<story><title>Moving Forward on Basic Income</title><url>http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DawkinsGawd</author><text>You completely side stepped the question.  I find it absolutely amazing how naive BI supporters are.  I grew up poor in a ghetto in New York.  Studied, went to university, became an engineer and am no longer in that socioeconomic bracket.  However it is very apparent that the people in my current bracket (the one&amp;#x27;s that support BI), have no idea about the issues of the poor.  Poor people are mostly poor because of the decisions they make.  At least that is my experience.  Drug addiction, gambling, alcoholism, poor budgeting, mental illness, etc, etc, etc.  Thinking back I do not know anyone in my neighborhood who was genuinely a hard working person with no vices.  Hard working people with not vices don&amp;#x27;t live in the slums and generally can support their basic needs.  Yes there are those occasions were an acute emergency happens and support is need but that is an atypical story.  Giving $1200 check to someone without food and shelter most definitely isn&amp;#x27;t going to provide them food and shelter.  It will more likely go to a stamp bag, scratch off, 40 ounce, etc.&lt;p&gt;Yes, we need to help these people.  Mental health, substance abuse, etc do not make people &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot;.  But giving someone a months worth of rent&amp;#x2F;food&amp;#x2F;utilities&amp;#x2F;clothing in cash is going to be disastrous</text></item><item><author>gshulegaard</author><text>This really isn&amp;#x27;t a good riddle.&lt;p&gt;First, Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT) work better than most people expect (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;international&amp;#x2F;21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;international&amp;#x2F;21588385-giving-...&lt;/a&gt;).  As noted in the article, UCTs work surprisingly well in scenarios where lack of capital is the primary problem.  A UBI (at least as usually is discussed in the US) is a de-scaling UCT.&lt;p&gt;Second, most proponents of a UBI see it as more efficient because of the savings on administrative overhead.  So dollar for dollar the assumption is that your social safety net with UBI is larger than current welfare.&lt;p&gt;Which finally brings us to the observation that current welfare is not an all-inclusive safety net, so opposing UBI because it isn&amp;#x27;t either seems a bit of a distraction.&lt;p&gt;A more interesting question, raised by the Economist article linked above, is where do UCTs break down?  This is a question whether or not UBI should be _entirely_ UCT or if there should also be some Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT).  This would be like providing incentives for going to college.&lt;p&gt;CCTs are better at correcting deeper issues that contribute to the cycle of poverty.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately I feel like a UBI is a good first step, but ultimately a combination of UCTs and CCTs are needed to really combat poverty.</text></item><item><author>xienze</author><text>So, a question for the BI fans:&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs.  &amp;quot;Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies&amp;quot;, they say.&lt;p&gt;But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all their money and now can&amp;#x27;t afford rent and&amp;#x2F;or food?  Do you tell them &amp;quot;tough shit, you&amp;#x27;ve exhausted all your social safety nets&amp;quot; or are there safety nets below BI, essentially recreating the welfare programs previously destroyed?  If so, how do you prevent fraud without a department following up on Joe&amp;#x27;s twelfth &amp;quot;my car broke down&amp;quot; case of the year?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>notthegov</author><text>In my experience, your characteristization of why people are poor is wrong and ignores the daily struggles the working poor faces. I agree that most people are flawed but that&amp;#x27;s because we are not taught in school how to deal with adversity or how to live life.  People in general have poor critical and analytical thinking skills, and get trapped in a vicious cycle with no hope for a better life.&lt;p&gt;I grew up poor and my mother worked to get us into the middle class.  As an adult, I have been poor and wealthy, and have good friends that are decent people but are trapped in a system of poverty, or a community of gangs and a cycle of jail.  Life is incredibly hard and it&amp;#x27;s not as easy as saying that poor people have vices.&lt;p&gt;Last year, I&amp;#x27;d buy breakfast for homeless friends on Hollywood Blvd. then go eat the free breakfast on the 28th floor of the Ritz-Carlton Residences.  I lived there and I can assure you, wealthy people are as crazy, addicted and ignorant as any poor person.  The amount of criminality and corruption within the 1%, and how the police and even retired high-level government officials protect them, is astonishing.&lt;p&gt;I wrote a previous comment on why I think if rich people were smarter then there&amp;#x27;d be less poor people.  We need a society with better systems where there&amp;#x27;s less friction and challenges for people to overcome.  And for many reasons, I see Basic Income as one of those better systems.