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We Need a Basic Income Guarantee

268 points by tokenadult 13y ago

tokenadult 13y ago
This issue comes up from time to time here on Hacker News, which is why I submitted the current story. The policy proposal of a basic income guarantee is interesting because a) no country has ever tried it, really, so there isn't a real-world experience case to look at yet, and b) a remarkable variety of people from otherwise differing points of view have proposed it over the years. Charles Murray's book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone would cost in the United States, and suggests some probable effects that would have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it was published. Murray's own summary of his argument http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf and reviews of his book http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-our-hands-a-plan-to-replace-the-welfare-state-article/ http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-ou... http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.pdf http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.p... http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2006/fall/pdf/book_review.pdf http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focu... http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296 http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296 may inform the discussion here. Big public policy proposals are not easy to discuss, but the big public policy proposal of a guaranteed basic income for all is a response to existing policy of supposedly targeted social welfare programs that are just about equally expensive in the benefits they provide, but much more costly to administer. As a matter of personal opinion, I am still thinking about whether or not a basic income guarantee is a good idea, but I definitely want to figure out if spending no more in total for social welfare by directly transferring cash to all citizens would simplify administration of welfare programs and allow more individual choice about how to use the money.
- jswinghammer 13y ago
  Arguments like this assume you can change one thing and society won't change around it. With a basic guarantee many people who are marginally employed would stop working. You'd have two classes of citizens: the workers and those who are effectively parasites off of the workers. I don't like people being poor but society is just not wealthy for poverty to disappear. The said a person living in poverty is probably better off than all the but the richest people at any time in human history. Part of the issue is that we lack an understanding of poverty and what actually causes people to not be in poverty. Considering that in human history poverty has always been the norm it makes sense to look at what causes poverty to not be the norm first before moving onto just "fixing" it.
  - transfire 13y ago
    Here's the problem with your analysis: Just because someone doesn't have a job, doesn't make them a parasite. Here's an example, a granddaughter who lives with and helps take care of her poor grandmother who has Alzheimer's. In her spare time she does sonogram analysis to determine the sex of babies for newly pregnant mothers (Yes, this does exist.) But there is no money in any of this, even though she provides a service to society. Give it some thought and you can realize there are many variations on this. The problem with capital-driven society is that it only values a narrow range of activities that have high rates of money exchange. But there are many things in life worth doing, indeed that need to be done, that do not.
    - jknightco 13y ago
      Except your granddaughter isn't providing services to society. She's providing one service to her grandmother, as a family member (which could almost be seen as repaying a debt). The other service she's providing is the equivalent of a hobby: if it was valuable enough to other people to be considered a "service to society," then she could be getting paid for it.
      - eCa 13y ago
        > Except your granddaughter isn't providing services to society. I think it's arguable that she does. By doing what she does she relieves the system from taking care of her grandmother, and thereby making whatever small amount of taxpayer money usable for something else meanwhile taking that economic burden on herself. (Edit: It can of course be seen that whatever wellfare money she gets is the equivalent of her service to grandmother/society, but in that case it's still at worst a zero sum scenario.)
rdl 13y ago
I wonder what it would take to do an incrementalist version of this -- basic income either at a state/local government level, or for a certain class of people, or as a purely private thing, as a way to test it and build support before going national and universal. Alaska's Permanent Fund dividend is like a deci-BI (it is O($1k/yr, BI of $15k would probably work in Alaska?). Arguably (government) pensions are a form of BI. You can get one with 20 years of military service or 20-30 years of LEO service in a lot of cases, and maybe this could be compressed even more. 10 years of overseas service in a high-risk occupation force could produce lifetime BI before you're 30? I might be willing to pay BI already in exchange for people having training for EMS/disaster response in certain areas. That's not really BI on paper, but if the training isn't particularly onerous, and the deployment is infrequent, it is approximately the same in effect, and could be used. A college/university with a huge endowment and few students could potentially do BI for graduates of certain programs, particularly in markets with high unemployment but high external benefits from the graduates.
- VLM 13y ago
  Your disaster response BI example is basically what the Reserves and National Guard did until about a decade or so ago. This was my experience in the USAR in the 90s. There have been a variety of (internal) doctrinal changes over the years which outsiders probably wouldn't understand, such that it certainly could not apply now. But, doctrine can change quickly. One interesting issue is being in the Reserves meant a "basic income" which was wealthy for a kid, "about average" for a college student, and a rounding error once you get a real job. You probably need some kind of pay scale modifications, which inevitably results in considerable gaming of the system. "Well, as long as I don't graduate, I'll get an extra $500/month and I'm spending that on nicer rent so I'll take one class per semester for the remainder of my life" (I suppose there are worse unintended consequences) Another problem is supply and demand. So you give young people $10K/yr. And everyone knows it. So colleges raise tuition $10K/yr because they have an obligation not to leave money on the table. And rents go up $10K/yr ditto reasoning. And sin taxes go up $10K/yr. And price of cars goes up $10K/yr. By the time you're done, the poor are more miserable than ever because they've only gained $10K but inflation has demanded an extra $50K/yr just to keep up with where they're at. I've seen this play out in govt sponsored day care cost sharing, govt sponsored housing (both welfare and nearby .mil bases), govt sponsored everything...
chiph 13y ago
America is both rich & poor at the same time. We have one of the most productive and efficient workforces on the planet, yet we are $17 trillion in debt. This can only be because we spent our money poorly - making bad decisions about where it should go. That debt can only be retired if we have a plan to stop increasing it, and to make payments to reduce the principal. The article says that the BIG would do this, but provides no rationale as to how this might happen. Would the BIG replace the myriad existing income programs? I don't see how - $10k is $834 a month, which not much more than the monthly food bill for a family. It would be to their advantage to continue on the old programs, as they'd get more money each month. The other danger is that the $10k wouldn't stay $10k for very long. Soon, there would be impassioned pleas from the politicians that "We have to help these people" by increasing it to provide a living wage.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  "for a family" Slightly unrelated: Of course children should receive BI. Why won't they? Of course, legal care must be taken so 10% of a family first child's BI, 33% of second child's BI, 50% for thirg child's BI (and so on) go to some special saving account then used to finance housing or education for those children. Or else a "family" collecting BI for their five children, living off it and then give children a boot after they grow up will become a social problem.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Why should the .gov chose a winner as in "used to finance housing or education for those children"? Why not demand a savings account for iphones to make apple rich? The fundamental problem is housing and (excessive) education is a non-productive activity. I don't see any benefit for society as a whole, in a supply/demand situation, to make relators and school administrators wealthy, while making it financially much more difficult / impossible for kids from small families to compete. What philosophical reasoning behind a kid with only one bro/sis has to live in the poor ghetto or be unable to afford college, in comparison a kid with ten bro/sis will have far more money in his account and be better off for his/her entire life merely because his parents were more fertile? There's an obvious financial reason under this system for college admins and housing builders to encourage huge families, because they'll be able to suck more money out of them. Another interesting effect of inflating higher ed prices would be the elimination via unaffordability for adult education. No more going back to school to learn X if the tuition for X has been exploded such that only children with 18 years of savings and 10 siblings can afford it. I'm not sure as a cultural trend that using the hammer of .gov policy to discourage lifetime learning (insert cliche about the economy being faster than ever, blah blah) is a wise social goal.
kjackson2012 13y ago
Poverty in the US is nothing like poverty in other countries. Poor people in the US mostly still have tvs, etc. Poor people in true Third world countries wash themselves in puddle water, and poor children play in garbage dumps. I've seen both with my own eyes. I don't agree that Americans need a basic income guarantee whatsoever. The idea might work in other countries, but certainly not in the US.
- transfire 13y ago
  This idea could not work in the kind of 3rd world country you are talking about. Those countries have a much more fundamental problem in not having a capitalized society at all. So there is no foundation for any such base income system to be built. For them to get out of poverty requires the removal of their corrupt governments and the establishment of a sound money system coupled with a required public education system.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Well, it could work if the BI was applied globally...that would be quite wonderful from a world peace, human rights perspective. It might not ever happen, but we can always hope. Of course, the corrupt governments would have to be removed first...
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Your conclusion has no relationship whatsoever to your observation, and you don't describe a connection in your post. I live in a country with high income disparity, basically the poor are living in dumps, but I don't see what that has to do with the states which is further a long the developed country spectrum.
- nawitus 13y ago
  Poor people in the United States are more poor than most people in e.g. Scandinavian countries. You also made the fallacy of "if some people are worse off, then Americans shouldn't be any better". However, it's ethical to increase the standard of living of all people.
devx 13y ago
You know where there is a lot money to be saved - much more than from food stamps and whatnot? The "defense"/war budget and the home police state. You could save literally hundreds of billions of dollars - every year - and you'd still have a bigger budget than it was at the beginning of 2000's. Not to mention an increasing chunk of that money is used against you: militarizing the police, all the unconstitutional searches from DHS, the mass spying of NSA, the "war on drugs" DEA, and so on. Besides keeping buying stuff the army doesn't even need to have a strong defense, and besides going into pointless wars for the sake of maintaining the profitability and businesses of the Military Industrial Complex, there's also incredible waste in the defense department, with things being paid for many times over what they're really worth. So, Democrats (or really, anyone), if you want a lot more money put into social programs and into fixing and building the infrastructure, then target the defense budget, and ask for a dramatic cut - and not just those bullshit "cuts from planned budget increases", which is just another way of saying they won't increase the waste much more than it already is, in the future.
- davidy123 13y ago
  The army and military industries are huge employment and research organizations. Not efficient ones in the latter case, but there you go. You'd have to re-target all that employment and spending somewhere to make up for the hole, like, say, health and energy. Unfortunately other countries around the world may not make the same decision as you and the US would fall behind in certain capabilities, which may be important to have at some point.
