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For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs.

Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.

Correct link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income. GMI is different.

The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income.

Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there.

The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.

I might agree. However, most people will want basic income as an extra, not as a replacement. I would bet a significant amount on that (i.e. basic income being popular only until poor people figure out what are they going to lose).

The masses don't like taking care of themselves. Not even if they get 'free' money for that.

> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare.

That seems to be a conclusion without any premises, woefully short on data and implicit but imprecise definitions of 'efficient', 'helpful' and 'welfare'.

Guaranteed minimum income is based on need, basic income is based on citizenship.

>Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare.

Is this empirically proven somewhere? Or is that what its proponents are saying? Forgive me if I'm a little cynical when someone tells me an idea they support is a much better form of welfare than what we currently have but doesn't back it up with proof.

> There's a logic problem with Basic Income.

No, there's not. At least, if there is, its not the one you claim.

> They want people to think either: 1- it will help me earn more (because I make less than the BI) 2- it won't change anything for me (because I already make more than the BI)

Who is "they"?

> But obviously, these two assertions can't be true at the same time.

They can both be true if the benefits plus (reduced) admin costs from BI come strictly from the benefits plus (higher) admin costs of the welfare programs it is replacing. (There are people who make less, in the short term, in that scheme, but its only some subset of the people who are making money from the admin costs of the replaced programs.)

They can't if you set BI at a level that requires more money than that, or if you do it without replacing any existing programs, but neither of those is inherent in the concept of BI (and the latter, at least, I've never seen proposed.)

Basic income doesn't inherently require taxes to increase, especially if you measure it as taxes paid less government benefits received. You're thinking of things in class warfare terms -- someone else gets more money from the government therefore I get less or pay more. Any program that works on that principle is just redistribution of wealth, or naked corruption.

The benefit of a basic income is that it changes incentives. In the existing system you lose government benefits if you take a job, so if the only job you can get pays low wages you have a significantly reduced incentive to seek employment. Higher unemployment means lower tax revenues, lower economic growth, etc. Fighting that is why a basic income is superior to means tested government assistance.

You're assuming that all that matters is the amount someone earns. If people care about more than just their on-paper income, then they can think:

1: it won't change my income now, but will save me from having to jump through ridiculous, demeaning and counter-productive requirements added to the current welfare program in an attempt to punish "undeserving" receipients.

2: it won't change my income now, but will provide a nice safety net in case I become unemployed for any reason.

> A healthy and minimally secure citizenry can be a public good just as much as roads and armies, which are also paid by taxes.

As a very narrow and specific (and not necessarily the most important) example of this, in any nation which may rely on conscription and/or mobilization of volunteer citizen militias in time of need, a healthy and minimally secure citizenry is, among other public goods, directly related to military capacity.

That's exactly what he wanted to emphasize.

People think government has some magical, limitless supply of money available to them, when in reality, it's mostly just money that's forcefully confiscated from everyone.

In other words, basic income is a zero-sum game, but not without its consequences. It's alright not to go into printing or loaning money here, both of those lead to ruin too.

How high would tax rates have to be, to collect enough money for basic income? How many businesses would just shut down or get the fuck out, leaving that much fewer businesses in the country to shoulder the burden? That's a feedback loop right there. The remaining businesses would be just that much more likely to get out too, and then the next remaining, and so on.

The idea of basic income is not rooted in reality, but entitlement and the need for "security", no matter how illusory it might be.

> Especially because we can afford it.

You mean you can afford it. How do you know if I can afford it? By necessity, to implement this, you've got to take money from people and give it to other people.

Your assumption is that by rights any one in the category of those losing money, is making so much that they lack any moral claim to it.

FYI, for the States at least, $2000/mo is too high. It always strikes me... I don't think people who make good money often understand just how poor most people really are. The lower 50% of U.S. tax payers only average around $15,000/yr. If I were to guess, approx. 50% of the poverty level would make a good peg. I also think parent should get additional allowances for no more than two children.

That said, the system has a tendency to balance itself (the marvels of free-market capitalism when allowed to work properly) so no mater how much was granted per month, the system could self-adjust. Unfortunately there are so many entrenched interest gumming up the works these days, I'm not sure anything about the markets are really working "freely" as they should.

This is the answer that made most sense to me - I'll attempt to paraphrase;

The net benefit of basic income for an individual tends to zero (percent) as the individual's income rises.

If I were thinking for myself I would support this idea and then go on basic income for life, I can live with very little, so why not?

Hence you post it to HN, who have all obviously signed the initiative? Sorry, but that seems like a missed opportunity.

sorry, price inflation. Supply and demand.

As I understand it, the QE strategy is for the central bank to buy bonds. Bonds become overbought, so investors shift to stocks and shares, lifting the stock market. Investors benefit, as do companies seeking to raise funds through share issues, but uninvested consumers do not. As a result, the stock market goes up, and borrowing costs for companies go down, but the "Real" economy stagnates. Companies can borrow easily to fund expansion, but have no real market to sell into, because the stock market is disconnected from the underlying "main street" economy. Basic income provides another mechanism for Keynesian reflation, but targets the "real" economy rather than the stock market, so stimulates actual demand, rather than pumping up the bubble. Of course, inflation is a massive risk with both of these strategies ... and may happen more directly and more quickly with the basic income strategy rather than with QE ... so on second thoughts ... it might not be too great an idea.