Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

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The concern is, on the whole, those receiving & relying on a basic income find a right to the fruits of the labors of others, without any incentive toward their own productivity. Many people find that with a little care, they can live nicely on little - and if that little is just given to them, then they can occupy their time just fine with mundane leisure (eating, mating, entertaining) and ongoing demand for more. Why contribute to national productivity when idleness is encouraged & funded?

Many will contend that having the basics covered will encourage the poor to be more productive by not limiting their efforts to mere existence (a la "might one take time to learn programming if not obligated to a 16-hour-a-day job just to pay rent & buy food?"). Many contend this is absurd, as those not inclined toward productivity are not going to become inclined without any reason to. Reality is a complex mix of these, the overall expectation being grounded in one's faith (or lack thereof) in human productivity sans motivation.

Basic income also risks devaluing money. The purpose of currency is representation of value; if someone is not creating value, their money has no value to represent. Money taken from someone and given to others (taxation for BI distribution) gives workers nothing in exchange for their efforts; money received for zero productivity may be squandered a la "easy come, easy go". Concern is akin to minimum wage: a gallon of gas will always be worth about 20 minutes of clerking at a gas station, regardless of the number placed upon the currency used to pay for the work and buy the gas. Basic income would skew low-number pricing: higher prices may continue to represent greater value accurately, but pricing of mundane goods/services would inflate as those purchasing have done nothing to acquire the currency buying them.

Basic needs have a cost to fulfill. Making it easy to fulfill those needs without social contribution reduces overall societal productivity, rewarding idleness and punishing productivity, lowering national GDP. Requiring people to work (true welfare cases aside) encourages productivity, including in work people would rather not do but for need to provide for one's own basic needs.

Reverse question is worth asking: how can basic income possibly be sustainable?

I think you need to look at the fact that a lot of people are considering BI solely because of expected advances in automation.

If we're looking at a situation where a vast, vast amount of the value created in the economy is pumped in by a handful of players who own large automated factories and most knowledge-work that we know today is done by specialized AI, then we might be in trouble on the jobs front.

So I think what a lot of people are looking at is a situation where for the average person, there is no job for them in the greater industry - the engineering and technically skilled folks required to build and maintain the machinery might be a fraction of what is required now.

So the marginal contribution of low-skilled Joe Blow is going to be very low or zero.

Now, getting to this situation without mitigating it would probably lead to violence, etc, so this line of reasoning has lead a lot of people into looking at BI.

While I think you have a very valid point, I think that setting up the right carrots and sticks inside a BI system to ensure that the right amount of development occurs is something that can be done.

One of the major effects of simply giving the poor a regular source money is reducing their cognitive load. In the past, it was seen that this stress would encourage the poor to keep working, as it was seen that poverty is caused by lack of motivation.

Today we know that this just screws them over worse. Stress inhibits brain development and constant lack of security decreases motivation to try and improve the situation. Opportunity costs make most prospects look impossible, and an awful lot of people simply don't have the time to stop and figure out what they should do.

So let's get rid of that yolk and see what happens when we give everybody a secure environment to develop themselves. I think it's worth going through the effort of figuring out how to arrange the carrots and sticks to make it work. Don't you?

The counter to this is that people will be encouraged to contribute to things that do not make them a living like editing Wikipedia, contributing to open source software, gardening, politics, volunteering, etc. because they can do whatever they want without getting paid for it.

The benefit of basic income is that it does in fact incentivize you to work because you do get more money if you work part time, as opposed to current programs that decrease your benefits quickly as you get more and more hours.

But even if we assume people work less with BI, but live happier lives, what is the goal?

> Many people find that with a little care, they can live nicely on little

I believe this is the crux of your argument, and I would say that it is a postulate that cannot be assumed. If the "basic income" were $1k, few people would find they could live on it and thus the motivation to work would remain. On the other hand, who would work if they received $1 million per year? What if it's somewhere in the middle? I would argue that the incentive for work would remain if the benefit only brought people up to the poverty line.

Who wants to at live at the poverty line? $20k for a family of 4 affords very little luxury.

> Basic income also risks devaluing money

Do foodstamps make food significantly more expensive for everybody? What is the percentage of all food revenue bought with food stamps?

If 14% of US citizens live below the poverty line, the vast amount of GDP, productivity, taxes and whatever else you want to measure are generated above that line.

I've heard some arguments that a flat livable wage, without eligibility requirements beyond income would obviate the need and overhead for a whole slew of expensive social programs, including social security, welfare, food stamps, and the minimum wage.

Then there are small scale experiments like the one in the original article, though limited in actionable data did not produce behaviors like you described.

So, to answer your question, it can be sustainable because it can replace some expensive and hard-to-administer social programs with a relatively easier to distribute system. There are tangible incentives to earn more than "basic" income, and training to do so becomes easier. Lastly, the bulk of GDP and the tax base are generated by those far above the poverty line.

As I mentioned elsewhere, it's worth noting that $20k/yr goes a lot further when you're working 60hrs/wk at stretching it than when you're working 60hrs/wk at making it.

I don't mean this to play any particular role on either side of the debate - I'm not sure of all the ramifications - I just think it's probably an important point.

"The concern is, on the whole, those receiving & relying on a basic income find a right to the fruits of the labors of others, without any incentive toward their own productivity."

Capitalist states were founded by theft and bloodshed, as if this is an argument. It's all trying to make people conform to some ideology when the words "incentive" and "prodictivity" and "other peoples labor" have no real definition, it's just vague mumbo jumbo. If you really meant that then that would mean many historical injustices would have to be undone (aka the capitalist states theft of property from the natives).

Albert einstein:

"The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future."

http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

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