basic Income Bromance by Lauren Smiley https://medium.com/backchannel/silicon-valley-s-basic-income-bromance-97595cd35d5d https://medium.com/backchannel/silicon-valley-s-basic-income...
- mmagin 11y ago
  That essay seems unnecessarily ad hominem and I find it hard to read with the unnecessary amount of neologism. Certainly people are welcome to find ideas advocated for by fairly socially well-off groups to be suspect, but it doesn't make those ideas inherently bad.
- noam87 11y ago
  The tone of that article is very confusing. What's the point he's trying to make? (honest question)
mojoe 11y ago
I've thought about this a lot, and if you assume that automation will continue to put more and more people out of work, then there seems to be two probable paths forward: either bureaucracy continues to grow, causing more and more people to do meaningless busywork, or a UBI is established. Neither option seems great to me, considering human nature, but if I were to bet I'd say that current inertia is moving us toward the bureaucracy option.
bsurmanski 11y ago
What happens in the case I am working in a foreign country on a visa? In that case, I can imagine the home country would refuse GBI because I am no longer resident, and the host country would refuse because I am not a citizen. If that is the case, I can imagine that GBI would put a drag on workers abroad. Maybe people would even refuse to emigrate because they wouldn't be able to afford the few years without GBI before they are a citizen in their new country.
- themartorana 11y ago
  Best question about UBI I've heard. Usually the argument is that poor people won't work. I don't have an answer, actually, I just wanted to say that your question is reasoned and not politically charged, so thanks. I'm also curious about this?
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  I think that what you describe is a good thing, when you look at the complete picture. GBI could (should?) function, effectively, like a negative income tax -- below a certain income level the government pays you. Above that level, you earn nothing from the government, because you're making more than some specific threshold already (probably at least 1.5x GBI, preferably higher [1]). So yes, it would discourage people from going to a new country for fun and lounging around there and not working. People who want to move to a new country should do it because there's a job for them in that new country, and if it doesn't pay above the GBI threshold, then yes, they should probably stay home. If you're a consultant who can work from anywhere, and you make more than the cutoff (which I would hope!), then GBI is similarly irrelevant. GBI for a backup income while you're starting a company is also something to think about: Where would the US prefer that you start a company? Here, of course. So I think that GBI encouraging people to work in the country is absolutely appropriate. Finally, GBI could be provided to US citizens and permanent residents who spend more than X% of their time in the country. If that's 51%, then you could spend nearly six months in another country getting situated before GBI would cut off, which should be more than enough time to pick up a job there. Even if it only paid you for 2-3 months of living abroad, that's not bad for a paid vacation and/or job hunt. [1] This may be obvious to most; apologies in advance. If you phase out GBI at a 1:1 rate with what you earn, as in, if you earn $10, you get $10 less GBI, then taking a job that paid less than GBI would earn you nothing (unless you're being paid under the table, but let's assume we don't want to encourage people to cheat). EDIT: My math was wrong. The idea is that you set the marginal tax rates such that every dollar you earn earns you more money, but that by the time your income is at some arbitrary level, you're paying more than GBI in taxes. Figuring out the exact rate curve is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)
themartorana 11y ago
Just came here to say that the tired argument that UBI "start[s] creating some pretty powerful disincentives to work" is really just old at this point. What someone that trots that out is saying is that more people would be able to forgo wasting their lives in menial jobs and instead create art and new businesses, or stay home to raise a family or care for elderly parents, as if either of those is somehow morally wrong or shameful. There will still be incentive to working - cars and houses and jewelry and iPhones and etc and etc will still cost money, likely above what a basic income gives you (except for the most basic apartment and car maybe). But people will be able to choose to not work in deplorable conditions or for terrible wages or for below minimum wage because tips, and won't have to live in constant fear of losing a minimum wage job and losing the leaky roof above their family's heads, or going bankrupt when your kid breaks his arm. When people claim UBI will disincentivize working, they mean disincentivize being taken advantage of by a system meant to keep them under foot and under served - and that not willingly participating in such a system is somehow morally reprehensible. Which I find morally reprehensible.
- danharaj 11y ago
  Yes. One need only consider that the threat of starving to death is an incentive to sell yourself to another person in order to dispel the euphemistic and misanthropic rhetoric.
- mojoe 11y ago
  Yep, and considering that extreme poverty leads to all kinds of avoidable crime, I'd much rather live in a society where people are doing something unproductive (like playing video games all day) rather than going out and hurting each other, themselves, and their communities.
- strictnein 11y ago
