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"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every c

"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed. "

jaibot 13y ago
Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .
- KiwiCoder 13y ago
  Guaranteed minimum income is based on need, basic income is based on citizenship.
- sz4kerto 13y ago
  I might agree. However, most people will want basic income as an extra, not as a replacement. I would bet a significant amount on that (i.e. basic income being popular only until poor people figure out what are they going to lose). The masses don't like taking care of themselves. Not even if they get 'free' money for that.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    Any proposed government program that causes the net wealth of any distinct group of people to increase or decrease is going to be supported or opposed by various people for self-interested reasons. But the point is not to to wage war over who steals money from someone else and gives it to themselves by way of government bureaucracy, the point is to do something that results in a net benefit to society, for example by reducing the disincentive to work created by the discontinuation of government benefits when one finds gainful employment. The net result of that is to reduce unemployment and underemployment, which increases the tax base and allows a given level of government services to be provided at a lower tax rate (or an increased level of government services to be provided at the same tax rate, depending on your policy preferences).
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income. Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there. The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy." But in this case, they would be able to offer each other money for providing each other services. Congregations of people would inherently be able to realize some demand, which is not presently the case (or that demand is filtered through bureaucrats).
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil. It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        "Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil." I'm not really sure what you are saying here. My understanding of the favelas is that there is a great deal of economic activity going on there, and a lot of people working actively to better their situations. Limited resources coupled with sparse, unequally applied regulation and rule of law leads to some bad situations, but those in the favelas are living in the favelas primarily to have access to the economic activity of the city. Resources go to the favelas only in proportion to the earning power of the residents, which dynamic basic income specifically changes, and it is this change specifically that I am saying is likely to produce better results. It's totally possible you were saying something I'm missing; if so, please clarify. "It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them." Physical location matters, but it matters less than it ever has before. Ideally, we want more places with opportunity, not ever higher rents in SF and Manhattan.
- SEMW 13y ago
  Correct link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income. GMI is different.
- berrypicker 13y ago
  For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs. Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.
  - jaibot 13y ago
    Milton Friedman proposed negative income tax _in addition to_ guaranteed income. Worth noting that the US has partially implemented negative income tax (we call it EITC) - it's working really well and should probably be expanded (probably worth taking money from other welfare programs if it comes to that).
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      EITC is not a negative income tax. In a negative income tax, below a certain level, each marginal dollar of reduced income produces an additional negative amount of income tax (or, equivalently, positive amount of refundable credit.) EITC is a work incentive program that provides additional income tax credit with increasing labor income up to a certain amount -- the feature for which it is named as a tax credit for earned income -- and then tails off above a certain point. In the range from the peak to the tail off, it might be mistaken for a negative income tax, but that's true of any tax credit (or even, really, a tax deduction) that has a soft cap. But that's not really the basic design or function is, and, while the EITC may work fairly well, there's no good argument I can see that the negative-income-like portion of the top end of the EITC benefit curve is a contributor to its beneficial functioning, except perhaps if you consider it only against having a sharp cut-off where the benefit drops from the maximum to $0.
- benihana 13y ago
