Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of?
If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and his family by learning some vocational skills.
Choosing Oakland in particular has interesting connotations, considering that it is a major industrial center where there may be lots of opportunity for skilled workers.
Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.
Of course, there are still a great many people who truly could take advantage of the basic income experiment because their other options are severely limited for whatever reason.
There are already lots of great free (or very cheap) ways to educate yourself but all of them require time and energy. If you spend most of your time and energy working an awful job just to survive you can't take advantage of these opportunities.
Take away the need to invest time and energy into basic survival and you can suddenly take advantage of a lot of cool things that were previously not accessible to you.
even ignoring the grind that is an awful job: Community College is cheap and has all sorts of vocational training... if you can take Monday Wednesday Friday off between 9:30 and 10:15 then again between 1:00 and 1:45.
The intersection of Jobs-That-Can-Work-With-That-Schedule and Jobs-That-Can-Pay-Enough-For-CC-AND-Food-AND-Shelter is tiny and flooded with existing students.
There are people out there that wouldn't be able to cope with that. If you're on low income and have a family to support and, equally as important, nurture, then you are gonna struggle to find time, money and energy for community college.
With the strains of poverty, health issues increase. Sometimes this could lead to involvement via social services. At this point, education is a pipe dream.
I've been there. Still am there. I could spend the evening reading educational books. Sometimes I do but always at the expense of what needs to be done. Always st the expense of the little family time I have (I see my kids perhaps one hour tops weekdays - that is a luxury compared to what I used to have).
This is with a system where the state, currently begrudgingly, helps me out a great deal. I whince thinking about countries where the social security net isn't as helpful.
It requires a lot of optimism to keep yourself a float in a situation like this. College, through my eyes, is a wonderful idea that is a bit too on the optimistic side at the moment, even for me.
> Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.
That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.
This exists in Japan, and is actually a very wonderful thing for the most part.
There are a lot of low-paying jobs here that involve doing little else than basic customer service: answering questions and directing people where to go. Similarly, there are also a lot of low-skill labor jobs focused on parts of the national infrastructure.
Imagine, in the United States, if we pulled a page out of FDRs playbook and started putting the underemployed to work on our national infrastructure. Helping out road crews, cleaning up parks, cleaning up trash, that sort of thing
Government offices are part of that infrastructure, so people could also learn to answer phones, guide citizens through navigating the maze that is most civil service agencies, and so on.
It would take a lot of work to get there, but all that money goes right back into the economy, and it makes life better for their entire community, which I think should at least be a point of pride.
> That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.
We automate many things to squeeze the absolute last penny out of it. That can have deleterious effects, too.
For example, many fruits and vegetables have been bred to be harvested by machine. These foods have been shown to have fewer nutrients and taste differently from those which much be harvested by hand.
Employing some people to harvest some of the non-automatable crops would be a good thing.
> Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of?
The two things have little to do with each other.
A universal basic income has two primary purposes. The first is that it can act as the safety net for people with no other options, without the administrative overhead and errors inherent in means testing or the disincentive to work of welfare benefits you lose when you get a job. The second is that it's inherently redistributive across the whole wealth spectrum, so it allows you to simplify the tax system because you're doing the redistributive part on the spending side, allowing you to use a single universal tax rate that can't be avoided with shell games and accounting tricks.
Now you want to offer vocational training on top of that, but this is the usual "we should help people by giving them food stamps" fallacy. Give people the money instead. They know more about their own situation than you do. If their best option is to use the money to go to school, they'll do that. But maybe their better option is to use the money to move somewhere else, or pay down debts, or go to rehab, etc.
The people know better than the government what the people need.
In America there is no such thing as "no other options".
When you see folks saying these people are lazy, they are folks who understand there are always "other options". They might not be the options you want, but then you want free money so who cares what you want.
> Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.
Because that's really what we want in the 21st century: human machine cogs like we had in the 19th. No, let's let robots do robot things and we don't need humans to "compete" with them. Let's let humans do more human (and humane) oriented tasks.
"Let's let humans do more human (and humane) oriented tasks."
The definition of "humane" keeps shifting over time and will always be a matter of perspective.
To share a personal story, my father was unemployed while I was in college. Within a few months he looked like he had aged 10 years. Several months later he took a part time job as a landscaper and he started recovering.
I remember coming home from college once, driving to his work site and watching him push a lawnmower until he had a break in his work. This was a man that used to wear a suit and tie and commute to the city every day. Yet as I watched him push a lawnmower, I never felt more proud of him. He introduced me to his co-workers and it was the first time I had seen him smile in nearly a year. Several months later he was able to find gainful employment.
One could argue the isolation and lethargy caused by long term unemployment is more damaging mentally and physically than most labor intensive jobs. Moreover, society needs rungs in the ladder of economic advancement and it is human nature to find value in work and being part of a team.
There are a lot of assumptions here. Why can't people learn to or be assisted in finding purpose and happiness outside of a job? I've done it twice myself, going 6+ months by choice without a job. Regarding isolation, I don't think it is that difficult to imagine ways people can stay connected and have a vibrant social life without full time employment.
A big aspect of this is reframing cultural values so that people don't feel so strongly that there worth is determined by their employment status.
That's his point. Although it wasn't a blue collar job like his dad originally had, it was still enough to keep him mentally healthy. Being completely unemployed sitting home harmed him psychologically.
His point was that having any job will create enough benefits to offset the supposed harms caused by having a job that one would consider himself overqualified for.
For the most part I agree, with the caveat that 'any job' is perhaps too broad.
I've done loads of 'menial' jobs throughout my life and some were so soul-crushingly terrible (to me) that I'm not sure having them was better than 'sitting at home unemployed'.
I've never done landscaping, but I suspect it would not have been one of those soul-crushing jobs.
It wasn't "gainful" employment because of schedule variabilities. Beside, the PP is arguing against the employment value of "cog" type jobs that are easily automated.
"Provide" isn't a good word here - if vocational training is connected to this program, the only connection possible would be forcing people to use these vocational programs (I mean, you might just send a brochure to people but that's not a real connection). Present day social services abound with various "workfare" schemes. Even more prison labor, they tend to be failures on all levels - neither preparing the participants for jobs in the real economy nor producing things of value nor giving the participants a feeling of worth.
The idea of universal basic income is to eliminate social services bureaucracy - basically that the money spent deciding who is or isn't deserving could be better allocated by just giving something to everyone.
Answer: Life gets better. We have proof of this from history. When was the last time anybody here ground their own flour or washed their laundry using a rock and a river?
We are gonna end up in the future that Wall-E has predicted. Machines do everything and humans are fat slugs. Our minds are lazy and want to do the least amount of work. If given the option, we will do the least amount and occupy ourselves in entertainment. Now is that living? Thats up to you to decide. A good book to read on experiments done to understand human behavior is Daniel Kahnemans Thinking Fast and Slow.
