3 ms·

I'd be a big fan of giving anyone with a PhD a small social stipend and means-tested health insurance. It's much cheaper than other universal basic income prop

I'd be a big fan of giving anyone with a PhD a small social stipend and means-tested health insurance. It's much cheaper than other universal basic income proposals.

fennecfoxen 7y ago
What makes this a good idea?
- tnel77 7y ago
  I’m curious if the “dr” in their username is a hint. It could that this is only a good idea to those who have a doctorate and would directly benefit from it.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    It is totally possible that this only appeals to those with a PhD. And, perhaps there'd be an influx of students who just want to get a PhD so they can get 20k per year to survive. But somehow I doubt it.
- arkh 7y ago
  Let me guess: they have a PhD and would like to live hassle free.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    For me, it's fine. I'm tenured and have a business. Most phds have and would continue to have meaningful employment.
- imgabe 7y ago
  I don't know that I would advocate this necessarily, but I can see the logic. If you have a PhD you've at least demonstrated that you have a passion for a particular field and you've been trained to conduct research in that field. Many PhDs would just want to do research in their field and would continue doing so as long as they can feed and house themselves. Societally, maybe many of these wouldn't produce anything "useful", but some percentage might develop some breakthrough in their field that would more than make up for paying for all the rest. Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? You could make the same argument for providing a universal basic income for everyone, but in the general population you're going to have a higher percentage of people who will just watch Netflix all day or whatever you consider to be a useless activity.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    > Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? Yes, thank you, nailed it.
  - fennecfoxen 7y ago
    > Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? I think if we want the government to pay PhDs to promote research and the advance of knowledge, the PhDBI proposal has some limitations as a means to that end. Many PhDs are gainfully employed, and often have much higher incomes than those without PhDs; they are hardly in need of this stipend. Aside from these cases, it is not clear that the PhDs thus supported are in fact productive, or that the stipend will actually effect the advancement of knowledge, and it seems that it would be very hard to assess the success of this initiative given its structure, or impose any sort of accountability. You identify "some PhD math prodigy," but there are twice as many doctorates in philosophy as there are in math, and while I am in favor of some PhDs in philosophy, it is not clear the extent to which this specific achievement is something the government needs to be subsidizing. It may be the case that this PhDBI structure would incentivize the pursuit of low-quality PhDs, in the hopes of obtaining the stipend and then ceasing productive work. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185353/number-of-doctoral-degrees-by-field-of-research/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185353/number-of-doctora... ) The government has a variety of avenues to promote research in specific fields: by employing those researchers directly, by funding research universities, by issuing grants to researchers engaged in research. I feel these might be better at obtaining public policy goals, while being much less susceptible to rent-seeking.
    - dr_dshiv 7y ago
      Not sure where statistia gets its sources, but there are roughly 500 philosophy phds awarded a year http://dailynous.com/2017/08/28/slight-increase-philosophy-phds-awarded-humanities-data/ http://dailynous.com/2017/08/28/slight-increase-philosophy-p... And roughly 2000 in math. http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/phds-awarded http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/phds-awarde... >The government has a variety of avenues to promote research in specific fields: by employing those researchers directly, by funding research universities, by issuing grants to researchers engaged in research. I feel these might be better at obtaining public policy goals, while being much less susceptible to rent-seeking. It's surprisingly difficult to engage in pure research with government grants, believe it or not. In certain fields, like philosophy and math, just covering health insurance and providing lunch money might be much more effective.
wallace_f 7y ago
My friend read your comment and became enraged. He is a chef. He asks, "why PhDs?" "Haven't they already used a lot of taxpayer and non-profit dollars?" Why should PhDs get a social stipend, but not a chef? This would ultimately be a net transfer of wealth from the chefs to the PhDs, by force of law.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Right. Because chefs have immediate market value whereas the extremely educated do not -- but are more likely to produce disproportionate intellectual value given time .
- 6510 7y ago
  If we are really going to automate everything (in the really long run) IDEALLY there are going to be unemployed people. Work costs finite resources. We cant continue to work just for the sake of working. Disasters are going to happen. Having an unskilled population could mean the end of humanity. A tiny increase in allowance for learning and maintaining(!) useful skills could be an interesting approach. Cooks seem pretty nice to have. In a worse case scenario they could be even more valuable if they could cook on open fire, do a bit of gardening, know more about nutrition. It will be somewhat of a hard puzzle slapping value on training that is theoretically useful, we might have to do crude generalizations like phd = 200$ extra per month but it wouldn't be perfect or even elegant.

