YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/can-high-profile-bay-area-tech-incubators-basic-income-plan-work/

by Tomte • 10 years ago

176 226 10 years ago

YC blog post here http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income

TheCowboy4• 10 years ago

Would individuals be restricted from using any government social welfare programs during this period? Many advocates propose funding basic income by disbanding current safety nets.

If recipients are living in public housing, collecting food stamps, accepting federal student loans, or any other form of indirect government aid, then it skews the results.

karmicthreat2• 10 years ago

It might skew it, but YC is probably trying to answer a more fundamental question. If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. Or if people will just sit on the couch, have kids till they can't afford them, become addicted to drugs.

TheCowboy4• 10 years ago

I understand this, but ignoring what I mentioned means the question becomes, "What would people, who are provided a basic income in addition to basic government services, do?"

For example, an important question is if the implementation would require disbanding Obamacare, reverting to the old system, etc. The ability to obtain healthcare can sway a lot of outcomes. I might have pursued a more entrepreneurial path in the past if I had an option of basic income in addition to healthcare.

daveguy3• 10 years ago

The former. The latter is a racist caricature of welfare.

mtanski• 10 years ago

We've seen string free money transfer already work in some places. There's been a few trials an follow up on that, although not in Western countries.

What I'm really curious to personally answer is: what would happen if everybody would be guaranteed a basic income? What kind of problems would it introduce? Would the new minimum income become a poor tool because of corresponding price increases (to capture that income)? Or would it work well long term?

That's why I'd love to see a small country. Preferably not Switzerland or Nordic. Because they've been able to create programs that others have a hard time replicating. A country with a more mixed population (religions, races, education levels).

chromatic• 10 years ago

If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement.

If only there were a group of people with sufficient money they never had to work! We could study them and see what they did to amuse themselves.

AnthonyMouse2• 10 years ago

If recipients are living in public housing, collecting food stamps, accepting federal student loans, or any other form of indirect government aid, then it skews the results.

Depending on how much money it is, the extra income might disqualify them from receiving most of that stuff anyway, especially if they also have any kind of a job.

That's going to be the real thing to watch out for though. If the basic income isn't enough to disqualify you from welfare but basic income + job is, the study is going to be useless unless you prohibit the subjects from also applying for welfare.

TheCowboy4• 10 years ago

A lot of programs aren't that black and white when it comes to eligibility, and how many dependents a person has will also affect benefits. So that's yet another thing that needs to be controlled for if we want to put trust into the results.

One elegant way to ensure that people don't use these benefits, and that doesn't leave them worse off, is to make minimum income higher than all of the income eligibility limits.

DonaldFisk• 10 years ago

Isn't receipt of benefits from these government social welfare programs dependent on having no other source of income? If so, the recipients of the basic income would lose the benefits. If not, the benefits are themselves a form of basic income.

TheCowboy4• 10 years ago

It's not that binary. The idea that you don't want programs to discourage people from working guides a lot of the income schedules.

This is a good example of how some programs work that could conflict with the experiment: http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/income-rules-income-limits

CPLX2• 10 years ago

"Overall the idea is to take money we make from YC [and], rather than all of the partners cashing out... putting it into research," Krisiloff told Ars. "I think that there’s a culture at YC that just making money isn’t that interesting."

I do understand the intended meaning of that sentence, and clearly it's more than admirable that these people are putting their money where their mouth is, but I really wish SV people would stop talking this way as it's tone deaf and counterproductive.

Several billion for them and a million and a half for a few people in Oakland implies that they do still find money somewhat interesting.

chickenfries2• 10 years ago

Indeed, and I think it's particularly necessary for them to improve the messaging around basic income in order for it to be politically successful.

tim3332• 10 years ago

On the other hand it allows YC to experiment and do stuff the politicians couldn't get away with. I quite like that they can say what they think rather than editing it to be politically appealing.

loceng2• 10 years ago

This experimenting may give them insight into what life and how behaviours present themselves when people are being supported, and then give them a heads-up knowing where people are then willing to spend their cash - on necessities as well as extra spending money (if they are given it).

That's invaluable data and if they can use profits from their ecosystem to support a growing community/ecosystem that supports this, and then discover or create increasing productivity within that community then the model could replicate and be adopted by wider regions.

In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings to the masses - like a tax, however if that % is less than what people pay on average currently in taxes to government, and the productivity level is higher - then it should naturally compete and takeover (save status quo systems trying to block and cause friction).

tim3332• 10 years ago

In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings

Not necessarily. Part of the reason for this research is figuring what to do if the robots replace us for the most part. In that situation wages would likely be low and a lot of the value would move to the market cap of the leading tech stocks that controlled things. The government could tax that, as cgt or wealth tax or similar, rather than wages.

mozumder2• 10 years ago

I'm just hoping someone wins a $1 bet - the usual amount - at the end of this experiment.

rexreed• 10 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjkdynBFHuQ and actually, I've always, always loved this scene since I was a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLySXTIBS3c - takes some thinking to learn how the markets were cornered and how they made all that money shorting OJ commodities.

