
Why we should all have a basic income - nmat
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income/
======
dzink
During Brexit, people in job-starved areas of UK were reported as resentful
for receiving handouts. They wanted gainful employment and their dignity back.
You could have corporations foot the bill for basic income and people with
certain values would still not want it. The image of being a breadwinner is so
deeply instilled in some people that for them not being that, triggers mid-
life-crisis: a depression, sense of meaningless existence, addiction, etc.
Employment's bigger role is not just to provide income, but to keep people's
minds busy and balance dopamine and add more meaning in their life. We have to
provide solutions for all of the pieces of the puzzle if we want rapid
automation.

~~~
ako
Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something
completely different.

In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most people
had a lousy job, that involved very little effort.

The first time i came to the US, i got the same feeling, lots of meaningless
jobs (lift boy, parking lot attendant, grocery store bag filler) that i didn't
see in the Netherlands.

Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income?

At least with UBI people can decide for themselves how they create a
meaningful daily activity.

~~~
Koshkin
> _In communistic days in eastern europe, everyone was employed, but most
> people had a lousy job, that involved very little effort._

I find this hard to believe. Why would a job "in communistic days" be
different from, well, a job?

~~~
ako
Because there was a job for everyone. Government had to create a job for
everyone.

See: [http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-
action/bria-19-1-a-...](http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-
action/bria-19-1-a-life-under-communism-in-eastern-europe)

"In the workplace, almost everyone had a job. Wages,however, lagged far behind
those in the Western democracies. A common joke was, "They pretend to pay us,
and we pretend to work." But rents, goods, and services were far cheaper than
in the West."

~~~
Koshkin
> _job for everyone_

You are implying that this was dictated by political rather than economical
reasons, but that may be not entirely correct.

> _we pretend to work_

This is true - for some workers. Thing is, the Western society in not and has
never been different in this regard. And, some of the "job creation" policies
could exacerbate the problem even more.

~~~
ako
Yes, some jobs are the same here.

The main question is: do you create a job because there's some work to be
done, or do you create a job because somebody needs a job?

~~~
Koshkin
Do you have an evidence of the latter, or this is purely hypothetical? (An
honest question.)

~~~
ako
Common knowledge, see earlier link, some googling will easily give you more
info.

Lots of older people in Easter Europe think communistic days were better and
wish they could go back: state provided housing, education, healthcare and a
job. Not great, but basic (as in basic income).

------
jondubois
If I had basic income, I would go back to study, get a PhD in Computer Science
Majoring in AI/Machine learning and then I would try to do something
meaningful with it. I am tired of doing pseudo-intellectual software
'engineering' tasks - I would like to use my intellect to tackle difficult
problems instead of trivial problems like building UI components and managing
databases. Unfortunately, I can't afford to go to back to uni right now.

I think that there are a lot of people in my position who are desperate for
basic income. From a societal point of view, innovation would move quicker if
people had more time to invest in themselves.

Unfortunately for me, right now, I just have two options if I want to buy
myself some time to study:

\- Hope that one of the startups I work/worked for gets a big exit and that I
can cash in and fund my studies.

\- Wait for retirement age before going back to uni (and hope that my brain
still works OK at that age).

~~~
wolfgke
The fact that someone is paying you to do these jobs shows that the things you
do _do_ have a lot value to someone (your boss, the company's customers etc.).
So your existing job is far from being meaningless.

Instead of crying for a UBI you should better cry for people not to buy
software that does "trivial stuff". If people were willing to spend a lot of
money on software that does highly not-trivial stuff, there probably were a
large demand for people that are able and willing to work on such things.

Markets are a democracy - everybody votes with his wallet.

~~~
jondubois
If me and my colleagues were better educated and less stressed on average, we
would introduce fewer bugs into the system and we would waste less time
debugging issues that should never have existed in the first place. I guess I
believe that education has a really good ROI.

~~~
wolfgke
> I guess I believe that education has a really good ROI.

Did you do a back of the napkin estimate for this? You also have to include
the tuition fees and the opportunity cost of (probably) not working while you
study on the debit side (thus no, i.e. lost, income). On the credit side the
increased productivity/better job etc. Have you computed how many years it
will take to reduce the computed debt (including opportunity cost)? I have not
computed it, but I'd assume that it would take a hellish lot of time to even
break even.

------
vectorpush
Almost everyone here seems to be discussing the economic challenges of UBI,
but so far I haven't seen much mention of the political challenges. UBI is a
completely unworkable concept in the U.S.A and likely many European countries
as well. American citizens will be literally shooting eachother in the streets
before they accept such a massive wealth redistribution mechanism, and that
resistance will be mostly made up of the masses that could benefit from it, to
say nothing of the powerful that will leverage the full extent of their
influence to prevent their gains from being redistributed.

~~~
jjawssd
Americans do not trust that the government has their best interests in mind,
ergo Americans do not want to have their money taken away from them to pay for
government programs.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Like roads, air traffic control, sewers, clean water, etc., etc.?

~~~
jjawssd
You mean the roads which are crumbling
([http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/road-
infrastructure/](http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/road-
infrastructure/)), congested ATCs
([http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/aviation/](http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/aviation/)),
and water systems with heavy metal contamination with our drinking water
infrastructure nearing the end of its useful life
([http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/water-
infrastructure...](http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/water-
infrastructure/))?

------
prodmerc
If everyone gets $1000 every month guaranteed for "basic needs", the prices
for those basic needs will increase accordingly. And independently. So you'll
end up spending that $1k on either housing, bills or food.

So you will still need a job if you want all three of those things, not sit
around and contemplate what you should do with your life.

It's sort of like how the ACA raised the overall price of insurance.

Giving money/help selectively to those who need it right now (and can prove
it, i.e. no job but looking for one) is still better than UBI.

Prove me wrong.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Prove me wrong.

Ok here we go.

> If everyone gets $1000 every month guaranteed for "basic needs", the prices
> for those basic needs will increase accordingly. And independently. So
> you'll end up spending that $1k on either housing, bills or food.

They don't get $1000/month for "basic needs", they get $1000/month for
_whatever they want_. It's completely unconditional.

Which means people wouldn't go out and buy twice as much food as they
currently eat because they suddenly have a pile of money that can only be used
for buying food. Unless they are currently starving, which hardly anyone in
the US is, they would buy the same amount of food that they do now and there
would be no inflation in the price of food.

And anything with the effect of increasing nominal housing prices without
reducing the ability of people to buy housing is _excellent_ because it allows
you to increase the housing stock without reducing nominal housing prices and
causing existing homeowners to go underwater on their mortgages. In other
words you can build more housing to cancel out the effect without NIMBYs
fighting you and thus allow more people to own homes.

> It's sort of like how the ACA raised the overall price of insurance.

