91–100 of 187 posts
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There's a class of wealthy people they can tap into.
You gotta be careful of the Laffer Curve[0] though. Tap into the rich too much and they'll leave. Make it illegal to leave... well, your country is going downhill fast. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
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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> Since those large-scale riots did not happen it can be termed a success. You can't be serious.
Perhaps you are not in or have not been to India. Even minor situation can lead to deadly violence there. Associating those 100 deaths to demonetization is absolutely pushing a political agenda by media. Check how death of popular politicians can lead to 100s of ppl committing suicides in India. Or check how 1000s die every year in train accidents in just one city of Mumbai. The sad part is even most Indians I meet i…
I'm not sure where the rest of your argument is going. You seem to be saying that Indian lives are cheap anyway.
The declared criteria for the success of demonetisation has shifted twice so far. It started as "we'll stop corruption", then it was "we'll go cashless" and now it's "we've converted cash saved at home to cheap loans". But even the BJP has never claimed that it was "this will not cause riots".
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You can raise income taxes on the employed pay for UBI for the unemployed. Therefore, the cost would only be $20 * India's unemployed adult population, which is a lot less than 900 million.
That is also no longer a Universal Basic Income.
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This is what I point out whenever BI is brought up as a possibility in the US. With 1/4 the population of India, higher GDP, and allowing for all the existing entitlement programs being retired, we can't afford it either. The math just doesn't work out. Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers. Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority).…
What are you basing that on? I don't buy the idea that America can't afford basic food and shelter for every man woman and child for even a second. Have you ever thought about how much poverty is negatively affecting the potential future of the US? I suspect the cost to society of children growing up in an environment with constant hunger is much, much larger than the cost of feeding that kid.
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> Since those large-scale riots did not happen it can be termed a success. You can't be serious.
I am serious. If you live in India you would have heard of constant fear-mongering by the opposition parties about "large-scale riots" and "financial emergency". No such thing happened. Every Indian co-operated with the move. This is unlike any other demonetization that was carried out previously by 6 other countries which either lead to coup d'état or large-scale riots. Also, is the only counter one can come up with…
This is a no-true-scotsman argument. I am Indian. I was forced to co-operate with the move because of being an ordinary citizen. I had no choice but to go along.
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> Judging by your comments on this thread, you neither know nor care about this. You speak as if the only downside to this entire affair was 100 people dying, all the while citing 0 sources. No I care about it. But the problem is that most of them did not cite sources and were rhetorical. So I had to reply back in rhetoric. Since you cite sources I'll reply with sources too: "It would be helpful if you cited your sou…
> Jan Dhan Yojana I hate to break this to you, but most people don't actually have bank accounts, and if they do, they don't know how to use them. Most of those bank accounts that were opened in the Jan Dhan Yojana scheme have ₹1 ($0.015) or less in them [1]. These laborers mentioned in the article I linked did not have accounts which they could use. That's why they threatened to strike if they weren't paid in cash.…
Your Jan 4th article has no data on the amount of money deposited. My advise to you is to go back and re-read that article. RBI has still not released the latest data. The last release was on December 13th. Articles written after that are just here-say and speculation.
> I hate to break this to you, but most people don't actually have bank accounts, and if they do, they don't know how to use them. Most of those bank accounts that were opened in the Jan Dhan Yojana scheme have ₹1 ($0.015) or less in them [1].
That is not the Government's problem. The Government had already instructed owners of private and public companies to open Jan Dhan accounts for their laborers. The owners either failed to do it or purposefully chose not to open accounts to evade tax. Now they have no choice but to open for them.
> These laborers mentioned in the article I linked did not have accounts which they could use. That's why they threatened to strike if they weren't paid in cash.
In my comment in the previous reply I already mentioned that they did not have because the companies failed to open accounts for them. Don't skip reading my comments please. I can't answer the same point again and again.
> You live in a bubble if you think lower income groups are rapidly adopting digital payments. Sure, the help at your place did, but I've met many people living in the heart of Bangalore who can't afford a smartphone. These same people also don't have a bank account. Or who knows, maybe they have a 0 balance account in their name somewhere.
That is no excuse for not moving to digital payments. The same excuse was cited in the 1990's when the computer and telecom revolution was taking place in India. People were comfortable with typewriters and found computers intimidating. Today you find most of the workforce quite comfortable with computers. Even with telecom revolution the biggest beneficiaries were the lower income groups. They completely skipped fixed line telephony and moved straight to mobile phones. I agree with you that many find digital payments intimidating and many don't have smartphones but they have no choice but to adopt it now because of disruption in informal economy. You are on Hacker News. You should know better what is the outcome of disruption. There will always be a short-term negative impact followed by a long-term positive impact.
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?
"Because if everyone can afford food and basic items for living", the economic collapse is unavoidable. How did we develop this notion that the economy can function well only when a portion of the population balances on the edge of starvation.
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There's a class of wealthy people they can tap into.
You gotta be careful of the Laffer Curve[0] though. Tap into the rich too much and they'll leave. Make it illegal to leave... well, your country is going downhill fast. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
We should tap into it on a global scale. We'll have Moon colonies in no time!
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I am serious. If you live in India you would have heard of constant fear-mongering by the opposition parties about "large-scale riots" and "financial emergency". No such thing happened. Every Indian co-operated with the move. This is unlike any other demonetization that was carried out previously by 6 other countries which either lead to coup d'état or large-scale riots. Also, is the only counter one can come up with…
> Every Indian co-operated with the move. This is a no-true-scotsman argument. I am Indian. I was forced to co-operate with the move because of being an ordinary citizen. I had no choice but to go along.
On a lighter note, the "large-scale riot" theory was not propagated by the Government but by the opposition. Read up articles by P Chidambaram and you'll know what I mean. So don't hold us guilty for using that term :)