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A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

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Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#371

Post by notahacker »

brightball wrote: post #236
gjm11 wrote: post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

To make it work you'd have to take whatever the amount is and extract it from all other government benefit programs. You get $700 / month from the government for basic income. Your social security, welfare, unemployment, disability, etc is reduced by $700 / month. Reducing all of those programs by the first $700 would effectively gut each of them enough to finally make some reforms without inducing panic in everyone…

Why would you get bipartisan support for the FairTax? Redesigning the tax structure to favour millionaires (massive net beneficiaries because their US consumption expenditure is usually a tiny fraction of their capital gains tax and/or income tax bills) over the middle classes (no matter how high the stipend is someone has to pay for the millionaires' tax cut) isn't exactly a popular proposal even on the right

That said, agree with your main point that making BI deductible from [mostly] retained existing benefit entitlements is the least messy way of introducing it, but it also makes it more politically difficult since it's paid for purely by tax increases.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#372

Post by humanrebar »

ww520 wrote: post #354
humanrebar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to get in on it, buy Treasuries. Let them eat cake? > ...they desire to avoid deflationary spirals. I've never really understood this. Dropping prices (see the recent changes in oil prices) are really good for the impoverished, at least in the short run. If we are really talking about a post-scarcity economy, wouldn't deflation indicate efficiency and be a good thing?

Deflation in the entire economy is bad. Deflation in asset is ok as long as there are more cash offsetting the asset deflation. Basic income is one way to get more cash into the economy.

Wouldn't across-the-board efficiency gains look like across-the-board deflation? That is, wouldn't automation in and of itself cause hoarding? Why buy a TV this year if the one next year will be better and cheaper?

Also, hoarding would theoretically only be a problem for the middle and upper classes since the working classes can't afford to save. But the middle and upper classes already hoard, more or less, when they buy and hold real estate.

So what's the risk exactly?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#373

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #316
pjc50 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone's that highly productive they'll still be able to earn enough that going out to work would make economic sense. Or they could have the fathers change the diapers.

If someone's that highly productive they'll still be able to earn enough that going out to work would make economic sense. This is absolutely true in a free market with no labor distortions (BI, tax, etc). However, we already live in a world with distortions (taxes, welfare, regulations) that drive a wedge between economically optimal and actual choices. How would adding an even bigger wedge help? Also, due to women'…

Actually I can't imagine anything closer to the "free market" utopia than a labor market with basic income.

The current market is not free because people are forced to offer their services if they don't want to starve. That's a huge distortion that you would remove with basic income.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#374

Post by fucking_tragedy »

Aoyagi wrote: post #210
mcv wrote: post #130

Interesting how this article spins Basic Income as something of particular interest to conservatives while liberals would object to it. I suppose that can help sell the concept to highly partisan anti-liberals, but I know plenty of liberals and progressives who strongly support Basic Income. The idea that the people employed in the bureaucracy managing the current mess of programs losing their job is a silly concern.…

10k? That's almost the average income (or more, depending on how you count taxes) of the Czech Republic. If I had to choose between living in a 2nd world country and working and living in a 1st world country and not working for the same money, guess which I'd choose?

You're ignoring that $10k/yr is well below the poverty rate in the US. That's abysmally poor.

I'm sure you'd like the $10k/yr + working option better if rice and dog food don't sound like appealing staples.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#375

Post by dilemma »

howeyc wrote: post #333
dilemma wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in San Francisco? 2. Can an unemployed single parent of two support themselves and their family on $10,000 per year in Detroit? 3. Why? 4. See 3. 5. What are the proposed benefits of UBI?

No, it's about having enough to live in the USA. Not about having enough to live where you want at your special snowflake standard of living. Yes, you may only get enough to live awesome in "the middle of nowhere" or whatever. So what? If you want to live in San Fran, find a way to get the money to live there.

So under UBI, if someone in San Francisco, NYC, DC, Seattle, etc. loses their job, they should move to rural Wisconsin?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#376

Post by Unklejoe »

cujo wrote: post #348
Unklejoe wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool idea. I'd advocate for an age of 25 though. An 18 year old these days is still a child. Give them a couple years into the drinking age to get their bad decisions out of the way.

Sounds like you should advocated for a drinking age of 25 instead. Or move all those other things you get to do at 18 to 25 also.

I think we should actually lower the drinking age. It's currently 21 here. In fact, being 18 really gains you nothing here other than the ability to join the military and get into trouble with the law.

My main point is that a few years should go by after a child enters into the adult world before they have access to a fund left for them.

There's usually a short "reckless" period immediately after graduating high school and college. However, this usually calms down after the initial shock of having sudden freedom wears off.

I have two friends who inhereted $20,000+ sums of money from relatives when they were in their late teens, and both of them pissed it away in under a year. Looking back, both of them seem to regret it.

(Me and my friends are all around 25 years old).

