Hacker News Reader

Comment by rlpb | Hacker News Reader

If the market rate for dirty jobs goes up, will the basic income be enough, or will I struggle to pay for my waste collection (and everything else) on the basic income alone?

View on HN

Which is a good point. Ultimately all costs get passed on to the consumer -- so where does it end?

As costs go up, consumers buy less. There's a certain price which maximizes profit: that's where it ends.

Exactly. I have 5 apples. There are 5 people willing to pay at least $2 for them, so I sell them for $2. That's basic economics.

With a basic income, now most of these people have more money. So I can charge $3 per apple, and even if I only sell 4 of them I still make $2 more than I made before. I eat the last apple myself, and the person who only has the basic income doesn't get an apple at all.

I think universal welfare makes more sense.

If you have a monopoly on the only five apples in the world, why were you charging only $2 in the first place? In a competitive economy, somebody else will be happy to sell an apple to the last person.

In practice that's not true and I suggest you research the amount of fruit that's left to rot in fields because companies decide it's not worth selling it.

However, the $12 you got in case B is not worth as much in the market as the $10 you go in case A, since the economy appears to have suffered 50% inflation in the meantime.

Your $12 in case B has a purchasing power equivalent to $8 in case A.

It ends when the cost is so high that automation becomes cost-effective. Basic Income, as much as minimum wage, is a collective push towards skilled labor, away from menial tasks.

In general terms, UBI seems sane. I see two implementation problems. First, worldwide society competition: Can my society support UBI and compete with China? Second, automatic system balancing. What is the correct UBI level? Can we leave it out to be hashed by politicians?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com