Moving Forward on Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income <comment><USER3> So, a question for the BI fans:

I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say.

But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all their money and now can't afford rent and/or food? Do you tell them "tough shit, you've exhausted all your social safety nets" or are there safety nets below BI, essentially recreating the welfare programs previously destroyed? If so, how do you prevent fraud without a department following up on Joe's twelfth "my car broke down" case of the year?

<comment><USER4> Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help.

That's where family and charity hopefully take over.

At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing guarantee" fund.... and then we've just recreated the existing system.

That's the best argument against BI I've heard, and one I'd love to hear rebuttals to.

<comment><USER5> You'll find there are two voices for BI, the liberal and the liberatian. The liberal would prefer to _keep_ universal healthcare and food programs and put cash on top, making the total distribution to the poor larger. The liberatian would prefer to simply move the complex paternalistic safety net into a simpler cash payment which doesn't disincentivize work while not increasing it's size.

As an aside, if you pay attention you'll see the two types of people will squelch their vocalizations in the interest of a short term alliance in support of BI.

Personally I believe the liberal position has both moral and practical superiority. It's going to be cheaper to make sure people have bread and vaccinations despite themselves than it's going to be to solve the resulting issues later.

<comment><USER6> The thing I'd like to see is government services that will optionally replace portions of your Basic Income.

If you're having problems feeding yourself, I would like to see an opt-in program where you can receive food, in exchange for $X out of your BI. If you're having problems housing yourself, an opt-in program for housing in exchange for $Y out of your BI.

The same options should be available for all the necessities (clothes, food, water, shelter, communications, and savings). The sum of these government services should sum to your total BI grant, so if you opt-in to all government services you have the basics of survival totally covered but receive no direct BI.

<comment><USER7> This makes sense to me because I have a feeling most people who would need to rely on BI also have a problem managing money.

As an example, I once had a homeless guy ask me for money outside a grocery store. I suggested that we go inside and get him whatever food he wanted, and he said he'd wait for me outside. Sure enough he was gone by the time I returned. I'm fairly certain he only wanted the money for alcohol or drugs. That kind of person doesn't save money for food, they beg for food and use the money for other purposes.

If you made the program automatically adjust your BI down when you started accepting food from government programs, that would basically act as the government stepping in for people who just aren't able to handle money.

<comment><USER8> So what if he did buy booze with it? I buy booze with my money and there's nothing wrong with that. If someone asks me for money, and I feel inclined to give it, the money becomes theirs, and why shouldn't they spend it on whatever seems like the best choice for their circumstances? And what gives me the right to decide what that best choice would be? I'm not living that life. Maybe a bottle of whiskey really would offer the most comfort per dollar. That's pretty sad, but why judge the person making the choice? Judge the situation offering them that choice instead.

<comment><USER9> I don't want them to destroy their bodies. I don't want them to fuel black markets with my money, and this is speaking as an occasional consumer of mind altering substances not available in pharmacies.

Further, I don't have much money. I cannot afford a lot of stuff for myself. So I can only help with necessities. And I don't want to judge whether any given person is lying.

In conclusion, I never hand out money. But I've bought quite a few bags of groceries for strangers.

<comment><USER8> Well, that seems reasonable. I'm just not OK with the whole "deserving poor" idea that seems to be baked into American political philosophy when it comes to homelessness and poverty support, because I don't want to have control over other people's lives any more than I want them to have control over mine.

Freedom isn't freedom without the option to fuck up.

<comment><USER10> Having the option to fuck up isn't the problem.

The problem is that the US system has such incredibly low social mobility that it prevents any alternative to fucking up.

The mythology of personal choice applied to situations over which hardly anyone has actual personal control is perniciously misleading.

The "undeserving poor" \- feckless, addicted, irresponsible - is just as much of a cliche as the opposite.

In fact, BI research shows that most people don't waste the money. They use it to improve their lives - sometimes by starting small businesses that wouldn't be possible without BI.

<comment><USER8> Your response is phrased in the form of a rebuttal, but I think I agree with everything you are saying, so far as I understand it, which leaves me to wonder if I didn't explain myself clearly.

I believe that the concept of "deserving" or "undeserving" poverty is not just unhelpful but actually misleading, and creates a great deal of unnecessary confusion. It is more useful to ignore the personal details and look at the systems. We can't change other people; we can rarely change ourselves; but we can certainly change systems, because they are human creations in the first place. So that's how we should approach poverty.

I am in favor of basic income as an improvement on and replacement for other forms of social support, for a variety of reasons: it seems like a more efficient way to move money around, it seems like a more effective way to distribute resources to people in need of them, and it seems overall like a more egalitarian, less judgemental way of dealing with a whole complex of problems which currently create a great deal of suffering. It is simple enough to feel like good engineering. It is fair enough to feel sustainable. It is non-ideological enough that I feel reasonably sure it would be difficult to use it as a mechanism of social control against weirdo outliers, like I am, but who aren't fortunate enough to have access to the same resources I do.

By "option to fuck up" I mean simply the freedom to do something other than mainstream opinion thinks you should. In these examples, people clearly believe it would be a bad idea for someone begging on the street to use the money they earn to buy alcohol. Well, on average, that's probably true. But just because someone is in a desperate way, I don't believe that gives me (or you, or anyone) the right to tell them what choices they should make. It's still their life. If I am willing to hand the guy on the street corner my spare $5, I have to be willing to accept that he's going to do whatever he thinks best with that money. If I can't be happy with that I shouldn't give him the money. But I believe that each person generally is the best judge of what is best for themself; I'd like it if the society around me would leave me free to make my own choices, not because I'm successful enough not to have to beg for money on the street, but because that's how I think we should all treat each other all the time, regardless of circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most compelling case I've seen made recently for basic income is from Yanis Varoufakis (the infamous Greek finance minister who resigned after refusing to agree to the terms of the bailout that the Greek people voted against in a referendum): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss)

There were many gems in that talk, but this one stood out to me in particular:

"The right to turn down a job is essential for a well functioning labor market, and for a civilized society. And to have that right, a genuine right, to turn down a job, you must have an alternative: An outside option. Because desperate people will accept to do desperate things..."

"Libertarian economists, who claim that liberty is a driving force, define liberty in a negative sense, in the sense of an absence of constraints, of voluntarism: If you've said yes to some contract, that contract must be, by definition, a free contract, and therefore, it must be some act of free will... Well, it's not. The Mafia loves to give us options that we can't refuse, to make us offers we can't refuse. The fact that we say yes to them doesn't mean that they were chosen freely. The fact that the Greek government accepted the terms, last summer, of the troika, does not mean that it was a voluntary transaction. To have a free contract, to have a contract that is signed by both sides, representing and exuding the freedom of both sides, each side must have a capacity to say no. I said that before, and I am saying this once more: In essence, freedom in action requires a basic income."

<comment><USER12> The right to turn down all work, at an evolutionary level, is granted only to photosynthetic organisms.

<comment><USER13> The right to free speech and religious expression at an evolutionary level is non-existent. What's your point?

<comment><USER14> Free speech and freedom of religion demands nothing of your neighbors except non interference. Basic income, on the other hand, demands their labor (at our current level of technology). In the future automation may change this, but right now there is a big gap between demanding free as in speech and free as in beer.

<comment><USER15> It in fact does not require their labor. It requires effective taxation of land and distribution of said taxation effectively.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) "... revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can reduce or eliminate existing taxes on labor and investment that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue back to the people through a basic income or citizen's dividend."

<comment><USER16> All taxes come from private enterprise. All of them. It may be displaced by time, so that money I made last year pays taxes next year, but there was labor. That's why money even exists - as a store of value.

<comment><USER17> I find it misleading that American enterprise can ever be wholly "private", when it depends so much on regulation, subsidies, and public resources. Taxation goes to support the common infrastructure that makes any work possible. Problem?

<comment><USER16> Unless private parties -- consumers -- buy stuff, there is no income. The government can intervene and distort things (and should -- I'm not a libertarian) but if there is no private commerce, there is nothing to tax.

In a society with no regulation, people still partake in commerce. It has lots of problems and I wouldn't want to live in, say, Somalia, but Somalis still engage in trade and the strongmen who run such places depend on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good to see steps like this being made!

As a slight aside, there are strong proponents who argue, based on Ricardo's law of rent [0], that any excess income above the basic subsistence level will inevitably be swallowed up by landlords in the form of rents.

I'd be very interested to hear from the folks involved in this study if they have an opinion on such an assertion, and if you have any ideas on addressing that effect when it comes to instituting a basic income. Since, if you agreed with those arguments, it seems that a BI's long-term impact on disposable incomes would trend towards 0.

I am still studying the topic, but find the arguments compelling that say a basic income would need to also be paired with something along the lines of either a land-value tax or a community land contribution [1] (which, as the argument is often used, would have a dual bonus by obviating the need for property and income taxes) in order to have meaningful effect.

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

[1] [https://www.unitism.com/land/en/9-keep-what-you-earn-pay- for...](https://www.unitism.com/land/en/9-keep-what-you-earn-pay-for-what-you- use)

<comment><USER19> I've brought this up in the past, and am always met with arguments that just don't seem to dent the problem statement.

My simple question I always pose is this: _" If everyone has $X dollars, then wouldn't $X become worthless?"_

I fail to see how there won't be _some_ kind of inflationary situation amongst the lower class, especially in the form of rents over the course of a year as leases reset. I also refuse to accept any argument that involves the majority of landlords "doing the right thing".

Thanks for posting the Law of Rent.

<comment><USER20> This would be the case if the X dollars were being printed from scratch every time they were distributed. They aren't, though; they are coming from tax dollars.

Yes, it would most likely cause some inflation of consumer goods, since poor people spend more of their money on consumer goods than rich people (so when you transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, consumer goods will become more expensive)

This increase in consumer good prices, however, will also cause more resources to go into producing goods for poor people (who suddenly aren't so poor anymore). Depending on the limiting factors for these consumer goods, this will most likely cause prices to stabilize at a reasonable place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work.

I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The result was that many people started to see the benefit as a 'right', and that the choice to work or not to work was a matter of personal choice. So basically the same thing that BI tries to achieve. But the result in the Netherlands was that more and more people chose not to work, or chose to do work that didn't pay anything, or worked for black money and collect the social benefit at the same time. In the end the whole system just got too expensive and had to be adjusted to be much more strict.

Tl;Dr; BI is a very nice idea on paper but unfortunately becomes too expensive in practice.

<comment><USER19> What I've found here on HN is that there is an _extremely_ large amount of "wishful projection" and selection bias, in that many people here are young and promising entrepreneurs-in-training, and they believe that basic income will allow them to work on their startup dream without having to worry about paying the bills.

While that may be true, they fail to realize that they are in the extreme minority of actually-motivated people who would make a good use-case of basic income.

The vast majority of the world will fall into other categories, such as non- productivity or black markets. Not everyone wants to go build the next great app, folks!

I personally believe that this is _the_ most important decision that humans must make over the next half-century, as we automate nearly everything and have little need for cheap human labor:

 _What do you do with all of those idle hands and minds?_

In my opinion, if you allow the masses to do absolutely nothing while providing them the necessities for life, society will collapse upon itself over time, as people vote themselves more and more benefits for doing less and less work, while ostracizing the working and ownership classes. Question is only how many generations it takes.

My favorite example is what happens when you put rats into such a utopia: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM)

IMHO, humans are no better than they (possibly far worse, in fact), and I see no reason to believe how anything else will happen over the course of several generations of "free stuff".

Humans without responsibilities and accountability = chaos. Tell me it hasn't already begun.

<comment><USER22> The mice in the video bred rapidly and filled the space until it became too crowded. Humans however have contraceptives and entertainment systems and so the population stabilizes before that.

<comment><USER23> and with BI can 1) afford education which is related to lower childbirth and 2) wont worry so much about retirement, also correlated with lower child birth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Amazing how quick this jumped into extraneous "what-if" comments and liberal vs. libertarian and so on. It appears that the premise that YC is moving forward on is very simple: "give them the money and see what happens."

I would imagine it would be monthly because that is how our culture works on necessities like shelter and water. If they run out of the money on day one, or do a deal with a payday lender, it doesn't become "tough shit." It will be answered with a big silence. There won't be somebody to call and complain to.

Once a month money will appear in your account. End of story. The funders aren't also attempting to solve health care and pay day lending. They aren't creating a bureaucracy of people waiting by the phone to listen to sob stories.

What happens after the money hits your account is the focus of the research. Thrive or fuck up, your choice . . . and not the problem of the suppliers of basic income.

Many here are jumping immediately to the worst case scenario stories. Those will comprise a tiny minority. They're playing the hunch that basic income will be a net plus and they want to find out how and how much so they can tweak it and propose it to best impact the future.

This seems like a great use of some of the wealth that has been steadily trickling up.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not look at folks who have some variant of basic income -- retirees. Especially public sector. There's lots of data there to look at.

I have a friend who was a fireman who developed some health problems at 44 which made doing his job difficult without putting himself and others at risk. He's now retired at approximately half pay, with healthcare. He's now doing stuff that he is passionate about -- cooking BBQ for friends, family and events and gardening. (very serious gardening, like he can almost feed his family from a city lot).

There are many stories like that which are worth hearing. IMO, it would be a better population to study, as most retirees like what I'm describing aren't receiving subsidy for housing or food.

<comment><USER26> You can also retire from the US military after 20 years (so as young as 38), which would be a pretty large population to study.

<comment><USER27> True but almost no one actually does retire. You get about 1500-2000 a month as an enlisted retiree which most people would have to support a family with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we're going to give it to > participants for the duration of the study, no matter what.

This is omitting one crucial detail: for _how long_ will the basic income last. At least for myself, my decisions would be completely different if I was to receive unconditional income for e.g. 10 years (or less), vs. for the rest of my life.

<comment><USER29> It's 5 years. Outlined in the link below

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic- income](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income)

<comment><USER3> So in other words, a long enough time to make people think they can draw reasonable conclusions about the viability of BI, when in actuality it's not long enough. You have to study the generational effects of this sort of thing. People are going to behave very differently when they know this will be around for a very short time versus the rest of their lives, nevermind how people behave when they're second or third generation BIers.

<comment><USER29> There's only one way to study something like this.. and that's to do it. 5 years is a pretty amazing amount of time and I'm sure some great data will come out of it. Some smart people will probably treat it as a short-term thing and treat it as such, but the majority of the population are probably short sighted and will treat it as if it will be there forever. You can do a lot in 5 years.

<comment><USER30> > There's only one way to study something like this.. and that's to do it

This is a dangerous thing to experiment with when you have a huge nation of 318+ Million population.

It's far safer to let smaller nations, like Finland (whose entire population is less than New York City), test this idea out for a few generations. It's far easier to "bail out" a city's worth of people than it is a large nation, if things don't go as planned.

<comment><USER31> Or maybe a some folks in Oakland?

<comment><USER30> > Or maybe a some folks in Oakland?

I don't think a city in the US is a good sample, since people are more likely to move in and out of the city during a generational (or multi-generational) test case. In addition, city lines/boundaries are "fuzzy" a lot of the time, often with one side of a street being incorporated and the other side not, etc. City boundary lines may also shift over time, etc.

In addition, if it's known anyone with an Oakland address gets BI, some (or many) people will attempt to move there, which will cause other unintended economic consequences for the city, skewing the test results.

A [small] nation is a better sample, since it tends to have fewer of these issues over a long time span.

<comment><USER31> But you are just guessing at what the problems might be.

I think that is the point of this pilot -- find the problems that crop up.

Your own argument is that it should not be done wholesale until we know what the effects are at a smaller level: that's what's being done here.

Start small. Fix smaller problems. Ratchet up. Rinse and repeat.

<comment><USER30> Well, it's difficult to see how this trial study is going to yield any useful information.

\- The sample subjects are incredibly biased, in that they are already founders and presumably motivated individuals. Not a representation of the general population, not even close.

\- The study has a time limit (5 years). So no test subject is going to make life-long or life-altering decisions based on this limited trial.

