Martin Luther King on “Guaranteed Income” (1967) | Hacker News Reader

Martin Luther King on “Guaranteed Income” (1967)

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61 pointsAvenueIngres35 comments

It seems like it would be easier through technology to just reduce the minimum cost of living so much, that whatever basic income needed would be extremely small or even nothing at all.

I'm reading the Wright Brothers Bio right now and what struck me is how they came from a really poor family ( dad was a travelling preacher ), and they owned a small bicycle shop in a small town, yet they had no trouble owning a big house, and could afford to leave the shop for several years in their 20s to go across the country to do flying experiments.

That would be unthinkable today due to rent & food & healthcare costs.

That's probably the endgame that 3D printing is pointing toward - being able to create anything you need on your own with a minimum of input needed (raw materials) so we're all self sufficient. The problem is the transition phase, where these automated production facilities are only benefitting the current owners of the factories, but have not yet become cheap or miniaturized enough to really benefit everyone (will we see a Personal Factory revolution like that of Personal Computers?). Capitalism works because the owners of the factories still need workers to run the machinery and buy the produced goods. Replace them with robots and you lose the market to sell the goods to too and the whole thing breaks down - the next 50 years are going to be a very interesting time to be alive.

> That would be unthinkable today due to rent & food & healthcare costs.

3D printing won't help with any of those.

Food, housing inputs, and health care devices could all be printed.

Going out on a limb, printed food would still need foodstock inputs of some type, and housing still needs land.

Yup, poor/working class in those days probably had more financial security than most of the middle class these days.

I think that's the one thing that needs to be addressed more from basic income advocates. Basic income alone will simply lead to inflation of housing prices in artificially supply-constrained areas like NYC and SF.

Basic income should be coupled with government initiatives to increase the supply of housing (eg. zoning and regulation changes to allow increased density, subsidizing non-luxury apartments, land value tax).

One of the reasons people live in high population areas is because that is where the jobs are. If we had some form of basic income, people could live more spread out and reduce the demand on expensive high demand housing.

government subsidies cause distortions. Somehow providing basic income to incentivize people to live more in rural areas would only cause those currently living in rural areas to be more costly. The salaries of farmers, oil rig workers, truck drivers, miners, lumberjacks, etc... would rise.

Plug one hole in the dike and others will pop up. Just let the free market work and people choose where they want to live and work.

There are many villages and towns where a significant portion of the properties is uninhabited, so an increase in population wouldn't necessarily increase the cost of living there (up to a point). This is a real problem for rural areas at least in Europe, and many places are offering various incentives to try and lure some younger people, since otherwise they will be completely empty in a few decades.

This is such an important point. In Australia and we have so many beautiful places to live but anyone tied into white collar work like mine basically has 2 cities that have good employment options and a few more with limited opportunity.

I suspect many would head to sea/tree change if ensuring your earnings was not such an important factor.

100% land value tax.

Whether or not there is a basic income, it's the right thing to do. Income should be either earned (by creating value) or shared equally (if derived from land and natural resources).

>> "...government initiatives to increase the supply of housing..."

The government zones the way it does today on purpose, to create a built environment and social structure that insures you have to work all the time to afford housing and a car. This makes you docile and governable and taxable.

This is an overly cynical view of zoning. While zoning today in most cities is overzealous, there are good aspects to zoning too (compared to what came before).

The point of Universal Basic Income, is in part, to give people more choice in terms of employment. Some people choose to live in NYC or San Francisco, but many do so because that's where the work is. With Basic Income, well, perhaps a job paying a little less a little further away will help.

It's not clear that this will be enough to offset inflation, but the truly excellent Basic Income subreddit FAQs [1] addresses inflation specifically, and in essence there has been little to no evidence of it in practice.

I personally have always been a fan of Henry George who not just advocated an LVT, but suggested that this should be the only tax - all other taxes were unfair. I realise I am in a minority and some taxes can help with social/healthcare issues (e.g. on tobacco and alcohol).

That said, UBI with a rigorous LVT would be my ideal. Alas, voters utterly despise both, at least in the UK, so it's unlikely we'll see either any time soon.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index

That's ridiculous. The Wright Brothers changed the world. On par if not exceeding today's equivalent of Marc Andreesen (Netscape), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Brin&Page (Google) - and the last time I checked, people like that DO own big house(s) and CAN afford to travel and do experiments without any worries about rent, food, healthcare.