  >Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Is this empirically proven somewhere? Or is that what its proponents are saying? Forgive me if I'm a little cynical when someone tells me an idea they support is a much better form of welfare than what we currently have but doesn't back it up with proof.
  - MarcusVorenus 13y ago
    How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? At the very least we would save a ton of money on bureaucracy and corruption.
    - JackFr 13y ago
      Why? Do you think the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the social services industry would sit idly by while their jobs are eliminated? Of course not. And that is the real reason it will never be implemented. For this to be palatable to the right, it's got to credibly eliminate a large existing bureaucracy -- something which might be palatable to the left, but for the specific interest of that bureaucracy.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? You would get supporting evidence for each of a set of propositions, from which the efficiency (however that is operationalized in context) of the particular plan being proposed follows. The whole point of the scientific method is that it allows us to have justifiable (even if not certain) evidence-based predictions of things that haven't been tried yet.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    "Efficiency" is ambiguous. In terms of (benefit dollars delivered)/(benefit dollars delivered + administrative costs) its almost true-by-definition, since the absence of means testing removes most of the source of administrative requirements in traditional welfare programs. In terms of effectiveness at achieving the goals of welfare programs, it is far less clear, though there are pretty clear arguments that certain features of basic income -- particularly the lack of disincentives to outside income -- are beneficial in that regard. OTOH, there are also pretty clear arguments that the lack of need-based focus -- which is intimately tied to the lack of disincentives -- are potentially negative, especially when replacing welfare programs whose existing qualifications are based around special needs (e.g., programs qualified by particular disabilities) that increase costs rather than simple lack of resources (e.g., income/asset-qualified poverty support programs.)
- JackFr 13y ago
  > Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. That seems to be a conclusion without any premises, woefully short on data and implicit but imprecise definitions of 'efficient', 'helpful' and 'welfare'.
RivieraKid 13y ago
That's equivalent, everyone knows government gets its money from taxpayers.
- anoncowherd 13y ago
  That's exactly what he wanted to emphasize. People think government has some magical, limitless supply of money available to them, when in reality, it's mostly just money that's forcefully confiscated from everyone. In other words, basic income is a zero-sum game, but not without its consequences. It's alright not to go into printing or loaning money here, both of those lead to ruin too. How high would tax rates have to be, to collect enough money for basic income? How many businesses would just shut down or get the fuck out, leaving that much fewer businesses in the country to shoulder the burden? That's a feedback loop right there. The remaining businesses would be just that much more likely to get out too, and then the next remaining, and so on. The idea of basic income is not rooted in reality, but entitlement and the need for "security", no matter how illusory it might be.
  - RivieraKid 13y ago
    I think that 90% of people (100% on HN) understand this. > How high would tax rates have to be, to collect enough money for basic income? They would need to be significantly higher, but significantly more money would get back to the taxpayers too, so the aggregate demand would remain about the same, so businesses would be ok. BI, if set up properly, can redistribute wealth in a very similar way as it's happening today (in Europe). The only difference would be side effects like lower fear of unemployment, which could make the labor market much more liberal.
    - anoncowherd 13y ago
