16 ms·

Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

75 points by joeyespo 10y ago

TomorrowRich 10y ago
Basic Income is a utopian fantasy. It will never have the support of the working class.
err4nt 10y ago
As a Canadian entrepreneur I worry that mincome/basic income will serve to knock the wind out of the sails of many innovators and entrepreneurs who, like me, are currently DRIVEN to work hard, research, push the industry along and crank up competition. I would much, much rather work hard, earn more money, and feed my neighbour - than have no hope of digging myself out of my situation no matter hos hard I worked, being taxed, and then myself being supported by taxes I lost after they've been spread around. Rigt now I see a need and want to help by helping to educate entrepreneurs on how to make more money, when I see somebody trying really hard to succeed that makes me WANT to invest anything I can in their success. But the moment people want to pillage my profits Im finding greener pastures. I dont think Im alone in this - if mincome is a big tent that relies on a few strong tentpoles to hold it up and cover everybody - those tentpoles are hard working entrepreneurs. If mincome ever becomes a reality those tentpoles will leave and what was a tent sheltering and protecting people will collapse and suffocate all left inside.
- ck425 10y ago
  What of the arguments that it would encourage entrepreneur by giving them more of a safety net to try new ventures? Additionally most studies suggest Basic Income won't be that much more expense and will save heavily on administration costs, so the tax aspect is minimal.
- ep103 10y ago
  Most of the reports I've seen have stated that actually, it works the other way around. That the vast majority of people who go into entrepreneurship only do so if they have money to fall back on, one way or another, should their business fail. So by that logic, basic income should actually significantly increase the likelihood of entrepreneurship, because while mincome will still be low enough that people will want to work, it will be high enough to remove the barrier to entrepreneurship of: "but if this idea doesn't work out, I won't be able to eat"
  - pmalynin 10y ago
    I think there was a bit on NPR a few months ago that discussed the idea that having a fallback will make you work and try less exactly for the same reason. I think having the "cornered animal" type of drive goes a long way.
    - erpellan 10y ago
      By that logic productivity in all industries could be improved by introducing flogging / periodic executions of lowest performing staff. What's more likely: someone takes a risk knowing that if they fail their kids won't be homeless, or knowing that if they fail, they will be?
      - pmalynin 10y ago
        You are right -- that's how we built the Pyramids and America pre civil war, and look how far that got us. If you want interpret my response at the extremes I'm more that glad to dance.
        ch4s3 10y ago
        The pyramids were built with corvee labor as a tax scheme and antebellum America relied on slavery, even the industrial free states utilized cheap raw materials like cotton produced in slave states. Are you suggesting that compelling people to work by force is an appropriate modern economic system?
        pmalynin 10y ago
        It's just as appropriate as 'flogging / periodic executions of lowest performing staff' Hence my point.
      - derekp7 10y ago
        Some companies do this to a lesser degree -- every year they fire the bottom 10% of performers -- also known as stacked ranking.
- wirt 10y ago
  HN has finally gone full Randian.
- sanxiyn 10y ago
  This seems to be against redistribution, not basic income. Basic income is "how" of redistribution. "How much" part is very much orthogonal. Are you okay as long as basic income does not increase amount of redistribution, or do you have some specific objection to basic income as a method of redistribution?
  - err4nt 10y ago
    Using the government to redistribute money to those in need is like giving your right arm a blood transfusion from your own left arm, but spilling 2/3 of the blood on the way over. I strongly believe in charity and social assistance, but its MY job, not the governments job to make sure my family and neighbours are fed and safe. Government needs to deal with national and international issues. What happens to my neighbour is MY responsibility and I believe citizens can organize and redistribute resources for muuuuuch cheaper than a government can.
- troncheadle 10y ago
  Alright John Gault. If we're talking nation level, your startup is not a 'tentpole.' How does your market cap compare to GE, Google, Amazon, Lockheed? Those are redwoods, and there are plenty of those. You're a maple sapling, there are plenty of those too. You're doing that thing where the middle class rebels against their own interests by positioning said interests as the interests of the working class, because they see themselves as soooo much more driven, and hardworking -- get real, plenty of people living in poverty with the same hustle as you, they just grew up on the other side of Toronto without access to the same resources. Basic income doesn't come off the backs of small business, and that is a silly reason to be so afraid of it.
  - psycr 10y ago
    Opportunity is not evenly distributed, yes. But neither is skill. > Basic income doesn't come off the backs of small business, and that is a silly reason to be so afraid of it. What's the name of your business?
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - snuxoll 10y ago
      > Opportunity is not evenly distributed, yes. But neither is skill. Skill can be learned with enough drive. Opportunity is required for success, there's plenty of smart, skilled people in the world who are stuck in the workforce because of lack of it. Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers" is a good read on the effect opportunity (or the lack thereof) has on our lives. It can come off as pretty over simplified and anecdotal so don't take my praise of the book as me touting it as something it's not, but it's worth reading (and I rarely say that of required texts from courses I've taken).
    - troncheadle 10y ago
      That's just willfully ignorant. For majority of people, differences in opportunity are SO much more influential in their lives than differences in skill or intelligence. Consider three kids -- one is rich, suburban white, IQ is 170. The other is rich, suburban white, IQ is 75. The third is poor, inner city black, IQ 170. In this situation, which lives do you think look most similar to one another? If you answered 'obviously the white kids', then great! You get it. If you answered 'the two kids with an IQ of 170' then you need to spend some time in the real world. Let's add kid #4 -- poor, black, inner city, IQ 75. If we want to compare across QoL, opportunity, really almost any metric, we're going to group across socio-economic lines, not IQ. If you find yourself thinking 'Well what if that young black kid catches a lucky break and gets out of poverty' you're almost there -- the need to catch a lucky break to escape is a defining aspect of poverty and it works against even the most naturally skilled people. The amount of skill needed to overcome that lack in opportunity makes it silly to bring skill into the equation when talking about opportunity. Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.
