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The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income?

The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income? The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should be more? Not hard. How hard is it to reduce the amount of the check. Almost impossible. It will eventually devolve into a problem like Greece has now. Too many people receiving money, not enough people paying in. Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen. I'm sure it will be attempted in America at some point and the "public servants" are licking their chops.

a_c_s 11y ago
Cutting all the programs needed to enable basic income would mean most public servants would lose their jobs.
- frogpelt 11y ago
  I'm talking about elected officials.
  - a_c_s 11y ago
    The vast majority of bureaucrats are not elected officials
- epylar 11y ago
  At which point they could go on basic income.
- killface 11y ago
  that's not a bad thing. reduces costs, reduces HR overhead, etc.
djb_hackernews 11y ago
I can see that being a problem but what about this solution (to be honest I don't see basic income becoming a thing in the United States in my life time) Peg it to a CPI? GDP? Or maybe codify it in a constitutional amendment?
jsprogrammer 11y ago
>The government and by extension politicians. You need a government that extends to the people who are being governed.
killface 11y ago
Yes, we understand the libertarian argument. We've had it shoved down our throats for years now.
Tloewald 11y ago
> Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen. So apparently the federal highway system isn't a net benefit? How about the internet? Also in more direct terms, the government "magically" made profits by bailing out AIG, GM, and so on -- so we got taxpayer money (or printed money, doesn't matter) being used to create (a) more money than was used, and (b) the net benefit of not having the economy implode together with the more arguable net benefit of (c) GM staying in business. As an aside: a friend of mine used to work as a transport economist, trying to figure out the net benefit of government projects. (This was in Australia, but Australian politics is every bit as borked and corrupt as American.) Typically the cut-off point for a government road project was a societal benefit / cost ratio of 20/1. The thing about corporations -- they raid the societal common (the benefits of public education, civil order, roads, etc.) and make profits "themselves".
- Natsu 11y ago
  I think you're right that a lot of things like roads are a huge net benefit to everyone. But those are things, not money. I don't claim to know what basic income would do, but I worry for the supply side of the equation. I used to work in a factory making windows. It was a terrible, terrible job and nobody would do it given a choice. So if everyone has the choice not to do it, what happens to the supply of goods like that? While I'd like to believe that the job could be made good enough to be attractive somehow, I can't think of an amount of money that would make me agree to go back. This, of course, makes me wish we could free the people stuck doing that, but I wonder just how many goods there are like that? We're suddenly playing with the 'free rider' problem for our entire society. Sure, we can print enough money for everyone, but what happens when it's nothing but worthless paper because there's nothing to buy?
  - Joeri 11y ago
    If a job is so unpleasant that people will only do it to avoid abject poverty and its miseries then something is wrong with that job. Probably that window manufacturing job could have been much more pleasant given the right process changes, but the factory owner was not incentivized to try because they could find someone willing / forced to accept that job as it was. In essence, basic income does away with wage slavery, but that is a good thing. Those goods will still get made, but they won't get made in the same way. Though to be honest, most places will probably not bother making the job nicer and will just move it to somewhere where wage slavery is still legal.
rconti 11y ago
America will be about the last place to attempt this, if the past (and our current welfare) are any guide. It's an interesting concept. My immediate reaction is that it creates disincentives to work. In theory it does, but the only data we have is those who are currently on welfare and do not work -- but maybe those people were basically not going to work anyway! We have no competing group of people who are on welfare yet still CHOOSE to work to better their lives, because as soon as someone gets a job, no more benefits! So it's natural that an outsize chunk of people on public assistance don't work -- and the ones who stay on the longest, of course, don't WANT to work. But it undercounts those who go on the system then back out of it as they get work. Other things that seem "obvious" to result: inflation. If everyone can afford $x for housing, why should housing costs not go up by a similar amount? The same way 2 incomes is now "normal", and the same way giving tax deductions on mortgage interest to make housing "more affordable" means, now that everyone can afford more housing, housing is bid up. I don't know, but it's a fascinating experiment, anyone who is not paying for it should be in favor of this experiment -- unless you just hate poor people.
- CONTRARlAN 11y ago
  > I don't know, but it's a fascinating experiment, anyone who is not paying for it should be in favor of this experiment -- unless you just hate poor people. What a bizarre statement. It's really easy to read that as two things: 1. You're totally game to experiment, just so long as it's not your money. 2. Anyone who doesn't agree must hate poor people. I'm pretty certain you didn't really mean either, but the net result of that sentence is awfully unproductive: "anyone who doesn't like this must either have skin in the game or hate poor people!"
  - eplanit 11y ago
    That's the common tactic of argument these days. The notion of "criticism" has been re-cast as "hate". Hate is more easily dismissed, ridiculed, and trivialized.
    - rconti 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- branchless 11y ago
  > The monetary system is pretty well understood. Basic income just becomes another input for money to enter the system. I'm no fan of basic income however basic income comes from tax. This is redistributive, but not expansionary. You say it's well understood but you seem to think that central bank issued currency is the cause of inflation. Most "money" is created as credit from private banks (against land). Again, basic income is not creating money. Read up on money creation, you will be surprised and then perhaps see how you are being fooled on much of how your entire world works with regard to democracy.
  - Joeri 11y ago
    Basic income does run the risk of causing ancillary money creation. People may end up lending more because they have a guaranteed income. For example, my country at one point introduced a tax credit for home loans, provided it was your only home, to incentivize people to become owner instead of renter and gain financial security. The net effect was that home prices rose to offset the tax credit, because many people lend at the upper range of their budget and suddenly that limit was higher. Basic income risks having a similar effect.
    - branchless 11y ago
