Posted on 06/01/2016 12:48:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Can giving people money help solve wealth inequality?
Y Combinator, a prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator program for startups, is wading into a new world changing project: basic income.
On Tuesday, Y Combinator said in a blog post that it would conduct a short pilot study in Oakland, Calif., a city of great social and economic diversity that has both concentrated wealth and considerable inequality. The accelerator has also hired Elizabeth Rhodes, a PhD in social work and political science from the University of Michigan, where she completed research on health and education in slum communities in Nairobi.
Y Combinator defines basic income as giving people enough money to live on with no strings attached, and its an idea that has roots in both left and right-wing economic theories, though relatively little data about it exists, according to Y Combinator president Sam Altman. The accelerator hopes the study will help illuminate a possible future in which technology replaces jobs, but also drives down the cost of living....
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
If “Y Combinator” wants people to have income, let THEM pay for it.
Uhh, that is what they are doing with this test
This is what would happen:
1. Prices would go up to compensate for the income.
2. Scams would spring up to swindle the less bright amoung us out of their new-found windfall.
3. Programs for the poor would still be there.
In the end, everyone would be worse off—especially the taxpayer.
“a possible future in which technology replaces jobs, but also drives down the cost of living....”
How about an approach to living in the actual present?
Well, unless they’re willing to give everybody $60 billion so they can be as rich as Bill Gates, I’d say that “income inequality” is a stupid, phony issue, hyped by people who really want the kind of income equality that everybody is currently enjoying in Venezuela.
Jeopardy—Guaranteed basic income: I’ll take “What is welfare?” for 40,000.
They seem to have missed the end result of socialism when ‘guaranteed’ minimum income requires ‘forced labor camps’
Basically when a robot replaces your job position, you will be guaranteed a income to sustain you...
I'm assuming you will be living off the money of new technology that generates profits with the lower labor costs of robotics...
It is a reality quickly catching up us today...
Many of the 95 million americans out of work have been simply replaced with technology of some type which makes their job no longer necessary...
As long as I'm not footing the bill for this idea...
let's see where it goes...
I'm not very optimistic it will work as planned...
I think the minimum income is just step one before they roll out the maximum income, and then on to maximum wealth accumulation, etc.
though relatively little data about it exists...
Sure there is and it’s called welfare.
2015 - More than half of the nation’s immigrants receive some kind of government welfare, a figure that’s far higher than the native-born population’s
2015 - The American welfare state today transfers over 14% of the nations GDP to the recipients of its many programs, and over a third of the population now accepts need-based benefits from the government. In 1961 it was 5%.
Funny enough, but libertarian leaning Charles Murray had this same idea. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/libertarian-charles-murray-the-welfare-state-has-denuded-our-civic-culture/
He makes an interesting argument, and I get where he is coming from. Still disagree with it..
I thought one of the points of the basic income is that it replaces existing welfare programs. I’m sure it will work for some but others, like the mentally troubled, need supervision
Y Knot-heads?...............
As automation replaces unskilled workers at $15/hr the obvious question becomes what do you do with all of these unskilled ....persons. There are a certain percentage who are indolent, another percentage who are ineducable (which overlaps with indolent). How do you prevent them from creating more ineducable, and thus indolents and then criminals who seek more ?
With nothing but time on their hands, what do yu do with them?
All they have to do is look at the Lottery Winners of the several states, over the past 30 years, and see how many of the ones who suddenly had huge amounts of money at their disposal, wound up broke as a convict after a few years...............................
When you pay people to do nothing, that is exactly what you’ll get in return.
Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon were both proponents of a guaranteed minimum income, too.
My son knows Sam Altman. He is the energizer bunny, self motivated, self driven, disciplined and very bright overflowing with good ideas that usually turn into revenue. He is surrounded by others of that ilk. He doesn’t understand people who have never held a job, or if they had one, they didn’t last because getting up in the morning and going to work is not one of their priorities. He believes that with a guaranteed income, those folks will be off the welfare rolls and will turn their energy to creative ventures. Nothing of the sort will occur. They will become clams, with their shells opening only when the check arrives. Those who don’t die of drug and alcohol abuse will die of sloth.
The war on poverty envisioned the same outcome and it never happened. Wonder why?
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