So, this study doesn't seem to accomplish any of the basic tasks needed to study ramifications of such an idea in practice.

All we will know after this study is concluded, is how founders treat monthly cash given to them for 5 years. In reality, it sounds a lot like YC is just paying them a salary to build their business.

YC is testing the outcome of paying their founders a salary in order to achieve greater gains down the road... something any business will attest to being beneficial. This is not a BI study.

I agree, start small, work up. This is why I said let a small nation conduct this test (such as Finland, who is already planning to convert into a BI economy full-scale, from my understanding).

> But you are just guessing at what the problems might be.

No, the issues listed in my previous post are clearly issues with conducting this test at a city level. Part of preparing a study is to examine complications that may impact the findings... and these are obvious complications.

<comment> elizabeth-ycr Participants will be randomly selected from the population of Oakland--we are not sampling YC founders.

<comment><USER32> In all honesty, I will be rather surprised if it really winds up being a truly random selection of the Oakland population. The political incentives for the city to find a way to put a thumb on the scales will be very strong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you are really serious about Basic Income, I strongly encourage you to look at the Kollel system within the ultra-orthodox/yeshiva communities (i.e. Lakewood, NJ)

While their model is conditional, the framework for providing a stipend to cover basic necessities so the kollel members are free to study, is very similar.

You will see a glimpse of what happens. There is amazing achievement, and there is abuse of the system. There are unparalleled social services powered by the community (i.e. hundreds of lending "GMach's" which lend and share everything from baby strollers to expensive fertility meds.)

If you want a glimpse into how Basic Income will work, looking at the full spectrum of Lakewood New Jersey would be eye opening.

You will see some of the most amazing examples of selflessness and accomplishment and you will see outrageous abuse of the system.

All in All, people will be people and the only solution that is sustainable is focusing on solving for the cause, not subsidizing the effect.

For all the kollel stipends that are paid out, ultimately, peoples true nature wins out. The only thing we can do is work to improve that nature.

Better People make a better world, not better circumstances.

(for what its worth, I am a fan of the idea of basic income, after all...if people will be people, than lets at least make sure no one has to suffer from starvation or homelessness.)

<comment><USER34> "ultra-orthodox/yeshiva communities"

Ultro Orthodox Jews / Mennonites etc. have a _very strong_ set of social rules, and very conservative behavioural expectations.

You can't compare someone in such a community to the American population at large.

The 'ethos' in a religious community centres around faith, family, duty, responsibility.

In America, it's 'personal aspiration'.

They can hardly be used as an experimental basis.

<comment><USER33> Maybe you can't compare it, but you can still learn from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think it's great YC is funding some interesting research.

I'm a bit curious as to why they didn't partner with some established academics in this area (there's plenty of economists who have done excellent research here) rather than start a new program - but it's YC's money, and they can choose how to spend it.

How open do you plan to be about things like datasets/analysis plans and so forth? I think this would be an excellent opportunity to push forward open science [http://osinitiative.org/about-osi/](http://osinitiative.org/about- osi/). Further, if you allow people who are skeptical of the minimum income to register the objections _before_ you gather the data, you can address them before you proceed - at that point, post-hoc critiques are a lot less credible.

<comment><USER36> We did consider it, and we are working with some established academics.

However, I think it's a good idea to push forward alternative models of doing (and funding) research. Frankly, most of the existing institutions we thought about partnering closely with were somewhat bloated, and it would have made the whole study significantly more expensive and slower.

<comment><USER37> > Frankly, most of the existing institutions we thought about partnering > closely with were somewhat bloated, and it would have made the whole study > significantly more expensive and slower.

Some of that "bloat" is due to compliance and ethics: has YC engaged an IRB yet? SV tech companies (Facebook, OkCupid) have shown very questionable judgement with respect to ethical considerations.

<comment><USER38> There's a reply to this elsewhere in the thread - they've said they're using an external IRB.

<comment><USER37> Excellent to hear, thanks for clarifying that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Honestly, I think any "Basic Income" research where the recipient classes aren't 100% of the members of some well-defined polity and where the policy is explicitly a close-ended pilot is researching something so fundamentally different from Basic Income (it is well-known that close-ended benefits have a different effect on behavior) that, while there may be some useful insights that have applicability to actual Basic Income, they should be called something else.

<comment><USER40> The one thing that I never actually see any of the people who tout BI answer is why it won't just cause an increase in the price of low income goods. Why won't laundry detergent just cost x% more money, etc. I think that the effective spending power low income individuals have under BI would be practically around the same that they had pre-BI if it's used a supplement to our current programs, and lower if BI is used to replace current programs...

<comment><USER39> > The one thing that I never actually see any of the people who tout BI answer > is why it won't just cause an increase in the price of low income goods.

It won't _just_ cause that because of the way supply and demand curves for real goods tend to work. It will _definitely_ cause an increase in the market- clearing price of many goods demanded at the low end of the income scale (because of how demand curves are shaped, and the influx of cash), which will increase the quantity supplied of those goods in most cases (because of how supply curves are shaped), resulting in people who are net beneficiaries (after considering where the funding comes from) affording more total goods, even though they are also paying higher prices for each unit of goods.

<comment><USER40> And things that lag with an increase in demand? Housing, etc.?

I don't doubt that it will have some benefit towards the TPP of low-income consumers in the long term -- I do doubt that in the model of replacement of current welfare systems that this is an effective approach, and I doubt that it will be effective in the short term as housing prices will skyrocket. The long term effects of the latter would be interesting if the short term shockwaves caused the policy to be repealed.

<comment><USER39> > And things that lag with an increase in demand? Housing, etc.?

The degree to which housing lags is a function of unrelated (to the benefit structure) aspects of public policy (particularly, local zoning and planning processes.) Places where the low-end housing markets are unresponsive because of these types of policies will remain problematic for the same reason under a UBI.

But avoiding major disruptions is one of the reasons I think a gradual ramp up of UBI and phasing out other benefit programs by just counting UBI in income when determining eligibility is, even though it defers the administrative cost savings of UBI, the best way to move to it.

<comment><USER40> I think that a delayed implementation is one of the most reasonable things that I've heard regarding UBI! Thanks for the input, some food for thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Although I admire the intent here, my opinion is that it's focused on the wrong variable. Lack of "enough" income is not the root of the problem for why people get sucked into poverty and stuck there. The problem is that working people have become increasingly unable to turn their income into equity. And the number one expensive expense of "shelter" is why. So the poor people will have more money to pay rent ... woohoo. Landlords in Oakland are probably already salivating, factoring this into their next rent increase, maybe even planning to build a few more "brand new affordable housing units" in a complex that will increase both supply and price of rent. Are people _ever_ motivated to work harder to pay their landlords more? Almost never... But give them an opportunity of ownership, and that truly turns the tables on not only what kind of work they can do, but how they spend their time and money.

I'm slowly building Ecosteader to go this direction of enabling ownership to build equity. My motivation was originally to build a land development network of people interested in green / sustainabile building, but the more I investigate this piece of the project, the more apparent it becomes that land ownership really does solve both problems in one. People who own land or homes tend to care more about environmental quality / NIMBY issues.

For the "property tax is just rent" crowd arguing that angle -- property tax on a small and undeveloped piece of land is almost nothing... build a small structure on that land and it doesn't go up by that much. In 90 percent of the US, I'd imagine that tax for the whole year is less than one month's rent in Oakland. It's when people who have massive square footage on massive acreage start complaining that property tax makes them poor that the perception gets skewed.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Basic Income that ends in 1/5/10 years" is not basic income at all.

For some of the population they will literally be studying the effects of a _temporary salary increase_ that follows a person if they change jobs.

For some of the population they will be studying a _don 't-have-to-work sabbatical._

<comment><USER6> What are you quoting with the quotation marks?

I agree with you on that a BI that ends in 1 year isn't a good test. However, from the article their goal with the sort-term pilot is "to prepare for the longer-term study by working on our methods--how to pay people, how to collect data, how to randomly choose a sample, etc". So...who cares if the short-term pilot isn't a good study on BI? That's not their goal.

I disagree with you that 10 years of BI wouldn't count as BI. That is a _long_ time for an individual to be receiving an unconditional income.

<comment><USER43> The point of BI is that you wouldn't have to worry about supporting yourself for the bare necessities. If it's only 10 years long you still have to consider your career prospects after you lose BI. If you tell an employer "I've been out of a job for 10 years because I got free money and didn't need to work" they aren't exactly going to jump at the chance to hire you. Plus your skills will be out of date.

<comment><USER6> > you wouldn't have to worry about supporting yourself for the bare > necessities

I know very few people who only work in order to secure for themselves the bare necessities of life. I suspect, even in an infinite BI world, many people would work in order to be able to have more than the bare necessities.

However, anecdotal evidence such as "people I personally know" is terrible evidence for making drastic changes to our social welfare programs. Which is why we need small scale studies and pilot programs in order to begin to assess the data of how people behave when they receive BI.

> If you tell an employer "I've been out of a job for 10 years because I got > free money and didn't need to work" they aren't ...

No, but if you _really_ didn't want to work, you could easily take 6 years off and then spend 2 years on education, and another 2 years getting back into the job market. It would be really good to have this kind of data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does YCombinator have an Institutional Review Board?

Musing about this study, it feels like it could very much run aground with some of the ethical concerns regarding consent that have dogged some studies with high participation incentives, in that withdrawing from the study potentially represents a financial catastrophe, so participation in the study becomes less than fully consenting.

<comment> elizabeth-ycr Y Combinator does not have an internal IRB, but we will absolutely go through an external IRB.

<comment><USER38> That's good to hear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Although basic income seems fiscally challenging today, in a world where > technology replaces existing jobs and basic income becomes necessary, > technological improvements should generate an abundance of resources and the > cost of living should fall dramatically.

I am 100% for this experiment. But the assumption that technology will replace basic jobs seems naive. Throughout human history, we have seen rapid and accelerating technology improvements. In 1900, roughly 40 percent of Americans were in farming. Today, roughly 2 percent of Americans are in farming [1].

During that same time period we went from most woman not working to most woman working. We are currently in a period of prolonged, very low unemployment by historical standards with more people working on earth than ever before.

As much as it seems obvious that technology will replace all low income jobs, it may be obvious because we are limited in our imagination about what the future low income jobs will be.

[1] [http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf](http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf)

Do not let my comment be mistaken for a lack of interest in Basic Income. Hopefully it will be a well thought out and great experiment. One that teaches us about Basic Income and its potential impact.

<comment><USER45> > _I am 100% for this experiment. But the assumption that technology will > replace basic jobs seems naive. Throughout human history, we have seen rapid > and accelerating technology improvements._

Arguments from "but this is how it always have been" have a tendency to break down when significant societal/technological changes happen.

<comment><USER46> I use a different model than everyone else which I think gives insight on this. I split jobs into 3 categories (simplified here to make it easy to understand):

1) jobs that mostly create economic value (doctors, farmers, programmers): the percentage of these jobs is already small and keeps decreasing with technology.

2) jobs that mostly transfer economic value (marketers, lawyers): these jobs keep increasing. (Note: I'm not saying marketing and law doesn't create value but more marketers and lawyers mostly means more value transfers rather than more value)

3) jobs that arbitrage time and money (executive assistant, cleaning person): I call these arbitrage because the dollar value of time varies between individuals varies and so they trade time and both win economically. These jobs likely grow with inequality.

In a future where wealth is concentrated and more jobs are automated, job types 2 and 3 most likely grow, not shrink. That's what happened because of past technological progress and I don't see a reason to think it will happen any differently this time. In fact, I expect this to happen even more this time.

I'm not saying this is a great outcome. In fact, I think this is an argument for basic income. But I don't think jobs are going to disappear anytime soon.

<comment><USER47> > _1) jobs that mostly create economic value (doctors, farmers, programmers): > the percentage of these jobs is already small and keeps decreasing with > technology._

I really don't follow why job types 2 and 3 would grow instead of shrink; shouldn't job types 1 and 2 be the ones to increase with technological advances?

Technological advancements meant massive increases in output per farmer but farming itself does not require specialized skills, so the increased productivity lead to the drop in the farmer population. Contrast this with activities like programming and medicine which cannot be automated wholesale -- programming and medicine do require specialized skills.

For instance, we'll need more programmers in future than we have now since someone has to program/maintain code written for self-driving cars (for the rest of the population), precision farming (for farmers), telemedicine (for doctors) etc, and with efforts like Learnable Programming [1], more people will pick up programming as a career, so the ranks of people that identify with the programming profession would swell not decrease.

I believe the same increased productivity would eventually happen to the field of medicine -- if computers become really good at the basic stuff -- physical examinations that can produce an initial diagnosis that is fairly accurate, would-be doctors will spend a shorter time in training since they have less material to master. I think this will eventually lead to more people qualifying to become doctors.

So the point I'm making is that including farmers along with doctors and programmers as examples of job type 1 needs some rethinking.

[1] [http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/)

<comment><USER48> Some of the categories type 1 jobs will grow and some will shrink. More programmers will be writing code for self driving cars, but fewer truck and delivery drivers will drive those cars. Both of those are type 1 jobs because they produce new value. Type 1 jobs will shift towards mostly consisting of job that require specialized skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am worried that this study will just confirm the local benefits of BI (which have already been pretty well documented, e.g. Mincome) without addressing the unanswered questions regarding BI.

The real unanswered questions mostly revolve around large scale changes to the economy, not localized improvements. Some questions I really want to see answered are:

\- Will UBI create large price inflation for basic goods (which is what traditionally happens when you give everyone free money)?

\- If so, do we think that this will still be net beneficial for alleviating poverty? Often price inflation is regressive since it hits commodities harder than something scarcity priced.

\- I would also like to ask this question slightly differently: What happens if we were to give everyone the equivalent of 6 months of unskilled labor each year? That's more or less what traditional UBI proposes, and phrased that way who is going to provide the labor (or goods/services)?

Money can be thought of (roughly) as debt owed to you by society. When you think about it that way, doing localized BI seems like an easy win. Doing universal BI seems like a potential catastrophe. Does this study address the latter?

(Edit: my awful spelling)

<comment><USER50> Regarding inflation of prices - if feeding everyone leads to inflation of prices then in principle we can't feed everyone. That says more about resources than it does BI, if I understand you correctly. I think if we were to do this, we would need the capital and infrastructure to handle the increased demand, maybe outside the traditional economic system so that prices didn't increase so much.

<comment><USER49> I think you misunderstand my concern.

Going from a system where everyone needs to generate $20k of economic value "to eat" (yes, oversimplification of benefits, but bear with me) to one in which no one needs to generate economic value may have some macro scale inflation issues.

Those are the issues a study of UBI needs to cover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm really, really happy you're going forward with this!

That said, I have just one question to this experiment - how it's going to handle media exposure?

What I worry about is that the interaction with the greater world through mass media will blow the entire thing up and make it useless. I expect at least:

\- prices going up for rent and some stuff in areas where owners know population is on BI

\- people getting increasingly targeted by scams

\- deliberate attempts to mess up with the experiment

Come to think of it, the first two could be solved by random enough sampling of candidates over a large enough population. But I'm sure others here could come up with several other potential failure modes that the huge attention and "uncommonness" of the situation could bring.

Part of me thinks that such experiments should be done in secrecy and revealed only after they're finished, but that's not how science is usually done, for obvious reasons.

<comment> elizabeth-ycr We want to share as much as we can throughout the process, but protecting participants and the integrity of the study are our first priorities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've recently been researching the structured settlement (annuity) industry. It seems like as soon as someone has a guaranteed set of future payments, you will get structured settlement brokers reaching out, offering to buy out their future payments for a (often low-ball) lump sum today, and many will take it. Will you permit these kinds of side deals?

<comment><USER53> You can't sell your social security benefits, so I would guess the same restrictions would apply.

<comment><USER54> You can - by taking a loan.