      Ok yes it could do, but your example augments my main point. Most credit creation is against land. When you incentivise land speculation you create inflation. We've seen this leading up into 2008 when the money supply rocketed. Basic income is IMHO a bad idea and we should do land value tax, as I said in my post. I don't think basic income would prove as inflationary as a direct tax subsidy against land speculation as the former could feed into some land speculation whereas the latter is basically intended to fuel this fire. edit - whoops realised I put about land value tax in my other comment. Anyways: land value tax - the establishment hate it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
wwweston 11y ago
> take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen. Seems to work in late stage free markets dominated by 2-3 large-scale players.
HappyDreamer 11y ago
> asking any government to take money from the people [...] and magically produce a net benefit to the people is [...] impossible But that happens already in the country where I live. People pay taxes, and via taxes, we are able to provide health care and university education to everyone. I like this system, and I'm one of them who pay taxes. It's good for me if everyone is well educated, and healthy. Whether or not a basic income would work, depends on the number of citizens. Fairly few, and many efficient machines and robots that can do most of the hard work, then it'll work okay. Too many people, then basic income won't work I think. In the future, thanks to contraceptives, I think there won't be too many people.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen." Your logic is sound, but you've misunderstood something crucial. Where does money come from? In short, money is created in one of two ways; by government spending and by bank loans. All money that exists in the rest of the monetary system was originally formed in one of these two ways. From the viewpoint of the worker, money exists only after something of value is created, after all that's how we get paid, we do the work then the money ends up in our bank account. But in reality, money exists before we earn it. The money in my bank account and your bank account isn't 'ours' before it's someone else's. The way that money is spent into an economy has a large role to play in the the quality of life of a society that is based on money as a medium of exchange. Some of the ways the money is created can be destructive to the economy (for example, when mortgage values increase faster than wage values), whereas other ways can boost the activity of an economy (for example, healthcare spending). The role that the banking industry plays in the creation of money has the potential to undermine the social good that UBI could offer, but I don't want to detract from the main point, and the main point is this; understanding how money is created is very useful in understanding how to get the best out of the systems we build on top of money. UBI organised by a government can just be a different way to spend new money into the system. Aside from the usual effects of inflation it doesn't have to involve your savings or earnings at all.
JamesBarney 11y ago
"Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen." It doesn't matter if redistribution is inefficient in terms of dollars if it's efficient in terms of utility. The idea that a rich person gets less from money than a poor person does is called diminishing marginal utility. An example of this is $3,340 can buy a very rich person a purse, or it can buy a very poor person the life of their daughter.[0] Now suppose that this government bureaucracy is terrifyingly inefficient and burns one dollar for every dollar that makes it to the malarial foundation. This would mean that a rich person has to give up 2 purses to save one life. In most people's books this is a huge gain in utility, and is why even if redistribution is inefficient[1] financially, it is very efficient when measured by utility. [0] - Give well estimates that the malarial foundation saves 1 life per $3,433 [1] - The latest papers by the IMF actually argue that redistribution does not reduce growth.
- ryanx435 11y ago
  good choice of examples: purchase a purse that costs as much as a used car or save a daughter (not a son). I am seriously impressed: you've hit all the proper buttons to evoke the proper emotions in people reading your comment to take your side. How can anyone argue that a purse provides more value than someone's daughter? they can't, and so you've provided no room for any one to disagree with you. congratulations! you are fluent in propaganda and argument framing! how about using a different example, since the money would be taken from everyone, not just the rich: 3,433 is about 6 months rent for me. that does provide me a lot of utility. or its about 8 months rent for someone else. that also provides them a lot of utility. so why should I pay for them to be sheltered for 8 months instead of sheltering myself for 6? especially considering that the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy means that they will likely only be sheltered for 6 months: the exact same utility as if I had just kept my money for my own rent.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    At which point we rapidly approach the theory of the "utility monster".
shredprez 11y ago
>Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. That may not be a bad thing if we're talking about people who contribute nil to society. >If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should be more? Not hard. Not hard to argue, very hard to accomplish. Political change in many countries is slow and welfare recipients are rarely afforded much sympathy by the working and managing classes. In any case, the real function of basic income is so much more than a moral institution (we've heard those reasons a million times and I won't touch on them here). The exciting thing is that it gets the useless and/or uncommitted to self-select out of the labor market. That means better productivity, higher quality services, a better work environment, lower labor supply and higher wages. They can continue contributing little-to-nothing, be provided a reasonable minimum by local standards, and leave the rest of us to accomplish what we want to in business, research, etc. That would be a HUGE weight off the backs of workers and companies, and I would gladly pay to keep people who can't be bothered out of work. Make no mistake, we're already carrying these people financially and professionally. Not having them gum up our operations would be well worth whatever instinctual annoyance their mooching causes. That's the conclusion I've arrived at.
- ryanx435 11y ago
  > The exciting thing is that it gets the useless and/or uncommitted to self-select out of the labor market. That means better productivity, higher quality services, a better work environment, lower labor supply and higher wages. you're going to have to explain this logical leap as it is non intuitive and I don't see any sources on your comment.
  - shredprez 11y ago
    Simple enough: clearing the lazy, the unmotivated, and the unaccountable from our labor market would make it easier to get work done (less drain from employees who don't contribute); make work more pleasant (surrounded by motivated colleagues who value what they do); and eliminate competition from useless employees who leech jobs, artificially inflate the labor supply and tarnish average applicant quality because they'd rather stay home and do nothing (improving employees' position relative to employers). The above doesn't seem non intuitive to me, beyond the idea that it might actually be worth it to pay some people to go away.
TrevorJ 11y ago
It also becomes a sacred cow. The bread dole was a huge issue for Rome once it got started because they really had no choice but to keep it up.

