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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

#181

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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…

> There's no incentive for fraud in an unconditional benefit system.

Of course there is - money, the same incentive as always. The fraud just takes a different form. Now it's "people that don't exist" instead of "people that don't qualify".

Note, however, that "people that don't exist" may be easier to detect than "people who don't qualify", which involve all kinds of judgment about grey areas.

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

#182

Post by dragonwriter »

fweespeech wrote: post #148
duaneb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah. Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition that they insist will be fixed with "economic growth". Its the same handwaving the GOP does. Perfect example: There are 242,470,820 adults in the US. http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am... > In my version, every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically i…

> Many people who are into BI are unwilling to admit its a very expensive proposition

A mature BI (one providing an above-poverty-line benefit) is an expensive proposition, but you don't need a mature BI, or one that replaces all the programs you'd like to replace with one, to get net social benefit from it. So you start with a small BI, and phase out the things it is eventually planned to phase out only as the BI benefit makes the existing program irrelevant. (Until then, you just treat the BI as income when calculating benefit for the existing programs.)

To do this, you establish a funding stream that is expected to grow with economic growth, and let the funding stream (basically; using a formula that cushions fluctuations so that short-term downturns don't lead to BI cuts), including prior year savings from reductions in other programs due to the BI along with tax collections in the "funding stream" calculations -- determine the BI level.

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

#183

Post by pmalynin »

ch4s3 wrote: post #171
pmalynin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right -- that's how we built the Pyramids and America pre civil war, and look how far that got us. If you want interpret my response at the extremes I'm more that glad to dance.

The pyramids were built with corvee labor as a tax scheme and antebellum America relied on slavery, even the industrial free states utilized cheap raw materials like cotton produced in slave states. Are you suggesting that compelling people to work by force is an appropriate modern economic system?

It's just as appropriate as 'flogging / periodic executions of lowest performing staff'

Hence my point.

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

#184

Post by troncheadle »

err4nt wrote: post #173
troncheadle wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'm replying to you down the chain a bit because this is a great example of you just not getting it at all. Do you have a college education? Did you go to a good high school? Do you have motivated peers? Growing up, did you have enough food to eat every day and every night? Do you have two loving parents? Or even one? Did you have a roof over your head every night? How many times did you change houses, schools, d…

> Do you have a college education? Yes! I couldn't afford fancy schools so I did community college for 3 years and paid my own tuition. Total cost > Did you go to a good high school? I went to an okay high school. It was 1/3 hilbillies from the country, 1/3 rich city folks from a nearby town, and 1/3 lower middle class folks who lived in the country. I was part of the last group. > Do you have motivated peers? HELL N…

> I think you've got me pegged wrong.

You're right, I definitely did. Sorry about the assumptions and thanks for furthering the discussion despite that.

I also seem to be misunderstood -- I don't think that your success is only due to your privilege. I see that positioning a lot and it is a dangerous way to think. I think your privilege had a hand in your success, not that it is entirely responsible for your success. I also think that basic income is a way to give that privilege to a wider swath of the population without taking away opportunity from other people.

I think that basic income is a good strategy to lift the norm so it's not so necessary to be a mold breaker to build a high quality of life from impoverished beginnings -- raise the baseline and I think we give more people a chance at success.

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

#185

Post by pkaye »

dragonwriter wrote: post #180
pkaye wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Then what about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? What abo…

> The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Or, more likely, we don't include disability programs (which are not purely or primarily means-tested programs) as among th…

Now what about the kids of undocumented workers? Will people in retirement continue to get their social security? How will we pay for all this? Assuming 418M people at $13K which I typically see mentioned as basic income, that is $4T which is more than the entire US federal budget.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #174
yummyfajitas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we don't have long term structural unemployment. Robots didn't take our jobs. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... We actually currently have a scarcity of labor and BI makes this problem worse (about twice as bad as the great recession did). http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf EITC increases incentives to work as does a basic job guarantee. Welfare and BI have the…

> But we don't have long term structural unemployment. No, we have (arguably) the early phases of an economic revolution with rapid changes in the kinds of jobs in demand (which is the other thing I mentioned), long-term structural unemployment is a speculated future issue, both of those (as short and longer term concerns) are issues that are usually cited as motivations for UBI (personally, I'm more interested in th…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by [deleted] »

err4nt wrote: post #175
sigmar wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you replied to "without access to the same resources" with a list of physical needs seems to show that you really don't appreciate the disadvantages lower income people face. A laptop is fairly useless without the knowledge/education of what to use it for. Having time to go to a Starbucks is difficult for anyone with kids and without the money for daycare. Furthermore, the fact that you think everyone l…

> Furthermore, the fact that you think everyone lives near a Starbucks is pretty illustrative of your privilege I didn't say "everybody can do it because everybody has a starbucks" I just gave one example of type of place that provides many of those resources free of cost. Name 3 coffee shops in your town that don't have electricity? So here's a slightly more complete list for those who can't extrapolate: - libraries…

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by timt51 »

err4nt wrote: post #175
sigmar wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you replied to "without access to the same resources" with a list of physical needs seems to show that you really don't appreciate the disadvantages lower income people face. A laptop is fairly useless without the knowledge/education of what to use it for. Having time to go to a Starbucks is difficult for anyone with kids and without the money for daycare. Furthermore, the fact that you think everyone l…

> Furthermore, the fact that you think everyone lives near a Starbucks is pretty illustrative of your privilege I didn't say "everybody can do it because everybody has a starbucks" I just gave one example of type of place that provides many of those resources free of cost. Name 3 coffee shops in your town that don't have electricity? So here's a slightly more complete list for those who can't extrapolate: - libraries…

On somewhat of a tangent...

The difficult circumstances of your life drove you to work hard, to hopefully succeed, to be a better person, to become who you are today.

But did it/should it have to be that way? Did it have to be so hard?

Maybe. Maybe not. I wish it didn't have to be that way - for anyone.

But such difficulties in life are what make our accomplishments so spectacular...

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

#189

Post by err4nt »

icebraining wrote: post #145
err4nt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Beyond what's been pointed out, entrepreneurs have an additional safety net: limited liability. You can be sure that by creating a legal veneer, your home and other property will be safe, while the rest of society pays for the losses accrued by your experiment. That's potentially a much larger welfare transfer than any BI.

LLC in the US does. I suppose for a few hundreds or thousands you could incorporate in Canada too - though I believe Sole Proprietorship is the most popular type of business by FAR, and with sole proprietorship the proprietor is 100% liable for damages the business incurs. So it's actually more like a “personal liability” net for most…

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

#190

Post by logiczero »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #95
jonwachob91 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most welfare is paid for by the states...

The link is about state economic dependence on the federal government, not which layer of government distributes welfare benefits. It's just a rehashing of the red state-blue state federal dependence argument, which is really the rural-urban dependence argument. If you want to knock rural areas as being net welfare recipients, just call them rural areas rather than red states. But even that's still an unhelpful gener…

And as one of the comments pointed out, many of the rural states are completely at the mercy of the Federal government. When the Federal government controls 48% of a state's land (Wyoming), yet doesn't allow logging, mining or agricultural activities on most of it, what exactly is the local population supposed to generate revenue from?
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