51–60 of 187 posts
I don't see how they would afford this. Rough approximations show that even giving $20 a month to India's 900 million adult population would mean an annual expenditure of 216 billion dollars, more than 4 times the country's annual defence budget. Where does all this money come from? Increased taxes from the middle class (so that they pay $40 to get $20)?
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Then I'll take the liberty to correct your understanding of my comment: I spoke about: a move that directly affected livelihood of billion Indians, "with a possibility of large-scale riots". Since those large-scale riots did not happen it can be termed a success. Why am I talking about "large-scale riots"? Because the Opposition (even the Supreme Court of India) predicted large-scale riots: http://www.merinews.com/mo…
> Since those large-scale riots did not happen it can be termed a success. You can't be serious.
Also, is the only counter one can come up with for an economic move is talk about "death of 100 people"? Seriously? In a populace of a billion the death of 100 people for such a huge economic move is close to nothing.
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>That's great, but its just a sedative for the masses. As opposed to the great energy drink of communism?
No, and some difference will always be there. That's healthy - it aspires people to be more. But I'd like it to be more like Star-Trek: people work hard and achieve things for the prestige. If you become captain of a star ship, you're admired, and you (for example) still get more pretty ladies fawning after you than the helm officer. And he does so more than a dude who wants to do nothing but play GTA:XXIV on the Hol…
Hardass "realists" love modeling the market as anarchic self-interested atomic agents until it comes to giving their own kids a leg-up even if they don't deserve it. Then it's all biology and social psychology.
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I'll take liberty to correct your perspective: A demonetization move that directly affected livelihood of billion Indians, with a possibility of large-scale riots, but ended with only 100 deaths. I don't see how it cannot be termed a success. Can you think of any major move that directly affected the entire country but did not end in large scale riots? If you need to understand what a "hasty decision" means take a lo…
brouhaha means - Loud confused noise from many sources. I don't think anything was said about it being a success or otherwise
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I'll take liberty to correct your perspective: A demonetization move that directly affected livelihood of billion Indians, with a possibility of large-scale riots, but ended with only 100 deaths. I don't see how it cannot be termed a success. Can you think of any major move that directly affected the entire country but did not end in large scale riots? If you need to understand what a "hasty decision" means take a lo…
> a possibility of large-scale riots, but ended with only 100 deaths. I don't see how it cannot be termed a success. What is the upside we got with demonetization that we can call success? Did it end black money? No. Will it end counterfeit currency? No. Does it help citizens in any way? No. Then what exactly is the success we achieved here? Modi have blood of 100 citizens on his hands this time instead of thousands…
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Every basic income story has an inflation comment. Think in terms of proportion of wealth helps. If a company issues new shares and gives it X(analogy to govt printing money), the overall dilution in value of share doesn't prevent that the wealth of X from going up. For instance, giving 100% new shares of a 10 million dollars company to X means each share has half of the old value, but X has nevertheless gained 5 mil…
The argument for inflation is simple. You are giving goods and services to people, who then also self consume their own labour. So they get paid twice in real terms. If they worked for a living they would get paid once, and their output would return to the social pool. Since the social pool ends up less than the counterfactual, and there is more money chasing it you have inflation. Those working get fed up with that…
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I'll take liberty to correct your perspective: A demonetization move that directly affected livelihood of billion Indians, with a possibility of large-scale riots, but ended with only 100 deaths. I don't see how it cannot be termed a success. Can you think of any major move that directly affected the entire country but did not end in large scale riots? If you need to understand what a "hasty decision" means take a lo…
> a possibility of large-scale riots, but ended with only 100 deaths. I don't see how it cannot be termed a success. What is the upside we got with demonetization that we can call success? Did it end black money? No. Will it end counterfeit currency? No. Does it help citizens in any way? No. Then what exactly is the success we achieved here? Modi have blood of 100 citizens on his hands this time instead of thousands…
70% of those polled (average of all polls conducted by media and independent media houses) disagree with you. I, as a Free Citizen of India, disagree with you.
You fail to mention about all those getting caught with counterfeit currency and black money and still continue to be caught. Are those the figments of my imagination? Or are you only seeing one side of the coin? The side that suits your narrative?
> Then what exactly is the success we achieved here? Modi have blood of 100 citizens on his hands this time instead of thousands like it was in Gujarat riots under his leadership. Is that the benchmark of success?
This is a ridiculous and a very weak argument to counter an economic move. I'm sorry that you are incapable of understanding a perspective beyond the deaths of 100 people.
Have there been any studies on the impact to prices on staple foods? Because if everyone can afford food and basic items for living, does that mean the prices for these items will go sky high? Especially as supply will be short of demand?
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Why would demand for staple foods shoot up? Sure, there's some hunger in India, but AFAICT most people are already getting most of the calories they need. If anything, I would would think demand for basic staples would go down as people switch away from the cheapest of foods to better ones.
> Sure, there's some hunger in India, but AFAICT most people are already getting most of the calories they need. I'm pretty sure this is very wrong. Quick search brought up the following: http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-fac... > Hunger continues to take its largest toll in Southern Asia, which includes the countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The estimate of 276 million chronically un…
I don't see how they would afford this. Rough approximations show that even giving $20 a month to India's 900 million adult population would mean an annual expenditure of 216 billion dollars, more than 4 times the country's annual defence budget. Where does all this money come from? Increased taxes from the middle class (so that they pay $40 to get $20)?
Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers.
Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority). Family size is 3 (average household size is really 2.54 persons in the US)
US Population: 312 million, which is 104 million families (households). The Census dept. says poverty level for a family of 3 is $20,000, so that's what BI must match. This gives us annual BI payments of $2.08 trillion.
Savings from shuttered entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies: $938 billion. EITC & CTC: $362 billion. Total savings is $1.3 trillion annually.
But what about Social Security (OASI/DI) with $888 billion in payments? Since that's a pay-it-forward program we can't end it suddenly (it'd be political suicide, in any case). It'd have to be tapered off in some fashion. The trust fund (Al Gore's "Lock Box") doesn't exist as a big pile of money to be tapped, as that has been turned into US-issued Treasury Bonds.
So there's a shortfall of about $810 billion each year. Could we tap into the money sent to the Pentagon? Yes, but that's "only" $610 billion and we'd have a military that isn't being paid and with increasingly obsolete equipment. Not a good situation.