Comment by karlmdavis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karlmdavis | Hacker News Reader

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Don't this:

> The aggregate effect of free money is what will determine the outcome.

And this:

> Not what exceptional individuals might achieve with it, but what a lazy drunkard would achieve with it matters)

Contradict each other? The "aggregate effect" = "lazy drunkards" + the effect of "exceptional individuals" + the effect of everyone else. So it really isn't the lazy drunkards that matter; it's the overall effect that does. If, on average, it improves society then isn't that a win?

Very often, when talking about basic incomes and similar programs, people seem to say things like "twice as many people will take advantage of the system and be lazy." To me, that's not a sufficient criticism: it all depends on the percentages. If a program increases the percentage of bottom feeders from 1% to 2%, say, but also doubles the quality of life of everyone else, that would be a huge win to me. Obviously, the numbers I chose in my example are probably unrealistic, which just further illustrates how important it is to actually determine what the numbers are/will be.

You're right. That was wrong. I obviously meant it's the effect of A plus B.

It would depend on the amount of "bottom feeders". That's a bad way to define it though, "non-productives" might be better, since it would include pensioners, children, students (including people who go back to studying if this program is introduced, but are older than 0-24 years), really ill people, ... mostly not people I'd define as bottom feeders.

I would say that it's a lot larger than 1-2%. Let's assume that a lower bound on the non-productive people would be 30% of the total (which would mean tax levels need to be, at bare minimum . I would say that various factors are going to make that close to 50% over a period of time that's not very long.

Suppose you'd have the same tax level for these things as you currently have for social programs + medical programs (~50% of total taxes), then here's how much it could be (ignoring administration costs, which would take another bite):

Non-active population => basic income possible using 50% of govt. budget

30% => 11,249

40% => 9,642

50% => 8,035

60% => 6,428

70% => 4,821

(the current labor force participation rate is 65%. Since that is likely to drop, prudence would suggest you take the 50% or 60% figure as realistic. Increases in the govt. budget dedicated to this cannot make these numbers rise by a significant amount. So I would think the 30% figure is the maximum attainable even if the military were to be defunded)

Since even the largest of these numbers is only barely sufficient to live + insurance + ... is this really worth it ? This amount is not of the level that it's going to do what this program needs to do to improve our economic situation : give the poor disposable income.

The basic problem we have is of a different nature. We do not have any economic reason for 70% of the world population to be alive, and that number is growing fast. In the US that number is currently amazingly low, but it's bound to rise as well.

> It would depend on the amount of "bottom feeders". That's a bad way to define it though, "non-productives" might be better, since it would include pensioners, children, students (including people who go back to studying if this program is introduced, but are older than 0-24 years), really ill people, ... mostly not people I'd define as bottom feeders.

You're absolutely right, thanks for the correction.

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