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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

#301
post #225
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager there will be people who will take advantage of the system and use it as a opportunity to not work and laze around all day however those people will be the one who are not particularly productive in their work anyway. They might find something else to do they might not but that's OK it is an acceptable loss. On the other end companies which used to take advantage of the job market and the fact that ever…

I imagine partitioning living NEEDS [housing, food, transportation] as an area of the economy with its own money/token/basic-income-credits system separate from the WANT economy of everything else.

I've thought about this, too but I can't figure out how you'd prevent those tokens from being bartered for more traditional currency outside of the necessary conversion by landlords and grocers and other providers.

With ubiquitous computing now available to everyone we might be able to fully track that sub set of transactions with 'currency with state and history' as opposed to traditional 'dumb dollars' but I think it would be a hard problem getting it to play nice with the traditional currency economy.

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

#302
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and my take on people arguing for basic minimum income have not understood the human nature. communism was doomed from the beginning as they were removing all incentives to do something useful in the long therm.

There is a huge difference between everyone gets exactly the same regardless of merit* (communism) and everyone gets a guaranteed income on which you can just barely make a living (basic income). The second doesn't disincentivize working, as you still get increased rewards if you work or work harder. * Unless you are in a position of power of course, then you deserve more.

> There is a huge difference between everyone gets exactly the same regardless of merit* (communism)

Everyone getting exactly the same regardless of merit has nothing to do with communism. So much so that Marx spent a lot of time criticising this idea and tearing it totally apart whenever someone raised it (Critique of the Gotha Programme has a substantial section on this subject).

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

#303
post #83
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

everyone has a personal project that gets sidelined for their work. For many people that project is to watch their favorite TV shows while eating their favorite ice cream.

No it isn't. That isn't their personal project. That's all they have the choice of doing. Most people do those things because they're tired after working hard all day for a wage that doesn't give them enough money to do anything but sit in front of the television. If people had the opportunity to work a bit less in their job so they could do something worthwhile and fulfilling in their spare time, most people would t…

"a few of them end up just enjoying themselves"

The studies about people that win money that I've seen paint a different picture: 75% lose it all within 5 years by not spending wisely. It's the same with professional sports players and it's gotten so bad, they have started getting them mandatory professional money managers. I believe there is a Netflix documentary about it called "broke".

People that inherit money also end up losing their money at crazy rates unless they already had good money management skills/work for a living/were taught these skills by their parents.

I don't see how this would be any different with a basic income. Not to mention the inflation caused by it. For starters, all businesses will have their prices raised automatically to pay for the new taxes imposed on them.

In the very beginning, it might be okay in terms of economics. However, as the years go on, more and more people will start relying on this basic income and we will have entire generations of people depending on it to live.

Costs will only increase and there will be less people actually contributing to the tax base, so the only way to continue to pay for it is tax increases on the middle class and everyone else making a living. It's basically just another wealth transfer scheme to people that never earned it.

The sad fact is that the vast majority of people never really appreciate things they haven't earned and although a basic income sounds nice in theory, it's a flawed idea that is doomed to fail.

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

#304
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richer countries have lower birth rates. Richer men in the same country have more kids. PS: I think I just misread your comment. By "national scale" I thought you meant in the same country.

Ok, I think I should have written "international scale", I apologize for the confusion. I don't know of any study on national level, i.e. of families in a single country. The only thing I know of are anecdotes and stories about very poor families having 5+ children.

I have seen this stat from a few studies.

EX: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/kids_are_normal....

Higher income > more kids, Higher education > fewer children.

This seems fairly obvious as people are less likely to have children and stay in school. But, as I understand it the effect is larger than that.

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

#305
post #225
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager there will be people who will take advantage of the system and use it as a opportunity to not work and laze around all day however those people will be the one who are not particularly productive in their work anyway. They might find something else to do they might not but that's OK it is an acceptable loss. On the other end companies which used to take advantage of the job market and the fact that ever…

I imagine partitioning living NEEDS [housing, food, transportation] as an area of the economy with its own money/token/basic-income-credits system separate from the WANT economy of everything else.

Maybe, but there's strong evidence (from the field of macroeconomics) that allowing people to just receive money (rather than payments in kind) makes them even better off. Although you may fret about people using the money for bad things, in reality mostly they don't, but they are better at allocating resources than a central planner. Think of it this way, to the citizen who actually wants to be better off, would you rather be able to cut your spending in order to make a smart investment or not be able to do so?

