<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>freeflight</author><text>&amp;gt; The reality is that if you want to cover everyone&amp;#x27;s basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That&amp;#x27;s the conversation we should be having.&lt;p&gt;Why even insist on that $12K number in the first place, isn&amp;#x27;t that like approaching the problem from the wrong end?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s something that always puzzled me about economic policymaking, regardless of which country; Changes seem to happen at a pace of years and only with static values, which makes reacting to our modern volatile and interconnected markets, in any useful way, impossible.&lt;p&gt;Case in point the basic income: Ideally the amount of money people get could be linked to the general living costs, adjusted to their area of residence, and some national economic index.&lt;p&gt;Sure the first one could be abused by people registering in more expensive areas while living in cheaper ones, but in the long run, and economic big picture this would only lead to rising prices (and basic income) in the cheaper areas, generated through the spending by the &amp;quot;cheaters&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Imho something really underestimated is how much of an economic boost a basic income would be, it&amp;#x27;d be like the government directly subsidizing general purchasing power, and lot&amp;#x27;s of that will come back to the government in the form of taxes. It&amp;#x27;s like the opposite end version of corporate bailouts and tax giveaways.&lt;p&gt;Looking at a number like 7 trillion from that side, suddenly makes it way less intimidating and way more appealing. It&amp;#x27;s not like money is some finite resource that has to be mined in deep and dangerous caves; When it&amp;#x27;s about saving banks, Big Whatever or waging wars, against something or somebody, there always seems to be more than enough of it?</text><parent_chain><item><author>petra</author><text>The reality is that if you want to cover everyone&amp;#x27;s basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That&amp;#x27;s the conversation we should be having.&lt;p&gt;But that than becomes a painful and complex conversation, talking about huge changes in the structure and possibly quality of real-estate, healthcare, transportation and roads, universities, etc and maybe some core tenets of capitalism.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s no way for this conversation to be fruitful and have really big changes - until we have a real crisis - because that&amp;#x27;s how democracies work in general.&lt;p&gt;but here&amp;#x27;s a starting point, anyway:&lt;p&gt;1. Transforming real-estate, from a system largely aimed at profits, into a system that is focused on offering decent living conditions as cheaply as possible.&lt;p&gt;2. Inserting disruptive innovation and real cost reduction into healthcare. And yes, like all disruptive innovation , it probably means lowering quality, at least for some time.</text></item><item><author>aaron-lebo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;ll be really interesting to see how this basic income thing plays out over the next few decades. Basic income is most easily testable in small, high income, relatively homogeneous societies that agree on a more communal way of governing. So, the Nordic countries, see Finland.&lt;p&gt;What is most interesting is how many optimistic and as yet untested claims that basic income advocates make. See this article. Paragraph after paragraph about how this program will work, what the advantages will be, but we don&amp;#x27;t really have any hard numbers, and even once we get them in a limited setting in Finland, or with random people across the US, we have studies that aren&amp;#x27;t generalizable, and we have very few. If n=29 means anything in this context, we&amp;#x27;ve got like 2.5 (not a rigorously considered statement, don&amp;#x27;t hurt me).&lt;p&gt;The really cynical part of me notices how basic income is like the ideal political promise. &amp;quot;Hey, we&amp;#x27;re gonna give you money so you don&amp;#x27;t have to work, and when we do, society is gonna transform into utopia&amp;quot;. We&amp;#x27;ll all be living in Truman Burbank&amp;#x27;s world, apparently. Because of course people won&amp;#x27;t squander their basic income (maybe on Bitcoin?) and if they do, so much for a social safety net.&lt;p&gt;The general populace (not those at the top) are seeing a bad economic situation, so of course their response is yes, meanwhile the people who are the biggest proponents of this as of currently are people like Altman, Zuckerberg, and Musk. The first two have political ambitions, the last is a utopian.