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Enough with Basic Income

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Re: Enough with Basic Income

#91

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

I'm glad this story came up. Basic Incomes sounds like a great, simple solution but it's not. Yes, welfare is an important part of our current economic system. There are people that needed it no question about it but giving it to all with no questions asked is a disaster in the making.

The fact is that the only reason we endure a job day after day is that we need to get paid to pay for our needs and wants. We get up everyday and race to work not because we owe someone a favor or because we love our work but because if we don't we'll get fired and have to deal with the consequences.

I would hate to live in a society where people show up to work at will. Think about it. The fireman, or name your specialist, decided not to show up today. Yikes!

I can see why the idea is attractive but money is what makes the world go around. Cliche but very true! If we decide that everyone can get it and not have to work for it, we are asking for a society that loses a prime motivator to get people moving towards a career and even to get out of the house.

The Utopian idea that if we don't have to work we'll be free to create a wonderful world. Is wishful thinking. All we have to do is look at what a group of rich young adults do when all their needs are filled. They become self absorbed and look to fill their own selfish wants. How many of them become nurses or doctors? Yes, rich is an extreme way to look at it, it's not "basic income" but it gives a clue to what happens when people lose a basic motivator.

We are scared that technology will suck up all the jobs but if we don't have people thinking about how to get people jobs and keep them busy we are in real trouble. Basic Income does not help in the long run.

Also it will never be enough. Basic needs will be fulfilled but people will always want more. One example that comes to mind is the introduction of the white phone by Apple. Apple introduced it and some people were falling over each other to get it. Not because it was white but because they could own something that others wanted. Human wants are infinite. Basic income will only create a never ending spiral that will keep people unhappy because they can't get what they want.

Money is a societal tool that's used to keep society fed and safe but it has to be used correctly. Giving it away, while attractive, is not the answer.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#92

Post by alanwatts »

blahi wrote: post #31
newjersey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to fill in many papers, prove that you don’t have sufficient income or any valuable property, go through many humiliating and intrusive controls. If you want to earn (a small amount of) money without working, then you must endure it all. In most cases it is necessary to seek the help of a social worker to carry out the procedure in its entirety. This is exactly the reason I want basic income. I want nobody…

And what happens in the very long term? What happens when kids are raised with the attitude that they are guaranteed to survive on basic income? What happens when their number grows? What happens when that large group feels that bare survival doesn't cut it any more and want more? What happens if the numbers actually don't pan out but scared politicians doon't want to give up power and cook the books for decades? Rem…

>There are two states in nature. You either grow or you shrink.

There is also homeostasis. Perpetual growth is cancer.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#93

Post by nugga »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #80

It would be so nice if the people in favor of UBI would be the only contributors to the system, leaving everyone else to live their lives as they like. But no, UBI means everyone else needs to contribute and convincing is done by force ("you pay your taxes or go to prison, you citizen, and your tax money will be used for what we want").

Doesn't the society you live in already maintain order through force? Aren't you already being taxed and the money used for whatever, including things you may find reprehensible?

If UBI were to make more sense than whatever welfare maze we currently have then why not switch? Having a job or means to support yourself is not a guarantee these days, not everyone is as lucky.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#94

Post by calibraxis »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #83
jnbiche wrote: post #46

This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-related job loss that isn't with traditional welfare solution proposed by the team he cheers for. He didn't spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me some of the strongest arguments for BI: 1) He worries about division and polarization. Well, BI i…

I found your comment constructive and I don't want to start an off-topic debate, just open something up to private contemplation. You, of course, have a right to your own opinion. Many (all?) libertarians lean left on a great many social issue and consider the social part of libertarianism as important if not more important than the right leaning economic part. I think the term "libertarian right" while not an incorr…

Yes, it's confusing to some in the US because Democrats are basically what "moderate Republicans" used to be in the 1980's. As even Obama pointed out. (http://www.salon.com/2016/05/17/noam_chomsky_the_democratic_...)

By world standards, not to mention many past US standards, the two presidential candidates (and the current president) are clearly right-wingers.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#95

Post by rayiner »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #83
jnbiche wrote: post #46

This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-related job loss that isn't with traditional welfare solution proposed by the team he cheers for. He didn't spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me some of the strongest arguments for BI: 1) He worries about division and polarization. Well, BI i…

I found your comment constructive and I don't want to start an off-topic debate, just open something up to private contemplation. You, of course, have a right to your own opinion. Many (all?) libertarians lean left on a great many social issue and consider the social part of libertarianism as important if not more important than the right leaning economic part. I think the term "libertarian right" while not an incorr…

Libertarians intersect with liberals only on a handful of social issues: gay marriage, drugs, and abortion. Most of the social issues near-and-dear to the left are not compatible with libertarianism. There is nothing libertarian about the Civil Rights Act of 1964--which curtailed peoples' freedom to serve which customers they chose to serve or hire which employees they chose to hire. There is nothing libertarian about affirmative action, mandating equal pay for women, mandating family leave, and subsidizing child care. There is nothing libertarian about EPA and OSHA and their extensive regulatory codes. There is nothing libertarian about pushing more educational issues up to the federal level to redirect tax dollars to lower-income school districts.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#96

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #2

There are some good points in here. However, what I think the author misses is that we are within reach of a post-scarcity economy, at which point all of those historical economic references go out the window (since nearly all economic theory assumes scarcity). That possibility makes a UBI experiment very worthwhile to me. I don't think we're there today or anything like that, but it may be within our lifetimes that…

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I don't think post-scarcity will eat the entire economy anytime soon. In particular, I think that it will still be unaffordable to access proper medical care, child care, and housing. And I don't see how UBI solves that.

