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My own private basic income

opendemocracy.net

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Re: My own private basic income

#81

Post by harrumph »

erentz wrote: post #70

Wow I am astounded that all the comments so far are trying to tear down this person and what he is saying, and very transparently because there seems to be something threatening about this idea that he got where he has through luck. Why do people find this idea so threatening? I got where I am today due to luck. I did work hard. But I know other people who work hard too. Who are just as capable. They just didn't get…

>To discount luck's role in how people get successful is a huge blind spot.

That's the fantasy of meritocracy, fulfilling itself. When someone thinks that gold coins spray from their asshole every time they update a Git repo, they can comfortably presume their role is paramount in the value created. Of course, every library linked, every bit of infrastructure required, every calorie of energy delivered, every man-year of education needed by users - this all disappears in a cloud of self-regard.

Re: My own private basic income

#82

Post by rrggrr »

Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis.

"1. For owners, work is optional."

... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time.

"2. ...your stuff will keep on making money forever."

... Again, I wish this were true. Lifetime income producing investments are hard to find where volatility, fees, inflation, taxes and life's circumstances don't erode value. Sure, the truly wealthy are set. But most business owners are not truly wealthy, and the exit strategies just aren't there in many industries.

"3. We can get entrepreneurship without the enormous rewards to ownership we have today"

... Anyone whose dealt with the day-to-day grind of owning a business would be especially offended by this comment. A firehose of pain, suffering and risk flows to the owner in the form of litigation, regulators, employees, vendors, customers, bank officers, etc., etc. I've equated it to a "lazy susan" dispensing aggravation in every conceivable form. Its the reward - if you can get it - that makes it worthwhile. Try just getting divorced as an owner and you become an instant convert to rewarding ownership.

Yes, rent-seeking monopolies are bad. Yes, more needs to be done to create opportunities for wealth creation by employees - to give them the freedom to say "no". No, punishing ownership isn't the answer.

UPDATE x2: I'm really not confusing types of owners. The author's thesis is broad not only in the article, but in his works in general. Access to passive income investments (eg. REIT's) is among the few places small business owners can go to rent-seek. Rent seeking is bad under a few sets of conditions but doesn't deserve author's indictment.

Re: My own private basic income

#83

Post by aerovistae »

bigtunacan wrote: post #74

Can someone clarify this piece for me? I don't understand how the author is able to completely avoid taxation on the rents. >My wife and I don’t need the money we make from owning most of the business. We live off the salaries of our jobs, and reinvest virtually our entire share of the business. These reinvestments count as “losses,” and so officially we have never made any income or paid income taxes on our share of…

If they took any sort of money from their business, it would be taxed as income. But if the money just stays inside the business and is used to buy more rental buildings-- what's there to tax? So the business keeps growing and growing.

Case A: the owners take a paycheck of $100,000. It gets taxed at 30%, they get $70k.

Case B: the owners take no paycheck but instead buy a $100,000 property through the business with the business's earnings. They pay no tax but now own a $100,000 property which will now augment the business's earnings further. Down the road years later, they finally take a paycheck at $300,000, which is taxed down to like $180,000 or something. Still more than 2.5x the Case A payout, and let's not forget they own that much more property now on top of everything else.

Re: My own private basic income

#84

Post by pg314 »

omegaham wrote: post #68
OJFord wrote: post #26

> [in the US] people who don’t need their income are taxed less than people who do I'm not American; I don't know the tax structure. But I can't even imagine that this could possibly be true, or what is true that is meant. Without looking it up, I would assume that the USA subscribes to progressive taxation, under which the richer pay more tax in both absolute and relative terms. Even if it has a flat rate of tax, (a…

Let's look at Person A vs Person B. Person A is a football player and makes $1 million in salary per year. This is all taxed progressively, meaning that Uncle Sam takes off 39.6% of most of his income. As a result, he pays close to $400k in taxes. Person B is an investor. He invests in Applied Materials, and they have a very good year. His stock is now worth $1 million more than it was at the beginning of the year. S…

It's even worse than you describe. For the part he doesn't sell, no taxes are owed on the capital gains. Only when capital gains are realised, are taxes owed. If he holds onto that stock forever he can keep compounding forever, without every being taxed.

