Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://simulacrum.cc/2013/07/10/three-trends-that-push-us-towards-an-unconditional-basic-income/ <comment><USER4> > _" How would we pay for it? We could start by getting corporations to pay > their taxes."_

I don't know why people keep harping on corporate taxes. If anything, taxing corporations is _regressive_ \-- the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels.

Taxing corporations doesn't produce magic money -- it's still taxing people in the end, but it's the consumers. Far better is higher tax rates on investments, and higher taxes on the rich. We should be taxing the _people_ who _own_ the corporations, or are paid huge salaries by them -- that is, if you believe in progressive taxation.

<comment><USER5> > If anything, taxing corporations is regressive -- the taxes ultimately get > passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their > income levels.

Actually, the studies show that corporate taxes are essentially a proxy for the taxing the ultra-wealthy - a cut in the corporate tax rate is very similar to cutting the highest marginal income tax rate.

After all, if corporate taxes truly fell on the poor, Republicans wouldn't be for cutting them.

<comment><USER6> You started off with an interesting addition to the conversation, and I was hoping for a reference regarding the relationship between corporate taxes and the ultra-weathy, but instead I got a gratuitous, tired, over-used, boring, ad-hominem about Republicans that added nothing to conversation.

<comment><USER7> No he didn't. The national Republican Party is outspoken about raising taxes on lower income people, in "broadening the base". In the election-year expose of Romney's secret fundraising speeches, we learned about "the 49%" of Americans who don't pay taxes. Well, we didn't learn about it, it's a very common trope for conservative politicians.

It's no secret that Republicans largely support "base broadening", as well as less-overt attacks on the finances of the poor like their CURRENT attempts to divorce the farm bill from food stamps, to further cut food stamps.

You're trying to enforce some politically correct echo chamber where a national political party isn't responsible for their votes and their policy.

Republicans are _openly_ for raising taxes on the bottom 50% of Americans, are _openly_ for decreasing wealth transfer like foodstamps, welfare and unemployment, and are _openly_ for lowering (and abolishing) corporate taxes.

Those are their policies and it is utterly and totally fair to state that and reference it.

<comment><USER8> Yes he did.

Your comment and jellicle's comment are not quite the same thing.

Even then, you are painting some of the party's platform in a negative light without showing why exactly that is their platform to begin with nor why you consider them terrible ideas. Some of their reasons may be bad, but that doesn't mean all of their reasons are.

<comment><USER9> GOP Platform: "I've got mine, f __* you. "

<comment><USER10> Leftist Platform: "I'm taking yours, f* you."

Yeah, this line of discussion is going to get us far.

<comment><USER9> Let me be more specific:

Who is blocking comprehensive reform of the banking sector (which arguably drove not only the US into a recession, but the world as a whole)? Republicans

Draconian anti-abortion laws? Republics

Raising student loan interest rates while keeping lending rates to banks near zero? Republicans

Supporting egregious amounts of defense department spending (The US spends more on defense then the next 10 countries COMBINED; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures))? Republicans

Blocking immigration reform? Republicans

Trying to prevent the implementation of universal healthcare? Republicans.

I could go on, but it would be pointless.

<comment><USER6> If only these issues were as clear-cut as you seem to think they are.

There is plenty of evidence that the risky loans associated with the home mortgage crisis were motivated by federal policies advocated by Democrats such as the implicit guarantees associated with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The student loan debacle is another example of unintended consequences of government loan subsidies and there is considerable evidence that those subsidies are simply captured by the colleges and universities when they raise their rates.

Regarding defense spending, it isn't a surprise that the US spends lots of defense since the US basically provides a national defense capability for itself and most of its close allies. There is certainly plenty of ways to be more efficient on defense spending but Congressional support for inefficient defense spending is hardly a Republican phenomena. It is a systemic problem.

Anyone who thinks that the ACA is the be-all-and-end-all of healthcare systems is delusional. It is a bureaucratic nightmare riddled with stupid incentives, accounting flim-flam, and ridiculous complexity. Add to that the completely reasonable thought that the more appropriate location for these services, if they are going to be provided, is the states.

Immigration reform: Unending posturing from Democrats who seem to want no limits to immigration and Republicans who seem to want no immigration at all. On top of that, I don't think the public knows what it wants (i.e. no real grassroots consensus)

Abortion: I'm not going there other than to say neither Republicans nor Democrats are uniform in their opinions on this topic.

My basic philosophy is that neither party is acquitting itself with much distinction these days. It is foolish to think that the flaws in our public policy are the fault of either party alone -- they are both complicit.

<comment><USER11> The issues are pretty clear cut, the issue is you're getting bogged down by political party labels that have little meaning. If someone performs a bunch deregulation that's not a "left" position no matter what party they claim to be in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see no one in this active discussion has mentioned yet Charles Murray's book _In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State,_

[http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236](http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236)

in which Murray goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone would cost in the United States, and some probable effects that would have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it was published.

Murray's own summary of his argument

[http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf](http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc242a.pdf)

and reviews of his book

[http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in- ou...](http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/in-our-hands-a- plan-to-replace-the-welfare-state-article/)

[http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.p...](http://www.conallboyle.com/BasicIncomeNewEcon/MurrayReview.pdf)

[http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focu...](http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2006/fall/pdf/book_review.pdf)

[http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296](http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=296)

may inform the discussion here. Big public policy proposals are not easy to discuss, but the big public policy proposal of a guaranteed basic income for all is a response to existing policy of supposedly targeted social welfare programs that are just about equally expensive, but more costly to administer.

<comment><USER13> The other problem with "targeted social welfare programs" is that it is very easy to dislike programs that someone else (particularly someone that you don't like) benefits from. A program that you yourself benefit from tends to be less likely to get eroded by future politicians.

Compare welfare and social security for a classic example of the difference.

<comment><USER14> This is my biggest concern with the idea, which I don't see being addressed (checked the entire conversation on this post to date). I don't think having the vote and having the basic income is compatible with each other. Why aren't people going to vote themselves larger basic incomes every year? How can you both have the (modern conception of the) vote, and a basic income at the same time?

Attempts to answer this question also need to deal with human beings as they are, not as they could be if we were all just really good and pure and all motivated by selfless interest only in the good of humanity as a whole or something, because presumably this is being proposed as a real policy for real people and not some fantasyland.

(Also, I do not consider "well we already have some programs like that today" to be a defense... I'm not entirely convinced that's just going to turn out peachy keen in the end either. I'm personally pretty convinced we've already passed a threshold at which a significant chunk of our government is actively pursuing government dependency as a conscious policy, and that's not going to end well either, as the same mechanics take sway... there is always a reason to grow benefits, it's always evil to cut them, and there's no feasible way to bound the growth of promised benefits to real growth, other than the really, really hard one of simply running out of resources.)

While this is a criticism of mine, and I am not trying to hide my general skepticism as seen in my second paragraph, I am posting this also in a genuine spirit of inquiry about what answers to this question may have been developed. I acknowledge the problems the BI idea is trying to solve, and I acknowledge that I have no answers (including, alas, BI, unless someone can convince me here).

<comment><USER15> I think you're overweighting the relative influence BI can exert. Introducing BI as a tiny fraction of GDP does not make existing financial power structures disappear. Existing wealth will still wield the same influence it always has. There will be plenty of lobbyists to push back against corporate tax hikes, there will still be the usual capitalist incentives to start a business and increase production, the American people will still believe in upward mobility and the right of a business owner to make money. In short, I think you're imagining a slippery slope of a policy without any checks and balances where in fact there will be many. I could be wrong of course, but it's really rampant speculation on both our parts because humans don't really have an intuitive or historical understanding of how such a system would actually pan out in practice.

On balance it seems like a better risk than the current welfare and disability systems that dehumanize people and create a perverse incentive not to work in order to survive. If efficiency and automation trends continue some sort of wealth redistribution will become strictly necessary whether that is done through government policy, charity, or revolution. BI for its potential flaws doesn't look so bad compared to the alternatives.

<comment><USER14> "Introducing BI as a tiny fraction of GDP"

OK, yes, but what's going to _keep_ it a tiny fraction of the GDP? The BI's natural "lobbying organzation" is _the entire public_... not even the entire _voting_ public, but the entire public. No current structures have that characteristic. For almost the entire population, $10,000 is a _lot of money_. Even people making $150,000/year are going to still appreciate $10,000, and we're now talking _well_ above median.

If there was a lobbying force large enough to actually countervail the _entire public 's_ interest in voting themselves more money, I'm pretty sure it would not be hard to drum up a mob against them.

As I understand it, Basic Income's distinguishing characteristic is that _everybody_ gets it. You can't use our experiences with things that well less than half the population gets to judge the effect it will have on voting patterns.