- kohanz 10y ago
  Sorry, but this is the same argument we see time and time again against higher taxes (not just Mincome). We saw it in 2008 with "Joe the Plumber". Some entrepreneurs are driven by maximizing profit margins and some aren't. If your opinion was widely shared, there would be almost no entrepreneurial success stories in countries with a much more socialist approach than even Canada (e.g. throughout Europe). I am a Canadian entrepreneur too, but I love this country and that has to do with a lot more than just how much tax I pay. If they were to raise taxes for good reasons, it wouldn't cause me to uproot my family and leave.
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  - err4nt 10y ago
    If they give taxes a bump of course, but what if they radically rearrange taxes. There are many voices i hear who believe people above certain limits should be taxed 90% or more, and some cutoff limits Ive heard have been 250k, or even 100k. If you suddenly fell into a 90% taxation bracket would you still be just as happy as today?
    - mordocai 10y ago
      You do realize that, assuming taxes work like they do today, it'd be 90% on the amount over 250k/100k not 90% over the total income? Assuming you realize it, your point must be that only having 10% effective increase in income after you reach the threshold is demotivating, and I would agree.
      - err4nt 10y ago
        So a bracket like that which stifles motivation would absolutely hurt industry, economy, and innovation. Its like youre in a race against every other business and country in the world, and you say: "hey, lets put these leg cuffs on! No everybody has a 3 foot stride wehn walking, so its no fair for you to walk fast. These shackles will only restrict your movement if you succeed too much and are able to take bigger strides. The most important thing is to reduce the gaps between winners and losers!" In that race, do you think you stand a fighting chance against unshackled competitors?
- aleksei 10y ago
  So what's your take on universal healthcare? Do you resent having to pay for the treatment of others? I get that increased taxes are offputting, but what's your alternative to making sure people aren't forced to live on the street, taking into account future loss of work due to automation? And what makes you believe that mincome would deter people from innovation?
  - err4nt 10y ago
    Its not about an increased tax ration, its about entitlement and motivation. Would you feel better giving $1000 to charity, or having $500 stolen from you?
- deleted 10y ago
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- huherto 10y ago
  As an entrepreneur, you need consumers to succeed. If there is a healthy middle class (assuming basic income helps) your businesses has better chances.
- milesvp 10y ago
  I'm not sure you're worries are about the right things. As an entreprenuer I highly value safety nets. The odds of failing are so high that without things like publicly supported bankruptcy I don't think I'd ever risk going into the kind of debt necessary to succeed. So I imagine minimum income to be a huge boon entreprenuership. As an economist however, I may be in agreement. I have some concerns about the inflationary effects of a minimum income. I have a strong suspicion that goods strongly associated with low income will tend to get more expensive, negating much of the benefit of a minimum income. And I'm also concerned about the positive feedback in the political system where the majority continue to vote for increases to their stipends uncontrollably. All in all I'm not sure which is going to have the bigger effect long term on the economy.
  - VLM 10y ago
    So ... one problem is a long term tanking in the velocity of money. Can't make commissions or skim off money that's not spent. No matter how fast or slow the revenue comes in, the fixed debt, is fixed. Its very hard to argue that even if every penny goes into the pocket of a couple New York Bankers, that there won't be more activity along the way than if nothing gets spent. Something interesting to consider is there are goods and economic fields where the population has been trained to say they'll pay anything for X, Y, or Z. Medical care, Education, Real Estate, whatever. Given that we have generations of explosive inflation in those fields way beyond normal inflation rate, I don't think changing the base income would change much in the long run. If health care costs always in the past and forever in the future until rapidly approaching system collapse will increase by 25% annually, then giving a poor person $10K/yr will have basically no impact in the long run. Like arguments I had with my wife about Peapod grocery delivery vs shopping myself... the difference is (was) approximately six months of food inflation price, and I don't enjoy shopping, and I intend to continue eating six months in the future, so I don't care if it costs a little more today, its not really changing anything in my life financially. Another interesting thing to think about is the old Dr Phil line about money problems being unable to be fixed with money. So giving 10K to poor people means in practice its all going to disappear with no improvement in standard of living, just like every other handout in the history of humanity. Such that there's almost no point in talking about that economic segment of the population WRT mincome. And its not much money for rich people, so ignore them too. mincome is a purely middle class play, its the only group that can experience any change.
- Applejinx 10y ago
  As an American entrepreneur I've run a small business for nearly ten years, over that time earning nearly a quarter of a million dollars (yeah, not quite Facebook). I've observed that my income closely tracks a Fed metric having to do with disposable income of working class citizens (almost perfectly tracks a metric of increases/decreases in that labor share) As such I'm finding your attitude impractical. Why do I, as a business owner, care whether you personally think some third person is a try-hard eager beaver? If you yourself don't want to work, you should indeed leave. I'm not at all sure you understand the math of this. Personally, I'm all for the poorer classes having spending money, because as near as I can work out, sometimes they will spend it on me. When they starve, I starve. No amount of exceptionalism will change that simple fact, and if you're honest about the math you see that the whole point is getting rid of 'a few strong tentpoles'. Those guys are distorting the system and SHOULD leave. Celebrating them is a fool's game.
