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Enough with Basic Income

salon.thefamily.co

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Re: Enough with Basic Income

#131

Post by 1024core »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #25

Fascinating that he picks Blair's Fabian speech as an example of the NHS being a thorn in government's side. I didn't vote for Blair, or support many of his policies, but his governance utterly transformed the NHS for the better. It was adequately funded for the first time in a couple of decades, at the time of this speech, and they were now searching for ways to measurably improve care, especially in comparatively n…

> The French example of basic income isn't. It's a means tested benefit which is utterly incomparable to UBI.

Read the article again. His point is that the RMI (RSA) is what they ended up with, even though they wanted (started with) something similar to UBI.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#132

Post by orangecat »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #123
Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty. I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal…

I would add that, one answer to replace all the welfare system is not a fix. Yes, the current system looks like a complicated pointless machine but it's a system that got that way because it needs to fulfill many needs. One solution for all sounds great but nothing is that simple. Like knots in tangled string. We need to fix the system one knot at a time. We might even need to cut out whole sections but there's not o…

It's interesting how many of the techies out there would laugh at the idea of replacing the internet with just computers and wires - what could be simpler.

Well, dumb pipes are in fact simpler and superior to the centralized systems of control and preferential treatment that telcos are constantly trying to impose.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#133

Post by stephengillie »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #117
stephengillie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the right is the infamous voucher system. It has been widely experimented, often with negative results, in fields such as education. The principle is to provide individuals with money and let them find providers on a lightly regulated market. Vouchers often deliver poor performance. The money distributed contributes to inflating the prices as the price elasticity of supply is negative—if only because nobody’s su…

Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain quantity of currency in circulation leads to inflation only relative to a given capacity to produce goods and services. Given that our economic system sees only very limited inflation, and can quickly ramp up production further, your arguments seem mostly strawm…

Removing excess currency is entirely the point - our economic system sees very little inflation because we have a tax infrastructure consuming part of the money supply. Not all services can scale infinitely, so you will always have scarcity - and you can always use FOMO and other game mechanics to introduce artificial scarcity into infinite systems. Some goods and services will always be more inelastic than others, and so inflation will start there and spiral out of control, as those producers monopolize markets.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#134

Post by saynsedit »

brokencode wrote: post #34
saynsedit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some may argue we are already in a post-scarcity economy. Unfortunately virtual scarcity will persist for some time. This is because the economic system isn't organized enough to distribute all resources fairly and efficiently. As jobs decline (due to increased automation and export), the old way of distributing resources fairly fails, and virtual scarcity will increase. UBI seems like it can fill that gap but I worr…

Competition will continue to keep prices down. Just because people have a new source of income, doesn't mean they that will become more likely to buy overpriced goods.

What will drive the commensurate increase in competition? If competition stays the same, inflation will simply drive prices up.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#135

Post by grecy »

Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #89
jnbiche wrote: post #46

This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-related job loss that isn't with traditional welfare solution proposed by the team he cheers for. He didn't spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me some of the strongest arguments for BI: 1) He worries about division and polarization. Well, BI i…

Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty. I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal…

What gets me about your article is your utter lack of willingness to allow people to attempt to improve something.

Maybe BI won't work, and any money invested in it will be wasted. Maybe BI will work, and it will eventually solve many problems with today's Western societies.

Who are you to tell the rest of us we're not even allowed to try?

Is it your money being invested in the attempt?

Will it negatively impact you?

If we take your attitude, possible improvements will never be attempted, and therefore, nothing will ever improve.

>My understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance.

It's fantastic that you have another idea! Don't waste your energy nay-saying people who are trying something other than your idea, get to work making your idea happen!

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#136

Post by orangecat »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #91

I'm glad this story came up. Basic Incomes sounds like a great, simple solution but it's not. Yes, welfare is an important part of our current economic system. There are people that needed it no question about it but giving it to all with no questions asked is a disaster in the making. The fact is that the only reason we endure a job day after day is that we need to get paid to pay for our needs and wants. We get up…

Also it will never be enough. Basic needs will be fulfilled but people will always want more.

