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I hope you can see how other people see it very differently. First, basic income can be implemented different ways, including a base that everyone gets regardless of income, fair in the same way that everyone gets equal access to the roads regardless of income. Anyone can get to where they're going, but how enjoyable that trip will be depends on what kind of car you can afford. There are still huge advantages to being wealthy.

Second, there are a lot of indications that the way to make money in modern capitalistic society is not to add value to society but to extract value from it. The more surefire way is to game the financial system, and you see huge firms that nearly crash the worldwide economy making billions. There's also a ton of money in gaming the legal system, which is why patent trolling is such big business. And that's just the beginning. Look at the Panama Papers! When you look at the worldwide economy, corruption is everywhere, and the most corrupt make the most profit.

You may disagree, and I hope I'm wrong and your right, but to a lot of people the viewpoint that the economy is essentialy fair and beneficial to society looks naive. When you get into the messy details, it begins to look to a lot of people like the more damage you do to society, the more money you make.

I sincerely hope that there's something I'm missing that says that corruption is just a small problem, the wealthy are getting what they deserve, and that the system is working. I'm still open to the idea.

> it begins to look to a lot of people like the more damage you do to society, the more money you make

This is mostly why I abandoned all hope of 'big' entrepreneurship. You cannot compete if you have a conscience. Someone who knows a few more schemes or a few more influential people will destroy you.

I am 100% certain I can add value in the right situations. However, if the market makes those situations untenable via barriers to entry, misleading marketing, backroom deals and whatever other means, what options am I left with? Ugly ones.

Basic income at least allows for the possibility of people contributing to society without involving the almighty dollar. It may or may not work, but whoever doesn't think that possibility is worth exploring needs to give me a hell of a good reason. The cost of food and shelter for your average human is not gonna break the damn bank.

You think UBI will eliminate corruption?

All the money collected as taxes goes to the govt every year and the govt is still in debt and taxes go up every other year.

People voluntarily invest their extra savings in the wall street, look at the level of productivity and innovation that brings. the prices of electronics keeps going down.

Looks like wall street is the clear winner here. Corruption is everywhere and only the free market reduces it.

The Basic Income is the terminal phase of a democracy, wherein people are rewarded simply for existing, extracting their subsistence from the productive forces in the economy. It is the final vote-buying mechanism of the political elite to create a permanent dependent underclass.

Thanks to our democratically-installed public school system, liberty is a topic which cannot be discussed in polite company. Don't be discouraged when you get down-voted by the Hacker News progressive/socialist hive mind.

Your argument could be made about any form of welfare.

"Liberty is not a topic that can be discussed in polite company" seems more likely to be an issue with your definition of liberty rather than an issue with the polite company.

Hacker news crowd are usually wealthy programmers who got very lucky in the nature's randomness. You have to be definitely smart to be a good programmer and the comments are usually very optimistic and ideal world scenarios.

The programmers who graduate to be good managers and fail couple of businesses really care about liberty. The best leaders I ever worked with cared so much about giving their productive people more liberty and they think like programmers. So there is hope after all ;-).

>wherein people are rewarded simply for existing, extracting their subsistence from the productive forces in the economy.

And when those forces are machines, why shouldn't we do exactly this?

>liberty is a topic which cannot be discussed in polite company.

I have no problem talking about liberty, only with people who seem to think that word means "property rights" and little else.

Basic income is necessary to distribute benefits for citizens with intangible value creation.

Ex: Stay-at-home parent raises children while breadwinner works. Breadwinner is freed from tedium and can be more productive at work. Children receive enough attention to become well-adjusted and productive adults.

What is the non-breadwinner worth? How do you calculate it? How do you compare value to non-working person taking care of sick family? Or a community volunteer (especially when the community needs volunteers and can't pay them)?

And that's why universal income makes sense.

Citizens are not some helpless victims. They make their life choices and they should by exercising personal responsibility.

The same benefits also applies to non-value creators who want to avoid tedium of work and the incentivizes to not do anything and takes risks goes away.

There is a natural Darwinism involved in influencing who wants to have kids. If someone is already struggling in their life, why should they get the incentive to have kids?

1: Some people are helpless victims, especially poor and minorities. Much bigger chances of arrest and fewer starting opportunities significantly limits where they can go and what debts they are chained to for how long.

2: Lazy people have and will always exist. Better in general for them to collect their check and not bother anybody. Otherwise you end up with more criminals, homeless, bad employees who can tarnish your brand, and so on.

