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The indignity of no work

economist.com

201–210 of 268 posts

Re: The indignity of no work

#201

Eliminating taxation and implementing a basic income payed for by new money created out of thin air, pegged to the GDP for the year, is how the world will deal with machines creating more wealth than we know what to do with, without people. It's a direct form of wealth transfer that requires zero force, no "putting people in cages because they can't/don't pay" nonsense. For social spending, you do the same: print new…

err.. your left wing viewpoints are showing.. have a look at what happens to indigenous groups that are given handouts.. massive alcoholism.. obesity.. huge problems. people will have to work and improve themselves. the struggle in life is important along with risk taking. but, the dynamics of pay may change to compensate for the amount of leverage we can get today in society

Canadians seemed to handle it just fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Mincome was an experimental Canadian basic income project that was held in Dauphin, Manitoba during the 1970s. The project, funded jointly by the Manitoba provincial government and the Canadian federal government, began with a news release on February 22, 1974, and was closed down in 1979.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether a guaranteed, unconditional annual income caused disincentive to work for the recipients, and how great such a disincentive would be.

It allowed every family unit to receive a minimum cash benefit. The results showed a modest impact on labor markets, with working hours dropping one percent for men, three percent for wives, and five percent for unmarried women.[1] However, some have argued these drops may be artificially low because participants knew the guaranteed income was temporary.[2] These decreases in hours worked may be seen as offset by the opportunity cost of more time for family and education. Mothers spent more time rearing newborns, and the educational impacts are regarded as a success. Students in these families showed higher test scores and lower dropout rates. There was also an increase in adults continuing education.[3][4] A final report was never issued, but Dr. Evelyn Forget (/fɔrˈʒeɪ/) conducted an analysis of the program in 2009 which was published in 2011.[4][5] She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidences of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[6] Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.[7][8]

Re: The indignity of no work

#202

Eliminating taxation and implementing a basic income payed for by new money created out of thin air, pegged to the GDP for the year, is how the world will deal with machines creating more wealth than we know what to do with, without people. It's a direct form of wealth transfer that requires zero force, no "putting people in cages because they can't/don't pay" nonsense. For social spending, you do the same: print new…

Since M0 is about 3.7 trillion, printing 7.5 trillion in cash would cause inflation of about 200% per year.

This would have obviously bad effects, causing people to great lengths to avoid holding cash. I think income or sales tax is the only way to distribute large amounts of money from the rich to the poor.

Re: The indignity of no work

#203

Eliminating taxation and implementing a basic income payed for by new money created out of thin air, pegged to the GDP for the year, is how the world will deal with machines creating more wealth than we know what to do with, without people. It's a direct form of wealth transfer that requires zero force, no "putting people in cages because they can't/don't pay" nonsense. For social spending, you do the same: print new…

There is no such thing as a free lunch. The taxes just become hidden in inflation instead of visible income taxes, and it becomes impossible to adjust taxes to different levels on different individuals (all dollars pay the same tax in lost value regardless who holds them or how much income they made that year.)

Re: The indignity of no work

#204
post #184
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not trolling. Really it doesn't work and the math is simple. There are ~310M Americans. To give them even 10k each per year that's 3.1 Trillion which is more that the US gov't collected in taxes last year.

Requirements could help make the math work. For example, only adult citizens with no income may participate in the program.

[deleted]

Re: The indignity of no work

#205
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, a sufficiently high ABI would have welfare gotten rid of: no more free housing, schooling, nothing: just live with your ABI. To really calculate the cost of ABI, you need to subtract the cost of welfare.

That won't work. If it worked, we woudn't need free housing, schooling etc right now - giving people money would be much easier. The problem is that money is fungible - if you give people money instead of free housing, they'd just by some crap on it and then will come back to you and complain they have nowhere to live, and you're back to square one. That's why there are so many non-monetary benefits - because you can…

"The problem is that money is fungible - if you give people money instead of free housing, they'd just by some crap on it and then will come back to you and complain they have nowhere to live, and you're back to square one."

That's the fear that leads to all the specific help, but the experiments with unconditional cash show that is not what happens.

Re: The indignity of no work

#206
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The money […] has to come from somewhere Not necessarily. Money can be printed out of thin air. It is printed out of thin air right now, mostly by private banks (I know they're not technically printing money, but Fractional Reserve Banking and other shenanigans have the same practical effects). Of course, once you're explicit about printing money, you need to be careful about inflation. But we shouldn't fool oursel…

Money are used as a replacement of resources. By printing money out of thin air you make the same amount of money signify less amount of resources. This is very profitable to those who print money and very unprofitable for those who holds these money but need resources instead. So printing money is just a redistributive program that takes resources from savers. In severe form, from anybody having money, even for a sh…

> And these resources are not infinite, they are scarce.

