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My own private basic income

opendemocracy.net

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Re: My own private basic income

#21

Post by maerF0x0 »

opportune wrote: post #16
maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

I couldn't disagree more. As a society (and this goes from a community to a global scale) we should make it a priority to give everyone the resources to meet their maximum potential. I don't mean that we should give everyone a million dollars to invest of their own. What I mean is that we should ensure that everyone gets provided with a good education and food/water/shelter, etc. The author specifically mentions the…

Entrepreneurs have incentive to ensure everyone meets their maximum potential because this is the place where there is the most to extract.

If my value is $10 per day and someone makes my value $20 per day, there is $10 per day worth of value for us to negotiate over. We _both_ have an incentive to maximize my potential.

Also: >we should ...

thats a morality statement but without a canonical source of ethics that some do not ascribe to. But, I would assume that "self interest" is more or less universal, and thus we can build systems that use self interest to ensure good outcomes for all.

Re: My own private basic income

#22

Post by greedo »

Ignoring the logical fallacies the author makes, one thing jumped out at me. He's not buying the average home in South Bend. If he's only paying $180/year in property tax, the assessed value of his average home is around $9K. A quick look at Google shows the median price (from Zillow, so a grain of salt is recommended) of $65K. If he and his brother are buying up $9K homes, his average mortgage is under $50/month. I'm sure that he's doing the socially responsible job of only charging his tenants just a little over his full costs...

Re: My own private basic income

#23

Post by clort »

MichaelRenor wrote: post #14

> My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives? This is like…

> Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck.

some of that is the luck of being born in the right place.

also, many people did all that and still did not get hired at that place

Re: My own private basic income

#24

Post by moeymo »

Property tax is $15 per month in South Bend for a house? Wrong. Capital gains is taxed lower than income? Wrong -- sometimes it is, sometimes the other way around. Multiple factual errors.

Re: My own private basic income

#25

Post by Sodman »

MichaelRenor wrote: post #14

> My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives? This is like…

Being born into circumstances that even enable you to accomplish all of the above definitely falls into the category of luck, in my opinion.

Eg if you're born to wealthier parents, you likely have more time in the evenings/weekends to study, which makes all of the above easier than say, if you were born to a poorer family and had to work 20-40 hours / week to contribute to your family's income.

Next, being born with the right genetics that enable a natural talent/ability to understand a particular area well enough to get through all of that education and into a good job, is also a form of luck.

Sure there's a level of discipline and effort required to get there even when you've got all of the "luck" - but part of the article's point is that there are certain people that are born into certain situations which they can literally never raise themselves out of (without some kind of very very good luck).

Re: My own private basic income

#26

Post by OJFord »

> [in the US] people who don’t need their income are taxed less than people who do

I'm not American; I don't know the tax structure. But I can't even imagine that this could possibly be true, or what is true that is meant.

Without looking it up, I would assume that the USA subscribes to progressive taxation, under which the richer pay more tax in both absolute and relative terms.

Even if it has a flat rate of tax, (a structure, incidentally, that makes far more intuitive sense to me) the richer are still paying more tax in absolute terms, and equal in relative terms.

What Earthly metric is the author using?

Re: My own private basic income

#27

Post by z1mm32m4n »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

This echoes a lot of the same sentiments that Paul Graham puts forth in his essay "How to Make Wealth"[1].

Basically, the claim is "money is not wealth" (or as put above, money is not value). Money is a tool, used for three things:

1. making it easy to trade if you can't barter (i.e., be a medium of exchange) 2. store wealth (i.e., store value) 3. measure wealth (i.e., be a unit of account)

Wealth on the other hand deals with actually making the economy better off. Creating a startup that makes widgets faster and cheaper then ships them out over the interwebs moves the needle forward. Both of these scenarios create wealth.

I think there's still an argument to be made over the apparent inequality between how much work is required to create a certain amount of wealth. And certainly, owning wealth while doing no work is another story entirely.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Re: My own private basic income

#28

Post by orthecreedence »

MichaelRenor wrote: post #14

> My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives? This is like…

> applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university

Perhaps he is lucky enough to have parents that could afford college for him so he could invest in property rather than "invest" at getting to a $0 debt level.

It's also luck that the university exists in the first place. The system we exist in has build infrastructure for people to better themselves, and to turn around after earning millions of dollars and say "I did this all by myself" is disingenuous (or at the very least, incredibly ignorant).

I'd attribute most people's position in life to 5-10% "bootstraps" and 90-95% circumstances.

Re: My own private basic income

#30

Post by taway_1212 »

accountyaccount wrote: post #10
gitpusher wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont see it as unfair that a person making $1 a day is unlikely to become a deca-billionaire in their lifetime (total mobility); Do you see it as unfair that there are people stuck making $1 a day?

I think it depends. Is $1 enough to grant you housing, food, healthcare, and free time to see your family?

It's enough to get a can of Coke (not everywhere though).
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