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Enough with Basic Income

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Re: Enough with Basic Income

#151

Post by grecy »

Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #140
grecy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

I understand and respect your opinion.

Your opinion does not give you the right to stop others from voicing theirs, and working hard to achieve what they think is a worthwhile goal.

The fact you ignored that's what my comment is saying, and merely paraphrased your article makes me think you don't care about other people's opinions and ideas, which is a really, really great way to make people not care about yours.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#152

Post by ZenoArrow »

Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #96
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #2

There are some good points in here. However, what I think the author misses is that we are within reach of a post-scarcity economy, at which point all of those historical economic references go out the window (since nearly all economic theory assumes scarcity). That possibility makes a UBI experiment very worthwhile to me. I don't think we're there today or anything like that, but it may be within our lifetimes that…

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I don't think post-scarcity will eat the entire economy anytime soon. In particular, I think that it will still be unaffordable to access proper medical care, child care, and housing. And I don't see how UBI solves that. Hence there are more pressing problems, like deploying a sustainable universal health insurance in the US (either public option or single payer) and…

> "deploying a sustainable universal health insurance in the US (either public option or single payer)"

Why involve the insurance companies at all? They're just a drain on the US healthcare system.

If you cut out the insurance companies, changed the rules about price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry and engaged in preventative medicine (such as offering support to those who wanted to lose weight), the US could easily afford publicly funded healthcare. Other countries with fewer resources have managed it just fine. Even if you have to raise taxes to do it, you could do so and still leave people with more money in their pocket compared to when they were paying out insurance premiums.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#153

Post by DanFeldman »

randomdata wrote: post #126
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…

Is there really tech-related job loss? Or does tech actually create more jobs? I am from Canada, so that is the data I am most familiar with. The employment rate has almost never been higher (2008 was the highest), the unemployment rate has almost never been lower (2008 was the lowest). The US housing crash did take some toll on the Canadian economy as did the more recent fall in oil prices, but we're still looking f…

There will be a huge loss of jobs in the next 10 years, not job creation. At some point, self driving cars will exist with no driver, and around the same time, self driving trucks. Truck driver is still the most common job in many states [0].

When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry?

[0]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

Edit: [1] questions the claim that trucking in the most common job by state. There's still a lot of drivers out there though!

[1]: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#154

Post by aminok »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #120
aminok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all taxes demand a share of the currency we receive in private trade. A split rate property tax for example does not require making such a demand. My preference is to replace all taxes with user fees for use of government services and assets (like roads), and a heavy split rate property tax, and compensate property owners for the loss of value in their real estate that this tax shift causes.

Interesting. >> "replace all taxes with user fees for use of government services and assets (like roads)" I'm guessing with this we would also have to drastically reduce the number of services the government is providing? For example there will be certain services that they few people use but cost a lot to provide so if we aren't all contributing they can't continue to offer them. As for a split rate tax I hadn't hea…

Yes, moving to the tax system as proposed would require a massive reduction in government spending.

>However I don't understand how you can think tax on trade is authoritarian yet other tax forms aren't.

Land, and to a lesser extent the property that's built on it, can more justifiably be taxed, because an individual has less of a natural right of ownership over it.

This is due to land being a natural resource, that derives almost all of its value from its natural form, rather than the value the party that appropriated it added to it.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#155

Post by aminok »

chillwaves wrote: post #82
aminok wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarianism is authoritarianism, no matter how many countries practice it. >but if most people want BI then it would be authoritarian to not give it to them in a democracy. That's not how authoritarian is defined. The majority have no right to violate the right of the minority. More to the point, I'm arguing that we should try to change the minds of the majority, because the majority held viewpoint is authoritar…

I don't know what authoritarian means in this context. My understanding is the government has a monopoly on violence, and when I disobey laws that other people pass (through the process of democracy), I will be on the receiving end of government violence. What you call authoritarian is to me what folks call democracy. I also don't understand the distinction for private trade, in that without a functioning government…

Democracy is how we determine what laws to pass. Universal rights are how we determine if a law is just. Just as we have a universal right to not be enslaved, we have a universal right to not have our private property and privacy violated, and an income or sales tax does both.

>I also don't understand the distinction for private trade, in that without a functioning government to support a marketplace, such trade would not exist.

Private trade refers to trade amongst exclusively private entities, as opposed to trade amongst several entities, one or more of which are public (government).

Your speculation that private trade wouldn't exist without services rendered by government, even if it were accurate, would not disqualify trade amongst private parties as private.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#156

Post by [deleted] »

andrenth wrote: post #141
kmkemp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI doesn't disincentivize work. If I told you that I would give you $10k/year unconditionally, would you quit your day job? What if you were currently unemployed, would you stop looking for a job? There is no reason to as my payment to you doesn't depend on if you get a job or not.

If you give everyone $1000 a month (to round the numbers) now the work of someone who makes $1200 a month is only worth $200 (as one can make $1000 just by idling). Would this person want to work for $200 a month? This is a major disincentive of work.

[deleted]

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#157

Post by andrenth »

caente wrote: post #147
andrenth wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give everyone $1000 a month (to round the numbers) now the work of someone who makes $1200 a month is only worth $200 (as one can make $1000 just by idling). Would this person want to work for $200 a month? This is a major disincentive of work.

So what? If the person has no reason to work, then they shouldn't. Humans are entrepreneurial by nature. Everybody has crazy dreams that have long forgotten because they needed to eat. I don't even want UBI so people don't starve, I'd like UBI so people can live comfortably without having to work. Everybody should feel "rich", the same way most silicon valley kids do/are.

You made an emotional argument that seems angry at a certain group ("Silicon Valley kids").

However, the work that will not be done by those people who can do it but don't want to will still need to be done. The solution will then be to hire people at higher wages.

But since these higher wages are not a result of increased productivity, the employers won't be able to sell more. The result is that prices will go up, generating price inflation. And we know inflation is the worst of all taxes, as it affects the poorest the most.

In the long run, the money received via BI won't be able to sustain the "comfortable living" that it was supposed to.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#159

Post by esarbe »

glenda wrote: post #43
blahi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens in the very long term? What happens when kids are raised with the attitude that they are guaranteed to survive on basic income? What happens when their number grows? What happens when that large group feels that bare survival doesn't cut it any more and want more? What happens if the numbers actually don't pan out but scared politicians doon't want to give up power and cook the books for decades? Rem…

Your comment made me a bit sad because I read it as "What happens when those who struggle everyday to survive no longer have to?" - I understand your fear of entitlement etc... but I don't think things could get much worse than where we are now. For instance, "affluenza" is an acceptable excuse for killing a person in the US.

Hey glenda,

I wanted to congratulate you on your enduring politeness and civility while enduring exactly the opposite. I thank you for your tone and your contribution. While I may not agree with you, I applaud the manner in which you communicate.

It's people like you that really make HN a different place.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#160

Post by arielb1 »

Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #101
wilwade wrote: post #16

A reasonable article, albeit not capturing the full argument for UBI. One missing pro-argument is reducing the creativity monetary risk barrier. Entrepreneurship is at about 14% working age adults in the US (1). I would say that the number of people who would be entrepreneurs is higher, but limited by risk. Entrepreneurship is very high risk. Reducing that risk would enable more people to become entrepreneurs (a good…

I wrote the article. Thank your for your response. I get your point about painters and writers. But my guess is that working on affordable housing would do more good on that front—and would be more sustainable politically. You can read this convincing article by Sarah Kendzior: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/expensive-c...

So the problem with San Fransisco is too much people chasing not enough houses, and your solution is to pay people to buy houses?
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