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The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

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Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I'm thankful that you did not riot. Irrespective of your political inclinations. 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 :)

Of course I did not riot. I don't want to go to jail. That does not mean that I _co-operated_ with the move. Explain to me again how the move was a success. You are assuming a priori that it was a good decision as long as riots don't happen, which they didn't, hence it was good. But why was it good regardless of riots/no riots? I don't see how. So a few hundred crores of black money were caught in raids. That is a dr…

> Explain to me again how the move was a success.

Because you are confusing demonetization with remonetization and post-remonetization. All are different. Demonetization ended on December 31st. The move was a success as no riots or coups took place. Why should I take that factor to gauge success? If you look at the history of demonetization, with the exception of Britain, 5 other countries either had large-scale riots or the Government's fell due to coups. The remonetization phase did not even commence and in some instances demonetization was also rolled back. Demonetization is just declaring currency as no longer legal tender. It has nothing to do with implementation or the after-effects. The actual implementation of replenishing cash is called "remonetization" and post-remonetization is the real impact.

Now is remonetization a success? What about post-remonetization? Only the RBI final report as well as Income Tax assessment of those deposits made during November 8th to December 31st will be able to explain. This will take some time to come out. You are assuming that all money deposited in the banks are automatically converted to white. That is where your assumptions are wrong. The Tax authorities have already started auditing these deposits and are actively catching culprits who deposited huge amount of cash during the remonetization phase (see Mayawati's brother as well as her party being investigated for depositing 104+ crores). They'll start with the big fish and then catch the smaller fish.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Seriously? In a populace of a billion the death of 100 people for such a huge economic move is close to nothing." This might be a stat for you but if it was your kin maybe you won't feel the same way.

It's not a stat for me. I do sympathize. But stretching this argument to say that demonetization is a failure is ridiculous. In that way, in India, the deaths due to accidents are close to 1,37,000 in 2013 alone. Should we call transportation a failure and put a halt to every mode of transportation (be it autos, cars, buses, trains, planes etc) just because of this statistic or should we work towards improving the system?

I compared demonetization carried out by India with demonetization carried out by other countries. When I see that there were large-scale riots and coup d'état in other countries but no such thing happened in India I will definitely take this as a success. You want to have a narrow negative perspective of 100 people dying you can continue to have that. I have a wider positive perspective that no large-scale riots or coup d'état happened that would have sent the Indian economy in a downward spiral or worse: civil war.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I did not riot. I don't want to go to jail. That does not mean that I _co-operated_ with the move. Explain to me again how the move was a success. You are assuming a priori that it was a good decision as long as riots don't happen, which they didn't, hence it was good. But why was it good regardless of riots/no riots? I don't see how. So a few hundred crores of black money were caught in raids. That is a dr…

> Explain to me again how the move was a success. Because you are confusing demonetization with remonetization and post-remonetization. All are different. Demonetization ended on December 31st. The move was a success as no riots or coups took place. Why should I take that factor to gauge success? If you look at the history of demonetization, with the exception of Britain, 5 other countries either had large-scale riot…

> You are assuming that all money deposited in the banks are automatically converted to white. That is where your assumptions are wrong.

What? Where did I say this?

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#124
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

>Savings from shuttered entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies: $938 billion You're proposing eliminating the health care of 120 million people? What we really need is universal, single payer health care.

> What we really need is universal, single payer health care.

Why does it need to be single payer? Multi-payer systems can achieve universal or near universal coverage at good costs. See, for example, Germany or Japan.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because claiming that UBI will cause inflation is not justified by an understanding of Economics 101. Most basic economic theory will state that inflation is basically a monetary phenomenon. (Now, if you use monetary expansion to pay for the UBI, as the occasional person has suggested, then Econ 101 would suggest inflation, but that's true for any expenditure funded that way.)

