An idea on it's own, is just an idea - without a really good execution / team behind it - it has little to no value.

Only once a good idea has been executed really well, by a good team - does that idea suddenly have value. Generally the 'proportional' effort of actually executing the idea (in time / money / resources) - compared to the effort in generating the 'idea' - makes just having the 'idea' cheap.

This is not to say all ideas should be valued equally - there are both good ideas and bad ideas, but no idea will provide value (or have much worth) without it being executed really well.

(Hence someone can think of something like 'uber' or 'facebook' - relatively simple concepts to conceive as an idea - but without huge efforts in execution - they would not have become as valuable as they are).

What I mostly notice is that people who have never tried to execute an idea (or don't even know where to start) - are the ones who generally value ideas the highest. e.g. someone may say 'I have an amazing idea, but I won't tell anyone in case they steal it'... or someone else may say something like 'I had the idea for facebook before facebook existed'.

In both of these examples - the person has valued their 'idea' as much as the end execution.

A truly good ideas is valuable in the same way that great team is valuable before they start working. No one says a team of world class developers is worthless before they start on a project and we should take the same approach to world class ideas. Bring them together and you have enormous value.

His tone is aggressive and completely self centred - imagine trying to have a meeting with him where he sticks stubbornly to his opinion, refusing to listen to other opinions and potentially throws tantrums whenever he doesn't get his own way.

Secondly, the fact he refuses to pair program with a developer on the existing code base ' to see how he works within a team / on code - suggests that he probably would equally be unlikely to do anything outside of what he is technically being paid for.

I'm not saying anyone should work for free, but sometimes you have to help out, whether it's working a bit later or helping during a crunch time. He comes across like he only would want to work on things that interest him, during the hours he's paid and then be out the door.

I think the company that was hiring did a good job of filtering him out.

All programmers expect (or should expect) to have some demonstration somehow/somewhere. OP offered to demonstrate his skills but the hiring person was locked into their way of doing things (our code, our way, your time). The problem with this particular company is that they expected a whole day (or that's how he paints it at least).

I know the start up way is to push for more, but if you are hiring a person to make sure they stay late and work unpaid time, you have a manpower problem, it isn't a problem with the individual.

The real problem is that companies far past the start up stage continue with this belief that it is the employees responsibility to work late for the companies mistakes, and yet when it comes to raise time try to fit you into a rigid and small benefits/pay increase. If there is supposed to be a give and take, where's the give?

"Technically" being paid for? There is absolutely no reason for anyone to do any commercial work unless being paid for. People are not slaves, they have their own lives and their own free time to do the stuff they want to do. To expect from anyone to work for free and complain when they refuse to is outrageous.

> I'm not saying anyone should work for free, but sometimes you have to help out, whether it's working a bit later or helping during a crunch time.

Yes, in fact that's exactly what you're saying--people should work for free. You're just calling it "helping out". The employee is not there to "help" you (do what? get rich?), they are there to do the job they're contractually being paid to do. If you need more work to be done, then arrange so. If you need free "helping out" feel free to call in your friends and family.

Part of being a developer is there's going to be some crap I can't shield you from as your manager, despite my best intentions. If I think you are going to suddenly turn barrack-room lawyer on me, or tell me it's not part of your job, or anything other than deal with it professionally and helpfully, you're a poor team fit.

And if you understand so little about how programming teams work, and think that you are going to - with no context of the codebase or problem space - significantly improve my Senior Developer's work such that you're worth your contracting day-rate for the interview (and are paranoid to think that the interview is a big scam to get you to work for free) ... you're probably delusional.

It didn't sound like the company was looking for the interviewee to improve on the Senior Developer's work, it sounded like they wanted the interviewee to develop new features for deployment in a pair with the lead developer. Not the same thing IMO.

Maybe the company wasn't trying to concoct a grand scam, but there are certainly companies out there that would think nothing of doing so. And even if the whole 'write some deployable features' for us exercise was not devised as a scam, it doesn't change the fact that it is a bit unreasonable to ask a job candidate to spend a day writing code for you.

The guy even offered to write code for an open source project but the interviewer refused. What does that say about the company?

Anyway, I think attitude plays a really important role here. A candidate might be able to recite Linux Kernel code by heart, but if he doesn't show commitment or a bit of flexibility, I would never get him on my team. I'm not talking here about an 8 hour long test run. I bet the guy could have negotiated it to 4 hours or something. I gave away 8 hours of trial work once (+ 3 hours spent talking to managers during the other stages) and I never felt bad about it. I really don't get what the problem is here, I was always really eager to show what I can and to impress. It's all about being competitive. We're not pealing potatoes, we're writing code. Show some passion for Christ's sake. Or find a job that makes you happy even when you're not getting paid. That's the kind of job you'd like to keep for the rest of your life.

> Secondly, the fact he refuses to pair program with a developer on the existing code base ' to see how he works within a team / on code - suggests that he probably would equally be unlikely to do anything outside of what he is technically being paid for.

I don't think that is the case at all, the guy offered to do some work on some open source code and the interviewer refused. It's not that he wasn't willing to pair program, he was unwilling to produce a day's worth of deployable code for free.