      > I think that 90% of people (100% on HN) understand this. Really? Well, then you should understand that the feedback loop I described alone is enough to make BI unsustainable, and thus not worth pursuing. But it doesn't seem you do. There's another feedback loop too: the more people are just sitting at home, the more will want to join them, and so on. From another comment of yours: >> Do you think that wealth redistribution is wrong? Do you think it's wrong for a mafia to extort money from you? -Yes? Well then, do you think it's wrong for the government to do the exact same thing? You see, you'd pay "protection money" under threat of violence, but you also pay taxes under threat of violence. Spare yourself the mental gymnastics here. Forcefully dragging you to jail or just plain shooting you if you resist does actually count as violence. Where do you think the "wealth" to be "redistributed" comes from? -Why from extortion, of course. Would a mafia's extortion be perfectly fine as long as they used your money "efficiently"? Heck, their spending of your money increases aggregate demand, so all is well! >> There are many arguments suggesting that zero wealth redistribution is not the optimum. >> I'm convinced that wealth redistribution leads to higher aggregate utility. Whether it leads to higher nominal growth, I don't know. You throw around these terms as if they meant something here in the real world, let alone after acquiring the wealth to be distributed through blatantly immoral means. What makes zero redistribution of stolen loot "not optimal"? I'd say it's actually precisely the optimum. "Higher aggregate utility", "aggregate demand"? -Well there's Keynes again. False voodoo economics meant to justify/rationalize State spending and taking on ever more massive debt loads until, of course, eventually the nation's extortion income is wholly consumed in paying interest and the house of cards falls down. Does an economy imploding help the poor? Does currency debasement and inflation (ie. loss of purchasing power) help the poor? Why no, no they don't. Quite the contrary, but those two are what governments are causing with massive printing and borrowing and using money they don't actually have.
a3n 13y ago
A healthy and minimally secure citizenry can be a public good just as much as roads and armies, which are also paid by taxes. I want this.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > A healthy and minimally secure citizenry can be a public good just as much as roads and armies, which are also paid by taxes. As a very narrow and specific (and not necessarily the most important) example of this, in any nation which may rely on conscription and/or mobilization of volunteer citizen militias in time of need, a healthy and minimally secure citizenry is, among other public goods, directly related to military capacity.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
weddpros 13y ago
There's a logic problem with Basic Income. They want people to think either: 1- it will help me earn more (because I make less than the BI) 2- it won't change anything for me (because I already make more than the BI) But obviously, these two assertions can't be true at the same time. Instead they should think either : 1- it won't change a thing 2- it won't change a thing (so why do it?) OR 1- it will help me earn more 2- I will earn less so others can earn more BI advocates say it is an important change. So they advocate for a tax raise, but they "forget" to say it.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  Basic income doesn't inherently require taxes to increase, especially if you measure it as taxes paid less government benefits received. You're thinking of things in class warfare terms -- someone else gets more money from the government therefore I get less or pay more. Any program that works on that principle is just redistribution of wealth, or naked corruption. The benefit of a basic income is that it changes incentives. In the existing system you lose government benefits if you take a job, so if the only job you can get pays low wages you have a significantly reduced incentive to seek employment. Higher unemployment means lower tax revenues, lower economic growth, etc. Fighting that is why a basic income is superior to means tested government assistance.
  - weddpros 13y ago
    Say I'm jobless, and I make 1000/m. If I find a job that pays 1100 : - with BI I'll make 1100. That's the value of work. - without BI I'll make 100 + 1000. The value of work is 100. With BI, people will think "I don't want to work for 100/m" (you know, it's the gov that pays the other 1000/m). You'll hear people say "I'm paid 1000 just to breathe, why work for 100?". It you want to limit this problem as much as possible, you'll need a basic income of exactly 0.
    - streptomycin 13y ago
      Problem is, rich countries already have welfare systems and hardly anyone would support completely eliminating them. So people are already paid to breathe. The question is how to do so while minimizing perverse incentives.
transfire 13y ago
The point isn't about money being "taken from taxpayers". They are already doing that regardless! The point is would you rather have that money fed through an expensive, heavily bureaucratic and often corrupt means-tested welfare system, or would you rather just have it all distributed to everyone equally with nearly zero overhead and no means left for abuse or misuse. I think the answer is obvious.

