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Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?

69 points by ryan606 10y ago

Overtonwindow 10y ago
Negative. Those with money will fight like hell to keep from giving it up. However if by some chance/miracle a guaranteed income is ever instituted, it will become a political football, as politicians and advocacy groups seek to continuously push it higher and higher. Instead of a money handout, I would rather support money in exchange for public works and service. I don't believe handouts without some kind of exchange will ever really work.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It's not just those with money that will fight it like hell, a lot of people without much money see working for access to resources as a fairness issue.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  Politically I don't see it being any different to progressive taxes which many (most?) countries already implement. Practically I suspect it will need to be quite low to avoid all sorts of distortions.
  - Overtonwindow 10y ago
    By politically I'm imagining a politician campaigning on the promise to increase the basic minimum income. Vote for me and I'll get your basic income increased. Don't vote for my opponent because they just want to cut your basic income! It's the tax issue all over again.
    - twoodfin 10y ago
      Exactly, and just as likely to be gummed up by complexity. After all, how can you be against teachers and firefighters receiving just a little more BI for their essential, thankless jobs?
      - pgeorgi 10y ago
        but such considerations are what their actual income is for.
    - Retric 10y ago
      You forget the US is run by the rich, which is why this does not happen with Social Security. It's all about not having the benefit cut instead of increasing benefits or lowering retirement age.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    I haven't listened to the episode, but the Basic Income that makes sense is one that replaces all/most welfare programs. The existing programs are very distorting already, often giving poor people 100%+ marginal taxes. Sure, Basic Income would be distorting, but far less than that. It should also save a lot of money since it requires almost no people to administer. This is also the biggest problem with instituting it, since the people holding those jobs will fight to the death to keep them.
    - dageshi 10y ago
      I don't believe it will replace all/most welfare programs. I think it will replace some and then politicians will be elected to top it up for select groups. "Fairness" will come into play, "I am disadvantaged compared to this other person, I should get more, it's only Fair". Plus regional top ups, cost of living in different places is higher than others, I expect there will be a demand for a top up based on cost of living on top of basic BI, again that'll need to be enforced and administered.
  - lawlessone 10y ago
    it doesn't even exist yet and he's trying to distort it.
- mc32 10y ago
  I agree on the points of exchange for public good. Even poor people are loath to see others getting by on "freebies". But a progressive system where BI depends on need (age, for example) and commensurate effort (volunteering, helping take care of elderly, studying, training, etc.) I think is doable and will need to be worked out as more jobs get automated and people are left out of the economy either due to mismatch of skills or other handicap.
  - strommen 10y ago
    A large part of the Basic Income's appeal is that its simplicity would dramatically reduce government overhead. Existing entitlement programs are complicated as hell, and it takes a lot of work to enforce and refine eligibility rules.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    The systems we have today are the compromise results of such a "progressive system" where system income depends on need (age [Social Security, Medicare], circumstance [Unemployment, Social Security Disability, SNAP, Welfare], etc) and based on "commensurate effort" (previous wages, complicated forms, layers and layers of proofs, ...). Have you had to file for Unemployment "Insurance" yet, in your lifetime? It's a complicated circus to get back money that you "paid in". You have to prove, and then re-prove, your past earnings and tax amounts that had paid into the programs (plural if working across state boundaries); you have to "be actively seeking work" and prove, every single week, that fact with somewhat embarrassing forms to fill out to get the money that you already set aside for this already embarrassing situation... These systems treat you as "guilty-by-default" and we've let the worry of possible fraud, however unlikely, turn these systems into giant theaters of "fraud reduction" and complicated terror on the individuals dealing with the system. Basic Income, by expecting to be unqualified and guaranteed to all regardless of need or effort, is intentionally about simplicity and about avoiding the giant red tape spaghetti that is our current "entitlement" systems. If everyone gets it, equally, then you don't need to worry about "fraud" and you don't need to worry about "proof".
    - mc32 10y ago
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >stituted, it will become a political football, as politicians and advocacy groups seek to continuously push it higher and higher. This is pretty much Chicago in a nutshell. You have all these handouts to public sector unions in return for union votes and union support. You have further entitlements given to the poor on the south and west sides for votes. You have all these ugly deals done in exchange for staying in power, and no one cares about actually balancing the books. When push comes to shove, you just raise taxes over and over. In other words it won't just go "higher and higher" it'll just be higher for special interest groups who can deliver votes. If you can't deliver mass votes and aren't part of one of these groups, your income will be low or non-existant as you'll be stuck in the 'worker' group and not in the 'leisure' group. GMI needs an implementation that works. I suspect there really is none that doesn't quickly just become corrupt patronage. GMI and democracy/elections may not be compatible. It may only work under a totalitarian system and sounds pretty close to the USSR's system at that point. The best case scenario here seems to be automation making the cost of living so low that existing welfare systems will just be more than enough to take care of people. If we can vastly lower the cost of everything, then modest payouts will be enough and we'll be able to retain a capitalist and democratic system.
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Social security is basic income for those over 65. It is a football like you say but no one has dramatically increased it for decades. Besides the looming shortfall it seems to be run fairly responsibly.
  - mc32 10y ago
    SS is different in that presumably you have previously contributed to the funds which get disbursed at retirement. Recipients of BI may never have contributed monetarily to the burse.
  - prodmerc 10y ago