You can't just think about the first year of Basic Income's implementation. You have to think about the second year. You have to think about the tenth year. You have to think about the 18th year, when people who have never lived in a regime other than having BI exist start voting themselves. Are _they_ going to understand that it's a bad idea to listen to the politicians promising to make it larger? Because there will be such politicians. Probably all of them, honestly.

<comment><USER16> > OK, yes, but what's going to keep it a tiny fraction of the GDP? The BI's > natural "lobbying organzation" is the entire public...

Er, no, its not. The natural lobbying organization is the people whose have an expected positive _net_ utility from an increased BI. That's not the entire public, as both increased public debt and increased taxation have negative consequences for members of the public. (And as, empirically, its been shown that increased income has a declining, and beyond a certain point, immeasurably small contribution to experience utility.)

> You have to think about the 18th year, when people who have never lived in a > regime other than having BI exist start voting themselves. Are they going to > understand that it's a bad idea to listen to the politicians promising to > make it larger?

Sure. They'll probably understand the effects of BI level changes a lot better than people in the first year do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Basic income _on top_ of everything else doesn't make much sense (cost-wise).

But if we could trade B.I. for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social progams-- it would probably be more cost efficient as individuals look after their money better than other people do.

Here's a video from Milton Friedman (not Tom Friedman!) who is advocating for a negative income tax-- a variation of basic income.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM)

<comment><USER18> I agree, but unfortunately I don't think "basic income and no other welfare programs" is a politically stable policy. No sooner will it have been introduced than politicians will be tempted to screw with it to help a favored constituency.

Go to work as an inner city teacher? Here's an extra 20% in your BI.

Live in an area damaged by a hurricane? We'll bump your BI for a year or two.

I don't think a "simpler" tax code would last much longer for the same reason.

The only way I think it could actually work is if we turned over the whole thing to a bunch of unelected technocrats like the Fed (which might not be a terrible idea since it gives them another lever on economic policy...)

<comment><USER19> _Go to work as an inner city teacher? Here 's an extra 20% in your BI._

So ... politicians would suddenly start to pay people to teach in the inner city? Those scoundrels! I can see why you're opposed to this concept.

<comment><USER20> One of the proposed advantages of BI is its simplicity (which among other things means few loopholes and lower enforcement overhead). The point the poster you quote is making is that no tax code will remain simple for very long.

In fact you support that point. Many of the complexities we have now come from adding "just one more feature" to the tax code, until we end up with something so complex that there is an entire industry built up around paying taxes.

If he said "In exchange for supporting inner-city teachers, we will be indirectly subsidizing H&R Block to the tune of $2B" you might ponder whether or not it's worth it.

<comment><USER21> Why not? If you get BI out of any political process, you already had a majority in support of the simplification. It just requires vigilance, which our current track record for is terrible, but _any_ economic system or _any_ political process requires vigilance, and a BI isn't any different.

It is true that over the entire history of the United States, the American public has proven itself apathetic to the abuses of their politicians, but that is a cultural problem that needs to be solved regardless of having a basic income or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think in the end this wouldn't work. It'd play out something like this:

A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. (Particularly when politicians push the basic income amount up to placate constituencies)

Because workers bow out of the system certain industries lose productive capacity. Maybe we stop producing enough food, or enough fuel.

Prices rise (assuming a moderately free market), which causes the basic income amount to rise and it spirals out of control from there.

The state is forced to intervene. Either by forcing people to work certain jobs (ala [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_\(1968\)#August_1981_strike)) or by capping the basic income and reincentivizing work.

Hayek: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.

<comment><USER23> I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels. What's really depressing is that not a single comment here or on the article even mentions this.

Why the hell should I pay even more and subsidize those who have more than two kids?

<comment><USER24> I don't think the number of kids goes up with prosperity. Developed countries and upper classes typically have much lower birth rates than their counterparts, and some countries are even experiencing negative population growth.

<comment><USER23> I agree, but in depressions/recessions it goes down quite reliably. It's a strong signal

<comment><USER24> Hmm, true. Probably something to keep an eye on, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand how people oppose unconditional basic income without also opposing the fact that automation decreases the amount of working hours available for a person(or in other words, the amount of _jobs_ ), and thus decreases the amount of income per person, while maintaining productivity stable if not increasing it, thus making all sorts of goods cheaper.

Someone enlighten me. These discussions always seem so damn complex and heated for some reason. What am I missing, when I believe that UBI/BIG(basic income guarantee) is the future, and that in future people _don 't_ need to work 40 hours a week?

Before anyone counters with saying that "people don't need to work and thus just leech the system", I will cover this now. People _will_ need to work, because UBI/BIG will _not_ cover anything but the very _basic_ income. This means cheap housing, cheap food, clothing and whatever else is considered _basic income_. Perhaps this would be something like 800 USD per month, or 200 per week, give or take some. People would most definitely _want_ to have more income, and as such they would _want_ to work. A full 40 hour week? Perhaps not -- maybe 20 or 30 hours a week. Whatever they feel fit best for them.

(note that I live in a country with the nordic welfare system, where most people live on a rent rather than own a house, which perhaps makes a difference, or then not. I don't know, hence why I discuss.)

<comment><USER26> Automation reduces costs and prices, creates _new_ job fields, and permits for specialization. It's been happening since the cotton gin, and is a basic staple of an advancing society. We're able to sit on our butts in our chairs and make our livings punching keys on a little rectangle while staring at another little glowing rectangle because our societies are highly specialized and highly automated, making it economically viable for us to purchase and consume goods produced two thousand miles away, rather than having to spend our time tending our gardens so we can make sure that we have food to eat this week. Bemoaning automation as the death of the common man's ability to feed himself is just as silly as it was in Eli Whitney's time.

People will only _need_ to stop working when automation reaches the point that their needs are met without it imposing a burden of work on anyone else. Of course, this will be the point at which the robot revolution will begin, and humanity is doomed.

<comment><USER27> > Automation reduces costs and prices, creates new job fields, and permits for > specialization.

Currently automation has reached the point in which it replaces lower-skilled jobs by higher-skilled jobs. Many people who worked in the former _will not be able to work in the latter_ (mostly because it takes years to specialize), so for them, those jobs are as good as gone.

<comment><USER26> Do you have any particular examples we could analyze? Yes, you're right, the jobs that robots can do better are gone, but any improvement in efficiency in an industry generally results in lower prices and an increase in job creation around that industry. Again, in the case of the cotton gin, while the gin itself reduced the need for manual labor to pick seeds from cotton, it blew the demand for labor to plant and harvest cotton through the roof, and the improved output of these larger plantations resulted in the creation of shipping ports and explosive growth in the textile industry. In fact, this is widely considered to be a socially _negative_ effect of the cotton gin, since it dramatically increased the demand for labor, which was then filled by slavery. That was obviously not desirable, but the core point I'm trying to make there is that eliminating all those slaves' jobs resulted in a dramatically larger demand for labor in the supply chain.

Just because the old job is gone doesn't mean there isn't a new one to be done, and improvements in efficiency and costs of production result in economic growth that have positive impacts all over related markets.

<comment><USER27> > _Do you have any particular examples we could analyze?_

I'd look at every job that is being replaced by a robot or a computer system. I can't give you a particular example in form of "job A replaced by robots, workers can't move anywhere else", because so far we've been very efficient at reallocating labor. Throughout last 200 years, people out-automated in agriculture moved to manufacturing; optimized out from there they are moving to services, but the computer technology makes this sector fair game, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere else to go.

More machines are creating more opportunities for building them, but the manufacturing is already heavily automated, so this is the case of robots building robots. As a human, you can't compete there much.

Just imagine self-driving cars really taking off in few years and replacing most jobs in transportation industry. Where will those people go? What kind of jobs we can imagine they could have without years-long retraining that robots _arleady_ can't do better?

> _Just because the old job is gone doesn 't mean there isn't a new one to be > done_

Yes, but my point is that jobs are not made equal, and just because you could do the old one doesn't mean you will be able to do the new one. It is increasingly not the case.

<comment><USER26> > _I can 't give you a particular example in form of "job A replaced by > robots, workers can't move anywhere else", because so far we've been very > efficient at reallocating labor._

Surely it makes sense to be able to cite examples of how we are failing to reallocate labor before complaining that we're not able to reallocate labor.

<comment><USER27> You're right. I can give you a fair share of personal anecdotes and general social lore related to rising unemployment for STEM-or-finance-educated people. I can point to first principles and proofs by enumeration. I can't provide examples of "elimination of an entire class of human skill and subsequent failure to move labour up the skill ladder" because this transformation is - I believe - underway, not yet finished.

