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"With this pilot, we want to provide a true test of a universal basic income." ... except for the part where taxes are collected from the population to pay for said universal basic income.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few more good podcast links here, 2 episodes of NPR's Planet Money about GiveDirectly's results: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/11/08/243967328/episo... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/08/16/212645252/episo... Overall the basic income idea... I don't like it in a lot of ways, I just can't see it resulting in a productive society personally. But that's just my gut reaction and I could be wrong, so far…
Basic income could just as likely increase productivity. Without the need to work, there is a greater incentive to automate jobs. People don't work crap jobs because they like to, they do it because they have to. Anyone who wants a higher standard of living than the basic income minimum can improve their skills while they're sustained by their safety net. Meanwhile, basic income puts more money in the pockets of cons…
I worry that it would be a lot worse than that - that we could create a class of non-workers and workers. Some products would only be affordable to workers and if, like you're saying, those workers are only those working high paying jobs, this is probably how it'd work out. It could perpetually shrink the labor force while forcing those people who aren't working into a lower class in society and overall dropping our productivity at large - setting back the kinds of automation that such a society could require.
Personally I'd almost immediately attempt to drop out of the workforce. And well, software developers are often pretty heavily involved in this sort of automation. So maybe I'm just speaking to my own situation here more than anything.
Of course, this is only speculation, and probably one of the worst possible outcomes I can envision for such a program.
I definitely agree with you about experimentation though, and if the main funds for it are coming from donors voluntarily and not out of the tax payer's pockets then that's all the better. It would be great to have both private and public researchers in on this though, I'll take as many eyes as we can get on the data.
While initially in favor of basic income due to the income trap created by the traditional approch, I have come to oppose it due to a better understanding I now have of the nature of money. Consider that basic income works when you think of money in the micro context as a means of exchange for goods and services, but not when you think of it in the macro context as a reflection of the wealth of a society. Simply tran…
Please transfer all your money to me. As you say, it will not make you less wealthy.
Recently fascinated by the thought of piping donations directly to poor populations and allowing them to use it as they wish. I watched the documentary Poverty, Inc. [0] regarding the "poverty industry" and how endless foreign aid in these countries is killing the economy. If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business. Or if the U.S. pumps an end…
Also worth considering are countries where a large portion of the economy is based on family members sending remittances back from the United States (or other country). In a sense, they already have a form of basic income for the people who remain at home.
Only in that some of the people that remain home have a source of income. But that doesn't make it anything like a "basic income", anymore than the fact that some people are supported by family members working in the same country means that that country already has something like basic income.
Recently fascinated by the thought of piping donations directly to poor populations and allowing them to use it as they wish. I watched the documentary Poverty, Inc. [0] regarding the "poverty industry" and how endless foreign aid in these countries is killing the economy. If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business. Or if the U.S. pumps an end…
Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve. If you want it to work it needs 3 things: 1) Free Education 2) High Taxes 3) Strong Unions Sounds leftist? It may astonish you which countries have the highest ratio of rich persons per capita live. This and a good explanation can be found in "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? (TEDxOslo)" https…
I hear Hugo Chavez' daughter has billions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can extend this argument to banking though: If the U.S. pumps an endless supply of money into Haiti, how could Haitian banks hope to compete with their loan offers?
I don't think this works. Presumably cash has a lot more utility than rice or shoes, for example. These people can always use more money (i.e. bank loads in your example), but once they have x shoes or y rice, the utility of new shoes or rice is very low.
It has a lot more fungibility, which should also mean that the marginal utility of cash drops slower (as a function of total utility from that source) than for rice or shoes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why doesn't transferring money from you to me make me wealthier? It allows me greater access to goods and services, which seems to me to be almost the definition of greater wealth.
The wealth of a society is a reflection of the quality of the people in the society. 10 million in my hands isn't worth as much as 10 million in the hands of warren buffet.
Recently fascinated by the thought of piping donations directly to poor populations and allowing them to use it as they wish. I watched the documentary Poverty, Inc. [0] regarding the "poverty industry" and how endless foreign aid in these countries is killing the economy. If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business. Or if the U.S. pumps an end…
Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve. If you want it to work it needs 3 things: 1) Free Education 2) High Taxes 3) Strong Unions Sounds leftist? It may astonish you which countries have the highest ratio of rich persons per capita live. This and a good explanation can be found in "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? (TEDxOslo)" https…
> Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve.
There are so many reasons why that's not relevant to the conversation that it's hard to know where to start. 1) You are conflating value systems with poverty. 2) You are cherry picking one particularly bad example and using it as evidence that it could NEVER work. 3) "All the money they can dream of" does not apply to all Saudi Arabians, it applies to those that have a lot of money.
Recently fascinated by the thought of piping donations directly to poor populations and allowing them to use it as they wish. I watched the documentary Poverty, Inc. [0] regarding the "poverty industry" and how endless foreign aid in these countries is killing the economy. If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business. Or if the U.S. pumps an end…
What you are describing is a mercantilist theory of development.[1] Giving people free things usually helps them; what doesn't help them is the way that the 'gifts' are chosen, whom the 'aid' is given to, and how the poor are treated.[2] The gifts are usually chosen based on which companies and unions the 'giving' country wants to promote and help, instead of what the poor need. The 'aid' is often given to tyrants, a…
Wages have been lower relative to inflation, real estate etc because demand for human labor has been dropping. Consumer goods come down in price but real estate, gold and other limited resources are a reference for how low demand for human labor is falling.
Technology enabled outsoucing, and automation, to erode the demand for human labor. Luddites were 150 years too early. The capabilities of computers are only growing.
The next will be self driving cars, kiosks at mcdonalds and drone delivery. That will put a lot of people out of work.
Relying on wages to trickle money down only works when employers value their employees. These days we are in the intermediate period with a growing unemployed class, part time temp work, two year stints at companies, and stagnant wages for the average profession including developers.
There is no reason not to tax the productivity gains made by corporations by R&D and automation, and redistribute that to everyone. Alaska has been doing unconditional basic income from a tax on using its natural resources.
Most people will be 90% consumers and only 10% producers. Already, most full time jobs are just make-work. Conditional welfare and fulltime jobs make people afraid they'll lose their check if they work on what they are passionate about. That's an infantile mentality that holds many back from living productive lives. They instead pretend to work or pretend to be poor, to keep getting that conditional check. It's time to let the humanity at large grow up, stop wasting time and tap their potential.