I agree with this, and it negates your first point. Basic income is not intended to be something that you'd want to live on by default; it's just protection against hunger and homelessness. Almost everyone will want more, and they'll be unambiguously better off by increasing their earnings (unlike today: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/effective-m...).

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#137

Post by calvano915 »

geezerjay wrote: post #128
ntaenta wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when kids are raised with the attitude that they are guaranteed to survive on basic income? When kids are raised without the persistent threat of not surviving? They'll stand a better chance of flourishing and reaching their full potential, like many of us here on HN who have an affluent background.

> When kids are raised without the persistent threat of not surviving? Having to contribute to society by keeping a job, and using the income of said job to finance your cost of living is far from being a life-risking enterprise. You're trying to avoid the point by inventing absurd emotional examples.

You're ignoring the seemingly obvious threat of less job opportunities over time that provide a living, thriving wage. There's many people who have "a job" now who are barely getting by, enough to live but not thrive by any means. As efficiency increases over time because of tech, in combination with increasing reliance on cheap global labor and further stagnating wages locally, there will need to be some way to keep the local economy flowing beyond people just "keeping a job".

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#138

Post by mindslight »

The primary issue with BI is that it is actually just the exact same economic policy of last the two decades, but masquerading as a social program. "Helicopter Ben" has just taken this long to design and market.

The idea is basically just creating even more "stimulus" money, but distributing it just a little further from the centralized bankster cronies. Don't doubt for a second that they will still end up collecting it as rents on financialized assets (chiefly housing).

Our fundamental economic problem is being in a Keynesian death spiral - now that production has gotten insanely efficient, the incentives that were forcing people to overwork are now battering those who can't find work. Turning up the treadmill even faster yet will not get us out of it!

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#139

Post by SubiculumCode »

stephengillie wrote: post #133
SubiculumCode wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain quantity of currency in circulation leads to inflation only relative to a given capacity to produce goods and services. Given that our economic system sees only very limited inflation, and can quickly ramp up production further, your arguments seem mostly strawm…

Removing excess currency is entirely the point - our economic system sees very little inflation because we have a tax infrastructure consuming part of the money supply. Not all services can scale infinitely, so you will always have scarcity - and you can always use FOMO and other game mechanics to introduce artificial scarcity into infinite systems. Some goods and services will always be more inelastic than others, a…

Well many do not recognize that taxes are a mechanism for controlling inflation, so this point was not targeted at you, obviously.

I suppose that my previous comment's wording could be construed as assuming we couldexist in a post-scarcity economy. That was not intentional. However, universal basic income does not require a post-scarcity framework to be workable, and the claim that universal basic income will cause inflation to 'spiral out of control' is left unsupported.

Money is currently created out of nothing through the banking system, and the FED controls inflation just fine through various mechanisms e.g. setting interest rates. Basic income proposals can have similar inflation controlling mechanisms e.g. tie payouts to inflation rate or changes in tax rate. In any case inflatuon caused by basic income could be offset by increasing the fed interest rate which is currently near zero.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#140

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

grecy wrote: post #135
Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your response. I wrote this article because it seems to me the basic income discussion is orchestrated by people, notably in technology, who are unaware of politics and reluctant to get their hands dirty. I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal…

What gets me about your article is your utter lack of willingness to allow people to attempt to improve something. Maybe BI won't work, and any money invested in it will be wasted. Maybe BI will work, and it will eventually solve many problems with today's Western societies. Who are you to tell the rest of us we're not even allowed to try? Is it your money being invested in the attempt? Will it negatively impact you?…

I sincerely regret that the US is currently missing critical opportunities such as that to deploy a state-of-the-art universal health insurance, while most of the energy of those who could support that effort is dedicated to discussing basic income.

Also I point out that real-life enactments such as the French RMI, even though they succeeded at providing critical resources to those in need, are under extraordinary financial and political pressure. That pressure explains why it's become so complex, ridden with adverse effects and hated by much of the political spectrum.

I'm fairly certain that basic income would suffer the same fate. Therefore I see it as a political dead end and a distraction from much-needed debates on critical social risks in the digital age.

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