Regarding the "skill class elimination", as far as I have read, basic manufacturing is already done; i.e. it's not completely automated _only_ because robots are still a bit more expensive than low-wage workers. But even in China this seems to be changing (in favour of robots).

<comment><USER26> Personal anecdotes and social lore make for pretty crappy science. I would love you to point me at first principles and proofs by enumeration.

What I see, in looking at the numbers published by the government, is that the number of jobs has been consistently tracking with labor force since they started measuring it in 1925. If automation were wrecking jobs and making people unemployable, I'd expect that the 20th century - the century in which the human race made more significant technological advances than during the rest of human history combined - to have resulted in a consistent decrease in percentage of the employed workforce. Instead, we see that no such widening has occurred. There is certainly an argument to be made that people are being forced out of factory jobs and into foodservice jobs or whatnot, but I can't see any empirical evidence for the assertion that we're actually innovating ourselves out of the opportunity to work.

<comment><USER28> The 20th century also saw the introduction of labor law, working hours plummet, welfare state, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> An interesting repercussion of such a system is the potential for unrestrained creative endeavour. Fear of meeting basic needs will no longer be the primary motivator for most workers. Free to think of and most importantly act on new ideas, our massive population will be able to attempt to function like a distributed network. There will be those who choose to only consume, but that is no different today, many people are simply required to perform a meaningless job in order to do so. I would imagine that the benefit of freeing millions of willing inventors outweighs the drain imposed by all those who only consume. Then again, this only makes sense assuming that most repetitive and "busy" work can be automated.

</comment><comment><USER30> Australia already has essentially this setup. Every person in the country can be paid $492.60 every two weeks ($12,800 yearly) and up to another $121 every two weeks ($3,146 yearly) to help with rent.

Everyone qualifies, forever, irrelevant of past job history, education, family status, etc. etc. There is no time limit for the payments.

The only difference between this and the article, is that if you get a job, whatever you earn is deducted from your payments.

I personally think it does a fantastic job of making sure there is no poverty in the country, and it means Australia has an enormous middle class.

(Link updated) [1] [http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the-world- ho...](http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the-world-how-does- australia-stack-up/)

<comment><USER31> Link appears to be broken: [http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around- the-world-ho...](http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the-world- how-does-australia-stack-up/)

The interesting part in the article is that in order to receive this payment, you have to be actively looking for work. Not sure how this is measured, but the qualification makes it philosophically different from the unconditional wage being advocated.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for the link update.

You are right, you must apply for x jobs per month, and keep a logbook of that activity.

In that sense, yes, it's philosophically different from the unconditional wage, but it's a good example of the effect on society (no extreme poverty, huge middle class, higher taxes, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Though some more reasonable forms of this idea exist, this particular description has some major problems:

* What if the money you pay someone does not go as far as expected? Maybe they lose some of the money in various ways, or maybe they are just very bad at negotiating economic transactions or buy the wrong kinds of things from the wrong places. Maybe they are trying to live in an expensive area -- do we kick them out?

* There will be a significant class of people who simply know _nothing at all_ about work or participation in the economy. That may have all kinds of bad effects for those people, one of which may be a greater likelihood of the problem above.

* Some people who would otherwise be productive will put off both education and work for a while. When the time comes that they want to be involved, it will be hard for them to make the transition, and many will just stay out of the workforce forever. So, some of the ultra-productive people the author is expecting to do the heavy lifting will not exist.

* There will be pressure to stop granting new citizenship/residency to almost anyone, because the potential cost will go way up. Even if, in the long term, immigrants are good for the economy, in the short term it could be crushing if each one gets a comfortable living regardless of work.

* There will be an imbalance in which jobs are actually done. The number of computer programmers might be higher, but the number of nurses might go way down. If having a nurse is required to make some people comfortable, how do we remedy that?

* "Comfort" in general is a moving target in this process because changing the basic income will have a big effect on the economy. It's hard to say whether you could ever really find a stable value that offers anything resembling "comfort" for those living on it.

<comment><USER33> If the number of nurses willing to work for current rates goes down, then the market rate for nurses will go up. Eventually it will be high enough that being a nurse is more attractive than being a programmer.

<comment><USER32> Nursing is hard work, and if someone is already "comfortable", there's not a lot of incentive to study for it and do it unless the pay goes WAY up.

There are a lot of jobs like this, where the threat of discomfort is the primary motivator. Across the economy it would take a huge amount of money to incentivize already-comfortable people to do them.

And if the jobs don't get done, then someone else is uncomfortable.

<comment><USER28> Sounds like an ideal situation to incentivize the solution of discomfort without creating more discomfort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the main problem with this argument that software is eating everything and automation is replacing jobs is that it imagines the world as it is today, with the current set of jobs as fixed. Lest we forget a time when all goods were physical and there were no digital goods. The extent of what can be consumed by technology does have limits. But more than that, we as a society become wealthier, not poorer, when things become faster, cheaper, and easier to produce.

There was a time when people spent nearly half their income on food because food production was an incredibly inefficient process. Eventually much of food processing became automated and advances made it much more plentiful. What had a larger impact on the economy? The millions of people no longer needing to spend valuable time producing food, or the fact that people now had much more disposable income to spend on other things?

<comment><USER35> That's the thing, instead of giving people a universal basic income and distorting the prices we should really keep on striving to make the essentials that people need as cheap as possible.

<comment> guard-of-terra Which basically means things that do not scale will skyrocket in price.

You already see this as prices of education and housing grow decade to decade.

Essentials are: bad food that doesn't taste well, bad housing, bad medical care, bad transportation and bad service. That's what Soviet Union consistently delivered to every citizen and while there were vitrually no hungry, unemployed or homeless people, nobody felt happy too, everybody fought to be able to afford a tiny bit of something of quality.

In short, cheap essentials are not so cool.

<comment><USER27> Also, we're talking about world where robots produce those cheap essentials out of soil and solar/nuclear power, leaving many more unemployed competing for ever shrinking pool of jobs that are not done by robots out of free solar/nuclear power.

Basically it's not any kind of a solution, it's exactly where we are headed now.

<comment><USER34> I don't understand why this is a problem. A job is something you have to do to complete a task. Somebody pays you for it because it brings them some value. If they can get that task completed for a lower rate, why is that a bad thing?

Sure, in the short-term you lose the paycheck you received for completing that task, but in the long-term that person who paid you is now wealthier, which enables them to spend money elsewhere. This causes the jobs to migrate to where things need to be done. I assure you we are still a very long way from accomplishing all tasks that need to be done and for which people would be willing to pay. But if we ever did reach that point, nobody would need to work because everything would be free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> With basic income, wouldn't the economy adapt to the fresh money supply and rents and other costs raise to account for it? It would effectivly be additional currency inflation by a different name?

<comment><USER37> Maybe instead of giving everyone cash, the government could provide people with a default shelter, food plan, etc.

<comment><USER38> Yes, public housing projects worked so well.

You can go look up economics papers on Google Scholar or SSRN about the benefits of direct payments versus in-kind payments. You might worry that someone will use their direct payment and spend it on hooch, but you can't stop that: if you give them food stamps they will trade that for money and then spend it on hooch.

<comment><USER39> Actually you can stop it, by doing exactly what he says - you can eat free food at this particular place, but so can everybody else. It stops hunger, but it has a resale value of 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The author of this is article is more than a little bit out of touch. To be honest, HN is the only place I have ever even heard people discuss the concept of an Unconditional Basic Income or call Bitcoin a "radical economic ideology". Most people in the US have never even heard of Bitcoin or an Unconditional Basic Income.

The author is so far removed from reality that it's almost humorous. He cites an example where Instagram has apparently replaced Kodak, an example as ignorant as it is misguided. Having known one of Kodak's chief inventors from before the company began its steep decline, it is evident that Kodak collapsed from a series of bad decisions and a failure to secure its territory in IP space. Comparing that to Instagram isn't a comparison of apples to oranges, it's a comparison of oranges to a desk lamp.

I could go on, but there's no need. This article is crap factually, logically, and intellectually. I understand that the title panders to the closely held ideologies of many on these boards, but if you have to look this hard to find arguments for why we're moving toward a UBI, then we're probably not moving toward it at all.

<comment><USER41> Agreed... he lost me as soon as he cited that _idiotic_ Kodak to Instagram concept. The idea that the 13 people at Instagram are the effective replacement for all of Kodak's business (while ignoring the 500K-odd people involved in building the phones instagram runs on) is so dumb it's galling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wouldn't the basic income value need to vary across regions? For example, the notion that:

"Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on"

would mean a different value in San Francisco than in Grover, NC.

If the government adjusted the basic income to account for regional cost-of- living, I imagine it would be popular to maintain a fake residency in an expensive area while actually living somewhere cheaper.

