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Y Combinator Plans To Start Doling Out $60 Million Next Year to Study Universal Basic Income (gizmodo.com)
The research arm of Y Combinator plans to begin a study on universal basic income next year in which it will give unconditional cash payments to 3,000 participants. From a report: The test is partially intended to see if receiving routine payments will quell anxieties around losing jobs to automation. As Wired reports, the study will be called "Making Ends Meet." Under the plan, a thousand people would get $1,000 per month and the other 2,000 would get $50 per month to serve as a control group. Some of the participants would receive monthly payments for three years and some would get paid every month for five years. Sam Altman, CEO of Y Combinator, a highly successful startup accelerator that helped give rise to companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Reddit, announced the company's plans to research universal basic income -- or as he put it, "giving people enough money to live on with no strings attached" -- in a January 2016 blog post. Altman explained his belief that universal basic income will eventually be implemented across the nation as more jobs are automated and "massive new wealth gets created."
I'm not a proponent but how relevant could the results actually be if it isn't implemented nationwide?
Perhaps a poor country could take a crack at it, like Venezuela, to see if it boosts their economy.
it's not free if it gets taken out of my paycheck.
I, too, want to get money for simply existing and contributing nothing
When a leading VC starts chasing after weird ideas, you know that the end is nigh!
We need immigrants to do the jobs that robots won't do and a program to pay people to not care if they lose their job.
Well, I wonder how this is going to turn out.
When I was 5 years old I figured out that if everyone has $1,000,000 dollars everyone would be rich.
I realized when I was 10 why if everyone had $1,000,000 nobody would be rich.
Sure, this experiment will work because the source of the money isn't other people's money and it isn't inflation.
When the source of the money is inflation or other people's money, that $12,000 a year will be sunk into rent increases and increased home prices, amongst other things.
I think the idea for UBI is that, while you may not be eating out buying filet mignon, you can at least survive on it.
Is $1,000 survivable? It is significantly less than minimum wage, which people already struggle with.
...increase the value of the money VC funders have put into the startup accelerator?
This will create no jobs and no value. If I were backing Y Cabinator, I'd want to pull all my money out and invest in something that actually creates jobs for Americans (and comes with the possibility of my money earning a profit), rather than waste it handing out welfare.
(Psst: Universal basic Income failed when they tried it in the SIME/DIME experiments, where it discouraged work. Try reading Losing Ground instead of repeating failure...)
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Mi faggot doesn't want to pay taxes to support society, so society needs to kick this Mi faggot to the curb. Go live at the bottom of the ocean you childish troll.
Where does this money come from? All the people touting UBI all say to watch this video or read this paper yadda yadda. Bottom line is taxes will go up for middle class.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I love my job (software dev) so I would continue to come into work. But what about plumbers, welders, construction workers and burger flippers? Will they still come into work if they were guaranteed a paycheck anyway?
The problem with Universal Basic Income is that it could push wages down and increase prices. If the government is going to give a certain amount of money, then the assumption by business is that people can afford to pay more for goods and services. Furthermore, businesses may assume that with UBI, they can pay their employees less. Therefore, any assistance that UBI offers will end up negating any advantage.
Ask Canada how it worked out for them....
Oh wait! They closed it down because it was unsustainable and they ran out of other people's money.
Captcha: Falter (how appropriate)
as more jobs are automated and "massive new wealth gets created."
If more jobs are automated that means more people without jobs. Who is going to pay them this income? Those getting massive new wealth?
All you've done is make the masses dependent on a select few continuing to give them money and in doing so create a redistribution of wealth (such that it is ).
I'm not the smartest person in the room, but how is this even remotely feasible and sustainable?
Oh ,here they come again with 'help'.
Do not fall for it.
Just like the social programs of today, this is a lure to trap people and families into a life of dependence
That's about as useful as this is. Why not spend that $60,000,000 on training people for different jobs if theirs are in dire danger of being lost to 'automation'? Wouldn't that be smarter? "Teach a man how to fish" instead of "Give a man a fish", remember how that works?
