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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

#251

Post by dnautics »

notahacker wrote: post #240
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…

Technological progress is exactly why we have an inflationary money system. Those who invest their money in the technological progress, has a bigger pot of money to aim for so their expected ROI isn't, on average, negative after adjusting for risk and tranasction costs. The person who works to create it can push for a pay rise that keeps pace with inflation. The person that buries their money in a whole in the ground…

No. That may be a post hoc justification/apologetic for the status quo, but that is definitely not a historically correct model for why we have inflation. In the roman era, there was inflation caused by the cupidity of the emperor who debauched the gold coins by cutting them with silver. In the American revolution we had inflation because the colonies desperately needed to raise funds for the war effort and the British printed fake currency to derail the economy... Something similar happened during the civil war. During the depression FDR adjusted the gold standard to cheat laborers of their value (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUvm9UgJBtg). In the 70s Nixon went off the gold standard because the French kept recalling their portion of the dollar backing, believing the us was not going to keep its word in the face of a stalling economy.

If you want to argue that it SHOULD be the justification that's fine (and morally questionable, unless you like screwing the poor) but there is no historical evidence that you model ever has been the rationale for inflation.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#252

Post by notahacker »

rtpg wrote: post #179
jasonlfunk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The inflationary cycle only exists if you don't do the math. 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. Walm…

If only economics were so simple[1]. Nobody disputes that some people will end up richer, and that people who have no income of any sort (generally those who are not employed, not disabled and not looking for work) will indisputably benefit. The rest of the winners and losers depend very heavily on the amount in question, who pays most of the increased burden, what happens to people who were previously entitled to more than the Basic Income; you can nevertheless guarantee that some of the losers will be relatively poor workers, some rich people will end up richer (including some pretty unproductive rich people, like slum landlords) and some rich people will end up broke (especially people providing jobs to relatively-unskilled US workers in competitive international markets).

That said, you can make one pretty uncontroversial prediction: if you try to set the Basic Income high enough to ensure people can actually indefinitely live "in respectable conditions" with it as their main source of income, then there will be a lot less wealth being produced in the US.

And I can't see why only people actually applying for work should be subjected to moral judgements and restrictions on their lifestyle?

[1]I'm not sure who's paying for the stipend in your example. Or why Guy 2 wouldn't push for a pay rise when faced with a 50% reduction in his real wage (presumably he has some bargaining power if he's worth 3x a Walmart worker)

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#253

Post by JJ216 »

This is Switzerland subtly dumping money into their economy in an effort to devalue the CHF; they're pretty damn desperate, not hypers progressive. And it would never work in the US because we have a strong belief in paternalism as state policy in regard to welfare...the government simply knows better how to spend money than a poor person ever could...

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#254

Post by philwelch »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #232
philwelch wrote: post #134

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…

it obviously phases out as income increases. You avoid the disincentive by making the phase out smaller in slope than the increase in income. i.e. every dollar you earn removes 30 cents of basic income. I really dislike how little people think BI systems through before dismissing them. You are smarter than all the economists who support it?

> it obviously phases out as income increases.

Yes; if you'd bothered to read the last paragraph of my comment before responding to it, you would have seen that I reached the same conclusion.

> I really dislike how little people think BI systems through before dismissing them

I really dislike how people like you can't be bothered to read and comprehend someone's comments before making these little dismissive responses. You should work on your reading comprehension before you accuse other people of not thinking things through.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#255

Post by rwl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #122
rwl wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have a similar question. One of the major reasons to have social programs that buy things like health insurance is that governments have a lot more bargaining power than individuals (up to and including the legal authority to set price caps). In the case of healthcare, governments can get the same coverage and care much cheaper per capita than individuals could if they purchased it on their own. Giving individ…

Consider the ACA model (even minus the subsidy aspect), which uses (1) purchase mandates, (2) minimum standards, and (3) state exchanges through which private insurance can be purchased. This applies most of the the large-purchaser effect of a social program, but isn't a traditional social benefit program (sure, the actual ACA, which has subsidies for some purchasers, includes a traditional social benefit program as…

> This applies most of the the large-purchaser effect of a social program...

Does it, though? That's what I'm wondering. Is there any evidence that the model followed by the Affordable Care Act is not significantly more expensive per capita than a single-payer, "Medicare for all" kind of system?

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#256

Post by ctdonath »

swalkergibson wrote: post #201
strlen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are perfectly able to own an automatic rifle manufactured before 1986. The only thing preventing such ownership is simply that the number of rifles that fit this criteria is becoming less and less by the day, which means that the price for a weapon like this is high. Granted, this means that a member of the US armed forces cannot keep his M4. > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free S…

You are perfectly able to own an automatic rifle manufactured before 1986.