The primary driver of increasing insurance premiums wasn't the subsidy, it was
the requirement that insurance companies take people with preexisting
conditions. Suddenly a million sick people are making insurance claims who
previously had no insurance, what did you think was going to happen to
premiums?

> Giving money/help selectively to those who need it right now (and can prove
> it, i.e. no job but looking for one) is still better than UBI.

Only if you want them to pretend to look for a job and never find one. And you
want to create a poverty trap because actually taking a job doesn't actually
increase the amount of money in their pocket because the government withdraws
an equivalent amount of benefits.

~~~
prodmerc
> Suddenly a million sick people are making insurance claims who previously
> had no insurance, what did you think was going to happen to premiums?

This is what I mean.

From a business point of view, suddenly everyone has an extra $1000.

They were buying stuff from you until now, there's no reason not to try to
drive the price up to see how much more you can charge now.

If enough businesses will do that, it will reach a critical mass where the
ones charging old prices are the idiots left behind.

So if literally everyone has an extra $1000, nobody has an extra $1000.

A bit different with insurance, since the government forced insurance
companies to accept all these people, so they increased prices. I'll ignore
the fact that they were still making enough profit to just accept the losses,
because people are greedy and they will always want all the profit they can
get.

~~~
neltnerb
So I get where you're going with this, but the businesses are still competing
with one another in a free market.

So yes, you're right that if all the avocado farmers in California decided to
engage in price fixing because they know that more money exists and that they
can get it, they probably can. But it presupposes highly monopolistic behavior
that doesn't seem very likely to work for most markets. Especially if it's
easy to become an entrepreneur.

The business, after all, makes a profit as long as their price is above their
cost. So unless their costs go up, competition keeps prices down.

Now, I think you're half right -- prices will go up, but it's not because of
gouging by middlemen or traditional inflation. It will be because as people
drop out of the labor market, the really undesirable jobs will become more
costly to fill.

But that strikes me as a much more fair free market than what we have now.
Yes, you will have to pay more to have your garbage picked up in front of your
house. Why? Because as it turns out, you would much rather be doing whatever
you do than deal with a thousand people's garbage. Maybe they should be
getting paid more than you, in a voluntary free market.

So I imagine it will be sort-of inflation, but almost better described as a
rebalancing of the economy. Jobs that humans can do much more easily than
robots will get higher salaries. Jobs that are enjoyable get lower salaries.
Overall, salary spread across jobs becomes much smaller.

But I don't think it's necessarily likely to be some kind of _overall_
inflation, it's a redistribution of wealth accomplished by simultaneous direct
transfer of wealth through the UBI, in addition to a redistribution of power
accomplished by allowing "Nothing" to be an option that employers have to
compete against.

~~~
prostoalex
> But it presupposes highly monopolistic behavior that doesn't seem very
> likely to work for most markets.

Higher education costs expanded to absorb the extra money from the student
loans thrown at them, healthcare costs increased as more consumers started
competing for a fixed supply of appointment slots, hospital beds and medical
services.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Higher education costs expanded to absorb the extra money from the student
> loans thrown at them

That's because they're catastrophically stupid industry-specific interest rate
subsidies. A dollar for tuition is then less expensive than a dollar for
anything else, so everyone conspires to buy things with the cheap government
money that isn't available when used for anything else. And that process is
highly inefficient because it's basically a huge implicit fraud scheme to
redirect subsidized student loan money to things that aren't strictly
education, which no one can admit to out loud or explicitly negotiate for
because it's illegal to use the money for that. Then it's, look how expensive
"education" has become!

A UBI doesn't do that because it doesn't restrict what you can use the money
for.

> healthcare costs increased as more consumers started competing for a fixed
> supply of appointment slots, hospital beds and medical services.

In part this is the same thing (here is a huge pile of money that you can
_only_ use for healthcare, now everyone go swamp the doctor's office at the
same time). And the rest of it is temporary because no one knew the law was
coming ahead of time so now we need some time to increase the supply of
healthcare providers.

~~~
prostoalex
> because it's basically a huge implicit fraud scheme to redirect subsidized
> student loan money to things that aren't strictly education, which no one
> can admit to out loud or explicitly negotiate for

I agree, but how does showing up with a wad of cash instead of a check from a
student loan agency increase your negotiating power? Large number of
international students today (Chinese and Saudi until recently) paid cash and
yet had little say on football teams, new administrative buildings or spending
in general. The university system just goes out and borrows whatever it feels
like, the debt service is added to expenses.

UBI also removes the advantage of centralized negotiating power that's
beneficial in industries like healthcare. With Medicare or a private insurance
company the $500 list price for doctor's exam can be negotiated down to $99.
With UBI it's the consumer against doctor's office, whch historically did not
play out well due to massive information disadvantage.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I agree, but how does showing up with a wad of cash instead of a check from
> a student loan agency increase your negotiating power?

Because cash you can spend somewhere else.

Suppose you _like_ football. If the money is "student loans" then you can
spend it by attending a school with a big fancy college football stadium and
subsidized tickets for students. If the the money is _cash_ then you can use
it to go to that school instead of a less expensive one with no football
stadium, or you can go to the less expensive school and use the money to buy
NFL season tickets.

So when the money is student loans, people have only the first option and all
the schools have to build big fancy football stadiums to attract students. But
you can't do that on a per-student basis. And you can't directly buy college
football tickets with student loan money but you can launder it through
administration to subsidize them. So everybody who attends that school ends up
paying for football even if all they really wanted was an education, and then
people have to consider the quality of the school's football team when
choosing schools instead of only the quality of their professors. It would
have been better to have just let the students who like football use the money
to buy NFL tickets.

And so on for twelve other categories of student loan money laundering
colleges have to engage in to attract students.

> UBI also removes the advantage of centralized negotiating power that's
> beneficial in industries like healthcare. With Medicare or a private
> insurance company the $500 list price for doctor's exam can be negotiated
> down to $99.

There is no reason you can't use your UBI money to buy private insurance.

And the only reason the list price for those things is $500 is that everybody
knows the scam. The buyer for the insurance company wants to look like a great
negotiator to his boss, so the doctor's office claims everything costs five
times as much as they actually want and the buyer gets to look like a big hero
for whacking it down so much.