Back in the seventies a firm did this in the Seattle area, though back then it was something like $600 a month. The guy I knew who was in the program spent all his money on turquoise jewelry.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Restrict recipients *only* to people that have lost their job to automation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Under the plan, a thousand people would get $1,000 per month and the other 2,000 would get $50 per month to serve as a control group.
Sam Altman, CEO of Y Combinator, a highly successful startup accelerator that helped give rise to companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Reddit, announced the company's plans to research universal basic income -- or as he put it, "giving people enough money to live on with no strings attached"
So $12K is a living wage?
Ken
The results aren't relevant anyway, as at its best, $12000/yr isn't enough to live on unless you live under a bridge, so the whole "will people still work" and "what might they do otherwise" bit falls flat on its face. This isn't a UBI test. This is an "auntie Sarah died and left you a tiny bit of money which you can't get at all at once anyway" test.
It's not basic. It's not universal, either. It is income, but so is that $100 bill you got for xmas.
It amazes me how often these "tests" get the whole idea completely wrongheaded... and then people run around saying "test X proves..." when all it really proves is its not a test of UBI at all.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
UBI is a universal failure, waste of time and money, and is shown so each and every time it is attempted. But still they keep putting it out there. Obviously there is a real agenda behind this facade, but what is it? to dumb down the population to accept other lies as truth? Is it a big tax scam of some sort? A coverup of some political shenanigans? Money laundering? Give us a hint!
Something like this requires a solid understanding of macro economics and human nature.
"Universal" basic income on such a small scale will produce different results than if it were truly universal, so the test is mostly useless for the problem they are trying to study. On a truly macro scale, where everyone is receiving UBI, the macro scale will balance out such that there is little to no change at the micro scale. It's the same effect as a rising tide - lift the water level equally for everyone and their vertical position relative to all others will not change. Lift the water level unequally and it again suffers from not being universal and ends up being nothing more than wealth redistribution. Fine if that's the intended outcome, but call it what it is.
Second problem is a failure to understand human nature. People need meaningful work to do which is appreciated in some form by others. Depriving them of that need is part of the current economic problem, and giving them free money does nothing to fix that.
If the Fair Tax were passed, everybody would get a prebate based on what they'd pay on tax with an income at the poverty level. Back in 2014 that amount was about $12,000/year for adults and about $4,000/year for children.
It really is a good plan, but I doubt Washington D.C. would ever give up the power they have now with the income tax.
Well, look at it this way. As automation increases, due to these very startups and their peers, the available number of jobs will decrease. So now, do you want your neighbors robbing you, or hanging out relatively peacefully, painting watercolors or whatever? Seems like a very good time to test these waters (not that this instance is a decent test, it's not, $12k/yr is ridiculously low in this economy), before people begin to experience desperation.
And in so doing, this provides some insurance that these Y-folk and those like them can continue to invent more and better automation. Without, you know, the torches and pitchforks coming out.
Again, jobs are going to go away due to automation. The point of real UBI (which, again, this isn't) is not to create jobs. It's to make sure people can survive what's almost certain to be coming, which will be an employment drought of unprecedented magnitude. Barring natural disaster, war, etc.
You can keep pretending things will just keep going along as they have been, but eventually it'll come home to roost, no matter how firm your convictions are otherwise. As automation proves to be cheaper, faster, better, it will eat the jobs market like wildfire.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Only problem is 'rural' areas don't have public transportation to take :(
The nearest bus stop to my parents is a PARK and RIDE several miles away, and they are barely rural anymore :(
Unless the goal is to kill the idea of UBI, this is wasted money.
UBI enable people to make projects if the income is high enough that you do not have to starve for a paid job, any shitty paid job, to make a decent living. And it works if you do not have to bother wbout when it stops.
is breaking down! Let's make new chains and keep people dependent on the system forever!
When I was 5 years old I figured out that if everyone has $1,000,000 dollars everyone would be rich.
I realized when I was 10 why if everyone had $1,000,000 nobody would be rich.
Sure, this experiment will work because the source of the money isn't other people's money and it isn't inflation.
When the source of the money is inflation or other people's money, that $12,000 a year will be sunk into rent increases and increased home prices, amongst other things.
