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My own private basic income

opendemocracy.net

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Re: My own private basic income

#11

Post by Sodman »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

The problem is for a lot of people, they'd need something more like a 10x multiplier or more. (Eg the folks he references trapped working as cheap labor that can't even leave without the company's permission, who likely can't even afford travel).

Re: My own private basic income

#12

Post by andkon »

obstinate wrote: post #4

On some level, this is basically "capitalism 101." If I don't need my resources now, I can put them to work so that I can later benefit from them. This leads to me having productive assets, which pay me some return. If I could not acquire productive assets, there would be much less reason to save. And it's unclear how one would save, as banks would likely not exist either. You can solve this problem somewhat by havin…

The problem here isn't that capitalism lets you have productive assets that give you a return. It's that when r > g (when the rate of return of capital is greater than the growth rate of output), inequality increases dramatically. The greater the difference between r and g, the greater the rate of increase in inequality.

This is laid out super bare in his example: he bought a house. That house is in an area that surely is past its prime in terms of growing rate of GDP growth. Which means r > g. And that means his assets give him relatively good returns, which in turn compound, which has the net effect of him getting far, far ahead of everyone else who lives in that area.

Re: My own private basic income

#13

Post by alphonsegaston »

gitpusher wrote: post #7
maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

> I dont see it as unfair that a person making $1 a day is unlikely to become a deca-billionaire in their lifetime (total mobility); Do you see it as unfair that there are people stuck making $1 a day?

When you get to the bottom of this kind of thinking, there's always some form of a just world fallacy. Despite the fact that the wealthy engineer circumstances to keep the poor in their diminished condition for their own profit, it's never "unfair" because of this foundational error. See also programmers thinking they're "highly paid" despite years of collusion by tech giants to reduce their salaries and capital owners eroding what they do earn through rent-seeking real estate investments.

Re: My own private basic income

#14

Post by MichaelRenor »

> My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar

Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck.

Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives?

This is like a new age of economic predestination, where everything has been predecided for you by God and there's nothing you can do. Calvinist and BI proponents apparently have a lot in common.

Re: My own private basic income

#15

Post by the_cat_kittles »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

this seems thoughtful, but there are some absolutes that get in the way of this relativistic argument. one is that people who are really poor cant eat enough, and die sooner. to me, it is unfair that you would have a shorter life because you are not born into wealth.

Re: My own private basic income

#16

Post by opportune »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

I couldn't disagree more. As a society (and this goes from a community to a global scale) we should make it a priority to give everyone the resources to meet their maximum potential. I don't mean that we should give everyone a million dollars to invest of their own. What I mean is that we should ensure that everyone gets provided with a good education and food/water/shelter, etc.

The author specifically mentions the people making about $7 a day doing manual labor in Qatar, and that they were a lot shorter than he was primarily due to lack of nutrition. Do you believe that these people should only be able to aspire to making $14 a day? Maybe not all of these individuals are hard workers (by nature. I'm sure they are essentially forced to be hard workers to survive) or smart, but a lot probably are, and it's because of an unfair system that didn't give them access to food and education that they have to work in Qatar to make a living.

You may see this is simple economics, but I see this as a modern form of slavery: keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a cheap source of grunt labor.

Re: My own private basic income

#17

Post by maerF0x0 »

Sodman wrote: post #11
maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

The problem is for a lot of people, they'd need something more like a 10x multiplier or more. (Eg the folks he references trapped working as cheap labor that can't even leave without the company's permission, who likely can't even afford travel).

for the record I'm speaking of a "Real" multiplier (taking in account inflation / standard of living) . IMO if every generation is 2x-ing their parent's lifestyle, its nearly instantaneous wealth in the scale of humanity.

In the developed world today's poor live like kings of old. In 1000 yrs I would imagine that their poor will live better than our wealthy "Playboys" of today. I see nothing wrong with people being in different places, so long as they have the ability to better their circumstances.

The ability (and actuality) of improving circumstances is more or less happiness, happy lives are definitionally worth living.

Re: My own private basic income

#18

Post by gutnor »

Dave_TRS wrote: post #5
tiku wrote: post #2

So this is the part 2 to the "how to retire at 34" article from a few years back..

Agree - seems to be a greatest hits of personal finance ideas with current buzzwords mixed in like "basic income" and "privilege" that aren't central to the post. Be a saver not a spender. Invest in things with strong cash flows relative to the purchase price. Use your personal connections, such as family members that can make good business partners. Take lucrative boring jobs if you can stomach them. Be lucky.

The core of the article is luck into making way more money than you need. Use spare luck to find a honest someone that knows what to do with that money. Retire.

That's not really what personal finance are about. Unless Vegas Holiday Brochure count as Personal Finance: go to a casino, win big, retire.

Re: My own private basic income

#19

Post by brianwawok »

Hey, South Bend made an article on the internet and it wasn't even about our mayor!

Rental income here is a bit weird because you have in general a very poor town, with a very expensive private university with old money funding houses for students. I bought my house here for a fair bit less than it would cost to rent something half the size.

Re: My own private basic income

#20

Post by ManFromUranus »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #9
gitpusher wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont see it as unfair that a person making $1 a day is unlikely to become a deca-billionaire in their lifetime (total mobility); Do you see it as unfair that there are people stuck making $1 a day?

If they literally are "stuck" . Here we get into a nasty debate about spectrum of probability vs effort and the multipliers that should be reachable by end of life. I definitely agree that a 0 probability despite maximum effort is unfair. In between is a grey area though.

Effort is irrelevant though, if they spend their effort on something that could never succeed or is useless or irrelevant to the market then their effort should obviously fail and it is not unfair. So it matters a lot what they choose to apply effort to. Generally life is an IQ test and rewards those who make optimal choices WRT events in their life.
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