  - derefr 13y ago
    To put it more bluntly, the DHS is a jobs program. We already have BI; you just have to hold a gun and let the government tell you what to do.
motters 13y ago
I was dubious about the idea of Basic Income in the past, but now having more experience of the problems of the economy I'm in favour of it and see it as becoming inevitable at some point. Eventually it will simply be impossible in the majority of cases to exchange human labour (intellectual or physical) for resources, and we're on a sliding scale where it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that. The existing welfare state here in the UK is wasteful and highly corrupt. In the last few years I've seen all of the various government scams with my own eyes. It would be far more efficient simply to have a minimum basic income for everyone without preconditions or poisonous moralising. A lot of wasted effort and unnecessary hardship would be prevented by doing that.
guard-of-terra 13y ago
"annual cash grant of $10,000—with no work requirements—to every adult over age 21." And why is that? Imagine you're 18, you've finished your high school and look up to three years of busting your ass in McDonalds instead of attending some education courses because you for some bizzare reason don't qualify for getting money like everybody else does. Then there are single moms who don't get anything for their children. Obviously we see and example where a smart man didn't stop and think, instead throwing in an "over 21" no-brainer.
- jk4930 13y ago
  >single moms who don't get anything for their children. Which is good, because then there's no incentive to produce many children just to cash in their basic income. Being a single mom in Western nations is mostly a business model anyway (either the father or state has to pay and considering that more than 70% of break-offs are initiated by the woman), and it usually results in children who are more prone to become criminals and dropouts.
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    We can disincentivize having each next children so our family converges on "mom, dad and 2-4 children", which would be pretty nice actually won't it? While building some savings for those children, larger when there's a lot of them. Western nations sponsor single moms and get a surplus of single moms, that's what BIG ends.
  - consonants 13y ago
    >Being a single mom in Western nations is mostly a business model anyway Can you expound on this?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Then there are single moms who don't get anything for their children. This is an example of a problem that's easy to state, but not at all easy to solve. If we give money to single moms with no strings, this may provide incentive to have more children (an idea with substantial evidence). If we create a disincentive to address that problem, someone will surely accuse the state of promoting racist policies or trying to engineer a change in the genetic makeup of the population.
yummyfajitas 13y ago
I see this proposal, but like many I object to it. It reduces the marginal value of work and encourages laziness. We already have enough laziness, we don't need more. The fact is we waste a lot of human capital. People claim to be unable to find work, yet it costs $50-80 to have your house cleaned in NYC. The unemployed are simply unwilling to clean houses for $10/hour. According to many on the left, we need more unskilled immigration since immigrants "do jobs that Americans just won't do" [1]. But I do agree that we should eliminate the current ragbag of welfare programs and replace it with a single simple one. So rather than a basic income, I propose a Basic Job Guarantee. The government will give anyone who asks a job at minimum wage. If that is insufficient to pay rent, the government can also provide cheap housing out in the boondocks [2] and buses to the location of the Basic Job. This is the FDR plan and it worked well. Rather than paying people to watch TV we paid people to build national parks. A basic income without work makes sense after technology makes human labor obsolete, but we are nowhere near that point yet. [1] I'm not opposed to immigration, I'm simply pointing out that people across the political spectrum agree that many Americans are unemployed by choice. [2] I.e., move the housing projects to south jersey, don't stick them in midtown manhattan.
- derefr 13y ago
  I think the crux of the issue is, entrepreneurs (us!) just don't want to build companies that rely on "unscalable" low-cost human labor any more. We want to build our empires on the backs of machines. There are no new jobs being created at the margin. All the jobs we want people to do are hard, and all the unemployed people we have are unqualified to do them. My wild-and-crazy suggestion: a Basic Training Guarantee--a law requiring companies to hire capable-but-unskilled laborers, and convert them into skilled labor. No more "15 years' Node.js experience required", or its equivalent in any industry. Work with what we've got!
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    There are plenty of job openings being created at the margin. I want my house cleaned for less than $80 (note: 2 hour job). Farmers want their crops harvested for minimum wage. There are no jobs being created because the unemployed are unwilling to do these jobs. To identify all the job openings that go unfilled, go live in India or China. Most upper class families have a maid, a cook and a driver (if they are wealthy enough to own a car). This is quite uncommon in the US - instead, we have people who are paid not to work.
tiatia 13y ago
I am libertarian and pro market. I like the idea of BI. The problem with our modern "capitalist" society is that you are forced to play the game with no exit options. Earlier it was possible to "just move West" and start farming some land. Today you don't have this option and I think it is indeed a fundamental problem. Milton Friedman, not your typical socialist, was actually one of the inventors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income
- snitko 13y ago
  If you're a libertarian, then you should realize that these money would come out of other people's pockets without their actual approval. Have a fund for poor financed voluntarily. Don't force people to pay for things they disagree with.
  - zanny 13y ago
    The problem is funding that poverty relief fund is not giving you a competitive advantage in a systemically brutal market. If you give charity (beyond the tax emept parts) while your competition invests, you are losing ground. If society forces a 10% consumption tax on goods transactions, or you could just put a 10% profit tax, you don't create an environment where being empathetic is bad business.
  - vasilipupkin 13y ago
    The issue is that we already do redistribute wealth to the poor, and BI is a more efficient way of doing it in theory
c3o 13y ago
We need a BIG because it is becoming a required human right in an information society. More and more, power and opportunity are determined by access to information, and we're making strides in democratizing that and thereby decentralizing power. But to actually realize the benefits from increased access to information requires freedom from existential fear (and education and a mostly discrimination-free society). If we do not fix these problems, we're not improving the world with all our wonderful tech tools but establishing a digital elite. We need a BIG because it encourages risk taking. Society is built largely on the backs of low-wage laborers, but actually benefits most from free, educated, motivated people chasing not just a living wage but a fulfilling occupation. The ingenuity of human minds is our greatest, most renewable, still hugely untapped resource. It should be society's goal to enable and tap that potential. YCombinator sort of pays smart people BIs for a summer not as a reward for work but to ENABLE them to work, to great benefit (though not entirely unconditionally, obviously). When and why have we given up hope of expanding such concepts to all of society? We need a BIG because markets are made of people, which means there can be no free market without free people. Many people today are not free but under economic duress. Only once people's livelihoods are secured, the labor market will produce win-win situations and exploitation will be eliminated (giving everyone a benefit most of us techies already enjoy). Finally, jobs will be paid what they're actually worth to us rather than what employers can get away with. Unpopular tasks will have to be fairly (=highly) paid or automated. A BIG actually perfects capitalism, rather than undermining it. We need a BIG because it's not possible to "live off the land" by your own labor anymore in our society. An income is required for survival. We need a BIG because progress is eliminating (the need for) many low-wage, manual labor jobs. "Full employment" is becoming less and less necessary or desirable. We need a BIG because many tasks society benefits from aren't paid: Caring for the elderly, raising kids,... but even writing open source software or contributing to Wikipedia. People doing such work today are either privileged, dependent on others or in precarious living conditions. All of these strike me as things we should work to avoid. We need a BIG because it is fair and simple – paid not just to the jobless, but everyone. It is empowerment rather than a bureaucratically administered handout with all kinds of social stigma attached.
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  > We need a BIG because it's not possible to "live off the land" by your own labor anymore in our society. An income is required for survival. This brings up an idea I had recently: how about a Basic Land Guarantee instead? You give everyone who asks some piece of fertile land, where they can move and start a farm. If they can't live decently in the big city, they could move to the countryside and support themselves.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
I've always thought that this would have some interesting effects on society. Sure, there are some people who would be content with basic subsistence. Some of those people might turn to crime to get their jollies. I'm not sure there is any social system that can prevent this. A guaranteed income that paid a basic subsistence would drive up the cost of goods. Some of that would be because people at the lowest end of the wage scale can now be picky about their working conditions, driving up the cost of delivering goods and services, and generally improving working conditions. Employers would have to make mundane, dirty, low-skill work a more palatable proposition. Garbage men's wages would increase. Some of it would be because of opportunistic business practices seeking to maximize profit from goods and services and especially off of the people at the bottom. An equilibrium could be reached, but prices for goods and services wouldn't look like the do now. Why some action is necessary: Whether you like the Basic Income or not, something has to change. Technology, especially automation, is currently and will continue to displace low-skilled labor. At some point it will also begin to eat some skilled labor. And why shouldn't it? I can't blame industry for automating labor away. I also can't blame them for the effect that will have on the displaced labor; but, it will have a terrible effect if nothing is done. Nobody can expect those people to starve themselves. This is actually a great opportunity for humanity; if this 'surplus' labor can be directed toward further advancing society (in a positive way). What are the alternatives? A fragmentation of society into: Aristocracy, Worker Class, and a Loafer Class. I doubt this would be stable without an oppressive authoritarian State. Something else?
ahallock 13y ago
The last thing we need is another government program. Everyone thinks he has a great idea when he can use the force and coercion of the State to extort everyone else to support his megalomaniacal master plan. If this idea is so good, let's not use to the State to implement it. Let's start locally and work our way out. But that would be too difficult and too much work. It's much easier to get politicians to point guns at people. Instead of just handing people a BIG, maybe we need to look at what is fundamentally causing poverty. BIG is just an impersonal, "throw some money at it" non-solution. It will probably be used by the rich and powerful to keep people poor. Special interests will get involved; the State will pick winners and losers; people will be less free and more dependent on the State. Is this what we really want?
- zanny 13y ago