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11469080&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11469080&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Moving Forward on Basic Income</title><url>http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DawkinsGawd</author><text>You completely side stepped the question.  I find it absolutely amazing how naive BI supporters are.  I grew up poor in a ghetto in New York.  Studied, went to university, became an engineer and am no longer in that socioeconomic bracket.  However it is very apparent that the people in my current bracket (the one&amp;#x27;s that support BI), have no idea about the issues of the poor.  Poor people are mostly poor because of the decisions they make.  At least that is my experience.  Drug addiction, gambling, alcoholism, poor budgeting, mental illness, etc, etc, etc.  Thinking back I do not know anyone in my neighborhood who was genuinely a hard working person with no vices.  Hard working people with not vices don&amp;#x27;t live in the slums and generally can support their basic needs.  Yes there are those occasions were an acute emergency happens and support is need but that is an atypical story.  Giving $1200 check to someone without food and shelter most definitely isn&amp;#x27;t going to provide them food and shelter.  It will more likely go to a stamp bag, scratch off, 40 ounce, etc.&lt;p&gt;Yes, we need to help these people.  Mental health, substance abuse, etc do not make people &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot;.  But giving someone a months worth of rent&amp;#x2F;food&amp;#x2F;utilities&amp;#x2F;clothing in cash is going to be disastrous</text></item><item><author>gshulegaard</author><text>This really isn&amp;#x27;t a good riddle.&lt;p&gt;First, Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT) work better than most people expect (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;international&amp;#x2F;21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;international&amp;#x2F;21588385-giving-...&lt;/a&gt;).  As noted in the article, UCTs work surprisingly well in scenarios where lack of capital is the primary problem.  A UBI (at least as usually is discussed in the US) is a de-scaling UCT.&lt;p&gt;Second, most proponents of a UBI see it as more efficient because of the savings on administrative overhead.  So dollar for dollar the assumption is that your social safety net with UBI is larger than current welfare.&lt;p&gt;Which finally brings us to the observation that current welfare is not an all-inclusive safety net, so opposing UBI because it isn&amp;#x27;t either seems a bit of a distraction.&lt;p&gt;A more interesting question, raised by the Economist article linked above, is where do UCTs break down?  This is a question whether or not UBI should be _entirely_ UCT or if there should also be some Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT).  This would be like providing incentives for going to college.&lt;p&gt;CCTs are better at correcting deeper issues that contribute to the cycle of poverty.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately I feel like a UBI is a good first step, but ultimately a combination of UCTs and CCTs are needed to really combat poverty.</text></item><item><author>xienze</author><text>So, a question for the BI fans:&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs.  &amp;quot;Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies&amp;quot;, they say.&lt;p&gt;But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all their money and now can&amp;#x27;t afford rent and&amp;#x2F;or food?  Do you tell them &amp;quot;tough shit, you&amp;#x27;ve exhausted all your social safety nets&amp;quot; or are there safety nets below BI, essentially recreating the welfare programs previously destroyed?  If so, how do you prevent fraud without a department following up on Joe&amp;#x27;s twelfth &amp;quot;my car broke down&amp;quot; case of the year?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dota_fanatic</author><text>Assholes aside, since turning an asshole into a non-asshole is an incredibly complex issue, people I&amp;#x27;ve known who are like the ones you&amp;#x27;re describing tend to not like their situation, dream about and periodically pursue having a better life, but are utterly incapable of making a chain of steps towards that better life when it&amp;#x27;s so much harder to climb than it is to stay down in the ditch. The level of competitiveness in our world also means there&amp;#x27;s many people above them who have it in their interest to keep them down and dependent (as their livelihoods depend on it).&lt;p&gt;One would hope with a lessened burden and greater freedom for the millions of Americans who &lt;i&gt;aren&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; like that, social support and community would increase. MOOCs and the like would get more support. More people would pursue experimentation. More people people would do it right instead of getting shit done. More people would be free to stop giving themselves to processes they know are unethical.&lt;p&gt;These people you&amp;#x27;re describing are only a problem to kill off &amp;#x2F; suck dry in the world we live in now. In a world of basic income, they&amp;#x27;d at least have a chance of getting help from the people around them that do care, have a well-developed sense of empathy. Having said all this, I totally agree that giving a lump sum of money to the people you&amp;#x27;re describing is indeed a terrible idea, will have bad outcomes.</text></comment>