I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having to jump through all the same hoops.)
This is just my experience after working for ~1000 hours on healthcare.gov w/other YC alumni (relatively nonideological-liberal-or-libertarian engineer bias), but I think it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead, along with unintentional side effects, edge cases, and bad incentives.
(This isn't why healthcare.gov had major issues, it's just another problem.)
That said, there's no way politically a basic income is going to fly anytime soon. So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,...
Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone.
Consider a BI paying 300M people $20k. Cost is $6 trillion.
Consider a targeted program paying 50M people $20k, no overhead. Cost is $1 trillion.
You need an overhead cost of 500% of benefits for a basic income to be cost competitive.
Can any BI proponents provide even a back of the envelope calculation suggesting how BI could possibly be competitive?
I'm not convinced that Basic income would necessarily deal with edge cases all that much better. A simple basic income implies that you provide everybody with the same minimum income and they cut back on public services etc to the minimum since in theory people can now buy what they want.
But there are problems in that not everyone can live off the same amount of money. This is especially true with disabled or very ill people who are the most likely to be unable to obtain employment. They also require more money to maintain the same living standard, often much more in the case of people who require full time care etc.
This basic premise(MVP) exists on American Indian reservations, quasi-sovereign states. The BIA and the Tribe distributes an equal share of funds from either the government or gaming to each tribal member. As long as you can prove you are a tribe member, you get the funds.
Feel free to visit any of these reservations and see the kind of lives they live. I grew up surrounded by them in Arizona and went to school with many Native Americans in both primary & high school. It's not a great way to live and the reason so many are leaving the reservations.
I agree we would really benefit from a radical simplification our entitlements. Going through the simplified and unified but still arcane ACA application process personally brought this home for me, especially when I realized it is a system that can become a single entry point to multiple varied entitlement programs that formerly each had their own different qualification rules. Digging into it I saw that one of the goals behind it was to get more of the people who are entitled to Medicaid into Medicaid, the biggest barrier being that it takes a college degree and several days of dedicated work to navigate your way through the application process (I exaggerate, but not by much)
I also agree that we are decades away from sufficient public outrage to fuel the political machine to make these changes. Much like the flat tax, it makes sense to most people but will never happen due to the strong motivation of current rent-seekers to maintain the status quo.
While I would much prefer a basic income to an increase in the minimum wage, I am torn by the fear that it would turn us into the world of Neal Stephenson's Anathem or Mike Judge's Idiocracy. I support Voltaire's assertion that "Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need"
It's an independent organization that functions as a voluntary tax collection. Everybody who believes in basic income signs up for it, and makes a monthly donation. At the end of each month, we divide the total pot of all donations by the number of users: if you need the money, you withdraw your portion. If you don't need it, you can leave it in, so that the next month's pot will be bigger.
That's the whole algorithm.
I think it's self-balancing - if I, as a software developer, have the opportunity to withdraw a small sum, I won't bother - I don't need an extra $5 or $50 or $500, really. But to someone in a lower income bracket, that might be a significant amount of money.
Is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with?
My proposal is an e-currency with a time based demurrage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)) fee. The demurrage fees would be paid out equally to all consumers. The demurrage fee pay outs would be equivalent to a basic income. Since it is an e-currency, it would be independent of governments.
Why would businesses accept such a currency? In the future wealth inequality will probably cause economic demand to shrink. By accepting these types of currencies, businesses could grow while remaining profitable.
> ...is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
I don't know, but technology like http://ethereum.org may make it possible to move some things from the realm of states into software. For example, given data feeds of births/deaths/retirements, it might be possible to implement a software contract for voluntary social security that pays contributing participants an annuity from retirement until death.
I'm reading the comments, and surprised at what's missing. What happened to the business approach?
The US government is delivering a large number of products with wildly varying costs, efficiencies, and price points. e.g. unemployment, welfare, food stamps, etc. There is a proposal is to replace those products with only one.
The new product fills (mostly) the same need as the existing ones. It will do so at less cost, with more efficiency (less bureaucracy, administration, fraud, etc.). Previous market studies show that it works.
So... what's the problem?
As a non-US person, this looks a lot like previous discussions on health care. France pays about $10 per person per day for universal health care. The UK pays about $10. Japan pays about $10. Canada pays about $10.
The US (before Obomacare) ? About $20, for care that isn't universal.
You guys are getting ripped off. Yet the bulk of the population sticks their fingers in their ears, and complains about people who may not "deserve" it. Or they complain about fraud.
Who the hell cares about random welfare guy ripping off the system? If you're making over $40K per year, you're getting ripped of by the system. By your system, that you demand to keep in place.
You can get rid of the checks and balances, and just absorb the cost of fraud. And as a bonus, a simpler system is harder to game, which leads to more detectable fraud, and therefore less of it.