  I'm pretty heavy on voluntarism and libertarianism, but a counterargument here is that when people are given the choice, they allow poverty, because there has always been poverty. It doesn't help that one of the major ways to get wealthy is to be very apathetic to the suffering of others. A lot of the runaway profit centers that can get people really wealthy depend on what is already borderline extortion (landlords abusing tenants, healthcare costs, credit cards that predate on the poor). Also, the main argument about BI is that you don't pick winners or losers at all. From square one, you don't pick sides. You say "every citizen of adult age is authorized to get $2000 a month" the end. You eliminate all the other welfare, you could even possibly eliminate public healthcare, and just do a raw wealth redistribution. While it would be nicer if we could get a 99% econonmically literate society of people who can't be taken advantage of who are eternally vigilent to protect their economic interests and behave rationally in all interactions, we can't pull that off. And I think the last 30 years have well demonstrated what happens when people who live to make money off others focus entirely on making money off people who aren't focusing on fighting that battle - they win. By a landslide. And they can crush an entire middle class by way of a cultural apathy to it. And we can't easily fix it, at least not while people are destitute. If everyone was more prosperous, their heirarchy of needs was well taken care of, maybe over a hundred years you could transition to a culture of intellectualism and personal introspection so that you could dissolve violent theft of profits and let people interact as rational informed actors, but we don't have that right now, the problems are only getting much worse, and the worse they get the less likely you are to stand a chance to achieve a truly free society.
lutusp 13y ago
The thesis is easy to state -- we're wealthy, therefore there should be a default payout to unproductive people, as a sign of how we differ from animals, from fascists and blind supporters of oligarchy. A failure to take this step will identify us as unworthy to claim membership in the human race. The idea has merit but unfortunately blurs the issues of income redistribution and state power. As with many public issues, if the state administers the program, the result will likely be a catastrophe. The evidence? The outcome for prior programs of this kind. Warren Buffett has recently argued that he and other very wealthy people should pay more in taxes, a sentiment many other wealthy people share: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-tax-for-the-wealthy.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-... Quote: "... we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that." But this realistic proposal, and the idea of a guaranteed income, differ in one important way -- the former is being proposed by people able and willing to take action on their own, which they have: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge But the latter guaranteed income idea would be administered by the state, which means it would be subject to ever-changing political forces. It would be a shame if a good idea were administered by an entity renowned for doing things so badly that even good ideas can be made to look terrible in retrospect. As tokenadult remarks in a post here, it's never been tried, anywhere. On that basis alone, it deserves a hearing. But it would be a shame if the power responsible for its implementation guaranteed the failure of a potentially successful policy. Am I unjustly skeptical of big government? I don't think so. Examples abound that show how inefficient and counterproductive big government can be -- NASA compared to private space companies, government welfare programs compared to those administered by private agencies. But my favorite example is that, six months after the 9/11 attacks, the INS approved student visas for two of the dead terrorists so they could enroll in pilot training: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/us/nation-challenged-hijackers-6-months-late-ins-notifies-flight-school-hijackers.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/us/nation-challenged-hijac... This example redefines "clueless" and is hardly atypical. I would hate to see a sound public policy idea undermined by the method of its implementation.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
shin_lao 13y ago
This will raise the price of everything I think, because nobody will want to do the chores and we cannot (yet) automate everything. In the end people with the Basic Income will be poor and we'll be back to square one.
- vasilipupkin 13y ago
  not if the total subsidy is equal to the amount currently redistributed to poor people
StandardFuture 13y ago
Well since we are all pretty much software guys here and since this is HACKER news: Wouldn't it be wise for some among us to try to build a simulation of what would happen in the US economy given a Basic Income? That's what I propose. I believe we have enough historical, economic, and census data to at least "play out" a few different ways something like this could go down. It would require taking into consideration plenty of factors and it would be a bit of work but in the end it could also potentially be history-altering itself. Let's make it open source to avoid any possible corruption though. ;)
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  Couldn't help thinking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging
snitko 13y ago
It always amazes me how these people are always ready to extract money out of other people's pockets by force, essentially, to finance their equality and poverty elimination ideas. Why at least one of them wouldn't just commit to making a billion dollar himself by building some useful business and then give it all away to prove his point? Why does it always have to be somebody else, who's paying?
- pdog 13y ago
  A billion dollars is about $20 for each of the 46 million Americans that live in poverty.
  - snitko 13y ago
    Great, convince others to help, don't just tax them. If you can't convince a person that you're right about helping those people, and decide to simply impose an additional tax, then you're coercing them and treating your fellow citizens as objects to be milked, not as individuals to be convinced. But anyway, if you have THAT many people living in poverty and you want to just give them money, there's something wrong with either your assessment of what poverty is or with the solution you propose. The point is not to give money. Money are irrelevant. If you give money, you don't create wealth, you redistribute it. The point is to help all those people create value and, thus, wealth.
    - Raphmedia 13y ago
      I grew up in a family that was receiving money from the government (Québec, Canada). My mother was very sick, you see? Thanks to that money, she saved enough to sent me and my brother to school. Now, I make decent money. I pay lots of taxes. Every paycheck, I pay in tax what we would receive for a month when I was a kid. Trust me from firsthand experience. You want to give money to poor people. Why? Because this money is used to send the kids to school. To put food on the table. To slowly get some education. Do you really believe that people will only buy drugs with the money you give them? That they will gamble it away? Bullshit. Go out, meet some people.
stewartjarod 13y ago
subsidies of any kind won't help an already failing economy.
- derleth 13y ago
  This is economically illiterate on multiple levels.
  - stewartjarod 13y ago
    you're a towel.
  - stewartjarod 13y ago
    Because ec1, ec2, and ec3 turned out so well. corn subsidies, oil subsidies, and energy subsidies are working well too... You're a towel.
    - derleth 13y ago
      The New Deal disproves your thesis, such as it was.
      - stewartjarod 13y ago
        The New Deal didn't bring our economy out of the recession of the 30's. World War II did that. If you would like actually discuss why subsidies are bad for the economy and the world market let's have the discussion. If you want to just throw high school economic terms around then I will stop reading. I'm sober now and this disgusts me. I have a bachelors in Economics and would love to point you to resources that show how subsidies are mostly bad for any economy. Perhaps if you just researched economical efficiencies of subsidies and the negative impact that it can have across markets that would get you started.
coin 13y ago
Another F'ing onswipe site. It just makes for a terrible mobile browsing experience.
cheald 13y ago
Can someone please explain to me why a BI wouldn't simply result in higher prices, resulting in the need for a higher BI, resulting in higher prices, resulting in the need for a higher BI, etc? You have two mechanisms by which you can fund such a proposal: * The government prints money and hands it out. Basically, just direct inflation; the BI becomes an arms race to keep up with inflation caused by BI. * The people who successfully make money have a larger portion of it taken away by the government and given to people who don't make money. They recoup their losses by raising prices and re-extracting it from the people it has been given to, except now the government gets a cut of it twice. BI has to be increased to keep pace with rising prices caused by funding BI. (There is a third proposal: Borrow it without any plan to actually repay it, which is not self-sustaining for obvious reasons) In either case, I can't understand how a BI would lead to a more stable economy. The endgame of the first option is Zimbabwe. The endgame of the second option is Marxist communism; the point at which the system reaches stability is the point at which there is nobody left to extract extra money from to distribute. I feel like I'm missing something critical that makes it a viable strategy. I don't think anyone at all is in favor of uncontrolled hyperinflation, so I'm left to conclude that the favored option is the second choice. We know from history that communism just doesn't work once you reach a large enough population that people are not personally accountable to each other; why would it be different here? (I want to make it clear that if I could snap my fingers and make the world such that nobody had to live in poverty and had food, clothing, shelter, and an internet connection, I'd do it. I don't have anything against the moral goals of BI. I just don't see how it's sustainable, since the money for it has to some from somewhere.)
- anoncowherd 13y ago
  Nice to see someone capable of independent thought.
- jayd16 13y ago
  Demand isn't the only thing that sets a price. Competition keeps prices low.
  - cheald 13y ago
jeffdavis 13y ago
This could be an interesting experiment on a small scale. Maybe a small-medium US state could try it and see what happens. That's the Federalist approach, which we seem to have forgotten about (the article advocates doing it for the entire US, which would be a ridiculously reckless and disruptive thing to do without proving it on a smaller scale first). One drawback that would really concern me is: can people borrow against their basic income? That could be bad in so many ways. In fact, I could see that destroying the entire system. You could have people back at the food bank, and you ask them where their $10K went, and they tell you they have $500/mo in debt service. But to eliminate that, you'd basically have to prevent people from making any forward promises dependent on that money, which could include things like apartment leases. I guess you could try making a web of special-case exceptions and loopholes by which you could do long-term housing leases but not long-term TV leases; but that sounds like it's turning the simple system into an accounting mess. There are also numerous other drawbacks. People will still make bad choices and still end up with serious problems, so we'll still need other programs.
- lifeformed 13y ago
  > This could be an interesting experiment on a small scale. Maybe a small-medium US state could try it and see what happens. What if we had some big colony made for social/economic experiments? We could try out crazy things like basic income. Perhaps the experiments are opt-in/out, or maybe if you hate them, you can leave with paid relocation. The population should be a microcosm of the US or a US city, and the goal should be to try weird things to get it close to a utopia, using the same budget as a comparable populous.
  - jeffdavis 13y ago
    I'm an empiricist at heart, too (at least for some things; everyone is an idealist one way or another). But come on, it has its limits! I think we both already know that a social experiments colony would be chaos. What I was suggesting would have an outside chance of providing useful information. Given enough time, it would probably provide enough information to prevent the next phase from being a complete disaster. You could say that every nation created (or major political upheaval) is an experiment. The U.S. certainly was. Unfortunately, it takes hundreds of years to start producing useful results, and even then, the results are very muddled.
sseveran 13y ago
To understand if this is feasible I think we would need to answer a few basic questions: 1. Given that we have a plethora of wealth transfers in place why have they not lead to a decrease in poverty? The "Great Society" was introduced 40 or 50 years ago and why has that not lead to a decrease in poverty? 2. Why does collapsing all existing programs into a single program make it more efficient? Why will it lead to less complexity? How will other actors (like government unions) respond? 3. How much is "Basic Income"? How should it be adjusted for inflation? Should it be the same in every geography even though the cost of living varies greatly? It seems to me this is the real question that people focus on even though personally I believe it should be the second.
- jquery 13y ago
  Why do we still have the same level of poverty as we did 50 years ago? Short answer, we don't. It's just the goalposts that keep moving.
  - greedo 13y ago
    Perhaps it's because we have an entire industry (and government bureaucracy) dependent on there being dependent class? Yes, the goal posts get changed. It's not that kids are hungry, they're food insecure. Same with parents, job insecure. Well, they used to call that life. You'd go out, work your butt off, save what you earned, and only rely on family, friends, and church. Nowadays, it's depend on your monthly EBT and never improve your lot.