jaibot 13y ago

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .

KiwiCoder 13y ago
Guaranteed minimum income is based on need, basic income is based on citizenship.
sz4kerto 13y ago
I might agree. However, most people will want basic income as an extra, not as a replacement. I would bet a significant amount on that (i.e. basic income being popular only until poor people figure out what are they going to lose). The masses don't like taking care of themselves. Not even if they get 'free' money for that.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  Any proposed government program that causes the net wealth of any distinct group of people to increase or decrease is going to be supported or opposed by various people for self-interested reasons. But the point is not to to wage war over who steals money from someone else and gives it to themselves by way of government bureaucracy, the point is to do something that results in a net benefit to society, for example by reducing the disincentive to work created by the discontinuation of government benefits when one finds gainful employment. The net result of that is to reduce unemployment and underemployment, which increases the tax base and allows a given level of government services to be provided at a lower tax rate (or an increased level of government services to be provided at the same tax rate, depending on your policy preferences).
jiggy2011 13y ago
The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income. Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there. The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy." But in this case, they would be able to offer each other money for providing each other services. Congregations of people would inherently be able to realize some demand, which is not presently the case (or that demand is filtered through bureaucrats).
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil. It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      "Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil." I'm not really sure what you are saying here. My understanding of the favelas is that there is a great deal of economic activity going on there, and a lot of people working actively to better their situations. Limited resources coupled with sparse, unequally applied regulation and rule of law leads to some bad situations, but those in the favelas are living in the favelas primarily to have access to the economic activity of the city. Resources go to the favelas only in proportion to the earning power of the residents, which dynamic basic income specifically changes, and it is this change specifically that I am saying is likely to produce better results. It's totally possible you were saying something I'm missing; if so, please clarify. "It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them." Physical location matters, but it matters less than it ever has before. Ideally, we want more places with opportunity, not ever higher rents in SF and Manhattan.
SEMW 13y ago
Correct link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income. GMI is different.
berrypicker 13y ago
For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs. Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.
- jaibot 13y ago
  Milton Friedman proposed negative income tax _in addition to_ guaranteed income. Worth noting that the US has partially implemented negative income tax (we call it EITC) - it's working really well and should probably be expanded (probably worth taking money from other welfare programs if it comes to that).
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    EITC is not a negative income tax. In a negative income tax, below a certain level, each marginal dollar of reduced income produces an additional negative amount of income tax (or, equivalently, positive amount of refundable credit.) EITC is a work incentive program that provides additional income tax credit with increasing labor income up to a certain amount -- the feature for which it is named as a tax credit for earned income -- and then tails off above a certain point. In the range from the peak to the tail off, it might be mistaken for a negative income tax, but that's true of any tax credit (or even, really, a tax deduction) that has a soft cap. But that's not really the basic design or function is, and, while the EITC may work fairly well, there's no good argument I can see that the negative-income-like portion of the top end of the EITC benefit curve is a contributor to its beneficial functioning, except perhaps if you consider it only against having a sharp cut-off where the benefit drops from the maximum to $0.
benihana 13y ago
>Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Is this empirically proven somewhere? Or is that what its proponents are saying? Forgive me if I'm a little cynical when someone tells me an idea they support is a much better form of welfare than what we currently have but doesn't back it up with proof.
- MarcusVorenus 13y ago
  How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? At the very least we would save a ton of money on bureaucracy and corruption.
  - JackFr 13y ago
    Why? Do you think the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the social services industry would sit idly by while their jobs are eliminated? Of course not. And that is the real reason it will never be implemented. For this to be palatable to the right, it's got to credibly eliminate a large existing bureaucracy -- something which might be palatable to the left, but for the specific interest of that bureaucracy.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? You would get supporting evidence for each of a set of propositions, from which the efficiency (however that is operationalized in context) of the particular plan being proposed follows. The whole point of the scientific method is that it allows us to have justifiable (even if not certain) evidence-based predictions of things that haven't been tried yet.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  "Efficiency" is ambiguous. In terms of (benefit dollars delivered)/(benefit dollars delivered + administrative costs) its almost true-by-definition, since the absence of means testing removes most of the source of administrative requirements in traditional welfare programs. In terms of effectiveness at achieving the goals of welfare programs, it is far less clear, though there are pretty clear arguments that certain features of basic income -- particularly the lack of disincentives to outside income -- are beneficial in that regard. OTOH, there are also pretty clear arguments that the lack of need-based focus -- which is intimately tied to the lack of disincentives -- are potentially negative, especially when replacing welfare programs whose existing qualifications are based around special needs (e.g., programs qualified by particular disabilities) that increase costs rather than simple lack of resources (e.g., income/asset-qualified poverty support programs.)
JackFr 13y ago
> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. That seems to be a conclusion without any premises, woefully short on data and implicit but imprecise definitions of 'efficient', 'helpful' and 'welfare'.

RivieraKid 13y ago

That's equivalent, everyone knows government gets its money from taxpayers.

