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It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

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Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#681

Post by tsotha »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #652
tsotha wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then, I'm confused. OP said society made it possible for me to make a living.

Ah, I think I see what you mean. While I can't speak for OP: Without a society there'd be no education system, no legal tender, no laws protecting employees, no laws protecting companies, no infrastructure supporting it - and so on. So society makes it possible for people to have jobs. There's an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child, which tends to indicate that the group has had a lot of input to the…

So the people who don't work... what are they providing me?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#682

Post by encoderer »

Retric wrote: post #242
encoderer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Personal income is about $13tn, so a 20% flat tax would currently provide about $8500/yr basic income. And that, of course, is on top of our current government spending. Also I'm not sure what you'd do w/ payroll taxes. You're just grossly understating what tax rates would have to be to accommodate this. You think there will be economies of scale that SS today doesn't already achieve that could somehow offset this…

First off children don't get the full amount only 1/2 which reduces costs by ~13%. $8500 / (1-.13) = 9770 / year which is rather close to 10k/year. A single person living on 10k after taxes is about the same as a single mother living on 15k hard but hardly impossible. If you add 10k per kid it creates a rather strong incentive to have a few kids. Also, the assumption is you cut a lot of government spending not just s…

Spending on welfare programs is a tiny share of our budget. Add up everything -- state and federal -- and it's about 600bn from the data I've seen -- and before the recession it was half that.

Your comment about the 12.5% you save from social security should tell you what you need to know: In order to provide a "basic income" for JUST SENIORS we have to have a 12.5% tax. Now, nominally it's less, because social security taxes cap out at like $110k/yr so there are a lot of income dollars in the US above that amount that aren't paying Fica. Regardless, it's still a tax somewhere near 10% to provide about $15k/year to mostly just seniors. Disability and survivior benefits only make up 20% of social security.

I obviously looked up some facts here to test my assumptions -- everything is just on the social security website and usgovernmentspending.com

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#683

Post by [deleted] »

pdonis wrote: post #680
whyme wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the how part as something worth getting into. It's also dependant on the technological advancements and makeup of society at the time change starts to happen. It took centuries for the monetary systems to develop with many bumps a long the way. That will also need to happen in a resource managed economy.

I don't see the how part as something worth getting into. In other words, you advocate a "resource managed economy" but you conveniently exempt yourself from having to explain how you are going to avoid having it suck the way the Soviet Union sucked. Pardon me for not getting all excited about society spending centuries in that quagmire. For all the problems our current money economies have, they are still way better…

[deleted]

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#684

Post by thaumasiotes »

drblast wrote: post #644
yummyfajitas wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. BJ is work that is not worth doing at current market prices . I.e., picking up garbage in the park might be worth $4/hour, but minimum wage is $7.25/hour. If we spend $7.25 more and get $4.00 worth of value out of it, we lost $3.25. If we are already spending $7.25 on welfare/BI and getting nothing in return, we a…

And how is that different than eliminating a minimum wage and providing a basic income, other that the basic job is much more complex?

The basic income goes towards making sure the worthless jobs don't get done anyway. It's more like eliminating the minimum wage and then using the existing welfare state mechanisms to float everyone's consumption up to a floor of $20k / year as long as they have a job.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#685

Post by thaumasiotes »

nitrogen wrote: post #637
yummyfajitas wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going with your numbers, if a basic jobber costs $7.25/hour and they produce $0.30 worth of value, the Basic Job pays for it's own overhead. And of course, $1T I must commend you on actually thinking things through carefully and checking if, numerically, a policy is remotely plausible. It's so rare to see on threads like this.

You don't actually need all $6T, because most people will be paying taxes that equal or exceed what they receive from BI. You mentioned earlier that BI disincentivizes work. How so? It seems to me that it would not, because the basic income doesn't disappear the instant you start working even a little bit.

This one is pretty straightforward. BI disincentivizes work because it stays with you if you stop working. On the common assumption that people are working for the money, not for the joy of showing up, this reduces the penalty for not working, which will cause a rise in... not working.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#686

Post by benched »

bcheung wrote: post #474
api wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not why communism didn't work. Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy. It was central planning that failed, not guaranteed minimums. A guaranteed minimum income without economic micromanagement or other central planning is what I'd like to see tried.

I lived in Russia for several years. Communism didn't work because people didn't have a strong incentive to work. They also lost sight of how to efficiently organize resources. I can't tell you how many times I walked into a store and the clerk was reading a book and when I tried to ask a question they just ignored me or shrugged me off without bothering to even try to help. Sometimes they will flat out lie about whe…

As long as people are eating, I don't care. People shouldn't have so much power over each other's lives and attitudes.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#687

Post by nitrogen »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #685
nitrogen wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't actually need all $6T, because most people will be paying taxes that equal or exceed what they receive from BI. You mentioned earlier that BI disincentivizes work. How so? It seems to me that it would not, because the basic income doesn't disappear the instant you start working even a little bit.