Owning nothing newer than a quarter-century old (most likely much older and significantly used), at about a 25x markup, and submitting to strict licensing & monitoring, IF you can find anything close to what you actually want amid dwindling supply in a market more akin to "great art" investment than home defense ... hardly "perfectly able".

As an upstanding citizen, who may be called up for military duty at any time (i.e.: draft), I have a right to buy/make an M4 of my own without legal harassment & undue cost.

well regulated

Read that enumerated right as: "considering that a nation needs a standing army to remain secure, the fact that such a standing army exists does not in any way justify limiting the right of individual citizens from owning and appropriately using all the terrible instruments of the soldier, including cannons and battleships." Think about that long and hard, from the Founding Fathers' point of view (they had just overthrown domination by the world's superpower and wanted to enumerate key rights of the individual), before responding.

I've used automatic rifles. The fearful power most people impute on them doesn't exist; they're overrated (useful, but overrated). And yes, individuals should be allowed to own hand grenades, precisely because it is nobody else's right to "allow" such ownership so long as nobody is unduly threatened thereby. The "right" to restrict ownership only comes from situations where innocents are at genuine demonstrable risk of harm, at which point it's just a matter of self-defense by those innocents and their delegates (gov't/police); machine-guns & grenades do not inherently cross that line, while (yes) nukes do.

All this tangential arguing about weapons comes back to the basic argument against the thread's premise: you do NOT have the right to take my money without my permission and give it blindly to everyone else. Doing so on the pretext of "give poor people money so they don't kill me" violates my right to keep what is mine (and use it as I see fit), which is backed by my consequential right to use whatever tools necessary to enforce that right. Leave me be, and I'll be quite charitable; take what's mine by threat of force, with no more justification than mob rule, and equal force in response is justified - not because of what's taken, but because of the threat.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#257

Post by ahomescu1 »

cookingrobot wrote: post #236
ahomescu1 wrote: post #234

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, 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.

The same reason people deserve not to be born into slavery. A basic human right that we respect now, that we didn't always.

Back when we had slavery, many people (free or slaves) fought against it. Many slaves tried to escape (and a lot of them succeeded).

Are just as many people fighting now for technology and knowledge? My impression is that they aren't, but you're advocating that they get rewarded anyway.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#258

Post by gruseom »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #119
rayiner wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, of course not. But the idea that minimum income would cause everyone to just quit their jobs is predicated on the presumption that the poor are morally inferior. Thus, analogies to what middle and upper class people do once they reach a certain level of income are irrelevant, because those people are not morally inferior. You might see a middle class person leave his comfortable line engineer job to get an MBA or…

No, it's simply predicated on the idea of diminishing marginal utility. The only reason it's more of a potential problem for the poor than the rich is because a concave function has a negative second derivative. Seriously, make up any concave function and compute marginal utility before and after a basic income for the rich and poor alike. It's also a concern given that the poor already do sit on their ass and eat mc…

Comments like this make it seem like you have a personal agenda behind all that math.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#259

Post by prostoalex »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
prostoalex wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every child is eligible for his fair share of minimum income, there's a good incentive to direct productive-work energy into baby-making activities, boosting household's basic income numbers with each new addition.

> If every child is eligible for his fair share of minimum income, there's a good incentive to direct productive-work energy into baby-making activities, boosting household's basic income numbers with each new addition. That kind of assumes basic income adds to rather than replaces existing welfare programs, which already have this feature. If it replaces them -- as most basic income advocates propose -- there is no…

But the argument for replacement rests on reduced administrative costs of the replaced programs. If you still have to employ bureaucracy to monitor eligibility and combat fraud, you're kinda back to square one.

Re: Scrap the Welfare State and Give People Free Money

#260

Post by prostoalex »

ctdonath wrote: post #108
prostoalex wrote: post #56

Do the "welfare state" programs include Medicare and Medicaid? Otherwise $3 trillion spend ($10,000 x 30,000,000 people) is pretty close to US budget expenditures today, but that figure includes all healthcare, defense and bond interest payments. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/federal-spe... It's probably an affordable program at $1,000 a year, but at that level, is it going to make a difference?

The article references $10,000/yr BGI for all over 21. Thats some $2,400,000,000,000 which is 15% of USA GDP.

From that same link the federal budget revenues for 2012 were at $2,501,000,000,000. Unless there's a plan to drastically increase those revenues, cutting a billion of overhead costs here and a few billion there won't help.
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