I would be happy to give up half my income if I knew it was being used to support students trying to learn engineering or new technology, or help a small family through a rough time, or pay for some fresh grad to get a broken bone set--especially if I knew that that safety net existed for me as well.

It's time to start embracing the fact that as a civilization we've come beyond the point where we're scrabbling like mad to shake loose the resources for existence, and instead we can now start actually trying to make people, everyone, safer and happier and more actualized.

What if it were used to support students trying to learn intersectional gender theory, or help a small family replace their year-old phones, or pay for some fresh grad to sit on their couch and play videogames?

I'm not trying to be provocative, it's just that you're thinking about this in the wrong way. You can't associate it with any uses that you may think beneficial or worthwhile. You need to accept that it's no-strings-attached money, otherwise you're just going to be disappointed.

If they want to learn intersectional gender theory, more power to them--after a time, I imagine they'll tire and move onto other, more useful pursuits. Ditto videogames and phone replacement...you can only be a consumer whore for so long before you start to feel that there's something else out there.

I don't mind that it's no-strings-attached money, because I might myself want to blow my allotment on a fleeting pleasure someday.

We need to give up this "keeping up with the Joneses nonsense".

I've met plenty of people who have been happily sitting around, smoking weed and playing video games all the time, and showing no sign of stopping as they barrel into their 40s.

You have met an anecdotal few. If you'd like to make the argument that this is a pervasive, generalizable thing, I hope you've brought your citations.

Ok, so let's go with your assessment, that life-long slackers are indeed quite few. What happens when being a life-long slacker becomes acceptable in the culture (or as it might start out, in some subculture)? If slacking makes its way into culture, and becomes more accessible, isn't that potentially quite a big threat to the prosperity of future generations?

Legal and funded does not mean acceptable in the culture. It's legal to go about naked in many places, but it's not often done, because it's not acceptable in the culture.

Welfare already exists and while the lazy scrounger stereotype definitely exists, I feel it's worth that overhead to take care of vulnerable people and those in hard times.

Why would it be a threat? We've multiplied individual worker productivity by fantastical amounts. I think it's vastly more likely that we will have more people who want to work than meaningful jobs in which to employ them.

Open your eyes! More than 10% of the work population is already FORCED to be life long slackers!

And why shouldn't they be able to do so? With a guaranteed income they would still be actively participating in the economy and whatever work niche they had inhabited before would be freed up for more motivated individuals to perform. Win win.

I'm just countering the claim that people won't sit on ass forever; not everyone is as motivated as angersock.

Most assuredly some will, that's to be expected. If given a similar option I'd mothball my career over the course of six months and spend $n years engaging in unprofitable creative pursuits and maybe travel.

But they wouldn't actually be participating, they'd just be a middle man that takes a small cut to support their own life without providing anything useful in return (aka a parasite)... The good part is that it looks like most people wouldn't just do nothing all day long, they would contribute in one way or another...

They would be providing consumer spending. You claim this isn't useful to the economy?

With money that were pretty much gifted to them by other people - those people could cut the middle man and just spend it themselves...

Until we have an easy/efficient way of identifying such folk though (those who are truly capable vs those who are disabled/incapable) the most efficient solution is probably something like a minimum basic income.

Is there a lot of demand at the registrar's office for intersectional gender theory courses? I haven't heard of strong demand in that subject, but I normally avoid administration buildings.

So why don't you give up half of your income to a family or group of students who are struggling?

Do you feel more confident that a government entity would do a better job at picking a family or students? Or would you only want to do it if everyone at your income bracket was also doing it?

Serious question, not trying to be a dick.

The genius of the minimum guaranteed income, and the reason that it could possibly appeal to both liberals and libertarians is because in this case it does precisely the opposite of what you're afraid of: the government doesn't pick anything.

They give it to everybody. If you think that the government does a poor job of allocating the absolutely colossal amounts of money currently spent by social programs, or you recognize that trying to "do a good job" and prevent fraud, and all the other social engineering requires a vast, wasteful bureaucracy, then this is an interesting option.

This is a program that eliminates extreme poverty, but requires almost no infrastructure. You'd only need to verify that recipients are citizens and that they file their taxes. Since you can abolish Social Security, a stripped down social security bureaucracy, which already prevents people who haven't paid into social security from receiving benefits, could take over that task.

