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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

#691

There is something else to consider too: The political party that brings this in will likely be in power for a really long time! Think about the consequences: Even if it was proven financial suicide for the country (Governments can always print more money I suppose and let the next generation deal with the fallout), what political party would have a manifesto abolishing or reducing it? It would be political suicide.

It already is political suicide to mention cutting any entitlement. This is the fundamental flaw of democracy.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#692

I really don't understand how a 'basic' income is supposed to work. What if I spend my basic income on drugs and hookers? are you willing to let me starve? what about my kids? If not, then the basic income can't actually replace the existing social programs. If nobody need to work, then if employers want employees, they have to pay more to get them, which makes prices rise, which makes your 'basic' income insufficien…

The cost-rising point is greatly simplified. Yes the cost of labor will go up, however this does not mean the prices rise so much that your basic income is not very helpful, and here's why:

  * Only the cost of labor will increase, the cost of other inputs to making goods or providing services will not.
  * The cost of labor will not increase uniformly, but rather it will increase most at the low end (people who are more likely to refuse employment due to basic income) and less at the high end.  A software engineer making $120k is not likely to decide to stop working because he now gets $10k from the government.  However a part-time fry cook making $6k a year might.
So you have a slight increase in the price of goods (the x% of the cost of goods that was from low-paid labor just got y% higher) but an increase in purchasing power that is larger than x% * y% so overall people now have more purchasing power.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#693
post #670

The next big thing, after the $15 minimum wage, should be the 8 hour day and the 40 hour week. Everybody gets overtime, unless you're in the 1%. The whole "exempt" thing needs to go.

I agree that everyone who goes over 40 hours should get overtime, but I also think the standard work week should be reduced from 40 hours.

One step at a time. A 40 hour work week is politically sellable. After all, we used to have it, so it's "conservative".

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#694
post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people without treasury are left out of the new money created Everybody in the US has treasuries. SS is the biggest holder of them, so when their value goes up, everyone with a SS account benefits. Next, most pension/retirement plans give another large class of adults benefits (50%+ of adults hold such plans). Remember, Fed buys from the Open Market (the "OM" in "FOMC"), which has an effect on pricing for all. >…

For fractional reserve, the 10X money is what's circulated in the system. The liability on the book is just accounting. The bank doesn't have 10X money to start with. It has 1X but it's allowed to lend out upto 10X. The extra 9X is created out of thin air. Of course the 10X is the theoretical max; ultimately what controls the nX (where 1 Lending out loan creates money circulated in the system. Paying off debt destroy…

>It has 1X but it's allowed to lend out upto 10X

No, a bank cannot lend out 10X of it's deposits. That's simply wrong.

Say a person deposits $1. The bank owes the person $1. If the bank thinks this $1 is unlikely to be withdrawn soon, it can lend out $0.90 (assuming a 10% reserve rate). End of story. This bank having received $1 cannot turn around and lend $10. Note that this point the bank has $0.10 of the original persons assets, owes that person $1, and is owed $0.90 by the borrower. The net position of all this is zero for the bank.

Now, the borrower can deposit the borrowed 0.90 (assuming it's not spent somewhere else) into that bank, or some other bank. The process repeats.

The net value to society is zero. Liquidity is added, debts are added, they balance to zero.

If a bank lending money is creation of money, so is all lending. I lend Bob $10, he lends $10 to Fred, he lends $10 to Joe, and since we don't have fractional reserves, this is an infinite multiplier. However the chain of debts and assets still is zero sum. There is no difference between this and banks, except banks are required to hold some cash on hand to handle normal business transactions.

>By controlling the interest rate, the Fed controls and levers the up and down of this huge money supply.

Not quite - a bank will loan any money it has at the highest rate it thinks is profitable (as would any actor in the economy). No bank loans are at the target rate the Fed sets.

The Fed does not control the interest rate, they set the Federal Funds Target Rate, which is a target. They do not lend money at this rate [1]. Nor do banks, except to each other, and only overnight.

Banks lend money to each other overnight to meet reserves, and each pair of banks sets a rate it thinks is worthwhile, like any open market transaction. The weighted average of these loans is the "federal funds effective rate". The Fed wants this number to be the Federal Funds Target Rate, and they use FOMC to buy/sell assets to try and get banks to lend to each other at the target rate. This has almost no effect on the multiplier, since it does not change the reserve requirements, and the usual fluctuations are tiny.

Nowhere does the Fed set a rate and lend at that rate, or even force others to lend at that rate. It's a target.