When I was 25 years old I figured out that $1,000,000 invested in an index fund would increase in value enough to account for inflation and give an income of $2000 a month in perpetuity.
Also when I was 25, I figured out that any reduction of the workforce would push wages up and make jobs better by way of competition from supply and demand.
Also also, I noted that you don't need to give everyone the income immediately. Having a lottery will take people out of the workforce gradually, which could be funded over time in a reasonable way. Each $1 billion spent this way takes 1,000 people out of the workforce.
I noticed many things when I was 25, including that if you took all the entitlements programs and simply gave the money out with no regulatory oversight, you could have 5 times as many people using entitlements.
Looking at the cost of entitlements, it's clear that we *could* start moving people off of welfare and related services and eventually get to UBI or something close to it, with no increase in taxes.
Individual productivity keeps rising, and it's pretty easy to see that UBI has to happen.
Or if it doesn't, then we're in for a world of hurt as all the goods and services needed by everyone are made by fewer and fewer people, while the people who can't find a job either starve or revolt.
I disagree, it is only if the UBI is excessive, if we don't eliminate other forms of welfare at the same time, etc...
I figure that a modest UBI can be funded with existing welfare spending combined with eliminating the lowest tax brackets. You don't need them if people are getting about $6k/year up front.
I don't read AC A human right
Instead of universal income give out a universal housing credit redeemable in tax dollars. This will give an incentive for property owners to rent to someone in exchange for the tax credit value (worth more than pre taxed revenue). Homeowners simply offset their taxes, and residential rental property owners have an incentive to house people.
Stipends for the peasants. Yea, let us rejoice, for our noble lords and ladies are in good spirits today!
You'd still see them coming into work, but you'd probably have to pay them more to do so.
There was recently an article about human feces having become such a problem that San Francisco was hiring human poo cleaners. Wage? $75k/year each.
If the potential plumber wants more than a very modest life, he still has to go out and work.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm curious as to how you think that this could reduce wages. My line of thinking is that with a substantial portion of people looking at just staying home if the pay isn't worth it, that pay will have to increase to lure people out.
As such, businesses that assume they can pay less because of the UBI will discover that said potential employees decide that just staying home is better.
I figure that market forces will tend to adjust such that living on just the UBI sucks enough, and working improves that enough, that most people still end up working.
I don't read AC A human right
If I could count on my rent being made and some or all of my monthly expenses I would start making beef jerky on a more than pastime basis. I'd also volunteer more than 1 day a week at the animal rehab preserve, I specialize in snakes and lizards. I also spend one day a week as a library volunteer reading to kids and indexing the books in their book store. I think most people would not just quit doing things but would find more personally fulfilling things to do with their time that wouldn't normally make enough money to warrant or allow them to devote the effort. Imagine musicians, writers and countless other creative pursuits which could arise.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When you run out of SOMEBODY ELSE'S MONEY to give away. This won't work, it hasn't worked and it will NEVER work. "oh, but we are just getting it from the rich" Yeah, and they will flee the states, countries that have this, and hide their money elsewhere. What RIGHT does someone else have with someone else's property? I think these people that come up with this garbage should allow these people to live in their homes a while, or, take THEIR money and give it away. NO! Tell the lazy butts to get up and work!
If welfare payments are reduced because of this for the people on it then it's probably pointless because it can already be established what happens when extra income simply reduces welfare payments for people because that already happens however if people know that they will keep the universal basic income no matter what then they will probably have an incentive to seek other work etc humanity is what it is and you must work with what you've got not what you think you should have
Universal vote is overrated.
We cannot afford extreme poverty (decent food, shelter, medical should be considered a universal axiomatic right). Period, no discussion. ('axiomatic' means that there is no basis for discussion of this point; it just 'is'.) So how are we to pay for this? By reasoning from the second axiom that we (also) cannot afford extreme wealth .
So, 'we' as a society decide what a tolerable minimum standard of living is, then, using a progressive tax policy enough resources are generated (yes, "confiscated",if you choose to use that term, just as all taxes can be considered confiscation, unless you take the view that "taxes are the price one pays to live in a civilized society" ) . When enough wealth has been redistributed from the very top of the economic heap to the very bottom that there is no more extreme poverty, then a by-definition 'fair and proper' tax structure has been established, so stop increasing the tax. So there is no extreme poverty, and a limit to extreme wealth. A perfect system? Of course not, but arguably better than what we have now!
