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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

#221

Post by kamaal »

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…

>>It's basic income, like, enough for beans and rice and a small apartment.

Pretty soon some will guilt shame a rich guy for driving around an BMW while some 'poor' are getting by on with 'rice', 'beans' and 'small apartment'. And ask for basic luxury.

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

#222

Post by JamesBarney »

kamaal wrote: post #205
dsr_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"those who are net recipients... and those who are net contributors" We already have that in the US. For example, on a state-by-state basis: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the... Every serious basic income article I've read addresses the question of who pays for it. The answer is, unsurprisingly, everyone who pays taxes.

>>The answer is, unsurprisingly, everyone who pays taxes. 1. Not every one would work to pay taxes, when there is a way to not work and still get paid. 2. Lesser the number of people who work lesser the pool of money to share among the remaining. 3. Those who still continue to work feel cheated all the time to be working and making up for everyone. While they push insane hours to make a living, punished all the time…

I don't know of any western democracies collapsing under the weight of their taxation system.

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

#223

Post by duaneb »

1123581321 wrote: post #209
duaneb wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's even a common model, yet. Some are designed only to benefit the poor, like negative income tax rates. It's kind of silly to discuss the details when there aren't any. People need to be open to giving cash to the poor to even begin thinking about how best to implement it, and the US at least has been going in the opposite direction since the original Clinton welfare reform, which emphasizes emplo…

I do not agree. Understanding of and agreement on the details makes it possible for people to be open to such a broad idea. Currently, the details are discouraging, so it makes sense for proponents to downplay them, but in the long run, they will have more success solving the prerequisites and working their way up. My opinion is that a career in robotics is the most effective way of solving those prerequisites.

Well, I would investigate negative income tax. I don't know what the current state of the UBI lobby looks like, but there are certainly flavors of UBI that are much more efficient at allocating funds where they are needed most. Negative income tax is just one flavor of the more nuanced strategies. I certainly don't think routing some percentage of money into the governments coffers just to pay out again to the same people paying it would be an attractive option, and that seems like what you're describing. I believe that is by far the least efficient model I've seen.

Personally, I think it's throwing money away without also addressing healthcare costs, including nutritional reform. Sugar is only cheap when you ignore the costs of obesity we all bear in increased premiums. This is the only way of which I can conceive to implement some form of cash relief without cutting into benefits.

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

#224

Post by dllthomas »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #119
dragonwriter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 outw…

> 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.

Are you sure about that? For recipients, there is potential to slack off while still receiving pay. Possibly to the point of doing other work (under the table? for their own household?). While this can be construed as still comparing favorably to BI ("at least we're getting some work out of some of them") it is not at all the same as there being no opportunity for fraud.

Meanwhile, there is tremendous potential for abuse and fraud by those giving out the basic jobs. A long running program whose criteria for success is "employ a lot of people at marginally useful things" is a large pile of money just waiting to be spent on making improvements that especially benefit the connected few.

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

#225

Post by dragonwriter »

dllthomas wrote: post #224
yummyfajitas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 outw…

> 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. Are you sure about that? For recipients, there is potential to slack off while still receiving pay. Possibly to the point of doing other work (under the table? for their own household?). While this can be construed as still comparing favorably to BI ("at least we're getting some work out…

> Meanwhile, there is tremendous potential for abuse and fraud by those giving out the basic jobs. A long running program whose criteria for success is "employ a lot of people at marginally useful things" is a large pile of money just waiting to be spent on making improvements that especially benefit the connected few.

A point well-illustrated, in fiction, in The Green Mile.

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

#226

Post by dpark »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #154
wccrawford wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave your brother to die on the street, cold and hungry and ignored. Of course.

After sleeping on the street for one night, the brother might also choose to spend his money on rent rather than weed the next time around.

You might want to check on the price of weed vs rent in a typical city. The brother is unlikely to forgo the weed if doing so just means he's sleeping in the streets sober instead of high.

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

#227

Post by gwright »

logiczero wrote: post #190
jackcosgrove wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Logging, mining, and agricultural activities is hardly an exhaustive list of economic activity. It is also strange to think about what people should do with land they don't control. Or even to assume that natural resources are the only resource of importance.

Connecticut has 3.6 million people, Wyoming has roughly 0.6 million people. 6.2% of Connecticut's 5543^2 miles of land is public 56% of Wyoming's 97818^2 miles of land is public.

So Wyoming has about 8 times as much private land as Connecticut and about 1/6th the number of people.

I realize that there is a lot more involved than just land, but it looks like in the aggregate, there is about 50 times as much private land in Wyoming per person than in Connecticut.

It is easy to poke holes in my analysis, but I'd be surprised if scarcity of land is the roadblock to a healthy economy in Wyoming.

I'm also not trying to take an opinion on whether the federal government should hold all that land, just pointing out that there is a lot of land in Wyoming on a per-capita basis.

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

#228

Post by rorykoehler »

jimmyk wrote: post #214
majewsky wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Because there's only so much money to spend every year, and when it's used up, the economy shuts down until New Year's Eve. /s

Do you not believe there are scarce resources? Or do you not believe money is used to direct how those scarce resources are used?

Considering the amount we waste is enough to feed the rest of the planet, no we don't really have scarce resources and resources are becoming less and less scarce every year.

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

#229

Post by gwright »

tw04 wrote: post #142
CPLX wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's never an option costing zero as long as the brother in question has the ability to punch you in the face and take your food for leaving him to starve.

The fact there's a section of the population who believes that poor people won't turn to crime before starving to death simply amazes me. You actually have 4 options: do nothing and then put people in jail. Which will cost you WAYYYYYY more per person, per year, than just giving them money directly to "freeload". Do nothing and wait for the mass revolt when half the population is starving to death when you've got som…

I'm a bit dismayed at the lack of imagination in this thread.

How about designing public policy that provide incentives to work rather than incentives not to work? (earned income tax credits)

How about decreasing the cost of labor in order to increase employment while simultaneously providing programs that assist during periods of unemployment? (e.g., make it easier to hire and to fire and switch jobs while providing strong unemployment safety net, decouple health insurance from employment)

How about setting expectations that people be self-sufficient and not dependent upon others? This is a more of a cultural problem then a policy problem.

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

#230

Post by gwright »

akmiller wrote: post #168
yummyfajitas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Many reasons to this and something has to change at some point. But just a couple of points is that if everyone receives it then nobody can be robbing the system as everyone is entitled to it. Another point that the HN crew should be well aware of is that we are going to see entire Industries worth of jobs disappear. Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be…

> Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's.

I see this argument a lot lately, but it isn't clear to me why we should have any confidence in this type of speculation. Even if it this generally turns out to be true, what are the second-order effects of such a radical change to the job market? How will people adapt? What new opportunities will arise?

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