

Ask HN: Any volunteers for Guaranteed Basic Income Non-Profit?  - gremlinsinc

I&#x27;m a huge fan of this idea, as I love how it empowers people--when all people receive equal income, they no-longer have the &#x27;I&#x27;m a loser collecting a handout&#x27; mentality. People will feel better about themselves, and seek to rise above their station. -- People spend hours in unemployment lines, and collecting foodstamps, and going through hoops that they could spend on education, or applying for jobs, or starting new businesses.<p>Entrepreneurs will have more expendable income and time freedom to go out and start something awesome.<p>The icing on the cake is that it won&#x27;t cost anymore than we&#x27;re currently spending, and a lot of sound studies point to the fact that it could actually end poverty once and for all!<p>I&#x27;m wanting to get some bright minds together to start an initiative to get the ball rolling.<p>Here are some phases:  1 : Build website&#x2F;media channels to get the word out and explain in idiot-proof terms what it is, and why people should talk to their congressmen about it.<p>2 : Get politicians on board--as far as I can tell, this is something that MANY libertarians are behind, lots of democrats, and even conservatives like. It&#x27;s a NON partisan issue, which means if we can get a respectable member from each party on board we could build some strong momentum.<p>3 : Collect donations to get the word out, and collect signatures in support of the initiative, and build an email&#x2F;mail congress system to contact politicians and get the word out.<p>If you&#x27;re onboard, send me an email  : pixelgremlins@gmail.com
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transfire
I thought about this many years ago. It occurred to me that it could be put
under the purview of the Federal Reserve Bank. Each citizen would become a
stock holder of the Fed, owning one non-transferable share. Each stock would
pay a monthly dividend and hence a basic income for all.

Few people know that right now there are already share holders in the Federal
Reserve. They get paid 6% on their money guaranteed by law. Hence the Fed has
incentive to keep inflation below this threshold. Lets use this as a template
for every citizen. If a "basic income" was pegged to a 20hr part-time job at
minimum wage, that would be approx $6000/yr. That amount is 6% of $100,000. So
if the Government invested $100,000 per citizen in the Fed, that would cover
it. With 200,000,000 million adults that comes to a total of $20 trillion. Now
we can use another clever idea... the Treasury can just print two $10 trillion
dollar coins, pay the Fed with it and issue each stock in the name of every
citizen (based on SS). And the matter is all but done. This transaction is
essentially the same as the current issuance of Federal bonds. So it is a
simple precedence to follow. (Note, as the minimum wage gets raised, the
Government adds additional funds, about $1 billion for every quarter raise.)

~~~
bmelton
Fantastically informative post. I learned.

As a slight addition, by eliminating only cost-based social programs like
welfare, SNAP, etc., it would free up enough in spending to pay each adult
citizen in the US approximately $12k per year, and probably more, because the
administration costs should be less for one program vs. the many.

That amount could be added to the kitty as well.

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not we _should_ have a basic income. I
vastly prefer it to the deeply flawed social programs in place, and I suspect
that any implementation we'd get from our government would be deeply flawed as
well, or either progressive/regressive/broken in some way, but I don't know if
I'm on board with the actual idea of it -- that said, it's very, very
compelling, and your approach seems rational, Constitutionally valid, and
practically, very workable.

~~~
iForgetMyPW
Printing $20 trillion and issuing stock with neither resource (gold, silver,
any rare or precious material) backing it will cause immediate devaluation of
the existing currency and rapid inflation.

Issuing $20 trillion in stock with no service or commodity backing it will
cause a rapid drop in the value of the stock, as there will be no demand for
the stock.

If you use the $20t in stock to back the $20t in new currency, you're looking
at a very rapid collapse in the economy. If you do this in the US, which is
still currently the base for the global economy, you're talking about tanking
everything. Once, or if, China or the EU trading zone become a more stable
alternative foundation, it might not cause as much damage, but you're still
looking at a sudden upheaval with this plan.