But your point here is well taken - are these rich folks placing bets and toying with poor folks? Hmm.

logicallee4• 10 years ago

I liked it better when Y Combinator was giving this kind of money[1] out to founders who could use it to build a business. Old text: "In 2005, Y Combinator developed a new model of startup funding. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money (average $18k) in a large number of startups (currently 82)" I note that $2k/month for 12 months is $24k, so that's more than their old investment size.

Meanwhile, now, it's calling its investments of $120K a "small amount of money"[2], while calling this kind of money ($24K for a year) a basic "income" and not actually treating it as an investment. This bothers me.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20120614131411/http://ycombinator...

[2] http://www.ycombinator.com/

aphextron• 10 years ago

Agreed. I'm a broke developer who would love nothing more than a small living stipend to work on my own projects and contribute to open source. If I had just enough to get by and be able to code all day I would be so happy.

jlg232• 10 years ago

So basically you are one who would benefit from a basic income. Why is a "living stipend to work on [your] own projects" better than a basic income which too would allow you to work on your own projects?

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

Be careful, though, sometimes "code all day" is actually a form of addiction and...in the end of it all...you'll end up possibly unhappy, take it from me :|

To test this hypothesis, try not coding for a couple weeks, and avoiding other possibly addictive habits. See if you go through a "withdrawal" as it were...best of luck to you and us both!

godzillabrennus• 10 years ago

YC is still making these investments, they are simultaneous working to save the middle class because without that group of people we will have a lot less startups. I think what they are trying is important enough to risk some cash on and I'm eager to see how it pans out over the next couple of years.

logicallee4• 10 years ago

if it were making such investments in the same spirit as before, it wouldn't also call $120K a "small amount of money" on its front page. I think what I object to is the silent change from investing an average of $18K to investing $120K and still calling the latter a small amount of money. It's really not.

also let's be clear: from an investment standpoint, investing $12K instead of $120K means that startups can do ten times worse while still being a free investment. put another way: a tenth as many need to succeed to be free. People behave very differently under such conditions of risk!

Also investing $12K made them an investor of first, last, and only resort for startups that needed that. sorry, anecdotally this is actual fact.

granted, this does not describe most startups, just a few.

11thEarlOfMar• 10 years ago

One aspect that I've not heard discussed is the likelihood that a portion of those being granted a basic income will be exploited for their new-found cash. Has this been considered at YC and if so, what are their approaches to minimizing it?

dclowd9901• 10 years ago

This is why I wish the sample size was bigger, closer to that magic 2000 person populace that gives a relatively random cross section. I just don't think they're going to get the value they need out of this limited experiment. 2000*24000 = 48million... I'm sure they have that kind of scratch laying around.

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

Yes, but to truly understand the implications wouldn't it have to be like...the size of a whole country?

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

I guess my question is (similar to your and to an earlier thread here)...if the minimum income is given to all, wouldn't "lowest tier" housing costs just raise up to swallow it all up, since demand for housing would increase? ( initially I doubt exploitation will be a problem since the number of participants is so few ).

Today "lowest tier housing" is purchased by the poor/poorest class. Suddenly the poor (and everybody, for that matter) have more money, however the amount of housing remains the same (though I guess some new development could be spurred, but you get the drift).

Really the YC experiment won't be able to even touch this aspect. It also won't be able to really touch on the long term effects it would have on participants. Initially will people be like "yea! let's get more education!" but then after 10 or 20 years, it just becomes common place, people stop thinking of it as "extra money for growth" but as "just normal monthly spending money" (like they consider food stamps today or what not) what happens then, I wonder...do they just live in slightly nicer apartments, or use it for education? It will be an interesting experiment for sure...

All I know is the people who live next to me really wish they could afford cable TV. And trips to disneyland. This would make their dreams come true...(there's a reason they're currently poor, believe it or not, it's something like cultural background and current cultural peer group, and kind of their understanding of how the world works). Extra money might not help that particular group. Though it would take the stress/pressure off, certainly. Or maybe it would, I don't know. So in essence, it might "magnify" peoples' current propensities. Do they want to not work? Don't! Do they want to invest? You can invest more quickly (though the reality, like I said before, is people tend to just "spend up" to what they think they can afford, get nicer cars, etc. again if this experiment is "only 5 years" they may not see this). It also makes me wonder if employers will offer "less" since they know "well, you already make 10K so I guess we don't have to offer you as much..." :|

However, if I receives this money <cough> of course I would do magnanimous things with it, like...investing it in real estate. Especially since poor people have more money to pay landlords. I wouldn't feel bad about jacking the rents on them now that I know they can afford it :)

So the reality is that people who now "wish" they could go to college will be able to (huge win, BTW). And those happy with not working? Well, they won't have to (or do they already not?) Got a cruddy job you wish you could quit? You will be able to (so maybe wages for worse jobs will increase?) The question mark is what will happen after that. Will people who quit their "tedious job" start up a new business out of sheer boredom/sheer freedom? Or will they just not work?

jasonwen• 10 years ago

One year is too limited in my opinion. If you want to see what people will do with basic income, you have to give them the feeling the money is near infinite. One year looks to me its not enough to drop everything, as you will know it will soon come to an end. The paychological barrier for me would be at least 5+ years.

