A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-05-02/a-basic-income-should-be-the-next-big-thing <comment><USER2> This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc.

And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like

> But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income > through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 trillion. And if the benefit > is phased out for households earning more than $100,000 (that would be 20 > percent of the U.S.'s 115 million households, or about 70 million people, > assuming three to a household), the cost declines to about $2 trillion. You > could confine the program to adults and shrink the price tag even more, > possibly to as low as $1.5 trillion.

Yes, you can reduce the amount paid out by making it _not a universal basic income scheme_ any more. But that rather misses the point.

(The _correct_ thing to say here is: Yes, a universal basic income sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty would be really expensive. Taxes would need to go up a lot, which would leave wealthier people less well off than they are now. If you don't want a large-scale redistribution of wealth, then you don't want a BI scheme sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty. But you might still want to consider a BI scheme that's _not_ sufficient to keep everyone out of poverty, to simplify and to reduce poverty traps. No one would have to be much worse off then. But it wouldn't be enough for anyone to live on, and would still need supplementing by other safety nets.)

<comment><USER3> It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone.

Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession.

This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to people, fewer services provided makes us all become poorer. That's simple arithmetic.

<comment><USER4> I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery. People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me? If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you expect some stranger to do it except out of either good will or fear? Sure, you can get some deeply fearful stranger to sit in the same building day in and day out, doing your dishes and pouring you coffee, putting their own individuation on hold for your career, just to have basic economic security. But in the big picture, a whole world of people out of touch with what they love is bad for the planet itself.

Many people never get a chance to discover a passionate relationship with work. Collectively, when we kick the habit of forcing people into doing things out of fear (with money) means that a lot of people are gonna be feeling like fish out of water. Generations of slaves don't just jump out of their chains eager to get working again.

<comment><USER5> So much for sanitation. How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the displeasure of the job?

Believe it or not, there are jobs that need to be done, but nobody in the world has a passion for them.

Employment isn't about fear or force. It's about two parties agreeing that they each come out better after the transaction of selling labor. I may not love what I do every day, but the sacrifice is worth it to have the benefit of the salary and other benefits that my employer gives me. And she probably isn't enamored with having to give up that money to pay me, but values the productivity I deliver (when I'm not on HN) more than that money.

The ability to trade labor for goods or money is the single greatest invention in the history of humanity. Without it I'd have to grow my own food and fibers, weave my own cloth for clothing (in the house I had to construct myself), sitting in a dark drafty room wishing that some altruist would come cure my illnesses.

But instead, we found that people can decide they value one thing more than another, and engage in voluntary commerce so that they can trade in kind.

<comment><USER6> Employment is in fact often about fear or force.

I work a day job because the state will literally show up with police and guns if I went out into the mountains and lived off the land. Therefore unless I want to starve I must work. Even when it's on shit I hate.

I am lucky enough to have a skill that is sufficiently valuable that I can survive despite disabilities making it difficult to work.

If you imagine that the labor market is free because it happens to mostly be positive sum, you haven't lived at the bottom of the labor market for any length of time.

<comment><USER5> _the state will literally show up with police and guns if I went out into the mountains and lived off the land_

Why? Is it someone else's land that you're trespassing on, using up their resources, hunting their animals, etc?

Shall all of us who don't feel fulfilled do the same thing as you propose? When you hurt yourself and get an infection, are you going to crawl back out of the woods and expect there to still be other people to care for you, supply your antibiotic, and yes, clean your bedpan while you recover? What right to you have to expect the bedpan cleaner to serve you?

 _unless I want to starve I must work._

Who do you expect to plant, harvest, and distribute the food you want to eat?

When you want something from someone - food, medicine, etc. - you're going to have to offer something in return, else why should they provide it? For almost all of us, our labor is the product we can offer in trade. Only by all of us making this tradeoff does society survive.

<comment><USER7> >When you want something from someone - food, medicine, etc. - you're going to have to offer something in return

What if the value of someone's labour is not enough for the things they need to survive? There's no function of the market that ensures it will be.

At some point, you either have to help people out without anything in return, or choose to let them die.

<comment><USER5> _What if the value of someone 's labour is not enough for the things they need to survive?_

Sure, we can make a moral argument about that. But that's not what this branch of the debate is about. We were debating the proposition that "money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people" and employment is force.

But since you bring it up, my biggest concern about BI is along the same lines as your moral question. Suppose that every year we hand out $X,000 to each person. Some people are going to waste that on booze, gambling, etc., and still be left with nothing to eat. What's our moral obligation to those people?

<comment><USER8> > What's our moral obligation to those people?

I think we can all agree it to be none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income.

The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess of programs losing their job is a silly concern. Why should we keep paying people for unnecessary bullshit jobs? Why should we employ people to check and ensure that other people aren't secretly working? Let those people do something more productive.

I would like Basic Income to be a bit more than $10,000 per year, though. Ideally, especially when the number of jobs available falls due to increased automation, I'd like the Basic Income to provide a comfortable income. People can and will still work to increase their income further, but when robots do more and more of the work for us, there's no reason to punish people for being unable to compete with robots.

<comment><USER10> 10k? That's almost the _average_ income (or more, depending on how you count taxes) of the Czech Republic. If I had to choose between living in a 2nd world country and working and living in a 1st world country and not working for the same money, guess which I'd choose?

<comment><USER11> I am just amused by the "2nd world country" thing. I really fail to see how life in Central Europe is somehow of "lower quality"(e.g. Czech, Poland, Germany) compared to USA. I'd actually prefer living in Central Europe or especially Southern Europe over USA any day.

<comment><USER10> Well since you just bulked Czechia, Poland and _Germany_ into one group, I can understand how you fail to see it.

Since you mentioned Germany, I'll use that. A Czech earns about a third of what a German earns. But everything costs more or less the same (except for housing, but the difference certainly isn't multiples). Gasoline costs the same (and much more than in US), vast majority of consumer goods costs the same, food seems to be cheaper, but that's because it's of lower quality.

Yeah, education is "free". As is government free to take more than half of what people earn.

By "2nd world" I mean "1st world prices, 3rd world wages" (yes I know 3rd world is something incomperable).

<comment><USER11> Oh, I did it intentionally. I live in Bulgaria and the situation is similar. However my definition of 2nd world is just different, that's all.

<comment><USER10> Well, of course, I consider it more of a tongue-in-cheek term, heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Fed engineers a slow inflation every year via interest rate control and gives the benefit of the newly created money to banks, the loan borrowers, and asset holders as rates lower than keeping inflation at zero. Since the money supply increases anyway, might as well give the new money as basic income to ALL people. At least the money will be spent directly by the people for economic activities, instead of indirectly via the loans and asset inflation.

The Fed can raise interest rate to shrink the money supply for banks and borrowers while give more direct cash to expand the money supply via basic income. This can be in addition to the government's budget spending on basic income.

An interesting outcome is the deflation of the asset bubble as rate increases. The money supply expansion via direct cash counters the deflation in economy. This should reverse the trend of the great wealth transfer to the asset holders in the last 20 years.

<comment><USER13> Regarding inflation... if _everyone_ instantly has $X now, doesn't $X become worthless?

For instance, why would landlords not raise rents knowing that everyone now has this cash?

<comment><USER12> The problem is not inflation. It happens already. The problem is the new money created causing the inflation is given to the asset holders and banks, not to everyone.

Rent increases now, due to inflation. The general public have to give more despite not getting the created money. Landlords got the benefit of rising rent due to inflation and rising housing price due to lower interest rate to create more money.

Basic income just shifts the inflated money to everyone instead of just the asset holders.

<comment><USER14> "new money" is not, or ever, given to anyone. Banks included. The U.S. gov basically sells promissory notes (treasuries) to an independent, non governmental organization (The Federal reserve...which is not "federal" in the least bit..) on behalf of the American people. Although the fed is more or less offering a note at x price and the U.S. Treasury just buys it...

Anybody is allowed to buy bonds from the U.S. Treasury. In exchange, you get the "new money" as you call it. At no one point is anything given to the banks or asset holders.

The interest rate is determined by the rate the fed sets and buys these notes from the US T. This is the key and primary tool at which a PRIVATE, non- governmental organization, determines interest rates. However..you can also buy these notes directly from the Fed. China does all the time along with many other countries. Yes...other countries hold the "debt" of the American people... If that's not crazy enough...it gets better. This organization..the Fed...gets to tell banks how much to hold in required reserves. Another primary tool they use to control inflation.

