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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

#501

Post by sirmarksalot »

cdoxsey wrote: post #126
summerdown2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. Everyone I've ever seen argue this has had strong opinions about how other (more greedy and venal) people would act. They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money. I suggest, instead, we try specifics. Given a basic income, I wouldn't be lazy. Nor would…

They, of course, would still work, but the great unwashed masses would sit on their backsides and take the money. The counter argument would be the existence of industries that people will already not work in. For example Italy has a 38.5% youth unemployment rate. It also can't get enough workers for the garment industry. So why don't the youth of Italy want these jobs? Maybe the work is seen as menial (so a cultural…

> So why don't the youth of Italy want these jobs? Maybe the work is seen as menial (so a cultural condition) or maybe the wages are too low.

If you can't make a living wage at these jobs, then by taking the job you are hastening your own demise. If you already have a living wage, then taking a low-paying job will give you a supplemental income. If you can work part-time at a low-paying job, then you can still spend your other time educating yourself or looking for a better job.

Also, if you can't fill your factories with the wage that you're offering, then the free market is telling you that you need to either increase the wage, or learn to make do with less, i.e. decrease output.

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

#502

Post by Zaytes »

abstractbill wrote: post #382
antitrust wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A program that you yourself benefit from tends to be less likely to get eroded by future politicians. This could be bad. Very popular programs never get reconsidered, even if they have bad effects.

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?

Prop 13 in California

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

#503

Post by TeMPOraL »

mynewwork wrote: post #235
hackinthebochs wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd. People will work, they just won't "work for the man" if they don't want to. They will do things they enjoy. They will be creative. They will play sports. They will volunteer, etc etc. Ask yourself: what would you do with your life if you had nothing to compel you into the daily grind for survival? If your basic needs were guaranteed to be met, what would you want to accomplish? Imagine a world where t…

Being a waiter, cook, barista, janitor, retail floor worker, or cashier are all 'working for the man' that few people really enjoy. So restaurants, coffee shops and basically all stores disappear in your proposed only "do things they enjoy" world. Which is good, because no one would work construction, or do plumbing, or review building permits for safety in a basement office in city hall for fun either, so there woul…

> Society can't function with people only doing things they enjoy.

Yes it can. Or rather it will. That's the whole point of this basic-income discussion. The source of the problem stems from the fact automation and software is systematically replacing humans in things they don't enjoy.

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

#504

Post by adventured »

100 million * $20,000 = $2 trillion

No matter how you shake around the minimum income scales, you'll end up near those types of massive figures.

That's $2 trillion dollars that doesn't exist right now and would have to be magically conjured up. And I suspect a comfortable wage would need to be higher than $20,000. I think the financial disaster of this arrangement would be closer to $3 trillion.

It's mathematically impossible.

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

#505

Post by pyrocat »

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.…

lol nice troll

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

#506

Post by antitrust »

penguindev wrote: post #121
cdoxsey wrote: post #59

I think in the end this wouldn't work. It'd play out something like this: A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. (Particularly when politicians push the basic income amount up to placate constituencies) Because workers bow out of the system certain industries lose productive capacity. Maybe we stop producing enough food, or enough fuel. Prices rise (assuming a…

I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels. What's really depressing is that not a single comment here or on the article even mentions this. Why the hell should I pay even more and subsidize those who have more than two kids?

> I'd be far more worried about this sending a false prosperity signal that could exacerbate our already insane and unsustainable population levels.

Hello there, person I'm very glad entered this conversation as you did.

You're talking about a great taboo. No one wants to admit that not every precious snowflake can do exactly what they want to be a shining star. Saying that we have too many precious snowflakes, or that we shortly will, is akin to saying that and it makes people nervous.

But there are a lot of us, aren't there?

And our population plan seems to be "Reproduce however you want until nature starts killing us off."

It could be that our coming jobs shortage is the result of too many people. Our geographic area is big enough that there will always be a certain number of jobs because of the different specialized tasks necessary in each locality.

But everyone wants a kid, and it seems the people who don't plan for those kids, whether rich or poor, have the most.

This worries me more than global warming, nuclear proliferation and synthetic marijuana (mostly jk) combined.

