181–190 of 268 posts
I don't get the philosophy behind the "dignity of work". People primarily work in order to get paid, money they then spend on themselves or their families. Work is no more altruistic than going to clubs and having casual sex. Society functions not because people feel compelled to work out of principal, but because if no one worked, the price of labor would go up until people were enticed to do it. And it's also very…
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I'm sure you can find a basic introduction to the idea you're arguing against somewhere on the web but basically, instead of giving money to the poor and needy, you give it to everyone and those that earn a little give some of it back in tax, at some point you earn enough to give it all back. Those in the latter group cost you nothing, even though you've "given" them x thousand dollars, so dividing (or multiplying) a…
Oh, so your BI is means tested. OK ya, what you're arguing for and what most of the other folks around here are arguing for isn't the same thing. It's a little messy but we already pretty much have what you're talking about with a patchwork of unemployment benefits, welfare, medicaid and various forms of disability insurance.
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Okay, now I am 100% that you're just trolling indiscriminately. There have been at least a couple real-world experiments done, have you even had the decency to look it up on Google? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=basic+income+experiment
He's not trolling. Really it doesn't work and the math is simple. There are ~310M Americans. To give them even 10k each per year that's 3.1 Trillion which is more that the US gov't collected in taxes last year.
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I think you are giving too much weight to the people getting something for free argument...the subsidies are income based, meaning a lot of these people were never going to be able to get insurance even at work. You can more or less tell who gets employer-based health insurance based what they're paid. I doubt too many people are going to stop working because they qualify for ACA subsidies, you still have a whole lot…
>>> I doubt too many people are going to stop working because they qualify for ACA subsidies Equivalent of 2.5 million workers is too many or not too many? >>> I see the ACA subsidies as a way to make people more proactive about their health and keep them out of emergency rooms which is significantly more costly to the system. This is also proven not to be true. Having insurance, actually, raises usage of emergency r…
The fact that people may run to the ER unnecessarily even with insurance is perhaps a reflection of other problems (maybe too many hypochondriacs Googling :)? ), but that isn't a reason to not make healthcare accessible.
If the choice is between people over say 60 desperately holding on to jobs because they can't afford health insurance on their own, versus young people getting opportunities to start their own lives then the choice for me a rather simple one.
PS: I have no ideological axe to grind in this matter. If we are going to live in a modern society, these are problems that have to be dealt with somehow.
I grew up in a place and a time where people died in gutters (no exaggeration) from hunger and disease, that is the difference between a modern civilized society and one that isn't so. It is a choice that has to be made. The dignity that is afforded to people by social programs is a dignity consequently bestowed upon all of us.
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Here's the first ten countries in the list of countries by suicide. Greenland Lithuania South Korea Guyana Kazakhstan China Belarus Slovenia Hungary Japan Obvious caveats about national suicide stats apply.
Obvious exception of the Eastern European countries. South Korea and Japan are notorious for the high suicide rate. The work hours in these countries are ridiculous. People literally get worked to death. Engineers pretty much devote their entire life to their company. There is no work-life balance. There is only work.
Why?
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He's not trolling. Really it doesn't work and the math is simple. There are ~310M Americans. To give them even 10k each per year that's 3.1 Trillion which is more that the US gov't collected in taxes last year.
Requirements could help make the math work. For example, only adult citizens with no income may participate in the program.
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Oh, so your BI is means tested. OK ya, what you're arguing for and what most of the other folks around here are arguing for isn't the same thing. It's a little messy but we already pretty much have what you're talking about with a patchwork of unemployment benefits, welfare, medicaid and various forms of disability insurance.
Means-testing is a wash on average, though: you keep the taxes of higher-income people lower, but then don't give them the cash payment. This works out better for very wealthy people (since tax rates are typically percentage-based, while the payout is a fixed number), but worse for lower-middle-class people, who get means-tested out of the payout but don't make enough to get much tax savings. There's some cross-over…
The math doesn't work.
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>Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean no one will ever wash dishes at a restaurant, no one will pick up trash, no one will spend time wiring your house for internet, or fix your computer, or do a large swath of jobs. Absolutely disagree. Freeing people to work on things they desire will mean that undesirable jobs (such as the ones you describe) will have to increase pay and conditions to correctly r…
> Doctors deserve to be paid according to their skill, yes, but at the moment have entrance requirements which are disproportionate to the job at hand. I'm not a doctor, but sometimes I wonder if it's easier than it seems. It's not hard to diagnose the basic and obvious stuff and do good work by only addressing the basics. Repeating something like that doesn't take talent, but you do have to make sure you actually kn…
I'm also not a doctor, but I imagine that large part of doctor's paycheck is for staying alert when treating a hundredth patient with "obvious" cold/indigestion symptoms, which are actually masqueraded symptoms of a serious disease.
Eliminating taxation and implementing a basic income payed for by new money created out of thin air, pegged to the GDP for the year, is how the world will deal with machines creating more wealth than we know what to do with, without people. It's a direct form of wealth transfer that requires zero force, no "putting people in cages because they can't/don't pay" nonsense. For social spending, you do the same: print new…