anoncowherd 13y ago
That's exactly what he wanted to emphasize. People think government has some magical, limitless supply of money available to them, when in reality, it's mostly just money that's forcefully confiscated from everyone. In other words, basic income is a zero-sum game, but not without its consequences. It's alright not to go into printing or loaning money here, both of those lead to ruin too. How high would tax rates have to be, to collect enough money for basic income? How many businesses would just shut down or get the fuck out, leaving that much fewer businesses in the country to shoulder the burden? That's a feedback loop right there. The remaining businesses would be just that much more likely to get out too, and then the next remaining, and so on. The idea of basic income is not rooted in reality, but entitlement and the need for "security", no matter how illusory it might be.
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  I think that 90% of people (100% on HN) understand this. > How high would tax rates have to be, to collect enough money for basic income? They would need to be significantly higher, but significantly more money would get back to the taxpayers too, so the aggregate demand would remain about the same, so businesses would be ok. BI, if set up properly, can redistribute wealth in a very similar way as it's happening today (in Europe). The only difference would be side effects like lower fear of unemployment, which could make the labor market much more liberal.
  - anoncowherd 13y ago
    > I think that 90% of people (100% on HN) understand this. Really? Well, then you should understand that the feedback loop I described alone is enough to make BI unsustainable, and thus not worth pursuing. But it doesn't seem you do. There's another feedback loop too: the more people are just sitting at home, the more will want to join them, and so on. From another comment of yours: >> Do you think that wealth redistribution is wrong? Do you think it's wrong for a mafia to extort money from you? -Yes? Well then, do you think it's wrong for the government to do the exact same thing? You see, you'd pay "protection money" under threat of violence, but you also pay taxes under threat of violence. Spare yourself the mental gymnastics here. Forcefully dragging you to jail or just plain shooting you if you resist does actually count as violence. Where do you think the "wealth" to be "redistributed" comes from? -Why from extortion, of course. Would a mafia's extortion be perfectly fine as long as they used your money "efficiently"? Heck, their spending of your money increases aggregate demand, so all is well! >> There are many arguments suggesting that zero wealth redistribution is not the optimum. >> I'm convinced that wealth redistribution leads to higher aggregate utility. Whether it leads to higher nominal growth, I don't know. You throw around these terms as if they meant something here in the real world, let alone after acquiring the wealth to be distributed through blatantly immoral means. What makes zero redistribution of stolen loot "not optimal"? I'd say it's actually precisely the optimum. "Higher aggregate utility", "aggregate demand"? -Well there's Keynes again. False voodoo economics meant to justify/rationalize State spending and taking on ever more massive debt loads until, of course, eventually the nation's extortion income is wholly consumed in paying interest and the house of cards falls down. Does an economy imploding help the poor? Does currency debasement and inflation (ie. loss of purchasing power) help the poor? Why no, no they don't. Quite the contrary, but those two are what governments are causing with massive printing and borrowing and using money they don't actually have.

a3n 13y ago

A healthy and minimally secure citizenry can be a public good just as much as roads and armies, which are also paid by taxes. I want this.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> A healthy and minimally secure citizenry can be a public good just as much as roads and armies, which are also paid by taxes. As a very narrow and specific (and not necessarily the most important) example of this, in any nation which may rely on conscription and/or mobilization of volunteer citizen militias in time of need, a healthy and minimally secure citizenry is, among other public goods, directly related to military capacity.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

weddpros 13y ago

There's a logic problem with Basic Income. They want people to think either: 1- it will help me earn more (because I make less than the BI) 2- it won't change anything for me (because I already make more than the BI) But obviously, these two assertions can't be true at the same time. Instead they should think either : 1- it won't change a thing 2- it won't change a thing (so why do it?) OR 1- it will help me earn more 2- I will earn less so others can earn more BI advocates say it is an important change. So they advocate for a tax raise, but they "forget" to say it.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
Basic income doesn't inherently require taxes to increase, especially if you measure it as taxes paid less government benefits received. You're thinking of things in class warfare terms -- someone else gets more money from the government therefore I get less or pay more. Any program that works on that principle is just redistribution of wealth, or naked corruption. The benefit of a basic income is that it changes incentives. In the existing system you lose government benefits if you take a job, so if the only job you can get pays low wages you have a significantly reduced incentive to seek employment. Higher unemployment means lower tax revenues, lower economic growth, etc. Fighting that is why a basic income is superior to means tested government assistance.
- weddpros 13y ago
  Say I'm jobless, and I make 1000/m. If I find a job that pays 1100 : - with BI I'll make 1100. That's the value of work. - without BI I'll make 100 + 1000. The value of work is 100. With BI, people will think "I don't want to work for 100/m" (you know, it's the gov that pays the other 1000/m). You'll hear people say "I'm paid 1000 just to breathe, why work for 100?". It you want to limit this problem as much as possible, you'll need a basic income of exactly 0.
  - streptomycin 13y ago
    Problem is, rich countries already have welfare systems and hardly anyone would support completely eliminating them. So people are already paid to breathe. The question is how to do so while minimizing perverse incentives.

transfire 13y ago

The point isn't about money being "taken from taxpayers". They are already doing that regardless! The point is would you rather have that money fed through an expensive, heavily bureaucratic and often corrupt means-tested welfare system, or would you rather just have it all distributed to everyone equally with nearly zero overhead and no means left for abuse or misuse. I think the answer is obvious.