That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit.
Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive.
> Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive.
Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anything close to keeping in shape with sports, running, and so on. Not that that stops people from fucking, but the proportion of athletic, attractive people fucking is far lower than you might make it out to be.
A lot of that is because, in the current world, staying fit is difficult. I, for example, would be in great shape if I could exercise. I like exercise. Exercise is, in fact, how I discovered that I have joint problems. I unfortunately don't have time to go to a pool every week, which is basically the only exercise I can handle, and so I have trouble with fitness. On larger scales, there are entire towns that don't have access to fresh fruit or vegetables; google "food desert". There are people that don't have enough money to buy anything other than pure calories per dollar without paying any attention to health. There are people whose household water is barely potable and drink soda all the time because it's cheaper than bottled water. There are people that grew up in households that drank soda and have sufficiently shitty jobs that they can't summon up the willpower to change that habit. Then you've got people that simply rolled badly on the genetic lottery or inherited bad intestinal flora and can't be fit no matter what they do.
Removing stresses on time, money, social interaction, culture, and mortality will make the population more healthy, not less healthy.
> Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anything close to keeping in shape with sports, running, and so on.
Research has shown that a lack of "psychological bandwidth" degrades impulse control.
Being excessively poor, having to take care of children or elderly parents, having a crappy job, etc. all take their toll on your ability to execute on things like exercise, cleaning, saving, etc.
Removing the problem of "daily living expenses" from someone's plate is a HUGE step toward helping them improve their situation both physically and mentally.
Yeah, that's a risk. However, I'm less afraid of the robots that get us there and far more afraid of the applied psychology (propaganda/advertising/politics) that could trap the entire species in that state. The Culture demonstrates a future with similar robotic capabilities where the exact opposite happens, with people gaining nearly ultimate self-actualization, the difference being in the application of intelligence.
I guess you haven't read the Culture novels? They explain it better than I could.
The short form is that they've solved Friendliness and handed most of the management over to hyperintelligent, near-omnipotent benevolent AIs. The only real problems left for individuals qualify as "how to not get bored", which for the most part they approach by cultivating eye-watering arrays of esoteric and satisfying hobbies, projects, arts and crafts, high-brow debates, luxurious indulgences, social groups, and games. The few people that still aren't satisfied generally end up in their diplomatic corps slash military slash spy agency slash police force. "Ultimate" may have been an exaggeration, but it is by far the most satisfying utopia I've seen described.
You make it sound as if we are going to run out of work? We can always increase the level of education then have more research scientists and engineers, for example. Imagine if we did 10x the amount of R&D.
Does everyone have the capacity to become a research scientist or engineer with enough training? I think we'll have to find some creative ways to use low-skilled labor.
What you said was that it could solve the problem of running out of work for people. This only works as a solution if everyone can be trained to that R&D.
No, I didn't say that. I said we could train a lot more people. Do you think 10% of the world population currently works in R&D? My proposal was to greatly increase the number.
Then what the highly trained research scientists and engineers need to do is apply their scientific training to fleecing rich people of their money.
Which is actually what is happening, and has been happening for the last 2 decades with the entry of a large number of physics, math, and CS Ph.Ds into hedge funds and tech entrepreneurship. Stage 1 is a massive wealth transfer from dumb old money built on relationships to smart new money built on technology. Stage 2 is increased funding for STEM research & applications, as the new money diverts capital into their interests. Stage 2 takes a generation or so - it doesn't happen until the new money feels secure enough in their wealth that they can divert attention to becoming powerful. But we've seen the beginnings of it already, with Tesla, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Calico, Google X, YC Research, Breakthrough Starshot, and the Gates Foundation diverting some of that money that was redirected into scientifically-trained hands back to actual scientists.
10x R&D sounds great, but as you throw more money towards a subject, you dont get more good research, you get more crap you have to wade thru. I remember when there was virtually unlimited money towards aid research, they quickly ran out of anything resembling a remotely qualify researcher very quickly.
Education is the great emancipator, but education you and I take for granted as being common, is often not.
It's hard to learn and work on improving yourself when you have no time or energy left from being able to just pay the bills to eat, sleep and work.
Poverty really is a cycle that more people should try out to see how quickly all of their options, rights, and entitlements dissapear and become inaccesible and traded for constant struggle.
about 50% of people make it out of poverty over a 20 year span. It seems if we stopped people from slipping into poverty in the first place, then we'd eventually have no (or exactly 1) people in poverty.
Basic income would help people do all sorts of things including having money to spend while you're getting your education.
Meanwhile, providing vocational training is a great thing.
Tying them together assumes you're a better judge of someone's needs when you don't know them. They may have a smarter way to spend or invest the money.
I suspect that an important subset of the people that worry about what the unwashed masses are going to do with so many free time, is also a subset of the people that complain about paternalistic states. Kind of ironic.
One year is too limited in my opinion. If you want to see what people will do with basic income, you have to give them the feeling the money is near infinite. One year looks to me its not enough to drop everything, as you will know it will soon come to an end. The paychological barrier for me would be at least 5+ years.
Then again if I know it will come to an end in xx years, I will feel more inclined to work harder. It's like a deadline.
They've said they're working with an external IRB. Not telling them would be a massive issue for informed consent, and at least if I was sitting on said IRB would generate a pretty firm "Um...no."
A big part of this experiment is that we want to see how (and if) basic income will change people's behavior. To be able to do this, the income stream has to be reliable. That's why the idea is often called Basic Income Guarantee or Unconditional Basic Income.
If the income stream could just stop at any time, you couldn't measure its psychological impact as effectively.
Why not give the subjects a basic income for life? That will mirror the potential reality of basic income. You could still only run the study for a year (or five years) but you'd have to pay out for the rest of their lives if you want the subjects to behave in a realistic way.
I'm sure they're well aware that a one year test won't answer a lot of questions. But it will answer some, and it will probably help them set up a better experiment for the future.
And the same criticism could be levelled at a 5 year experiment. I think that eventually they're going to have to do a lifelong experiment, buying annuities from a reputable insurance company for the recipients. That's going to be expensive, so make sure you have the experiment set up right before you do it.
Hi! I work on the study -- just want to affirm sub-thread clarification that this 1 year portion is a pilot to figure out logistics (not planning to answer research questions), and we hope to follow on with a 5 year study to actually answer the questions.
There are all manner of logistical and ethical issues that need to be ironed out for a study like this. Doing small, limited-time, "This is not exactly going to produce the same results as the larger planned study" is extremely common.