IsaacL 10y ago
"If we’re interested in social policies that are resilient I think the dignity problem, or the moral aspects of these policies are worth considering more closely." I certainly agree the moral aspects are worth considering. No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors. Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. The current welfare systems are a messy parcel of compromises, but they at least acknowledge that people have to demonstrate need to be the recipients of government handouts. Once you establish that people have a permanent, inalienable right to an income, you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.
- duaneb 10y ago
  > Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. Have you witnessed this?
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  - 1123581321 10y ago
    I have seen it in every discussion. Some of the forms of evasion include: * focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses * focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish * focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial failure anyway so comparison is pointless * taking the position that BI is only replacing current welfare programs (until it's pointed out that current programs would not support anyone if spread around) Occasionally, someone will admit that they are proposing a 100% tax rate, which is about what such a system requires. Even more occasionally, it's admitted that every country must implement a 100% tax rate at once to avoid mass emigration of anyone earning more than ~$20k/year.
    - 10y ago
yummyfajitas 10y ago
It's extremely counterproductive to, as the article puts it, "take the question of the moral quality of the poor off the table." The fact is that a large amount of poverty is directly correlated with "moral quality". Most poor people in the US (maybe Canada is different?) have low "moral quality", which I define as engaging in behaviors that are likely to keep a person poor. These behaviors include not seeking work [1], substance abuse [2], single motherhood [3] and crime [4] (including crimes with no economic motive such as intimate partner violence). There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc. Why would we want to take the primary cause of poverty off the table if our goal is to solve it? It's almost as if this guy's primary goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents rather than reduce poverty. [1] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... [2] http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH-MHDetTabs2013.pdf http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs... https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/adultsmoking/ http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/adultsmoking/ [3] https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520248198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323532894&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage... http://www.economics21.org/html/great-gatsby-curve-revisited-part-1-755.html#.U8KmDXV53UY http://www.economics21.org/html/great-gatsby-curve-revisited... [4] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf
- clavalle 10y ago
  So it is your sincere belief that most poor people are 'broken' in the sense that they can't even make rational decisions where 'rational' means 'likely to improve one's life'?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    I don't know. In the past I argued that the poor are completely rational and simply choose to exploit the safety net. It's a hypothesis I can't rule out. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_work.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_wo... But that doesn't explain many of their other bad behaviors, e.g. wife beating.
throw2016 10y ago
You only get one life and anything that let's everyone and not just those born to privilege get a shot at doing more than just surviving can only be a good thing. It may unlock a whole new level of untapped human creativity and potential leading to a happier and perhaps more dynamic and productive society. There is a risk of focussing on narrower narratives rooted in the current economic context and missing the proverbial woods for the trees. Maybe freed of that bigger ideas can emerge.
krupan 10y ago
Every time basic income comes up people seem to missunderstand the key points: 1) It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment. Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life. 2) It's a huge reduction and simplification of government, replacing several huge bureaucratic entities with one that effectively just mails out checks to everyone periodically.
- jackcosgrove 10y ago
  > Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life. That's a glib statement that ignores the experience of welfare pre-reform, and SSDI currently. Of course some people will do just that, and the relative difficulty of earning a wage compared to the relative generosity of a basic income would determine the proportion of people who live like this.
- epistasis 10y ago
  I'm not sure if there's agreement on either of those points, honestly. A good number of people who talk about basic income are talking about giving less than is enough for subsistence living. And many talk about keeping additional programs in place, such as disability (somebody with special medical needs will not be able to live on the same income as somebody that can care for themselves and does not need additional medical care). It's important to come up with concrete proposals. I don't think that there's going to be much overhead savings from your point number (2), and I'm not sure if we're ready for the tax levels that (1) would bring.
  - krupan 10y ago
    I agree that there are lots of variations on the themes of points 1 and 2 and that's a huge problem in trying to discuss this intelligently and dispassionately. On a personal note, I'm less interested in savings from point 2 than I am in a reduction in power and corruption (or at least corruptibility).
  - mordocai 10y ago
shams93 10y ago
Basic income shouldn't be welfare imagine you have an ai or robot doing your job who owns the output? If only a few people benefit from this productivity the system eventually implodes. In order to keep capitalism functioning in a post human work society you need a mechanism for redistribution . Basic income shouldn't be welfare it's supposed to represent your share of the productivity of a post human economy.
someone7x 10y ago
> Mincome was not unlike the un-stigmatizing benefits that can come at tax time Why is it purposefully difficult to read. This is the mental effort that I have to go through. 1. Ok so not and unlike, let's say the cancel each other out. Not dissimilar can become similar. 2. un-stigmatizing, does this mean that it's just not stigmatizing or that it is removing a stigma? 2a. "mincome is lacking stigma, similar to tax time benefits" 2b. "mincome removes a stigma, similar to tax time benefits" edit:format