I'd be a big fan of giving anyone with a PhD a small social stipend and means-tested health insurance. It's much cheaper than other universal basic income proposals.

fennecfoxen 7y ago

What makes this a good idea?

tnel77 7y ago
I’m curious if the “dr” in their username is a hint. It could that this is only a good idea to those who have a doctorate and would directly benefit from it.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  It is totally possible that this only appeals to those with a PhD. And, perhaps there'd be an influx of students who just want to get a PhD so they can get 20k per year to survive. But somehow I doubt it.
arkh 7y ago
Let me guess: they have a PhD and would like to live hassle free.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  For me, it's fine. I'm tenured and have a business. Most phds have and would continue to have meaningful employment.
imgabe 7y ago
I don't know that I would advocate this necessarily, but I can see the logic. If you have a PhD you've at least demonstrated that you have a passion for a particular field and you've been trained to conduct research in that field. Many PhDs would just want to do research in their field and would continue doing so as long as they can feed and house themselves. Societally, maybe many of these wouldn't produce anything "useful", but some percentage might develop some breakthrough in their field that would more than make up for paying for all the rest. Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? You could make the same argument for providing a universal basic income for everyone, but in the general population you're going to have a higher percentage of people who will just watch Netflix all day or whatever you consider to be a useless activity.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  > Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? Yes, thank you, nailed it.
- fennecfoxen 7y ago
  > Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? I think if we want the government to pay PhDs to promote research and the advance of knowledge, the PhDBI proposal has some limitations as a means to that end. Many PhDs are gainfully employed, and often have much higher incomes than those without PhDs; they are hardly in need of this stipend. Aside from these cases, it is not clear that the PhDs thus supported are in fact productive, or that the stipend will actually effect the advancement of knowledge, and it seems that it would be very hard to assess the success of this initiative given its structure, or impose any sort of accountability. You identify "some PhD math prodigy," but there are twice as many doctorates in philosophy as there are in math, and while I am in favor of some PhDs in philosophy, it is not clear the extent to which this specific achievement is something the government needs to be subsidizing. It may be the case that this PhDBI structure would incentivize the pursuit of low-quality PhDs, in the hopes of obtaining the stipend and then ceasing productive work. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185353/number-of-doctoral-degrees-by-field-of-research/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185353/number-of-doctora... ) The government has a variety of avenues to promote research in specific fields: by employing those researchers directly, by funding research universities, by issuing grants to researchers engaged in research. I feel these might be better at obtaining public policy goals, while being much less susceptible to rent-seeking.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Not sure where statistia gets its sources, but there are roughly 500 philosophy phds awarded a year http://dailynous.com/2017/08/28/slight-increase-philosophy-phds-awarded-humanities-data/ http://dailynous.com/2017/08/28/slight-increase-philosophy-p... And roughly 2000 in math. http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/phds-awarded http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/phds-awarde... >The government has a variety of avenues to promote research in specific fields: by employing those researchers directly, by funding research universities, by issuing grants to researchers engaged in research. I feel these might be better at obtaining public policy goals, while being much less susceptible to rent-seeking. It's surprisingly difficult to engage in pure research with government grants, believe it or not. In certain fields, like philosophy and math, just covering health insurance and providing lunch money might be much more effective.

wallace_f 7y ago

My friend read your comment and became enraged. He is a chef. He asks, "why PhDs?" "Haven't they already used a lot of taxpayer and non-profit dollars?" Why should PhDs get a social stipend, but not a chef? This would ultimately be a net transfer of wealth from the chefs to the PhDs, by force of law.

dr_dshiv 7y ago
Right. Because chefs have immediate market value whereas the extremely educated do not -- but are more likely to produce disproportionate intellectual value given time .
6510 7y ago
If we are really going to automate everything (in the really long run) IDEALLY there are going to be unemployed people. Work costs finite resources. We cant continue to work just for the sake of working. Disasters are going to happen. Having an unskilled population could mean the end of humanity. A tiny increase in allowance for learning and maintaining(!) useful skills could be an interesting approach. Cooks seem pretty nice to have. In a worse case scenario they could be even more valuable if they could cook on open fire, do a bit of gardening, know more about nutrition. It will be somewhat of a hard puzzle slapping value on training that is theoretically useful, we might have to do crude generalizations like phd = 200$ extra per month but it wouldn't be perfect or even elegant.