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Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

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191–200 of 205 posts

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: Anarchy is the system you're describing (total voluntary interaction with government, or no government) and there's plenty of anarchists around, and literally 0 successful anarchist states. Let me approach your anarchy differently: Why do we not have anarchy? Because not-anarchy is working and is the best system we've ever used. Why don't we get rid of this to try anarchy? Well -- who's stopping you from creat…

No. Societies who have respect for individual rights are not necessarily anarchy. For example collecting taxes is obviously justified when it would prevent more significant violence - e.g. to fund an army, police and a court. Stealing from the hard-working to give to the lazy brings is a massively perverse incentive which only low birthrates, dysfunctional behaviours and national decline. On the contrary - there is a…

>"Stealing from the hard-working to give to the lazy brings is a massively perverse incentive which only low birthrates, dysfunctional behaviours and national decline."

This is outrageously charged and bigoted language is the sole result of radicalization.

That you use these ignorant and bigoted labels when discussing economics belies your total academic and functional ignorance on the subject, and betrays your true purpose: to mindlessly repeat the propaganda which convinced you into this tribalistic response.

"On the contrary - there is actually 0 successful socialist states. So your statement is massively misleading."

An extremely common "whataboutism" defense from a fully radicalized zealot. No one brought up socialism, but the Propaganda Script that you are rote-repeating and incapable of deviating from makes heavy use of this particularly ignorant "whatabout" trope, so of course, you have to just copy-paste this red herring in.

I truly hope you can wake up from the radicalization which has fully consumed you. Good luck, you really need it.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have always had a cognitive advantage over machines in the past. This will not necessarily be true in the future. What advantage do we will then have? The only possible advantage I can see is that raising a human for 20 years + housing + food + other expenses and then employing him would be cheaper than replicating another AGI, but I cannot imagine this to be true.

Perhaps human cognition will be enhanced by machines? This would open up a lot of new opportunities. I know there are companies working on doing exactly this.

Only so long as humans are required for the machine to do their job. The second it is feasible and cheaper to have a machine do what the human/machine hybrid could do, they would switch.

This is more of a bridge solution to full automation. "We need doctors to control dumb surgical robots until we're advanced enough that surgical robots can operate without a human controlling them" etc

We're doing the "assist" thing already in all the places that we can't quite do the "machine only" thing.

Even self-driving cars mirror this: the goal is a vehicle that doesn't require an operator. The bridged reality, currently, is that the operator must remain alert and able to take over any time.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under UBI, the people with low skills would have the means to upgrade those skills.

Exactly. And if all the people with low skills upgrade their skills, the cost of low skilled labor increases, driving up the price of goods, and making the current UBI insufficient. We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago.

==We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago. ==

Would we stop importing this labor from other (poorer) countries? I imagine only people with a SSN would get the UBI benefits. Immigrants would still come here to do low-skilled jobs as they would be ineligible for UBI, no?

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#194
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, we could view them as “happiness activities”. In labor economics it is called leisure and the goal of people is to optimize between income and leisure. I know lots of employed people who spend their days “staring out the window losing their mind”. It seems we have over optimized in the wrong direction (towards work and away from leisure).

"Happiness activities" are fine, but I'm not sure they should be subsidized by taxes.

They already are subsidized in plenty of places (sports stadiums and public parks for example).

It raises a fundamental question about the government's role and it's goals. We tend focus on maximizing productivity and other countries focus more on maximizing health/happiness. Even the way Americans talk about education is through the lenses of creating more productive workers as opposed to something like creating more enriched citizens.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the real question imo is “does this scale without destroying the country’s finances?” It depends on how it is implemented and the numbers involved. One proposal [1] would be to give everyone $US 10K per year starting at age 21, and not having income taxes start until you have an income over US$ 40K. This allows one to get get enough for the bare necessities (shelter, food) "for free", but if you want to have a…

Giving everyone $10K/year would just inflate prices until $10K was the zero baseline for income.

> Luckily, [[new research]] on a program in Mexico gives us a real-world test case for this idea. And it strongly suggests that giving out cash doesn’t cause inflation — or if it does, the effects are very, very mild.

* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16256240/m...

> If, however, you funded a UBI with graduated taxation, you would effectively be redistributing wealth from the wealthiest to the population in general. Depending on the tax code, people somewhere in the middle of the scale would receive about the same amount in UBI as they pay in tax increases.

* https://www.quora.com/Wont-a-universal-basic-income-raise-in...

For the second article, he notes that if UBI is done via printing money, then it could.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Societies who have respect for individual rights are not necessarily anarchy. For example collecting taxes is obviously justified when it would prevent more significant violence - e.g. to fund an army, police and a court. Stealing from the hard-working to give to the lazy brings is a massively perverse incentive which only low birthrates, dysfunctional behaviours and national decline. On the contrary - there is a…

>"Stealing from the hard-working to give to the lazy brings is a massively perverse incentive which only low birthrates, dysfunctional behaviours and national decline." This is outrageously charged and bigoted language is the sole result of radicalization. That you use these ignorant and bigoted labels when discussing economics belies your total academic and functional ignorance on the subject, and betrays your true…

The entire thread is on socialism - what do you think UBI is? Also you're talking about academic ignorance but your posts are nothing other than extremely lowly ad hominem attacks - first I was an anarchist, now I am ignorant - where are your real arguments?

