551–560 of 669 posts
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The system breaks down when people get to democratically vote for their own UBI. Why work extra for a cool car or nice vacation when you can just vote for more benefits?
People could already vote for free cars to citizens, but they don't because the economics are terrible. I don't see UBI making that risk worse.
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because in the scheme described the effective tax on your income is positive (the more you earn, the more is transferred away) as opposed to negative (the more you earn the more is transferred to you).
What you are describing might intuitively sound like what a negative income tax should mean, had you never heard of a negative income tax before, but that is not what a negative income tax is. A negative income tax, which is a name for a type of benefit system, does not mean that people are literally negatively taxed, regardless of their income.
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I always interpreted the point of the programs as by taking immediate insecurity off the table, you are allowing people to make more long term decisions for their well being.
Growing up I was in a negative leverage situation, even though I was smart and hardworking I was bled financially and I had to spend effort to layer contingency after contingency before I could even drive. This gave my life negative torque, the moment I got a little leverage, I stacked up roommates and basically lived like a digital ascetic for 12 years. I ended up in the top 1% of earnings for my starting co-hort no…
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>Germany shifted to a system that is as close to a basic income as you can currently imagine. It is free money for everyone. Everyone obviously excluding the people who work full-time and who are paying taxes so that "everyone" can live of Bürgergeld. >but especially for those relying on government money... Yes, those are the real victims here. Who else could be victimized by working full time, so that other people d…
> It is free money for everyone. Everyone obviously excluding the people who work full-time and who are paying taxes so that "everyone" can live of Bürgergeld. Oh wow, the exact thing people have been saying would happen has happened. Turn's out Quasi-UBI is a drain on tax paying citizens after all. Amazing.
I cannot even name one thing that is not broken beyond belief. The conservative government has added the debt ceiling to our Constitution requiring a 2/3 vote to change it, thereby making investments like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US utterly impossible. However, they are needed for dozens of reasons, not just the collapsing infrastructure which will directly impact our economy.
Conservatives, Greens, Liberals and Social Democrats have all completely failed at running this country for 40+ years. Russian-supported fascists AfD are obviously not an alternative.
We are coasting on the gains, relationships and industries established before 1990. This is where our standing and wealth comes from and we are simply riding on that high until it pops.
I can go deeply into all of the troubles but Ill keep it simple: the state of the military is entirely representative of the state of ALL other sectors. That should be relatable to non-Germans. I am not exaggerating for karma, my deepest worry is the condition of the real estate / housing market. This is material for a complete shit show, it honestly scares me.
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>That takes work that apparently does not need to happen for any other reason than economic, not because it is valuable in and of itself. Value =/= Work. no extra work is happening at the burger shop. you still need X hours to make Y hamburgers. If anyone works less, fewer people eat. The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere). >So why does it need to be created in the first pla…
> The extra value is extracted from the buyers (many of whom are workers elsewhere). Who could, in turn, work less if burger prices didn't reflect the need to pay investors more than they invested. > In theory, people have proposed doing away with the profit signal, but the only alternative is trial and error from a political process. You can always measure by actual consumption. > By way of analogy, Walmart has a 2%…
>Who could, in turn, work less if burger prices didn't reflect the need to pay investors more than they invested.
This then invokes the problem that if everyone works less, less is produced. Even if you raise salaries, the options are the same. A) Same hours, same amount of goods to buy, or B) fewer hours, fewer goods to buy.
This is why I am saying "value" is entirely besides the point. What matters is production and consumption. you could cut salaries by 99%, and if production is the same, prices go down 99%. You can double salaries, and if production is the same, prices double.
The amount of "value" an investor has locked up doesnt change this. all that matters is the consumption of investors. If Investors are buying and eating all the hamburgers for themselves, yeah, that impacts workers. If they stick it a locked box of reinvested stocks, it has exactly zero impact.
>You can always measure by actual consumption.
Yes, this has been proposed in the last 150 years of economic literature. The challenge is who measures it, and who controls it. Remember, we already no that the market isnt perfect. The question is if it is better than a realistic alternative. Do you think a panel of elected republicans and democrats, with all their campaign promises, lobbyists, and personal product desires would do a better job of keeping the super market stocked?
