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My own private basic income

opendemocracy.net

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Re: My own private basic income

#91

Post by maerF0x0 »

rrggrr wrote: post #82

Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis. "1. For owners, work is optional." ... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time. "…

I think OP is not talking about the kind of owners you're thinking of. "Owner" of a startup, or "Owner" of a unvested equity package etc. are not his intended group.

I think its more like people who can easily meet their needs/wants even while holding something like a dividend fund or w/e. Owner of sufficient passive income assets that any extra effort or income or ROI is only gravy.

Re: My own private basic income

#93

Post by gozur88 »

omegaham wrote: post #68
OJFord wrote: post #26

> [in the US] people who don’t need their income are taxed less than people who do I'm not American; I don't know the tax structure. But I can't even imagine that this could possibly be true, or what is true that is meant. Without looking it up, I would assume that the USA subscribes to progressive taxation, under which the richer pay more tax in both absolute and relative terms. Even if it has a flat rate of tax, (a…

Let's look at Person A vs Person B. Person A is a football player and makes $1 million in salary per year. This is all taxed progressively, meaning that Uncle Sam takes off 39.6% of most of his income. As a result, he pays close to $400k in taxes. Person B is an investor. He invests in Applied Materials, and they have a very good year. His stock is now worth $1 million more than it was at the beginning of the year. S…

It's not so much that it benefits people who get income from investments as protects them from inflation. If you hold on to something for ten years and sell it for the same amount in constant dollars, the tax you pay on the increase in actual dollars is really a wealth tax.

Re: My own private basic income

#94

Post by [deleted] »

opportune wrote: post #32
maerF0x0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrepreneurs have incentive to ensure everyone meets their maximum potential because this is the place where there is the most to extract. If my value is $10 per day and someone makes my value $20 per day, there is $10 per day worth of value for us to negotiate over. We _both_ have an incentive to maximize my potential. Also: >we should ... thats a morality statement but without a canonical source of ethics that som…

Real life isn't just an elaborate Austrian economics simulator. In this case, there are a lot of complex dynamics at play: will workers emigrate elsewhere if trained well (Basically the IIT problem)? Are constituents/subjects ok with reductions in their quality of life so that other people can be provided these resources. To act as if the market will magically fix this is lazy and not realistic. Also yes of course I…

[deleted]

Re: My own private basic income

#95

Post by edpichler »

The article is about something that should be obvious, capitalism: money goes to the capital owner.

Of course this has a lot of problems, but it's the best we have today. On this system, the rules of the game are: we need to work and spend less than we earn, and use the money to accumulate more capital, an not buying more things.

Re: My own private basic income

#96

Post by drewcon »

opportune wrote: post #16
maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

I couldn't disagree more. As a society (and this goes from a community to a global scale) we should make it a priority to give everyone the resources to meet their maximum potential. I don't mean that we should give everyone a million dollars to invest of their own. What I mean is that we should ensure that everyone gets provided with a good education and food/water/shelter, etc. The author specifically mentions the…

> keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a cheap source of grunt labor.

Poor, underfed, and uneducated is the default position for human beings. We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing.

There is no conspiracy to "enslave" anyone, nearly all public health and wealth measures over the last 100 years are overwhelming up and to the right. That growth did not happened through magic or luck and certainly not from some misapplication of noble intentions (see communism), but through the slow accumulation of societal benefits, over time, across an open market economy.

It is not and will never be "fair", there will never be equality of outcomes, but jesus, we've faired a lot better under this system than by the whims of kings and politburos trying to distribute "fairness" with a clumsy iron fist.

Re: My own private basic income

#97

Post by jhall1468 »

Mz wrote: post #85

TLDR Guy in financially comfortable position feels guilty, decides his education, willingness to live in Qatar, etc shouldn't really be worth this much, completely discounts the idea that anything actually matters, it is all merely "luck" and that's it. Sounds like an existential crisis, not really a good commentary on the concept of basic income.

TLDR

Guy reads an interesting article that threatens his idea of success, incorrectly summarizes the article and resorts to personal attacks against the author.

Sounds like threatening core beliefs makes you defensive, not really a good commentary on the article itself.

Re: My own private basic income

#98

Post by KSteffensen »

nql wrote: post #77
patrickdavey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally life is an IQ test and rewards those who make optimal choices WRT events in their life. Do you think that if you'd been born in a slum you would have a decent chance of winning in the IQ test & optimal choice events in your life? I would imagine that almost anyone reading these comments has been unbelievably fortunate to be born into relatively wealthy circumstances & had things like "books" around to hel…

Being born in a slum more than likely means that your parents failed the IQ test, which is a strong signal about your IQ.

I hope that was meant to be ironic. If not that was one of the most depressing statements I have seen in a while.

Re: My own private basic income

#99

Post by ktta »

rrggrr wrote: post #82

Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis. "1. For owners, work is optional." ... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time. "…

You are mixing together business owners and rentiers (property owners). Very different things. Property owners don't need to work 60-hour weeks unless they are the sole handyman for 100+ houses.

Re: My own private basic income

#100

Post by Mz »

jhall1468 wrote: post #97
Mz wrote: post #85

TLDR Guy in financially comfortable position feels guilty, decides his education, willingness to live in Qatar, etc shouldn't really be worth this much, completely discounts the idea that anything actually matters, it is all merely "luck" and that's it. Sounds like an existential crisis, not really a good commentary on the concept of basic income.

TLDR Guy reads an interesting article that threatens his idea of success, incorrectly summarizes the article and resorts to personal attacks against the author. Sounds like threatening core beliefs makes you defensive, not really a good commentary on the article itself.

FYI: I am a woman. I am homeless. I get a lot of flak from people because I am not pro UBI when people seem to think I should be simply because I am homeless. Instead, I believe we need to view our current situation as The Second Industrial Revolution and do whatever the next evolutionary step is to make paid work a lighter burden while raising quality of living for the masses. I am pro gig work done right.

Also, your comment is basically a personal attack.

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