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Comment by ShellfishMeme | Hacker News Reader

This is about the tiny daily portions of money, not about BI.

It's hard to make long term plans with that, because instead of putting aside $100 at the beginning of the month, now you need to save $3 a day. With amounts that small, it's easy to accidentally overspend.

Plus sometimes sudden unexpected costs happen, and you cannot wait another week to slowly save up for it, you need that money now.

Not all poor people are poor because they're drug addicts that cannot handle money. Poverty is hard to escape. I'd rather not humiliate these people any further and make it even harder for them to lead a dignified life just because some people might waste their money in the first week.

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> Plus sometimes sudden unexpected costs happen, and you cannot wait another week to slowly save up for it, you need that money now.

If unexpected costs happen currently, you either have the money or you don't and have to wait - the situations are the same.

(Upfront payment - Have the money? Great. If not, wait until next payment. Daily payments - Have the money? Great. If not, wait)

> I'd rather not humiliate these people any further and make it even harder for them to lead a dignified life

(FWIW, I live on benefits due to medical issues) How is this undignified? If anything, it's one less thing to worry about (I've occasionally forgot about payments and ended up having ~zero money left just after a payment. A rolling income would at least mean I get money for essentials pretty much immediately)

I feel like it's undignified because it sounds to me like saying "You can have money, but since you are poor and don't know how to handle it, we give it to you in small daily portions so you don't waste it all at once.". Like parents do with their young kids.

If it's basic income, then you should be free to choose how and when to use it.

For your example about forgotten payments, the result would be that you did not pay, so potentially you may lose your insurance, or you receive a fine or something worse. That's a decision you should be able to make yourself.

If you don't have control over your own money, that's not very dignified.

>Plus sometimes sudden unexpected costs happen, and you cannot wait another week to slowly save up for it, you need that money now.

How do we help people when this happens NOW?

I'm not sure how that is relevant at all. We're talking about how a BI system could work and whether it could be a good idea to split the money in tiny daily chunks. I stated that I believe that is a bad idea because I believe it's generally harder to put aside a dollar a day than $30 a month at the beginning of the month. So far I haven't heard any counter argument, just "How would that be worse than what we have now".

Plus that question has so many answers depending on which country you live in. I can tell you for example that in my country you are expected to save part of your welfare money for those cases, which does not necessarily work very well since it's often not enough money to really save it.

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