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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

Andrew Yang is too early with the UBI, which in this case means he’s wrong. We still need humans to make things and the future. A negative income tax would work better now and would be a better segue to UBI.

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$12K/year is hardly a free ride to a life of no work. There will be a tiny minority that somehow game it and live off that, but for the vast majority it’s a cushion and not a replacement for work at all.

I wish for your assessment of human nature to be accurate, but I’m quite doubtful.

What do you even mean? The average income in this country is ~45k. If that is what he was proposing than maybe we’d have an issue, I guess, but I doubt it. Everyone is so sure that people on UBI would stop working, and there is no evidence to back it up. In the studies that have shown people who stop working it is usually caregivers, which I would argue is a positive thing.

The median US individual income ($31,099) is a better metric to use since the average is more weighted by extremes that don't represent the "typical" experience of people.

[1] According to google from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

You should look into welfare payments in Australia. It's about the easiest to get and most generous on the planet, and a small percentage of people do choose to be lazy and life off it.

But the very vast majority don't.

Why are you doubtful? Are people born into wealth generally lazy?

he's not too early. the conditions out there are really bad in the middle of the country. a negative income tax is ultimately regressive at its incentives are likely to keep people in poverty.

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