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Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

simulacrum.cc

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Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. I know of a few short lived experiments, but I'm not aware of any country that has implemented a basic income, let alone failed at it. Could you let me know where you're thinking of? > It all sounds good in theory, but in practice... ... where has it failed in practice?

You're looking at the effect, and not the cause. What caused the global banking crisis? 1.) Cheap money via gov't Fed Policy (created the artificial boom) 2.) Government mandates in mortgage lending (caused a lot of people to buy homes when they weren't in a realistic position to do so)

I seem to have edited my post while you were answering a point I later took out because it didn't seem relevant to the main point (which is that I don't think anyone has introduced basic income yet).

However, I don't believe in your analysis of the banking crisis, either. You seem to have missed out a lot of other reasons. From wikipedia:

> In its "Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy," dated 15 November 2008, leaders of the Group of 20 cited the following causes:

During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

i.e. Though it was also a failure of other things, it was by large part a failure of corporate risk assessment and lack of regulation.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#72
post #50

Russians tried it with USSR. Every time new technology is introduced everyone gets scared that jobs go away. Over time the level of service and innovation requirements go up providing more jobs for those that adapt. Such as life. Don't make the world what its not. It most likely won't work. :-)

Can you tell me more about basic income in the USSR? The wikipedia page on basic income doesn't mention it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Examples...

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#73
> "How would we pay for it? We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes."

I don't know why people keep harping on corporate taxes. If anything, taxing corporations is regressive -- the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income levels.

Taxing corporations doesn't produce magic money -- it's still taxing people in the end, but it's the consumers. Far better is higher tax rates on investments, and higher taxes on the rich. We should be taxing the people who own the corporations, or are paid huge salaries by them -- that is, if you believe in progressive taxation.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at the effect, and not the cause. What caused the global banking crisis? 1.) Cheap money via gov't Fed Policy (created the artificial boom) 2.) Government mandates in mortgage lending (caused a lot of people to buy homes when they weren't in a realistic position to do so)

You completely ignored their direct question. Which communist countries implemented basic income?

So sorry I didn't address all your points.

I need to get back to work so that others don't have to.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#75
post #15

It misses the fact that work is fulfilling for (most) people. I've heard talk of the government being the employer of last resort, which has its own problems. But just paying people to breath has problems as well.

>It misses the fact that work is fulfilling for (most) people. Basic income is not against working, it's point is to let people work in all kinds of situations. Old-fashion social security usually makes the tax rate for certain part-time / freelancing work 100% (e.g. $100 increase in pay can reduce benefits $100, therefore the actual marginal tax rate is 100% and most people won't do that work). > But just paying peo…

> You can do that in most Nordic countries, and it has many more benefits than disadvantages. For example, you can walk safely everywhere because everyone has sufficient social security. Street robberies and whatnot are practically non-existent.

To me that sounds like an argument against BI. You're basically saying that we can have the social safety benefits of BI for only 10% of the cost by using means-tested programs . Since that's what the Nordic countries are doing, and according to you it works really well.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#76
post #39

Wouldn't the basic income value need to vary across regions? For example, the notion that: "Every single adult member receives a weekly payment from the state, which is enough to live comfortably on" would mean a different value in San Francisco than in Grover, NC. If the government adjusted the basic income to account for regional cost-of-living, I imagine it would be popular to maintain a fake residency in an expen…

I don't think so. If you're only on the basic income, then to put it roughly, you don't "deserve" to live in San Francisco or Manhattan.

People move to cheaper parts of the country all the time, to fit their budget. I don't know why this would be any different.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely ignored their direct question. Which communist countries implemented basic income?

So sorry I didn't address all your points. I need to get back to work so that others don't have to.

If you knew the answer, it would have taken you less time to type it than it would have to make yet another meaningless platitude.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#78
post #59

I think in the end this wouldn't work. It'd play out something like this: A certain percentage of the population would stop working entirely since they no longer need to. (Particularly when politicians push the basic income amount up to placate constituencies) Because workers bow out of the system certain industries lose productive capacity. Maybe we stop producing enough food, or enough fuel. Prices rise (assuming a…

Alternative scenario:

A certain % stop working for existing businesses. However, since there is greater money velocity in the system (vs. investments), there's still high demand (likely _higher_ demand). Businesses which had been slow to automate their production do so, spending more money on high-skill positions.

Prices temporarily increase to pay for this capital investment, but within a few years drop to below prices pre-BI.

Note that the author DOESN'T advocate necessarily doing this today, but that this is somewhat inevitable. I think I agree — eventually, the vast majority of jobs in our society will be automated / done by machines. Either we give these people a BI, or a very large segment of our population falls into poverty, which has other damaging political ramifications (revolution?).

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#79
post #68

Ok, yes to: "towards" and "trends." However, not "forces" the bring us "all the way to." OP misses the point that even though I am listening to free electronica on youtube right now... 1. It was once sold for money by its creators 2. Its creators tolerate it being given away for free in order to develop their reputations and bring in an income through performance and sales. This an example of symbiotic capitalism, no…

But what about Deviant Art, Wikipedia, and most of YouTube? Also, a lot of musicians can barely afford to eat, even with touring. I imagine it would be liberating if that wasn't even necessary.

Re: Trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income

#80
post #50

Russians tried it with USSR. Every time new technology is introduced everyone gets scared that jobs go away. Over time the level of service and innovation requirements go up providing more jobs for those that adapt. Such as life. Don't make the world what its not. It most likely won't work. :-)

Russians tried the exact opposite: everyone was required to work in the USSR. You'll get a minor prison sentence for avoiding work (IIRC it was called "went to jail for idleness"). The law was hard to enforce though.

What the blog post describes is, basically, communism. The official communist party line in USSR (correctly) identified the lack of automation (advanced technology) to make it a reality. Basically the official state goal of the Soviet Union was to advance the science and technology towards achieving that goal, hence the repressions against religion, endless attempts to identify and focus "more important" sciences and skip "less important" ones, introduction of pyatiletkas (5 year plans), etc.

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