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It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

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Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#701

Post by dllthomas »

ThomPete wrote: post #697
thaumasiotes wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is pretty straightforward. BI disincentivizes work because it stays with you if you stop working. On the common assumption that people are working for the money, not for the joy of showing up, this reduces the penalty for not working, which will cause a rise in... not working.

With BI it always is beneficial to work. Even if you only work for a couple of months a year (for instance picking strawberries) you will make more money than not doing anything. So if anything BI incentives people to work even if only for once in a while.

All this shows is that BI doesn't entirely eliminate existing incentives to work. That's uncontroversial. It could still very well be that BI provides a disincentive relative to an identical system without BI.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#702

Post by dllthomas »

llamataboot wrote: post #628
eanzenberg wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. BI would not provide increases to science nor art. It would dilute them. I get enough emails as it is from whacko's who think they've upturned Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, or created some perpetual motion machine. If society valued these people's output they would be financially rewarded already. There's already incentives in present society, called capitalism and competition! There's a reason why only a tin…

Funny, that $24k a year that allowed you to play drums (along side your graduate studies) is about in the range of what people generally propose for a basic income

Indeed, it's quite a bit more than I'd propose for a basic income.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#703

Post by dllthomas »

nkoren wrote: post #604
eanzenberg wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you decide the "50M who actually 'need' it" with vastly less overhead? There is a cost to run the IRS and determine (correctly) peoples income. Furthermore, a 4k tax on 250M of the U.S. could be crippling to a good chunk of them. If your true point is redistribution of wealth, our tax system already does that and can do it more. But that's a different discussion..

You don't decide. The point of Basic Income is that it's unconditional and universal. If somebody can prove they're a citizen, they get the BI, no need to determine their income. As for a $4k tax being "crippling to a good chunk of them" -- no, you misunderstand the nature of BI. If we're paying $20k worth of BI in this scenario, then the mean income should be about $40k (since a good level for BI -- in basically any…

"(since a good level for BI -- in basically any economy -- is about 50% of the mean)."

How do you arrive at this?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#704

Post by dllthomas »

sitkack wrote: post #645
nkoren wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't decide. The point of Basic Income is that it's unconditional and universal. If somebody can prove they're a citizen, they get the BI, no need to determine their income. As for a $4k tax being "crippling to a good chunk of them" -- no, you misunderstand the nature of BI. If we're paying $20k worth of BI in this scenario, then the mean income should be about $40k (since a good level for BI -- in basically any…

Someone needs to turn this into an animated chart. It looks like you are taking away someones first dollar earned?

"It looks like you are taking away someones first dollar earned?"

I don't see where you're getting that. Presuming the numbers haven't changed since you commented, it looks to me like taking away half of every dollar earned.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#705

Post by dllthomas »

fishy929 wrote: post #566
nkoren wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would be cheaper to use a machine to build the bridge, give the money you save to the people, and then let them add value to society in some other way.

But the economy doesn't want them, or is unable to utilize them under present conditions. Eating what you have in front of you is still more filling than waiting (or letting someone wait) for that next, bigger meal. Of course, that also doesn't mean we shouldn't eliminate the incentives that contribute to inefficiencies being preferable. There are plenty of scenarios where people are employed to dig a proverbial hole…

You're assuming the value of a person's time to themselves is zero. If it's positive, and if the economic value we're deriving from the make-work is less than it, then the make-work program is actually destroying value.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#706

Post by dllthomas »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #538
3pt14159 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic Job is stupid because it leads to silliness like building bridges with hand labor instead of machines.

If labor is abundant and machines are scarce, why is this stupid?

Because it means it's harder for me to get a job building those machines, which is how we make genuine progress.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#707

Post by dllthomas »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #537
ja30278 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly so. I don't understand why the 'Basic Job' idea doesn't get more traction. For all of the talk about a 'post work' world, I still see plenty of work that needs doing, every day.

Well, Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing. There's a fundamental conceptual problem with it: Imagine I, for whatever reason, accept a Basic Job from the government. The job is, by design, bad. I'd rather not do it. So my dream scenario is that I officially hold a Basic Job and draw its meager salary, but instead of doing whatever work it supposedly entails I sit at home and watch TV. This…

"Well, Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing."

Not at all. There are things that provide economic value that is hard to capture. Determining what those things are and how to value them is going to be messy, though.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#709

Post by dllthomas »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #411

No, it's time for something proven: Australian style welfare. Maybe in 50 years time, it will be time for basic income. The problem with giving people free money, is it reduces the incentive to work. Australia, and other countries, have introduced systems with minimal requirements for receiving welfare: making an effort to find a job, based on simple objective criteria.

"Australia, and other countries, have introduced systems with minimal requirements for receiving welfare: making an effort to find a job, based on simple objective criteria."

That's more or less the situation in the US at present, as I understand it. We all want people doing useful things, but this kind of system 1) means that the benefit of finding that job (for those at the bottom) is substantially less than it is under BI, and 2) we're requiring people focus not on their job search or on preparing themselves for work but on documenting their job search and jumping through bureaucratic hoops - hopefully there is substantial overlap but when do we ever measure exactly what we intend to?

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