And in general insurance makes things cost _more_ for the same reason colleges
with fancy football stadiums are more expensive. People don't ask whether
something is worth the cost when they're spending somebody else's money. If
you're paying out of your own pocket, you ask if knowing the result of some
test is _really_ worth $1200 of your money. If the insurance company is paying
for it, you run _all_ the tests whether you need them or not.

~~~
sobani
About health costs, things will become _more_ expensive if every person has to
negotiate for themselves. People who have a medical problem, want the problem
fixed. They don't have the time or ability to find a good alternative. An
insurance or government is in a much better position, because they have the
time and expertise to shop for an alternative beforehand and make it an all or
nothing proposition for the _producer_.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
You're making the argument for medical licensing, not the argument for single
payer. People don't know which doctors are quacks so the government has to
step in. But money is a different question -- if we required doctors to
provide prospective patients with a standardized price schedule it would be
trivial for patients to see which doctor charges $100 and which charges $200.

If you have government or insurance pay for everything (and then pay everyone
the same amount) the buyer _still_ doesn't know which doctor provides the best
care, but now doctors have the incentive to provide no more than the bare
minimum care because they aren't allowed to charge any more for better
quality/convenience/atmosphere for the same procedure.

------
nickthemagicman
Capitalism is going away, no matter what, once we have massive unemployment
due to automation. You think people are just going to accept starvation? Shit
will get real, real fast. And most people aren't as articulate or reasonable
as the people on this site. There will be massive violence. A better way to
look at UBI is that it's not about giving poor people money. Its about keeping
the fabric of society together and preventing revolutions.

~~~
edblarney
"Capitalism is going away, no matter what, once we have massive unemployment
due to automation"

No.

1)

The Industrial Revolution saw a considerably greater degree of automation than
we are seeing now.

'Single Engines' replaced dozens of workers, some cases 100's.

Think 'weaving machine' vs. 'individual weavers'.

The 'automation' we have today is mostly 'soft' \- do you think MS Word
actually replaced 'Secretaries'? Or was it a confluence of things, including
the fact that we now have 'Executive Assistants' which do much more than
Secretaries ever did.

And what happened during the Industrial Revolution? Wages rose! Unemployment
never really went down.

You know all those 'servants' in 'Downton Abbey' \- the ultimately left to get
_higher paying jobs_.

I should add - this had also a lot to do with the labour movement.

2)

The major source of 'job loss' in Industrialized countries is not 'automation'
\- it's 'outsourcing' to India and China.

'Automation' has been going on in a very aggressive way for over 200 years -
and yet we still have fairly low levels of unemployment.

Entire new sectors have developed: entertainment, professions, services. There
were 5 channels in 1950 and now 500. There weren't many pro athletes in the
1900's - now their are tons - and massive industries around them. We didn't
really provide much in terms of healthcare in 1900 - now maybe 20% of the
economy is healthcare. Very few used to go to University, let alone finish
highschool - now education is a massive industry.

There is always 'work' that can be done so long as we can improve each others
lives.

So - the question of 'UBI' comes down to how we decided to spread the
surpluses. Do we give some surpluses to those who are not directly
contributing?

Hint: we already do. Especially in socialized countries - we give massive
subsidies to non-working people: healthcare, parks, security, all sorts of
other services. Power subsidies (electricity is subsidized here in Quebec). We
just don't give them spending money.

I think UBI is an interesting idea, but a dangerous one as well.

I live in Montreal, many of the people in my neighbourhood are 'artists' \-
photographers, actors - but really they all work full time in services.

You can get a 1/2 decent, small but respectable flat around here for $400 a
month - and I don't mean grungy. It's entirely possible to live decently off
$1K a month (remember healthcare is already paid for by other members of
society).

I feel that with UBI - my neighbourhood would fall flat - because everyone
would quit their service jobs (or work a lot less) - because they only need
UBI + a little bit of extra cash - i.e. '1 day work weeks' \- I think would be
the preferred mode of existence for vast numbers of the young people around
here. They would live a 'very low materialism' style of living, and be happy
with it.

I think a 'means tested' form of UBI (not really 'Universal' ...) instead of
welfare would be better.

In America - a better idea than UBI might simply be to make sure that everyone
has access to healthcare, in a slightly-more-socialized way. I don't mean
'single payer' \- but something. Having better healthcare for everyone would
put people on a much more equal/fair footing - AND probably be good for the
economy directly/indirectly. Solve that problem and you're already a huge step
forward in trying to provide for better social outcomes.

~~~
nkurz
_I feel that with UBI - my neighbourhood would fall flat - because everyone
would quit their service jobs (or work a lot less)_

Could you explain why you mean by "fall flat"? Do you mean that the businesses
that currently employ the service workers would close because they would be
unable to find anyone to work for them? It seems likely that they'd need to
increase the wages paid for unrewarding positions, but that this might be
offset by the greater number of locals who can afford to patronize them.

 _I live in Montreal, many of the people in my neighbourhood are 'artists' \-
photographers, actors - but really they all work full time in services._

 _' 1 day work weeks' \- I think would be the preferred mode of existence for
vast numbers of the young people around here._

Presumably when you say "1 day work week", you do not include the time spent
working on the projects personally important to these people? I view it as a
strong positive that more young people would have more time to pursue their
artistic interests, and presume they would do so. There may be negatives that
should be carefully considered, but don't you see this as something we should
strive for?

 _They would live a 'very low materialism' style of living, and be happy with
it._

So more art gets created, the lifestyle is less materialic, and people are
overall happier? And you are arguing against this idea? Would I be right to
guess that you are not currently working a poorly paid job you hate in the
service industry while trying to find time to pursue the art you love? I don't
mean that last question as an actual attack, but I do wonder if your self-
interest might be different than that of the majority of your neighbors.

~~~
edblarney
"Could you explain why you mean by "fall flat"? Do you mean that the
businesses that currently employ the service workers would close because they
would be unable to find anyone to work for them? It seems likely that they'd
need to increase the wages paid for unrewarding positions,"

No.

Coffee Shops etc. already run on pretty low margins -> they'd be out of
business. Any business wherein labour is a significant input cost and where
wages are low enough that people would quite - would shut down - and that's a
lot of businesses.

"So more art gets created, the lifestyle is less materialic "

That's a choice we can make today - we don't need massive government
intervention to make that decision for us.

It also means a significantly reduced output:

The value of the 'art' getting created is significantly lower than the
'service' they provide making coffee - or else that art would be getting
created.

It's easy to prove: if their are were 'worth something' to you and I, we'd be
buying it. We're not. But we will however hire them to make coffee for us.

"Would I be right to guess that you are not currently working a poorly paid
job you hate in the service industry while trying to find time to pursue the
art you love? I don't mean that last question as an actual attack, but I do
wonder if your self-interest might be different than that of the majority of
your neighbors."

I don't care what my neighbours 'aspirations' are.

It is not their right to take my money to pursue their aspirations.

If they want to make art that nobody wants to buy, that's fine by me, but I
should not have to pay for their rent so they can do that.

They can serve coffee, get a better job, make better art that people want to
buy - it's entirely their choice, they are entirely capable.

They can have whatever lifestyle they want to build for themselves.