Then again if I know it will come to an end in xx years, I will feel more inclined to work harder. It's like a deadline.

bryanlarsen• 10 years ago

I'm sure they're well aware that a one year test won't answer a lot of questions. But it will answer some, and it will probably help them set up a better experiment for the future.

And the same criticism could be levelled at a 5 year experiment. I think that eventually they're going to have to do a lifelong experiment, buying annuities from a reputable insurance company for the recipients. That's going to be expensive, so make sure you have the experiment set up right before you do it.

pekko• 10 years ago

See http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income: this one-year study is just a pilot, it works as a preparation for a longer-term one.

chirau• 10 years ago

What if they don't tell the people when the income is going to stop coming in?

mattkrisiloff2• 10 years ago

Hi! I work on the study -- just want to affirm sub-thread clarification that this 1 year portion is a pilot to figure out logistics (not planning to answer research questions), and we hope to follow on with a 5 year study to actually answer the questions.

dang5• 10 years ago

Ok, we changed the title above to try to communicate that.

Fomite4• 10 years ago

There are all manner of logistical and ethical issues that need to be ironed out for a study like this. Doing small, limited-time, "This is not exactly going to produce the same results as the larger planned study" is extremely common.

traviswingo• 10 years ago

I'm very interested to see the overall outcome of this research. While the intentions are good, my initial expectations of this are not very high. I look forward to be proven wrong.

gjkood• 10 years ago

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of?

If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and his family by learning some vocational skills.

Choosing Oakland in particular has interesting connotations, considering that it is a major industrial center where there may be lots of opportunity for skilled workers.

Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.

Of course, there are still a great many people who truly could take advantage of the basic income experiment because their other options are severely limited for whatever reason.

WoodenChair• 10 years ago

Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.

Because that's really what we want in the 21st century: human machine cogs like we had in the 19th. No, let's let robots do robot things and we don't need humans to "compete" with them. Let's let humans do more human (and humane) oriented tasks.

louprado2• 10 years ago

"Let's let humans do more human (and humane) oriented tasks."

The definition of "humane" keeps shifting over time and will always be a matter of perspective.

To share a personal story, my father was unemployed while I was in college. Within a few months he looked like he had aged 10 years. Several months later he took a part time job as a landscaper and he started recovering.

I remember coming home from college once, driving to his work site and watching him push a lawnmower until he had a break in his work. This was a man that used to wear a suit and tie and commute to the city every day. Yet as I watched him push a lawnmower, I never felt more proud of him. He introduced me to his co-workers and it was the first time I had seen him smile in nearly a year. Several months later he was able to find gainful employment.

One could argue the isolation and lethargy caused by long term unemployment is more damaging mentally and physically than most labor intensive jobs. Moreover, society needs rungs in the ladder of economic advancement and it is human nature to find value in work and being part of a team.

laksjd• 10 years ago

There are already lots of great free (or very cheap) ways to educate yourself but all of them require time and energy. If you spend most of your time and energy working an awful job just to survive you can't take advantage of these opportunities.

Take away the need to invest time and energy into basic survival and you can suddenly take advantage of a lot of cool things that were previously not accessible to you.

Avshalom3• 10 years ago

even ignoring the grind that is an awful job: Community College is cheap and has all sorts of vocational training... if you can take Monday Wednesday Friday off between 9:30 and 10:15 then again between 1:00 and 1:45.

The intersection of Jobs-That-Can-Work-With-That-Schedule and Jobs-That-Can-Pay-Enough-For-CC-AND-Food-AND-Shelter is tiny and flooded with existing students.

kiba2• 10 years ago

You're giving a man enough fishes so he can learn to fish.

ozmbie• 10 years ago

What happens when we create fishing robots that do the work for all of men?

saulrh4• 10 years ago

Answer: Life gets better. We have proof of this from history. When was the last time anybody here ground their own flour or washed their laundry using a rock and a river?

melling3• 10 years ago

You make it sound as if we are going to run out of work? We can always increase the level of education then have more research scientists and engineers, for example. Imagine if we did 10x the amount of R&D.

noir_lord• 10 years ago

Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.

That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.

bsder3• 10 years ago

That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.

We automate many things to squeeze the absolute last penny out of it. That can have deleterious effects, too.

For example, many fruits and vegetables have been bred to be harvested by machine. These foods have been shown to have fewer nutrients and taste differently from those which much be harvested by hand.

Employing some people to harvest some of the non-automatable crops would be a good thing.

donw• 10 years ago

This exists in Japan, and is actually a very wonderful thing for the most part.

There are a lot of low-paying jobs here that involve doing little else than basic customer service: answering questions and directing people where to go. Similarly, there are also a lot of low-skill labor jobs focused on parts of the national infrastructure.