partiallypro 10y ago
A basic income isn't meant to be progressive or recessive; that's the point.
paulsutter 10y ago
Assume for the sake of argument, that we woke up one morning and there were machines that could write code. Really good code, 30,000 debugged lines a day. They invented better languages that we couldn't even understand and were willing to do this work just for fun. In that world of super high productivity but few jobs, Would basic income make sense? And if not, what's a better system? (asking the BI opponents here) I'm asking as a sincere question, I'm not trying to be persuasive. I'm not saying this will happen, I'm hoping to avoid that debate, I'm just saying assume-for-the-sake-of-argument that this does happen, in some other world, a world we don't need to debate about.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  I think this is actually highly feasible... I mean who better to talk to machines and write code at a deeper machine-level than the machine itself? They have bots now that can write whole news stories, coding wouldn't be that difficult for a sophisticated AI to do in 10-20 years from now. Medical doctors, and even lawyers may be displaced by AI at least in part. It's not just service jobs that will be going away, just wait till the high earning jobs start being automated away.
- BenoitEssiambre 10y ago
  We are not in the process of transitioning in this type of situation as we would see high productivity gains in every sector if we were. But for the sake of the argument, bellow is how I imagine such a future would look like. Note that basic income doesn't have to be part of it, but some form of redistribution will likely be necessary. In a world where machines are better than humans at almost everything, unless we discover new laws of physics, machines will still require time and natural resources (space, energy and matter) to produce goods and services. Since there will no longer be a market for labor, the economy will be dominated by markets for readily available energy, space and matter (what economists sometimes call "land"). Robots will be in charge of automatically turning this energy and matter into the maximum amount of value for humans (hopefully). For most people, "working" in this world will consist of going online, buying or trading an amount of energy, buying raw materials or spent matter that is ready to be recycled and pressing a "go" button. Some people may also work on designing new better machines that produce finer goods. This will be mostly creative work as the technical part will mostly be automated. People will not have to go out to work. Machine owners will be able to watch video of machines working maybe in an industrial park somewhere. The finished goods, spent matter (trash) and machines themselves, will be picked up and delivered by delivery robots. If they wish for more variety, people will trade the production of different machines and they will trade different kinds of spent matter. They will also trade the machine designs and the land or space to host the machines. The machines will sometimes have to be replaced when worn out or obsolete but that will also be done by machines. The most important economic constraint will likely be global energy production likely based on what can reasonably be captured from the sun. People could own shares in energy production capacity. Every day, as energy shareholders, people will receive their energy dividend, an amount of energy to be spent. They will be able to sell this energy, use it in machines to produce stuff or services or maybe store it in a battery. There might be a level of inequality in this society. This will depend on how much governments allow ownership of things to be concentrated, especially ownership of energy production. Governments may redistribute so as to guarantee a minimal amount of livable space, energy and matter to everyone. In this future universe, this minimal amount of redistribution of energy and matter (ie. trash) will give people a very high amount of value without them having to work at all (unless they want to as creative endeavors). Not a bad existence in my opinion. Something like giving people a minimal number of shares in the economy, shares of energy production or shares of GDP could make for an interesting way to implement something like universal income in a futuristic scenario. It would probably create better incentives for people to want to grow total output or at least not hurt it too much than to tax and redistribute a fixed amount. It would also make the system robust to variations in real GDP due to natural causes, disasters etc. It's hard to fulfill a real basic income promise when total production suddenly drops.
gremlinsinc 10y ago
There's also the fact that growing up in poverty ALMOST ensures that you continue in poverty. Most people who break out of poverty as pop singers, artists, entrepreneurs - their entire family changes, so does future generations from them on.. A recent article exposed how poverty and the stresses from it actually literally affect the brain and cause poor brain development. Essentially this makes Poverty a mental health issue, and should be covered under healthcare. http://europe.newsweek.com/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=yahoo_news&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous/news&yptr=yahoo http://europe.newsweek.com/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239... If we had a UBI for one generation we would see less crime, we would need less police, less militarized toys for police, and see increase in benefits like 30 hour work weeks, time off for births, etc. When technology displaces 40% of jobs by 2030 - why not make it so everyone can contribute but less time? When you say how lazy people on welfare are, let me ask you how lazy are rich people too? Especially generational wealth (wealthy brats), how many playboys are out on their private jet, or yacht for 4 months of the year? What makes them matter more than someone who's working at a strip club because it's the only thing she can do to put food on the table. A good portrayal of this is in Les Miserables where Cosette's mother became a prostitute just so she could send $10 per week to the evil caretakers of her daughter, when she was laid off. There are so many people who are desperate like she was. There's also this thing where we all want to think we're 'equals' in America, but do you really think your kid is equal to the kid slumming it in the bad sector of town, who might get dinner every other night if he's lucky? Who's parents have completely given up hope so yes, they do drugs - but should he suffer because his parents are fuck ups?
todd8 10y ago
I've found a recent government report (June, 2016) very useful in thinking about the economics of taxes and UBI. See The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013 [1]. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-HouseholdIncomeFedTaxes_OneCol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...