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

#306
post #73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager there will be people who will take advantage of the system and use it as a opportunity to not work and laze around all day however those people will be the one who are not particularly productive in their work anyway. They might find something else to do they might not but that's OK it is an acceptable loss. On the other end companies which used to take advantage of the job market and the fact that ever…

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.

Do a thought experiment. Imagine that the entire UK were walled in by an impenetrable barrier enclosing the country out to the boundary of its exclusive economic zone, and every record and memory of ownership were wiped away, such that no one could be entirely certain who owned what. Stimpson J. Cat pushed the History Eraser Button.

On the morning following the event, some boffins assemble and work out an emergency plan for re-establishing a workable economy, on the assumption that one existed before everyone forgot what it was.

Now, with no memory of the past, does the UK have the land, labor, and capital to completely provide for the needs of its people? If that costs £X per year, can the people of the UK produce £X of economic output per year, and with the correct proportions of goods and services?

(For your reference, the UK represents approximately 4% of the global economy.)

I reached my own conclusion as a result. It is completely workable mathematically. It just doesn't work within the existing legal tradition. That's the one that respects property and contracts--the one we all like because it's what we rely on to assure ourselves that the car we drove to work will still be there when we knock off for the day, and the house we go back to won't be full of grubby squatters when we get there.

But as much as we like it, those with more wealth, who lack the will or the imagination to spend what they earn--to keep the production-consumption economy circulating efficiently--like it more. It keeps the grubby middle class from building ugly-but-productive anthills and beehives within sight of their beautiful-but-inefficient homes, yachts, and luxury resorts. And that is what stops the socialist schemes to erase poverty--we just don't have the stones to commit armed robbery to do it. The middle class largely pays for itself, and no more, so the only available source for the necessary resources to haul the lower classes out of poverty is the rich, including the synthetic rich people better known as corporations.

So you swallow your lofty free-market, shalt-not-steal ideals, abandon your pipe dreams of one day being in the upper class, and you tax the rich at near-extortionate rates. Naturally, they would want to flee such a tax regime. Let them. Just stop them from taking the productive capital with them as they go.

It might work out like France. It might work out like Venezuela. It might work out like the USSR. But if it doesn't work out, it won't be because it is a mathematical impossibility. It will just be because someone made a wrong assumption in one of the thousands of possible places to make a mistake when trying to re-engineer an entire national economy.

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

#307
post #77

When I see that discussion about basic income I am always wandering, who is going to pay for that? I assume the money will not be printed (this would not help, as inflation would make that income very small). So the country that applies such policy must have some way of finding money. Some countries have natural resources that they can sell, so the problem is solved. But how about the rest? I guess this will be finan…

When I see that discussion about basic income I am always wandering, who is going to pay for that? The typical justification is that it pays for itself in simplified management, improved education, lower crime, etc. I haven't seen the sums, but given that the US incarcerates 1% of it's population at exhobitant (direct and indirect) cost, it doesn't seem that unrealistic. Let's forget about the question if this is mor…

> "given that the US incarcerates 1% of it's population at exhobitant (direct and indirect) cost"

Isn't part of the problem there that the US Prison System is a for-profit industry?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pz3syET3DY

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your basic math is assuming the money is distributed to everyone. Wouldn't it make more sense to only give it to adults? That knocks out probably about 25% of the population so you're looking at 48 million. That gets us to £5000/year. Of course the article mentions differences between what single people get and what couples/families get which would also bring down the numbers.

The reason for that is to cover the cost of raising kids (in my extremely basic example). If the idea is to replace things like welfare, food stamps or whichever programs cover the cost of raising children, I think it's easiest to assume that everybody gets the same dollar amount (the de-facto average amount). There's a lot of ways to try to dice up the numbers (family size, married/unmarried, etc), but I think as a basic example, the numbers are fairly solid.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it is - it's been a while since I studied economics but I beleive it's called negative income tax.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's evidence on a national scale that birthrate is anticorrelated with wealth. The better off people are on average, the less kids they have.

is it a smooth relationship, or is it more of a step function with 1 steps?

I always suspected that the reality was more like "people who are able to afford children and able to make long-term plans tend to have only as many children as they want, when they feel they are ready, but people who aren't able to afford children or who don't make long-term plans will tend to take a more devil-may-care attitude towards procreation."

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