  Sorry, but I don't feel like paying more in taxes so that people can "create art" and take care of their own families. When did it become my responsibility to work harder so that they can do that? Taking care of my family involves me working hard, so why are you willing to make me work harder so that others can work less? An no one thinks taking care of your own family is shameful or morally wrong. Taking more money from me to pay you to take care of your family, on the other hand, is morally wrong.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
C.H. Douglas and the Social Credit movement were absolutely immense during the Depression period and slightly afterwards (especially in Canada). His philosophy was a syncretic mix of positive economic theory, Christian philosophy and policy proposals that amounted to a UBI among other things. Today, it is nearly dead and largely unknown. The MMT people have made their strides on the blogosphere, and did get Stephanie Kelton into the Senate Budget Committee. They loathe the UBI, however. They want to go straight for a job guarantee, as advocated in e.g. Hyman Minsky's writings. Assuming a Sanders presidency, their vulgar Keynesianism might pass. These things tend to come and go, especially after crises. Sometimes they succeed. The Townsend Plan was a major impetus for Social Security. But I wonder if in some years we'll still be debating this.
sly_foxx 11y ago
Why are people on HN supporting basic income so much? Do you support 'Guaranteed Basic Sex' as well? You know, there are guys like Elliot Rodgers who would be thrilled with something like that.
- afarrell 11y ago
  The reason that folks on HN are so in favor of UBI is that large numbers of us are employed as software engineers. We automate things that were previously done by humans. We make our money by destroying jobs. From a gods-eye perspective, this is actually a good thing, as it brings down the costs of serving peoples' needs. From the perspective of someone who loses their job, it sucks because that person now has no way to feed themselves. So, we want to get around that by being able to say to someone: "Here is a free $700/month. Move to rural Maine and spend 6 months learning to code and eating food delivered by the driverless truck which stole your job. Then join us in automating more people's jobs away." Why not Universal Basic Sex? Very few people think that sex is a basic right or think that the existence of sexually frustrated folks indicates a flaw on the part of society. Most people don't put sex and food/shelter/medicine/etc in the same categories. Also, HN readers aren't doing things to make sex harder to find, so we feel no responsibility for people's sexual frustration. Also, we can't really automate the production of sex. If someone wants to seriously argue that we should give everyone a free Autoblow 2...well I would be interested in reading that argument.
  - sly_foxx 11y ago
    "From a gods-eye perspective, this is actually a good thing, as it brings down the costs of serving peoples' needs." Why do you define 'good' as servicing needs of members of homo sapiens species? What if a good thing(objectively) is actually servicing members of 'fire ant' species? You attitude smells like speciesism. "From the perspective of someone who loses their job, it sucks because that person now has no way to feed themselves." Yep, just like a lot of other animals. You look at some of those animals in the jungle - maybe you'll eat if you're lucky and survive long enough to reproduce. It's a struggle for them. When a zebra is killed by a lion, it ain't nice for the zebra. "So, we want to get around that by being able to say to someone: "Here is a free $700/month. Move to rural Maine and spend 6 months learning to code and eating food delivered by the driverless truck which stole your job. Then join us in automating more people's jobs away." Again, this smells like speciesism. Why do you want to spend your time helping members of homo sapiens species? Was that the result of brainwashing during your childhood or did you independantly discover that it is your duty to help members of homo sapiens species? "Very few people think that sex is a basic right or think that the existence of sexually frustrated folks indicates a flaw on the part of society." You forgot to add 'today' or 'these days'. Why is what majority thinks an indicator of truth? "Most people don't put sex and food/shelter/medicine/etc in the same categories." Again, you're going by what majority thinks. Do you care about truth or what majority thinks? "Also, we can't really automate the production of sex." Modern tech can certainly help. For example, you spy on people to see who is attractive and having lots of sex. Then, you sexually tax those people. You locate, kidnapp and take them to someone who is unattractive. From the perspective of the receiver, it will be automated, 'cause they'll be getting women frequantly with no effort.
pithic 11y ago
As optimistic as they seem on the surface, calling for GBI is, in a way, a call for throwing in of the towel by the human race. It's a hasty concession that continued human well-being is no longer compatible with nature or morality. Oddly, such defeatist calls invariably ignore a raft of dreadful and immediate societal effects: the end of meaningful work and self-esteem as both an option and a goal for the masses; the justifiable resentment of productive people whose living standard will be forcibly degraded; and the institutional bifurcation of the human race into producers and parasites, with the reduction of the whole to a sort of government-managed bi-pedal livestock.
Madmallard 11y ago
Basic income will not work when fiat currency drops and devalues our dollar to be worth almost nothing. Everyone surviving off of it will have to fend for themselves. National debt continues to skyrocket and quantitative easing cannot continue to happen without severe inflation coming. This crap is just a nice idea but will not work in reality when our economy goes into the dumpster.