For the $60M they are spending on these 1000 people getting free income, YC could instead invest their same standard $120k deal on 500 more startups -- $120k*500=60M. They regularly turn away hundreds (thousands?) of hardworking, dedicated entrepreneurs every year with great businesses that just don't fit their model perfectly, who have likely invested all their time, money and lives building their businesses. The startups would in aggregate create actual jobs, likely more than the 1000 people that are just getting free money. This investment would incentivize entrepreneurship and more startups being created and creating more jobs....Even as someone who is open to the idea of UBI someday as a public policy/governmental cost, I just don't understand this move. Instead of giving people free money, why not provide pre-seed capital to people who have a legit plan and want to work?
One mechanism I like to implement such a thing is to require that X% of the stock of all corporations or other such liability limiting/wealth concentrating legal tools always automatically and irrevocably belongs to the country's citizens
You mean like state capitalism in the People's Republic of China?
with jail / er as your only doctor
benefits cliff makes people not want to work
You bought an inexpensive house in BCS in 2013 - you might have bought mine. My income wasn't much higher than $1,500 / month when I bought it. Congrats on getting out of the rent trap.
I sold my BCS house and used the money for a down payment in Dallas, where was recruited for a higher-paying job. I found that In Dallas I could afford either A 2,000 sq foot house, or this 3,500 sq foot one that someone had skipped about 20 Saturdays of upkeep and repairs.
Things like a faucet dripping (20 minute fix, $4) and they didn't finish painting one end of the house (3 hours, $60), and the bushes hadn't been trimmed in years (3 hours, $0). I expect that after spending 100 hours and $4,000 I should be able to sell it for $50-70,000 more than I paid for it.
That cheap little house in Bryan started something pretty good.
However, this one is trying so hard to virtue signal and make unsubstantiated "scientific" claims, all because eventually they want to take our money whether we want to give or not.
At least the respectable charities show us pictures of injured dogs while some screechy lady is singing.
Well, good thing I had a tax increase to pay for the UBI in the post you replied to, right?
The important point is that, once you eliminate other forms of welfare and plow that money into the BIG, the additional taxes only need to more or less neutralize the BIG for middle class and above income earners.
So, while technically a tax increase, actually revenue neutral to most people.
I don't read AC A human right
Just lost a lot of respect for Y Combinator. I'll still keep reading Hacker News as that seems to be their most successful and enduring effort.
I swear to God, I think people are becoming so open-minded, their brains are falling out of their collectiv(e|ist) heads!
Exactly. Any subset receiving subsidy will relatively outperform any group not receiving subsidy.
If everyone nationwide were to receive that subsidy, the relative effect would be zero and the macro effect would be inflationary and ultimately detrimental.
To put a finer point on it: There is no point to "studying" UBI on trial groups other than to propagandize the "success" of the program.
When a problem is abstract and spread across time, like Global Warming or Loss of Jobs due to AI, common people cannot comprehend it. It is so much easier to react to Muslims when 12 terrorists cause 9/11 than tackle Global Warming or implement Universal Basic Income.
In some parts of America a single man with a $1,000 a month income would be better off in prison. Medical care alone would wipe them out. I am aware that in some places local prices and conditions would make life at times reasonable for a single person. In my area the rent for a humble one bedroom apartment is $1500 a month. A social security net implies an income that keeps you squarely up with the community. At $1,000 a month that person is locked into almost a depraved poverty meaning that it is no social safety net at all. And it creates another severe issue. What can any business gain from people with seriously low income? Businesses hate the poor as they simply can not be farmed. After all, they won't be buying cars, eating out or buying clothing. That hatred is what was behind attacking the hobo camps in 1930. Any place hobos wanted to build a camp was attacked both by mobs and the government. The attitude was that they could not buy anything and they would surely steal your chickens and laundry off of your clothes lines. If one looks at the hell hole slums in S. America and thinks a bit those slums exist because they need to exist. Despite the depravity, disease, crime and filth the people in those slums are better off than if the slums were demolished. Perhaps it is time for the US to allow slum communities with cardboard and scrap metal housing.