3: Great point about children! I do believe that maintaining the replacement rate is of paramount importance (if you don't believe me, look at China by 2050), but excessive offspring should be discouraged, and even taxed at certain rates.

People have kids outside of financial consideration. The desire for having children is an enormous natural force for many (not all). That's not even including all the children as result of youthful mistakes or just plain happenstance.

Technocrats are quick to frame having children as some sort of result of rational decision making, like buying a car. Since it's obviously not, this viewpoint readily becomes a normative prescription. What not is, instead should. Hence, poor people shouldn't have children because they can't afford them.

But humans aren't robots. It's like saying teenagers shouldn't wreck their dad's car (they will), adults shouldn't fall in love with abusive a-holes (happens all the time), or old Johnny over there should just give up smoking already (he won't).

A just community absorbs this messiness with patience, forgiveness, and empathy. Families generally do. Friends often as well. Tight-knit towns have that capacity. Perhaps even the polis as well. But the higher up we go, the more abstract a human becomes. Right now, humans are widgets, no more than appliances in the cybernetic feedback loop. Not too long ago, we were divinely chosen caretakers with responsibilities to God first&foremost; at some point we were hapless pieces on the game board of disinterest cosmic chess players. Not sure which abstraction to prefer honestly.

People also don't want to let go of their hard earned money. It is also an enormous natural force. Our society is doing that to productive people forcibly and for your just theory you are picking and choosing which force of nature we should tolerate and which one we shouldn't. Your patience, forgiveness and empathy has any worthiness if it is voluntary and forcing it on certain set of people is no longer a just community.

>Our society is doing that to productive people forcibly

If they don't like it, they can stop producing.

But I'm guessing they're not quite so willing to give up all the other freedoms their money grants them.

They are productive people, they do other things like move to places where there are less taxes mostly out of USA. They hire people outside USA where payroll taxes are less. Or they stash in cyprus and panama. Or buy politicians.

Why do you think Steve jobs and other CEOs give them selves 1$ salary because they want to avoid paying income tax and want to pay less capital gains tax.?

>They are productive people, they do other things like move to places where there are less taxes mostly out of USA.

They still need to sell their goods in the US, so we can tax them then.

And as these countries develop, they'll start to implement similar social programs. Eventually there'll be nowhere left to hide.

>Or they stash in cyprus and panama. Or buy politicians.

These are separate problems, with their own solutions.

If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. If the only thing you can imagine is taxation then you try to solve every problem with taxation.

I can imagine many things, I just think taxation is the most obvious solution to the inevitable inequality that results from allowing people to accumulate capital.

And I tend to find that libertarians cling just as hard to the hammer they call "property rights".

There are similar number of people who are raising above their class and similar number of people falling below their economic class. The income inequality will probably exist no matter what we do because not everyone of us are born with same calibre and America is a huge country.

In America there is equality of opportunity but you want to give equality of outcomes which is almost impossible to do without crossing moral boundaries.

Imagine a class of students, do you think it makes the class more smarter if you take grades from better ranking students to underperforming students? Income tax is exactly that a very regressive idea.

I have no problem with the kind of inequality that comes about because some people are more skilled than others. That's the incentive to acquire skills, and that's fine.

My problem is with the kind of compounding inequality that arises when you start allowing people to accumulate capital, because those who already own capital are more able to earn money than those without.

In order to avoid this, without abandoning the benefits of capitalism entirely, we introduce a slow constant rate of wealth redistribution. This gives those without capital a chance to acquire some, and potentially do an even better job with it.

>In America there is equality of opportunity

Do you really believe this? Do you really believe the child of a poor family is equally able to learn the skills to succeed as a child raised in a rich one?

>but you want to give equality of outcomes

No, I just think extreme and consistent disparity of outcomes is evidence of a systematic problem.

Basically you want to punish people's kids if their parents aren't up to your standard. True meritocracy, that.

just like you want to reward stupid people having kids. true idiocracy.

I'll bite, UBI is in my opinion the least worst antipoverty program I've seen.

What else can you do when someone's broke, homeless, and can't provide enough value to sell to get a roof over their head? Just telling people to "Work Harder!" in a market that's become increasingly hostile to unskilled labor seems callous and short-sighted.

We can't just get rid of nonproductive people.

how about insurance and charities?

If we have a transferrable health savings accounts for everyone, a parent can insure their child incase of worst case scenarios and the savings transfer from parent to children.

If we have a productivity savings accounts for the days where you cant be productive that would handle individual level failures.