It could allow one of the largest and most sweeping reductions in the size of government in our lifetimes.

And if you believe in freedom, but also want to live in a country where people don't have to beg for food, then this is your best bet. You trust people to make their own decisions about what benefits them and their family. You don't discourage work or enterprise.

I think it's a political long shot of epic proportions, but also a great idea.

Agreed, and it could effectively counter the increasing concentration of wealth that increasing automation in a pure capitalistic society would inevitably bring.

It is quite stabilizing.

The fact is, our .gov is doing a pretty shitty job as far as social contracts go, and the incentives for playing nice only exist once you've bought into the thing wholesale and are doing quite well for yourself.

Given the way we treat felons, the poor, and the ill I'm rather surprised things aren't boiling over sooner.

Given the way we treat the productive, the non-corporate, and the individual, I'm surprised things haven't boiled over already.

The linked article mentions cuts in other social welfare programs as one of the risks of a guaranteed basic income. Many who promote guaranteed basic income do not think it should replace our existing programs.

> Many who promote guaranteed basic income do not think it should replace our existing programs.

I have never seen anyone advocate for UBI who expressed any position other than support for using it to replace, at a minimum, means-tested poverty support programs, and generally they want it to replace many other targeted social benefit programs that currently provide services, direct subsidies for selected purchases of goods and services, or indirect subsidies through tax credits and deductions for purchases.

The usual argument for UBI is that it eliminates the most of the administrative overhead and duplication of function in the multiple programs it would replace, as well as replacing the perverse incentives that occur with means-testing.

It should at a minimum get rid of unemployment and welfare. It just wouldn't make sense to keep them around.

Can you cite any BI proponents who explicitly say that it shouldn't replace existing benefits programmes? Speaking for myself -- and every other BI activist I've ever read or heard of -- I certainly think that it should replace the vast majority of existing benefits, as well as minimum wage.

If there is no safety net, I can't really give away my money, because I'm worried about what will happen in the future if for some reason I'm unable to work. Or if my brother is unable to work, or if my parents have severe problems. If I pay taxes in a social market economy, on the other hand, I can be confident that I'm also covered, and so are they, like everyone else is. Therefore there is no need to hoard piles of money for yourself and family (modest savings are still prudent).

And in any case, I don't think a handful of people donating to charity is a serious systemic solution to inequality and poverty. For one thing, it fails to give a guarantee of a safety net, which is what's needed to give people a believable backstop. For another thing, there's a bit of an adverse selection problem: people who get rich retroactively decide they have no need for the existence of a safety net, and don't want to pay for one, because poorer people are lazy/stupid/etc.

I did move from California to Denmark, which is in a way putting my money towards what I'd like to see more of (due to visas/citizenship/etc. this is not equally easy for everyone). I now pay more taxes, and in return I am part of a more social-democratic system.

>I did move from California to Denmark, which is in a way putting my money towards what I'd like to see more of (due to visas/citizenship/etc. this is not equally easy for everyone). I now pay more taxes, and in return I am part of a more social-democratic system.

And, IIRC, Denmark rates much, much higher on social mobility than the US.

Presumably, he is interested in a solution to the class of problems, not to an individual instance of the problem. Giving up half your income in taxes in his method is a proposed solution to the class of problems. Giving up half your income when no one else is is a proposed solution to a single instance of the problem.

And with universal basic income, recall that there is no 'picking' performed.

To me the first-order effect is much less valuable than the second-order effect of living in a society where everyone knows a safety net exists (e.g. reduced crime).

Or, also relevant to HN, increased entrepreneurship. Removing the risk of total loss would be huge for encouraging people to try new things.

The funny thing is that entrepreneurship doesn't flourish in socialized countries as well as in capitalist ones

How do you define a socialized country?

If your going to talk about a socialist country you may have a point. But unfortunately I think your going to find you dont have as much evidence as you thought you did, should you do some research.

The most productive level of intellectual growth in the history of mankind has consistently come out of groups of people who have been 'freed' from the burden of worrying about their 'next meal' so to speak. From renaissance era patronage through to the modern trends you see with the flow of capital in California.

Socialized != Socialist.

A centrally planed socialist economy has no place for entrepreneurship at all, ergo it will be suppressed and not flourish. A socialized economy is one where all citizens are invested into the social fabric of society, for instance I have a level of free health care here in Australia, but I choose to work and pay for a higher level of medical care and I am free to do so. This is a socialized system, a socialist one would deny my right to chose a higher standard via some logical argument about the higher standard I want to pay for being excess capacity that should be redistributed to all.