If they are handicapped, or ill, that's another story, but otherwise, their
life is their job, not mine.

~~~
nkurz
_Coffee Shops etc. already run on pretty low margins - > they'd be out of
business._

Possibly, assuming nothing else changes, and they can't raise their prices or
automate so as to require less labor. But others are claiming that the problem
with UBI is that all the prices would go up, presumably including those at the
coffee shop. And if everyone in the neighborhood had another $1000 per month
to spend, don't you think that at least some of the coffee shops would see
increased business?

 _The value of the 'art' getting created is significantly lower than the
'service' they provide making coffee - or else that art would be getting
created._

Maybe, but this bothers me in two ways.

First, it assumes only those with the surplus money to buy art are allowed to
determine the value of art to society, and that those will the inability to
pay for art have no say. Isn't it fair to allow these non-rich art lovers to
democratically vote for policies that result in more art?

Second, it implies that the value of art can be completely judged by its
market value of at the time it was created. The more creative geniuses we have
serving coffee to rich folk, the fewer works of art we'll have in the future.
Obviously most artists aren't geniuses, but I think this tradeoff at least
merits some consideration.

 _if their are were 'worth something' to you and I, we'd be buying it. We're
not. But we will however hire them to make coffee for us._

There is lots of art I appreciate and would like to encourage, but I don't
have money to support it. I've never felt comfortable paying someone to make
me hot beverages --- I'd much prefer self-service and greater automation.

 _I don 't care what my neighbours 'aspirations' are._

Perhaps that's the big difference in our views. I care tremendously about
whether those sharing my society feel they are living fulfilling lives. UBI
might not be the best way to accomplish this, but I guess I hadn't considered
that you might not consider this to be a benefit.

------
dang
We changed the URL from [https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/why-we-
should-all-ha...](https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/why-we-should-all-
have-a-basic-income-7177d5b339ec), which points to this.

Although basic income is obviously a well-worn topic, this article seems a bit
more substantive than average. So we'll try downweighting this thread less
than we usually do for well-worn topics.

~~~
politician
It's good to hear confirmation that you're doing this sort of thing. May I
suggest surfacing this drag coefficient to the UI, so that people know what
you've done?

It looks pretty sleazy when a young thread with high engagement (comments and
upvotes) nonetheless slides to the second page.

~~~
dang
That's just how HN works. Story rank is determined not only by upvotes and
submission time, but by numerous other factors including active moderation.
We're unlikely to publish all that because doing so would increase two bad
things: attempts to game the site, and meta nitpicking. Those are bad in their
own right _and_ eat up the resources we have for making HN better, so it's in
the community interest to minimize them.

The approach we've taken re transparency on HN is not to make all the data
public but rather to answer users' questions about how the site works or
what's going on in specific cases. That seems to be the sweet spot.

------
jarym
Funny how all the proponents of a Universal 'Basic' Income aren't proposing
instead to make every 'Basic' item 'Free'.

After all, if you believe their rhetoric, giving someone $500/mo should be the
same as giving them free bread, eggs, milk, some clothes and some movie
tickets.

I wonder why... Maybe, the reality is that over time our 'Basic' needs
increase. In certain parts of the world shoes are still considered a luxury
whereas in others, Nikes and Adidas are considered 'basic'. 50 years ago car
ownership was a luxury even in most 'developed' nations, as were televisions.
Now they're considered 'Basic'.

The reality is, the people touting UBI as a way forward suffer from having a
thoroughly static and isolated view of the world. They fail to see that value
creation is what's important, and drives society to further itself. As value
creation goes up, the definition of 'basic' increases with it. I'm not for a
minute advocating that the current system is anywhere near perfect - the
wealthiest in our population are questionable value creators while at the same
time there are value creators scraping by in the world so the way we reward
people needs a rethink.

I don't profess to know how to solve the poverty crisis and I very much want
it to be solved as a citizen of the world. What I do know is that the only way
to do it will involve reforming education so that future generations are
inspired to advance humankind and create value in the process.

~~~
Deregibus
>Funny how all the proponents of a Universal 'Basic' Income aren't proposing
instead to make every 'Basic' item 'Free'.

>After all, if you believe their rhetoric, giving someone $500/mo should be
the same as giving them free bread, eggs, milk, some clothes and some movie
tickets.

It's not "funny", it's the core part of basic income that separates it from
state-run socialism. Not making a determination about what is or isn't basic
is one of the key points. You give a person their $500 each month and let them
determine what it should be spent on. What is basic for one person may not be
for another.

~~~
jarym
Go back to 1950s USA where average annual salary was just over $3000 - if I
told you back then I'd give you $500 a month - almost twice the average salary
where do you think we'd all be now? Would we be even here?

Now take your $500 a month and project forward another 50-60 years. What do
you think it'll buy you then and why?

By picking a monetary amount - be it $50, $500 or $1000 it IS absolutely
making a determination about what's basic. And its doing it based on the
living standards and cost of living of today. That's a large part of why its
so flawed.

~~~
delinka
It seems to me it'd have to be specified as a formula based on the "poverty
threshold" and "inflation." I really can't imagine just throwing out a number
and expecting it to be unchanged for decades.

------
Tepix
I'm wondering what effect good virtual reality with a Metaverse as described
in Snowcrash and Ready Player One will have on society. There is a potential
that a large percentage of people will be happy with their virtual life even
if they are poor in real life (as soon as the virtual reality is good enough
to spend pretty much all of your time there).

~~~
rgbrgb
We're already seeing this effect, no goggles necessary:

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-video-games-
jobs-e...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-video-games-jobs-
emploment-20160923-story.html)

"Happiness has gone up for this group, despite employment percentages having
fallen"

------
shahbaby
“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies
what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his
downfall rather than to his preservation.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli 1469 - 1527

Even if UBI was proven to be a net gain to society, implementation is highly
unlikely.

This is less about technology/economics and more about human nature, which has
not changed much over the last 500 years.

~~~
undershirt
> human nature, which has not changed much over the last 500 years

Let's be clear that "human nature" is relatively stable, but the "cultures"
that sit atop are much more capricious-- slowly changing in different ways to
fit the same human desires.

------
2noame
As the author of this article, I suggest reading this one next if your concern
is inflation:

[https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-
basic-...](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-
just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7)

If you have another question check here:

[http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-
faq](http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq)

------
TaylorAlexander
I think a basic income is a dangerous and bad idea.

If we expect the wealthy class to give their money to the masses to fund their
survival, the masses would become functionally dependent on that transfer
continuing. At which point the wealthy class would have incredible power over
the masses.

Asking for a basic income is like asking to go to prison for the free food. It
is not a good idea to become dependent on others with such different
interests.

Instead, I advocate the development of open source automation solutions that
provide everything necessary for human survival. Open source machines can be
manufactured by any corporation and purchased by groups who would then own the
means of their own survival.

