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It Is Time For Basic Income

hawkins.ventures

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Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#721

Post by dllthomas »

ahomescu1 wrote: post #345
buzaga41 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's acceptable. Depending on the circumstances, killing can be acceptable, eating human flesh can be acceptable, why wouldn't stealing be? It's not taken from you, if everybody receives basic income, how can it be taking from you? You're missing the point.

> Depending on the circumstances, killing can be acceptable, eating human flesh can be acceptable, why wouldn't stealing be? Maybe you find those acceptable, but I find all of them horrible. Killing someone is only acceptable in self defense (in which case someone else is trying to kill you first), while cannibalism is just sick.

"Killing someone is only acceptable in self defense"

How is that not "depending on the circumstances"? Is not "killing is needed to defend myself" a circumstance?

"while cannibalism is just sick."

So, if someone is genuinely in a situation where their options are 1) starve to death, or 2) eat the other guy who just starved to death, you think it's clear that they should choose 1?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#722

Post by ThomPete »

dllthomas wrote: post #719
ThomPete wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that is actually one of the major claims from opponents of BI and thus controversial. That it removes the incentive for someone to work. But there is nothing that indicates this at all. In fact the Canadian experiment mincome although not conclusive did not show people in general stopping to work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

You think a major claim of BI opponents is that there is zero remaining incentive to work, as opposed to simply a substantially reduced incentive? Show me anyone (who understands that BI isn't lost when someone works) making that claim anywhere. I agree with you that the evidence shows there is not even substantially reduced incentive. In the case of Mincome in particular, it did show a decrease in hours worked, whic…

I think you should read what I wrote again and perhaps you will realize that i did not make any claims about zero disincentive.

What I said was that it always will pay off to work and therefore incentives people to work.

Thats a very different argument than the one you are arguing against.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#723

Post by dllthomas »

ThomPete wrote: post #722
dllthomas wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a major claim of BI opponents is that there is zero remaining incentive to work, as opposed to simply a substantially reduced incentive? Show me anyone (who understands that BI isn't lost when someone works) making that claim anywhere. I agree with you that the evidence shows there is not even substantially reduced incentive. In the case of Mincome in particular, it did show a decrease in hours worked, whic…

I think you should read what I wrote again and perhaps you will realize that i did not make any claims about zero disincentive. What I said was that it always will pay off to work and therefore incentives people to work. Thats a very different argument than the one you are arguing against.

So your assertion is that you were making a true statement that was utterly unrelated to the subthread you were replying in?

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#724

Post by ThomPete »

dllthomas wrote: post #723
ThomPete wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should read what I wrote again and perhaps you will realize that i did not make any claims about zero disincentive. What I said was that it always will pay off to work and therefore incentives people to work. Thats a very different argument than the one you are arguing against.

So your assertion is that you were making a true statement that was utterly unrelated to the subthread you were replying in?

I was replying to this:

"...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..."

More specifically this sentence:

"...On the common assumption that people are working for the money..."

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#725

Post by stcredzero »

growupkids wrote: post #548
boomlinde wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cab driver is a really bad example because the cab driver isn't providing a service that people argue is a human right. In terms of healthcare I think that it's reasonable that those who can should pay more to cover for those who can only afford to be grateful. That is usually how the cost of public services is distributed using taxes.

Ok, so make the example "your wife is bleeding out". Should the can driver charge you outrageously because you are richer than he is?

Should the can driver charge you outrageously because you are richer than he is?

Only if you are outrageously rich and the driver did an excellent job of emergency transportation and only by billing you after the fact. The first priority should be on saving lives, then sort the logistics out later.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#726

Post by stcredzero »

ende wrote: post #392
demoncore wrote: post #306

I just spent a year living in South Western France which is the most socialist part of France. (I'm a US citizen based here most of the time and I'm a CEO). If you want to see the result of wealth redistribution, go check it out yourself. You'll meet young men and women in the prime of their lives who spend their entire day in a coffee shop and later a bar, sipping a beverage discussing art, culture, poetry, how busi…

I agree with you. So don't tax the innovators and entrepreneurs. Leave their income alone. Tax the land owners who generate wealth for themselves while contributing nothing to society. Tax the unproductive rent-seeking wealth of those who attain their position not through innovation but through dependence on and manipulation of the political class. Institute a land value tax and leave productive incomes free from tax…

Tax the unproductive rent-seeking

Underlying your position is the assumption that society can properly arbitrate what is "unproductive rent-seeking" versus "socially destructive entitlement culture." Depending on your circumstances, your opinion on what these things are will differ, and in a democracy, the whims of the majority will win out, regardless of economic reality.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#727

Post by stcredzero »

nkoren wrote: post #639
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.

> of course, $1T Your $6T number is false. Even in your strawman, the cost of the Basic Income would be $1T: $6T less $5T as a "cash-back rebate", due to the fact that every single person paying for the BI is also receiving the BI. This has been explained to you many times on this thread, but you keep ignoring it. > if a basic jobber costs $7.25/hour and they produce $0.30 worth of value, the Basic Job pays for it's…

But a Basic Income would have $0/hr worth of overhead

This doesn't sound plausible to me. People are devilishly clever when it comes to bilking large bureaucracies out of free money. It's going to take a bit of work to prevent that from happening. Organized Crime is going to get in on something like this.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#728

Post by stcredzero »

eanzenberg wrote: post #670
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I get enough emails as it is from whacko's who think they've upturned Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, or created some perpetual motion machine. If society valued these people's output they would be financially rewarded already. There's already incentives in present society, called capitalism and competition! If you can't differentiate between capitalism and scientific peer-review as separate processes for separating…

Competition underlies capitalism. Why do you think scientists want to publish in the best journals like science and nature? There is a healthy amount of competition in science too. It's what drives people to get into the academy, or get awards like the Nobel. It's what creates great science, but it also creates politics in research. There's a number of parallels between capitalism and academic research.

So there has to be a requisite degree of suffering on the bottom-end to motivate the population to compete to better their station? Is that the society-scale version of "The beatings will continue until morale improves?"

Well, on a more serious note, it would be, "The subtle resource starvation will continue until you become more valuable and productive."

Would the "lower classes" in academia lacking health care result in more academic productivity? Actually, no one really disagrees about these things in an absolute sense. It's more where people want to draw the lines.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#729

Post by stretchwithme »

dllthomas wrote: post #716
stretchwithme wrote: post #636

I encourage fans of this idea to experiment with it. Find a complete stranger and give him a guaranteed income if he abstains from government programs. Come back in five years and share your results. As for me, I don't wish to be forced into running your experiment.

Experiments have been done, and have shown good results. I've no objection to further experimentation, but at some point we should implement the policy that looks best. There is, mathematically speaking, clearly some non-empty set of optimal values for a Basic Income. How confident are you that $0 is in that set, even in the face of argument (from not just the modern left, but also Thomas Paine and Milton Friedman an…

Go for it then. Hope its worth your money.

Re: It Is Time For Basic Income

#730

Post by dllthomas »

ThomPete wrote: post #724
dllthomas wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your assertion is that you were making a true statement that was utterly unrelated to the subthread you were replying in?

I was replying to this: "...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..." More specifically this sentence: "...On the common assumption that people are working for the money...…

I think you need to re-read what you wrote in response to that.
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