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It Is Time For Basic Income

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Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#531

Post by boomlinde »

pdonis wrote: post #273
whyme wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption? I didn't make any claim to suggest why poor nations are poor, did I? I simply suggested that as poor nations evolve, their people will consume more.

What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption? You said we would need 5 planets worth of resources if everyone lived at an American standard of living. That would only be true if it took a full one planet's worth of resources for everyone at the standard they are living at now. But it doesn't; we aren't using the full productive capacity of planet Earth now, not even close, and a…

The American standard of living is inherently based in part on the standard of wastefulness. Our attitude towards wastefulness in general is a prerequisite for many of our liberties worldwide. If you remove these properties from the equation you don't really have the American standard of living anymore.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#532

Post by growupkids »

msellout wrote: post #407
yummyfajitas wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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…

Consumer spending will increase and therefore also tax revenues. More importantly, we can cut other programs to recover the difference. Edit: rough calculation in other comment

Exactly how does consumer spending increase if it's just redistribution? And assuming it does, why is that good? What about consumer savings being reduced due to less net income for the earners?

I'm having trouble seeing how this could work. If gross income generated, not redistributed, doesn't change (this doesn't create more work completed, it just moves income to someone else). then how is new wealth generated? It seems like spending would likely be the same, if not be reduced due to friction and overhead which would reduce net income across the board (wealth redistribution isn't free, so if new wealth isn't generated, then net income seems like it must go down, and aggregate spending would also go down).

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#533

Post by 3pt14159 »

ja30278 wrote: post #526
yummyfajitas wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. There are cheaper policies than BI which don't do this. One example is Basic Job - if you need a job real bad the government gives you a really bad job. This has no poverty traps, and (unlike BI) has no disincentive for work. You also get to avoid spending money…

Exactly so. I don't understand why the 'Basic Job' idea doesn't get more traction. For all of the talk about a 'post work' world, I still see plenty of work that needs doing, every day.

Basic Job is stupid because it leads to silliness like building bridges with hand labor instead of machines.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#534

Post by bertil »

contingencies wrote: post #525
bertil wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest example of something similar that I can think of are Nordic countries: there is very little verification on your claims (outside of records associated to a constantly used unique identifier) and the entitlements are significant. It works rather well there, but it generally comes with a pre-existing massive social pressure that prevents any abuse; Finland might be the exception to that social monitor (peop…

The closest example of something similar that I can think of are Nordic countries: there is very little verification on your claims Late last year I was in Denmark, where ATMs are rare and plastic is king. I was reliably informed that the government didn't like people using cash and that as a business owner if you used more than a few thousand kroner per year you were audited. Furthermore, when you put in tax returns…

Use a few [hundred dollars] -- for what?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#535

Post by growupkids »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #175
kalvin wrote: post #164

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…

I'm not convinced that Basic income would necessarily deal with edge cases all that much better. A simple basic income implies that you provide everybody with the same minimum income and they cut back on public services etc to the minimum since in theory people can now buy what they want. But there are problems in that not everyone can live off the same amount of money. This is especially true with disabled or very i…

Additionally, the cost of living varies widely, for example, in the US. Between climate differences (it costs more to stay warm in Alaska in the winter than it does in Florida), logistical differences (fuel costs more in Hawaii than it does in Texas), to real estate costs (housing is more expensive in SF, CA than in Norfolk, VA), to transportation costs (parking in NY is more expensive than in Jacksonville, FL), etc.

So the amount of income necessary to survive is going to vary by location, sometimes substantially. So a universal income wouldn't be tenable either, as one dollar doesn't buy the same things everywhere. How would you calculate what that should be without market forces?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#537

Post by thaumasiotes »

ja30278 wrote: post #526
yummyfajitas wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. There are cheaper policies than BI which don't do this. One example is Basic Job - if you need a job real bad the government gives you a really bad job. This has no poverty traps, and (unlike BI) has no disincentive for work. You also get to avoid spending money…

Exactly so. I don't understand why the 'Basic Job' idea doesn't get more traction. For all of the talk about a 'post work' world, I still see plenty of work that needs doing, every day.

Well, Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing. There's a fundamental conceptual problem with it:

Imagine I, for whatever reason, accept a Basic Job from the government. The job is, by design, bad. I'd rather not do it. So my dream scenario is that I officially hold a Basic Job and draw its meager salary, but instead of doing whatever work it supposedly entails I sit at home and watch TV.

This scenario isn't just an improvement in my life -- it's also an improvement for everyone handling me! The work doesn't need to get done; it's only there as a penalty for me, to encourage me not to draw the Basic Salary if I don't really, truly need it. So when I save myself some effort by not showing up for work, I also save my handlers effort that might have gone into overseeing me. Just as it's easier for me to stay home, it's easier for them to pretend I didn't than to track whether or not I did anything. So overseeing Basic Job is conceptually pretty difficult.

I don't claim that this is more or less difficult to deal with than the problems of any other welfare system, but it is an obvious and fundamental flaw in the concept, and might help explain why it's hard for Basic Job to get traction. On a shallower level, the concept of "pay someone to dig a hole today and fill it in tomorrow" (a.k.a. The Basic Job Concept), has been the go-to example for exactly what we don't want government to do for a long, long time. That can also make it difficult to get traction.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#538

Post by yummyfajitas »

3pt14159 wrote: post #533
ja30278 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly so. I don't understand why the 'Basic Job' idea doesn't get more traction. For all of the talk about a 'post work' world, I still see plenty of work that needs doing, every day.

Basic Job is stupid because it leads to silliness like building bridges with hand labor instead of machines.

If labor is abundant and machines are scarce, why is this stupid?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#539

Post by thaumasiotes »

wazoox wrote: post #507
yummyfajitas wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbers, please. And see my other comments on the disincentive to work - in the pilot projects, BI was a massive work disincentive.

Notice that work disincentive is a plus, not a minus, when there are millions of unemployed people.

Exactly how is it a plus? The goal isn't to make a nominal "unemployment" statistic go down; it's to create valuable things. Your comment makes me think "a receding tide lifts all boats".

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#540

Post by boomlinde »

dredmorbius wrote: post #482
ende wrote: post #385

Replace income tax with land value tax. Then it's not redistribution of income. The argument for a land value tax is Georgist: land is not property because it is not the product of one's own labor. Therefore land 'owners' should pay rent to society in the form of the land value tax (though not on the property built on the land). That rent is then paid to society as a universal basic income. (And to preempt those who…

How does a lands tax comport with the fact that some acres are hugely more productive (or extractive) than others? It's not in the US, but the First Oil Well in Bahrain, which has been providing oil since June 2, 1932. For much of its life at 70,000 bbl/day, more recently at about half that rate, 35,000 bbl/day. That's roughly $3.5 million per day in productivity. There was a time, and Henry George came well after it…

If it's not a "lands tax" but a "land value" tax, if some acres are hugely more productive they are also hugely more valuable, and at best they are taxed accordingly.
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