<comment><USER12> The Fed obviously creates inflation by injecting new money into the system. Who get the extra new money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm still wondering about one thing: if everybody has a basic income, then who will be doing the dirty jobs like collecting our waste? Will the price for waste collecting go up? And will there then be a kind of economic "inversion", where the intellectual people prefer to work on interesting stuff at the expense of money, while the "non-intellectual" (need a better word here) people will make all the money doing the dirty jobs?

<comment><USER16> First of all, no job should be considered dirty.

Second, if you go to places like Netherlands, Norway and Japan you'll see that it's not about money. Higher education prepares workers to do more complex, more efficient and more productive jobs.

Also, the society is more conscious about not having someone to do stupid things for them like collecting their trays after they eat at the McDonadls, this is YOUR responsibility as a member of a society, to look for others as well.

So in Amsterdam for example, street cleaning and trash collection are done with specialized vehicles. In Denmark, subways are autonomous.

I like to believe that as you increase education and income, the people that would be considered "dumb" in an very unequal society will spend their time developing technologies to automate tasks no one likes to perform and increase productivity.

<comment><USER17> You're suggesting that people that would be considered "dumb" today will suddenly start inventing automation of street cleaning, trash collection, and the like if we implement a basic income and better education?

That strikes me as an extraordinary claim.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, it's more like the people owning the waste companies that would try to drive up automation because of the high costs associated with manual labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the reason for huge support behind Basic Income is failure of government in efficient allocation of its resources. The current generation with its experience with public education, spending on unnecessary wars and other poorly run government programs no longer trusts government to effectively deliver services. Thus Basic Income seems like a natural solution. I honestly would prefer a smaller government that reallocates resources, over Bernie Sanders style big government socialism.

<comment><USER20> Why does it follow that the answer to an inefficient government is to give that same government more power to redistribute wealth?

Being a big inefficient government _and_ redistributing wealth are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER21> It's important to distinguish between rights- and incentive-based objections to redistribution and efficiency-based objections to government spending. The government as an organization of humans is very inefficient and wasteful at accomplishing actual tasks (e.g., building bridges), but it's actually very efficient at redistributing wealth through pure transfers (e.g., the administrative overhead of social security is negligible compared to the amount redistributed). Thus the best objections are grounded in bad incentive effects or property rights, not the inefficiency of government.

<comment><USER20> I interpreted the parent comment is implying ineptitude by the government in delivering positive outcomes and my comment is in reply to that. If the regime is inept at delivering solutions why would we entrust it to take more by way of taxation to support a basic income.

My comment is not about the efficiency or admin overhead of printing checks. It's about trust in government to deliver an outcome.

<comment><USER21> Trust obviously depends strongly on the task. I trust my dog to fetch the ball but not do my taxes, because he's a lot better at the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the $1 trillon stated in the article, spread across 300 million people, each person would get around $3000 a year. That honestly doesn't seem like it would help a lot, considering it would replace current welfare systems. The Swiss proposal of around $2600 a month, implemented in the US, would cost nearly $10 trillion a year which doesn't really seem feasible.

I don't think the problem with basic income is an ideological one, its a numbers one. There simply isn't enough money to implement it without massively increasing taxes.

<comment><USER23> I absolutely agree but my biggest fear is that socialists don't give a shit and will push "progressive taxes".

I live in Scotland and they love the fact that they can raise taxes here now... they openly talk about it and very few people I know bat an eyelid!

But it's the curse of socialism imo: As long as you tax people earning more than me then I am fine with it.

Sadly, something I have heard too often

Edit: Spelling

<comment><USER2> There are some sorts of political proposal it's reasonable to be shocked at people talking openly about. For me, they're things like: Reintroducing slavery. Switching to communism. Putting people in prison for having the wrong religion. Expelling all black people from the country.

... Do I understand correctly that you consider _raising taxes_ to be in this category?

<comment><USER23> I absolutely don't believe they are in the same category: How the hell did you equate them?

Who honestly wants to pay more tax? Really? I ask you in all seriousness.

I am well-off but up until recently I earned enough to keep my head above water. I had a disposable income after all bills were paid of around £100 a month: One burst tyre in my car and that was it but I had no debt (apart from my mortgage) as I lived within my means.

I work hard, I get up early and study and so on and I am a contractor now, earning good money.

That being said: I have no issue with taxation. I believe in taxation but I do not believe in constantly increasing it nor do I believe that it is a moral issue like it has been made recently.

For as long as I can remember, no Government has decreased taxes in the UK. None. They shuffle them around but they never decrease them.

I read something a year or so ago (can't remember the reference, maybe Taxpayers Alliance) that showed over 60% of my money is taxed now through income tax, stealth taxes etc.

Enough is enough!

<comment><USER2> I equated them because you said:

> _they love the fact that they can raise taxes here now... they openly talk > about it and very few people I know bat an eyelid!_

which looked to me (and still does) as if you were expressing surprise that people _openly talk about raising taxes_ and that others aren't surprised they're doing so.

> Who honestly wants to pay more tax?

Me. More precisely: all else being equal I prefer to pay less tax, but all else is not equal and I think increasing the taxes paid by people like me and using the resulting revenue to increase funding for (e.g.) the national health service or benefits for disabled people would, overall, make the country I live in a better place.

> no Government has decreased taxes in the UK

Well, according to the graph here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom) tax revenue in the UK was a smaller fraction of GDP in 2005 than in 2000. It's a little under 40% (which already makes it quite implausible that 60% of your income gets taken in tax).

Finer-grained comparison is really difficult because the tax system is complicated (income tax, National Insurance, VAT, capital gains, ...); over the last few decades income tax has decreased substantially for most people but other taxes have increased.

> over 60% of my money is taxed now

This is not something you should be believing or disbelieving on the basis of something you read from an anti-tax campaigning organization. You should have all the information you need to work it out.

I don't know whether I'm paid better or worse than you are (I would guess fairly similarly) but I do not pay anywhere near 60% of my earnings in tax. Adding up all the taxes I can think of, I reckon I pay either about 30% or about 40% in tax; the lower figure is if I count capital gains (largely untaxed because most of my assets are in tax-efficient things like ISAs and pension funds) as "income" and the higher figure is if I look only at salary.

(Maybe the numbers look worse for contractors than for salaried employees? I am not counting, e.g., corporation tax paid by my employer; neither do I see any reason why I should.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Switzerland will hold a June 5 referendum on whether to give every adult > citizen 2,500 Swiss francs (about $2,600) a month.

Yeah and, for sure, it won't pass... considering how conservative we are, plus the legal side of the proposal is not so clear in where the money will come from.

<comment><USER25> This doesn't seem like enough for Switzerland - what do you think? Based on my experience this would be on the very low side. The previous vote on minimum wage was quoted as working out at around 4000CHF/month. Granted, most basic income proposals are on the low side - this just seems even lower than normal.

<comment><USER26> It seems low. I think this is what cashiers at Lidl or Leader Price actually make in Switzerland. Or rather, it's the urban legend in France that this how much a cashier in Lidl/Leader Price makes in Switzerland.

Though this might be part of the whole "Everything is better in Switzerland" psyche prevalent in France (streets are paved in sheets of gold, etc).

<comment><USER27> 4000 Francs is a de-facto minimum wage in Switzerland. Even the most basic jobs will earn you that much, usually. It's rare that you earn significantly less than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the early 1970s, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a "mouse utopia" to see what would happen if he created the perfect world for mice, with unlimited food, starting with four males and four females, that could reach a population of 2500.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM)

What happened next is absolutely astonishing. When the mice had nothing to do and nothing to work for, their society collapsed upon itself. Females stopped caring for their young. Betas began guarding the elite females, despite them not breeding with _anyone_. Fights broke out for no reason whatsoever. Mice stopped eating.

Their population peaked at 2200, and then died off extremely quickly.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/)

It was a big, fat, giant mess. And it's exactly what will happen to us if we don't have _something_ to work and live for. Hell, it's already happening.

I don't think humanity survives with basic income as planned. We fall apart when we have nothing to do. We're no better than mice - we are still just animals with a larger hierarchy.

I'd rather see unproductive humans digging and re-filling holes in the ground than getting paid to do nothing. Or something like the biking experiment in Black Mirror.

Yet we need to do _something_ as automation grows. Society is in for some serious decisions, and no country currently has the leadership to be able to tackle them.

