Y Combinator Announces Funding For UBI-Supporting Political Candidates (latimes.com)

Most people "feel like they have great potential that is being wasted," argues Y Combinator president Sam Altman -- a Stanford dropout whose company's investments are now worth $65 billion, including Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox. Now an anonymous reader quote the Los Angeles Times: A wealthy young Silicon Valley venture capitalist hopes to recruit statewide and congressional candidates and launch an affordable-housing ballot measure in 2018 because he says California's leaders are failing to address flaws in the state's governance that are killing opportunities for future generations. Sam Altman, 32, will roll out an effort to enlist candidates around a shared set of policy priorities -- including tackling how automation is going to affect the economy and the cost of housing in California -- and is willing to put his own money behind the effort. "I think we have a fundamental breakdown of the American social contract and it's desperately important that we fix it," he said. "Even if we had a very well-functioning government, it would be a challenge, and our current government functions so badly it is an extra challenge..."

Altman lays out 10 principles including lowering the cost of housing, creating single-payer healthcare, increasing clean energy use, improving education, reforming taxes and rebuilding infrastructure. He has few specific policy edicts, and floats proposals that will generate controversy, such as creating a universal basic income for all Americans in an effort to equalize opportunity, public funding for the media and increasing taxes on property that is owned by foreigners, is unoccupied or has been "flipped" by investors seeking a quick return on an investment.
Altman argues that he wants to "ensure that everyone benefits from the coming changes," and specifically highlights the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Altman writes that "If it turns out to be a good policy, I could imagine passing a law that puts it into effect when the GDP per capita doubles. This could help cushion the transition to a post-automation world."

Comments

The investor class is powerful

[hwstar]

Things are going to get very ugly before they get better. The investor class will not relinquish its power without a fight. These guys will fight to the bitter end. They have everything to lose. They will use their resources to keep the status quo in place. Expect the skirmishes between main street and wall street to escalate. The outcome is very hard to predict, but there will be a conflict. Best case: We are able to wrest control from the investor class, and restore democracy. Worst case: Think Second Civil War, Robots killing citizens en-masse, biological agents released, or US military thermonuclear bombs targeted intra-US.

No jobs where housing is cheap

[t0qer]

The real issue isn't a housing shortage, the real issue here is there are no jobs where housing is cheap.

There is plenty of cheap housing in California if you're willing to live anywhere but the bay area. Modesto, Stockton, Hollister, Tracy come to mind first. Problem is guys like Sam Altman want to live in Woodside, Atherton, or Los Altos. People like Sam Altman do not want to commute any more than 12 minutes to work. People like Sam Altman would never lower themselves to live in any of the aforementioned cities, much less start a company with decent paying wages in them.

We always hear the excuse, "WELL THE GOOD TALENT DOESN'T LIVE IN THOSE CITIES!" Really? Because I could have sworn we have over 100k H1b visa holders that were willing to live anywhere but where they came from. I could have sworn a lot of these folks would think that Stockton, even with it's high crime rate is a much better, much more civilized city than where they came from.

I've been preaching this for a while, seems like it would solve so many issues. Less traffic, less economic depression, and a foot up for people living in those cities. It's not like Atherton, Los Altos, or Woodside need anymore money. Give people a job, they won't need UBI.

Re:But does it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ideology is that ppl are free to pursue their happiness. Should we have tested the Declaration of Independence before rashly committing so much blood and treasure? Emancipation is too risky; we must do experiments to see what will happen to the price of cotton before giving slaves freedom.

Re:A UBI...

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be the dumbest post I have seen in a few days.

I did the math on UBI and found scrapping existing welfare, EI and veteran payments in favour for one UBI program would not only supply more income to more people, it would actually save the government money.

UBI is not magic, the money doesn't just come from the air, it comes from taxes. To pay for UBI the government merely needs to shift taxes to apply to wherever the money currently is. In other words, people who are making profits end up footing the bill for the people they laid off to make those profits.

