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A universal income is not such a silly idea

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Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#71

Post by ricardobeat »

PaulJoslin wrote: post #59
agilebyte wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is not just about moving goalposts. What is different is that it frees you from the worry that you need to eat and have an abode. And the hope is that this comfort will make you engage in work you really want to do , rather then turn you into a couch potato.

The idea is nice, but if it causes widespread increases in costs / consumer goods / rent due to the reasons I mentioned, then the only places you may be able to just stay at home and work may not be the place you want to be. For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, e…

So everyone that wants to live in London will need to have a job, just like they have today. It's a decent trade-off.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#72

Post by downandout »

tokenizer wrote: post #62
downandout wrote: post #31

Progressives seem to have lost all understanding of the concept of money. It is a means of trade. The spending power of the basic income will ultimately reflect the value its recipients produced in order to obtain it - zero in this case.

> The spending power of the basic income will ultimately reflect the value its recipients produced in order to obtain it - zero in this case. What do you think the purchasing power of welfare money is? Furthermore, can you really separate the purchasing power of the money utilized in the minimum income and the income from working?

I am not separating anything. I am saying that inflation will rise, because that's what happens when a country isn't producing anything more, but the country increases the amount of its currency in circulation. It's like a stock split - absent a rise in the actual value of the company, doubling the number of shares makes each share half as valuable.

In this case, over time inflation will adjust to the point that the spending power of the basic income will approach zero. It won't actually hit zero, because markets are not 100% efficient. But it will be close.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#73

Post by icebraining »

PaulJoslin wrote: post #45
Mikeb85 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working. Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life. With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your…

That's correct Mike, it's not always the case (benefits being cut and working a job can provide you with a worse quality of life) - but I think that is more of a problem regarding the wages people are being paid in jobs, rather than the benefits system. For a long time inflation, house prices and general costs have beat basic wage increases - leaving many working for less money relatively than they would've got years…

Actually, wages are increasing enormously, and faster than costs, for the vast majority of workers of those corporations. It's just that most of them are not American or European.

In any case, that assessment, valid or not, doesn't provide a solution.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#74

Post by LekkoscPiwa »

I'm always shocked how otherwise very rational and logical people tend to be "communists". It is one of the things that lets me down when reading comments on HN. So sophisticated as far as hard science goes, so naive and just - plain dumb - in terms of humanities.

Ever heard of inflation? If you give basic income to everyone what happens to the prices of everything? So the ROI on this is extremely limited and the price inflation will kill any benefit.

But still for some people rising prices with real unemployment at 15% is a good thing!

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#75

Post by PaulJoslin »

ricardobeat wrote: post #71
PaulJoslin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is nice, but if it causes widespread increases in costs / consumer goods / rent due to the reasons I mentioned, then the only places you may be able to just stay at home and work may not be the place you want to be. For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, e…

So everyone that wants to live in London will need to have a job, just like they have today. It's a decent trade-off.

That is incorrect, London is not like that today. London is an extremely multi cultural city, with both rich and poor living side by side in the same boroughs. A lot of people argue that most of London's unique culture in places like Brixton came from the poor and that's what made London in a lot of ways great.

If you say, everyone in London will need a job, then you are then moving the poor / unemployed on mass out of the city. On paper this may look great, but for social-economic reasons this is a disaster.

You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#76

Post by nabla9 »

downandout wrote: post #31

Progressives seem to have lost all understanding of the concept of money. It is a means of trade. The spending power of the basic income will ultimately reflect the value its recipients produced in order to obtain it - zero in this case.

Progressives?

Did you know that Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman supported the idea?

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#77

Post by ricardobeat »

graeme wrote: post #44

Does anyone know how the swiss proposal treats travel/residency? I've long thought that a guaranteed income is an idea worth trying. But it did occur to me recently that such an amount would let you live like a king in many developing countries. Is there anything in the proposal to stop people from simply moving abroad? More generally, how should a well designed universal income proposal treat travel/living abroad? I…

A rule setting a maximum of one or two months/year paid abroad would suffice.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#78

Post by Mikeb85 »

PaulJoslin wrote: post #45
Mikeb85 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working. Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life. With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your…

That's correct Mike, it's not always the case (benefits being cut and working a job can provide you with a worse quality of life) - but I think that is more of a problem regarding the wages people are being paid in jobs, rather than the benefits system. For a long time inflation, house prices and general costs have beat basic wage increases - leaving many working for less money relatively than they would've got years…

> The system is broken, but the equality of pay and living standards is not to blame with the government, it's to blame with greedy corporations, share holders insisting they need to do anything for profit and wages being pinned down to the minimum they can be that the work force will stand for (to maximise profits).

Let me ask you something... If you start a new business, and let's say you take out a huge loan to pay your startup expenses, and you have a huge pool of qualified workers fighting to work for you for 10 dollars per hour, are you going to pay them any more? Knowing full well that that's a shitty wage, but that if you pay them any more you might go out of business and have a huge debt burden... Or do you pay them 20 dollars per hour out of generosity, and risk going bankrupt, with repercussions that could follow you for years?

It's easy to blame corporations, but remember, there's more players in the job market, including many struggling small businesses... Furthermore, large corporations have gone out of business, and when they fail entire towns and cities can become destitute (look at Detroit).

Corporations pay market value for wages, to increase wages you need to either increase the number of jobs, or decrease the number of workers.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#79

Post by dangoldin »

I think the biggest benefit of a universal income is to remove the perception that unemployment is a bad thing. Now to reduce unemployment there's a fair amount of menial labor and policies encouraging it. If countries didn't have to worry about their employment levels I suspect they'd be a lot more willing to embrace new approaches.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#80

Post by JTon »

salient wrote: post #56
Mikeb85 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working. Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life. With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your…

I agree, for this to work, everyone would have to receive that amount of money. Or at least say, everyone receiving under $100,000 a year in salary. Otherwise, you might feel cheated if you replace your $12,000 free money for a $20,000 job . You'd still have to receive the free money, so you'd then earn $32,000 a year.

I would hate to be the person who earns just over that arbitrary 100k line.
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