I make more than $100,000 a year, but I'd gladly quit if I had a basic income that let me lay around at home all day and read library books.
A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
581–590 of 840 posts
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'll have to agree to disagree. And as I say, step outside your bubble. The vast vast majority of the population reject basic income, in favour of a meritocracy, where the harder you work, the more money you can earn. Confiscating money from everyone, and then distributing it equally amongst the population (Regardless of whether they need it or deserve it) doesn't sit very well with people.
>The vast vast majority of the population reject basic income, in favour of a meritocracy, where the harder you work, the more money you can earn. Then the vast majority of the population are rejecting basic income for the wrong reasons. Nothing about basic income invalidates meritocracy. In fact I would say it strengthens it. No longer is the rat race composed of a hodgepodge of willing, unwilling, and incompetent w…
Mind explaining how intentionally reducing the explicit tangible rewards of personal merit strengthens a meritocracy?
Is critical thinking no longer a thing?
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#583I see two basic issues: 1. How do you implement this whithout border control - if you create a basic income that is higher than ~1/2 the world's income the amount of illegal immigration will be huge 2. Will we really have the will to tell people who are starving because they lost their stipend to drugs or gambling "too bad"?
1. Most likely the UBI would only go to legal permanent residents. 2. It's at least no worse than today for those people. Support groups will still exist. If you distribute money frequently (e.g. weekly) it might help a little in preventing catastrophic situations where people lose it all. My concern here is that the payday loan industry grows instead of shrinking (tough to predict these types of things).
1. while that is likely the case, since we grant citizenship to those born here (who i believe can then sponsor their family), the obvious choice would be to move here illegally and have children.
2. many current programs today limit what can be bought (SNAPS) or provide the service directly (low income housing), that's not to say there are not ways around this or that dollars are not fungible, but I do think there is difference
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#584I see two basic issues: 1. How do you implement this whithout border control - if you create a basic income that is higher than ~1/2 the world's income the amount of illegal immigration will be huge 2. Will we really have the will to tell people who are starving because they lost their stipend to drugs or gambling "too bad"?
which one of those problems we don't have now, again?
we obviously have both, which would seem to be exacerbated by such a plan.
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery. People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me? If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you expect some stranger to do it ex…
So much for sanitation. How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the displeasure of the job? Believe it or not, there are jobs that need to be done, but nobody in the world has a passion for them. Employment isn't about fear or force. It's about two parties agreeing that they each come out better after the transaction of selling labor…
Employment is in fact often about fear or force.
I work a day job because the state will literally show up with police and guns if I went out into the mountains and lived off the land. Therefore unless I want to starve I must work. Even when it's on shit I hate.
I am lucky enough to have a skill that is sufficiently valuable that I can survive despite disabilities making it difficult to work.
If you imagine that the labor market is free because it happens to mostly be positive sum, you haven't lived at the bottom of the labor market for any length of time.
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're might not be holding a gun to his head, but at the end of the debt collection chain there is more than enough coercion and disenfranchisement to keep people doing things they don't want to do.
you know, most people in the US are capitalist. if you want to push the idea of a basic income, it's probably not a good idea to get all communist-y and stuff.
because pointing out the non-state chain of force is so much more out of fashion than the "taxes=theft" of the ur-capitalist rand worshipers?
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone's that highly productive they'll still be able to earn enough that going out to work would make economic sense. This is absolutely true in a free market with no labor distortions (BI, tax, etc). However, we already live in a world with distortions (taxes, welfare, regulations) that drive a wedge between economically optimal and actual choices. How would adding an even bigger wedge help? Also, due to women'…
Actually I can't imagine anything closer to the "free market" utopia than a labor market with basic income. The current market is not free because people are forced to offer their services if they don't want to starve. That's a huge distortion that you would remove with basic income.
you really don't understand what a free market is then. i would suggest any econ 101 book
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, duress (which is what the prospect of death is) does not make a market more free. If you are forced to accept a crappy deal because otherwise you will die, you are not making a free decision. A fair deal in a free market is one that you can afford to say no to. > Some services or products are worth less precisely because there is no customer available willing to pay more for it. And for some services or products…
What duress are you talking about? No one in the EU or the US will actually die if they don't take some crappy job. These people are free to live in a tent and dive into trashcans for food if they don't like to work, which isn't nice but this certainly isn't death! It's just a crappy lifestyle. It's just they don't want to live in a tent and they want to have a smartphone, a car and enjoy all the things that the work…
> which isn't nice but this certainly isn't death!
It took me literally five seconds of searching to find a study [1] that notes that homeless people in the UK have a death rate that starts at twice that of people with homes and increases up to six times that of people with homes with age.
[1]: http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Homelessnes...
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll have you know that money itself tends to disincentivise work for a lot of people. In this economy, monied relationships are too often wage slavery. People think that they can pay me to work on something I don't love. You are sitting here talking about people mowing your effing lawn. Are you kidding me? If you aren't gonna do that yourself, why in the dear beloved earth should you expect some stranger to do it ex…
So much for sanitation. How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the displeasure of the job? Believe it or not, there are jobs that need to be done, but nobody in the world has a passion for them. Employment isn't about fear or force. It's about two parties agreeing that they each come out better after the transaction of selling labor…
> How am I going to get someone to pump out my septic tank, except to pay him some amount that is sufficient to compensate for the displeasure of the job?
Fortunately, given your basic income in this scenario, you have more money to do so!
Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not "realistic advice", but that's what people did back in the day. Also, the only reason it "puts having a family largely out of reach" is due to women's sexual choices - most women prefer a man who lives a higher status lifestyle. Sorry, but you aren't entitled to a wife; if women prefer a different lifestyle, that's their choice. And again, what fraction of people who stop working in the for-profit economy…
No, that's not what people did back in the day. Those who managed lived off advances from their publishers, inheritance, sponsors, or Church sinecures. It's not possible nowadays. You need to promote your works and it became much less socially acceptable. It's a weird observation that going off the grid would price you out of the dating market. Plenty of "starving artists" and outright bums have more success with wom…
Have you ever lived out west?
It's literally how it was done. Go west, steal some land from whatever non-white people are there. Have many babies and bootstrap civilization on the empty land.
yummyfajita's is missing that this isn't possible now because we're out of land to steal, and the state gets pissy about building a log cabin in national forest service land.