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Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

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Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#181

Post by rtpg »

dnautics wrote: post #163
nimble wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income is a good idea but you have the rationale wrong. The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources. As general advancement accelerates and allows for greater production with less labor, a greater percentage of that wealth ought to be shared with ever…

The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind This is, actually, the argument for why we shouldn't have an inflationary monetary system. Normally technological improvement is deflationary (witness lowering prices for tech goods in spite of inflation - healthcare is different because it's highly regulated). Yet what we do by inflati…

but with fractional banking and the like the amount of money actually in the system is always increasing, so the inflation isn't actually "destroying" anything, it's basically just the equivalent to a flat tax that goes out to banks to help fund loans

At one point I had the impression that inflation is supposed to encourage spending, but thinking about it, it probably punishes the poor (who have pretty much no savings) more than anything

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#182

Post by mbesto »

DougWebb wrote: post #136
mbesto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a criminology class in college and the big takeaway was the supposed statistical correlation between race and crime - which, if study correctly - actually correlates to poverty and crime.

That seems to obvious to me, I'm always surprised that more people don't see it that way. I believe that most racism is really classism, and exists primarily in places where race and poverty correlate. Not to say that actual racism doesn't exist; of course it does. But I think when most people think "I'd rather not be around 'those people'", if they thought about it they'd find that 'those people' are really defined…

Well, it's much easier to see someone's skin color than it is their poverty.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#183

Post by swalkergibson »

rayiner wrote: post #85
swalkergibson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any society, there will be the haves and the have-nots. The transition of wealth between those two groups will always happen, whether by roving gangs of marauders (like in Somalia), or by the government. I personally prefer that the wealth transition occur through government due to the ancillary benefits of things like roads and police, but that is just me.

This is true, but you gloss over one point. Any society will have its haves and have nots, but those will not be the same group of people across societies. In the U.S., the "haves" are pencil neck geeks. In Somalia, they're strongmen. Government creates this cocoon that allows the geeks to thrive. When there is government, and the concomitant law and order, having a good eye for investments is a trait that can make s…

That is correct, but strongmen in your example exist exclusively to extract money (the ultimate common denominator in almost all societies) from weaker people/tribes. That is my position. Without government, you are obligated to pay your own private security force, driving on your own private roads, paying for your own private healthcare. My position is that you would probably pay a similar percentage of your income to provide these services for yourself than if most everybody contributed to a pot of money to provide these services for the greater good.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#184

Post by sharemywin »

ctdonath wrote: post #99
pinaceae wrote: post #60

As a European we are bit further down that path than the US. I assume most of the readers here are "wealthy", would not need basic guaranteed income. So let me explain why this is a good idea from a rich man's perspective. You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. That's it. Behind all the nice language this is what it boils down to. It is paying off poor…

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…

Except we have the highest incarceration rate in the world and I read we pay somewhere around 80k per prisoner per year.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#185

Post by evacuationdrill »

ctdonath wrote: post #148
barrkel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Police are assigned to serve all, protecting poor as well. If welfare is going to be provided to such a large scale as we do, then yes I'd rather the BI approach just to keep things simple and efficient - and to reveal the veiled problems a complex welfare system conceals. And no, charity is not utter bullshit. What I do isn't signaling anything to anyone, as I keep it as low-profile & anonymous as possible. Altruism…

Come to Houston, where most of the departments operating here earn lots of income from neighborhoods. Your HOA pays the departments to guarantee periodic patrols or even guarantee an officer present somewhere inside 24/7.

This is not the same as off-duty police being hired; they pay the department toward officer salaries. Just because they're sworn to protect doesn't mean they can't prefer to protect certain areas.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#186

Post by dragonwriter »

jasonlfunk wrote: post #115
carbocation wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Because, unlike current poverty support programs, where the having a benefit program that gives you $X and a job that gives you $X the most you can get is $X, with basic income, you can have the basic income of $X and the job of $X and have $2X.

So, given constant wages, the marginal income effect of working would be the same for anyone not getting a means-tested program now, and greater for anyone who would get a means-tested program now. (The marginal benefit might be less in the former case because of the declining marginal utility of additional income, though.)

> Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages.

Entry level wages are artificially high compared to market labor supply because of the minimum wage, so even if BI did reduce the supply of labor for minimum wage jobs, it wouldn't necessarily stop them from being able to fill positions at the existing wage levels. Many BI proposals also include eliminating the minimum wage, which would make work that is not currently economically viable (because, while it provides value, it doesn't provide enough value to warrant the minimum wage) viable.

> Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income.

This, OTOH, is a real potential issue with inflation-pegged basic income: if you set the level too high for the current economy to support initially and peg it to inflation, you'll get caught in an inflation cycle.