This won't happen in the US for a number of reasons. One of which is that the bureaucracy won't voluntarily reduce. Another (as seen here) an unwillingness to deal with these issues in a business-like manner.
Yes, I'm from a socialist country advocating for more capitalism. Not unfettered, but more.
Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society, which accounts for inherent human limitations and behaviors. Evolution is an extremely feckless game, and thus far we've been trapped by its whims, endlessly struggling in a free-for-all battle for survival.
In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behaviors we're prone to, and what impact these have on our societies.
Second, we will need technology which allows us to liberate ourselves from extreme labor, giving us free time to engage our societies in a calm, rational matter without our survival on the line.
If these two conditions are met, then I believe humanity will transcend into a new golden age. As of this writing, I think we're made incredible progress on the second point, but are very far behind on the first.
Furthermore, the US is an extremely complex nation, with a history that makes unity almost impossible except against foreign entities. The US needs to make an incredible amount of progress on the first point in order to even consider radical ideas like basic income. In fact, it is currently dialing back its SNAP (food stamps), which is part of its social assistance program. This is in the context of an already weak social safety net, by far the weakest of any western nation.
Sadly, the US has a very long way to go. The commonwealth and Nordic countries, by comparison, are much further along.
> Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society
Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses), thus negating the positive effects of basic income.
Then you know what would happen next... people asking for an increased basic income, and the thing would spiral to the end.
It's not that easy to escape from Evolution. We can delay it for a time, if we keep our exponential growth going. Unfortunately, not for a really long time, unless we discover some way to grow beyond our galaxy.
Anyway, basic income is important for this century we are on. For our lifetime. Things will get very ugly very fast if we automate everything and don't have some functional redistributing program before.
Obviously this is not a new idea... Twenty years ago I sat around with college mates, in Canada, listing the merits of the "Guaranteed Income" and quite frankly I still support the idea today.
If you took all the salaries, property and operations cost associated with distributing old age security, welfare, disability, unemployment wages etc etc, it would probably pay for much of the cost associated with the Guaranteed Income (even if you had a small group dedicated to counter fraud abuse).
I could list out the many benefits and the nay-sayer objections with counter arguments, but after twenty years I've come to realize money distribution is not the problem. The problem is money = power and society is hell bent on gaining power.
The real solution is to move to a resource managed economy that eliminates money all together. But quite frankly we as a society are not there yet and I doubt we will be in my lifetime.
Some citizens, with their guaranteed basic income, will spend it wisely to cover their needs...as envisioned by proponents of this approach.
Others, however, will waste their income and again find themselves short of what is necessary to cover their needs.
What then? Simply increase the amount of basic income awarded, and hope that by throwing more money at the symptoms of poverty, the cause will be addressed?
And where does this money come from? Not immediately, of course, but 5-10 years down the road once society has been changed by this policy's implementation? Why would the financial engines of today, which could theoretically fund such an endeavor, continue to run as efficiently in the future?
I am always wary of supporting a basic income guarantee. Although it sounds much better than the current welfare mess we have, the actual implementation will probably be an addition rather than a replacement.
I agree there are immense benefits but it fails to recognize that markets rule the world. Once there would be a Basic Income, that is when market prices would go up to cancel out the benefit. You underestimate the rulers of the world (wealthy) to hold onto their advantage.
I see it as many times better than welfare or unemployment since it is distributed equally to everyone. If there is a limit it will eventually be too low, so even rich people would get it, they would have to or it would be destroyed.
Social security is an insurance policy really that doesn't hit wealthy wallets much beyond what everyone pays, but people still want to destroy it and this is against workers directly paying in their whole lives for a subpar investment, yes small businesses pay the full 15%ish and social security returns 2% annually and also props up our dollar big time with investment in t-bills. So even benefits like that are too social for many.
But a Basic Income distributed to everyone would lose the current perception of welfare/unemployment being bad when really these are helpful to keep the low end propped up and in the end I believe it saves money. You'd have to keep moving it up like minimum wage as the effects are normalized, it really is a travesty that minimum wage hasn't gone up as well.
People in America really don't like helping one another so this and other programs with even a hint of social aspects will not catch on. But if someone gets a benefit that the complainer also gets, they would probably be ok with it. However this does not redistribute and would eventually be cancelled out in pricing.
I am not at all an economist, but I wonder: if everyone had the same amount of fixed income (in addition to whatever else they made from their jobs), wouldn't there be continual inflation, rendering that money worthless? Wouldn't the fixed income become the new zero income?
Also: How does Macdonalds work in this situation, if the fixed income "replaces" minimum wage. Does Macdonalds pay on top of this wage? Do they double it? Do they pay zero? If they pay zero, what incentives workers to work at Macdonalds?
I haven't read much on BI, so I'm sure this has already been answered already, but: how do the numbers add up?
The US poverty line for a single person is $11k. For simplicity, let's say BI gives everyone in the US $10k per year. Times 313.9 million, that's $3.1 trillion per year. The US government spent, overall, $3.45 trillion in 2013. How would we be able to afford basic income?
