The Campaign To Get Every American Free Money, Every Year 1291
merbs writes: Supporters of a basic income have finally organized a proper political movement. Basic Income Action is, according to co-founder Dan O'Sullivan, "the first national organization educating and organizing the public to support a basic income. "He tells me that "Our goal is to educate and organize people to take action to win a basic income here in the U.S." This 2013 Economist article does a good job of summarizing the pro and con viewpoints on the (ahem) basic idea.
Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:3, Insightful)
in the form of SS (old age, disability, survivor benefits), food stamps, etc, etc?
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Informative)
Even cheap Chinese laborers are being replaced by machines now, a new era is quickly approaching. I once agreed with your opinion, but in an era where most college graduates have to move back in with their parents - laziness is not the problem.
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, consider taxi drivers, regional and long haul truckers - what happens when they get replaced by self-driving robots? It's certainly a hell of a lot more efficient, but do you think that's going to create new jobs? The guy at the dispatch center and the mechanic already have a job. Maybe we get a new computer tech who specializes in fixing the computer side, but that's minuscule compared to the number of human roles eliminated. Worse, the job roles that are being eliminated are relatively low-complexity/low-education. Even if there were enough jobs, how many of those drivers do you think are going to be capable of retraining to do much more advanced analytical work?
We do have a serious problem in that from about the 70s/80s onward, the gains in productivity have become increasingly decoupled from wages. All the benefits are going to the rich, especially the seriously rich. But I disagree that automation - real automation, not just augmenting/aiding human workers - will never lead to increased unemployment.
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"From the period 1936 to 1970" ... and then wages fell off the cliff. You could blame globalization but I wouldn't, fully anyways. Eventually humanity will stop finding ways to be more productive, and instead find ways of enriching their lives. This is a given. Until we're blazing around the Galaxy using FTL, we have very strict sets of conditions in which we can grow as a species. If we continually push through the phyosophical rhetoric that productivity will expand into infinitely, we'll have a large cult
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If you want to talk about historical evidence then industrial production is a blip and the majority of human productivity has been small scale custom work with family associations and apprenticeships to craftspersons all under the governance of the local aristocracy.
Historical evidence doesn't mean future performance. We are approaching a time when it will take very few people to provide for the needs of the majority of human population, and we're not growing new jobs fast enough to reclaim the losses.
Thos
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFY. As the cost of labor trends to zero, the cost of goods trends to the cost of raw materials.
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Exactly, so we get a negative feedback loop that diminishes economic activity and wealth. People are working for money building things that people buy with the money they get from building other things and so on; that's how the economy works and how people's needs get met. If we replace the people building things with machines building things, then those machines would also have to do the buying of things (and be paid money with which to do so) to justify their own existence, which they're not going to do,
How is this paid for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this money just magically appear?
Isn't the Fed Reserve already magically creating money for us...and that is just getting us further in debt?
While this sounds all warm and fuzzy...everyone likes "free" money...but WTF does it come from?
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inflation is a tax on everyone.
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:4, Interesting)
Inflation is only a tax on those who are holding currency, or who have chosen to trade a given service or good (such as time worked) for currency at a fixed rate. Non cash capital, money, and property are not affected by inflation. So inflation is not, in practice, a tax on those who are in favor of inflation.
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you pay attention to austerity politics, they are all making big noises about inflation, but in every case they're losing more in GDP than they save in 'austerity'. It's a trap that causes economies to shrink and die, and we're damn lucky the USA hasn't wholeheartedly bought in to this thinking.
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:4, Informative)
most people though don't think a used pinto should be a million dollar car
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Google 'Inflation is your friend SNL' to get the joke.
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Interesting)
They wouldn't be able to pay for this purely out of tax revenues already collected. It would require printing money and sending checks against money that hadn't been in the economy yet. That influx of money would cause some level of price inflation. It would also, however, create more demand for goods and generate more sales of goods. That would create some jobs and encourage further automation. Eventually when there's nothing left to automate, the businesses selling everything will be the primary sources of taxes. Workers will be lightly taxed and most of all of them will have subsidized incomes. Those not working are subsidized to the baseline.
The whole idea is basically turning corporate subsidies on their heads. Companies used to get subsidies for creating jobs and keeping their product prices down. Now much of those go back to the stockholders or other owners since automation is cutting production costs and cutting some jobs. As the jobs go away, though, the demand for the products goes away. It's largely a consumer economy, so it needs consumers to spend money. Stop subsidizing the corporations who are automating away the means to consume. Start subsidizing the consumers who then buy the products.
It's not necessarily the best plan, but that's the part necessary to understand before praising it or dismissing it.
Another competing but potentially complementary option is that if fewer person hours are needed but we have so many people, lower the number of hours before overtime kicks in. If we cut everyone's hours by 20%, 20% more people might get hired. Still, though, people wouldn't want to give up 20% of their pay, so giving more people jobs at the same pay rate for fewer hours does -- guess what -- inflate prices.
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This is oversimplified to the point of being incorrect. Your flaw is thinking that $1 corresponds to some unit of effort. In reality, $1 corresponds to some unit of productivity, whether it's you, a robot, some technological innovation, a new business process, or whatever.
