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Comment by mozumder | Hacker News Reader

This is key.

No one has ever said "I'm going to stop making money because I have $1."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility

At $1 the second dollar is useful, at $50,000, I'm good for the year and will not pursue additional dollars. Replace $50,000 with whatever amount you need to feel content.

See rich people as a counterpoint to your argument

It's not a counterpoint. For a rich person, each additional dollar is worth less than it is for a poor person.

and yet Warren Buffett continues to work?

There is a high social status associated with his job. If he were a janitor with the same wealth, I doubt he'd be rushing in to scrub toilets all day.

Though I'm several orders of magnitude less well-off than Mr Buffett, I still have more than enough that I could stop working now and survive well enough the next 50 years.

I continue to work because I genuinely enjoy what I do.

I didn't say there isn't a diminishing value of each dollar, but your comment seemed to imply that at a certain point, people will be "content" at a certain income level and not try to get more money.

Rich people are a counterpoint because there are people with incomes the size of a small country, and they are still striving for money. Given the diminishing utility of familiar pleasures, I think its likely that constantly reaching for "more" is the norm, rather than the exception.

That's nice and all, but no one is going to feel content at basic income.

But that's different from basic income. The idea with basic income is that you shouldn't fear dying of hunger and being homeless because you literally can't pay, but at the same time you will have to work if you want that plasma TV and iPhone on top of your basic survival money. Basic income should give everyone just about enough to survive and pay rent, but not enough to have a high quality life that most people want.

Food and shelter are limited resources which cannot be given freely. If the cost is not remunerated to the provider (in this case government) it imposes an unsustainable burden on the provider to find new resources. There are only so many houses that can be built on this planet and only so many people willing to do it.

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