    - jquery 13y ago
      Yes. Here in San Francisco, there's a push for food stamps to be accepted at higher-end restaurants as opposed to just fast food. It's slowly becoming a "right" to not only eat out, but to dine well. So, to recap, poverty has gone from starving => hunger => food necessities => fast food => fine dining. I really don't mind the push for this. It's just calling it "poverty" that grinds my gears.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
ballard 13y ago
US population estimate as of current = 316,582,121 Estimated population over 21 = 80% = 253,265,696 Cost of BIG: $2.53 Trillion (15% of GDP, more or less) The benefit hopefully would be no person should have to worry about basics of water, food and shelter. (See homeless camps that appear to be third-world mud & scrap shelters.)
- tghw 13y ago
  2012 Federal Tax Receipts: $2.45 Trillion This is where it falls apart. To implement this program, you would need to double tax receipts. 98% of income taxes, which account for about 46% of all receipts, are paid by the top 50% of the population. The median income is around $30k. At that level, about $4050 goes to federal taxes. If we double all tax sources, that would increase the tax burden to $8100. (This is assuming the BI is untaxed.) Effectively, the median would see an extra $5,950/year from this program. People making above $70,000 would start to see their taxes increase more than the $10,000 BI. People with incomes of $200,000 would be paying an extra $35k per year. I think it's an interesting proposal, but with these sorts of increases, you're going to encounter a lot of resistance from upper-middle classes and higher, the sort of people who tend to be much more influential in politics...
  - ballard 13y ago
    So how exactly would this be funded? Double taxes? The rich would never pay anything more, the mid/upper would be squeezed. Also: Deficit, debt and looming likelyhood of austerity strategy.
    - tghw 13y ago
      That's what I was getting at, we'd have to double taxes, though for anyone below $70k/year, it'd be a net positive.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
jwatte 13y ago
Another perspective on BI: "For us, the living." Written by Robert Heinlein in the 1930s IIRC.
JDDunn9 13y ago
I think the BIG is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see some hard evidence that it works before we implemented something this large nationwide. The government should do a controlled test. You could go somewhere like India, randomly select a bunch of small cities, give half of them a BIG, and see what it did to work incentive and the local economy. It would only cost a few million, and you'd have better, more reliable data than economists' un-tested theories.
- nbouscal 13y ago
  It's been done, details here: http://mondediplo.com/2013/05/04income http://mondediplo.com/2013/05/04income
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Even better: Simply send every single American citizen a check for $1,000 a month. This is more than enough to live comfortably, and wouldn't have to be means tested. Bill Gates would get one, and a six month old child born in poverty would get one. The total bill would be around $3.6T, a bit over half what the US government currently spends in total. Phase out all education spending, health assistance, pension assistance, welfare assistance. Replace it with a simple check that every single citizen gets. More efficient, less waste, and more honest.
- greedo 13y ago
  Got a source for the Federal Govt. budget being over $7T a year?
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Never said it's $7T - it's $6.4T. And who said anything about Federal only? http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown
    - greedo 13y ago
      You said "US government." To most, that would mean federal government. And clearly, BI would be a Federal program, meaning an additional $3.7T in spending. If you think that phasing out local edu, Medicaid, etc is a great plan, or even a tenable one, you're misunderstanding politics.
      - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
        Oh, I wasn't aware that guaranteed income was a tenable policy proposal. ;) Get real.
codex 13y ago
You're an entry level worker with few skills and little experience, living just above the poverty line. You're unemployed and thinking of eating your cat. Along comes unconditional basic income, and suddenly you're netting $20K a year. You were making $23K at your last job before you were laid off, so this isn't so bad! A year later, your old boss calls you up and offers you your old job back. Awesome! Only now the salary is $6K, not $23K--the market wage now that everyone gets $20K. Work 40 hours a week for an extra $6K? No thanks--you're doing okay with your basic living wage and zero effort. Plus, Rob is getting the band back together! And so you remain an unemployed entry level employee until you die.
- vault_ 13y ago
  It's pretty easy to fabricate a story to support whatever position you want: You get laid off and along comes unconditional basic income. Your $20K is covering your basic expenses pretty well, but you're bored out of your skull (you sold the TV after you were laid off). Rob says he's getting the band back together and after a while you guys think you're starting to sound pretty good. A year later your boss calls and offers you your job back. He wants to pay your $6K, you negotiate part time for $4K so you still have time to devote to the band. Your boss agrees since he can just hire another person or two for less than your old salary. With your extra money you pay for time in a recording studio and new instruments. Your band becomes wildly successful and you quit your job since royalties are now making you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. And so you rise above your entry level beginnings and tell people stories of how you've achieved the American Dream until you die.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  I don't get it. If nobody wants the 6k job, how is it that nobody is offering more? Are there less people looking for workers? Let me tell that history again. Yeah, you get that 20k a year. Then your old boss calls, and just offers you 30k for that job you used to do for 23k. You can either join your old friends on their band again, or get a total 50k a year, your choice. Now, about your old boss, he'll have to pay more, no questions about it. But the total cost of salary is trending down anyway, so the best option is to start with a small basic income, and grow it at the proportion that income concentrate at the top.
bobbydavid 13y ago
It's because the distribution of wealth affects what the economy produces. If money is more evenly distributed, you will see more economy cars, microwaves, middle income housing construction, etc. If only a few people are really wealthy, you will see luxury yachts, mansions, etc. So scarcity conditions are different -- there really are more toasters to go around because the people had the money to buy them.
vasilipupkin 13y ago
This is a good idea in theory, but in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. It could work, if you could phase out all other types of assistance. But what's the chance of that?
jchrisa 13y ago
The shortest clearest argument for basic income I've read http://books.google.com/books/about/What_s_Wrong_with_a_Free_Lunch.html?id=6KLUWNiFUSYC http://books.google.com/books/about/What_s_Wrong_with_a_Free...
dylanrw 13y ago
I like the idea, however this quote sums up why I think it may not happen. “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― John Steinbeck
hosh 13y ago
We don't need a basic income guarantee. We need essential needs and basic services approaching the cost of zero. Example: sunlight approaches the cost of zero (though there might be a capital expenditure to take advantage of it, the ongoing expense approaches zero).
- ihateloggingin 13y ago
  Sunlight does not approach the cost of zero when there is private ownership of land. The legal right to collect the sunlight is attached to the land. Securing that legal right costs money.
  - hosh 13y ago
    You forgot to mention water rights too. The thing is, such rights are at the end of the day, absurd. Such rights comes down to being able to exercise power to seize and hold land. Did I mention in my original post, I talked about capital expenditure, and approaching zero expense? Land would be a part of that capital expenditure. Any ongoing expenses related to land would be the cost to hold land, whether that be through registering it with the government or to defend it against all comers.
MichaelTieso 13y ago
George Carlin said it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wDadtkByw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wDadtkByw
ctdonath 13y ago
Here's a thought: anyone supporting the BI theory, don't say any more about it until YOU are providing BI, personally, to at least one other person unrelated to you. If you intend to use the police power of the state to take thru threat of force the lawful and moral possessions of others to give to those you are sympathetic to, then you should at least FIRST be willing to do it out of your own pocket without coercion. If you won't do at least that, then you have no moral stand thereon.
ddeck 13y ago
Some posit that given what they assume to be an inevitable loss of the majority of jobs to robotics/AI at some point, a basic guaranteed income is going to be essential to ensure continued consumption and growth. Paul Krugman wrote an opinion piece with his thoughts on this earlier this year[1]. As one commentator noted on the piece: If the fight is between capital and labour, and capital is winning, it seems subsidies in the form of some basic type of income may be called upon. As Krugman notes, the issue relates to the fact that it is now jobs on all fronts that are being jeopardised. Highly skilled, unskilled not to mention the professions most suited to little grey matter. The new inequality we are seeing has little to do with how well educated you are. It’s hard to penetrate beyond the barrier on education alone. The new inequality is about capital owners and non-capital owners. An alternative of course, is the continued rise of "bullshit jobs" that was highlighted in a post a few weeks ago.[2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-f... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478
brianbreslin 13y ago
How does it work in cultures or societies where the government issues stipends annually? I am thinking of certain Native American tribes in the us issue their tribe members $xx,xxx a year as their share of casino earnings (sans work). Or aren't there places like UAE that have some sort of basic income to citizens?
levosmetalo 13y ago
One thing that opponents of BI are missing, and proponents fail to realize and explain is that there will be no "magic extra money" involved. The cost of basic income will not be higher than what currently is spent on social safety nets. Yes, every adult in the state will get ~1000$ and every child ~500$. That means that lover income or no income people with get enough to survive, without penalizing them for actually working low paid jobs. Middle class people will get the same amount, but obviously they are going to be taxed progressively more, so their net income would stay more less the same as now. Even the richest people will get this money, but I guess they will be net losers because of the taxes. Now, if implemented correctly, there won't be extra taxes, no printing money, since the money will be distributed just a bit differently. No inflation, since total monetary sum stays the same. In addition to that, it might be even cheaper, since it will reduce administrations costs of current welfare system to almost a half. (No hard data, but remember reading that charity spends almost ~40% of revenue on administrative tasks). And, poor people will have incentive to work, since even a minijob would be a net beneficial to them.
bagosm 13y ago
>America is awash with money. > >Yet poverty continues to grow. After this statement I stopped reading, and I would like to take some time to address a common issue that I see repeating itself. There are some incredible minds here on hacker news. Fast and efficient problem solvers. However, the issue is that you trust too much. You trust the general opinion, and the science that was laid before you. This isn't an issue in and of itself, however it makes you sometimes start with an assumption and try to solve a problem that isn't there. Never forget that the majority of the knowledge the mankind has always thought of to be exact, has been completed or even disproved by newer science. Solving the problem: "America has lots of moneyz, but people are getting poorer" is a fool's errand. The author acknowledges the fact that the economy is failing, but still starts with that assumption. That statement is so deeply nested inside his psyche that even though he acknowledges the exact opposite as truth, he still seeks out to solve that problem like a Don Quixote charging the windmills. Don't be a Don Quixote. Double and triple check your assumptions about reality. Try to disprove your own assumptions. Only then you will be completely certain and self confident about what you do.
tpainton 13y ago
Because welfare did such a great job of ending the poverty cycle...even Clinton felt it needed reform...Im only 45 and and Im seeing the cycle of stupidity.
axilmar 13y ago
Were would the money needed for BIG come from? Increased taxes on the rich? And why Medicare and Medicaid would cost so much in the future?