Imagine, in the United States, if we pulled a page out of FDRs playbook and started putting the underemployed to work on our national infrastructure. Helping out road crews, cleaning up parks, cleaning up trash, that sort of thing

Government offices are part of that infrastructure, so people could also learn to answer phones, guide citizens through navigating the maze that is most civil service agencies, and so on.

It would take a lot of work to get there, but all that money goes right back into the economy, and it makes life better for their entire community, which I think should at least be a point of pride.

AnthonyMouse2• 10 years ago

Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of?

The two things have little to do with each other.

A universal basic income has two primary purposes. The first is that it can act as the safety net for people with no other options, without the administrative overhead and errors inherent in means testing or the disincentive to work of welfare benefits you lose when you get a job. The second is that it's inherently redistributive across the whole wealth spectrum, so it allows you to simplify the tax system because you're doing the redistributive part on the spending side, allowing you to use a single universal tax rate that can't be avoided with shell games and accounting tricks.

Now you want to offer vocational training on top of that, but this is the usual "we should help people by giving them food stamps" fallacy. Give people the money instead. They know more about their own situation than you do. If their best option is to use the money to go to school, they'll do that. But maybe their better option is to use the money to move somewhere else, or pay down debts, or go to rehab, etc.

The people know better than the government what the people need.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

In America there is no such thing as "no other options".

When you see folks saying these people are lazy, they are folks who understand there are always "other options". They might not be the options you want, but then you want free money so who cares what you want.

skybrian2• 10 years ago

Basic income would help people do all sorts of things including having money to spend while you're getting your education.

Meanwhile, providing vocational training is a great thing.

Tying them together assumes you're a better judge of someone's needs when you don't know them. They may have a smarter way to spend or invest the money.

j45• 10 years ago

Education is the great emancipator, but education you and I take for granted as being common, is often not.

It's hard to learn and work on improving yourself when you have no time or energy left from being able to just pay the bills to eat, sleep and work.

Poverty really is a cycle that more people should try out to see how quickly all of their options, rights, and entitlements dissapear and become inaccesible and traded for constant struggle.

maerF0x04• 10 years ago

about 50% of people make it out of poverty over a 20 year span. It seems if we stopped people from slipping into poverty in the first place, then we'd eventually have no (or exactly 1) people in poverty.

joe_the_user• 10 years ago

"Provide" isn't a good word here - if vocational training is connected to this program, the only connection possible would be forcing people to use these vocational programs (I mean, you might just send a brochure to people but that's not a real connection). Present day social services abound with various "workfare" schemes. Even more prison labor, they tend to be failures on all levels - neither preparing the participants for jobs in the real economy nor producing things of value nor giving the participants a feeling of worth.

The idea of universal basic income is to eliminate social services bureaucracy - basically that the money spent deciding who is or isn't deserving could be better allocated by just giving something to everyone.

johnm1019• 10 years ago

Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.

This is comment is a hilarious embodiment of the hipster movement.

Gargoyle• 10 years ago

Give him enough fish so that food isn't a concern and see what else he does with his time.

That's the point of this project.

RobertoG2• 10 years ago

"..and see what else he does with his time."

As it's his/her right.

I suspect that an important subset of the people that worry about what the unwashed masses are going to do with so many free time, is also a subset of the people that complain about paternalistic states. Kind of ironic.

prawn4• 10 years ago

More than just training, I think a lot of people could be helped by very regular motivation of some sort.

ulrikmoe• 10 years ago

Control group or not. If YC wanted a scientific experiment, then they should have conducted it in silence.

scrollaway2• 10 years ago

Why?

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

To avoid the Hawthorne effect.

secfirstmd• 10 years ago

I think this is to be welcomed but I would also be interested if YC published a study on the tax arrangements used by its companies. Inequality is heavily linked to reduced government big budgets caused the culture and abuse of offshore trusts, the double Irish etc etc. Minimum income is important for the future but governments have to be actually able to collect the revenue in the first place...

Ressuder• 10 years ago

Do you believe that there are any illegal tax arragements used by YC's companies? Because I have to say that if there is not, the problem is on the governments side - not theirs, and trying to have the business side of things solve that kind of problem seems really strange.

matt2000• 10 years ago

I don't understand how the math on basic income is supposed to work. If we gave this amount of money to every person in the US it would cost $7.2 Trillion dollars, roughly double the entire US federal budget. How is this supposed to work? Do only certain people qualify for basic income?

giovannibajo1• 10 years ago

I am not familiar with YC project, but many similar discussions in Europe focus around the "guaranteed minimum income", which basically means that you give money only to people that don't have an income. You need to decide a good threshold for that, as you don't want to promote unemployment.

tamana5• 10 years ago

If you set the minimum too high and the GDP drops due to non productivity, it will cause inflation, effectively lowering the minimum income amount in real terms.

hiou• 10 years ago

This isn't actually an academic experiment. It's a group of very rich people using lesser off people as entertainment.