If the basic income wasn't adjusted for different areas, you would probably see some areas become rich elite enclaves while other areas become basic income ghettos.

<comment><USER43> I'm fairly sure the government knows where we all truly live.

<comment><USER42> Unlikely. I know of a lot of people who live in New Jersey but register their auto in another state under a relative's address for cheaper insurance. I also know people who use an old address or the address of an acquaintance/relative so their child can attend a different school district.

<comment><USER44> That just implies that communication in government is poor, particularly if it is a local or state government that wants to know something from the federal government. I am sure the IRS would have no problem finding those people if they were so inclined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I really like the concept (and have for at least a decade and a half). The linked article misses one thing which is that minimum wage legislation can probably be removed too.

What I don't know is actually what the level of the basic income could realistically be at what levels of income tax (I assume that there would be a single flat tax rate for all income additional to the Basic Income).

It would be great to get good statistics of earned/savings income distributions for a few countries and current income tax, capital gains tax and National Insurance takes and build a tool to see what incomes and rates a feasible. I picture being able to adjust basic income and see the effect on the tax rate and vice versa. Ideally you could make the income distribution adjustable so that you could try different scenarios such as the effect of more people doing no work.

I'm not sure how children should be handled in these models either as there are real costs and you don't want child poverty but you don't want to make breeding too profitable which may occur if they attracted the full rate Basic Income.

</comment><comment><USER46> Arguments like this are completely selling ourselves short on our ability as a species/society to innovate and come up with new ideas that improve our life for everyone. I'm sorry, but it drives me absolutely nuts! Come on guys, are we really saying that we aren't capable of continuing to come up with new ideas and grow them into sustainable businesses that lift a majority of Americans out of poverty?? What a positive, optimistic this author has on our future, not to mention his faith in the capabilities of fellow human beings.

Instead of jumping into many of the circular arguments below of where costs are truly incurred from things such as taxes on the rich and on corporations, let's think of taxation in a different way - as valves controlling where capital flows in our economy. Think of taxes as valves in a hydraulic system or switches/relays in an electrical system. If those valves aren't directing the right amount of electricity or hydraulic oil to the right parts of the system, the entire system stops working. In the same line of thinking, if not enough capital is going to the right places in our economy, our economy slows down and stops working.

So, the question becomes, where do we need to adjust the valves to get the entire system working again? Where can we cut taxes, to give that sector of the economy a boost? It's small businesses, innovators/inventors, and early stage startups. Why? Because if 1 out of every 1,000 businesses started turns into the next Microsoft or GM and employs 100,000 people, then we need 10m people out of work right now/100,000 jobs per Microsoft startup*1,000 startup businesses = 100,000 startups.

There's a reason the first round of capital for starting a company typically comes from friends and family - because it's extremely risky, and those closest to the entrepreneur can make that investment at the lowest risk possible because they have insider knowledge of the entrepreneur's skillset. If we have a disappearing middle class, that means that very first round of capital is disappearing too, because it comes from the middle class, which means 10 years from now, we will have even fewer jobs for the middle class. I'll leave it up to everyone else to debate how we can get more money into the hands of the middle class, but taxing the rich and providing a basic income for everyone is not the answer.

<comment><USER27> > Come on guys, are we really saying that we aren't capable of continuing to > come up with new ideas and grow them into sustainable businesses that lift a > majority of Americans out of poverty?

Of course we are. The best of those ideas involve robots and weak AIs systematically replacing humans in everything they do.

What the author says is that the way to innovate ourselves out of this situation and end up well is _not_ by doing more of the same. Capitalism is going to die as energy abundance and automation will make manufacturing essencially free, and smarter software will do the same to most service and knowledge jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.

<comment><USER48> The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately.

The Mincome experiment ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome)) dabbled with this idea and the results were rather surprising. Most people seemed to want to work rather than loaf around and collect benefits.

Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"?

<comment><USER49> > The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on > bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately.

This idea does not stand up to any scrutiny at all. The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the cost of a BI program.

> Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the > tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be > "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have > somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"?

None of those suggestions would come anywhere near the amount of money needed for a BI program.

<comment><USER16> > The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the > cost of a BI program.

Most of the cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is in validating and enforcing the conditions on beneficiaries. _Unconditional_ Basic Income avoids these costs quite directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> We have a light version of this in Denmark. It makes a lot of people not want to work and is the main reason behind why the effective tax is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%. Pay 45% income tax, 200% car tax (literally - <USER2> 10.000USD car costs 30.000USD), pay high property taxes, "green" taxes like on gas - and when that is done, please pay 25% VAT of everything you buy after that.

And you know what? About 80% of the Danish love this system enough to not want to change it. A party suggesting a 40% flat tax is considered extreme in Denmark.

I happen to hate it, but that is just me...

</comment><comment><USER51> Can we come up with a solution that doesn't strong-arm workers into keeping society's dead weight around? Why make sure that every non-worker in society has enough money to eat McDonalds and watch cable TV at the cost of the freedom of everyone to make and spend money as they please?

<comment><USER52> thank you for this. I'm an empathetic person, but every morning I drive out of my driveway to work and look at the house across the street from me with three people who stay home all day in their house watching TV.

When I get home, their TV is still on and the other people in my building and I are exhausted from working and finally get some time for recreation, usually in the dark. The other neighbors say the across-the-street people are selling opiates. They should be made to do something in return for their government money: anything useful around town like cleaning up, repainting signs, babysitting- not just getting free government money to capitalize their opiate sales.

I love my job, but not enough that I would come here everyday first thing in the morning if I weren't being paid. That's why the Wikipedia example mentioned in the article is a _terrible_ counterexample for OP's point. First, Wikipedia is a _clone_, not an original work. Second, it's billions of micro- contributions, not people working 40-45 hours per week like the others in my building and myself. No one is that motivated. As posted yesterday, the theory of the Tyranny of Structurelessness is real. Only a small portion of society functions without leaders. And I admit that I am not one of its leaders (yet!), but I am comfortable for the most getting led toward productive efforts.

That's why I believe poverty is a failure of leadership. It's the inability or disinclination of leaders to herd those people into something useful. It's cheaper to pay them to stay home. It's got nothing to do with them being lazy, as someone else wrote. MOST of us are lazy, not merely the unemployed.

<comment><USER53> Have you considered the fact that you don't know anything about the lives of the people who live across the street from you and maybe you should refrain from judging them so harshly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's a fascinating idea, and it's a real challenge to market capitalism as we know it in the long run.

But the biggest problem with any such system is unequal need. Need states are stochastic at the individual level. They might appear to be neater and more deterministic at the aggregate level, but a system designed in aggregate is bound to have challenges at the margins. I could easily see this system becoming, essentially, a fixed amount that just shifts everyone's personal needs/income graphs up by X amount a year. Above that point, everyone still needs income to fit any needs not met by X.

An unintended consequence, for example, would be that this system places an extra burden on the disabled, or the parents of multiple children, or the elderly, etc., to take on more work to meet their greater needs. By eliminating need-based welfare and replacing it with a flat payment structure, we'd basically be handwaving away the fact that need states are variable.

It's possible that I'm misunderstanding how this system works. And many of the same arguments I'm making against this system could certainly be leveled against our current system. I guess I'm struggling to see how this system has greater utility and fewer externalities than the current one.

</comment><comment><USER55> I actually think Argentina would be a great place to impose basic income.

Argentina has a long time standing issue with 'welfare' programs being abused in corruptive ways, such as government employees cashing in, their relatives, etc.

Middle class despises the way those funds are used because they are not regulated or productive: as a foreign national, you could get welfare within 6 months of moving in to argentina. Plus free college education.

Also, argentina has a long-time standing issue with inflation, which in this case could be worked to its benefit, which is it can fund this strategy. Currently, the government uses welfare programs to target vulnerable sectors and generate dependency, but if everyone got it, they wouldnt have that kind of edge anymore, and if they wanted to better one sector, they would be forced to help every sector.

But i will still think that although basic income is very forward-thinking, it has veery unforeseen consequences. We dont know what is going to happen to a city or a country if such a thing is implemented, for better or worse, in terms of sociology, more than economics.

I also wonder how to actually make it practical. By basic supply and demand, this should create a strong increase in demand, which raises prices and the very basic income would then become less effective.

</comment><comment><USER56> I disagree with this article almost entirely. Yes, labor jobs are on the decline, but service jobs are staying steady if not increasing. The "demand for unconditional basic income" is a joke, yes it's possible to attempt to initiate something where every person receives $10,000 a year, but the money has to come from somewhere.

