221–230 of 761 posts
Wouldn't businesses just raise prices to offset the basic income, rendering it useless?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Basic Income takes much more buy in from more people to get off the ground.
I like the idea of it being attempted on the city level though, I'd never thought of that. It's likely the smallest scale that would work with the least amount of individual buy in required.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
US Personal income is about $13tn, so a 20% flat tax would currently provide about $8500/yr basic income. And that, of course, is on top of our current government spending. Also I'm not sure what you'd do w/ payroll taxes. You're just grossly understating what tax rates would have to be to accommodate this. You think there will be economies of scale that SS today doesn't already achieve that could somehow offset this…
So then to lift everyone out of poverty, we just need a 40% flat tax on top of the current federal taxes (so that we can continue to fund everything else). Hooray, 70% tax rate!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses), thus negating the positive effects of basic income. Then you know what would happen next... people…
Free from wage slavery, citizens receiving basic income could spend time producing their own commodities. They could learn trades not to use in a career, but to reduce their dependency on others. I also think the premise that prices would rise and create a GBI death-spiral is far from guaranteed. With a GBI behind them, citizens could potentially be more likely to start their own businesses, increasing competition an…
People generally only work for 8 hours a day. They can't spend the rest of their time doing that right now? Everyone is free to start a business. Tons of people do it while working a full time job. Tons of people go to college while they have a full time job. Those who are lazy won't and I see no reason why I should reward such behavior with my tax dollars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you are not, but society is an organism with more than you in it, and if he's thrown into the bin because he's can't make it in it the guy may think it's fair to take it from you... I already had a similar discussion on Slashdot recently. Taking other people's money by force is, IMHO, theft. My question then isn't why it would be OK for the guy, but why does theft become OK for society? Why are you arguing that ste…
People like you scare me. I can't even understand that point of view, and I don't think we can have a productive argument if we don't share a basic understanding of what a society is. Saying that taxes are theft is as absurd to me as saying that private property is imoral.
Additionally, as well as 100% Inheritance tax with exceptions for personal items (inheritance is the biggest game breaker in a fair system), another very practical and fair idea would be no VAT/sales tax (disproportionately affects the poor) and vastly reduced business taxes; however Progressive personal income taxation that works like the effects of relativity on the speed of light (no tiny group of bands that end a…
And even if you'd really want this, it's feasible only if you also have a 100% tax on gifting stuff - otherwise any old/sick person would simply gift their wealth to whoever he wants to leave (generally taxed at the normal income tax rate) or buy/sell stuff at very advantageous terms for the same effect; or take an expensive life insurance policy that'd pay out as much as he'd like to his relatives.
Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society, which accounts for inherent human limitations and behaviors. Evolution is an extremely feckless game, and thus far we've been trapped by its whims, endlessly struggling in a free-for-all battle for survival. In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behavi…
Anyway, basic income is important for this century we are on. For our lifetime. Things will get very ugly very fast if we automate everything and don't have some functional redistributing program before.
The US government is delivering a large number of products with wildly varying costs, efficiencies, and price points. e.g. unemployment, welfare, food stamps, etc. There is a proposal is to replace those products with only one.
The new product fills (mostly) the same need as the existing ones. It will do so at less cost, with more efficiency (less bureaucracy, administration, fraud, etc.). Previous market studies show that it works.
So... what's the problem?
As a non-US person, this looks a lot like previous discussions on health care. France pays about $10 per person per day for universal health care. The UK pays about $10. Japan pays about $10. Canada pays about $10.
The US (before Obomacare) ? About $20, for care that isn't universal.
You guys are getting ripped off. Yet the bulk of the population sticks their fingers in their ears, and complains about people who may not "deserve" it. Or they complain about fraud.
Who the hell cares about random welfare guy ripping off the system? If you're making over $40K per year, you're getting ripped of by the system. By your system, that you demand to keep in place.
You can get rid of the checks and balances, and just absorb the cost of fraud. And as a bonus, a simpler system is harder to game, which leads to more detectable fraud, and therefore less of it.
This won't happen in the US for a number of reasons. One of which is that the bureaucracy won't voluntarily reduce. Another (as seen here) an unwillingness to deal with these issues in a business-like manner.
Yes, I'm from a socialist country advocating for more capitalism. Not unfettered, but more.
I haven't read much on BI, so I'm sure this has already been answered already, but: how do the numbers add up? The US poverty line for a single person is $11k. For simplicity, let's say BI gives everyone in the US $10k per year. Times 313.9 million, that's $3.1 trillion per year. The US government spent, overall, $3.45 trillion in 2013. How would we be able to afford basic income?
(2) The full single-person household federal poverty line is a very high target to aim for per person for BI in an initial implementation. Half of the two-person household FPL per adult citizen and permanent resident (about $7500/each), and, if BI is going to paid to children (or, rather, guardians on their behalf) the full marginal amount for an additional family member (about $4000/each) per child (again citizens and permanent residents) is probably a more reasonable target to aim for, but I'd expect an initial implementation to start out below that and work up.