311–320 of 681 posts
This argument is just plain wrong. Kodak was not replaced by Instagram. Kodak was replaced by Apple and Samsung and a bunch of other asian manufacturers. They have way more than 13 employees.
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It's not that simple. Of course, the direct effect of corporate taxes is mostly on the wealthy who own most of the stock but that's not necessarily the group who gets most of the wealth--more on that below. Even in terms of direct payments, wealth isn't the only important factor. As significant is a company's willingness to be creative. I have never seen a corporate tax scheme that's ungamable that doesn't involve gi…
re: It can use that money in three general ways: Lower prices, raise pay or return it to shareholders. Or, paid out to executives as bonus.
And I'm honestly wondering - what percent of payroll is the typical CEO or CEO bonus?
Someone enlighten me. These discussions always seem so damn complex and heated for some reason. What am I missing, when I believe that UBI/BIG(basic income guarantee) is the future, and that in future people don't need to work 40 hours a week?
Before anyone counters with saying that "people don't need to work and thus just leech the system", I will cover this now. People will need to work, because UBI/BIG will not cover anything but the very basic income. This means cheap housing, cheap food, clothing and whatever else is considered basic income. Perhaps this would be something like 800 USD per month, or 200 per week, give or take some. People would most definitely want to have more income, and as such they would want to work. A full 40 hour week? Perhaps not -- maybe 20 or 30 hours a week. Whatever they feel fit best for them.
(note that I live in a country with the nordic welfare system, where most people live on a rent rather than own a house, which perhaps makes a difference, or then not. I don't know, hence why I discuss.)
Though some more reasonable forms of this idea exist, this particular description has some major problems: * What if the money you pay someone does not go as far as expected? Maybe they lose some of the money in various ways, or maybe they are just very bad at negotiating economic transactions or buy the wrong kinds of things from the wrong places. Maybe they are trying to live in an expensive area -- do we kick them…
If the number of nurses willing to work for current rates goes down, then the market rate for nurses will go up. Eventually it will be high enough that being a nurse is more attractive than being a programmer.
If I live comfortably on my basic income doing whatever, how do I become qualified to work? Remember we have college grads who aren't qualified to work, and they've spent their entire lives being educated.
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…
I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels. What's really depressing is that not a single comment here or on the article even mentions this. Why the hell should I pay even more and subsidize those who have more than two kids?
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Let consumers face those issues and watch as the market responds to consumers who are paying cash.
The problem is that when consumer make bad decisions (i.e. don't go to the doctor and develop serious health problems), the government in the end still has to foot the bill. You can't turn people away from emergency rooms and have them die on the street.
Good analogy is car maintenance. Most people are very diligent about oil changes because they (inherently, I would argue) recognize the cost structure.
Though some more reasonable forms of this idea exist, this particular description has some major problems: * What if the money you pay someone does not go as far as expected? Maybe they lose some of the money in various ways, or maybe they are just very bad at negotiating economic transactions or buy the wrong kinds of things from the wrong places. Maybe they are trying to live in an expensive area -- do we kick them…
Another problem is that it might devalue the currency. When most of it is given away, there's decreased competition for it, and thus its value in the market decreases.
No proposed basic income would give away most of the currency in circulation as BI, which makes that argument somewhat irrelevant.
Basic income on top of everything else doesn't make much sense (cost-wise). But if we could trade B.I. for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social progams-- it would probably be more cost efficient as individuals look after their money better than other people do. Here's a video from Milton Friedman (not Tom Friedman!) who is advocating for a negative income tax-- a variation of basic income. http…
I agree, but unfortunately I don't think "basic income and no other welfare programs" is a politically stable policy. No sooner will it have been introduced than politicians will be tempted to screw with it to help a favored constituency. Go to work as an inner city teacher? Here's an extra 20% in your BI. Live in an area damaged by a hurricane? We'll bump your BI for a year or two. I don't think a "simpler" tax code…
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Let consumers face those issues and watch as the market responds to consumers who are paying cash.
The problem is that when consumer make bad decisions (i.e. don't go to the doctor and develop serious health problems), the government in the end still has to foot the bill. You can't turn people away from emergency rooms and have them die on the street.
In your case I am wondering why exactly is that we can't turn people away - in aggregate it is likely to save more lives since seeing people dying would be an excellent motivating factor for others to make sure they pay their health care insurance -- and since they would therefore have it and would be able to get treatment earlier, which is cheaper, thereby causing the price of health care to be pushed down (treating people in ERs is frighteningly inefficient).
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Among us highly motivated and educated people who read HN regularly, it seems somewhat foreign that large swaths of the population will revert to just drinking beer, smoking legal weed, playing video games, watching tv, eating McDonalds and living in their RV or subsided apartment and not use birth control. But large swaths of the population already do this.
We should welcome this. For those left in the job market: - remuneration would likely improve - only motivated people would be left, so "pretending" to enjoy a job and all other kinds of fakery diminishes - artificial competition for jobs would decrease drastically - the ability to change jobs becomes extremely fluid on both sides of the table(with liberalized hire/fire policies [employer-side] plus a lack of worry a…
why?
-"artificial competition for jobs would decrease drastically"
why is artificial competition important? You are saying that it will be easier for qualified people to get jobs because unqualified people won't bother to apply any more?