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VC, Entrepreneur Says Basic Income Would Work Even If 90% People 'Smoked Pot' and Didn't Work (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader cites a story on TI: The chief complaint people lodge at universal basic income -- a form of income distribution that gives people money to cover basic needs regardless of whether they work or not -- is that it'll make them lazy. Sam Altman doesn't buy it. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast, entitled "Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?" Altman argued basic income could support huge amounts of productivity loss and still carry the economy on its shoulders. "Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win," Altman says. "And the American puritanical ideal that hard work for its own sake is valuable -- period -- and that you can't question that, I think that's just wrong." [...] The complaint Altman addressed on the Freakonomics podcast is a common one. Study after study, however, has shown that giving people extra money makes them feel financially secure. That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
This is the capitalist version of "let them eat cake." Because god help them if the proles feel like they deserve some of the money they're making capitalists.
I strongly suspect that my level of "basic needs" I'm willing to "give" to someone who smokes pot and plays video games all day is much lower than they will demand.
Simply doesn't work at the moment http://www.economist.com/news/...
The entire American capitalist system is predicated on the idea that workers don't have the freedom to just leave their jobs, no matter how bad the conditions. This is maintained by a careful system of salary collusion, artificial means of keeping wages stagnant and low (using H1B's and outsourcing, among other methods), and union busting.
A guaranteed income is a guarantee that your workers will no longer have to take whatever shit you sling at them.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In the war between facts and dogma, facts have a habit of coming second. Facts are hard to think through and analyse properly, and proper analyses are detailed and tough to understand. Dogma doesn't have any of these drawbacks.
John_Chalisque
Except you are confusing this and welfare. It is not the same thing. It is also not "free" it is basic. Everyone gets it, even those who work. There is a lot of overhead that could be saved in managing welfare systems by doing something like this.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Under guaranteed income, I would still work. I wouldn't be happy with the minimum. I'd be fine knowing a person that could make do with the minimum didn't really have to work.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Right now, when the government wants to expand the money supply, the Federal Reserve just sort of dumps money on the biggest financial institutions. Then it pays them a small interest fee for their service of having use of the money (0.25% according to this Investopedia article).
If the government really must inflate the money supply, then it seems to me that the best way to do it would be to spread the new money evenly among the citizens. It's just part of reality that when you have lots of money, it's easier to get more money, so almost all the time when we are talking about the economy, everything benefits the rich more than the poor. Here would be a direct payment that would definitely benefit the poor more than the rich.
Inflation effectively steals part of the value of the money. This is hardest on the poor, and people trying to live on a fixed income. Directly paying the inflation to the people would offset the harm, at least partially.
P.S. I'm a minarchist libertarian, so I don't really like seeing the government messing with the money supply at all. I'd rather just see prices deflate, so that maybe a hamburger would go back to costing a dime, and even a small income would be enough to live on. However, I'm not a trained economist, and apparently Milton Friedman believed we need to inflate the money supply as the economy expands. If you have to bet on whether Milton Friedman was right or I am right, you should bet on Milton Friedman. And if we accept that we need to inflate the money supply, I'd just as soon do it by paying the new money out to all the citizens.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Robots. Every time raising the minimum wage comes up, people are quick to claim such a raise in labor costs will just accelerate adoption of automation. But if we had basic income in lieu of a minimum wage, then such automation would be unequivocally positive.
It's not just elimination of the people maintaining the system, it's eliminating the need for the system at all.
When they ran the experiments in Canada in the 70s, only TWO groups of people worked less:
1) Mothers
2) Teenaged boys.
The mothers stayed home with their kids, freed from the burden of trying to take care of children and provide for them at the same time. That's bound to have good outcomes.
Teenaged boys stayed in school. Instead of abandoning their education to get a farm or industrial job at 16, they finished high school. The correlation between education level and productivity is fairly well established.