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#377

Post by gumby »

jackreichert wrote: post #227
timlyo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article is talking more about the difference from the current system. > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 trillion. These retirees can be excluded from the calculation because they are already being paid, they wouldn't add any additional cost to the system.

Is it fair to say they're being paid if they paid into the system paying them for their entire working lives? Can someone please explain why people call Social Security an entitlement? Am I missing something?

Yes. The SS system is clever, but it required a lot of sleight of hand to get it into place -- but that approach has kept it alive for 80 years so far.

First, SS is universal rather than means tested in order to garner enough support to keep it in place. It's ridiculous that someone with millions in assets will receive a relatively small SS payment each month once they turn 70, but if the system had any decision making in it, it would eventually be gutted by those who "only want it to go to the deserving", with all the misty, hoop-jumping etc that you get with welfare assistance. Essentially money is wasted on the wealthy in order to make sure those who really need it get it.

Second: "they paid into the system" is deliberate propaganda. We all "pay into the system". Dollars are fungible -- one marked "social security" on your paystub is no different form the one marked "federal income tax" any more than the electrons in your GPU are the same as the ones in the CPU. And we are entitled to the benefits of air traffic control, food safety, schools etc. And in practice the SSN money does work that way: how do you think it's "invested"? It buys government bonds.

It's a cumbersome fiction, with rich kabuki elements (I myself appreciate the wasteful "statements" that some idiotic congressman decided should be sent to every recipient). Claiming you paid for it so you were entitled to it was a clever idea.

This crazy system arrived because the model people had was private pensions; many people didn't or couldn't invest in them so the Roosevelt administration developed "a pension fund for everyone" in the face of stiff opposition. It was very similar to the difficulty of implementing Obamacare: the whole ludicrous infrastructure was designed to bring insurance companies into the system rather than sit beside them. So SS is much more efficient than Obamacare because the opposition wasn't as effective back in the early 1930s.

This whole "you paid for it" scheme has other pathologies as well: the tax is regressive. The people who need it pay a higher proportion of their income than the people who don't. That's just cruel.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#378

Post by humanrebar »

cdash wrote: post #263
humanrebar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to get in on it, buy Treasuries. Let them eat cake? > ...they desire to avoid deflationary spirals. I've never really understood this. Dropping prices (see the recent changes in oil prices) are really good for the impoverished, at least in the short run. If we are really talking about a post-scarcity economy, wouldn't deflation indicate efficiency and be a good thing?

Debt is the problem. The majority of Americans have a large amount of debt and if income goes down, which is what will happen in a deflationary spiral, how are they going to afford to pay off their debt? It also encourages hording of money and doing nothing with it as it becomes more valuable over time.

Debt is a good point, but I'm not sure it's the government's job to pay off all debts. If the original contracts are untenable, that seems to be the source of that problem.

As for hoarding, what's the argument? That people will make Scrooge McDuck bank vaults and take baths in their gold coins? People will still need to buy things eventually, right?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#379

Post by random_upvoter »

Unklejoe wrote: post #315
goda90 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or instead, give it universally to children, but require a certain percentage be saved in some sort of fund that they are given full control of when they turn 18. That way the parents don't have to shoulder all of the expense of a child, but the child isn't screwed over by irresponsible parents either.

Cool idea. I'd advocate for an age of 25 though. An 18 year old these days is still a child. Give them a couple years into the drinking age to get their bad decisions out of the way.

That is mainly because "these days" 18 year olds are no longer empowered to make any relevant decisions. You propose to keep treating them like children for seven more years. The day they become 25 you'll say "My gosh, they're 25 now but they're STILL like children!".

It is my opinion that this huge collective distrust towards youth is one of the biggest hidden problems of today's society. If it was up to me, kids would get a basic income from the age of 14.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#380

Post by pbhjpbhj »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #250
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>funneled resources toward consumption (since rich people invest, poor people consume, and we've shifted resources from rich to poor) // That's a natty turn of phrase but I'm calling bullshit. Rich people invest with the excess financial wealth they have after they've consumed hugely more than a poor person. Give me more money and I can afford to eat better (reduced healthcare burden), can repair my house (reducing t…

If you believe that the rich consume and the poor invest, then the best stimulus during times of recession is tax cuts for the rich. I take it this is your preferred policy for the next recession? There is no particular reason investment has to come from rich people. That's just how western economies seem to work. As I noted, in Namibia, poor people do seem to invest new wealth.

Where did I say that the poor invest (they do, in The West, eg in pensions, but we're talking generalities)? We're all clearly consumers. Rich people costume more than there share, they still have excess financial wealth to invest.

Redistributing this would allow poorer people opportunity to take part in investment which in turn should lead to more redistribution.

Tax increases for the rich in recession would (with a similarly naive analysis to the one you proffered) reduce the tax burden on the poor and allow then to become richer, increasing their consumption. Millions can buy a new TV instead of one person getting a yacht.

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