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Comment by LoSboccacc | Hacker News Reader

Would you not work? Basic income is nearly not enough to access luxuries. Sure you should be able to live off it, but I think most people would likely want more, the difference from forced equality being that you can still work and keep that as luxury money.

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> I think most people would likely want more

Would they, though? That's the key question that I believe this study (and others like it) fail to address. Depending on the basic income amount, I believe it would be possible to live a fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life without needing to supplement that income.

I would want more. Currently I don't really care what I buy at supermarkets, I can go on 2 week holidays and potentially buy gadgets I like. However I can't really afford a car or buy a home or fancy synthesizers.

With BI I could spend more, but I would still keep on working towards a relaxing financial freedom where money is not a problem at all.

Besides a few monks, everyone I've met that makes under $20k/yr wants more. I've never seen a real area where people are comfortable until the $40k/yr mark. Yeah, I know there are exceptions (there's always outliers in data, but you can still find means and trends). So I am confident you wouldn't see a significant difference in number of workers unless you brought that UBI level up by several times the proposed $1k/mo.

I never understood that point. Almost everyone I know works fulltime although they could live a "fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life" on maybe 15h/week of work. If minimizing work would be a goal, most people would be able to do it right now.

Yes, this requires employer flexibility and the move from 40h->15h per week grants much less freedom than stopping work entirely but masses of people suddenly being content with a minimum amount of money does not sound convincing to me at all.

Haven't most studies around UBI shown that the only people that usually don't work when given a UBI are students and mothers (so they can focus on school and their children, respectively)?

Living off the basics is pretty dull. Most people who live ascetic lifestyles by choice usually come from a position of relative wealth and choose it more as an aesthetic or affectation than anything.

I think there are plenty of people who would be happy having a minimalist life, and there are those who would choose to see the world. And I believe that there are those who are drawn to doing things; working on stuff that they're interested in. And there are those who do want more stuff, and so will work.

All in all, I think there are enough people that things would be fine.

I agree. I think a lot would move to affordable places where that guaranteed income goes a lot further. If that's true then we aren't going to be as competitive on a global scale. Maybe that's not a big deal, maybe it's a huge deal; I don't know.

Anecdotally my friend is part Native-American and gets 4k/mo from the tribe's casino money and they're bumping it up more soon. She's chosen to be a stay at home mom.

The question really isn't whether someone person on Hacker News would want to work.

A better question would be, "how many would report their work out of an entire country was offered a basic income?" There are already data points for comparison, when that question is asked.

Most people on Hacker News are really not any different from anyone else in their country - they're just in a different line of work. The idea that you're a better/more moral person if you get paid more is a fallacy.

An interesting question is "can we reasonably automate things that people currently get paid less for than a basic income would be, or will we have to pay them more, and if we have to pay them more, what will be the economic effect of that?"

It may also work by making basic income really basic, so there’s an incentive to still go out there and specialize.

>>Most people on Hacker News are really not any different from anyone else in their country - they're just in a different line of work. The idea that you're a better/more moral person if you get paid more is a fallacy.

People on HN are significantly different and not even close to a representative sample. No one at any point is saying that HN readers are better or more moral, but there are huge, huge differences in technical skill, intelligence, knowledge, college attendance rates, social skills, empathy, and so forth compared to an average sampling of the population of the United States. I'll leave it up to everyone to decide which direction the arrow points in the above fields.

"The idea that you're a better/more moral person if you get paid more is a fallacy."

You are making arguments against things I never wrote, which is a strawman fallacy.

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