181–190 of 552 posts
Collect taxes at high stakes -> Give money away for free -> Expect from people to be happier. Why governments just decrease some tax rates and let people to choose what to do with their own money?
Err, to help people who don't have any money?
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> Communism (Which is what this is), has failed. Why this generation seems determined to try it again is beyond me. A bit of a stretch there and i should know i was born in a communist country. The reason Communism has failed is because of the lack of checks and balances on power compounded with corruption not because of concepts like this. > This is about stealing money from the successful, and giving it to everyone…
The real reason Communism couldn't succeed (not necessarily the reason it failed) is because none of the countries trying it were or are advanced capitalistic economies before the revolution. Imagine a transition into communism in a less-scarcity scenario, where robots generate so much material wealth as to provide it to everyone, and no one HAS to work, and technology married to political science in turn allows more…
I live in france (10% unemployment), and unless you're listed as seeking work, you're not given welfare. It's odd because they don't really check that you send resumes, nor do they really try to contact companies or just propose you a shitty jobs. The "get a job" mentality is really weird to me, because if you have freedom, and you can't find a job that suits you or that you're just too humiliated to beg all those em…
That money has to come from somewhere, it will either reduce the consumption from where it was taken or it will reduce capital stocks that can be used for investment.
I live in france (10% unemployment), and unless you're listed as seeking work, you're not given welfare. It's odd because they don't really check that you send resumes, nor do they really try to contact companies or just propose you a shitty jobs. The "get a job" mentality is really weird to me, because if you have freedom, and you can't find a job that suits you or that you're just too humiliated to beg all those em…
That money has to come from somewhere, it will either reduce the consumption from where it was taken or it will reduce capital stocks that can be used for investment.
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People starting companies are driven, determined people who want to create things. The vast majority of people are not. You're vastly over-estimating the general population. The majority are lazy, and if given money, will sit watching reality TV and stuffing their face with ice cream. (Step outside the startup bubble for a while). Most people are also selfish. The idea that they'll all start doing things to benefit o…
So what if some people decide to use their money to watch TV all day? Its a trade off, in return for some people being able to do things improving society they couldn't have done otherwise, or being able to spend time with their kids rather than work a bullshit job which mostly pays for childcare so they can do their job, we have to put up with a few people having more reality TV to bore us about in the pub. Sounds g…
One of the first pieces of advice I had when my company landed its investment was to pay ourselves a decent (not extravagant) wage so that my time went on worrying about the company rather than how I was going to afford to do things in my personal life. The same is true for employees - if they're paid a good living they will spend more time on thinking about problems in their job instead. If a government were to do t…
Inflation would eat it up.
Personally I think it is lazy to dismiss the thinking behind Basic Income as merely communism.
When I see that discussion about basic income I am always wandering, who is going to pay for that? I assume the money will not be printed (this would not help, as inflation would make that income very small). So the country that applies such policy must have some way of finding money. Some countries have natural resources that they can sell, so the problem is solved. But how about the rest? I guess this will be finan…
Most civilized countries already have something very similar - social security. Everyone who works pays into the system that distributes that money among those who are unemployed. It's a type of insurance if you will. If I participate in the system, I can be reasonably sure that were I to lose my job, I wouldn't end up on the streets. A spectacular example of why this is a good thing is J.K Rowling who was able to wr…
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People starting companies are driven, determined people who want to create things. The vast majority of people are not. You're vastly over-estimating the general population. The majority are lazy, and if given money, will sit watching reality TV and stuffing their face with ice cream. (Step outside the startup bubble for a while). Most people are also selfish. The idea that they'll all start doing things to benefit o…
> Communism (Which is what this is), has failed. Why this generation seems determined to try it again is beyond me. Isn't communism about central economic planning? Basic income is explicitly capitalist. No-one decides who ought to do what. We just distribute money, and let the market determine what to fund with it.
Though because you bring up central planning - I think that we should reconsider this idea. In a technological society, central planning run by supercomputers executing global optimization algorithms doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. Historically, central planning failed mostly because there was no way for flesh and blood humans to react fast enough and to optimize well enough (that and usual human corruption). Not to mention we didn't have properly developed optimization theory before the 60s.
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You don't mention the fact it's completely unworkable mathematically. In the UK I believe it'd cost £240 billion a year. Where the hell would anyone be able to find that money from? (Tackling tax avoidance from Starbucks isn't a credible answer). Just to put it in context, that's twice the entire NHS's budget, or 5 times our defence spending.
To put it further into context £240 billion is slightly less than what the UK government spends on pensions and welfare. Since basic income would replace much of the need for pensions and welfare, it might just end up more or less balancing out.