Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% rich people store their wealth in assets - which are not affected by inflation at all (in fact, the value appreciation often beats it - even during a pandemic). Only the poor people have to store their wealth in cash because they don't have enough of it to buy a diversified range of assets, and the short term risk is unbearable to them (while rich people will simply hodl a little longer). Additionally, poor peopl…
The government printing bills that they then buy stuff with for the poor transfers those things from the wealthy who owned it in the first place to the poor people who got it. As the poor gets more money demand for stuff they buy increases which raises prices and leads to inflation, meaning that said inflation is a direct result of the original wealth transfer and therefore can't possible be a reverse wealth transfer…
European Citizen's Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income
151–156 of 156 posts
Re: European Citizen's Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supposedly it would help with #3, because you'd need to tax something to get the money no? Also, I've always wondered, if unemployment is so high, is it because the work just isn't needed? Does spain already produce and provide services in a way that scale to all its population?
> is it because the work just isn't needed? Well, obviously it isn't needed today but you can always change the economy so that it becomes profitable enough to hire everyone. >Does spain already produce and provide services in a way that scale to all its population? A lot of products come from China nowadays which means your domestic workers have to do high skill jobs to compete internationally or low skill jobs that…
That's the part that I don't understand. Like you're saying you could increase demand, so more people want more services and more products, implying the current set of employed people would now no longer be enough to keep up with this new demand, so they'd need to hire more. Ok, well assuming the latter is true, that the current set of employed people can't scale to higher demand, what still doesn't make sense to me is where would this higher demand come from and especially how would this new demand afford to spend more money? If everyone is unemployed, it seems only if the existing employed people spend more money can the demand increase, since the unemployed cannot afford to spend more anyways.
But why would the employed suddenly choose to spend like twice as much money? You'd need to come up with some innovative new product or service that is irresistible. (Side note: I believe this is actually where the US excels at. They're always creating new services and products, creating an accretion of the total set of things people want.)
So you've got this chicken and egg problem. The question is how do you bootstrap this?
I think one way is investing in new ventures. Give incentives to the currently employed to invest their money in an attempt at creating a new product or service that will in turn cause the other existing employed to spend more money (continue to spend on what they currently spend on + this new service or product). And that will create new jobs (hopefully), allowing more people to enter the pool of employed, and repeat this until you have full employment.
In this model though, we're relying on an infinite growth. Because the pendulum goes: create new spending habits, this leads to new jobs, now optimize production and offshore, this leads to job loss, now hope that we come up with some more growth that leads to even more spending habits, etc.
So it basically says, as soon as there's no longer any new shiny thing, the rich will just hord the money. So if you want the rich to redistribute their money, you need to give them shiny new things in exchange. And so you want to create policies that promote the creation of shiny new things.
Well, this model has worked pretty well to be honest. So I'm not going to criticize it too much. But I think we are seeing some of its downsides as well. It's based on a very unsustainable consumption model, that takes a big tole on the environment. And it might also have a maximum, maybe there is now so many shiny things, that the speed at which we can come up with even more shiny things that people would keep wanting is slowing down. (Also because you need the existing shiny things to continue to be sold as well, if you replace an old one by a new you didn't grow the pie, just changed hands).
And I believe that's the motivation for finding a different model that be more sustainable. Maybe UBI ain't it, but I understand the drive to search for one.
Re: European Citizen's Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income
#153I dislike UBI a lot. (coming from the left side of the European political spectrum for what it's worth) for a few reasons. The first one is that I think work is a fundamental aspect of personal life and people feel deeply rewarded for being compensated for it. UBI is underpinned by a sort of Wall-E philosophy of human nature. It in a weird way presents itself as humanistic but is deeply apolitical and anti-social. Se…
Both those numbers are way below the level needed to.mske people not motivated to get even very crappy jobs.
Re: European Citizen's Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income
#154Why wouldn't any company of wealthy person just leave these countries. As these developing countries start to rise and compete. They get safer to live in. They built solid infrastructure. One may ask why live in these places
Why would you leave the country where people who spend all of their income have more money? You want to sell to them as much as possible, at inflated prices because they can afford it. Even manufacturing is not obviously a problem there. Sure you can't blackmail your employees with being destitute, but those who choose to work for you are doing so out of their free will which may improve quality of their work. Also m…
What happens when developing countries have younger people who buy more things, better laws, and comparable wages.
For example a former french president left france for russia cause of their taxes. Many people left california for much the same. Does california have more wealthy citizen than nevada or texas sure. But at a certain point the math tilts.
Re: European Citizen's Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income
#155I dislike UBI a lot. (coming from the left side of the European political spectrum for what it's worth) for a few reasons. The first one is that I think work is a fundamental aspect of personal life and people feel deeply rewarded for being compensated for it. UBI is underpinned by a sort of Wall-E philosophy of human nature. It in a weird way presents itself as humanistic but is deeply apolitical and anti-social. Se…
This one I don't get. Empowering workers, in leftie politics, usually means some version of labor, wage, union,... protection laws (not saying this wrong, I'm myself seeped in leftisms). Thus creating a dependency to the state to protect one's work from the ruthless.
Where is the principal difference between being dependent on the state for cash vs protection?
Wrt the larger UBI point: I see it more as an opportunity for people to find deeper, more personally meaningful, work. My inner optimist hopes people would seek out more fulfilling, self-determined, work. My inner pessimist sees the Wall-E thing, though I would not call it underpinning. My inner realist would like to see more studies.
Re: European Citizen's Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income
#156I dislike UBI a lot. (coming from the left side of the European political spectrum for what it's worth) for a few reasons. The first one is that I think work is a fundamental aspect of personal life and people feel deeply rewarded for being compensated for it. UBI is underpinned by a sort of Wall-E philosophy of human nature. It in a weird way presents itself as humanistic but is deeply apolitical and anti-social. Se…
I don't think people stop working with UBI. What it does provide though, is a safety net to make sure you'll have food on the table but no more. Suddenly if you're hating your job, it's not that scary to tell your boss that their abuse is over. You can have some time to re-train, and be whatever you really wanted to be. There's also loads of activities that aren't counted as work that would suddenly become very devel…