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A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

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Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#511

Post by Schwolop »

ryanx435 wrote: post #509
reb wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple enough: clearing the lazy, the unmotivated, and the unaccountable from our labor market would make it easier to get work done (less drain from employees who don't contribute); make work more pleasant (surrounded by motivated colleagues who value what they do); and eliminate competition from useless employees who leech jobs, artificially inflate the labor supply and tarnish average applicant quality because the…

all of the problems you just described can be solved by simply firing a bad employee or not hiring bad ones in the first place. I'm still not following why paying them to do nothing is necessary.

Because right now those fired employees still _need_ to work, so they apply somewhere else. Even the most incompetent eventually get past the filters and gum up someone else's operation. So we have a cycle in which we harden the filters (e.g. day-long interviews for programming jobs) which makes life worse for everyone involved.

If those bad employees could self select the "good enough" lifestyle provided by a basic income, we could reduce all the overheads associated with trying to protect workplaces from them.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#512

Post by macspoofing »

refurb wrote: post #396
macspoofing wrote: post #364

The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of a basic income. One of the great things about universal healthcare is that you just never worry about it. I never have to think about what would happen to myself or my spouse or my kids if they get cancer after I quit or lose my job. Whether my insurance will fight me on some treatment, or if it covers the rights things. It's nice. Basic income seems like…

Whether my insurance will fight me on some treatment, or if it covers the rights things. I don't think universal healthcare addresses those issues. I'm from Canada and people fight with the gov't all the time over the coverage of medical care and drugs. Sure, if you have a really common condition you might get everything you need, but if you have a rare condition, you're often stuck trying to fight it out for coverag…

>I'm from Canada and people fight with the gov't all the time over the coverage of medical care and drugs.

I'm from Canada too, and yeah, the system isn't perfect. Generally conditions which require a more intensive and personalized long-term care (read: expensive) are lacking. Drugs may be expensive. Dental isn't covered. But let me tell you, you need to see your family GP? You'll see them without worry. Your GP refers you to a specialist for tests? No charge. Your specialist orders more tests because of a finding? No charge. Surgery? No charge. You're hospitalized for a few weeks? You'll never get a $70,000 bill.

There is a certain freedom in being able to go through all that, even when unemployed, and never think about whether you'll have to re-mortgage your house.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#513

Post by macspoofing »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #397
macspoofing wrote: post #364

The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of a basic income. One of the great things about universal healthcare is that you just never worry about it. I never have to think about what would happen to myself or my spouse or my kids if they get cancer after I quit or lose my job. Whether my insurance will fight me on some treatment, or if it covers the rights things. It's nice. Basic income seems like…

The problem is that income does not get you by. It's a totally abstract concept and cannot sustain a physical being. Maybe an income of potatoes and butter could sustain you. An income of digital credits only gives you some accounting leverage to access goods in a public market (which may or may not exist). If there are no doctors, your income won't ensure you receive treatment when you need it.

>It's a totally abstract concept and cannot sustain a physical being.

... Feel free to transfer your abstract concepts to my abstract account.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#514

Post by macspoofing »

sliverstorm wrote: post #398
macspoofing wrote: post #364

The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of a basic income. One of the great things about universal healthcare is that you just never worry about it. I never have to think about what would happen to myself or my spouse or my kids if they get cancer after I quit or lose my job. Whether my insurance will fight me on some treatment, or if it covers the rights things. It's nice. Basic income seems like…

The output side of BI is naturally attractive. Everybody gets money. How could that not be attractive? I'm just skeptical about how we would fund BI to a level that is meaningful while maintaining some modicum of equitability and equanimity. Just to lift everyone to the poverty line in the USA ($11,770) would require paying out more than $3 trillion in net benefits, or roughly the size of the entire federal budget to…

>The output side of BI is naturally attractive. Everybody gets money. How could that not be attractive?

That's not why I find it attractive. Most people would not be satisfied with a basic income. Most people are more ambitious than that. They'll want a condo, a nice car, a nice TV, a nice vacation. That's why they work for more stressful jobs that pay higher than minimum wage work.

I like the piece of mind BI gives you, like universal health-care does, like social security does. I know that if I get a run of bad-luck or I fuck up, there is a safety net.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#515

Post by jliptzin »

rconti wrote: post #419
frogpelt wrote: post #362

The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income? The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should b…

America will be about the last place to attempt this, if the past (and our current welfare) are any guide. It's an interesting concept. My immediate reaction is that it creates disincentives to work. In theory it does, but the only data we have is those who are currently on welfare and do not work -- but maybe those people were basically not going to work anyway! We have no competing group of people who are on welfar…

I don't think killing motivation would be something to worry about. I can think of lots of examples of people who don't need to work but continue to do so anyway, from my own group of friends as well as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, etc etc.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#516

Post by branchless »

roblev wrote: post #501
branchless wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear. BoE in their blog have a different idea to you, from their official blog: http://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-interm... > In the simple ILF model, bank loans represent the intermediation of real savings, or loanable funds, between non-bank savers and non-bank borrowers. Lending starts with banks collecting deposits of real resources from one agent, and ends with the lending of those resourc…

A lot of the confusion comes from the fact that there are two sorts of money that are in circulation: base money and bank money. This blog post is only talking about bank money, and does not reference base money. Base money (dollar bills, Euro notes, pound notes etc.) is controlled entirely by the central bank and base money can be created and destroyed by the central bank, whenever they like. Think of it as like dig…

Base money is 3% of all money. Go ahead pull the lot out. It won't matter. Only parking meters that can't take cards will feel it.

Reserves are unconstrained as banks lend to each other after creating credit via deposits from borrowers. If two banks create 400k and then each borrower buys land with this 400k and the seller then deposits the fresh "money" with one another's bank they have 400k credit. Demand is pulled forward and the credit will be destroyed only when it is paid down.

Money supply since the end of the gold standard (I'm not a goldbug) has rocketed. What constrained the near vertical rise? Nothing.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#517

Post by jlarocco »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #31
jkarneges wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody is required to do the "shitty jobs", I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them? Maybe having a waiter at a restaurant would become a luxury. Perhaps all the jobs would continue to exist but there'd be some very interesting rebalancing.

Very likely. Think of how uncommon household servants are today compared to before the industrial revolution. Now only the super-rich have them, as a rule. The rest of us get by with automation (washing machines, vacuum cleaners), with the occasional hiring of a temporary "servant" when neccessary (e.g., calling a cab compared to having a dedicated chauffeur, or having a landscaper or cleaning service come in once in…

I'm almost certain household servants have always been for the rich.

I'm curious what makes you think otherwise?

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#518

Post by jlarocco »

tormeh wrote: post #149
jkarneges wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody is required to do the "shitty jobs", I wonder if those jobs would increase in value as less people do them? Maybe having a waiter at a restaurant would become a luxury. Perhaps all the jobs would continue to exist but there'd be some very interesting rebalancing.

Just go to a country with really high labor costs. This is exactly what you'll see. Lots of work goes undone because people just don't care enough to pay for it. Usually just cosmetic or convenience stuff.

Actually, that happens in the United States.

I read an article a while back that some types of manual labor are having a really hard time filling positions because nobody wants to do them for what they can afford to pay, and IIRC, they were already paying significantly higher than minimum wage.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#520

Post by TrevorJ »

frogpelt wrote: post #362

The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason: Who administers the basic income? The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should b…

It also becomes a sacred cow. The bread dole was a huge issue for Rome once it got started because they really had no choice but to keep it up.
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