    Because those are money paid for (saved up) by the same people while they were young and employed... Where would this basic income for everyone magically come from? It maybe would be possible if the rich (millionaires and especially billionaires) and corporations would pay for it with higher taxes, but since they run the world, I'm guessing that's not gonna happen. Seriously, the current welfare systems are quite ok (pay only those who don't have enough and/or don't have a job), just streamline it and tax the rich a bit more for more money to go into it. Europe seems to do it best so far. But of course that's socialism, etc. (and somehow basic income isn't)...
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I also don't believe it can't work long term unless attitudes change dramatically. People who work for a low income will complain that there are people who get almost the same without doing any work. The same wealthy people who lobby for more tax cuts will also not want to pay for people who don't do anything. There will be a lot of people who will use the freedom granted by basic income for productive means but there will also be a lot of people who won't do anything productive and just live off their basic income. That will give opponents a lot of material for campaigning against basic income. So my prediction is that this won't work long term. That is, unless our society changes in radical ways.
  - pluteoid 10y ago
    The people working for only slightly more than the UBI will get more than twice the income of someone not working at all. Universal basic income means everyone gets the income.
    - maxxxxx 10y ago
      I doubt that. Low end salaries will probably go down unless there is a minimum wage.
  - kspaans 10y ago
    > but there will also be a lot of people who won't do anything productive and just live off their basic income. Won't do anything productive like spend money on food, housing, and entertainment? They will just sit inside and stare at the walls all day.
    - maxxxxx 10y ago
      Not stare at walls but watch TV all day.
      - kspaans 10y ago
        Sounds like great news for distributors, and content creators.
Retric 10y ago
I think we should just call it what it is a dividend. We have crossed a point where handing off 10% of everyone's income allows for a reasonable minimum standard of living. But, because progress is always going to cost some people more than others we need to align incentives. Sorry, I know your a world class doctor, but Auto Scan (TM) just does a better job. The important thing to remember is that % for a given standard is dropping over time. If 1% is enough to reach the current US standard then it's going to be really hard to say no. PS: I don't think we will take this global any time soon. But, we could. World GDP is 106 dollars per person per day. 10% of that is 10.06$ per person per day. 80% of humanity lives on less than 10$ per day.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  Could you expand on "align incentives" a little more please?
  - Chronic51 10y ago
    Why would I, a rich person, pay 10% of my income in the US when I can simply claim citizenship of another (business focused) country?
    - Retric 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine it can happen again.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      Most people aren't willing to give up their citizenship that easily. We can see that because they already do pay more than 10% of their income.
    - stephenhuey 10y ago
      Because if you're still in business, you might still make more money in the U.S. due to other superior resources available here. For example, there might be greater creative output from well-paid workers who receive basic income and profit sharing, and this could lead to better overall returns for business owners. Obviously not all types of businesses would do well, but hopefully the ones that would thrive would be businesses we're more interested in seeing thrive.
f_allwein 10y ago
It is important to consider this as more and more white-collar jobs may become redundant due to automation [e.g. 1]. Moreover, it would be interesting to see what becomes of today's jobs if there were an basic income. E.g. what percentage of jobs would disappear and not be missed? How many people would continue to work at their current job? [1] http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Industries-of-the-Future/Alec-Ross/9781476753652 http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Industries-of-the-Futu...
- ancap 10y ago
  Why? We have had "automation" in some form or another for many millennia and we have not needed a "basic income". Every technological advancement from the invention of hand tools, to creating complex machines can be loosely classified as "automation" and in every case the standard of living has increased and resources were then allocated to some more productive means. Why is today's automation any different?
  - f_allwein 10y ago
    The general argument (made e.g,. in the Alec Ross book) is that there will not be enough paid work left as more and more jobs are automated. So paying a basic income would become necessary to ensure people's survival (or prevent social unrest).
    - ancap 10y ago
      Just around my home I could easily hire a few people to do various jobs at any given time, but it is not cheap enough for me to justify doing that. Automation comes at a cost, and often humans laborers can do the job cheaper. The thing that will be pushing people out of a job is minimum wage, not the automation which often results in reaction to minimum wage.
      - mercutio2 10y ago
        Great! Then you should be strongly in favor of a basic income, because part of the logical construction of BI is the abolition of minimum wage. Minimum wage is a collective agreement to avoid people working below subsistence wages. Once subsistence is guaranteed covered by BI, there will be much less need for low end wage distortions. Admittedly, many wealthy people seem to prefer having subsistence not guaranteed, it makes negotiating for low wage low skill servants much easier. I suspect once we have BI, it will be much more expensive to pay someone to come clean your house.
VincentEvans 10y ago
Why wouldn't all standard of living benefits of basic income get eliminated immediately by all relevant costs rising to soak it up? This happens every single time the poor get any sort of money. In poor neighborhoods the rents cost as much as people are able to pay, no more, no less. Do you know when most rental deposits are collected? Around the tax return season. If suddenly the poor had some money to spare - the rents will simply go up. The water bill will go up. Electricity, gas. Etc.. until there's no extra income left. And then the poor will be in exactly the same situation as they are now. Source: long time resident (and landlord btw) of poor neighborhoods of Philly. P.S: Government is willing to help poor with mortgages? House prices balloon. Government is helping with education grants - colleges raise tuition. Borderline-broke municipalities with enormous unfunded liabilities are looking for any opportunity to collect back taxes and make up new ones. I can go on. Why would this be any different? As the history shows it will provide a benefit for only a short amount of time until costs catch up. P.P.S: I am not an opponent of helping poor, quite the opposite. I just don't know how to go about it in real world.
- branchless 10y ago