I hope this brief illustration helps clarify some things to anyone else that might be having trouble seeing a clear difference between socialist and socialized.

Though there is an implicit assumption here that entrepreneurship is inherently good.

Can you please provide the definitions of "socialized" and "capitalist" countries that this claim is based on and the evidence that it is true?

You see a massive spike in entrepreneurs by age group at the medicaid eligibility line.

> Or would you only want to do it if everyone at your income bracket was also doing it?

I think this is general answer to this question (at lest it's mine). It's similar to prisoner dillema: I am happy to agree to rules forcing cooperation but in absence of those I won't cooperate that happily (reasons I think are easy to imagine and I've just seen that one poster did great job explaining those).

It's not "I want to give away half my money", it's, "I want to live in a society where all people give away half of their money, and of course I am willing to be subject to that rule myself."

The purpose of government, if it can be said to have a purpose at all, is to cover those items where we're better off doing them but they wouldn't happen on their own due to various game theory considerations or just plain transaction costs.

>especially if I knew that that safety net existed for me as well.

> I would be happy to give up half my income if I knew it was being used to support students trying to learn engineering or new technology, or help a small family through a rough time, or pay for some fresh grad to get a broken bone set--especially if I knew that that safety net existed for me as well.

You can do this right now, without having to set up any controversial and potentially corruptible political programs, and have a greater certainty that the funds you supply are actually going to the purposes you support.

I don't understand the mindset that these goals should only be pursued through coercive politics.

In addition to those effects, there is more spending, which indirectly boosts the economy.

At first glance one might think, the recipient now has more to spend, but that amount is taken from others, so it's a break-even. But in fact, the "others" are higher income people, and would spend the money differently.

The poor people relying on the assured income boost total demand for things like food and clothes, while the richer taxpayer would have more likely spent it on either luxuries or investments. A transfer of spending from luxuries to basic items corrects a social balance, and increase of aggregate demand has better outcomes than feeding the supply side.

Now... Why do you say that spending boosts the economy?

Yeah, I know I'm questioning something quite basic. Do you (not just you, ds9, but anybody) have any justification for that that isn't a direct quote of Keynes? Because investing boosts the economy (by increasing productivity - Keynes never modeled that, go figure), and spending reduces the potential for investiments, so the picture is at least more complex than that.

> Why do you say that spending boosts the economy?

Because the economy is the whole set of exchanges of goods and services, and spending is economic activity.

> investing boosts the economy (by increasing productivity - Keynes never modeled that, go figure),

Actually Keynes directly considered not only that investment produced future gains in output, but how those gains changed with additional investement in the same area. [1]

> and spending reduces the potential for investiments

How? If spending by A to acquire a good from B decreases A's funds available for potential investment, it does so only by increasing B's funds available for potential investment by the same amount.

[1] See, particularly Book IV (commencing with Chapter 11) of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).

Because, demonstrably, it does. A lot of folks hate the very idea of social spending, but one thing that my dad noticed over time is that when he talked to a fast food restaurant owner in Orange, SC (fairly poor area) they said that their business would not survive without the social assistance provided to the area.

It’s fair to question whether Orange, SC should be kept alive as a going concern, but this franchise owner was able to employ ~20 people because of the social assistance funds provided to the community. His employees would be able to spend their paycheques, too.

Investments in infrastructure provide much the same value (as in the TVA, which did more for pulling Tennessee out of its deep poverty than anything else). Investments without spending associated with those investments are dead money. While savings should be encouraged so as to reduce individuals’ emergency needs for money, they don't keep an economy going as much as spending does.

(And yes, that pains me to say as someone who doesn’t like our consumer culture even as I participate in it because it’s what we have. I don't have a rightful solution to that dichotomy.)

The terms here are muddled, but what the hell, I'll go ahead and try and answer. For what it's worth, the parent comment isn't particularly well defined either.

First, if we define "the economy" as GDP [1] (a generally poor approximation, but still better defined than a vague "the economy" entity), spending tautologically boosts "the economy". It either falls under the "private consumption" or "gross investment" part of the equation.

Now, I'll try and respond to your analysis point by point.

