The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Then what about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? What about kids in foster care? What if parents have lots of kids? Should kids also get a basic income? As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.

> The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception.

Or, more likely, we don't include disability programs (which are not purely or primarily means-tested programs) as among the primarily-means-tested programs that are replaced by UBI in the first place. To the extent that improvements are needed in disability programs, they come from elsewhere.

(OTOH, part of the problem creating incentive for disability fraud is secondary testing in primarily means-tested benefit programs, which leaves lots of gaps in basic poverty support.)

> What about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve?

We deal with child neglect through child welfare systems, not social benefit systems.

> What about kids in foster care?

What about them?

> What if parents have lots of kids?

Then...they have lots of kids.

> Should kids also get a basic income?

Pretty obviously, yes, kids should get basic income (if nothing else, most of the primarily means-tested social benefit programs -- both welfare and EITC -- in the country are support programs for parents with dependent children that are strongly scaled by the number of dependent children, so if you want a system that does at least as good for current targets of benefits while removing the adverse effects, the obvious methods is that kids should be included as beneficiaries. There are a few programs that are not targeting such families -- e.g., General Assistance programs, but they are small both in their per-beneficiary benefits and their aggregate costs as a share of overall social welfare spending.)

The most sensible way to do a UBI is probably "all citizens and legal permanent residents".

> As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.

The whole point of the "U" in UBI is that you don't add exceptions. You define a broad universe of recipients with as few qualifications as you can sensibly make, and everyone within that universe gets the same benefit.

Now what about the kids of undocumented workers? Will people in retirement continue to get their social security? How will we pay for all this? Assuming 418M people at $13K which I typically see mentioned as basic income, that is $4T which is more than the entire US federal budget.

> Now what about the kids of undocumented workers?

What about them? Those kids are themselves either citizens or (improbably) legal permanent residents (and thus, beneficiaries) or not (and thus not). This isn't rocket surgery.

> Will people in retirement continue to get their social security?

That depends whether Social Security is a replaced program or not (IMO, it shouldn't be, since its not a means-tested social benefit program.)

> How will we pay for all this?

With new taxes plus the redirected funds from replaced programs.

> Assuming 418M people

From a few different sources, I get that the US population is 319M, about 93% citizens and 3.6% lawful permanent residents. So, assuming 418M beneficiaries of a UBI is unreasonable.

> at $13K which I typically see mentioned as basic income

$13K/capita is a just about the point at which two-person household would clear the poverty line, so its not a bad point to consider a reasonably mature UBI; OTOH, I'd prefer to identify a funding mechanism that should grow with economic growth, and have benefits scaled so as to (in the long-term, smoothing short-term variability) follow that funding mechanism, eventually reaching such a mature level (and going to even higher levels with more growth) rather than setting a benefit level and then trying to fund it out of the gate.

And I wouldn't expect a mature UBI for a generation or so.

You keep asking questions implying that they're problems when in reality they're just really not that big a deal. Tax bureaucracies have dealt with exceptions since forever. Same thing with legal systems.

This is not the slippery slope that you're implying; you can certainly draw certain lines when the system that you're building has limited scope and leaves the outliers to other benefits systems.

Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then you have their $500. It always boggles my mind how many people would rather see the system grind to a halt, rather than anybody naughty be consuming. I would much rather see a class of people with disposable income.

  Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then
  you have their $500.

Except now, you've used your time and resources to produce weed instead of other goods and services. The people who would have used that $500 to buy those other goods and services will subsequently have a lower standard of living.

If someone steals $5k from me and uses that $5k to buy my car, am I just as well off as I was before because I still have my $5k?

>Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us.

There's a simple solution that all BI advocates should embrace: you take BI money and you give up your vote, because it is a conflict of interest.

It'll be a cold day in hell before that idea flies. But how do you balance the mob voting themselves bread and circuses, against the wealthy voting to let the mob starve?

I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.

>I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.

Agreed, sign me up. Power should always be balanced with direct responsibility. If you want to vote for the government to do something, you better be able to pay in blood or treasure to see it done.

Like people working for the government, or elected politicians? They get all their income from somebody's else taxes (), have obvious conflict of interests as they make laws that affect their job and income, and I see no chance they won't be allowed to vote.

() Actually most of those money goes back to the state, minus the ones going into savings, private properties or leave the country to pay for imported goods.

It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is.

>It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is.

You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.

Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case.

"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent concept to acting on one's own behalf as a citizen, where there is only one interest, one's own, being represented, and thus no opportunity for a conflict.

You may be abusing the term to mean a conflict between your interests and those of other citizens, but every citizen would have that kind of conflict, and that's what equal participation exists to resolve (and not what conflict of interest means.)

>"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens

That's precisely what a voter is doing. According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign. Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.

Even Congress recognizes this about itself - it passed Amendment 27 which limits its ability to raise its own pay. It thus recognized that it is acting in a different capacity when addressing its own pay than when addressing normal business.

> >"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens

> That's precisely what a voter is doing.

No, its not. A voter is voting on their own behalf as a citizen, and not graned additional authority beyond that of a citizen to act as an agent of other citizens.

> According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign.

One might, perhaps, argue "according to the philosophy to which some subset of the framers subscribed, and which motivated the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign", however, to argue as you do is absolutely without support; the Constitution does not mention sovereignty, and insofar as it expressly grants the traits associated with sovereignty to any entity, it does so to both the states and the federal government, but not anyone else.

> Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.

Even if one accepted the preceding claim, this doesn't follow from it. Individual sovereigns (as opposed to sovereign republics) have no distinction between private and public interests; that's the key thing that distinguishes a Republic from a Monarchy, that in the former government is not a private function. So, the idea that Constitutional sovereign citizenship (if it existed in the first place) would imply that citizens had both "public" and "private" capacities that were distinct is completely incoherent -- if individuals are sovereign, their public sovereign capacity is exactly their private capacity.

> Even Congress recognizes this about itself

Congress is, rather obviously, a body of people who each exercise additional authority in government beyond that of a citizen-voter representing themselves, and who are instead empowered to act as agents representing the interests of other citizens. That's the whole point of Congress.

> it passed Amendment 27

No, Congress doesn't pass amendments. Congress proposes Amendments (Amendment 27 was one of the 12 initial amendments proposed as the bill of rights.)

I am not going to engage you on what is. My position is that voters ought to be responsible for the policies for which they vote.

To do otherwise is madness, and the degree to which our legal and political systems say otherwise is madness.

Many reasons to this and something has to change at some point.

But just a couple of points is that if everyone receives it then nobody can be robbing the system as everyone is entitled to it. Another point that the HN crew should be well aware of is that we are going to see entire Industries worth of jobs disappear. Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. We are on the cusp of automated vehicles and when that comes to fruition all cab/taxi/bus/truck drivers will be without jobs. This will happen in many other areas as well and to not seriously prepare for this type of future is absolute lunacy. Not saying that BI is THE answer...but it, along with many other things, are definitely worth exploring further.

> Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's.

I see this argument a lot lately, but it isn't clear to me why we should have any confidence in this type of speculation. Even if it this generally turns out to be true, what are the second-order effects of such a radical change to the job market? How will people adapt? What new opportunities will arise?

Yes, and if I do this:

    try:
        ...
    except Exception, e:
        return 200, "ok"

then I've completely eliminated the problem of 500 Internal Server Error.

Just because you redefine taking money you don't need from productive people as "entitled" doesn't make the problem go away.