Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

Yes. Something might destroy all I have earned but that is fine. I am individually responsible for that and I dont think someone else owes me anything.

Singapore is a not a "minimal welfare state". As an example, some 40% of the population lives in government subsidized or public housing. Singapore has universal public healthcare. Generous unemployment and government pension benefits. There is free primary and secondary education as well as multiple state-run universities with free/highly subsidized tuition. In short, there are lots of social safety nets there.

I'm guessing the fellow who answered you is roughly correct, as small, privately owned businesses generate much wealth in America. I don't think this is the interesting question though, because I don't believe in the premises of your original comment. The interesting question is what is the distribution of total wealth in the world, mapped onto the country. Making heat maps of this, mapped onto various other things (inherited versus self made, yalevard versus everyone else, etc) will tell you how the world works. It's obvious to me that the world is run by a narrow self-serving oligarchy, and that we are in the extractive phase of history, such as was experienced by late Rome and 14th century Venice. It's not so obvious how to show this to other people, or what to do about it.

> First, only the people making up to the amount of the basic income would be willing to quit their jobs- anyone making more than needed to survive would certainly continue wanting to maximize their earnings

You've made two assumptions here:

1. People are ENTIRELY rational (they're not)

2. No black market exists

If you could guarantee that those conditions could be met, I would be much more willing to engage in the rest of your comment further. But they can't be met, not even close.

In order to be useful the basic income has to be a substantial fraction of the median income, or else you can't really argue that it's basic. If receiving it means that you're still in poverty by a wide margin I don't think it's useful enough to talk seriously about.

But once it's a substantial fraction of the median income, working looks less and less attractive. What I mean is that say $2000 for 0 hours worked in a month is very nice, and $2020 for 1 hour worked is at least in percentages, infinitely less desirable. Perhaps once you get up to 30 hours per week worked and $4400 in income you're starting to see some benefits from working in some kind of a meaningful way.

The issue is that working has both a fixed amount of hassle and a marginal amount of hassle. Once you don't need to work to eat, now you're just doing gut-feeling comparisons of hassle/reward ratios. On days that I have to work I have to get out of bed, get dressed, commute, etc. That's a fair amount of hassle. There's also the marginal hassle of being at work and not getting to do exactly what I want.

It wouldn't be worth it to do all the fixed overhead hassle to only work a hour a day because that would make such a small different in the total monthly income. So that leaves people wanting/needing to work more, probably at least a 4-6 hour day to amortize the fixed overhead of hassle into a reasonable number of hours to make the total amount of hassle substantially less than the money received so that working makes sense.

So now that lots of people aren't willing to do low skill, low pay jobs the pay obviously would have to go up. But that means that prices are also going to go up. And that means that the basic income isn't basic anymore; it means that it's sub-basic since it can't provide for your basic needs. That then requires a bigger basic income, which leads to higher prices, which leads to higher basic income, until you've got at least the potential to have a zimbabwe-style hyperinflation.

"Crucial to both components is discipline over the creation of additional money. However, the Mugabe government was printing money to finance involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, in 2000, in the Second Congo War, including higher salaries for army and government officials." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

Once those people (government officials and army) got more money and started to spend it, everyone started to realize that the money was not worth as much as they thought it was. That led to prices going up, which led to more money printing to keep salaries ahead of the curve and this spiraled out of control very quickly.

Granted there's no guarantee that a similar kind of runaway would happen under the basic income. But it's definitely a very real risk.

EDIT: I forgot to touch on the black market. If a person wants to accumulate income it might be better to do so on the black market. That allows a person to avoid high taxes (basic income has to come from somewhere, that somewhere is always proposed to be higher taxes). That makes the black market (or working "under the table") attractive. The shadow economy of Europe is already by one estimate 17% of the total economy. Basic income would further encourage such things: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/salman-sakir/black-market-econo...

> You seem to be confusing "food security" with "very low food security".

From the link: "Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food."

"reports of reduced quality"

What do you think quality means in a nutritional context? How it tastes? No, that is desirability.

> The natural consequence of not getting enough food is weight loss. Where are the skinny poor people? Note that here in India, even in a well developed city, they aren't hard to find. In the poor parts of the US where I've lived, you mostly just see fat people.

You do realize you can just eat a bunch of starchy foods and suffer malnutrition but not lose weight right? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/malnutrition-obe...

I think the issue here is you are trying to be pedantic without understanding the context of the words being used. That and complete ignorance of "sufficient calories to gain weight" != "3 square meals a day".

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng... "(Especially of food) having different elements in the correct proportions: a healthy, balanced diet"

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng... "A substantial, satisfying, and balanced meal:"

So your argument is basically: "Well 14.3% are alive and not starving to death"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100512141912.ht...

2-3,000 people a year die from malnutrtion in the US.

> The natural consequence of not getting enough food is weight loss. Where are the skinny poor people? Note that here in India, even in a well developed city, they aren't hard to find. In the poor parts of the US where I've lived, you mostly just see fat people.

This isn't evidence either btw. Its anecdotal. You are refusing 5% of the population doesn't get enough to eat and people dying every year in the US as "well, I don't see it".

But hey, 2-3,000 people dying a year isn't a problem for you eh? Because its just envy. Nope. No material impact whatsoever.