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Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

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Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#71
post #64

I like the idea of a basic income on principle, and this article has some great arguments for it. (Though I agree it is far from being paid for--and a land tax essentially means it only gets paid to the landless, so you'd need to exempt "reasonable" owner-occupied land). But let's simulate how it would look in the real world. I think mindless consumerism would go way up, especially in the lower classes. Advertising i…

On the other hand, the article choose a pretty high monthly value ($1k). Going with $600 or $800 should greatly alleviate this problem.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#72

One of the better article on subject. It's affordable, though it implies new huge tax. Like tax on land. Though not sure if people would support that, once they saw the bill for their land. Changing status quo is hard. Though I would suggest that universal free healthcare is some form of basic income. Maybe let's do it first? Another less hardcore version is to expand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_cr…

> it implies new huge tax

There are countries (especially Northern Europe) that already spend a large amount of money for unemployment and social benefits. In those countries the basic income could be implemented in a cost-neutral manner, just refactoring how the the sum of money equal to the present benefits, is allotted.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#73
post #8

I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies. To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I f…

> it is not fun to have grand economic ideas experimented on a live population.

True, but unfortunately there is no other way to test the validity of economic theories. You can't simulate a human society in a lab.

At best, you can start experimenting on a small subset of humans and expand once you're sure that it's safe. Guess what, there have been several UBI experiments in various places ranging from Namibia to Canada, and the results seem promising.

Japan does sound like a good place for large-scale experiments like this. But even that might be too ambitious for now, with 130 million lives at stake. Perhaps we should try Norway, Finland, Switzerland and/or Iceland first.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#74
post #25
post #8

I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies. To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I f…

The idea of Basic Income goes hand in hand with the process of automation. There are millions of jobs that will go away due to automation. The counter-argument to "will basic income lead more people to stop working" is not "people are working too hard anyway" but rather "most people won't have a job...coming soon". What are all those people going to do once this happens? Find another job? Yeah right. Here [1] is an a…

> What are all those people going to do once this happens? Find another job? Yeah right.

Yeah, right, exactly. Remembers farmers? You know that almost everyone was a farmer like 150 years ago in the now developed countries? When we started to automate farming jobs, people did not simply become unemployed and started dying off. They MOVED on, you know. And found opportunities to learn new skills and apply them elsewhere, which massively benefited society in the end.

It's the same VERY old story again. Yeah, the "wheel killed the jobs of slaves", but then humans started doing more stuff in the end and progressed on to greater things. Please stop with the old, overused rhetoric.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#76
post #64

I like the idea of a basic income on principle, and this article has some great arguments for it. (Though I agree it is far from being paid for--and a land tax essentially means it only gets paid to the landless, so you'd need to exempt "reasonable" owner-occupied land). But let's simulate how it would look in the real world. I think mindless consumerism would go way up, especially in the lower classes. Advertising i…

In the UK the government has recently being trying to increase the birthrate by giving more money to those who have kids, so its interesting to see you suggest this would be a problem with BI.

I assume this is a general problem with advanced economies as I read an article recently that said kids in school were being given better info on how to get pregnant in some countries, in another attempt to lift the birth rate.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#77
One thing I've always wondered about the basic income is wont it just mean prices go up because people are greedy? Take the article about trailer parks that was on here a week ago: The business owners said that they had to be careful when raising prices to make sure tenants can still afford it. If their tenants suddenly get an extra $1000/month, what's to stop them putting the rent up by $1000/month?

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#78

If you'd told me ten years ago I would ever support a basic income, I would have laughed. My thought would have been, "People getting paid without doing anything? Absurd!" But, in the past few years I've thoroughly changed my mind on this, and a number of other fronts. I now fully support a basic income (though I think a debate needs to happen about how much that basic income ought to be and how it ought to be funded…

> The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems.

You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward spiral, where you have to readjust the basic income every couple of years to make up for the inflated prices.

Ever heard of minimum wage? Yeah, that one did not work as expected either (and created massive unemployment when the threshold was set too high as well).

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#79
I was shocked by the "magic of markets" analysis. When there's no more bread, people make more bread ? Nope, bread becomes more expensive. Especially with automation : it's harder for new baker to start in the market, so those in the market get more powerful. That's concentration.

Basic income will make less poor but more slaves. Slaves that will be dependent on those (I assume it's the state) who define the exact amount of that uncondional income. Since a huge part of the population will be out of the "producer", thus the producer will have more power.

What must be done instead is to make sure power doesn't get concentrated. But this means less efficiency : one big optimised company is surely more efficient that ten smaller ones. With less power, the workforce can still negociate, the workforce can still share the remaining work, those who have no job still have a chance to get one if they want/need to. With basic income, there's no need to do that anymore...

So I don't like that basic income.

For example, there's a lot of unemployment in my country. People gets some allowance to live. The problem is that the lack of work is not acknowledged => those people are stigmatized. Anyway, they do get an allowance, kind of your basic income. The problem is that because of the unemployment, the employer are in a very strong position to pay people less (since many do want/need a job). So work valuation diminishes...

Competition is the problem, if companies would compete less, then basic income could work. There would be more space for choice : do I work or not ? can I share my work ?

Basic income means : let's detach ourselves from the consequences of competition.

Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?

#80
post #78

If you'd told me ten years ago I would ever support a basic income, I would have laughed. My thought would have been, "People getting paid without doing anything? Absurd!" But, in the past few years I've thoroughly changed my mind on this, and a number of other fronts. I now fully support a basic income (though I think a debate needs to happen about how much that basic income ought to be and how it ought to be funded…

> The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems. You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward s…

"Ever heard of minimum wage? Yeah, that one did not work as expected either (and created massive unemployment when the threshold was set too high as well)."

Citation needed. Your assertions do not match my understanding of the facts about the result of the minimum wage. (Though I would have agreed with you ten years ago, a better understanding of it has altered my opinion significantly.)

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