Programming is skilled labor, and doing skilled labor for free for a commercial interest devalues the profession. It's one thing for there to be occassional spikes in working hours, it's another thing to start out a relationship with the attitude of, 'You will do work that is valuable to me, but you will only get the chance of working for me in return'. That's what clueless people looking for programmers on Craigslist do.

Flip the situation around. Let's say the interviewee asked the company to provide a developer to spend a day developing an open source feature so he[the interviewee] could see the company's coding practices in action. What company would agree to that? Especially for multiple interviewees?

The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.

On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.

Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.

This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.

TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.

The real key is to be original. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.

Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.

I always wanted just 1 (still do), but back in 2010 I was just going to spend £100 and see what happens. It seems in the US the people who did similar to what I wanted to do in varying forms made good profits (and had an interesting ride).

This is different from 'speculating' (e.g. 'oh I wish I had actually bought some') - I had full intent and wanted to buy them, but just the barrier to entry due to UK regulations were very high. I even tried to arrange peer to peer transactions through reddit or in person but they also seemed difficult. Most people I ever met in person who had any didn't want to sell due to the belief of the ever increasing price.

Of course I managed to be highly ineffective at making the most of the bitcoins I had. I think I probably had about 10 bitcoins in my posession at one point, and I probably realised about £150 of real gain out of them. Hindsight is wonderful!

Edit: I should add that I opened my MtGox account a few years ago, before there was any requirement for ID or verification. I think the whole process has become a lot harder since.

They seem to like the fact it separates them from the US dollar, as well as allowing Chinese residents more control over their money and a potential store of wealth comparable to gold (although far more volatile).

Of course I still believe this is unsustainable, but in a strange form this is a wealth rebalancing act on a global scale... the rich Chinese giving money to the US citizens.

As long as the rest of the world doesn't go bitcoin mad and let the Chinese cash out again, then if it ever pops there will be a lot of wealth lost in China.

[1]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-27/bitcoin-surges-to-1...

Both China and the US government have given BitCoin a tacit (and not-so-tacit) endorsement, China with a pro-BitCoin documentary on state television, and the US with Senate hearings that appeared to suggest the US is not going to move to outlaw it but rather regulate it. I do not see the US government giving its citizens the impression that using BitCoin would be legitimate and then going back on that suggestion - there would be too many vested interests, with a lot to lose, and they would not be cool with that.

The Chinese government is more powerful than the US government, however. There is a chance that they could see their citizens pour their savings into BitCoin and still move for a regulatory crackdown. I'm still concerned that they will believe BitCoin is getting out of control and their ability to control the funds exiting and entering the country through BitCoin is diminished.

The bottom line: the more countries that start using BitCoin, that more stable it will become, the less a single country's regulatory action will impact the price.

https://bitbargain.co.uk/

edit: prices don't seem as good as they used to be though.

If there was a way to pay cash and get bitcoins, I'd have done it years ago.

In the current system, you can go stay at home and get income support, which should provide you with the basics i.e. a home, food, electricity etc. If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working.

[Note the 'should' and 'hopefully' - This system may not always work, but when it doesn't it's generally a fault with wages paid not being sufficient rather than the benefits system being broken]

This therefore means there is an incentive to go work. There is also control, to make sure the money the unemployed person is getting is mostly spent on the basics (such as housing, rather than say drugs).

The problem with suddenly giving everyone a minimum amount of money, is that due to everyone now 'at least' having that amount of money at hand, this becomes the new 'bottom' of the market. If I get a job, I earn money on top of this basic amount, which means I can afford nice things and the person unemployed still can't afford anything.

To clarify, this works similar to pricing of items in different markets. A beer in the UK is ~£3.50 (£5 in London), a beer in Vietnam is about 14 pence. Both costs are fairly relative to what they would have to pay their work force to produce the item (plus cover costs and make a profit) and what the local market can afford to pay.

If let's hypothetically say, you gave everyone in Vietnam this basic wage, the cost of beer would not remain at 14 pence. The first reason is because the work force would find their existing pay negligible compared to the basic pay (so wages would have to rise to be incentive to work on top of basic pay) which would in turn cause cost of manufacturing to rise, but also the market would realise with this extra money available - the price could be set higher and would rise accordingly.

Now back in the UK if this was to occur, you would have slight price rises due to these factors which would in affect move the poverty line up higher, which would mean the people at the bottom are still poor relatively.

What's worse is that assuming the people who are unemployed are given the choice on how that money is spent, they may in fact not spend the money sensibly (i.e. on their housing) and end up homeless instead.

The final problem with this model is that the cost of living and economic output is not evenly distributed throughout a country. £1750 a month in northern England may give you a fantastic lifestyle, where as in London you'd barely cover your rent. (What happens to the unemployed in London in a fixed give everyone a basic income situation? They have to leave London and move where they can afford, which then makes it potentially harder to find a job and splits the country into two halves, the elite / the poor).

> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working.

Staying home and not working today is not actually an option in most places in the world. The reason is why this new model is called unconditional basic income. The current system called income support is conditional.

And market forces love the fact that its conditional, since it allows exploitation. If income support is for example conditional on the unemployed not having received a job offering, then the market can exploit this fact and offer people jobs for below income support (or what ever is minimum). Unemployed people can not say no, or they loose the government income support, and thus become forced to accept a slave job or loose all income.

unconditional basic income would eliminate this issue from the board, and increase wages for unattractive jobs.