And no where does this force banks to lend or not lend to others. Banks decide to do this at whatever rate borrowers will pay.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_funds_rate

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poster is crazy to think liberals will EVER support a hugely regressive tax scheme. Consumption taxes destroy the middle class by acting as vehicle to transport wealth from the middle to the ultrawealthy, which makes it surprising that people continue to suggest it. Now perhaps a consumption tax combined with a large capital gains tax and inheritance tax -- to keep taxes going in the oligarchs economy AND the regular…

> Poster is crazy to think liberals will EVER support a hugely regressive tax scheme. Consumption taxes destroy the middle class by acting as vehicle to transport wealth from the middle to the ultrawealthy, which makes it surprising that people continue to suggest it. So the proposal is to combine something like VAT with a basic income. Doing that would cause low income people to have a negative effective tax rate (b…

> "Super-rich don't pay tax on money they don't spend" is the status quo.

Only if you ignore estate taxes...which FairTax eliminates.

For the rich (defined here as anyone with enough wealth that, if they don't spend it down, they will face estate taxes) they either have to realize the gains (and be taxed) and spend down or leave an estate which will be subject to estate taxes, giving them a maximum time window on taxation equal to their lifespan.

With "FairTax", which eliminates estate tax and goes to a strict consumption tax, there is no such maximum window.

> And consumption taxes benefit debtors at the expense of creditors. Income tax makes the debtor pay back the debt with after-tax dollars. Consumption tax causes the creditor to be paid in pre-tax dollars.

Because it also changes the cost structures on which debt is occurred, this only is meaningful as a one-time effect on debts that exist at the time of the transition to a predominantly-consumption-tax system, not as durable feature.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd rather see unproductive humans digging and re-filling holes in the ground than getting paid to do nothing. Or something like the biking experiment in Black Mirror. I'd rather people get paid to do nothing than people getting paid to do pointless tasks. I've seen some amazing things people made in their spare time, but I can't imagine anyone making something worthwhile digging and re-filling holes.

Again, the people building "amazing things in their spare time" are not the people to be concerned about!! The usefulness we'd get out of the creative top 1-5% of the population is far outweighed by the chaos that'd be caused by the bottom/criminal 10% of the population.

Part of the benefit of a UBI is that it permits us to give harsher penalties to criminals because they can no longer use poverty as an excuse. I'm all in favor of cutting off UBI for criminals (temporarily or permanently depending on the severity of the crime).

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#697
I would be for this but I'm afraid that once all the other programs are dismantled, food stamps, welfare etc, that the poor might end up getting less support than they did before.

I try hard not to be cynical, but I wonder if this isn't a ruse to accomplish exactly that.

I mean the US is known for being "frugal" when it comes to helping people. See the medical system for example, or the treatment that veterans get. Why the sudden surge in generosity, why the sudden desire to redistribute income?

Weren't these anathema just recently, even to some democrats?

Also the fact that it keeps coming up in the media makes me slightly suspicious.

Why is this being promoted so much right now? I bet there are PR firms out there calling newspaper reporters and bloggers, to promote coverage of this idea on behalf of who knows which group or organization. [1]

[1]: http://www.prwatch.org/

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#698
post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

It's not just wealthier people who will be worse off - it's everyone. Basic income is known to create a large disincentive for work. In previous experiments (Mincome) labor supply dropped by about 10% - double what happened during the great recession. This means that fewer working mothers can find child care, fewer laborers to mow your lawn, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, etc. No matter how much money you give to peop…

Any lack of production will be made up for easily by eliminating redundant positions in many businesses and automation.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#699
post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

To make it work you'd have to take whatever the amount is and extract it from all other government benefit programs. You get $700 / month from the government for basic income. Your social security, welfare, unemployment, disability, etc is reduced by $700 / month. Reducing all of those programs by the first $700 would effectively gut each of them enough to finally make some reforms without inducing panic in everyone…

"fair tax" is the stupidest thing ever. How do you implement a progressive tax on consumption? You'd have to keep track of every purchase a person makes to know how much they've spent. It's worse than keeping track of income, and it's also a massive surveillance tool. Then there's the whole problem that people who have lower income will pay a higher percentage of it in tax. There is nothing good about that scheme.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#700
post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, money is supposed to enable economic activities; hoarded money not used is money wasted. Yes, increased productivity and efficiency are deflational in nature. You can create N more things now with the same cost. The extra N things push price down if the amount of money in the system stays the same. That's why central banks inject more money into the system to "soak" up the extra economic activities, to maintain…

> ; hoarded money not used is money wasted. If a man walks up to a microphone in a crowded room, and everyone seems him up there, and he could say anything he wants, so that the whole room will hear it - and he says nothing - has he said anything? spending money is 'speaking in the formal language of money' saving money is holding your tongue. https://medium.com/@MarkPXuNeyer/consider-money-as-a-formal-...

I agree with you at a personal level, but there's a difference between personal finance and money circulated at economy level. Money circulating in economy is money put in good use. Money not moving is useless for the economy.
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