<comment><USER52> Right, often the guarantee of future payments can be treated as collateral to make getting a loan much easier. At a minimum it can be used to show proof of future income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I wonder how to test controlling for reciprocity. I.e., If I receive a basic income as part of a pilot/experiment I will feel tempted to "give back" somehow, while if basic income is a baseline all humans receive, that reciprocity will not be present. How can you design an experiment so that somehow people don't feel they are receiving money in an extraordinary way, but rather that's just part of how the world works. Wouldn't that change their motivations and thus the behavior you want to observe?

<comment><USER56> >If I receive a basic income as part of a pilot/experiment I will feel tempted to "give back" somehow, while if basic income is a baseline all humans receive, that reciprocity will not be present. How can you design an experiment so that somehow people don't feel they are receiving money in an extraordinary way, but rather that's just part of how the world works

FWIW, excepting the actually lazy (which I think comprises a vanishingly small minority of the population), I think most people will _feel_ as though they have to give back. Sure, once _everyone_ gets N dollars/month just for being alive, they will no longer be receiving money in an extraordinary way, but culture is hard to kill. The relentlessly inbred Protestant work ethic provably shapes a panoply of aspects of our society even now (8 hour work days that office drones spend half of on Reddit, etc); there's no reason to think that its influence will suddenly drop away with the advent of "free money". I have little to go on beyond the already extant Canadian study of 'mincome' [0] back in the 70s, but that was generally considered a success, with recipients putting the money to use in building their businesses and communities, rather than sitting on their asses (with the notable exception of new mothers and teenagers [1], for respectively obvious reasons (OTOH teenagers' HS graduation rate improved, possibly due to not feeling pressure to go get a job)).

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

[1] [http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget- cea%20%282%29.pd...](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget- cea%20%282%29.pdf) , which is a 2011 analysis of the data from the 70s, largely lying fallow thanks to Manitoba's provincial Conservatives

<comment><USER57> It comes down to how much Basic Income one can expect to collect. I don't consider myself _extraordinarily lazy_ , and thus do my part working to earn a comfortable living. Really though I'm the type who hasn't found my "dream job", so working 9-5, 40 hour weeks, is something I don't particularly enjoy, and it sucks the life out of me.

Existing social assistance where I am doesn't even cover the cheapest rent in the city, requiring you to live with at least two others who are also on welfare in a studio apartment that deserves to be condemned as being unsuitable for human habitation. So long as "basic income" means bottom-of- the-barrel minimum income that requires you to rent in the slums with roommates, while barely having enough money to eat... I will remain employed. If "basic income" ever provides more than that, I could see myself being tempted into joining the ranks. Particularly if you are allowed to keep income from a part-time minimum wage job without any clawbacks to the basic income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I find it very naive to assume that basic income will be implemented as a simple, straightforward, clean replacement of our current welfare systems.

Our current, messy, complicated, unsuccessful welfare systems is the result of many powerful political, social, and moral tendencies and forces, which will reshape basic income in the same way they shaped the welfare system in the first place. There will be many attempts to give some people more income than others -- and some of those attempts will be justified. After several years, we will end up re-creating our current welfare systems, for the same reasons we created them in the first place. Society is not a clean slate upon which any policies can be successfully imposed.

Unless those political, social, and moral forces change or disappear, basic income won't be very basic after the politicians, and the voters, get their hands on it.

Tyler Cowen's thoughts on the matter are very perceptive: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what- are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html)

<comment><USER59> [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/arnold_kling_on_1.h...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/arnold_kling_on_1.html)

Arnold Kling's opined on this point (the particular distortion of the US political process) in his interview with Russ Roberts on the EconTalk podcast:

Kling: Well, let me make another point before I get back to that. Which is a point I also make in the book. Which is that, it isn't that the political process kind of just makes random errors. I think it actually makes very systematic errors. What it does is it always seems to work in the direction of subsidizing demand for something and restricting supply for that same thing.

<comment><USER58> It's not just the US that is like this. Every country is.

Put another way: Things are the way they are for powerful reasons (which may or may not be justifiable). You can't just ignore these reasons when you create policy, otherwise those reasons will cause things to revert to the way they were before.

Proponents of basic income will have to overcome many peoples' moral intuitions about who deserves help, and who should have to work for a living.

If these moral intuitions remain the same, basic income won't be basic for long -- people will vote to give more money to the disabled, less money to felons, and so on. Should people receive basic income while incarcerated due to a criminal conviction? Someone will come along who suggests that members of certain racial groups should receive more money in the basic income program as a form of affirmative action, to compensate for past wrongs. Maybe people who choose to work should get more money under basic income, as an incentive for others to choose to work. Should people who inherit a lot of money have their basic income reduced?

I think it's pretty clear that the first time someone makes a change of the kind I listed above, the cat will be out of the bag, and basic income won't be "basic" income anymore. Then the argument that basic income should treat everyone the same will become useless to defend against further changes. You can't really preserve the purity of a policy design when the voters want to change it.

There is also the danger of everyone voting to increase their income, to the extent that the program runs out of money.

I think these moral intuitions can be changed, but only through a gradual phase-in of benefits over time. Of course, that's exactly what has been happening over the past century or so, and it's what led to the welfare systems we have today.

<comment><USER60> And then the threat of losing your income becomes just another way for the government to control people's behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Can anyone explain how this can be implemented mathematically? Assume 300 million people @ $12k / year, you are spending $3.6 trillion. That is already more than current government revenue, leaving all current government services unfunded.

<comment><USER62> \- To a large extent, it is expected to replace current programs like welfare and social security. So those budgets, in theory, would be reduced or eliminated and supplemented with Basic Income.

\- It will be a taxable income. So a family including two adults would have an additional $24k on which to pay taxes. Those taxes help pay for the program by effectively reducing the additional funding that needs to be raised.

\- Theoretically, it will increase wages and employment since there will be a lot more money spent, increasing economic activity. Increasing both wages and employment increases tax revenues, which would again offset some of the cost. I think this is really the biggest factor that needs studying, as it seems to have the most influence on the decision to deploy BI. Ultimately, it is a macro economic decision. It is also the most difficult factor to model and predict without actually implementing it on a large scale. The most important question, in my mind, is what is the extent of inflationary pressure applied by BI?

<comment><USER63> > Theoretically, it will increase wages and employment since there will be a > lot more money spent, increasing economic activity.

At a macroeconomic level, that money comes from somewhere (generally taxes), which means that it's also _decreasing_ consumption and/or investment by an equivalent amount. You can make the argument that collecting the taxes to fund a program is still desirable in the end, but it's mathematically incorrect to say that it would have a net increase in economic activity.

To put it another way: what would the money be spent on if it _weren 't_ collected as tax revenue? Some portion of it would be spent on consumable goods, and the rest would be saved (invested). Money saved is very important to the economy, because that's how society gets access to capital for long- term investments (whether public works projects or private investments).

<comment><USER62> > "which means that it's also decreasing consumption and/or investment by an > equivalent amount"

I am not sure about this, because the net amount is still new money in the economy, being spent for services, saved, or invested. Yes, a typical person is paying more taxes, but they will have net more money to spend or save: $BI - [Tax on $BI] is still > $0.

As a further example, let's say there is a salon that employs 2 beauticians before BI. After BI, they see an increase in business, and now can employ 3 beauticians, increasing employment by 1. The 3rd beautician is now paying taxes that were not paid before. Those taxes in part can help fund the BI.

<comment><USER63> > I am not sure about this, because the net amount is still new money in the > economy

No, the net amount is zero. Unless you're talking about literally printing money (in which case the costs are spread about in the form of inflation). There is no 'new money'.

> Yes, a typical person is paying more taxes, but they will have net more > money to spend or save: $BI - [Tax on $BI] is still > $0.

You're ignoring the number of people who will be paying _more_ in taxes than they will recieve. Even if you make the moral argument for taking their money and giving it to others, you can't ignore the fact that, without the additional tax, the money would literally be used in some other way, either as consumption or as investment.

As a ballpark, if the payout is $5,000/person/year * 300,000,000 people = $150,000,000,000/year, that's $150,000,000,000/year that needs to be raised in taxes in order to cover the program. Every dollar that gets paid out has to be funded through money that would otherwise be in someone's bank account, and which they either would spend or would save (invest).

<comment><USER64> Money supply increase does not necessarily lead to inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Setting aside whether or not redistribution is ever justified, I do respect the pragmatism of the UBI granted it replaces all other forms of welfare. Faced with a choice between the current welfare state and a UBI, the latter is a no brainer.

While not specifically a UBI, the negative income tax seeks to accomplish the creation of a similar safety net while still maintaining a strong profit motive for the people benefiting from it. A negative income tax is something I would definitely get behind.

<comment><USER66> I think it's important to some degree to be agnostic about what we mean by 'basic income'. We're planning to test the version coloquially closest to 'universal basic income', but something along negative income tax could make sense -- we need to find the answers (hence doing the study!), not just prescribe what we think is right.

<comment><USER40> But the study doesn't actually study UBI. The problems with UBI are heavily rooted in the U -- what happens when an entire society is now making (X + Income)? Using any reasonable economics we'd assume that the price of goods would scale accordingly, especially at the bottom of the curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> "One reason we think it may work is that technological improvements should generate an abundance of resources."

This is already being seen in some contexts. For example, the portion of income Americans spend on food has dropped from 17.5% to 10.5% over the last 53 years. "Because of the overall rise in income, and the consistent shrinking of food prices adjusted for inflation, we actually have more disposable income than our grandparents did" [1]. It is likely that improvements in agricultural technology and food distribution have led to the 'shrinking food prices' contribution, seen in the US. This means that there is downward pressure on the actual threshold of what would constitute a basic income, and thereby supporting Sam's assertion.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/you...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/your- grandparents-spent-more-of-their-money-on-food-than-you-do)

<comment><USER67> All the figures I have seen have pointed to large increases in food prices. Where are they getting their figures that food prices have dropped?

<comment><USER68> Where are you getting figures that food prices have increased as a percentage of total income? I've only seen that they've decreased, and GP post gave a link supporting his position.

<comment><USER69> It's macro vs. micro. Over the past 50 years food prices have fallen, but since the great recession they've risen considerably (though still nowhere near what they were 50 years ago.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Are there any papers addressing the issue "basic income increases the returns to owners of scarce goods" issue? I don't know what the correct name is.

Use case:

A 250 square foot apartment in a building with twenty annual homicides rents for $350 per month before basic income. After basic income, the same apartment rents for $1350 per month, because the rent on all the apartments in safer buildings has gone up due to the increased capacity to pay of renters seeking less lethal housing.

<comment><USER39> > Are there any papers addressing the issue "basic income increases the > returns to owners of scarce goods" issue? I don't know what the correct name > is.

The correct name is "inflation", the effect to which this is effect is present for suppliers of any particular good is measured by "price elasticity" \-- both price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply play a role (in a real tax-funded BI, which is redistribution of returns, it is offset in part for many goods by the fact that increased money chasing the goods in one segment of the population is mirrored by reduced money chasing goods in another segment of the population.)

<comment><USER70> "Inflation" occurs when the money supply increases but the supply of things money can buy does not increase.

If basic income is funded by taxation, then the money supply does not increase. Every dollar distributed to the set { A, B, C ... } is taxed away from the set { A, B, C ... }, so the purchasing power of the set is unchanged.

<comment><USER39> > "Inflation" occurs when the money supply increases but the supply of things > money can buy does not increase.

There are two different uses of the term "inflation" in economics: one is simply an increase in the money supply ("monetary inflation"), the other is simply increase in nominal prices in either the market as a whole or some segment ("price inflation"); the latter is what is being discussed in the grandparent post. Monetary inflation is a potential cause of price inflation (though there are other potential causes, and other factors can result in monetary inflation without price inflation, so there is no necessary direct relationship.)

You seem to want to restrict "inflation" to mean "monetary inflation producing price inflation", which is narrower than either of the usual definitions.

<comment><USER70> The price of lithium has risen. The price rise is often attributed to an increase in demand for batteries. Is it correct to describe this price increase as"inflation"?

<comment><USER71> That's how the term is most broadly used by people who follow financial markets. Central bankers are currently obsessed with inflation as they see it as an indicator of economic vitality (ie. people have such a thirst for creating/obtaining new wealth and new enterprise that they are willing to pay more for things like the batteries in your scenario).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> >If the pilot goes well, we plan to follow up with the main study. If the pilot doesn't go well, we'll consider different approaches.

I'm excited that someone is taking the initiative to test the idea further. Any thoughts on how to tell if things "go well"? Is there a set of metrics that will published beforehand? Most of the claims I've heard about basic income tends to fall into the not-falsifiable camp. I am very interested to see what data/results would convince a basic-income proponent that it isn't a good idea. (I think the opposite would be easier, turning a basic-income skeptic into an advocate).

<comment> elizabeth-ycr We believe transparency is crucial to the integrity of the research, and we'll be sharing our research design and data analysis plan for the full study ahead of time. We will also share the data with other researchers. As for the success of the pilot, we'll consider several metrics, including success of mechanics (payment, data collection mechanisms, etc.); whether the amount of money is sufficient to meet basic needs; and, through interviews with participants, whether the research design is likely to offer insight into how individuals would experience and respond to a basic income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> One thing I didn't see mentioned in the post was an attempt to understand macro economic forces are affected by BI. I understand there are limitations to what can be studied in a controlled environment, and teasing out cause and effect of macro forces can be very, very difficult, but any sort of R&D done at a company normally focuses on reducing the largest risks first, to determine if the project should move forward. Looking at how individual well being and happiness are affected by a basic income seems like an (almost) no brainer as to what the outcome will be - generally positive for those individuals. Maybe this is something that is also being looked at by the team, and just didn't get mentioned in a brief blog post, but I would hope this research is at least thinking about how to address and manage these largest risks first, instead of the opposite.

<comment> elizabeth-ycr How basic income affects macroeconomic conditions (inflation, housing prices, demand for labor, etc.) is really important to figure out, but it's honestly beyond the scope of this study. Unless BI is implemented on a macro level, we can't measure the macro-level effects. We're focusing on the individual-level effects as a first step, but we'll be looking at more than happiness and well- being. We're using the pilot to help refine outcome measures, but we'll share those once they're finalized.

<comment><USER74> I wonder if you could get some interesting data about macro effects by giving BI to a whole neighborhood within Oakland, preferably one that historically has had low levels of migration and shops locally. Instead of sampling randomly from the population of Oakland, universally give everyone within a neighborhood basic income (or run a parallel study doing so).

That'd answer some of the biggest questions I have about BI. What happens to rents & housing prices when everyone has an extra $X to spend? What happens to prices in neighborhood shops? To what degree are people willing to travel to avoid high prices? What happens to the social fabric when everyone is richer? Do people engage more with their community when they don't have to worry about basic financial survival? Or do they isolate themselves and enjoy their new toys? If people choose not to work, what else do they spend their time doing, and how does that effect the community?

At the very least, you'd get some really great data about elasticity of rents, housing prices, and local goods which I bet economists would love to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I think tis is a step in the right direction, but I can't help but think that raising the floor still leaves people there on the floor. Won't inflation, as well as increased demand for the things people need just raise prices of those things out of reach of those on the floor negating any benefit?

<comment><USER76> > "Won't inflation, as well as increased demand for the things people need > just raise prices of those things out of reach of those on the floor > negating any benefit?"

Ideally you'd want UBI to increase with inflation. However, as the initial study is over 5 years the decrease in purchasing power by the end of the study is likely to be minimal.

There is a risk that companies that service low-income people will increase their prices faster than inflation, negating some of the benefits of UBI. The only guard I know of for this is strong competition and disciplined consumers, people have to be willing to express their dislike of price hikes by shopping elsewhere otherwise the system won't work. I'm guessing that monitoring price rises will be part of this YC-backed study.

<comment><USER77> _There is a risk that companies that service low-income people will increase their prices faster than inflation, negating some of the benefits of UBI. The only guard I know of for this is strong competition and disciplined consumers, people have to be willing to express their dislike of price hikes by shopping elsewhere otherwise the system won 't work._

There are places where people don't have enough mobility to be able to do this.