When I was 25 I read the book "Time Machine". I thought it was dumb because why would the Morlocks work underground so the people above ground got to live free and clear and not work.
Then I read the above post where that is EXACTLY the world Okian Warrior is proposing. I used to also wonder how anyone thought slavery, where one class of people work while another lives off their work, could happen and again I read Okian Warrior's post. All we need now is someone screaming "Income Inequality!" because the workers are making more money than those who don't work, oh wait we already have that.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
Socialism has many names, and the latest name is UBI. It has the same problem, though: the math just doesn't work. Efficient economies strive for equilibrium. Perfectly-efficient economies achieve new equilibrium instantly, but of course we know that no economy is perfectly efficient.
That's where these charlatans come in. Socialism exploits the inefficiencies in a real economy to achieve success that can only be temporary - until the efficiency of the economy catches up and inflates out the bias implemented by socialist policy.
If you start giving everyone $100, eventually that $100 will not have any buying power as the increased demand created by it inflates prices to compensate.
This is known fact and has been for decades. Today, socialism fails quickly because technology is making economies more efficient - reducing response times to changes in stimuli. So, the response from the left is to grow socialist programs FASTER, to try to stay ahead of the curve.
One curious phenomena we are starting to see is that prices start to increase in anticipation of new social programs, instead of in response to them. Economies are getting so efficient that they can tune out social program bias before they even start. That's pretty fascinating.
Blah blah blah ..Good idea!,, blah blah ..Bad Idea!.. blah blah...
Could someone just post a link where I can sign up to get $1,000 a month?
I already make good money, but an extra grand would certainly help.
When you take from people who work and hand it to freeloaders, it results in a failed society. Things like welfare, the UBI, socialised medicine, public utility companies, public roads, and other giveaways need to be examined, because they are unsustainable.
It's only the obvious leading solution for a world where most wealth can be produced automatically without anyone having to work for it.
And despite several slave driver lobbyist groups having set up deliberately badly designed UBI "experiments", to make UBI look bad and kill the discussion (which apparently worked on you), it’s still big in Europe and the EU.
No matter how much you are made to want to be a good slave, defending your "right" to have a job be a slave, reality only has two options to offer you: 1. Get money from somewhere without having a job (ideally from the fatcats that used automation to replace you), or 2. starve to death.
Because the fatcats sure as hell won't give you a job if they can do without you. Even if there is nobody left to buy their shit, killing them in the process. They'll just switch to imaginary growth via stock gambling. Focusing more on "growth" than on actual survival. Just like a pathogen too deadly for its own good.
Automation never was the problem. The machines being owned by people, who built "their" wealth upon leeching off of employees who did the actual work, is!
Or, getting straight to the point: Profit is the problem! So the part of their income that they did not earn (but essentially steal).
UBI is merely the act taking that back, and balancing the market. And you love a "OMG free market!!!1111one", don’t you?
If you’re over in Dallas, I’m afraid I didn’t buy your home. The couple whose home I purchased still lived in the area as recently as last year. Mine is an 1800 sqft home on a third of an acre, tucked into a nice, quiet neighborhood in Bryan. I purchased it at $163K in 2013. We had it reassessed in 2016 for a refinancing (by the same assessor, no less), and it had already gone up to $205K at that point, what with market improvements and modest upgrades we had been making to the home. At this point, I’d wager we could get quite a bit more than that, were we to list it, just based on what less updated comparable are going for in the neighborhood.
Oddly, my monthly mortgage is less than I was paying for that apartment (though obviously there’s insurance and property tax as well, so it ends up being more), but 2011 was when I started working a full-time job, so the money started piling up quite a bit faster at that point. Also interestingly, my wife was making roughly the same full-time salary as I was when we met in 2014, but the cheapest place she could find where she lived in D.C. was a cramped basement apartment that cost her 3x my monthly mortgage payment, so it was a no-brainer for her to join me down here once we got married.
