411–420 of 492 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you think a tax on personal income is the only way to do that?
I didn't say it was :). What alternative do you propose?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Bridge to Nowhere or pay them to start the next Apple?
Nobody is going to start the next Apple if you pay them. Nobody. Great progress and innovation only come out of great tribulation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work. >Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an em…
> Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Bridge to Nowhere or pay them to start the next Apple?
A more rigorous question with which to start (though maybe a bit leading...) would be:
Would you rather pay qualified labor force participants to do labor/construction/civil engineering, or would you rather pay the same number of qualified participants to start high growth technology companies?
The nice thing about this question is that it lends itself to empiricism - we can figure out the most rational answer by looking at the ratio of successes to failures in each category of achievement. To put it very precisely: at what percentage of successes out of total attempts are we willing to choose to fund extremely rare but huge successes that employ a lot of people over very consistent but modest successes that employ only the workers and a smaller ongoing number in the long term?
I haven't actually done the math, but my intuition (which could be wrong!) is that it makes more sense to pay for people to e.g. fix America's insanely expensive and inefficient transportation system than to pay for them to sit in a garage and try to "innovate." Then again, you could argue that America's transportation projects are inefficient and expensive because they support an elaborate jobs program already :)
It seems to me that basic income could make me either (1) fall victim to depression, addiction, or some other mental disorder, or (2) find a hard problem to work on which keeps me occupied and satisfied for a lifetime.
Or an easy problem. Or any problem. Or social work. Or volunteer-ism. Or cycling. Or wandering the streets of your city. Honestly the work based culture has dulled the creativity people to such an extent that they can't think of anything outside of work. Or maybe human males are wired for this sort of thing. I dunno. The reason people become drug addicts or alcoholics is that it's painful to be outside of the social…
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" -- JFK
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time..." Citation needed. Otherwise, it's not even anecdata. If your perspective from "...a small third world welfare state..." is to be informative, please expand and explain.
> Otherwise, it's not even anecdata While it's no comprehensive study, it is very much anecdata, for it's how my parents, parts of my family and plenty of people I know have managed to climb out of poverty of all degrees before there was a welfare system. Hunger and work did not deter them. The word "mutante" (mutant) is often used to describe this kind of people, for how they decide to break the norm despite the env…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit. So what? Why is the purpose of other people's lives to serve your idea of nobility?
Wow. That's a huge straw man if ever I've seen one. I will entertain you, however: We aren't talking about anyone's "life purpose", whatever the hell that means. We are talking about having the state (and for a quick reminder, that means citizens producing value, not a magical entity that pulls money with value out of hat) fund people with no desire to create value. Not just people going through a rough time, not peo…
The whole point of proposing UBI, however, is that we now (almost) universally agree that the LTV is just plain false, and much "value creation" actually involves machines doing the work. We believe that if we impose work requirements by force on humans by depriving them of machines of their own, forcing them to compete with machines to survive, there will be immense human suffering for completely arbitrary reasons.
UBI is thus the moderate proposal to deal with the issue. The radical proposal is to give everyone whole or partial ownership of enough machines to supply for themselves, perhaps through some collective-ownership arrangement like a cooperative, commons trust, or the state.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting the majority of those people are completely, utterly useless? Useful contributions don't necessarily have to be intellectual. They may be able and happy to provide art, joyful company, social skills, physical assistance (eg. getting groceries, moving equipment) or other support to those in need.
That moves the goalposts. Sure, I can't think of a human being that can be categorized as completely useless, that doesn't mean that an UBI program is sustainable for society just because "no one is absolutely, completely useless". In fact there is no shortage of individuals who, despite being outside of the category of "useless" by technicalities, dedicate their state-funded free time in making society worse. A coup…
Or they might not. Either way, I wouldn't consider them any more harmful to society than those probably millions of people working very hard to shove ads into peoples faces ever more efficiently, or those bankers and accountants looking for loopholes to effectively steal from others. Or corrupt politicians whose only concern is filling their pockets. Or I could name a bunch of other mostly useless leech industries.
My point is, I think you are judging these people from a faulty perspective very much ingrained into our society, where one's usefulness to humanity is primarily judged based on how much money they can get their hands on either by stealing from others or selling their freedom to someone willing to pay for it, regardless of what value they actually contribute (if anything) as long as it's considered legal and they do so as part of the so called "workforce".
UBI would fundamentally change that by allowing people to spend time doing things they consider useful, rather than working for whatever gets food on the table, however useless it may actually be. Of course, for that to work, people need to be open to other people's ideas of useful and the currently dominant view of measuring usefulness in GDP or whatever may become obsolete.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Creating jobs is one thing, but creating meaningful jobs is something completely different. * Hoover Dam * Lincoln Tunnel * LAX * LaGuardia Airport Just a few examples of things created by jobs created primarily to give people work. >Are these meaningless jobs really better than universal basic income? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an em…
> Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Lincoln Tunnel or pay for them to write some poetry and start an emo band? Would you rather pay somebody to build the next Bridge to Nowhere or pay them to start the next Apple?
I'll take some high speed rail though, please. Perhaps 100,000 new affordable apartments in New York and San Francisco too. Unless you think that there's no need and people wouldn't want them?
During Brexit, people in job-starved areas of UK were reported as resentful for receiving handouts. They wanted gainful employment and their dignity back. You could have corporations foot the bill for basic income and people with certain values would still not want it. The image of being a breadwinner is so deeply instilled in some people that for them not being that, triggers mid-life-crisis: a depression, sense of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It matters because of the potential impact on society? Part of the promise of UBI that proponents often talk about is unleashing more human potential that's currently stuck in some corporate grind. And while playing WoW all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. MMO addiction isn't really healthy.
> And while [sitting in an office] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Office work] isn't really healthy. > And while [bagging groceries] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Menial labor] isn't really healthy. > And while [driving an truck / bus / uber] all day isn't exactly the wors…