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Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

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Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#461

Post by steveklabnik »

ezxs wrote: post #458
steveklabnik wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me more about basic income in the USSR? The wikipedia page on basic income doesn't mention it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Examples...

Basically the government guaranteed to get you a job with a basic income. All seemed like a good idea "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" until folks realized that the people deciding basically were the ruling class and the working class now worked out of fear of Gulag instead of financial rewards.

That is _not_ what Basic Income is. That's full employment. Totally different.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#462

Post by dasil003 »

agilebyte wrote: post #417
jerf wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my biggest concern with the idea, which I don't see being addressed (checked the entire conversation on this post to date). I don't think having the vote and having the basic income is compatible with each other. Why aren't people going to vote themselves larger basic incomes every year? How can you both have the (modern conception of the) vote, and a basic income at the same time? Attempts to answer this que…

Agree with you. How does one enforce people hopping borders from places that have no universal income policy? How do we deal with sovereign states that are allowed to set their own tax policy and thus legally become an offshore tax haven?

The same way we always have. What do either of these issues have to do with BI?

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#463

Post by thwest »

sliverstorm wrote: post #384
speeder wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain?

The book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve Reading the summary at the top of the Wiki entry, it's already not surprising the book has been labeled racist. Any book that discusses race, inheritance, and socioeconomic class always gets called racist.

That's an incredibly cheap dismissal that's simply not true. There are plenty of books that look at those issues from a humanist perspective.

The Bell Curve is labeled racist because it is myopic about the existence and importance of race. Race is not a valid scientific categorization: it is not based on statistical grouping of DNA, or anything concrete other than "people used to be assholes to foreigners." There is an order of magnitude more genetic + cultural diversity among each race than there are between the races.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#464

Post by kbolino »

superuser2 wrote: post #429
jerf wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my biggest concern with the idea, which I don't see being addressed (checked the entire conversation on this post to date). I don't think having the vote and having the basic income is compatible with each other. Why aren't people going to vote themselves larger basic incomes every year? How can you both have the (modern conception of the) vote, and a basic income at the same time? Attempts to answer this que…

Inflation exists. They should vote themselves a larger base income every year (unless it's automatically pegged to the CPI or something).

If there was a UBI, then the yearly raises everyone voted themselves would be a significant cause of inflation.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#465

Post by TeMPOraL »

jsnk wrote: post #351
zxcdw wrote: post #313

I don't understand how people oppose unconditional basic income without also opposing the fact that automation decreases the amount of working hours available for a person(or in other words, the amount of jobs ), and thus decreases the amount of income per person, while maintaining productivity stable if not increasing it, thus making all sorts of goods cheaper. Someone enlighten me. These discussions always seem so…

Historically speaking, automation in various fields greatly increased number of jobs, productivity and quality of life.

But it also systematically replaces low-skilled jobs with high-skilled ones. You can't expect a low-wage factory worker to change into control engineer overnight, nor a clerk will be able to program automated checkout machines.

Nowdays new jobs are simply not accessible to the people who get replaced. I think what people don't get when discussing it is that historical (XIX century) examples don't apply because our computer-based automation is something different than their mechanical automation; robots can do any low-skilled thing humans can, which wasn't the case during Industrial Revolution. It's not just about doing stuff faster.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#466

Post by makmanalp »

recusancy wrote: post #371
tokenadult wrote: post #174

I see no one in this active discussion has mentioned yet Charles Murray's book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 in which Murray goes into detail about how much a program of guaranteed income for everyone would cost in the United States, and some probable effects that would have on everyone's everyday behavior. I read the book a year or two after it was publi…

From the author of the overtly racist Bell Curve.

I think there could be a better explanation for this:

There is an impression that your IQ score is a fixed thing that you're born with, but in reality you can "study" for the IQ test and get better scores at it. There is also the whole issue that IQ scores have been rapidly rising in the past few decades.

This might just mean that IQ score merely acts as a proxy for socioeconomic status and education level and a bunch of other factors, and it doesn't really measure your true maximum intelligence potential.

Thus, the fact that some groups have lower IQ than others wouldn't necessarily point to them being inherently / genetically disadvantaged.

As an aside, I don't know anything about the book or the authors' alleged motivations, but if they truly had no agenda, it's not very fair to be called racist because the result of your research says something politically incorrect, and you conveyed your true results to the best of your knowledge. This kind of torches-and-pitchforks behavior is just as bad for the advancement of knowledge as fudging up the numbers for ideological motivations.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#467

Post by pille »

127001brewer wrote: post #345
beachstartup wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see welfare vs. disability

As I have just posted elsewhere in this thread, disability seems to be a type of "basic income". [1] [1] http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ Edited for clarity.

One of the biggest problems with disability pay is the barrier it creates to joining the workforce. Losing payments when you get employed is a huge disincentive to looking for employment. That's the opposite of what UBI is trying to do.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#468

Post by mncolinlee »

el_zorro wrote: post #445
abstractbill wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to help me better understand what you're saying, can you give an example of a program that's very popular, and which has bad effects?

Surely Social Security wasn't meant to be the biggest item on the Federal Budget. I suppose you can argue about its popularity, but it has become enormous.

Would you mind mentioning any one thing which federal government does which should be more costly than providing a livable income to everyone over the age of 65?

Our Federal Government is not responsible for most of the major functions of governance because our states cover most functions. Also, we aren't at war with a major foreign power.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#469

Post by harryh »

zxcdw wrote: post #313

I don't understand how people oppose unconditional basic income without also opposing the fact that automation decreases the amount of working hours available for a person(or in other words, the amount of jobs ), and thus decreases the amount of income per person, while maintaining productivity stable if not increasing it, thus making all sorts of goods cheaper. Someone enlighten me. These discussions always seem so…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#470

Post by tareqak »

crazygringo wrote: post #73

> "How would we pay for it? We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes." I don't know why people keep harping on corporate taxes. If anything, taxing corporations is regressive -- the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels. Taxing corporations doesn't produce magic money -- it's still taxing people in the end, but it's the consumers.…

What I personally don't understand is the reluctance to tax consumption as opposed to production.

From my point of view, it is easier to decide how much to tax a particular good or service e.g. a luxury car vs. a basic car vs. public transport. Another example would be a salon visit vs. a doctor visit. In addition, sales taxes are less personal (maybe even less controversial). As opposed to taxing "me" or "you", tax that "thing". Finally, sales tax seems easier to enforce since it is applied at the point of sale. However, I will admit that it's easy to avoid paying sales tax if transactions are paid for by cash.

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