Inflation should also not be effected by much. The total amount of money in society is still the same finite amount as before. There is no "extra money available", only a different form of distribution. There is a larger group with money to spend on products, which drives prices both up (more demand), but also down (more incentives for large scale production). It also makes money change hands more often, and is often attributed as the reason why a income support system do not actually drive prices or wages down.

Nobody today wants to accept an income below what you need to survive because..you need to survive. Liberals don't want to see other people accepting an income below what is needed for them to survive in a way that we can accept, so pass rules about a minimum wage.

With this proposal, there is wage that it too low. As long as you make enough to afford something nice that you want that you couldn't otherwise afford, there is no reason not to take the job. Therefore at the low end, employers can pay LESS than they do now.

What it does instead is remove perverse incentives that make poor people receive less money for working than not working. The classic example being a single mom who, while working, and paying child care, makes less than on welfare. (Incentives that we've responded to by passing rules forcing poor people to take the otherwise irrational work option.)

This is silly. If that were the motivation, then minimum wage would be a few dollars/day.

Here is a list of countries by GDP per capita, after adjusting for purchasing power. Lots of countries (e.g. Venezuela, Georgia, India) have a GDP/capita below the US minimum wage. The world GDP/capita is below the US minimum wage. Yet somehow people in those countries still survive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...

As long as you make enough to afford something nice that you want that you couldn't otherwise afford, there is no reason not to take the job.

Sure there is - you might value that nice thing less than you value watching tv instead of working.

Liberals don't want to see other people accepting an income below what is needed for them to survive in a way that we can accept, so pass rules about a minimum wage.

The key points being that liberals don't want to see it (they don't see other countries), and it is the liberals defining what seems acceptable.

As for your "after adjusting for purchasing power" comment, you know enough economics to know that such adjustments depend on the bundles of goods being purchased, and the poor purchase different bundles than middle class people would. (The same problem means that the quoted inflation figures do not accurately predict the experience of specific socioeconomic groups.) Thus the figures should be taken with a grain of salt.

But that said, yes, people survive on that. But do liberals like seeing them do that? I submit that liberals don't, and this is the motivation for the minimum wage. (See the sibling reply to yours for verification.)

As for watching TV versus working, I'm sure that would happen. I know some of those people. I also know people who would happily work for less than minimum wage just to get out of the house.

It can be worse that this.

At least in some states, every dollar you earn is deducted (at least in part) from your welfare checks. This was at least the case a while ago; I couldn't vouch for its truth today after welfare has been "reformed" several times. It was definitely true at one time, though.

When this was true, at the very least, it was a severe disincentive to working, since until you were able to make more than your welfare check, you would be at best be making pennies on the dollar by taking a job.

Or at least, every now and then, there's an article in various European news articles that someone pulled that crap. (Most Euro countries will give a monthly stipend of ~100 euro per child you have, no questions asked (in Belgium you have to work to get it, I believe, but no other qualifications. A bank director gets it, and so does the cleaning lady))

Welfare also scales payments based on the number of kids you have. This is a common (and almost certainly apocryphal) accusation against people currently on welfare; if it's ever true, it's an exception and not the rule. (which is why it would be news)

What is true is that the vast majority of people want to feel useful -- and (at least when the women in question are even moderately educated) they don't want to have extra children just to have a higher stipend.

Likewise, a mother who goes to work and spends her whole paycheck on child care increases GDP, but if she just stays home and cares for the child herself, it doesn't count because it's not a business transaction.

Showering money to everybody is very likely to make more harm than good to real people's economies. A transition to Friedman's proposal on a "moderate" negative income tax (it's not what the name suggests) makes a lot more sense than this. Although I'd just give conditional help as it's done in many European countries with a reasonable degree of success.

In the minds of most people it's more of a "you will not go hungry or get cold in the winter" level of support, and I would make the argument that the majority of folks would continue to work to supplement their income beyond the bare necessities.

It depends on your base axioms here. Most people don't like living with the bare minimum, and will try to work their way out of it. Most people aren't stuck at the bottom of the income range by choice.

Think of the entrepreneurial venues now open to people who no longer have to juggle two shitty jobs just to get by. I think we'd come along way towards reducing human misery without really harming the economy - with the exception of making jobs that are shitty for no good reason obsolete.

My take is that capitalism is corrupted because people are unable to meet basic needs. We pretend that capitalism is a system where everyone is able to make informed decisions. We pretend that in capitalism, a 10% chance of making $1M a year in income has the same value as a 100% chance of making $100k a year. This is just not the case.

People have two different types of risk they can take. Income risk, and personal risk. Personal risk is your shelter, your food, your health, your family. Income risk is your expected income beyond what is needed to meet those basic needs.

If your personal risk is covered for some reason, then you are able to objectively evaluate income risk. But if your personal risk is not covered, you have to be more conservative. The downside is not that you might not make as much, it's that you might lose your home, health, or starve. You can't be logical about that.

If we have a system where personal risk is largely covered, then the free market will actually pay people what they are worth because people will feel free to actually take risks and (for instance) start companies and pursue their passions.

This is some stuff I wrote on it a while back, it's better written than what I put here.

http://neltnerb.tumblr.com/post/58818804903/an-entrepreneurs...

And that's the essential fallacy: You cannot control the prices of goods and services in the market.