If the money for this basic income comes from taxation, then both the government loses net income and the corporations lose as well. You can think about it an entropy or friction, there is always a cost for doing something. If corporations essentially pay their customers (via the government) to buy their goods the world would eventually collapse.

If the money for basic income comes from printing money (or equivalent) it devalues to insignificant amounts too quick to do virtually anything with it.

This idea is a fantasy, perhaps the population of the world needs to DECREASE to maintain its stability in a technological world. If there are less jobs, maybe there's less need for humans.. If this is the case, perhaps it is time to move to Mars or something, like a cell that has replicated enough DNA/organelles to split in two and create a new daughter cell.

You cannot suitably hold by basic unconditional income. Any college economics class/text book would probably make this much more clearer than I, but the "trends," conclusions and potential sources for the basic income would fall apart under close inspection. For example, if the need for labor decreases, the cost of labor decreases (the net company expense), therefore people may have worse pay, but also the products are cheaper.

The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility.

<comment><USER57> 300,000,000 people in the US. You give them each 10,000 dollars. That's 3T dollars, or roughly the size of the existing federal budget (~3.5T). US GDP is ~16T. It's a lot, but that's not beyond the pale of possibility, and the poorest people will spend that money nearly instantly, reving the economy and making the world a little bit better for everyone.

"If corporations essentially pay their customers (via the government) to buy their goods the world would eventually collapse."

I feel like this betrays a misunderstanding of how money works. First of all, 10k per person isn't enough to create an extreme situation. Secondly, it is the circulation of money that drives progress. If companies didn't disperse the money they accumulate somehow, the economy would stall.

On a more noble level, giving people the option to not work is simply removing additional coercive elements from society. People should be free to choose what they wish to do with their lives. 10k isn't enough to remove the incentive to better yourself, but it is enough of a cushion so that you don't need to submit to awful situations simply to survive.

If janitorial tasks become in high demand, they will pay appropriately or design machines to do it - just like everything else.

<comment><USER56> "Money" (or any currency) is just a means of trading one good for another, if there are no goods being transferred via the currency it cannot be considered a currency. That being said, if you simply hand out 3 trillion a year then you would be effectively taxing everyone by (3T/total wealth) then redistributing it does nothing because you've also taxed EVERYONE by that same amount.

To follow up my argument:

3T/16T is 25% that would be the inflation rate per year, of course each year it would increase as follows:

(3 * 1.25)/(16 * 1.25) (3 * 1.25 * 1.25)/(16 * 1.25 * 1.25) etc.

Of course this doesn't take into consideration the approximate 1% growth or what ever it currently is. The point remains that the redistribution of wealth will decrease the amount the currency is worth. Currency that is handed out WITHOUT something being traded for it does not apply to "currency circulation." Instead what you have is a situation where every person is taxed at about 25% and receives slightly less than that tax in return (which was used to disburse the collected taxes).

This is why NO COUNTRY ON EARTH gives out tax money to all of its citizens. It may on the other hand provide welfare checks to its needy, which again deflates the wealth of others (by inflating the currency), but keeps those poor from starving.

Hopefully my explanation is somewhat sufficient...

<comment><USER57> I do agree that it may cause some inflation (I'm not sure how much). I don't think those computations are correct though (3/16 = 18.75, not 25 for example). Inflation is measured as the cost for a basket of goods. Simply giving lots of people more money would not change the cost structure immediately. It would provide a larger consumer pool that companies can compete to server. The effects are complex and it's not immediately clear that inflation would spike to sky high levels, though a rise in inflation does occur when there is more trade because people are getting higher wages. A little bit of inflation is a positive indicator.

However, redistributing definitely does have an economic effect because richer people has an increase propensity to save. When you take 10k that they weren't using and give it to someone poor, that money starts flowing immediately. An analogy would be something like, say you have a lake with some water seeping out from a small waterfall. If you go and take 10,000 liters and put it in a dry lake (ignoring soil absorption :P), that water will start flowing net much faster since you now have two waterfalls going.

I'm not dismissing your inflation argument, I just anticipate that the magnitude of the effect is small (or at least able to be dealt with with monetary policy) compared to the benefit of giving people (especially poor people) some money.

As an aside, part of the reason for doing this is not economic (assuming that inflation does not outpace reasonable technical measures to oppose it). The real question is are we rich enough to afford taking basic care of all of our citizens, regardless of where they started in life? It's a question of justice. We may not have reached that point yet, but I think it's definitely arguable that we have.

You may reach a different conclusion, but ask yourself, if you were teleported outside of time and space, and didn't know if you were going to be rich or poor. What sort of system would you advocate for?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance)

We may not agree on the conclusions, but my position is that we should not let people starve or suffer if we can afford not to. Secondly, we should allow people the ability to choose their life circumstances to the best of their abilities. 10k a year removes many coercive influences and allows them to eat and sleep in safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> _Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on. The only condition is citizenship and /or residency._

Sweet! None of us have to work anymore! Party at my place every night for life!

 _You get the basic income whether or not you're employed, any wages you earn are additional._

Few, that's a relief. It'll be nice to close all of the school's down and tell kids they can go home, play video games indefinitely, and never have to worry about their future again.

 _The welfare bureaucracy is largely dismantled. No means testing, no signing on, no bullying young people into stacking shelves for free, no separate state pension._

Down with welfare, up with communism!

 _Employment law is liberalised, as workers no longer need to fear dismissal._

Hey boss, fuck you! Why? Because fuck you, that's why! What are you going to do about it? Fire me? Ha!

 _People work for jobs that are available in order to increase their disposable income._

That's cool. Make sure to tax them high enough to pay for all of my house parties.

 _Large swathes of the economy are replaced by volunteerism, a continuation of the current trend._

Who wants to volunteer to clean my toilet and mow my lawn? Anyone? Even if I say thank you when you're done?

 _The system would be harder to cheat when there's only a single category of claimant, with no extraordinary allowances._

I can't figure a way to game it either; it's mathematically and economically perfect!

<comment><USER59> I agree with these concerns; I really can't see how a system like this would possibly work. Why would anyone do anything if they had no incentive to work?

<comment><USER60> You don't ever do anything - not any one single thing - without a profit motive?

<comment><USER61> Who does?

<comment><USER62> Today I drew a picture for fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Won't the basic income drive prices up to the point where you need to work anyway?

<comment><USER64> Not necessarily. People will only, for example, buy luxury items that are affordable - laptops, nice clothes etc. So, if most of the population which are sustained mostly on this form of base income cant afford said items, corporations theoretically wont be able to offload their products, products for which if you consider automation trends, the cost of producing should go down even further. No idea if this is sustainable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> >>>As Jaron Lanier points out, Kodak once provided 140,000 middle class jobs, and in the smouldering ruins of that company's bankruptcy we have Instagram, with 13 employees.

This argument is just plain wrong. Kodak was not replaced by Instagram. Kodak was replaced by Apple and Samsung and a bunch of other asian manufacturers. They have way more than 13 employees.

</comment><comment><USER66> One worry I have with Basic Income discussion is that what most people think the minimum required just to live is very high, which frames the discussion wrong.

Basic Income probably shouldn't cover much beyond rent in cheap, shared accommodation, heat and some electric, and groceries, and healthcare, if that is provided separately.

<comment><USER24> Basic Income should never be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings, at least until we've reached a place where we don't need human labor for very many tasks (if ever). I say this as an avid supporter of a basic income.

<comment><USER16> > Basic Income should never be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on > savings, at least until we've reached a place where we don't need human > labor for very many tasks (if ever).

Its seems to me to be self-evidentally economically impossible for universal BI to do this (which, incidentally, means it probably can't replace _all_ existing social benefit programs, because you probably still want to have some programs that people _can_ live on without a drain on savings, though these would need to be time limited and almost certainly have other qualifications) unless we've reached that point of labor-irrelevance.

If you set the level of BI such that it would allow such comfortable living given pre-BI prices, the resulting effect on prices would quickly drive such comfortable living back out of reach for those relying solely on BI.

You can _mitigate_ poverty and economic inequality with BI, because the inflationary effects will be no greater than the income boost given at the low end of the scale, but there is a declining marginal benefit of each additional dollar of BI.

<comment><USER28> > seems to me to be self-evidentally economically impossible for universal BI > to [be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings] unless we've > reached that point of labor-irrelevance

Why is it economically impossible? It seems quite possible to me.

For example, suppose that 20% of the population _must_ be engineers for society to survive. But the other 80% of the population is irrelevant to production. The 80% could be given a BI of $40k, while the 20% could be given a salary of $200k (or $2M if you like).

(The 20% and 80% figures could just as easily be reversed, if you consider 20% to be "labor-irrelevance" \-- although it is not irrelevant if it is necessary to the survival of society to ensure it's done.)