  spot on. One group are ready: landlords. People do not understand how prices are set and this is a major barrier to stopping rentier activity. Rents are set by what the market can bear. I hope we get land value tax and stop the leeches.
- arviewer 10y ago
  According to your view, you cannot change anything ever. Take a look at microcredits. Give women in Africa $50 or $100 to start up their own business. They know exactly what to do, and it really helps. Isn't this something similar?
  - VincentEvans 10y ago
    I recall a recent article about that. I really can't recall much of the detail - but it was about how after an immediate success from the monetary infusion, most of the bushiness folded shortly after because owners fell victims to corruption, extortion and crime. So yes, it is similar, but not in a good way. :)
vaadu 10y ago
Where is the incentive to get people off the couch looking for work or going to school?
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Inside every person, silly.
  - lghh 10y ago
    If I had a decent basic income, I wouldn't be working.
    - prodmerc 10y ago
      You wouldn't? What would you be doing? If I had basic income that pays for everyday expenses, I'd be free to learn something (robotics/automation/mechanical engineering) and find a job in that industry...
      - lghh 10y ago
        I'd practice cooking, read a lot, and do some coursera/udacity/whatever courses, and see my friends and family more. I may work as I do now, but only a day or two a week. That would only be if I got very, very bored though.
        prodmerc 10y ago
        Hmm, well I'm quite sure you would apply that knowledge somewhere eventually, after resting for a while maybe...
    - drumdance 10y ago
      But not everyone would. I really love my work. Fewer people in the marketplace would be good for me because it would drive up my wages, which means I could afford to do things that the average UBI recipient could not. Also, it's not like UBI would solve all social problems. Many people who like to work in nonprofits today would continue to do so. Probably even more people would because they would have more of a safety net underneath them while they save the world. That said, I'm skeptical of a UBI. Too many unknown consequences.
dota_fanatic 10y ago
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about anything. Some parents can put 850k in a account for their child when it's born that gets invested, say in the American economy (grows by say 7% over an average, long time period), which compounds until later in life, and when they grow up, they can access it. With good financial responsibility, this child won't have to work a day in their lives and can live off the returns. Why can't we as a society do this for everyone, but you can never touch the account, only the returns? That is, wealth and a foot in the returns of humanity as a right. You're born, you get $1mil put in an account that gets invested. When you turn 18, you start getting a monthly check, the return on that investment. You can never touch the account, only get its returns. Someone tell me why this is a bad idea, worse than guaranteed basic income.
- wskinner 10y ago
  What makes you think the American economy would continue growing at 7% forever? And why do you believe prices wouldn't rise to meet the new common standard of living afforded by this grant?
  - dota_fanatic 10y ago
    Because humans will never stop climbing. It's built into us. Even most people in poverty want to climb, they just have little to no options, so they find ways to cope nevertheless. As for rising prices, surely they can't rise everywhere? People will be able to afford to abandon the obscenely wealthy playpens (SF, NY, Tokyo, etc) and move somewhere that's affordable. Cost of living varies depending on location, doesn't it? Surely this would result in more competition, not less?
- mistermann 10y ago
  Why only one million, why not five million?
- ryandvm 10y ago
  Good luck growing the economy at 7% when your population has a 100% incidence rate of affluenza...
tgflynn 10y ago
It seems to me that the question of how to finance a UBI is probably the largest stumbling block. Of course it could be done through taxes but a lot of people have legitimate concerns about government taxation. For taxation to work you need a coercive government and many of us are very aware of the downsides of such an entity. Of course taxation isn't the only reason we have a coercive government there's also the war on drugs and other policies which seem to ultimately derive from the need of a significant fraction of the population to dictate the choices of their fellow citizens. This tendency is of course inevitably amplified among those who self-select for government or political careers. There is also to some degree a legitimate need for self-defense which also inevitably leads to some degree of coercive government. But even if these problems could be solved, say for example through more rational and better focused defense policies and through evolution of ethical views to give greater weight to the desires of individuals to lead their lives as they see fit, if we are going to provide a safety net for everyone we will always need some form of government and if that government is financed through taxation a level of coercive and invasive policies is likely inevitable. Could we find a better way to finance government and a UBI ? Some countries and regions with extensive natural resources have been able to leverage them to help finance their governments and provide assistance to citizens (examples I believe include Norway and Alaska). However most economies are not so strongly dependent on the exploitation of natural resources so this type of solution cannot be generalized. What if a nation's government became an investor in that nation's economy ? I'm not talking about nationalization of industry but allowing the government to acquire minority ownership of public corporations as a means not of exerting control but of generating income. Could we imagine government evolving to the point of relying for its financing on a financial portfolio much like some universities receive substantial income from their endowments ? I'm not an economist but I've never encountered this idea in the press. It would be interesting to know what the experts think of it.
- branchless 10y ago
  You have to fund it via land value tax or rentiers will take up all the slack. Get rid of income tax, tax land. We want to stop rentiers, we don't want to stop workers. Right now it's back to front, by design.
ancap 10y ago
In the past century we have countless examples of socialism failing, yet its proponents devise some new scheme, some new brand and try to sell it as if something will be different this time. Socialism will always fail because it is contradictory to human nature.
- inflagranti 10y ago
