Ask HN: How would you change your life if there was a basic income? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you change your life if there was a basic income?

29 points3rd334 comments

I don't believe a single one of you. If there was a basic income of, say, $15,000, almost none of you would feel more free to stop other income. With mortgage/rent payments, car payments, restaurants, internet, cable, gadgets, video games, and social life expenses, most people on here feel as if they need far higher than a "basic" income. If you feel you could live off that amount and you have a programmer job, you should do it now while continuing to work at your job, invest the difference, and just retire in 8 years or so.

I think I would start working very late (with 35 or even 40).

Most of the employed of us would be net tax payers and would be (I'm guessing) unwilling to go to the much lower salary that would make us net basic-incomers (even marginally). For me, I'd either save/spend less -- or be more aggressive with my prices to get salary up again. It depends on how much more tax I owe. So far, tax-increases in the past few years have not changed my lifestyle at all (they aren't big enough to care much) -- a tax covering basic income would have to be much bigger though (right? -- does anyone have numbers?)

It would be a nice cushion for those of us that might be taking 0 salary to start a business, but my guess, again, is that they hope to be moving towards higher incomes.

In retirement, I assume basic income is just SS (in the US), perhaps a little more. The main benefit to me is that it would start earlier -- and the main benefit of that is that it would cover medical insurance. That would make it much more likely that I would retire earlier.

Well, considering I haven't had a paycheck in 18 months...

I would quit working on the product I've been slaving over, a basic income means horrific taxes. I didn't work hard so they could be confiscated.

Now that I've got a basic income I switch gears, I start growing food, fishing, hunting. So that I can sell for untraceable, untaxable cash. I also start tutoring at the local college in math and computer science, once again cash only.

I convert the cash I keep stockpiling into precious metals, gold, platinum, palladium. They take up little space, and will be easy to transport once society descends into chaos. I expect it will take at least 20 years. At first most people will keep working, but when they start seeing other people who seem to be happy not doing anything they will start asking themselves how stupid they are to keep funding everyone else's party and they themselves will drop out.

Before things get too bad, I slip out of the country. Most likely a sailboat out of Florida, the story is I'm heading to the Caribbean, except once far out at sea I head for my real destination, never looking back.

Won’t machines take over most labor making unemployment normality?

I'm just curious; what kind of lifelong, nonstop party do you see people living on 7.82 an hour? Especially considering that now they're partying all the time instead of working 40 hours a week? 15k a year doesn't go very far; I know I wouldn't be happy earning so little, especially without a job to occupy my time.

edit: For clarification, I pulled the 15k figure from the currently rated top comment. If you feel that a basic income would provide significantly more than that, I'd love to see what sort of figures you consider plausible.

I think you completely missed my point about making money in a black market. If I'm working 40 plus hours a week trying to scrape by on minimum wage, I wouldn't have time to carefully execute black market transactions. With the entire week available, I can focus 100% on it. I can deal with people I know personally who would have bought the legal products from a store anyway. I wouldn't feel the least bit guilty or wrong about what I was doing either because I would feel that the rules I have sacrificed for my entire life were tossed out the window and I completely wasted my youth.

Another thing, it really doesn't take that much money to live. With some caveats, you have no debt. You live a simple life. Or like me, you already own all of your toys and luxuries. The thing is, I am talking from experience. I consulted in the bay for $30k a month back in 2012. Even so, I rented a room in a house with other people renting a room. I shared one bathroom with 3 other people, I got 1/2 the top shelf in the refrigerator. Was it worth it? Damn right it was, $750 a month everything including high speed internet. I wasn't there much anyway. I ended up quitting after 8 months. That's right, I could have made another $90k before they would have let me go, but it wasn't worth it. I did not come from money, I have no family whatsoever. I worked a 3rd shift factory job to put myself through college. So don't get any ideas that I am operating and behaving from a privileged position.

As for nonstop party, this is a huge problem for language. You see everyone doesn't have the same definition for the same words, so when two people discuss something using the same exact words they may have very different pictures in their head AND they assume the other person is thinking the exact same thing.

My idea of a nonstop party is sleeping in, taking a nap whenever I feel like it (I do that now). It's having the freedom to decide I really want to cook an interesting meal and just doing it, as in I have nothing else on my schedule I have to work it around. It's buying a $299 ski season pass in Incline village and going skiing since I live 0.5 miles from the lift. It's the freedom to research and learn about any topic I want to, and I don't have to stop because of other obligations. In fact there is so much interesting stuff out there to learn and read; knowing that I had an obligation to "occupy my time" would be a living hell. It was, that's why I quit my job.

I have no idea what they would pay as a living wage, I don't think $15k would do it. Keep in mind I am 100% against the idea to begin with, I just wrote a comment about what I would do if it came to pass. I am very, very good at adapting to situations and exploiting them. I'm also very good at figuring out how to opt out, if you really didn't want to work, you too would find a way to do it.

I'm not sure if this helped you understand my point of view, but I will finish by saying "One man's heaven is another man's hell". If you really want to understand how this will play out you need to realized that not everyone is as responsible as you are, their idea of a good time may be totally different than yours, it might be cable TV, a carton of cigarettes and a case of beer.

* I'm living pretty damn well on Lake Tahoe, $24k a year, I drive a Land Rover. I ski, bike ride in the summer, hike. And I'm currently working on a product. I have never been happier.

I imagine this would be similar to the life in the GDR.