<comment><USER28> Do mice have a concept of leisure? Exploration for its own sake? Cultural enrichment? Scientific endeavour?

Also, in that experiment isn't there a complete excess of resources? We certainly don't have that, opulence would still be expensive and out of reach of a BI.

<comment><USER13> > a complete excess of resources? We certainly don't have that

You seen the obesity rates in America?

The people who truly enjoy "Exploration", "Cultural enrichment", and "Scientific endeavor" are not those that I'm worried about in this world. Most of the world does not operate like that, nor do they use (or even understand!) such phrases.

<comment><USER28> Yes. Obesity is far more complex than that, I'm also looking at the global perspective.

Obesity to me is about lack of resources for better nutrition (though companies push junk pretty hard), lack of education, and lack of will power.

FWIW I'm substantially overweight despite being poor enough to need to miss meals in the past couple of years.

So give people BI and they'll just get blazed/drunk all the time, and make other mischief, is that your assessment?

<comment><USER13> > So give people BI and they'll just get blazed/drunk all the time, and make > other mischief, is that your assessment?

Not everyone, but the noisy few will far outweigh those that are "culturally enriching" themselves with "art" and "scientific exploration".

Just look at what's happening in the western welfare class already. How does this not become an extension of that?

I'm so absolutely unconvinced by this thread. I fear for the future of this species. I have a feeling this is why guys like Elon Musk are in such a hurry too... they see it happening too.

<comment><USER29> I'm sorry, what exactly is happening to the "western welfare class"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady >> "But in the U.S., many liberals see it as naive and a distraction from more practical priorities, such as a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave."

I can't see how they could believe this. First of all a minimum wage becomes unimportant as you should hypothetically have enough money to support the kind of lifestyle a minimum wage job would provide without working. Secondly, as it's no longer financially critical to them, people won't be as inclined to take on minimum wage type jobs - which will force the wage up anyway so that the business can attract employees. So it should take care of itself. As for paid family leave (I presume they mean maternity/paternity leave?) you won't need that as your basic income will ensure you still have money coming in. And if the company wants to retain your services after your leave they will offer it anyway. The key point in these examples is that even if you don't get a higher minimum wage or paid family leave it's no longer going to have a big effect on you as you have your UBI to rely on.

Also, it doesn't seem to me like there is a left/right split on this elsewhere in the world. This leads me to believe that the problem is the highly partisan US political system. The right is obviously going to support UBI as it would significantly reduce government size - the left can't be seen to be agreeing with the right. I think it's a kind of childishly schoolyard thing you see a lot in US politics (he likes that so I don't).

<comment><USER30> >I can't see how they could believe this. First of all a minimum wage becomes unimportant as you should hypothetically have enough money to support the kind of lifestyle a minimum wage job would provide without working.

It's considered a distraction because it's a political pipe dream that has a very low chance of being implemented.

The reason the left doesn't like it is fourfold:

* The pretext for basic income presumes that we have a lack of spending because we've run out of things to spend money on. This couldn't be further from the truth. American infrastructure is crumbling and yet politicians still want to restrict necessary spending, choking off demand and killing jobs.

* The pretext for basic income also presumes that we have a wide variety of cheap goods that don't need much US labor because of efficient markets and automation. We don't. We have a wide variety of cheap goods not requiring US labor because China intentionally undervalues its currency. China can pull the plug on that at any point and trigger a torrential level of inflation in the US.

* The last time the US faced this problem of high unemployment due to artificially suppressed demand (in the 30s) it was successfully fixed with federal job guarantees that ended up providing useful employment and getting a huge amount of useful infrastructure built that we still use today.

* However much you try to deny it or dress it up, people actually want jobs - for more than just the income.

<comment> k-mcgrady Some good points, I'm curious about your final point though. Personal want just for more than just the income. IF the UBI worked, are you suggested people would want to, but couldn't work anymore? That jobs would be difficult to find?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's a little surprising — with all discussions about basic income taking place, I assumed it is more of a left-wing thing. But what is even more surprising are arguments against it: social workers being laid off and other more complicated policies like minimum wage taking a back seat. With this kind of rhetoric, it's easy to believe that the real reason is the "welfare lobby" of government officials who don't want their bloated offices to close, indeed.

</comment><comment><USER32> Won't a basic income just increase inflation? Minimum-wage jobs would by necessity then need to pay more, which would then cause the costs of goods and services to go up, which would then make living more expensive, necessitating an increase in the basic income and so forth...?

For example, say I'm a landlord. If everyone all of a sudden had an additional "base" income, why wouldn't I increase my rents to absorb at least a portion of that? Then, only people who had a job would still be able to afford to rent from me, while those on the basic income would be unable to afford it. I'm not out either way.

So you would say you need to introduce legislation to stop me from doing that, but the free market would abhor that and likely accuse you of being a communist. So you can't. So I'm failing to see the point of the whole exercise?

<comment><USER33> _Minimum-wage jobs would by necessity then need to pay more_

That's the opposite of what's being proposed: the minimum income comes from the government, not employers. Minimum income can replace minimum wage.

 _For example, say I 'm a landlord. If everyone all of a sudden had an additional "base" income, why wouldn't I increase my rents to absorb at least a portion of that? Then, only people who had a job would still be able to afford to rent from me, while those on the basic income would be unable to afford it. I'm not out either way._

Sure, but now that you've raised the price, there's an opportunity to undercut you that didn't exist before. The result ultimately depends on the supply and demand of housing. Just think of it like a bunch of slightly-richer people moving into the neighborhood. Prices will rise, but not enough to take all the new residents' extra money.

<comment><USER32> This would only work in places where supply exceeded demand. In a landlords' market there is no reason to compete. All the same people who could afford to rent from you before can still afford to rent from you now, you're just charging them more.

<comment><USER34> Basic income could have the effect of flattening out demand rather - at the moment, people are forced to cluster close to where the work is available. If I want to just live on basic income, why not go somewhere more affordable?

<comment><USER32> ...and all of a sudden these places that were previously unattractive are now attractive, and housing that previously had no demand now does.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's not as simple as some might like to think.

<comment><USER34> I take your point, but if we remove the requirement for jobs to be present, a much larger range of locations become reasonable to live in. A broader range of acceptable locations spread amongst the same population is clearly likely to decrease overall competition for a given property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I really don't understand how a 'basic' income is supposed to work.

What if I spend my basic income on drugs and hookers? are you willing to let me starve? what about my kids? If not, then the basic income can't actually replace the existing social programs.

If nobody need to work, then if employers want employees, they have to pay more to get them, which makes prices rise, which makes your 'basic' income insufficient again.

I don't get it.

<comment><USER36> The cost-rising point is greatly simplified. Yes the cost of labor will go up, however this does not mean the prices rise so much that your basic income is not very helpful, and here's why:

      * Only the cost of labor will increase, the cost of other inputs to making goods or providing services will not.
      * The cost of labor will not increase uniformly, but rather it will increase most at the low end (people who are more likely to refuse employment due to basic income) and less at the high end.  A software engineer making $120k is not likely to decide to stop working because he now gets $10k from the government.  However a part-time fry cook making $6k a year might.

So you have a slight increase in the price of goods (the x% of the cost of goods that was from low-paid labor just got y% higher) but an increase in purchasing power that is larger than x% * y% so overall people now have more purchasing power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 'In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."'

        :Rudyard Kipling [0]

0 - [http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm)

</comment><comment><USER38> The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math.

Take for instance the amount spent on the bank bailouts, which were supposedly done to help stimulate the economy. If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody a check for somewhere around 20K (the number is debatable).

Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child. The national debt is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced budget and a check for 100K? (I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.)

We're reaching the point where the average person who supports helping the poor can figure out that we could have just set up an endowment for each poor person when they were born and spent less money than this. And at the same time we would get rid of a lot of folks doing useless overhead simply because the system is so complex.

For those reasons and more I like the UBI idea.

But ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. We need about a thousand different experiments -- ran for 10 or 20 years -- before we can begin to start saying what might work or not work. When I look at other charitable causes (aid to Africa comes to mind first), the rhetoric got way out ahead of the actual results for many, many decades. Tons of time, effort, and money were spent on strategies that didn't work but sounded pretty cool. We'd be idiots not to recognize that this is the danger here too.