268 points by tokenadult 13y ago

This issue comes up from time to time here on Hacker News, which is why I submitted the current story. The policy proposal of a basic income guarantee is interesting because a) no country has ever tried it, really, so there isn't a real-world experience case to look at yet, and b) a remarkable variety of people from otherwise differing points of view have proposed it over the years. Charles Murray's book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone would cost in the United States, and suggests some probable effects that would have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it was published. Murray's own summary of his argument http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf and reviews of his book http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-our-hands-a-plan-to-replace-the-welfare-state-article/ http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-ou... http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.pdf http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.p... http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2006/fall/pdf/book_review.pdf http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focu... http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296 http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296 may inform the discussion here. Big public policy proposals are not easy to discuss, but the big public policy proposal of a guaranteed basic income for all is a response to existing policy of supposedly targeted social welfare programs that are just about equally expensive in the benefits they provide, but much more costly to administer. As a matter of personal opinion, I am still thinking about whether or not a basic income guarantee is a good idea, but I definitely want to figure out if spending no more in total for social welfare by directly transferring cash to all citizens would simplify administration of welfare programs and allow more individual choice about how to use the money.

jswinghammer 13y ago
Arguments like this assume you can change one thing and society won't change around it. With a basic guarantee many people who are marginally employed would stop working. You'd have two classes of citizens: the workers and those who are effectively parasites off of the workers. I don't like people being poor but society is just not wealthy for poverty to disappear. The said a person living in poverty is probably better off than all the but the richest people at any time in human history. Part of the issue is that we lack an understanding of poverty and what actually causes people to not be in poverty. Considering that in human history poverty has always been the norm it makes sense to look at what causes poverty to not be the norm first before moving onto just "fixing" it.
- transfire 13y ago
  Here's the problem with your analysis: Just because someone doesn't have a job, doesn't make them a parasite. Here's an example, a granddaughter who lives with and helps take care of her poor grandmother who has Alzheimer's. In her spare time she does sonogram analysis to determine the sex of babies for newly pregnant mothers (Yes, this does exist.) But there is no money in any of this, even though she provides a service to society. Give it some thought and you can realize there are many variations on this. The problem with capital-driven society is that it only values a narrow range of activities that have high rates of money exchange. But there are many things in life worth doing, indeed that need to be done, that do not.
  - jknightco 13y ago
    Except your granddaughter isn't providing services to society. She's providing one service to her grandmother, as a family member (which could almost be seen as repaying a debt). The other service she's providing is the equivalent of a hobby: if it was valuable enough to other people to be considered a "service to society," then she could be getting paid for it.
    - eCa 13y ago
      > Except your granddaughter isn't providing services to society. I think it's arguable that she does. By doing what she does she relieves the system from taking care of her grandmother, and thereby making whatever small amount of taxpayer money usable for something else meanwhile taking that economic burden on herself. (Edit: It can of course be seen that whatever wellfare money she gets is the equivalent of her service to grandmother/society, but in that case it's still at worst a zero sum scenario.)

rdl 13y ago

I wonder what it would take to do an incrementalist version of this -- basic income either at a state/local government level, or for a certain class of people, or as a purely private thing, as a way to test it and build support before going national and universal. Alaska's Permanent Fund dividend is like a deci-BI (it is O($1k/yr, BI of $15k would probably work in Alaska?). Arguably (government) pensions are a form of BI. You can get one with 20 years of military service or 20-30 years of LEO service in a lot of cases, and maybe this could be compressed even more. 10 years of overseas service in a high-risk occupation force could produce lifetime BI before you're 30? I might be willing to pay BI already in exchange for people having training for EMS/disaster response in certain areas. That's not really BI on paper, but if the training isn't particularly onerous, and the deployment is infrequent, it is approximately the same in effect, and could be used. A college/university with a huge endowment and few students could potentially do BI for graduates of certain programs, particularly in markets with high unemployment but high external benefits from the graduates.

VLM 13y ago
Your disaster response BI example is basically what the Reserves and National Guard did until about a decade or so ago. This was my experience in the USAR in the 90s. There have been a variety of (internal) doctrinal changes over the years which outsiders probably wouldn't understand, such that it certainly could not apply now. But, doctrine can change quickly. One interesting issue is being in the Reserves meant a "basic income" which was wealthy for a kid, "about average" for a college student, and a rounding error once you get a real job. You probably need some kind of pay scale modifications, which inevitably results in considerable gaming of the system. "Well, as long as I don't graduate, I'll get an extra $500/month and I'm spending that on nicer rent so I'll take one class per semester for the remainder of my life" (I suppose there are worse unintended consequences) Another problem is supply and demand. So you give young people $10K/yr. And everyone knows it. So colleges raise tuition $10K/yr because they have an obligation not to leave money on the table. And rents go up $10K/yr ditto reasoning. And sin taxes go up $10K/yr. And price of cars goes up $10K/yr. By the time you're done, the poor are more miserable than ever because they've only gained $10K but inflation has demanded an extra $50K/yr just to keep up with where they're at. I've seen this play out in govt sponsored day care cost sharing, govt sponsored housing (both welfare and nearby .mil bases), govt sponsored everything...

chiph 13y ago

America is both rich & poor at the same time. We have one of the most productive and efficient workforces on the planet, yet we are $17 trillion in debt. This can only be because we spent our money poorly - making bad decisions about where it should go. That debt can only be retired if we have a plan to stop increasing it, and to make payments to reduce the principal. The article says that the BIG would do this, but provides no rationale as to how this might happen. Would the BIG replace the myriad existing income programs? I don't see how - $10k is $834 a month, which not much more than the monthly food bill for a family. It would be to their advantage to continue on the old programs, as they'd get more money each month. The other danger is that the $10k wouldn't stay $10k for very long. Soon, there would be impassioned pleas from the politicians that "We have to help these people" by increasing it to provide a living wage.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
"for a family" Slightly unrelated: Of course children should receive BI. Why won't they? Of course, legal care must be taken so 10% of a family first child's BI, 33% of second child's BI, 50% for thirg child's BI (and so on) go to some special saving account then used to finance housing or education for those children. Or else a "family" collecting BI for their five children, living off it and then give children a boot after they grow up will become a social problem.
- VLM 13y ago
  Why should the .gov chose a winner as in "used to finance housing or education for those children"? Why not demand a savings account for iphones to make apple rich? The fundamental problem is housing and (excessive) education is a non-productive activity. I don't see any benefit for society as a whole, in a supply/demand situation, to make relators and school administrators wealthy, while making it financially much more difficult / impossible for kids from small families to compete. What philosophical reasoning behind a kid with only one bro/sis has to live in the poor ghetto or be unable to afford college, in comparison a kid with ten bro/sis will have far more money in his account and be better off for his/her entire life merely because his parents were more fertile? There's an obvious financial reason under this system for college admins and housing builders to encourage huge families, because they'll be able to suck more money out of them. Another interesting effect of inflating higher ed prices would be the elimination via unaffordability for adult education. No more going back to school to learn X if the tuition for X has been exploded such that only children with 18 years of savings and 10 siblings can afford it. I'm not sure as a cultural trend that using the hammer of .gov policy to discourage lifetime learning (insert cliche about the economy being faster than ever, blah blah) is a wise social goal.

kjackson2012 13y ago

Poverty in the US is nothing like poverty in other countries. Poor people in the US mostly still have tvs, etc. Poor people in true Third world countries wash themselves in puddle water, and poor children play in garbage dumps. I've seen both with my own eyes. I don't agree that Americans need a basic income guarantee whatsoever. The idea might work in other countries, but certainly not in the US.

transfire 13y ago
This idea could not work in the kind of 3rd world country you are talking about. Those countries have a much more fundamental problem in not having a capitalized society at all. So there is no foundation for any such base income system to be built. For them to get out of poverty requires the removal of their corrupt governments and the establishment of a sound money system coupled with a required public education system.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Well, it could work if the BI was applied globally...that would be quite wonderful from a world peace, human rights perspective. It might not ever happen, but we can always hope. Of course, the corrupt governments would have to be removed first...
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Your conclusion has no relationship whatsoever to your observation, and you don't describe a connection in your post. I live in a country with high income disparity, basically the poor are living in dumps, but I don't see what that has to do with the states which is further a long the developed country spectrum.
nawitus 13y ago
Poor people in the United States are more poor than most people in e.g. Scandinavian countries. You also made the fallacy of "if some people are worse off, then Americans shouldn't be any better". However, it's ethical to increase the standard of living of all people.

devx 13y ago

You know where there is a lot money to be saved - much more than from food stamps and whatnot? The "defense"/war budget and the home police state. You could save literally hundreds of billions of dollars - every year - and you'd still have a bigger budget than it was at the beginning of 2000's. Not to mention an increasing chunk of that money is used against you: militarizing the police, all the unconstitutional searches from DHS, the mass spying of NSA, the "war on drugs" DEA, and so on. Besides keeping buying stuff the army doesn't even need to have a strong defense, and besides going into pointless wars for the sake of maintaining the profitability and businesses of the Military Industrial Complex, there's also incredible waste in the defense department, with things being paid for many times over what they're really worth. So, Democrats (or really, anyone), if you want a lot more money put into social programs and into fixing and building the infrastructure, then target the defense budget, and ask for a dramatic cut - and not just those bullshit "cuts from planned budget increases", which is just another way of saying they won't increase the waste much more than it already is, in the future.

davidy123 13y ago
The army and military industries are huge employment and research organizations. Not efficient ones in the latter case, but there you go. You'd have to re-target all that employment and spending somewhere to make up for the hole, like, say, health and energy. Unfortunately other countries around the world may not make the same decision as you and the US would fall behind in certain capabilities, which may be important to have at some point.
- derefr 13y ago
  To put it more bluntly, the DHS is a jobs program. We already have BI; you just have to hold a gun and let the government tell you what to do.