Currently when companies realize gains in productivity, all of the additional money either gets paid out to the people at the top or reinvested in the company, which essentially pays it out to the investors. The employees get little or non
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Funny)
I can't believe they wasted their lives like that, when you could have saved them all that work.
libertarian that supports a BIG (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I'm a libertarian leaning supporter of a BIG.
1. If you check out their actual site [basicincomeaction.org], they're proposing a much more modest $800-1500/month.
2. No, the money comes from eliminating most other forms of welfare. This would fund about 3/4 of the BIG@1k/month
3. The rest could be funded through tax 'adjustments'. For example, put in a flat tax. It need not be progressive or have lots of deductions because 'everybody' gets the BIG, which serves as a huge tax deduction/credit. A flat 30% from $1 earned, for example, has you 'breaking even' at $40k worth of income. Don't give a break for long term capital gains, so people like Trump doesn't get away with only paying 20%(15% earlier), and you have your income back.
4. If they 'print' money instead by using the reserve, we aren't going deeper in debt so much as causing inflation. Which I've almost forgotten about recently...
Personally, I like the BIG because it's mechanical, neutral, fungible, and therefore free(libertarian leaning, remember). Mechanical - it's neutral. You don't have people using it to try to tell you how to live your life, as they do with welfare and taxes today. Fungible - use it for YOUR needs, which may not be the needs the legislature forsaw when they passed a welfare package with restricted spending. Eat cheap but need warm clothing? Too bad! EBT money is only for food, not clothing!
I might be libertarin - but I'm a practical minarchist, not an anarchist. I've seen enough research to believe that a practical safety net is cheaper than our current policies. Multiple research studies have shown that, for example, homeless people are extremely expensive, between shelters, emergency rooms, police, court, and such. To the tune of $250k per homeless person per year. Turns out that a 'shelter first' policy works better than requiring them to detox on the street. Worst case, ~$12k/year per person is a whole lot cheaper than $250k. And this is only one example of many.
While $12k might not seem like much - put 4 'would be homeless' into a house or apartment, and you're looking at a decent amount of purchasing power.
It also helps solve the 'welfare cliff' problems where earning extra money when you're on assistance can actually end up costing you money. Sure, you might be paying 30% of everything you earn in taxes, but you don't have any cases where earning $1 more makes you ineligible for a program, costing you $5k.
When Canada tried a similar program in a town, they found employment was maintained, but graduation rates went up, hospital visits went down, and mothers spent more time with their newborns.
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The OP claimed to be "libertarian leaning" and not a libertarian, so I'm sure he would agree with you.
I gather from the tone of his post that he sees himself as "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" which tends to fall into the same part of the spectrum as libertarian. I also note that OP is doing a pure economic analysis of the situation and finding it cheaper than what we have today, hence his support.
If I'm putting words into your moth, OP, you have my apologies.
Indeed I do! Titles are limited in le
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Informative)
The United States GDP per capita is 53,041.98 USD (2013). This is nearly $4000 per month. Assuming that approximately 33 percent of the American population would qualify for minimum basic income, it would constitute less than the country's annual military spending to utterly eliminate homelessness, poverty, starvation, lack of education and illiteracy, as well as drastically improving a nation's psychological health.
Constantly screaming "WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?!?!" is significantly less helpful and constructive than actually reading the f***ing articles and finding out where it comes from.
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Informative)
Most people are not happy with a basic living, and will certainly work to supplement it.
You know Switzerland has already implemented a basic income right? Strangely, they have not been plagued by a mass of people quitting their jobs.
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Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Insightful)
"There are PLENTY of folks with no drive which would leech on said system and not be self motivated enough to try to better themselves above it in any significant way."
So they would stay exactly where they are now but with a lower "TCO" for the country that hosts them. So, what's the problem, then?
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GP said:
You want paid work because you want more than whatever plain rice you'd be able to afford surviving on a basic income.
Parent responded:
[...] what if the basic income was just enough to keep me comfortable with a plot of land and a small home?
So the question seems to boil down to: what happens if the basic income level allows you to live very comfortably so there is no monetary incentive to work?
1) In most places in the US, even in the rural southwest, a plot of land and a small home are not cheap. Unless you already owned them, you could probably not afford them on a basic income.
2) Prices will get set by supply and demand. Even if the price for a comfortable small home and plot of land starts out in range o
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:4, Insightful)
All the money is free. That's the thing. Modern economies are made up in no small part of manipulating the sentiment of the participants. The money numbers are completely made up and pretty arbitrary. It's more a delicate game of manipulation than earnest tracking of resources. The concept of 'resources' is now so fluid that it's actually a really hard concept.
Re:How is this paid for? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with socialism. This is an attempt to strengthen the free market.
Money does magically appear. It has no value other than what a bunch of technocrats have agreed upon. We do print money with no value. But we give that money to a handful of institutions who decide as technocrats who gets money. A small club decides what market segments receive investments. They also decide who is able to get a loan. But that small club of technocrats have proven over and over again that they don't know what they are doing. Every 10-15 years governments over the world have to bailout banks with tax money. The financial sector is being kept alive with tax payer money, but don't bring to the society what they are supposed to bring. They only think about their own short term profits. That is socialism at its absolute worst!
Basic income also works with printing money with no value. But instead of giving it to a small club of institutions, the government gives everyone an equal share. Individuals, businesses, banks, ... have to compete for that money in a free market. Who gets the money? The person with the best idea. What business earns most? The business with the best products. What bank gets most? The bank with the best service toward the customer.
