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A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

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Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#261

Post by JupiterMoon »

moonchrome wrote: post #144
JupiterMoon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of basic income is to take people out of starvation and lack of shelter. It would still leave people wanting to earn in order to e.g. go on holiday, own a computer, go to a bar, go to a restaurant, eat nice food, own a car (in Europe where owning a car is not required at least) etc - i.e. still plenty of incentive to work, earn and save just more freedom to take risks by e.g. starting that business... You al…

I doubt people are starving in developed countries so I wouldnt say it's taking anyone out of starvation, it's an alternative to existing welfare in that regard. And when we get to "basic shelter" well coupled with free health care I guarantee you there are people out there who have very little ambition beyond that, I know more than a few from highschool that literally said things like "all i need is enough money to…

> Also that's not how I saw basic income schemes suggested, usually it's paid out to people below min income and then progressively lowered to some point

This is not basic income.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#262

Post by SimpleXYZ »

In theory, a basic income should shift wages from skill to demand. For example, sanitation workers and doctors would get a high wage whereas video game designer wages would drop. (You won't care about a video game when there is 3' of garbage on your lawn.)

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#263

Post by pakled_engineer »

noreasonw wrote: post #201

What about the following flavor of Basic Income: In order to reduce the amount of money needed to support the BI scheme, you are given a card to buy some standardized products: jeans, bread, soup, chairs, tables, beds, bikes, ubuntu and the like. The main point is that those products are cheaper to produce and distribute. You lose some of the power of money but since society is paying the bill I think you should acce…

You reinvented food stamps. There will be costs running that card scheme and costs for retailers accepting it, and maybe the BI recepient wants to buy used clothing p2p or not have to go to bigbox retail corp to buy jeans. Maybe they buy fabric and make their own unique clothes now that they have time. My city is full of hipster hobbyist dressmakers and drop in sewing lounges, maybe they will become successful designers if not forced to do meaningless work to survive.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#264

Post by anticon »

nshepperd wrote: post #142
anticon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's extremely funny how every argument for Basic Income completely ignores the fact you will have to centrally plan how you're going to get all this endless money to give people. You're going to decide where to raise taxes.

The other problem is that if implemented, any future elections would boil down to which party is going to raise basic income the most (Bribing the electorate).

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#265

Post by dagw »

314 wrote: post #109
anticon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Checking the latest figures for 2016: 155B for pensions and welfare 56B. I assume the point is to replace both of those completely with the basic income so the net cost is not 240B, it is 29B. Not cheap, but not pie in the sky either. Sell a bank or two :)

There's an addition ~55B spent on welfare that comes from from local rather than central budgets, so that should probably be included.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#266

Post by 7Z7 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #135
onion2k wrote: post #33

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…

"If a government were to do that for everyone it seems pretty obvious that society will be better off - people will spend their time working on things to improve everyone's life rather than worrying about how to afford their rent." Looking at populations of people who have gone from being very poor to being very rich overnight does not support that statement. Most of the time the money is more of a curse than anythin…

>Looking at populations of people who have gone from being very poor to being very rich overnight does not support that statement..

That isn't a remotely analogous situation. This is people not being able to afford food, suddenly being able to afford food. Being suddenly very rich brings with it opportunities and responsibilities that simply being fed do not.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#267

Post by 7Z7 »

verinus wrote: post #100
mcv wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who is going to pay for that? The same people who are paying for the other welfare, unemployment and disability payments, the lower tax brackets for lower incomes, etc. Those are all things that basic income could eventually replace. It's not like there's free money coming out of nowhere, it's simply a smarter and more efficient way to distribute the money that's already there. The big advantage of basic income, th…

> It's not like there's free money coming out of nowhere, it's simply a smarter and more efficient way to distribute the money that's already there. I highly doubt that. In my opinion the current european social system destroys incentives to work and take responsibility for ones own live.

..and Basic Income does the opposite, by not disincentivising finding supplementary work.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#268

Post by DougWebb »

JonFish85 wrote: post #258
anticon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basic math: £240 billion / 64.1 million people in the UK = £3,744/year (assuming no government overhead). Seems low. That works out to be £312/mo/person. That certainly wouldn't seem to replace many costs (especially pensions and the like). Let's say you wanted it to be £500/mo/person. That'd run you £384.6 billion/year. Add in, say, 5% overhead and you're at £403 billion/year. Where does that money come from? If you…

You also have to factor in the fact that for most government welfare-type agencies a large portion of their budgets are spent running the bureaucracy, rather than going out to the people. Universal Basic Income greatly reduces the overhead costs. So £1 of Basic Income doesn't replace £1 of a current welfare program; it replaces £2 or £3 of the current program.

Put another way, if the current welfare spending is £120 billion/year, the recipients are only getting £40-£60 billion/year. So that's all of the Basic Income you need to replace the welfare spending, leaving you with a £60-£80 billion/year surplus.

Obviously, the actual amounts depend on the detailed overhead costs for each agency that would be replaced by a UBI program. But I'd be willing to bet on anywhere from 20% to 60% savings for each agency. UBI can be highly automated; with electronic payments and ties to a tax database, it can be as little as a smallish office of administrators and DevOps, and a server farm.

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#269

Post by merijnv »

anticon wrote: post #250
merijnv wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But no - that doesn't mean the state should give everyone free money. Why not?

Because there is no free money. We would all have to pay for it. We would be subsidising laziness.

> Because there is no free money.

Ok, sure.

> We would all have to pay for it.

Well, yes.

> We would be subsidising laziness.

Why is it laziness? As I pointed out, repeatedly, above. There's two ways we can go with this discussion. You can state "There is nothing worth of value, except economic value". If that's what you believe, fine. But I think that is a very shallow and hollow belief and then there is not much sense in further discussion.

Alternatively, you can agree that there are pursuits that, while not producing any economic value, are very valuable to society. Such as arts, social projects, research, etc. and that those of us who are good at maximising economic value (but, most likely not spending as much time/effort in other areas) should subsidise those of us who ARE taking care of our elderly, raising kids, or otherwise fulfilling socially and artistically important roles. In which case we can discuss whether basic income is a good way to accomplish this or whether there are better ways.

And what is so terrible about subsiding laziness? Why do you care? If you have more than enough money to do whatever you want, what does it hurt you that someone manages to "not starve" even though they don't "do anything"? Is that really so bad? You would honestly prefer thousands, if not millions, starving to avoid "subsidising laziness"?

Re: A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory

#270

Post by exch »

jackweirdy wrote: post #173
zimpenfish wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's another incentive to have more children and bigger families Should be easy to back that wild claim up with statistics. Can you?

My inner pessimist is expecting to see a "there was this Daily Mail article one time". Everywhere I look, I see the opposite. Families with a comfortable amount of disposable income have the 2.4 kids, but those in poverty (and particularly the working poor) have 3, or upwards. Anecdotal, but I'm yet to see evidence to the contrary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw

A talk by Hans Rosling[1] on the subject.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling

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