> I'm not saying the study is a bad thing, but if basic income were implemented in an entire community, it would have a different effect than just a small slice of a community. In particular, wouldn't it just raise the price of housing and rent? There's only so much land and housing to go around, and if you're competing with everyone else to buy a house or rent an apartment, if everyone else can afford to pay that much more, then the prices would go up.
What you are saying basically is that inflation will cancel out all effects of the minimum income.
You are forgetting that the minimum income does not have the same relative impact on all incomes because people earn different amounts of money.
If the minimum income is 1000 Euro a month, and if everybody earned 10000 Euro a month, then yes, we would see a 10% income increase for everybody and a subsequent 10% inflation.
But some people earn only 2000 Euro a month, and others earn 20000. That means that for some, it is a 50% raise in income, and for others it is 5%. The inflation will lie somewhere in between - more than 5% but less than 50%.
In effect, the minimum income decreases the income gap. It lowers the income of the rich via inflation and it increases the effective income of the poor by raising their nominal income above the inflation rate.
You seem to be assuming an externally funded basic income.
This may be true for the pilot, but once implemented "in production", a basic income would be funded through taxation, and so wouldn't increase the total amount of cash at all, just shift it about.
This is the one thing I haven't seen anyone talk about yet.
What would the additional tax burden be on the median household? Would their tax burden be lower because the BI is replacing all the other welfare programs they are currently subsidizing?
The rent will precisely increase by 1000 Euro. Yes you can compare percentages all you want, but at the end of the day, 1000 Euro basic income is 1000 Euro more for everyone. That will be directly plowed into everyone's (for example) personal rent/housing budget or tolerance, which translates to inflated rental prices.
If I make $15K/month and receive a $1K/month basic income, I'll gladly pay $1K/month more for rent -- just like the guy making $5K/month would. Can you tell me what will happen to rent rates?
That's what happened when Facebook gave out monthly housing subsidies to employees a few years back, rent increased by exactly the same amount as the subsidies in the areas that qualified for the subsidy.
If you make $160K a year, your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all.
And this is the way it's supposed to be: High earners will be net losers, people with low/sporadic/zero market income will be net gainers.
But I'm saying the effect could be a net transfer from taxpayers (people with medium to high income) to landowners especially real estate companies. Since much housing stock is owned by a business which may even be operated at 0 net income... which means the business would be paying no corporate income tax. And the property taxes are incredibly low in CA since prop 13 applies to commercial real estate as well. So it's likely to mean the personal taxpayer (income tax and sales tax account for the majority of the revenue) subsidizing the real estate companies.
I don't know how strong the effect would be, but if true, the effect of basic income would be a strong subsidy from taxpayers to real estate companies.
> your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all.
This will never happen (through government legislation). If it does happen, then the policy will encourage individuals not to work, since the income to work ratio is better if you make less money. This would be a disaster for a country's economic development.
Having the choice to work a bit less is actually good. And the economic gains from increased distributive efficiency would be huge.
In reality, there is already a large basic income program, it's called Social Security.
I'm sure you probably think that giving millions of elderly the freedom to retire is terrible for economic development, but it is no doubt a great advance for human decency.
You're assuming a 100% taxed marginal rate after some income level. That seems extremely unlikely. As long as the marginal tax rate is <100%, there will be incentive to work.
But who says income tax is the only type of tax? You can use a progressive consumption tax (no tax under $x item, y% tax from $x to $z, etc) to raise the funds. Economists much prefer this type of tax because it disincentives consumption rather than production.
Can you explain why this will not happen? A UBI is an income redistribution scheme. Higher income brackets must necessarily pay more than they receive, one way or another. Is it problematic? Sure, but so are all sorts of programs already in effect.
You can give me all the money you want and I won't spend any of it on housing. In fact my income has gone up 50% in the last five years and my housing expenses haven't changed at all.
But you're an individual, and obviously changes in one individual's income won't affect the housing market. If everyone in your community's income changed, things would be different. The amount of land in an area is fixed, and practically speaking so is the housing stock. Housing is priced at the margin, and if everyone still wants to live in the area, and is willing to pay more now (since even if they paid the exact amount of basic income more in rent, they'd still have the same amount of disposable income after paying the increased rent), then I would expect the price of housing to rise.
That is essentially already the status quo with government funded housing vouchers. More commonly known as section 8. It's a huge boon for landlords. Not that the alternative of government run hosing projects is any better but what are you going to do.
I have several acquaintances who work in the trades (carpentry, house framing, fence building, concrete driveways/sidewalks/porches building, window/door installers, painters, etc.).
Buying and rehabbing real estate over the past several years, I've met a lot of these folks.
Most of their ability to earn a living wage has been decimated by unchecked immigration.
So I suggest we start there -- give all the tradespeople in our area, who were born here and have now seen their livelihoods decimated -- a living wage.
That way, we can tell them "yes we've fully endorsed unchecked migration, and your jobs are gone, but here -- have this living wage."
Its not the immigration its the illegal pay and lack of benefits that they are given. The construction industry is based on underpaying migrants. If you have been rehabing homes then you certainly took advantage of this too.
Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that.
If you're rehabbing properties in this area (Silicon Valley) you cannot give work to people unless they have a Contractor's license, which you can verify here:
There are many reasons for only hiring licensed contractors:
1) your homeowners or commercial insurance will not be able to 'weasel out' of covering a loss if the contractor has an in-effect license (who got injured or who caused injury or any type of loss, really)
2) you can check their fixed address so that if you need to serve them (for small claims, or a lawsuit, etc.) -- you know you can find them
3) no language barrier, so it's possible to 100% eliminate any possible misunderstanding of the outcome that the hired work needs to achieve
In 2005 a buddy of mine hired a presumptive illegal from the Home Depot parking lot. I alerted my friend "not sure if you've seen this yet, but the guy is using a hand saw to cut and hang your sheetrock"
Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw
I'm not sure about California, but eg. in Norway, the problem is usually that contractors will hire sub-contractors, that'll pocket the difference between what on paper might look like a "living wage" (although, often when you factor in materials and look at actual time spent, the offers start to look suspiciously cheap) - and hire someone unaware of local conditions, and pay what ends up being effectively slave wages.
There was recently a case where the local government had contracted for all the electric and cabling for a new hospital - and it turned out that after calculating the expected pay due to the hours in the offer, there wasn't any money left for the actual cables and electronics the company was supposed to install (also included in the offer). Usually this is all accompanied by fake work contracts that lists higher wages than what's actually paid to the workers.
So your line of:
> Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that.
reads a lot like "I do take advantage, but I'm wilfully ignorant, so I'm not the bad guy". Not saying that's the case, just saying that's the impression you give.
?? How do I think sheetrock is supposed to be cut?
Did you really intend to ask that?