>Note Walmart is subsidized by government programs that pay their employees because the wages Walmart pays are considered too low for survival.
Lets be honest about what is happening here. Voters feel bad and want people to have more money than Walmart needs to pay them to secure their work.
Calling this a subsidy is rhetoric. Walmart doesn't need the programs. Walmart will have enough workers either way, or even raise the wage to secure workers if they need to.
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> Maybe the real victims are the people who have to work full time and are suffering from the increased cost of living? If this was a genuine concern there wouldn't be so many people skimming off the top of every nation on the planet. We're surrounded by parasites and you're picking on people running calorie deficits for some reason.
>If this was a genuine concern there wouldn't be so many people skimming off the top of every nation on the planet. We're surrounded by parasites and you're picking on people running calorie deficits for some reason. Wrong. The only way to go hungry here in Germany is by choice. The people "skimming off the top" are not the ones paying millions upon millions in taxes. It is those who are to lazy to work, because they…
This very rarely ever happens by accident. It's a useful policy hack for people "who pay millions in taxes" because it disincentivizes their workers from pushing for a pay raise.
This way they can leech more of the surplus value of their labor.
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Income taxes wouldn't need to-- nevermind. Okay. Please stop nitpicking and either defend your claim about "100% socialization of income" or admit you were wrong. Sorry for saying irrelevant words, I will try to minimize them. A flat tax increase of 20% of income minus 12k would be far from ideal, but anyone making less than 60k would have less taxes, anyone making 60k-120k would have a 0-10% of income increase, and…
At the end of the day, I have fun I don't think you are 60k number is right, or your 12K number is sufficient to cover all of the cost of living a comfortable life. This is fundamental to the difference. I think the desired level of Ubi is on par if not higher than the average American Income. This leads to the 100% redistribution claim. It is very simple. If we assume the average income is 60k, urinalysis is still w…
> I think the desired level of Ubi is on par if not higher than the average American Income. This leads to the 100% redistribution claim. It is very simple.
You think the "desired level of UBI" is more than the median income? You're talking to caricatures and fools, not real advocates. And you should have said you were talking about far more than $1000 a month significantly earlier in the conversation.
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I know you really want to believe it, but this is bs: look at inflation statistics in Europe and you'll see that the effect you're imaging doesn't exist. There's no excess inflation in Germany compared to everywhere else in the EU. Also Bürgergeld is $500 a month for an adult, which is very far from "You can easily live from the Bürgergeld ". Survive maybe but definitely not "easily live". The labor market issues in…
> Also Bürgergeld is $500 a month for an adult, which is very far from "You can easily live from the Bürgergeld". Survive maybe but definitely not "easily live". You're leaving out a ton of information there. The 500 Euros is after everything else has been paid for. There's also lots of benefits like Kindergeld, money for each child you have.
People living out of it are living in absolute misery, well under the poverty line.
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> It is free money for everyone. Everyone obviously excluding the people who work full-time and who are paying taxes so that "everyone" can live of Bürgergeld. Oh wow, the exact thing people have been saying would happen has happened. Turn's out Quasi-UBI is a drain on tax paying citizens after all. Amazing.
German here, our country is broken beyond recognition due to 40 years of terrible political decisions independent of party or political side . I cannot even name one thing that is not broken beyond belief. The conservative government has added the debt ceiling to our Constitution requiring a 2/3 vote to change it, thereby making investments like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US utterly impossible. However, they…
And more and more of that is either going bankrupt or is being outsourced to China. Whole sectors are step by step becoming non-competitive. Manufacturing, which has been the most important wealth generator for the lower middle class, is going away. Engineering is only relevant if you can innovate, which for many, many reason doesn't really happen. In Germany a very experienced Software developer makes a pittance compared to what you can in the US with much less experience, even before taxes.
Of course it doesn't really help that much of the population is not particularly inclined to do anything engineering/scientific/manufacturing related and actively looks down on that.
>my deepest worry is the condition of the real estate / housing market
Honestly, I am "optimistic" that multiple big manufacturers will fail before that, together with their suppliers.