EDIT: One of the interns at the non-profit I volunteer at landed a job, but had to give it up because he didn't have transportation that could reliably get him to his job. (Late shift.) He lives in Oakland.

<comment><USER76> > "There are places where people don't have enough mobility to be able to do > this."

That's where Internet shopping comes in. Ideally you want to support local businesses to keep jobs in the area, but if you need to fight against price hikes and can't do so locally then the best thing to do is shop online until the price hikes are reduced.

<comment><USER78> The irony here is that it's well-documented that the poorest are also generally the least equipped to take advantage of the best deals (online or otherwise). Lack of a credit card, inability to purchase in bulk ("bulk" to someone with meager financial resources might not appear to be "bulk" to you), no Internet at home, unreliable transportation, are all reasons people are not able to shop online or at places like Costco.

<comment><USER76> Traditionally yes, but there are options. If the individual is too poor to have any Internet-capable device (can use free WiFi to buy things, though I recognise this is a security risk unless you're tech savvy) then there are ways to save money through community action (pooling resources to buy in bulk, etc...). It's more a question of organisation and discipline rather than opportunity, though it's certainly harder than only having to rely on your own initiative.

<comment><USER77> _there are ways to save money through community action (pooling resources to buy in bulk, etc...). It 's more a question of organisation and discipline rather than opportunity, though it's certainly harder than only having to rely on your own initiative._

Sounds like a good project to benefit those lower on the socioeconomic ladder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> > If the pilot goes well, we plan to follow up with the main study. If the > pilot doesn't go well, we'll consider different approaches.

Interesting. What are the metrics to determine the success or failure of the pilot?

<comment> elizabeth-ycr We'll consider several metrics, including success of mechanics (payment, data collection mechanisms, etc.); whether the amount of money is sufficient to meet basic needs; and, through interviews with participants, whether the research design is likely to offer insight into how individuals would experience and respond to a basic income.

<comment><USER80> One aspect of Basic Income that I am interested in is the idea of relocation - will recipients receiving Basic Income in this study have the ability to move somewhere where their dollars will go further? Or will they have to stay in Oakland where the study is being conducted?

It would seem like a good thing to have people try to maximize the impact of their payments and handcuffing them to a place with higher cost of living and increasing rents would seem like a bad thing.

edit: I see now that the post says participants are able to move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Why is the underlying assumption always "as technology continues to replace jobs and generate massive wealth" in the world of BI? It seems like BI is an answer to a false dichotomy.

What if we fix our society instead? What if instead of massive seeking of profiteering we actually double down on our efforts to improve lives _today_ , _right now_ in this very moment instead of some far distant realization of "when all jobs are automated" which is a highly debatable premise, and if even true, a long ways away.

That's the thing that is so frustrating to me about my fellow people in tech. Driven to automate. Why? To what end? If you stop and think who really benefits the most from this endless pursuit to automate, you will see it really isn't your common neighbor.

I will say I feel this way with most fields of research and schools of political thought as well. So much is being done for theoretical problems in the distant future, when we could double down on current issues. Instead we fund obscure research that may or may not reach fruition, or the underlying assumptions might change under this hope that some future results will solve our current problems, meanwhile the status quo remains for those suffering now. And you wonder why people are becoming increasingly weary with science, and even technology.

Technology was suppose to make people happier and have endless opportunities, yet it is becoming increasingly obvious society is even more unhappy, more anti-social, more fragmented than ever before. More people are unhappier than ever before, more people are committing suicide, more people are addicted to pain killers and opioids than ever before, more people are addicts in general. Sure we are living longer, long enough to stuff our faces with all the processed junk our wonderful technology has created so cheaply, but we have missed out on the meaning, I am afraid.

Maybe I have just become so cynical I can't work in tech anymore.

What can I say though. It pays good.

<comment><USER82> Automation is an absolute necessity to end poverty. Do you really think stone age people could have ended their abject poverty by just "fixing" their society? It is the immense wealth create through increased automation which has allowed the general well being of most people in the western world today.

We can't simply fix the world today by some political decision. There simply isn't enough wealth in the world to create a good life for the whole worlds population. Growing the economy for the whole world to the point there there will be enough for everybody will take significant time. You can't just do it right now, as much as you like.

Then you have countries such as the US, which has at least the same wealth asa e.g. Nordic countries but yet has significant poverty problems largely eradicated in Nordic nations. In a sort of naive and theoretical way these problems should be possible to solve given that enough wealth exists. But in practice such a thing would be difficult to achieve.

If you just installed a nordic style system in the US today, it wouldn't cause an immediate solution to all social problems. The existence of the nordic style welfare system over many years has made sure that there doesn't exist a large poorly educated and dysfunctional class of people.

You can treat an illness much more easily if you tackle it early on. However if you let it fester for years as the US has done, you will need much stronger forms of medication.

E.g the years bad blood between blacks and whites in America can't be changed by merely passing a set of laws.

What you can do is starting with reforms today, but it will be years before one can reap the benefits. People's values, attitudes etc doesn't move that fast. That is why one needs a lot of patience for solving a lot of world problems.

It is likely much faster to develop an advance AI system than getting blacks and white American to trust each other e.g. Likewise it will take decades before Americans are going to think poor people aren't just lazy and caused their own predicament.

<comment><USER83> > There simply isn't enough wealth in the world to create a good life for the > whole worlds population.

That is far from obvious to me. I have no idea if it's true or not.

But analagously, many people are surprised to learn that most countries experiencing 'famine', historically, have been _exporting_ food, and that there is, unquestionably, currently enough food produced on the planet to feed everyone adequately and enjoyably. And yet people starve.

It's not obvious to me that there isn't enough wealth in the world to create a good life for everyone, too. Now, today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Basic income, unfortunately, is not a problem of economics. You can argue for month about its viability, but ultimately, I think basic income is a problem of politics, because I can't see western governments and their representatives agreeing to change their systems to implement it. Reaganomics are still alive and well.

Basic income really sounds like one of those socialist counter weight, that, just like new deal policies, can make capitalism viable again, but I feel it will criticized for being some socialist measure. The end of the cold war is still too near.

It's more a concern of political belief than anything else. Of course economists and administration can argue about it, but in the political scene, I'm very pessimistic.

</comment><comment><USER85> "Pay up, Mortimer, I won the bet."

"Here. One Dollar"

From the vantage point I have in my union job and my part time job at a very large retailer with low wage hourly workers, there is no way rich people give away their money. At least without wanting something in return. That point is rock solid and not changeable. You don't get something for nuttin.

Having some that get BI and some not in a community will create a BIpolar environment. Real emotions exist.. I can only imagine when couple A gets 5 years worth of money and single person B living down the road does not. Or Whatever. There has to be some catch.

But this is real and not Trading Places. I wonder what the bet is and I wonder what the dollar will be?

</comment><comment><USER78> In a timely coincidence, the NYT published this about BI today:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/economy/why-a- uni...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/business/economy/why-a-universal- basic-income-will-not-solve-poverty.html)

<comment><USER86> Yeah, I even saw them together at the top, but after a quick refresh the nyt article was off the frontpage. Looked suspicious tbh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Reading arguments for Basic Income makes me realize what it must be like to argue with a flat-earth proponent. I literally can't understand the frame of mind that leads to the belief that this would be a good idea, at least as proposed.

I realize this isn't a substantive argument about the issue at hand, and will be rightfully downvoted..but I think this might be the first time I've _ever_ been so daunted by the ridiculousness of an idea, that I can't begin to formulate arguments against it, solely because I can't tell how to frame the argument.

</comment><comment><USER88> A lot of people around the world have been receiving old-age pensions for quite a while. Many are still healthy and able, with some of those working and some not.

Why will this study provide better data about how people will behave when given a basic income than the presumably huge amount of data available about how healthy people behave on a pension?

Working out how to plug a basic income into an economy, how to arrive at what it should be and how to transition an economy to include a basic income would be a better use resources.

<comment><USER89> In Germany, I think, you can only get your state pension when you stop working? (Or at least, there are severe restrictions on working.)

But given these caveats, that probably exist similarly in other countries, it's a good field to study.

Of course, the social expectations on people on old-age pensions are quite different from the ones on the working-age population.

<comment><USER88> > In Germany, I think, you can only get your state pension when you stop > working?

I think that's the same in the UK, too. In other countries you can work and still receive the state pension, but most seem to be means-tested...

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

Denmark apparently has the best pension scheme which includes a "public basic pension scheme"...

[http://www.thelocal.dk/20141013/denmark-has-worlds-best- pens...](http://www.thelocal.dk/20141013/denmark-has-worlds-best-pension- system-study)

> Of course, the social expectations on people on old-age pensions are quite > different from the ones on the working-age population.

Which is why I said 'healthy', who should be the subset who are studied.

<comment><USER89> Yes, but I think even `healthy' is not enough of a qualifier.

Ie healthy old people (who are well off enough) might be expected to go on cruises etc. I wouldn't count their voluntary unemployment for much, when I was trying to forecast what effects a universal basic income had on the general population.

(On the other hand, I would count their voluntary employment for a lot.)

<comment><USER88> I think we can assume those whose income is just a state pension or just a BI won't be able to afford cruises...

As with a pension, many of those receiving a BI will have other sources of income, so I think it is a good match. And if you look at my link about Denmark, you'll see that Denmark is to do away with forced retirement. Their pension starts at 65, while their forced retirement age was 70. "Current employment legislation allows companies to dismiss employees when they turn 70, but Frederiksen said the legislation should be changed to reflect the modern workforce."

So even in the country with supposedly the best pension scheme in the world, people still want to keep working beyond 65.

I don't see much point in small-scale tests of a BI. They'll tell us how a few receiving them will behave, but they won't tell us how businesses or the economy will behave when everyone's receiving them. And it's the latter we really should be wanting to understand.

<comment><USER89> Depends what you mean by small-scale. On a US scale, all of Denmark is small scale.

<comment><USER88> What I mean is it won't tell you how a BI will affect the economy as a whole. Not that studying a pension scheme will either, but it can probably provide you with insights that are just as useful as YC's study will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Very cool! Please consider studying GiveDirectly's approach to evaluation (e.g. pre-registered evaluation plan and pre-analysis plan).

<comment> elizabeth-ycr We will definitely be following this protocol. We're committed to transparency throughout the study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> So is this basically "pure" communism? I guess historically, countries we called communistic didn't really adhere to its central idea; or they couldn't do so practically due to the accompanied political/economic instability following regime change.

<comment><USER92> No. Communism requires abolition of private ownership. However, the hyperinflationary spiral resulting from BI could assist a transition to communism.

<comment> some-guy BI isn't printing money so how would hyperinflation ensue?

<comment><USER92> Supposing the BI funding proposal doesn't include printing money (which is not at all clear), the price of inelastic goods (in particular housing) will rise to absorb the universal increase in income. There will then be calls to index BI to inflation, which politicians won't be able to resist, and the spiral will begin.

<comment><USER3> Not just tie it to inflation, but to location as well. After all, it wouldn't be fair for someone on BI to not be able to live in Manhattan or San Francisco.

<comment><USER92> > Not just tie it to inflation, but to location as well.

If it happens, I hope they do both, since the location adjustments will be even more rapid than the generic inflation adjustments, and it is possible that hyperinflation would just destroy the highest cost cities, rather than the entire US, before the program is scrapped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> I'm a complete armchair economist and realize that a lot of really smart people are tackling this, but, in my limited understanding of supply and demand, my concern would be that a new floor for basic goods and services would materialize due to the new buying power of those on Basic Income. Doesn't that artificially inflate the base price of those goods and services without ever having a natural (market-based) opportunity to decrease? I'm interested in any literature that might address this basic principal, because I suspect it may be more complicated than I am imagining. This is sort of tangential (from a healthcare perspective), but I'm also interested in any research from a historical perspective pertaining to adjusted price history as health insurance became more popular / commonplace within society (probably, in particular, American society as I'm sure it has been allowed to flourish for much longer here). Any help in pointing me in the right direction would be most appreciated.

<comment><USER94> There wouldn't be a problem delivering goods, because companies would still compete to deliver those goods using price signals.

The problem is that a lot of goods delivered to the poor are delivered by low- skill workers, and since demand curves slope there will be significant inflation here, along with a lot of things undone.

<comment><USER23> IMO the spike in demand will cause shortrun inflation, then suppliers will scale up production/competition in response. IDK if 5 years is enough time to see this all through. Depends on what they end up demanding most of. Food seems to be in good supply so minimal inflation there. Housing is tight in bay area so likely to see inflation there.

<comment><USER95> You won't see measurable inflation from such a small scale program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Very exciting! I wonder how the short-term nature of the pilot program might have some inherent biases compared to the long-term study? Presumably there would be less dramatic changes in behavior / lifestyle?

<comment><USER66> That's correct -- it's really not our goal though to try and answer the main research questions with the pilot; it's meant to help us figure out the mechanics of doing the larger study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Not one mention of Switzerland? Possibly a larger scale study soon. Voting June 5th.

[http://www.basicincome2016.org/](http://www.basicincome2016.org/)

</comment><comment><USER98> Here's a serious question. I'm like, 50/50 with whether or not I believe BI could work or not, but I really believe it can NOT work without being universal in nature.

By doing it in a small geographic area only, aren't you're already skewing your results?

These people have now an additional incentive not to leave the area, when otherwise there may have better opportunities for upward social mobility. Now you've got a closed system, so how do you handle the general move in and move outs in the area? Are new residents not welcome to it? If not now you've got a big income discrepancy. If they are welcome to it, how do you prevent a flood of new residents?

It seems like it's doomed to fail with a small sample size, for any number of reasons. Be very careful here, as this sample is a slice of real human beings, who could be impacted in real ways throughout their lives.

<comment><USER99> I'm not sure about your other questions, but regarding your claim that "these people have now an additional incentive to not leave the area", I don't think that's true:

>In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we're going to give it to participants for the duration of the study, no matter what. People will be able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country—anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> This is outrageous. Look at how this people lobby to the State to take money out of others pockets against their will and still appear to the media as a benefactor of some kind.

</comment><comment><USER101> > Oakland is a city of great social and economic diversity...

Ok, here's an honest question. These days we often are told that increasing diversity is the responsibility of all successful healthy organizations, end- of-discussion (see: GitHub).

Under what conditions would increasing _economic_ diversity be seen as a good outcome?

<comment><USER102> Few people complain when rich and middle class people start moving into historically low income areas (at least until the poor can't afford to live there)

When it applies to companies, I think it's pretty universally suggested that hiring people from poor backgrounds who've worked very hard to get close to the hiring thresholds and are probably being overlooked by other companies is usually a good decision. You don't get any additional "diversity benefit" from paying them less though...

<comment><USER103> > Few people complain when rich and middle class people start moving into > historically low income areas (at least until the poor can't afford to live > there)

You must not be following the news much. If you even begin to move into a historically poor area, people will cry gentrification and start throwing rocks.

<comment><USER83> > If you even begin to move into a historically poor area, people will cry > gentrification and start throwing ro

Nah, when it's just one upper-middle-class you by yourself (how do you "begin to" move somewhere, anyway? either you move or you don't, the 'beginning' of moving is invisible to anyone but yourself), local people are confused or bemused or pleased or at most slightly annoyed. When a couple friends follow, and then all your peers follow because it seems safe and/or exciting now, and the people who lived there before realize that the neighborhood is finally getting safer and more amenities but _they aren't for them_, the amenities are things they still can't afford and the safer neighborhood is one they soon won't be able to afford -- that's when they start throwing rocks. Mostly metaphorically so far, but I'd expect literal physical rock throwing to pick up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> It seems to me that a limited, 5-year Basic Income experiment is fundamentally flawed and will, at best, fail to predict anything important about what system-wide BI would have on society and at worst will be disastrously misleading and have an incredibly adverse effect on public policy.

What I'm reading scares me.

 _Oakland is a city of great social and economic diversity, and it has both concentrated wealth and considerable inequality. We think these traits make it a very good place to explore how basic income could work for our pilot._

To me this screams complete lack of any meaningful experimental controls.