The alternative, of course, is to use the /people/ as the commodity or
precious resource underpinning the 20 trillion dollars, but then we're talking
about legitimate slavery. No, thank you.

I'm open to alternative ideas on how to back the investment and guaranteed
income. I just see a hole in your current plan, that perhaps you've already
thought about and covered.

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thaifighter
I like the idea, but I'm not sure this can work. The first thing you should do
is try to poke as many holes in this idea as possible, then close them and
build the case as to why this would work. One problem I see is that it might
hyperfocus demand toward a small number of base consumption items _if_ a
larger than anticipated number of recipients do decide to not work. This could
inflate the price of these basic items and put the poorest in society back
into the same boat of not having quite enough money to sustain themselves
(having to pay the higher price for goods that they previously could afford
etc). Then, we'd have to revisit raising the basic income level every 3-5
years instead of 8-12 years. Along with ridiculous debt ceiling fights, we'd
also have basic income fights.

If it's set up to avoid these fights by being indexed to the rate of
inflation, people will lose ground over the long haul, since wages tend to
rise faster than inflation (and if we index it to wages, it creates a problem
currently being discussed with respect to social security) and those pressures
from wages might ultimately drive the price of goods out of reach for those
who rely on their basic income.

You might also see irrational behavior on the part of some recipients, where
they buy nonessential items (iphones, hdtvs, etc) and choose to go hungry or
even homeless. Econ likes to assume rational behavior, but that's only so it
can fit into a nice model. Fact is, plenty of people act irrationally, and
while it's easy to ignore them in a model, it's hard to when they're sleeping
along the street or in your stairwell.

And what would we do with them? Put them in jail? Force them to spend only on
essential goods? If we force them to spend on essentials, aren't we just
calling it welfare by a different name? The state can't let them just linger,
because their loitering has costs of it's own, not limited to growing social
unrest (this is partly why privatizing social security is such a horrible idea
-- the market might fail and the state will still have to bail out people's
private pensions or risk unrest, probably gaining nothing but added
uncertainty in the long term).

Our system just might function optimally when its set up to let people choose
to fail, as some surely will, and to make it just painful enough to encourage
moving one's self out of poverty.

Playing devil's advocate here. A shift like this would seem to have very
little margin for error.

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crasses
"that they could spend on education, or applying for jobs, or starting new
businesses."

Your difficulty would be to ensure the realisation of the benefit, and that
there actually are jobs available that provide for these people.

I would prefer to approach the same issue in the reverse fashion, providing a
job/ education with housing and minor allowances, requiring that the person
start and complete a certain amount of work before any monetary incentive is
provided. Available office space could be used, old buildings fallen into
disuse can be repossessed to allow startup businesses some working space. This
way you actually guarantee some economic value and proper utilisation of the
funds. What you would end up with is the government incorporating businesses
that mimic private enterprise, have stricter rules and hire from a different
pool of people.

 __If I were homeless and or couldn 't afford education, all I need is a warm
bed, hot shower, library card, three square meals and google. (Not some
arbitrary handout I would not be able to allocate properly, or in effect be
compelled to spend unwisely because I know not the value of working for it.)
The idea of a basic income is flawed if it allows comfortable survival without
working, no different from communal distribution.

All that being said, I'm not American. What do I know.

~~~
gremlinsinc
The problem is we need less government intrusion not more we don't need hoops
and red tape, red tape costs more, i simply purpose a guaranteed basic income
so people who really need help don't feel like charity cases, charity cases
act like charity cases because they have no hope for anything better.

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sebkomianos
What's your goal, what do you want to achieve with this? Raise awareness?
Promote the idea? Eventually apply this?

Also, you are based in the US, I understand? What's the number of bucks you'd
say is the right amount for this? Do you reckon that's something easy to agree
on?

Hope my questions are not mistaken for disagreement or criticism, I'd be all
in for this if it was to be done thoughtfully.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Raise awareness, get bipartisan politicians on board, raise funds to get
public support.