Re: My own private basic income

#85

Post by Mz »

TLDR

Guy in financially comfortable position feels guilty, decides his education, willingness to live in Qatar, etc shouldn't really be worth this much, completely discounts the idea that anything actually matters, it is all merely "luck" and that's it.

Sounds like an existential crisis, not really a good commentary on the concept of basic income.

Re: My own private basic income

#86

Post by dv_dt »

jedmeyers wrote: post #80
opportune wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all miserably failed? The US does this to an extent right now: we have a decent (of course it's not the best) public education system, and we have programs like SNAP/TANF/Section 8 so that children don't grow up underfed on the street. There's no reason it could not also be done globally; the global GDP/capita is about $15k. Of course, simply providing these services doesn't always cut it. Look at the generation…

> we have a decent (of course it's not the best) public education system What's your take on the current student loans situation where almost everyone is able to obtain resources to go to a limited number of colleges and pay for whichever degree they like? Should we expand this and instead of loaning money give it away for free, if this goes towards achieving maximum potential? In your opinion, how much would a regul…

I think there is a huge problem with the student loan method of funding college in that it causes much more inflation than simply funding public universities who in turn would supply low or no cost tuition.

Re: My own private basic income

#87

Post by wturner »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

The world "value" is always confusing. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire presumably because she is valued for her ability to interview people (she basically talks into a microphone for large sums of money). If she left society and shacked up in the woods tomorrow it wouldn't impact my life in the least. On the other hand, my garbage pickup person does harder work and makes a lot less, but if there was a garbage collector strike I would not be happy. I value my garbage collector more than Oprah Winfrey and I would assume the average citizen does as well.

Using the phrase "They provide more value" as an umbrella phrase for why people get rich is understandable, but something just doesn't seem quite right about it.

Re: My own private basic income

#88

Post by nql »

vilmosi wrote: post #64
MichaelRenor wrote: post #14

> My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives? This is like…

> Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. I genuinely thought you were sarcastic. Being born in circumstances that allow you to do that is luck, even in the developed world.

Its only luck if you consider every person independent of their ancestors, rather than a product of their ancestors.

Re: My own private basic income

#89

Post by [deleted] »

vilmosi wrote: post #64
MichaelRenor wrote: post #14

> My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives? This is like…

> Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck. I genuinely thought you were sarcastic. Being born in circumstances that allow you to do that is luck, even in the developed world.

[deleted]

Re: My own private basic income

#90

Post by opportune »

jedmeyers wrote: post #80
opportune wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all miserably failed? The US does this to an extent right now: we have a decent (of course it's not the best) public education system, and we have programs like SNAP/TANF/Section 8 so that children don't grow up underfed on the street. There's no reason it could not also be done globally; the global GDP/capita is about $15k. Of course, simply providing these services doesn't always cut it. Look at the generation…

> we have a decent (of course it's not the best) public education system What's your take on the current student loans situation where almost everyone is able to obtain resources to go to a limited number of colleges and pay for whichever degree they like? Should we expand this and instead of loaning money give it away for free, if this goes towards achieving maximum potential? In your opinion, how much would a regul…

We should be looking at ways to reduce the cost of college. Education doesn't need to be a hand-holdy 4 year summer camp, and I think the expectation that it should be is based on cultural expectations. The loan based payment model is only a problem because it's leaving a certain subset of students in a lot of debt with degrees that don't enable them to pay it off. I definitely don't think we should just give everyone unlimited money to study, nor do I think the solution is going the Western-Europe route of making college free, but only for the X% of students that do best on entrance exams.
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