Hacker News Reader

Comment by 300bps | Hacker News Reader

>a universal income of $10k/year per person for every citizen 21 and over...I find myself liking the idea more and more

The $10,000 would increase demand by $10,000. What mechanism would then increase supply? How much would that mechanism increase supply?

I fail to see any such supply-increasing mechanism. If I'm right about that, then that $10,000 would be eaten by inflation literally instantly.

Money is a store of productivity. It cannot be a universal policy of an economy to give out money for no productivity exchange without consequences.

View on HN

You're wrong about that, because you're assuming that all the inflation would targeted to the exact same $10k of increased spending power.

Say there's 250m people in the US over 21, give each of them $10k and you're talking $2.5 trillion/year. Say, the economy as a whole is about $15 trillion/year (it's a bit higher, but I'm approximating), so at most you'd be looking at inflation of 16.6%. You're assuming that the first $10,000 of goods and services would be inflated by 100%, but this isn't true, nor is the first $10k of goods and services the same for everyone.

Obviously I'm giving you a very abridged answer, but I encourage you to look into Milton Friedman's writings on the concept of Basic Income - not a person you could accuse of economic illiteracy, even if you didn't agree with all or many of his views.

If we assume that $10,000 for every person would instantly cause exactly that much inflation (which I don't think is a settled question), then the net effect would be a transfer of wealth from people with more than the average amount of money to those with less than the average amount of money.

I don't think we can dismiss that out of hand. It seems like a pretty bog-standard social welfare program.

Taxes would be paying for it, so it wouldn't increase demand at all.

> What mechanism would then increase supply?

Robotics. In my lifetime, most basic productivity will be fully automated. Robotic factories will make self-driving tractors that cultivate fields of genetically engineered crops.

Labor is already obsolete. The majority of Americans of traditional working age (13+) already live on handouts. This trend will accelerate in the next 20 years. It is a huge question of how to handle the below average people who are both unnecessary and not well suited to the life of ibtellectual pursuits.

In Peter F. Hamilton's sci-fi novels, he posits that each person will receive an EMA, an energy-mass allocation to use or trade as they see fit. With the boundless resources of the universe brought to your doorstep, we need a better method of resource allocation than the minimum wage.

> handle the below average people who are both unnecessary and not well suited to the life of ibtellectual pursuits.

indeed

Reply on news.ycombinator.com