> Because investing boosts the economy

Again, we're on solid ground here if we're considering "the economy" to mean "GDP"

> and spending reduces the potential for investiments

Woah, hold on there. This assertion doesn't make sense from several perspectives. First, the economy isn't some zero-sum game where players must choose between spending and "investiments". Spending by one party can be converted into productive investments by another. e.g. if people start buying a ton of G.I. Joe action figures, the maker of G.I. Joe Figurines can convert that capital inflow into a factory.

In addition, many forms of consumer spending are investments from their perspective. A new washing machine frees productive time that can then be spent e.g. learning a trade. A new car might enable them to find new jobs or reduce their maintenance expenses on their current car.

> so the picture is at least more complex than that.

Right, but generally when parties are producing things other people want to spend money on, the economy is "working". The corollary is that when nobody is willing or able to spend money on new goods, the economy is probably not healthy.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP

A transfer from luxuries might correct a social imbalance, but a transfer from investments to basic goods and services might have a negative impact on the overall health of the economy.

Also, many 'luxuries' are things that eventually become things we need (Tesla Motors?).

Having said that, I Am Not An Economist, so it's possible I Know Nothing.

Increased demand for basic goods and services increases the expected yield of investments in areas related to producing and selling those goods, and therefore would be expected to increase investment in that area.

One concern I've always had with the idea that the rich "re-invest" in the economy is how much they actually invest in American businesses vs sit on the money or invest abroad. A minimum basic income will assuredly increase spending on basic necessities in American businesses.

Thanks for this very clear explanation. I think maybe you just blew my mind.

Also, a question occurs to me. Would this scheme still function at a rate other than 50%? If the billionaires would only allow the scheme with the rate set at 45%, it would change the "zero" point, but maybe not much else?

That's exactly correct. At 45%, the top earners would pay a bit less, the bottom earners would receive a bit less, and the break-even point would move to the 45th percentile rather than the 50th percentile. So more people would actually pay net taxes, but the average taxation would be lower.

Not percentile. 45% of mean.

Ah, thanks, you're entirely correct!

I'm not convinced that a 50% tax would actually be enough to afford a basic income for the entire population. It would also have to cover all other government expenses, and many countries already end up with taxes that approach or exceed 50%.

Consider also that the proportion of people who actually earn an income in many countries is falling already due to ageing of the population. Plus once this guaranteed income is available, it's only going to encourage more to give up working. Personally, I have already given up, even though my available income is substantially lower than the $2800 in the Swiss proposal, and really only covers my basic living expenses. Nevertheless, I value my free time highly enough that I prefer it this way.

> many countries already end up with taxes that approach or exceed 50%.

I doubt they're that many. Can you give any examples? And in the cases they do, most will be for an exceedingly small number of people.

Even countries people like to consider high tax, like Norway, does not get to 50% other than in extreme outlier examples (if you're an extreme high earner with a shitty tax accountant, has no debts or other means of getting deductions, and spends vast amounts of your money purchasing highly taxed items like alcohol and luxury cars).

If you mean marginal tax rates, then it's a different matter.

But I'd be pretty much nobody has an overall tax bill that approaches the marginal tax rate on their gross income. Norway, for example, has a marginal income tax rate that's 40%, but that only kicks inn on income greater than ~$135,000. Someone who makes $200,000 (about 3 times the national average) still only ends up paying 33% income tax total before deductions. Let's say said person spends $50k/year on stuff that's VAT rated at the full 25% rate (which is frankly unrealistic, and that only adds about 6.25 percentage points to their tax rate, bringing our example person close to 40%.

But if said person pays substantial debt interest (say on a mortgage), they'll also have massive deductions - it'd be fairly unlikely for a person at that kind of income level to end up paying more than about 35% between income tax, VAT and other taxes.

The rates reach 45% in Australia, and I suspect much of Europe is something similar. France was proposing 75% recently. It's true that these are marginal rates.

But consider how much taxes would need to rise to pay for the basic income. Let's say 50% of people who are eligible for basic income actually work. Then you'd need to collect two times the basic income from each of those people, on average. Surely this would push marginal, and probably overall, tax rates over 50%. Tax rates this high are only going to encourage even more people to give up working. I suspect such an economy would simply collapse.

It's possible that invention of Star Trek replicators would change things. If people could have all material things they wanted with minimal effort, then I imagine that the remaining work could move to a volunteer model.