overgard 11y ago
If society values innovation (questionable!), UBI totally makes sense. How many skilled, capable people are working bad jobs or are afraid to start a venture because they're concerned about ending up on the street? Safety nets encourage risk taking, and risk taking is necessary for innovation. This always gets characterized as subsidizing free-loaders, but perhaps naively, I think most people want to have an impact on the world, and you don't need to threaten them with starvation to get them to do important work. You only need to threaten them with starvation if you're asking them to work against their interests.
11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
$12,000/year per American adult who is not already on welfare or social security would cost about $2 Trillion per year. To put that into perspective, Social Security cost $1.3 Trillion in 2013. The cost of all social welfare programs was $529 Billion. The GDP came in at around 17 Trillion. The US could afford it if we really wanted to. - Is it inflationary? Prima facia, it has to be. But then it would also increase the flow of money and put more people to work in places that the $1,000 gets spent. - Is it fair? If every American receives it, regardless of their wealth, then I don't see how it would be unfair. - Is it realistic politically? It seems that the US was pretty close to something along these lines in the 60's[0] and Obama finally got universal health care through. Perhaps it is realistic enough to at least put a true, modern pilot program in place and convince ourselves one way or the other. It really seems better than the alternative: Status quo for the homeless and the poor. A real value is that lower financial stress across the entire country would free parents to focus more on raising their kids. Many, many social problems subside when families do better. So my question is, how can we construct a valid experiment to convince ourselves one way or the other that this will benefit society overall, and provide enough value to actually do it? http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/guaranteed-income%E2%80%99s-moment-sun http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/guaranteed-income%E2%...
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  >$12,000/year per American adult who is not already on welfare or social security... Is not what's being proposed by pretty much anyone. $12,000/year per American adult who isn't already earning $X/year is how I understand it. A negative income tax, effectively. Even if it's not administered that way (i.e., everyone gets a $1k check every month), then you raise taxes in such a way that every dollar earned means you earn more, but that by, say, $48k/year you're paying at least $12k/year in taxes.
  - 11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
    The proposal is to pay all citizens the same amount. No means testing, no qualification except perhaps an age limit. Individuals are not the only tax payers, and the wealthy do pay far more than $12,000 per year already.
danharaj 11y ago
"fuck you, got mine"
- strictnein 11y ago
  Yeah, that's what I'm saying, champ.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    you didn't have to use so many words
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't post like this here. Even when you think someone is expressing a bad point of view, it's important not to degrade the environment with hostility. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10959436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10959436 and marked it off-topic.
oldmanjay 11y ago
Do we need this story over and over? Nothing new is ever said, and the comments are just as predictable. I get that some segment of HN thinks this is super important and should be constantly flogged but I question the purpose.
jurassic 11y ago
Can anyone here recommend any good books on the topic of UBI?
afarrell 11y ago
The incentives aren't quite aligned to make this happen, but I wonder if a private entity could jump-start this. Lets take an organization engaged in a massively profitable activity that is unpopular because it eliminates large numbers of peoples' jobs. As an example, lets assume that Alphabet has a company working on driverless long-haul trucking. Suppose they take a pile of capital and start an endowment that then pays a small monthly amount to everyone in the political entity that could possibly stop them. To whom do they cut a cheque? Voters. They only need to get access to a voter database with names and mailing addresses. So now everyone who votes is getting a cheque from that entity every month, however small. Their marketing department comes up with some way to brand it so as to make those voters now feel warm and fuzzy about this scheme. They then structure their company in such a way that the profits from their job-killing activity add to the monthly amount paid. In effect, they give every voter a stake in them continuing to do this. Then, when any law comes up which threatens their activity, they defend it as strongly as they would defend social security. Over time, this activity has generated enough profit that what was once a tiny cheque is actually large enough for people to pay a few bills. The problems with this are: 1) I'm pretty sure the math wouldn't ever work out to paying anyone anything significant. 140 million voters is a lot of people to pay. The cost of postage alone would eat up the payout in the beginning. 2) There isn't enough incentive for an organization to do this just for the sake of profit. It would be cheaper to maintain a skilled team of lobbyists. 3) I suspect that people would be suspicious of cashing a random cheque that purports to be from a well-known company. 4) It might make voter fraud a non-trivial problem.

