101–110 of 337 posts
Progressives seem to have lost all understanding of the concept of money. It is a means of trade. The spending power of the basic income will ultimately reflect the value its recipients produced in order to obtain it - zero in this case.
Progressives? Did you know that Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman supported the idea?
The thing I genuinely don't understand regarding the basic income for all argument is that surely it just moves the goal posts rather than solves the problem at hand? In the current system, you can go stay at home and get income support, which should provide you with the basics i.e. a home, food, electricity etc. If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifesty…
> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working.
Staying home and not working today is not actually an option in most places in the world. The reason is why this new model is called unconditional basic income. The current system called income support is conditional.
And market forces love the fact that its conditional, since it allows exploitation. If income support is for example conditional on the unemployed not having received a job offering, then the market can exploit this fact and offer people jobs for below income support (or what ever is minimum). Unemployed people can not say no, or they loose the government income support, and thus become forced to accept a slave job or loose all income.
unconditional basic income would eliminate this issue from the board, and increase wages for unattractive jobs.
Inflation should also not be effected by much. The total amount of money in society is still the same finite amount as before. There is no "extra money available", only a different form of distribution. There is a larger group with money to spend on products, which drives prices both up (more demand), but also down (more incentives for large scale production). It also makes money change hands more often, and is often attributed as the reason why a income support system do not actually drive prices or wages down.
Can we stop putting these "universal income" posts on the front page until someone has something genuinely new to say about the idea or there's some news about an actual implementation?
I had a genuinely new idea this morning. Paying people for idleness increases idleness, which isn't necessarily good for the recipient. Why not pay them instead for doing things that make their life individually or collectively better? * Pay them for taking and passing college classes. * Pay them for losing weight and getting their BMI to an acceptable level that reduces collective health care costs. * Pay them for g…
I also don't like this idea because it increases personal dependence on the state. If the goal is to make people independent and self-confident, how does this help (on the whole, excluding edge cases)? And as the top commenter said, I think this will move the goal posts and surely cause inflation. I also think this will enable some peoples' destructive habits (how does the song go? "It's the first of the month... Get up, wake up!").
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The spending power of the basic income will ultimately reflect the value its recipients produced in order to obtain it - zero in this case. What do you think the purchasing power of welfare money is? Furthermore, can you really separate the purchasing power of the money utilized in the minimum income and the income from working?
I am not separating anything. I am saying that inflation will rise, because that's what happens when a country isn't producing anything more, but the country increases the amount of its currency in circulation. It's like a stock split - absent a rise in the actual value of the company, doubling the number of shares makes each share half as valuable. In this case, over time inflation will adjust to the point that the…
Through what mechanism exactly? Please also explain why this hasn't happened with other, existing forms of social subsidies.
It seems like it is your understanding of money that is laughably over-simplified.
Basic income has potential but I think people are waiting for the governments to provide, while there is possibly another way. Imagine creating bitcoin version that does not favor early adopters, but allows everyone participating to get the same amount of coins every week. Of course it's easier said than done, and it would need to be detailed a little more, but I think it's possible.
After all, there's no truth in "having" to work. I think there should be the freedom to choose if you'd like to work or not.
I've always pondered why people think you "need" to work. You "need" a job.
I like working, and have a job, but I know many people are fine getting by, and it stresses them out for having to work everyday, which I think is perfectly fine.
An alternative that I prefer is a welfare system such as in Australia. Australian welfare is very similar to basic income, the main differences being that you have to look for work (but enforcement is not strict) and the way welfare decreases as your income increases, makes your effective marginal tax rate about 50%. I'm not sure what the optimal tax schedule (pre-tax vs post-tax and welfare) should look like, but my…
This is a bad idea in the long term. The whole reason basic income is being seriously looked at is because we know automation is eliminating the need for labor and that trend will continue until work simply isn't available for a large percentage of the population. People need to get over the idea that work will be necessary to live or the idea that work is how one contributes to society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not separating anything. I am saying that inflation will rise, because that's what happens when a country isn't producing anything more, but the country increases the amount of its currency in circulation. It's like a stock split - absent a rise in the actual value of the company, doubling the number of shares makes each share half as valuable. In this case, over time inflation will adjust to the point that the…
> over time inflation will adjust to the point that the spending power of the basic income will approach zero. Through what mechanism exactly? Please also explain why this hasn't happened with other, existing forms of social subsidies. It seems like it is your understanding of money that is laughably over-simplified.
Are you seriously trying to make the argument that their economy will absorb this with no effect on the value of their currency?