Additionally, visits to hospitals decreased and the number of mental health cases significantly decreased--huge savings in a system that is already government funded. (An 8.5% drop in hospital visits gives an outsized return; hospital visits are far more expensive than normal trips to the doctor.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There's nothing 'puritanical' about that idea, either. People wither away when they don't have a purpose in life. Sadly most people aren't too driven to find a purpose, they would just sit around, get fat, and do nothing -- except maybe get into some sort of trouble or other, or worse, keep reproducing out of sheer boredom. Work is good for people whether they themselves believe it or not, and that's my totally unscientific opinion on the subject, based on 50+ years of observations of people in general -- and note that this is also coming from someone who would benefit greatly from not having to work, yet be provided for the rest of his life. I'd just as soon not have to bother with some stupid job or other, and I'd spend my time going back to school, and riding my bikes, which is much more than I think the average person would end up doing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
You people categorically against this do realize we are rapidly approaching a point where large parts of the population don't really have to work to support our basic societal infrastructure? So what happens then? Do we actually reevaluate our economic system or just proceed as we've been going with increasing economic inequality and subsequent societal unrest? Are you people so selfish that you would deny basic support for all if our society could afford it? There will always be an incentive for work because you'll be able to make more money and have more things.
But neither do they want the plebs to revolt.
Yes, it's called the "riot index". A cost/benefit ratio of gains from austerity to the losses from the resulting property damage. It is finely tuned.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you have lots of money, but have trouble with the idea of a basic income think of it as guillotine insurance!
-Some meme I saw somewhere
If by "happiness" you mean "millions of dead and suffering people" then yes indeed, all socialist countries produce is "happiness". Just look at how "happy" Venezuela is these days!
Doesn't matter though if you manage to get in good with the rulers, and can bask in the reflected opulence. Sucking-up to the overseers is on hell of a retirement plan.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's clear up a bit of garbage that some idiots don't understand
1) Basic = to what we give them in prison, minus the security. Food, housing, cheap clothing. In fact, it's CHEAPER to give people a Basic Income than it is to put them in prison (guards are not cheap)
2) No one, and I mean NO ONE, that's willing to live at that level of crap (and it is crap) is ever going to amount to much of anything. If you are stupid enough to live like this, you were never smart enough to significantly contribute to society. People that know how to write, dance, invent, discover, repair, etc. should and will continue to work and earn more.
3) The main areas where we would (and currently do) give more money is not for the people on Basic Income, but instead is for their children, which would need education etc. so that they don't get stuck at the Basic Income.
4) We already do this for many people already. It's called Social Security and Disability. Not to mention Prison and Institionalized - though those last two are a lot more expensive, they basically do the same thing.
5) The people we currently provide a basic income for (old, disabled, criminals and insane) are not considered free loading, lazy shmucks because we recognize that for various reasons, they can't meaningfully contribute.
6) All we are really talking about is adding "below average intelligence" to the category of disabled.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well, to be honest, there is no other human choice.
What is the percentage of people that are useless? 30%, 40%? It has to be higher than the unemployment rate, given the amount of bullshit jobs that exist nowadays. This percentage is increasing thanks to the machine intelligence going on. One guy with modern tools can do the same work as many guys that hadn't those tools back then. Most of the population cannot become PhDs (lack of capabilities, money, lust, whatever), and even if they could, we just don't need 10^9 PhDs. What will be that percentage in 30 years? 80% 90%?
What do we do of these people? Let them starve and have social unrest? Give them what it takes to smoke pot and play video games and have most of the population happy?
We built all our previous civilizations on the value of human work. You have to realize that the value human work is very rapidly plunging towards zero. This is unprecedented in history. Do you really think we can continue business as usual and it will be fine?
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Exactly. I'm very surprised we haven't used statistical information to cut down on rent seeking behavior. Useless middlemen must wield far more power than those that desire an efficient, equitable market.
The problem with that theory is that we are essentially replacing the existing private middlemen with government middlemen. Any time the government offers a service or benefit it comes with strings attach. The government can't resist doing so. Engaging in some sort of social engineering for "your own good". Want government housing, then your behavior must conform to these government requirements. There will still be middlemen, there will still be management, they will merely be government ones looking not for a profit but to enforce compliance with whatever the social engineering "its good for you" idea of the day is. Actually that's a bad metaphor, it implies one idea is replaced with another, this is government we're talking about ... the ideas don't get replaced, they just stack new on top of old, they rarely go away.
