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A universal income is not such a silly idea

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Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#111

Post by levosmetalo »

cynusx wrote: post #90
JTon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hate to be the person who earns just over that arbitrary 100k line.

hiring managers would use it to convince people to take sub-100k wages. This pretty much happens already in progressive taxation countries(e.g. belgium) where you can actually make less money by having a higher salary because your tax-rate increases.

I have yet to see an example about net pay decreasing with marginal tax rate increase. When you earn 120k, only those 20k over 100k will be taxed with the higher rate, not the amount below 100k, so every increase in gross salary leads to increase to net salary.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#112

Post by PaulJoslin »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #78
PaulJoslin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct Mike, it's not always the case (benefits being cut and working a job can provide you with a worse quality of life) - but I think that is more of a problem regarding the wages people are being paid in jobs, rather than the benefits system. For a long time inflation, house prices and general costs have beat basic wage increases - leaving many working for less money relatively than they would've got years…

> The system is broken, but the equality of pay and living standards is not to blame with the government, it's to blame with greedy corporations, share holders insisting they need to do anything for profit and wages being pinned down to the minimum they can be that the work force will stand for (to maximise profits). Let me ask you something... If you start a new business, and let's say you take out a huge loan to pa…

Capitalism is powered by money and greed. At it's heart, the point is to maximise profit and efficiency. This drives innovation and growth across the world... this is no bad thing.

However, as a side of effect of this, it also means businesses want to become more efficient, reduce costs and maximise profitability - your share holders are expecting good returns and that's just the way the world works!

However, according to this http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-ratio-average-worker/ The CEO is currently getting around 241 times the average salary!

Let's say the CEO takes $9.6 million and the average worker gets $40,000...

This income divide is causing the problem, as the prices will move up in line with the wealth the CEO has just got (along with the workers obviously), but to the average worker, they're not really being paid much more (or any more at all) to counter act the inflation.

If you go back to that graph in 1980 where the CEO only made 35 times the amount of the average worker and redistributed more of the profit to the employees, let's say average employee now gets $55,000 and the CEO gets $2,000,000 then the prices remain more affordable relative to the money in the market and the wealth has been distributed more evenly.

Note this is with the assumption the corporation still made the same profit whichever way it was divided.

The top 1% of wealth is greater than the other 80% of wealth combined in the USA and it's this greed that is causing the divide, rise in prices and rise in poverty line compared to the 'average salary'.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#113

Post by JanezStupar »

weddpros wrote: post #97
Mikeb85 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life. With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your…

I often hear this argument, but it sounds wrong to me. Benefits are cut when you start working, and resumed when you stop again. Did you consider the fact that salaries WILL be lowered to compensate for BI ? If BI is 1000, that 1200 paying job will become a 200 paying job... I just can't see where's the incentive to work. Who wants a 200 paying job when you get paid 1000 for just breathing ?

I think you have your own answer. Nobody will do jobs like that.

Because why would they?

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#114

Post by mercurial »

hershel wrote: post #42
graylights wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly the point of universal income. You don't pay them for idleness, you pay them regardless. You just don't pay them enough for their desires, just their needs. All those things you want cost money to verify and adds massive administration costs. Another point of universal income is it's cheap to administrate. If you want to "pay" people for taking college, just subsidize it.

isn't it possible at least in theory to decrease this administrative costs using technology, But maybe it costs said much because there's no real push to do so and large resistance from the public sector ?

As illustrated by the regular failures of large IT government projects, regardless of the country: not necessarily.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#115

Post by informatimago »

PaulJoslin wrote: post #25

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…

Sure. There are some places where some kind of basic income are experimented (Alaska (very low), Norway IIRC). A big scale experiment in a more "normal" country like Switzerland would be welcome.

In any case, the problem is that we're on the verge of having roboticized (and computerized) everything. Already, most of the jobs are useless jobs. And for the remaining productive jobs, they could also me automatized a lot more than they are if the organizations performing them hadn't wrong incentives that make them perform them in silly and inefficient ways.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#116

Post by gnaritas »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #74

I'm always shocked how otherwise very rational and logical people tend to be "communists". It is one of the things that lets me down when reading comments on HN. So sophisticated as far as hard science goes, so naive and just - plain dumb - in terms of humanities. Ever heard of inflation? If you give basic income to everyone what happens to the prices of everything? So the ROI on this is extremely limited and the pri…

I'm always shocked how otherwise very rational and logical people tend think every socialist idea is communist and don't seem to know what communist actually means.

> Ever heard of inflation?

Yes, have you?

> If you give basic income to everyone what happens to the prices of everything?

I don't think you know how inflation works. Basic income doesn't increase the money supply, it's income redistribution, not money printing. Wealth is taken from those with excessive amounts and given to the rest.

It's also not communism.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#117

Post by clarky07 »

I'm a conservative. One would probably assume I'd be against a universal basic income. In theory I am, but I actually think I find the basic income much more palatable than the current welfare state.

At least with the basic income, there is never an incentive to not work. It makes it possible to not work, but it doesn't incentivize it. The current welfare systems make it such that if you start working you lose the welfare. If you don't have the skills to make significantly above the welfare level, you are actively incentivized to not work.

For those suggesting we'd have massive inflation making this completely worthless, I think you underestimate the level of money we currently give away. While there would be some inflation, we already give huge amounts of money in the form of welfare, food stamps, social security, etc. A basic income would replace all of those things.

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#119

Post by rycho »

downandout wrote: post #72
tokenizer wrote: post #62

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…

basic income doesn't increase the amount of currency in circulation...

Re: A universal income is not such a silly idea

#120

Post by muyuu »

belorn wrote: post #102
PaulJoslin wrote: post #25

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…

I understand the confusion, but its mostly there thanks to misconception about how things works now, > 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 s…

The problem with making it unconditional is that it will completely break the ceteris paribus calculations as to what is good enough, making a lot of collateral damage on its way while being largely ineffective.

Showering money to everybody is very likely to make more harm than good to real people's economies. A transition to Friedman's proposal on a "moderate" negative income tax (it's not what the name suggests) makes a lot more sense than this. Although I'd just give conditional help as it's done in many European countries with a reasonable degree of success.

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