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

#507

Post by Retric »

jerf wrote: post #482
dasil003 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overweighting the relative influence BI can exert. Introducing BI as a tiny fraction of GDP does not make existing financial power structures disappear. Existing wealth will still wield the same influence it always has. There will be plenty of lobbyists to push back against corporate tax hikes, there will still be the usual capitalist incentives to start a business and increase production, the American…

"Introducing BI as a tiny fraction of GDP" OK, yes, but what's going to keep it a tiny fraction of the GDP? The BI's natural "lobbying organzation" is the entire public ... not even the entire voting public, but the entire public. No current structures have that characteristic. For almost the entire population, $10,000 is a lot of money . Even people making $150,000/year are going to still appreciate $10,000, and we'…

A BI is generally associated with a flat tax to pay for it. Aka everyone gets 10,000 a year tax free but after that all income is taxed at ~20% to pay for it pluss whatever else the government needs, net result increasing the BI costs everyone making over around 50k per year more money than they gain. However, the good thing is it's revenue neutral for the person near 50k. And adds 5k to someone making 25k per year so there is no disincentive to work a low paying job to like with the current social programs.

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

#508

Post by TeMPOraL »

lettergram wrote: post #249

I disagree with this article almost entirely. Yes, labor jobs are on the decline, but service jobs are staying steady if not increasing. The "demand for unconditional basic income" is a joke, yes it's possible to attempt to initiate something where every person receives $10,000 a year, but the money has to come from somewhere. If the money for this basic income comes from taxation, then both the government loses net…

> The point is basic economic theory define this as an impossibility.

Because "basic economic theory" goes out of the window when technology starts doing everything for you. You can't escape from labor being free to services, because services are next for machines to eat. And after them are knowledge workers.

The pillar of our economics is scarcity. Money is needed to allocate scarce resources, because there is in general always more demand than supply. But the moment "resources" (food, manufacturing, energy) gets dirt cheap, the whole concept loses sense.

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

#509

Post by comrade_ogilvy »

sliverstorm wrote: post #487
thwest wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's an incredibly cheap dismissal that's simply not true Examples, please, of books that investigate socioeconomic status & race that have not been called racist? Because I can't think of any. By the way, I'm not talking about literary explorations of race like "Huckleberry Finn". Although that was called racist too. There are orders of magnitude more genetic [...] diversity among each race than there are between…

Well, you could read Stephen Jay Gould's The Mis-measure of Man.

Or you could read The Bell Curve. It is positing a small difference between "races", a difference so small that it is very minor compared to the expected range of deviation for a populace.

The idea that there is a scientifically definable thing called "race" lacks data. That is your row to hoe if you believe other. Skeptics are not required to disprove the existence of the tooth fairy, Nessie, or "race".

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

#510

Post by dasil003 »

jerf wrote: post #482
dasil003 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overweighting the relative influence BI can exert. Introducing BI as a tiny fraction of GDP does not make existing financial power structures disappear. Existing wealth will still wield the same influence it always has. There will be plenty of lobbyists to push back against corporate tax hikes, there will still be the usual capitalist incentives to start a business and increase production, the American…

"Introducing BI as a tiny fraction of GDP" OK, yes, but what's going to keep it a tiny fraction of the GDP? The BI's natural "lobbying organzation" is the entire public ... not even the entire voting public, but the entire public. No current structures have that characteristic. For almost the entire population, $10,000 is a lot of money . Even people making $150,000/year are going to still appreciate $10,000, and we'…

> The BI's natural "lobbying organzation" is the entire public... not even the entire voting public, but the entire public. Even people making $150,000/year are going to still appreciate $10,000, and we're now talking well above median.

Then why couldn't we get universal health care passed through decades and decades of attempts?

I think you are assessing the human psychology factor incorrectly. The US population is not a lobbying organization. Just because something is in their interests does not make people rally behind a cause. A lobbyist has an agenda, but the very existence of BI does not make it everyone's agenda to increase it. The person making $150k has better things to worry about than exerting pressure to increasing BI, and in fact, will likely be a business owner and someone that is very receptive to the argument that raising taxes will hurt production. Similarly, raising BI is not a cause that fuels people's competitive spirit and drive for meaning. Certainly there will be a socialist contingent that does have that agenda, but I don't see why you are so convinced that it will inevitably become a runaway train.

> You can't use our experiences with things that well less than half the population gets to judge the effect it will have on voting patterns.

Exactly what I said previously—we're both speculating.

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