 _If the pilot goes well, we plan to follow up with the main study. If the pilot doesn't go well, we'll consider different approaches._

What does this mean? If the pilot gives you the results you want? What kind of science is this?

<comment><USER105> There needs to be some sort of action, though. Pondering all the possible effects has been going on for some time now, and simulating a perfectly spherical BI in a vacuum is not going to be any more useful than a 'fundamentally flawed' empirical experiment.

>What kind of science is this?

It's the normal scientific method. They have a hypothesis. They're going to test it in the real world. And the results will be analyzed. What's the alternative? If the pilot doesn't go well, and they take the same approach again, that'd be the very definition of insane.

<comment><USER104> Well, it's "not the normal scientific method." Although it's arguably a part of it. My objection may have been a bit strenuous, as the key word here is "pilot study." This is a pre-study study. Their only "hypothesis" here is "is a basic income experiment with real people even at all feasible"

They don't yet have a real hypothesis about basic income, at least not that they have presented. The questions here ([https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic- income](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income)) are rhetorical and vague, which make for very bad hypotheses.

Personally I do not believe this study, as I see it described now, will yield any useful scientific knowledge. The results, if they seem favorable, will be used to influence public policy without regard to actual scientific merit and society will be subjected to the real experiment.

I would be much less concerned if I saw someone with a rigorous background in mathematics and economics developing an actual predictive model that could be falsified with specific tests. When the inputs are vague ("people") and the conclusions are subjective ("are people happy?") it is not scientific method.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> It is funny to see such naïve attempt to ignore the basic laws of ecology and economics.

Any given ecosystem could sustain a certain limited population without being collapsed and destroyed together with its habitats. Everything evolutionary biologist will tell you that.

The no free lunch law, like every other law of the Universe, also cannot be gambled out, given that money is a measure of labor, and is like ATPs of a complex system we call local economy. Disturb the balanced flows and the whole system will inevitably collapse.

Economical perpetuum mobile is impossible for the very same reasons a physical one is impossible.

But who cares if it is such a brilliant scam for any politicians. When consequences appeared they would be very rich and very dead.

</comment><comment><USER107> Does anyone know how long the pilot in Oakland will be? What the number of recipients will be and how much they'll be getting?

I saw someone mention $10k a year but I'm not sure that's official. Also, does anyone know what the qualifications for candidacy will be?

</comment><comment><USER108> From today's New York Times: "UBI is a Poor Tool to Fight Poverty"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807201)

EDIT: changed URL to original HN reference, 180+ comments

</comment><comment><USER109> A lot of the discussion here seems to revolve around UBI as a solution for poverty and homelessness, but I would argue that that's missing the point. As I wrote this this morning in re: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11807201)

""" Keep in mind when discussing UBI, especially in the context of poverty, that it is not a solution to poverty. It is a solution to automation crashing demand by throwing earners permanently out of the economy.

Robots take the jobs so people have no money to spend even as the robots make more stuff, cheaper.

What to do with the people? Throw them in a volcano? "Hunger Games"? Let's just give them money and see what happens, okay?

That's UBI.

UBI isn't for the bum. It's for you (okay, well, your cousin. You read HN, you're probably fine.)

"""

The thing that makes UBI make sense is that the economic order is being overturned by automation.

 _We simply no longer need to work to live._ Bucky Fuller pointed this out decades ago. His estimate put the inflection point in the mid-seventies.

We are punishing ourselves.

\---

I want to have UBI so I can devote myself to a program of research. It may not pay off, in fact, it almost certainly won't. But there is a small but non-zero chance that it will pay off handsomely in terms of benefit to society. It's also a very non-linear, meaning that there is absolutely no way I can predict when it might payoff, right up until the moment it does (or I die, whichever comes first.)

There is no one to whom I can honestly say, "Fund me, it's worth it." Maybe I could find an arch-angel investor, but it would be pure patronage (not to say charity.) But with a Universal Basic Income I can devote myself to gardening and research and be no trouble at all to anyone. And I'm not doing anything uniquely important at my job so no one would be harmed if I quit.

<comment><USER83> Why do you feel the need to distinguish between "the bum", and "you", a victim of "automation crashing demand by throwing earners permanently out of the economy."

Can't some portion of current 'bums', or the homeless, be victims of "automation crashing demand by throwing earners permanently out of the economy" too? I would think they are. Hasn't the process already begun, a long time ago, if perhaps speeding up now? Some of the present poor and homeless definitely seem to have been "permanently thrown out of the economy" to me.

<comment><USER109> Yes, in fact, this is exactly the point I was making. People are talking like the homeless are someone else when the rationale for UBI, in my opinion, is that we are almost all about to be homeless (unless we adjust our systems.)

<comment><USER83> Agreed, but you seemed to be suggesting that the current homeless or very poor are something different than that, and different from you and I. I think this is an inconsiderate and inaccurate suggestion, by and large.

<comment><USER109> Friend, I was homeless for about four years. I know that we are all truly equal. I apologize for suggesting anything less. Please forgive me. :-)

<comment><USER83> fair enough. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin if whole world would work on this BI, you would buy a coffee or two for it, nothing more. every single item we purchase and consume every day would be massively more expensive. there is a reason why all the stuff is made in china.

or you want BI just for yourself, your circle or your country?

once, in star-trekish future, this might be the best choice. in current world, it just doesn't make sense apart from nice intellectual exercise on what-if topic. what about we focus all this energy and money into directly fixing things like preventing wars, education, health care for aging population etc? or are these topics not cool anymore?

<comment><USER110> What evidence do you have to support your assertion? Plenty of products are made and manufactured in the US and are not prohibitively expensive.

Why can't we work on multiple problems at the same time? Nobody is suggesting we abandon other issues to work solely in BI...

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Unfortunately, the explanation most consistent with data on happiness/satisfaction is that the primary utility gain from wealth is derived from gains in zero-sum social status.

We can tell this even from the language of the post itself: "everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs."

Basic needs? Everyone in America has their basic needs. Almost all of the _basic_ needs of a human, i.e. those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year. We consider modern needs beyond these to be 'basic' because there is a nature in our humanity, or the humanity of most of us, that doesn't like it when people are so far apart from one other in power or status.

As such, it's likely that this study will find, entirely correctly, that recipients are happier, more productive, etc. What they won't discover is how people behave when basic income is the status quo, rather than being the equivalent of a lottery winner. I suspect the results will be vastly different.

<comment><USER112> > those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a > year.

Dignity is probably a basic need that $1-2k can't buy.

<comment><USER45> Which is the parent's point precisely: basic needs is a social construct -- the physical basic needs are trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> One important component that should not be overlooked is how BI is tied to basic occupation. People do need something to do, no matter how automated the future becomes, and that thing ought to be something they are well adapted to do.

It should not be entirely left to chance. Unoccupied people will find every avenue for their unspent energy, and too easily this becomes competition, and conflict.

Farming is a good example of a pastime that is historically maligned yet immensely rewarding and pleasurable when done right.

Along with BI ought to be a very carefully structured form of basic income that allows people cultural engagement that is productive and sustainable.

<comment><USER92> Why, groups of like minded people could collectivize their efforts and manage their kolkhoz according to the principles of self-management, democracy, and openness, with active participation of the members in decisions concerning all aspects of internal life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> One interesting thing with UBI is that all startups will suddenly be ramen- profitable from the very beginning :)

Will we see an explosion of startups?

<comment><USER115> Yes, because rockstar coders are willing to work for $10k (or whatever the BI fans are touting today), plus vague stock promises...

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> Unfortunately, this experiment cannot be extrapolated to macro-scale because it doesn't take macro-effects into consideration.

<comment><USER66> We're certainly not trying to answer everything with this one study--we hope it will be an important piece, but it's going to take a number of studies, a number of different approaches to know if BI really could or could not work. We hope us taking a first step will help push others in the US to do more of the research we need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Question: Wouldnt it make more sense to pick an more isolated ecosystem than oakland?

Eg a smaller town or even a small country (eg an island country - yes sounds crazy but actually why not)

Or is the goal rather to find out how people will act? (as in: get lazy or not)

<comment><USER118> I don't think how isolated the ecosystem is too important. I would be more concerned with the methodology of measuring how behaviour has changed- Are they going to follow around candidates before the checks come rolling in to establish baseline behaviours?

<comment><USER66> We're going to have a control group for the pilot that doesn't receive an income, and following base-line behavior is something we'll consider doing for the main study.

<comment><USER117> To understand this correctly: the core goal of the study is to see how people will behave?

<comment> elizabeth-ycr We are focusing on the individual-level effects (not the ecosystem), but it's a lot more than how people act and behave. We'll provide more details on outcome measures later, but we'll be interviewing participants to understand their decision-making processes and the constraints they face. It isn't enough to know that certain outcomes are associated with basic income; we want to know how cash transfers generate the effects and why outcomes vary among recipients (if they do). These insights can inform future research and policies.

<comment><USER117> got it. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> There is nothing compassionate about authoritarian income redistribution.

</comment><comment><USER120> What I don't understand with BI is this: if you give everyone the same amount of money, won't prices and rents adjust accordingly by exactly that amount, thereby nulling the effect ?

<comment><USER121> I think that what you would see is rents exploding in certain places like SF, but if you don't need to be in a particular city for work or social services, a lot of people would move to places like Cleveland or Detroit that are much cheaper to live in.

<comment><USER92> Detroit is cheaper right now, but people aren't moving there. Post-BI, Detroit landlords will raise rent to capture any additional disposable income, so everywhere will still be in the same relative position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> This one is easy. Just ask everyone in the town one question:

"We're going to provide a basic income for you and everyone else. Now, what are your plans for work?"

Basic income will manufacture laziness.

As a homeless teen, when I received charitable handouts, it was humiliating. "Why am I so inferior that I can't provide my own stuff, and rely on others to support me?"

\- makes you lazy \- and paradoxically you begin to dislike the handout-givers -- "they probably think they're better than me because they're self-reliant and without them I have very poor prospects."

I turned things around by joining the military. Having handouts and not having to work was okay but it leads to resentment, and if you're not lucky enough to feel you're as good and worthy as the handout-givers, you start feeling worthless and stop trying.

Ever see signs in national parks warning "don't feed the animals" ? A lot of park-goers believe that's because human food is bad for the animals. That's only part of it.

The parks do not want the animals to become dependent on handouts. They want the animals to always get their food the normal way -- hunting for it, working for it. NOT getting handouts.

Once an animal (or a person) becomes accustomed to handouts, they stop working hard, or hunting/foraging in the animal case -- just wait for the handouts.

</comment><comment><USER123> We have BI in Mexico for people over 65 years old since about 10 years ago. Nothing is different in general, but for some of those people I would think those few pesos are life changing.

<comment><USER124> This was practically the panacea of 20th century liberalism - the idea of state retirement income being unconditional was fundamental to post WW2 society in all western democracies and become a cornerstone of growth in the era. How could you fathom being successful in business while you had to care for your parents?

In the same sense, that will apply to basically everyone in this century in regards to technological unemployability. We could either stifle our society with the burden of social unrest involving the unemployable and underemployed, or we could just give them the money to take care of themselves so anyone who _can_ still be productive will be able to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> Is this truly going to be a basic income experiment, or is it going to be a charity experiment? To me it's only a valid experiment if somehow it is self- sustaining (e.g. it's funded by the same population it's distributed amongst, not by external donors).

Taking Oakland's population of roughly 450k, presumably this experiment doesn't cover the entire city (guesstimating a minimum income to be ~$1,000/mo for that area to cover rent + all expenses, that'd work out to be a $450 million per month price tag). So right off the bat it probably is going to be limited heavily in scope, which diminishes it's value as a test of "universal" basic income.

Even if it ends up being self-funded (which I'd be surprised if it actually is), you have to figure out how to get people to pay for it. People probably won't sign up to voluntarily give up more than they'll receive, which makes it tough. And you don't have the same enforcement that the IRS does (e.g. you can't forcibly take money/property from people). And on top of that you don't have the power to truly create money, although you can approximate it by taking charity donations from folks in SF.

I guess I'm just really skeptical of what any results might actually mean.

</comment><comment><USER126> Hey EVERYBODY, this topic is all what _actual economists_ , you know _literal_ big E Economists, study; so, while actual economists can disagree about this topic, they disagree from a basis of understanding some things.

People who have not studied economics--for which the prerequisite is calculus and also statistics so if you haven't taken those, you haven't taken economics--...people who have not studied economics, micro and macro, should read about this topic with avid interest, but don't debate it, you just have no idea what you are talking about.

Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to say, this discussion is like reading a debate of computer programming by non programmers speculating from the point of view how they imagine it might work, like the 5 blind men and the elephant...

The basic laws of economics have not been overturned. People respond to incentives; there is no free lunch; dead weight losses; transfer payments; too many dollars chasing too few goods; growth in money supply; water seeks its own level, tides, all boats; labor theory of value; national income accounting; trickle down, it's really a thing... I could go on, but what is the point.

<comment><USER22> A lot of big E Economics is pretty bad. Often because they try to use calculus and also statistics and statistics on human behaviour but humans don't behave that way.

<comment><USER126> big E economists are entirely aware of the pitfalls and the limitations of their field, they know it's far from exact, and they know it much better than people who don't study economics. Those who are ignorant of historical mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

and in terms of rational vs irrational behavior, the behavior of fluids is describable without deriving from the behavior of the particles that make up the fluid; and the limitations of the approach is understood, again, not by lay people but by experts in the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> Some interesting numbers:

      * The US Population is 320 million [http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html].
      * Our federal budget is $3.9 trillion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_outlays_in_recent_budget_submissions].   * If every dollar of the budget went towards BI (no defense spending, no infrastructure, etc), that would be $12,260 / person / year.
      * If you limit it to adults, it ends up around $15,000 / person / year (about 80% of the US population is 15 years or older [http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html]).

This actually lines up pretty closely to the official poverty rate [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Recent_poverty_rate_and_guidelines)]. It equals an hourly wage of about $6 / hour.

I wonder if there were a BI, if those at or near the poverty line would tend to get more efficient with their spending. For example, moving towards lower cost parts of the country.

<comment><USER115> Relocating doesn't seem very easy if you're on the short end of the cash spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> I think of basic income as a venture capital firm that treats us all as individual startups. Lots of value can be generated by people doing what they find worthwhile on their own terms. Some people will sit around playing video games all day. Others will raise their kids. Others (like me) will build things. I'd wager we'd get more out of this then forcing people to work at McDonalds.

</comment><comment><USER129> As a resident of Oakland, I am excited about YC running this experiment here. I'm sure there will be plenty of debate over whether it's the best location, but it is definitely a place that provides a microcosm of many the issues BI hopes to address. It also has a population, regardless of where they are on socioeconomic spectrum, that is relatively open-minded to experiments like this.

I look forward to learning more details about their program.

<comment><USER66> Glad to hear! If you or people you know might have any feedback, please feel free to reach out at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> This shit again.

NO ONE has given me an answer to the question: what will happen when basic income inevitably raises the overall price of basic stuff because now "everyone can afford it"?

It will be back to zero, people with basic income will not be able to afford _both_ housing/bills and food. Moreover the ones without will be totally fucked.

So, what gives? Run BI in a few small counties and call it a success? Gee wouldn't BI supporters love that...

<comment><USER31> >what will happen when basic income inevitably raises the overall price of basic stuff because now "everyone can afford it"?

That is the kind of question that experimentation like this sets out to answer.

There are a lot of theories. My personal theory is that, in general, stuff is not going to get more expensive because of basic income. Providers know that people have more money to spend but there is also still competition between providers.

There will be places where this generality fails, no doubt. Two areas that I'd be interested in looking at are businesses that require marginal employees to provide a small amount of value and cannot raise prices to cover the increased cost of enticing employees to work for them: fast food, for example. They may have to pay more or change what kind of employees they hire or they may even get to pay less since basic needs are accounted for. Who knows. That is why experimentation is needed.