Think "working-age adult" (perhaps even "household") not "individual". Also, assume that taxes will reclaim that basic income from folks making significantly more than the poverty line.
According to Wikipedia, only the bottom quartile of the US population earns less than $22500 per household; if you assume that BI isn't simply added on tax-free to higher-earning households' net income, that makes it more like 1/4 of the 80% of the population over age 14 would be eligible for full BI benefits. So, call it 20% of your original population estimate.
That makes it roughly $600 billion, with the potential chance of largely replacing welfare ($532 billion* in 2013) and federal disability ($166 billion), not to mention some portion of Social Security and other programs.
Sounds like a reasonable idea to at least explore IMHO.
Most implementations I've read lean towards it being similar to a negative tax (there are other possible implementations out there). So if you file $0 income, you get a $10,000 credit/refund. If you make $200,000 income, you pay $20,000 in taxes.
So taxes on the top brackets pay for basic income on the lowest brackets, with the understanding that the impact isn't changing much for most people because we already have a progressive tax system and this is just a simpler/more efficient way to distribute.
Removing social security, medicare, and most other government social welfare programs should remove a giant chunk of the federal budget. I think if you re-do these numbers that will appear a lot more affordable.
Proponents of BI say it can't exclude anyone. That is silly. Things we consider the most basic fundamental rights: voting, free speech, are restricted for large groups such as convicted felons. It would be reasonable that anyone who fails to conform with government rules of accepted social behavior should also be excluded from BI.
The more serious problem with BI is how the dollars flow toward prices. If you make a blanket distribution of money to a large group of money the end result may just be price inflation in the goods that exist in a limited quantity, most specifically real estate.
I think BI is a fairly poor idea. But, being realistic I am trying to imagine what it would look like in use. All I see is a tool for governments to control large segments of lower middle class citizens. That may well be the goal.
(1) The primary sources of funding usually suggested for BI are cutting existing means-tested benefit programs and increasing high-end income taxes. (Note that many of these existing programs are currently joint federal/state funded programs, so unless BI was done the same way, this would also involve shifting some spending from the states to the federal government.)
(2) The full single-person household federal poverty line is a very high target to aim for per person for BI in an initial implementation. Half of the two-person household FPL per adult citizen and permanent resident (about $7500/each), and, if BI is going to paid to children (or, rather, guardians on their behalf) the full marginal amount for an additional family member (about $4000/each) per child (again citizens and permanent residents) is probably a more reasonable target to aim for, but I'd expect an initial implementation to start out below that and work up.
You increase the taxes by an average of $10K
which means nothing at the low end (people below the poverty line) and more than that at the high end
but ideally the middle class breaks even on the idea, they pay $10K to the basic income fund and get about $10K at the start of the year as a prebate on the next year's basic income tax
I can think of three sane approaches. First, BI does not necessarily need to be above the poverty line. We can also go to a progressive BI, which may better be describe as a negative income tax, where the poor get more than the rich. And we can increase taxes.
The US social security budget is 1.3trillion, so diverting all of it to BI would get people 30% of the way towards the goal of reaching the poverty line.
It may be that getting everyone above the poverty line is infeasible. It may be that the poverty line may be sidestepped, say, by relocating to a poorer (less costly) region of the country.
Food for thought. I haven't really formed an opinion on it, really. The numbers don't look that off, at first inspection.
I'm not sure you could to do straight math like that as it does depend on the implementation. I presume there would be corporate tax laws introduced that would re-coupe most dollars associated with employees. So a govt could craft whatever policies they want in order to make it work out.
More tax. More specifically, an amount of extra tax that for a typical person would roughly balance out the extra (say) $10k/year in basic income, so that the net effect on government finances would be small.
I didn't RTFA, but if you instead assume it just goes to adults (~221M) then that's $2.2T. I think BI gets rid of SS/Medicare/Medicaid/etc, which gets you back roughly $2T.
Because income taxes would go up as well. The poor would benefit but the rich might actually end up with a net loss. A basic income is nothing more than a redistribution of wealth, and in theory, might not cost anything more.
Every time a post like this comes up it gets hundreds of people supporting the idea. The problem is that most of the readers of HN have been in the Upper Middle Class or higher their entire lives. Friends, family, co-workers, all UMC, and so you don't know, you've never experienced, the pathologies typical of poorer people. Or, you pretend those pathologies can be solved with a new variation on welfare.
Giving out checks is going to create millions of people who do nothing but 1) Watch television and eat potato chips or 2) Spend the checks on drugs/alcohol, and steal whatever they need until the first of the next month. Worse, many of those people are the same who used to clean your toilets and take out your garbage. Not mine--yours.