Not too terribly far off from this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure

harigov2• 10 years ago

Imagine that the money comes from no where. We have capabilities to offer people some things that they probably aren't capable of buying. Like say better food, more electronics, better homes, etc., Instead of expecting everyone to work to "earn" their living, we can instead guarantee some basic standards of living by giving everyone money that comes from no where. It just requires us to rethink productivity and economics. If a robot works instead of human, it is still productive and contributing to economy. If it were human, the work itself will have some value and so does the output of that work. With robots, we are only counting the output and not the work itself. What if we were to incorporate that into finances and pay that as basic income? It doesn't matter that the money is essentially created from nowhere, as long as there is some productive work taking place to account for that.

kr72• 10 years ago

I don't think robots change anything. Robots increase efficiency of human workers, they don't replace them entirely. Netflix and Redbox are highly automated, but they still have human workers; just fewer than Blockbuster did.

Robots that don't need humans is science fiction for the foreseeable future. They are not producing output from nothing; they are just tools that amplify the productivity of human workers.

This has been happening for hundreds of years with new technologies that improve efficiency.

pinkythepig• 10 years ago

The basic premise is that everyone is taxed some percentage of their income and then they are paid back some flat amount. For those (probably) in the middle class, this tax/payment will be exactly the same. You pay X per year and gain X per year in benefits. For those who make less than that, they will end up earning more from the payment than they pay in to the system. Those who earn more money than that will pay more into the system than they receive back in benefits.

Do only certain people qualify for basic income?

The good part about it is that everyone qualifies for the exact same payment, this reduces the cost of administering the program significantly. No need to fill out forms, check if you are covered, prove you make under a certain amount, or talk to 20 different agencies, the only thing that has to be confirmed is that you are a legal resident.

tomjen3• 10 years ago

On the pay side, sure. Presumably the IRS would still check that I payed my (now presumably higher) tax payments? So you don't really save anything there.

JonFish85• 10 years ago

I've found that doing the math absolutely doesn't factor into this. That's where it falls apart--it's not the most efficient if you're giving money to people only to have to reclaim it from 90% of them. It's a fun thought experiment but at a national scale the math really falls apart because there isn't an external source of funding to grab money from.

tamana5• 10 years ago

Did you know that the US has Social Security and Medicaid and taxes already, taking money and paying money?

themartorana4• 10 years ago

Don't need it, necessarily. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/printing-money-...

thebooktocome• 10 years ago

Most basic income recommendations are somewhere south of $1,500-$2,000 a month.

But no, every citizen qualifies. That's the basic part.

tamana5• 10 years ago

Universal is the "every citizen" part

Basic is the "only enough to subsist on" part.

LargeCompanies2• 10 years ago

Can you live off of 2k in San Fran?

Avshalom3• 10 years ago

Oakland, and: probably not very well. but you can still work, you can stop spending every day stressed about how your entry level retail job isn't giving you enough hours, or you can afford to set two or three days of the week as "unavailable and take some classes. You can stop worrying that taking the day off to interview for a job will be the difference between making rent that month.

Although for reference 2k a month before taxes is the equivalent of a $12/hr 40hr/wk job. I don't live in Oakland but here in Albuquerque thats considered a pretty good job.

LargeCompanies2• 10 years ago

yeah or you could be smart and take that money and the time it gives you to either learn a skill that will make live a ton more comfortable and or start a business that makes you and employees money.

I am very happy living here in Maryland as cost of living is inexpensive and govt. IT jobs are plentiful and the pay is good.

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

Unfortunately the study, even at 5 years, doesn't seem long enough, in my mind, to gauge if people under it would "just move to Albuquerque where the cost of living is cheap" (or perhaps UBI could/should be adjusted based on location dunno...)

maerF0x04• 10 years ago

One can, but its not a glamorous existence.

$2k before tax is about 1500 after. $1200 to share a bedroom with someone. $100-200 to eat, $53 muni pass. The rest to cover a litany of other things like cell phone, medical costs, "entertainment", etc.

jgalt212• 10 years ago

YC's attempt at delaying the coming proletariat uprising.

larrywright• 10 years ago

I'm not sure I get the logic of doing this in one of the most expensive areas to live in the US.

acdha• 10 years ago

Wouldn't the argument be that people trying to get by there would be among those most likely to be forced to make poor long-term decisions due to short-term cash crunches?

If rent's high, you have less flexibility to make lifestyle changes since you need to work more hours / jobs just to pay rent (making it hard to take classes), invest in things which will save money over the long term, or do things like move closer to work/school to save time.

awt• 10 years ago

Why not just have a YC charity?

dev1n• 10 years ago

Good question. I believe the thinking behind the UBI experiment is that YC wants to specifically do an experiment. Not start a charity. Maybe down the line YC would consider starting a charity but I don't think that's in their gameplan. This is specifically to answer a very explicit question. Charities don't normally do that sort of thing.

RobertoG2• 10 years ago

With this question, and in all this thread actually, basic income is put in the framework of "what could we do with all those people"?

I think that we should be open to another kind of narratives about this issue.

For instance, we could change the name from "basic income" to "automation dividend".