This one is pretty straightforward. BI disincentivizes work because it stays with you if you stop working. On the common assumption that people are working for the money, not for the joy of showing up, this reduces the penalty for not working, which will cause a rise in... not working.

The arguments for BI that I've read here on HN assert that this isn't a problem, because people who don't want to be working are a net drain on the systems in which they work, and/or they will be replaced by people who want to work a little bit but can't because they will lose disability.

The incentive to continue working even if you receive BI is that BI won't be enough to have a luxurious lifestyle, just enough to meet basic needs and educate oneself.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#688

Post by yourapostasy »

nirnira wrote: post #440
yourapostasy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only seem workable if the donors could offset the amount of donation from their tax liabilities. Also, most BI discussions I've seen are about how to replace the existing benefits delivery infrastructure with BI, and not as an additional entitlement.

Blisterpeanutes: "People who support blind charity should put their money where their mouth if they think it's such a great idea." Yourapostasy: "Hey great idea, even better why don't we give them all the money they give back so they don't actually have to make a sacrifice at all for their beliefs!"

If you want a bifurcated benefits distribution program, where BI and "conventional" taxes exist side-by-side, to see which program is more effective in an open competition, then telling supporters of BI "you not only have to pay the taxes you already pay, but you also then pay beyond that for BI" would handicap the results in favor of the existing "conventional" taxation system. I personally think advocates of BI are committing the Soros reflexivity mistake, which pretty much most of the field of economics sins against as well. Without a near-free energy source, I doubt BI works over the long-haul. But that doesn't mean when someone advocates testing BI by telling supporters to dig into their pockets even deeper after they have paid taxes they currently are liable for, that I will idly stand by and let that pass for a fair challenge. Operationally, unless there is some strong way (like via DNA) to identify benefits recipients of one system over another to avoid double-dipping and similar negative externality behavior, I don't think side-by-side systems are actually feasible.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#689

Post by eli_gottlieb »

bcheung wrote: post #474
api wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not why communism didn't work. Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy. It was central planning that failed, not guaranteed minimums. A guaranteed minimum income without economic micromanagement or other central planning is what I'd like to see tried.

I lived in Russia for several years. Communism didn't work because people didn't have a strong incentive to work. They also lost sight of how to efficiently organize resources. I can't tell you how many times I walked into a store and the clerk was reading a book and when I tried to ask a question they just ignored me or shrugged me off without bothering to even try to help. Sometimes they will flat out lie about whe…

>I can't tell you how many times I walked into a store and the clerk was reading a book and when I tried to ask a question they just ignored me or shrugged me off without bothering to even try to help.

They do that plenty in capitalist Israel.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#690

Post by phil21 »

orthecreedence wrote: post #274
bcheung wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free from wage slavery? Technology is so much further along than it was 1000 years ago people barely have to work to have the same living standard as they had then. People generally only work for 8 hours a day. They can't spend the rest of their time doing that right now? Everyone is free to start a business. Tons of people do it while working a full time job. Tons of people go to college while they have a full time…

This is the type of attitude that hinders progress, and for no apparent reason. News flash: you're already rewarding people who sit around doing nothing with your tax dollars. GBI does the same, but at reduced overhead. Starting a business is hard. Starting a business while working full time is near impossible. It's not about laziness or incompetence. You just don't get the same business opportunities you do when wor…

>Yes, you'll have lazy people who take advantage. But I'm willing to bet for every lazy person who just wants to sit around all day eating Little Debbies cake rolls, there are 100 who get bored and decide to actually do something with their lives.

I'd take that bet and put my entire personal wealth behind it.

Have you ever lived in the ghetto? I grew up in a poor area, not even that horrible compared to many others. Since this is a site for nerds, you are probably familiar with the 80/20 rule. Applies here as well. 80% of the people I grew up around were worthless, and the only reason they did anything at all was if they had a base need to fulfill. If they had enough income from sitting on the couch all day to pay for their home, food, sex, and basic entertainment most of them would have not done a single iota of work in their lifetimes. Some didn't as they were able to game the SSI and/or welfare systems.

The other 20% either "got out" through sheer personal effort or became entrepreneurs of the only sort they knew how - generally drug dealers or other illegal means of enterprise (and yes, some of these guys were absolutely impressive and could have easily run legit companies). This group would benefit from a basic income, but the vast majority I see simply soaking up the system to the point where it would be untenable. I'd also expect far more "abuse" of the system if the lifestyle was that of a minimum wage job or better.

I think you might have a slightly optimistic view on the average human - probably from associating yourself with high performers on a daily basis. I tend to forget this too sometimes, but then I go home for a visit and very quickly re-learn my hatred of humanity :)

The tragedy of the commons exists. This entire discussion seems to forget this fact.

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