In Germany, it is definitely survivable. Not nice, but OK. I've (unwillingly, duh) been doing it for the last 10 years. ... I think that’s about it. Occasionally, I need to repair my bicycle, which I use for all my daily needs, or order a goods taxi (basically a van or even a huge truck for taxi prices), or buy a new piece of furniture or computer equipment. That's where I use the rest of my money.
Because my health care, rent and disability insurance are already paid; I can get a lawyer or a lawsuit in court for 10EUR, if the justice center employee approves that it is a reasonable claim; and my average costs a month are: food: at least 150EUR, apartment: up to 550EUR, drug store: 10-15EUR, household items: 5EUR, clothes: 30-40EUR, mobile phone (pre-paid allnet flat, 1,5GB): 8EUR, ISP (25Mbit): 20EUR, electricity: 20-50EUR (depending on if I run my computers and daylight lamp all day)
I don't go out much, and have little social life. My PC, clothes and furniture are not exactly new and high-quality. I cannot do any noteworthy amount of traveling. In essence I cannot have much fun. Which is more important for human survival than you might think. It slowly drives you towards depression, and then suicide. Either by doing it, or by eating or drinking so much that you die via that.
That’s why it’s not nice.
$1000 may juust be enough for you to die at a "normal" age. But you will not have had a happy life. Also, life expectancy here has dropped a bit in recent years. (Thanks, EU aka fascists!)
So... you decide whether that can be called survivable. ... Technically it is. Technically.
Which is kinda the point, if you consider people who don’t slave away to live to be worth less and want them to suffer. (Which seems to be the general mindset.)
Those getting massive new wealth!
Automation creates wealth.
If that wealth would go to everyone, there's your UBI!
If the wealth doesn't go to everyone, like in the current anti-social dog-eat-dog profit psychopath "economy", but to a few fatcats who don't work for "their" money, then they will have to pay us back what they stole (profit) from society. There's your UBI.
What about this is so fuckin' hard to get??
Useless.
You'd serve humanity better if you researched getting people of cultures that have 3+ kids with no visible means of support to get sterilized for $X. In the US you already HAVE a large section of the populace that live off of welfare and crime, how's that working out for ya? You don't work, you don't eat, no that's too harsh a reality for the dying West... We need more jobs that people can do despite automation,.paying them to sit on their arses will just create another Baltimore (you don't that).
Yeah, it has been shown in enough studies, that Americans (and to an extend, westerners) are unlike homo sapiens in their social behavior. They are massively selfish/egocentric, anti-social to a level comparable to psychopathy, and think like Ferrengi (riches over everything. "money. don't know why, but money!").
Also, it is well-known that "lobbyists" (another word for traitors that should get 20 years in prison for treason) tried, time and time again, to poison the concept, by using "studies" and "experiments" that where deliberately set up for failure. I mean a FIRM doing it? The very type of organization whose only purpose it is to profit (=steal) from society, and for which the UBI is payback? How much more obvious can you get?
UBI - works for small homogenous countries. It works when it takes the place of ALL the other Social Services.
The savings from removing all the government workers makes it viable.
When UBI is implemented in a vacuum or in addition to the Social Services it acts as a magnet to the lazy.
Couple that with Open Borders, What could possibly go wrong?
Do they check immigration status? Do they have to stay in this country to still get the money?
Will a flood of people wanting those checks wash over the Y-combinatory?
From the summary: The research arm of Y Combinator plans to begin a study on universal basic income next year in which it will give unconditional cash payments to 3,000 participants.
They will study it and will find, as every other UBI study or implementation I've heard of in the USA, that UBI doesn't work. This country wasn't built by people who depended on government handouts. It was built on hard work and independence of government. UBI fosters neither hard work nor independence of government and, as such, is an extremely poor fit for the continuance of this country. All you UBI fans should study the current situation in Venuzuela. If you do, you will discover it isn't a good paradigm.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
New wealth does not "get created" out of thin air. Someone created it.
This is the evasion at the root of the "guaranteed income" scheme.
An AI is a machine. If a person uses machines to create wealth, then that person created the wealth and the wealth belongs to that person. To consider only the fact that the wealth "gets created" but not the fact that it is created by "someone" is to evade the fact that one is advocating the theft and redistribution of wealth.