Once you provide a basic income to everybody, that will create a scenario wherein the majority of people benefit from the income inversely proportionally to their level of other income. This is the intended effect: The poor benefit the most and the upper-class are largely unaffected. So it's a good idea, right? Not exactly: What are the poor going to spend their income on? Primarily food, housing -- the "not going hungry or cold" things. So they've got more money to go out and buy food and they will. And the lower-middle-class who make a bit more than that will now have enough money to buy more food and better housing and they will. And the middle-middle class have a little extra money to spend as they wish and they will. And so on. But the majority of that money will be spent. With more free cash to go around, prices will rise to capture the additional profits. When prices go up we have inflation and now the poor are back to not being able to afford food and shelter and the lower-middle-class are back to living hand-to-mouth and so forth. The market compensates for the additional influx of cash by providing opportunities to soak it up, so it doesn't wind up helping anyone in the long run.

Well we'll just peg it to the rate of inflation and the problem will be solved, right? Again -- it's not that simple.

See, only one in three Americans is working. If we determine that each American needs about $500 per month to "not go hungry or cold" then that means the average American will have to pay $1,500 in additional taxes. We'll burden the upper class with the majority of those taxes, of course, but this isn't good for the middle class either. The upper-middle-class winds up being saddled with enough additional tax burden that they join the middle-middle class. And the middle-middle class who were previously getting along fine on a household income of $50,000 just joined the lower-middle class because even with the added income they have to pay more for the basics: food and shelter because of the additional inflation.

So now we're saddled with a shrinking middle class, (sound familiar?) nobody being able to afford any more than they were before and the rich continue to remain largely unaffected by all of this. In the end it accomplishes the exact opposite of what you set out to do.

Some instances here:

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

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

That article contains a lot more information than most articles about stipends. Note that the US Earned Income Credit is a negative income tax, yet it doesn't seem to even make a blip on anyone's radar as communism.

Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life.

With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your quality of life, since the benefits are always there, so there is actually more incentive to work.

For a long time inflation, house prices and general costs have beat basic wage increases - leaving many working for less money relatively than they would've got years ago. Meanwhile, the big corporations report yet ever greater profits and the CEO's take ever higher multiples of basic salary in bonuses each year.

The system is broken, but the equality of pay and living standards is not to blame with the government, it's to blame with greedy corporations, share holders insisting they need to do anything for profit and wages being pinned down to the minimum they can be that the work force will stand for (to maximise profits).

If corporation pay was fairer (like it used to be) where perhaps a CEO only makes 10 times the basic workers salary, rather than 100 or 1000 times the basic workers salary, then the wealth from the corporation output would be shared more evenly and the problem would be solved (for people in work).

Not to mention corporations which don't pay tax causing governments to lose out on a lot of tax revenue which would in turn pay to support the poor!

Let me ask you something... If you start a new business, and let's say you take out a huge loan to pay your startup expenses, and you have a huge pool of qualified workers fighting to work for you for 10 dollars per hour, are you going to pay them any more? Knowing full well that that's a shitty wage, but that if you pay them any more you might go out of business and have a huge debt burden... Or do you pay them 20 dollars per hour out of generosity, and risk going bankrupt, with repercussions that could follow you for years?

It's easy to blame corporations, but remember, there's more players in the job market, including many struggling small businesses... Furthermore, large corporations have gone out of business, and when they fail entire towns and cities can become destitute (look at Detroit).

Corporations pay market value for wages, to increase wages you need to either increase the number of jobs, or decrease the number of workers.

However, as a side of effect of this, it also means businesses want to become more efficient, reduce costs and maximise profitability - your share holders are expecting good returns and that's just the way the world works!

However, according to this http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-ratio-average-worker/ The CEO is currently getting around 241 times the average salary!

Let's say the CEO takes $9.6 million and the average worker gets $40,000...

This income divide is causing the problem, as the prices will move up in line with the wealth the CEO has just got (along with the workers obviously), but to the average worker, they're not really being paid much more (or any more at all) to counter act the inflation.

If you go back to that graph in 1980 where the CEO only made 35 times the amount of the average worker and redistributed more of the profit to the employees, let's say average employee now gets $55,000 and the CEO gets $2,000,000 then the prices remain more affordable relative to the money in the market and the wealth has been distributed more evenly.

Note this is with the assumption the corporation still made the same profit whichever way it was divided.

The top 1% of wealth is greater than the other 80% of wealth combined in the USA and it's this greed that is causing the divide, rise in prices and rise in poverty line compared to the 'average salary'.

http://chiefexecutive.net/how-much-does-the-average-ceo-real...

http://www.equilar.com/ceo-compensation/new-york-times-top-1...

To a large degree the market value for wages is such only because of a government subsidy to the employers. Take Wal-Mart for example, they go as far as helping their employees enroll in all sorts of government poverty programs because even though they are full-time workers they still qualify for SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid and other similar programs.

Wal-Mart, McDonalds and other similar large low-wage paying corporations should not be able to use government welfare in what effectively part of their compensation to employees.

Think about what would happen if they weren't able to do this. Prices would go up and who would this hurt the most? Their customers. Who are their customers, generally? Poor people.

This calculus does not apply at all to the companies currently turning record profits. That's not to say that there's necessarily no important reason those companies should be choosing to keep their profits high as opposed to paying out higher salaries, but this manifestly isn't it.