In this way we could think of it as a right to a share, in the hard work of all the past generations, that created the immense pool of infrastructure and knowledge that we enjoy nowadays.

Also, we shouldn't forget that, in a few years, all 'those people' could be us.

youngButEager4• 10 years ago

Can I make a suggestion?

I have several acquaintances who work in the trades (carpentry, house framing, fence building, concrete driveways/sidewalks/porches building, window/door installers, painters, etc.).

Buying and rehabbing real estate over the past several years, I've met a lot of these folks.

Most of their ability to earn a living wage has been decimated by unchecked immigration.

So I suggest we start there -- give all the tradespeople in our area, who were born here and have now seen their livelihoods decimated -- a living wage.

That way, we can tell them "yes we've fully endorsed unchecked migration, and your jobs are gone, but here -- have this living wage."

What a nice gesture on the part of we the elite!

ilaksh3• 10 years ago

Its not the immigration its the illegal pay and lack of benefits that they are given. The construction industry is based on underpaying migrants. If you have been rehabing homes then you certainly took advantage of this too.

Look in the mirror.

youngButEager4• 10 years ago

Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that.

If you're rehabbing properties in this area (Silicon Valley) you cannot give work to people unless they have a Contractor's license, which you can verify here:

http://www.cslb.ca.gov/

There are many reasons for only hiring licensed contractors:

1) your homeowners or commercial insurance will not be able to 'weasel out' of covering a loss if the contractor has an in-effect license (who got injured or who caused injury or any type of loss, really)

2) you can check their fixed address so that if you need to serve them (for small claims, or a lawsuit, etc.) -- you know you can find them

3) no language barrier, so it's possible to 100% eliminate any possible misunderstanding of the outcome that the hired work needs to achieve

In 2005 a buddy of mine hired a presumptive illegal from the Home Depot parking lot. I alerted my friend "not sure if you've seen this yet, but the guy is using a hand saw to cut and hang your sheetrock"

Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw

Mein gott.

christinecha• 10 years ago

I really want to know how the conversation went with the folks in the control group.

"Hey, we're doing a study where we give money to a bunch of people... Not you, though."

Ha!

Rinum• 10 years ago

The control group could be blinded (they're unaware what is being studied).

jamesjyu• 10 years ago

They just get Monopoly money ;)

Fomite4• 10 years ago

There are a number of study designs that don't require a null-intervention control group. Some of those would have been interesting, and might actually have yielded something closer to the true effect.

nickpsecurity2• 10 years ago

I'm concerned about bias in this in form of the Hawthorne effect for one group and something akin to Learned Helplessness (or self-fulfilling prophecy) for the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

The Hawthorne effect can apply if they tell the group receiving the money about the expected benefits of basic income. They know the spotlight is on them. They're also getting special treatment. They might work more and do better in this situation than if basic income was the norm similar to how welfare is the norm but doesn't get people out of poverty. Whereas, it's the opposite if the control group is told about the scheme: people in an economic rut with likely negative outlook that just got slighted on basic income and will be watched to see if they will fail. They'll likely fail either by default or barely trying although some might be motivated to work harder to stick it to observers.

If Y Combinator is reading this, I suggest countering it with careful presentation to each party. Especially to the control group. Tell them they're simply being observed as part of a study on poverty in Oakland and where people end up over time. Absolutely no talk of basic income or another group.

For benefiting group, countering Hawthorne effect is less my expertise. Old trick of making both groups feel like they're getting special treatment or advantage can't apply here. Perhaps water down the effect by describing it as one of a series of experiments... with descriptions of various approaches... to help lift people out of poverty along with theory of each. Mention positive, neutral, and negative outcomes that are common on existing welfare. Mention the potential the new approach offers. Mention that they're selected to try it for a year with the results entirely on them but observed to inform future studies. Effect is still there but with a balanced presentation instead of overly-positive or specific push from researchers presenting it. Information overload might even drown out Hawthorne effect to make them focus on whatever is last thing said.

The control group I'm pretty sure on but other possibilities are speculation. Consider how to handle benefit group carefully. Regardless of methodology, I'm glad to see YC doing it as it might help some people regardless.

maerF0x04• 10 years ago

too late now but in future ones maybe they could do 3 groups and pay 2 groups in various amounts. One group gets the "full amount", another a "half amount" , the third nothing. Tell the first two groups they're getting the Full amount. see if there is a difference in responses.

nickpsecurity2• 10 years ago

That's an interesting expansion on it. Would be especially interesting to see difference between full and half.

ilaksh3• 10 years ago

Most places won't let you rent without making 2.5 times the rent. So for 2k that's $800. In Oakland that gets you an SRO, a single room, or you can live in a box truck.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/eby/apa?query=oakland&ma...

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

Yeah I thought that too somehow...they say "$1-$2K" and I'm like...is that really a basic income wage?

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

Though in retrospect that's for one person, maybe they could rent a room? I assume if a family is on this they each get the $1K? kids too? unclear...

overall the experiment is "slightly different" than giving the poor yearly tax refunds (ex: it gives money to the rich and the poor) so...maybe useful :)

themartorana4• 10 years ago

"I think that there’s a culture at YC that just making money isn’t that interesting."