The first question we have to ask is this: What is UBI? Is it a reliable income _in place_ of a bunch of other services? Or is it _in addition_ to a bunch of other services? The difference matters. Once that's defined, I sure would like to see if a majority of people doing nothing "rubs off" on ambitious, driven people. Or maybe it works the other way around. Maybe a small percentage of ambitious, driven people, in a society without external pressures, can persuade more and more folks to find meaning in helping others. Beats me. Sure will be fun to learn more.

Slogans are great. Results are better.

<comment><USER39> >If you'd just let the banks fail, you could have spent the same money giving everybody

The bailouts were asset swaps, repaid with a gain for the taxpayer [1]. They were not cash giveaways. Comparing this to simply giving cash to people is ludicrous.

The most at risk was about 2T, with only 650B actually out at any time, which at your claim of 20K per person, only pays for 32 million people. You're off by an order of magnitude (completely ignoring that the bailouts were asset swaps, not giveaways).

>Hate poverty? The U.S. has spent more than 5 Trillion on it over the last few decades. That's another 20K or so per man, woman, and child

Over the course of _decades_. It's not 20K in a year. It's more like 1/40th ($500) of that a year. And the only places I can find a number this large includes Medicare/SS payouts. Are you going to remove these programs (especially Mecicare/Medicaid) with your conversion to a once in a lifetime check per person?

> The national debt is closing in on 20T. Would you rather have a balanced > budget and a check for 100K?

That's nonsense. Adding massively more to spending via UBI is not going to balance the budget or reduce the debt, and I don't know what magic lets you take 20T of debt (the biggest holder being SS, and large amounts to the Fed and loans to US investors, such as retirement funds) and simply divide by 320M people to get 100K (actually, this is 62.5K) in a check. Nothing in this line of numerology makes any sense. These uses are nowhere near exchangeable.

>(I understand the math is way fuzzy here. It's to make a point.)

The math isn't fuzzy. It's simply wrong, from the starting values, to the calculations, to the conclusions.

>The reason UBI has such broad appeal is that, well, people are able to do basic math.

Unfortunately this basic math is not coupled to reality, ignores very important and well tested economic ideas backed by 100+ years of empirical data, and is ignores the downsides and costs involved.

And so far, I fail to see many UBI proponents that are able to do basic math. A few can, but mostly they are full of numerology and ignoring the _meaning_ of various amounts.

I've yet to see a UBI that doesn't either require massive tax hikes to the point of possibly destroying the economy or leave those needing assistance now in much worse shape.

>Slogans are great. Results are better.

Intellectually honest claims checking is better, and it helps avoid chasing impossible or unlikely or destructive plans.

[1] [https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/](https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/)

<comment><USER38> You seem to be in search of an argument. I will not provide you with one.

Yes, the math is plain wrong. No, it does not change the point. I am not writing an essay or presenting a white paper on UBI. Heck, I'm not even supporting UBI except in terms of "let's experiment"

So that was a wonderful tear down of my math, which I expected, but it doesn't change my thesis any: whatever amount of money you would like to provide for good causes, a good case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide that money directly to everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the system, no complex system of administration.

I'm not in favor of massive tax hikes. I'm also not in favor of bandying around the slogan "UBI". As I said, until there's some real policy there, it looks attractive on the surface. I outlined the reasons why it looks attractive. That's about all we can say about it right now.

<comment><USER39> >whatever amount of money you would like to provide for good causes, a good case can be made to eliminate the middleman and provide that money directly to everybody -- no qualifying, no overhead, no gaming the system, no complex system of administration.

This is my main disagreement with UBI. Resources (money) is limited, and providing the same social help to all regardless of need necessarily hurts those most in need and helps those in the least of need.

Your argument to make a simple system can be applied to many places it makes life worse - should we everything and all at the same rate? Experience shows that progressive taxes is probably a big benefit overall, and certainly tax incentives can and do have benefits. I think providing basic assistance, since resources are not enough to simply give everyone goods, should be targeted to minimize human suffering, and providing free cash to those that can work in lieu of providing it to those that honestly cannot is inhumane.

You dislike the middleman, but again, middlemen are vastly beneficial in many cases, and likely are here too, to distribute limited resources in a way to do the most good. And the overall cost of the middlemen is small compared to the amount passed out. UBI would also require a decent amount of administration, so it's not completely without admin.

>I outlined the reasons why it looks attractive

Sure, free money untethered to reality is attractive. The problem is the attractiveness fades when one is tasked with explaining how the money is obtained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I see two basic issues:

1\. How do you implement this whithout border control - if you create a basic income that is higher than ~1/2 the world's income the amount of illegal immigration will be huge

2\. Will we really have the will to tell people who are starving because they lost their stipend to drugs or gambling "too bad"?

<comment><USER41> 1\. Most likely the UBI would only go to legal permanent residents.

2\. It's at least no worse than today for those people. Support groups will still exist. If you distribute money frequently (e.g. weekly) it might help a little in preventing catastrophic situations where people lose it all. My concern here is that the payday loan industry grows instead of shrinking (tough to predict these types of things).

<comment><USER40> 1\. while that is likely the case, since we grant citizenship to those born here (who i believe can then sponsor their family), the obvious choice would be to move here illegally and have children.

2\. many current programs today limit what can be bought (SNAPS) or provide the service directly (low income housing), that's not to say there are not ways around this or that dollars are not fungible, but I do think there is difference

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How does a universal basic income work from economics stand point? Let's say everyone gets $1000/mo. Currently the market knows that everyone has $10 and prices bread accordingly at $1.50. Tomorrow the market will know that everyone has $1010 and will price the bread at $100. Thus everything from food to utilities to rent gets adjusted to the new normal and the poor can't still afford the basics. Is this theory not correct?

<comment><USER36> Take a step further. Let's say on day 1 of the basic income age all the bread merchants raise their price to $100.

One smart bread merchant will probably say "Hey I used to sell this for $1.50, I can do better than $100" and prices it at $90. Now everyone buys bread from him.

The other merchants feel the price pressure and the cycle continues, with the price settling down to something likely higher than $1.50 (to reflect the increased price of labor input as a result of basic income) but not so high that it totally eats the increased income.

So yes, things will cost more after basic income (after all you'd likely need some sort of inflation to find the money to give away). But in an efficient market they will not cost so much more than people are not still effectively richer than they were before. It does not change the intrinsic value of most things, it just makes certain inputs (namely labor) more expensive.

<comment><USER42> In other words, utilities and commodities will always hover around cost price due to market forces and hence the poor will be able to afford the basics. There might be other non essentials that might become more expensive to absorb the extra money in the market, but we would have mostly likely solved a bigger problem. Makes sense. I still worry about housing.

<comment><USER36> Housing is interesting because it's one of the few things we buy that is priced mostly around our ability to pay for it rather than the value of what we are buying. That's why in SF it seems that housing prices rise in lock step with wages in the dominant industry (tech).

So while it's very likely that the cost of housing will increase in this situation, again I think people will still be better off overall. People will have increased purchasing power for non-housing goods and still pay the same percentage of their income for housing, even if that is now a percentage of a larger number.

<comment><USER42> Also education cost spiked because of easy availability of student loans. Could there be many more products/areas like this?

<comment><USER43> > Also education cost spiked because of easy availability of student loans. > Could there be many more products/areas like this?

Anything that isn't provided by a freely competitive market can be like this in the long term, and anything where the supply side can't quickly respond to demand-side changes can be like it in the short term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> When I think about it from a business perspective, the advantage is not just smaller government but workforce flexibility. If I only have 20 extra hours of work some weeks, there is no way I am hiring another person full time. With a basic income in place, I can hire someone at market rates just for those 20 hours without all of the stress for both parties. Still not perfect, but much better.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't see how the government can be shrunk, short of violent collapse. UBI will be introduced, and not a single government program will be dropped, not a single government official laid off; wars, bailouts and $500 toilet seats will continue, but we'll have to tax, borrow or print a few more billions (or trillions, in the case of US-sized economies - I live in a small country).

</comment><comment><USER46> All of this is basically moot, because while the average person's entitlements might stay the same or increase due to a basic income to cover the things entitlements currently cover (we won't need to hand out food stamps if we have a basic income, for example), every other person's entitlements they rely on will get cut as a result, and those people (and there are at least tens of millions of them) will raise unholy hell about it.

There's the 10% for each entitlement that _need_ the full entitlement, and there are dozens of entitlements, hundreds, so 10% of hundreds of programs will just be too many people to allow a basic blanket income to cover their entitlements.