You ask me that after I said:
"Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw"
I think the point you missed was "he's insinuating using a hand saw is not the correct way, that's why he said Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw"
Well, I only hire licensed contractors, including painters, but in the trades (at least in the Bay Area) people I've hired are happy for the work and since my first project in 1993, have complained about the flood of illegals taking work from them by undercutting on the price.
I would imagine that a lot of people don't realize the risk they take hiring an unlicensed contractor. So the law-abiding tradespeople lose work to that.
You cannot risk hiring unlicensed tradespeople unless you're just really, really stupid. The "loss of insurance" risk alone is bad enough.
There are a number of study designs that don't require a null-intervention control group. Some of those would have been interesting, and might actually have yielded something closer to the true effect.
Would individuals be restricted from using any government social welfare programs during this period? Many advocates propose funding basic income by disbanding current safety nets.
If recipients are living in public housing, collecting food stamps, accepting federal student loans, or any other form of indirect government aid, then it skews the results.
It might skew it, but YC is probably trying to answer a more fundamental question. If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. Or if people will just sit on the couch, have kids till they can't afford them, become addicted to drugs.
If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement.
If only there were a group of people with sufficient money they never had to work! We could study them and see what they did to amuse themselves.
We've seen string free money transfer already work in some places. There's been a few trials an follow up on that, although not in Western countries.
What I'm really curious to personally answer is: what would happen if everybody would be guaranteed a basic income? What kind of problems would it introduce? Would the new minimum income become a poor tool because of corresponding price increases (to capture that income)? Or would it work well long term?
That's why I'd love to see a small country. Preferably not Switzerland or Nordic. Because they've been able to create programs that others have a hard time replicating. A country with a more mixed population (religions, races, education levels).
I understand this, but ignoring what I mentioned means the question becomes, "What would people, who are provided a basic income in addition to basic government services, do?"
For example, an important question is if the implementation would require disbanding Obamacare, reverting to the old system, etc. The ability to obtain healthcare can sway a lot of outcomes. I might have pursued a more entrepreneurial path in the past if I had an option of basic income in addition to healthcare.
Obama care made health insurance a lot more expensive for me. I used to pay $66 a month for a high deductible PPO plan now I have to pay triple that for an HMO with a similarly high deductible. In other words it made following an entrepreneurial path more expensive.
Lets interpret the claim charitably - people on welfare have reduced work effort, increased fertility, and increased drug consumption. Do you assert that any of those claims are false?
The assertion is that none of those are inherent qualities of a group. Reduced work effort is a chicken egg issue. Of course people on welfare are going to have reduced "work effort" -- joblessness is probably what made you have to get it in the first place.
Same with drug consumption. I would question any "higher drug use" measure as selection bias -- investment bankers aren't generally being drug tested are they? That doesn't mean the overwhelming majority are not eager to earn a productive living.
I think it would be great to drug test for it (but damn expensive and not very libertarian). I bet you'd see a lot of well off people not opting for the free income because they "don't need it" whereas they'd line up for it without a drug test.
A further claim is that increasing welfare reduces work effort. Is this disputed?
I don't know why we are discussing drug tests for welfare, but simple arithmetic provides a very low bar for them to be cost effective. Google suggests a drug test costs $10-30. If welfare costs $15,000/year, then you only need to have a 0.2% positive rate for it to be worth it.
Do you think folks on welfare do drugs at a rate lower than 0.2%?
> A further claim is that increasing welfare reduces work effort. Is this disputed?
Yes, it's disputed. Assuming that you/the GP are correct, and that data do exist that people on welfare have reduced "work effort" (how is that measured?), increased fertility, and increased drug consumption, then you of all people know that correlation doesn't mean causation. It could be that their increased fertility and/or drug consumption caused them to go on to welfare. Or vice versa.
Either way, it would be very hard to draw any conclusions from such data outside of correlation.
In addition to confounding, you also run into lots of statistical biases in such data. As someone else pointed out, poor people are screened for drugs at much higher rates than non-poor, because the jobs that poor people work in are much more likely to require them. As such, even if such data exists, it would be very suspect.
Furthermore, drug testing the general population, even one that has marginally higher drug use rates (and I've seen no convincing data of this either way) runs into the problem of predictive value and false positives (for the same reason screening the general female population under 40 for breast cancer results in massively high rates of false positives).
I think it was more of a "follow the money" kind of argument. Governments want to collect as much and pay out as little.
One way to pay out less is to create a barrier such as drug testing. according to the math, drug testing is "worth it" to that end. Its also fairly politically acceptable compared other more extreme examples such as lowering the welfare amount, random denials or killing poor people.
Naturally, I'm not in favor of any of those options.
Drug consumption is definitely wrong. Poor people can't afford drugs. People on welfare in states that require drug testing of welfare recipients have much lower rates of drug use than the population at large. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-dru...
Consider their headline number - Missouri. Testing cost $336k and found 48 drug users. Assuming welfare costs $10k/person, it saved $480k making it a net positive. All the other states they discuss had significantly higher returns (5-10x).
This all assumes not a single drug user was deterred from applying and also that not a single welfare recipient was deterred from using drugs.
Further, none of these measure the question of whether poor people do more or less drugs. Most of these programs only drug test some people and have expensive human-administered programs to decide who to test: "complete a written questionnaire about drug use"“suspicion-based drug testing for each applicant”,“reasonable suspicion exists” that they might be illegally using “a controlled substance or controlled substance analog.”
The fact that these programs found very few drug users is merely due to the fact that welfare recipients aren't dumb enough to put "yes I do drugs" on a written test.
This article is pulling the social sciences shuffle - find a socially undesirable conclusion, write an abstract hinting that it's false, and bury the truth in the data tables.
The reason these rely on surveys instead of urine tests is because courts have deemed mandatory testing to be an unreasonable search, while random testing based on reasonable suspicion hasn't been shut down by courts (yet). Florida tried to have mandatory testing for all welfare recipients but the courts threw it out.
Nevertheless, these results are really astonishing and I think you're looking at them all wrong. Some bureaucrat in Utah thought that 460 welfare recipients were suspicious and ordered them tested, but only 18 of them tested positive. The bureaucrat was wrong 96% of the time, and the 4% usage rate is both under the drug use rate for the general population of that state (6% self-reported) and over-represented (because these were the 10% specifically selected people that the agency thought were using drugs).
Anyway, your profit and loss analysis seems fishy to me. It is highly unlikely that by denying 14 applicants their welfare checks the state of Utah saved anything near 100% of the face value of said check. In fact I would say it is quite likely that the state paid some fraction (with no upper bound) of that on subsequent support for and/or enforcement upon the unsupported people and their families, not to mention the general economic loss of not putting that money in motion.
If you want to do a more detailed cost/benefit calculation, go ahead. I'd love to see it. But you do need to include the benefits which that article pretty explicitly does not.
not to mention the general economic loss of not putting that money in motion.