It will most likely just give government new avenues of control with inevitably lead to new avenues of government corruption. Congress can not resist meddling with these avenues of control, either for their well intended social engineering or political payback to friends and enemies, as we see in today's tax code. The tax code probably being the greatest delivery vehicle with respect to influence buying and corruption.
Good grief I'm tired of you people attempting to blame the system for human nature. Human nature is why we have corruption, and have had corruption in every system of power since the beginning of civilization. A Capitalist Republic is the best system humanity has ever implemented to reduce and control the impact of human nature. The US was not a half ass Republic like we saw in other countries which still hold/held Monarchies and and Noble classes/families. It was fully implemented from ground up as a Capitalist Republic. The fact that it took well over 200 years for the system to become so noticeably corrupt speaks volumes for how well it works. Name one communist country that has been clean for more than a week. Name a Socialist country that has been clean for more than a year.
To GP, I call complete and utter horse shit. There is no expectation of a stagnant worker in Capitalism, in fact that view defies any writing by Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and countless Economists in between. Economic mobility is one of the keys of Capitalist theory. If workers don't believe they should work for X dollars at Employer-A they try to work for Employer-B at Y dollars. People being stuck means that competition is lacking, not that workers are intentionally stuck. Workers who are "stuck" should be able to start their own businesses to compete. Competition exists at each of the 3 legs of capitalism, or at least it should.
What you may be attempting to claim is that "starter" jobs should pay as much as "professional" jobs, which is horse shit. Who would want to work hard when there is no payoff or benefit? Oh yeah! That doesn't work very well, which is why worldwide innovation is relatively flat. The US innovation bubble is a fluke of Capitalism.
I realize that it's trendy and cool to say the US is bad. I fully admit that corruption is a huge problem that I don't know we can fix without a reset. I am a US Citizen who denounces the corruption and entrenched politicians all the time. That does not make Canada a "better" Government.
In a do-over would you choose another Capitalist Republic or go Communism? If you say Socialist I implore you to determine how you are going to be different than communism to succeed. The Socialist governments in the EU are really not doing as well as many are being led to believe.
Me, I'd do another Capitalist Republic.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And if that is the way modern capitalism worked, you might have a point. But when you consider the amount of corporate welfare in most industrialized countries, and couple that with the fact that, as the Panama Papers show, the very wealthy are so powerful that they can actually manipulate, if not outright force the political system to make sure not only profits are guaranteed, but large amounts of cash is protected in tax shelters. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when being wealthy effectively creates a whole new political class, capable of overawing politicians to guarantee compliance and leniency, then i'd say we've left behind the idealized capitalism and are well on the way to kleptocracy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And if you give everyone in America a check for something like $20,000 every year,
The federal and state budgets of the US totaled around 5.5 trillion dollars. There are around 210 million US citizens over the age of 18. This comes out to around $26k per person. This is if you spend EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR ON THIS PROGRAM. But let's say we settle on something smaller (like $13k). You are still going to have to roughly take in 50% more tax just to cover this program. And if the overall economy shrinks because of a drop in worker participation, won't that make it even more difficult to fund this?
First, the basic income replaces a lot of other programs, so it isn't as expensive as it looks. It's far cheaper to administer than welfare programs. Second, we raise taxes to cover the rest. Everybody's taxable income goes up.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But almost certainly at levels of income that will not be satisfactory to them.
I don't think anyone should starve, so I would be happy to provide funds for as much beans, rice, and vitamins as would be necessary to prevent starvation. But I'm not happy about being asked to provide lobster, filet mignon, or even fast food.
"Basic needs" at this point though seems to be something like "a nice 2br apartment with all amenities and easy access to all the nice services, in a good school district, 400 channels on 50" 4k TV, 100Mbit internet, smart phone, game console" and "free pot". IOW, they expect my lifestyle without working for it (although I don't smoke pot), and demand instead that I reduce my lifestyle to fund theirs.
Today, doing nothing really isn't an option. You *have* to work somehow. By offering a basic income, you are, in effect, creating competition for those jobs. If I have the leverage to say "no", if some people find "nothing" a competitive alternative, then supply-and-demand for workers says that prices (ie, salary) will have to go up to match.