All that said, my favorite version of this is the "negative income tax". We have something kind of like it already, but the EITC would have to be expanded significantly before it was actually something like a negative income tax, and that means cuts to other programs.

</comment><comment><USER47> Looks like this topic needs a serious longitudal study. This being a hot political topic virtually guarantees no one will conduct one.

</comment><comment><USER48> The more free money printing is going on, the more I'm incentivized to buy/use Bitcoins from my hard work's money. UBI centralizes power to the money printers even more, gives a little to those who don't work (for their votes), and takes even more money away from those who work. Still, this can go on only with central banking.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think this is sort of the apotheosis of the concept that money is the universally effective solution to all problems.

Money is not the universally effective solution to health care in this country. We already spend double, as a percent of GDP ,compared to any other country.

I think we're going to run into some problems on the supply side with a universal basic income. Some prices will rise due to increased consumption. This will make capital investment (e.g Research and Development, New Factories, Upgrading Production Equipment) more costly. Eventually you'll burn the furniture to heat the house and then things will start to fall apart and get into an inflationary spiral. It does have the benefit going for it that it is less complex to administer though, while our health care system is enormously complex and grows ever more complex with the more money that gets spent on it.

</comment><comment><USER50> > And they fear that a basic income would, in the end, be less than what many > people get when all the federal government's cash and social-service > programs are combined.

Note that the poor will obviously get fewer benefits if BI is only funded from cuts to programs the benefit the poor.

Example: lets say we eliminate program X that currently has a means test limiting it to the poorest 20% of the population. If we, as the article suggests, use that money to fond some fraction of BI for the poorest 80% of the population, then one can trivially see that we have distributed 3/4 of the money for program X away from the poorest 20%.

Now there are significant savings from reducing overhead, but unless program X is 75% overhead, it's still a net loss in realized benefits for the poor.

In order to make BI palatable to the US left, you will need to fund it at least partly through raising taxes.

</comment><comment><USER51> The basic problem that makes universal basic income impossible is that it's simply not possibly to set the level of it. Have a try:

1\. What should UBI be in San Francisco? 2\. What should UBI be in Detroit? 3\. Should they be the same? 4\. What happens if they're not the same? 5\. What happens if they're the same?

<comment><USER52> 1\. $10,000. 2. $10,000 3. Yes. 4. They would be. 5. All of the proposed benefits of UBI.

<comment><USER51> 1\. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in San Francisco? 2\. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in Detroit? 3\. Why? 4\. See 3. 5\. What are the proposed benefits of UBI?

<comment><USER53> No, it's about having enough to live in the USA. Not about having enough to live where you want at your special snowflake standard of living.

Yes, you may only get enough to live awesome in "the middle of nowhere" or whatever. So what? If you want to live in San Fran, find a way to get the money to live there.

<comment><USER51> So under UBI, if someone in San Francisco, NYC, DC, Seattle, etc. loses their job, they should move to rural Wisconsin?

<comment><USER54> Yes. Why not? When they do, it'll cause rent to drop in San Fran, NYC, DC and Seattle. The US has a staggering amount of available land. The problem with real estate is that prices are high where the jobs are located. With basic income you no longer have to live where the jobs are and can move around freely.

<comment><USER51> >When they do, it'll cause rent to drop in San Fran, NYC, DC and Seattle.

No it won't, no more than today.

>With basic income you no longer have to live where the jobs are and can move around freely.

Poor people are already "free" to not live in places they can't afford, and instead live in places with poor access to education and healthcare and jobs, and as such have reduced life expectancy. Your plan to use UBI to re-locate and segregate poor is no improvement compared to the current situation.

<comment><USER54> I live in Canada so I always take health care for granted in these sorts of discussions. Knowing this, it should come as no shock to you that I also support universal health care.

What may be less obvious is that I also support universal education and in Canada we also generally have that, at least as far as K-12 goes. If I were a parent, my children would have access to the same quality of public education in a small rural town as they would in a rich area of Toronto.

<comment><USER55> _If I were a parent, my children would have access to the same quality of public education in a small rural town as they would in a rich area of Toronto._

Is this true in reality or just in principle? An area with more students can naturally better afford to offer programs that are of limited interest, because they will still have lots of students that are interested. An area with less students probably can't spend money on things that are only of interest to 1 or 2 students.

It's not true in either sense in the US, localized funding for schools is presented as the more fair solution.

<comment><USER54> It's true in reality. We don't have localized funding for schools in Canada; we fund them province-wide. The small rural school gets the same funding per student as the big city school. The difference between the smallest schools and the biggest schools is not that much so rural kids have a longer bus ride to get to school. They don't have to sacrifice on programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think the issue with BI is that no matter how many things are automated and how many items become abundent there are still things that will remain scarce: land, minerals. Land will remain a scarce resource and all things that depend primarily on land will remain scarce (housing, agriculture, etc.).

And in this situation there is nothing stopping land owners from absorbing the basic income. This means that revenue generated by land owning (not necessarily land owning itself) would have to be heavily taxed. Maybe even taxed progressively to avoid economies of scale in land owning and prevent a very few from owning all the land.

Or we could terraform celestial bodies in the Solar system.

It is important to note that land itself is limited, not housing. As long as we can continue building even higher and deeper housing is not actually limited.

<comment><USER57> For this reason, I think Basic income really only makes sense when paired with land value tax (LVT) and rent caps, which would prevent that problem. Both already work well in other economies in Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> You could look at Sweden here for a reference. Everyone does not get a fixed sum of money but everyone can get social services to help out if you are unemployed thou the amount of money vary from situation to situation. This and other things like everyone has a right to schools, universities and health care does not come for free however. 25% tax on products, salary tax 30-55% on different salary ranges + ~15% on top for pension plan and state tax that the employee never sees that the company pays. So sure it can work but it's not cheap and it builds on that everyone should get a job. If people lost interest in that and unemployment would raise more, that would be bad...

</comment><comment><USER59> A basic income fails on the same point as increasing the minimum wage - neither provides much additional opportunity in life, both simply make being poor and disenfranchised more palatable.

</comment><comment><USER60> The next big thing, after the $15 minimum wage, should be the 8 hour day and the 40 hour week. Everybody gets overtime, unless you're in the 1%.

The whole "exempt" thing needs to go.

<comment><USER61> I agree that everyone who goes over 40 hours should get overtime, but I also think the standard work week should be reduced from 40 hours.

<comment><USER60> One step at a time. A 40 hour work week is politically sellable. After all, we used to have it, so it's "conservative".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Why is that ubi is considered the next big thing, while people on welfare are usually looked down upon? In the current (optimistic) horizon it might seem like a good idea, but a recession could easily spin this the wrong way imho. If you don't contribute by working and paying taxes on your income, there can be a problem when a stressed actor comes asking to justify your ubi. OTOH, if you do need to work either way, why not tweak the current distribution system and include ubi money in wages.

<comment><USER63> The reason many (not me) look down on things like welfare is they are not personally and directly benefitting while some other person is and they aren't perceived as working to deserve the benefit.

The idea with UBI is that you no longer make the government assistance a merit based assistance and instead everyone gets it equally. For those with large incomes the small amount of UBI will be a pittance. For those with little or no income it will be a lifeline. In both cases the amount would be exactly the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think the idea of a basic income is really interesting though one aspect of it troubles me and I would be interested to hear HN's solutions to it. The trouble lies in the creative and economic relationship. If a substantial number of people reduce or stop their usual working hours and live off the income to pursue entirely creative activities, such as making a website or art, they are exempt from the usual capitalist status quo which forces a venture to be good, popular and eventually profitable (there is no standard of quality necessary as long as its overheads are not too high). This could mean a substantial number of people are neither creating wealth through work or taxable business.

One counter-argument is that by freeing up people to pursue their interests, there will be more good businesses opened as well, which will be profitable in the long run. The other is that a person would not pursue a project that is not well-received for a long period of time due to negative feedback.

Neither of these fully answers the problem though of what the system would do to stop people falling off the economic grid and the impact on GDP/taxable income this would have. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER9> I think most people will continue to work, simply because people generally like having more money. What will stop is degrading bullshit jobs for little pay. Businesses that rely on those jobs will disappear, unless they manage to make their jobs more attractive. Businesses will have to work harder to attract employees, because employees are less desperate for work. More of the profit will go to employees, less to upper management and shareholders. I think that's a good thing.

