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It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

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Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#341

Post by hahainternet »

ahomescu1 wrote: post #252
hahainternet wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as a policeman gets fired, he becomes worthless to you?

That's an excessive over-simplification of my point. And to answer you: no, he doesn't become "worthless" to me (whatever that may mean), but I will stop paying him for his services.

The fact is that the healthiest situation for any society is for every member to be able to afford to meet their basic needs with a little extra income. This is clearly not possible through a purely free job market. 'Sacrificing' some of your income to maintain this society and permit mobility is in your best interests. Who's to say you won't be the next one fired, or your child?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#342

Post by aianus »

mynameishere wrote: post #249

Every time a post like this comes up it gets hundreds of people supporting the idea. The problem is that most of the readers of HN have been in the Upper Middle Class or higher their entire lives. Friends, family, co-workers, all UMC, and so you don't know, you've never experienced, the pathologies typical of poorer people. Or, you pretend those pathologies can be solved with a new variation on welfare. Giving out ch…

What's wrong with 1)?

I'd rather have robots clean the toilets and free these people to watch TV and eat chips or get high or whatever they would prefer to spend their lives doing.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#343

Post by ahomescu1 »

buzaga41 wrote: post #321
ahomescu1 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying that taxes are theft is as absurd to me as saying that private property is imoral. I'm not arguing that "taxes are theft". I'm arguing that giving money to poor people so they don't attack me is theft. buzaga was saying that if I/we don't "take care of the unfortunate", they'll decide to take our money/stuff by force. Sounds like a veiled threat to "give them money, or else..." That is theft, in my opinion.…

+misery = +violence -misery = -violence +people participating in the economy = +business, +salaries better society = better society for everyone You still can't seem to think outside your box it seems. Misery breeds violence, there's no "or else", there's no "they", it's reality, I could resort to violence to survive and so could you.

By that logic (extending it a bit), we could fire all the cops, and just give our money over to criminals who ask for it. There's a point at which I draw the line, and prefer to fight instead.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#345

Post by ahomescu1 »

buzaga41 wrote: post #293
ahomescu1 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are not, but society is an organism with more than you in it, and if he's thrown into the bin because he's can't make it in it the guy may think it's fair to take it from you... I already had a similar discussion on Slashdot recently. Taking other people's money by force is, IMHO, theft. My question then isn't why it would be OK for the guy, but why does theft become OK for society? Why are you arguing that ste…

Of course it's acceptable. Depending on the circumstances, killing can be acceptable, eating human flesh can be acceptable, why wouldn't stealing be? It's not taken from you, if everybody receives basic income, how can it be taking from you? You're missing the point.

> Depending on the circumstances, killing can be acceptable, eating human flesh can be acceptable, why wouldn't stealing be?

Maybe you find those acceptable, but I find all of them horrible. Killing someone is only acceptable in self defense (in which case someone else is trying to kill you first), while cannibalism is just sick.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#346

Post by in2liberty »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #313
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…

...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,... Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone. Consider a…

I'll provide far more napkin math - and I deploy a frictionless work requirement - and it cost not a dollar more than we spend today:

https://medium.com/p/1d068ac5a205

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#348

Post by tartuffe78 »

orthecreedence wrote: post #288
Noxchi wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So take from the rich and give to the poor.

No, take from everyone and give to everyone. In a non-biased way. Hey, the rich get their $1k check every month too.

But that's only getting back part of the $1000+ that was taken from them

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#349

Post by gamerdonkey »

enraged_camel wrote: post #328
adekok wrote: post #229

I'm reading the comments, and surprised at what's missing. What happened to the business approach? The US government is delivering a large number of products with wildly varying costs, efficiencies, and price points. e.g. unemployment, welfare, food stamps, etc. There is a proposal is to replace those products with only one. The new product fills (mostly) the same need as the existing ones. It will do so at less cost…

>>Who the hell cares about random welfare guy ripping off the system? If you're making over $40K per year, you're getting ripped of by the system. By your system, that you demand to keep in place. The USA is a deeply individualistic society. For most people, the default mindset is "me vs. those other people," and your average American will do anything (including tolerating a grossly inefficient system) to make sure "…

Oddly, you've also just summed up the reasons behind many of our copyright and patent issues.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#350

Post by Oculus »

>>It is the most efficient possible form of wealth redistribution because there is no bureaucratic overhead needed. More money reaches the poor directly.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite will occur with an entirely new three letter agency being responsible for the distribution.

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