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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

#661

Post by ihateloggingin »

nawitus wrote: post #12
btilly wrote: post #5

I've got a twist on this basic idea. Fund basic income with a large tax on various CO2 producing activities. With the idea that - on average - people can pay this tax out of the basic income received from it. And people will have direct incentives to find ways to reduce CO2 consumption. Then get rid of silly specific legislation that tries to achieve the same goal in less successful ways. Thus fuel efficiency, Califo…

This idea seems to incur very high bureaucracy costs. What are CO2 producing activies? How much are each of them taxed? Who measures the tax and is responsible paying for it? Etc. One selling point of basic income is that there's no loopholes and there's very little bureaucracy costs, therefore a larger portion of the money is actually used for consumption instead of doing unnecessary (for society) work.

You don't need to tax actual CO2-producing activities. You just tax the production of CO2-containing fuels. The price is passed on to the buyer who produces CO2 with them.

You can then offer tax credits for CO2 capturing (with the burden of proof on the claimant).

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

#662

Post by ihateloggingin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #127
dllthomas wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic Income should never be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings, at least until we've reached a place where we don't need human labor for very many tasks (if ever). I say this as an avid supporter of a basic income.

> Basic Income should never be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings, at least until we've reached a place where we don't need human labor for very many tasks (if ever). Its seems to me to be self-evidentally economically impossible for universal BI to do this (which, incidentally, means it probably can't replace all existing social benefit programs, because you probably still want to have some progr…

> seems to me to be self-evidentally economically impossible for universal BI to [be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings] unless we've reached that point of labor-irrelevance

Why is it economically impossible? It seems quite possible to me.

For example, suppose that 20% of the population _must_ be engineers for society to survive. But the other 80% of the population is irrelevant to production. The 80% could be given a BI of $40k, while the 20% could be given a salary of $200k (or $2M if you like).

(The 20% and 80% figures could just as easily be reversed, if you consider 20% to be "labor-irrelevance" -- although it is not irrelevant if it is necessary to the survival of society to ensure it's done.)

Why is that economically impossible?

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

#663

Post by ihateloggingin »

danbmil99 wrote: post #637
Nursie wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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,…

> if you're asking where the moral authority to demand you help house feed and clothe people comes from... LOL. It's already here. Rather than snarky comments, try to actually think about the question. There are good arguments against unbridled capitalism, but "Libertarians -- LOL!!" is not one of them.

Rather than pulling a sentence out of context and telling someone to "actually think about the question," try to actually address the argument.

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

#664

Post by ihateloggingin »

diydsp wrote: post #101
axuaq wrote: post #56

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?

thank you for this. I'm an empathetic person, but every morning I drive out of my driveway to work and look at the house across the street from me with three people who stay home all day in their house watching TV. When I get home, their TV is still on and the other people in my building and I are exhausted from working and finally get some time for recreation, usually in the dark. The other neighbors say the across-…

> selling opiates

Sounds like you're just envious that the entrepreneurs across the street are more successful than you.

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

#665

Post by ihateloggingin »

dorkrawk wrote: post #409

What happens if I squander my basic income on something frivolous and I can't get a job? Wouldn't there still need to be social programs to prevent people who fuck up from just starving to death? How would a basic income coexist with current systems of debt? Could this exist without VAST healthcare reform? What happens when people get (expensively) sick? Who gets a basic income? Every citizen over 18? Every non depen…

When someone has so lost control of himself that he can't feed himself -- even though he has the money to do so -- we put him into custody in a hospital, and hopefully rehabilitate him. That's severe mental disorder.

You're absolutely right about healthcare; you can't replace public healthcare with a basic income.

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

#666

Post by ihateloggingin »

yaddayadda wrote: post #234

I find it interesting that the author mentions BitCoin early on, but then never addresses how an Unconditional Basic Income would work if corporations switched to BitCoin or other anonymous, decentralized monetary system. In concept, I'm a firm proponent of a Unconditional Basic Income/Guaranteed Minimum Income/Negative Income Tax, but I think BitCoin is going to be a prohibitive cog in the financial wheel.

BitCoin is not anonymous. Cash is anonymous.

Why don't international corporations just exchange briefcases full of $100 bills right now?

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

#667

Post by ihateloggingin »

antitrust wrote: post #268

The problem with unconditional basic income is that there's no incentive to do anything beyond the minimum. Like most utopian plans, this idea relies on the belief that humans will get up and do things in large numbers. We can't even get them to voluntarily recycle and quit beating their kids.

I'm sure you don't mind 1% of the population raking in a substantial passive income, though, do you?

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

#668

Post by ihateloggingin »

MattyRad wrote: post #259

While I think this article makes some sweeping generalizations and assumptions, the question it poses is what's important. If we as programmers continue to automate the world (as is our job), and as previous jobs therein are rendered unnecessary, how does one reallocate the workforce? Is the workforce unnecessary at that point?

We just need to adjust social attitudes so that it's accepted that passive income is the right of everyone, not just 1%.

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

#669

Post by ihateloggingin »

maxerickson wrote: post #108
mikekij wrote: post #53

Do you have any idea how many people would just not work, sit at home, watch TV, and collect their BI check?

Given 300 million people, it's prudent to consider the net impact and not sweat the details too much. Say a policy makes 200 million people better off in some virtuous manner but creates 10 million free loaders. Is that a horrible policy? Say the value of the virtuous benefit is 10x the cost of the free loading?

The other poster's concern is obviously punishing the undeserving poor.

However, the point of the article here is to assume that millions will be "free loaders" no matter what we do because their labor is unnecessary.

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

#670

Post by ihateloggingin »

iheart2code wrote: post #230

How would a system like this scale to different regions? I can see this working in a smaller country, not the US. I would need a much larger subsistence wage to survive in the SF bay area than I would in most other places in the country. And if certain (already overcrowded) regions are allowed larger wages, you'd probably see people flocking there for the increased wages. I can also see this placing strain on the sys…

> I would need a much larger subsistence wage to survive in the SF bay area than I would in most other places in the country.

Plenty of people live in the SF bay area with no BI at all.

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