Unless those jobs can be automated completely, of course. But then, GDP is fine, taxes will probably focus more on corporations, and people will be freed from the degrading bullshit jobs, free to look for something better. And that, I think, is also a good thing. Let the robots do the stupid work, while we're off doing more fun stuff.

Make sure technology makes everybody's lives better. Isn't that the entire point?

<comment><USER64> My concern is perhaps not with this generation but the next. I don't think anybody who is used to working and the lifestyle that it allows would seek a massive reduction in income to pursue something frivolous, but it is easy to imagine an entire group of people entering the job-market for the first time having no inclination to work for a job, when their own hobbies and interests can be sated without the need to be profitable. Which needless to say would be economically damaging in the long run

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I make more than $100,000 a year, but I'd gladly quit if I had a basic income that let me lay around at home all day and read library books.

<comment><USER66> And you would be replaced by someone who likes to travel to tropical beaches to sit and read books all day :)

<comment><USER67> It would reduce the supply of highly skill labour, which would reduce the amount of goods/services produced, and as a consequence, the amount of wealth the world gets to consume. You're making the 'lump of labour fallacy' in assuming that someone will just take his stop with no loss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is something else to consider too: The political party that brings this in will likely be in power for a really long time!

Think about the consequences: Even if it was proven financial suicide for the country (Governments can always print more money I suppose and let the next generation deal with the fallout), what political party would have a manifesto abolishing or reducing it? It would be political suicide.

<comment><USER68> It already is political suicide to mention cutting any entitlement. This is the fundamental flaw of democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I'm for basic income, however looking beyond it - whats really necessary is to be able to let each person discover their (productive) passion to be able to contribute and exchange their time and labor for some unit of value. 99% of people will still be competing for the same thing - food, housing, transportation, low level luxuries. With demand getting stronger, UNLESS the people receiving basic income get creative and produce the things they need, expanding the pie, the prices for them will go up.

Overall, tastes are infinite, I'd love to drive a tesla and live in a (multi?)million dollar mansion, but I can't. They are too expensive for me - meaning my work and labor doesn't produce enough value (or may be not valued appropriately - but this a whole other topic) to exchange for those things I want. If we want more people to drive teslas and live in mansions, everybody who will be getting UBI needs to get productive to increase the amounts of teslas and mansions in existence.

</comment><comment><USER70> This concept would simply create inflation.

Image everyone has $10 on island A. Island B sells coconuts and the going rate for a coconut is $1. Based on other bills the islanders need to pay for, $1 fits the average budget and is what people are willing to pay for coconuts.

Now make everyone on island A have $100. The demand for coconuts rises but people on island B soon realize they can make more money by raising prices even though they sell less units. They eventually increase the price of coconuts to $10 because that ends up being the price point at which the Island B people are making the most money.

Therefore by increasing the income of everyone by a factor of 10, you end up increase the prices by a factor of 10. There is some lag time where prices will balance out though, so if you just kept doing this every month you might have a period of faux prosperity but you would also be creating runaway inflation.

<comment><USER71> We would not be increasing everyone's income by the same factor. People with less money would see their income rise by a larger factor than people with more money. Thus, for example, if you have $0 pre-BI and $X post-BI, with X > 0, there's no amount of inflation that will cancel out the fact that you've benefited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I would be for this but I'm afraid that once all the other programs are dismantled, food stamps, welfare etc, that the poor might end up getting less support than they did before.

I try hard not to be cynical, but I wonder if this isn't a ruse to accomplish exactly that.

I mean the US is known for being "frugal" when it comes to helping people. See the medical system for example, or the treatment that veterans get. Why the sudden surge in generosity, why the sudden desire to redistribute income?

Weren't these anathema just recently, even to some democrats?

Also the fact that it keeps coming up in the media makes me slightly suspicious.

Why is this being promoted so much right now? I bet there are PR firms out there calling newspaper reporters and bloggers, to promote coverage of this idea on behalf of who knows which group or organization. [1]

[1]: [http://www.prwatch.org/](http://www.prwatch.org/)

</comment><comment><USER73> A basic income could make low-pay jobs more interesting than ever, and companies could benefit from it.

In most developed EU countries, a "social" income is given to unemployed people. In Belgium, it varies between 550€/month and 850€/month, depending on the situation. People lose this income as soon as they start to work, that means that a part-time job with an income of about 1000€/month is really unattractive. With a basic income, unemployed workers could be stimulated to accept this kind of low-pay jobs, as the pay will add up to their basic income.

With the increase of productivity we got in the last 50 years, the hours worked by low-skilled workers must be lowered, or we will face endlessly increasing unemployment rates. An universal basic income can stimulate this.

</comment><comment><USER74> This isn't why we would do it, but only 1 in 10,000 'unemployed' citizens need make a significant contribution to open source or some kind of theoretical discovery to make Basic Income a bargain investment for society as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER75> This is such a nice distraction from solving any real issues. While people are debating basic income wages will keep stagnating and big companies are hoarding money in tax shelters. But hey, let's discuss basic income.

</comment><comment><USER76> Land value tax. Basic income will raise rents. Tax land not labour.

[http://www.landvaluetax.org/what-is-lvt/](http://www.landvaluetax.org/what- is-lvt/)

</comment><comment><USER77> Surely $833 a month ($10,000 a year) still wouldn't be even close to enough for someone who is unemployed to live? Wouldn't rent and bills use that up, without leaving anything for food, clothing etc? I love the idea of universal basic income, but I feel it would need to be double the amount proposed in this article to really change society for the better. Otherwise people will still need to resort to crime to extra money, seeing as there are going to be even less jobs in the future.

<comment><USER36> While I also find it hard to believe, the Federal Poverty Line is $11,880 for individuals. If you make $12k a year you are not considered to be in poverty (if you live alone).

So yes, 10k a year would still leave people below the current poverty line. But over 45 million americans already live below the poverty line. So evidence suggest it actually is enough to survive by some standard and may be a good place to start since it's likely that people will be able to find some supplementary income through work.

In the long term the goal would be to significantly increase quality of living for all and hopefully change the horrifying numbers I just presented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> 10,000 isn't basic income its like slightly more than welfare for a basic income to be meaningful in a city like los angeles you're talking at least 70k if a person has even any hope of having a roommate situation. The other alternative is to give everybody everything they need in life at no cost, but 10k in los angeles is a joke, if they tax it you're talking still talking about having a choice between food and a youth hostel bed on that low an income.

<comment><USER66> You wouldn't need to live in a city like Los Angeles. Without job security to tie you to a location, you would move to areas of the country/state where cost of living was lowest.

Additionally, if you wanted to live a middle class lifestyle, you would have a job. That's the incentive to keep working. The basic income is to keep people at an above-poverty income level, not to keep everyone at middle class. In fact, the mere definition of the term means you couldn't have everyone at middle class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The Bloomberg version of basic income means a minimal payment and an end to most need-based welfare programs. The guy who drinks up his benefits can just die on the street.

</comment><comment><USER79> One thing that strikes me as a bit off is that there are a massive amount people that are "retired" but want to work. While I get that basic income is intended for a segment of the population that's able to work, seems like including a massive segment of the population that's already receiving basic income via social security AND wants to work would provide a lot of data for just the cost of measuring it; meaning the basic income is already covered.

</comment><comment><USER80> Abolish all welfare, phase out social security, and have the poor rely on private charities. If people don't want to donate to the charities that's their choice, it's their money. You're not entitled to money, food, a home, or a job -- you're entitled to nothing. You're entitled to starve in the gutter. If you want something more you have to earn it or have someone voluntarily agree to give it to you out of their own free will.

<comment><USER36> If you live in the United States, that's not the social contract we've agreed upon and you should leave if you feel that way. As a citizen of the US we have decided to collect taxes to provide certain services for the common good.

You are free to fend for yourself in many parts of the world. But not if you like that blue passport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Negative. Those with money will fight like hell to keep from giving it up. However if by some chance/miracle a guaranteed income is ever instituted, it will become a political football, as politicians and advocacy groups seek to continuously push it higher and higher. Instead of a money handout, I would rather support money in exchange for public works and service. I don't believe handouts without some kind of exchange will ever really work.

