frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Is Universal Basic Income Effective? Not Really

https://www.city-journal.org/article/universal-basic-income-costs-jobs-work
9•Bostonian•2h ago

Comments

Oceoss•2h ago
Incentives matter. Imo you are not productive if you are paid for doing nothing
david-gpu•2h ago
Agreed. Retirees, even early retirees, are very unproductive because they don't need to produce anything anymore to maintain their lifestyle.
SilverElfin•1h ago
Ironically the happiest and healthiest retires do more than the bare minimum. Maybe it isn’t work but they’re staying productive (or busy?) in many ways. Not doing things is really destructive to the human psyche.
david-gpu•3m ago
Unproductive in economic terms. They not contribute significantly to the tax base compared to what they used to.

Painting in broad strokes, of course. I'm sure somebody somewhere is working harder than ever, but it is not the norm. Long walks in the park and meeting with friends doesn't contribute to the tax base.

Kim_Bruning•1h ago
Many Retirees I know have very busy schedules! They're not $/€ productive per-se but they do quite a lot of work!
aappleby•2h ago
"The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit[4] conservative think tank"

Thanks, I'll pass.

SilverElfin•1h ago
Is that really a reason to dismiss ideas without directly considering them?
nisegami•1h ago
It signals that this article is propaganda and likely doesn't have epistemological value.
jonahbenton•34m ago
From that particular organization, yes. Their narratives originate from a fictional, often sociopathic universe. Sometimes fiction is good, interesting, challenging. Right now, no time or cognitive surplus for that bullshit.
allears•2h ago
This guy is pretty quick to dismiss the results of a very few tentative experiments. Extra money on a regular basis is certainly helpful, isn't generally spent on frivolous things, and produces some positive outcomes. But it's not nearly sufficient to break someone out of a cycle of poverty. If you're roughly "middle class" like me, you know that you're being squeezed all the time. Things get more expensive, and 'the system' is always coming up with new ways to take your money. Imagine being in the same situation, but broke and out of work, with kids. An extra thou a month might keep your head barely above water, but it certainly won't put you on a path to security or self-sufficiency.

The reason these experiments are being tried is that our social order is breaking down. Even if you're able-bodied, well educated, and willing to work, there are too few jobs that pay a living wage. And many people were unfortunately born to the wrong set of parents, so they never got good health care or education. What do we do with these people? Leave them out in the street to die?

jonahbenton•33m ago
Manhattan Institute is consistently blindly sociopathic.
mitchbob•2h ago
Another view of UBI:

https://thefutureofemployment.com/universal-basic-income-a-g...

Innovators are people who can afford to take risks. UBI can enlarge the pool of those people to include those who aren't born into wealth.

SilverElfin•1h ago
Even people who are “rich” can’t really take risks. They have to sacrifice their health or family or career progress as a salary earner to take a shot at innovation (entrepreneurship I mean). The VC startup world often is just “who is willing to sacrifice other things and take the most risk”, and excludes those seeking to live a balanced and healthy life.

I agree having safety nets means more people can contribute to innovation. But it’ll still be hard to survive the brutality of startups. As a society we shouldn’t reward those who make unhealthy choices to “win”. That’s still exclusionary IMO. But I don’t know how you can defend against that.

mitchbob•33m ago
It's possible that UBI could allow people to do new and great things and have a balanced and healthy life. What if the goal isn't becoming a billionaire, but instead making the world a better place while enjoying a comfortable standard of living? There are ways that we as a society can promote this kind of altruism.
SilverElfin•32m ago
Maybe it has to be mixed with removing incentives for billionaires to exist. Like a cap on wealth.

PowerSync – sync engine for building local-first apps

https://github.com/powersync-ja/powersync-service
1•gervwyk•45s ago•0 comments

A wasteland of rubble, dust and graves: how Gaza looks from the sky

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/05/wasteland-rubble-dust-graves-how-gaza-looks-from-the-sky
2•NomDePlum•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a FlutterFlow app to track what I own and how often I use it

https://letsfancy.com/
1•letsfancy•2m ago•0 comments

I've built a platform to store and track YouTube channels

https://github.com/Aletech-Solutions/XandTube-platform
2•alexerKeyan•5m ago•2 comments

Fine-tuning with GPT-OSS and Hugging Face Transformers

https://cookbook.openai.com/articles/gpt-oss/fine-tune-transfomers
2•amrrs•5m ago•0 comments

