401–410 of 761 posts
They'll give basic income but soon they'll establish exceptions for some categories of people that will receive something more. Then an othe category, then an other.
In the end it will be exactly like before, except it will cost much more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
10k/year for 50m is 500b. Throw in 100% overhead and targeted welfare providing equivalent benefits is still half the price of BI. Note that the current level of welfare is $20k/person so you are advocating a massive reduction of consumption for the welfare class. (I don't object, just pointing it out.)
It didn't say people on welfare get $20k/person. They don't get anywhere near that. That's how much the government spends to administrate giving them welfare (including managing means testing to prevent people from abusing it) as well as the welfare itself. I'm pretty sure US welfare is somewhere around $500-900/mo, and if you get a job (thus, work towards becoming a 'productive member of society') you may lose it.
http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/taxes-and-cliffs...
Consumption data agrees.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt
I haven't read much on BI, so I'm sure this has already been answered already, but: how do the numbers add up? The US poverty line for a single person is $11k. For simplicity, let's say BI gives everyone in the US $10k per year. Times 313.9 million, that's $3.1 trillion per year. The US government spent, overall, $3.45 trillion in 2013. How would we be able to afford basic income?
Think "working-age adult" (perhaps even "household") not "individual". Also, assume that taxes will reclaim that basic income from folks making significantly more than the poverty line. According to Wikipedia, only the bottom quartile of the US population earns less than $22500 per household; if you assume that BI isn't simply added on tax-free to higher-earning households' net income, that makes it more like 1/4 of…
- Can you really exclude kids? They still need someone to support them. They may not get their 10k, but their parents need extra (presumably around 10k for each child) to support them.
- If you switch to a means-tested system (the article actually advocates for everyone gets 10k, not just the poor), don’t you lose many of the benefits the article advocates? Eg, you go back to the complexity of having to determine who’s eligible, rather than gaining the efficiency of just saying “everyone”.
- A means-tested system also creates the perverse incentive that the article’s BI would bypass: people near the threshold for BI have a weakened incentive to work extra for fear of losing or lessening their BI.
Edit: Actually, a comment lower down points out that our social security expenditures were $1.3 trillion in 2013[0], so that's our lower bound. "Income derived from Social Security is currently estimated to keep roughly 20% of all Americans, age 65 or older, above the Federally defined poverty level." Since BI would replace SS, we'll be paying at least that amount to start with.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This basic premise(MVP) exists on American Indian reservations, quasi-sovereign states. The BIA and the Tribe distributes an equal share of funds from either the government or gaming to each tribal member. As long as you can prove you are a tribe member, you get the funds. Feel free to visit any of these reservations and see the kind of lives they live. I grew up surrounded by them in Arizona and went to school with…
I suspect that situation has more variables involved than simply a minimum basic income.
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…
Edit: rough calculation in other comment
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Naturally you have to "raise taxes" (in a nominal sense) at the same time you add a basic income, so that the added income is cancelled out for middle-class and wealthy people, and the net amount of redistribution stays more or less constant. It's still a big win, since you've taken all of the various benefits agencies and collapsed their roles into that of the IRS or equivalent tax agency, which has to exist anyway…
If it's really more efficient than the current system, it should be fundable from the existing entitlements. Just dismantle the programs, fire all the bureaucrats running them, and divert all these funds toward the basic income. If it requires another tax then it's not an alternative, it is an expansion of the welfare state.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Naturally you have to "raise taxes" (in a nominal sense) at the same time you add a basic income, so that the added income is cancelled out for middle-class and wealthy people, and the net amount of redistribution stays more or less constant. It's still a big win, since you've taken all of the various benefits agencies and collapsed their roles into that of the IRS or equivalent tax agency, which has to exist anyway…
Back of the envelope calculation please - that will clarify your vague words and reveal many arithmetic errors (if such are present).
We could get between $6k and $7k annually per citizen by swapping those plans for a basic income. If children don't count, we could bump that to maybe $10k. Obviously, this change would need to be taken gradually to not cause too much disruption.
