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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

#111

Post by alanwatts »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #73
DougWebb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that clear cut. Your options are more like: 1) Trust your brother, feed him and let him crash. Costs you $50. 2) Don't trust your brother. Hire an investigator to determine if he bought weed. Most of the time nothing is found so you wind up helping him, which now cost $70. Occaaionally you discover something and choose not to help. Still costs you $20. Is #2 worth it? That depends on how often the investigat…

There's a third option which always costs $0.

Which one is that?

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

#112

Post by CPLX »

err4nt wrote: post #87
troncheadle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright John Gault. If we're talking nation level, your startup is not a 'tentpole.' How does your market cap compare to GE, Google, Amazon, Lockheed? Those are redwoods, and there are plenty of those. You're a maple sapling, there are plenty of those too. You're doing that thing where the middle class rebels against their own interests by positioning said interests as the interests of the working class, because they…

The resources that I built my business on: - a chair - a table - electricity - any computer - internet - coffee (for food) - bathroom If you can bring your own laptop to a starbucks, they have plenty of the rest of those. A laptop can cost as little as 230$ USD, so thats really the only barrier and I beleive its an attainable goal for anybody in North America. If your life depending on having a laptop, thats somethin…

- A position as a first class citizen in a tremendously wealthy industrial country that got that way by stealing resources and enslaving native populations for centuries, presumably

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

#113

Post by paulsutter »

Assume for the sake of argument, that we woke up one morning and there were machines that could write code. Really good code, 30,000 debugged lines a day. They invented better languages that we couldn't even understand and were willing to do this work just for fun.

In that world of super high productivity but few jobs,

Would basic income make sense? And if not, what's a better system? (asking the BI opponents here) I'm asking as a sincere question, I'm not trying to be persuasive.

I'm not saying this will happen, I'm hoping to avoid that debate, I'm just saying assume-for-the-sake-of-argument that this does happen, in some other world, a world we don't need to debate about.

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

#114

Post by sigmar »

err4nt wrote: post #77
ep103 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the reports I've seen have stated that actually, it works the other way around. That the vast majority of people who go into entrepreneurship only do so if they have money to fall back on, one way or another, should their business fail. So by that logic, basic income should actually significantly increase the likelihood of entrepreneurship, because while mincome will still be low enough that people will want…

Maybe on paper, or in theory. In my life I'm not ashamed to say it was the hunger of having nothing, no safety net, and having no job that STILL drives me today. That fire that got started when I had bills and no money is still burning strong today. But I worry if theres too mucb cushion perhaps I would have not hurt as bad, and ever achieved what Ive accomplished since then.

>it was the hunger of having nothing, no safety net, and having no job that STILL drives me today

Canada has had health care provided to you since 1984. So to say you have "no safety net" is factually wrong. Did the existence of public health care make you decide to leave and build your business somewhere else? It seems it did not.

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

#115

Post by VLM »

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…

That would seem to assume we're not already funding (1) already for everyone who isn't too mentally ill to participate in existing more expensive to administrate programs.

A classic example would be something like working poor on food stamps. We've decided as a nation to provide corporate welfare by allowing corporations to under pay employees and taxpayers will pick up the tab by providing food stamps to the employees. A lot of pointless administrative money is spent to make sure yes indeed they work at Walmart and Walmart doesn't pay a living wage. An interesting side effect is many jobs are going to have massive wage deflation down to minimum wage. Sort of a communist system where everyone gets the same pay.

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

#116

Post by icebraining »

kasbah wrote: post #28
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…

You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society. For instance artists, for now, need to try and sell their work but a lot of cultural works are not necessarily sell-able. It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?

Playing Devil's advocate,

> You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society

You could still measure whether any contribution is being made at all and only give BI to those who are contributing. Which is essentially what existing subsidies for art & etc are for.

> It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?

Under BI, members of minorities who overcame those handicaps will be paying more in taxes to support a whole bunch of white males, though.

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

#117

Post by legulere »

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…

Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants and has everything they are to owe to the society that formed them. What a single human can achieve compared to that is extremely small.

The reality is that the greatest amount of wealth is not attained by work but inherited. This stands in total opposition to the idea that our society is a meritocracy.

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

#118

Post by err4nt »

mordocai wrote: post #103
err4nt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they give taxes a bump of course, but what if they radically rearrange taxes. There are many voices i hear who believe people above certain limits should be taxed 90% or more, and some cutoff limits Ive heard have been 250k, or even 100k. If you suddenly fell into a 90% taxation bracket would you still be just as happy as today?

You do realize that, assuming taxes work like they do today, it'd be 90% on the amount over 250k/100k not 90% over the total income? Assuming you realize it, your point must be that only having 10% effective increase in income after you reach the threshold is demotivating, and I would agree.

So a bracket like that which stifles motivation would absolutely hurt industry, economy, and innovation.

Its like youre in a race against every other business and country in the world, and you say: "hey, lets put these leg cuffs on! No everybody has a 3 foot stride wehn walking, so its no fair for you to walk fast. These shackles will only restrict your movement if you succeed too much and are able to take bigger strides. The most important thing is to reduce the gaps between winners and losers!"

In that race, do you think you stand a fighting chance against unshackled competitors?

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

#119

Post by yummyfajitas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #110
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…

> See NPR's expose on rampant disability fraud There's no incentive for fraud in an unconditional benefit system. > It's hard to see how eliminating safeguards will improve things. Its actually easy to see, when the "safeguards" directly produce perverse incentives. Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme…

Yes, and if I redefine all errors as successes my program has no bugs.

Back in reality, my application is not meeting business needs, and BI is still wasting a bunch of money on people who don't need it.

Means-testing reduces the marginal benefit to finding additional income, encouraging a culture of dependence. And any type of conditional benefit scheme creates an incentive for fraud where the benefits of fraud outweigh the expected cost of committing it.

A Basic Job Guarantee (if you need a job real bad, the government gives you a real bad job) does not create incentives for fraud. EITC also has minimal incentives for fraud.

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

#120

Post by err4nt »

CPLX wrote: post #112
err4nt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resources that I built my business on: - a chair - a table - electricity - any computer - internet - coffee (for food) - bathroom If you can bring your own laptop to a starbucks, they have plenty of the rest of those. A laptop can cost as little as 230$ USD, so thats really the only barrier and I beleive its an attainable goal for anybody in North America. If your life depending on having a laptop, thats somethin…

- A position as a first class citizen in a tremendously wealthy industrial country that got that way by stealing resources and enslaving native populations for centuries, presumably

What exactly is a first class citizen? Care to explain?
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