Sure it does. The only difference between a small business and a big one is size and scale of the problems.

It's just like a small business owner keeping a healthy balance for potential rainy days ahead instead of giving everyone a giant bonus every year.

In any case, that assessment, valid or not, doesn't provide a solution.

Did you consider the fact that salaries WILL be lowered to compensate for BI ?

If BI is 1000, that 1200 paying job will become a 200 paying job... I just can't see where's the incentive to work. Who wants a 200 paying job when you get paid 1000 for just breathing ?

Because why would they?

You've got it backwards. The incentive is not to work, the incentive is for employers to offer market value for their wages. When people have the power to choose not to work, the market will have to adapt. If nobody wants a 200 paying job, the pay will have to go up.

The current system we have forces people to work unfair wages just to support themselves. Basic income will make it a competitive, voluntary labour market.

How much should a garbage man get paid? Arguably (to me) more than many other professions. The free market for labor is badly broken, and I think that a guaranteed income will help (although not perfectly). Besides, I for one think that giving people the freedom to raise their kids for a while, or do art, or start a company, is more valuable to society than having them work a very likely unnecessary job just because we incentivize working over value generation.

"the incentive is for employers to offer market value for their wages" You might put pressure on employers, for sure -> more unemployment. Maybe wages will go north. Then inflation.. then BI will have to increase too.

It's the first time I read that BI might cause wages to increase. Most advocates say "it will not change anything for you" if you already have a job :-)

Lastly, keep in mind that workers ARE the ones who will support the cost of BI. Not employers, not the government... Only workers.

So you'd better not increase unemployment :-) or the cost of work will raise a lot

Or wages would raise, prices would raise (inflation), then BI would not anymore afford a minimal standard of living.

Or both: unemployment would raise, wages would raise, prices would raise, taxes would raise.. companies would go bankrupt or relocate, and most people on BI would be poor.

That's what makes it equitable.

- There are now more people spending money because they have disposable income. This is good for businesses.

- There is added incentive to work, because one does not lose income by starting a job.

- The people being made redundant by automation are given a cushion that will help as they figure out how to become economically relevant again. This is good for everyone, because there are fewer families forced out onto the streets, etc.

- There is, potentially, less of a bureaucracy to manage the distribution of existing welfare programs, assuming existing programs can be consolidated into the new basic income scheme. This is an attractive point for conservatives and libertarians.

There's no need for equitability here, although that's also something that is desirable within bounds. But I think few millionaires and billionaires will find a significant decrease in their standard of living if they have to pay more into the pot than they receive. Also keep in mind that the billionaires are billionaires because society provides a framework for them to accumulate and retain the capital that they have; for this reason they have an implicit debt and obligation to society.

With a scheme like this, one would replace a system full of loopholes (for the rich) and handouts (for the poor) with a simple flat system.

Everybody gets $x/yr, and everybody pays y% in taxes on all income after that (not just earned income). No deductions, no credits, no loopholes, no welfare state (other than the UBI).

What's somewhat clever about this is how it essentially balances out. The billionaire won't even notice the extra amount in their bank account, but there aren't many billionaires. Meanwhile the three jobs four kids single mom will be greatly impacted by this, which is the whole point.

I once calculated, based on what amounts to a back-of-the-napkin calculation based on a flat tax, that the inflection point would be somewhere in the $60-70k range for Canada. The US would be a bit higher due to the greater income inequality.

Yeah, that would be terrible. How could one survive?

_That_ is the sort of thing that could go away with a guaranteed basic income. At that point, you'd just have taxes, which do in fact behave as you describe.

And there are some programs that don't have marginal phaseouts. Each one is trifilingly small, but they may add up.

All sane countries with progressive taxation always apply the higher tax bracket only to the part of the salary that is in the bracket.

E.g. if the tax is 10% < $50k and 25% >= $50k, a $60k salary would have to pay 10% * $50k + 25% * $10k in taxes, and all wage increases increase net pay.

You don't understand how progressive taxes actually work. This simply doesn't happen. You can't make less money by making more money.

Or if you prefer to tax sales, with Z being the total amount of sales, priceX/Z. X/Z is the VAT rate.

Yes and no. It's not an incentive to get a 10hr/week part-time job, for example, because you'd lose your benefits and so get paid less overall. Even making the transition can be difficult - most jobs won't pay you until the end of the month, but your benefits will be cut off at the start. How long does it take to save up a month's expenditures while on benefits?

> There is also control, to make sure the money the unemployed person is getting is mostly spent on the basics (such as housing, rather than say drugs). > What's worse is that assuming the people who are unemployed are given the choice on how that money is spent, they may in fact not spend the money sensibly (i.e. on their housing) and end up homeless instead.

Sure. But the evidence is that just giving people money works better on average than requiring them to jump through hoops.

> The problem with suddenly giving everyone a minimum amount of money, is that due to everyone now 'at least' having that amount of money at hand, this becomes the new 'bottom' of the market. If I get a job, I earn money on top of this basic amount, which means I can afford nice things and the person unemployed still can't afford anything.

You can't have it both ways. Either employed people get more money than unemployed, which provides an incentive to go work, or they don't, which doesn't.

It's not like people with more money are going to start consuming twice as much food. The unemployed should be able to afford basic necessities; the employed will find it easier to buy luxuries, which is as it should be.