Can you explain what this means? Sometimes I hear language like this describing Keynesian stimulus, but you do know we aren't in a recession, right? We don't have any slack labor force that can be tricked into working by reducing their real wages while holding nominal wages fixed.
We're grownups here. It doesn't require an explicit reference to race to read between the lines. That stereotype is a historically racist get-out-our-kind-of-voters code.
Not racist, but perhaps a bit too coarse. I don't really consider BI to be welfare though. It's not need based, and generally has more possible upsides to it than welfare. Like being able to start a business with the money.
Point is it could be the wrong direction. We don't really know yet how it should be implemented. Experiments like this are what is going to tell us.
> If recipients are living in public housing, collecting food stamps, accepting federal student loans, or any other form of indirect government aid, then it skews the results.
Depending on how much money it is, the extra income might disqualify them from receiving most of that stuff anyway, especially if they also have any kind of a job.
That's going to be the real thing to watch out for though. If the basic income isn't enough to disqualify you from welfare but basic income + job is, the study is going to be useless unless you prohibit the subjects from also applying for welfare.
A lot of programs aren't that black and white when it comes to eligibility, and how many dependents a person has will also affect benefits. So that's yet another thing that needs to be controlled for if we want to put trust into the results.
One elegant way to ensure that people don't use these benefits, and that doesn't leave them worse off, is to make minimum income higher than all of the income eligibility limits.
Isn't receipt of benefits from these government social welfare programs dependent on having no other source of income? If so, the recipients of the basic income would lose the benefits. If not, the benefits are themselves a form of basic income.
well fwiw, I'm a staff member, wouldn't consider myself rich, and that culture is what keeps me wanting to work there--I'd be pretty bored if it was more like a traditional VC firm.
I think it enhances the message of the BI experiment. The folks at YC have enough money to allow pursuit of their interests. Another poster quoted a study indicating there are 50 million people below the poverty line in America. If bills were not a concern, how could those people impact society by following their interests in entrepreneurship, science, literature, art, etc?
Imho any basic income program must be universal. It won't survive if it is seen as handouts to the poor. This both stigmatizes those who receive it and opens the program to abuse. Everyone should receive the income, rich and poor. That ensure that those in power (the rich) take ownership of the program and protect it.
Nor should the income be withdrawn as a form of punishment. If we start picking and choosing then the incentive is always to cut away the least powerful, disenfranchised criminals being the least powerful of all.
I don't understand how the math on basic income is supposed to work. If we gave this amount of money to every person in the US it would cost $7.2 Trillion dollars, roughly double the entire US federal budget. How is this supposed to work? Do only certain people qualify for basic income?
The basic premise is that everyone is taxed some percentage of their income and then they are paid back some flat amount. For those (probably) in the middle class, this tax/payment will be exactly the same. You pay X per year and gain X per year in benefits. For those who make less than that, they will end up earning more from the payment than they pay in to the system. Those who earn more money than that will pay more into the system than they receive back in benefits.
>Do only certain people qualify for basic income?
The good part about it is that everyone qualifies for the exact same payment, this reduces the cost of administering the program significantly. No need to fill out forms, check if you are covered, prove you make under a certain amount, or talk to 20 different agencies, the only thing that has to be confirmed is that you are a legal resident.
On the pay side, sure. Presumably the IRS would still check that I payed my (now presumably higher) tax payments? So you don't really save anything there.
Presumably yes (them or people they displace from the job market). But people are only a fraction of operating costs - you have databases, rents, material expenditures, etc. Also in case of top bureaucrats I'd expect their salaries to be higher than BI, so the delta is part of the money saved.
I've found that doing the math absolutely doesn't factor into this. That's where it falls apart--it's not the most efficient if you're giving money to people only to have to reclaim it from 90% of them. It's a fun thought experiment but at a national scale the math really falls apart because there isn't an external source of funding to grab money from.
Imagine that the money comes from no where. We have capabilities to offer people some things that they probably aren't capable of buying. Like say better food, more electronics, better homes, etc., Instead of expecting everyone to work to "earn" their living, we can instead guarantee some basic standards of living by giving everyone money that comes from no where. It just requires us to rethink productivity and economics. If a robot works instead of human, it is still productive and contributing to economy. If it were human, the work itself will have some value and so does the output of that work. With robots, we are only counting the output and not the work itself. What if we were to incorporate that into finances and pay that as basic income? It doesn't matter that the money is essentially created from nowhere, as long as there is some productive work taking place to account for that.
I don't think robots change anything. Robots increase efficiency of human workers, they don't replace them entirely. Netflix and Redbox are highly automated, but they still have human workers; just fewer than Blockbuster did.
Robots that don't need humans is science fiction for the foreseeable future. They are not producing output from nothing; they are just tools that amplify the productivity of human workers.
This has been happening for hundreds of years with new technologies that improve efficiency.
There is no such thing as a factory with zero workers. Fewer workers, but not zero. This is not a paradigm shift; the cycle of increased efficiency destroying jobs has been going on for hundreds of years.
There are so many problems that need solving. I don't think we are anywhere close to a world where there is not enough for people to work on. There is currently a mismatch between the skills needed and the skills available, but we should try to solve that problem first rather than giving up and saying that some people just cannot contribute anything.
Irrespective of whether robots replace humans or augment them, we are clearly capable of meeting basic needs of everyone. Basic Income is to economy what basic education is to knowledge and awareness. It doesn't mean that people don't have to work or that we have no more progress to worry about. It's just realizing that we can improve the basic standard of living for everyone to a decent level without asking them to do anything.
I am not familiar with YC project, but many similar discussions in Europe focus around the "guaranteed minimum income", which basically means that you give money only to people that don't have an income. You need to decide a good threshold for that, as you don't want to promote unemployment.
If you set the minimum too high and the GDP drops due to non productivity, it will cause inflation, effectively lowering the minimum income amount in real terms.
Wouldn't the argument be that people trying to get by there would be among those most likely to be forced to make poor long-term decisions due to short-term cash crunches?
If rent's high, you have less flexibility to make lifestyle changes since you need to work more hours / jobs just to pay rent (making it hard to take classes), invest in things which will save money over the long term, or do things like move closer to work/school to save time.
I hate to be critical because I love the core idea, and YCRs wonderful corporate generosity. However, this is path dependency in action, in all it's anti-intellectual glory. The only value that will be extracted here is the publicity/marketing value. If they can somehow leverage that into some kind of state or federal government supported largesse, I will happily stand corrected.
But in the absence of that, as scientific experiments go, and dressing it up as such is a waste of money. I'm sure enough people have told them that by now. YCR says it's for figuring out the logistics, which implies some kind of future action. The only problem is if they wanted to do this correctly, this isn't going to be very useful way of figuring out the logistics for eg. people who speak Swahili. See my comment here for more info on why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11812563
I would love to be wrong but I doubt it. The study will no doubt make for interesting reading - if it's published.