That's a tad disingenuous. I'm sure "anymore" might clarify it, but it's easy to say when you are rich.

mattkrisiloff2• 10 years ago

well fwiw, I'm a staff member, wouldn't consider myself rich, and that culture is what keeps me wanting to work there--I'd be pretty bored if it was more like a traditional VC firm.

themartorana4• 10 years ago

Fair enough. Apologies if that felt disrespectful.

It just seemed silly language to me, especially in light of the program focusing on how money can alleviate the majority of poverty's struggles.

dwaltrip3• 10 years ago

I don't think one needs to be rich to find meaning in such a notion.

simplegeek• 10 years ago

I tried really hard to find papers by Elizabeth Rhodes on basic income but I could not.

I was just wondering if she did lot of research on the topic that made her the most suitable candidate for the job.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

This is the stupidest idea ever, for a lot of reasons that anyone can find in a basic class or a few web searches on economics.

Why did this get voted on in the netherlands? Why is this being tried in America? This is dumber than communism.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play.

Like it or not it is a force of nature.

jwdunne2• 10 years ago

Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement.

It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to door sales, even if those two things happen to be things people enjoy and, on the whole, beneficial?

You can think of an unlimited number of scenarios where someone has fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. In fact, the most callous and unhelpful thing to say is "you made poor life choices bro" like you even know what you're taking about.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice.

Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes.

Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you participate in. Don't whine about how unfair it is. If you aren't willing to accept those risks then you should not engage in risky behavior.

krisdol• 10 years ago

I was a refugee of war that immigrated to the United States and survived off of food stamps and public housing until we got on our feet. we'd be considered pretty well off today, certainly in the top 5-10% of income earners.

Natural selection... More like dumb luck your ignorant persona was born privileged and not having to work your way up through the social structure of a foreign country several times. If it wasn't for public assistance we'd be dead or arrested for god knows what we would have done to put food on the table.

Social services exist to keep you safe from the poor just as much as they exist to keep the poor able to move upward through socioeconomic class

dang5• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976748 and marked it off-topic.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

They'll do nothing and buy drugs and alcohol.

People have been doing that with free money since forever. You can't package the free money in a different way and expect different results.

edanm• 10 years ago

Do you have any research to back that statement up?

dang5• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976433 and marked it off-topic.

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

They're I think randomizing the sample, though, so it's not just targeting poor people, if that helps clarify.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

I'd like to know if the people responsible for promoting this idea will be punished for the lives that are going to be inevitably destroyed?

The last time we did something this stupid with predictable chaotic results required a corrupt president and retired general. So apparently it has gotten easier since then, to convince people that the shit they're eating is ice cream.

simbalion10• 10 years ago

I'd bet money that most of the people will spend their free dollars on drugs and alcohol.

skybrian2• 10 years ago

I'd take your bet. There are studies showing otherwise.

"This study documented large, positive, and sustainable impacts across a wide range of outcomes including assets, earnings, food security, mental health, and domestic violence. It found no evidence of impacts on alcohol or tobacco use, crime, or inflation." [1]

But that was in Kenya so maybe it would be different somewhere else?

[1] https://www.givedirectly.org/research-at-give-directly

simbalion10• 10 years ago

I concede, under different economic conditions a program like this might be very successful, but in America it will attract lazy people like flies to shit.

dang5• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11977054 and marked it off-topic.

JoeAltmaier4• 10 years ago

I'm confused. Isn't this already being done various places around the world already? (e.g. Alaska, Puerto Rico) Why not study people in those places? Better yet, nearly everybody in those places is getting the benefit, so the experiment isn't poisoned by the culture (you're the only one in your neighborhood getting a benefit - others treat you differently)

itake• 10 years ago

I think they are interested in delivering a basic income such that it should be enough to live off of. Alaska [0] only offers ~$2,000 for the entire year in compensation. I am not sure what program you are referring to for Puerto Rico...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Annual_i...

JoeAltmaier4• 10 years ago

Used to be 10K?

dmix• 10 years ago

I made a similar point in the original YC basic income thread.

I questioned the value of doing this when something like public healthcare is working very well in Canada, where it operates much more cost effectively than the US public/private mess, and it has been for a long long time. And we're right next to the US. Yet there has been little progress adopting a similar system in the US.

I'm not sure if just getting examples of it working will be a sufficient motivator that they hope it will be. But I guess public healthcare is old hat now and not in need of scientific study for it's efficacy, just political will which is much more expensive and involved than running social experiments.

n72• 10 years ago

I don't mean this flippantly, but perhaps, at least unconsciously, for reputation or glory or whatever. If you just give a chunk of cash to an existing study you don't get, say, glowing articles written about you.

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

They kind of dismiss "other places that do this" by saying they want to see how it'd work in the US

https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income

I had a similar initial question, since I heard once that Germans (?) already have a basic income system in place, though possibly only for the poor ($500/month plus housing or something like that). Though I suppose "that's Germans, not us" or what not.