A basic income becomes a source of leverage for moneyed interests to get their
way. But if we all own the machines that support our survival, we can choose
for ourselves when we work and when we study to better ourselves.

I've written about this recently, here:
[http://tlalexander.com/machine/](http://tlalexander.com/machine/)

------
amelius
It would certainly be nice if startups were ramen-profitable by default :)

~~~
mjolk
Disagree. I've tried some really bad ideas that rightfully died very quickly.
The world doesn't need more junk that no one needs or wants, whether that be
plastic or digital.

------
funkyy
Automation will not reduce overall jobs same way industrialization did not do
that. Automation will create more jobs in services instead. Basic income is
crazy socialist dream that was tested in communism already and it failed.

~~~
lemmsjid
Basic income is very different than traditional communism in that it keeps
with the basic capitalist infrastructure.

In fact, basic income is much more capitalistic than existing social safety
net systems because it maintains the assumption that if disadvantaged people
are actors in the market, that the overall system will be more efficient than
specific government-specified handouts.

Really the question underlying basic income and safety nets in general is to
what extent every citizen in a modern society should have access to goods,
regardless of their contribution. Once society has decided how much access
such citizens should have, welfare vs basic income becomes a question of
efficiency and optimization as opposed to ideology.

As for automation not reducing overall jobs--as someone who works in
automation I don't see how it will magically create more service jobs. There
are few jobs today that employ large numbers of people that are not in danger
of being replaced by automation--and the whole point of automation and
efficiency is to minimize the number of people required to maintain the
system. I do think service jobs become the way people become gainfully
employed in an automation world, but that society will need to expand its
definition of what is a job worthy of recompense--for example someone could
decide to become an artist, and actually have that be a renumerative
profession.

~~~
dTal
>Really the question underlying basic income and safety nets in general is to
what extent every citizen in a modern society should have access to goods,
regardless of their contribution

Absolutely this. And if we're honest with ourselves - if someone will die for
want of something relatively cheap that the state can easily provide (like
food, water, shelter, or antibiotics), can you really justify condemning them
to death because they can't afford it? Sure, you want to encourage people to
contribute to society, but do you _really_ want that encouragement to be the
threat of annihilation?

------
Mz
When I was 3 years old, my dad bought a brand new house in a brand new suburb.
It was 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, etc. For its era, it was a very solidly middle
class or upper middle class house and he had 3/4 of the price of the house in
the bank. The house cost $16k. He had $12k in the bank. It was a LOT of money
when I was 3 years old. It is not a lot of money today.

A $1000/month sounds like a lot now. But the minute you issue UBI, it will
spur inflation and the value of that $1000 will immediately be less than it is
now. This is a problem faced by every single welfare or aid program the world
over: It takes no time for whatever figures you came up with to be out of date
and for your program to not be accomplishing its intended goals.

I have written about this before (for example:
[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-
obsol...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-
before-we-opened.html)) and I expect to write about this more. The UBI is a
bad solution to the problem. We have faced this problem before in the form of
the Industrial Revolution and we invented the 40 hour work week. It helped
distribute work more fairly. We need similar solutions today. Turning most
people into sheeple and charity cases merely because they are not rich is a
terrible, terrible idea.

~~~
xvedejas
I think most proponents of UBI agree that the value should be tied to
inflation, updated on a regular schedule (I advocate monthly). This would
guarantee that UBI doesn't go "out of date".

------
heycomeoncomeon
I'm adding to the the discussion cause we have very smart people here with
very good assessments on what the implications are for basic income. I had to
chime in to clear some of the speculation on the arguments brought forward.
I'm not for or against basic income at the moment but I want to make sure we
are all on the same page on what inflation is and the basics of economics.

Inflation is simply the influx of money that causes the "value" of ALL
goods/services to increase. This is due to the increase of the money supply
which decreases the value of the currency. I emphasize that it is the value of
ALL goods/services not just one or a large number of sectors. When we see
prices rise up in goods and services in one area it isn't inflation because it
is in one area of the economy.

Another misunderstood axiom of economics is that a market is based on finite
resources. If goods in one area of the market increase then somewhere else
across the economy the value of goods and services decrease. Now the
misinterpretation of inflation and price hikes happen due to one variable,
time. The time it takes for price hikes in one area to affect another is what
gives the perception of inflation. But when the value of groceries
significantly increases then I assure you people are going to eat out less. It
just takes time for the sectors to affect on one another.

------
err4nt
This article seems really out of touch, and anybody mentioning the 'UBI'
experiment in Manitoba Canada as a success or in a positive light I can hardly
trust about the experiments I haven't read about. When we Canadians did an
experiment it failed!

~~~
skybrian
If it's a failure, this isn't widely known. Links?

------
droithomme
Who is "we"? Who is "all"? Does this include migrants and undocumented aliens
who do the dangerous jobs for low pay with no labor protections or civil
rights? Or would they be excluded from the basic income? If they are excluded,
and have no rights, but continue to perform the dirty jobs while the rest of
"us" relax and benefit from their labor, how is that different from the system
of chattel plantation slavery?

~~~
imgabe
Slavery involves no pay and being unable to leave under threat of violence.
Undocumented workers are paid and are free to leave. Indeed, many people are
actively asking them to leave.

I take your point, but it's not slavery. A basic income isn't meant to
preclude anyone from working. If it existed and undocumented workers were
removed, those jobs would have to pay a wage sufficient to entice someone who
doesn't need them for survival, or we'd have to go without those services.

------
unstatusthequo
As a payor of six digits of taxes, this sounds expensive and likely to be
taken advantage of by the lazy.

When I grew up my basic income was something called "wages," for which I
worked to earn.

Someone has to fund shit like this. Handouts do not promote self help, but the
opposite: dependence on the government. Is that something to be proud about?

~~~
alexandercrohde
I find this attitude dismissive. It's easy for those of us who are very
successful financially to internalize an attitude that we got wealth because
we deserve it, because we tried hard. It's nice to believe the things which
allow us to pat ourselves on the back and not need to be bothered with
anything like "research" or "trying it out."

------
roldie
EconTalk has a recent episode on basic income [0]. The guest is against basic
income but the debate is interesting.

[0]
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/michael_munger_3.ht...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/michael_munger_3.html)

~~~
thephyber
My interpretation of that episode was that the guest was largely _for_ UBI, so
long as it replaced many of the current safety net / welfare programs (it is
simpler to administer, doesn't require large bureaucracies to verify
eligibility, and doesn't dis-incentivize people from getting a job and working
their way up as do disability, unemployment insurance, section 8, food stamps,
etc).

My interpretation was that the host wasn't sold on the idea nor on the low
estimated tax increases required to fund a UBI (IIRC the guest stated 3-10%
increases in income taxes and the host speculated more like 20+%).