That's just reality. I'm guessing that the main reason why conservatives like Charles Murray support basic income is because it focuses the menagerie of handouts into one policy, which will allow for easier metrics into how increases are harmful.
I have a proposal. Those who favor basic income should pick one or two recipients who are deserving of assistance, and open their own pockets and provide the money. The recipients will be glad and thankful, the donors will feel they have moved society toward utopia, and the rest of us can just get on with our lives without suffering the burdens that an additional entitlement would impose.
I say this not to incite a flame war or partisan jibes. I just feel that it's the most honest and ethical way to provide basic income; those who believe in this approach are free to contribute, while those who don't are free not to.
> While people could theoretically survive off the charity of others, advanced artificial intelligence and robotics are likely to increase the portion of the population who are unemployable.
We've been hearing this kind of arguments for literally centuries (the steam engine is going to put people out of work, cars and trucks will create unemployment, oh no Silicon valley is going to kill all manual work out there through automation, and then robots will take over the world and there will be no more jobs for people). This is really, really old and tiring. If anything, technologies increase the amount of economic growth through increased opportunities, and so far the market has clearly demonstrated that it's providing a lot more jobs to way more people than when we were still 1 billion on this planet.
1) When people don't need to produce value to live in the world, they will cease to produce value.
2) Ultimately it is not income that is needed to survive but resources properly organized. The cost of survival is getting cheaper and cheaper at an exponential rate. You wouldn't know that though because they keep raising the bar on what it means to "survive"—big screen tv, air conditioning, car, etc. The amount of work required to live according to living standards 100 years ago is rather minimal.
3) Where does this "basic income" come from? If you are taking it from others who produce value then how are you any better than a slave owner? The only difference is that instead of owning and taking the livelihood of an individual you are taking it from everyone collectively in smaller amounts. The moral principle is the same.
4) Why would people work if they can just take from others? Everyone will do the least amount possible because everyone else is just going to take their profits so why bother. Communism didn't work so why are you proposing it now?
5) You can't protect people from being stupid. Unless you are physically handicapped or retarded, in which case there is charity and family, it's really pathetically easy to survive in today's world. You aren't being chased by tigers. Agricultural yields are 100x than they were just a short time ago. The Internet provides a vast amount of resources to better yourself. There are greater abundances than ever before and people are generally charitable towards others. If you can't survive under those conditions there is something wrong with you.
6) I find it offensive and an attack on my personal liberty that you would demand that I sacrifice my livelihood so that another doesn't have to work hard and make wise decisions.
Providing a basic income for all people, regardless of their merit to the society as a whole, is problematic. It's not enough to just hand over a couple hundred dollars to someone and say "have fun". We need to ensure everyone is getting the proper basic services, first.
I'm talking about shelter, food, water, and a basis for living comfortably. We have the resources to do this, today. We just don't have the distribution infrastructure. Money should be something you spend purely on things you want, not things you need.
Given that we built a distribution infrastructure of some kind to automatically and evenly distribute the total food resources of the country, we would see a dramatic change in how money is looked upon and how we use it. No longer will we require money, instead, money is something you earn and use for things you wish to do. We can focus all of our time and energy on furthering our technology, our minds, and the human race in general.
There are three major advantages of unconditional basic income.
1) It will always be beneficial to work. I.e. even for a couple of hours.
2) Society wont have to waste money controlling whether someone should have the money or not. The frees millions of people and billions of not trillions of control.
3) It removes most argument around inequality and it makes sure there always is customers.
You can't have wealth without creating it through labor. You can see this when you isolate the abstractions society has and go to the core semantics.
Take a population of people. Stick them on a remote island. Then institute this measure. Where does this income come from? If you just print money, what is there to buy if nobody has produced it? If it is from taxation, then if you produce something and others just take it why would you bother producing when it is much easier just to take from others like everyone else?
I would argue, and history seems to show this. That a society prospers as a whole the more they reward hard work and allow the people to enjoy the fruits of their own labors.
I once stumbled upon a YouTube video consisting of a woman who received ~$1,400/mo entirely supplied by Government Assistance Programs.
I once saw a job posting for a Web Developer/Python position where the client stated: "$1,000/mo is enough in Belarus."
I stopped to think for a bit: "I hardly made $800/mo when I was freelancing, and I was happiest when I was not working."
I think the biggest argument for Basic Income is to normalize what is already an existing systemic exploitation of a broken system. Professional exploiters and accidental/system-justifier exploiters need to be cut off, which might motivate professionals and invalids to assess our system as more just. I'm sure a positive network effect will follow.
Why not just try it? Why not stop arguing these speculative points and just try it?
You actually raise a good point about testing it. If you have heard of the Sea Steading Institute they are proposing that we establish a bunch of "startup" style countries to examine which policies and solutions will work and which won't. The problem with basic income though is that it relies on captive individuals (value producers who pay tax) and given the choice they are most likely going to move to somewhere that doesn't force them to pay as much tax. I can't see how socialism can survive without forcing people against their will.