JoeAltmaier4• 10 years ago

Huh. Last time I looked, Alaska was part of the US.

ThomPete2• 10 years ago

I hope they will be taking the Hawthorne effect into account here.

I am fundamentally a proponent of UBI but the last thing we want are experiments in pseudo environments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

unclesaamm• 10 years ago

This is a huge issue that is very hard to solve at this point. The obvious solution, not telling people about the experiment, is out. It reinforces the skeptics who think of this as a way for YC to brand itself more philanthropically, because from a research perspective it's just expensive, grandiose hogwash.

Edit to say that I too support UBI, and actually helped pass a resolution at my Congressional District's Democratic Party convention in favor of UBI.

ThomPete2• 10 years ago

Yes.

Sounds like we have the same concern despite our support.

The last thing I want is useless data. The hawthorne effect is actually at play in many other situations and is generally an underestimated issue with qualitative research.

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

Right, it's like participants may artificially use the money to "better their lives" only because they personally wish that UBI could become permanent...

sacrilicious• 10 years ago

Is this a minimum so that the 2k number is whatever the net would be, so that people who currently have jobs would have their income supplemented?

I was very interested in Even as a company designed to approach challenges like these. I can't imagine how difficult it is to take on a study like this, I'm rooting for them to be successful and hope they share the resulting data. It should always be close to our thoughts - lack of a living wage causing long commutes from soon-to-be gentrified neighborhoods, all in the shadow of Chomsky's Responsibility of Intellectuals.

grizzles• 10 years ago

I hate to be critical because I love the core idea, and YCRs wonderful corporate generosity. However, this is path dependency in action, in all it's anti-intellectual glory. The only value that will be extracted here is the publicity/marketing value. If they can somehow leverage that into some kind of state or federal government supported largesse, I will happily stand corrected.

But in the absence of that, as scientific experiments go, and dressing it up as such is a waste of money. I'm sure enough people have told them that by now. YCR says it's for figuring out the logistics, which implies some kind of future action. The only problem is if they wanted to do this correctly, this isn't going to be very useful way of figuring out the logistics for eg. people who speak Swahili. See my comment here for more info on why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11812563

I would love to be wrong but I doubt it. The study will no doubt make for interesting reading - if it's published.

stephengillie• 10 years ago

The financial side of the project is definitely...interesting. Another poster pointed out that tax-funded UBI would work like a redistribution of wealth. Almost any other way - funded by Angel/VC donations, Kickstarter, using another tax pool (having Congress pay for it), taking loans or increasing the US Federal debt, or even by pillaging other countries - would still just be a redistribution of wealth.

There is one other way - Expansion of the overall money supply. But this is well-known to result in nearly equivalent inflation. Humans somehow want a certain percentage of all money - not just an arbitrary amount. This percentage may be extremely small for some - 0.0000001% of all money, or less - but when the total number of dollars increases, each person wants an equivalent percentage increase in the total number of dollars they get. This may be Bitcoin or ISK or priceless paintings instead of dollars, or whichever currency of the day.

Has there been a UBI monetary-policy model produced that doesn't invoke large inflation or heavy wealth redistribution?

mathattack• 10 years ago

Great idea. I hope it works. Even if it doesn't work, if it provides experimental data, that will be valuable.

One line I didn't like from the article:

It’s obviously difficult to lift people out of poverty. According to the White House, as of 2012 (decades after President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty"), approximately 15 percent of Americans (or 49.7 million people, including 13.4 million children) live below the poverty line. Worse still, "only about half of low-income Americans make it out of the lowest income distribution quintile over a 20-year period." (As the old saying goes: "It’s expensive to be poor.")

I think this can be very misleading. Is the poverty line a good definition? And if everyone's standard of living rises over 20 years, is it an issue to be in the bottom quintile? I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that it's very shabby statistics. (Maybe I just shouldn't read articles like this)

sjg007• 10 years ago

It might take more than a year... And is this more than the dole? Basic income for me is 100k a year.. So that means starting a startup.

rogerdpack12• 10 years ago

I guess the question they're trying to answer is "will poor people use this as a means to step up" because...for somebody already making 100K/yr I'm not sure how much effect the extra $12 or $15K is going to have, honestly. I mean nicer vacations? a slightly better house? The only real interesting data point to me is for the poor people, does it allow them to "step up". It might, today's US dole just provides at most food and shelter, so perhaps they'll use the money to ... get some education. Of course, if that were the case wouldn't they already be using their yearly "tax refund" to go and get education? Most people don't seem particularly adept at that for some reason...

sandworm101• 10 years ago

Imho any basic income program must be universal. It won't survive if it is seen as handouts to the poor. This both stigmatizes those who receive it and opens the program to abuse. Everyone should receive the income, rich and poor. That ensure that those in power (the rich) take ownership of the program and protect it.

Nor should the income be withdrawn as a form of punishment. If we start picking and choosing then the incentive is always to cut away the least powerful, disenfranchised criminals being the least powerful of all.

YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

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