a_c_s 11y ago

Cutting all the programs needed to enable basic income would mean most public servants would lose their jobs.

frogpelt 11y ago
I'm talking about elected officials.
- a_c_s 11y ago
  The vast majority of bureaucrats are not elected officials
epylar 11y ago
At which point they could go on basic income.
killface 11y ago
that's not a bad thing. reduces costs, reduces HR overhead, etc.

djb_hackernews 11y ago

I can see that being a problem but what about this solution (to be honest I don't see basic income becoming a thing in the United States in my life time) Peg it to a CPI? GDP? Or maybe codify it in a constitutional amendment?

jsprogrammer 11y ago

>The government and by extension politicians. You need a government that extends to the people who are being governed.

killface 11y ago

Yes, we understand the libertarian argument. We've had it shoved down our throats for years now.

Tloewald 11y ago

> Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen. So apparently the federal highway system isn't a net benefit? How about the internet? Also in more direct terms, the government "magically" made profits by bailing out AIG, GM, and so on -- so we got taxpayer money (or printed money, doesn't matter) being used to create (a) more money than was used, and (b) the net benefit of not having the economy implode together with the more arguable net benefit of (c) GM staying in business. As an aside: a friend of mine used to work as a transport economist, trying to figure out the net benefit of government projects. (This was in Australia, but Australian politics is every bit as borked and corrupt as American.) Typically the cut-off point for a government road project was a societal benefit / cost ratio of 20/1. The thing about corporations -- they raid the societal common (the benefits of public education, civil order, roads, etc.) and make profits "themselves".