The solution to this, as I see it, is fairly simply; dedicate a set share of the revenue from progressive income taxes to the basic income, and set benefit levels based on the lower of the levels by equally distributing the revenue from that tax to beneficiaries or the inflation-adjusted level of the starting benefit amount.

You get better self-regulation and signalling of when you need to reexamine the assumptions in your benefit levels and revenue structure, and if you initially set it at a level that would actually pull people out of the work force in a way that would trigger run away inflation, then barring direct intervention it will regulate itself back down (in real terms) until that's not the case.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#187

Post by dnautics »

rtpg wrote: post #181
dnautics wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind This is, actually, the argument for why we shouldn't have an inflationary monetary system. Normally technological improvement is deflationary (witness lowering prices for tech goods in spite of inflation - healthcare is different because it's highly regulated). Yet what we do by inflati…

but with fractional banking and the like the amount of money actually in the system is always increasing, so the inflation isn't actually "destroying" anything, it's basically just the equivalent to a flat tax that goes out to banks to help fund loans At one point I had the impression that inflation is supposed to encourage spending, but thinking about it, it probably punishes the poor (who have pretty much no saving…

if you have a fixed money supply, even with fractional banking, the amount of money in the system is limited; and to push the model further, even if you had a 0% reserve requirement, in the long run defaults and amortization of loans (deflationary) would balance out new lending (inflationary).

Ever wonder why the population is overleveraged and over-stressed about loans and what not? It's because the system needs people to go into debt to continue function. It's legalized, voluntary, fractional slavery, but the system wants you hand over ownership of your labor to someone else.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#188

Post by Domenic_S »

streptomycin wrote: post #133
3am wrote: post #78

And when they spend their money stupidly and don't have enough money for health care or food, we let them die on the street, right? Or we let private charities cover the gap. But when they don't, we let them die on the street? And if we don't let them die on the street, we find ourselves back where we started, in need of a social insurance safety net for basic necessities.

We have the same problem today. For instance, food stamps can be sold/wasted, and not everyone who needs them signs up.

Right, so why bother incurring more cost for the same outcome? It's like refactoring your code for speed and ignoring the DDoS that's bringing your app down in the first place.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#189

Post by strlen »

pinaceae wrote: post #175
strlen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

gun ownership (illegal) in Brazil is crazy high, no ones gives a shit about legality. 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?

No, I don't think there are low crime rates for this reason. I have never implied this or stated this. In any case a comparison between Switzerland and US is bizarre -- there are far too many differences to idly (without multivariate analysis on data that is likely not even available) claim that any one variable explains lower crime rate in one vs. the other.

[Edit: I previously included a longer rant here, but, I'll just point anyone to this CDC study -- http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur... -- and let them make their own conclusions]

I do happen to think that it's better for individuals to decide on their own whether the risks of keeping a firearm are outweighed by any protection it offers. My firearms are stored unloaded, under lock, with ammo in a separate location: I live in a safe neighbourhood -- which I can finally afford to do after winning the IPO lottery (to be blunt) -- so for me the risks outweigh the benefits; I don't, however, claim to be able to make this choice for others. I would much rather see housing prices go down (even though I will be hurt personally by this) and for the (scary) trend of growing education-based stratification of US society to end -- stratification which is largely manifested in ways American families live.

"Not giving a shit about legality" is far worse than even outright (but enforced) bans -- it means the criminals are able to get away with it, but individuals citizens who want to actually use it for self-defense or sport cannot.

You're also confusing two aspects of Swiss laws: militia members can keep their service rifle at home while it's a fully automatic (i.e., an actual assault rifle) with restricted ammo (I think the restrictions, however, are to prevent the military issued ammo to be used for non-military purpose; you can still take it to the range and use it with civilian purchased ammo).

Separately from this, after the end of their militia service, they have the option of paying to have it permanently converted it to semi-automatic and keeping it under the same laws as other civilian firearms.

On the other hand, fully automatic/select fire weapons are essentially illegal in the United States, military members can't keep their automatic rifles with them at home, and so on. Like in Switzerland, most US states do permit ownership of semi-auto versions of those rifles (however, afaik in the United States, they must have been manufactured as semi-automatics -- there's murky case law that can land you into trouble for having cerrain M16 parts in an AR-15, for example). However, some states (e.g., NY) ban them completely..

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#190

Post by Domenic_S »

gnaritas wrote: post #87
Kiro wrote: post #46

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.

Everyone doesn't get more money, the money is just distributed differently. The rich would be paying in much more than they get back in basic income. This doesn't change the money supply, just the distribution.

Right, but cost of basics would increase. If you sell bread, and you know that everyone now has $xxK basic income, why would you not increase the price of bread?
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