- I would invest in my house or flat and probably buy a second house or a vaction home to combat inflation. - Rarer items would be only available for bartering, so I would spend a lot of time exchanging stuff for other stuff like the people in the GDR did. Probably always driving around with a hanger, just in case something becomes available that I need for my house. - I would learn a trade to have something that other people want in exchange for the things I want (e.g. sanitary installations, woodworking). - You didn't state in your questions if the basic income is world wide, so I assume it is only in my country and I'm not allowed to leave (like the GDR had to prevent their people from leaving). So I would take a lot of vacations seeing old castles and hiking. I would never fly again, always going by car or train.

Go on a bike tour around the world, study theoretical physics, study advanced math, drop from university, study AI, build operating systems, compilers. Generally staying curious, while building fun stuff. Attend LW meet-ups around the world.

Why would you drop from university to study the theoretical subjects you mention? Uni should be the best place to learn those, since you will be hanging out with professors and students who are interested in those subjects, which is much harder to find outside academia.

It's not necessary to be enrolled in a university in order to do that. It does help to be in a university town though.

I would consider quitting the job. I could get 85 productive hours for myself, instead of 45 hours of tiredness I have now. Better today then when retired. Speaking of which my generation will never retire and will always rent.

The second half of basic income is universal health care. Without it, nothing would change for me. I'd still have to work, except I'd have to repay most of the BI with increased taxes.

However if both were true I'd quit and work on my own projects. I don't need much more than minimum wage to survive. The biggest reason I need more money now isn't because I'm spending more, but because I have to save most of my earnings for the inevitable retirement/unable to work.

Community things - open source, food banks. Even in some games (currently Minecraft) I spend much of my time making infrastructure for other players, my home is basic, my creations and influence are large.

Personal things would be perfecting the smaller joys, because the larger joys (e.g. what TV I watch, how and where) that I've already worked on in spare time are where I want them to be.

This isn't a sob story but I wouldn't think about suicide everyday. I would be grateful knowing that I would always have something to buffer me from the social entrapment of drug addicts, gang members and in short the general erratic uneducated subset of the social fabric where chaos dominates. The bad part of being ( somewhat ) poor in the U.S. isn't a lack of money ( at least not when you're scraping by enough to survive and have shelter) it's the lingering threat of having to confront or deal with people who simply are operating on a foundation of assumptions about life that most educated people are in a position to not tolerate. Just having that worry removed would make a huge difference in my life. To answer your question I would do what I'm already doing. Work in odd jobs when they present themselves. The only difference is the money would be enough for me to launch a small business idea I have quicker than the time it's going to take me.

Do you have some family or some sort of support network you could lean on? It sounds like you're in an at-risk environment. Even spending an hour or two at the library rather than being around those influences might be helpful to your state of mind. Not to mention having plenty of books and Internet access to help you launch your small business idea.

It wouldn't. I'd save the additional income while continuing to work just in case things were to change in the future.

While my kids don't ask for much, one thing I wish I had the money for was to take them to see some of the amazing sites of our country. We drove cross country from PA to Colorado and it was fantastic. Would love to have them see everything from there on West.

Are there any studies exploring links between basic income and inflation? Will prices of essentials move up because of a sudden appearance of purchasing power on part of the entire population?

There was an experiment done in a small town in Canada: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Probably the best natural experiment is to look at what happened on the introduction of Social Security in the US and the analogous programs in other countries.

We should also realize that we can't just give net $xx,000 each to the entire population. The proposals usually fund BI with taxes on the higher earners. Spending should increase (as we move money from savers to spenders), but most (or much) of the population will be either near-neutral or pay extra taxes more than BI.

Basic income would be negligible to inflation, except for medium ticket discretionary items. Deflationary for luxury goods.

This is because basic income benefits the poor but increases taxes on the rich. The poor would be able to afford lower middle class items. The professional middle class would see a wash in taxes vs. BI.

Basic necessities would show no change because items like food and housing are already being consumed at nearly the rate the population could handle. Sure maybe steak prices go up a little, but rice would get cheaper too. Maybe less people would be homeless but some more houses could be built and find a buyer/renter too.

Bottom line: inflation is related to the total amount of money in the system. Basic income only re-distributes money.

Sure temporary slowing and speeding of money flow can affect inflation, but let's consider the long term average.

Unless it were implemented in such a way to guarantee people would still be out in the fields farming, I would be gardening and tending to chickens and pigs to make sure I had enough to eat.

Quit my job, permanently, and only do work that actually interests me. I live cheaply enough for it not to represent a significant change in lifestyle for me.

Trouble is, there are too many people like me...

learn about poetry,arts,ancient rome and greece, study functional languages and try to discover something.

You can do all of those now, even with only an hour a day; I do.

Care to elaborate? Especially with so few time left for each of the activities, I don't feel any sense of acomplishment. How do you cope with this?

Just force yourself to read two pages of some classical text of choice every day; even if you stop after the first couple (highly unlikely) you're still progressing through the text. The sense of accomplishment comes later, when I ponder what I have read, usually in the shower. :)

Other than the tax increase, no change. (And I say that as someone who thinks giving everyone a wad of cash is more honest than the means-tested favoritism welfare we have today)

Quit my productive engineering job to chase women, work on personal projects and political agitation. Getting paid to go Galt? Yes please.

I may not be representative, But that's honestly what I'd do.

Go and start my own company. This would make it considerably more practical, as self-employment becomes only a minimal net loss (or a net wash if I move somewhere cheaper).

I'd take more risk. Instead of safely working for others, I'd put more effort into my own ideas and try to bring those to market.

At 18, 21, or 25 it would have made a difference. Approaching 60, it would make little.

I'd escape the country before it turns into a north korean hunger games wellfare state monstrosity.

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