motters 13y ago

I was dubious about the idea of Basic Income in the past, but now having more experience of the problems of the economy I'm in favour of it and see it as becoming inevitable at some point. Eventually it will simply be impossible in the majority of cases to exchange human labour (intellectual or physical) for resources, and we're on a sliding scale where it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that. The existing welfare state here in the UK is wasteful and highly corrupt. In the last few years I've seen all of the various government scams with my own eyes. It would be far more efficient simply to have a minimum basic income for everyone without preconditions or poisonous moralising. A lot of wasted effort and unnecessary hardship would be prevented by doing that.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

"annual cash grant of $10,000—with no work requirements—to every adult over age 21." And why is that? Imagine you're 18, you've finished your high school and look up to three years of busting your ass in McDonalds instead of attending some education courses because you for some bizzare reason don't qualify for getting money like everybody else does. Then there are single moms who don't get anything for their children. Obviously we see and example where a smart man didn't stop and think, instead throwing in an "over 21" no-brainer.

jk4930 13y ago
>single moms who don't get anything for their children. Which is good, because then there's no incentive to produce many children just to cash in their basic income. Being a single mom in Western nations is mostly a business model anyway (either the father or state has to pay and considering that more than 70% of break-offs are initiated by the woman), and it usually results in children who are more prone to become criminals and dropouts.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  We can disincentivize having each next children so our family converges on "mom, dad and 2-4 children", which would be pretty nice actually won't it? While building some savings for those children, larger when there's a lot of them. Western nations sponsor single moms and get a surplus of single moms, that's what BIG ends.
- consonants 13y ago
  >Being a single mom in Western nations is mostly a business model anyway Can you expound on this?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lutusp 13y ago
> Then there are single moms who don't get anything for their children. This is an example of a problem that's easy to state, but not at all easy to solve. If we give money to single moms with no strings, this may provide incentive to have more children (an idea with substantial evidence). If we create a disincentive to address that problem, someone will surely accuse the state of promoting racist policies or trying to engineer a change in the genetic makeup of the population.

yummyfajitas 13y ago

I see this proposal, but like many I object to it. It reduces the marginal value of work and encourages laziness. We already have enough laziness, we don't need more. The fact is we waste a lot of human capital. People claim to be unable to find work, yet it costs $50-80 to have your house cleaned in NYC. The unemployed are simply unwilling to clean houses for $10/hour. According to many on the left, we need more unskilled immigration since immigrants "do jobs that Americans just won't do" [1]. But I do agree that we should eliminate the current ragbag of welfare programs and replace it with a single simple one. So rather than a basic income, I propose a Basic Job Guarantee. The government will give anyone who asks a job at minimum wage. If that is insufficient to pay rent, the government can also provide cheap housing out in the boondocks [2] and buses to the location of the Basic Job. This is the FDR plan and it worked well. Rather than paying people to watch TV we paid people to build national parks. A basic income without work makes sense after technology makes human labor obsolete, but we are nowhere near that point yet. [1] I'm not opposed to immigration, I'm simply pointing out that people across the political spectrum agree that many Americans are unemployed by choice. [2] I.e., move the housing projects to south jersey, don't stick them in midtown manhattan.

derefr 13y ago
I think the crux of the issue is, entrepreneurs (us!) just don't want to build companies that rely on "unscalable" low-cost human labor any more. We want to build our empires on the backs of machines. There are no new jobs being created at the margin. All the jobs we want people to do are hard, and all the unemployed people we have are unqualified to do them. My wild-and-crazy suggestion: a Basic Training Guarantee--a law requiring companies to hire capable-but-unskilled laborers, and convert them into skilled labor. No more "15 years' Node.js experience required", or its equivalent in any industry. Work with what we've got!
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  There are plenty of job openings being created at the margin. I want my house cleaned for less than $80 (note: 2 hour job). Farmers want their crops harvested for minimum wage. There are no jobs being created because the unemployed are unwilling to do these jobs. To identify all the job openings that go unfilled, go live in India or China. Most upper class families have a maid, a cook and a driver (if they are wealthy enough to own a car). This is quite uncommon in the US - instead, we have people who are paid not to work.

tiatia 13y ago

I am libertarian and pro market. I like the idea of BI. The problem with our modern "capitalist" society is that you are forced to play the game with no exit options. Earlier it was possible to "just move West" and start farming some land. Today you don't have this option and I think it is indeed a fundamental problem. Milton Friedman, not your typical socialist, was actually one of the inventors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income

snitko 13y ago
If you're a libertarian, then you should realize that these money would come out of other people's pockets without their actual approval. Have a fund for poor financed voluntarily. Don't force people to pay for things they disagree with.
- zanny 13y ago
  The problem is funding that poverty relief fund is not giving you a competitive advantage in a systemically brutal market. If you give charity (beyond the tax emept parts) while your competition invests, you are losing ground. If society forces a 10% consumption tax on goods transactions, or you could just put a 10% profit tax, you don't create an environment where being empathetic is bad business.
- vasilipupkin 13y ago
  The issue is that we already do redistribute wealth to the poor, and BI is a more efficient way of doing it in theory

c3o 13y ago

We need a BIG because it is becoming a required human right in an information society. More and more, power and opportunity are determined by access to information, and we're making strides in democratizing that and thereby decentralizing power. But to actually realize the benefits from increased access to information requires freedom from existential fear (and education and a mostly discrimination-free society). If we do not fix these problems, we're not improving the world with all our wonderful tech tools but establishing a digital elite. We need a BIG because it encourages risk taking. Society is built largely on the backs of low-wage laborers, but actually benefits most from free, educated, motivated people chasing not just a living wage but a fulfilling occupation. The ingenuity of human minds is our greatest, most renewable, still hugely untapped resource. It should be society's goal to enable and tap that potential. YCombinator sort of pays smart people BIs for a summer not as a reward for work but to ENABLE them to work, to great benefit (though not entirely unconditionally, obviously). When and why have we given up hope of expanding such concepts to all of society? We need a BIG because markets are made of people, which means there can be no free market without free people. Many people today are not free but under economic duress. Only once people's livelihoods are secured, the labor market will produce win-win situations and exploitation will be eliminated (giving everyone a benefit most of us techies already enjoy). Finally, jobs will be paid what they're actually worth to us rather than what employers can get away with. Unpopular tasks will have to be fairly (=highly) paid or automated. A BIG actually perfects capitalism, rather than undermining it. We need a BIG because it's not possible to "live off the land" by your own labor anymore in our society. An income is required for survival. We need a BIG because progress is eliminating (the need for) many low-wage, manual labor jobs. "Full employment" is becoming less and less necessary or desirable. We need a BIG because many tasks society benefits from aren't paid: Caring for the elderly, raising kids,... but even writing open source software or contributing to Wikipedia. People doing such work today are either privileged, dependent on others or in precarious living conditions. All of these strike me as things we should work to avoid. We need a BIG because it is fair and simple – paid not just to the jobless, but everyone. It is empowerment rather than a bureaucratically administered handout with all kinds of social stigma attached.

ahomescu1 13y ago
> We need a BIG because it's not possible to "live off the land" by your own labor anymore in our society. An income is required for survival. This brings up an idea I had recently: how about a Basic Land Guarantee instead? You give everyone who asks some piece of fertile land, where they can move and start a farm. If they can't live decently in the big city, they could move to the countryside and support themselves.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

I've always thought that this would have some interesting effects on society. Sure, there are some people who would be content with basic subsistence. Some of those people might turn to crime to get their jollies. I'm not sure there is any social system that can prevent this. A guaranteed income that paid a basic subsistence would drive up the cost of goods. Some of that would be because people at the lowest end of the wage scale can now be picky about their working conditions, driving up the cost of delivering goods and services, and generally improving working conditions. Employers would have to make mundane, dirty, low-skill work a more palatable proposition. Garbage men's wages would increase. Some of it would be because of opportunistic business practices seeking to maximize profit from goods and services and especially off of the people at the bottom. An equilibrium could be reached, but prices for goods and services wouldn't look like the do now. Why some action is necessary: Whether you like the Basic Income or not, something has to change. Technology, especially automation, is currently and will continue to displace low-skilled labor. At some point it will also begin to eat some skilled labor. And why shouldn't it? I can't blame industry for automating labor away. I also can't blame them for the effect that will have on the displaced labor; but, it will have a terrible effect if nothing is done. Nobody can expect those people to starve themselves. This is actually a great opportunity for humanity; if this 'surplus' labor can be directed toward further advancing society (in a positive way). What are the alternatives? A fragmentation of society into: Aristocracy, Worker Class, and a Loafer Class. I doubt this would be stable without an oppressive authoritarian State. Something else?

ahallock 13y ago

The last thing we need is another government program. Everyone thinks he has a great idea when he can use the force and coercion of the State to extort everyone else to support his megalomaniacal master plan. If this idea is so good, let's not use to the State to implement it. Let's start locally and work our way out. But that would be too difficult and too much work. It's much easier to get politicians to point guns at people. Instead of just handing people a BIG, maybe we need to look at what is fundamentally causing poverty. BIG is just an impersonal, "throw some money at it" non-solution. It will probably be used by the rich and powerful to keep people poor. Special interests will get involved; the State will pick winners and losers; people will be less free and more dependent on the State. Is this what we really want?

zanny 13y ago
I'm pretty heavy on voluntarism and libertarianism, but a counterargument here is that when people are given the choice, they allow poverty, because there has always been poverty. It doesn't help that one of the major ways to get wealthy is to be very apathetic to the suffering of others. A lot of the runaway profit centers that can get people really wealthy depend on what is already borderline extortion (landlords abusing tenants, healthcare costs, credit cards that predate on the poor). Also, the main argument about BI is that you don't pick winners or losers at all. From square one, you don't pick sides. You say "every citizen of adult age is authorized to get $2000 a month" the end. You eliminate all the other welfare, you could even possibly eliminate public healthcare, and just do a raw wealth redistribution. While it would be nicer if we could get a 99% econonmically literate society of people who can't be taken advantage of who are eternally vigilent to protect their economic interests and behave rationally in all interactions, we can't pull that off. And I think the last 30 years have well demonstrated what happens when people who live to make money off others focus entirely on making money off people who aren't focusing on fighting that battle - they win. By a landslide. And they can crush an entire middle class by way of a cultural apathy to it. And we can't easily fix it, at least not while people are destitute. If everyone was more prosperous, their heirarchy of needs was well taken care of, maybe over a hundred years you could transition to a culture of intellectualism and personal introspection so that you could dissolve violent theft of profits and let people interact as rational informed actors, but we don't have that right now, the problems are only getting much worse, and the worse they get the less likely you are to stand a chance to achieve a truly free society.

