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Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

nerdinvest.blogspot.com

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Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#141

Post by marcosdumay »

nmrm2 wrote: post #63
emartinelli wrote: post #20

In Brazil, we have a law[1], from 2004, implementing UBI, but it is not nearly applied for all population. This law determine a gradual implementation and I believe that the the full one is far away. There are some benefits for poor people, unfortunately there are frauds and IMHO some mass manipulation from government. [1] http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2004-2006/2004/lei/... (Portuguese)

Are you referring to bolsa familia? Or is this something else? (I don't speak Portuguese)

No, this is about universal income (bolsa família is means tested).

I've never heard about it, I don't think it has gone anywhere.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#142

Post by emartinelli »

marcosdumay wrote: post #141
nmrm2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to bolsa familia? Or is this something else? (I don't speak Portuguese)

No, this is about universal income (bolsa família is means tested). I've never heard about it, I don't think it has gone anywhere.

Actually, in theory Bolsa Familia should be kind of step to reach UBI. The referenced law talks about gradual implantation, initially by poor people.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#143

Post by xrange »

mikeash wrote: post #55
xrange wrote: post #30

Here's something I like to see some discussion on from Basic Income proponents. Does BI need to be rolled out everywhere-all-at-once, or is it possible to do small scale experiments to look at the effects? If you think it is possible to have meaningful smaller scale tests, how small can it be? 1000 participants? 100,000 participants? 10,000,000 participants? And then the big question, would there be any outcomes from…

I don't think you can do small scale experiments, unless you do it using an entire small country. The idea is that you raise taxes too, and naturally you'll have winners and losers. I don't think the losers (wealthier people) will tolerate being forced into the program while others are left out of it. If you let people choose, then only the winners (poorer people) will choose to participate, which will deeply distort…

>I don't think you can do small scale experiments

What if you started everyone out at $50/month, and increased it slowly over the course of say 10 years or 20 years, or 100 years to whatever target you liked? Or do you think a gradual introduction would invalidate the results, or that you couldn't extrapolate from people's behavior at $300/mo, what they might do when the payout is $1000/mo?

Or what if you started walking the social security age backwards gradually, making people eligible at the age of 60 in the year 2020, and 55 in 2025, and 50 in 2030, etc.?

Can anyone shed insight on Indian reservations and basic income. For some reason I thought that some reservations with casinos had payments to all the tribe members?

>You don't get much useful information about people's willingness to continue working when you target it at people who have retired.

What about the other claims that some people make with BI, like an explosion of new exciting art/music/novels, etc.. Is that testable with SS recipients (say looking at how many novels they write the year before, and the year after they retire, counting the number of hours they watch TV before and after retirement). Or are they an invalid group because they are old? Or are the "other" category of BI claims mostly just feel good claims that no one really believes?

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#144

Post by Domenic_S »

debacle wrote: post #117
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200K seems pretty extreme for a broken arm, even if it required surgery. I'd guess $1K max for non-surgical, $10/20K for surgery.

A compound fracture + ER visit could easily hit $30k. Not sure about $200k.

Ok, $153k for a rattlesnake bite [0], whatever. It was an illustrative example.

[0] https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3dngld/this_is_the_cos...

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#145

Post by dTal »

Retric wrote: post #109
sbuttgereit wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and what economic activity will be suppressed as capital moves away from prior uses. Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. The seen and the unseen indeed. Unless there's more than hand-wavy dismissive talk about the negatives such schemes bring, one is foolish to think that this does anything positiv…

Innovation often happens from the ground up. Harry Potter for example was written by someone on housing assistance. Clearly the England made far more money from her than the cost of her benefits. Further, if you tax a company at 10% or 20% the same investments are going to profitable. So, for the most part they behave the same which makes corporate tax breaks a very poor investment. PS: More generally, people with a…

Nitpick: Harry Potter was written in Scotland, not England :)

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#146

Post by maxxxxx »

manyoso wrote: post #12
maxxxxx wrote: post #10

My prediction for Basic Income is that even if it gets introduced a few years/decades later a lot of people will complain (rightfully or not) about all those parasites not doing anything while "job creators" have to pay for it. At least in the US it won't work long term looking at the current discussions about tax rates.

If it is also sold and paired with an elimination of the general income tax I think it could have wide support on the right and left. And how would we pay for it without a national income tax? A value added tax and a carbon tax.

