Basic income

you can only accept 1 w/ the help of the facade that the 1-life lets you hide in

White collar privilege

the pre-condition of a facade is something i've read about

Well yeah you wanna make sure it lasts through the tough winters around here

i could be so industrious at things where i would never be paid

i already was for 7 years, it's called ONLINE FILM CRITICISM.

also whoring

interview with the guy who designed the finland natural experiment. seems to have been widely misreported (it is not a universal basic income, they're testing it out on ~100,000 people) so read this if you read anything about it. super interesting & exciting

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3052595/how-finlands-exciting-basic-income-experiment-will-work-and-what-we-can-learn-from-it

bring it

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/americas-need-for-a-family-allowance/420123/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

From the Capitalism C/D thread

http://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income

50 years from now, I think it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people. I also think that it’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income. And I think that, combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a great life, by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty.

Hallelujah

this is certainly an unexpected development

kudos to them

i think basic income is a fantastic idea whose time has come and i agree that we might see it in our lifetimes but i'm not sure why i should be excited about Y Combinator trying to fund a study of it?

So it would be good to answer some of the theoretical questions now. Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things? Are people happy and fulfilled? Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more? And do recipients, on the whole, create more economic value than they receive? (Questions about how a program like this would affect overall cost of living are beyond our scope, but obviously important.)

this is still some extremely inhumane captain of industry ass thinking tho tbf

50 years from now, I think it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people. I also think that it’s impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income. And I think that, combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a great life, by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty.

this is good tho

i think basic income is a fantastic idea whose time has come and i agree that we might see it in our lifetimes but i'm not sure why i should be excited about Y Combinator trying to fund a study of it?

― Mordy, Thursday, January 28, 2016 11:36 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can be excited by like whatever you want i guess

i disagree. first if basic income is going to work politically we're going to need to demolish the randian idea that communism makes ppl lazy and the only way to do that is disprove it. second even w advanced technology society is still going to require a certain level of productivity from its citizens. if food + shelter eg are extremely cheap than the reciprocal productivity from citizens will be much smaller to balance, but you can't give out more than your society produces? xxp

why are you excited by it?

i disagree. first if basic income is going to work politically we're going to need to demolish the randian idea that communism makes ppl lazy and the only way to do that is disprove it.

that's what they're gonna study, smarty pants

yes correct.

(that post was a response to "this is still some extremely inhumane captain of industry ass thinking tho tbf")

something can be necessary politically and also be inhumane in fact they often go hand in hand

it's not inhumane to set out to disprove a toxic idea

well i guess depends on if youre looking at this from a human rights stand point or just a cool economic widget pov not that either of those is wrong per say but just that paragraph has some some certain assumptions baked in and i dont think its exactly asking does communism make people lazy anyway, also obvs people will work and "contribute to society" less under basic income which is part of the assumption of the machines are taking our jobs in the first place, which im not at all convinced is true anyway fwiw

i mean a lot of people work in order to play video games already def some of them will just play video games

i dont know if communism makes ppl lazy it def makes them toil futilely which is one reason i dont think we shd have communism

no one has ever really tried a low regulation high service economy but i think it cld be right for the USA! lets give it a shot folks

Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more? And do recipients, on the whole, create more economic value than they receive?

Imo a better question would be "Do people suffer less?"

but aside cost, how do supporters of UBI envision it becoming politically feasible given that 1) people get to vote 2) people don't like their taxes being given to other people unconditionally

also the OG basic income/negative income tax idea was proposed as a way to replace the entire welfare state, otherwise it's not affordable. is that what yall itt want?

there was a hilariously bad thing in jacobin about ubi written by some sociologist grad student this week that seriously said 'if we had a UBI, we could go on strike all the time' lol

My theory is that there's a large enough unemployment / low wage crisis from automation that a radical policy shift becomes feasible. I don't know how likely this is - seems like we can always find jobs for ppl.

i mean many of the jobs we find are stupid office work that produces little tangible value but still

yeah i don't buy that one. paradoxically automation tends to result in more jobs in medium-long run not less

i'm fascinated by how it's captured the political imagination lately, i don't know why a VC firm is studying it we already have lots of research on how labor supply reacts to welfare

personally i wish the low-skill labor policy that had a movement behind it was for a wage subsidy (embiggened EITC) rather than 15$ minimum wage, universal basic income and job guarantee

if it becomes politically feasible itll be because of extreme wealth inequality prob, ppl wondering if they cld put that money to better use than a handful of richy riches

the universal part is obvs also extremely important poltically welfare programs for the poor dont fare vary well in this country but welfare programs for everyone are sacrosanct

i'm fascinated by how it's captured the political imagination lately, i don't know why a VC firm is studying it we already have lots of research on how labor supply reacts to welfare