  We have countless examples of capitalism failing too. But the argument that socialism is against human nature is obviously wrong, as humans are social animals. However, as any animal, if you corner them and put them in survival mode, things can get ugly. The purpose of modern states is exactly to provide security in multiple ways, one of them being shared financial security, to remove the need of constant struggle for survival and allow the social side of humanity to flurish. As an example on a smaller scale: There were enough articles recently for instance about Amazon, as an extreme example of hiper competitive anti-social environment that encourages people to backstab each other and play politics to advance. Pure survival mode. Compare that for instance with companies like Google, that spoil everyone and even give you 20% time for free. So far they haven't collapsed. Now you can argue that companies are not countries, but I don't see how such learning don't apply. That exactly is the human behaviour argument. Sorry in advance for the ad-hominem, but that supposedly intelligent people even here on Hacker News keep reiterating old tropes about socialism and human nature unreflected, while any research in that regard or simple observations as illustrated above are contradictory to it, is baffling.
  - ancap 10y ago
    >But the argument that socialism is against human nature is obviously wrong, as humans are social animals. Socialism is anti-social (or were you confused by it having the word "social" in it?). Socialism says two people do not have the right to come to an agreement on the exchange of property and labor. What is social about that? How is that in harmony with human nature? >There were enough articles recently for instance about Amazon, as an extreme example of hiper competitive anti-social environment that encourages people to backstab each other and play politics to advance. And yet people work for Amazon. Willingly. What's wrong with that? Just because the work environment does not meet your standards of what you expect from a job, why would you want to deprive others of their jobs? That's very anti-social. >Now you can argue that companies are not countries, but I don't see how such learning don't apply. Not only are they not countries but trying to extrapolate such scenarios which happen between free acting, cooperating, social individuals to a generic edict enforced through threat of violence is foolhardy. >Sorry in advance for the ad-hominem, but that supposedly intelligent people even here on Hacker News keep reiterating old tropes about socialism and human nature unreflected, while any research in that regard or simple observations as illustrated above are contradictory to it, is baffling. Again, your examples tell us nothing of socialism and are not even applicable.
klunger 10y ago
It was interesting that they used dogs as an example of a population that had its work taken away by technological progress, yet did not provide the obvious counter example (horses).
- SilasX 10y ago
  Horses also had their work taken away by technological progress.
vansteen 10y ago
Next month in Switzerland, there's a votation to establish a basic income. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2016#Basic_income_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2016#Basic_...
wimagguc 10y ago
An earlier Freakonomics episode [1] discusses whether early retirement is bad for the health. According to the show it actually might be: "one additional year of early retirement causes an increase in the risk of premature death of 2.4 percentage points" Guaranteed Basic Income sounds like an early retirement option for most people, so where it's probably a fantastic opportunity for self-starters, it might be lethal for everyone else. GBI's side effect can be weeding out non-entrepreneurs. [1] Early Retirement: Bad For Your Health? http://freakonomics.com/2012/03/29/early-retirement-bad-for-your-health/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/03/29/early-retirement-bad-for-...
JonFish85 10y ago
Well, the real question is, are you ready to pay for the Guaranteed Basic Income? Generously assuming that it's not indexed to inflation, probably what would happen is that costs would rise to account for the newfound money. Then, of course, there would have to be services that remain in place, because if people spend their income stupidly, we can't have them starving in the streets. Then you have the collection problem, that suddenly taxes would have to go up (and they would, of course, regardless of how many services you think you can cut). The people who pay? In general, as with any tax increase, it's the middle class. It's the couple that went to college, saved their money, worked hard, bought a house and started a family. Regardless of how much you think you can raise tax rates on "the rich", the only way to pay for something like this is by getting to the middle class, which is where the tax revenue is.
tzs 10y ago
I've wondered if a "guaranteed basic goods" systems might make sense, either as an alternative to a basic income system, or as a way to slowly transition to one. The idea would be that as we figure out how to automate things, we make those things essentially public goods. We end up with a mixed economy, where we have one class of goods that are produced in publicly owned automated factories and do not cost the consumer money, and another class of goods that work like they do now where private parties produce them and sell them for money which the buyers earn through paid employment. For instance, consider vegetables. We're close to being able to make almost fully automated farms for many crops, and we're close to fully automating most of the shipping from farm to market. The idea would be that as we achieve this, the government buys up these farms (or starts its own farms), and everyone gets a daily allotment of the produce from these farms. Some meat production is also highly automated, and so we should be able to at some point in the not too distant future add meat to this. At that point everyone who has a place to cook has their basic food requirements taken care of. How about transportation? Automobile manufacture is very automated. At some point that too will be almost completely automated. Combine that with self-driving cars, and we should be able to have a publicly owned nationwide fleet of self-driving taxis. Ideally these would be electric cars, powered by publicly owned solar, wind, hydroelectric, or nuclear systems. As automation gets more and more advanced, more and more goods can be added to the "made by publicly owned automated factories" list and made available to all. When enough stuff is automated and turned into public goods to allow someone to survive reasonably without a job as long as they have housing, we can start making publicly owned housing in places where land and construction costs are cheap. That will be away from the big cities, but for people who decide to not work that would be fine, as it would for people who can work remotely. So we should be able to reach a point where everyone can have a basic apartment or small house and the necessities to survive reasonably there, without an income. Will we ever be able to automate everything except creative intellectual work? I don't think so, at least not for a long time. I think that would require the development of something like the robots from Asimov's stories--robots that have human form factors (so that they can work anywhere that a human can work) and human level intelligence, and I don't think we'll be there anytime in the next 100 years. A nice thing about this approach is that it can be done with minimal disruption. With basic income you have to give everyone enough to reasonably survive right from the start. With basic goods, you go item by item, industry by industry.

