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Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

basicincomecanada.org

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Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#61

Post by someone7x »

> Mincome was not unlike the un-stigmatizing benefits that can come at tax time

Why is it purposefully difficult to read.

This is the mental effort that I have to go through.

1. Ok so not and unlike, let's say the cancel each other out. Not dissimilar can become similar.

2. un-stigmatizing, does this mean that it's just not stigmatizing or that it is removing a stigma?

2a. "mincome is lacking stigma, similar to tax time benefits"

2b. "mincome removes a stigma, similar to tax time benefits"

edit:format

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#62

Post by derekp7 »

erpellan wrote: post #22
pmalynin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a bit on NPR a few months ago that discussed the idea that having a fallback will make you work and try less exactly for the same reason. I think having the "cornered animal" type of drive goes a long way.

By that logic productivity in all industries could be improved by introducing flogging / periodic executions of lowest performing staff. What's more likely: someone takes a risk knowing that if they fail their kids won't be homeless, or knowing that if they fail, they will be?

Some companies do this to a lesser degree -- every year they fire the bottom 10% of performers -- also known as stacked ranking.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#63

Post by sidlls »

bsbechtel wrote: post #31
exabrial wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last two sentences couldn't be any more eloquent. When reasoning on these issues, one should always carefully examine the phrase: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Every single word is chosen very carefully.

A basic right is something you inherently have, and cannot be taken away. It's not something to be provided by the government. I wish more people had a better understanding of this.

This treats rights (legal) as though they were laws of nature. I have yet to see convincing data or argument supporting this notion.

There is ample evidence from history that the legal construct called "rights" is in fact not absolute at all. In fact, all the data we have suggest that "rights" are in fact provided by the government. The mechanisms differ (e.g. the US's constitutional republic encodes government-defined rights in the Constitution and laws derived from it), but ultimately "rights" are something that people, in the forming of the government they live under, agree should exist.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#65

Post by krupan »

epistasis wrote: post #47
krupan wrote: post #37

Every time basic income comes up people seem to missunderstand the key points: 1) It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment. Nobody who is willing to work at least a part time job is going to just sit back and live off of basic income alone for their whole life. 2) It's a huge reduction and simplification of government, replacing several huge bureaucratic entities with one that effectiv…

I'm not sure if there's agreement on either of those points, honestly. A good number of people who talk about basic income are talking about giving less than is enough for subsistence living. And many talk about keeping additional programs in place, such as disability (somebody with special medical needs will not be able to live on the same income as somebody that can care for themselves and does not need additional…

I agree that there are lots of variations on the themes of points 1 and 2 and that's a huge problem in trying to discuss this intelligently and dispassionately.

On a personal note, I'm less interested in savings from point 2 than I am in a reduction in power and corruption (or at least corruptibility).

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#66

Post by yummyfajitas »

heartsucker wrote: post #44
yummyfajitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my brother tells me he's hungry and broke I might make him dinner and let him crash on my couch. If I just saw him spend $500 on weed I'll probably tell him he's on his own. The demonstration is essential because if we don't require it, some people will exploit our kind nature to rob us. This is already a massive problem in programs where we do require demonstrations of need. See NPR's expose on rampant disability…

But at what level do we accept there's assholes and move on and not let them ruin it for all of us? If we have a program that helps 1 person and 1 person scams it, we might get rid of that program. What if it helps 10 for every 1 scammer? 1,000? 1,000,000? Certainly with the last we'd say it's ok.

We stop when the marginal cost of additional oversight exceeds the marginal benefit of additional fraud prevented. I.e., we keep increasing oversight until diminishing returns causes $1 of additional fraud prevention spending to reduce fraud by $0.99.

I don't know where that point lives, but as NPRs expose demonstrates, that amount is certainly larger than zero and probably a lot larger than where we are now.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#67

Post by yummyfajitas »

sanxiyn wrote: post #54
yummyfajitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my brother tells me he's hungry and broke I might make him dinner and let him crash on my couch. If I just saw him spend $500 on weed I'll probably tell him he's on his own. The demonstration is essential because if we don't require it, some people will exploit our kind nature to rob us. This is already a massive problem in programs where we do require demonstrations of need. See NPR's expose on rampant disability…

How can some people exploit basic income system to "rob us"? Maybe they can fabricate people which don't actually exist? (Or more realistically, delay reporting death to collect basic income of dead people.) These are concerns, but hopefully modern government can deal with fake identities. These still seem a lot better than current welfare system. If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "…

People exploit basic income to rob us when they consume it without needing it. Why do you think having zero oversight and giving benefits to everyone, including those who don't need it, is somehow better than the current system?

If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.

Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#68

Post by CPLX »

IsaacL wrote: post #9

"If we’re interested in social policies that are resilient I think the dignity problem, or the moral aspects of these policies are worth considering more closely." I certainly agree the moral aspects are worth considering. No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and thos…

> it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and those who are net contributors.

This is an attribute of all conceivable systems of government, and as such the comment contains no insight.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#69

Post by collyw »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #27

It's extremely counterproductive to, as the article puts it, "take the question of the moral quality of the poor off the table." The fact is that a large amount of poverty is directly correlated with "moral quality". Most poor people in the US (maybe Canada is different?) have low "moral quality", which I define as engaging in behaviors that are likely to keep a person poor. These behaviors include not seeking work […

From what I have seen, the very rich are lacking in morals a lot. Avoiding taxes, exploiting workers, hiking prices of essential drugs to generate profits. Not all of them but many.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#70

Post by IsaacL »

duaneb wrote: post #13
IsaacL wrote: post #9

"If we’re interested in social policies that are resilient I think the dignity problem, or the moral aspects of these policies are worth considering more closely." I certainly agree the moral aspects are worth considering. No matter how you arrange your basic income scheme (and the tax system to support it), it's going to split the population into two groups: those who are net recipients of government money, and thos…

> Don't let basic income advocates evade the question of who pays for their utopian scheme. Have you witnessed this?

Yes. The huge majority of pro-UBI writings I see talk up the benefits in great detail but either ignore, or misrepresent, the costs.

Lots of naive idealists support UBI - but I also frequently see UBI advocates who purport to be "evidence-based" and "rational", and yet who fail to provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how they propose to fund their scheme. Instead they do 1 of 3 things:

1. Provide evidence countering non-essential arguments, e.g., will basic income recipients be motivated to work? This implies they've addressed the opposing side, while simultaneously ignoring the essential counter-argument, i.e., where the money comes from.

2. Hand-wave about reduced administration costs. (This is nowhere near sufficient to cover the huge increase in spending). Or automation (yeah, we have better deep learning algorithms, but machine vision, robotics and natural language processing are advancing glacially slowly, so most jobs will require a human in the loop for the foreseeable future).

3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible.

With a small amount of research I found numerous counter-arguments to UBI, including a paper by the New Zealand government finding what I stated in point 3, i.e., UBI would imply benefit reductions to pensioners and the disabled and still require major tax hikes.

I see many people becoming full-time advocates and researchers into UBI, claiming it to be a rational, scientific, evidence-based policy. And yet they miss these basic issues. (It's no mystery why. After realising that current welfare systems don't work, and that a UBI can't work, the logical next step is to question wealth redistribution itself, but that's too far for most). The 20th century saw many intellectuals proposing "scientific" utopian schemes while blatantly ignoring reality, with well-known results.

http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor...

http://thespinoff.co.nz/featured/31-03-2016/i-love-the-idea-...

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/universal...

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