Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
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Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#2I think a basic income is a decent idea but 583$ a month aka 10k - 3k for heath insurance seems rather low to replace things like disability checks especially if your removing all benefits for children. It's also not goig to satisfy people on social security who are getting checks for as much as 3,000$ a month.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#3 Some libertarians may not be fans of a guaranteed or basic income because such a system would, they argue, disincentivize work. Murray believes that his surtax scheme would incentivize work after someone began earning over $25,000.
There is a reason people get a little squeamish about proposals to just give poor people money...we all know what it does to us. You can't just go proposing something like this and throw out a magic number ($25k) and an assertion of how people will react to the incentive. You have to be much more careful and empirical than that.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#4Whatever the economic effect, I have a hard time imagining the political class giving up the power that comes from being the middle men between dispersed costs and concentrated benefits.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#5As robots and AI replace humans a Basic Income combined with geolibertarian style'd property and resource taxes are the only sane way to have humans compete with machines in the marketplace. Otherwise we're just born landless. Slaves to the land and robot owners who came before us bequeathed with immortality and inheritance of the former economy.
Private property was necessary for a time. It ensured long term investment, but if we don't switch models soon social unrest will be the limiting factor on scientific advancement and growth.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#6Some libertarians may not be fans of a guaranteed or basic income because such a system would, they argue, disincentivize work. Murray believes that his surtax scheme would incentivize work after someone began earning over $25,000. I'm fairly libertarian and also agree with the concept of a basic income or negative income tax, but phrases like this are very dangerous. It would only begin incentivizing work after you…
In conventional basic income systems, the basic income is _on top of_ anything you might be earning from a job, so work is incentivised from the start. In practice, for high earners, a lot of it would be clawed back in tax, of course.
Certainly there would be people happy to live on it without working (assuming it was a reasonable figure), and that's fine, as long as _most_ people aren't in that group. To an extent it will depend on what you set the figure at, but history has shown that most people don't like not working, even if they don't need to to survive.
An example; Ireland has a relatively generous social welfare system; an adult currently gets 188 euro a week plus housing benefit etc, and this lasts indefinitely. During the 90s-00s economic boom, unemployment fell below 4%, which is normally considered functional full employment. Clearly, when jobs were available, people wanted to do them. Now, maybe if you double or triple the figure it'll work out differently, but I'd be surprised if it would be that different. And that's a social welfare payment, which disincentivises working more than basic income (the social welfare payment goes away when you start working, the basic income doesn't).
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#7I've been saying this for years now. Give people the freedom to make their own economic decisions without the fate of crushing poverty over their heads. Give them the financial breathing room to learn a new skill, start a business, or simply find a better job than the one they currently have.
Basically, the freedom to take risks. Rich people have been telling us for decades that is what they bring to the table. Risk. That's how jobs, innovation, progress and wealth are created. Let's see how it works when everyone has that opportunity.
And if it decreases crime, disease, teen pregnancy, and the dropout rate, that's just icing on the cake.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#8Some libertarians may not be fans of a guaranteed or basic income because such a system would, they argue, disincentivize work. Murray believes that his surtax scheme would incentivize work after someone began earning over $25,000. I'm fairly libertarian and also agree with the concept of a basic income or negative income tax, but phrases like this are very dangerous. It would only begin incentivizing work after you…
It would only begin incentivizing work after you make 25k? And what about people like me that took 28 years to get to that point?
Incentive to work is only one issue. Another is that people don't want to lose their job because it would mean that they die. That mean technological improvements are more likely to be opposed by workers. With basic income, programmers and other job destroyers will be able to automate at will, and everyone will benefit.
I would have never worked as hard as I did to finish college if I didn't have the threat of perpetual poverty and possibly homelessness hanging over my head.
Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work. I never finished college, but now I am pretty active as a self taught learner and actually care more about learning than most college students. It has been a while since I didn't study and learn something new everyday.
The threat of perpetual poverty is like the threat of dying in wars. Yes, it propel you forward, but it was not a good incentive.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#9This is unpopular here, but I really believe that if you can't provide for yourself financially there is something seriously wrong with you, and I don't think treating you like a child is unreasonable. Beyond washing and feeding yourself, getting an income is pretty much adulthood 101.
Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money
#10I've been saying this for years now. Give people the freedom to make their own economic decisions without the fate of crushing poverty over their heads. Give them the financial breathing room to learn a new skill, start a business, or simply find a better job than the one they currently have. Basically, the freedom to take risks. Rich people have been telling us for decades that is what they bring to the table. Risk.…
"Give people the freedom to make their own economic decisions"
Why should they be free to make their own decision about how they spend MY money?