The financial side of the project is definitely...interesting. Another poster pointed out that tax-funded UBI would work like a redistribution of wealth. Almost any other way - funded by Angel/VC donations, Kickstarter, using another tax pool (having Congress pay for it), taking loans or increasing the US Federal debt, or even by pillaging other countries - would still just be a redistribution of wealth.
There is one other way - Expansion of the overall money supply. But this is well-known to result in nearly equivalent inflation. Humans somehow want a certain percentage of all money - not just an arbitrary amount. This percentage may be extremely small for some - 0.0000001% of all money, or less - but when the total number of dollars increases, each person wants an equivalent percentage increase in the total number of dollars they get. This may be Bitcoin or ISK or priceless paintings instead of dollars, or whichever currency of the day.
Has there been a UBI monetary-policy model produced that doesn't invoke large inflation or heavy wealth redistribution?
Most places won't let you rent without making 2.5 times the rent. So for 2k that's $800. In Oakland that gets you an SRO, a single room, or you can live in a box truck.
Though in retrospect that's for one person, maybe they could rent a room? I assume if a family is on this they each get the $1K? kids too? unclear...
overall the experiment is "slightly different" than giving the poor yearly tax refunds (ex: it gives money to the rich and the poor) so...maybe useful :)
Great idea. I hope it works. Even if it doesn't work, if it provides experimental data, that will be valuable.
One line I didn't like from the article:
It’s obviously difficult to lift people out of poverty. According to the White House, as of 2012 (decades after President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty"), approximately 15 percent of Americans (or 49.7 million people, including 13.4 million children) live below the poverty line. Worse still, "only about half of low-income Americans make it out of the lowest income distribution quintile over a 20-year period." (As the old saying goes: "It’s expensive to be poor.")
I think this can be very misleading. Is the poverty line a good definition? And if everyone's standard of living rises over 20 years, is it an issue to be in the bottom quintile? I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that it's very shabby statistics. (Maybe I just shouldn't read articles like this)
One aspect that I've not heard discussed is the likelihood that a portion of those being granted a basic income will be exploited for their new-found cash. Has this been considered at YC and if so, what are their approaches to minimizing it?
This is why I wish the sample size was bigger, closer to that magic 2000 person populace that gives a relatively random cross section. I just don't think they're going to get the value they need out of this limited experiment. 2000*24000 = 48million... I'm sure they have that kind of scratch laying around.
I guess my question is (similar to your and to an earlier thread here)...if the minimum income is given to all, wouldn't "lowest tier" housing costs just raise up to swallow it all up, since demand for housing would increase? ( initially I doubt exploitation will be a problem since the number of participants is so few ).
Today "lowest tier housing" is purchased by the poor/poorest class. Suddenly the poor (and everybody, for that matter) have more money, however the amount of housing remains the same (though I guess some new development could be spurred, but you get the drift).
Really the YC experiment won't be able to even touch this aspect.
It also won't be able to really touch on the long term effects it would have on participants. Initially will people be like "yea! let's get more education!" but then after 10 or 20 years, it just becomes common place, people stop thinking of it as "extra money for growth" but as "just normal monthly spending money" (like they consider food stamps today or what not) what happens then, I wonder...do they just live in slightly nicer apartments, or use it for education? It will be an interesting experiment for sure...
All I know is the people who live next to me really wish they could afford cable TV. And trips to disneyland. This would make their dreams come true...(there's a reason they're currently poor, believe it or not, it's something like cultural background and current cultural peer group, and kind of their understanding of how the world works). Extra money might not help that particular group. Though it would take the stress/pressure off, certainly. Or maybe it would, I don't know. So in essence, it might "magnify" peoples' current propensities. Do they want to not work? Don't! Do they want to invest? You can invest more quickly (though the reality, like I said before, is people tend to just "spend up" to what they think they can afford, get nicer cars, etc. again if this experiment is "only 5 years" they may not see this). It also makes me wonder if employers will offer "less" since they know "well, you already make 10K so I guess we don't have to offer you as much..." :|
However, if I receives this money <cough> of course I would do magnanimous things with it, like...investing it in real estate. Especially since poor people have more money to pay landlords. I wouldn't feel bad about jacking the rents on them now that I know they can afford it :)
So the reality is that people who now "wish" they could go to college will be able to (huge win, BTW). And those happy with not working? Well, they won't have to (or do they already not?) Got a cruddy job you wish you could quit? You will be able to (so maybe wages for worse jobs will increase?) The question mark is what will happen after that. Will people who quit their "tedious job" start up a new business out of sheer boredom/sheer freedom? Or will they just not work?
I'm concerned about bias in this in form of the Hawthorne effect for one group and something akin to Learned Helplessness (or self-fulfilling prophecy) for the other.
The Hawthorne effect can apply if they tell the group receiving the money about the expected benefits of basic income. They know the spotlight is on them. They're also getting special treatment. They might work more and do better in this situation than if basic income was the norm similar to how welfare is the norm but doesn't get people out of poverty. Whereas, it's the opposite if the control group is told about the scheme: people in an economic rut with likely negative outlook that just got slighted on basic income and will be watched to see if they will fail. They'll likely fail either by default or barely trying although some might be motivated to work harder to stick it to observers.
If Y Combinator is reading this, I suggest countering it with careful presentation to each party. Especially to the control group. Tell them they're simply being observed as part of a study on poverty in Oakland and where people end up over time. Absolutely no talk of basic income or another group.
For benefiting group, countering Hawthorne effect is less my expertise. Old trick of making both groups feel like they're getting special treatment or advantage can't apply here. Perhaps water down the effect by describing it as one of a series of experiments... with descriptions of various approaches... to help lift people out of poverty along with theory of each. Mention positive, neutral, and negative outcomes that are common on existing welfare. Mention the potential the new approach offers. Mention that they're selected to try it for a year with the results entirely on them but observed to inform future studies. Effect is still there but with a balanced presentation instead of overly-positive or specific push from researchers presenting it. Information overload might even drown out Hawthorne effect to make them focus on whatever is last thing said.
The control group I'm pretty sure on but other possibilities are speculation. Consider how to handle benefit group carefully. Regardless of methodology, I'm glad to see YC doing it as it might help some people regardless.
too late now but in future ones maybe they could do 3 groups and pay 2 groups in various amounts. One group gets the "full amount", another a "half amount" , the third nothing. Tell the first two groups they're getting the Full amount. see if there is a difference in responses.
