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Comment by johnny_kinds | Hacker News Reader

The issue with basic income is in the long-term. When more and more generations of people start to depend on it (I've seen it with welfare in my hometown), it becomes a crutch and will stifle their future success.

Eventually, there won't be enough people giving back into the system and the whole thing will collapse. Before this happens, taxes will continue to be raised in people in lower income brackets.

The politicians love it though. It creates an instant voter base. Why would a person, receiving free money, vote for someone that will take it away?

Because of things like this, I wish we had laws in place that all voters had to at least 1) work some sort of job (it doesn't matter what it is) and 2) proof they paid income taxes.

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Two strong assumptions in your comment: 1) "there won't be enough people giving back into the system"

Considering the fact that we don't even know precisely how it will be financed, why is this already a conclusion?

2) "I wish we had laws in place that all voters had to at least 1) have a job 2) proof they paid income taxes"

I have never seen any factual data supporting this. Actually, surveys seem to support the exact opposite: a large majority of people without work want to work, and a considerable portion of employed people wish they didn't have to work anymore to pay their basic utility bills. And would you surrender your right to vote just because you got laid off last month?

>Considering the fact that we don't even know precisely how it will be financed

If it's paid for by creating new money, this has historically led to hyperinflation.

If it's paid for out of revenue, by definition it comes from taxes, and no matter what source those taxes, they come from income that would have gone to people. Thus the common economic maxim that only people pay taxes.

So either it's printing money or it's coming from people. Do you have a third option?

Hyperinflation is not a foregone conclusion of printing new money; it depends on how fast it is printed.

>Hyperinflations are usually caused by large persistent government deficits financed primarily by money creation (rather than taxation or borrowing). As such, hyperinflation is often associated with wars, their aftermath, sociopolitical upheavals, or other crises that make it difficult for the government to tax the population. A sharp decrease in real tax revenue coupled with a strong need to maintain the status quo, together with an inability or unwillingness to borrow, can lead a country into hyperinflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

I agree, but printing enough to pay "living" income for a decent percent of a population will lead to hyperinflation. That is a substantial amount.

Consider what would happen if instead of using taxes to pay SS in the US we just printed that much each year. It would be a disaster.

I was pointing out to the OP that his implication that the money will not be paid by others through taxes at some level is unlikely. Printing enough to make a basic income program for a populace is economic suicide.

>Consider what would happen if instead of using taxes to pay SS in the US we just printed that much each year. It would be a disaster.

Would it? In the eight years since 2008, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet has grown by nearly $4.5 trillion[0], mostly to the benefit of financial institutions and the stock market. Meanwhile, the cost of social security in 2015 was $888 billion.

The first quantitative easing was an emergency response, sure. Yet it expanded by an additional $2 trillion since 2010! I have to wonder if this money would be better allocated to living income, putting cash in the hands of consumers and boosting aggregate demand.

[0] 2015 Federal Balance Sheet Report http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/quarterly...

Surely the provincial government of Ontario doesn't have the power to unilaterally print Canadian money?

> it becomes a crutch and will stifle their future success

The need to work already stifles people's success. People spend time working "dead-end jobs" where every hour worked diminishes their chance of future success.

If people didn't have to work that _______ job, they wouldn't. But they do, because they have no choice.

A basic income gives them that choice. It does not "stifle" it.

> ... a crutch that stifles people's success ...

I'm not sure how that's a "crutch."

Also, in the future utopia you're describing where no one has to work a shit job that "stifles [future] success"... who cleans the toilets? Who waits tables?

One of the issues basic income attempts to address is increased levels of automation and the associated decrease in the overall number of jobs available. As a society, what should we do about the people who will be driven out of the job market by this trend?

I personally believe basic income is a much better solution than the wellfare systems we have in place to deal with mass unemployment. Traditional need-based wellfare systems actually disincentivize work in that you can often lose wellfare benefits once you start working full-time, whereas basic income has no strings attached, and any work you choose to in hopes of improving your standards of living will actually improve your standards of living instead of being a trade-off.

Maybe these shit jobs will be paid decent wages to attract workers since work will be optional, turning entire orthodoxies about the value of domestic work upside down.

"who cleans the toilets? Who waits tables?"

The robots, of course.