Natsu 11y ago
I think you're right that a lot of things like roads are a huge net benefit to everyone. But those are things, not money. I don't claim to know what basic income would do, but I worry for the supply side of the equation. I used to work in a factory making windows. It was a terrible, terrible job and nobody would do it given a choice. So if everyone has the choice not to do it, what happens to the supply of goods like that? While I'd like to believe that the job could be made good enough to be attractive somehow, I can't think of an amount of money that would make me agree to go back. This, of course, makes me wish we could free the people stuck doing that, but I wonder just how many goods there are like that? We're suddenly playing with the 'free rider' problem for our entire society. Sure, we can print enough money for everyone, but what happens when it's nothing but worthless paper because there's nothing to buy?
- Joeri 11y ago
  If a job is so unpleasant that people will only do it to avoid abject poverty and its miseries then something is wrong with that job. Probably that window manufacturing job could have been much more pleasant given the right process changes, but the factory owner was not incentivized to try because they could find someone willing / forced to accept that job as it was. In essence, basic income does away with wage slavery, but that is a good thing. Those goods will still get made, but they won't get made in the same way. Though to be honest, most places will probably not bother making the job nicer and will just move it to somewhere where wage slavery is still legal.

rconti 11y ago

America will be about the last place to attempt this, if the past (and our current welfare) are any guide. It's an interesting concept. My immediate reaction is that it creates disincentives to work. In theory it does, but the only data we have is those who are currently on welfare and do not work -- but maybe those people were basically not going to work anyway! We have no competing group of people who are on welfare yet still CHOOSE to work to better their lives, because as soon as someone gets a job, no more benefits! So it's natural that an outsize chunk of people on public assistance don't work -- and the ones who stay on the longest, of course, don't WANT to work. But it undercounts those who go on the system then back out of it as they get work. Other things that seem "obvious" to result: inflation. If everyone can afford $x for housing, why should housing costs not go up by a similar amount? The same way 2 incomes is now "normal", and the same way giving tax deductions on mortgage interest to make housing "more affordable" means, now that everyone can afford more housing, housing is bid up. I don't know, but it's a fascinating experiment, anyone who is not paying for it should be in favor of this experiment -- unless you just hate poor people.

CONTRARlAN 11y ago
> I don't know, but it's a fascinating experiment, anyone who is not paying for it should be in favor of this experiment -- unless you just hate poor people. What a bizarre statement. It's really easy to read that as two things: 1. You're totally game to experiment, just so long as it's not your money. 2. Anyone who doesn't agree must hate poor people. I'm pretty certain you didn't really mean either, but the net result of that sentence is awfully unproductive: "anyone who doesn't like this must either have skin in the game or hate poor people!"
- eplanit 11y ago
  That's the common tactic of argument these days. The notion of "criticism" has been re-cast as "hate". Hate is more easily dismissed, ridiculed, and trivialized.
  - rconti 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

branchless 11y ago
> The monetary system is pretty well understood. Basic income just becomes another input for money to enter the system. I'm no fan of basic income however basic income comes from tax. This is redistributive, but not expansionary. You say it's well understood but you seem to think that central bank issued currency is the cause of inflation. Most "money" is created as credit from private banks (against land). Again, basic income is not creating money. Read up on money creation, you will be surprised and then perhaps see how you are being fooled on much of how your entire world works with regard to democracy.
- Joeri 11y ago
  Basic income does run the risk of causing ancillary money creation. People may end up lending more because they have a guaranteed income. For example, my country at one point introduced a tax credit for home loans, provided it was your only home, to incentivize people to become owner instead of renter and gain financial security. The net effect was that home prices rose to offset the tax credit, because many people lend at the upper range of their budget and suddenly that limit was higher. Basic income risks having a similar effect.
  - branchless 11y ago
    Ok yes it could do, but your example augments my main point. Most credit creation is against land. When you incentivise land speculation you create inflation. We've seen this leading up into 2008 when the money supply rocketed. Basic income is IMHO a bad idea and we should do land value tax, as I said in my post. I don't think basic income would prove as inflationary as a direct tax subsidy against land speculation as the former could feed into some land speculation whereas the latter is basically intended to fuel this fire. edit - whoops realised I put about land value tax in my other comment. Anyways: land value tax - the establishment hate it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

wwweston 11y ago

> take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen. Seems to work in late stage free markets dominated by 2-3 large-scale players.

HappyDreamer 11y ago

> asking any government to take money from the people [...] and magically produce a net benefit to the people is [...] impossible But that happens already in the country where I live. People pay taxes, and via taxes, we are able to provide health care and university education to everyone. I like this system, and I'm one of them who pay taxes. It's good for me if everyone is well educated, and healthy. Whether or not a basic income would work, depends on the number of citizens. Fairly few, and many efficient machines and robots that can do most of the hard work, then it'll work okay. Too many people, then basic income won't work I think. In the future, thanks to contraceptives, I think there won't be too many people.