Govt works best when it does less and is a last resort system instead of the first.

I'm afraid I don't share your anti-state religious convictions.

I'm afraid you share an omnipotent-state convictions.

>>A Basic Income from Govt comes at a huge price of loss of individual liberty. If someone gives you free stuff, they will expect controls like where you are allowed to spend your money and time.

No. The entire point of basic income is that it is unconditional. You get a check from the government at frequent intervals. Unlike food stamps, you can spend the money on whatever you want.

You're right, but...

Politics is a real thing. It means that government programs have rules changes when people decide that they're unhappy with the way it's currently being done. Basic income might not stay unconditional for long.

Do you think I can get the check in America and go and spend it outside America?

If we make it something available to _all_citizens_, I don't think the location where you live should matter -- just like paying taxes.

If you're a citizen of the US, and get an unconditional monthly check deposited from the gov't, I don't think I care whether you (my fellow citizen) decides to spend that money living in Los Angeles, or decides to travel to Vietnam and live cheaply. You pay income tax as a US citizen even if you live elsewhere, so I don't see how it's unfair to send you a check either.

That's _the point_ of UBI: you get it, and can do what you feel is best with it. If that means buying steak one night a month and ramen the rest, or pay your tuition, or pay for a gym membership, or sock it away in a bank account to fund your 15-year anniversary trip to Italy, I should not care.

Looks like a wealth transfer scheme where the wealth transfers from America to outside America. At least if the spending happens with in an economy it circles back into economy.

Just earn monthly recurring money for being a citizen, take the money and spend it where ever you want and what ever you want. 50% chance of spending on self-destructive things and why go to college? why get a job? why do anything? go to a different part of the world just blow it all out.

A fool and his/her money depart. Nature gave us a reward system that incentivizes effort and you cant get away facing unintended consequences when you go against it.

Are you just looking for a reason to argue? It sure sounds like it. What difference does it make whether the recipient can spend it outside America or not? Does that invalidate enraged_camel's point whatsoever? No, it doesn't.

In case you really care, though, yes, you can. You probably have to convert the currency somewhere along the way, and you may have to pay for a wire transfer, but yes, you can (just like with any other source of US dollars).

You should try reading an economics textbook.

>This model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else will have to break at a certain point. how come you get rewarded for enjoying the gossip column and I spend extra effort doing something else which is harder and my earnings are taken away?

That's an argument that can be made against ABSOLUTELY ANY TAXATION.

did we ever try no taxation?

No taxation tends to get quickly replaced with "taxed by a local warlord". For instance, traditional government is largely absent from large parts of Afghanistan and eastern Pakistan. But these places are not libertarian utopias.

did you try breathing? well there is no oxygen on mars so breathing always does not work.

You are correct but we are talking about America.

> If someone gives you free stuff, they will expect controls like where you are allowed to spend your money and time.

Yeah, that's why they should pay you in cash. Every basic income discussion I've ever seen has been on that basis.

> model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else

No, you take from productive sources and reward everyone, even the productive sources. Basic income is not just for the poor.

> I spend extra effort doing something else which is harder and my earnings are taken away

Only a portion of them. I fail to see how your argument is not also an argument against all taxation, period.

> The productive people are dragged down and discouraged

The productive people produce if they want more than the minimum. If they do produce, then they get whatever they can earn, and they pay a portion to the government in taxes.

> A Basic Income from Govt comes at a huge price of loss of individual liberty.

Funny, I always thought of UBI exactly the other way round. More precise I'd even say it is the most valuable opportunity at hand to generate sustainable values not degrading the planet in the aftermath.

Actually automation is replacing the work that humans have to do - this means that most activities left will be the ones that are not in high demand, with low or no pay. Imagine we have machines providing us food and all the material possessions we ever need, without any human input. Traditional capitalism/distribution of wealth through employment makes little sense under this scenario.

    This model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else will have to break at a certain point. how come you get rewarded for enjoying the gossip column and I spend extra effort doing something else which is harder and my earnings are taken away?

a) The "productive sources" are mostly automated. b) you also get rewarded since the basic income is universal. whatever work you do provides you with extra income - people who work hard will still be rewarded accordingly.

The only way this would work is to remove income taxes and use other forms of taxes to pay for basic income. This would ensure those that own the automation pay for it. But as being discussed elsewhere in this thread, the more likely result is that people who are working for income will end up with less money than before (even when you count in the basic income), thus being rewarded less for working as hard as before.