Hence there are more pressing problems, like deploying a sustainable universal health insurance in the US (either public option or single payer) and reflecting on how we could make housing more affordable so that middle class and working class people can live where the jobs are located.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#97

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

vitno wrote: post #5

"there’s a libertarian ideological bias in Silicon Valley that seems to turn people into ignorant morons when it comes to social state-related issues. As engineers, some don’t even get the political stakes." "So enough already. Grow up now, study history..." Regardless of the actual content of the article, I found the style of so many unnecessary ad hominim attacks offputing. The actual content of the article isn't r…

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I'm certainly not the first to point out that Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that?

I didn't write that basic income won't work as a solution designed to fix a problem. My point is that I don't see a political path to enacting it, and even though it was enacted, I don't see how it could survive the next round of election.

So yes maybe it's time to focus on more winnable fights such as implementing universal health insurance.

https://medium.com/@Nicolas_Colin/thanks-for-all-the-respons...

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#98

Post by geezerjay »

inflagranti wrote: post #73
stephengillie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the right is the infamous voucher system. It has been widely experimented, often with negative results, in fields such as education. The principle is to provide individuals with money and let them find providers on a lightly regulated market. Vouchers often deliver poor performance. The money distributed contributes to inflating the prices as the price elasticity of supply is negative—if only because nobody’s su…

Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? I guess you mean private companies which are always well run (how many banks had to be bailed out?), never susceptible to corruption (VW comes to mind just recently) and offer great customer service (any cable company ever)...

> Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!?

You've missed the point.

The point is that the foundation of the basic income concept is that the income redistribution scheme works flawlessly and according to the people's expectations. This assumption is patently false, as the system is established and managed by people, particularly elected officials and the regime's apparatchiks, who have a long and plentiful resume of manipulating, distorting and corrupting the state to fit their own personal agendas.

I can tell you exactly what happened in my country's income redistribution scheme. It is supposed to be entirely independent of the state and self-managed. Yet' somehow the ruling regime managed to manipulate the system to finance golden parachutes to the nation's career politicians (golden pensions paid off to people who never contributed to the scheme) as well as forcing it as a cash cow to the state as a exceedingly cheap source of state loans.

And it is supposed to be a simple system where worker contributes 1/3 of their salary to finance pensions and unemployment benefits.

That's what these organizations made by people are used for, in reality, and reality always trumps fiction.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#99

Post by alanwatts »

justinmk wrote: post #37
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #2

There are some good points in here. However, what I think the author misses is that we are within reach of a post-scarcity economy, at which point all of those historical economic references go out the window (since nearly all economic theory assumes scarcity). That possibility makes a UBI experiment very worthwhile to me. I don't think we're there today or anything like that, but it may be within our lifetimes that…

> The main threats are overpopulation and politics, as tech seems to be ticking along quite nicely. If [over]population is a factor, then "post-scarcity" is fiction. This makes me think BI advocates are quietly assuming constraints such as "we'll discourage reproduction somehow"--while constantly mentioning how BI will be free of constraints.

The income itself is what stabilizes the population, this phenomenon is known as the demographic-economic paradox.

The real false assumption here is that increased standard of living leads to overpopulation. The data indicates the opposite is true.

Reproduction is a survival mechanism. Threaten an organisms survival, and that mechanism is triggered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#100

Post by geezerjay »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #57
at-fates-hands wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It is not like we can't afford it. Have you looked at the US Economy lately? (Jan 2016) Why 2016 keeps getting uglier for US economy - http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/29/why-2016-keeps-getting-uglier... (April 2016) Americans' confidence in economy at 2016 low - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/28/news/economy/us-economic-con... (June 2016) The next recession is already here—and there isn't much the Fed can do - http://ww…

The whole point of UBI is universal. If it's just moving some bits into everyone's account monthly, entire layers of bureacracy, with their buildings, staff, forms, and fraud checking departments, can be removed. It should make it remarkably cheap to run, comparatively. Make it lower income only and you have to bring all that back.

> It should make it remarkably cheap to run, comparatively.

You're assuming that it would be possible to simply eliminate government and state services and institutions, both politically and practically.

Instead, everyone working within an organization works to serve their own personal interests. This means that it's practically impossible for an elected official to eliminate all this state cruft, as every single person within the organization would fight tooth and nail to sabotage the project.

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