<comment><USER82> The primary problem with a guaranteed employment program is the proliferation of edge cases:

\- I want a job, but I have no transportation

\- I want a job, but I have no skills

\- I want the money from a job, and I'm willing to show up to a job, but I never actually do the work. If you fire me, I will go get another guaranteed job.

\- I show up to the job and do the work, but my manager hates me and fires me. I guess I will go get another guaranteed job.

\- I show up to the job and do the work, but all the managers in this town have an unspoken agreement that they will report people of my (skin color, gender, orientation, whatever) as not doing the work, so I have been fired multiple times.

\- Bureaucracy managing the guaranteed jobs program replaces the bureaucracy managing the programs eliminated by Basic Income.

I'm in favor of more spending on maintenance and public works, but I don't think a guaranteed jobs program will work as well as basic income.

<comment><USER81> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Side question: what prevents a basic income from being a driving force behind an inflation jump making the system less stable?

For example: rent. Wouldn't landlords managing properties at the low end of the market price, raise those prices knowing people both 1. have more distribution control over their money (cash vs. coupons for things) and 2. More people in their target market have cash to pay.

</comment><comment><USER84> Why not have repayable assistance? The government gives you money for up to 5 years until you get a job, and then you have to pay the government back. You pay the government back a small percentage of your monthly paycheck, say 0.05%, no interest. It's basically an interest free loan with a long repayment schedule. But at least the government gets something back.

</comment><comment><USER67> Entrenching authoritarianism should NOT be the next big thing.

Compulsory basic income requires throwing people who refuse to hand over currency they receive in private trade in prison, where they are kept in small enclosures, and often develop mental illness, and suffer physical and sexual abuse. Techies should not support such a dark, authoritarian vision for the future.

<comment><USER85> I don't understand your comment. By "hand over currency they receive in private trade" are you referring to taxes? Taxes already exist without basic income. The punishment for tax evasion does not necessarily have to increase because of basic income.

<comment><USER67> Yes. Specifically, I'm referring to taxes on income and sales. A basic income would most likely require taxes to increase and at the very least will make us more dependent on these taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> The simple answer is : A subsidy of such large proportions is not economically viable for the Govt.

</comment><comment><USER87> A universal basic income is inferior to a job guarantee:

[http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/07/09/how-big-is- big...](http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/07/09/how-big-is-big-enough- would-the-basic-income-guarantee-satisfy-the-unemployed/)

[http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/16-reasons- matt-y...](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/16-reasons-matt- yglesias-wrong-job-guarantee-vs-basic-income.html)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3ne2iu/randall...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3ne2iu/randall_wray_mmt_economist_against_basic_income/)?

[http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=13025](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=13025)

<comment><USER88> A job guarantee like they had it in the the former [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc) ?

<comment><USER87> No, that was under a communist dictatorship.

That was 100% government employment to the exclusion of the private purpose.

It was a centrally planned economy where the government determined what everyone should do at all times.

A Job Guarantee, on the other hand (which I'll explain because you obviously didn't look at any of the links I posted in my initial comment, but rather went off your pre-existing opinions) is a guarantee by the government that if the private sector will not or can not employ someone, they will be given a good job by the government.

I won't bother providing additional links, you're obviously only interested in dealing with straw men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Although I advocate the empowerment of the impoverished, this looks like a very fundamentally flawed idea that would actually harm those it sets out to help. We need a different approach.

When you give everyone in the economy a $10000 basic income you drive demand without driving supply. This graph[1] demonstrates how we _estimate_ the relationship between the two, as well as price. As you'll notice, an increase in demand without an associated increase in supply results in an increase in prices. Essentially we might expect that over time the $10000, with market forces as the causation, will become the new N=0 point. Your basic salary becomes worthless. Any economic freedoms that you have created are fleeting in nature.

A stricter socialist approach seems to be the better one: instead of investing that money into people's pockets, you invest it in job creation in services that assist these people. For example: aggressive funding of soup kitchens. The poorest of the poorest might not have money in their pockets, but it might be possible to provide even advanced (e.g. internet) services to them in such a way that they don't require money. This solution conveys no economic freedom - an ingredient for misery.

Point is: I don't know and honestly, _we_ don't know.

Helping the impoverished is one of the most important goals of our race; but racing into poorly thought out solutions _might_ result in the impoverished being no better off in the long run. I'd love to hear some counterarguments because the basic salary, at least superficially, has the attractive quality of being simple to implement.

[1]: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Su...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Supply- and-demand.svg/2000px-Supply-and-demand.svg.png)

<comment><USER90> What's the net economic difference between giving someone $5, which they then spend on soup, and spending $5 to buy soup on their behalf? None. Same for spending $10000 on someone's behalf via services, versus simply giving them $10000 which they then spend on the same services. Who holds the taxpayer provided money when making the final sale for goods or services is moot.

In both cases you're driving up demand, which is what in turn drives up supply. Supply doesn't magically materialize - either someone pays for it with money, or someone pays for it with time not spent earning money, to provide those services or products. As your own graph demonstrates, quantity goes up regardless. What's your "new N=0 point" on the graph?

My point here is not that there aren't issues with funding demand for services with inelastic supply (where large increases in price only lead to small increases in quantity, meaning little good was done.) There are such issues. Instead, my point is that these are _not UBI specific issues_. They're valid concerns with housing programs and rent controls today, for example.

The real difference of consideration between UBI vs other social welfare programs (when taken as a whole), is how demand might _change_ (lowering in some places while increasing in others) when the ones actually consuming the services get to direct where the dollars are spent, instead of government policymakers.

In theory, replacing social welfare programs with UBI might drive demand away from elastically supplied goods and services, towards inelasticly supplied goods and services. It's far from a given, though - we have plenty of existing government programs for such inelastic things as housing. If you see some fundamental flaw of UBI that would cause demand to shift this way, I've missed it, so please do share.

I'm more concerned by the other factors:

On the one hand, those in need of services in many cases the ones in the best position to know what they need, so the money for those services may be spent more efficiently - especially if there's less waste in red tape bureaucracy, from government organizations unfettered from the pressures of capitalism.

On the other, if you haven't learned how to manage your money, don't know about the things that could best help your situation, or are in the grips of addiction, it may be difficult for you to spend your money wisely.

My understanding is that direct cash influxes to the poor in 3rd world countries has worked pretty well. It's not _perfectly_ analogous to helping out the poor in 1st world countries via UBI, but I'm fairly hopeful it's analogous enough.

<comment><USER89> > What's your "new N=0 point" on the graph?

In essence I meant that, in a construed way, the buying power of $10000 would approach the same buying power as the pittance that the impoverished have today. Your argument was very educational so I have to do some more thinking about this and may discard that point. Thanks for the food for thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> The problem is, this doesn't happen in a vacuum: how do you prevent rent- seeking and COL inflation? Not universal basic income works in a free market, you may have to control prices directly in order to do it.

</comment><comment><USER92> Does such tests as the one made in Kenya make sense at all? Having external money injected into local economy will have a different effect that taxing that economy and then redistributing part of it in form of UBI.

</comment><comment><USER93> Let people fend off for themselves. That's what we do anyways when terror strikes. Imagine a post acolypatic world everyone fends for themselves are work hard for it.

</comment><comment><USER94> Find a way to do it without using force, or threat of force, and I'll be on board. Otherwise, any UBI proposal is a non-starter in my book.

</comment><comment><USER95> Problem is there's a large number of people who work hard, produce and frankly don't look too kindly on those who don't. Why is it so hard to understand that when we don't have to do something, a lot of people won't do anything but frivolous non productive activities, while unabashedly leeching off those who like to work for profit, progress and frankly to make life interesting for them, their community and the future of all.

</comment><comment><USER96> OK, so you introduce UBI. Yay! Now what happens to all the social workers employed by the city (say, SF)? Remember: SF spends ~$35K/homeless/year. Who pays when a homeless guy ODs and needs hospitalization? Right now government housing is subsidized for the poor (some people in SF pay $35/mo for a 2BR government apartment). Do we still have these subsidies after UBI? What about food stamps? And the 10M+ illegal immigrants?

</comment><comment><USER97> I will say that if the US ever got a basic income, I wouldn't have a reason to kill myself anymore.

<comment><USER67> Living on money taken by force from others is an easy solution, but it is not an ethical one. If you feel like you have a reason to kill yourself, you need to find someone to talk to about this, not look to the government, and the fruits of its authority, for your salvation. It's not lack of resources that makes someone suicidal. It's a deficiency in your ability to address the challenges you face in your life.

