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Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

theincomer.com

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Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#121

Post by CryptoPunk »

magduf wrote: post #71
privacypoller wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely what it is at the core. The problem with it's application has been proven over and over again; the very wealthy have the means and motivation to avoid it while the burden falls on the same segment of the population over and over again.

The solution is simple: legislate so the very wealthy can't avoid it, while remaining in the country. It's really not that hard: if they have assets here and reside here, then you tax them, and seize them if necessary. The only reason this isn't done is because too many people vote for politicians who pass laws favorable to the very wealthy.

This would cause massive capital flight and long-term capital avoidance of that jurisdiction.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#122

Post by moduspol »

insickness wrote: post #118
moduspol wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still waiting for the UBI trial that includes allowing everyone receiving it to vote for how much the UBI checks are for. That aspect never seems to get included for some reason.

Great point. Politician #1: "I'm going to increase UBI to $2000!" Politician #2: "I'm going to increase UBI to $5000!" Politician #3: "I'm going to increase UBI to $10000!" I'm totally voting for politician #3!

And don't forget: proponents are claiming this is necessary because large groups of people will be incapable of obtaining gainful employment. This means, by design, this cannot just be "the necessities" because increasing groups of people will be relying on it to live out their entire lives.

That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for. After all, you wouldn't tell a huge group of people they'll never be able to afford a vacation their entire life, right? And this will include a car, at least for most of the US. How much money should be allocated for that? Should they be able to afford home ownership, or just rent? Will it be enough to let them choose where they want to live?

These questions (and many like them) will be debated over and over again. I don't think it'll be as on-the-nose as you laid out, but over time, the end result is the same.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#123

Post by DonaldFisk »

ProfBernardo wrote: post #68

Nowhere in this article does the author provide a source for the mentioned 40% drop.

The article isn't very well written. The drop was 36.5% and is reported in http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b... starting on page 45.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#124

Post by DonaldFisk »

moduspol wrote: post #122
insickness wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. Politician #1: "I'm going to increase UBI to $2000!" Politician #2: "I'm going to increase UBI to $5000!" Politician #3: "I'm going to increase UBI to $10000!" I'm totally voting for politician #3!

And don't forget: proponents are claiming this is necessary because large groups of people will be incapable of obtaining gainful employment. This means, by design, this cannot just be "the necessities" because increasing groups of people will be relying on it to live out their entire lives. That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for. After all, you wouldn't tell a huge group of people they'…

> That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for.

If people don't have work to do then they are already, practically by definition, on vacation.

If you mean going on package tours and the like, there's no more reason to discuss those as a Basic Income "entitlement" than there is with social security payments.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#125

Post by jostylr »

TomMarius wrote: post #114
jostylr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal Dividend, the idea being that we all are investors in the world around us, particularly in the act of creating the next generation and staying alive to be the workers, consumers, etc. So everyone gets a cut of the general profits. If one is against this idea, then ask why any investor of money into a company should get money back from it when they did no explicit work for it? If you reject the universal div…

> If one is against this idea, then ask why any investor of money into a company should get money back from it when they did no explicit work for it? Because they did. They put their capital (that they worked for, or their ancestors did) at risk so someone could use it. It's only fair that they get a cut.

If you trace the history of that capital to a violent past, such as slave owners or government eviction of natives or violent suppression of people's rights or unfair distribution of wealth by the government or redlining, ... is it still fair?

If fairness is a concern, one would seem to be led, at the very least, to want to wipe the slate clean for every new individual; no transference of wealth or privilege from one generation to the next. Only self-made people, self-made by above board behaviors, nothing morally or legally questionable. Then sure.

Since that has nothing to do with the actual distribution of wealth in the world, saying it is only fair seems an inadequate justification.

In general, I have always thought the idea is that successful investors can invest successfully and so giving new capital to such individuals leads to further successful invested in ventures, enriching society further.

The same thing goes here. Living individuals have been successful at living, which usually requires great effort and skill by both the individual and the community, and so why not give a bit back to further that journey, a journey that enriches us all.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#126

Post by moduspol »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #124
moduspol wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget: proponents are claiming this is necessary because large groups of people will be incapable of obtaining gainful employment. This means, by design, this cannot just be "the necessities" because increasing groups of people will be relying on it to live out their entire lives. That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for. After all, you wouldn't tell a huge group of people they'…

> That means we'll be discussing how many vacations should be paid for. If people don't have work to do then they are already, practically by definition, on vacation. If you mean going on package tours and the like, there's no more reason to discuss those as a Basic Income "entitlement" than there is with social security payments.

Perhaps "travel" would have been a better word, but the point still stands.

--Social security isn't intended to be a single monetary payment people will, by design, rely on for their entire lives. That's the key difference.--

EDIT: Actually it does do that for specific subsets of people (those with disabilities and similar), but it's a very limited subset as opposed to the entire population, and I think the difference is significant.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#127

Post by simonsarris »

Clickbait from a new website.

The "strengthened workforce" if you click through is actually about this paper with the alaska fund: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf

Not about basic income per se.

The work disincentive of basic-income-like cash transfers, in studies so far, is actually somewhat consistent at around 10%. Some papers referencing this approx figure:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_M...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_P...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduat...

(from research on a long BI article I wrote)

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#128

Post by gph »

Spooky23 wrote: post #111
gph wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a huge amount of the money spent on benefits are used just for administration. I think a lot of people way overestimate the administrative costs. For example U.S. Social Security administrative costs are around 6 billion a year. Sounds like a lot but it's only 0.7% of the total cost of the program[1]. Sure there's a handful of different programs all with their own costs, but it's maybe 20-50 billion a year. That's n…

SSA gives away money, administers programs and adjudicates disability claims. It’s nothing, relatively speaking. The lifting for social services is at the state and county level. There’s probably 3 million people engaged in that function, depending on what you scope into it. I betcha there are 10,000 people just doing children’s services in NYC.

>I betcha there are 10,000 people just doing children’s services in NYC

Ok, but we aren't talking about UBI replacing CSA or really any of the local services are we? It's not like child abuse is going to disappear because everyone gets a UBI check. A lot of the state and county level social services are not going to be obsoleted because of UBI. I would think it's more of a federal/national program meant to replace federal/national social services.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#129

Post by jpindar »

lolsal wrote: post #92
twblalock wrote: post #29

The big problem with UBI, aside from how to pay for it, is that it will not survive as either universal or basic once the voters get their hands on it and decide that, say, UBI benefits should be cut for felons, increased for single mothers, indexed to the cost of rent, etc. In other words, we have a bunch of different welfare standards for people in different situations because that is what succeeds politically, and…

There is also the concern for what kind of welfare programs to implement (or keep) even with UBI - for example, if I blow all of my UBI on gambling/drugs/alcohol/electronics, will society let me starve to death in the street?

What happens now if you blow all your money from social security etc.? Why would that change?

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#130

Post by twblalock »

jostylr wrote: post #109
twblalock wrote: post #29

The big problem with UBI, aside from how to pay for it, is that it will not survive as either universal or basic once the voters get their hands on it and decide that, say, UBI benefits should be cut for felons, increased for single mothers, indexed to the cost of rent, etc. In other words, we have a bunch of different welfare standards for people in different situations because that is what succeeds politically, and…

People already remove the universal right to vote for felons so what would the difference be here? One can always talk about universal and then not actually do it.

If UBI is not universal there is no point to doing it -- it would just be a complicated welfare system, and we already have one of those, and we certainly shouldn't throw it out just to end up creating another one.
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