> Most basic economic theory will state that inflation is basically a monetary phenomenon. Uh, no, that's not true at all. Monetary policy is only one of many factors that can drive inflation. > Because claiming that UBI will cause inflation is not justified by an understanding of Economics 101 Uh, yes it is. MV = PQ is literally in introductory economics textbooks. Advocates of UBI talk about how it would encourage…

Well, I think advocates of UBI arguing that it would encourage growth by stimulating spending are ignoring the fact that a tax-funded UBI would take money from elsewhere. It doesn't necessarily matter what advocates of UBI say about its suppose growth-boosting effects or what have you - the parent post was saying that Econ 101 understanding affirms that redistributive policies increase inflation, and I disagree. I should definitely qualify that with the caveat that I'm talking about Monetarist Econ 101, where V is stable in the long run, and Q is determined by overall productivity. Therefore P is roughly proportional to M. Sure, there's short-term effects, but over the long run, by Monetarist Econ 101, a UBI, if funded out of tax revenues, shouldn't cause inflation.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#126
post #90

Every time UBI is brought up, vague arguments about inflation come up. However, I've never seen anyone cite economic literature that actually quantifies such an effect. It's just a claim justified by an understanding of economics 101. However: there's a reason why a study of economics doesn't end at the 101 level. Economics 101 is a grossly simplified toy facsimile of the actual capitalist economy. There are professi…

Care to share some examples? I can't recall anyone suggesting ubi could work without seriously tweaking the definition.

I got these citations from wikipedia because I'm at work and can't spend too much time providing a citation trail. I've read the second citation but haven't watched the first:

Christopher Pissarides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmumRUGXQhQ

Angus Deaton: http://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-gets-nobel-prize...

They're both Nobel laureates in economics, whatever that's worth.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#127
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I call it morbid because "not enough people died hence its a success" is a bad argument. What is your cutoff for the number of people to have died for it to have become a failure? How do you arrive at that cutoff? The cutoff was not given by me. It was given by the nay-sayers including the Supreme Court of India. Who speculated "financial emergency" and "large-scale riots"? Was it people who supported demonetizatio…

> The cutoff was not given by me Yet you used that data point to call the move a categorical success. > But you are again trying to tie an economic move like demonetization with something inherently negative No, I'm not trying to tie anything. I'm just trying to make you understand the fallacy that might have inadvertently crept into your reasoning (happens to the best of us!) Also I'm not comparing demonetization to…

> Yet you used that data point to call the move a categorical success.

No I did not. I only countered a point that was made by the OP who said demonetization was a failure because 100 people died by citing a point that the Opposition parties in India made during the demonetization phase (about large-scale riots).

> No, I'm not trying to tie anything. I'm just trying to make you understand the fallacy that might have inadvertently crept into your reasoning (happens to the best of us!) Also I'm not comparing demonetization to pollution, I'm comparing the policy of demonetization to the policy response against pollution. Or to make it even simpler, I'm comparing the government policy to curb corruption to government policy to curb pollution, or the government policy to prevent deaths during the partition. Just because one policy response led to more deaths than another, doesn't mean that the former response wasn't as flawed as the latter. Especially since there are so many differences between the initial conditions that existed during the partition and the conditions that exist today. I will repeat here that simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. Apples and oranges my friend.

So you can explain this to the OP of the post who said that demonetization was a failure because 100 people had died. Do you now understand why I'm countering this specific point? Because it makes no sense to compare an economic move with deaths. Apples and oranges indeed.

> Unfortunately not. Will this data ever be publicly available? No. Did a black market exist? Most definitely.

Of course it will be. You are assuming that the RBI will not publish data on remonetization. You are also assuming that the Income Tax department automatically accepts every deposit made between November 8th and December 31st as white money without conducting an audit. In fact, I'll argue that it has become so much more easier now for the Government to easily audit deposits as they have entered the formal system to catch evaders and bring them to book than to go after those who had hoards of cash stacked in their secret lockers.

