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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

#351

Post by s73v3r »

dagw wrote: post #65
Sir_Substance wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority of people are not. You're vastly over-estimating the general population. The majority are lazy, and if given money, will sit watching reality TV and stuffing their face with ice cream. I've always felt that this argument against basic minimum income said more about the arguer than society at large. In my experience, everyone has a personal project that gets sidelined for their work.

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's not. That's what they do to try and escape the stress from having a shitty job. Which they have to do in order to have a roof over their heads.

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

#352

Post by Silfen »

budu3 wrote: post #348
Fuxy wrote: 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…

How will you deal with inflation? Wouldn't the sudden influx of many cause the price for basic goods, rent etc to go up?

If you pay for basic income with tax dollars, it will (theoretically) cause no long-term inflation.

See: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...

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

#353

Post by Retric »

MSM wrote: post #336
Retric wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have heard the opposite from many studies as well. You linked a post that spawned many, many rebuttals by various organizations. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-w... http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-a...

Both of those ignore the education factor.

Basically if you have two groups of American born, collage educated men, with of the same age then income positively correlates with number of children. But, if you compare collage dropouts vs. people that have PHD's then the PHD population makes more money and has fewer kids. So, education is a huge confounding factor.

We went from 14 being a reasonable age to start a family to 24 or even 34 being the 'reasonable age' that's a huge impact. But, ‘wealth’ as an independent factor aka adjusted for age, education, country etc becomes a positive factor.

PS: Historically, starvation also limited family size.

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

#354

Post by TTPrograms »

budu3 wrote: post #348
Fuxy wrote: 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…

How will you deal with inflation? Wouldn't the sudden influx of many cause the price for basic goods, rent etc to go up?

Inflation doesn't necessarily follow. If everyone was given a 10% raise then you would get inflation, but a fixed distribution results in a very different effect. One possibility is that people would purchase roughly the same amount with the lower classes having free time to educate themselves rather than working minimum wage jobs. I mean, I can't imagine somebody throwing their lives away just to buy another loaf of bread or bottle of milk every week.

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

#355

Post by s73v3r »

anticon wrote: post #222
just_had_tea wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...in which we learn the real reason you're against UBI—dirty immigrants. I really fail to see how this can be anything other than an argument for more fair/equal wealth distribution in the world. If most countries had similar schemes, then why would the "good for nothing immigrants" go to supposedly scrounge in the US?

If we redistributed wealth around the world, everyone would be poor, unable to start companies, etc etc. Does that really solve anything useful? You do realise that if you redistributed wealth over the world, you would be drastically worse off don't you...

That's a lie and you know it. Isn't the refrain parroted here all the time something about bootstrapping your own company? Self funding and all that? While a couple people like you might throw a tantrum and decide not to participate, I imagine there would be 5x that many in poorer places in the world who would be able to more than make up for it and start amazing companies.

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

#356

Post by s73v3r »

anticon wrote: post #64
Sir_Substance wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority of people are not. You're vastly over-estimating the general population. The majority are lazy, and if given money, will sit watching reality TV and stuffing their face with ice cream. I've always felt that this argument against basic minimum income said more about the arguer than society at large. In my experience, everyone has a personal project that gets sidelined for their work.

Seriously? Do you not think you're in a bubble of 1%ers? Most people aren't itching to start a company you know... Most want to watch American Idol and do nothing.

The more I read your posts, the more I imagine you're just someone who's scared that they won't be able to have a bunch of employees paid minimum wage at his beck and call, that he can treat however he wants because they're dependent on him for a job.

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

#357

Post by s73v3r »

notahacker wrote: post #122
robmcm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony that you chose American Idol as the TV show is delightful. It's a prime example of people often from impoverished background trying to better them selves rather than sitting around doing nothing :)

Alternatively you could interpret American Idol as people spending one day a year pursuing an unlikely dream of lavish wealth before going back to the couch to see how the few contestants that made it through get on :) I'm not sure "practising for reality TV shows" falls into the category of self-actualisation I'm particularly keen to uproot the economy as we know it to fund.

Wouldn't that be similar to startup culture, though?

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

#359

Post by chimprich »

paulhauggis wrote: post #303
onion2k wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

With all due respect, I think you're really confusing two arguments here; that of wealth distribution and the concept of basic income.

The idea of a basic income does not imply a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor or indeed anyone. You could set up a basic income system tomorrow in your country of choice and set the level of basic income and tax levels so that everyone, at least in the beginning, was receiving the same amount of cash they were before.

One advantage of the idea is that the poor would be more likely to find work because the marginal reward is so much better, leading to more wealth overall and sharing out the tax burden more. At least in theory.

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

#360

Post by s73v3r »

dantheman wrote: post #160
jokoon wrote: post #155

I live in france (10% unemployment), and unless you're listed as seeking work, you're not given welfare. It's odd because they don't really check that you send resumes, nor do they really try to contact companies or just propose you a shitty jobs. The "get a job" mentality is really weird to me, because if you have freedom, and you can't find a job that suits you or that you're just too humiliated to beg all those em…

That money has to come from somewhere, it will either reduce the consumption from where it was taken or it will reduce capital stocks that can be used for investment.

"or it will reduce capital stocks that can be used for investment."

Doubtful. Lots of cash is sitting idle.

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