69 points by ryan606 10y ago

Negative. Those with money will fight like hell to keep from giving it up. However if by some chance/miracle a guaranteed income is ever instituted, it will become a political football, as politicians and advocacy groups seek to continuously push it higher and higher. Instead of a money handout, I would rather support money in exchange for public works and service. I don't believe handouts without some kind of exchange will ever really work.

maxerickson 10y ago
It's not just those with money that will fight it like hell, a lot of people without much money see working for access to resources as a fairness issue.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
Politically I don't see it being any different to progressive taxes which many (most?) countries already implement. Practically I suspect it will need to be quite low to avoid all sorts of distortions.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  By politically I'm imagining a politician campaigning on the promise to increase the basic minimum income. Vote for me and I'll get your basic income increased. Don't vote for my opponent because they just want to cut your basic income! It's the tax issue all over again.
  - twoodfin 10y ago
    Exactly, and just as likely to be gummed up by complexity. After all, how can you be against teachers and firefighters receiving just a little more BI for their essential, thankless jobs?
    - pgeorgi 10y ago
      but such considerations are what their actual income is for.
  - Retric 10y ago
    You forget the US is run by the rich, which is why this does not happen with Social Security. It's all about not having the benefit cut instead of increasing benefits or lowering retirement age.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  I haven't listened to the episode, but the Basic Income that makes sense is one that replaces all/most welfare programs. The existing programs are very distorting already, often giving poor people 100%+ marginal taxes. Sure, Basic Income would be distorting, but far less than that. It should also save a lot of money since it requires almost no people to administer. This is also the biggest problem with instituting it, since the people holding those jobs will fight to the death to keep them.
  - dageshi 10y ago
    I don't believe it will replace all/most welfare programs. I think it will replace some and then politicians will be elected to top it up for select groups. "Fairness" will come into play, "I am disadvantaged compared to this other person, I should get more, it's only Fair". Plus regional top ups, cost of living in different places is higher than others, I expect there will be a demand for a top up based on cost of living on top of basic BI, again that'll need to be enforced and administered.
- lawlessone 10y ago
  it doesn't even exist yet and he's trying to distort it.
mc32 10y ago
I agree on the points of exchange for public good. Even poor people are loath to see others getting by on "freebies". But a progressive system where BI depends on need (age, for example) and commensurate effort (volunteering, helping take care of elderly, studying, training, etc.) I think is doable and will need to be worked out as more jobs get automated and people are left out of the economy either due to mismatch of skills or other handicap.
- strommen 10y ago
  A large part of the Basic Income's appeal is that its simplicity would dramatically reduce government overhead. Existing entitlement programs are complicated as hell, and it takes a lot of work to enforce and refine eligibility rules.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  The systems we have today are the compromise results of such a "progressive system" where system income depends on need (age [Social Security, Medicare], circumstance [Unemployment, Social Security Disability, SNAP, Welfare], etc) and based on "commensurate effort" (previous wages, complicated forms, layers and layers of proofs, ...). Have you had to file for Unemployment "Insurance" yet, in your lifetime? It's a complicated circus to get back money that you "paid in". You have to prove, and then re-prove, your past earnings and tax amounts that had paid into the programs (plural if working across state boundaries); you have to "be actively seeking work" and prove, every single week, that fact with somewhat embarrassing forms to fill out to get the money that you already set aside for this already embarrassing situation... These systems treat you as "guilty-by-default" and we've let the worry of possible fraud, however unlikely, turn these systems into giant theaters of "fraud reduction" and complicated terror on the individuals dealing with the system. Basic Income, by expecting to be unqualified and guaranteed to all regardless of need or effort, is intentionally about simplicity and about avoiding the giant red tape spaghetti that is our current "entitlement" systems. If everyone gets it, equally, then you don't need to worry about "fraud" and you don't need to worry about "proof".
  - mc32 10y ago
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>stituted, it will become a political football, as politicians and advocacy groups seek to continuously push it higher and higher. This is pretty much Chicago in a nutshell. You have all these handouts to public sector unions in return for union votes and union support. You have further entitlements given to the poor on the south and west sides for votes. You have all these ugly deals done in exchange for staying in power, and no one cares about actually balancing the books. When push comes to shove, you just raise taxes over and over. In other words it won't just go "higher and higher" it'll just be higher for special interest groups who can deliver votes. If you can't deliver mass votes and aren't part of one of these groups, your income will be low or non-existant as you'll be stuck in the 'worker' group and not in the 'leisure' group. GMI needs an implementation that works. I suspect there really is none that doesn't quickly just become corrupt patronage. GMI and democracy/elections may not be compatible. It may only work under a totalitarian system and sounds pretty close to the USSR's system at that point. The best case scenario here seems to be automation making the cost of living so low that existing welfare systems will just be more than enough to take care of people. If we can vastly lower the cost of everything, then modest payouts will be enough and we'll be able to retain a capitalist and democratic system.
mrfusion 10y ago
Social security is basic income for those over 65. It is a football like you say but no one has dramatically increased it for decades. Besides the looming shortfall it seems to be run fairly responsibly.
- mc32 10y ago
  SS is different in that presumably you have previously contributed to the funds which get disbursed at retirement. Recipients of BI may never have contributed monetarily to the burse.
- prodmerc 10y ago
  Because those are money paid for (saved up) by the same people while they were young and employed... Where would this basic income for everyone magically come from? It maybe would be possible if the rich (millionaires and especially billionaires) and corporations would pay for it with higher taxes, but since they run the world, I'm guessing that's not gonna happen. Seriously, the current welfare systems are quite ok (pay only those who don't have enough and/or don't have a job), just streamline it and tax the rich a bit more for more money to go into it. Europe seems to do it best so far. But of course that's socialism, etc. (and somehow basic income isn't)...
maxxxxx 10y ago
I also don't believe it can't work long term unless attitudes change dramatically. People who work for a low income will complain that there are people who get almost the same without doing any work. The same wealthy people who lobby for more tax cuts will also not want to pay for people who don't do anything. There will be a lot of people who will use the freedom granted by basic income for productive means but there will also be a lot of people who won't do anything productive and just live off their basic income. That will give opponents a lot of material for campaigning against basic income. So my prediction is that this won't work long term. That is, unless our society changes in radical ways.
- pluteoid 10y ago
  The people working for only slightly more than the UBI will get more than twice the income of someone not working at all. Universal basic income means everyone gets the income.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I doubt that. Low end salaries will probably go down unless there is a minimum wage.
- kspaans 10y ago
  > but there will also be a lot of people who won't do anything productive and just live off their basic income. Won't do anything productive like spend money on food, housing, and entertainment? They will just sit inside and stare at the walls all day.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    Not stare at walls but watch TV all day.
    - kspaans 10y ago
      Sounds like great news for distributors, and content creators.