I support the idea, but there are other things that have to go with it in order to really work and not end up like the broken economy that Argentina had to put up with when doing something similar.
It would need serious tax reform, changes to how business are treated locally and internationally.
One suggestion for tax reform is to apply taxes strictly on only sales tax, not income tax. Certain property taxes may still be effectful, but it's really a huge mess that will really function if not taken all together.
I suppose an analogy is when it comes to extreme programming, you can't just take what you like and get all the benefits--not that basic income specifies these other things, but I believe there is a bigger package that has to be considered.
Replace income tax with land value tax. Then it's not redistribution of income. The argument for a land value tax is Georgist: land is not property because it is not the product of one's own labor. Therefore land 'owners' should pay rent to society in the form of the land value tax (though not on the property built on the land). That rent is then paid to society as a universal basic income.
(And to preempt those who might question why anyone would both owning land: because like any investment there is a cost that can be exceeded by profit.)
How does a lands tax comport with the fact that some acres are hugely more productive (or extractive) than others?
It's not in the US, but the First Oil Well in Bahrain, which has been providing oil since June 2, 1932. For much of its life at 70,000 bbl/day, more recently at about half that rate, 35,000 bbl/day.
That's roughly $3.5 million per day in productivity.
There was a time, and Henry George came well after it, when the agricultural productivity of land was in fact the basis of virtually all wealth (some contributions from the sea, as well as water and wind power). Since the large-scale exploitation of coal, oil, and gas, starting in the mid 18th century, that hasn't been the case.
It eventually likely will be again, but I've not read enough of the Georgist view to see how the huge variances in land productivity would be addressed. Even if mere ag output is considered.
I didn't know it was called that. I was actually thinking along the same lines. Make that the only tax. Everything else could be optional fees for services or premiums for insurance products.
but then if you choose not to interact with the market economy you cannot subsist off your own land, especially if everyone is buying up land and making it private so that there is no public access to nature
[+] [-] kalvin|12 years ago|reply
This is just my experience after working for ~1000 hours on healthcare.gov w/other YC alumni (relatively nonideological-liberal-or-libertarian engineer bias), but I think it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead, along with unintentional side effects, edge cases, and bad incentives.
(This isn't why healthcare.gov had major issues, it's just another problem.)
That said, there's no way politically a basic income is going to fly anytime soon. So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy?
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|12 years ago|reply
Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone.
Consider a BI paying 300M people $20k. Cost is $6 trillion.
Consider a targeted program paying 50M people $20k, no overhead. Cost is $1 trillion.
You need an overhead cost of 500% of benefits for a basic income to be cost competitive.
Can any BI proponents provide even a back of the envelope calculation suggesting how BI could possibly be competitive?
[+] [-] jiggy2011|12 years ago|reply
But there are problems in that not everyone can live off the same amount of money. This is especially true with disabled or very ill people who are the most likely to be unable to obtain employment. They also require more money to maintain the same living standard, often much more in the case of people who require full time care etc.
[+] [-] damonpace|12 years ago|reply
Feel free to visit any of these reservations and see the kind of lives they live. I grew up surrounded by them in Arizona and went to school with many Native Americans in both primary & high school. It's not a great way to live and the reason so many are leaving the reservations.
[+] [-] patja|12 years ago|reply
I also agree that we are decades away from sufficient public outrage to fuel the political machine to make these changes. Much like the flat tax, it makes sense to most people but will never happen due to the strong motivation of current rent-seekers to maintain the status quo.
While I would much prefer a basic income to an increase in the minimum wage, I am torn by the fear that it would turn us into the world of Neal Stephenson's Anathem or Mike Judge's Idiocracy. I support Voltaire's assertion that "Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need"
[+] [-] jes5199|12 years ago|reply
It's an independent organization that functions as a voluntary tax collection. Everybody who believes in basic income signs up for it, and makes a monthly donation. At the end of each month, we divide the total pot of all donations by the number of users: if you need the money, you withdraw your portion. If you don't need it, you can leave it in, so that the next month's pot will be bigger.
That's the whole algorithm.
I think it's self-balancing - if I, as a software developer, have the opportunity to withdraw a small sum, I won't bother - I don't need an extra $5 or $50 or $500, really. But to someone in a lower income bracket, that might be a significant amount of money.
[+] [-] _Robbie|12 years ago|reply
My proposal is an e-currency with a time based demurrage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)) fee. The demurrage fees would be paid out equally to all consumers. The demurrage fee pay outs would be equivalent to a basic income. Since it is an e-currency, it would be independent of governments.
Why would businesses accept such a currency? In the future wealth inequality will probably cause economic demand to shrink. By accepting these types of currencies, businesses could grow while remaining profitable.
