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Comment by logjammin | Hacker News Reader

You make good points, but you may be missing why OP's comment is getting the upvotes it's getting, or at least why I'd wager it is: he describes the kind of contentment that most of us can't even imagine possessing without winning the lottery, and he described having that contentment with surprisingly (to him/her) modest means. I can't speak for anyone else, but this is why I upvoted it. Hell, I can think of at least two times in my life where I've been scolded about being unproductive or ambition-less for even mentioning the possibility of living such a life (without being a millionaire).

Solely with respect to this person's comment, what we call such an arrangement matters a lot less than the high quality of the life he/she describes.

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He's not giving us the full story. Did he have health insurance (seems like he's in Germany, so yeah)? I made under $30k this past year and did not have health insurance. I promise you that I'd rather have that than try to live off $1k a month. If it sounds so great to you, I challenge you to live off that amount and see if it is as grand as he describes. I'm guessing he's making more than $1k.

There are a lot of menial part time jobs you can get if you want to live as he describes. It's not fun.

I can gladly talk about financials.

- I have health insurance. It's pretty far from free, and it's mandatory. I wrote a very detailed guide about how German health insurance works [1]. It's not comparable to the US system, and I want to write a separate guide to explain this more accurately.

- My take-home is slightly above what a full time minimum wage worker would make. My expenses are around 1400€ a month. It could be brought down to 1000€, but I insist on certain luxuries and planned my exit accordingly.

1. https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/german-health-insurance I'm happy to answer more questions.

Ok. Thank you for the input. Google-fu brings this cite from dw:

€1,500 ($1,700) per month gross for full-time workers, Germany has one of the highest minimum wages in the European Union.

So it seems you made about $20k. Obviously, this isn't much money, so props to you for that. It is about double what UBI could offer (at least in the US) in a country with one of the greatest social safety nets in the world.

Don't mean to castigate you nor be overly personal, but do feel like it is important to put into context.

I don’t understand all the comparisons to the US here. The article is talking about Finland, and the comment poster is from Germany.

Is anyone saying this is appropriate for the US right now?

In my opinion, the US has a long way to go before even beginning to consider such practices. The UBI is something EU nations can experiment with, not the US.

Can you elaborate? Why can EU countries experiment with UBI but not the US?

The most basic thing about US society is that each and every single person is responsible for their own american dream. Constantly you hear of people arguing that they shouldn't pay for someone else mistake, someone else healthcare, someone else life, etc.. "I worked hard, why don't they work hard like I did" The idea that sometimes the collective good is better than the single individual isn't something that is agreed at a large scale. That's why you cannot imagine the US having UBI. Even in the middle of the pandemic, where having more people being treated/taken care of would be better for the common good but also for you as an individual (less people that can infect other people!), you still have no strong movement for universal health care.

The US can’t even figure out healthcare. How do we expect to facilitate paying everyone vast sums of cash when we can’t even coordinate a public option for healthcare due a variety of reasons? The stimulus check nonsense around covid is a prime example. So many people got screwed because they didn’t have a bank account or were exempt from paying taxes.

Those structural issues aren’t present in most European countries due to the expanded social safety nets. The US needs to implement a lot of infrastructure between the government and the citizenry to facilitate and distribute a program like UBI effectively.

I’m an American who wants a ubi, but we’re not ready structurally to handle it in the current political climate of any foreseeable political future in the next decade, IMO.

> Can you elaborate? Why can EU countries experiment with UBI but not the US?

US's Overton Window is extremely far away from this kind of social policies. If the US can't agree on the fundamental importance of a socialized healthcare service then more daring experimental social policies such as a livable basic income is too far out to even contemplate.

But it would be awesome if they did, though. Perhaps if they slapped a "Milton Friedman approves this" sticker on it.

> I'm happy to answer more questions.

How much are you willing to tell us about the income source?

I’m finding it difficult to think of anything that generates a small but consistent revenue stream with no babysitting, that is also completely unresponsive to low-effort attempts at scaling it.

Usually if there’s no babysitting, that means low-effort scale. Or if it is hands-free but still can’t scale, it’s because you’ve found the boundaries of the market opportunity (but when is that ever just 1k?)

I guess my question is what niche product/service did you find that the entire world only wants $1000/mo of??

Here it is: https://allaboutberlin.com/

My niche is "make knowledge of Germany approachable to non-Germans".

This website works because moving to Germany implies paying for certain things, like health insurance. It also works well because most of the existing information is only available in German. This content also ages rather well, unlike programming tutorial or cellphone reviews for example. I don't need to constantly create new content.

I can't think of any other topic I understand this well that provides this much value to the readers. I know a thing or two about long distance motorcycle travel, but nothing I couldn't summarise into a few articles, and nothing that could generate affiliate income. I had some other ideas, but none of them withstood scrutiny.

Instead, I'd rather grow the website to cover more complex topics that I'm currently dealing with, such finance and retirement planning in Germany. It feels good to help people answer the same questions I had.

That's really cool.

How do the website generate money though? I haven't seen any ads or paid content.

It was probably indirectly explained here:

> I know a thing or two about long distance motorcycle travel, but [...] nothing that could generate affiliate income.

It could be something as simple as a tool that costs a dollar and automatically checks out a popular book from the local library. And it's only in German and works with one library system.

Implementing UBI without universal healthcare certainly would be a silly approach, yes.

Is the thought process that we can or are going to get both universal healthcare passed (even the Democrats can't agree on this) and UBI passed in this political environment? It's going to take a bigger crisis than covid-19 to do that.

It's also not the usual argument you hear from UBI proponents (we can reduce costs because we only need UBI).

I don't say this to be a dick, but political change has to happen within political realities.

I share your skepticism that it can get done in the US any time soon. We can't even get people to wear masks during a pandemic.

The article in question is about Finland, where healthcare is already universal, largely free, and much liked by the populace.

That's totally fair. I am looking at this through a very US-centric lens, but I'd guess many HN readers are, and certainly Yang's tech supporters were. To also be fair, the user we are talking about doesn't appear to be Finnish or is the study in question true UBI. But that's all pedantic. :)

That is why I am in favor of universal basic services, but not UBI, and why I called UBI the 'hail mary' of neoliberal market capitalism.

UBI wants to change nothing abut the socio-economic structure that drives millions into extreme poverty. It just wants to slightly reduce the rising flood of people that are just run so far down into the ground by the system that they are abandoning society altogether and threaten collapsing it.

Make sure all your people have decent healthcare, housing and food. It is obvious that in some (rich) countries these basic levels of social security are failing hard.

UBI just wants the current rent-seeking financialization machine to keep churning even when its forced in the extreme to trow the bottom of the pyramid some breadcrumbs to prevent them from bailing out.

If you want an entire lifestyle blog about this, read http://mrmoneymustache.com/

Anyone here a fan?

The Mad FIentist is an excellent podcast (FI = Financial Independence), and the reddit forums for LeanFIRE (what OP describes here) and FatFIRE are good. FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). Also, check out the book “Your Money or Your Life”. We don’t need to live the way we do, and I for one commend OP.

I’m a fan of the Dutch equivalent geldnerd.nl, mrmoneymustache.com is on my list. Thank you!

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