It's a double-whammy against the wealthy, in that they will have to pay a large chunk of *both* the basic income and the delta in salaries. On the other hand, they have benefited the most from income/wealth inequality over the last 3 decades, and increased automation will only make a basic income more necessary.
I'm not sure *anyone* has fully thought through the action-and-reaction of basic income, so I can't honestly say that it's "good", but one way or another its time may be coming.
I write software and smoke Pot, I make over $200K/year, maybe this view that if you smoke Pot, then you're a a slacker should be thrown out. Also, I live in Southern California, I don't think of myself as "Rich". I kinda of laugh when I see people get upset over $15/hour basic wage since you're definitely way below the poverty line in Southern California at $30K/year.
I have lived and worked in the Netherlands, you have no idea what you are talking about if you think the Dutch mindset is in any way socialist in nature. They were the original capitalists, which made them wealthy beyond measure.
The mindset of people in the Netherlands is very far from that of the socialist...
Mainly you can tell they are not socialist by the fact they are (a) permissive, and (b) happy - neither the sign of socialism at work (as well know all too well from countless historical examples, socialism and totalitarianism go hand in hand).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I htink we were collectively distracted by the poor term "the 1%". The actual 1%, the moderately wealthy, the successful doctors and dentists and lawyers and small business owners, they aren't the issue here. The 1% aren't the people in the Panama Papers.
We should instead be upset at "the richest 100 families", who IMO have been causing so many problems. In some ways, the difference between "ideal capitalism" and "capitalism as practiced in the US" is the difference between the 1% and the richest 100 families.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh please, this isn't that hard. The Basic Income is simple: everyone gets the same amount, period. (As I understand it; if I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but I don't think I am.) You don't get more money for living in NYC than in Bumfuck, Idaho. So if that basic monthly paycheck (which isn't going to be a whole lot by NYC standards) isn't enough for you, then you need to pack up and move somewhere cheaper. But guess what? Now that you have a guaranteed basic monthly income, you have money to move, and you don't have to worry about losing your job and not having a source of income, so you can afford to abandon the high-price city and move someplace cheaper and see if it works out for you. If it doesn't work out and there's no jobs there or you just plain hate it, no problem, you still have that basic income, so you can pack up and move again. Moving isn't that expensive when you don't have a lot of stuff anyway, the problem is the danger of losing your job and that paycheck, and not finding a new one in the new location. BI solves that.
Now, with that out of the way, real estate prices are pretty simple: leave them to market forces (to an extent). If a city makes itself so expensive that all the janitors and cooks and meter maids can't afford to live and work there, oh well! They'll have to figure out a solution on their own, such as building some lower-income housing, or they can just suffer the consequences.
In fact, this will probably be a really GOOD thing for getting rents lower: with the lowest-income people no longer required to work for a living, and only working because they want more money so they can buy iPhones or whatever (BI isn't going to provide them enough money for any luxury, just the basics), they're not going to put up with shitty jobs in high-rent cities any more, a bunch of them are going to move out to cheaper places. It'll be better for them to move to the middle of nowhere, collect their BI check, and smoke pot or watch TV or maybe start a small business than to hang around some ultra-high-rent city like NYC working their ass off just to pay the rent (or commuting for hours every day to live someplace more affordable) because the BI isn't close to sufficient to pay the rent there. This will force rents to come down in those cities, one way or another.
So, for your SanFran example, the city will basically implode, which is a good thing. Usually, things need to completely fall apart before people will fix them.
I think the VC's claim is a little strange also:
Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win,
Yes, people will continue to invent, they will create new products and services, music, art, etc. But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If 90% aren't doing anything except sitting at home on their basic income, what kind of domestic market are those 10% going to have for their products?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
It's a trap and even worse can be a weapon used against people in need. Husband lose his job and you were a single income family? Kick him out and we'll give you money! Stay with him and we'll make sure you burn together. What the fuck sort of message is that?
