391–400 of 1001 posts
I can't take this seriously. >(Questions about how a program like this would affect overall cost of living are beyond our scope, but obviously important.) No, that's not just "obviously important". It's practically the ONLY thing that's important. If basic income raises the cost of living to the point where it negates the effect of having it, then basic income is meaningless. Here's your study. 1) Bring one piece of…
I'm very skeptical of basic income as commonly understood. The typical basic income program I've seen goes something like this: give every person in the country $10k to live on, no strings attached. [a] 1) As defined above, this is horribly inefficient and expensive. I, a software engineer in Silicon Valley, would receive this $10k. How does this benefit society? I already make over $100k; I don't need additional inc…
1.) We'd have to implement it so that starting somewhere on the pay scale, taxes increase so that by some point you pay back to full $10k you received. Naively: $25k income you pay back $1000 of the $10k in taxes at $50k, pay back $2500, etc. That way you, making over $100k, essentially get $0 basic income by the end of the year. 2.) You probably have to say "everyone over 18 gets $10k, each child up to 3 per family…
If I recall correctly about 50k is median income for the working population, so you're still paying most of your population at least $5000. And that's just the currently working population, there are so many non-working adults who will also want the free money, I can envision the divorces being had for an extra $10k right now... the incentives this creates are very bad.
It's worth reading about the Canadian experiments with basic income in the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/colby-cosh-what-th... The experiment allowed households to opt out, and after a while most did. However this result is convoluted by the fact that the income was not inflation indexed, and inflation rates in Canada in the 1970s got quite high. The main concl…
http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor...
Key takeaways:
"An income of $300 per week is just over the average (mean) benefit income – therefore a plausible minimum income. However, paying a guaranteed income of $300 per week to every New Zealander aged 16 years and over, excluding superannuitants, comes at considerable fiscal cost. The fiscal cost of the GMI proposed in the first model (Model 1) is $44.5 billion (including the cost of all social transfers – in particular, New Zealand Superannuation payments, would cost $55.5 billion), requiring a flat personal tax rate of approximately 45.4%. Note that this tax rate and the others considered below are cost-neutral – not fiscally neutral – as personal taxes currently raise approximately $6 billion in excess of current social assistance costs."
"Although the Gini coefficient improves under all models, many beneficiaries (including the disabled, carers and sole parents) currently receive more than $300 per week and would be made financially worse off under a GMI scheme. Therefore the GMIs considered could distribute money away from those most in need of government assistance and toward those who have choices and opportunities but choose not to work."
If you introduce basic income so that nobody has to do the shitty job, nobody will do it.
But one day there will be robots that can clean the toilets, and then there will be no shitty jobs left to do - and perhaps only then can basic income take hold.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whether I agree or not with this (mostly, I don't), it fails my test of "being something a startup can do". Whereas a startup that had a really good solution for inculcating the kinds of skills and values white-collar employers are looking for could outcompete universities instead of legislating them out of the picture. When people discuss the value signaling provided by elite universities, their first example is usu…
Agreed. Though sometimes we're trying to tech-fix things which are broken on a whole different level. Education is effectively free today. You pay to get the certificate. I think that's a broken system.
(I am not opposed to legislative fixes! I'm a statist liberal Democrat. I'm confining my response to the terms 'sama set out.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the reason people are suffering now is the level of monetary inflation I don't think any respectable economist actually agrees with you on that. The increase in the monetary base during QE was paired with a collapse in the money multiplier. Most of that cash stayed in reserve at banks (see 'Repeat After Me: Banks Cannot And Do Not "Lend Out" Reserves'). Price inflation is nowhere in sight; inflation is below histor…
Depends on which inflation figure you count. When I think of inflation, I think of the largest costs first -- housing, which can easily be 30 to 50% of your earnings for most people. Check out the Housing Price Index -- does that look flat to you? http://us.spindices.com/indices/real-estate/sp-case-shiller-...
Food - Basic nutritious food should be cheaper. Currently, cheap food is not nutritious or that cheap. Even Soylent costs $2.83 and many do not consider that food. A meal should cost less than $1. - 2 ways that I have been mulling * Automation for on demand food * Mass production of simple meals.
Right now the government has basic(or really much more than basic) income . . . it can create the money it needs to do what it wants. And this trickles down from the President and the Speaker of the House to the foot soldier and the mailman.
This is a feature of the monetary system and it is only challenged in rare, extreme, or politically charged cases.
Perhaps we should think about innovating the currency to provide basic income to citizens rather than to the state.
"send them a cheque for $10,000 and increase their taxes by ~$10,000" which (suprise) just wastes people's time and money.
Replace "cheque" with "direct deposit" and what time is wasted? You have to do taxes every year anyways. And what little time is wasted is offset by the sense of security that $200/week is going into your bank account every week like clockwork no matter happens to you or your job.
The money and time wasted is the huge infrastructure to enforce the ever growing list of restrictions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is key. No one has ever said "I'm going to stop making money because I have $1."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility At $1 the second dollar is useful, at $50,000, I'm good for the year and will not pursue additional dollars. Replace $50,000 with whatever amount you need to feel content.