That's the idea of basic income. It is a liberal idea. But it is not the socialist kind of idea where the state runs businesses. The only thing the state does is collecting value added tax and giving everyone an equal share of money, without requiring the big bureaucracy to decide who is entitled for subsidizes or who has to pay what amount of income tax. Basic income goes hand in hand with a flat income tax system and a high value added tax. Flexible work, high VAT, low income tax, basic income, unregulated free market. That is what basic income is about. Are you happy with a basic income, a roof above your head and decent food? Just work a few days a month until you have enough. Do you want to live in luxury, go on holidays, have a big TV? Work a bit more.
Think about it. If you are happy with your basic income, you no longer need to work. If you want something more, you have to work for it. If you want to start your own business, you can spend your savings and work hard and succeed or fail. When you fail, no worries, you still have your basic income.
The main reason why I haven't started my own business is that I don't like insecurity. I've a nice income. Do I want to risk my safe live just to try my luck in my own business? I do not want to. When I start my own business, I need to invest my savings and I lose my income. Way too risky for me. With basic income, I would have started my own business 2 decades ago. When things wouldn't go as good as expected, I'd still have my basic income. If I would have succeeded I might have been an employer of many people.
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Because the Soviet "civilization" worked out so well. Same thing with the Chicom's "civilization".
Next you'll be telling us that Cuba has the best Healthcare system in the world.
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First off, all of the social programs the government already puts money into would be eliminated and the money funneled into this.
Second, if you don't have health insurance it ends up costing all the rest of us as someone has to pay for it so that means taxes. It's the same reasoning that every state forces you to have car insurance if you have a car. Get over it.
Third, of course wages would go down for some, or more companies would hire more part time workers. Companies are always fighting to pay worker
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine peaked in his early twenties. He was doing highly skilled technical work on embedded electronics. They moved the job and he couldn't bicycle or bus-ride to get there anymore. He worked computer repair for a depot place, but they closed. He ended up at a computer big-box store that is now closed. He followed coworkers from that big-box store into retail. He eventually had supervisors that didn't like him and would only give him ten hours a week to try to get him to quit, but he wouldn't quit to go anywhere else. Eventually they were fired and the new supervisors gave him full-time again, but shlepping retail packages to restock store shelves has taken its toll on him and it's exceedingly unlikely that anyone else would hire him.
He made a significant series of missteps along the way, arguably starting with not getting a driver's license. He's been geographically stuck and that has severely limited his options. Unfortunately I fully expect him to work to the grave because he doesn't qualify for much in the way of financial assistance because he has no dependents, nor is he physically bad enough off to qualify as disabled. I can't even say if I feel he deserves extra help or not. He has made his own way, and while it hasn't led him to bounty it has been full of opportunities that he did not exercise.
I believe that there should be safety-nets. I don't believe that there should be a basic living stipend, unless everyone, even those who work, receive it. I think it makes much more sense start using the stick approach to employers, to have tax levels that reflect the burden that not paying workers for full-time employment, and to reduce those taxes the more employees are full-time.
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Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be noted that such programs have been trialed in small areas. They're not only generally met with wide support, but they tell an interesting story. The rate of people working does drop, but only in certain categories: generally only 1) teenagers and young adults, who use the time to get a better education when they would otherwise have worked; and 2) new parents, who take more time to spend with their children. In other groups, the rate of work does not change. For those two groups, the lack of work is still a sacrifice - the basic income is well less than what one could earn with a proper job. But it lets people focus on what's important in their lives - for their happiness and their future.
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably an over-generalization, but I've got to say: only an American could so thoroughly miss the point of a basic / guaranteed income as to think this is even a question. (Yes, I'm an American too, I just spend a lot of time outside of our political echo chambers.) The whole point of this system is that *everybody* gets it.
It replaces a wide swath of other social programs and regulations. Social Security and Unemployment and so forth are the obvious ones, but it goes much further than that. Minimum wage goes away, and people are instead paid what the market will actually support for their work (without the risk that they will be left without enough to get by on). Food stamps (which go to people who are working, even working full-time, under the current system) go away.
Yes, this means Bill Gates gets as much from this program as an 18-year-old who is trying to get her garage band off the ground... but that's OK. Gates doesn't need the money, but it's not worth the overhead to make sure he doesn't get it; easier to just let *everybody* get it. As for the 18-year-old, she can pursue her art without worrying that she'll end up out on the street. It also addresses inequality, contrary to what The Economist claims; even though the absolute difference in their incomes doesn't change, the ratio sure as hell does.
Re:Seize your Privilege (Score:5, Informative)
Already being done, on a massive scale. Not working.
You're advocating for basically a feedback loop, a way for a functioning system to flip out and cease to function.
Pretty much the whole concept of Basic Income is to say that some aggregations of capital are superfluous. You don't 'need' a billion dollars as an individual. Nothing about you is 'worth' that kind of power and influence, especially since the people who get that kind of money tend to be psychos.
