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Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

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Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#51

Post by effn »

astrodust wrote: post #24
speeder wrote: post #6

And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.

The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately. The Mincome experiment ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome ) dabbled with this idea and the results were rather surprising. Most people seemed to want to work rather than loaf around and collect benefits. Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates o…

> The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately.

This idea does not stand up to any scrutiny at all. The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the cost of a BI program.

> Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"?

None of those suggestions would come anywhere near the amount of money needed for a BI program.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#52

Post by AndrewDucker »

brador wrote: post #19

With basic income, wouldn't the economy adapt to the fresh money supply and rents and other costs raise to account for it? It would effectivly be additional currency inflation by a different name?

The idea would be that you'd tax it back from most people, so that the only people who gained much were the very poor.

It's basically a way of making sure that people don't starve to death while unemployed, but without having to put any kind of bureaucracy in place.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#54

Post by militiaman21 »

khill wrote: post #39

Wouldn't the basic income value need to vary across regions? For example, the notion that: "Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on" would mean a different value in San Francisco than in Grover, NC. If the government adjusted the basic income to account for regional cost-of-living, I imagine it would be popular to maintain a fake residency in an expen…

I'm fairly sure the government knows where we all truly live.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#55

Post by grecy »

Australia already has essentially this setup. Every person in the country can be paid $492.60 every two weeks ($12,800 yearly) and up to another $121 every two weeks ($3,146 yearly) to help with rent.

Everyone qualifies, forever, irrelevant of past job history, education, family status, etc. etc. There is no time limit for the payments.

The only difference between this and the article, is that if you get a job, whatever you earn is deducted from your payments.

I personally think it does a fantastic job of making sure there is no poverty in the country, and it means Australia has an enormous middle class.

(Link updated) [1] http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/16/dole-around-the-world-ho...

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#56

Post by axuaq »

Can we come up with a solution that doesn't strong-arm workers into keeping society's dead weight around? Why make sure that every non-worker in society has enough money to eat McDonalds and watch cable TV at the cost of the freedom of everyone to make and spend money as they please?

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#57

Post by effn »

derefr wrote: post #37
effn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use Social Security funds to fund a Basic Income. It operates similarly to a pension fund so it would be equivalent to confiscate peoples lifetime savings. Good luck explaining that to someone who is just about to retire.

You can, however, say that going forward, people will pay into basic income instead of social security; and that no one born after [policy-change date] will receive social security in the future (since they never paid into it.)

Possible in theory. But then you have to explain to people why they are paying the same amount of tax as people one year older than them, but will still receive a lot less when they retire.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#58

Post by datasage »

speeder wrote: post #6

And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.

In the short term yes, but these trends are not limited to one region or country, they are global. Its likely that we will see most developed countries adopt some from of basic income sometime in the future, at which point there wont really be anywhere reasonable to go to escape it.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#59

Post by cdoxsey »

I think in the end this wouldn't work. It'd play out something like this:

A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. (Particularly when politicians push the basic income amount up to placate constituencies)

Because workers bow out of the system certain industries lose productive capacity. Maybe we stop producing enough food, or enough fuel.

Prices rise (assuming a moderately free market), which causes the basic income amount to rise and it spirals out of control from there.

The state is forced to intervene. Either by forcing people to work certain jobs (ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...) or by capping the basic income and reincentivizing work.

Hayek: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#60

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #37
effn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use Social Security funds to fund a Basic Income. It operates similarly to a pension fund so it would be equivalent to confiscate peoples lifetime savings. Good luck explaining that to someone who is just about to retire.

You can, however, say that going forward, people will pay into basic income instead of social security; and that no one born after [policy-change date] will receive social security in the future (since they never paid into it.)

[deleted]
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