Retric 10y ago

I think we should just call it what it is a dividend. We have crossed a point where handing off 10% of everyone's income allows for a reasonable minimum standard of living. But, because progress is always going to cost some people more than others we need to align incentives. Sorry, I know your a world class doctor, but Auto Scan (TM) just does a better job. The important thing to remember is that % for a given standard is dropping over time. If 1% is enough to reach the current US standard then it's going to be really hard to say no. PS: I don't think we will take this global any time soon. But, we could. World GDP is 106 dollars per person per day. 10% of that is 10.06$ per person per day. 80% of humanity lives on less than 10$ per day.

Overtonwindow 10y ago
Could you expand on "align incentives" a little more please?
- Chronic51 10y ago
  Why would I, a rich person, pay 10% of my income in the US when I can simply claim citizenship of another (business focused) country?
  - Retric 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine it can happen again.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    Most people aren't willing to give up their citizenship that easily. We can see that because they already do pay more than 10% of their income.
  - stephenhuey 10y ago
    Because if you're still in business, you might still make more money in the U.S. due to other superior resources available here. For example, there might be greater creative output from well-paid workers who receive basic income and profit sharing, and this could lead to better overall returns for business owners. Obviously not all types of businesses would do well, but hopefully the ones that would thrive would be businesses we're more interested in seeing thrive.

f_allwein 10y ago

It is important to consider this as more and more white-collar jobs may become redundant due to automation [e.g. 1]. Moreover, it would be interesting to see what becomes of today's jobs if there were an basic income. E.g. what percentage of jobs would disappear and not be missed? How many people would continue to work at their current job? [1] http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Industries-of-the-Future/Alec-Ross/9781476753652 http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Industries-of-the-Futu...

ancap 10y ago
Why? We have had "automation" in some form or another for many millennia and we have not needed a "basic income". Every technological advancement from the invention of hand tools, to creating complex machines can be loosely classified as "automation" and in every case the standard of living has increased and resources were then allocated to some more productive means. Why is today's automation any different?
- f_allwein 10y ago
  The general argument (made e.g,. in the Alec Ross book) is that there will not be enough paid work left as more and more jobs are automated. So paying a basic income would become necessary to ensure people's survival (or prevent social unrest).
  - ancap 10y ago
    Just around my home I could easily hire a few people to do various jobs at any given time, but it is not cheap enough for me to justify doing that. Automation comes at a cost, and often humans laborers can do the job cheaper. The thing that will be pushing people out of a job is minimum wage, not the automation which often results in reaction to minimum wage.
    - mercutio2 10y ago
      Great! Then you should be strongly in favor of a basic income, because part of the logical construction of BI is the abolition of minimum wage. Minimum wage is a collective agreement to avoid people working below subsistence wages. Once subsistence is guaranteed covered by BI, there will be much less need for low end wage distortions. Admittedly, many wealthy people seem to prefer having subsistence not guaranteed, it makes negotiating for low wage low skill servants much easier. I suspect once we have BI, it will be much more expensive to pay someone to come clean your house.

VincentEvans 10y ago

Why wouldn't all standard of living benefits of basic income get eliminated immediately by all relevant costs rising to soak it up? This happens every single time the poor get any sort of money. In poor neighborhoods the rents cost as much as people are able to pay, no more, no less. Do you know when most rental deposits are collected? Around the tax return season. If suddenly the poor had some money to spare - the rents will simply go up. The water bill will go up. Electricity, gas. Etc.. until there's no extra income left. And then the poor will be in exactly the same situation as they are now. Source: long time resident (and landlord btw) of poor neighborhoods of Philly. P.S: Government is willing to help poor with mortgages? House prices balloon. Government is helping with education grants - colleges raise tuition. Borderline-broke municipalities with enormous unfunded liabilities are looking for any opportunity to collect back taxes and make up new ones. I can go on. Why would this be any different? As the history shows it will provide a benefit for only a short amount of time until costs catch up. P.P.S: I am not an opponent of helping poor, quite the opposite. I just don't know how to go about it in real world.

