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A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

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Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#601

Post by logfromblammo »

Unklejoe wrote: post #447
morgante wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop calling us "children." It's offense and rude. How very convenient that the cutoff of adulthood is your own age—if you're going to insult vast numbers of functional adults, at least insult yourself in the process. Silly child. First of all, you are in fact wrong. The majority of young adults do in fact live independently. [0] Second of all, if you think that adulthood isn't reached until 25, why would you be advo…

The link you posted doesn't seem to work. [How very convenient that the cutoff of adulthood is your own age] I chose the number 25 because it is usually a few years after most people have graduated college and have entered the work force. The number 25 is used in many places as a "special" age. Insurance companies, rental car companies, hotel bookings, etc... [you're going to insult vast numbers of functional adults,…

I'd like to lend my support to "old enough to realize that the real world sucks".

By that measure, I reached adulthood two weeks short of my 25th birthday. That, of course, was when I was laid off for the first time, just after signing a year-long lease on a new apartment.

That's probably just coincidence, though. I'm sure that many people realized the real world sucks earlier than I did.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#602

Post by beachstartup »

ticviking wrote: post #586
beachstartup wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

ooh boy, you have a lot to learn about sales and marketing of ideas.

but i guess that would make sense, .. since.. well, you know.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#603

Post by dragonwriter »

MicroBerto wrote: post #202

In the early 1970s, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a "mouse utopia" to see what would happen if he created the perfect world for mice, with unlimited food, starting with four males and four females, that could reach a population of 2500. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM What happened next is absolutely astonishing. When the mice had nothing to do and nothing to work for, their society collapsed upon…

> And it's exactly what will happen to us if we don't have something to work and live for.

Accepting for the sake of argument that this is true (which, a single, non-replicated experiment on mice is far from sufficient to establish), it has nothing to do with Unconditional Basic Income, which does not provide unlimited quantities of anything, or otherwise make it so that humans don't have "something to live and work for".

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#604

Post by undersuit »

tniswong wrote: post #582
undersuit wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Would you mind explaining how you think anyone is "intentionally reducing the explicit tangible rewards of personal merit?"

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#605

Post by themartorana »

morgante wrote: post #393
Unklejoe wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool idea. I'd advocate for an age of 25 though. An 18 year old these days is still a child. Give them a couple years into the drinking age to get their bad decisions out of the way.

That's offensive. I am 23 and have lived away from home since I was 17. I've been financially independent since I turned 18. Don't stereotype.

If that's offensive, I'm not entirely sure you have been participating in the real world. You'd be offended by damn near everything.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#606

Post by ams6110 »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #352
bane wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your arguments are interesting, but they hold only in systems with artificial inflation controls. UBI increases the amount of money in the economy, which has the same effect as simply printing more, thus the value (scarcity) of the money decreases. A poor mother without UBI will be a poor mother with UBI because costs will simply go up, something you acknowledge. As costs for services go up, costs of products go up a…

How many bottlers are running on such razor thin margins?

All of the ones that operate in a competitive market.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#607

Post by dragonwriter »

MicroBerto wrote: post #218
minsight wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that animal behaviour doesn't necessarily map perfectly onto human behaviour.

Of course it's not perfect. But when something we're proposing has once resulted in total catastrophe (complete end of civilization), it's worth researching a hell of a lot more. This is why I feel any democracy is eventually doomed to fail. People will vote themselves more and more free stuff, but "free stuff" ultimately defeats the will of the human spirit. It's worth researching more, but everybody just seems to f…

> But when something we're proposing has once resulted in total catastrophe (complete end of civilization),

In order for it to have resulted in a "complete end of civilization", you'd have to have first actually created a mouse civilization. Which would, actually, have been a more interesting result.

And in order for it to say anything about UBI, it would have to actually be in some way analogous to what UBI provides. Which, it isn't. Even aside from the fact that mice are not humans (they are occasionally good models for humans biochemically, but basically never good models when it comes to politico-economic behavior.)

> If you think this will end crime, then I have a bridge to sell to you.

I don't think it will end crime. I don't think it needs to end crime to be a good thing. (OTOH, it can substantially increase the expected marginal disutility of defection from social norms that results in incarceration -- especially when the perpetrator is relatively poor -- which should reduce the rate of economically-motivated crimes committed by relative sane people, which is a significant chunk of crime, but very far from all of it.)

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#608

Post by dllthomas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #569
dllthomas wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you tax it back. Typically proposals include a flat tax (or flat tax increase) to pay for it. In that case, you net extra money from the system if you make more than the mean, and you net pay into the system if you make more than the mean, but there are no hard cliffs and your next dollar earned still means more money in your pocket at any point.

Most proposals I've seen include progressive tax, and usually an increase in progressivity. Also, some proposals are simply no change to funding, with the UBI directly using the funds of other benefit programs that it replaces. A flat tax (or even just a decrease in progressivity) directly works against the purpose of adopting a UBI. EDIT: Changed "all" to "most"; I've definitely seen right-wing proponents advocating…

To clarify, most proposals I've seen have involved one of the roughly equivalent options of a separate flat tax specifically to fund UBI or an increase of the same amount across all tax brackets.

I have seen some proposals involving replacement of taxation generally with a flat tax coupled with a UBI - sold specifically as being able to still produce an overall progressive curve with the simplicity of a flat tax. While I think those are both positive things, I find this oversold - most of the complexity of taxation has little to do with brackets, and while the resulting curve is progressive it is only a particular family of curves and it's plenty possible that the optimal curves (by whatever metrics we assign) are not in that family.

I have seen some proposals that involve a progressive increase in taxation; these have been (in my recollection) fewer and less detailed than the first category - mostly, I expect, because they are a bit harder to analyze.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#609

Post by DominikR »

zyxley wrote: post #588
DominikR wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This isn't surprising considering the alcohol/drug abuse and crime among homeless people.

The reason why their death rate is higher is their state of mind.

It causes them to not take that crappy job that barely affords them a normal life and can potentially open up new perspectives for the future and instead choose to do nothing and hang out with the wrong people until it is too late and they end up on the street.

I don't see how giving them free money will in any way change their psychological condition. (of course there are always exceptions)

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