It won't get support from the right. It's pretty clear that the right wing doesn't like people getting something for nothing.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#147

Post by gwright »

hackuser wrote: post #139
jpadkins wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recognizing a livable income as a human right I was with you until that one. The fundamental right to other people's wealth is a very slippery slope. I believe human rights should only be negative rights. > Paving the way for a new American Dream in the 21st century reads like political marketing fluff. dilutes the message.

> The fundamental right to other people's wealth is a very slippery slope. All rights - everything a society does - require contributions from others. The premise that people somehow create wealth all by themselves and therefore have no obligation to share it is false. Everyone's wealth depends on enormous contributions from everyone else, current and past. How did they build their app without the free K-12 education…

> All rights - everything a society does - require contributions from others.

The concept of positive and negative rights is pretty well defined. If you are going to assert that all 'rights' are positive rights you need to do a tad bit more explaining.

> The premise that people somehow create wealth all by themselves and therefore have no obligation to share it is false.

You are throwing up a straw man. No one asserts that wealth is created 'all by themselves' at least according to the definition you seem to be using. It is also difficult to know what 'obligation to share' means. Does that mean "obligated to pay my taxes" or does it mean "obligated to support arbitrary redistribution schemes and government policies" or does it mean something else?

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#148

Post by gwright »

shkkmo wrote: post #126
sbuttgereit wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and what economic activity will be suppressed as capital moves away from prior uses. Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. The seen and the unseen indeed. Unless there's more than hand-wavy dismissive talk about the negatives such schemes bring, one is foolish to think that this does anything positiv…

> Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. I've been talking about how minimum income can make the minimum wage obsolete and thus allow for the existence of a wider variety of jobs (and creation of wealth) that was previously unviable while also fixing the market inefficiencies created by putting an artifici…

> Wealth exists only within an economy and thus is a social construct that makes it's owner intrinsically beholden to that society. Wealth thus increases the moral obligation to the society from which that wealth is derived.

This notion pops up quite a bit in HN discussion of basic income. Can anybody provide some references to any sort of scholarly work on this concept? Presumably it has been described and discussed in depth and I'd like to be able to understand it better or even associate a name to the concept.

In any case, I'm not sure I follow the logic in this particular description. Why does wealth being a 'social construct' make the 'owner intrinsically beholden' to that society? What does 'intrinsically beholden' mean? These seem like arbitrary and poorly defined assertions to me.

> Minimum income is ... given to everyone.

Define minimum income. Do you imagine it enough to provide food, shelter, clothing? If so explain what other mechanisms would prevent the emergence of a large group of people who simply lived off the efforts of others as a choice. What mechanism would keep that sort of system in equilibrium rather than the consuming group growing and the producing group shrinking and the resulting tensions escalating? And don't we want to construct a system that moves towards a state that maximizes the number of self-sufficient people rather maximizing the number of dependent people?

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#149

Post by hackuser »

gwright wrote: post #148
shkkmo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is talking about generating new wealth to make this happen: it's pure consumption and some of that will be at the expense of capital investment. I've been talking about how minimum income can make the minimum wage obsolete and thus allow for the existence of a wider variety of jobs (and creation of wealth) that was previously unviable while also fixing the market inefficiencies created by putting an artifici…

> Wealth exists only within an economy and thus is a social construct that makes it's owner intrinsically beholden to that society. Wealth thus increases the moral obligation to the society from which that wealth is derived. This notion pops up quite a bit in HN discussion of basic income. Can anybody provide some references to any sort of scholarly work on this concept? Presumably it has been described and discussed…

> Why does wealth being a 'social construct' make the 'owner intrinsically beholden' to that society?

A stab at it: 1) Money is a social construct, as are many other things necessary to make wealth valuable and meaningful; 2) Any person's wealth is due to the 'society' they live in, to a great degree. Consider the roads, laws, political system, safety, education (of the wealthy person, their employees, and customers), wealth of customers/vendors/investors, science, etc. Compare the prospects for wealth and the value of it (i.e., uses for it) for someone in Syria with someone in the Bay Area, for example.

I agree; I'd like to find something more authoritative bout the topic.

Re: Powerful Political Forces Are Aligning Behind Minimum Income

#150

Post by qudat »

drcode wrote: post #67
jerelunruh wrote: post #36

Let's say that currently rent is $1,000 per month, food is $500, and Alice is earning $2,500. Now UBI is implemented and Alice and all fellow citizens receive $1,000 per month. What will keep the market from easing the entry level rent up to $1,500 and food to $1,000 since the money is available? At first glance it seems like we'd just be choosing a different number representing "broke".

Easy, once that starts happening, we'll just raise Alice's earnings to $3,500. (kidding)

you've essentially described minimum wage
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