This is the crux right here.

The government no longer providers you money as BI. It provides you with the right to housing (build up), the right to energy (one person can only use so many KwHs/day), the right to worldwide communications (I think we can all agree the price of moving bits is going to continue to fall), the right to food, and the right to transportation (electric self-driving vehicles).

With enough wind, solar, nuclear power, with self driving cars, with automated manufacturing and farming, you don't need money. You simply provide for your citizens their basic essentials. The people who want to work, will. The people who don't aren't a burden, because robots don't resent.

Re: The indignity of no work

#207
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's pointing out that it's a practical impossibility. I'm not convinced that it is NOT financially viable. Especially in Switzerland where the governance is exemplary compared to other countries. I believe it is, only a real world example will convince me and Switzerland IMHO is the perfect country to run this experiment . The fact that you equate taxation with extortion for example, shows that you have a differen…

> I'm not convinced that it is NOT financially viable. Especially in Switzerland where the governance is exemplary compared to other countries. It's not about the "quality" of your "governance", ie. "how satisfactorily you're enslaved". It's just that all money a government hands out to people has to come from somewhere, and each of the ways of acquiring the money has negative, compounding consequences. > The fact th…

"True. But if you think about it for a moment, you'll realize it actually meets the criteria for extortion. You're handing over your money under threat of violence, even if the violence is X steps removed from where you are now."

If I take your laptop, is it extortion when you demand its return? At some point you may resort to violence (or have someone else do it on your behalf), so, that's extortion right? I would say no, because we have collectively agreed that property rights should usually be enforced - the mere fact that I possess your laptop doesn't mean it is rightfully mine. Likewise, we have collectively agreed (through the process of government, with all its flaws) to pay certain amounts in tax in certain situations. Asking for something that in someone's possession but that they don't actually have right to is not what extortion is.

Re: The indignity of no work

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The money […] has to come from somewhere Not necessarily. Money can be printed out of thin air. It is printed out of thin air right now, mostly by private banks (I know they're not technically printing money, but Fractional Reserve Banking and other shenanigans have the same practical effects). Of course, once you're explicit about printing money, you need to be careful about inflation. But we shouldn't fool oursel…

I did list printing as one of the three way a government acquires money, and as "smsm42" explained, it's not a sustainable way to fund anything, let alone the massive expenditures required for UBI. > But we shouldn't fool ourselves: we never ever lacked money. Money isn't scarce. What we may lack however are resources (both renewable and fossil), and labour. Money is a representation of value - you've had to earn it…

> it's not a sustainable way to fund anything, let alone the massive expenditures required for UBI.

I'm open-minded but not convinced that printing money for UBI is an awful idea.

Printing money and sharing it out equally results in inflation, very likely, which affects people with existing wealth/savings more. The result is that money is very effectively redistributed, in a way which the existing income-based taxation system is unable to. Isn't that exactly the goal?

Re: The indignity of no work

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctors deserve to be paid according to their skill, yes, but at the moment have entrance requirements which are disproportionate to the job at hand. I'm not a doctor, but sometimes I wonder if it's easier than it seems. It's not hard to diagnose the basic and obvious stuff and do good work by only addressing the basics. Repeating something like that doesn't take talent, but you do have to make sure you actually kn…

> I'm not a doctor, but sometimes I wonder if it's easier than it seems. It's not hard to diagnose the basic and obvious stuff and do good work by only addressing the basics. Repeating something like that doesn't take talent, but you do have to make sure you actually know it and the best way to do that is to have an external authority on the matter. I'm also not a doctor, but I imagine that large part of doctor's pay…

Perhaps, but zero of the paycheck is for knowing the theory of organic chemistry.

Re: The indignity of no work

#210
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caveat: Not a professional analysis, and not the OP. There's 248 million people ages 16 and older in the US, of which 63% are in the labor force[1]. So 156 million people are available for work (not all of whom are employed). Total population is about 330 million. If each of them were to get a basic monthly stipend (this is everyone, including infants) of $1200, that's $396 billion per month in payments. Per working…

Your math assumes we're paying for it with an employment-contingent head-tax, which would be totally crazypants. Most income is earned by high earners, most earners are not high earners.

From another perspective, the total income of US persons in 2010 was over $12 trillion/year[1]. People are currently paying a total of $899 billion in federal income tax. Assuming we distribute the burden evenly per dollar earned, assuming incentive to work is linear in dollars, and assuming there are no other effects we would see incentive to work drop by something a little over one third. This leaves dramatically more incentive than the above numbers would indicate. For the record, though, $14k/yr is about twice the BI level that I personally (tentatively) favor.

[1] https://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-tpi.htm

[2] https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=4363

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