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Comment by a8da6b0c91d | Hacker News Reader

If anything like basic income happens expect immigration to be halted and birthright citizenship grants to be ended. The value and meaning of citizenship will rapidly change and tolerance for outsiders taking a slice of the pie will rapidly plunge. I think there will be a lot of ramifications like this that most people probably aren't considering.

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Alaska has its Permanent Fund Dividend, which is a kind of basic income coming from state oil sales. How hard is it to get Alaskan citizenship?

Um, one small difference, you have to be a resident of Alaska for at least a year, intend to remain a permanent resident and not be absent more than 180 days without a valid reason. [1]

[1]: http://pfd.alaska.gov/Eligibility/EligibilityRequirements

All reasonable restrictions to apply to a national Basic Income program.

In what way is that a difference?

Living in Alaska for a year is a steeper obstacle than living most places.

You have to live here for a full calendar year before you can apply for the dividend. Even then, the dividend is only $800-$1200 per year, hardly enough to offset the higher cost of living in AK.

I think there are sufficient disincentives for living in Alaska to cancel that out.

As a US state, Alaska can't halt immigration to the state (at least not from US citizens.) If Alaska was it's own country, I would bet they would have pretty severe restrictions on immigration.

There is an underlying premise that only the US will have a basic income. If robots/AI do most of the labor there is no (long term) reason why all countries can't offer basic income to their citizens.

> If robots/AI do most of the labor

Exactly. But we're not there yet, and possibly not very close.

The swiss referendum for basic income also referred to "citizen" income as well, knowing full well that 20% of their population has immigrant status. Steal from the poor to feed the middle.

Steal from the poor to feed the middle.

Has served Europe well for the past fifty years or so.

But the pie grows larger as more people enter the economy (though it may be sublinear).

The pie grows larger as people enter the economy who were brought there by the desire to get a free income? I support the proposal, but come on

Definitely true, it's just that people don't know that or want to believe it.

Every attempt at analyzing this for the US economy I have seen concludes that immigration is at best a wash for the people who were already US citizens. It does, however, have the effect of worsening income disparity. Capital benefits while low income wages are driven down. Of course one also has to consider environmental costs.

> If anything like basic income happens expect immigration to be halted and birthright citizenship grants to be ended.

Why? Doesn't make a lot of sense. To the extent that immigration might strain a BI system, there are much smaller changes that would allow managing the impacts, while still maintaining the basic high-level structure of the existing citizen and immigration system.

Really?.. I think BI per se might change the landscape somewhat - and that depends on its scale - but "rapidly change" - no, you don't principally differentiate strangers with passports from strangers without.

May be not, other countries may move in that direction. Furthermore, they may even move faster. For example, Mexico already passed a universal income law for people over 65.

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