I'm confused. Isn't this already being done various places around the world already? (e.g. Alaska, Puerto Rico) Why not study people in those places? Better yet, nearly everybody in those places is getting the benefit, so the experiment isn't poisoned by the culture (you're the only one in your neighborhood getting a benefit - others treat you differently)
I made a similar point in the original YC basic income thread.
I questioned the value of doing this when something like public healthcare is working very well in Canada, where it operates much more cost effectively than the US public/private mess, and it has been for a long long time. And we're right next to the US. Yet there has been little progress adopting a similar system in the US.
I'm not sure if just getting examples of it working will be a sufficient motivator that they hope it will be. But I guess public healthcare is old hat now and not in need of scientific study for it's efficacy, just political will which is much more expensive and involved than running social experiments.
I had a similar initial question, since I heard once that Germans (?) already have a basic income system in place, though possibly only for the poor ($500/month plus housing or something like that). Though I suppose "that's Germans, not us" or what not.
I think they are interested in delivering a basic income such that it should be enough to live off of. Alaska [0] only offers ~$2,000 for the entire year in compensation. I am not sure what program you are referring to for Puerto Rico...
I don't mean this flippantly, but perhaps, at least unconsciously, for reputation or glory or whatever. If you just give a chunk of cash to an existing study you don't get, say, glowing articles written about you.
This is a huge issue that is very hard to solve at this point. The obvious solution, not telling people about the experiment, is out. It reinforces the skeptics who think of this as a way for YC to brand itself more philanthropically, because from a research perspective it's just expensive, grandiose hogwash.
Edit to say that I too support UBI, and actually helped pass a resolution at my Congressional District's Democratic Party convention in favor of UBI.
Sounds like we have the same concern despite our support.
The last thing I want is useless data. The hawthorne effect is actually at play in many other situations and is generally an underestimated issue with qualitative research.
Right, it's like participants may artificially use the money to "better their lives" only because they personally wish that UBI could become permanent...
Is this a minimum so that the 2k number is whatever the net would be, so that people who currently have jobs would have their income supplemented?
I was very interested in Even as a company designed to approach challenges like these. I can't imagine how difficult it is to take on a study like this, I'm rooting for them to be successful and hope they share the resulting data.
It should always be close to our thoughts - lack of a living wage causing long commutes from soon-to-be gentrified neighborhoods, all in the shadow of Chomsky's Responsibility of Intellectuals.
I'm very interested to see the overall outcome of this research. While the intentions are good, my initial expectations of this are not very high. I look forward to be proven wrong.
> "Overall the idea is to take money we make from YC [and], rather than all of the partners cashing out... putting it into research," Krisiloff told Ars. "I think that there’s a culture at YC that just making money isn’t that interesting."
I do understand the intended meaning of that sentence, and clearly it's more than admirable that these people are putting their money where their mouth is, but I really wish SV people would stop talking this way as it's tone deaf and counterproductive.
Several billion for them and a million and a half for a few people in Oakland implies that they do still find money somewhat interesting.
This experimenting may give them insight into what life and how behaviours present themselves when people are being supported, and then give them a heads-up knowing where people are then willing to spend their cash - on necessities as well as extra spending money (if they are given it).
That's invaluable data and if they can use profits from their ecosystem to support a growing community/ecosystem that supports this, and then discover or create increasing productivity within that community then the model could replicate and be adopted by wider regions.
In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings to the masses - like a tax, however if that % is less than what people pay on average currently in taxes to government, and the productivity level is higher - then it should naturally compete and takeover (save status quo systems trying to block and cause friction).
>In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings
Not necessarily. Part of the reason for this research is figuring what to do if the robots replace us for the most part. In that situation wages would likely be low and a lot of the value would move to the market cap of the leading tech stocks that controlled things. The government could tax that, as cgt or wealth tax or similar, rather than wages.
Right, thanks for clarifying - I had meant earnings of a company as well (or any task that gets done and has a 'profit' associated); perhaps earnings wasn't an appropriate word to for me to use.
On the other hand it allows YC to experiment and do stuff the politicians couldn't get away with. I quite like that they can say what they think rather than editing it to be politically appealing.
A concept like universal basic income is 100% thoroughly a political concept in every respect. There's no such thing as a successful program that ignores the aspect of its political appeal.
Who do you think could implement a universal basic income, besides a government? Implementing a UBI at a national level would be a monumental political task. The politics matter, even at this stage.
Studying the effects of something is different from trying to implement something.
These are 2, completely separate issues.
Perhaps once this research is done, other people who are more skilled at solving political problems, will take this research and do something useful with it.
UBI isn't something that is going to be done over night. Just look at the the comments here saying that the study won't 'really' measure the effects of UBI unless it is done for decades.
If someone doesn't start the research now, it won't be ready by the time UBI is actually politically feasible.
I guess the question they're trying to answer is "will poor people use this as a means to step up" because...for somebody already making 100K/yr I'm not sure how much effect the extra $12 or $15K is going to have, honestly. I mean nicer vacations? a slightly better house? The only real interesting data point to me is for the poor people, does it allow them to "step up". It might, today's US dole just provides at most food and shelter, so perhaps they'll use the money to ... get some education. Of course, if that were the case wouldn't they already be using their yearly "tax refund" to go and get education? Most people don't seem particularly adept at that for some reason...
I think this is to be welcomed but I would also be interested if YC published a study on the tax arrangements used by its companies. Inequality is heavily linked to reduced government big budgets caused the culture and abuse of offshore trusts, the double Irish etc etc. Minimum income is important for the future but governments have to be actually able to collect the revenue in the first place...
Do you believe that there are any illegal tax arragements used by YC's companies? Because I have to say that if there is not, the problem is on the governments side - not theirs, and trying to have the business side of things solve that kind of problem seems really strange.
Good question. I believe the thinking behind the UBI experiment is that YC wants to specifically do an experiment. Not start a charity. Maybe down the line YC would consider starting a charity but I don't think that's in their gameplan. This is specifically to answer a very explicit question. Charities don't normally do that sort of thing.
With this question, and in all this thread actually, basic income is put in the framework of "what could we do with all those people"?
I think that we should be open to another kind of narratives about this issue.
For instance, we could change the name from "basic income" to "automation dividend".
In this way we could think of it as a right to a share, in the hard work of all the past generations, that created the immense pool of infrastructure and knowledge that we enjoy nowadays.
Also, we shouldn't forget that, in a few years, all 'those people' could be us.
Oakland, and: probably not very well. but you can still work, you can stop spending every day stressed about how your entry level retail job isn't giving you enough hours, or you can afford to set two or three days of the week as "unavailable and take some classes. You can stop worrying that taking the day off to interview for a job will be the difference between making rent that month.
Although for reference 2k a month before taxes is the equivalent of a $12/hr 40hr/wk job. I don't live in Oakland but here in Albuquerque thats considered a pretty good job.
yeah or you could be smart and take that money and the time it gives you to either learn a skill that will make live a ton more comfortable and or start a business that makes you and employees money.