Why is that economically impossible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Just imagine what one could do with one's life, backed by an unconditional income! One could strip off parts of the daily worries; one could try out more things; one could develop ideas, big ideas, without having to fear that a possible failure risks your and your family's lives.

Today, only very few people with a solid financial background can afford to work on big ideas. What a waste! Think of all those geniuses out there who can't just afford to take the time to read a book because they have to work so hard to feed their families!

I also want to argue, that merely the knowledge that you can't completely fail in your working life will cause a huge benefit for public health, physical and mental. I would bet that many diseases would just disappear, due to the lowering of the general distress level.

<comment><USER67> Actually, let me add that I would like to see another development which is something like a compromise on the unconditional income:

Sabatticals.

Sabatticals or semi-sabbaticals should be mandatory. Just imagine what a powerful motivation it would be for anybody, knowing that working hard for a few years will earn you a year off. Then imagine, what one could do during the sabbatical, learn, explore, re-think one's live ... And finally, imagine yourself at the end of your life, looking back saying "yes, maybe I got a bad a job, but I did so many great things during my sabbaticals, so non, je ne regrette rien ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> _Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on._

Maybe we at least start with "enough to live somewhat uncomfortably on"? That way nobody starves or goes without basic necessities, but still have an incentive to improve their lot- and it isn't that hard, because they are on the cusp of living comfortably.

Another important factor, IMO, is how you index how much the income should be. Do you index it based on where the recipient lives? (I.e. everyone who lives in New York should get enough to live comfortably in New York) Do you index it based on average nationwide cost of living? Personally I'd be inclined to the latter.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've got a twist on this basic idea.

Fund basic income with a large tax on various CO2 producing activities. With the idea that - on average - people can pay this tax out of the basic income received from it. And people will have direct incentives to find ways to reduce CO2 consumption. Then get rid of silly specific legislation that tries to achieve the same goal in less successful ways. Thus fuel efficiency, California's attempts at cap-and-trade, incentives for renewable energy - <USER3> should become unnecessary.

<comment><USER69> This idea seems to incur very high bureaucracy costs. What are CO2 producing activies? How much are each of them taxed? Who measures the tax and is responsible paying for it? Etc.

One selling point of basic income is that there's no loopholes and there's very little bureaucracy costs, therefore a larger portion of the money is actually used for consumption instead of doing unnecessary (for society) work.

<comment><USER70> Of course there are details to work out but it is fundamentally a solvable problem. A tax on any coal natural gas or oil should cover most of the bases (per ton of carbon contained). If it is being purchased for a use that won't end up in the atmosphere (IE carbon capture and storage), the burden is on the purchaser to prove the case for a tax write-off.

<comment><USER69> I don't think there's a reason to couple a CO2 tax to basic income. You can create a CO2 tax separately from basic income, as it has enough opponents as it is.

<comment><USER13> I suggested coupling them because I was looking for something that fits, "Solve as many problems with one go as possible, getting rid of as much legislation as possible."

If you create a significant CO2 tax separately from some specific program, like basic income, the fear is that it will be (and will seen to be) just a general supplement on government spending. Which has a tendency to grow until it cannot, so you're just putting off an inevitable crunch that we're already bumping up against.

But if you tie them together, the pain of the tax is balanced by the pleasure of the income. And people have been shown to enjoy that sort of thing. Witness the popularity of tax refunds, even though getting one is strictly worse for you than not getting one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I think it would make a lot of sense to have a BI and to also double-down in R&D to improve all levels of understanding and capabilities in the fields of AI and robotics. The protestant work ethic is deeply engrained in this society, but perhaps now we should be thinking in terms of "how do we free as many people as possible for pursuits they haven't yet found" \-- and investing heavily in removing jobs that the most hours are worked in.

The necessary investment in all levels and types of STEM would be huge, and the result would be tons of technology that can be used to replace current work. To prevent the technology from simply being used to make a very small number of people rich, vast amounts (if not all) of the research should be released as free & open source technology. I do admit however that FOSS is not a pancea to address concerns of excessive wealth concentration - and taxes will continue to play that role.

In a sense, the wealth created by the increases in automation will be captured back in the form of taxes, and use to fund additional investment in automation as well as a basic income to sustain all the residents of the society which decided that it was worthwhile to try to abolish work, instead of continuing to fetishize it as a moral obligation.

</comment><comment><USER72> My favorite quote about this comes from Douglas Rushkoff:

"Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff."

Are jobs obsolete?: [http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER73> Regarding this quote: "I've lived in a country that had a period of 'full employment' and now has 14% unemployment, and I don't see how anyone can be so misanthropic to claim that those 14% of people just got lazier."

I hesitate to take someone's radical economic ideas too seriously if they either can't do math or does not know the econ 101 definition of "full employment".

</comment><comment><USER74> I disagree with the first couple facets of the new system definitions:

"Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on. The only condition is citizenship and/or residency." \- This is a government.

"You get the basic income whether or not you're employed, any wages you earn are additional." \- This is welfare.

"The welfare bureaucracy is largely dismantled. No means testing, no signing on, no bullying young people into stacking shelves for free, no separate state pension." \- So a government run welfare program to replace the welfare bureaucracy. Doesn't sound to radical, in fact, it sounds the same.

"The system would be harder to cheat when there's only a single category of claimant, with no extraordinary allowances." \- Some one can always cheat the system, and there will always be extraordinary allowances because there are people in the system whose desire is for those things. Opportunism has always been a part of evolution. Sure we don't "need" it

</comment><comment><USER75> Friendly reminder: People work for all sorts of reasons, having enough money to not starve is just one of them.

What's the first question people ask you when they meet you? In this country, it's usually "what do you do?"

I'm just as OK with people being motivated to work by status or prestige or ego societal pressure as they are by the threat of financial ruin.

</comment><comment><USER76> While I think this article makes some sweeping generalizations and assumptions, the question it poses is what's important. If we as programmers continue to automate the world (as is _our_ job), and as previous jobs therein are rendered unnecessary, how does one reallocate the workforce? Is the workforce unnecessary at that point?

<comment><USER28> We just need to adjust social attitudes so that it's accepted that passive income is the right of everyone, not just 1%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Obligatory link to "What's Wrong with a Free Lunch" a short synopsis of the main arguments and responses of people against basic income. [http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-Lunch-Democracy- Forum/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-Lunch-Democracy- Forum/dp/0807047139)

</comment><comment><USER78> _We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes. As I mentioned above, corporate profit margins have hit an all time high, and that money will circulate far faster if it's placed in the hands of consumers._

This is very wrong when you think about large scale. The model simply can't work when you apply it to all the population. Think about the point when it'll break.

There is no free money. Giving money to someone by taxing someone else, is not a stable equation. This will create a tension between those who produce and those who consumes. Corporations will move to States/Countries with better tax schemes.

My strategy is simpler: Liberalize everything. Everybody pays for his own consumption; and shared resources are paid by people _equally_. There should be no taxes, and also no subventions. That means people pays for the gov. bills _equally_.

Well, but that's only on my perfect world view.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ok, yes to: "towards" and "trends." However, not "forces" the bring us "all the way to."

OP misses the point that even though I am listening to free electronica on youtube right now...

1\. It was once sold for money by its creators 2\. Its creators tolerate it being given away for free in order to develop their reputations and bring in an income through performance and sales. This an example of symbiotic capitalism, not volunteer work. 3\. My listening is driving ad revenue for google.

So it's not really free out of the goodness of the creator's heart. It's free +to me right now+, b/c atm I'm not currently in its "for-pay whirlpool." Advertisers, clubs and music afficiandos _are_ in its for-pay whirlpool.

Finally. OP claims "we are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, but not money." This is only true for a small cluster of artisans.

<comment><USER79> But what about Deviant Art, Wikipedia, and most of YouTube? Also, a lot of musicians can barely afford to eat, even with touring. I imagine it would be liberating if that wasn't even necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Read NPR's beautiful article "UNFIT FOR WORK - The startling rise of disability in America" if you're not convinced on the costs of the current system and how people cheat it. [http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for- work/](http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/)

</comment><comment><USER81> Do you have any idea how many people would just not work, sit at home, watch TV, and collect their BI check?

<comment><USER82> Given 300 million people, it's prudent to consider the net impact and not sweat the details too much.

Say a policy makes 200 million people better off in some virtuous manner but creates 10 million free loaders. Is that a horrible policy? Say the value of the virtuous benefit is 10x the cost of the free loading?

<comment><USER28> The other poster's concern is obviously punishing the undeserving poor.

However, the point of the article here is to assume that millions will be "free loaders" no matter what we do because their labor is unnecessary.

<comment><USER24> > [M]illions will be "free loaders" no matter what we do because their labor > is unnecessary.

