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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

#591

Post by dredmorbius »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #428
tokenadult wrote: post #174

I see no one in this active discussion has mentioned yet Charles Murray's book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 in which Murray goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone would cost in the United States, and some probable effects that would have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it was publi…

Nor has anyone mentioned Ancient Rome. There an elite few controlled all the money, and the middle classes simply had no economic room to exist. The result was patronage, on a scale equivalent to a welfare system, with ordinary Romans queuing each day to recieve a daily "wage" in return for loyalty / obligations / it's complicated - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome I mention it simply because…

Interesting. That's not altogether unlike how many non-profits operate today -- by way of largesse from major patrons.

"It's complicated" indeed.

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

#592

Post by inflagranti »

jerf wrote: post #392
btilly wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem with "targeted social welfare programs" is that it is very easy to dislike programs that someone else (particularly someone that you don't like) benefits from. A program that you yourself benefit from tends to be less likely to get eroded by future politicians. Compare welfare and social security for a classic example of the difference.

This is my biggest concern with the idea, which I don't see being addressed (checked the entire conversation on this post to date). I don't think having the vote and having the basic income is compatible with each other. Why aren't people going to vote themselves larger basic incomes every year? How can you both have the (modern conception of the) vote, and a basic income at the same time? Attempts to answer this que…

"This is my biggest concern with the idea, which I don't see being addressed (checked the entire conversation on this post to date). I don't think having the vote and having the basic income is compatible with each other."

If you have well-enough educated, hopefully reasonable people I don't think this will become an issue. Swiss recently voted down to get more holidays ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland...) and it wasn't even close of getting through. Now this of course doesn't prove anything (we also voted to ban minarets for instance, which definitely wasn't very rationally based), but it shows that people will not just take the short sighted approach only thinking of immediate rewards and instead try take the whole economic outcome into account.

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

#593

Post by rlanday »

speeder wrote: post #418
sliverstorm wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve Reading the summary at the top of the Wiki entry, it's already not surprising the book has been labeled racist. Any book that discusses race, inheritance, and socioeconomic class always gets called racist.

Actually this book sounds fascinating, must be a interesting read, agreeing with it or not.

I’m reading it now; it is fascinating, because the idea that it’s possible to measure intelligence and used it to predict probabilities for individual and group outcomes is one of the most useful, strongest-supported ideas in all of the social sciences, yet many people either misunderstand the state of scientific consensus (“IQ doesn’t really measure anything, intelligence tests are largely bogus”) or actively try to deny that this is possible for political purposes (“many people are disadvantaged because of low socioeconomic status, but we can equalize everything with more government spending“). Understanding something other people don’t should allow you to gain an economic advantage somehow; there should be sort of arbitrage opportunities to profit from the knowledge differential. For example, many people think having a four-year college degree adds x amount of value because the average college graduate earns y more dollars over their lifetime than the average non-college graduate, and this means that everyone should go to college. But if you understand that a large part of x actually comes from the inherent value in being intelligent, and a large part of the reason students of top universities make better workers is that they were really smart even in high school, not necessarily because a university education is worth what students are paying, perhaps instead of hiring only from top universities, you can hire students straight out of high school based on their SAT scores (yes, the SAT measures intelligence) and train them yourself? Universities use a multitude of signals when deciding who to admit (test scores, essays, reference letters, extracurriculars), so in addition to trying to determine intelligence, they’re also trying to determine other character traits, but The Bell Curve (at least I think this is where I read it) presents some data related to job hiring that shows intelligence is the trait that’s most measurable and provides the most predictive power.

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

#594

Post by dasil003 »

agilebyte wrote: post #559
dasil003 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way we always have. What do either of these issues have to do with BI?

I do not know what you mean and what "always have" means in your context. The article asks to get more money from corporations which I do not think is feasible. I am in the UK now and this country decided to go for universal income we would have to either close the borders or convince at least the whole of EU to do the same at the same time. Please expand your comment if you can.

I was speaking of the US, but I also live in the UK, and I have first-hand experience getting a UK visa as a highly paid professional, and it was not exactly easy. Also I might add that though the NHS is set up as a human right, all public funds are not. For instance, I have to pay for my daughter's school in full, which would be partially covered by the state if I were a citizen. So it's not a question of going from "open" borders to "closed", it's a question of degree.

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

#595

Post by Nursie »

danbmil99 wrote: post #270
Nursie wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> large swaths of the population already do this. They do indeed. And why not let them? Most of what they could do with their time is being automated away, and the front-line service industries (restaurants, coffee houses) can only take on so many. Does there not ever come a point when we can say we're rich enough as a society to support those who can't meaningfully contribute? That even without their effort we have…

> Does there not ever come a point when we can say we're rich enough as a society to support those who can't meaningfully contribute? You are free to support those who can't meaningfully contribute, but where do you get the moral authority to demand that I do so as well, with my own money? Besides the moral argument, isn't there a good chance that a permanent underclass with a guaranteed welfare income will overpopul…

>> You are free to support those who can't meaningfully contribute, but where do you get the moral authority to demand that I do so as well, with my own money?

We're not quite there yet but what happens when all the food and goods a society need can be made by automation, run by a skeleton crew of (say) 5% of the population in facilities owned by 1% of the population? Nobody else can compete on price or availability, the makers don't need staff, and only so many can fit into the service industries.