75 points by joeyespo 10y ago

Basic Income is a utopian fantasy. It will never have the support of the working class.

As a Canadian entrepreneur I worry that mincome/basic income will serve to knock the wind out of the sails of many innovators and entrepreneurs who, like me, are currently DRIVEN to work hard, research, push the industry along and crank up competition. I would much, much rather work hard, earn more money, and feed my neighbour - than have no hope of digging myself out of my situation no matter hos hard I worked, being taxed, and then myself being supported by taxes I lost after they've been spread around. Rigt now I see a need and want to help by helping to educate entrepreneurs on how to make more money, when I see somebody trying really hard to succeed that makes me WANT to invest anything I can in their success. But the moment people want to pillage my profits Im finding greener pastures. I dont think Im alone in this - if mincome is a big tent that relies on a few strong tentpoles to hold it up and cover everybody - those tentpoles are hard working entrepreneurs. If mincome ever becomes a reality those tentpoles will leave and what was a tent sheltering and protecting people will collapse and suffocate all left inside.

ck425 10y ago
What of the arguments that it would encourage entrepreneur by giving them more of a safety net to try new ventures? Additionally most studies suggest Basic Income won't be that much more expense and will save heavily on administration costs, so the tax aspect is minimal.
ep103 10y ago
Most of the reports I've seen have stated that actually, it works the other way around. That the vast majority of people who go into entrepreneurship only do so if they have money to fall back on, one way or another, should their business fail. So by that logic, basic income should actually significantly increase the likelihood of entrepreneurship, because while mincome will still be low enough that people will want to work, it will be high enough to remove the barrier to entrepreneurship of: "but if this idea doesn't work out, I won't be able to eat"
- pmalynin 10y ago
  I think there was a bit on NPR a few months ago that discussed the idea that having a fallback will make you work and try less exactly for the same reason. I think having the "cornered animal" type of drive goes a long way.
  - erpellan 10y ago
    By that logic productivity in all industries could be improved by introducing flogging / periodic executions of lowest performing staff. What's more likely: someone takes a risk knowing that if they fail their kids won't be homeless, or knowing that if they fail, they will be?
    - pmalynin 10y ago
      You are right -- that's how we built the Pyramids and America pre civil war, and look how far that got us. If you want interpret my response at the extremes I'm more that glad to dance.
      - ch4s3 10y ago
        The pyramids were built with corvee labor as a tax scheme and antebellum America relied on slavery, even the industrial free states utilized cheap raw materials like cotton produced in slave states. Are you suggesting that compelling people to work by force is an appropriate modern economic system?
        pmalynin 10y ago
        It's just as appropriate as 'flogging / periodic executions of lowest performing staff' Hence my point.
    - derekp7 10y ago
      Some companies do this to a lesser degree -- every year they fire the bottom 10% of performers -- also known as stacked ranking.
wirt 10y ago
HN has finally gone full Randian.
sanxiyn 10y ago
This seems to be against redistribution, not basic income. Basic income is "how" of redistribution. "How much" part is very much orthogonal. Are you okay as long as basic income does not increase amount of redistribution, or do you have some specific objection to basic income as a method of redistribution?
- err4nt 10y ago
  Using the government to redistribute money to those in need is like giving your right arm a blood transfusion from your own left arm, but spilling 2/3 of the blood on the way over. I strongly believe in charity and social assistance, but its MY job, not the governments job to make sure my family and neighbours are fed and safe. Government needs to deal with national and international issues. What happens to my neighbour is MY responsibility and I believe citizens can organize and redistribute resources for muuuuuch cheaper than a government can.
troncheadle 10y ago
Alright John Gault. If we're talking nation level, your startup is not a 'tentpole.' How does your market cap compare to GE, Google, Amazon, Lockheed? Those are redwoods, and there are plenty of those. You're a maple sapling, there are plenty of those too. You're doing that thing where the middle class rebels against their own interests by positioning said interests as the interests of the working class, because they see themselves as soooo much more driven, and hardworking -- get real, plenty of people living in poverty with the same hustle as you, they just grew up on the other side of Toronto without access to the same resources. Basic income doesn't come off the backs of small business, and that is a silly reason to be so afraid of it.
- psycr 10y ago
  Opportunity is not evenly distributed, yes. But neither is skill. > Basic income doesn't come off the backs of small business, and that is a silly reason to be so afraid of it. What's the name of your business?
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  - snuxoll 10y ago
    > Opportunity is not evenly distributed, yes. But neither is skill. Skill can be learned with enough drive. Opportunity is required for success, there's plenty of smart, skilled people in the world who are stuck in the workforce because of lack of it. Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers" is a good read on the effect opportunity (or the lack thereof) has on our lives. It can come off as pretty over simplified and anecdotal so don't take my praise of the book as me touting it as something it's not, but it's worth reading (and I rarely say that of required texts from courses I've taken).
  - troncheadle 10y ago
    That's just willfully ignorant. For majority of people, differences in opportunity are SO much more influential in their lives than differences in skill or intelligence. Consider three kids -- one is rich, suburban white, IQ is 170. The other is rich, suburban white, IQ is 75. The third is poor, inner city black, IQ 170. In this situation, which lives do you think look most similar to one another? If you answered 'obviously the white kids', then great! You get it. If you answered 'the two kids with an IQ of 170' then you need to spend some time in the real world. Let's add kid #4 -- poor, black, inner city, IQ 75. If we want to compare across QoL, opportunity, really almost any metric, we're going to group across socio-economic lines, not IQ. If you find yourself thinking 'Well what if that young black kid catches a lucky break and gets out of poverty' you're almost there -- the need to catch a lucky break to escape is a defining aspect of poverty and it works against even the most naturally skilled people. The amount of skill needed to overcome that lack in opportunity makes it silly to bring skill into the equation when talking about opportunity. Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.