2. Perhaps, although if they do something stupid with that money, they still need supporting - so you either let people go homeless / starve or help them (which creates a new layer of welfare)

3. I'm not saying twice the food would be consumed, I'm saying prices would rise accordingly which would mean consuming the same amount of food costs more than it does now. The goal posts will just be moved and the poverty line will be above the basic minimum everyone gets paid.

Maybe. Even giving people food isn't reliable - some people will sell it for drugs. Sure, we'd probably still need some kind of emergency welfare system for those circumstances, but drastically reducing the size and complexity of the welfare system is a win, even if we don't eliminate it entirely.

> The goal posts will just be moved and the poverty line will be above the basic minimum everyone gets paid.

The point isn't to make the unemployed any better off than they are now. The point is to make the working poor better off, incentivize work more than it is presently, and reduce the overheads of the welfare system.

An unconditional basic income should include enough money to pay health insurance yourself.

Really? How that explains millions of homeless, poors eating in soul kitchens and/or with coupons, etc?

I guess I just don't understand their definition of liberty.

Now, I am not sure whether this is a high enough level of benefits or too high - but I don't think it's laughably low

I think poor is a relative term and I dont think America has as many as lets say Central or South America. I dont see people living in shacks sifting through landfills to make ends meet.

Do these people currently get incapacity benefit, income support, employment and support allowance, etc, coupled with housing benefit and council tax benefit?

Some of those benefits require people to go to an office and demonstrate willingness to work. So, these people who have no intention of getting a job sap the time and energy of advisors who could be helping people who do want to work.

> What's worse is that assuming the people who are unemployed are given the choice on how that money is spent, they may in fact not spend the money sensibly (i.e. on their housing) and end up homeless instead.

Currently, people can become "intentionally homeless". Didn't pay your rent and got evicted? Tough, you don't get social housing. If you're lucky (or you have unlucky children) you may get some emergency accommodation.

It's very tough to get council / housing association housing in the UK. Some places have a waiting list of 26 years. (twenty six years, so you know this isn't a typo.) And that's of the people who are eligible to go on the list - including everyone who thinks they're eligible makes the wait even worse.

That is assuming you know which benefits you are entitled for and how to claim them. Most of those benefits you can't apply retroactively. And you can't have someone else claim them on your behalf (for obvious reasons). There is a lot of useless and intrusive bureaucracy saved when you just pay everyone £X.

If you give every person in Vietnam $1, then the poor people have a relatively higher percentage of all the money to spend than they had before. Hence the percentage of all goods and services going to the poor will also be a higher percentage of the total goods and services. This becomes even more apparent if you exaggerate the amount. What if you give all people on earth $1 trillion dollars? Now everyone is basically equally rich. Even though prices will rise massively, the total supply of goods and services going to the people who were previously poor increases a lot. (of course in practice such a massive basic income may completely destabilize a society)

What is different is that it frees you from the worry that you need to eat and have an abode. And the hope is that this comfort will make you engage in work you really want to do, rather then turn you into a couch potato.

I fear that for every person doing something meaningful with the freedom given to them via basic income, there'll be 10 or 20 who become couch poatoes or worse, self-destruct (booze, drugs, gambling) out of boredom.

Do you realize what you're saying here? That people should be forced into wage slavery to keep them from becoming lazy or alcoholic or drug addicts. That's an incredibly regressive position to take.

Basic income should be given to all. This gives everyone more freedom. If people have mental health problems including substance abuse, they should be given treatment.

Throughout the history of human civilizations we have stood on the shoulders of giants. We have built ourselves up from nothing and all of that progress has been measured by our ability to reduce our dependence on a subsistence lifestyle, freeing people to innovate and create great works of cultural or artistic importance. Now we are finally nearing the end of this long road. We are finally approaching complete freedom from labour as a survival necessity. And now people are complaining that this is a bad thing?

No. People should be forced to do something useful, because the goods don't come out of the blue. This is not the same as "wage slavery".

Edit: I am alluding to the fact that we are way past full employment.

Well there's your problem, fear is not the proper state of mind with which to make good decisions.

I also suspect that a lot of these guys have been trained for manual work that is, regardless of basic income, being moved overseas and automated. The work is going/gone.

Edit: Also, I would highly respect any manual labourer who would stay in their job even though they were sure of their income. I think that is a useful currency too.

For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.

Yes, you would now be free to work on your projects from your own home, but you would now not live where you want, with the people you are friends with, in an area which would be full of people who also are only taking the basic wage and probably a pretty horrible place.

The on paper calculations of the affect of this is like a snapshot of some code, before you press run. In the first state it is in, it would be fine, but the economic effects from this over the long term both in social and financial terms would be profound.

If you say, everyone in London will need a job, then you are then moving the poor / unemployed on mass out of the city. On paper this may look great, but for social-economic reasons this is a disaster.

You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.

The further London moves away from the UK, the more are cities like Brighton, Cambridge etc. looking more attractive. More attractive to people willing to live in a more mixed area too.

BTW,

>You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.

This is already happening/has already happened, unfortunately.

Some models call for a universal income which takes location inconsideration. The income would be higher in London, for example. That's a pretty controversial model, though.