And I use public infrastructure - was raised 200 meters away from a transfer subway station - and I call taxation a robbery. But I am not a hypocrite, because on a free market I would have paid roughly 20 times less for it - what is also called a fair price.

Not surprised that a person who sees violence and robbery as a universal solution is acting like that. Shame I just got down to your disgustingly low level...

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And if all the people with low skills upgrade their skills, the cost of low skilled labor increases, driving up the price of goods, and making the current UBI insufficient. We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago.

==We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago. == Would we stop importing this labor from other (poorer) countries? I imagine only people with a SSN would get the UBI benefits. Immigrants would still come here to do low-skilled jobs as they would be ineligible for UBI, no?

A very large proportion of low skill labor is done by us citizens- and we don’t have many visas for low skilled labor.

This wouldn’t evade the problem of increasing the cost of low skill labor and thus increasing the cost of goods.

To your point, it would force the poor without UBI into even harder poverty.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Stealing from the hard-working to give to the lazy brings is a massively perverse incentive which only low birthrates, dysfunctional behaviours and national decline." This is outrageously charged and bigoted language is the sole result of radicalization. That you use these ignorant and bigoted labels when discussing economics belies your total academic and functional ignorance on the subject, and betrays your true…

The entire thread is on socialism - what do you think UBI is? Also you're talking about academic ignorance but your posts are nothing other than extremely lowly ad hominem attacks - first I was an anarchist, now I am ignorant - where are your real arguments? And I use public infrastructure - was raised 200 meters away from a transfer subway station - and I call taxation a robbery. But I am not a hypocrite, because on…

Socialism is communal ownership of the means of production and self-regulation of workers. This is ELEMENTARY, by the way, so your propaganda-based misinformation on the subject definitely demonstrates the low-quality of your opinion.

Using a government to regulate a market to provide a social safety net is not "socialism" outside of the radicalized anti-academic conservative sphere who use the red scare in every single post they make -- NO EXCEPTIONS (and you clearly fit the rule).

"Not surprised that a person who sees violence and robbery as a universal solution is acting like that. Shame I just got down to your disgustingly low level..."

At the end of the day, you are a fully radicalized zealot whose radical anti-civilization speech perfectly mirrors the alt-right terrorists who attack our civilization all across the globe. From the far-right radical sovereign citizens who resort to violence nearly every day, to the alt-right youth bigots who shoot up mosques/blackchurches/synagogues and drive into crowds, nearly all of them parrot exact same ideological script as you do.

If I had to pick the conservative terrorist that you remind me of, I'd say either the Bundy terrorists who violently attacked the government multiple times because it existed, or the Vegas Shooter who murdered all those people. Both are huge anti-government tax-is-theft "monopoly of violence" types, and they decided to end the "monopoly of violence" in their own ways.

I'm proud -- honored -- to hold myself to a dramatically higher, more academic and more rational standard than your policy of rote-repetition of terrorist propaganda. If you think my level is low, then I have succeeded, for it is the policy of your ideology to make rabid use of doublespeak. I am legitimately honored to be considered "low" by you as that is a rather significant testimony as to my high moral quality!

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#199

no government will be able to give people basic needs except at the cost of other people. I believe this will eventually happen, but through technology, not through these 'Robin Hood' type politicians. if you look thoughout history it wasn't any societal rules or enforcements that advanced us, but application of scientifical discoveries to build products that help make human life easier

> I believe this will eventually happen, but through technology People have been saying that since the industrial revolution. Yet here we are with millions employed doing bullshit jobs that don't need to exist.

https://pics.me.me/bernanke-ill-pay-you-20-000-to-eat-that-p...

here you have it :D

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#200

I’m sorry, but “getting free money makes people happy” isn’t exactly a shocking result is it? The result that the employment level was consistent is mildly interesting, though I’d expect the numbers could be different with a longer or larger test. But the real question imo is “does this scale without destroying the country’s finances?”

> But the real question imo is “does this scale without destroying the country’s finances?” It depends on how it is implemented and the numbers involved. One proposal [1] would be to give everyone $US 10K per year starting at age 21, and not having income taxes start until you have an income over US$ 40K. This allows one to get get enough for the bare necessities (shelter, food) "for free", but if you want to have a…

>One proposal [1] would be to give everyone $US 10K per year starting at age 21, and not having income taxes start until you have an income over US$ 40K.

That sounds a lot like the Fair Tax plan that was all the hubbub a decade ago but never got off the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax#Monthly_tax_rebate

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