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It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

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Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#271

Post by FLUX-YOU »

tempestn wrote: post #146
baddox wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that millions of years of evolution have baked into every living thing a deep need to work, and we'll feel bad if we don't (because for millions of years lazyness meant death). We need to struggle. I think there is a difference between "work" that fulfills our desire to dedicate time and effort toward challenging endeavors and "work" that creates sufficient net value to keep oneself alive (or in the case…

It's not like the economic incentive to work will be completely gone though. Presumably BI would be, at least to start, roughly the bare minimum required to survive. Any luxuries would still require earned income. Also, given hedonic adaptation, humans are rarely content with any given level of luxury. While there are certainly negatives to that, it does mean that most (or at least many) people would continue to atte…

>It's not like the economic incentive to work will be completely gone though. Presumably BI would be, at least to start, roughly the bare minimum required to survive. Any luxuries would still require earned income.

Curiously, I think Basic Income would drive creativity in some people to acquire luxuries without working for someone else (building their own stuff, or unfortunately, stealing). I think many would wear that as a badge of pride. We already worship business leaders and entrepreneurs. Imagine the praise of successful entrepreneurship of one's life and possessions and not just his business.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#272

Post by bryanlarsen »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #245
jgj wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reliability of charity in this case would increase as the number of people who need it decrease. I don't think we can rely on charity to solve everyone's financial woes, else said woes would already be solved. But when the percentage of people in need of charity grows smaller, the impact of the same pool of charity increases for those left in need.

But isn't the point of BI that everyone has enough for their basic needs? It would seem unfair at that point to tell some people try and get charity funding (which might dry up at any point).

There are plenty of people whose basic needs are substantially larger than the average citizen. For instance, many people need expensive motorized wheel chairs, which would be difficult to purchase on BI. Currently, the state provides motorized wheel chairs to many, but there are many stories of this program being abused. It's quite possible that a charity could step in here to supplement BI to make chairs affordable, and could do better and more efficient needs testing than the state.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#273

Post by pdonis »

whyme wrote: post #238
pdonis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the 7 billion mark we would need 5 planets worth of resources if everyone were to consume at the level Americans do You're assuming that we are already making maximal use of all available resources. We aren't; we're not even close. The reason the "poorer nations" are poor is politics, not lack of resources.

What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption? I didn't make any claim to suggest why poor nations are poor, did I? I simply suggested that as poor nations evolve, their people will consume more.

What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption?

You said we would need 5 planets worth of resources if everyone lived at an American standard of living. That would only be true if it took a full one planet's worth of resources for everyone at the standard they are living at now. But it doesn't; we aren't using the full productive capacity of planet Earth now, not even close, and a lot of what we do produce gets wasted for political reasons. If we got rid of that waste, we might well be able to support everyone at an American standard of living with just one planet's worth of resources, not 5.

I simply suggested that as poor nations evolve, their people will consume more

That's part of what you suggested, but it isn't all of it. See above.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#274

Post by orthecreedence »

bcheung wrote: post #224
jgj wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free from wage slavery, citizens receiving basic income could spend time producing their own commodities. They could learn trades not to use in a career, but to reduce their dependency on others. I also think the premise that prices would rise and create a GBI death-spiral is far from guaranteed. With a GBI behind them, citizens could potentially be more likely to start their own businesses, increasing competition an…

Free from wage slavery? Technology is so much further along than it was 1000 years ago people barely have to work to have the same living standard as they had then. People generally only work for 8 hours a day. They can't spend the rest of their time doing that right now? Everyone is free to start a business. Tons of people do it while working a full time job. Tons of people go to college while they have a full time…

This is the type of attitude that hinders progress, and for no apparent reason. News flash: you're already rewarding people who sit around doing nothing with your tax dollars. GBI does the same, but at reduced overhead.

Starting a business is hard. Starting a business while working full time is near impossible. It's not about laziness or incompetence. You just don't get the same business opportunities you do when working a full time job as you do when you're able to network and market yourself during regular hours. It can be done but it's really, really fucking hard. Also, working a full time job while in college isn't a good thing. Our country needs to provide education more universally if it wants to stay ahead of the curve. Saying "you can either live in indentured servitude to your student loans, work a full time job while in college, or be born with rich parents" doesn't really cut it. Sure, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and all that bullshit, but let's get serious here...the country doesn't work like it did in the 50s.

GBI makes it possible for your average person to take an idea from conception to reality a lot easier. I'd say for all the companies I've started, the largest overhead was by far salaries and making sure the founders were able to put food on the table. With GBI, our businesses would have been 10x more successful, because investment capital would last 10x longer! This is good for business.