The national debt is likely to go down, not up, if UBI is implemented because it saves money in the long run. Not just by unifying programs, but by reducing social housing, medical and emergency responder costs which are a result of poverty.

Or maybe instead

[skam240]

Or maybe you dont have a strong grasp on what UBI is for or how it would work.

What it is for: a future where automation is cutting large numbers of people out of work. While there have always been people who have lost their jobs to automation the worry now is that robotics may be replacing manual labor almost entirely in the future. What are the manual laborers in this country going to do if that happens? Furthermore, advances in "ai" threaten many traditionally well paying jobs which makes the problems even worse.

How UBI works: UBI isnt as expensive as you make out. With UBI there's no unemployment payouts, food stamps, or any other number of social programs along with the large bureaucracies needed to make them work. While that money saved wont cover all the costs there's enough static wealth at the top even right now (let alone in a world so heavily automated) to make up the difference.

And really, I havent heard any viable solutions to what looks like a looming labor crises that isnt "let them all starve" or UBI

Re:Or maybe instead

[Anonymous Coward]

You easily gloss over a lot of unnecessary collateral damage.

Wow, where to start

[rsilvergun]

First off, thanks for trotting out Karl Rove/Regan's tired old talking point about government. To which I'll say: A government agent paid for the life saving medicine for a family member of mine. While a capitalist declined to order some cat scans for said family member because they were afraid they wouldn't get paid if the scans came up negative and caused lots of complications. Google the phrase "Wallet Biopsy" sometime and be horrified.

Now on to the next point: I get it. You don't like Government. Well, tough titties. See, gov'ts are really, really useful. For everyone. If you try to do without one the rich and powerful won't. They'll make one for you. Well, not you per se. For themselves. And _only_ themselves.

And for Pete's sake pick a better sig. Sweden doesn't have a bloody police state. The USSR and China are not progressive. You do understand that people can lie, right? The folks who crammed your head full of those ideas did. Go read some of Liz Warren and Al Franklin's books. Then check their sources (they're all meticulously sourced) and then go read A People's History Of The United States. You've been had.

Re:A UBI...

[gweihir]

The thing you UBI-detractors do not understand is that the UBI is Universal. It has minimal overhead, quite unlikely the system in place now. That is the whole point. It just distributes mostly the same money as is distributed now, but with almost no bureaucracy and nobody falling through the cracks. It eliminates a lot of value-destruction the current system does and fosters.

However, there are certainly problems with an UBI. For example, many people will find it really difficult to live without work and not because of financial aspects. That is the real killer here. With an UBI, all the make-work things currently done will fall away and that is going to hit hard. Just look at how many people run into massive issues when they retire or how many dies soon afterwards. People need something to do and many cannot create that by and for themselves.

That said, an UBI will happen, there is no way around that. The numbers just do not add up any other way, unless the whole world agrees to go back to a non-tech model of society. That is not going to happen.

Re:A UBI...

[squiggleslash]

No, that's not why UBI wouldn't work, you and your friends apparently do not understand how it's supposed to work.

It would be neutral in terms of income for the middle class. The concept isn't "We add UBI to the current system", but "We replace all forms of welfare and even the tiered taxation model with UBI and a flat tax". The savings that pay for it come from:

1. Everyone on the same tax rate. So you pay 25% on every dollar, you don't get the first $X thousand free of tax, then the next $Y thousand at a lower rate, etc.
2. Reduced bureaucracy due to qualifications testing for existing benefits being eliminated.

The problem, of course, is that the latter isn't really going to work. You can't replace disability with UBI because the average person on disability has much higher medical costs, and they can't exactly solve the discrepancy by finding a part time job.

That is the real problem with UBI. It ignores why we only provide certain benefits to certain people and assumes that everyone covered can just get a job if UBI doesn't cover their needs. So in practice, it wouldn't solve the bureaucracy issue. The best you can hope for is to combine it with a general improvement in public services - making healthcare free, for example, would at least reduce the problems for someone whose disability benefits are replaced by UBI - but that wouldn't solve the whole problem.