------
omilu
Here is the same author in 2014 attempting to explain how basic income won't
lead to massive inflation:

 _[https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-
basic-...](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-
just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7#.ajika83kp*)

>>>_It would not be new money, just money shifted from one location to
another. This means that the value of each dollar has not changed. The dollar
itself has only changed hands.*

There is no sure fire way to _reduce_ the value of a dollar then to
redistribute it to people that didn't work for it. The fact that you have to
work for the dollar is the thing that gives the dollar value.

~~~
Balgair
"The fact that you have to work for the dollar is the thing that gives the
dollar value."

Wait, so then how does inheritance work? Like, your grandmother worked for it,
but you just snowboard all year long. What am I missing here?

~~~
sokoloff
Money can be thought of as a claim check on labor. You work doing something
valuable and get money. You spend some and save some. What you have
saved/invested and not spent and passed on to someone else still has value.

In the snowboarder's case, someone worked for that money and gifted it to
them. Totally consistent if you don't overly focus on the " _YOU_ have to work
for it" but rather " _SOMEONE_ has to work for it"

~~~
lg
right. so i work, pay taxes and those get distributed to my neighbor's UBI.
what i have passed on to someone else still has value.

------
jondubois
I'm a big fan of Thomas Piketty's idea of a progressive global tax on wealth.

I think that the root cause of a lot of the financial stress that many people
are feeling right now is the result of having too many people leeching off of
passive income from their investments/wealth (derived from work they did 30
years ago) and not actually contributing anything new to society.

These wealthy people have become parasites.

Right now, if I build an office building and I rent it out to people; assuming
that I manage to stay afloat during the first few years, the passive income
that I will later generate from that investment will probably keep coming in
for the rest of my life... Even worse than that; when I die, my children would
be able to keep getting the free passive income; they could just sit there and
consume stuff (make others work for them) without working themselves; without
contributing anything new to society.

There is a point when you have to stop paying these passive earners. We're
already doing it when it comes to patents/copyrights (In many countries,
copyrights expire after 70 years or so... Patents generally expire sooner than
that) - We need to either extend this notion of 'expiry' to ALL property
rights OR at the very least tax that wealth. Why should regular property be
treated any differently than intellectual property?

Right now, what we have is crony capitalism. If we wanted to have proper
capitalism; companies like Ford, GM, Toyota... would all have to pay royalties
to the descendants of the people who invented the wheel and also to all the
descendants of the people who discovered iron ore, etc... That would be fair -
Actually, doing this would probably have the same effect as passive income
since probably every human has at least one person in their ancestry who made
a major contribution to mankind (why don't they get royalties for that?).

When you put it into context, the rules of our current flavor of capitalism
just seem ridiculously arbitrary.

I think that a progressive global tax on wealth combined with basic income
would be a perfect way to average out the unfairness of the system without
damaging the capitalist incentive structure.

~~~
perilunar
What you've described is close to Georgism, which holds that people should
only be able to own wealth they produce themselves by their own labor, and
that wealth from 'rent seeking' (land rents, natural resources, natural
monopolies) should belong to everyone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)

~~~
jondubois
That sounds great.

------
gdix
The first graphic is geniusly deceptive:

"See, we take a little bit from everyone, shuffle it around a bit and return
it back to everyone. Hooray!"

When it reality, the actual result is the red section loses dots which just go
blue green and yellow groups.

~~~
notahacker
I particularly like the way they don't put an earnings scale on the second
graph to show that it implies _everyone earning more than about $40k per year
has less money than before_.

Now try telling someone on $50k in the Bay Area that their net tax increase is
mostly going to go to people not receiving any welfare at the moment, most
probably because they don't actually need the money enough to even think of
registering as looking for work...

------
tunesmith
I have such trouble with basic income discussions because it is such an ill-
defined term it is basically meaningless. Like here in the US, UBI _with_
social-security/medicare is a massively different thing than UBI _instead of_
social-security/medicare. So massively different that it's just two completely
different subjects, arguments, things.

They should just be named differently so we know what we're talking about -
otherwise you have people agreeing they love it when the actually massively
disagree, or other people saying they hate it on grounds other than what was
suggested.

------
king07828
Country A has pure UBI. Country B has "almost UBI" where, in order to receive
payments, the person must have documented proof of 3 hours per week of at
least one of: volunteer work, education as a student, or teaching a class. In
this scenario, I would expect country B's economy to dominate country A's
economy because in order to get your check you have to work with other people
(volunteer), make yourself better (student), or make others better (teach).

------
dietsche
bad idea. totally unworkable. this will create a class of dependent poor
people. It will also create a working class who slaves away to provide for
those who refuse to work.

~~~
EliRivers
There already is a class of dependent poor people. Most of them have jobs.

~~~
taber
Not to mention the class of dependent rich people.

------
thescribe
It has been 0 days since hacker news argued about basic income without any new
data.

------
lend000
I'm glad basic income is getting a lot of discussion, but it's important to
realize we are still pretty early in the process of automation taking over
more jobs than people can innovate. Technology has been making entire
industries/classes of workers obsolete for centuries, and the economy has
always adjusted.

In this next push, it _looks_ like it will be different because AI/machine
labor is so 'general,' but in reality, the pressure it will first exert on
physical labor sectors will create more opportunity for a human economy based
on social value and services (i.e. waiters in nice restaurants, artists,
musicians, writers, inventors, chiropractors, etc.), as well as those
requiring a combination of intelligence/education/creativity, like most of HN.
There will likely be an increased prevalence of security guards, managers, and
techs overseeing machines, and it will force people to take on skills (which
they are fully capable of) that do not involve pure manual labor/doing what
they're told. And of course, it's a longer time frame between 'pretty general'
physical automation and 'sentient super-intelligence' replacing scientists,
engineers, business leaders, and of course, the politicians who will never let
themselves be replaced.

But when we do start to have the impetus for a basic income, say ten years
from now, let's make sure it starts off basic, because there will always be
jobs of some sort that you can get to supplement your income, and they will
probably be increasingly social in value. Not enough to rent out a nice one
bedroom apartment in Manhattan, but enough to get by if you're willing to go
without nice amenities, get roommates and not live in an expensive downtown
area. Until virtually every job can be automated and we are all servants to a
mechanical society, there needs to be incentive/reward to working.

------
jakeogh
Merely a way to control people. It's dishonest to pretend that it's for
everyone, the first thing that will happen if you wrong the power structure is
it will withdraw funding.