To hit that $20k number, we'd need to increase taxes. Increasing consumption taxes would be fair. Since the flat credits is very progressive, it's OK to pay for it with a regressive sales or value-added tax.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with rewarding laziness is that you get more laziness. Rewards by definition are meant to encourage behavior. I disagree that it can't be stopped. Don't give them money. Stopped. I'm not arguing that it isn't hard. You don't need to work 16 hours a day to provide for themselves. But you do need to work more than 8 hours a day if you don't have resources and want to get ahead. Once you start having some re…
> Don't give them money. Stopped. How would you go about doing this? Who gets money and who doesn't? Is a single mother raising 3 kids lazy? Is an artist who works night and day and gets pennies in return lazy? There's a lot of overhead in deciding this. A lot . > That fact that other people won't buy their work is not a problem of other people. It's their problem. So, my point that art is only worth it's value to th…
You get money if someone agrees to pay you for goods or services rendered. Period. No overhead.
There will always be unfortunately situations. Charity and family can help. Knowing there will be consequences for your actions and that you can't ask people to bail you out is another.
They definitely aren't lazy. I greatly respect those people. I'm still not going to pay for their lifestyle though.
In the case of the artist, I was in that situation. Minimum wage would have been an order of magnitude more than I was making. When it didn't work out, I took responsibility for my situation and changed what I was doing to something that society would pay for.
I got a day job and it sucked. I hated it. I moved into a warehouse with a friend to save money and so I could pay off my $30K of credit card debt faster, I built myself a room with lumber purchased on credit card, built in the evenings after I got off of work, hands numb from all the hammering I was doing when framing (which I had to teach myself how to do), getting woken up at 6 AM every morning to the sound of industrial saws and compressors from the unit next door, trying to work on the weekends when it was 100 degrees in my room because there was no AC, paying $500/mo in credit card interest, buying food on credit card, having my friend pay down my credit card with checks I would endorse to him because any checks I deposited in my bank account would be seized by the IRS because I didn't have enough money to pay my taxes. Then to make matters worse my friend and I got laid off. So, we decided to try to make our own startup and worked our asses off. When the finances couldn't bare I decided to give in and find a normal day job again.
Yeah, it sucked. But I didn't whine about how I'm a victim and how others need to give me their hard earned money. I manned up, took responsibility, changed what I was doing, and slowly over the course of many years dug myself out of the situation. I wasn't doing what I wanted to but I was digging myself out of the hole I dug from my failed ventures. Eventually I completely paid off my credit cards, and car loan. I even got a motorcycle to make the commute easier and paid that off completely as well. Now I'm making decent money at a place I enjoy doing programming, saving up and trying to figure out how to invest in real estate. I had to go through some lousy programming jobs before I found the good ones.
I went from a really horrible situation, deeply in debt, no college degree, and now I'm doing well for myself. I don't see why I should be forced to pay so others don't have to work as hard and/or make the hard decisions to grind through what needs to be done.
So yeah, people may be in some really crappy situations. So what? They need to stop whining, stop expecting handouts, and do something about it.
> So, my point that art is only worth it's value to the general population stands. That makes it more entertainment than art. Please note the distinction.
Noted. I see the difference. But that begs the question, what is the value of something that society doesn't value? lol
I'm not changing my mind that people should get to do whatever they find interesting at other people's expense though.
> However, I do think there's something to be said for giving people more of an opportunity to do what they like. After all, we all tend to do better work when we're doing something we want to be doing.
Ideally yes. As technology grows people need to work less and less and they will have more time to pursue their own interests. Also, if you want to pursue your own interests, go through the grind first. Once you have resources you will have more time and money to pursue your interests. It's much easier to work hard first and then enjoy things, than to dig yourself into a hole because you don't have the resources. Trust me. I know. lol
I actually saved up for years at a job I hated before I felt I had enough money to do the photography. I failed miserably, but then I did what any toddler would do. Get back up and try again.