kohanz 10y ago
Sorry, but this is the same argument we see time and time again against higher taxes (not just Mincome). We saw it in 2008 with "Joe the Plumber". Some entrepreneurs are driven by maximizing profit margins and some aren't. If your opinion was widely shared, there would be almost no entrepreneurial success stories in countries with a much more socialist approach than even Canada (e.g. throughout Europe). I am a Canadian entrepreneur too, but I love this country and that has to do with a lot more than just how much tax I pay. If they were to raise taxes for good reasons, it wouldn't cause me to uproot my family and leave.
- deleted 10y ago
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- err4nt 10y ago
  If they give taxes a bump of course, but what if they radically rearrange taxes. There are many voices i hear who believe people above certain limits should be taxed 90% or more, and some cutoff limits Ive heard have been 250k, or even 100k. If you suddenly fell into a 90% taxation bracket would you still be just as happy as today?
  - mordocai 10y ago
    You do realize that, assuming taxes work like they do today, it'd be 90% on the amount over 250k/100k not 90% over the total income? Assuming you realize it, your point must be that only having 10% effective increase in income after you reach the threshold is demotivating, and I would agree.
    - err4nt 10y ago
      So a bracket like that which stifles motivation would absolutely hurt industry, economy, and innovation. Its like youre in a race against every other business and country in the world, and you say: "hey, lets put these leg cuffs on! No everybody has a 3 foot stride wehn walking, so its no fair for you to walk fast. These shackles will only restrict your movement if you succeed too much and are able to take bigger strides. The most important thing is to reduce the gaps between winners and losers!" In that race, do you think you stand a fighting chance against unshackled competitors?
aleksei 10y ago
So what's your take on universal healthcare? Do you resent having to pay for the treatment of others? I get that increased taxes are offputting, but what's your alternative to making sure people aren't forced to live on the street, taking into account future loss of work due to automation? And what makes you believe that mincome would deter people from innovation?
- err4nt 10y ago
  Its not about an increased tax ration, its about entitlement and motivation. Would you feel better giving $1000 to charity, or having $500 stolen from you?
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huherto 10y ago
As an entrepreneur, you need consumers to succeed. If there is a healthy middle class (assuming basic income helps) your businesses has better chances.
milesvp 10y ago
I'm not sure you're worries are about the right things. As an entreprenuer I highly value safety nets. The odds of failing are so high that without things like publicly supported bankruptcy I don't think I'd ever risk going into the kind of debt necessary to succeed. So I imagine minimum income to be a huge boon entreprenuership. As an economist however, I may be in agreement. I have some concerns about the inflationary effects of a minimum income. I have a strong suspicion that goods strongly associated with low income will tend to get more expensive, negating much of the benefit of a minimum income. And I'm also concerned about the positive feedback in the political system where the majority continue to vote for increases to their stipends uncontrollably. All in all I'm not sure which is going to have the bigger effect long term on the economy.
- VLM 10y ago
  So ... one problem is a long term tanking in the velocity of money. Can't make commissions or skim off money that's not spent. No matter how fast or slow the revenue comes in, the fixed debt, is fixed. Its very hard to argue that even if every penny goes into the pocket of a couple New York Bankers, that there won't be more activity along the way than if nothing gets spent. Something interesting to consider is there are goods and economic fields where the population has been trained to say they'll pay anything for X, Y, or Z. Medical care, Education, Real Estate, whatever. Given that we have generations of explosive inflation in those fields way beyond normal inflation rate, I don't think changing the base income would change much in the long run. If health care costs always in the past and forever in the future until rapidly approaching system collapse will increase by 25% annually, then giving a poor person $10K/yr will have basically no impact in the long run. Like arguments I had with my wife about Peapod grocery delivery vs shopping myself... the difference is (was) approximately six months of food inflation price, and I don't enjoy shopping, and I intend to continue eating six months in the future, so I don't care if it costs a little more today, its not really changing anything in my life financially. Another interesting thing to think about is the old Dr Phil line about money problems being unable to be fixed with money. So giving 10K to poor people means in practice its all going to disappear with no improvement in standard of living, just like every other handout in the history of humanity. Such that there's almost no point in talking about that economic segment of the population WRT mincome. And its not much money for rich people, so ignore them too. mincome is a purely middle class play, its the only group that can experience any change.
Applejinx 10y ago
As an American entrepreneur I've run a small business for nearly ten years, over that time earning nearly a quarter of a million dollars (yeah, not quite Facebook). I've observed that my income closely tracks a Fed metric having to do with disposable income of working class citizens (almost perfectly tracks a metric of increases/decreases in that labor share) As such I'm finding your attitude impractical. Why do I, as a business owner, care whether you personally think some third person is a try-hard eager beaver? If you yourself don't want to work, you should indeed leave. I'm not at all sure you understand the math of this. Personally, I'm all for the poorer classes having spending money, because as near as I can work out, sometimes they will spend it on me. When they starve, I starve. No amount of exceptionalism will change that simple fact, and if you're honest about the math you see that the whole point is getting rid of 'a few strong tentpoles'. Those guys are distorting the system and SHOULD leave. Celebrating them is a fool's game.