[+] [-] RoboTeddy|12 years ago|reply
I don't know, but technology like http://ethereum.org may make it possible to move some things from the realm of states into software. For example, given data feeds of births/deaths/retirements, it might be possible to implement a software contract for voluntary social security that pays contributing participants an annuity from retirement until death.
[+] [-] adekok|12 years ago|reply
The US government is delivering a large number of products with wildly varying costs, efficiencies, and price points. e.g. unemployment, welfare, food stamps, etc. There is a proposal is to replace those products with only one.
The new product fills (mostly) the same need as the existing ones. It will do so at less cost, with more efficiency (less bureaucracy, administration, fraud, etc.). Previous market studies show that it works.
So... what's the problem?
As a non-US person, this looks a lot like previous discussions on health care. France pays about $10 per person per day for universal health care. The UK pays about $10. Japan pays about $10. Canada pays about $10.
The US (before Obomacare) ? About $20, for care that isn't universal.
You guys are getting ripped off. Yet the bulk of the population sticks their fingers in their ears, and complains about people who may not "deserve" it. Or they complain about fraud.
Who the hell cares about random welfare guy ripping off the system? If you're making over $40K per year, you're getting ripped of by the system. By your system, that you demand to keep in place.
You can get rid of the checks and balances, and just absorb the cost of fraud. And as a bonus, a simpler system is harder to game, which leads to more detectable fraud, and therefore less of it.
This won't happen in the US for a number of reasons. One of which is that the bureaucracy won't voluntarily reduce. Another (as seen here) an unwillingness to deal with these issues in a business-like manner.
Yes, I'm from a socialist country advocating for more capitalism. Not unfettered, but more.
[+] [-] FD3SA|12 years ago|reply
In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behaviors we're prone to, and what impact these have on our societies.
Second, we will need technology which allows us to liberate ourselves from extreme labor, giving us free time to engage our societies in a calm, rational matter without our survival on the line.
If these two conditions are met, then I believe humanity will transcend into a new golden age. As of this writing, I think we're made incredible progress on the second point, but are very far behind on the first.
Furthermore, the US is an extremely complex nation, with a history that makes unity almost impossible except against foreign entities. The US needs to make an incredible amount of progress on the first point in order to even consider radical ideas like basic income. In fact, it is currently dialing back its SNAP (food stamps), which is part of its social assistance program. This is in the context of an already weak social safety net, by far the weakest of any western nation.
Sadly, the US has a very long way to go. The commonwealth and Nordic countries, by comparison, are much further along.
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses), thus negating the positive effects of basic income.
Then you know what would happen next... people asking for an increased basic income, and the thing would spiral to the end.
[+] [-] marcosdumay|12 years ago|reply
Anyway, basic income is important for this century we are on. For our lifetime. Things will get very ugly very fast if we automate everything and don't have some functional redistributing program before.
[+] [-] Pinatubo|12 years ago|reply
Did you mean "ethics informed by empirics" or something like that? "Empirically ethical" is a logical contradiction.
[+] [-] javajosh|12 years ago|reply
I was amused by my brain which, perhaps inevitably, read "golden age" with a distinct Alpha Centauri voice.
[+] [-] whyme|12 years ago|reply
If you took all the salaries, property and operations cost associated with distributing old age security, welfare, disability, unemployment wages etc etc, it would probably pay for much of the cost associated with the Guaranteed Income (even if you had a small group dedicated to counter fraud abuse).
I could list out the many benefits and the nay-sayer objections with counter arguments, but after twenty years I've come to realize money distribution is not the problem. The problem is money = power and society is hell bent on gaining power.
The real solution is to move to a resource managed economy that eliminates money all together. But quite frankly we as a society are not there yet and I doubt we will be in my lifetime.
[+] [-] MrZongle2|12 years ago|reply
Some citizens, with their guaranteed basic income, will spend it wisely to cover their needs...as envisioned by proponents of this approach.
Others, however, will waste their income and again find themselves short of what is necessary to cover their needs.
What then? Simply increase the amount of basic income awarded, and hope that by throwing more money at the symptoms of poverty, the cause will be addressed?
And where does this money come from? Not immediately, of course, but 5-10 years down the road once society has been changed by this policy's implementation? Why would the financial engines of today, which could theoretically fund such an endeavor, continue to run as efficiently in the future?
[+] [-] jdreaver|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drawkbox|12 years ago|reply
I see it as many times better than welfare or unemployment since it is distributed equally to everyone. If there is a limit it will eventually be too low, so even rich people would get it, they would have to or it would be destroyed.
Social security is an insurance policy really that doesn't hit wealthy wallets much beyond what everyone pays, but people still want to destroy it and this is against workers directly paying in their whole lives for a subpar investment, yes small businesses pay the full 15%ish and social security returns 2% annually and also props up our dollar big time with investment in t-bills. So even benefits like that are too social for many.