My main concern, and you may be referring to it with your 'basic stuff' category, is what will happen to rents. Landlords know that people /need/ a place to live. I would not be surprised if there is a spike in rents because they hold more power over their consumers than, say, a fruitseller whom, if they raise prices to try and capture some of that extra cash sloshing around, might find their customers just buying a muffin or going to the movies or, really, anything else that is available in the overall market.

<comment><USER131> I thought this about landlords as well, but landlords are also subject to the same economic rules. Many landlords are just trying to cover the payments on the their property + a little extra. If the landlord has BI as well as the renter, then the baseline doesn't really move at all. The landlord doesn't have to charge more to cover expenses because they get BI too.

That's the theory, anyway. I really have been on the edge of my seat to see how this idea works out and what the details will be like.

My biggest concern with BI is the abolishment of state healthcare. With healthcare expenses as astronomically high as they are in the US, I think the only real path to a workable system would be universal healthcare + universal basic income, and then getting rid of welfare, food stamps, etc. I can't see this working if people have to spend all their money on health costs.

<comment><USER115> That's not how economics works! If the landlord can charge more for rent, they will. Look at how college tuition skyrocketed as schools became awash in student loan money. Do they need to raise rents? Possible, depending on how inflation hits there costs. But if they can, and the market will bear the cost, they will. That's how pricing of all goods works.

<comment><USER31> Only if you ignore competition.

<comment><USER115> Competition between colleges and universities hasn't done much to keep tuition costs in check.

<comment><USER132> That's not what the previous commenter was discussing. College/Universities have no incentive to lower the cost of tuition because everyone can get a loan for what ever they charge.

The idea being, the government has removed financial competition and there is no "best for your money" because many students can get a loan for where ever. The way to change this, is to obviously not enforce/have the law enforcing the payback of all student loans. This will dramatically drop attendance at outrageously price universities, forcing them to either drop tuition (or just take more out of country students).

<comment><USER115> Landlords will have no incentive to lower costs either; they have the opposite incentive, charge as much as the market will bear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> With basic needs met, how many people will strive for more? Will we see an increase or a reduction in the workforce? Many people seem to have no idea how a free market economy works, or what is the role of government. I believe that most people are in favor of the concept of "no taxation without representation". In other words, people want to have a say in how their government spends the taxes collected from them. How would this work out in the "basic income" system? Government taxes would be collected from those who were earning money (leaving out the fact that a large percentage of them may work for their government and thus are not actually adding value to the economy). The taxes then get distributed to the non-working, non-contributing people collecting their "basic income". As fewer people see the need to work, the economy collapses. (See "The Economic Collapse of the Soviet Union.") Aside from the honorable egalitarian intentions, how is this a good thing?

</comment><comment><USER134> Per Malthus, the ever-expanding global population will probably prevent us from achieving a state of total abundance in the long run. We may (or may not) be able to rely on technological progress at times, but constant population growth is virtually guaranteed (barring any sort of population management or disasters).

I love the kind-hearted spirit of this effort, but it seems ill-informed.

</comment><comment><USER135> I wanted to write a comment a la "Who is going to work at Starbucks if they don't need to earn their rent" \- but then I realized that those jobs might go away very soon. And what then? I don't want to live in a world with 70% of the population losing a large portion of their growth potential (bc of unaffordable education, healthcare, even housing).

<comment><USER136> Something that is always surprising me when visiting the US, as a Scandinavian, is how many employees there are in a given shop (or coffee bar :). I don't think a Starbucks/shops/coffee bars needs as many people to operate as there often (in my experience) are in the US (at least in the 10 different cities/places or so I have been to on the east & west-coast/mid- west).

Assuming Scandi baristas are about as efficient as their colleagues over the pond, it is probably the time to complete a coffee-transaction that suffers, though, as with software development, I am not sure if throwing more people at the problem necessarily solves it quicker.

As an example, I remember one time, when I was waiting for a coffee (in the US) and there were no less than 5 employees more or less just hanging out discussing something more important than making my flat-white-double-soy- extra-machiato-caramel-coffee-like-beverage (which I could mean sarcastically, but I don't since I was waiting for a flight and not in a particular hurry) for a pretty good amount of time.

I suppose you could arrest me on this being my own experience (and you wouldn't be wrong), but I am feel confident that there must be some numbers that back them up because the difference is so flaggerant.

Apparently unemployment rates are as high or higher in Sweden for example, so there should be as high a demand for jobs at Starbucks here (in the case profits suffers from this). Intuitively I think that you'd rather hold off, take the well-fare and wait/prepare for a good job than taking one at Starbucks if you got a (good) education. This in turn (again my hypothesis), has made it the norm for that relative extra minute (or whatever) for coffees in Scandinavia, thus that job (as barista number 5) doesn't exist here at all. The price of a barista would also be higher, because it is harder to fill those positions. Which also makes changes the margins on how much more sales the barista number 5 would need generate for it to be profitable.

In any case, finally, commenting on the comment above :) I think that, in some places, many of those jobs do not exist (anymore) and it is still pretty OK to live here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> I think it is great to study basic income. While many people think it will work, many others are worried people will become unmotiviated and this will have bad consequences. An alternative thing to also study is a workfare program that gives jobs to everyone.

As mentioned in other comments, the HN readers are very motivated people. Most people in general are not. Many people may not work and either become lazy (such that they can no longer work) or worse occupy their time with something counterproductively, such as in gangs. Even without basic income I know people who didn't work for a while and eventually they became helpless with regard to work.

Using computers we can provide work for all people. This can be something like accounting, project management, or something as basic as rating movies and video games. There is always more work to be done, it just might not be economically viable. Where needed, these non-economically viable jobs can be subsidized as a form of welfare.

<comment><USER138> This was tried in India. It is called MNREGA.

From Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005)

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (or, NREGA No 42) was later renamed as the "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act" (or, MGNREGA), is an Indian labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the 'right to work'. It aims to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.[1][2] Starting from 200 districts on 2 February 2006, the NREGA covered all the districts of India from 1 April 2008.[3] The statute is hailed by the government as "the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programme in the world".[4] In its World Development Report 2014, the World Bank termed it a "stellar example of rural development".[5]

<comment><USER137> That looks like it fared pretty well, though not perfectly. I think it could have non-manual labor opportunities can be added via computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER139> It is one thing to create a dependency, it is quite another to terminate the relationship. I hope YC has a _really_ good plan on how they will wind this down if they decide not to go through with it.

Chinese proverb: save a mans life and you are responsible for him. This might very well end up with some horrific withdrawal effects if and when the project is terminated.

</comment><comment><USER140> Would a basic income simply cause a rise in the cost of living (housing, food, etc...) and therefore nullify its intended effect?

<comment><USER141> There's arguments on both sides of that. The truth is that economics are rough guesses at best and the only way to know if demand will outstrip supply leading to price increases or if supply will increase enough to make up a lot of the difference is to try and see what happens.

What's actually likely to happen is that some places supply won't increase as much because of external limits (a la zoning in SF or space in NYC) and other places the supply will increase enough that there will be only small effects. On top of that it's hard to guess how much more mobile people will be if they have a guarantee of income if they move to the midwest from a big city where their BI will go much further, which would blunt the demand increase in big cities.

It's a huge mess of interdependent factors and effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> People wonder "where is the money going to come from?" On a national level it could be newly issued fiat currency, which silences the "it's theft!" argument but then raises the crucial question: what about inflation?

Well, there are two issues here:

1) If the people are freed up to learn or take jobs (I wish minimum wage would be abolished in any jurisdiction that UBI is given out) then more dollars would be chasing more goods and services, so no inflation.

2) However, if there will be more money chasing the SAME number of goods and services, we would have to remove the money from the system by taxing corporations. And this _is_ , in fact, something that raises questions of liberty (of corporations). Corporations can choose where to operate and they often choose tax havens.

What we should really be doing is recognizing the incredible changes that are coming because of AI and its effects on automation in the next 20-30 years. Demand for human labor will fall and experience massive shocks. Wealth creation will increasingly be done by ROBOTS.

This is a GOOD THING as it breaks countries' historic dependency on social security schemes working from having more and more children pay for the elderly. That leads to overpopulation and kicks the can down the road to the children.

Instead, we want to TAX THE MACHINES by somehow measuring the productivity gains from laying people off. Not enough to disincentivize R&D but enough to scale with the UBI and remove money from the system. The machines don't really need to keep ALL the money and the argument that "taxation is theft" starts to sound silly when you are taxing profits of corporations run largely by machines.

The other way, of course, is to redistribute the money to shareholders in the public stock market via dividends. This has been the "socialism" we've had so far in this country.

<comment><USER115> "newly issued fiat currency" is theft. Forced inflation is theft from people with savings etc etc etc.

<comment><USER39> I accept that some people have this broad of a concept of "theft", and I have no problem (so long as it is clear what is meant) with using the word this way, however, once it is broadened this far, I fail to see any necessary connections with the moral implications of more typical definitions of "theft".

<comment><USER115> Normally I would say that printing more fiat currency isn't theft since it's usually done in a lawful manner. And since theft is by definition unlawful taking, then that wouldn't qualify. But inflating the money supply by 2-3 trillion dollars would be a generational transfer of money like we've never witnessed in the US.

<comment><USER143> 1970s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER144> I applaud the move to push this forward, but the cynic in me can't help but ask; is the federal government really willing to make a portion of their employees obsolete? Are the people who run these large bureaucratic departments willing to give up that power? How will AFEG & municipal unions react to this?

</comment><comment><USER145> Perhaps I'm missing something, but how BI accounts for the fact that not everyone has the same basic needs or expenses? Someone will need expensive medications, another in-home care services, parents will need to spend money on kids, pay for daycare/schools, etc. Writing the same check to everyone might save you from bureaucracy, but it will put vulnerable groups in a relatively worse position, while single healthy people will profit from it. Also how do you avoid just deepening the gaps between the poor and the rest? Poor will still be getting approx. the same amount as they do now, but the rest of the population will get extra money they didn't have before, so the difference will be even bigger? Also wouldn't this extra cash flow create inflation, raising all the prices?

<comment><USER146> I can't respond to all of the needs and expenses you enumerate, but I'm of the opinion that you need to have a single-payer healthcare system or something similar that decouples medical emergencies from their costs, so that a basic income isn't needed to pay for those emergencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER147> my main concern with this is that the working class will lose social status compared to those who don't work. In fact it could give those who don't work more status than the working class (my broad definition of working class would include anyone who does not have enough to stop working) because they have much more time. i don't think this is something we want to see. Although its arguably better than the current welfare system it still hurts hard-working people with little wealth. i would argue for a basic income in terms of food, shelter and some facilities, but not money. this will keep a clear class difference between the working class and dependent people. which means unemployment still means misery and work still means happiness. it would keep the incentive intact without being cruel.

<comment><USER148> Does your concern depend on the "dependents" receiving basic income, but the "working class" not receiving basic income? Or, does it depend on basic income possibly changing the signifiers of social status?

If it's the first case,

Most proponents of Basic Income want to implement either Universal Basic Income (everyone gets the same check, regardless of their means), or a Basic Income which drops off proportionally with earned income.

In a Universal Basic Income scenario, someone who chooses to work should always have more income than someone who does not work. Given how much social status is currently centered around wealth and income, a worker should have more social status than a non-worker.

If it's the second case, where we assume implementing UBI will change the markers of social status - I think this is pretty unlikely. For the foreseeable future, having more income than someone else means being able to buy rarer or higher-quality luxuries. Humans value rarity and scarcity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Will recipients of Basic Income payments be allowed to move to somewhere with a lower cost of living where their payments will go further?

Handcuffing people to a location - especially one with a rising cost of living like Oakland - seems like it would not be in the best interest of participants receiving such payments.

<comment><USER149> I think they can.

> In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we're going to give it to > participants for the duration of the study, no matter what. People will be > able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country—anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER150> One of the big differences between the government writing checks and a private organization, are the tax consequences. Does anybody know exactly how that would work? Would it just be self employment income, with all the self employment taxes? Or would it be a gift (and tax free if under $14k/yr)?

</comment><comment><USER151> I do not really know where I stand on BI yet, but my concern is that if the BI is coming from taxes, why not tax income less and tax consumption more? This will encourage people to still be productive members of society rather than trying to find ways to live off the BI forever.

<comment><USER152> > This will encourage people to still be productive members of society rather > than trying to find ways to live off the BI forever.

It sounds like you have a fairly narrow definition of productive member of society. A lot of volunteer work has little or no monetary value (things like dog walkers at your city's animal shelter) yet still are good for society.

<comment><USER151> Volunteering full time on BI sounds like they are paid to volunteer, and my narrow definition is because I see people behaving similar to what I've observed with foodstamps.

finding ways to live off solely that and making little to no effort finding a job, simply finding ways to increase foodstamps by having additional dependants or otherwise.

these people are not volunteering more or what I would say are being productive members of society, yes they are likely a small percentage, maybe 1 out of 50 however, I see that percentage skyrocketing if something like basic income is provided.... I don't mind being totally wrong, I just find it very very very hard to believe people will still try to be 'productive' members of society ina general term.

not to invoke Ayn Rand, because I disagree with more than 50% of Atlas shrugged, but the whole concept of 'To each according to their need and to each according to their ability' does not work. people will abuse the system of BI just like SNAP or foodstamps or Dole are abused today.

<comment><USER151> just to add quickly, I do believe one day the need for many types of work will be minimized to almost nothing, so some solution will be required, but from what I've observed with proposed BI solutions I have very little faith in actually succeeding.

I dream of a day that was referenced in Star trek where all of these challenges were 'solved'. I do not see BI in its current infancy being a possible solution, it needs work and I'm excited to see more research on the topic because that is what it needs in order for a solution like it to be truly successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> Have you given much thought to the effect of a participant taking on debt during your experiment?

<comment><USER154> Landlords and colleges are likely to gobble up as much of that free basic income as they possibly can. Payday lenders stand to make an even bigger killing than they do now. If not done carefully, it could result in an even more quickly widening wealth gap than we have now.

<comment><USER155> BI (and any assets purchased with BI?) should definitely be off-limits to debt collection, but wouldn't that solve this sort of problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER156> I'm delighted this is moving forward and that the pilot program will be in Oakland! I lived in a cooperative house there years ago and experienced the sharp contrasts in wealth.

See also:

The One-Minute Case for a Basic Income - [http://www.basicincome.org/news/2013/02/opinion-the-one- minu...](http://www.basicincome.org/news/2013/02/opinion-the-one-minute-case- for-a-basic-income/)

A flyer of the same: [http://hypertexthero.com/work/basic- income-11-arguments/](http://hypertexthero.com/work/basic- income-11-arguments/)

</comment><comment><USER157> "We think everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs—no matter what, especially if there are enough resources to make it possible. We don't yet know how it should look or how to pay for it, but basic income seems a promising way to do this."

The bit about "how to pay for it" is interesting considering that Uber, AirBnB and other companies that are known to not pay corporate taxes and exploit their workers have been funded by Ycombinator.

Maybe Ycombinator should fund a startup that manages to have companies pay workers a living wage _and_ pay corporate taxes. That would be a nice contribution to the world economy.

</comment><comment><USER158> If the "pro basic income" people gave 5 mins of their time to charity for every hour they talk about being an online social justice expert, we would have already solved these problems.

BI fixes the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is that people think that they're being charitable by demanding social programs. Wrong. Being charitable means getting your hands dirty, helping people, educating them, physical presence. I dare you instead of typing hacker news comment, Google your local food kitchen, spend $10 on items they need. Show up in the flesh Saturday morning and actually do something besides flap your gums.

<comment><USER159> I think you're missing the bigger point that we have been giving out food for generations and it has not helped reduce poverty. You're basically telling everyone to go do all the stuff people have always been doing that never works.

<comment><USER158> My question is did you take the $10 challenge... or no?

Last time I checked (on saturday), my local food kitchen was swarmed with hungry people, not an endless line of volunteers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER160> If I live in Oakland or know someone who does can I tell them to sign up for free money?