This scheme has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. It is the same ancient desire to live at the expense of other, more productive people. So move along, nothing new to see here, just the same old envy and avarice which has plagued mankind from the beginning.
Let's see, in the US, 80% of the wealth is owned by the top 0.1%, and 400 families own over 60% of that wealth. In fact, the top 20 people own more wealth than HALF THE US POPULATION.
Where's the good jobs these "job creators" are creating with their tax breaks?
Of course, there's the std. troll line, about how socialists want HALF OF WHAT YOU OWN!!!! EEEK. That, of course, is stupid - why would we want half of what *you* own (and if you're posting to slashdot, you're not in the 1%).
A more correct who do we want to take from would be the famous quote of Willie Sutton, who, when asked why he robbed banks, said, "That's where the money is".
How 'bout we take 90% of Bill Gates, M$, Apple, the Walton family (That's Walmart, where they tell their employees how to apply for food stamps), etc, and use that money for a UBI?
You know, like a reverse income tax for the rest of us... the way they do using oil and gas revenues in Alaska?
Really, I have read the results of the already tried experiments, one failed so miserably it was canceled after 4 months but the original goal was two years! I have always found that repeating the same failed experiment over and over again hoping for a better outcome shows a total lack of reviewing history, and downright stupidity.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
everyone already has a universal basic income.
$1000/mo is not enough for anything basic and giving people any money at all is not a good control because regardless of the amount you receive, you will ALWAYS feel better getting it.
To be accurate representation you need to give your 100 people $2500/mo and then take $2500/mo at gunpoint from about 150-200 people and compare that to your control of 300 random people in a generally capitalist society. You should also inflate costs for your test group to the point that $2500 now has the same value as $500 in your control group.
You can try these things and see who would volunteer.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
'Universal Income', socialism, communism, whatever you choose to call it, has failed every time it has been attempted! Just another democrat party failed idea!
Actually, it kind of does. Or at least, I'm not looking solely at housing, but looking more towards cost of living.
The Federal poverty line, rounding to nearest thousand, is a simple formula. It is basically $8k + $4k*number of people.
So, household of 1? $12k for federal poverty line.
Household of 2? $16k. For this reason while I start at $6k, I say that I can be talked up to $8k.
3? $20k
4? $24k. Done. Household sizes beyond 4 start getting a little more complicated though, especially if you're talking "roommates" that are not related to each other.
I don't read AC A human right
Let's see, we have:
1. Ad hominem
2. False Dilemma
3. Appeal to the Stone
4. Proof by assertion/argument from repetition
I don't read AC A human right
In charge of it, living off it alone or is his proposing it as his idea and calling it work thereby being rich from it?
Because the only way that system would work, would be if someone who was doing that work and was publicly explaining and publicized for doing that work specifically in the context and location that the work was being done is was doing it for free (other than the amount that the base income was).
Which would of course only mean that he would just write a simple formula, number of people divided by total recurring amount.
Now who woulnd't join it if you were allowed to work otherwise, which is of course the only way it would work. Obviously the original person could still work another job but really in that case what's the point in this being under Y Combinator?
Basically, they'd have to have a country entirely to implement this under the current documented structure of this planet.
After that the reality would be if they worked better for less, and then it would be free market. Of course they could work hard and then win in that regards but the only result would be full automation and "one planet" so the basic reality is that most people are being roadblocks not contributors to anything beyond this planet and towards infinity.
What would you do about it, reserve parks (simple countries, indian reserves) and declared customs (sounds great but those aduanas are not literal about their customs, in fact they do not tell you a thing about the reality in the place you are visiting and don't deserve their money).
So yes, we are set to wait until they all decide to change and we continue trying to convince them. Meanwhile they keep making babies and we watch organisms who without precaution reproduce to the point of eating one another. You just wonder where the big steps were in the process. It's kind of sad to consider that they would have to be "under control" to think like that, and then still consider that the control won't support or at least discuss this fact. This is obvious with the understanding that if they were "under control" that they could learn why to not rapidly reproduce.