Therefore, the superfluous capital is nothing but a prize. So here, have a trophy cup saying you beat everybody else, and then the government through taxation seizes your superfluous capital and takes it and uses it. (It's proposing to give it to your customers, so go and sell more stuff to them, keep it moving)
FOSS is about accumulated information and tools ALSO being in circulation. You'll still have your education and your contacts, plus your contacts will also be taxed like you so you'll still be in the same relative position you were before (this is why Donald Trump wants to jack up taxes on the rich: winning is relative, plus he doesn't respect the rich people he's personally seen, and thinks they're losers)
Re:Seize your Privilege (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the problem. *SOME* wealthy people will use their wealth in a socially beneficial manner (or at least in a way that explores the possibility of social benefit). But most of them won't.
If you don't have extremely rich people, there will be some options that are never explored. Some of those options will be extremely valuable. Most of them, however,...
Governments and corporations have not be very good at exploring high risk/high payoff scenarios. We need those areas explored. (How rapidly?) What alternative structures will accomplish this? The alternatives wouldn't need to be very efficient to be better than the current approach. A change in the laws to encourage thinks like corporations creating entities like Bell Labs was might suffice, but they need to be able to accumulate stashes of cash that cannot be raided except for advanced projects.
That said, I'm in favor of totally replacing the non-retirement portion of Social Security (and part of that) with a basic income...which everyone gets. Somehow it needs to be tied to the actual cost of living, but "somehow" is dangerously vague. Perhaps the "basic income" should equal the current minimum wage, and then remove all minimum wage rules & laws. (At least in my area the minimum wage is considerably below the actual poverty level. I don't know what the law says the poverty level is.) I believe that *eventually* the basic income should be above the actual poverty level, though not by much. And that education should be free at all levels. So if you want to devote your life to polishing your skills for a decade, you should be able to do so. Perhaps internet access should also be freely available at, say, the speed of a 100 kB/s. Perhaps a bit slower.
The idea here is to be prepared for the (already incipient) future where robots increasingly replace jobs. Eventually, of course, all jobs will be replaced, but that's several decades off. In the mean time SOME people will need to be employed, and will need to prepare themselves for employment, with no guarantee that the job will still be available by the time they are ready. Many people will need to prepare for 10 years for a job that will be automated away shortly before they are qualified (or very soon afterwards). This is already happening to people, but it's still rather uncommon. It won't remain uncommon. A sign of this is the number of articles saying "People should consider the concept of a career to be obsolete" and similar things. They emphasize the need to be always ready to retrain, but many careers require an extensive preparation. Doctor, lawyer, pharmacist, etc. And the initial signs of automation are just that fewer new people are currently being hired. This is almost always disguised in the reported statistics, or attributed to a temporary economic slowdown. And currently much of it is accurately attributed to off-shoring. But new articles seem to be indicating that many of those jobs that were off-shored are being automated because even Javanese workers aren't as cheap as robots. (OK, most factory automation doesn't involve real robots. But that's the way it's being reported.)
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you want to tax wage earners so you can, in turn, pay everyone a stipend that comes with a debt+interest burden? With today's western governments running deficits, that's essentially what you're suggesting. You're crazy. You can't just print money when people need/want more.
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"UBI is a way to uplift everyone"
Except for those who pay for it.
"Also, YOU would benefit from it too, since it would be paid out to everyone."
Not everyone will pay FOR it.
"What, you don't like money?"
Yup, that's one reason why I work. To earn MY OWN MONEY.
The other reason is because I can. I've worked for a few decades to develop knowledge, skills, and abilities that are sufficiently marketable to enable me to find employment. Others not so fortunate or motivated may have different results.
I do not begru
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Re: Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe some people have kids and then things turn south? If I lost my job and I spent my savings while looking for a new one, I wouldn't be able to just give away my kids because I couldn't afford them anymore.
Re: Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who really can afford to have kids without worrying about what happens if they lose their job etc. are the people who aren't having any kids. If everyone took your advice (and somehow, magically, birth control became 100% effective), we would quickly have a population collapse. A huge number of kids these days are being born to poor and lower-income people; they're keeping our numbers up. How that's going to play out long-term, I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound good. What the answer to this is, I don't know. Honestly, I think that if we don't want a societal collapse within 2 generations (because the more productive people in society aren't replacing themselves with kids, and the kids of the unproductive people aren't generally becoming productive to replace the older productive ones), we need to work really hard on life-extension therapies so people can live past 150.
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Informative)
The idea behind a basic guaranteed income is that it replaces all that, and is universal. EVERYBODY, regardless of age, disability, location, job, or dead relatives is guaranteed the basic income. It replaces government pensions, welfare, food stamps, even the minimum wage, and all of the redundant bureaucratic apparatus (and chances to cheat) that are associated with those programs.
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
It replaces government pensions, welfare, food stamps, even the minimum wage, and all of the redundant bureaucratic apparatus (and chances to cheat) that are associated with those programs.
And by simplifying and removing that bureaucracy, you can theoretically save money overall.
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And by simplifying and removing that bureaucracy, you can theoretically save money overall.
By firing all of the redundant bureaucrats? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Are you serious? Do you really think the bureaucracy is going to go away?
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
And when was the last time you heard of any major tax or department in govt that was fully and successfully defunded or removed entirely?
Hell, it took almost 108 years to remove the Phone Excise Tax [usatoday.com] ....something as archaic as that took forever to fully remove.
