171–180 of 1001 posts
The site used to make some of the diagrams on this article is pretty cool: https://excalidraw.com/
Watermark is optional, but I kept it because I appreciate someone took the time to make a high quality diagram tool and still open sourced it.
I feel like this is the perfect example why everyone should at some point be required to start a business. Because some of these ideas stem from to many people not understand the economy in a real sense because they are always workers and see the world through that lens.
Maybe more people would start businesses if they had UBI as a safety net.
Honest question - how does one prevent inflation with UBI? If the market price of an apartment is $500, and suddenly everyone gets UBI, the landlord would raise the price as much as he can, say $1000. People on UBI are in the same relative position as before. They still can’t get the apartment because there’s enough people who have the UBI plus something else and can pay $1000.
A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…
A UBI paid for with a carbon tax would both save us from the worst consequences of global warming and stimulate the economy. It's hard to find a rational excuse for not doing it. Planet Money did a great episode on this idea over 7 years ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/07/12/201502003/epis... They did a followup 5 years later: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/18/630267782/epis... It seems like…
I don't see how this would really work. A carbon tax in an ideal situation is just a consumption tax. This means that it's the consumer that pays it. Rich people don't eat more food nor do they drive dozens of cars at once. If we want this carbon tax to offset our greenhouse emissions then that means it will necessarily disproportionately impact poor people. And then you want to turn around and pay that money back to…
People don’t need money. People need basics like housing, food, and medical care. No UBI scheme is going to work in an economic system like the one in the U.S. that isn’t capable of providing those things. It’s not like there’s a shortage of food or shelter now and yet we still have homeless people while homes sit empty. We still have hungry people while farmers are destroying their crops. The economic system is the…
I need money. Money gives me the freedom to seek after my choice of housing, food, and medical care. One common refrain I've heard is that the US already has a UBI, but it is $0.
Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income approaches zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax I do think people radically…
Why give free school to everyone, libraries? Clearly a rich person doesn't need those either? Public services should be public. There's extreme social value in equal access and you reduce an extreme amount of bureaucracy and debate in the process. >If I got free money I wouldn’t increase spending, I would reduce work. WE SHOULD ALL REDUCE WORK. Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We'…
>Sorry for the caps but we need to collectively get into this mindset. We're more productive than ever with very little to show for it. We've been having labor outright stolen from us for decades.
Speak for yourself. Not everybody's comfortable spending most of their time lounging around doing nothing that anybody else even values enough to pay for.
Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income approaches zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax I do think people radically…
The most likely implementation in the existing US federal government is a negative income tax. > I definitely would choose not to work or work less if that money came free from government. You aren't alone, so your $1200 would not go as far in that future as it does now. There would be some inflation (perhaps only localized increased costs to some industries), but I'd suspect that people working less would be a featu…
Why give free money to everyone? Clearly a rich person doesn’t need a monthly check from government... Milton Friedman long ago proposed a negative income tax to replace means-tested welfare programs. Essentially, people below a certain income threshold would receive money which scales to a maximum the closer their income approaches zero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax I do think people radically…
Reducing the number of hours/jobs that people currently work would reduce the labor supply and wages would rise (Econ 101). I don't see how these "consequences" are a bad thing. Furthermore, "unforeseen consequences" are effects that we don't know will happen because they lie beyond our ability to predict them. There will always be unforeseen consequences of any major policy decision.