<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>Balgair</author><text>&amp;gt; As it stands, &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot; is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.&lt;p&gt;Nearly all Kings and Emperors were &amp;#x27;poorer&amp;#x27; than most Westerners under the poverty line of today. They had no refrigeration, antibiotics, electricity, etc. But we still agree that there are &amp;#x27;poor&amp;#x27; people today, and I think we&amp;#x27;re correct to say so. Yes, it is a moving target, and thank God that it is such. If &amp;#x27;progress&amp;#x27; means that we have to drag the least lucky of us up to levels of decadence that Cesar could never have though of, I&amp;#x27;m more than on board for that. Quibbling about the exact definition of poor for all of time is useless. Charge ahead, have the &amp;#x27;poor&amp;#x27; of our grandchildren&amp;#x27;s time be the wealthy of today.</text><parent_chain><item><author>ctdonath</author><text>Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The US &amp;quot;poverty line&amp;quot; is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US&amp;#x27;s vast welfare&amp;#x2F;entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $.&lt;p&gt;What constitutes &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot; keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of &amp;quot;nobody should go without X&amp;quot; (when X didn&amp;#x27;t exist not long before, broadband internet being the latest). Affordable housing gets overrun by population growth &amp;amp; attracting mobile opportunity-seekers, living space naturally going to the highest bidder; property taxes being a thing, there is no recognized natural right to real estate. Health care relentlessly advances, new lifesaving care objectively costing a great deal ... vs a public sentiment of a right thereto.&lt;p&gt;We need an objective redefinition of &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot;, predicated on a baseline of nutrition, housing floorspace, basic tools (stove, disposal, etc), care (minimum optimistic odds of longevity), information access, etc and an understanding that the baseline cannot be shifted - that those doing better are &lt;i&gt;not poor&lt;/i&gt;, that accessibility thereto is largely attainable (whatever the sociopolitical system), and acknowledgement that when&amp;#x2F;if all are above that line, poverty services are officially out of a job.&lt;p&gt;As it stands, &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot; is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.</text></item><item><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;gt; With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.&lt;p&gt;The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It&amp;#x27;s true of &lt;i&gt;anything that causes the poor to have more money&lt;/i&gt;. Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it&amp;#x27;s true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa.&lt;p&gt;Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;independent&lt;/i&gt; problems.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, you&amp;#x27;re assuming the UBI actually results in the poor getting more assistance rather than merely different assistance. Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount, maybe people just use it to buy housing and healthcare anyway -- but maybe some of them don&amp;#x27;t, and that causes those prices to go &lt;i&gt;down&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>throwaway13337</author><text>The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it&amp;#x27;s more of an auction for who can afford them.&lt;p&gt;With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.&lt;p&gt;This problem wouldn&amp;#x27;t appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals.&lt;p&gt;We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to provide real relief. Throwing money at the problem will just move money to a few hands.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729</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>baddox</author><text>Why would we not want the baseline to improve over time? I genuinely do not understand the attitude that we should establish some extremely low bar like “is not currently at risk of starvation” and then never move the bar, but merely congratulating ourselves when more people pass that bar.</text><parent_chain><item><author>ctdonath</author><text>Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The US &amp;quot;poverty line&amp;quot; is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US&amp;#x27;s vast welfare&amp;#x2F;entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $.&lt;p&gt;What constitutes &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot; keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of &amp;quot;nobody should go without X&amp;quot; (when X didn&amp;#x27;t exist not long before, broadband internet being the latest). Affordable housing gets overrun by population growth &amp;amp; attracting mobile opportunity-seekers, living space naturally going to the highest bidder; property taxes being a thing, there is no recognized natural right to real estate. Health care relentlessly advances, new lifesaving care objectively costing a great deal ... vs a public sentiment of a right thereto.&lt;p&gt;We need an objective redefinition of &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot;, predicated on a baseline of nutrition, housing floorspace, basic tools (stove, disposal, etc), care (minimum optimistic odds of longevity), information access, etc and an understanding that the baseline cannot be shifted - that those doing better are &lt;i&gt;not poor&lt;/i&gt;, that accessibility thereto is largely attainable (whatever the sociopolitical system), and acknowledgement that when&amp;#x2F;if all are above that line, poverty services are officially out of a job.&lt;p&gt;As it stands, &amp;quot;poor&amp;quot; is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.</text></item><item><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;gt; With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.&lt;p&gt;The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It&amp;#x27;s true of &lt;i&gt;anything that causes the poor to have more money&lt;/i&gt;. Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it&amp;#x27;s true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa.&lt;p&gt;Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;independent&lt;/i&gt; problems.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, you&amp;#x27;re assuming the UBI actually results in the poor getting more assistance rather than merely different assistance. Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount, maybe people just use it to buy housing and healthcare anyway -- but maybe some of them don&amp;#x27;t, and that causes those prices to go &lt;i&gt;down&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>throwaway13337</author><text>The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it&amp;#x27;s more of an auction for who can afford them.&lt;p&gt;With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.&lt;p&gt;This problem wouldn&amp;#x27;t appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals.&lt;p&gt;We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to provide real relief. Throwing money at the problem will just move money to a few hands.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729</url></story>