IsaacL 10y ago

"If we’re interested in social policies that are resilient I think the dignity problem, or the moral aspects of these policies are worth considering more closely." I certainly agree the moral aspects are worth considering. No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors. Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. The current welfare systems are a messy parcel of compromises, but they at least acknowledge that people have to demonstrate need to be the recipients of government handouts. Once you establish that people have a permanent, inalienable right to an income, you imply that others are obligated to provide them with that income.

duaneb 10y ago
> Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. Have you witnessed this?
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- 1123581321 10y ago
  I have seen it in every discussion. Some of the forms of evasion include: * focusing on the wealth/profit generated by a surge in entrepreneurship from the millions suddenly motivated to start successful businesses * focusing on the unlimited wealth created by robots/asteroids/solar in space which will fund any program we wish * focusing on how we can't afford not to try BI, i.e., the default system is a financial failure anyway so comparison is pointless * taking the position that BI is only replacing current welfare programs (until it's pointed out that current programs would not support anyone if spread around) Occasionally, someone will admit that they are proposing a 100% tax rate, which is about what such a system requires. Even more occasionally, it's admitted that every country must implement a 100% tax rate at once to avoid mass emigration of anyone earning more than ~$20k/year.
  - 10y ago

yummyfajitas 10y ago

It's extremely counterproductive to, as the article puts it, "take the question of the moral quality of the poor off the table." The fact is that a large amount of poverty is directly correlated with "moral quality". Most poor people in the US (maybe Canada is different?) have low "moral quality", which I define as engaging in behaviors that are likely to keep a person poor. These behaviors include not seeking work [1], substance abuse [2], single motherhood [3] and crime [4] (including crimes with no economic motive such as intimate partner violence). There are direct causal relationships between all of these behaviors and poverty. Not seeking work will result in not having a job, drug abuse will make you lose your job, and having no job makes you poor. Etc. Why would we want to take the primary cause of poverty off the table if our goal is to solve it? It's almost as if this guy's primary goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents rather than reduce poverty. [1] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... [2] http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH-MHDetTabs2013.pdf http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs... https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/adultsmoking/ http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/adultsmoking/ [3] https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/dp/0520248198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323532894&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage... http://www.economics21.org/html/great-gatsby-curve-revisited-part-1-755.html#.U8KmDXV53UY http://www.economics21.org/html/great-gatsby-curve-revisited... [4] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf

clavalle 10y ago
So it is your sincere belief that most poor people are 'broken' in the sense that they can't even make rational decisions where 'rational' means 'likely to improve one's life'?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I don't know. In the past I argued that the poor are completely rational and simply choose to exploit the safety net. It's a hypothesis I can't rule out. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_work.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_wo... But that doesn't explain many of their other bad behaviors, e.g. wife beating.

throw2016 10y ago

You only get one life and anything that let's everyone and not just those born to privilege get a shot at doing more than just surviving can only be a good thing. It may unlock a whole new level of untapped human creativity and potential leading to a happier and perhaps more dynamic and productive society. There is a risk of focussing on narrower narratives rooted in the current economic context and missing the proverbial woods for the trees. Maybe freed of that bigger ideas can emerge.

krupan 10y ago

Every time basic income comes up people seem to missunderstand the key points: 1) It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment. Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life. 2) It's a huge reduction and simplification of government, replacing several huge bureaucratic entities with one that effectively just mails out checks to everyone periodically.

jackcosgrove 10y ago
> Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life. That's a glib statement that ignores the experience of welfare pre-reform, and SSDI currently. Of course some people will do just that, and the relative difficulty of earning a wage compared to the relative generosity of a basic income would determine the proportion of people who live like this.
epistasis 10y ago
I'm not sure if there's agreement on either of those points, honestly. A good number of people who talk about basic income are talking about giving less than is enough for subsistence living. And many talk about keeping additional programs in place, such as disability (somebody with special medical needs will not be able to live on the same income as somebody that can care for themselves and does not need additional medical care). It's important to come up with concrete proposals. I don't think that there's going to be much overhead savings from your point number (2), and I'm not sure if we're ready for the tax levels that (1) would bring.
- krupan 10y ago
  I agree that there are lots of variations on the themes of points 1 and 2 and that's a huge problem in trying to discuss this intelligently and dispassionately. On a personal note, I'm less interested in savings from point 2 than I am in a reduction in power and corruption (or at least corruptibility).
- mordocai 10y ago

shams93 10y ago

Basic income shouldn't be welfare imagine you have an ai or robot doing your job who owns the output? If only a few people benefit from this productivity the system eventually implodes. In order to keep capitalism functioning in a post human work society you need a mechanism for redistribution . Basic income shouldn't be welfare it's supposed to represent your share of the productivity of a post human economy.

someone7x 10y ago

> Mincome was not unlike the un-stigmatizing benefits that can come at tax time Why is it purposefully difficult to read. This is the mental effort that I have to go through. 1. Ok so not and unlike, let's say the cancel each other out. Not dissimilar can become similar. 2. un-stigmatizing, does this mean that it's just not stigmatizing or that it is removing a stigma? 2a. "mincome is lacking stigma, similar to tax time benefits" 2b. "mincome removes a stigma, similar to tax time benefits" edit:format

partiallypro 10y ago

A basic income isn't meant to be progressive or recessive; that's the point.