It may not be only single mothers caught in the trap. After all I've not only seen, but I've known men who are effectively 'playboys' who simply knock up women and then say they care for these children to 'earn a living'. My ex-fiancee had two children before I dated her. One from her boyfriend in high school and another from one of those 'playboys' who knocked her up to have another kid he could mooch off of. My Ex is a nurse and as is typical the caring type of person, though not always the smartest. Even so she never intended to have a second child, the guy went to quite some lengths to get another kid he could claim is his. One of our constant issues while we were together was that she'd lose part of her government provided income if I ever married her. She could qualify for welfare while working full time because of the kids and got free medical coverage and 'food stamps' to go with it.
When I lost my job and my unemployment expired? "You don't meet our standards of need or protected status for any type of support." Ironically if we would have gotten married and I lost my job I bet I'd have qualified then because I would have been 'supporting two kids'... The whole system is shit and couldn't see need if it bite it in the ass. It's rife for abuse because we decide some people deserve help and others don't. Making it universal would finally be a means of destroying the traps and weapons and creating a balanced environment without bias.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
That doesn't happen a lot today, so why would it happen under the new regime? People who cannot afford to live where they do now rarely just up and move; they prefer to sit and whine about how the cost of living is too high and there needs to be a higher minimum wage.
They can't afford to move now because they're wage slaves: they can't afford to lose their job because they're living paycheck-to-paycheck and have no money to do anything differently. Of course, you have no comprehension of this because you've never had to live it.
The guy who goes to work at Mickey D's to be able to afford better pot isn't creating incredible new products or wealth.
Nice strawman. It only takes a small minority of people creating hugely successful enterprises (like Harry Potter, written by a woman on welfare) to make the system work for everyone. And Mickey D's isn't going to need many workers in the future because their jobs are being automated, so how exactly do you propose to handle that?
And it isn't going to get rid of the rich people; they'll just stop working and take the free money.
Wow, you anti-BI people are an incredibly stupid lot. I'm sure rich people will be perfectly happy to live on $1k a month in a tiny apartment with roommates...
This sounds nice on paper, except you still haven't dealt with the problem of those who feel they have the "right" to live there.
Sure I have: they don't have any such right. They have a guaranteed monthly income, and they can spend it how they like. If they can't afford the rent in Manhattan on that, then they'll have to move.
Remember also that New York was one of those states that wanted to justify having unemployment for longer than 99 weeks.
You don't need unemployment with BI, just like you don't need "disability", SNAP, etc. All these social programs are band-aid attempts to fix the problems caused by poverty. Eliminate poverty with a basic income and you don't need them any more.
Exactly.
Now one problem I do see is that a bunch of people are going to whine that the BI isn't enough to pay for their Manhattan apartment, and that they don't want to move because their family is there or whatever, and a bunch of bleeding hearts are going to try to "fix" this somehow. That needs to be fought against. The system won't work if they try to do some BS like giving people in Manhattan some huge BI (too many people will just want to move where the BI is higher, and the cost will be unaffordable, plus it'd drive up rents even more, bringing demands for even-higher BI in high-rent districts).
So BMI is going to be less than they're making today and they won't be able to afford it tomorrow, either.
They'll be able to afford it tomorrow because they don't have to worry about losing their fucking paycheck!! Holy shit, are you really this stupid?
The VC analysis uses the number "10%" doing this. There aren't 10% doing it today, and there won't be 10% tomorrow, especially when it's only 10% who are working at all.
There's only 10% creating real wealth. Most people's "work" is just make-work, or will be automated away shortly.
And you pro-BMI people are insulting and rely on ad hominem too much.
Well maybe if you didn't spout such stupidity, I wouldn't have to point out what morons you people are.
You can live pretty well on $3k/month when everyone else is at $1k.
Not if you want to drive a Ferrari or live in an exclusive place like next to Central Park or in Hawaii. What makes you think rich people are going to give up on wanting those things and be happy with a measly $3k/month?
A guy with a million in the bank can go 41 YEARS without working another day on that "income",
So what's stopping that guy from doing that *right now*?
But could it be that capitalism is practiced a little more ideally in the U.S.?
That, or maybe American tax dodgers just set up their sketchy shell corporations in Delaware or Nevada.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything