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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

Basic Income Now, with an immutable tenet that the basic income cannot be restricted or reduced, or contain compliance dependencies. Its time to empower individuals.

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Have any studies shown that UBI wouldn’t cause similar price increases to college tuition or housing prices have had with increased access to easy credit?

As someone who dislikes fiat currency, but is also in a place to benefit from it, UBI has always seemed bonkers to me. The MMT idea that fiat is infinite seems to only work if foresight is perfect and the ultimate cause of failure is known ahead of time (certainly Weimar Germany and Venezuela didn’t think they would inflate themselves into crisis).

Calling something "immutable" doesn't make it immutable.

I assure, the UBI is mutable when the people in charge want to change it. Or when we run out of money.

I disagree to this call to action

To have even a snowball's chance in hell of passing, I think you also have to ensure that it can't be increased without bound over time.

Why would people agree to an immutable tenet like that? Basic should not be a pact to the death.

Those tenets are important to the universality of UBI. Otherwise, the Federal government would try to impose means testing, or other conditions upon it, which would make it a very socialistic/communistic type of policy. I want it to be something more like a right of citizenship.

I think I see what you mean. I was thinking from a "fix what's broken" perspective, not a "make it like a birthright" perspective.

I can’t support socialism at all. I figured out how to work and earn money as 9th grade dropout. Everyone can.

It figures that given that you needed to earn money at 9th grade that you would have never become a doctor, lawyer, or any liberal profession that requires multiple years of dedicated studies.

Good for you but that's not how you make an equitable society.

I prefer equality, merit based system. Not "equitable"

Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes

And how do you propose creating equal opportunities?

By not favoring or biasing. Truly.

And you apply this rule to corporations how? What metric do you judge your results by?

Please reframe your question in a specific context. I’ll make a guess.

There is no bidirectional trust with corporations: assume you could get fucked at every moment.

When trying to convince a corporation (aka a group of people) to give me money I want to be evaluated on and compensated for my objective impact. Subjective evaluations (which can include bias, even the trendy intentional but liberally acceptable race and gender bias) are toxic and can be gamed.

I was in a rough situation and took it on the chin. I didn’t beg for money, I begged for the chance to work. Very different and represents opposing work ethics.

How do you systematically ensure equal opportunity, and how do you measure the results of your implemented policy

By judging people on what they do and not who they are. I’ve hired hundreds. One of my best hires couldn’t speak english and brought a translator.

So your systematic rules for ensuring equality in a world of biases is to simply tell people to "judge people" better? And we as a society will know that we've done a good job because we feel like we did?

I am a 9th grade dropout, too. I am a freelance programmer.

I’m really glad to hear you made it! Respect.

Thank you! IRC helped a lot to find clients, and sometimes I fix local people's computer after they realized I am a software engineer[1]. The latter is rare though. Regardless, I have ups and downs still due to expenses but hoping to change that and become financially stable, it is about time, I think. :) COVID-19 is really making it much more difficult though. Not infeasible, but extremely difficult to attain what I want[2] thanks to it. :(

[1] This helps me build connections as well. For example, I fixed a doctor's laptop, and she has helped me with various things because of it.

[2] I want to move to another nearby country. Cheaper and nicer apartments, and the pay is the same because I work remotely.

UBI is not socialism. If I attached conditions to how that money is spent, it might be socialism...which is why I believe we cannot had conditions to it. I think of it more as an inheritance. Personally, I'd advocate for a taxation free version of UBI, i.e. funded by fiat currency, and added as a policy tool to the Fed to control inflation and employment.

It is a fact that if you grow up near a financial cliff, people will fall off of it. That is not a productive way to conduct a society. It wastes productivity.

That's why you live in the country with the highest number of homeless people in the streets :) You should come visit socialist europe one day

Wikipedia’s list of countries by homelessness[0] suggests the US has a much lower rate of homelessness that most of the major European countries (Germany, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, etc.).

0 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeles...

That result is shocking to me, as I see homeless people everywhere I go in the US, but that much in comparison in Europe. So I'm wondering what it could be?

- Are the results false? Would a country lie on the numbers? It looks like the US estimation was misleading halved in two[1], the real numbers paint a much different picture placing the US much higher than any European countries.

- Are the results misleading? For example, I see that different years are listed for different countries (2012 for France, 2019 for the US), or that Germany's numbers include "around 375,000 asylum seekers and refugees in temporary accommodation".

- Is reality misleading? For example, it could be that homeless in Europe are taken care of and thus you don't see them much, whereas in the US they are all over the streets because there are no aids. Or it could be that most homeless people in Europe don't live in the cities and are thus out of sight.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-06/why-is-ho...

I am shocked at this number too. I see so many homeless throughout California, and not just in the big cities, but in the small towns.

I figured out how to work and earn money as a 9th grader coming from extreme poverty without even dropping out. Was making $30k/year from 9th - 11th grade. Then I got raped by a rare genetic medical issue.

In your world, I should just go fuck myself for having that medical issue though, right? Get off your high horse of toxicity.

Please don’t think I made my comment out of malice.

Could you afford privatized health care on UBI along with basic living expenses?

If the amount we’re talking is 2k/m and in the USA I bet not.

It is concerning that you feel the need to berate a random person who made a comment you just happen to disagree with or misunderstood.

You don’t know me, but I’ll share an ancedote. I suffered a life changing health problem and the advice that I was given is “two things happen to sick people: they get better or they die”. The responsibility to adapt is on you. Not society

You seem to not be aware of the simplest definition of "welfare state" nor which nations on Earth identify as such and what it entails. That, or, as stated, you just don't really care.

Either way, that being stated, further discussion would most certainly be fruitless.

The problem with most Basic Income scheme's is they are solely derived from Income based taxation, they redistribute high wage earners income to lower wage earners there by in effect punishing high wages

I can not back such a system as that is tantamount to labor theft and is unethical

Now if you want to base a UBI on something else beside Income based taxation, Such has a Georgist Single land value tax then that would be a more ethical system

Considering that the current system is built on theft by the richest in the form of worker mistreatment, doesn't it all balance out?

Amazon is a perfect example of this, you want to protect Bezos against the workers in shitty conditions that are surveilled and actively antagonized?

I see you have confused wealth and wages. Bezo's famously takes a salary of just over 80K, which is lower than many of the programmers working for Amazon

Also the idea that current system is " built on theft by the richest" is just asinine and ridiculous

I'm not confusing the two, I am fully aware of the methods the rich use generate their wealth while not contributing any of it back via taxes or any form typically.

Bezos wealth has doubled during the pandemic. As we discuss the pandemic pushing people into poverty, do you genuinely think it's asinine to judge the current system but not him?

I'd be interested in a UBI that is funded only by fiat, as a new tool for the Fed. Essentially giving the Federal Reserve the ability to set both interest rates, and UBI rates to optimally stimulate growth and employment, and manage inflation.

Islam has solved this problem over 1400 years ago. Zakat is a form of wealth tax that applies to money over a certain minimum amount. For currencies, it's 2.5%. So if you have $1M sitting in your bank account for 1 year, then by the end of the year you owe $25K to charity. Different percentages apply to other wealth/estate (like farm produce or cattle).

It's an extremely fair system, that does not punish people from making high wages (there is no income tax in Islam), and pushes people to invest into the economy. It also does not inherently cause inflation like today's fiat money. It's quite sad to see that humanity keeps refusing to learn from the past.

Wealth Taxes are just as bad if not worse than Wage/Income Taxes.

They have a massive destabilizing effect on the economy, especially if that wealth is tied up into stock of a company

Take for example the "great evil" of today Amazon and Jeff Bezos. If Bezo's was forced to liquidate say 2% of his ownership in Amazon to satisfy his wealth tax that would send the stock into a free fall wiping out many many times more than that in value. So not only does that make it hard to actually calculate the tax bill, over time that kill most investments, 401K's pensions, etc

Taxes on subjective wealth (i.e totaling all assets up based on "current market value") is a TERRIBLE system, and very unethical far more unethical than income based taxation

Islam's Zakat system provably works. Just read history.

> If Bezo's was forced to liquidate say 2% of his ownership in Amazon to satisfy his wealth tax

Except nothing I explained about Islam's Zakat laws force anyone to liquidate in the manner you're describing. Note I said cash money. Stocks are not cash money, and hence will not be taxed in the same way I explained. Ownership in companies is subject to things like debt, which will reduce the amount of money paid out.

Islam's Zakat is different from the wealth tax some leftists are trying to push today as you're describing.

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