Not if we kill them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The single biggest issue with BI is that there is some fraction of the population that will fritter it away and starve.

Most people proposing BI are economic liberals so have the point of view "If we gave them enough money to live off of and they wasted it, it's no longer our problem" but that doesn't sit will with the rest of the population that aren't economic liberals.

Even if you buy into that view, you still have to deal with the increased crime from starving desperate people; it costs a lot more than $10k per year to keep someone incarcerated, so inevitably non-violent offenders will be paroled only to offend again.

[edit] Perhaps those downvoting me could let me know why? I'd like to know how my comment detracts from the conversation on this article.

</comment><comment><USER83> There was an experiment with this called Mincome in Canada. They found that the only two groups of people who worked less were new moms and teenagers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome)

<comment><USER24> Note that "Guaranteed Minimum Income" is something else. From my reading Mincome is in fact a Basic Income system, despite the name, though I'm by no means an expert on the experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> What happens if I squander my basic income on something frivolous and I can't get a job? Wouldn't there still need to be social programs to prevent people who fuck up from just starving to death? How would a basic income coexist with current systems of debt?

Could this exist without VAST healthcare reform? What happens when people get (expensively) sick?

Who gets a basic income? Every citizen over 18? Every non dependent? Isn't a basic income for someone with 5 kids fundamentally different than a single person? Wouldn't a basic income even in the same state be vastly different (say Chicago vs Urbana in Illinois)?

This is certainly an interesting idea and I'm interested in people's thoughts on these and other details.

<comment><USER28> When someone has so lost control of himself that he can't feed himself -- even though he has the money to do so -- we put him into custody in a hospital, and hopefully rehabilitate him. That's severe mental disorder.

You're absolutely right about healthcare; you can't replace public healthcare with a basic income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> > _"...wealth creation will increasingly be confined to those with capital, > and things start to follow a Marxist logic. The middle classes (and their > elected representatives) will not let that happen."_

In the absence of real campaign finance reform, is the middle class really that empowered to "not let this happen" through their elected representatives? Those representatives, after all, are currently much more beholden to their financial masters--the corporations and its wealthier beneficiaries (executives, prominent shareholders) which provide large campaign donations.

Not that it can't change. There are just a lot of steps between here and there.

</comment><comment><USER86> I agree that a basic income may be the best solution to the decline in demand for labor. And I consider myself economically conservative. There is still much to be learned about the societal effect. Its something we need to consider as an alternative to social upheaval.

However other parts of this article concern me, in particular: "Employment law is liberalised, as workers no longer need to fear dismissal." Employment laws should be entirely at will in such a system. Workers _should_ fear dismissal. And after all, they have a basic income to fall back on.

Combining basic income with "liberal" employment law would be a disaster.

<comment><USER16> I don't think you understand what "liberalised" employment law means, since it means movement in the direction (if not necessarily to the exact point) you are arguing for in arguing against it.

<comment><USER86> Well, "liberalised" as a general term doesn't mean anything, so I wouldn't say I "don't understand" it. The language is ambiguous, but you may be correct on second thought.

<comment><USER16> > Well, "liberalised" as a general term doesn't mean anything

With economic policy, it _always_ means reduced regulation in favor of increased reliance on mutual consent of the parties.

<comment><USER86> Well I'm all for that outside of safety, transparency, and abuse regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I read this thread his morning and I'm having a really difficult time figuring out how the discussion has changed since then. Which comments are new? Which comments are valuable?

Does anyone else have this problem on HN? Any solutions?

<comment><USER88> I use a Chrome extension called Hacker News Enhancement Suite, and I'm sure there's other such options:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Taxes reward those who don't produce and punish those who do produce. But, taxes are the price of living in an organized society. Also, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Money isn't the problem, it's a lack of education about how money work that is the real problem. If you give poor or lazy people money it'll just find it's way back into the pockets of people who understand how money works (the rich). Even if we take everything from the rich, they'll just get it back because the average person, with no financial education, is incapable of preserving or creating wealth.

</comment><comment><USER90> For all of these "Trends" that seem to "push us towards an unconditional basic income" I'm sure there are stronger "Real Quantified Trends" that push us in the opposite direction.

</comment><comment><USER91> In Switzerland there are over 100'000 people that support the idea, which means the public gets to vote on it in the next 2-3 years.

[http://bedingungslos.ch/](http://bedingungslos.ch/)

</comment><comment><USER92> How would a system like this scale to different regions? I can see this working in a smaller country, not the US. I would need a much larger subsistence wage to survive in the SF bay area than I would in most other places in the country. And if certain (already overcrowded) regions are allowed larger wages, you'd probably see people flocking there for the increased wages. I can also see this placing strain on the system for the first few decades if people decide to have more children, since both parents don't need to work anymore.

<comment><USER24> Scaling it by region such that the increased benefits are greater than the increased expense is an obviously horrible idea. I think that scaling it by region at all is a bad idea, but am receptive to the notion that a slight increase might work out better if someone wants to present numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> What is the advantage of doing this in terms of "income" and "currency" rather than in terms of "rations" and "allotments"? Is it a purely rhetorical difference?

<comment><USER16> Basic income in the form of currency is fungible and cumulative with other income, rations/allotments, as usually understood, are non-fungible (for specific goods) and usually non-cumulative with other income (that is, a "ration" means you get that much and can get no more, rather than that you get a basic amount and can buy more freely.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> It misses the fact that work is fulfilling for (most) people.

I've heard talk of the government being the employer of last resort, which has its own problems. But just paying people to breath has problems as well.

<comment><USER69> >It misses the fact that work is fulfilling for (most) people.

Basic income is not against working, it's point is to let people work in all kinds of situations. Old-fashion social security usually makes the tax rate for certain part-time / freelancing work 100% (e.g. $100 increase in pay can reduce benefits $100, therefore the actual marginal tax rate is 100% and most people won't do that work).

> But just paying people to breath has problems as well.

You can do that in most Nordic countries, and it has many more benefits than disadvantages. For example, you can walk safely everywhere because everyone has sufficient social security. Street robberies and whatnot are practically non-existent.

<comment><USER95> 1) Work is not nearly as fulfilling as doing nothing for most people. I have no trouble admitting this to myself. And while I'd probably still do something, I'd no longer see any need to make any compromises to work together with anybody else. That would be satisfying. It would also be an economically negative proposition, but I'd learn a lot. Or at least, I'd feel I do.

2) About the "Nordic countries". WTF ? Have you looked at the crime stats for Malmo ?

Please note that the nordic countries are in a somewhat special situation just because of their location. They also have very few homeless. Of course, homelessness is a death penalty there, merely because of the weather. That means that in Nordic countries everybody has a house, and not made from wood, double glazing, brick, generally solid and everybody's inside before the sun is down. Breaking and entering after dark is insane.

<comment><USER69> >2) About the "Nordic countries". WTF ? Have you looked at the crime stats for Malmo ?

Yeah, well immigration can create major problems with crime.

>They also have very few homeless. Of course, homelessness is a death penalty there, merely because of the weather. That means that in Nordic countries everybody has a house, and not made from wood, double glazing, brick, generally solid and everybody's inside before the sun is down. Breaking and entering after dark is insane.

Yeah, because we have a good social security and everyone can get an apartment.

<comment><USER96> Or because homeless people just freeze to death quickly...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Shouldn't we also kind of tax machine work and not only human work?

</comment><comment><USER98> The big issue with UBI entirely replacing the welfare system is that it ignores those who require more money due to disabilities. Person X can subsist on £Y/week, but person Z needs fooprazatine which costs a non-negligable quantity of £Y (there are also other, more nuanced scenarios but drugs come to mind first). Of course there are ways around it and medical benefit fraud is already incredibly low (it's hard to fake that you need a carer or an expensive regimen of drugs (painkillers notwithstanding)).

</comment><comment><USER99> I like this conceptually, but where you set that wage is the tricky part. If most folks don't have to work, most won't. Less people to tax too. That will in turn cause inflation, as there's less supply of goods. Then you'd have to increase the wage to follow suit.

To get any kind of equilibrium that preserves an incentive to work, you'd need that universal payment to be fairly low. This isn't to say, "Don't do it" \- it's just to be careful with it.

</comment><comment><USER100> If money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country,( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money) ) then what are persons who receive this money paying? What changes hands? The state gives Chad cash and he gives them what in return? Is a minimum income even money anymore?

<comment><USER24> This is inane. So long as people in general are _willing to accept it in exchange_ for goods and services and repayment of debts, it's money. Even if it somehow wasn't "money" per that definition but a money-like item that worked the same as "money" in all contexts but one, how is that an objection? Wikipedia's phrasing of the definition of "money" provides some kind of moral obligation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> This will be another nail in the coffin for the rights of those who are already neglected[1] in the current system : stateless people, and unpopular minorities who can be made stateless.