82 points by joeyespo 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

trentmb 11y ago
> like population control I don't think many people that support a UBI oppose better sex education, greater availability of contraceptives/birth control medication, and abortions.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  That's still population control doesn't matter how you dress it up. There is nothing wrong with sex ed and abortion should be a basic medical procedure accessible to all but that's not the point. UBI has never been tested on a large scale it works great in small scale experiments but those are balanced by the existing open market. Communism also works great on smaller scales like communes and kibbutz's but it doesn't really work on national scales that well. If you implement UBI in a single city the fact that it's only confined to that place makes things like potential inflation untestable even local resources like rent can be controlled in such cases where in reality they'll run amok. Rent control for example was also posed as a great service but in pretty much all cases it either resulted in an extreme shortage of housing or a huge price inflation over time because government funded rent set the low bar as far as pricing goes regardless of the actual worth of the tenancy in an open market. If you implement UBI on a national scale the open market is quite likely to adjust fairly quickly which will make most basic goods and services out of reach of low income families again. It also can come at expense of other projects like vocational training and tuition grants. And if you want to control the adverse effects of inflation you usually start to step in into the realm of planned economies which never has ended well so far.
  - trentmb 11y ago
    > That's still population control doesn't matter how you dress it up. Yes, apologies I wasn't clear.
- newjersey 11y ago
  There seems to be a strong correlation between total fertility rate per woman and the probability of survival of infants. I don't know if there is a direct link here but a low infant mortality rate seems to correlate to a low birth rate as well. In any case, I fully support better sex education, greater availability of contraceptives and birth control, and access to voluntary abortions.
cronjobber 11y ago
Yeah, evolutionary... what's our planning horizon on this supposed to be, a thousand years? (Fun fact: The European Central Bank (ECB) once bought bonds off Portugal due on... wait for it... 9999-12-31.)
spikels 11y ago
Whoa there Moshe! While there are undoubtedly counterproductive incentives created by a basic income program most governments already have numerous programs with arguably worse incentives that are less effective. In most conceptions of basics income it replaces all the other assistance programs for the poor. Although in practice this would be difficult for two reasons: (1) some people are simply incapable of budgeting their income across their needs and (2) the poverty industry would resist any reduction in their role. Eugenics and forced sterilization are as unnecessary with basic income as with the modern welfare state.
cma 11y ago
Would hate to hear this guy's thoughts on caring for the disabled.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

aklemm 11y ago

Something ought to be done to: A) take advantage of our technical advancements to provide better for all B) decrease hoarding of wealth at the very top (that's not to say inequity can/should be solved for all). That said, I don't see how a UBI works as long as people's appetites remain, basically, insatiable. Providing a UBI would seem to end up increasing inflation of basic goods and services.