In any monopoly/duoploy/oligopoly/cartel-ish environment in which prices are determined by limited supply and therefore buyers ability to pay (seller gets the economic profit) makes buyer side cash infusion useless.

Why wouldn't that happen everywhere?

If we assume people prefer to live in a major city, and incomes are adjusted so that your income matches your cost of living, there is no downside to living there. That puts upward pressure on an area that is probably already maxed out for living space, which causes people to pay a little bit more in order to secure a place to live. Then, your income rises to offset your new costs of living there, providing the money necessary to allow someone to pay just a little bit more than you, thus beginning the cycle.

Outside of the city you would find a low demand and high supply of housing under such a scenario, and thus there would be no fuel to ignite a race to out-pay each other to find a place to rent. In fact, there you could probably convince the owner to accept a little bit less for rent as few people are interested in the place at all. If your offer is not accepted, it might sit vacant.

In any case, the problem is that we're on the verge of having roboticized (and computerized) everything. Already, most of the jobs are useless jobs. And for the remaining productive jobs, they could also me automatized a lot more than they are if the organizations performing them hadn't wrong incentives that make them perform them in silly and inefficient ways.

Income support is about £71 week (25 and over, or lone parent). That's £307.66 PCM.

Assuming water, gas and electric are around £100/month, you now have £48/week.

If you have to pay the "spare" bedroom "tax (average £16) £32/week is now your budget for travel, food and clothing.

And this is not a contrived example! It's barely even survival with the changes that the Tories have implemented.

I wouldn't call £71/week being provided with the basics.

> The thing I genuinely don't understand regarding the basic income for all argument is that surely it just moves the goal posts rather than solves the problem at hand?

I agree, but I see it as a good first step towards getting rid of the plague that is (savage) capitalism.

> In the current system, you can go stay at home and get income support, which should provide you with the basics i.e. a home, food, electricity etc. If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working.

The problem is that a lot of minimum wage employees are treated with minimum respect since they really are forced to be there. This way of thinking makes everyone miserable by not considering the quality of life of those concerned. And I'm just talking about "not being verbally abused" here basically, not even "have a nice kitchen". And there aren't enough public employees to ensure people don't get treated like shit.

> This therefore means there is an incentive to go work. There is also control, to make sure the money the unemployed person is getting is mostly spent on the basics (such as housing, rather than say drugs).

See, I disagree that the state should have such moral authority. But more to the point, this provides an incentive to the state to disregard basic needs (thereby reducing "needed" money) and pretend everyone has the same basic needs (thereby giving more people an arbitrary minimum). Also, people are still currently buying drugs/alcohol with their state money, because at the end of the day addiction will often win over food, and that's not a problem you solve by giving people less money (who will only starve more and/or commit more crimes).

> The problem with suddenly giving everyone a minimum amount of money, is that due to everyone now 'at least' having that amount of money at hand, this becomes the new 'bottom' of the market. If I get a job, I earn money on top of this basic amount, which means I can afford nice things and the person unemployed still can't afford anything.

That's on purpose. That's why it's not a communist scheme. But don't forget that food and house prices are/can be mostly controlled by the state, so it can make sure that everyone gets the real basics (as it already tries to do).

> If let's hypothetically say, you gave everyone in Vietnam this basic wage, the cost of beer would not remain at 14 pence. The first reason is because the work force would find their existing pay negligible compared to the basic pay (so wages would have to rise to be incentive to work on top of basic pay) which would in turn cause cost of manufacturing to rise, but also the market would realise with this extra money available - the price could be set higher and would rise accordingly.

That's also on purpose. One of the points is that everyone gets to be treated in a non-shitty manner, which means everything is going to cost more to produce, which means the middle class and above will be poorer on average, all things considered. I count that as a good thing (reducing income gap). However we're not talking about Vietnam (or China or Taiwan), because the powers that be would not allow the world factories to fuck up their way of life. This program only makes sense in first world countries, if we're aiming for things staying the same.

> Now back in the UK if this was to occur, you would have slight price rises due to these factors which would in affect move the poverty line up higher, which would mean the people at the bottom are still poor relatively.

Right. But more people would be able to not work under terrible conditions.

> What's worse is that assuming the people who are unemployed are given the choice on how that money is spent, they may in fact not spend the money sensibly (i.e. on their housing) and end up homeless instead.

That doesn't really make sense, since people need an address now to receive welfare, and I see no reason for this to change. If you're homeless you have a whole new set of problems, which would not be addressed by the measure afaik.

> The final problem with this model is that the cost of living and economic output is not evenly distributed throughout a country. £1750 a month in northern England may give you a fantastic lifestyle, where as in London you'd barely cover your rent. (What happens to the unemployed in London in a fixed give everyone a basic income situation? They have to leave London and move where they can afford, which then makes it potentially harder to find a job and splits the country into two halves, the elite / the poor).

This is a problem and needs to be addressed. I don't really think people on welfare can currently afford to live in London anyway (correct me if I'm wrong), so it doesn't really change anything.

All in all, remember that no one wants to have a shit life and be homeless. So if you give people money, they're likely to use that money to get a better/steady life rather than fucking up their life. There will be people who "mooch" on the system, but there already are. This is about working conditions and the right to be treated fairly (and to left-wingers like me, the right not to work).