Not that I am particularly worried, this will never happen in the United
States. China on the other hand, I bet they would love to tie this to their
human scoring system.

~~~
delinka
"...if you wrong the power structure is it will withdraw funding."

I have the same fear, that this would be a tool used to encourage conformance.
If not initially, then in time. Even in the US (but as you say, we're not
likely to adopt basic income in the US.)

One would hope, however, that this would become a basic right, and not one
that can be revoked for any reason whatsoever, even criminal convictions
(perhaps especially criminal convictions.)

------
dingo_bat
According to very quick Web searches, $1000 is about 80% of the median
personal income in the usa. I calculated the same rate for India and it comes
to ₹2751 per month based on a median income of $616 per annum.

If I were to get ₹2751 extra every month, it wouldn't make a difference for me
at all. In fact, my monthly expenses are 10x this amount and I'm only spending
less than 50% of my income.

So this measure surely isn't meant to have any effect on people like me. I
would imagine it's a similar calculation for most people on this website. For
this reason alone, we are very badly positioned to react in an emotional
manner. The only decisions that should be taken should be taken on the basis
of trials and hard statistics. Otherwise the "free money for slackers"
sentiment is too strong when it may not be the truth.

------
kareldonk
A basic income wont solve any problems in a sustainable way as long as
governments exist: [https://blog.kareldonk.com/governments-and-basic-income-
why-...](https://blog.kareldonk.com/governments-and-basic-income-why-they-
dont-go-together/)

------
umberway
It seems to me that basic income could make me either (1) fall victim to
depression, addiction, or some other mental disorder, or (2) find a _hard
problem_ to work on which keeps me occupied and satisfied for a lifetime.

~~~
devoply
Or an easy problem. Or any problem. Or social work. Or volunteer-ism. Or
cycling. Or wandering the streets of your city. Honestly the work based
culture has dulled the creativity people to such an extent that they can't
think of anything outside of work. Or maybe human males are wired for this
sort of thing. I dunno.

The reason people become drug addicts or alcoholics is that it's painful to be
outside of the social culture. And work is the social culture of our time.
It's the only thing that makes people feel relevant. We need to invent
alternative forms of feeling relevant.

~~~
umberway
By 'hard' problem I mean that it has depth, not that it's unpleasant. A stream
of easy problems _could_ work but it's less reliable because when there's a
dry spell then outcome (1) will be scratching at the door.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard" \-- JFK

------
RichardHeart
I wonder what effect an enacted basic income in the USA would have on
immigration. UBI is going to be life or death in a vastly automated world, so
we mind as well figure out how to solve the side issues of implementation.

------
briantakita
> The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by
> American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances
> Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in
> order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the
> welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and
> thus an end to poverty".

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy)

------
witty_username
UBI is inefficient--taxing someone and then giving them money. NIT (negative
income tax) makes more sense and can actually have the same effect as UBI
depending on the slabs.

~~~
trfgbv
[http://overweeninggeneralist.blogspot.com/2011/08/universal-...](http://overweeninggeneralist.blogspot.com/2011/08/universal-
basic-income-ubi-vs-negative.html)

~~~
witty_username
Those are good points, but there are ways to fix that.

There's no reason why NIT needs to involve large amounts of paperwork. NIT
only involves income, so a person simply needs to give their income (unlike
taxes, which are much more complicated).

The NIT would presumably have a minimum amount given even if you earn 0$. That
amount can be given to everybody can't do the paperwork. Then, the amount
remaining above that can be distributed as a NIT.

Basically, give UBI to people who can't do the paperwork to cover them. The
rest can use NIT.

The time lag is not a necessary property of the tax system. The NIT can be
done on a monthly basis.

Anyways, this is just an implementation issue. Either way they both
redistribute money.

------
Koshkin
You never know, UBI may turn out to be a good thing: it may result in creating
a healthy shortage of the workforce, which may lead to a more efficient
economy overall.

------
cocoa19
One thing I haven't seen discussed. Would we need some sort of population
control with UBI? Even if robots produce all basic necessities for human life,
the earth cannot sustain unrestricted population growth, which is a
possibility.

I don't know it's true, but I've heard of stories in Brazil where women in
certain towns have many kids so they can collect additional welfare benefits
for each kid.

------
lstroud
Politically, you would have to need guarantees against double dipping
(constitutional amendment outlawing all other forms of distribution - welfare,
food stamps). That's the problem with all the ideas like this...maybe they
would be better, but you have to get from here to there. The transitions are
almost always untenable and more complex than imagined (see healthcare)

Would be better to find something incremental.

------
JohnLeTigre
It's a cool idea but the problem is that people that sell goods will raise
their prices knowing that everyone has more disposable income.

So the cost of life will raise and the people will have the same relative
expenses (practically as poor) but without any fallback system this time
around.

So unless UBI is coupled with strict pricing regulations, it's a scam.

------
loki49152
How do the people who support this scheme plan to get around Say's Law? All of
the wealth that this "income" can demand still has to be produced by someone.
Is this just going to be open theft of wealth with printed money or open theft
of wealth to be distributed as money somehow?

------
cpursley
I have a serious question for folks who support UBI: what is stopping you from
getting started now and helping your neighbors?

Why not just cut out the middle-man (government bureaucracy) and provide
someone with a monthly income from your own pocket?

This could be accomplished by individuals with high income (like many here),
or by voluntarily pooling your money together.

~~~
cpursley
And before downvoting me, this is what ycombinator is trying at a private
institutional level: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-
income/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income/)

~~~
empthought
That's a research project, not a sustainable program. The putative benefits of
UBI would only apply if it successfully takes the place of the "safety net" of
programs already enacted.

------
known
UBI should provide impetus to intrinsic motivation
[http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm](http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm)

------
mrmrcoleman
Lots of conversation here but we already know how to deal with this; let's run
a test and see what happens. Just like they are doing in Utrecht in the
Netherlands.

If it looks good we can roll it out a bit more.

------
programmarchy
UBI is attempting to cloak itself in free market rhetoric, but it's bullshit.

Yes it may "incentivize" some individuals to work, but only by
disincentivizing others. It takes money from top wealth producers,
discouraging their labor, and gives it to people who aren't producing as much
wealth, effectively subsidizing unproductive work. This will make everyone
poorer in the long run.

The struggling artist meme is an appeal to emotion. The struggling artists and
entrepreneurs are struggling for a reason -- the market does not want their
goods or services! They should fail as quickly as possible, not continue to
drag on producing things people don't want.

I'll concede that the welfare state has perverse incentives which trap people
in poverty, but there are better ways to address it other than doubling down
on the mother of all wealth redistribution schemes.

~~~
nickthemagicman
You're right about the wealth producers!

We need a 100% inheritance tax! That way the wealth isn't going to people who
didn't produce it!

Then you redistribute that money to schools and training programs and small
businesses to give opportunities to anyone to become a wealth producer!

This improves the entire human race and not just the rich trust fund babies
who haven't produced anything in their lives.

