171–180 of 271 posts
Can someone tell me why basic income won't just lead to inflation? Everyone gets more money which drives up the prices until the gain is negligible.
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Right, and looking at stats like murder rates, incarceration numbers, etc. the US system is clearly working and superior. I can walk any street at 2am in Vienna without looking over my shoulder. Oakland? Philly? A personal gun doesn't stop anyone. Fantasy from lala land.
Oakland & Philly, for most practical purposes, ban carry of guns outright. Outside of official "gun-free zones", where armed citizens are legal, crime is very low.
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You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. Once you've established a "protection money" system, establishing their "right" to your money & property, they are now incentivized to demand - and take - more. Panem et circenses is the last stage of polite society; the cost eventually becomes unbearable as fewer work and more expect comfort & leisure for nothing…
The Latin American states where the elites lives on hill-side housing, protected by guards and fences, all have fairly strict gun laws. They aren't going to let the poor arm themselves! While European gun laws are usually stricter than those in the "red states" of US, there are many places that have more lax laws than New York, Connecticut, and California (Czech Republic and Italy two examples that popped to my head;…
Switzerland? yes, you have an assault rifle. which you DO NOT CARRY while walking around. and, you have no ammo for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
you really think switzerland has low crime rates because people have empty assault rifles at home?
One question: has anyone else ever done the math on this? Let's suppose we have a basic income of $1,000 per month per citizen. This is barely enough to get by in someplace like eastern Washington and not enough to get by in someplace like Seattle but it's a nice round number so let's go with it. The US population is about 300 million. But let's assume only adult citizens receive basic income. If you want children yo…
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You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. Once you've established a "protection money" system, establishing their "right" to your money & property, they are now incentivized to demand - and take - more. Panem et circenses is the last stage of polite society; the cost eventually becomes unbearable as fewer work and more expect comfort & leisure for nothing…
Ideological response: Police are the thugs that rich people buy to defend themselves from the poor. Actually, basic income / negative income tax is a very good idea, much better than welfare schemes of almost all kinds - it has almost no administration overhead. Charity, like you advocate, has huge amounts of overhead. Milton Friedman was an advocate, for example, and he was hardly a socialist. And the idea that char…
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This seems to me a typical US response. Let me give you a perspective from the rest of the world. I've lived for years in multiple countries on multiple continents, so I'm not just talking out my backside. In the rest of the world, the poor people vote for health care, welfare, and unemployment insurance. This is because they want that safety for themselves if something goes wrong. They recognize that these programs…
These programs are not largely insurance. People don't pay into them proportionally to their actuarial costs. I.e., the guy who drifts between jobs, getting fired every few months doesn't pay more for unemployment insurance than the guy who has been stably employed for the past 10 years. The disparity between rich and poor in the US has grown enormously in the past 20 years. And it's all because the average joe has b…
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From the optimist's view, think how many people whose lives are being spent working at Walmart or McDonald's who could instead be at home developing skills they are actually interested in (which school does a poor job of teaching), such as programming or sculpture, etc. Imagine the entrepreneurs who might feel freed to give business a chance, rather than feeling that they can't quit their day jobs? It would be a gran…
From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything. Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages. Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which…
If we take a universe where there are 3 people, one guy makes $100, another makes $300 a year, another makes $1000 a year. We'll assume that everyone spends all their money every year.
Suddenly the gov't decides to give everyone basic income, a stipend of about $100 a year.
Suddenly the bottom guy gets enough money to live and quits his job at Walmart. Walmart finds out that people are willing to work for double the old salary though($200). So they multiply the price of goods by 2. The guy from before starts working again.
Guy 1 now has $300 a year, Guy 2 $400, Guy 3 $1100
but prices have doubled right? so in PPP the totals are: Guy 1 has $150, Guy 2 $200 , Guy 3 $550
Guy 1 still ends up richer in the end.
This universe had 0% unemployment and Walmart made no profits. Basic income doesn't destroy wealth, it transfers wealth just like pretty much any gov't scheme. And richer people will end up paying for it (oh no!).
But on the bright side, people at the bottom will end up richer (because the higher wages end up going to someone), and will be able to live in respectable conditions (Which leads to all sorts of good things like being able to keep themselves and their children healthy, lowering the incentive for crime, etc). And it doesn't have the moral judgements attached to a lot of welfare.
I haven't formalised the calculation, but I'm fairly certain that by the continuity of the universe of economics, and the fact that someone with $0 revenue now will always be richer with basic income, there are winners in the system, and so it doesn't turn into some inflationary spiral.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, and looking at stats like murder rates, incarceration numbers, etc. the US system is clearly working and superior. I can walk any street at 2am in Vienna without looking over my shoulder. Oakland? Philly? A personal gun doesn't stop anyone. Fantasy from lala land.
Oakland & Philly, for most practical purposes, ban carry of guns outright. Outside of official "gun-free zones", where armed citizens are legal, crime is very low.