Ask HN: Are there any alternatives to basic income?
Basic income has some nice properties but quite some disadvantages, too. Is there any research towards alternatives that would help keep the society together once the machines really kick in?
Social policy seems to be hard to get right.
I.e. one thing I heard, that a certain level of universal-basic-income is being implemented in the US, by generous disability benefits. If you then feel that you no longer have ability to do meaningful work (especially in the rural areas), you can collude with your doctor to make yourself a diagnosis that you would qualify for and would qualify you for disability benefits. As they say, these days there are no healthy people, just insufficiently diagnosed ;) Then you can survive doing odd-jobs to supplement your now-almost-basic income.
But I get that making something like this general might just cost too much. And there might be unwanted sideffects.
I.e. in my country, you can apply for housing subsidy. This was supposed to help low-income households. In reality, it mostly helped people providing housing for of certain segment of almost-homeless people, where they no longer have stable address, and they barely scrape by to pay ther rent, mostly one-bed in a how income hostel. So, when the subsidies came, owners just raised the price of a bed by the ammount of subsidy. This created an interesting poverty-trap, and several cities are trying to fight back to untangle this. What doesn't help is that many of the trapped people are ethnic minorities, which then can be used by less savoury politicians in their municipal politc campaigns.
Basic income naturally scales up with improvements in productivity driven by automation and reduces labor market friction and enables adjustment to changing conditions.
PWA beginners increasingly obviously pointless, wasteful soul-crushing make-work with progressive automation and increases labor-market friction obstructing adjustment.
The latter works as a short-term collapse in demand for a kind of work that is expected to recover, the former is a long-term alternative to means-tested else programs that mitigates adverse incentives and other inefficiencies.
Both are potentially useful but don't address remotely the same set of problems.
I don't know what this sentence is supposed to mean. Can you clarify?
I dislike Basic Income because it boils down to a payoff to prop up otherwise unbridled capitalism.
I am a capitalist. Markets, innovation, and all that are beautiful.
But, we take too much. There must be more investment in the mutual, public good.
Here's the link if you have some time to read all the docs... https://basicincome.ycr.org/
And to be clear, the intent is good. No problem.
I do not see a positive outcome, as in a healthy, balanced society with robust and meaningful checks and balances.
We need that. I do not trust the outcomes without it.
It does seem as though YC is at least looking to see if this is truly a good idea or not based on the way the experiment is being conducted.
A lot of people find that distasteful because it implies a degree of authoritarianism beyond what basic income would require.
Guaranteeing work ultimately boils down to work for work's sake and arguments like "idle hands are the devil's workshop".
I'd prefer a return to the sort of social housing we created post war, where it wasn't just for the very needy but ordinary people in low paying jobs.
I'm not advocating this, but I've heard of several models for a merit-based economy (which I reject as it's only really viable under authoritarianism), but it illustrates a way in which this might work.
All individuals receive a fixed number of tokens daily. Everyone gets 100 for example. However, you're taxed based on merit, as defined by attributes in your wallet. If you have a bad driving record for example (comparable to receiving many traffic tickets), what costs me 20 tokens might cost you 21. You're penalized for misconduct at the point of sale. However someone who volunteers with a charity for 10 hours a week might only pay 18 for the same goods. The merchant/service provider is reimbursed the same, regardless of the cost, as all excess token taxes are pooled and the difference is allocated from that if the sale price falls under the base price. Merits and demerits are fixed to be issued at a 1:1 ratio.
Another option would be to simply impose a luxury tax on non-essential goods, and use that to finance essential goods. Less Universal Income, more Universal Food Stamps... You might pay 25% more for that new car, but you can always walk into a store and pick up a bag of food staples or simple pharmaceuticals. They key here is that's it's not just for the poor or disabled, and everyone pays the luxury tax. However, naturally those with more disposable income will likely spend more and thus pay more of the tax. This works in local economies (a small town for example), but doesn't scale up with population very well because locality plays a huge role in costs. If kept local however, there's no cost advantage to centralized administration, and it could end up costing everyone significantly more to run variants of the same programs on the local level. And then you might just make your luxury purchases two towns over (or online) where their tax is lower, lol. This system has been used in the past, but global economics in place today negate the efficacy of this model.
Another idea eschews the money aspect entirely and instead reduces the standard work week, freeing people up to pursue supplemental employment if they choose, start a side business, etc. This actually has more practical implications. Studies have shown in most office work, companies are effectively only getting 28 hours of work out of people in a 40 hour work week, and less in industrial jobs. Reducing the work week to 30 hours (at the same net salary) made no negative impact on productivity. Companies got the same amount of measurable work, for the same cost, but gave the employee more free time. Going from 40 hours to 30 potentially creates 25% more jobs if you need 24/7 coverage, but also increases the cost to the employer. However, with 25% more jobs available, you can get a part time job to work a full 40 hours (or more) if you want, ideally in another industry. Then if the industry you're in takes a dive, there's some resilience to layoffs. You already have other employment and skills in another field. The idea is rather than give people a basic income, less money could be used to provide tax exemptions to companies who adopted this model to offset their increased costs of hiring. You take less from the company, but that is more than offset by the value generated by the increase in employment and tax revenues generated from that productivity. The problem here is with skilled professions that are in high demand. For example, you can't do this with ER doctors, we don't have enough of them as it is. Not all professions and industries benefit equally. But this isn't without precedent, before the establishment of the 40 hour work week, most people were working 80-90 hours. It's doable and there are advantages, but it's not universal.To be implemented, it must be voluntary, not compulsory, but with changes made to the law to extend things like health benefit eligibility to people working under 40 hours. Then it can be slowly adopted naturally by those who benefit the most from it, and their experience and improvements in implementation can inform industries who may want to adopt it but will have less margin for error.
Keep in mind, universal basic income is already available to everyone. They're called "dividends". You pay into an investment and receive a portion of the profits at fixed intervals for assuming a portion of the risk. This is superior to a UBI, because you have to opt-in, contribute as much or as little as you want, and you get control over how the money is managed. People get butt-hurt when you say this, and counter with the same statement:
"Not everyone is an investor, many will lose the money, so it's not universal".
But that's true of a UBI too. Some people would take the money and invest it to grow their wealth, some people will buy food and housing to subsist on it, and some people will piss it away on weed and video games. Those are all valid choices, but they have consequences in regard to the financial prosperity of the individual.
There are plenty of good articles about unconventional economics here: https://countermarkets.com