231–240 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.
And what is the problem with inflation? If something it is a great problem that we are having so little of it globally. Inflation in the 2-4% per year is healthy.
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…
I really dislike how little people think BI systems through before dismissing them. You are smarter than all the economists who support it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think "pay enormous cost for a 20 year old firearm, get permission from the local law enforcement (which won't be granted to anyone in California who isn't a Hollywood producer), wait for the federal paper work for several months, pay additional fees" is "perfectly". Even prior to 1986 FOPA amendment, the number of people who actually owned such firearms was low -- but then again, they were only used in two c…
> [F]irst of all hand grenades, aren't technically arms if you use the definition of arms used when the constitution was written This is the crux of the entire argument to me. The spirit of the second amendment is to allow the citizenry to violently overthrow the federal government if they become too powerful, as a last-resort measure. The weapons that the colonists were fighting against were 3 rounds per minute musk…
That's actually not the case. Militia meant "every able bodied white male and sometimes freed blacks" (a more expansive definition than eligible voters -- as there were still property qualifications for voting), who are meant to be armed with common civilian firearms they would purchase themselves. They could be asked to show up at a "muster" by the government, but the second amendment explicitly protected the individual right of militia members originally from federal government (later on, via 14th amendment, this was extended to the states as well as well as to anyone who is not a felon, mentally ill, etc...).
It certainly recognized the right to use these firearms for hunting and self-defense. The common musket at the time -- The Brown Bess -- was smooth bore with a 0.75" caliber and a bead sight, i.e., a 12 gauge shotgun. It could be loaded with buck shoot, with a musket ball, or (as very common) "buck and ball". So it served both the purposes of militia service weapon, for hunting many kinds of game (which wasn't a luxury, but often a necessity), and self-defence (against both humans and wild animals).
Ancestors of modern hand grenades ("bombs"), artillery, and so on all existed at the time -- but were not commonly owned by civilians.
Rather than try my hand at constitutional scholarship, I'll go by the legal theory behind the Heller decision for this. More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/22/justice-sca...
Honestly, I'll go on record and say that this is good: violent overthrow of the government worked well for the American colonists precisely because they were colonists. The Monarchist loyalists could simply leave, whereas in France, they could only do so sans the head. The stakes were much smaller, so the American revolution (or really "the first American civil war") did not lead to the horrible outcomes other violent revolutions have almost exclusively lead to. Today, the results would be far far worse -- rather than a blossoming of civil liberties, it would mean revolutionary terror, followed by an even longer period of counter-revolutionary terror. If this happens, I'll definitely want to be armed, however -- to defend myself and my family from any of the factions involved in either the revolution or the counter-revolution as I make my way to the nearest port of entry of a peaceful country.
Private armies (those reading the "militia" to mean militia groups as opposed to what it actually means) are an even scarier idea. Not to Godwin this, but it reminds me of Freikorps, SA, as well as KPD/SPD armed groups, and other (sometimes state sponsored, sometimes not) street thugs of Weimar Germany.
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…
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…
What is their contribution to knowledge and technology, so that they "deserve" a stake? What you're saying is that they deserve something for nothing.
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Considering how cheap consumer electronics and entertainment are these days, I'm genuinely concerned that this 'minimum income' would be high enough to permit many to live in perpetual 'childhood' - cheap food, cheap entertainment.
Why does this concern you? To me, that sounds like hearing someone saying "I'm genuinely concerned that people will start giving their kids strange-sounding names." Sure, it's a bit odd, but so what... it's not affecting you. Maybe you are concerned that they will fail to contribute to the economy, thus dragging it down, but if so then I wonder what you think of our current economic system which leaves a noticeable p…
It concerns all taxpayers, since they're the ones paying the bill for basic income.
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, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources. What is their contribution to knowledge and technology, so that they "deserve" a stake? What you're saying is that they deserve something for nothing.
Had to stop here and evaluate if I should read any further. The author is suggesting that we give people money to directly break the law with it?
Even more importantly though, the percentage of welfare recipients who use illegal drugs and are good parents and holding down a job is less than 5%. Thus the requirement seems common sense since we do not wish to merely reinforce and enable bad/illegal behavior.
The author is a little confused about the history of Libertarian thought on this issue. A minimum basic income (MBI) is NOT a social progressive concept first thought up by western social democrats but was originally a fundamental tenant of a flat tax system. Something Libertarian's have been arguing in favor of for a long time. The basic design is simple. You give every person a single dollar amount as a MBI and the…
2) No rational person eschews more income simply because they'll pay X+dX% on each marginal dollar instead of just X%; such an action is just not on the radar of any rational actor.
3) No argument regarding the simplification of the code, however "which would also increase revenue" is a pretty extraordinary claim you haven't backed up
4) No argument here
5) Demonstrably untrue; the government will still have--and will still act on--plenty of things to "manipulate" social policy (e.g. by the award of contracts, enactment of other legislation, etc.)
6) This is just flat-out unproven assertion
So no, "we" don't see "Libertarian thought" as being both "MORE 'fair' AND more compassionate" at all.
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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…
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…