Yes, you'll have lazy people who take advantage. But I'm willing to bet for every lazy person who just wants to sit around all day eating Little Debbies cake rolls, there are 100 who get bored and decide to actually do something with their lives.

Let's also take art into account. Sure it's useless and stupid because the free market doesn't approve, but imagine a world without it. GBI would provide for those who thanklessly and actively make our country a more beautiful place.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#275

Post by wycx »

ekianjo wrote: post #256
jgj wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free from wage slavery, citizens receiving basic income could spend time producing their own commodities. They could learn trades not to use in a career, but to reduce their dependency on others. I also think the premise that prices would rise and create a GBI death-spiral is far from guaranteed. With a GBI behind them, citizens could potentially be more likely to start their own businesses, increasing competition an…

> wage slavery Having a wage, is by definition, not being treated like a slave. Plus, in most countries you get a wage AND you are free to look for jobs everywhere around you, and to get them. Unless you mean that the concept of having to do something to earn a living is actually akin to slavery, but I'd rather say it's common sense. Even from a personal standpoint, most people would not really feel good to be paid t…

Debt slavery is probably a more accurate description of the citizens of developed countries with high house price to income ratios.

(Or large student loans. Will the basic income be enough to cover student loan repayments?)

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#276

Post by Nzen »

marcosdumay wrote: post #227
FD3SA wrote: post #180

Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society, which accounts for inherent human limitations and behaviors. Evolution is an extremely feckless game, and thus far we've been trapped by its whims, endlessly struggling in a free-for-all battle for survival. In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behavi…

It's not that easy to escape from Evolution. We can delay it for a time, if we keep our exponential growth going. Unfortunately, not for a really long time, unless we discover some way to grow beyond our galaxy. Anyway, basic income is important for this century we are on. For our lifetime. Things will get very ugly very fast if we automate everything and don't have some functional redistributing program before.

The centralizing power of automation is much more pronounced now than it has been in the past. This stems from the current focus on knowledge work tasks rather than repetitious, small problem-space labor. IBM's watson will price out radiologists and their pattern finding ilk. I found Martin Ford's [lights in the tunnel](http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/) enlightening and concerning. He too suggests a basic income.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#277

Post by bcheung »

ekianjo wrote: post #256
jgj wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free from wage slavery, citizens receiving basic income could spend time producing their own commodities. They could learn trades not to use in a career, but to reduce their dependency on others. I also think the premise that prices would rise and create a GBI death-spiral is far from guaranteed. With a GBI behind them, citizens could potentially be more likely to start their own businesses, increasing competition an…

> wage slavery Having a wage, is by definition, not being treated like a slave. Plus, in most countries you get a wage AND you are free to look for jobs everywhere around you, and to get them. Unless you mean that the concept of having to do something to earn a living is actually akin to slavery, but I'd rather say it's common sense. Even from a personal standpoint, most people would not really feel good to be paid t…

Unfortunately many people think that having to work for a living is somehow inhumane. I think the best solution is to let them form their own country and live amongst themselves so that those who value hard work and think it is a virtue can enjoy the fruits of their own labor.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#278

Post by Pinatubo »

FD3SA wrote: post #180

Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society, which accounts for inherent human limitations and behaviors. Evolution is an extremely feckless game, and thus far we've been trapped by its whims, endlessly struggling in a free-for-all battle for survival. In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behavi…

> empirically ethical society

Did you mean "ethics informed by empirics" or something like that? "Empirically ethical" is a logical contradiction.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#279

Post by jbuzbee »

hmsimha wrote: post #213
fishtoaster wrote: post #163

I haven't read much on BI, so I'm sure this has already been answered already, but: how do the numbers add up? The US poverty line for a single person is $11k. For simplicity, let's say BI gives everyone in the US $10k per year. Times 313.9 million, that's $3.1 trillion per year. The US government spent, overall, $3.45 trillion in 2013. How would we be able to afford basic income?

I'm guessing we would only need to divert a fraction of the money currently being used on weaponry and military to cover the difference.

You'd guess wrong. In 2012 the entire defense budget was $689 Billion.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#280

Post by kaliblack »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #175
kalvin wrote: post #164

I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having…

I'm not convinced that Basic income would necessarily deal with edge cases all that much better. A simple basic income implies that you provide everybody with the same minimum income and they cut back on public services etc to the minimum since in theory people can now buy what they want. But there are problems in that not everyone can live off the same amount of money. This is especially true with disabled or very i…

> A simple basic income implies that you provide everybody with the same minimum income and they cut back on public services etc to the minimum since in theory people can now buy what they want.

I haven't seen the reduction in services implied anywhere. It may, however, be a reality when implemented, but the intention isn't simply to change how government funds are spent on the poor. Generally, the aim is to redistribute wealth from the 'rich'.

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