1\. The neglected non-citizen: statelessness and liberal political theory. [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449626.2011.558...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449626.2011.558733#.Ud7krtJOSfU)

</comment><comment><USER102> I find it interesting that the author mentions BitCoin early on, but then never addresses how an Unconditional Basic Income would work if corporations switched to BitCoin or other anonymous, decentralized monetary system.

In concept, I'm a firm proponent of a Unconditional Basic Income/Guaranteed Minimum Income/Negative Income Tax, but I think BitCoin is going to be a prohibitive cog in the financial wheel.

<comment><USER28> BitCoin is not anonymous. Cash is anonymous.

Why don't international corporations just exchange briefcases full of $100 bills right now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Very excited to see more and more discussion around this concept - I think Universal Basic Income should be a goal for humanity in the 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER104> 100 million * $20,000 = $2 trillion

No matter how you shake around the minimum income scales, you'll end up near those types of massive figures.

That's $2 trillion dollars that doesn't exist right now and would have to be magically conjured up. And I suspect a comfortable wage would need to be higher than $20,000. I think the financial disaster of this arrangement would be closer to $3 trillion.

It's mathematically impossible.

</comment><comment><USER105> This was really an incredible writeup, and I personally can agree with many of the long term trends. Loved the Dan Pink citation as well.

</comment><comment><USER106> I think it would be better to focus on lowering the cost of living (approaching zero) than to provide an unconditional basic income.

</comment><comment><USER107> This reminds me of "For Us, The Living", by Robert Heinlein. Where he discusses a very similar society and explains the economics of how it might work: [http://www.amazon.com/For-Us-The-Living- Customs/dp/074349154...](http://www.amazon.com/For-Us-The-Living- Customs/dp/0743491548)

</comment><comment><USER108> Can somebody explain to me how basic income can work in terms of the cycle of spending? If companies have to pay for all of people's income through a taxable percentage of their income, then these companies will only receive a share of that amount back through consumer spending? So the economy will shrink in a vicious cycle, right?

<comment><USER82> I think it is hard to be confident about what would happen. If most people elected to stop working the economy would probably contract. If instead the impact were to give more people the option of making longer term choices, you might see the economy expand.

If the basic income is set at a basic enough level, work should remain an attractive option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Nothing about this would work.

Significantly fewer corporations with a drastically smaller workforce paying greatly increased tax rates with a substantially weaker dollar to benefit an unthinkably higher quantity of citizens? I assume we still want to keep our military, education, and surveillance programs funded, too.

It simply does not math.

</comment><comment><USER110> Russians tried it with USSR. Every time new technology is introduced everyone gets scared that jobs go away. Over time the level of service and innovation requirements go up providing more jobs for those that adapt. Such as life. Don't make the world what its not. It most likely won't work. :-)

<comment><USER111> Can you tell me more about basic income in the USSR? The wikipedia page on basic income doesn't mention it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Examples...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Examples_of_implementation)

<comment><USER110> Basically the government guaranteed to get you a job with a basic income. All seemed like a good idea "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" until folks realized that the people deciding basically were the ruling class and the working class now worked out of fear of Gulag instead of financial rewards.

<comment><USER111> That is _not_ what Basic Income is. That's full employment. Totally different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> > \- You get the basic income whether or not you're employed, any wages you > earn are additional. > > \- The welfare bureaucracy is largely dismantled. > No means testing, no signing on, no bullying young people into stacking > shelves for free, no separate state pension.

Self-contradiction.

<comment><USER24> Not in the slightest. It takes more bureaucracy to administer a system where decisions need to be made. If there's some other problem you're seeing, you'll need to use more than one word to convey it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> The problem with unconditional basic income is that there's no incentive to do anything beyond the minimum.

Like most utopian plans, this idea relies on the belief that humans will get up and do things in large numbers.

We can't even get them to voluntarily recycle and quit beating their kids.

<comment><USER114> It's becoming increasingly clear that some people can't work despite their willingness. Full-time job growth is at an all-time low while temporary job growth is at an all-time high. Most of the jobs gained since 2008 have been temporary jobs or jobs with too few hours.

<comment><USER113> I think that's an entirely separate argument. Do you?

The fact that right now the economy stinks (P-U) and that some people who want to work, cannot, does not really have any bearing on future plans for guaranteed basic income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> My vote goes toward less hours, and higher wages. it's another way of solving the same issues. Everyone could work half as much, for twice as much, and you still double employment.

<comment><USER27> This doesn't compute.

1/2 work * 2x wages * 2x employment = 8 * cost per unit of work done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

</comment><comment><USER117> This will not happen in the United States of America in our lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER118> Worthless blabber. Giving people good social guarantees leads to more people unwilling to work. If you want examples take a look to Norway. Also another dumb question how the hell this article ended up in frontpage of Hacker News in first place?

</comment><comment><USER119> But then we'd all have to die at thirty.

<comment><USER24> ... why?

<comment><USER119> Attempt (failed obviously) to pull in Logan's Run.

<comment><USER24> Ah, I wondered about that, but the numbers didn't match when I hit Wikipedia, so I figured I'd missed something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> So Communism wins?

<comment><USER121> Or capitalism? One argument for the basic income is it allows everyone to be an entrepreneur by removing the benefits trap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> Here's an in-depth analysis in the form of a documentary[1] (German audio, English subtitles).

[1]: [http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the_basic_income_2008/](http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the_basic_income_2008/)

</comment><comment><USER123> Please keep the do-gooder central planning away from my bank account. Thanks.

<comment><USER9> Says the founder who has a business based off of a major component of US central planning (housing).

<comment><USER123> What? The two are mutually exclusive.

I know it's hard to fathom, but people purchased real estate, and will continue to do so with, or without, central planning.

Central planning (expanding the monetary supply and forcing banks to lend) has little effect on my business.

<comment><USER24> Did you mean "orthogonal" in place of "mutually exclusive"? If they were in fact mutually exclusive then any central planning should have a dramatic (and negative) effect on your business.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html <comment><USER2> I think this is a little misleading since I don't think version 3 really was a "solid representation of the Turbo Pascal experience". Version 3 was pretty feature poor: no step through debugger, no pull-down menus in the IDE, etc. It's was just a bare-bones console editor and a COM-only compiler.

It was the blue-background versions of the IDE that most people remember as "Turbo Pascal". That started with version 5. These versions were more than 10 times the size of Turbo Pascal 3. 548.64 kB for version 5 and nearly double that again for version 5.5.

500kB is still pretty small by modern standards but don't be thinking that everything you might associate with "Turbo Pascal" fit into 39,731 bytes.

<comment><USER3> I think I have TP7 on a disk, the whole distribution (all exes, ide, compiler, utils) is around 800kB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used Acornsoft ISO Pascal on a BBC Micro. It came in two 16KB ROMs. These included an editor.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ironically, I opened about 10 tabs of this site, which lead to using 1 Turbo Pascal worth of bandwidth in a few seconds.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's also [http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm) complaining about bloat in file sizes.

</comment><comment><USER7> The entire Super Mario Bros game for the NES is 31kb for comparison

</comment><comment><USER8> This one never gets old! While it's debatable whether it makes a whole lot of sense to compare compiled code to (completely) unrelated things, it's pretty shocking that touch on Mac OS Lion is that large in size (haven't verified myself though). Perhaps someone could quickly explain how that particular version of touch operates.

<comment><USER2> touch in macOS Sierra is down to 23kB since the 32-bit version is no longer part of the binary.

If you open it up, it's about 2/3rds zeros, maybe 10% Apple signing certificate, a whole bunch of dynamic linking data and according to otool, the (__TEXT,__text) section – normal code – is a mere 3kb in size.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Why all the 0s? Required padding?

<comment><USER9> Mach-O files are usually padded to 4096 byte aligned segments. You can inspect the segments with otool, pagestuff, and nm.

NB: UPX compresses it from 23312 -> 12904 bytes (55.35%) using UCL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pascal as a language was designed, among other things, to be very easy to compile. I believe that most of the time you don't even need to build an AST, for instance. Unless you try to optimize the result seriously, it must be reasonably easy to write a very compact and resource-economical Pascal compiler.

</comment><comment><USER11> They are not comparing to meaningful things like other Pascal, Algol, Go, or C compilers. Which would be a relevant comparison.

They are comparing to meaningless stuff like an iPhone picture (!)

</comment><comment><USER12> Still trying to find the Turbo Pascal source of the Turbo Bridge after all these years.

<comment><USER13> What is Turbo Bridge?</comment></comment>