xyzzy4 11y ago
> Providing a UBI would seem to end up increasing inflation of basic goods and services. Seems like that would be good for investors, bad for everyone else.
spikels 11y ago
Hoarding = saving and investing. Almost every point you make is confused about basic economics.
- aklemm 11y ago
  But you can't be bothered to explain where I've gone wrong? That's too bad. Regarding hoarding, do you think I meant they're keeping it under a mattress? Hoarding (which I'll admit is poor word choice and inflammatory) means they're allowed by policy to keep more than they ought to be if we want a UBI, or to raise up the lowest end of income spectrum.
GavinMcG 11y ago
How would that inflation work, exactly? UBI doesn't mean creating new money. This article [1] addresses that concern in a little more depth. Basically, the evidence we have from places that have tried this is that it might decrease inflation, and that in any case, the value of the income would far outstrip increased prices. [1] https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7#.qbg5o78cq https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
- aklemm 11y ago

choxi 11y ago

I'm excited for this idea to hit the mainstream, it's compelling enough to warrant a public discussion.

jsnk 11y ago

Are the proponents for basic income willing to cut other social programs related to food, housing, child care, unemployment, etc and cut down costly bureaucratic infrastructure supporting government programs?? Or are they trying to double down on basic income + all these government programs?

aklemm 11y ago
I would guess they'd be willing to do whichever one is most equitable and effective.
seba_dos1 11y ago
As far as I understand it, the whole point of basic income is replacing most of other social programs, especially those related to unemployment.
- newjersey 11y ago
  Sadly, it will be difficult to explain why we will give Donald Trump and Warren Buffett a basic income of the same amount we will give to a homeless person. It seems we don't discuss the details of any plan and all the news outlets want sound bites that they can repeat every hour. Even NPR hourly news seems full of sound bites.
  - JonFish85 11y ago
    The explanation would go something like this (I think, but I'm not a proponent of the system): You'd give them the same payment, but you'd take back a much higher payment in taxes. Giving people $40k just to send a bill of $100k seems inefficient to me.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      It's just an accounting movement, you don't need to actually transfer them the money so that they can pay it back. You calculate their balance and just tell them to pay $60k.

seba_dos1 11y ago

Is there some transcript available or is it only in audio form?

edward 11y ago

See also: Silicon Valley's Basic Income Bromance by Lauren Smiley https://medium.com/backchannel/silicon-valley-s-basic-income-bromance-97595cd35d5d https://medium.com/backchannel/silicon-valley-s-basic-income...

mmagin 11y ago
That essay seems unnecessarily ad hominem and I find it hard to read with the unnecessary amount of neologism. Certainly people are welcome to find ideas advocated for by fairly socially well-off groups to be suspect, but it doesn't make those ideas inherently bad.
noam87 11y ago
The tone of that article is very confusing. What's the point he's trying to make? (honest question)

mojoe 11y ago

I've thought about this a lot, and if you assume that automation will continue to put more and more people out of work, then there seems to be two probable paths forward: either bureaucracy continues to grow, causing more and more people to do meaningless busywork, or a UBI is established. Neither option seems great to me, considering human nature, but if I were to bet I'd say that current inertia is moving us toward the bureaucracy option.

bsurmanski 11y ago

What happens in the case I am working in a foreign country on a visa? In that case, I can imagine the home country would refuse GBI because I am no longer resident, and the host country would refuse because I am not a citizen. If that is the case, I can imagine that GBI would put a drag on workers abroad. Maybe people would even refuse to emigrate because they wouldn't be able to afford the few years without GBI before they are a citizen in their new country.

