111–120 of 213 posts
If I am getting free money, is 'society' going to be my boss, but in real life? Will I be more subservient to society than I currently am? What is my role in society, what am I giving back to it?
Your role in society now becomes: not being a problem because you have no job/money. That is why they give you money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "generous welfare payments" Welfare programs in the past may be relatively generous compared to today, but I'd be interested to know when this golden era of welfare payments was, which era did you have in mind? Also, it takes more than money alone to make people happy. It's possible to be financially comfortable but still live in a ugly, uninspiring place with very little that's enjoyable to do. I'd much rather be…
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/13/magazine/four-generations-...
If so, what factors do you believe contributed to the gang culture and drug use outlined in that story? Do you believe decent welfare payments were the cause? An enabling factor? A coincidence?
I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist. This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like…
Really? You think that's more realistic than just taking it from the top 0.1%? There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. Basically it was a policy of not letting a small number of people take all of the marbles. There is, in fact, a way to avoid that tax, it's called start a new business or expand o…
You know the Rothschild? Rockefeller? In what period they made most of their money?. In those with the higher "rich taxes".
In fact that basically meant in practice that only a few could hold all the power, with no competition, by law.
It is very similar to what happens in Cuba today, when you can't earn more than 30 USD a month or so, no matter how good you are or how much you provide for the state. You could be the one responsible for the famous Che Guevara photo or a baseball player, you will earn millions that the State will take, and give you 30 USD.
An exception has been made recently for small business to this law, but of course some people in power are the gatekeepers to it(and you better pay them a significant part of your profits under the table for getting permission).
Of course the communist in power will spent lavishly your money because they can decide who spends what. No rich people in the country officially. Fidel officially has no money, extra officially it has billions outside the country.
Basic income means most of your money being taken away from you in taxes for someone else to spend for you. This has been already invented and tested before.
My issue is the power over the people that the Basic Income would give the government. "Vote for me and basic income goes up!!" and the ways it will be manipulated by those in government in 10,20,100 years. Sounds good, but I can think of a million ways this can easily be abused.
How is this any different from "Vote for me and taxes go down!!"? At least we'd have a different choice.
The sales pitch of "get more money" will also be used to hide and justify taxes going up etc. They will do things like only talk about how you get more money and not mention things like they will tax more. Its an easier more manipulative sales pitch that it becomes capable of.
Also over the course of time tons of changes, additions, etc will be added to it. I am not completely against the idea, it sounds great in practice but I just see way too many things that can go wrong.
I also don't think its wise to put too many eggs in one basket.
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This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.
> There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone? Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs. I'm hones…
Housekeeper
Nanny
Personal trainer
Personal assistant
Tutor
Pet care
Archive researcher
Take two things that could unlock numerous needs for jobs.
1) education, which we currently do en masse, but could be personalised to varying extents
2) remote working, which would free people from cities and allow them to have larger houses and gardens, and in general make service provision less efficient and require more labour (it's easy to serve urban dwellers since they are so concentrated)
I believe we can liberate humanity from forced labor in my lifetime. And I think that the product of that liberation, in terms of cultural production and scientific discovery, will have a bigger impact on human civilization than anything we've seen in recorded history. Because when people don't have to be baristas to pay the rent, and have the resources to pursue whatever they were really passionate about before they had a landlord, beautiful things will develop.
"Basic income" is one possible tool in the box but it's not the only one. And instead of having dumb arguments about the minutiae of handing out free currency in our economic system as it's currently constituted, I would rather see more debate about the principle.
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Businesses don't want to hire people at 20 hours a week if they are willing to work 40. And this isn't black and white - we have been in transition to mental labor automation for the past 50 years. We have just been replacing desirable industry jobs with service jobs that people hate with a passion, as wealth inequality grows and those dropped out of economic potential switch to basically waiting on those that have n…
So basicly, let's deploy UBI, and if people want to work 3-4 day weeks, it is up to them. I agree with this idea, and it clears up the work-no-work part of my argument. I just felt that UBI is such a big step, that just lowering the number of weekly hours had a precedent (from 7 to current 5 days a week) and was not associated with a more leftist sentiment, thus being easier to pass.
I'm curious, and this may have been discussed elsewhere, but how would that work in a country like the US (both in terms of size of population and capitalistic greed)? For instance, when student loans became ubiquitous, universities raised their rates. Now there are many theories as to why that was but I feel the simplest explanation is that a) it created greater demand, and b) easy/cheap money (look at ITT). What's…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? You think that's more realistic than just taking it from the top 0.1%? There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. Basically it was a policy of not letting a small number of people take all of the marbles. There is, in fact, a way to avoid that tax, it's called start a new business or expand o…
>There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. When we were at war. There was also a longer time when there were no taxes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable. As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case. > There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Several things, yes. A lot, no. And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the num…
Do we value art? It seems to be hard to make a life that way unless you find some corporate niche. I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already.