I mean, the reason why this is an issue in the first place is due to rapidly increasing advancements in automating people out of the job pool.

Anyone who looks at the current state of self-driving cars and deep learning (ala AlphaGo) and doesn't recognize we are right on the cusp of a huge sea-change in how many jobs we can automate out of existence (at least in the sense that they won't be done by humans anymore) isn't thinking very hard.

And we are currently so far away from useful solutions to this economic problem that we really need to start seriously considering it right NOW.

Businesses that cannot find people to clean the toilets or wait the tables will not be able to sustain themselves.

This may lead to a family-centric economy, where businesses like the city corner-store flourish because the family owns and cares for the business. The economic benefit to the family in aggregate is greater than the basic incomes afforded to the individual family members.

(Also, edited my comment to remove the reference to crutch.)

> who cleans the toilets? Who waits tables?

It's being stuck spending huge numbers of hours on those dead-end jobs that stifles success.

There will be plenty of people that choose to work whatever basic job for a period of time, and leave it later. There will be plenty of people that would take up such a job part-time so that it doesn't stifle them.

In the worst case, you can always pay a good wage.

Plenty of people.

You can still clean toilets and wait tables to make extra income so you can afford the nice things you may like but aren't needed to live, such as vacations.

If you stopped cleaning toilets you don't starve. That's the idea anyway. You don't have to clean toilets but that is an option if you want to earn some extra spending money.

Not everyone considers cleaning toilets beneath them. I didn't mind having a job where I cleaned toilets, that sort of work doesnt bother me - it's only the pay that is terrible.

If a majority of a society wants only to barely survive, rather than improve themselves and/or humanity, that is a problem itself. I see little reason to let anyone suffer, regardless of that fact that they may have "earned" their suffering.

Do you have any modern, long-term examples of basic income failing?

> If a majority of a society wants only to barely survive, rather than improve themselves and/or humanity, that is a problem itself.

Yes, thank you. There might be lots of problems implementing basic income in our current society, but the fearful reaction to the idea itself has always struck me as fundamentally misanthropic and nihilistic.

If the fear of death is all we're living for, then it might be time to rethink our way of life quite a bit.

> If a majority of a society wants only to barely survive, rather than improve themselves and/or humanity, that is a problem itself.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that advances in technology have made it such that there is a 1% of individuals who progress so fast that they make the rest look like they're at a standstill by comparison, regardless of how hard they try.

I don't think OP was referring to people who are trying but cannot succeed. I think he was saying that basic income encourages a society to rely upon the government and forget about putting any effort in to trying to succeed.

If you're poor, you're already relying on the government, and have no means to apply any more effort.

The poor are incapable of rising above their current conditions?

If they were, why would they be poor?

>> " I wish we had laws in place that all voters had to at least 1) work some sort of job (it doesn't matter what it is) and 2) proof they paid income taxes."

Terrible, terrible idea. This is how people are discriminated against. Prevent enough people that don't agree with your politics from getting a job, they can no longer vote, and you can screw them.

> Terrible, terrible idea. This is how people are discriminated against. Prevent enough people that don't agree with your politics from getting a job, they can no longer vote, and you can screw them.

Sadly, you can already do this in the most US states today by wink-nudging the criminal justice system into disproportionately locking up members of groups you'd rather not see voting.

About your idea of restricting voting: you know that it has been like that with most older republics and democracies, right? In France it was called "democratie censitaire" - before voting rights became universal (ahem, if you were a man…). None of these republics were the rational, balanced sharing of resources state you envision. Universal voting rights brought a lot of change and arguably made society more leveled.

"Universal" except for individuals with criminal records.

#Edit, for the downvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement

welfare is different than a basic income though. The crutch part about welfare is that there is little incentive to get a job for many people because getting a job and working 40 hours a week would probably take you off welfare and might only get you a small sum over what you got off welfare without working at all. So where is the point in that?

Basic income gives a set amount to everyone without restrictions. So there is no perverse incentive to not work because it would be similar amounts of money and bump you off the program. Every bit of money you earn from a job when you are on basic income is a bit of money on top of that set amount.

The thesis in your statement comparing the two is fundamentally flawed.

welfare != basic income though.

I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid, but it's different when everyone gets it, and there's no hoops to jump through.

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