People voting themselves bread. I'm sure this will turn out well.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out if it gets passed, but I hope it does. I'd much rather Europe be the guinea pig.
This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
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Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#32"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citi…
Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .
> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare.
That seems to be a conclusion without any premises, woefully short on data and implicit but imprecise definitions of 'efficient', 'helpful' and 'welfare'.
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#33I will never support this idea. This is kind of thinking is extremely nationalistic: I am entitled to free money because I was born in XYZ. On top of this, this idea has very weak economics fundamentals, there is no prove that growth comes from redistributing wealth. There is plenty of prove growth comes from innovation and innovation comes from people actually working. We are in denial. The whole Europe is in denial…
> This is kind of thinking is extremely nationalistic: I am entitled to free money because I was born in XYZ.
It's just a technical change in the way we redistribute wealth. Do you think that wealth redistribution is wrong? There are many arguments suggesting that zero wealth redistribution is not the optimum.
> there is no prove that growth comes from redistributing wealth
I'm convinced that wealth redistribution leads to higher aggregate utility. Whether it leads to higher nominal growth, I don't know.
> Instead we propose the exact opposite.
Basic income would make public spending more effective.
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#34"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed." Well, they should have written "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It’s an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citi…
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Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#35Nice to see but what is with the mountain climber image which reminds me of someone who would have plenty of free time and cash for such a hobby. Is the idea to be "upwardly mobile" ? I mean I have to grasp for that idea.
No one likes looking at poor people.
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#36People voting themselves bread. I'm sure this will turn out well.
Are people not allowed to do that? In democratic regimes?
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#37I'd not heard of the basic income concept until now so my reaction might be naive, but what benefit could possibly justify the collection and redistribution of a fixed amount of cash to everyone , regardless of their situation? For example, if 1 person in 10 is thirsty, what benefit derives from giving water to all 10 versus the 1 - isn't that simply a wasteful distribution of resources? Even in the extreme case wher…
To construct a trivial example, say we give every citizen $2000 a month in post-tax basic income. Of course, most citizens have jobs and other sources of income. To make math easier, assume this government has a flat income tax of 20% If you earn $0, you are pay $0 in tax and get $2000 in basic income. If you earn $9000, you pay $1800 in taxes and get $2000 in basic income, netting you $200. Basic income washes at $1…
This is the answer that made most sense to me - I'll attempt to paraphrase;
The net benefit of basic income for an individual tends to zero (percent) as the individual's income rises.
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#38People voting themselves bread. I'm sure this will turn out well.
Technology and automatization of production is changing everything, the more we raise productivity the less people can satisfy our needs for products.
Do you propose we just start shooting people who are below the skill level required for sustaining the economy?
I for one would like to avoid living in a Logan's run type of universe. Thank you very much...
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .
For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs. Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.
Milton Friedman proposed negative income tax _in addition to_ guaranteed income. Worth noting that the US has partially implemented negative income tax (we call it EITC) - it's working really well and should probably be expanded (probably worth taking money from other welfare programs if it comes to that).
Re: This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .
> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Is this empirically proven somewhere? Or is that what its proponents are saying? Forgive me if I'm a little cynical when someone tells me an idea they support is a much better form of welfare than what we currently have but doesn't back it up with proof.
How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? At the very least we would save a ton of money on bureaucracy and corruption.