lutusp 13y ago

The thesis is easy to state -- we're wealthy, therefore there should be a default payout to unproductive people, as a sign of how we differ from animals, from fascists and blind supporters of oligarchy. A failure to take this step will identify us as unworthy to claim membership in the human race. The idea has merit but unfortunately blurs the issues of income redistribution and state power. As with many public issues, if the state administers the program, the result will likely be a catastrophe. The evidence? The outcome for prior programs of this kind. Warren Buffett has recently argued that he and other very wealthy people should pay more in taxes, a sentiment many other wealthy people share: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-tax-for-the-wealthy.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-... Quote: "... we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that." But this realistic proposal, and the idea of a guaranteed income, differ in one important way -- the former is being proposed by people able and willing to take action on their own, which they have: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge But the latter guaranteed income idea would be administered by the state, which means it would be subject to ever-changing political forces. It would be a shame if a good idea were administered by an entity renowned for doing things so badly that even good ideas can be made to look terrible in retrospect. As tokenadult remarks in a post here, it's never been tried, anywhere. On that basis alone, it deserves a hearing. But it would be a shame if the power responsible for its implementation guaranteed the failure of a potentially successful policy. Am I unjustly skeptical of big government? I don't think so. Examples abound that show how inefficient and counterproductive big government can be -- NASA compared to private space companies, government welfare programs compared to those administered by private agencies. But my favorite example is that, six months after the 9/11 attacks, the INS approved student visas for two of the dead terrorists so they could enroll in pilot training: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/us/nation-challenged-hijackers-6-months-late-ins-notifies-flight-school-hijackers.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/us/nation-challenged-hijac... This example redefines "clueless" and is hardly atypical. I would hate to see a sound public policy idea undermined by the method of its implementation.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

shin_lao 13y ago

This will raise the price of everything I think, because nobody will want to do the chores and we cannot (yet) automate everything. In the end people with the Basic Income will be poor and we'll be back to square one.

vasilipupkin 13y ago
not if the total subsidy is equal to the amount currently redistributed to poor people

StandardFuture 13y ago

Well since we are all pretty much software guys here and since this is HACKER news: Wouldn't it be wise for some among us to try to build a simulation of what would happen in the US economy given a Basic Income? That's what I propose. I believe we have enough historical, economic, and census data to at least "play out" a few different ways something like this could go down. It would require taking into consideration plenty of factors and it would be a bit of work but in the end it could also potentially be history-altering itself. Let's make it open source to avoid any possible corruption though. ;)

Kurtz79 13y ago
Couldn't help thinking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging

snitko 13y ago

It always amazes me how these people are always ready to extract money out of other people's pockets by force, essentially, to finance their equality and poverty elimination ideas. Why at least one of them wouldn't just commit to making a billion dollar himself by building some useful business and then give it all away to prove his point? Why does it always have to be somebody else, who's paying?

pdog 13y ago
A billion dollars is about $20 for each of the 46 million Americans that live in poverty.
- snitko 13y ago
  Great, convince others to help, don't just tax them. If you can't convince a person that you're right about helping those people, and decide to simply impose an additional tax, then you're coercing them and treating your fellow citizens as objects to be milked, not as individuals to be convinced. But anyway, if you have THAT many people living in poverty and you want to just give them money, there's something wrong with either your assessment of what poverty is or with the solution you propose. The point is not to give money. Money are irrelevant. If you give money, you don't create wealth, you redistribute it. The point is to help all those people create value and, thus, wealth.
  - Raphmedia 13y ago
    I grew up in a family that was receiving money from the government (Québec, Canada). My mother was very sick, you see? Thanks to that money, she saved enough to sent me and my brother to school. Now, I make decent money. I pay lots of taxes. Every paycheck, I pay in tax what we would receive for a month when I was a kid. Trust me from firsthand experience. You want to give money to poor people. Why? Because this money is used to send the kids to school. To put food on the table. To slowly get some education. Do you really believe that people will only buy drugs with the money you give them? That they will gamble it away? Bullshit. Go out, meet some people.

stewartjarod 13y ago

subsidies of any kind won't help an already failing economy.

derleth 13y ago
This is economically illiterate on multiple levels.
- stewartjarod 13y ago
  you're a towel.
- stewartjarod 13y ago
  Because ec1, ec2, and ec3 turned out so well. corn subsidies, oil subsidies, and energy subsidies are working well too... You're a towel.
  - derleth 13y ago
    The New Deal disproves your thesis, such as it was.
    - stewartjarod 13y ago
      The New Deal didn't bring our economy out of the recession of the 30's. World War II did that. If you would like actually discuss why subsidies are bad for the economy and the world market let's have the discussion. If you want to just throw high school economic terms around then I will stop reading. I'm sober now and this disgusts me. I have a bachelors in Economics and would love to point you to resources that show how subsidies are mostly bad for any economy. Perhaps if you just researched economical efficiencies of subsidies and the negative impact that it can have across markets that would get you started.

coin 13y ago

Another F'ing onswipe site. It just makes for a terrible mobile browsing experience.

cheald 13y ago

Can someone please explain to me why a BI wouldn't simply result in higher prices, resulting in the need for a higher BI, resulting in higher prices, resulting in the need for a higher BI, etc? You have two mechanisms by which you can fund such a proposal: * The government prints money and hands it out. Basically, just direct inflation; the BI becomes an arms race to keep up with inflation caused by BI. * The people who successfully make money have a larger portion of it taken away by the government and given to people who don't make money. They recoup their losses by raising prices and re-extracting it from the people it has been given to, except now the government gets a cut of it twice. BI has to be increased to keep pace with rising prices caused by funding BI. (There is a third proposal: Borrow it without any plan to actually repay it, which is not self-sustaining for obvious reasons) In either case, I can't understand how a BI would lead to a more stable economy. The endgame of the first option is Zimbabwe. The endgame of the second option is Marxist communism; the point at which the system reaches stability is the point at which there is nobody left to extract extra money from to distribute. I feel like I'm missing something critical that makes it a viable strategy. I don't think anyone at all is in favor of uncontrolled hyperinflation, so I'm left to conclude that the favored option is the second choice. We know from history that communism just doesn't work once you reach a large enough population that people are not personally accountable to each other; why would it be different here? (I want to make it clear that if I could snap my fingers and make the world such that nobody had to live in poverty and had food, clothing, shelter, and an internet connection, I'd do it. I don't have anything against the moral goals of BI. I just don't see how it's sustainable, since the money for it has to some from somewhere.)

anoncowherd 13y ago
Nice to see someone capable of independent thought.
jayd16 13y ago
Demand isn't the only thing that sets a price. Competition keeps prices low.
- cheald 13y ago

jeffdavis 13y ago

This could be an interesting experiment on a small scale. Maybe a small-medium US state could try it and see what happens. That's the Federalist approach, which we seem to have forgotten about (the article advocates doing it for the entire US, which would be a ridiculously reckless and disruptive thing to do without proving it on a smaller scale first). One drawback that would really concern me is: can people borrow against their basic income? That could be bad in so many ways. In fact, I could see that destroying the entire system. You could have people back at the food bank, and you ask them where their $10K went, and they tell you they have $500/mo in debt service. But to eliminate that, you'd basically have to prevent people from making any forward promises dependent on that money, which could include things like apartment leases. I guess you could try making a web of special-case exceptions and loopholes by which you could do long-term housing leases but not long-term TV leases; but that sounds like it's turning the simple system into an accounting mess. There are also numerous other drawbacks. People will still make bad choices and still end up with serious problems, so we'll still need other programs.

lifeformed 13y ago
> This could be an interesting experiment on a small scale. Maybe a small-medium US state could try it and see what happens. What if we had some big colony made for social/economic experiments? We could try out crazy things like basic income. Perhaps the experiments are opt-in/out, or maybe if you hate them, you can leave with paid relocation. The population should be a microcosm of the US or a US city, and the goal should be to try weird things to get it close to a utopia, using the same budget as a comparable populous.
- jeffdavis 13y ago
  I'm an empiricist at heart, too (at least for some things; everyone is an idealist one way or another). But come on, it has its limits! I think we both already know that a social experiments colony would be chaos. What I was suggesting would have an outside chance of providing useful information. Given enough time, it would probably provide enough information to prevent the next phase from being a complete disaster. You could say that every nation created (or major political upheaval) is an experiment. The U.S. certainly was. Unfortunately, it takes hundreds of years to start producing useful results, and even then, the results are very muddled.

sseveran 13y ago

To understand if this is feasible I think we would need to answer a few basic questions: 1. Given that we have a plethora of wealth transfers in place why have they not lead to a decrease in poverty? The "Great Society" was introduced 40 or 50 years ago and why has that not lead to a decrease in poverty? 2. Why does collapsing all existing programs into a single program make it more efficient? Why will it lead to less complexity? How will other actors (like government unions) respond? 3. How much is "Basic Income"? How should it be adjusted for inflation? Should it be the same in every geography even though the cost of living varies greatly? It seems to me this is the real question that people focus on even though personally I believe it should be the second.

jquery 13y ago
Why do we still have the same level of poverty as we did 50 years ago? Short answer, we don't. It's just the goalposts that keep moving.
- greedo 13y ago
  Perhaps it's because we have an entire industry (and government bureaucracy) dependent on there being dependent class? Yes, the goal posts get changed. It's not that kids are hungry, they're food insecure. Same with parents, job insecure. Well, they used to call that life. You'd go out, work your butt off, save what you earned, and only rely on family, friends, and church. Nowadays, it's depend on your monthly EBT and never improve your lot.
  - jquery 13y ago
    Yes. Here in San Francisco, there's a push for food stamps to be accepted at higher-end restaurants as opposed to just fast food. It's slowly becoming a "right" to not only eat out, but to dine well. So, to recap, poverty has gone from starving => hunger => food necessities => fast food => fine dining. I really don't mind the push for this. It's just calling it "poverty" that grinds my gears.
marcosdumay 13y ago

ballard 13y ago

US population estimate as of current = 316,582,121 Estimated population over 21 = 80% = 253,265,696 Cost of BIG: $2.53 Trillion (15% of GDP, more or less) The benefit hopefully would be no person should have to worry about basics of water, food and shelter. (See homeless camps that appear to be third-world mud & scrap shelters.)

