31–40 of 251 posts
Problem is with capitalism and it's founders that told us all that you can't live without work. In next decades we will need to change the system diametrical because robots will take all not creative jobs out there. If we want basic pay we will need to tax corporations that use robots at around 70-90%, money from tax will go for basic pay, money from people that receive basic pay will go to corporations etc. Thing th…
The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it dow…
You are arguing about specifics that do not make any difference to the overall argument the author is trying to make. UBI for 244 million is still unfeasible. UBI is just a bad idea, jobs in themselves have nice externalities that UBI wont give. People that have jobs generally don't commit crimes. Also a UBI will disincentivize working jobs that are undesirable but are necessary for a functioning society.
When you can't get the simple things right, why should we think you got the harder things right?
Something that is missing from the basic income/poverty debate is the notion of "learned helplessness"; after a long time in poverty, people get used to the lifestyle and have difficulty adjusting to "regular" life. For example, if you've been homeless your entire life, you've never had to lock your apartment door or carry a key around. My partner (a social worker) had a client who's apartment was always getting robb…
Relative poverty is insoluble without totalitarian levels of redistribution to a very low common denominator, and that is unlikely to include the inevitable oligarchs. Absolute poverty is rapidly being solved ( https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_... ) by markets and globalization, and radical redistribution such as a basic income tends to interfere with that.
The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it dow…
You are arguing about specifics that do not make any difference to the overall argument the author is trying to make. UBI for 244 million is still unfeasible. UBI is just a bad idea, jobs in themselves have nice externalities that UBI wont give. People that have jobs generally don't commit crimes. Also a UBI will disincentivize working jobs that are undesirable but are necessary for a functioning society.
The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it dow…
You are arguing about specifics that do not make any difference to the overall argument the author is trying to make. UBI for 244 million is still unfeasible. UBI is just a bad idea, jobs in themselves have nice externalities that UBI wont give. People that have jobs generally don't commit crimes. Also a UBI will disincentivize working jobs that are undesirable but are necessary for a functioning society.
and a better way to look at it is that it incentivezes changes in society that reduce the undesirable work that's necessary for it to function.
Relative poverty is insoluble without totalitarian levels of redistribution to a very low common denominator, and that is unlikely to include the inevitable oligarchs. Absolute poverty is rapidly being solved ( https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_... ) by markets and globalization, and radical redistribution such as a basic income tends to interfere with that.
Poverty is an issue long solved in USA. We are talking about relative poverty and governments are trying to push totalitarian redistribution schemes everywhere.
This is what the logic was: the student loans system has a high interest rate, and when the loan is defaulted, the government needs to pay. So what the government ends up paying is not only the actual loan, but the loan with some accrued interest. Also, the default rate is high. So in this case it makes sense for the government to just pay directly.
Now, following the same mindset, how much does the government pay if there is people without a basic income? is it more than just giving away that money directly to people? If there answer is yes, then probably it's not a bad idea after all.
Now, of course there will be issues. The food stamps system imposes some restrictions that you will no longer have if you just receive basic income. Also some people might just do the minimum required to get that income and live at the expense of the government. There might be pros and cons that need to be considered.
The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it dow…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By some measures, poverty already is a solved problem in the United States. Relative poverty is all we have left to solve....
There are quite a lot of people in the USA that consistently starve. I'm quite sure that according to most definitions that's clearly absolute poverty, not a relative one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States