I'm totally with you on this.

~~~
pyrophane
Your comment makes an excellent point. If our economy really was organized
around incentivizing production, there are many things we could do to that
end. In addition to a 100% inheritance tax, we could also surely implement
policies that discouraged most types of rent-seeking and the passive growth of
wealth that has allowed the richest in our country to become even richer
without having to produce anything.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Except that an inheritance tax creates a large disincentive for people with
children to create wealth, when passing that wealth on to their progeny is
their motivation for creating it.

------
kapauldo
A better idea is making minimum wage match the poverty line. We already habe
UBI for seniors and tbe disabled, and it works great.

~~~
thephyber
Problem #1: Minimum wage locks some people out of the workforce. If you aren't
disabled, but your skills don't rise the value of 2x of the minimum wage (wage
+ payroll taxes + benefits), then you are locked out of finding any legal
work. If you start to raise the minimum wage much higher than it already is,
you will start to make some forms or work and some industries economically
unfeasible.

Problem #2: Disability most definitely does not "work great". If you take
disability, you can be charged with a felony for every seeking work again. It
is a side-track to poverty for the remainder of your life, despite the fact
that you may be re-employable at some time in the future (possibly due to
innovations in technology or changes in the workforce). Additionally, despite
the name of the program, not everyone who accepts "disability" (SSDI) is
incapable of working. After trade deals like NAFTA, there is a structural
change in some industries and regions that qualifies workers in that industry
(usually ones where the trade deal is expected to offshore jobs) for
"disability" even though their body and mind are perfectly capable of working
again. It would be better to give them a UBI-like program which doesn't dis-
incentivize them to permanently leave the workforce.

We have safety nets like "Section 8" (housing vouchers), "Food stamps"
(grocery vouchers), unemployment insurance (UBI-like fixed payments), but each
of these is a step function. As soon as you get a job that pays above the cut-
off range, you lose the benefits and can have a net loss in purchasing power.
A UBI to replace these programs is superior because there would no longer be a
penalty for finding a job or making above the cut-off.

------
omilu
>>>Basic income guarantees you a monthly starting salary above the poverty
line for the rest of your life

If the poverty line stayed constant, basic income is a no-brainer. But basic
income makes the cost of goods rise. Demand for goods increases, but supply
diminishes. Nobody will do the crap jobs without higher pay, raising the price
of everything. Basic income is impossible.

~~~
Tepix
What about machines doing most of the jobs so there are only a few jobs left?
The value the machines generate would be enough to generate the basic income.
Why is it impossible?

~~~
lisivka
So, I, programmer, will be forced to work 12 hours per day to keep robots
firmware up to date, while everybody else will enjoy free ride? Sorry, it will
not work: I will chose free ride too.

Why not just decrease number of working hours to say 2 per day, but for
everybody, instead?

~~~
josscrowcroft
Alternatively - under UBI - you may decide to work 6 hours per day, and enjoy
the earned income in addition to the regular Basic Income payment, all the
while knowing that you can leave (or switch employer) any time without fear of
destitution.

~~~
PretzelFisch
You would still face the same issue since, you make more money you may have a
nicer apartment or house. You would then still be trapped in that job to
maintain your chosen lifestyle.

~~~
jacoblambda
Yes but that is entirely your choice. If you want the freedom to leave a job
on a whim then you likely are not going to be spending money on a home that is
too expensive to live in without working.

------
known
There is only 1 apple for 5 persons.

Person 0 has 0 dollars;

Person 1 has 1 dollars;

Person 2 has 2 dollars;

Person 3 has 3 dollars;

Person 4 has 4 dollars;

What is the price of apple?

------
known
I'd suggest unconditional free universal health care;

------
igallina
income is the result of work if you get paid without work someone else is
working for that since machines aren't there yet... I don't agree.

------
mempko
I think maybe money, as a technology has reached its limitation. UBI is a
patch to a broken system.

------
Mendenhall
Because what could possibly go wrong with making more people dependent on the
government?

~~~
empthought
So how do you commute to work in the morning anyway? Stop using public
infrastructure and suckling at the taxpayer's teat.

~~~
Mendenhall
I dont commute to work in the morning, I work from home :). To address what I
think is your point there is a difference between a road I pay taxes for and
use/can as compared to giving money to an individual that you gain nothing
from.

Also to me its not about taxes etc, its about the shift it would bring and the
ramifications of having the government issue such a huge amount of money.

~~~
empthought
The government already issues this amount of money. It's just inefficiently
distributed through individual and corporate welfare subsidies. A UBI would
replace nearly all of that.

------
tomcam
Who pays for it?

------
fbreduc
the biggest problem i see is now i want to raise my prices to get more of that
UBI pie

------
jliptzin
This will never happen in the US. You will have to move out of the country to
a different country that institutes a UBI if you are looking for something
like this (which I think is a good idea)

------
valuearb
This would be awesome. i'd quit working and rely on others to produce goods
and services for me. If I needed extra income I'd just play poker.

------
spork12
It would work for a certain period of time until inflation catches up.

You could keep raising the basic income to keep pace, but it would require
raising it more every time and sooner than the last time (exponential).
Inflation can be quite damaging because not everything inflates at the same
rate. For example salaries are pretty slow to inflate compared to the prices
for things like gas or food. This is why a mason could afford to buy a car
outright on their salary in the 1950s but almost everyone needs an auto loan
to buy a car today.

You could try to stop inflation using price controls but this almost always
leads to supply shortages. For an example look at rent ceilings in NYC, or the
way grocery stores functioned in eastern bloc socialist countries. They had
plenty of cash and prices were very cheap but there was nothing on the shelves
to buy.

tl;dr Basic income would just create a new $0 mark.

~~~
0xfaded
My hunch is that costs of services will increase while consumables remain
flat. Australia has a complex minimum wage system, but 20 AUD is typical and
on the order of 15 USD. The result is that services such house cleaners,
laundromats and car detailing are order 3 times expensive as in the US,
however produce and imported goods (Australia continues to systematically kill
off its domestic manufacturing capability) are more or less comparable with US
prices.

Maybe its just a SV thing, but having my (share) house maintained by an army
of Latinos for a fraction of my income makes me feel incredibly uneasy. The
other one that gets me are the car washes along El Camino where white people
drink coffee as their cars are tended to by Latinos.

Basic income will kill businesses that rely on cheap labour, as suddenly
incremental incentive to work will be minimal at $9/hour (why work only to
double my anual income?). To restore the incentive wages will also need to
rise, and the net result will be more expensive services accessed by a smaller
percentage of the highest earners.

~~~
skybrian
I think that depends on how unpleasant the job is. Doubling your income sounds
pretty good, actually.

On the margin, basic income gives people a bit more freedom to make their own
choices. I think the price for services in Silicon Valley would go up, but I
suspect more because people can take basic income with them when moving
somewhere cheaper. With the extra money, low wage/low cost places are likely
to become more popular.

