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A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

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Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#261

Post by yummyfajitas »

legutierr wrote: post #231
yummyfajitas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

> labor supply dropped by about 10% Isn't this the exact effect you would want, if you are instituting basic income partly as a response to structural unemployment as a result of automation? > fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. Maybe these jobs start paying more. How is that bad? With basic income, more mothers would be able to stay home with…

Isn't this the exact effect you would want, if you are instituting basic income partly as a response to structural unemployment as a result of automation?

If we don't have robots providing child care, cleaning houses, and all these other services, then "structural unemployment as a result of automation" is not actually a problem we have.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#262

Post by nkohari »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #194
yummyfajitas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery. People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me? If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you expect some stranger to do it ex…

There will always be work that some find unglamorous but has to be done. I doubt that garbage collectors see their job as a higher calling or a passion, and yet without solid waste collection society would literally collapse.

Somehow, you're assigning lesser intrinsic value to lawn mowing than you are to (eg.) jobs in STEM. Society may have assigned a lesser monetary value to it, but that's a function of supply and demand, and not a suggestion that the job is somehow "lesser" in some way.

It doesn't make sense to judge another person's job decisions using your own value system. Many (perhaps even most?) people see their job as a means to an end -- a way to make money to do the things they love. That's a perfectly reasonable and honorable way to live your life.

What we do need is equal access to the means to do other things. If you're interested, capable, and willing to have a career in (eg.) STEM, you should be able to do so without having to fight the socioeconomic conditions into which you were born.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#263

Post by cdash »

humanrebar wrote: post #169
ChrisLomont wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit is not given to the banks - the money is added through asset purchases on open market sales. The Fed owns more assets (usually Treasuries) and the bank has cash. If you want to get in on it, buy Treasuries. Next, the Fed avoid targeting zero inflation, because it's currently impossible to hit that number so exactly, and they desire to avoid deflationary spirals. The past 150 years has shown across hundred…

> If you want to get in on it, buy Treasuries. Let them eat cake? > ...they desire to avoid deflationary spirals. I've never really understood this. Dropping prices (see the recent changes in oil prices) are really good for the impoverished, at least in the short run. If we are really talking about a post-scarcity economy, wouldn't deflation indicate efficiency and be a good thing?

Debt is the problem. The majority of Americans have a large amount of debt and if income goes down, which is what will happen in a deflationary spiral, how are they going to afford to pay off their debt?

It also encourages hording of money and doing nothing with it as it becomes more valuable over time.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#264

Post by CompelTechnic »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #194
yummyfajitas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery. People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me? If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you expect some stranger to do it ex…

There's lots of work that needs to get done, whether anybody likes it or not. If the intrinsic motivation to do it is not there, people are willing to offer rewards to other people for it to be done.

I feel like your ideals are very far away from a gritty reality of the working arrangement for most people.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#265

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bane wrote: post #238
lsaferite wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you missing a variable for the cost the unskilled woman pays to have someone watch her children while she's being paid to watch the skilled woman's children?

Why would she do that? She'd just watch her own children at the same time.

Depends what level of income disparity you're operating on, rich people don't share nannies - the nanny's kids go to a nursery or more likely are looked after by a grandparent (maybe in a different country).

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#266

Post by ck2 »

Millions can't even get health insurance in half of the entire USA (24 vs 26 states do not have medicaid expansion because the supreme court ruled it was okay to screw everyone over).

Good luck with this basic income fantasy. Might as well try to negotiate reparations for slavery.

How about you finish what was started FIRST - and don't give me this "we can do multiple things at the same time" nonsense. This is six years later. The need for health care is pretty much universally understood. Giving people free money would never get out of congress.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#267

Post by pluma »

jackreichert wrote: post #227
timlyo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article is talking more about the difference from the current system. > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 trillion. These retirees can be excluded from the calculation because they are already being paid, they wouldn't add any additional cost to the system.

Is it fair to say they're being paid if they paid into the system paying them for their entire working lives? Can someone please explain why people call Social Security an entitlement? Am I missing something?

In Germany at least, public retirement funds are "pay-as-you-go", i.e. you don't pay in to save up money for yourself, you pay in to finance the current payouts to other people who previously paid into the system (and so on). Of course nobody treats it that way -- you'll hear a lot of "my pension" talk especially from people close to retirement and those who are unaware of how low their pensions will be a the current rate.

Theoretically the system could be justifiably stopped at any second and simply drained by the current pensioners (which would probably happen almost instantly). But good luck explaining that to people raised under the false assumption that the public pensions are "safe" (as politicians like to announce so frequently).

Our best bet would probably be "universal basic income for everyone below retirement age" but pensions are "topped up" to parity with basic income. A not-insignificant portion of pensioners already gets pensions below social security levels (meaning it is topped up to social security levels -- not that they get welfare on top). You could then fade out the pension system and replace it with basic income.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#268

Post by dilemma »

epaga wrote: post #197
dilemma wrote: post #191

The basic problem that makes universal basic income impossible is that it's simply not possibly to set the level of it. Have a try: 1. What should UBI be in San Francisco? 2. What should UBI be in Detroit? 3. Should they be the same? 4. What happens if they're not the same? 5. What happens if they're the same?

1. $10,000. 2. $10,000 3. Yes. 4. They would be. 5. All of the proposed benefits of UBI.

1. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in San Francisco? 2. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in Detroit? 3. Why? 4. See 3. 5. What are the proposed benefits of UBI?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#269

Post by wtbob »

Spooky23 wrote: post #162
mcv wrote: post #130

Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income. The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess of programs losing their job is a silly concern.…

>Why should we keep paying people for unnecessary bullshit jobs? Because human services jobs employ thousands of people (a state like New York has 40k+ people in public sector social services and at least that many private sector) and control thousands of votes. Democrats will have a hard time supporting it, because those unionized workers will get them voted out. It's also very telling about what "basic income" real…

> Conservatives don't give a shit about social welfare, this is just another scheme to enrich their pals and undermine the social safety net.

Huh?! That makes no sense: how is giving everyone a sufficient income to survive undermining the social safety net? How is increasing taxes on the wealthy enriching their pals?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#270

Post by adwf »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #157
rmc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher wages for dirty jobs would certainly spur innovation in labour saving devices to reduce the amount of manual labour. "Dirty" jobs being paid more certainly does sound a little more ethical than today, where those with little options have to work those dirty jobs to keep their house and to eat, and they are paid low.

How would it spur innovation? After enacting a BI, we've just reduced the labor supply and funneled resources toward consumption (since rich people invest, poor people consume, and we've shifted resources from rich to poor). Labor supply = Labor servicing consumption + labor servicing investment Rearranging this implies: Labor providing investment = labor supplied - labor providing consumption Simple arithmetic shows…

Well putting aside that you might be making a kind of post-hoc fallacy there with your equation; Is reducing labor supply really a bad thing?

Most developed countries have unemployment permanently somewhere between 5-10% or even more during recession. Some, like Spain, have closer to 25%. Reducing labor supply may be the only answer.

It's not that I don't agree with you in principle. But you can only gain productivity if there are things for people to do. The fact of modern society is that we are running out of jobs.

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