But a Basic Income distributed to everyone would lose the current perception of welfare/unemployment being bad when really these are helpful to keep the low end propped up and in the end I believe it saves money. You'd have to keep moving it up like minimum wage as the effects are normalized, it really is a travesty that minimum wage hasn't gone up as well.
People in America really don't like helping one another so this and other programs with even a hint of social aspects will not catch on. But if someone gets a benefit that the complainer also gets, they would probably be ok with it. However this does not redistribute and would eventually be cancelled out in pricing.
[+] [-] krazydad|12 years ago|reply
Also: How does Macdonalds work in this situation, if the fixed income "replaces" minimum wage. Does Macdonalds pay on top of this wage? Do they double it? Do they pay zero? If they pay zero, what incentives workers to work at Macdonalds?
[+] [-] fishtoaster|12 years ago|reply
The US poverty line for a single person is $11k. For simplicity, let's say BI gives everyone in the US $10k per year. Times 313.9 million, that's $3.1 trillion per year. The US government spent, overall, $3.45 trillion in 2013. How would we be able to afford basic income?
[+] [-] rcoder|12 years ago|reply
According to Wikipedia, only the bottom quartile of the US population earns less than $22500 per household; if you assume that BI isn't simply added on tax-free to higher-earning households' net income, that makes it more like 1/4 of the 80% of the population over age 14 would be eligible for full BI benefits. So, call it 20% of your original population estimate.
That makes it roughly $600 billion, with the potential chance of largely replacing welfare ($532 billion* in 2013) and federal disability ($166 billion), not to mention some portion of Social Security and other programs.
Sounds like a reasonable idea to at least explore IMHO.
* per charts at usgovernmentspending.com
[+] [-] MetricMike|12 years ago|reply
So taxes on the top brackets pay for basic income on the lowest brackets, with the understanding that the impact isn't changing much for most people because we already have a progressive tax system and this is just a simpler/more efficient way to distribute.
[+] [-] AJ007|12 years ago|reply
People under 18, 25%
Felons/criminals, probably 3%
Removing social security, medicare, and most other government social welfare programs should remove a giant chunk of the federal budget. I think if you re-do these numbers that will appear a lot more affordable.
Proponents of BI say it can't exclude anyone. That is silly. Things we consider the most basic fundamental rights: voting, free speech, are restricted for large groups such as convicted felons. It would be reasonable that anyone who fails to conform with government rules of accepted social behavior should also be excluded from BI.
The more serious problem with BI is how the dollars flow toward prices. If you make a blanket distribution of money to a large group of money the end result may just be price inflation in the goods that exist in a limited quantity, most specifically real estate.
I think BI is a fairly poor idea. But, being realistic I am trying to imagine what it would look like in use. All I see is a tool for governments to control large segments of lower middle class citizens. That may well be the goal.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|12 years ago|reply
(2) The full single-person household federal poverty line is a very high target to aim for per person for BI in an initial implementation. Half of the two-person household FPL per adult citizen and permanent resident (about $7500/each), and, if BI is going to paid to children (or, rather, guardians on their behalf) the full marginal amount for an additional family member (about $4000/each) per child (again citizens and permanent residents) is probably a more reasonable target to aim for, but I'd expect an initial implementation to start out below that and work up.
[+] [-] iopq|12 years ago|reply
but ideally the middle class breaks even on the idea, they pay $10K to the basic income fund and get about $10K at the start of the year as a prebate on the next year's basic income tax
[+] [-] gizmo686|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiosgc|12 years ago|reply
It may be that getting everyone above the poverty line is infeasible. It may be that the poverty line may be sidestepped, say, by relocating to a poorer (less costly) region of the country.
Food for thought. I haven't really formed an opinion on it, really. The numbers don't look that off, at first inspection.
Reference: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_State...
[+] [-] whyme|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjm11|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nattaylor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RoboTeddy|12 years ago|reply
Social security, unemployment, food stamps, etc seem to account for 1/3rd of the total federal budget in 2013 [1].
[1] http://nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2012/presidents-budge...
[+] [-] hmsimha|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jganetsk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pat2man|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameishere|12 years ago|reply
Giving out checks is going to create millions of people who do nothing but 1) Watch television and eat potato chips or 2) Spend the checks on drugs/alcohol, and steal whatever they need until the first of the next month. Worse, many of those people are the same who used to clean your toilets and take out your garbage. Not mine--yours.
That's just reality. I'm guessing that the main reason why conservatives like Charles Murray support basic income is because it focuses the menagerie of handouts into one policy, which will allow for easier metrics into how increases are harmful.
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|12 years ago|reply
I say this not to incite a flame war or partisan jibes. I just feel that it's the most honest and ethical way to provide basic income; those who believe in this approach are free to contribute, while those who don't are free not to.
Seems fair to me.