― flopson, Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:17 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah idk theres not a lot of information about just unconditionally giving everyone money it wld prob have pretty different outcomes than say our current system where only the extremely poor get money then if they start making money they dont get it anymore, obvs there are tons other way we give people money but theyre all contingent on certain somethings, data on just giving everyone money is pretty rare, tho not sure how y combinators going to address that

wasn't some south american country putting a basic income policy into practice? brazil maybe? can't we study the impact there?

anyway imo its p cool that an organization from an industry that generally thinks software and being smart can solve everything is very publicly saying this is something worth looking at, being mean to them on twitter is paying dividends

i've never heard of this org before but/so maybe it is p cool

theyre a very big deal in the startup scene

YC-backed cannabis tech company hiring front-end devs in Bay Area (angel.co)
14 hours ago

what abt instead of free money, free weed

yc runs a very well read and horrible message board if anyone wants to see what startup ppl are thinking abt this announcement heres the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340

I think the traction of the UBI idea is coming from a combination of a lot of poorly-managed office and service industry work that feels unproductive, increasing usage of gig economy jobs to boost discretionary income "whenever I feel like working" and increasing income and wealth inequality.

Yep.

Surprised nobody has brought up West Berlin here.

u cn just start talking abt west berlin if u want

feel like some UBI researcher isn't gonna come to any amazing insights but the fact that this is an issue that's in vogue in silicon valley is still a very good thing esp since they'll be paying for it. the real hurdle isn't figuring out how the system could work, the real hurdle is getting the majority of americans to agree w/ the statement 'maybe some people just shouldn't work and that's okay'. that's not something that even the far left really believes today. kinda have to break some core american values before we can have a politician saying 'eh let's just let people be on welfare forever'. maybe kids who take a self-driving car to work won't see the world the same way.

feel like you have to lay the groundwork of institutions and activism decades before anything can happen and this is maybe a small piece of that

churned butter. it’s radical but we’re living in extreme times

East Finchley?!

there isn't much to be learned about what impact ubi would have on society by paying it to 30 people, it needs to be nationally trialled, ya bunch of tight gits.

i need all the details before i relocate to Jarrow

at least it would cover a week's rent for a box room with no sink in East Finchley

it's going to have a different psychological impact on the recipients than a national ubi rollout would. With them knowing they are part of a small and quite lucky sample group. Their mentality is going to be that of prize winners. Wahey, I'm going to the bookies and the pub every day this week.

Pretty rough if you sign up for the trial and they stick you in the control group!!

"Sorry, sir, you're getting the placebo."

confirmation on the statement that 1600 HASN'T been credited to their account every month might cause them to have a very negative attitude

Pretty small sample group I thought.

Also, in the end this will just be another piece of data ppl can wave around to show that it's a good idea while the govt answers "no", right?

yup, pretty much like the other trials we've seen

a fascinating waste of time trying to evidence UBI when the counter arguments will all involve red faced journalists shouting about the workshy and magic money trees and the counter arguments will be successful

any idea that you can convince the UK state of is probably not an idea worth having

The fact that the UK is considering a trial of UBI surprises me.

I wonder if the aim is to try it so they can kill it off and say it has been discredited.

Or maybe the internal politics of government are more complicated than that.

I believe that on balance, UBI would be a good thing and could improve our society.

steady on there

I think this latest trial is being run by the Autonomy think tank, so it's not govt sponsored. There has been a three-year pilot of 500 care leavers running in Wales since last summer however. Think it could feasibly be introduces in some limited way by one of the devolved authorities.

Heartbreaking that every time we get media attention for basic income work, the inbox fills up with people desperate to be included in any trial – along with accounts of how a cruel, conditional welfare system has let them down

— Jack Kellam (@Jack_Kellam_) June 5, 2023

for real

Everyone is talking about a universal basic income today.

I think it’s a bad idea, and that we need Universal Basic Services instead (UBS) - where we have free education, healthcare & transport, alongside a massive expansion of social housing.

From my TED talk last year. pic.twitter.com/8rglnOiBHg

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) June 5, 2023

A rejection of UBI.

But if we can't have UBS, maybe UBI is better than nothing?

if ubi is offered as an alternative to basic services, its bad

It only makes sense as part of a broader network of services and controls on rents and prices, yeah