themartorana 11y ago
Best question about UBI I've heard. Usually the argument is that poor people won't work. I don't have an answer, actually, I just wanted to say that your question is reasoned and not politically charged, so thanks. I'm also curious about this?
SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
I think that what you describe is a good thing, when you look at the complete picture. GBI could (should?) function, effectively, like a negative income tax -- below a certain income level the government pays you. Above that level, you earn nothing from the government, because you're making more than some specific threshold already (probably at least 1.5x GBI, preferably higher [1]). So yes, it would discourage people from going to a new country for fun and lounging around there and not working. People who want to move to a new country should do it because there's a job for them in that new country, and if it doesn't pay above the GBI threshold, then yes, they should probably stay home. If you're a consultant who can work from anywhere, and you make more than the cutoff (which I would hope!), then GBI is similarly irrelevant. GBI for a backup income while you're starting a company is also something to think about: Where would the US prefer that you start a company? Here, of course. So I think that GBI encouraging people to work in the country is absolutely appropriate. Finally, GBI could be provided to US citizens and permanent residents who spend more than X% of their time in the country. If that's 51%, then you could spend nearly six months in another country getting situated before GBI would cut off, which should be more than enough time to pick up a job there. Even if it only paid you for 2-3 months of living abroad, that's not bad for a paid vacation and/or job hunt. [1] This may be obvious to most; apologies in advance. If you phase out GBI at a 1:1 rate with what you earn, as in, if you earn $10, you get $10 less GBI, then taking a job that paid less than GBI would earn you nothing (unless you're being paid under the table, but let's assume we don't want to encourage people to cheat). EDIT: My math was wrong. The idea is that you set the marginal tax rates such that every dollar you earn earns you more money, but that by the time your income is at some arbitrary level, you're paying more than GBI in taxes. Figuring out the exact rate curve is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)

themartorana 11y ago

Just came here to say that the tired argument that UBI "start[s] creating some pretty powerful disincentives to work" is really just old at this point. What someone that trots that out is saying is that more people would be able to forgo wasting their lives in menial jobs and instead create art and new businesses, or stay home to raise a family or care for elderly parents, as if either of those is somehow morally wrong or shameful. There will still be incentive to working - cars and houses and jewelry and iPhones and etc and etc will still cost money, likely above what a basic income gives you (except for the most basic apartment and car maybe). But people will be able to choose to not work in deplorable conditions or for terrible wages or for below minimum wage because tips, and won't have to live in constant fear of losing a minimum wage job and losing the leaky roof above their family's heads, or going bankrupt when your kid breaks his arm. When people claim UBI will disincentivize working, they mean disincentivize being taken advantage of by a system meant to keep them under foot and under served - and that not willingly participating in such a system is somehow morally reprehensible. Which I find morally reprehensible.

danharaj 11y ago
Yes. One need only consider that the threat of starving to death is an incentive to sell yourself to another person in order to dispel the euphemistic and misanthropic rhetoric.
mojoe 11y ago
Yep, and considering that extreme poverty leads to all kinds of avoidable crime, I'd much rather live in a society where people are doing something unproductive (like playing video games all day) rather than going out and hurting each other, themselves, and their communities.
strictnein 11y ago
Sorry, but I don't feel like paying more in taxes so that people can "create art" and take care of their own families. When did it become my responsibility to work harder so that they can do that? Taking care of my family involves me working hard, so why are you willing to make me work harder so that others can work less? An no one thinks taking care of your own family is shameful or morally wrong. Taking more money from me to pay you to take care of your family, on the other hand, is morally wrong.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

C.H. Douglas and the Social Credit movement were absolutely immense during the Depression period and slightly afterwards (especially in Canada). His philosophy was a syncretic mix of positive economic theory, Christian philosophy and policy proposals that amounted to a UBI among other things. Today, it is nearly dead and largely unknown. The MMT people have made their strides on the blogosphere, and did get Stephanie Kelton into the Senate Budget Committee. They loathe the UBI, however. They want to go straight for a job guarantee, as advocated in e.g. Hyman Minsky's writings. Assuming a Sanders presidency, their vulgar Keynesianism might pass. These things tend to come and go, especially after crises. Sometimes they succeed. The Townsend Plan was a major impetus for Social Security. But I wonder if in some years we'll still be debating this.

