A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

Post by n72 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 6:17 PM UTC

MicroBerto wrote: post #535

n72 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mice don't play soccer, compose symphonies, do crosswords, watch TV, etc. In other words, we're considerably better filling our leisure time than they are. (I'm 43. 'Kiddo' is slightly insulting and, dare I say, condescending.)

> Mice don't play soccer, compose symphonies, do crosswords, watch TV, etc. In other words, we're considerably better filling our leisure time than they are. Yup, all those bored teens and violent criminals are going to be playing crossword puzzles and composing symphonies all day now that their rent is paid and bellies are full. I gotta get out of this thread. I may be bitter and pessimistic about humans, but you pe…

Post by msandford » Tue, May 03, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #497

msandford wrote: post #381

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Remember also that people's wants are effectively unlimited in aggregate. If we could all have 100 foot yachts and spaceships and Ferraris we collectively in large majority would choose to have those things. You know, in the absence of any negative consequences for those actions. A beef carcass might have 500 pounds of meat on it, but only 5-10lbs of that is tenderloin. If we all have enough money to buy tenderloin i…

You know, in the absence of any negative consequences for those actions And there's the rub. Even if we could make 500lb all-tenderloin cattle you wouldn't see people buying hundreds of pounds of beef tenderloin for themselves every day. Billionaries like Bill Gates can already afford millions of pounds of tenderloin yet you don't see him eating that. Basic income might cause the price of tenderloin to go up a little…

Post by randomgyatwork » Tue, May 03, 2016, 6:36 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #146

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…

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

Post by gaius » Tue, May 03, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #383

gaius wrote: post #17

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The basic income will provide only the basics - if you want luxuries, you will still need a job.

Is having a child a basic or a luxury? This idea seems to be built on a notion that there are needs and that their are wants, and that we are only going to give enough to supply needs. But there are two major underlying problems with this. First, even if we assume that needs and wants exist, you aren't going to have agreement on what falls in what category. For starters, is having children a need or a luxury? Is a cl…

Post by hasenj » Tue, May 03, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

arximboldi wrote: post #23

amelius wrote: post #5

I'm still wondering about one thing: if everybody has a basic income, then who will be doing the dirty jobs like collecting our waste? Will the price for waste collecting go up? And will there then be a kind of economic "inversion", where the intellectual people prefer to work on interesting stuff at the expense of money, while the "non-intellectual" (need a better word here) people will make all the money doing the…

I don't know if that would actually be the case, but if it were, the question would be: is it actually a bad thing? I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste [1]. In fact, it is normal that as our society gets more educated and the supply of unskilled workers goes down, a lot of hard manual labor will become expensive. This is already the case with mining,…