Re:Don't we (the US) already have that... (Score:5, Insightful)
replaces government pensions, welfare, food stamps,
To me this is the basic flaw of basic income. By handing out free money, you are still going to have all the social ills those programs are at least mitigating, but now you have fewer people in your society who are working profitably (or at least I will assume so). Further, the flaw with currency has always been that its value is not fixed by any hard force, but rather floats based on a complicated set of functions that surely will not favor the poor. The outcome I see is that you give that currency out, and prices of things will go up, and people are still having a hard time scraping by (and bad decisions with that money will further conflate the issue).
I would rather see "Basic Services" instead of basic income. Every person can get X amount of food, show up and be treated for medical concerns, have day care, be provided with A place to live suitable for themselves alone, with heat and enough electricity for a single person. Do not give out money, give out basic and enabling services people in hard times can use. None of this would be posh, but it would provide basic living needs. You could do nothing at all and exist for as long as you live. This would have less inflationary impact, and would allow companies to hire/fire at will (which they arguably need to do), and allow citizens to retrain themselves as technology renders disciplines obsolete, and ultimately provide the safety net I think a civilized country should have, but leaving the best parts of capitalism. There will be considerable incentive incentive to get out of and an impetus to return the individual to productivity, which is actually the primary force for economic health in a country anyway. Some never will... and the success or failure of this program will be determined by how many such people exist.
But if you want to run a socialist experiment, this is how I'd start it, not by handing out a check.
Not the same (Score:3)
Don't we (the US) already have that in the form of SS (old age, disability, survivor benefits), food stamps, etc, etc?
No we don't. Those are programs for people that meet specific criteria. Big portions of the population don't qualify for those programs for one reason or another. Even when you do qualify, sometimes they take a while to kick in. I know first hand that the process of SS disability can take quite a while.
I'd need a lot of evidence to make me think that something like this is not a stupid idea. I think the notion that this would lift people out of poverty would be quickly swamped by inflation. Prices are
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Actually, my Citizen's Dividend is essentially an expansion of Social Security.
The Basic Income movement is inherently political, which I've had the unfortunate pleasure of learning about since I worked out how to make a *correct* Citizen's Dividend.
Basic Incomes are extremely expensive and have enormous economic impacts; to implement one without damaging the economy, you need to replace existing welfare. To gain a benefit, you need a stable finance source--stable relative to the distribution per perso
Free money isn't free (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Free money isn't free (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Not a huge fan of welfare in general, but this system is much preferred to the current system. Here's how you pay for it (remember this includes outlays AND overhead - overhead can be quite huge in some cases)
1. Eliminate all low-income welfare programs - there are a TON of these
2. Eliminate social security
3. You can probably eliminate most forms of medicare and medicaid
4. Eliminate most low-income student support programs (school lunches, etc...)
5. Eliminate most V.A. support programs, which is basically welfare as well
6. Government pensioners can probably have their pension payments removed from the minimum income (IE you don't get a pension AND basic income)
- This won't necessarily save money but can ease pressure in the pension system
7. Eliminate make-work/stimulus programs
That's just the tip of the iceberg. You can probably eliminate unemployment insurance, minimum wage, heck almost all labor regulations as the philosophy behind them is that low-income workers are exploited as they are being "forced" to work to survive.
Re:Free money isn't free (Score:4, Informative)
And you'll be getting it, just under a different program.
Take all those 'eliminates' he said and turn them into 'consolidate' instead. This is one program to replace all those other programs.
Re:Free money isn't free (Score:5, Insightful)
The money comes from automation and productivity increases due to technology. If a factory installs hundreds of robots and now no longer needs to hire people, there needs to be a way to redistribute some of those savings otherwise those who own the machines will gain all the advantages. In an ideal techno utopia, machines would be doing the majority of the work, most would live off a basic income out of that productivity surplus, and the few who enjoyed building machines would continue to do so (either for the prestige or for a larger share of that productivity surplus).
O Really? (Score:3)
And who owns the equipment that provided automation and productivity increases? How much did they invest to get those production gains? Why are the gains from that smart investment being given to someone else who didn't make the investment and has zero to do with it?
Ben Franklin (Score:5, Insightful)
and
Re:Ben Franklin (Score:5, Insightful)
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What makes you think they'd work any better than in Victorian times?
To begin with, we wouldn't have to worry about mass deaths from smallpox.......
Secondly they had laws preventing people from leaving town.
Thirdly, it's not a form of punishment, just a way to give people a lift when they are down.
Paul Krugman has suggested something similar as a way to get full employment.
Re: (Score:3)
>> What you want is the poor skilled in a way to contribute to economy, not to sweep the side of the road.
I disagree. Drive through any poor neighborhood and you'll see plenty of road sweeping, trash picking-up and weeding projects idle people could start today. Cleaning up the appearance of these places probably WOULD go a long way toward improving their economy - just see what happens to the edges of a seedy city when gentrification occurs.
>> You're basically proposing the Chinese way. Emplo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As the bar (between poor and insanely rich) keeps moving, the concept of 'survival of the fittest' changes in relevance and effectiveness.
