241–250 of 681 posts
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I don't think the number of kids goes up with prosperity. Developed countries and upper classes typically have much lower birth rates than their counterparts, and some countries are even experiencing negative population growth.
I agree, but in depressions/recessions it goes down quite reliably. It's a strong signal
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This is a really unhelpful comment. Why don't you think for a second next time before rushing out some snarky, superficial nonsense. Of course people would still work, for the same reason you don't still live with your parents - although judging by your response, maybe you do. Are you personally going to be perfectly content with a $10K/yr subsistence allowance? And closing all schools? What are you talking about? Th…
Among us highly motivated and educated people who read HN regularly, it seems somewhat foreign that large swaths of the population will revert to just drinking beer, smoking legal weed, playing video games, watching tv, eating McDonalds and living in their RV or subsided apartment and not use birth control. But large swaths of the population already do this.
They do indeed. And why not let them?
Most of what they could do with their time is being automated away, and the front-line service industries (restaurants, coffee houses) can only take on so many.
Does there not ever come a point when we can say we're rich enough as a society to support those who can't meaningfully contribute? That even without their effort we have wealth in excess and can afford to carry them?
> "How would we pay for it? We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes." I don't know why people keep harping on corporate taxes. If anything, taxing corporations is regressive -- the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels. Taxing corporations doesn't produce magic money -- it's still taxing people in the end, but it's the consumers.…
Raising corporate tax rates might or might not result in higher consumer prices. Depending on the company or industry, it might instead result in lower profits (which harms investors not consumers), or different management decisions--for example it might lead companies to invest in more growth abroad than domestically since the tax rate is lower abroad.
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> If anything, taxing corporations is regressive -- the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels. Actually, the studies show that corporate taxes are essentially a proxy for the taxing the ultra-wealthy - a cut in the corporate tax rate is very similar to cutting the highest marginal income tax rate. After all, if corporate taxes truly fell on the po…
> Actually, the studies show that corporate taxes are essentially a proxy for the taxing the ultra-wealthy - a cut in the corporate tax rate is very similar to cutting the highest marginal income tax rate. So why tax by proxy and not wealth directly?
Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on. The only condition is citizenship and/or residency. Sweet! None of us have to work anymore! Party at my place every night for life! You get the basic income whether or not you’re employed, any wages you earn are additional. Few, that's a relief. It'll be nice to close all of the school's down and tell kids they…
This is a really unhelpful comment. Why don't you think for a second next time before rushing out some snarky, superficial nonsense. Of course people would still work, for the same reason you don't still live with your parents - although judging by your response, maybe you do. Are you personally going to be perfectly content with a $10K/yr subsistence allowance? And closing all schools? What are you talking about? Th…
Helping people, building something great, improving the world are goals that can and are being taught in schools now. Unfortunately, the state of education is far from perfect. It seems feasible to correlate the laziness that is so feared by opponents of BI with a flawed education system. It is difficult to believe that better education cannot improve the intellectual curiosity and motivation of the supposedly "lazy." A flawed education system produces ignorance, laziness, and stifles intellectual appetite.
Instead of falling back on fundamental attribution error to assume there's something inherently wrong with the "lazy" person, maybe realize that without proper education and being shown opportunities and paths for contribution, people will certainly seem lazy. Not to say that university admissions are a perfect filter for people who are willing and capable of working hard, but even at top tier universities in the U.S., "Undecided" is a common major among students. Students who have a high school degree and have made it into selective schools, demonstrated at least some ability to work, but still don't necessarily know where to contribute.
Without data, but anecdotally I hear of many relatively wealthy middle-aged people who could retire comfortably, but don't, or they pursue a different productive interest (like teaching or volunteer work) after switching from their previous career. It seems reasonable that a better education system would go far to encourage people to better themselves and the world even in a BI scenario. It is hard to imagine someone who has learned curiosity, intrinsic motivation to contribute something, and empathy for others would sit around and leech from others all day.
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> If anything, taxing corporations is regressive No, its not. > the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels. It increases producer prices which shifts the supply curve to the right, but its pretty self-evident that the effect on actual prices is dependent on price elasticity of demand in the markets for particular products, and that price elasticity…
No more than taxing labor income (which the US does disproportionately) If you have a point to make, please try doing it without blatantly lying. It's common knowledge that the US has substantially higher corporate tax rates than almost anywhere else: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/feb/21/corporat...
I'm not blatantly lying. US taxes on labor income are disproportionate to taxes on other income sources, both because of the favorable rates applied in the income tax system to capital income, and because labor income is subject to additional taxes.
> It's common knowledge that the US has substantially higher corporate tax rates than almost anywhere else
Whether that's true or not, its entirely irrelevant the claim I was making.
This is very wrong when you think about large scale. The model simply can't work when you apply it to all the population. Think about the point when it'll break.
There is no free money. Giving money to someone by taxing someone else, is not a stable equation. This will create a tension between those who produce and those who consumes. Corporations will move to States/Countries with better tax schemes.
My strategy is simpler: Liberalize everything. Everybody pays for his own consumption; and shared resources are paid by people equally. There should be no taxes, and also no subventions. That means people pays for the gov. bills equally.
Well, but that's only on my perfect world view.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If anything, taxing corporations is regressive No, its not. > the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels. It increases producer prices which shifts the supply curve to the right, but its pretty self-evident that the effect on actual prices is dependent on price elasticity of demand in the markets for particular products, and that price elasticity…
No more than taxing labor income (which the US does disproportionately) If you have a point to make, please try doing it without blatantly lying. It's common knowledge that the US has substantially higher corporate tax rates than almost anywhere else: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/feb/21/corporat...
However I believe the parent's point was just that taxes on personal earned income represent a much larger share of total U.S. tax receipts than taxes on corporate income do, i.e. the U.S. mainly taxes labor income. And that is true; the corporate income tax accounts for only 10% of federal tax receipts: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3822
If the money for this basic income comes from taxation, then both the government loses net income and the corporations lose as well. You can think about it an entropy or friction, there is always a cost for doing something. If corporations essentially pay their customers (via the government) to buy their goods the world would eventually collapse.
If the money for basic income comes from printing money (or equivalent) it devalues to insignificant amounts too quick to do virtually anything with it.
This idea is a fantasy, perhaps the population of the world needs to DECREASE to maintain its stability in a technological world. If there are less jobs, maybe there's less need for humans.. If this is the case, perhaps it is time to move to Mars or something, like a cell that has replicated enough DNA/organelles to split in two and create a new daughter cell.
You cannot suitably hold by basic unconditional income. Any college economics class/text book would probably make this much more clearer than I, but the "trends," conclusions and potential sources for the basic income would fall apart under close inspection. For example, if the need for labor decreases, the cost of labor decreases (the net company expense), therefore people may have worse pay, but also the products are cheaper.
The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility.
Wouldn't the basic income value need to vary across regions? For example, the notion that: "Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on" would mean a different value in San Francisco than in Grover, NC. If the government adjusted the basic income to account for regional cost-of-living, I imagine it would be popular to maintain a fake residency in an expen…
I'm fairly sure the government knows where we all truly live.
