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It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

131–140 of 761 posts

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#131

If anything like basic income happens expect immigration to be halted and birthright citizenship grants to be ended. The value and meaning of citizenship will rapidly change and tolerance for outsiders taking a slice of the pie will rapidly plunge. I think there will be a lot of ramifications like this that most people probably aren't considering.

The swiss referendum for basic income also referred to "citizen" income as well, knowing full well that 20% of their population has immigrant status. Steal from the poor to feed the middle.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#132
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It replaces minimum wage in that McDonalds is welcome to offer a job flipping burgers for $1 an hour if they want. However, because no one _needs_ a job to live (because they can just live on the basic income) someone would only take that job if it was worth it/fulfilling to them.

> However, because no one _needs_ a job to live (because they can just live on the basic income) Well, someone needs a job for the system to work, since it's presumably funded by taxation. At least one person (more realistically, a large portion of the population) still needs to be creating wealth.

I the think that we should add a single requirement to the basic income. logging on into a national library 5 days a week for a minimum of 1 hour a day. do vr classes. force them to complete and pass standard mathematics and physics. it might take them 10 years to reach calc 2 but at that point we'll have someone who can contribute. you could even teach material from patent applications.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#133
post #48

Obviously this is not a new idea... Twenty years ago I sat around with college mates, in Canada, listing the merits of the "Guaranteed Income" and quite frankly I still support the idea today. If you took all the salaries, property and operations cost associated with distributing old age security, welfare, disability, unemployment wages etc etc, it would probably pay for much of the cost associated with the Guarantee…

>> If you took all the salaries, property and operations cost associated with distributing old age security, welfare, disability, unemployment wages etc etc, it would probably pay for much of the cost associated with the Guaranteed Income (even if you had a small group dedicated to counter fraud abuse).

Not even close. Do the math and also keep in mind that just recently our government was operating at a trillion dollar deficit (almost 30% of their entire budget) and even if you could operate at extreme deficits forever, that still wouldn't be enough.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Resource-managed economy" does not imply a centralized authority, which is where your snide rejoinder comes off the rails.

How the hell do you allocate resources with maximal efficiency, without either a central authority or trade? Maybe I'm just an old stick in the mud, but those two are "I tell you what you want" and "You tell me what you want", and I don't see the third option.

[deleted]

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#135
US specific:

* 2014 total US gov't spending: $6.3T (36.4% of GDP)

* # of Americans: 314m (2012)

* Cost to provide $10,000 per year to everyone: $3.14T

* Current US military spending: $0.8T

* Current US education spending: $1T

* Basic income + education + mil = $4.94T

* $4.94T vs $6.3T

[1]http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#136
At the moment, >90% of our population is still employed. How can you people take all those projections that half of us will be replaced by robots in a decade seriously? I would be surprised if we even reach <80% employment in my lifetime.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Resource-managed economy" does not imply a centralized authority, which is where your snide rejoinder comes off the rails.

How the hell do you allocate resources with maximal efficiency, without either a central authority or trade? Maybe I'm just an old stick in the mud, but those two are "I tell you what you want" and "You tell me what you want", and I don't see the third option.

You could manage (distribute) the resource of money, and allow people to spend it how they like within a free market.

Of course, I'm aware that whyme said "eliminates money all together" so this might not be what he meant.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real solution is to move to a resource managed economy that eliminates money all together So, rationing? I wonder if that's been tried before. Money is a repesentation of resources. And resources cannot be allocated efficiently by central authority, because of the calculation problem[1]. But maybe some college dorm discussions will bear some other solution. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculatio…

"Resource-managed economy" does not imply a centralized authority, which is where your snide rejoinder comes off the rails.

Distributed resource-managed economy sounds a lot like a barter economy. IMHO, money-based trade is almost always better than bartering.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#139
post #48

Obviously this is not a new idea... Twenty years ago I sat around with college mates, in Canada, listing the merits of the "Guaranteed Income" and quite frankly I still support the idea today. If you took all the salaries, property and operations cost associated with distributing old age security, welfare, disability, unemployment wages etc etc, it would probably pay for much of the cost associated with the Guarantee…

...that eliminates money all together You can't eliminate money. It's a natural creation of human interaction. Even prisoners have money.

If we can create , then we can destroy just as easily.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#140
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twenty years ago a lot of people couldn't see themselves using a cellphone or an Internet.

I think this is different, though. They did not have any moral objections to cellphones or Internet. They simply lacked imagination.

What if said moral objections stem from a lack of imagination?
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