Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Most of the population having access to most of the worlds knowledge in the palm of their hand is a gigantic boon to society.

What we should accept is that the time is approaching where a) it is possible for skill and lucky people to make many millions of times more money than those who are neither and that b) the cost communication has decreased so much that in many cases it no longer makes sense to employ people, instead it makes more sense to contract the work out.

This means we should do two things: stop talking about income differences and focus on making sure the poorest have tolerable lives and b) make it much, much, much easier to start your own small business. This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law.

View on HN

I think we need to be careful about what "tolerable lives" means too. I've seen "guaranteed income" proposals talking about something in the $25,000 USD range or similar. That's basically poverty level - and while that's better than nothing, it probably won't work as more and more jobs go away.

Imagine a world (or the US) where 75% of the people are at the poverty level and 25% are "rich". How long do you think that's going to last?

$25,000 is a very reasonable existence for a single person, as long as it's present buying power and after tax.

You can rent for less than $1000 and should be able to do utilities for ~$300.

That leaves about $200 a week, which is certainly not the lap of luxury, but it's plenty for food and necessities (I've done 2 people eating well enough for ~$100 a week so I really don't feel full of shit saying that).

There's no planning for the future in that, but part of the idea of a basic income is to de-risk things like that no?

For the young and healthy that may be true. But we're all going to get old, and most of us will need medical care that could easily exceed that.

That's fair, but that's a problem we have to solve regardless of whether a basic income is installed or not.

(At least, if we means the US and we keep providing Medicare and similar)

> Imagine a world (or the US) where 75% of the people are at the poverty level and 25% are "rich". How long do you think that's going to last?

Only as long as it takes for those 75% to make it to the pitchforks.

$25,000 is plenty to live on for single people in certain parts of the country. When I was in college I could live large on about half that with no problem at all.

I was with you until the last sentence:

> This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law.

How do you pay for the poorest to have tolerable lives with tax cuts? Or are you talking about cutting out regressive taxes on the working poor?

Maybe he believes we're somewhere to the right of the peak of the Laffer curve.

There's literally no evidence whatsoever for that, but evidence isn't what causes people to advocate for tax cuts for people making "many millions of times more money" than those who aren't lucky or talented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

I meant tax cuts and simplifications for the poor. Mostly the tax cuts would come as a result of the simplifications (eg if you import something with small import duties we can just do away with them, which will make them a little more money but mostly saves them time in not having to fill the paperwork and figure out which laws they fall under).

Large companies can afford the complexity but small companies typically can't. More importantly a neighborhood printshop isn't a complex business (it doesn't, for example, have overseas income on intellectual property taxes).

> Large companies can afford the complexity but small companies typically can't.

I love the idealism, but that's not how it works. Small or large, you will hire a company that specializes in customs to handle all the paperwork for you. It's about as complex as paying a bill for a small business.

The same applies to accounting, taxes, legal issues, etc. all businesses outsource this work to specialists.

The problem is that all facets of business have become so complex and specialized that you now need a specialist for everything. This isn't a burden on the business, since all businesses have to pay it and handle it in the same way.

It's a burden on the employees and consumers. They pay for all this complexity through lower salaries and higher prices.

OK, then I agree with you completely now that I understand. I concur we should incent small and family businesses.

The people have spoken, and with one voice they have demanded increased government spending and lower taxes.

It's a quote, but I forget where from.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com