In a world where everybody needs to dig ditches and pick cotton and grow crops, almost anybody is going to be able to exchange some effort and time for capital (in a very small way). To drop out of that system is super hard: what you have to do in order to join the ranks of the workers is little more than show up and use your muscles for a while. There's lots of demand fo
It might finally be time for this (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the work cycle is just about done evolving. For example:
- Hunter-gatherers organized into agrarian societies
- Mechanization and industrialization led to many farm workers transitioning to factory work
- Societal pressures on education, etc. led to many factory workers transitioning to office and service work
- Offshoring of all manufacturing from first world countries shifted smart people to office work, less-than-smart people to crappy service jobs
- Offshoring of office work including IT shifted a bunch of the smart people to crappy service jobs or the "gig economy"
- Automation or offshoring of the rest of the office work will lead to....chaos? Revolution? A country of people being paid to rate cat videos on YouTube?
Whatever it leads to, there isn't any work left for most people to move to. Smart people are still relatively OK, but there are A LOT of not-smart people holding down random corporate jobs and the few factory jobs that are left. When there's nowhere to go, and society still uses money to value things, basic income is a good idea. It also formally recognizes that there are people who just can't contribute to society at the same levels as others and provides a humane existence for them.
Re:It might finally be time for this (Score:4, Informative)
This !
By their replies, I see here a lot of people slave to their job, as it was the sole meaning of their life.
My job, my money, my family, my car, my house. WTF ?
What ? You don't have a job ? Go die, scum ! I don't want to help you, but if I'm in the same situation as you, I'll cry for help.
And you see that it works, when poor people feel miserable because they don't have a job.
Giving a minimal amount of money to allow people to live decently (food + housing) would make the society fairer.
Of course, there will be abuses, from both sides.
"Poor" people will say: I have not enough money to feed my big dogs or pay for my car.
"Rich" people will say: I won't pay slackers, because I work my ass off. I don't need anybody's help.
This will also help "normal" people to stop despising others because they cannot get a job.
There are life accidents, for example, when people are disabled, should they have twice the pain: disabled and jobless ?
What is the minimal amount of money you would need to live decently ?
Re:It might finally be time for this (Score:5, Interesting)
We are more resourceful that skeptics believe, and change has always made people fearful. Fear sells, and it is easy to exclusively take council of that fear.
With respect, I would not ridicule a fearful pessimist, apprehension and fear are natural but not inevitable. I believe there's much more to be optimistic about ahead -- Challenges make us grow overall as a species.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the work cycle is just about done evolving. For example: - Hunter-gatherers organized into agrarian societies - Mechanization and industrialization led to many farm workers transitioning to factory work - Societal pressures on education, etc. led to many factory workers transitioning to office and service work - Offshoring of all manufacturing from first world countries shifted smart people to office work, less-than-smart people to crappy service jobs - Offshoring of office work including IT shifted a bunch of the smart people to crappy service jobs or the "gig economy" - Automation or offshoring of the rest of the office work will lead to....chaos? Revolution? A country of people being paid to rate cat videos on YouTube?
Whatever it leads to, there isn't any work left for most people to move to. Smart people are still relatively OK, but there are A LOT of not-smart people holding down random corporate jobs and the few factory jobs that are left. When there's nowhere to go, and society still uses money to value things, basic income is a good idea. It also formally recognizes that there are people who just can't contribute to society at the same levels as others and provides a humane existence for them.
Except that billionaires like JK Rowling were once on the dole.
Guaranteed income allows people to take risks. Instead of being stuck on a dead end job treadmill to keep the apartment or health insurance, they can do risky things that could reap huge rewards.
One of the reasons that children of successful parents are more successful is because of that safety net. Even if they fail, its not so bad. The cost of failure for a regular person would be loss of home and enormous difficulty just to make ends meet
uh no (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:uh no (Score:5, Informative)
No matter how you cut it we will ALWAYS pay for those who won't work. Either we will pay as crime victims, or as supporters of their children who are in foster care/receive nutrition programs, need section 8 housing, etc etc. Or we will pay to dispose of their dead body when they die of neglect. Somehow those who will not work will cost you money no matter how you vote.
I, for one, would love to prevent desperation, crime, and abuse by paying losers to sit at home playing xbox and smoking weed staying out of my way and off of the streets..
desperate people do desperate things.
Re: (Score:3)
How much? And why won't they demand more than that?
Do you think there's an upper limit to what society can pay these people for not working before there are net negative consequences? What keeps the amount below that number?
Re: (Score:3)
You screw up your life, there's consequences.
What you fail to understand is that there are consequences for everyone. So, the entire middle class has to pay for a sluggish middle class because we want to teach a lesson to a flawed human? If a poor person gets $20K a year, almost all of that ends up in the economy (much of it in the local economy). If a rich personal gets $20K extra a year, that's most likely just going to buy more Phillip Morris or Comcast stock. You'd cut off your nose to spite your face!
Where did this idea come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people think are entitled to other people's money?
We've already seen what numerous entitlement programs have done to the USA. Our labor participation rate is the lowest it's been in my lifetime and I was born in the 70s. This is what happens when you over regulate an economy, over legislate entitlement programs, and don't require people to be productive in order to live.
Are there people that are truly down and out through no fault of their own? Absolutely! Is it really half of the US population? (47% don't pay federal income tax) Hell no. Maybe 5%. Let's scale back all of the unnecessary entitlements and get people being productive and working again.
Re:Where did this idea come from? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bull! It went down largely because factories drifted overseas, and nothing equivalent is replacing it on the same scale. Smarter machines and dirt-cheap overseas labor by desperate near-slaves are clearly biting into career options for high-school-level workers. Almost everything predictable and repetitious is drying up before our eyes.
