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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

#131

Post by gumby »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #113
chiph wrote: 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).…

Raise taxes on the wealthy (yes, including Silicon Valley programmers). It's really that simple. People just don't want it to be.

> Raise taxes on the wealthy. It's really that simple.

I'm a big fan of aggressively progressive tax systems but it isn't as simple as you think.

California has a very progressive tax system, with most people paying some but most of the money coming from a small number of taxpayers. Sounds great, and basically most people like it. The problem is that when the economy tanks, California takes a huge hit in income since wealthy taxpayers' capital gains drop precipitously.

Yes, there's a simple-to-describe fix: build a surplus in good times and borrow in downtimes. But this is very hard to implement.

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

#132

Post by gyey »

pkaye wrote: post #103
jganetsk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would you even define unemployed in a vast part of India? There is quite an bit of informal economy. I think >94% don't even file income taxes (either too low an income or don't declare.)

Less than 2.5% file tax returns and less than 1% pay tax.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/03/guess-how-many-people-pay-tax...

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

#133

Post by gumby »

addicted wrote: post #47
bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Worse, India (the nation) wastes a huge percentage of the food grown due to poor infrastructure (bad roads, limited refrigeration in the godowns, etc).

Also it's expensive to be poor: poor people in every country have to make a lot of bad-in-the-long-term tradeoffs due to transaction costs and loss of economies of scale (e.g. can't afford the savings of bulk buying).

When people have an opportunity reduce their base survival worry there's a chance they can fix some of the bigger problems. I don't think the Maslow hierarchy is terribly insightful but it's the right argument here: some problems are simply unfixable when you are busy worrying that you will starve to death.

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

#134

Post by hackalaugh »

chiph wrote: post #60
gyey wrote: post #49

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)?

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).…

Kind of thought large scale BI would come as a result of widespread automation of the labor force. This has some good points about potential sources for funding BI, as well as examples of places that have implemented some form of BI (including Alaska), and it's effects on local populations, poverty and personal productivity.

https://futurism.com/images/universal-basic-income-answer-au...

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

#135

Post by shripadk »

bitwiseand wrote: post #130
shripadk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> 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 ?

I definitely disagree with the "countless economists" mainly because economists love status-quo and despise disruption. We had "countless economists" say that the Telecom revolution in the 1990's was a big burden on Indian exchequer and a waste of resources. Today every Indian is thankful for the Telecom revolution and the introduction of computing as it created huge job opportunities. Economists have their place. They are not policy pundits. We had possibly the best economist in India as the Prime Minister for 10 years. He failed miserably in implementing any policy decision (including his party's own pet projects) leading to policy paralysis. Read about him here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Time-magazine-dubs-...

> 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.

It doesn't matter the choice of transport if you are dying in huge numbers: 1,37,000 accidents in just 1 year.

> Your villager however can't use bitcoins because his Rs.500 note isn't legal tender.

This shows your absolute lack of ground knowledge about India. Why should a villager use bitcoins when he can use PayTM wallets or even BHIM app (using Unified Payment Interface) that was introduced by the Indian government. Read about it here: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/paytm-on-boards-small-mer...

> 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".

From your comment it is quite clear that you don't live in India. So stop acting like a know-it-all. I live in India and I can differentiate between propaganda and reality.

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

#136

Post by plinkplonk »

This thread is political, just that it is Indian politics instead of American politics being discussed. An opportunity for American readers to get a first hand idea of what it feels like to have long threads of inane politically motivated discussion which doesnt' make much sense to readers from other countries ;-)

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

#137

Post by eli_gottlieb »

perfunctory wrote: post #58
nashashmi wrote: post #24

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.

>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.

"Pure ideology", a belief that's more moral than factual. You see, we have to discipline the lower classes into working hard, therefore they must live on the edge of starvation, therefore not attaining this disciplined state will inevitably collapse the economy. The causal connection is conjured from air to support the desired policy.

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

#138

Post by drabiega »

nashashmi wrote: post #74
drabiega wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be assuming that supply won't grow to accommodate expected demand, could you elaborate on why?

I have seen this happen in Pakistan during the years of Musharraf's presidency. The economy was moving up and more investments were coming in. More money was flowing. The prices of local products went up, especially food. Of course, more foreign products also made their way into the country. Some people were profiting from this movement, but the people who were poor could not benefit and they sunk deeper and went hun…

The changes you describe are very different than something like introducing BI and I would expect them to do pretty much what you describe. Prices are very sensitive to the distribution of income, so while external capital investment may increase demand for labor and increase agricultural productivity, it also skews production away from agriculture.

This is also the answer to your closing question: Since those who need the basic foodstuffs are financially weak and becoming increasingly so as the proportion of income shifts away from them, the proportion of capacity allocated to producing food for them decreases.

In a UBI scheme, the exact opposite happens. The allocation of income is shifted downwards, so the allocation of production shifts accordingly.

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

#139

Post by cmdrfred »

chimeracoder wrote: post #115
austincheney wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money comes from sacrificing existing entitlement programs, which might actually cost more. Think about it like this in the US: Imagine giving everybody a basic income and eliminating minimum wage, social security, medicare, welfare, and so forth... Naturally some people would become wealthier (paying down existing debts) and some people would become poorer (spending money more rapidly and increasing their debt b…

> Think about it like this in the US: Imagine giving everybody a basic income and eliminating minimum wage, social security, medicare, welfare, and so forth... What happens when someone inevitably spends their entire income on non-essential expenses, or bets it all on black, or gets talked into making a bad investment, leaving them with no money in the bank? Do we just tell them, "well, suck it up and get a job"? "So…

>Do we just tell them, "well, suck it up and get a job"?

Most entitlement programs in the United States are based on the poverty line. Currently that number is $11,770 for an individual. Working 40 hours a week you'd receive $15,080. Thus a great many working individuals simply do not qualify for much government assistance already as they not only receive more than minimum wage but they also work more than 40 hours a week.

My point is the way the system is currently designed punishes the working poor who have managed to make a life for themselves and rewards those with part time jobs, many of whom have chosen to not do so. If framed in this way I estimate that this would not only be politically viable but the party who proposed it would win in a landslide.

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #113
chiph wrote: 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).…

Raise taxes on the wealthy (yes, including Silicon Valley programmers). It's really that simple. People just don't want it to be.

[deleted]
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