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
We've been hearing this kind of arguments for literally centuries (the steam engine is going to put people out of work, cars and trucks will create unemployment, oh no Silicon valley is going to kill all manual work out there through automation, and then robots will take over the world and there will be no more jobs for people). This is really, really old and tiring. If anything, technologies increase the amount of economic growth through increased opportunities, and so far the market has clearly demonstrated that it's providing a lot more jobs to way more people than when we were still 1 billion on this planet.
[+] [-] bcheung|12 years ago|reply
2) Ultimately it is not income that is needed to survive but resources properly organized. The cost of survival is getting cheaper and cheaper at an exponential rate. You wouldn't know that though because they keep raising the bar on what it means to "survive"—big screen tv, air conditioning, car, etc. The amount of work required to live according to living standards 100 years ago is rather minimal.
3) Where does this "basic income" come from? If you are taking it from others who produce value then how are you any better than a slave owner? The only difference is that instead of owning and taking the livelihood of an individual you are taking it from everyone collectively in smaller amounts. The moral principle is the same.
4) Why would people work if they can just take from others? Everyone will do the least amount possible because everyone else is just going to take their profits so why bother. Communism didn't work so why are you proposing it now?
5) You can't protect people from being stupid. Unless you are physically handicapped or retarded, in which case there is charity and family, it's really pathetically easy to survive in today's world. You aren't being chased by tigers. Agricultural yields are 100x than they were just a short time ago. The Internet provides a vast amount of resources to better yourself. There are greater abundances than ever before and people are generally charitable towards others. If you can't survive under those conditions there is something wrong with you.
6) I find it offensive and an attack on my personal liberty that you would demand that I sacrifice my livelihood so that another doesn't have to work hard and make wise decisions.
[+] [-] tomphoolery|12 years ago|reply
I'm talking about shelter, food, water, and a basis for living comfortably. We have the resources to do this, today. We just don't have the distribution infrastructure. Money should be something you spend purely on things you want, not things you need.
Given that we built a distribution infrastructure of some kind to automatically and evenly distribute the total food resources of the country, we would see a dramatic change in how money is looked upon and how we use it. No longer will we require money, instead, money is something you earn and use for things you wish to do. We can focus all of our time and energy on furthering our technology, our minds, and the human race in general.
[+] [-] ThomPete|12 years ago|reply
1) It will always be beneficial to work. I.e. even for a couple of hours.
2) Society wont have to waste money controlling whether someone should have the money or not. The frees millions of people and billions of not trillions of control.
3) It removes most argument around inequality and it makes sure there always is customers.
[+] [-] bcheung|12 years ago|reply
Take a population of people. Stick them on a remote island. Then institute this measure. Where does this income come from? If you just print money, what is there to buy if nobody has produced it? If it is from taxation, then if you produce something and others just take it why would you bother producing when it is much easier just to take from others like everyone else?
I would argue, and history seems to show this. That a society prospers as a whole the more they reward hard work and allow the people to enjoy the fruits of their own labors.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] softatlas|12 years ago|reply
I once saw a job posting for a Web Developer/Python position where the client stated: "$1,000/mo is enough in Belarus."
I stopped to think for a bit: "I hardly made $800/mo when I was freelancing, and I was happiest when I was not working."
I think the biggest argument for Basic Income is to normalize what is already an existing systemic exploitation of a broken system. Professional exploiters and accidental/system-justifier exploiters need to be cut off, which might motivate professionals and invalids to assess our system as more just. I'm sure a positive network effect will follow.
Why not just try it? Why not stop arguing these speculative points and just try it?
It only works if you test.
[+] [-] bcheung|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] softatlas|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cordite|12 years ago|reply
It would need serious tax reform, changes to how business are treated locally and internationally.
One suggestion for tax reform is to apply taxes strictly on only sales tax, not income tax. Certain property taxes may still be effectful, but it's really a huge mess that will really function if not taken all together.
I suppose an analogy is when it comes to extreme programming, you can't just take what you like and get all the benefits--not that basic income specifies these other things, but I believe there is a bigger package that has to be considered.
[+] [-] ende|12 years ago|reply
(And to preempt those who might question why anyone would both owning land: because like any investment there is a cost that can be exceeded by profit.)
[+] [-] dredmorbius|12 years ago|reply
It's not in the US, but the First Oil Well in Bahrain, which has been providing oil since June 2, 1932. For much of its life at 70,000 bbl/day, more recently at about half that rate, 35,000 bbl/day.
That's roughly $3.5 million per day in productivity.
There was a time, and Henry George came well after it, when the agricultural productivity of land was in fact the basis of virtually all wealth (some contributions from the sea, as well as water and wind power). Since the large-scale exploitation of coal, oil, and gas, starting in the mid 18th century, that hasn't been the case.
It eventually likely will be again, but I've not read enough of the Georgist view to see how the huge variances in land productivity would be addressed. Even if mere ag output is considered.
[+] [-] bcheung|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donkeysmuggler|12 years ago|reply