I feel like this basic income ideology is really rooted in laziness - like, everyone likes free things, right? You don't have to work for it? But - do we ever really ask where that money is coming from? The rich just give it? So then, why would I work hard to become rich, if its just going to be taken from me? Its like income tax. Everyone loves paying tax on their income, right? (I, personally, do not.). So why don'…
You assume rich people worked hard.
I've seen rich people with baby soft hands that never worked hard. And I've seen dirt poor people with a broken body because of all the work. It's disgusting how you invoke fairness and justice.
This looks more like an exercise by someone trying (and in my opinion failing) to pass an ideological Turing test than a real argument.
What is an ideological Turing test? I don't think I understand your parenthetical remark.
The "ideological Turing test" is the attempt to argue for a position indistinguishably from a supporter of that position, when you yourself are not. If you can't convincingly do so, it's strong evidence you do not understand what supporters believe. Related to, but not identical with, "steelmanning".
Well, it is free money, that's the point; but neither that nor being "socialism" automatically makes it bad. This article is an interesting way of pitching basic income to a "capitalist"/right audience by phrasing it in ways like "basic income is fuel for markets", "buying is like voting" (!) and "I like markets. I want to reduce the size of government. I want less bureaucracy. I want less administration. I want fewe…
The Monopoly comparison is apt: even if you've got free money, there's no guarantee all the capital won't end up with one player.
Basic income is a bottom-up stimulus package, like how bailouts for banks are "stimulus" packages but nestled in Reaganomics, i.e., expecting the money to trickle down. Except that bailouts sequester the money almost exclusively in the banking industry and so are useless for everyone except those who are already rich, and the government itself. Basic income fills the economy with money that can be really spent, and l…
How about I just point out the huge flaw here: Bank bailouts, in theory, are to be paid back, with interest. In a lot of cases they were. Not all, of course, but the economy turned. Net, bank bailouts were a good investment. QE may turn out to be as well (I may doubt that, but truth it the jury's still out) If that same deal can be made, believably, for basic income, we wouldn't be having this argument: we'd provide…
> What we cannot have in the economy, is a large, and potentially exponentially growing, group of expenses without any useful work.
The solution would be to implement it so it forms a self-regulating feedback loop. It is indeed true (and tautological) that a basic income can only be as large as it can be. But it's also quite clear that in most circumstances this amount is not zero. And there is a lot of useful work done by people who don't get paid for it.
"First, saying basic income is socialism is as absurd as saying money is socialism. It’s money. It’s all it is. What do people do with money? They use it in markets. In other words, basic income is fuel for markets." The brilliant flow of thoughts and deduction just blew my mind.
If Basic Income isn’t socialism, I shudder to think of what the author would consider socialism.
I want to write a loooong point-by-point rebuttal but I'm just too lazy. Now if I were awarded a basic income maybe I'd take out a day and write it up! But here's a summary: I am in the top 20% whose income is still going up and whose tax will be used to pay out the UBI. What's in it for me? Why should I care? I really don't. And all the politicians are also in the top 1% (POTUS is a fucking billionaire, former POTUS…
The poor won't burn your neighbourhood and threaten your children. That's what's in for the rich. That sounds dramatic, but look at Brazil, and you can see that what I'm saying is not hyperbolic.
There is a huge correlation of the success of one person and their surrounding. In other words, for ones own interest the success of those around one is important. Helping the weaker helps a lot of other people.
> Everyone should get enough money to be able to refuse to work. That way, the incentive is shifted to employers, where it should be. Want someone to do something? Pay them enough to do it.
This sounds nice in theory, but how doesn’t this result in price inflation? Not only are you going to be taking a portion of businesses’ profits in taxes, but now you are increasing the cost of labour. And frankly, some jobs suck so badly that no one is going to want to do them without being paid a ton of money. For example, manual agricultural labor. Food costs would almost certainly skyrocket. (Unless you account for illegal immigrants, which you couldn’t naturalize because then you’d have to give them a UBI).
I want to write a loooong point-by-point rebuttal but I'm just too lazy. Now if I were awarded a basic income maybe I'd take out a day and write it up! But here's a summary: I am in the top 20% whose income is still going up and whose tax will be used to pay out the UBI. What's in it for me? Why should I care? I really don't. And all the politicians are also in the top 1% (POTUS is a fucking billionaire, former POTUS…
The alternative to UBI for you is that you either spend the rest of your life in a castle or your head ends up on a spike.
It isn't a coincidence that Thomas Piketty is a Parisian, you can still see plenty of signs of the Revolution on buildings around the city.
I feel like this basic income ideology is really rooted in laziness - like, everyone likes free things, right? You don't have to work for it? But - do we ever really ask where that money is coming from? The rich just give it? So then, why would I work hard to become rich, if its just going to be taken from me? Its like income tax. Everyone loves paying tax on their income, right? (I, personally, do not.). So why don'…
Comparing it with laziness is not far away from saying poor people are lazy. Laziness has nothing to do with it. More often than not, such claims are often connected with not seeing hidden privilege as a competitive advantage. Of all of my successful friends, only one come from a socioeconomic environment that isn't middle class or above. The ability to climb on the socioeconomic ladder is much harder for those witho…
In my opinion, informed by what I’ve witnessed personally amongst my peers, poor people are lazier, at least in a statistical, group-average sort of way. This isn’t meant to contradict anything you say about privilege or economic status of parents. In fact kids learn that hard work and contentiousness pay off from their role models, parents, and peers. So successful parents end up having successful kids, and the phenomenon is not explained fully by Dad’s connections. Saying it’s “privilege” is only the beginning of understanding. There are some aspects of personality that parents are imparting to kids, and if you’re interested in helping the rest of the kids, you have to understand what that is.
How about I just point out the huge flaw here: Bank bailouts, in theory, are to be paid back, with interest. In a lot of cases they were. Not all, of course, but the economy turned. Net, bank bailouts were a good investment. QE may turn out to be as well (I may doubt that, but truth it the jury's still out) If that same deal can be made, believably, for basic income, we wouldn't be having this argument: we'd provide…
In risk adjusted terms bailouts lose money by having easier terms than private investments. Further, bailout money came from loans (bonds), and the government lost money both from the loan payment and the higher interest rate from selling more bonds. People in prison do no work yet society has plenty of surplus to cover them. The reality is minimum wage jobs are a tiny slice of the economy because they create so litt…
> In risk adjusted terms bailouts lose money by having easier terms than private investments.
That's similar to saying I lost money because a bank offered you your mortgage for 4% when I could have lent you that money at 10%.