Again: the solution is to talk to someone. There are many who go through what you do, and there are many people out there who can help. You're not alone.

</comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin communism. everybody was forced to have a job, hence income. once you leave market forces driving the direction and try to force some righteous system down the throat of whole society, no exceptions taken, many bad things will happen. a lot of very unfair situations will occur in the system that aims to do the opposite.

I mean, by all means, do it, experiment on your society, take all the risks foreseen and unforeseen. if you manage to make first 50 years in glory (or 100 to be sure), you have my attention. just please, please don't shove it down my throat in country where me or my family lives. Please. Thank you.

where is the push for better education and more accessible healthcare? Fixing those guarantees a brighter future for mankind, period. this is roulette where you can lose a lot, gain a lot too.

</comment><comment><USER98> Will universal basic income take into account relative cost of living per geographical area? If so, why isn't the same done with income tax. If no, why then is it really a universal basic income / all that useful?

<comment><USER99> Many states, counties and cities in the United States already leverage their own income taxes in addition to federal income taxation. How about we let the same states, counties, and cities decide if they want to provide their own basic income addendum. And they might need to if the BI amount is great enough that a janitor in Seattle, or a maid in SF no longers sees a reason to live anywhere near a big city for a job that barely covers their financial needs, needs imposed on them by living in a big city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> First world problems.

</comment><comment><USER101> Testing

</comment><comment><USER101> I agree

</comment><comment><USER102> There isn't huge support. Step out of the bubble...

It's just the new generation of kids flirting with communism.

<comment><USER2> I think you may not have it perfectly clear in your mind what "communism" means.

<comment><USER102> Perhaps you need to convince the public that having a large government handing out a specific allowance to everyone regardless of how hard they work, is somehow different to communism.

<comment><USER2> So far as I can tell, "the public" has this perfectly clear. (Or at least as clear as "the public" ever has anything, which is not necessarily all that clear.) I think what you mean is that I need to convince _you_.

I've no idea what (if anything) you would accept as evidence. Here's the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page on communism; feel free to check that the [...]s don't hide anything that changes the meaning.

> [...] communism [...] is a[...] ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is > the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order > structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the > absence of social classes, money, and the state.

Does a universal basic income cause, or require, _common ownership of the means of production_? Nope. The means of production stay largely in the hands of businesses (or, as the communists might say, of Capital). Does it involve _the absence of social classes_? Nope. Successful lawyers (say) will continue to have much, much more money and much higher social status than anyone who's largely dependent on basic income. Does it involve _the absence of money_? Nope. It depends on the continued existence of money. Does it involve _the absence of the state_? Nope. It depends on the continued existence of the state.

Well, who cares what those pinko loons at Wikipedia say? Communism is whatever they had in the Soviet Union. How about that?

Well, in the Soviet Union they had a _centrally planned economy_ where the government told factories how many of everything to make, etc. Does a universal basic income cause or require that? Nope. Businesses continue to decide what to make and what to sell at what prices; individual consumers continue to decide what to buy. ("But a basic income would require a _big government_!" Well, kinda, in that the government would be taking in more tax and handing out more money. But that's got nothing to do with central planning. A basic income wouldn't mean that the government would do more of the _work_ ; if anything, it should be less because the BI would replace a bunch of other more complicated benefits that require more administrative work to make sure they're going to the "right" people.) In the Soviet Union they had a _totalitarian state_ with secret police, gulags, etc. Does a universal basic income require that? Nope. Obviously. The Soviet Union had _undemocratic politics_ where the Communists were always in power. Does a universal basic income require that? Nope. Obviously.

"Communism" does not mean the same as "anything vaguely leftish that I don't like".

<comment><USER102> We'll have to agree to disagree. And as I say, step outside your bubble. The vast vast majority of the population reject basic income, in favour of a meritocracy, where the harder you work, the more money you can earn.

Confiscating money from everyone, and then distributing it equally amongst the population (Regardless of whether they need it or deserve it) doesn't sit very well with people.

<comment><USER99> >The vast vast majority of the population reject basic income, in favour of a meritocracy, where the harder you work, the more money you can earn.

Then the vast majority of the population are rejecting basic income for the wrong reasons. Nothing about basic income invalidates meritocracy. In fact I would say it strengthens it. No longer is the rat race composed of a hodgepodge of willing, unwilling, and incompetent workers. All the unwilling or incompetent workers drop out. Those that still work have reasons to work besides filling a seat for 8 hours so they can continue to afford a meal .

<comment><USER103> Mind explaining how intentionally reducing the explicit tangible rewards of personal merit strengthens a meritocracy?

Is critical thinking no longer a thing?

<comment><USER99> Would you mind explaining how you think anyone is "intentionally reducing the explicit tangible rewards of personal merit?"

<comment><USER103> In a meritocracy, people earn money by means reaping the rewards of their own personal merit.

The government has no money of its own. So, in order to fund these programs, it must first appropriate said money from the people who earned it in the first place.

This appropriation (taxation) is non-voluntary, and enforced by threat of violence (force of law).

When someone takes something from me by force that I would not otherwise be willing to give them, it is by definition theft.

Therefore, it would seem to me that taxation/theft is an intentional attempt by the government to reduce the rewards of my own personal merit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Millions can't even get health insurance in half of the entire USA (24 vs 26 states do not have medicaid expansion because the supreme court ruled it was okay to screw everyone over).

Good luck with this basic income fantasy. Might as well try to negotiate reparations for slavery.

How about you finish what was started FIRST - and don't give me this "we can do multiple things at the same time" nonsense. This is six years later. The need for health care is pretty much universally understood. Giving people free money would never get out of congress.

</comment><comment><USER105> 1\. USA could have PREVENTED [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia) had it initiated UBI in 1971 for rest of the world when it pegged dollar to OPEC Oil [http://www.zerohedge.com/print/502779](http://www.zerohedge.com/print/502779)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world) provides impetus to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

3\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority) will OPPOSE UBI because they fear you'll NOT be subservient to them

4\. UBI is prudent distribution of cash, not wealth</comment>


Ask HN: What kind of shape are the derivatives of OpenSolaris in? - <AUTHOR> What's the current shape of the OpenSolaris forks (Illumos, OpenIndiana etc)? I don't hear much talk about any of them on this site. Are we missing out?<p>(I enjoyed OpenSolaris when I used it for a while in 2009, but I gave up when Oracle took it over. I'd love to know what has happened to it since then.) <comment><USER2> As an biased illumos user, I believe that: yes, you might be missing out. ;-)

To give a quick overview on the ecosystem: everything is based around illumos as the upstream repository. There are different distributions similar what you have with linux on kernel.org and distros like ubuntu, suse, rhel, slackware. Instead of just the kernel the illumos repository also includes some libs and core system tools for userspace. The illumos distributions differentiate a bit more on use case than the linux ones.

\- SmartOS is designed as a cloud hypervisor. It is probably the most radical distribution in that it is a complete live system that boots from usb/network and runs in ram. With traditional zones, KVM and lx-branded zones it's a great system for virtualization.

\- OmniOS is a minimalistic server distribution. It best fits for bare metal installations.

\- NexentaStor is a storage appliance built on ZFS delivering unified file (NFS and SMB) and block (FC and iSCSI) storage

\- OpenIndiana continuation in the spirit of the original OpenSolaris, including a full GNOME desktop environment

\- tribblix gives you "retro style and modern components"

There are a few more but these should give you a good intro.

Besides a variety of community contributors there are some bigger companies involved. Joyent, a cloud provider, is doing most work on SmartOS. Nexenta has NexentaStor, OmniOS is build by OmniTI which does consulting. Delphix is a database company that mostly contributes to ZFS parts. Pluribus has a SDN product based on illumos. Lucera, financial service provider also runs on illumos and contributes.

So even without oracle there is a very healthy mix of different commercial and community contributors.

Features like advanced filesystem support (ZFS), systems tracing (dtrace), fully fledged containers (Zones), and software defined networking (Crossbow) make it a very interesting system.

New drivers are developed and many features evolve in illumos. The focus is mostly on x86 server hardware but I know folks also using openindiana on laptops.</comment>


Tldp.org does not respond anymore 8-o - <AUTHOR> This sounds like a very bad news for the GNU / Linux community. TLDP was a true biblio place of GNU / Linux knowledge :-/ <comment><USER2> Working for me</comment>