Big Tech's Net-Zero Goals Are Looking Shaky

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/climate/tech-companies-climate-goals.html
2•mitchbob•7m ago•1 comments

Encapsulation Isn't Java's Fault (and Python Needs It Too)

https://www.lihil.cc/blog/encapsulation-isnt-javas-fault-and-python-needs-it-too/
1•ibobev•7m ago•0 comments

GPT-OSS

https://ollama.com/library/gpt-oss
1•saikatsg•8m ago•0 comments

Dynamically Update C++ syntax using Next Edit Suggestions

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/dynamically-update-c-syntax-using-next-edit-suggestions/
1•ibobev•9m ago•0 comments

Compressing the Wordle Dictionary

https://iamkate.com/code/wordle-dictionary/
1•wonger_•10m ago•0 comments

Godot Foundation Welcomes JetBrains as Platinum Sponsor

https://godotengine.org/article/jetbrains-joins-dev-fund-supports-godot/
2•TheFreim•10m ago•0 comments

Overhauling Figma's Parametrization Architecture

https://www.figma.com/blog/a-tale-of-two-parameter-architectures/
1•jenning•10m ago•0 comments

New Database Reveals 1.5M Pages of Once-Secret Police Use of Force Records

https://journalism.berkeley.edu/police-records-access/
3•Improvement•10m ago•0 comments

The DB Grill

https://db-grill.com/
1•jerrinot•12m ago•0 comments

US Explores Location Trackers for AI Chips

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-05/us-explores-better-location-trackers-for-ai-chips-official-says
2•wslh•12m ago•2 comments

OpenAI Just Dropped GPT-OSS and It's a Game Changer (Full Breakdown and Code)

https://algogist.com/openai-just-dropped-gpt-oss-and-its-a-game-changer-full-breakdown-code/
1•jainilprajapati•14m ago•0 comments

Self-contained Python scripts with uv and Coiled for easy cloud execution

https://docs.coiled.io/blog/uv-coiled-cloud-scripts.html
2•scj13•15m ago•1 comments

Florida sues some of the biggest porn platforms(XVideos,BangBros,GirlsGoneWild)

https://www.myfloridalegal.com/newsrelease/attorney-general-james-uthmeier-fights-protect-children-online-pornography-brings
4•Improvement•15m ago•1 comments

Authoritarian Leisure: North Korea's Tourism Project in Comparative Perspective

https://www.38north.org/2025/08/authoritarian-leisure-north-koreas-wonsan-kalma-tourism-project-in-comparative-perspective/
1•EA-3167•18m ago•0 comments

A Zoo in Denmark Wants to Feed Your Pets to Its Predators

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/science/zoos-denmark-food-pets.html
2•zdw•20m ago•0 comments

Brandolia – Generate a full brand identity with AI (logo, colors, slogan, more)

https://www.brandolia.io/
2•kokau•21m ago•2 comments

Scientific Journals Can't Keep Up with Flood of Fake Papers

https://www.wsj.com/science/scientific-journals-fake-paper-mills-92e42230
2•impish9208•21m ago•1 comments

Nvidia: No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/no-backdoors-no-kill-switches-no-spyware/
12•robotswantdata•22m ago•3 comments

Speed up unit tests with paralllel GitHub Actions

https://ohdear.app/news-and-updates/running-our-test-suite-in-parallel-on-github-actions
1•Mojah•24m ago•0 comments

Freedom of Information Act and Deteriorating Federal Transparency Infrastructure

https://www.justsecurity.org/118371/foia-federal-transparency-infrastructure/
3•anigbrowl•25m ago•0 comments

I make 3D Games [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAWv6AJ8M-Y
1•todsacerdoti•26m ago•0 comments

Vitest Browser Mode

https://vitest.dev/guide/browser/
1•martpie•28m ago•0 comments

A Python library for extracting structured data from unstructured text

https://thedailyrism.blogspot.com/2025/08/google-ai-releases-langextract-open.html
1•miclys•28m ago•0 comments

For the Culture

https://notbor.ing/words/for-the-culture
1•gregwolanski•28m ago•0 comments

The AI bubble is so big it's propping up the US economy (for now)

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-bubble-is-so-big-its-propping
9•mempko•29m ago•1 comments