ZenoArrow 11y ago

> "Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen." Your logic is sound, but you've misunderstood something crucial. Where does money come from? In short, money is created in one of two ways; by government spending and by bank loans. All money that exists in the rest of the monetary system was originally formed in one of these two ways. From the viewpoint of the worker, money exists only after something of value is created, after all that's how we get paid, we do the work then the money ends up in our bank account. But in reality, money exists before we earn it. The money in my bank account and your bank account isn't 'ours' before it's someone else's. The way that money is spent into an economy has a large role to play in the the quality of life of a society that is based on money as a medium of exchange. Some of the ways the money is created can be destructive to the economy (for example, when mortgage values increase faster than wage values), whereas other ways can boost the activity of an economy (for example, healthcare spending). The role that the banking industry plays in the creation of money has the potential to undermine the social good that UBI could offer, but I don't want to detract from the main point, and the main point is this; understanding how money is created is very useful in understanding how to get the best out of the systems we build on top of money. UBI organised by a government can just be a different way to spend new money into the system. Aside from the usual effects of inflation it doesn't have to involve your savings or earnings at all.

JamesBarney 11y ago

"Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen." It doesn't matter if redistribution is inefficient in terms of dollars if it's efficient in terms of utility. The idea that a rich person gets less from money than a poor person does is called diminishing marginal utility. An example of this is $3,340 can buy a very rich person a purse, or it can buy a very poor person the life of their daughter.[0] Now suppose that this government bureaucracy is terrifyingly inefficient and burns one dollar for every dollar that makes it to the malarial foundation. This would mean that a rich person has to give up 2 purses to save one life. In most people's books this is a huge gain in utility, and is why even if redistribution is inefficient[1] financially, it is very efficient when measured by utility. [0] - Give well estimates that the malarial foundation saves 1 life per $3,433 [1] - The latest papers by the IMF actually argue that redistribution does not reduce growth.

ryanx435 11y ago
good choice of examples: purchase a purse that costs as much as a used car or save a daughter (not a son). I am seriously impressed: you've hit all the proper buttons to evoke the proper emotions in people reading your comment to take your side. How can anyone argue that a purse provides more value than someone's daughter? they can't, and so you've provided no room for any one to disagree with you. congratulations! you are fluent in propaganda and argument framing! how about using a different example, since the money would be taken from everyone, not just the rich: 3,433 is about 6 months rent for me. that does provide me a lot of utility. or its about 8 months rent for someone else. that also provides them a lot of utility. so why should I pay for them to be sheltered for 8 months instead of sheltering myself for 6? especially considering that the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy means that they will likely only be sheltered for 6 months: the exact same utility as if I had just kept my money for my own rent.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  At which point we rapidly approach the theory of the "utility monster".

shredprez 11y ago

>Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. That may not be a bad thing if we're talking about people who contribute nil to society. >If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should be more? Not hard. Not hard to argue, very hard to accomplish. Political change in many countries is slow and welfare recipients are rarely afforded much sympathy by the working and managing classes. In any case, the real function of basic income is so much more than a moral institution (we've heard those reasons a million times and I won't touch on them here). The exciting thing is that it gets the useless and/or uncommitted to self-select out of the labor market. That means better productivity, higher quality services, a better work environment, lower labor supply and higher wages. They can continue contributing little-to-nothing, be provided a reasonable minimum by local standards, and leave the rest of us to accomplish what we want to in business, research, etc. That would be a HUGE weight off the backs of workers and companies, and I would gladly pay to keep people who can't be bothered out of work. Make no mistake, we're already carrying these people financially and professionally. Not having them gum up our operations would be well worth whatever instinctual annoyance their mooching causes. That's the conclusion I've arrived at.

ryanx435 11y ago
> The exciting thing is that it gets the useless and/or uncommitted to self-select out of the labor market. That means better productivity, higher quality services, a better work environment, lower labor supply and higher wages. you're going to have to explain this logical leap as it is non intuitive and I don't see any sources on your comment.
- shredprez 11y ago
  Simple enough: clearing the lazy, the unmotivated, and the unaccountable from our labor market would make it easier to get work done (less drain from employees who don't contribute); make work more pleasant (surrounded by motivated colleagues who value what they do); and eliminate competition from useless employees who leech jobs, artificially inflate the labor supply and tarnish average applicant quality because they'd rather stay home and do nothing (improving employees' position relative to employers). The above doesn't seem non intuitive to me, beyond the idea that it might actually be worth it to pay some people to go away.

TrevorJ 11y ago

It also becomes a sacred cow. The bread dole was a huge issue for Rome once it got started because they really had no choice but to keep it up.