paulsutter 10y ago

Assume for the sake of argument, that we woke up one morning and there were machines that could write code. Really good code, 30,000 debugged lines a day. They invented better languages that we couldn't even understand and were willing to do this work just for fun. In that world of super high productivity but few jobs, Would basic income make sense? And if not, what's a better system? (asking the BI opponents here) I'm asking as a sincere question, I'm not trying to be persuasive. I'm not saying this will happen, I'm hoping to avoid that debate, I'm just saying assume-for-the-sake-of-argument that this does happen, in some other world, a world we don't need to debate about.

gremlinsinc 10y ago
I think this is actually highly feasible... I mean who better to talk to machines and write code at a deeper machine-level than the machine itself? They have bots now that can write whole news stories, coding wouldn't be that difficult for a sophisticated AI to do in 10-20 years from now. Medical doctors, and even lawyers may be displaced by AI at least in part. It's not just service jobs that will be going away, just wait till the high earning jobs start being automated away.
BenoitEssiambre 10y ago
We are not in the process of transitioning in this type of situation as we would see high productivity gains in every sector if we were. But for the sake of the argument, bellow is how I imagine such a future would look like. Note that basic income doesn't have to be part of it, but some form of redistribution will likely be necessary. In a world where machines are better than humans at almost everything, unless we discover new laws of physics, machines will still require time and natural resources (space, energy and matter) to produce goods and services. Since there will no longer be a market for labor, the economy will be dominated by markets for readily available energy, space and matter (what economists sometimes call "land"). Robots will be in charge of automatically turning this energy and matter into the maximum amount of value for humans (hopefully). For most people, "working" in this world will consist of going online, buying or trading an amount of energy, buying raw materials or spent matter that is ready to be recycled and pressing a "go" button. Some people may also work on designing new better machines that produce finer goods. This will be mostly creative work as the technical part will mostly be automated. People will not have to go out to work. Machine owners will be able to watch video of machines working maybe in an industrial park somewhere. The finished goods, spent matter (trash) and machines themselves, will be picked up and delivered by delivery robots. If they wish for more variety, people will trade the production of different machines and they will trade different kinds of spent matter. They will also trade the machine designs and the land or space to host the machines. The machines will sometimes have to be replaced when worn out or obsolete but that will also be done by machines. The most important economic constraint will likely be global energy production likely based on what can reasonably be captured from the sun. People could own shares in energy production capacity. Every day, as energy shareholders, people will receive their energy dividend, an amount of energy to be spent. They will be able to sell this energy, use it in machines to produce stuff or services or maybe store it in a battery. There might be a level of inequality in this society. This will depend on how much governments allow ownership of things to be concentrated, especially ownership of energy production. Governments may redistribute so as to guarantee a minimal amount of livable space, energy and matter to everyone. In this future universe, this minimal amount of redistribution of energy and matter (ie. trash) will give people a very high amount of value without them having to work at all (unless they want to as creative endeavors). Not a bad existence in my opinion. Something like giving people a minimal number of shares in the economy, shares of energy production or shares of GDP could make for an interesting way to implement something like universal income in a futuristic scenario. It would probably create better incentives for people to want to grow total output or at least not hurt it too much than to tax and redistribute a fixed amount. It would also make the system robust to variations in real GDP due to natural causes, disasters etc. It's hard to fulfill a real basic income promise when total production suddenly drops.

gremlinsinc 10y ago

There's also the fact that growing up in poverty ALMOST ensures that you continue in poverty. Most people who break out of poverty as pop singers, artists, entrepreneurs - their entire family changes, so does future generations from them on.. A recent article exposed how poverty and the stresses from it actually literally affect the brain and cause poor brain development. Essentially this makes Poverty a mental health issue, and should be covered under healthcare. http://europe.newsweek.com/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=yahoo_news&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous/news&yptr=yahoo http://europe.newsweek.com/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239... If we had a UBI for one generation we would see less crime, we would need less police, less militarized toys for police, and see increase in benefits like 30 hour work weeks, time off for births, etc. When technology displaces 40% of jobs by 2030 - why not make it so everyone can contribute but less time? When you say how lazy people on welfare are, let me ask you how lazy are rich people too? Especially generational wealth (wealthy brats), how many playboys are out on their private jet, or yacht for 4 months of the year? What makes them matter more than someone who's working at a strip club because it's the only thing she can do to put food on the table. A good portrayal of this is in Les Miserables where Cosette's mother became a prostitute just so she could send $10 per week to the evil caretakers of her daughter, when she was laid off. There are so many people who are desperate like she was. There's also this thing where we all want to think we're 'equals' in America, but do you really think your kid is equal to the kid slumming it in the bad sector of town, who might get dinner every other night if he's lucky? Who's parents have completely given up hope so yes, they do drugs - but should he suffer because his parents are fuck ups?

todd8 10y ago

I've found a recent government report (June, 2016) very useful in thinking about the economics of taxes and UBI. See The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013 [1]. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-HouseholdIncomeFedTaxes_OneCol.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...