Do the 1% continue to take the majority of wealth as rent, and the 5% live reasonably well, and f*ck everyone else? Or do we recognise that human progress has been a group effort and start to share the abundance with everyone?

Besides which, if you're asking where the moral authority to demand you help house feed and clothe people comes from... LOL. It's already here. What's not moral is the immature libertarian "I've got mine" attitude we see so much of these days. Tax to help the less fortunate and societal development is theft of my stuff by force and inherently immoral? That's a pretty stunted and selfish thought pattern right there.

>> isn't there a good chance that a permanent underclass with a guaranteed welfare income will overpopulate in relation to those who are "meaningfully contributing", to the point where the ratio is so bad that the system breaks down?

Oh no, the poor people will breed!

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

#596

Post by zxcdw »

prostoalex wrote: post #589
zxcdw wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First one. I would assume UBI is only available to adults. The third one isn't really much of an option since it assumes that politics is more black and white than what it actually is. 50 shades of grey and counting. And of course people realize that UBI has it's drawbacks too.

That goes against the principle of requiring only residency or citizenship, why would you kick children out of it? Wouldn't you then need to provide a separate welfare program for needy children?

I am not sure -- perhaps if the proposal is that it's directly based on only the residency or citizenship then children too would have it, although I would find it somewhat questionable if it is needed(because it's the parents who need the money, not the children themselves for example). Perhaps the system could work better if it was for adults only, or that the money goes to adults.

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

#597

Post by joshuaellinger »

nkoren wrote: post #277
joshuaellinger wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No argument there. I love the idea of creating a pool of money that goes to people who do work that is beneficial to society. Or even just to make art for personal enjoyment. I'd just like to avoid having the government pay people to, say, drink and party. I think there does need to be some external social pressure / structure to motivate people. Otherwise, you wind up with the same political problems what current we…

Living on the dole is indeed terrible for people -- but it's terrible because it's a poverty trap. A poverty trap isn't created by supporting people who don't earn a wage: it's created by withdrawing support for people who do earn a wage (or engage in other forms of value-creation which the dole administrators disapprove of). Because a person on the dole is micro-managed in their activities, they are unable to volunt…

I don't like my proposal that much either. It has the flaws you mention, particularly if implemented by our current political class. I was being intentionally vague on the implementation and you assumed that current political forces turn it into a poverty trap. But current political forces also prevent an unconditional basic income.

It really comes down to how much you trust people to find their own path.

That clearly depends on how old they are. Below 18, you are required to be in school and you are not allowed to work. After 65, you get to live off our national pension plan and get free health care.

The other thing that makes me cautious about the unconditional income approach is the handful of rich kids that I knew in High School in Austin, TX. They had everything they could possible want handed to them and were miserable. It was puzzling as hell.

FDR had a really big internal debate over this during the Great Depression. Read a little of the history of that era -- it is not an easy tradeoff.

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

#598

Post by greedo »

wavefunction wrote: post #564
greedo wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. China loves the One Child policy. No horrible side effects at all. Social engineering like this is fraught with huge risks.

It makes perfect sense that 2 people should be able to replace themselves with 2 people. Nobody said 1 child policy, plus I mentioned a market for people who don't want to have kids selling off their "rights to reproduce." Your response is simplistic and doesn't even outline any of your concerns about what I've posted.

Trying to control people's reproductive rights goes against eons of human nature and evolution. And creating a "market" where you can sell these rights sounds like a horrible mash of Ayn Rand and Huxley.

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

#599

Post by ctdonath »

ppereira wrote: post #551
ctdonath wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Republicans are also openly for reducing burdens (both regulation and taxation) on the wealth producers so they can make more of it and spread it around. Taking half of earners' incomes with one hand and blocking ways to earn more with the other will NOT end well. I'm making a good buck, but at this rate of taxation I'm gonna have to resort to self-sufficiency homesteading with zero taxable income. Remember the goose…

> Republicans are also openly for reducing burdens (both regulation and taxation) on the wealth producers so they can make more of it and spread it around. Wow, you really do drink the trickle-down effect Kool-Aid.

You can't "spread the wealth" if there isn't any. Printing more money doesn't make more wealth, it just diffuses it more. If I stop working, you can't tax my now-nonexistent income.

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

#600

Post by criley2 »

ctdonath wrote: post #599
ppereira wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Republicans are also openly for reducing burdens (both regulation and taxation) on the wealth producers so they can make more of it and spread it around. Wow, you really do drink the trickle-down effect Kool-Aid.

You can't "spread the wealth" if there isn't any. Printing more money doesn't make more wealth , it just diffuses it more. If I stop working, you can't tax my now-nonexistent income.

I don't believe there is correlation between a lessened burden on wealth producers and it being spread around.

The burden on wealth producers is very low, one of the lowest points in the modern era.

You would expect in this era of hyper-rich and low-taxation that the wealth would be spreading around.

But it's not. Record profits for corporations (read: wealth producers) is turning into record stock highs, record numbers of billionaires and record lows for the middle class.

I refuse your argument because the world around me clearly shows that our "wealth producers" have figured out how to depress labor costs and increase investor returns. Great for them, but that concept is 100% contrary to your "wealth producers spread wealth".

No, wealth producers rightfully squeeze labor costs and rightfully return the biggest amount of money to themselves, their boards, and their investors. That's not spreading wealth downwards, it's spreading laterally only.

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