Unless you're rich. If you're rich, and not working, your opinions are valued and respected.
I don't think that's necessarily true. It's true for some people, mostly those that are rich because of their past work. But I don't think it's true for people that didn't earn their money through work like those that inherited it or won the lottery. Society can be pretty dismissive of people in these categories. I even think that we differentiate between people who are rich from work. Some people are seen has "havin…
BTW most people who won a lottery end up spending up the fortune, not living off it for a long time.
"It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society " - Markus Brunnermeier(1) I love how simply Markus arrived at the fundamental political issue with Basic Income in the USA: American culture and society is a "work culture". If you're not working you're not part of society. That's a very plain and powerful statement that is central to many of the gut-reaction trump-esque disparaging argument…
That's not a political issue, although it somehow has been made out to be. Society is a group of people whose contributions - however large or small - are beneficial to the rest of that group. Those contributions are called 'work'. There are many benefits to being a part of a society. Receiving those benefits without contributing to the rest of the society is selfish. This doesn't have much to do with Trump or gut-re…
The "work culture" is built upon the very narrow understanding of 'work' that is prevalent in American culture: that of making money in a self-beneficial way. You don't have this kind of work culture when you're looking at people in the abstract and measuring their ability to benefit society.
"It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society " - Markus Brunnermeier(1) I love how simply Markus arrived at the fundamental political issue with Basic Income in the USA: American culture and society is a "work culture". If you're not working you're not part of society. That's a very plain and powerful statement that is central to many of the gut-reaction trump-esque disparaging argument…
Is there anything particularly Trump-esque about, "Work = being part of society?" Is your logic that anything Trump likes is automatically wrong? Or is that an entirely subjective appeal? My personal experience with periods of time where I was under-employed, is that "Work = being part of society." People feel better when they know they are actively contributing. That's just a simple truth.
I appreciate your response because I probably needed to qualify that.
I am resolutely apolitical, but very much ADMIRE Trump's ability to state & capture - in a tweet - the underlying fears / motivations of voters.
And, to get completely off topic, there's a lovely article quantifying Trump's approach - based on the gunning-fog index - vs clinton / sanders.
"It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society " - Markus Brunnermeier(1) I love how simply Markus arrived at the fundamental political issue with Basic Income in the USA: American culture and society is a "work culture". If you're not working you're not part of society. That's a very plain and powerful statement that is central to many of the gut-reaction trump-esque disparaging argument…
Yet being part of society is something that people desire deeply, so it's possible that they'll just make their own work. I found Tim O'Reilly's musing on Econtalk last year (link - http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/10/tim_oreilly_on.html) to be persuasive - he posited that in a potential future where a min income is necessary, humans will spend a lot more time entertaining each other. Hey, Harry Potter was written while JK Rowling was "on the dole" and a lot of my favorite Twitch streamers (who have raised Street Fighter to both art and science) also seem to be awfully unoccupied Brits... I actually wrote an album during a brief unemployed period - see moneyhousegold.bandcamp.com - so I tend to imagine a society without need of work as a potential creative Golden Age in the making.
Society is a group of people whose collaborative efforts are able to accomplish more than any one individual and more than simply a sum of individuals. That means 'work', which is another word for 'doing something for someone else'. It is selfish to believe that one can belong to a group of people and obtain the benefits without contributing to it.
Why do you get to define what society is? Sure, if you take the definition that "society is the group of people who are working", then you get the conclusion that you are required to work to be in society. I'm going to present a different definition of society: > A society is a group of people involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typi…
Well, you can go make your society where the only thing that matters is that people believe the same thing. And then I'll live in current society, where people put forth an effort to support that society's needs. And then we can figure out which one gets to define society based on which one survives long enough to write down the definition. (Also, wouldn't a society imply exclusion by its very definition?)
Agreed. While I think a basic income is a good idea, the people I think it will make better off don't actually want it. They want jobs. Perhaps we should be considering a new Works Progress Administration instead.
A portion of those people will make their own jobs. Most of that portion are some form of artist - I know dancers, leatherworkers, acrobats, and event planners that would readily go after UBI - although what's interesting is that al those people already DO have jobs, just not the ones they want, or that pay the bills well enough.
Underpaid people who are pursing their passions will be fine with a UBI. People who lose their jobs to machines will have to rebuild their idea of why their life has value from scratch, and a UBI makes it clear that other people are still creating lots of value in the world—enough to fund checks for you.
Lots of people don't have productive passions. They were focused on being valuable to their family and community instead. What now for them?
"It might also shift the norm whether to work. Work = being part of society " - Markus Brunnermeier(1) I love how simply Markus arrived at the fundamental political issue with Basic Income in the USA: American culture and society is a "work culture". If you're not working you're not part of society. That's a very plain and powerful statement that is central to many of the gut-reaction trump-esque disparaging argument…
Agreed. While I think a basic income is a good idea, the people I think it will make better off don't actually want it. They want jobs. Perhaps we should be considering a new Works Progress Administration instead.
Maybe you should let those people speak for themselves. But I guess if you did that, we'd never hear anything.
The formulation of the question frames Social Security and Medicare as being mutually exclusive with a UBI. UBI ought to replace things like food stamps and welfare. Not healthcare or retirement benefits! I am a huge fan of UBI, and I would have voted "disagree" the way that question was framed. A better formulation would be to frame UBI as an "automation dividend". Where we dip into increased efficiencies produced b…
Totally agree, the question was framed poorly. Most liberal economists would disagree with this because it strips the existing social safety net (Social Security and Medicare being the big ones) and replaces it with only 13k. Heck, try buying private health insurance for someone who is 70 on 13k a year. :) Most conservative economists disagree because you didn't "earn" that money (whatever that means) and it would raise taxes. I suspect it was framed in a way to generate the most amount of disagreement as possible.
That's not a political issue, although it somehow has been made out to be. Society is a group of people whose contributions - however large or small - are beneficial to the rest of that group. Those contributions are called 'work'. There are many benefits to being a part of a society. Receiving those benefits without contributing to the rest of the society is selfish. This doesn't have much to do with Trump or gut-re…
The "work culture" is built upon the very narrow understanding of 'work' that is prevalent in American culture: that of making money in a self-beneficial way. You don't have this kind of work culture when you're looking at people in the abstract and measuring their ability to benefit society.
If you believe that the only reason people work is to selfishly make money, then OK, there's not much convincing I can do here. It reminds me of the argument that supporting Brexit can only be accounted for by xenophobia or racism. Is it really true that that many people are bigots? Or maybe there is another explanation that isn't being accounted for? Either way, earning money is not a selfish thing - it requires another party to agree. Taking money is selfish. There is a big distinction.