sly_foxx 11y ago

Why are people on HN supporting basic income so much? Do you support 'Guaranteed Basic Sex' as well? You know, there are guys like Elliot Rodgers who would be thrilled with something like that.

afarrell 11y ago
The reason that folks on HN are so in favor of UBI is that large numbers of us are employed as software engineers. We automate things that were previously done by humans. We make our money by destroying jobs. From a gods-eye perspective, this is actually a good thing, as it brings down the costs of serving peoples' needs. From the perspective of someone who loses their job, it sucks because that person now has no way to feed themselves. So, we want to get around that by being able to say to someone: "Here is a free $700/month. Move to rural Maine and spend 6 months learning to code and eating food delivered by the driverless truck which stole your job. Then join us in automating more people's jobs away." Why not Universal Basic Sex? Very few people think that sex is a basic right or think that the existence of sexually frustrated folks indicates a flaw on the part of society. Most people don't put sex and food/shelter/medicine/etc in the same categories. Also, HN readers aren't doing things to make sex harder to find, so we feel no responsibility for people's sexual frustration. Also, we can't really automate the production of sex. If someone wants to seriously argue that we should give everyone a free Autoblow 2...well I would be interested in reading that argument.
- sly_foxx 11y ago
  "From a gods-eye perspective, this is actually a good thing, as it brings down the costs of serving peoples' needs." Why do you define 'good' as servicing needs of members of homo sapiens species? What if a good thing(objectively) is actually servicing members of 'fire ant' species? You attitude smells like speciesism. "From the perspective of someone who loses their job, it sucks because that person now has no way to feed themselves." Yep, just like a lot of other animals. You look at some of those animals in the jungle - maybe you'll eat if you're lucky and survive long enough to reproduce. It's a struggle for them. When a zebra is killed by a lion, it ain't nice for the zebra. "So, we want to get around that by being able to say to someone: "Here is a free $700/month. Move to rural Maine and spend 6 months learning to code and eating food delivered by the driverless truck which stole your job. Then join us in automating more people's jobs away." Again, this smells like speciesism. Why do you want to spend your time helping members of homo sapiens species? Was that the result of brainwashing during your childhood or did you independantly discover that it is your duty to help members of homo sapiens species? "Very few people think that sex is a basic right or think that the existence of sexually frustrated folks indicates a flaw on the part of society." You forgot to add 'today' or 'these days'. Why is what majority thinks an indicator of truth? "Most people don't put sex and food/shelter/medicine/etc in the same categories." Again, you're going by what majority thinks. Do you care about truth or what majority thinks? "Also, we can't really automate the production of sex." Modern tech can certainly help. For example, you spy on people to see who is attractive and having lots of sex. Then, you sexually tax those people. You locate, kidnapp and take them to someone who is unattractive. From the perspective of the receiver, it will be automated, 'cause they'll be getting women frequantly with no effort.

pithic 11y ago

As optimistic as they seem on the surface, calling for GBI is, in a way, a call for throwing in of the towel by the human race. It's a hasty concession that continued human well-being is no longer compatible with nature or morality. Oddly, such defeatist calls invariably ignore a raft of dreadful and immediate societal effects: the end of meaningful work and self-esteem as both an option and a goal for the masses; the justifiable resentment of productive people whose living standard will be forcibly degraded; and the institutional bifurcation of the human race into producers and parasites, with the reduction of the whole to a sort of government-managed bi-pedal livestock.

Madmallard 11y ago

Basic income will not work when fiat currency drops and devalues our dollar to be worth almost nothing. Everyone surviving off of it will have to fend for themselves. National debt continues to skyrocket and quantitative easing cannot continue to happen without severe inflation coming. This crap is just a nice idea but will not work in reality when our economy goes into the dumpster.

overgard 11y ago

If society values innovation (questionable!), UBI totally makes sense. How many skilled, capable people are working bad jobs or are afraid to start a venture because they're concerned about ending up on the street? Safety nets encourage risk taking, and risk taking is necessary for innovation. This always gets characterized as subsidizing free-loaders, but perhaps naively, I think most people want to have an impact on the world, and you don't need to threaten them with starvation to get them to do important work. You only need to threaten them with starvation if you're asking them to work against their interests.

