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I don’t know... With every noble social program there can come unfortunate and unintended consequences. Tying a permanent monthly stipend, credit or whatever

I don’t know... With every noble social program there can come unfortunate and unintended consequences. Tying a permanent monthly stipend, credit or whatever to the number of children in a household or even having children in a household can be an incentive for bringing more impoverished children into the world. There are a lot of smart people on HN. What other ideas do you have? What are the unintended consequences? Here are a few ideas to kick around, like or dislike: Why not just establish a baseline income, eg. $30,000, and pay the difference to those households that don’t reach the baseline as a result of their employment: a basic income, reverse tax or employment subsidy? 10 million households * $10k is $100 billion per year. How about a guaranteed bank account program, so that everyone has the ability to establish a financial history, borrow money, receive electronic payments, etc? Can this be open-source developed and crowdfunded? Cost should be minimal. How about if folks can’t find a job, then let’s have a series of free, online-aided training programs to get unemployed people into appropriate jobs? This could definitely be open-source developed and crowdfunded. Cost should be minimal. How about putting people to work on government programs at the baseline salary in rebuilding our infrastructure for the 21st century: transportation, electricity, communications, education and training, caretakers, clinics and hospitals, etc? What are the basic skills necessary to contribute to these projects as basic-skilled helpers, technicians, assistants, drivers, promoters, customer service, etc? Cost should be in the infrastructure legislation. How about a set of guaranteed healthcare and childcare vouchers for every household? How about $10k for both? Have these vouchers work like an HSA—specifically for medical, dental, vision and childcare. Cost is about $100 billion per year. And finally, how about breaking up the silly higher education system by not allowing kids to borrow any more than $10k per year and a maximum of $20k over a 4-year degree program? If the school admits the student, then the school has to agree to the student’s limited financial situation. Do you want to cancel student debt? What about a tax credit of $5k per year as long as the debt is being paid down to a baseline of $10k or $20k? This would spread the cost to the government over several years and make it fair to future student borrowers.

miketery 5y ago
> Why not just establish a baseline income, eg. $30,000, and pay the difference to those households that don’t reach the baseline as a result of their employment: a basic income, reverse tax or employment subsidy? 10 million households * $10k is $100 billion per year. Some sort of gradient would be better. Like if you make 0 you get 20, if you make 10 you get 15 if you make 20 you get 10, if you make 30 you get 5 (otherwise no incentive to work more). Also i'd change the number from 30k to 50k, but again some gradient, at 50k you get 5 (0 you get 30, 10:25, 20:20, 30:15, 40:10, 50:5) > How about a guaranteed bank account program, so that everyone has the ability to establish a financial history, borrow money, receive electronic payments, etc? Can this be open-source developed and crowdfunded? Cost should be minimal. I was reading Andrew Yang's campaign policies. Under anti-poverty, a people's bank [1]: "Our City faces a crisis in banking accessibility. New York City is the world’s leading financial center. Yet over 350,000 City households — almost 12% — have no bank account. That is 50% higher than the national average. Another 780,000 City households are underbanked, meaning they have a bank account but still rely on nonbank providers of alternative financial services (AFS) such as check-cashing services, prepaid debit cards, and high-interest loan services. Households that rely on such services pay high fees for even basic financial transactions — an average of over $600 per year just to cash checks." To me this is absurd. Agreed we need better support for getting households banked at near zero cost. I've tried looking into process of starting a bank or a credit union, the former is nearly impossible or not recommended - you're better off buying a bank (Goldman Sachs did this for Marcus), the latter is somewhat manageable, but I felt too far in the deep end to get into it. If anyone has expertise and wants to chat, I'd love to learn more. 1 - https://www.yangforny.com/policies/a-peoples-bank-of-new-york https://www.yangforny.com/policies/a-peoples-bank-of-new-yor...
miketery 5y ago
> How about a set of guaranteed healthcare and childcare vouchers for every household? How about $10k for both? Have these vouchers work like an HSA—specifically for medical, dental, vision and childcare. Cost is about $100 billion per year. This would further degrade the system and promote rentiers. Our problem is a private / public health care system, and there is no good solution. Obama famously said around 2009, post recession, "I had two options, reform healthcare, or save millions of jobs, I chose the latter" (best as I can remember). Health care has become a jobs program by way of insurance companies. Median insurance prices have sky rocketed as far as I can tell, and insurance company stocks went up >4x post recession in the coming years (e.g. NYSE:UNH). > And finally, how about breaking up the silly higher education system by not allowing kids to borrow any more than $10k per year and a maximum of $20k over a 4-year degree program? If the school admits the student, then the school has to agree to the student’s limited financial situation. It's simpler than this. Simply allow bankruptcies to discharge student loans, the market will take care of it self, giving preference to better degrees and smarter people. We can still have scholarships and fund other things like liberal arts.

miketery 5y ago

> Why not just establish a baseline income, eg. $30,000, and pay the difference to those households that don’t reach the baseline as a result of their employment: a basic income, reverse tax or employment subsidy? 10 million households * $10k is $100 billion per year. Some sort of gradient would be better. Like if you make 0 you get 20, if you make 10 you get 15 if you make 20 you get 10, if you make 30 you get 5 (otherwise no incentive to work more). Also i'd change the number from 30k to 50k, but again some gradient, at 50k you get 5 (0 you get 30, 10:25, 20:20, 30:15, 40:10, 50:5) > How about a guaranteed bank account program, so that everyone has the ability to establish a financial history, borrow money, receive electronic payments, etc? Can this be open-source developed and crowdfunded? Cost should be minimal. I was reading Andrew Yang's campaign policies. Under anti-poverty, a people's bank [1]: "Our City faces a crisis in banking accessibility. New York City is the world’s leading financial center. Yet over 350,000 City households — almost 12% — have no bank account. That is 50% higher than the national average. Another 780,000 City households are underbanked, meaning they have a bank account but still rely on nonbank providers of alternative financial services (AFS) such as check-cashing services, prepaid debit cards, and high-interest loan services. Households that rely on such services pay high fees for even basic financial transactions — an average of over $600 per year just to cash checks." To me this is absurd. Agreed we need better support for getting households banked at near zero cost. I've tried looking into process of starting a bank or a credit union, the former is nearly impossible or not recommended - you're better off buying a bank (Goldman Sachs did this for Marcus), the latter is somewhat manageable, but I felt too far in the deep end to get into it. If anyone has expertise and wants to chat, I'd love to learn more. 1 - https://www.yangforny.com/policies/a-peoples-bank-of-new-york https://www.yangforny.com/policies/a-peoples-bank-of-new-yor...

miketery 5y ago

> How about a set of guaranteed healthcare and childcare vouchers for every household? How about $10k for both? Have these vouchers work like an HSA—specifically for medical, dental, vision and childcare. Cost is about $100 billion per year. This would further degrade the system and promote rentiers. Our problem is a private / public health care system, and there is no good solution. Obama famously said around 2009, post recession, "I had two options, reform healthcare, or save millions of jobs, I chose the latter" (best as I can remember). Health care has become a jobs program by way of insurance companies. Median insurance prices have sky rocketed as far as I can tell, and insurance company stocks went up >4x post recession in the coming years (e.g. NYSE:UNH). > And finally, how about breaking up the silly higher education system by not allowing kids to borrow any more than $10k per year and a maximum of $20k over a 4-year degree program? If the school admits the student, then the school has to agree to the student’s limited financial situation. It's simpler than this. Simply allow bankruptcies to discharge student loans, the market will take care of it self, giving preference to better degrees and smarter people. We can still have scholarships and fund other things like liberal arts.