branchless 10y ago
spot on. One group are ready: landlords. People do not understand how prices are set and this is a major barrier to stopping rentier activity. Rents are set by what the market can bear. I hope we get land value tax and stop the leeches.
arviewer 10y ago
According to your view, you cannot change anything ever. Take a look at microcredits. Give women in Africa $50 or $100 to start up their own business. They know exactly what to do, and it really helps. Isn't this something similar?
- VincentEvans 10y ago
  I recall a recent article about that. I really can't recall much of the detail - but it was about how after an immediate success from the monetary infusion, most of the bushiness folded shortly after because owners fell victims to corruption, extortion and crime. So yes, it is similar, but not in a good way. :)

vaadu 10y ago

Where is the incentive to get people off the couch looking for work or going to school?

mrfusion 10y ago
Inside every person, silly.
- lghh 10y ago
  If I had a decent basic income, I wouldn't be working.
  - prodmerc 10y ago
    You wouldn't? What would you be doing? If I had basic income that pays for everyday expenses, I'd be free to learn something (robotics/automation/mechanical engineering) and find a job in that industry...
    - lghh 10y ago
      I'd practice cooking, read a lot, and do some coursera/udacity/whatever courses, and see my friends and family more. I may work as I do now, but only a day or two a week. That would only be if I got very, very bored though.
      - prodmerc 10y ago
        Hmm, well I'm quite sure you would apply that knowledge somewhere eventually, after resting for a while maybe...
  - drumdance 10y ago
    But not everyone would. I really love my work. Fewer people in the marketplace would be good for me because it would drive up my wages, which means I could afford to do things that the average UBI recipient could not. Also, it's not like UBI would solve all social problems. Many people who like to work in nonprofits today would continue to do so. Probably even more people would because they would have more of a safety net underneath them while they save the world. That said, I'm skeptical of a UBI. Too many unknown consequences.

dota_fanatic 10y ago

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about anything. Some parents can put 850k in a account for their child when it's born that gets invested, say in the American economy (grows by say 7% over an average, long time period), which compounds until later in life, and when they grow up, they can access it. With good financial responsibility, this child won't have to work a day in their lives and can live off the returns. Why can't we as a society do this for everyone, but you can never touch the account, only the returns? That is, wealth and a foot in the returns of humanity as a right. You're born, you get $1mil put in an account that gets invested. When you turn 18, you start getting a monthly check, the return on that investment. You can never touch the account, only get its returns. Someone tell me why this is a bad idea, worse than guaranteed basic income.

wskinner 10y ago
What makes you think the American economy would continue growing at 7% forever? And why do you believe prices wouldn't rise to meet the new common standard of living afforded by this grant?
- dota_fanatic 10y ago
  Because humans will never stop climbing. It's built into us. Even most people in poverty want to climb, they just have little to no options, so they find ways to cope nevertheless. As for rising prices, surely they can't rise everywhere? People will be able to afford to abandon the obscenely wealthy playpens (SF, NY, Tokyo, etc) and move somewhere that's affordable. Cost of living varies depending on location, doesn't it? Surely this would result in more competition, not less?
mistermann 10y ago
Why only one million, why not five million?
ryandvm 10y ago
Good luck growing the economy at 7% when your population has a 100% incidence rate of affluenza...

tgflynn 10y ago

It seems to me that the question of how to finance a UBI is probably the largest stumbling block. Of course it could be done through taxes but a lot of people have legitimate concerns about government taxation. For taxation to work you need a coercive government and many of us are very aware of the downsides of such an entity. Of course taxation isn't the only reason we have a coercive government there's also the war on drugs and other policies which seem to ultimately derive from the need of a significant fraction of the population to dictate the choices of their fellow citizens. This tendency is of course inevitably amplified among those who self-select for government or political careers. There is also to some degree a legitimate need for self-defense which also inevitably leads to some degree of coercive government. But even if these problems could be solved, say for example through more rational and better focused defense policies and through evolution of ethical views to give greater weight to the desires of individuals to lead their lives as they see fit, if we are going to provide a safety net for everyone we will always need some form of government and if that government is financed through taxation a level of coercive and invasive policies is likely inevitable. Could we find a better way to finance government and a UBI ? Some countries and regions with extensive natural resources have been able to leverage them to help finance their governments and provide assistance to citizens (examples I believe include Norway and Alaska). However most economies are not so strongly dependent on the exploitation of natural resources so this type of solution cannot be generalized. What if a nation's government became an investor in that nation's economy ? I'm not talking about nationalization of industry but allowing the government to acquire minority ownership of public corporations as a means not of exerting control but of generating income. Could we imagine government evolving to the point of relying for its financing on a financial portfolio much like some universities receive substantial income from their endowments ? I'm not an economist but I've never encountered this idea in the press. It would be interesting to know what the experts think of it.

branchless 10y ago
You have to fund it via land value tax or rentiers will take up all the slack. Get rid of income tax, tax land. We want to stop rentiers, we don't want to stop workers. Right now it's back to front, by design.

ancap 10y ago

In the past century we have countless examples of socialism failing, yet its proponents devise some new scheme, some new brand and try to sell it as if something will be different this time. Socialism will always fail because it is contradictory to human nature.