> What if I don't agree with some of the articles of the constitution? Can I exercise my free speech rights to criticize the said articles without being charged with sedition?

You have already done it.

> Can I express those free speech rights by not standing up for the national anthem and not be charged for an offence?

If you are in India you are duty bound to stand. It is part of fundamental duties of every citizen of India. If you don't like it you can give up your Indian citizenship and adopt citizenship of another country.

> I am being instructed by legislation to sit or stand or perform some other body movement to uphold the legitimacy of a document, or an ideology, which I may or may not agree with. That was true for the Nazi salute as well.

No both are different. When you sit or stand, you do it for the concept of India and not for an ideology. The Nazi salute was a salute for an ideology that only catered to one section of society. The Constitution of India has a place for all except those who question the very ethos of India's existence. If you do not agree with the legitimacy of document you have no business accepting citizenship under the very document. That is highly hypocritical don't you think?

> There are very very subtle points that deal with things like burning the national flag and not "respecting" the national anthem. I urge you to check out the first amendment of the american constition and US supreme court rulings regarding their national anthem and national flag and what constitutes disrespect and what constitutes a criminal offence. Its fascinating stuff. The Indian constitution and the our Supreme court have a long way to go!

No we don't have a long way to go. India is a Sovereign Nation. Just because the US has a particular constitution doesn't mean we need to adopt the same. Would you be happy if we adopted the Second Amendment as well? It's ridiculous to compare constitutions. These are documents that are made based on historical as well as cultural differences. The United States is not as diverse as India. It's constitution would wreak havoc in an already fragile Indian society.

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#128
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

    > quite easy to talk of
    > "short-term impact" and
    > "long-term gain" when you're
    > not facing any of the short-
    > term impact yourself
This all reminds me of when a bunch of middle class and rich commentators stopped Zuck giving free internet to the poor

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Explain to me again how the move was a success. Because you are confusing demonetization with remonetization and post-remonetization. All are different. Demonetization ended on December 31st. The move was a success as no riots or coups took place. Why should I take that factor to gauge success? If you look at the history of demonetization, with the exception of Britain, 5 other countries either had large-scale riot…

> You are assuming that all money deposited in the banks are automatically converted to white. That is where your assumptions are wrong. What? Where did I say this?

> So a few hundred crores of black money were caught in raids. That is a drop in the ocean. A hundred times more than that is caught in regular tax raids every year.* It has done absolutely nothing to curb future corruption.

You are assuming that this is the be-all and end-all of this scheme. You are assuming that the Income Tax authorities won't look at and audit the deposits made in the banks when you declared that "It has done absolutely nothing to curb future corruption".

Re: The Indian government is set to endorse Universal Basic Income

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seriously? In a populace of a billion the death of 100 people for such a huge economic move is close to nothing." This might be a stat for you but if it was your kin maybe you won't feel the same way.

It's not a stat for me. I do sympathize. But stretching this argument to say that demonetization is a failure is ridiculous. In that way, in India, the deaths due to accidents are close to 1,37,000 in 2013 alone. Should we call transportation a failure and put a halt to every mode of transportation (be it autos, cars, buses, trains, planes etc) just because of this statistic or should we work towards improving the sy…

"Should we call transportation a failure and put a halt to every mode of transportation (be it autos, cars, buses, trains, planes etc) just because of this statistic or should we work towards improving the system?"

Are you actually comparing currency to transportation ? People have a choice in the mode of transport. Your villager however can't use bitcoins because his Rs.500 note isn't legal tender.

"I have a wider positive perspective that no large-scale riots or coup d'état happened that would have sent the Indian economy in a downward spiral or worse: civil war."

Your standards for a successful policy are shockingly low. And stop lying, you have no sympathy, you just called a 100 deaths as having a "narrow perspective".

Do you also disagree with the countless economists that have criticized the move based on theory and facts. Or is that "foreign propaganda" for you ?

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