tghw 13y ago
2012 Federal Tax Receipts: $2.45 Trillion This is where it falls apart. To implement this program, you would need to double tax receipts. 98% of income taxes, which account for about 46% of all receipts, are paid by the top 50% of the population. The median income is around $30k. At that level, about $4050 goes to federal taxes. If we double all tax sources, that would increase the tax burden to $8100. (This is assuming the BI is untaxed.) Effectively, the median would see an extra $5,950/year from this program. People making above $70,000 would start to see their taxes increase more than the $10,000 BI. People with incomes of $200,000 would be paying an extra $35k per year. I think it's an interesting proposal, but with these sorts of increases, you're going to encounter a lot of resistance from upper-middle classes and higher, the sort of people who tend to be much more influential in politics...
- ballard 13y ago
  So how exactly would this be funded? Double taxes? The rich would never pay anything more, the mid/upper would be squeezed. Also: Deficit, debt and looming likelyhood of austerity strategy.
  - tghw 13y ago
    That's what I was getting at, we'd have to double taxes, though for anyone below $70k/year, it'd be a net positive.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

jwatte 13y ago

Another perspective on BI: "For us, the living." Written by Robert Heinlein in the 1930s IIRC.

JDDunn9 13y ago

I think the BIG is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see some hard evidence that it works before we implemented something this large nationwide. The government should do a controlled test. You could go somewhere like India, randomly select a bunch of small cities, give half of them a BIG, and see what it did to work incentive and the local economy. It would only cost a few million, and you'd have better, more reliable data than economists' un-tested theories.

nbouscal 13y ago
It's been done, details here: http://mondediplo.com/2013/05/04income http://mondediplo.com/2013/05/04income

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

Even better: Simply send every single American citizen a check for $1,000 a month. This is more than enough to live comfortably, and wouldn't have to be means tested. Bill Gates would get one, and a six month old child born in poverty would get one. The total bill would be around $3.6T, a bit over half what the US government currently spends in total. Phase out all education spending, health assistance, pension assistance, welfare assistance. Replace it with a simple check that every single citizen gets. More efficient, less waste, and more honest.

greedo 13y ago
Got a source for the Federal Govt. budget being over $7T a year?
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  Never said it's $7T - it's $6.4T. And who said anything about Federal only? http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown
  - greedo 13y ago
    You said "US government." To most, that would mean federal government. And clearly, BI would be a Federal program, meaning an additional $3.7T in spending. If you think that phasing out local edu, Medicaid, etc is a great plan, or even a tenable one, you're misunderstanding politics.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      Oh, I wasn't aware that guaranteed income was a tenable policy proposal. ;) Get real.

codex 13y ago

You're an entry level worker with few skills and little experience, living just above the poverty line. You're unemployed and thinking of eating your cat. Along comes unconditional basic income, and suddenly you're netting $20K a year. You were making $23K at your last job before you were laid off, so this isn't so bad! A year later, your old boss calls you up and offers you your old job back. Awesome! Only now the salary is $6K, not $23K--the market wage now that everyone gets $20K. Work 40 hours a week for an extra $6K? No thanks--you're doing okay with your basic living wage and zero effort. Plus, Rob is getting the band back together! And so you remain an unemployed entry level employee until you die.

vault_ 13y ago
It's pretty easy to fabricate a story to support whatever position you want: You get laid off and along comes unconditional basic income. Your $20K is covering your basic expenses pretty well, but you're bored out of your skull (you sold the TV after you were laid off). Rob says he's getting the band back together and after a while you guys think you're starting to sound pretty good. A year later your boss calls and offers you your job back. He wants to pay your $6K, you negotiate part time for $4K so you still have time to devote to the band. Your boss agrees since he can just hire another person or two for less than your old salary. With your extra money you pay for time in a recording studio and new instruments. Your band becomes wildly successful and you quit your job since royalties are now making you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. And so you rise above your entry level beginnings and tell people stories of how you've achieved the American Dream until you die.
marcosdumay 13y ago
I don't get it. If nobody wants the 6k job, how is it that nobody is offering more? Are there less people looking for workers? Let me tell that history again. Yeah, you get that 20k a year. Then your old boss calls, and just offers you 30k for that job you used to do for 23k. You can either join your old friends on their band again, or get a total 50k a year, your choice. Now, about your old boss, he'll have to pay more, no questions about it. But the total cost of salary is trending down anyway, so the best option is to start with a small basic income, and grow it at the proportion that income concentrate at the top.

bobbydavid 13y ago

It's because the distribution of wealth affects what the economy produces. If money is more evenly distributed, you will see more economy cars, microwaves, middle income housing construction, etc. If only a few people are really wealthy, you will see luxury yachts, mansions, etc. So scarcity conditions are different -- there really are more toasters to go around because the people had the money to buy them.

vasilipupkin 13y ago

This is a good idea in theory, but in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. It could work, if you could phase out all other types of assistance. But what's the chance of that?

jchrisa 13y ago

The shortest clearest argument for basic income I've read http://books.google.com/books/about/What_s_Wrong_with_a_Free_Lunch.html?id=6KLUWNiFUSYC http://books.google.com/books/about/What_s_Wrong_with_a_Free...

dylanrw 13y ago

I like the idea, however this quote sums up why I think it may not happen. “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― John Steinbeck

hosh 13y ago

We don't need a basic income guarantee. We need essential needs and basic services approaching the cost of zero. Example: sunlight approaches the cost of zero (though there might be a capital expenditure to take advantage of it, the ongoing expense approaches zero).

ihateloggingin 13y ago
Sunlight does not approach the cost of zero when there is private ownership of land. The legal right to collect the sunlight is attached to the land. Securing that legal right costs money.
- hosh 13y ago
  You forgot to mention water rights too. The thing is, such rights are at the end of the day, absurd. Such rights comes down to being able to exercise power to seize and hold land. Did I mention in my original post, I talked about capital expenditure, and approaching zero expense? Land would be a part of that capital expenditure. Any ongoing expenses related to land would be the cost to hold land, whether that be through registering it with the government or to defend it against all comers.

MichaelTieso 13y ago

George Carlin said it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wDadtkByw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wDadtkByw

ctdonath 13y ago

Here's a thought: anyone supporting the BI theory, don't say any more about it until YOU are providing BI, personally, to at least one other person unrelated to you. If you intend to use the police power of the state to take thru threat of force the lawful and moral possessions of others to give to those you are sympathetic to, then you should at least FIRST be willing to do it out of your own pocket without coercion. If you won't do at least that, then you have no moral stand thereon.

ddeck 13y ago

Some posit that given what they assume to be an inevitable loss of the majority of jobs to robotics/AI at some point, a basic guaranteed income is going to be essential to ensure continued consumption and growth. Paul Krugman wrote an opinion piece with his thoughts on this earlier this year[1]. As one commentator noted on the piece: If the fight is between capital and labour, and capital is winning, it seems subsidies in the form of some basic type of income may be called upon. As Krugman notes, the issue relates to the fact that it is now jobs on all fronts that are being jeopardised. Highly skilled, unskilled not to mention the professions most suited to little grey matter. The new inequality we are seeing has little to do with how well educated you are. It’s hard to penetrate beyond the barrier on education alone. The new inequality is about capital owners and non-capital owners. An alternative of course, is the continued rise of "bullshit jobs" that was highlighted in a post a few weeks ago.[2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-f... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478

brianbreslin 13y ago

How does it work in cultures or societies where the government issues stipends annually? I am thinking of certain Native American tribes in the us issue their tribe members $xx,xxx a year as their share of casino earnings (sans work). Or aren't there places like UAE that have some sort of basic income to citizens?

levosmetalo 13y ago

One thing that opponents of BI are missing, and proponents fail to realize and explain is that there will be no "magic extra money" involved. The cost of basic income will not be higher than what currently is spent on social safety nets. Yes, every adult in the state will get ~1000$ and every child ~500$. That means that lover income or no income people with get enough to survive, without penalizing them for actually working low paid jobs. Middle class people will get the same amount, but obviously they are going to be taxed progressively more, so their net income would stay more less the same as now. Even the richest people will get this money, but I guess they will be net losers because of the taxes. Now, if implemented correctly, there won't be extra taxes, no printing money, since the money will be distributed just a bit differently. No inflation, since total monetary sum stays the same. In addition to that, it might be even cheaper, since it will reduce administrations costs of current welfare system to almost a half. (No hard data, but remember reading that charity spends almost ~40% of revenue on administrative tasks). And, poor people will have incentive to work, since even a minijob would be a net beneficial to them.

bagosm 13y ago

>America is awash with money. > >Yet poverty continues to grow. After this statement I stopped reading, and I would like to take some time to address a common issue that I see repeating itself. There are some incredible minds here on hacker news. Fast and efficient problem solvers. However, the issue is that you trust too much. You trust the general opinion, and the science that was laid before you. This isn't an issue in and of itself, however it makes you sometimes start with an assumption and try to solve a problem that isn't there. Never forget that the majority of the knowledge the mankind has always thought of to be exact, has been completed or even disproved by newer science. Solving the problem: "America has lots of moneyz, but people are getting poorer" is a fool's errand. The author acknowledges the fact that the economy is failing, but still starts with that assumption. That statement is so deeply nested inside his psyche that even though he acknowledges the exact opposite as truth, he still seeks out to solve that problem like a Don Quixote charging the windmills. Don't be a Don Quixote. Double and triple check your assumptions about reality. Try to disprove your own assumptions. Only then you will be completely certain and self confident about what you do.

tpainton 13y ago

Because welfare did such a great job of ending the poverty cycle...even Clinton felt it needed reform...Im only 45 and and Im seeing the cycle of stupidity.

axilmar 13y ago

Were would the money needed for BIG come from? Increased taxes on the rich? And why Medicare and Medicaid would cost so much in the future?