<comment><USER66> We're not sure how we're going to pick the participants yet, though we do know it will be a random selection process, in-line with randomized control trial principles. If you know anyone from Oakland that has feedback though, feel free to have them get in touch! email@example.com, or email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER161> I just hope they run this as a proper research study. The Millennium Villages weren't set up with controls and so there's very little research value to be gotten from all that effort.

Things to note:

1\. Who is in and who is out is fluid. There are no well-defined communities and some people will get into the BI cohort purposefully (i.e. staying with a friend who is in the BI district or claiming to be family).

2\. People move ... much more than one would think.

3\. People are individuals but really, families are the core unit of society. Don't just measure individual outcomes, measure family outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER162> From Sam's original post on BI: _" We have some examples of something close to a basic income in other countries, but we'd like to see how it would work in the US."_[1]

Why the focus on the US, exactly? Why not focus the research grant on the undoubtably _massively_ larger data set of basic income / welfare programs in more Social Democratic style governments? Just from a scientific standpoint wouldn't that be a better study?

[1] [https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic- income](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income)

</comment><comment><USER163> Wondering how long is this experiment going to happen ? Giving basic income to cover their existential expenses like a good food,water, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare is fine. However, the happiness depends on how much more can they save(to plan their investment) and also "invest" for their future to uplift from their current social living status to something higher.

Until and unless some time is given for the subjects to actually "act on their free will" I doubt whether this experiment would be successful.

</comment><comment><USER164> Related links: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839490) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839510)

</comment><comment><USER165> I've got a question for the BI fans that I haven't seen addressed before: The U.S. is a huge country, with wildly varying costs of living. Will a UBI be adjusted for regional costs, or will it be a simple flat rate?

I can see problems with both options; with the former you'd encourage people to stay in (or move to) more costly regions, and with the latter you'd either be paying someone in Salina Kansas above the median income as UBI, or you'd have people on UBI in Chicago, Oakland, and NY still unable to pay their rent.

<comment><USER92> All the proposals that I have seen are flat rate, with people being positively encouraged to relocate to areas that are currently less expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER166> "We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them." \- William L. Comer

</comment><comment><USER167> I just put in my YES vote for the upcoming Swiss vote on the topic. It won't get through mainly due to it being a very high-level proposal with too many questions open and a rather weak supporter camp. They could have done a better job of presenting models on how the economy would change which makes the financing part work.

Nevertheless, depending on what the share of yes-votes is it might trigger further discussion here and in surrounding countries.

Unfortunately, i'd be surprised if it gets more than 35% yes votes.

</comment><comment><USER168> What impact does UBI have on technology and companies?

In theory I suppose more people will be able to afford a basic phone, banking, transportation etc so more eyeballs on ads and users of services. By getting out of the poverty trap, more people can be employed so even more expendable income on technology.

Will companies pay their employees less if their basic needs are covered? Then automation would be less of a cost advantage. Cheaper labour could mean a shift of manufacturing back to the US?

<comment><USER169> Though, on the contrary, you'd have to now pay people X amount above BI to get them to do menial jobs.

i.e. if you get $10k from BI or can get $12k from working building widgets, you'd have to decide if that time spent making widgets is worth the $2k extra vs the opportunity cost of leisure or painting or whatever.

<comment><USER39> > i.e. if you get $10k from BI or can get $12k from working building widgets, > you'd have to decide if that time spent making widgets is worth the $2k > extra

That's not how UBI works. The "U" in "UBI" is "unconditional", referring (among other things [0]) to the fact that it isn't means-tested; that is, it isn't reduced for outside income.

So, if you have $10k in UBI and there are jobs making $12k building widgets, you don't get $2k extra from working, you get $12k extra [1].

[0] It also refers to the absence of _behavior_ testing, which is a common feature alongside _means_ testing of public welfare programs.

[1] Before taxes. Income (including payroll) taxes will reduce this, but you don't lose UBI dollar-for-dollar (or, for that matter, at all) with outside income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER170> As a non-American, can I be a control group? We can research how basic income affects different cultures and stuff. Just send me free money and see what happens!

</comment><comment><USER171> So the proposal is an expensive new social program to be paid for by governments that are already deeply in debt and unable to pay for their current liabilities?

</comment><comment><USER172> How will any basic income scheme avoid the problem where all politics and policymaking will then reduce to "promises to increase the basic income"?

</comment><comment><USER100> I don't understand what is the purpose of this research program. Is it to find the better ways the State will then use later when BI is implemented?

</comment><comment><USER173> I think Milton Friedman's negative income tax is an improvement on this idea, and has the benefit of providing more of an incentive to work.

</comment><comment><USER174> This should be interesting.

In the not too distant future we will have huge numbers of global population turned redundant by technology, what will they do?

<comment><USER175> Automation-apocalyptics forget, intentionally I assume, that new types jobs are created in the course of history, not only lost.

While that is no guarantee of how (much) the direction of the jobs market will shape, it makes thing more complex than the "we're sinking!" analysis, since there are more variables which take part than just "robots".

</comment></comment><comment><USER176> "Oakland is a city of great social and economic diversity, and it has both concentrated wealth and considerable inequality."

Also has great economic liberty if compared to the rest of the world which makes it particularly fertile territory.

Try this in a socialist paradise like Cuba or Venezuela and when you compare the outcome you'll see what I mean.

</comment><comment><USER177> I'm very curious about how the participants other income will change. Income is the best proxy we have for productivity, so if their other income changes much then we might be able to make some interesting observations about their work/leisure tradeoff.

It would also be very interesting to see how productivity changes with respect to demographic factors.

</comment><comment><USER178> Why isn't anyone talking about how they will actually be able to pay for this? We know how people respond already. It's called welfare. The interesting part is that everyone gets it. But the 1000lb gorilla in the room is HOW will it get funded. Do we have an energy boom like Alaska etc and fund it that way?

<comment><USER39> > We know how people respond already. It's called welfare.

Welfare is not the same as BI, and has different structural incentives, so there is no reason to expect that people will respond to BI the same as they do to means-tested welfare programs.

> Do we have an energy boom like Alaska etc and fund it that way?

No, we have a "growing returns to capital" boom, and fund it by taxing capital the same as other income, rather than tax favoring it.

<comment><USER178> > No, we have a "growing returns to capital" boom, and fund it by taxing > capital the same as other income, rather than tax favoring it.

Could you please provide some sort of example of this?

> Welfare is not the same as BI, and has different structural incentives, so > there is no reason to expect that people will respond to BI the same as they > do to means-tested welfare programs.

I'm well aware they are not the same. However I work with many who are on wellfare and understand their mindset a good % of people who will be on BI will be these people.

<comment><USER39> > Could you please provide some sort of example of this?

An example of taxing capital the same as other income? Basically, its just elimiting reduced LTCG rates and other reduced rates of taxation applied to capital gains. (Probably with added provisions to allow advanced and deferred recognition of gains so that irregular windfall gains -- capital or otherwise -- aren't unfairly taxed as all current-year income in a progressive system.)

> However I work with many who are on wellfare and understand their mindset a > good % of people who will be on BI will be these people.

In a UBI, _everyone_ will be on the UBI. The initial percentage of the people who will be on UBI that are current welfare beneficiaries is equal to the percentage of the population that are current welfare beneficiaries.

(In what I see as a sensible transition to a mature UBI funded primarily by taxes on capital, the _early_ net direct beneficiaries of UBI are mostly _not_ current welfare beneficiaries, but working people who are not eligible for means-tested welfare programs, since means-tested programs would only be phased out as UBI-counted-as-income resulted in eliminating eligibility for them.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER179> This is probably where my ignorance of socio-economics will shine, so please bear with me. In all the articles I've come across regarding universal basic income, I've never seen the idea of a flat tax rate mentioned (e.g. everybody, everything, 20%). It seems to me that it could work for the same reasons UBI is supposed to, i.e. reduce overheads among other things, while in this case also potentially reducing the risk for abuse and manipulation.

In my view, a universal flat tax rate would go hand-in-hand with a universal basic income. Since the essential aim of UBI is to ensure people can at least meet their basic needs to achieve a certain degree of freedom, it wouldn't seem too far-fetched to imagine meeting those needs at the societal level as well (which is already done to a large extent in a lot of countries anyway), i.e. free public healthcare, improved and completely free public education, even free electricity, water, internet and so on. The knock-on effect obviously being that the UBI wouldn't need to be as high should some or all of the basic needs be covered by default as public services.

Taking this a bit further, I'd like to see companies be incentivized to have their employees participate in Education in general. For instance, employees could spend 4 hours/week of their working time to go explain what they do to kids or run training sessions for adults trying to change career paths. The employer could be rewarded through some sort of tax break or something similar. Teachers would of course still exist, but the "burden" of Education would no longer be theirs only. I think this would have a number of benefitial effects:

\- it would subsidize the cost of Education to some extent

\- it would help level and adjust the job market more rapidly

\- it would help participating employees have a better understanding of their own job

\- it would expose people undergoing education to more professionals as opposed to almost only academics

But most of all, I believe it would make people realize that Education is everybody's responsibility and that it is a continuous and evolving process for people of any age or background.

There's obviously a lot more to be said about any of my points above, but I'd be interested to hear what people here think.

 _I understand that YCombinator would not have the ability to set tax rates and such, this is more of a thought exercise._

<comment><USER148> If I understand your proposal correctly, you propose to

      * set the income tax to a flat 20%
      * provide no (or very little) universal basic income
      * Increase freely available benefits

Addressing the tax issue specifically - you propose the benefits are:

      * Reduce overheads
      * Reduce risk for abuse and manipulation

I don't think a flat tax rate will achieve the things you want it to.

A progressive tax rate doesn't add any administrative overhead at all, it's just a different way of deciding how much tax you pay once you've correctly totaled your income.

Right now, I see 3 general categories for 'abuse and manipulation' in taxes - fraudulently misrepresenting your income, fraudulently misrepresenting deductions you may qualify for, or legally structuring income and behavior to pay much less taxes than otherwise expected (i.e., finding 'loopholes').

Your primary way of combating those abuses would be to simplify the deductions people can take. To a lesser extent, you can also simplify or refactor the different definitions of income.

A flat 20% tax rate means decreased government revenue overall, lower taxes for the rich, and higher taxes for the middle-class and poor. Most people would consider that to be a failure on every point.

<comment><USER179> Thank you for your comment, you bring up some very valid points. I think I might not have expressed myself clearly enough on some of mine so I apologize for that.

      set the income tax to a flat 20%

The 20% I mentioned was a completely random figure, my guess is that it should be much higher, but this would obviously need to be researched properly. This also wouldn't solely be for incomes, but rather for all financial transactions, which I believe (though I may be misguided) would reduce potential loopholes that rely on declaring income in various ways (including not as income). I think this idea is more or less in line with your idea to "simplify or refactor the different definitions of income".

Additionally, with a flat tax rate, I imagine it would be much easier to subtract taxes at the source (e.g. as is done in the UK for incomes) which in turn would reduce administrative work and therefore overheads.

      provide no (or very little) universal basic income

I am definitely in favour of a substantial universal basic income (within reason, of course). I simply believe that it would work better alongside a strong support network (i.e. education, healthcare, etc.).

      A flat 20% tax rate means decreased government revenue overall, lower taxes for the rich, and higher taxes for the middle-class and poor.

Regarding "lower taxes for the rich", I'm not sure how true that is (again, if we agree that 20% is a made-up figure for now). The rich benefit from ways of skirting these things that poor and middle-class people do not have. This reminds me of an article by Warren Buffet in the NYT on how the rich get special treatment ([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling- the-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super- rich.html)).

As for poor and middle-class people, I think it's important to look at the bigger picture. The initial tax spending would be, as you note, possibly higher, however relatively speaking this is money they would no longer need to spend on basic necessities, which for society as a whole seems more beneficial and a greater equalizer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER180> I want to give major kudos to Y-Combinator for getting into research, and especially for launching a Basic Income experiment. I consider this Elon Musk- level thinking!

Due to the fact that we're automating a ton of work and approaching a post- scarcity type society, it will definitely be important to determine if basic income is achievable.

</comment><comment><USER181> This should be read by anyone who agrees to this distortion... [http://www.threefolding.org/essays/2007-04-100.html](http://www.threefolding.org/essays/2007-04-100.html)

</comment><comment><USER182> Oh goody, income is magical. We can all just vote ourselves whatever we want. Let's all be millionaires - it's just a congressional act away.

Real income is earned not commanded. Any attempts to the contrary are doomed to fail.

</comment><comment><USER183> Since BI often discussed in the context of ML taking away jobs, why not perform this study on Uber drivers.

As someone who walks by Uber's new Oakland HQ regularly, it is always covered in anti-tech graffiti. Uber might gladly fund part of the research for PR reasons alone.

</comment><comment><USER184> I can't help but wonder - if there is basic income, won't the economy adjust and prices would rise so that any basic income would be insufficient again to buy you anything more than food for a week (not enough for rent or anything fancier)?

</comment><comment><USER185> Is having a trust-fund a form of Basic Income ? I wonder if there's any research there

</comment><comment><USER186> I hate to be the ostensible libertarian, but unless EVERYONE gets BI, the system will only perpetuate the poor staying poor just like so many other government programs that disincentive moving up in income due to the loss of benefits

<comment><USER148> While I can't speak for everyone, I expect most proponents of "Basic Income" as a new social structure are advocating for "Universal Basic Income". i.e., everyone gets a check.

In addition to, ideally, providing for a basic level of needs, a Universal Basic Income also enforces a certain equality of social status - there's no stigma to getting your UBI welfare check if your rich neighbor across the street is getting the same check.

The most commonly proposed alternative to a truly Universal Basic Income is the Negative Income Tax. If implemented with a progressive tax system (like the U.S's current tax system), there's still no disincentive to work, as every marginal increase in earned income is associated with a marginal increase in real income (even as the negative income tax benefit drops off).

Actually, for what it's worth, one of the strong arguments for switching to UBI is that our current system of welfare programs actually disincentives moving up in income! In current implemented welfare programs, there are several income-tested thresholds where support drops out entirely - <USER2> that a marginal increase in earned income can represent a _decrease_ in real income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> > If the pilot goes well, we plan to follow up with the main study. If the > pilot doesn't go well, we'll consider different approaches.

What does going well or not going well look like to the funders/researchers, how do you recognize it?

</comment><comment><USER187> The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

<comment><USER162> Same could be said for startups!

<comment><USER188> Only startups actually have to raise their capital in an entirely voluntary manner, with all the due diligence and stipulations that entails. Government just takes it. It's the difference between your wife shopping for groceries with your credit card and an armed gunman sticking you up the ATM telling you to comply or die.

<comment><USER162> Where are all these people buried who have been shot for not paying their taxes?

<comment><USER188> It's the threat of violence. Like I said, you either comply or die. Just try resisting your eventual imprisonment and find out. Of course people are well aware of what the threat ultimately entails and as such choose to comply, but this makes it no less immoral.

<comment><USER162> You'd think, if that were the case, that at least one person would have been killed for not paying their taxes in U.S. history. Can you cite a single example? Otherwise you're employing empty rhetoric.

<comment><USER188> Eric Garner

<comment><USER162> Given the couple hundred million people who are compelled to pay taxes every year, if they truly faced a "comply or die" ultimatum you would expect over the decades to see thousands (at a minimum) of killings.

Eric Garner and quite a few others are terrible examples of police brutality that minorities face in the enforcement of what should normally be non-lethal actions under any circumstances, even total non-compliance. Lethality here is a method of racial and/or class suppression, not so much enforcement of specific laws (e.g. jaywalking, loitering, cigarette tax compliance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER189> We basically already have Basic Income in Denmark.

We have "kontanthjælp" which in practise everyone, without an income qualifies for.

Kontanthjælp pays 2.181 USD a month, and on top of that you can get help with rent etc.