inflagranti 10y ago
We have countless examples of capitalism failing too. But the argument that socialism is against human nature is obviously wrong, as humans are social animals. However, as any animal, if you corner them and put them in survival mode, things can get ugly. The purpose of modern states is exactly to provide security in multiple ways, one of them being shared financial security, to remove the need of constant struggle for survival and allow the social side of humanity to flurish. As an example on a smaller scale: There were enough articles recently for instance about Amazon, as an extreme example of hiper competitive anti-social environment that encourages people to backstab each other and play politics to advance. Pure survival mode. Compare that for instance with companies like Google, that spoil everyone and even give you 20% time for free. So far they haven't collapsed. Now you can argue that companies are not countries, but I don't see how such learning don't apply. That exactly is the human behaviour argument. Sorry in advance for the ad-hominem, but that supposedly intelligent people even here on Hacker News keep reiterating old tropes about socialism and human nature unreflected, while any research in that regard or simple observations as illustrated above are contradictory to it, is baffling.
- ancap 10y ago
  >But the argument that socialism is against human nature is obviously wrong, as humans are social animals. Socialism is anti-social (or were you confused by it having the word "social" in it?). Socialism says two people do not have the right to come to an agreement on the exchange of property and labor. What is social about that? How is that in harmony with human nature? >There were enough articles recently for instance about Amazon, as an extreme example of hiper competitive anti-social environment that encourages people to backstab each other and play politics to advance. And yet people work for Amazon. Willingly. What's wrong with that? Just because the work environment does not meet your standards of what you expect from a job, why would you want to deprive others of their jobs? That's very anti-social. >Now you can argue that companies are not countries, but I don't see how such learning don't apply. Not only are they not countries but trying to extrapolate such scenarios which happen between free acting, cooperating, social individuals to a generic edict enforced through threat of violence is foolhardy. >Sorry in advance for the ad-hominem, but that supposedly intelligent people even here on Hacker News keep reiterating old tropes about socialism and human nature unreflected, while any research in that regard or simple observations as illustrated above are contradictory to it, is baffling. Again, your examples tell us nothing of socialism and are not even applicable.

klunger 10y ago

It was interesting that they used dogs as an example of a population that had its work taken away by technological progress, yet did not provide the obvious counter example (horses).

SilasX 10y ago
Horses also had their work taken away by technological progress.

vansteen 10y ago

Next month in Switzerland, there's a votation to establish a basic income. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2016#Basic_income_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2016#Basic_...

wimagguc 10y ago

An earlier Freakonomics episode [1] discusses whether early retirement is bad for the health. According to the show it actually might be: "one additional year of early retirement causes an increase in the risk of premature death of 2.4 percentage points" Guaranteed Basic Income sounds like an early retirement option for most people, so where it's probably a fantastic opportunity for self-starters, it might be lethal for everyone else. GBI's side effect can be weeding out non-entrepreneurs. [1] Early Retirement: Bad For Your Health? http://freakonomics.com/2012/03/29/early-retirement-bad-for-your-health/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/03/29/early-retirement-bad-for-...

JonFish85 10y ago

Well, the real question is, are you ready to pay for the Guaranteed Basic Income? Generously assuming that it's not indexed to inflation, probably what would happen is that costs would rise to account for the newfound money. Then, of course, there would have to be services that remain in place, because if people spend their income stupidly, we can't have them starving in the streets. Then you have the collection problem, that suddenly taxes would have to go up (and they would, of course, regardless of how many services you think you can cut). The people who pay? In general, as with any tax increase, it's the middle class. It's the couple that went to college, saved their money, worked hard, bought a house and started a family. Regardless of how much you think you can raise tax rates on "the rich", the only way to pay for something like this is by getting to the middle class, which is where the tax revenue is.

tzs 10y ago

I've wondered if a "guaranteed basic goods" systems might make sense, either as an alternative to a basic income system, or as a way to slowly transition to one. The idea would be that as we figure out how to automate things, we make those things essentially public goods. We end up with a mixed economy, where we have one class of goods that are produced in publicly owned automated factories and do not cost the consumer money, and another class of goods that work like they do now where private parties produce them and sell them for money which the buyers earn through paid employment. For instance, consider vegetables. We're close to being able to make almost fully automated farms for many crops, and we're close to fully automating most of the shipping from farm to market. The idea would be that as we achieve this, the government buys up these farms (or starts its own farms), and everyone gets a daily allotment of the produce from these farms. Some meat production is also highly automated, and so we should be able to at some point in the not too distant future add meat to this. At that point everyone who has a place to cook has their basic food requirements taken care of. How about transportation? Automobile manufacture is very automated. At some point that too will be almost completely automated. Combine that with self-driving cars, and we should be able to have a publicly owned nationwide fleet of self-driving taxis. Ideally these would be electric cars, powered by publicly owned solar, wind, hydroelectric, or nuclear systems. As automation gets more and more advanced, more and more goods can be added to the "made by publicly owned automated factories" list and made available to all. When enough stuff is automated and turned into public goods to allow someone to survive reasonably without a job as long as they have housing, we can start making publicly owned housing in places where land and construction costs are cheap. That will be away from the big cities, but for people who decide to not work that would be fine, as it would for people who can work remotely. So we should be able to reach a point where everyone can have a basic apartment or small house and the necessities to survive reasonably there, without an income. Will we ever be able to automate everything except creative intellectual work? I don't think so, at least not for a long time. I think that would require the development of something like the robots from Asimov's stories--robots that have human form factors (so that they can work anywhere that a human can work) and human level intelligence, and I don't think we'll be there anytime in the next 100 years. A nice thing about this approach is that it can be done with minimal disruption. With basic income you have to give everyone enough to reasonably survive right from the start. With basic goods, you go item by item, industry by industry.