By today's standards, many people were "poor" back then - it's all relative. Maybe in 100+ years they'll look back and marvel at how "poor" Andreesen/Gates/etc... were too.

You can be poor today and still make it big. You don't need a college degree or the massive debt that entails, you can make up for that with a good idea + hard work + persistence + live as frugal as possible + a little luck. It's not exactly the same - some things are harder and some things are easier, but overall it's still doable.

I think you need to go back to the original post, where I'm pretty sure the point was that the big house and travel came before world fame and riches. Would have saved you a lot typing had you done that first.

That's exactly right, but those who own real estate will fight it tooth and nail. We already have the ability to build cheap housing en masse. It's politics and greed that stand in the way of affordable housing. Those who own real estate want a return on their investment, but if more housing is built, housing prices will decline and they will lose money. This isn't just big businesses, but middle class families. We promised people that buying a house was an investment. Well, housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.

I say the federal government should pass laws invalidating most municipal restrictions on new housing development. These laws are nothing more than rent seeking by property owners. Yeah, some neighborhoods will see increases in noise and traffic, but that's the price we have to pay for accessible, affordable housing.

What are some good MLK book recommendations for Thanksgiving break? I'd love to get into more of his work but never had the opportunity to study it.

the king family lawyer's 40 year investigation: https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Kill-King-Behind-Assassination/d... (there's some really nasty stuff most ppl don't know in there.)

if you'd like a review first: http://www.ctka.net/2016/book-review-pepper-mlk/the-plot-to-...

I would highly recommend "Hellhound on His Trail." Both a good look at King and the hunt for the assassain: https://www.amazon.com/Hellhound-His-Trail-Electrifying-Amer...

This is an excellent anthology of some noteworthy King speeches and essays:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807034525/

Take a look at Milton Friedman's thoughts as well. I believe MLK's stance was largely influenced from what he knew about Negative Income Tax. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

I'm surprised I don't see negative income tax brought up in more basic income discussions. A NIT with a flat tax[1] has always seemed to me to be a really pragmatic way to implement a basic income.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Flat_tax_w...

A negative income tax has the same issues as a basic income. It isn't remotely affordable based on the current tax rates without large cuts to social spending and/or eliminating it entirely.

Full excerpt from King’s book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community”: https://medium.com/basic-income/mlk-on-guaranteed-income-bfd...

UBI is a practical impossibility because it isn't possible to answer the most basic question in a satisfactory manner:

How high should that income be?

I just watched the video, and a "Join NRA" Google ad appeared on the screen. Really, Google ?!? Placing a "Join NRA" ad on a MLK Youtube video... Either it is an awful coincidence or someone thinks it is okay to do this now.

I think you may be reading too much into it. What mechanisms are behind ad placement? I haven't done any online marketing so I'm not familiar with how advertising on YouTube works. So here's some speculation, none of which is meant to imply that I'm trying to assume what you're thinking. There's too little in your comment for me to do that :)

If there's no ad targeting, it'd just be coincidence, right? If there's some sort of ad targeting based on some demographic data, what does that say? It may just mean that you happen to match some criteria, like you happen to live in a certain location. How about if the advertiser is targeting certain videos or types of videos? Should that be allowed? Disallowed? Allowed only in some circumstances? Maybe just not this advertiser under any circumstances? How would you set up Google's advertising?

I guess I'm not sure what "someone thinks it is okay to do this now" implies. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you?

I might have over-react. I just hope that it is not a deliberate choice from NRA to target such video. I get it that the targeting can be complex and factor lots of different things. The end result here is a bit disturbing.

I understand. It's hard not to react when something hits you emotionally, in particular with what's been going on recently. I've been trying to figure out how to navigate all of this as well, which is why I've been asking questions. Thanks for being a part of that :)

Here is the screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/luD8Z I still think it is poor taste.

Poor taste implies some sort of intent, doesn't it? Do you think Google should have something in place that would prevent something like this? I'm not sure what that would look like in practice.

What makes you think they are targeting the video, and not you?

This is just the first time I get a NRA ad, it just happened to appear on a MLK video. It can be targeting at me, it is still interesting that it appeared on that particular video. I guess the positive side, is that each time I watch this MLK video, the NRA would have to pay even a little.

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