<comment><USER190> If only people without an income qualify, then it is not Basic Income. Basic Income is received by everyone without any means test. The purpose is to avoid perverse incentives in which people on welfare see little value in getting a job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER191> It's in the corporate interest to promote Basic Income. Relieves the social unrest of an automated future.

Corporate calls for Basic Income aren't very credible unless they come with a new corporate tax.

</comment><comment><USER192> UBI gives impetus to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

</comment><comment><USER193> Will YC withhold taxes? Or might recipients get into tax trouble?

Is it possible that a mix of people with BI and without would cause some weird social phenomena that spoil the study?

</comment><comment><USER194> Has anyone considered "subsidizing jobs" as an alternative to BI? Would it work better if the government gives $X to a company when they hire someone?

<comment><USER141> Then you get into a whole mess of determining what's actually a company and what's a job and lose one of the (hopeful) benefits of BI which is allowing people to explore creative endeavors like the arts which aren't totally job based or allowing people to study for a better job without having to compromise and basic living standards.

<comment><USER194> Well it wouldn't be 100% subsidized, meaning that the company has to payout _some_ money. With a subsidized payout, I imagine companies would hire even more people. And, even if someone gets away with not actually "working", there's a cap on the number of dollars the government subsidizes.

As much as I like the idea of programming side projects by just relying on BI, I'm not sure how realistic that is; I think cost of housing and food – both of which are increasing – needs to get much lower for that to be possible.

<comment><USER141> You misunderstand me. My main point was that by making it a job subsidy you're limiting the benefits to jobs only where UBI would allow people to pursue non job endeavors like education or creative fields without being destitute. Not that some people could skirt the system by making a company just for themselves to get benefits.

> As much as I like the idea of programming side projects by just relying on > BI, I'm not sure how realistic that is; I think cost of housing and food – > both of which are increasing – needs to get much lower for that to be > possible.

The point of UBI would that it would be set high enough to cover those costs. And if a particular location is expensive enough that it couldn't you'd have the freedom to move wherever it could to support you. Living in the mid-west is incredibly cheap compared to any big city or the coasts after all.

<comment><USER194> Surely we could work out education / creativity. For example, the gov could consider attending a university as a "job", and send funds that way. In any case, why worry about people "skirting the system" when the alternative (UBI) requires no work at all?

<comment><USER141> I'm _not_ worried about people getting paid to do nothing. It's a feature not a bug to me because it gives people the freedom to do non job things like the arts which are culturally enriching or do volunteer work helping other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER195> Congratulations to -Elizabeth, Matt and Sam.

It's wonderful somebody is taking something out of the economics textbook and into reality.

Success or failure, this is the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER178> Love the ambition of the project, but can't help but think they're focusing on the wrong end of the problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER22> It would be interesting if some of the homeless sleeping on the street were included to see if they get themselves together or not.

</comment><comment><USER196> The conclusion seems to be foregone: _We think everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs—no matter what_

</comment><comment><USER197> wow, as of writing this comment there are 1114 points and 1134 comments

i remember only a few years ago developing a model for capitalism without the need to acquire capital and being mocked, ridiculed, and chastised

i am glad to see that this conversation is so mainstream now and the strongest voices are becoming those in support

<comment><USER198> I would argue that the idea is not quite mainstream yet outside the tech community. The tech community though is very concerned about UBI as we see automation barrelling down the line and making a large percentage of the population unemployable. When that happens many a programmer would like to not be lynched in the streets by Luddite mobs for doing their job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER180> It just occurred to me that birth rate might go up on Basic Income, which wouldn't be very sustainable.

<comment><USER39> > It just occurred to me that birth rate might go up on Basic Income, which > wouldn't be very sustainable.

IIRC, empiricially birth rate tends to go down with a stronger social support network (probably because people rely on children reaching adulthood less as an emergency support).

</comment></comment><comment><USER199> Let's call this what it is. Any system that short circuits the basic human need for hard work and reward compensation will never be a success. You can sugar coat it and re brand it any way you want to. Humans need that feedback loop of blood, sweat and tears before they receive a 'reward'.

<comment><USER22> It's been theorised that hunter gathers in good times did ok without blood, sweat and tears.

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

<comment><USER83> That theory is actually pretty challenged. Makes me want to find time to enhance the wikipedia article, but it would be a lot of work.

Among critiques are that the !Kung San people the study of which is at the basis of this theory _weren't_ actually exclusively (or possibly even primarily) engaging in hunting and gathering as economic activity at the time the anthropologists studied them, but those anthropologists just chose to leave out the wage labor as "atypical". And that the !Kung San at that period of history actually were a regional underclass -- if they didn't work much, that's because they didn't have many options, and is similar to the extremely poor in any society. See Edwin Wilmsen, _Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari_

That's just a start.

But anyway, I agree with you that it's ridiculous to think that people can't be happy unless extorted to work for others at threat of starvation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER200> Why don't you hire someone who will need the basic income themselves? Do you want your team to be comprised of a bunch of PhDs who have never needed a basic income? Or is it more important to have PhDs on the program so it at least looks good, even if it doesn't scale or succeed?

</comment><comment><USER201> It looks like more and more Pirate Party ideas are moving tech mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER202> This is a great project proposal and I wish them the best.

</comment><comment><USER203> This is very Venus Project'ish! I am very excited by this blog post. If anyone wants to learn more about some fundamentals behind this, start down the Venus Project path and prepare to think differently.

</comment><comment><USER204> samaltman, have you compared and contrasted your approach to GiveDirectly's and other existing programs?

</comment><comment><USER205> We need to ensure Living Wage is paid.

<comment><USER146> I think a Universal Basic Income would help with this. Given the ability to survive without working a shitty, low-paying job, you now have the ability to say no to said jobs. Meaning demand for said jobs goes down, forcing the employer to automate or raise wages so that someone takes the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER206> Thank you for doing this, YC!

</comment><comment><USER207> There's a lot of skepticism about basic income, especially when it comes to how does it save money? The top comment as of this writing is questioning it:

> But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial > emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all > their money and now can't afford rent and/or food? Do you tell them "tough > shit, you've exhausted all your social safety nets" or are there safety nets > below BI, essentially recreating the welfare programs previously destroyed? > If so, how do you prevent fraud without a department following up on Joe's > twelfth "my car broke down" case of the year?

Allow me to digress for a moment, I've recently been reading "The Expanse" series, and they have a throwaway snippet in the second book (i.e., not a spoiler) where a Martian Marine is walking the streets of a city on Earth. There's a girl who sells her a hot dog. The girl says that she's doing it for work credits. After she accumulates one year worth of work credits, she can attend university and get a real job and make money. Otherwise, she'd have to be "on basic."

Like I said, it's a throwaway scene, so there's not a lot of detail, and even in the later books when they talk about being "on basic", it's not a detailed description. But the girl in the story distinctly mentions "money" after "getting a job" which came after "university." That implies to me that, on some level, money doesn't exist for those "on basic." (And to be clear, in this not-terribly-futuristic Earth, everyone's on basic.)

In other words, the term "on basic" implied to me that you get food, shelter, clothing, access to public transportation, K-12 education, healthcare, and basic internet automatically. But if that's the case, why would anyone want money? Well, the implication here is that the food is minimal: ramen noodles and vegetables and beef. Shelter are studio apartments. Clothing are Wal-mart quality. Basic internet is more like 56K than broadband.

In the Expanse Earth, if you want more than that minimum (and most of us would), then you have to spend a year working to prove your willingness to contribute to society, and then you can go to university for free, then get a job and make money. That money can buy you things like a house with a yard, a car, surf and turf, and vacations to the moon.

If we were to somehow (and that's a big if) go with the definition of "basic" from The Expanse, it's almost impossible to squander it. You aren't handing Joe $500 and saying "This is your money for the month. Don't blow it." The food and clothing are free. (Presumably with demonstrable need, but in a post- scarcity society, perhaps T-shirts cost virtually nothing compared to the previous welfare systems and you might as well just hand them out on demand).

I'm not an economist, and I don't know the ins and outs of basic income, but that one throwaway page in The Expanse made me think a lot about what I think basic income should look like... and I don't think it should look like a monthly check.

<comment><USER31> People can decide what they need. It is a lot less bureaucracy to say "Here's a check that should be able to get you shelter, clothing, and food -- go find it." rather than trying to place everyone somewhere.

<comment><USER208> I just see way too many people not doing this. BI would be like winning the lottery to these people. Someone would hand them a check once a month and they'd go spend it on useless stuff.

To top it off, they'd be first in line to complain about how crappy "the system" is.

<comment><USER124> People will complain about anything and everything. What is extremely valuable about UBI, though, is that unlike traditional welfare systems where those who squandered it are often just those who are also the most pitied, there is no ostracism for using a UBI and no social isolation for it because _everyone_ gets it, and those who cannot manage their money have no one to blame but themselves.

Today, the poor are defensive of one another to some degree, defending their "way of life" even when it is exploitative of social safety nets because they have to fight for scraps and every step of the process in getting such benefits is humiliating. It should surprise no one that once people have it, they are happy to blow it and stick an effective fuck you back to the society that ostracizes and criticizes them.

Which is one of the pillars of utility in UBI. It is a panacea solution to negating hostile poverty based cultures like ghetto. There is no more war against the poor, or active emotional attack for needing help. Everyone gets the help, and there is no vector for abuse through it, so those who are aggressive towards it or squander it are no longer fighting the man but are just fools who deserve no pity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER209> BI is the flat tax of the welfare world

</comment><comment><USER116> If that were the case, then the dividens should be paid proportionally to the "collective" taxpayer... the ones who paid the most taxes... the wealthy.

You totally don't get it and probably never will. Wealth isn't created equally and will never be. Do yourself a favor and read up on Venezuela.

<comment><USER210> Except that the wealthy don't pay that much taxes in the first place.

<comment><USER116> [http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of- fede...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-federal- income-taxes.html)

<comment><USER13> "The top one percent of income earners, who paid 38 percent of federal income taxes, faced an effective tax rate of 23 percent." [0]

"The richest 1% of the world's population now owns 50% of its total wealth, according to a report by Credit Suisse." [1]

I was in the top 5% last year. I paid an effective tax rate of 28% federal, and almost 45% including state/local. Why should I give one flying fuck if the people that control 50% of the world's wealth pay a majority of taxes, if they pay a lower effective tax rate than I do?

This idea that the 1% pay more than their fair share because they pay a majority of taxes is some ridiculous double-speak. One single percent of people control 50% of the world's wealth. You want me to feel bad for them how?

[0] [http://www.economics21.org/html/rich-pay-more-their-fair- sha...](http://www.economics21.org/html/rich-pay-more-their-fair-share- taxes-1205.html)

[1] [http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth- credit...](http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit- suisse)

<comment><USER211> Friend, you _are_ more than likely in the top 1% of the _world_ population. That only takes about $32k/year[0].

[0] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/050615...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

<comment><USER13> You're right. I am. And the stats above were US focused. (The 50% of wealth stat holds[0]).

The point, though, was GP's sole contribution was a link pointing to an article that the top 1% pay nearly half of federal income taxes (actually 45.7%) as a counter-point to its parent claiming the rich don't pay their fair share.

Well, 23% federal is not their fair share, based on income and wealth accumulation.

As to me being in the global 1%, there is no doubt. But like I said, I paid a lot in taxes, and I champion basic income (see any previous comments of mine on the subject). I don't defend high earners as unfairly burdened, and I believe that poverty and lack of healthcare in this world is a political problem, not a money/resource problem, and the fact that so many kids in the US, let alone the world, go hungry at night is a travesty of epic proportions.

[0] [http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/](http://inequality.org/wealth- inequality/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER212> Genuine question.

Why do you feel we should keep useless people alive?

<comment><USER124> Because you and I are likely to become useless. If we are not capital owners, who do not have the means to survive exclusively off the value of our assets, then we will become useless to the economy in this century.

We already do not send people to prison for unpaid debts. And it is not a genocide we could easily see through - the unemployable, a number growing daily through automation, will not just sit down and die, but likely burn all of society down around with them if abandoned by said society.

This isn't some isolated fragment of the population. This decade, its going to be 11 million US citizens associated with the trucking and transport industries. In the decade following, service jobs, office jobs, actuarial, law, and medical jobs will all be going to AI neural nets and robotics with realized vision. And if we ignore how they contributed to the economic engine that produced such abundance, and let them starve while the owners of the means of production reap near infinite supply, that _would_ realize our current extinction event to its fullest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER213> BI is immoral: why should anyone who can work get money for doing nothing?

<comment><USER214> Serious question: why should everyone work?

Followup: why is having some minimum amount of resources to live on immoral as opposed to merely unfair?

<comment><USER213> First of all, not everyone should work. Be it a child that lives off of his parents' money, a stay at home mom whose bills are paid by her husband, or a young, poor but promising artist who lives in an apperment from his mecenas.

BI is immoral (imho of course) because people get paid for doing nothing. It sends a message to society: laziness pays.

<comment><USER215> Being for or against policy because of the "message" it sends has historically been a pretty bad idea.

Just look at the drug war, where we don't want to send the "message" to kids that drugs are OK.

There's no telling what incentives people will actually have once BI is implemented. Maybe they'll actually be more incentivised to seek risky and rewarding work because they have a guaranteed safety net.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER216> Is the Basic Income concept (in its current formulation) a voluntary program? Or will it depend on violent coercion?

</comment><comment><USER217> I grew up with basic income. In high school my parents gave me $25 a week. If I wanted a new bicycle or expensive sneakers I had to work. At the time $25 covered going to the movies on a Friday or $7 grand stand seats at Fenway.

Maybe we should look at how teenagers manage allowances.

<comment><USER141> I don't think that's a good test case because allowances don't have to go to things like basic necessities so leisure and nonessentials get all the money and there are a lot of constraints on what a teenager can do. They're bound to their home and have limited free time to do other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER218> Or moving backwards, the study will findout.

<comment><USER56> I presume your strong, proud, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps oneliner throwaway comment was well thought out, so perhaps you could shed some light on the interesting artistic choice of failing to put a space between "find" and "out"?

<comment><USER218> Look at your self righteous attitude. Maybe you should grow some tolerance for alternative ideas and thoughts. There are many of us who are skeptical about the idea and would like to see how it goes.

<comment><USER56> >Maybe you should grow some tolerance for alternative ideas and thoughts

Yes! Exactly! That's _just_ what I wanted you to do! And you even elaborated a bit! A nasty throwaway line like yours about how it's obviously going to fail does not telegraph that you're "skeptical about the idea and would like to see how it goes" \-- quite the opposite. You've already determined that the study will fail, and that's the conclusion you're interested in seeing. Think I'm wrong? How could I have reasonably concluded otherwise based on "[o]r moving backwards, the study will findout"?

<comment><USER219> Pointless trolling the troll.

<comment><USER56> >Pointless trolling the troll

Slimey, yet satisfying!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER213> The YCR statement says:

"We think everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs—no matter what, especially if there are enough resources to make it possible."

Why give free money to people who are too lazy to work?

<comment><USER220> Why not just give them money? If someone is "too lazy" to work, they're not going to be productive in any job anyways. We already give these people substantial subsidies in the form of food stamps, housing assistance, etc.

If someone wants to not work and live in a bad part of town. No offense, by why do you care? You'll live a much nicer life than them, working, and having more.

<comment><USER221> > If someone wants to not work and live in a bad part of town. No offense, by > why do you care?

Sounds like "basic income will cover rent in the bad part of town" means that safety isn't covered in "basic"?

<comment><USER188> I have a hard time understanding how BI is going to afford everyone the ability to live in a nicer part of town. "Nicer parts of town" are a scarce resource. As such, they're costly. If you increase the BI to a level that would presently afford everyone to live in nicer areas, then the prices would simply rise commensurately.

Also I'm not really sure what safety has to do with the BI. The whole point is that each person gets $n and they can spend it as they see fit. Maybe someone would like to spend 10% of their BI on secure rural accomodations. Maybe another person would like to spend 100% on a sketchy rat trap in the Tenderloin. That's their prerogative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>