&lt;p&gt;Of course when you break down the numbers, it doesn&amp;#x27;t work. How do you make up the 3 trillion a year it would take to give everyone $12k when you almost had healthcare repealed? What programs do you decide to cut and how do you expect the two parties to have a fruitful discussion about it (lol)? These guys will never talk about any rigorous plans because they don&amp;#x27;t have any that would make it through legislation. They also won&amp;#x27;t talk about how crushing and depressing and difficult it is to live on 12k (they have no clue).&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a future where the super rich throw pennies to the peasants and at that point it&amp;#x27;ll be a great excuse. We give you money, why can&amp;#x27;t you pull yourself up by your bootstraps?&lt;p&gt;Will someone lay out a realistic plan detailing how you&amp;#x27;d implement BI in the US?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to citizen-driven governance</title><url>https://www.sitra.fi/en/blogs/basic-income-just-beginning-finland-one-innovative-governments-world-looks-citizen-driven-governance/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>p1esk</author><text>&lt;i&gt;you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Automation.</text><parent_chain><item><author>petra</author><text>The reality is that if you want to cover everyone&amp;#x27;s basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That&amp;#x27;s the conversation we should be having.&lt;p&gt;But that than becomes a painful and complex conversation, talking about huge changes in the structure and possibly quality of real-estate, healthcare, transportation and roads, universities, etc and maybe some core tenets of capitalism.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s no way for this conversation to be fruitful and have really big changes - until we have a real crisis - because that&amp;#x27;s how democracies work in general.&lt;p&gt;but here&amp;#x27;s a starting point, anyway:&lt;p&gt;1. Transforming real-estate, from a system largely aimed at profits, into a system that is focused on offering decent living conditions as cheaply as possible.&lt;p&gt;2. Inserting disruptive innovation and real cost reduction into healthcare. And yes, like all disruptive innovation , it probably means lowering quality, at least for some time.</text></item><item><author>aaron-lebo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;ll be really interesting to see how this basic income thing plays out over the next few decades. Basic income is most easily testable in small, high income, relatively homogeneous societies that agree on a more communal way of governing. So, the Nordic countries, see Finland.&lt;p&gt;What is most interesting is how many optimistic and as yet untested claims that basic income advocates make. See this article. Paragraph after paragraph about how this program will work, what the advantages will be, but we don&amp;#x27;t really have any hard numbers, and even once we get them in a limited setting in Finland, or with random people across the US, we have studies that aren&amp;#x27;t generalizable, and we have very few. If n=29 means anything in this context, we&amp;#x27;ve got like 2.5 (not a rigorously considered statement, don&amp;#x27;t hurt me).&lt;p&gt;The really cynical part of me notices how basic income is like the ideal political promise. &amp;quot;Hey, we&amp;#x27;re gonna give you money so you don&amp;#x27;t have to work, and when we do, society is gonna transform into utopia&amp;quot;. We&amp;#x27;ll all be living in Truman Burbank&amp;#x27;s world, apparently. Because of course people won&amp;#x27;t squander their basic income (maybe on Bitcoin?) and if they do, so much for a social safety net.&lt;p&gt;The general populace (not those at the top) are seeing a bad economic situation, so of course their response is yes, meanwhile the people who are the biggest proponents of this as of currently are people like Altman, Zuckerberg, and Musk. The first two have political ambitions, the last is a utopian.&lt;p&gt;Of course when you break down the numbers, it doesn&amp;#x27;t work. How do you make up the 3 trillion a year it would take to give everyone $12k when you almost had healthcare repealed? What programs do you decide to cut and how do you expect the two parties to have a fruitful discussion about it (lol)? These guys will never talk about any rigorous plans because they don&amp;#x27;t have any that would make it through legislation. They also won&amp;#x27;t talk about how crushing and depressing and difficult it is to live on 12k (they have no clue).&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a future where the super rich throw pennies to the peasants and at that point it&amp;#x27;ll be a great excuse. We give you money, why can&amp;#x27;t you pull yourself up by your bootstraps?&lt;p&gt;Will someone lay out a realistic plan detailing how you&amp;#x27;d implement BI in the US?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to citizen-driven governance</title><url>https://www.sitra.fi/en/blogs/basic-income-just-beginning-finland-one-innovative-governments-world-looks-citizen-driven-governance/</url></story>