It's also evil, as a large part of this income would go to funding alcohol and drug makers. If anyone needs further evidence, consider the costs of healthcare in the US vs Europe

This might happen to some degree but there is no reason to assume it would be "linear" so the effect is canceled out.

I have a question though Karen, did you know you were going to do this project before you created this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daC2EPUh22w ? (I originally saw it on r/GetMotivated when it went viral originally) or did you decide to build it due to the popularity that the video got and the requests from people wanting to achieve similar?

(Just curious from a marketing point of view whether you planned for the dance video to go viral to boost your idea or whether you saw an untapped market due to the popularity of the video and decided to fill it)

----

[EDIT] - Just got my question answered by watching this : http://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=9m57s - I'm glad that it was an idea that came out of the viral consequence of the original video, rather than the original plan all along.

Also just realised that the woman learning to walk video I saw today on r/GetMotivated was submitted by you / part of the same project.

I can see pg's mind turning over in the office hours video, trying to understand the concept and how big it can grow - I think he's right in the fact that you should see how people use it and allow yourselves to pivot if another idea emerges out of where you're at so far.

I guess the issue is that one of the reasons for the successful popularity of your original dancing video was that it had a nice balance of unique story, being told in a short enough manner that the viewer keeps watching, combined with the final scene coming together perfectly with the music / train / nailing the dance which in my opinion was the 're share' moment - where the user thinks 'I must re share this!'.

The problem is in the 10 second videos it's unlikely I'll want to 're share a single video' - so it's the compiled story at the end which becomes the thing I want to share as a user - but that's not automated / easy to produce. That said, I did enjoy watching the journey of you guys producing the product in 100 days (10 second clip at a time) so, in a world of transparency and people wanting free publicity it does seem to work. (infact I would happily continue watching the journey for 10 seconds a day, to continue the journey past launch out of interest to see what happens next).

Either way, both you and Finbarr have produced, marketed and launched a cool product in 100 days which is a pretty amazing feat in itself.

However, the way the blog post tried to convey this, it falls down for two reasons:

1 ) If you were someone who had studied media rather than programming you could film your own 'news' channel and upload it to youtube if you thought you could disrupt the news industry. This being the equivalent of sitting in your bedroom at home making a site or an app the way you want to. Thus this freedom to express your ideas does not just apply to programmers.

2 ) Just assuming that the news industry team don't know what they're doing and as a new hire media intern you would know how to fix it for them if only they let you, is almost like being a new intern at a software house and expecting to go in and tell everyone they need to change their methods or practices because you know best.

I expect you'd get similar resistance to making them change, as in both examples you as an intern have little experience compared to the people in either industry. What from an outside observer (or new hire) may seem dumb, perhaps is the most effective methods after years of A / B testing by the people within that organisation.

SAGE has been used.

Instead, I'd have to flick back and forth between the apps like a headless chicken?

[Edit] Actually, take his example apps as a suggestion. He's running VLC to watch star trek, but can't watch it at the same time as say using the browser. In a traditional window set-up, you can just set VLC to stay on top and overlay a portion of the screen while you can continue doing something else (like using the browser).

Although the concept looks pretty, it almost seems to be a step backwards in available functionality.

  Do you use a desk?
  Do you use paper?
  Do you use folders?
  How big is your desk? 
  How do you keep the papers on your desk?
  Do you hold up one sheet to read and one sheet exclusively?
  Do you keep a bunch of sheets side-by-side and compare them to each other?
  Do you like to open folders repeatedly or open a few papers from each folder?

In a world of internet before everything went viral, this story was just 'crazy enough' to essentially go viral. The concept of a page being worth a million dollars both in a literal and theoretical sense made this quite a popular link to share in the initial phase (when the site was empty apart from a couple of adverts).

This then drove a viral / media engine (including television / radio and word of mouth) which suddenly actually made the pixels on the page worth something!

Companies now flocked to get adverts on the site which was getting a large number of genuine traffic / media attention and thus the media cycle continued (as it was now a profitable, extremely successful site) - this in turn finished when the page was full and months later everyone lost interest.

Unfortunately, I think many of the copy cat sites didn't understand why this was successful in the first place. It was a clever new idea, which was likely to get press attention for being so 'unique' / 'clever' - the copy cats were unlikely to ever get the same 'viral' effect, so were never going to become successful like the original site.

If I remember correctly, even the founder himself tried to spin off a second site based on the same concept with limited success - mainly because people had seen it before.

It removes the risk for the developer to just 'build' (which is ultimately what they enjoy doing) and also shifts the key responsibility for the initial marketing / customer acquisition away from the developer (which is often what they either don't enjoy doing or suck at).

After this phase, either the idea is a success, the developer gets paid and a mvp is now a business hopefully with profit (for both parties involved) or the idea was not a success and the developer still gets paid some money.

If you have a world changing idea and you've quit your job with a plan to start a start up - that's fine. This probably isn't the right opportunity for you - try Y Combinator or go in search of real funding once you've built a self financed MVP.

However, if you're a developer with a niggling idea that you keep meaning to work on because you know it could turn into something bigger or you just don't feel confident in your own marketing / customer (or user) acquisition skills then this is a really great opportunity!

I've literally missed so many opportunities before, where I've had an idea - not executed it due to no short term monetary reward or no confidence that I could market it correctly and then watched as a start up is formed a year or two later by someone else which was essentially that idea!