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

$12,000/year per American adult who is not already on welfare or social security would cost about $2 Trillion per year. To put that into perspective, Social Security cost $1.3 Trillion in 2013. The cost of all social welfare programs was $529 Billion. The GDP came in at around 17 Trillion. The US could afford it if we really wanted to. - Is it inflationary? Prima facia, it has to be. But then it would also increase the flow of money and put more people to work in places that the $1,000 gets spent. - Is it fair? If every American receives it, regardless of their wealth, then I don't see how it would be unfair. - Is it realistic politically? It seems that the US was pretty close to something along these lines in the 60's[0] and Obama finally got universal health care through. Perhaps it is realistic enough to at least put a true, modern pilot program in place and convince ourselves one way or the other. It really seems better than the alternative: Status quo for the homeless and the poor. A real value is that lower financial stress across the entire country would free parents to focus more on raising their kids. Many, many social problems subside when families do better. So my question is, how can we construct a valid experiment to convince ourselves one way or the other that this will benefit society overall, and provide enough value to actually do it? http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/guaranteed-income%E2%80%99s-moment-sun http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/guaranteed-income%E2%...

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
>$12,000/year per American adult who is not already on welfare or social security... Is not what's being proposed by pretty much anyone. $12,000/year per American adult who isn't already earning $X/year is how I understand it. A negative income tax, effectively. Even if it's not administered that way (i.e., everyone gets a $1k check every month), then you raise taxes in such a way that every dollar earned means you earn more, but that by, say, $48k/year you're paying at least $12k/year in taxes.
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
  The proposal is to pay all citizens the same amount. No means testing, no qualification except perhaps an age limit. Individuals are not the only tax payers, and the wealthy do pay far more than $12,000 per year already.

danharaj 11y ago

"fuck you, got mine"

strictnein 11y ago
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, champ.
- danharaj 11y ago
  you didn't have to use so many words
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dang 11y ago
Please don't post like this here. Even when you think someone is expressing a bad point of view, it's important not to degrade the environment with hostility. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10959436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10959436 and marked it off-topic.

oldmanjay 11y ago

Do we need this story over and over? Nothing new is ever said, and the comments are just as predictable. I get that some segment of HN thinks this is super important and should be constantly flogged but I question the purpose.

jurassic 11y ago

Can anyone here recommend any good books on the topic of UBI?

afarrell 11y ago

The incentives aren't quite aligned to make this happen, but I wonder if a private entity could jump-start this. Lets take an organization engaged in a massively profitable activity that is unpopular because it eliminates large numbers of peoples' jobs. As an example, lets assume that Alphabet has a company working on driverless long-haul trucking. Suppose they take a pile of capital and start an endowment that then pays a small monthly amount to everyone in the political entity that could possibly stop them. To whom do they cut a cheque? Voters. They only need to get access to a voter database with names and mailing addresses. So now everyone who votes is getting a cheque from that entity every month, however small. Their marketing department comes up with some way to brand it so as to make those voters now feel warm and fuzzy about this scheme. They then structure their company in such a way that the profits from their job-killing activity add to the monthly amount paid. In effect, they give every voter a stake in them continuing to do this. Then, when any law comes up which threatens their activity, they defend it as strongly as they would defend social security. Over time, this activity has generated enough profit that what was once a tiny cheque is actually large enough for people to pay a few bills. The problems with this are: 1) I'm pretty sure the math wouldn't ever work out to paying anyone anything significant. 140 million voters is a lot of people to pay. The cost of postage alone would eat up the payout in the beginning. 2) There isn't enough incentive for an organization to do this just for the sake of profit. It would be cheaper to maintain a skilled team of lobbyists. 3) I suspect that people would be suspicious of cashing a random cheque that purports to be from a well-known company. 4) It might make voter fraud a non-trivial problem.