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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#661

Post by marcusverus »

8note wrote: post #111
marcusverus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone needs to participate with American capitalism as a worker drone Working a job you don't like is a leaser evil than mooching off of your neighbors. The level of entitlement required to argue the opposite is absolutely mind boggling. How many people have to work full time to support one able-bodied layabout? UBI may make sense in the event of technology-induced mass unemployment, but folks won't tolerate it…

> new graduates (who can split living costs with friends and delay entry into the workforce indefinitely), This one at least, and probably all of them is stuff that already happens, and their time spent not working is instead spent on improving their communities. I think that's still valuable, and maybe more valueable than making a billionaire slightly richer Ubi compensates all work, rather than just what capitalist…

> This one at least, and probably all of them is stuff that already happens

Yes. The system incentives against it, yet and it still happens. Redesign the system so that it incentivizes for it and it'll happen way, way more.

The idea that the idle poor are running around "improving their communities is obviously bullshit. The poor already work fewer hours per person, and their communities are universally the most neglected.

> UBI compensates all work

Capitalism compensates work that someone is willing to pay for--i.e. work that consumers find valuable. UBI compensates "work" playing video games and sleeping until noon. Pretending that the latter is more moral than the former is positively asinine.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#662

Post by throwawa14223 »

itronitron wrote: post #177
throwawa14223 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's my incentive for subsidizing non-work in others?

You are already subsidizing non-work in others, however currently their non-work is at a 'job' that they commute to every day.

Do I correctly understand that your argument is that because something undesirable currently is happening I should support policies to increase it?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#663

Post by throwawa14223 »

blooalien wrote: post #174
throwawa14223 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's my incentive for subsidizing non-work in others?

What's your incentive for continuing to eat, drink, and breathe once your overlords have fulfilled their greatest dream and replaced their need for human labor with robots and machines and other forms of automation? Your purpose will have been fulfilled and your existence now meaningless. That is the ultimate goal we're all working for, right? Being freed from working for our overlords so that we can all just lay dow…

It isn't my ultimate goal.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#664

Post by scotty79 »

moduspol wrote: post #261
geor9e wrote: post #56

I am not sure how small studies can account for the inflation wide rollout could cause. Consider this hypothetical: If you give 1 of 1000 renters $100, 1 landlord will leave the rent alone because they don't know. If you give 1000 of 1000 renters $100, word will get to 1000 landlords, who will all increase rent $100, because the market will bear it. I'm not saying this will happen, just that a small study enjoys the…

They also don't account for the way these decisions would be made, if done at the government level. Put simply: I'm looking forward to the study where the participants get to vote every year to decide how much money they should be getting from the people running the study.

For completeness the study should also be financed by wealth tax on the asset owners in the area, who can also vote.

If everybody can have one vote per dollar, this system would probably tend to zero UBI. If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#665

Post by moduspol »

scotty79 wrote: post #664
moduspol wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don't account for the way these decisions would be made, if done at the government level. Put simply: I'm looking forward to the study where the participants get to vote every year to decide how much money they should be getting from the people running the study.

For completeness the study should also be financed by wealth tax on the asset owners in the area, who can also vote. If everybody can have one vote per dollar, this system would probably tend to zero UBI. If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop.

> If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop.

Yep. As long as the wealthy can't leave, or keep their wealth / investments elsewhere, it should work pretty well.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#666

Post by literallycancer »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #568
literallycancer wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you gonna give everyone a national ID and wall up the border first? Or just let everyone come and get the free money?

People really do love to take imperfect solutions to tractable problems and deceptively expand them into something intractable so they can continue to sit on their hands. "How can I tie real solvable issues to some kind of thought stopping meme", it's a fun game politicians and and other disingenuous people play. Every pundit buzzword you've injected is orthogonal to the point and the issue. You can personally pursue…

Both of those things are in fact tractable, and many other countries manage to keep track of who's supposed to be in them just fine. It's telling that you think something that should be a non issue is a thought stopping meme.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#667

Post by Detrytus »

Djvacto wrote: post #505
syockit wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telemarketers are not subsidized. If there is no return on investment for employing them, companies won't employ them at all.

But the companies use of telemarketers isn't a net benefit to society. If the company instead spent on product quality, warranty services, employee benefits, or charity, we'd see more of a net-positive impact on the world around us. Generally, companies spending money competing for market share through advertising only benefits specific parties, and only financially. The goals and incentives (for companies) aren't cu…

Who decides what is a net benefit to society?

In capitalism people vote with their own money: if there is a demand for some good or service it keeps getting provided.

Of course you might argue, that average person can be manipulated into buying things that are harmful to them, but if you want to prevent that there's really no way to do that efficiently other than turning the whole country into a totalitarian surveillance state. And you also need an elite, a group of people who are above the law because they are just smarter, and know better and therefore set the rules for lesser beings.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#668

Post by scotty79 »

moduspol wrote: post #665
scotty79 wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For completeness the study should also be financed by wealth tax on the asset owners in the area, who can also vote. If everybody can have one vote per dollar, this system would probably tend to zero UBI. If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop.

> If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop. Yep. As long as the wealthy can't leave, or keep their wealth / investments elsewhere, it should work pretty well.

The rich person will have a choice. Either stay and compete for the money that was taken from other rich people with this tax and given to poor people that are way easier to extort or leave and forgo the opportunity and go to some other place where the only money that's available for taking is what poor earned with their work.

If I were a skillful rich person I'd stay, because that could help me to raise in ranks of the rich more quickly. If I was skilless rich person I'd get the hell out of there because other rich would be getting my money redistributed through this tax.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#669

Post by dbrueck »

yunwal wrote: post #507
dbrueck wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the case. Instead, it's just that the "let's tax the rich people more!!" idea is ill-founded to begin with, and the easiest way to show that is to point out that if instead of just taking some percentage more, you took everything they have, it still wouldn't solve the problem, not by a longshot.

Choosing some arbitrarily small segment of the population and saying "See, they don't have enough money to fund this program" is not the steelman you seem to think it is. Instead, try discussing something serious, like a plausible adjustment to the progressive tax system.

Nah, if someone puts forth an argument that is fundamentally flawed, it's neither wrong to point it out nor on me to do their thinking for them.

That said, if we want to talk taxes, I think a progressive tax system is nearly always wrong, immoral, and unfair, so you probably would disagree with any adjustments I'd suggest. :)

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