171–180 of 251 posts
I really want to know how the conversation went with the folks in the control group. "Hey, we're doing a study where we give money to a bunch of people... Not you, though." Ha!
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We are gonna end up in the future that Wall-E has predicted. Machines do everything and humans are fat slugs. Our minds are lazy and want to do the least amount of work. If given the option, we will do the least amount and occupy ourselves in entertainment. Now is that living? Thats up to you to decide. A good book to read on experiments done to understand human behavior is Daniel Kahnemans Thinking Fast and Slow.
That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.
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That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.
Have you been to a Walmart recently? I don't think the Wall-E scenario is entirely off base.
More accurately: there is a higher concentration of overweight people at a store that caters to lower income brackets.
When machines do everything, people won't have to settle for cheap unhealthy foods.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of? If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and…
There are already lots of great free (or very cheap) ways to educate yourself but all of them require time and energy. If you spend most of your time and energy working an awful job just to survive you can't take advantage of these opportunities. Take away the need to invest time and energy into basic survival and you can suddenly take advantage of a lot of cool things that were previously not accessible to you.
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If you make $160K a year, your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all. And this is the way it's supposed to be: High earners will be net losers, people with low/sporadic/zero market income will be net gainers.
> your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all. This will never happen (through government legislation). If it does happen, then the policy will encourage individuals not to work, since the income to work ratio is better if you make less money. This would be a disaster for a country's economic development.
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Its not the immigration its the illegal pay and lack of benefits that they are given. The construction industry is based on underpaying migrants. If you have been rehabing homes then you certainly took advantage of this too. Look in the mirror.
Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that. If you're rehabbing properties in this area (Silicon Valley) you cannot give work to people unless they have a Contractor's license, which you can verify here: http://www.cslb.ca.gov/ There are many reasons for only hiring licensed contractors: 1) your homeowners or commercial insurance will not be abl…
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Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice. Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes. Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you…
You don't need to ride a bike to get crippled by a car accident. You can choke on a piece of food while eating dinner. You can fall in the shower awkwardly and get paralyzed.
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Not racist, but perhaps a bit too coarse. I don't really consider BI to be welfare though. It's not need based, and generally has more possible upsides to it than welfare. Like being able to start a business with the money. Point is it could be the wrong direction. We don't really know yet how it should be implemented. Experiments like this are what is going to tell us.
It is textbook "welfare". It just that it fits your notion of being more classy then other kinds of welfare. "Welfare" is in the US Constitution.
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Its not the immigration its the illegal pay and lack of benefits that they are given. The construction industry is based on underpaying migrants. If you have been rehabing homes then you certainly took advantage of this too. Look in the mirror.
Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that. If you're rehabbing properties in this area (Silicon Valley) you cannot give work to people unless they have a Contractor's license, which you can verify here: http://www.cslb.ca.gov/ There are many reasons for only hiring licensed contractors: 1) your homeowners or commercial insurance will not be abl…
You score it with a knife and snap it for long straight cuts.
You use a hand saw for complicated or non-straight cuts. Or you might use a small rotary power tool but it really doesn't make any difference.
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> I'm not saying the study is a bad thing, but if basic income were implemented in an entire community, it would have a different effect than just a small slice of a community. In particular, wouldn't it just raise the price of housing and rent? There's only so much land and housing to go around, and if you're competing with everyone else to buy a house or rent an apartment, if everyone else can afford to pay that mu…
You seem to be assuming an externally funded basic income. This may be true for the pilot, but once implemented "in production", a basic income would be funded through taxation, and so wouldn't increase the total amount of cash at all, just shift it about.
What would the additional tax burden be on the median household? Would their tax burden be lower because the BI is replacing all the other welfare programs they are currently subsidizing?