I am very happy living here in Maryland as cost of living is inexpensive and govt. IT jobs are plentiful and the pay is good.
That would be the take some classes option, yes, and in many places even 1k a month before taxes would be enough to say "fuck work" entirely and focus on learning. I suspect 2k in Oakland is only enough to say "fuck full-time work".
Unfortunately the study, even at 5 years, doesn't seem long enough, in my mind, to gauge if people under it would "just move to Albuquerque where the cost of living is cheap" (or perhaps UBI could/should be adjusted based on location dunno...)
$2k before tax is about 1500 after.
$1200 to share a bedroom with someone. $100-200 to eat, $53 muni pass. The rest to cover a litany of other things like cell phone, medical costs, "entertainment", etc.
I liked it better when Y Combinator was giving this kind of money[1] out to founders who could use it to build a business. Old text: "In 2005, Y Combinator developed a new model of startup funding. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money (average $18k) in a large number of startups (currently 82)" I note that $2k/month for 12 months is $24k, so that's more than their old investment size.
Meanwhile, now, it's calling its investments of $120K a "small amount of money"[2], while calling this kind of money ($24K for a year) a basic "income" and not actually treating it as an investment. This bothers me.
YC is still making these investments, they are simultaneous working to save the middle class because without that group of people we will have a lot less startups. I think what they are trying is important enough to risk some cash on and I'm eager to see how it pans out over the next couple of years.
if it were making such investments in the same spirit as before, it wouldn't also call $120K a "small amount of money" on its front page. I think what I object to is the silent change from investing an average of $18K to investing $120K and still calling the latter a small amount of money. It's really not.
also let's be clear: from an investment standpoint, investing $12K instead of $120K means that startups can do ten times worse while still being a free investment. put another way: a tenth as many need to succeed to be free. People behave very differently under such conditions of risk!
Also investing $12K made them an investor of first, last, and only resort for startups that needed that. sorry, anecdotally this is actual fact.
granted, this does not describe most startups, just a few.
Agreed. I'm a broke developer who would love nothing more than a small living stipend to work on my own projects and contribute to open source. If I had just enough to get by and be able to code all day I would be so happy.
Be careful, though, sometimes "code all day" is actually a form of addiction and...in the end of it all...you'll end up possibly unhappy, take it from me :|
To test this hypothesis, try not coding for a couple weeks, and avoiding other possibly addictive habits. See if you go through a "withdrawal" as it were...best of luck to you and us both!
So basically you are one who would benefit from a basic income. Why is a "living stipend to work on [your] own projects" better than a basic income which too would allow you to work on your own projects?
I hope with a little thought, you can come to see the difference between formally investing in a startup which is trying to get off the ground, and handing someone an income no questions asked...
To put it in simple terms, you get what you pay for. If you invest in someone's startups, they'll deliver a startup (or fail); if you invest in someone's lifestyle, they'll deliver a lifestyle (or fail).
It's what makes a broke college student asking their parents for some money different from a homeless person who has just spent the money he had left on alcohol, asking for some money.
I am probably running a high risk of being misinterpreted. When a programmer becomes homeless and needs money, then that money is different from when someone who got out of prison for beating someone up has no money.
basic income makes it sound like the latter; whereas building a business is a lot more like the former.
> To put it in simple terms, you get what you pay for. If you invest in someone's startups, they'll deliver a startup (or fail); if you invest in someone's lifestyle, they'll deliver a lifestyle (or fail).
Whether this is true or not is exactly what needs to be figured out. So far, this is just a prejudice.
> When a programmer becomes homeless and needs money, then that money is different from when someone who got out of prison for beating someone up has no money.
And if that person just out of prison was a programmer? Would that change something? What exactly makes a programmer better than anyone who served his time and deserves a chance?
> I hope with a little thought [...] you can disagree, but please do so eloquently
Sorry, neither thinking nor eloquence are my forte. But I did indeed work with homeless people and ex-convicts. Try it and you might see they are people too.
one of the great business discoveries of the past few hundred years is that people respond to incentives. I won't respond to the rest of your comments.
I'd like to know if the people responsible for promoting this idea will be punished for the lives that are going to be inevitably destroyed?
The last time we did something this stupid with predictable chaotic results required a corrupt president and retired general. So apparently it has gotten easier since then, to convince people that the shit they're eating is ice cream.
I'd take your bet. There are studies showing otherwise.
"This study documented large, positive, and sustainable impacts across a wide range of outcomes including assets, earnings, food security, mental health, and domestic violence. It found no evidence of impacts on alcohol or tobacco use, crime, or inflation." [1]
But that was in Kenya so maybe it would be different somewhere else?
I concede, under different economic conditions a program like this might be very successful, but in America it will attract lazy people like flies to shit.
You've already posted many uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. That's not what this site is for, so please don't do that. Instead, please read the site guidelines and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement.
It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to door sales, even if those two things happen to be things people enjoy and, on the whole, beneficial?
You can think of an unlimited number of scenarios where someone has fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. In fact, the most callous and unhelpful thing to say is "you made poor life choices bro" like you even know what you're taking about.
Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice.
Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes.
Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you participate in. Don't whine about how unfair it is. If you aren't willing to accept those risks then you should not engage in risky behavior.
You're getting downvoted, but your perspective about the bike is correct (not sure about the other sentiments)
The logic is as follows: if I'm riding a bike on a sidewalk, the damage I can do to a pedestrian is an order of magnitude less than the car can do in damage to me in the street.
Hence bicycles should be riding with the pedestrians (on a wider sidewalk), in a dedicated bike lane separated from the cars, or should be banned entirely (for the convenience of motorists).
Forcing bikes onto the street with the US driving etiquette is the equivalent to throwing someone in a piranha tank.
You don't need to ride a bike to get crippled by a car accident. You can choke on a piece of food while eating dinner. You can fall in the shower awkwardly and get paralyzed.
I was a refugee of war that immigrated to the United States and survived off of food stamps and public housing until we got on our feet. we'd be considered pretty well off today, certainly in the top 5-10% of income earners.
Natural selection... More like dumb luck your ignorant persona was born privileged and not having to work your way up through the social structure of a foreign country several times. If it wasn't for public assistance we'd be dead or arrested for god knows what we would have done to put food on the table.
Social services exist to keep you safe from the poor just as much as they exist to keep the poor able to move upward through socioeconomic class
Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of?
If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and his family by learning some vocational skills.
Choosing Oakland in particular has interesting connotations, considering that it is a major industrial center where there may be lots of opportunity for skilled workers.
Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.
Of course, there are still a great many people who truly could take advantage of the basic income experiment because their other options are severely limited for whatever reason.