Hacker News Reader

Comment by elcapitan | Hacker News Reader

While I can understand the benefits of basic income, it still bugs me that this might massively undermine democracy and turn out to be a point of no return for a society. Once every single voter has an incentive to vote for politicians that promise increases of their basic income, each election will turn into a competition on increasing that type of spending. It's basically a massive redistribution scheme. This is different from welfare systems, which only support a small number of people who actually need it.

View on HN

How is that different from any democracy? People are incentivised to vote for people who promise lower taxes.

Edit: or better infrastructure, ...

It's different fundamentally. Lower taxes do not automatically guarantee you better income, but they do guarantee that the result of your work remains for you at your disposal in a larger extent. But the value still has to be produced by yourself, not the government that takes it from others.

Granted, lower taxes are different. Better infrastructure, more child support, ... still are the same problem, IMO. Yet, the system -- somehow -- works.

FWIW, that's the reason I'm in Churchill's camp: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Democracy relies on politicians believing what they say. It is easily gamed. Yet I have no better alternative.

Challenge my view :)

Yeah, it's absolutely terrible that something which benefits the majority of people might actually become an election issue.

Don't you see the problem here? Few politicians would dare campaign to reduce an established benefit. At what point would reason step in declare the scheme unsustainable? Probably when it's too late and all the productive talent has left the country.

> Few politicians would dare campaign to reduce an established benefit.

Right, because it's not like there's any US party that campaigns against government spending, food stamps and universal health care...

But no politician has been able to reform or touch Social Security, Bush didn't even try until his final presidential year.

Maybe that's because the reform the program requires is a lift on the cap of contributions.

It would be fine to have a constant increase at every election of it keeps up with inflation. I think you're a bit biased based on your feelings of mankind. It could go multiple ways but almost certainly it won't be predicted here.

It could have nothing to do with what one thinks about mankind. When people adopt a system (or a system is forced upon them), people will act rationally within that system.

> each election will turn into a competition on increasing that type of spending. It's basically a massive redistribution scheme

this is already happening without basic income. Every subsidy, every tax, every public school, every public hospital, welfare, universal healthcare, pensions etc. they are all parts of a massive redistribution scheme.

User mpg33 in this topic suggested 'Public Dividend', which would connect value of basic income with revenue of tax payers, making us all stakeholders of our country and eliminating 'free lunch' attitude of basic income.

> Once every single voter has an incentive to vote for politicians that promise increases of their basic income

This is already true. Not only that, it can never not be true.

Not everyone will benefit. Higher income earners will put in more in extra taxes than they get back in their basic income handout.

They (we, I am one of those) should do that anyway. In the end we all benefit if there is less/no hunger and stress for money. I notice that in NL where this is basically already the case; people are not stressed about money as they know they will get that anyway if all goes to hell for them. It doesn't result in less people working, it does result in more people doing what they otherwise would not dare to do.

>This is different from welfare systems, which only support a small number of people who actually need it.

It's different from welfare in that everybody gets an equitable amount, instead of who 'needs' it getting the most.

And by needs you mean a woman who has 10 children 'needs' welfare or somebody with an obsolete skill who can not find a job 'needs' welfare.

The questions of why didn't the woman limit her breeding to a level she can afford or why the unemployed person doesn't learn a new and more in-demand skill remain unanswered.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com