Even wages among the educated have been stagnant of late. Education only delays the inevitable. The current economy hugely favors the 1%: it's a winner-take-all economy.
If you get in the 1% club you have the power to protect your turf. If you are outside the club, you have to grovel with the masses for the shrinking pie.
Re: (Score:3)
Simple math (Score:3)
Multiply 300 million people by a very modest ten thousand dollars a year. Now tell me where that's going to come from, comparing with current US tax revenues, then tell me how you intend to avoid rampant inflation if you somehow manage to come up with it.
Re:Simple math (Score:5, Informative)
GPD of USA last years was 18.14 Trillion
300 Million times $10,000 is 3 trillion. So we need to capture 16% of the GDP in taxation to pay for this.
$869 Million of social security payments would be replaced by this. As would $949 Million of welfare payments. So the majority of this would be covered by the costs of the programs it would replace, and there are many smaller programs this would replace that I am not going to take the time to chase down and add up.
Has social security caused rampant inflation? How about child tax credits? Have welfare payments caused our currently explosive 1% inflation?
The simple math does not sound too bad.
Re:Simple math (Score:5, Interesting)
That just highlights even more problems, for example the $869 billion is divided between 59 million Americans, so most of those - the neediest - are going to be taking a substantial hit. Retired workers average at about $1300 a month, dropped under your vision to $800 a month. Disabled workers would lose about a third of their income. Over half of the $949 billion goes on medical care, and I'm willing to wager that's likewise divided up between a relatively small number of people.
As appealing as UI sounds on the face of it, it's a really ignorant idea at this point in our economic development.
Job guarantee is much more sound approach (Score:5, Interesting)
Universal Apocalyptic truth (Score:5, Insightful)
So what do we do? We are TOO efficient for everyone to earn a living. So do we just murder the people who are not "needed?" Do we let them starve? Do we have massive unnecessary works to employ the unemployable? I am all for suggestions, but when society doesn't really need as many workers as it has, you have to either change the idea of work, or kill off some of the workers.
I approve, sorta (Score:5, Interesting)
My leanings are very much in the libertarian direction. I support property rights, free markets, etc, etc, etc.
With that in mind, if we, as a society, are going to have wealth redistribution, this method is the least offensive to me.
Inflation is an extraordinarily evil and offensive thing, but if we are going to create money out of thin air, the place where it can do the least harm is in the bank accounts of the people.
Government should stop debasing our money and stop encouraging idleness, but if they are going to do it anyway, this seems to be the least offensive option.
The catch is that it needs to coupled with responsibility. It needs to replace our other systems, to a large extent. It cannot simply be added to them, or the people will waste their free money, and come back looking for more.
Relevant (Score:3, Interesting)
We need this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting unconditional basic income would be a huge boon for workers. If leaving work becomes a viable option for nearly everybody, then employers will no longer be able to abuse their employees. They'll actually have to offer decent working conditions, or the workers will just walk away. This should end bullshit practices like firing people for not working on holidays, or getting pregnant, or complaining about sexual harassment.
It wouldn't happen immediately, but a UBI would dramatically improve the employment marketplace for employees.
For best results, scale with average (Score:3)
If we do this by giving everyone half of (the average income minus their own income), then we basically guarantee that nobody makes less than half of average, we cost average people nothing to pay for it, and the burden on the rich who do pay for it scales with the inequality of income distribution automatically. In a market where income distribution was close to uniform already, this kind of distribution would automatically scale back to almost nothing. If a tiny handful of people get almost all the money and most people get almost none, then that tiny handful will be paying a lot to a lot of people. It creates a spring-like centerward pressure on everyone; people near average are barely affected at all, the further from average you get the harded it pulls you back toward average.
Libertarians and Unconditional Basic Income (Score:3)
Libertarians need to think more deeply here.
The state of nature is one in which a natural person has de facto rights to fight for his survival — which includes not just his own personal survival but the right to sire and raise children to equally viable adulthood. When I use the word “fight” I mean it: Animals will fight for territorial access for the lives of themselves and their progeny. The Austrian and Lockean schools fail to recognize the situation which arises in nature when an animal is without the means of intergenerational sustenance, and the necessity of aggression in some of those situations. Civilization attempts to ignore this by proclaiming “property rights” as “natural” against “aggression”. This foolishness at the heart of these schools of thought renders them forever vulnerable to collectivists. The way out is trivially obvious: Follow Lysander Spooner’s definition of legitimate government as a mutual insurance company into which men voluntarily invest their natural rights in exchange for shares in and dividends from the company. The premiums paid for property rights take the place of taxes. The dividends take the place of social welfare. The violation of this simple and obvious paleolibertarian construct sacrifices the bedrock principle of liberty upon which civilization is founded for the high purpose of becoming politically impotent against collectivists.
As for socialists, all they need to do is find out who is responsible for ignoring Martin Luther King Jr’s final advice which was quite congruent with this paleolibertarian notion of natural rights investment being compensated by a dividend.
They need to find out who is responsible for ignoring MLK’s advice and do whatever it takes to neutralize their power — and I mean whatever it takes.
I’d start with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
No such thing (Score:3)
There is no such thing as "free money". There is money that was taken from someone else by politicians with people with guns backing their play that they may give some of to you after taking their cut and paying all those needed to take that money. And you pay for all those middlemen. You pay again for the reduced productivity of those that produce more value than they consume.
Or the government just prints more and more money and gives you that. That is "free" right. Ask Zimbabwe what happens when the money printing press runs free. You get hit with all money being worth less and less. You get hit again with higher prices over time. And again if you happen to have any savings or fixed payments incoming that are now effectively reduced.
I have never seen one Guaranteed Income scheme that bothered to count its full costs, or talk honesty about who footed the bill how both directly and indirectly.
Re:Free stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it doesn't scale. Money has to keep moving or civilization collapses, and when you guys that turn the screws and get ALL the money keep it, it gets sucked out of the economy and stuck in the Cayman Islands or some such place.
This has happened before and was called the Gilded Age and led to the Great Depression. You guys simply don't produce as much economic activity as a thousand poor people each with a thousandth of the money.
Nations that don't figure this out are gonna die, so it's kind of up to them what they do about it.
Re:Free stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people can't wrap their head around this. I once posed the question, "What would happen if one king owned all the gold?", and I got some pretty bizarre responses. Some people just couldn't wrap their head around the fact that when money leaves the economy, the economy switches to a different form of money and becomes degenerate before that happens. One poster seemed to think that gold would somehow still be required for tax payments, despite the fact that all the gold was already in the treasury and was thus impossible to render as payment. Many refused to see the king as being potentially capital and/or government. They were locked into the idea that he was one or the other, based on their ingrained political philosophy.
Re: (Score:3)
The amount of US wealth owned by the top 1% has fluctuated between 34% and 37% since the early 1960s. There's no runaway train of the richest amassing more and more (relatively) of the wealth.
Re: (Score:3)
How about End This Depression Now! [wikipedia.org] by Nobel Price by Nobel Price winner and macroeconomist Paul Krugman? You've honestly never heard of this idea!?
Re: (Score:3)
You mean like, for example, Shockley, Mullis, Lenard, Pauling, or Josephson? The Nobel Prize is often awarded for important contributions in a narrow technical field. A consequence of the Nobel Prize is that its recipients often suffer delusions of grandeur, believing themselves to be experts on everything in their field and beyond. And that's the real Nobel Prize, no the joke that's awarded to economists.
Krugman got his prize for his work on spatial econo
Re: (Score:3)
Here: https://www.fcc.gov/lifeline [fcc.gov]
It isn't the huge waste people make it out to be, but it is quite the outdated program.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Interesting)
>> $10k per child
The current problem with "per child" is that it is sometimes an incentive to have MORE children, especially if the cost to minimally clothe/feed/plug-em-into-TV is less than the offered incentive. For population control and family stability, you'd be better off with something like "$20K per adult, $45K for married couples - period. If you want kids, scale back your lifestyle or get a job/education that can support a higher standard of living."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I lean fiscally conservative, but anyone who believes it's this simple is...well, I'll be a little tactful...very wrong.
Ask new high school grads how easy it is to "get a job". It's possible, but it can take months, and the job you get won't be great and won't pay much. I've also known very intelligent and capable people who were long term unemployed. They aren't anymore, but a year or two out of work completely discounts any "get a job" nonsense. There are
Re:Not Free Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did the money in your pocket come from?
It came from presumably your employer. Where did they get it? They made things and consumers of some kind bought the things.
Where did the consumers get the money to spend?
This is where your concept fails. The basic income idea is so simple and obvious. It says 'okay, let's continue to have a relatively unregulated capital-based system, and this is where the money comes from'. It's nothing more than a negative feedback loop on a variable that would otherwise go into a runaway condition and crash the program.
If you don't believe 'capital' is going into a runaway condition and crashing capitalism, then you clearly do not run your own business and rely on customers having money to spend.
Re:Not Free Money (Score:5, Informative)
Right now new capital enters the system via debt. Businesses and consumers borrow money the banks don't actually have. If it doesn't get to the consumers, it doesn't keep circulating. If it doesn't keep circulating, more businesses lay people off and there are fewer consumers spending less money.
The basic income idea is to put new money into circulation not from taxes necessarily, but probably from printing it into circulation. That creates some inflation, which is basically debt spread evenly across the entire economy. Then the economy keeps the money flowing, because there's a steady supply of it to people who aren't currently employed. It makes banks a secondary source of entry for currency rather than the primary one.
The government doesn't have to keep track of this program for rent, that program for health insurance, this other program for some other type of assistance, and then a complex tax code. The basic income subsidy and a simplified tax code makes the government much more streamlined so the tax rate can actually be lower or more of the money put into the subsidy.
It might not be an ideal solution, but it's not expected to be "free". It's actually a very profound macroeconomic idea for adjusting to booming per-worker productivity and a simultaneous lack of jobs. The problem it's trying to solve is that the reason the job market is so soft is that so few people need to work to produce the things that make everyone able to live comfortably. Demand for labor is down, which is causing demand for products to be down (via lack of means to pay). If more people could pay, more products could be sold. The corporations wouldn't need tax breaks as subsidies because nearly all products are subsidized on the buyer's side. Most of the tax burden could eventually be shifted onto the people owning the automation.
Re:I can't see how this will work (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get a job, you get that money on top of the basic income. A job or no job could be the difference between ramen every night and having real food and a car.
Re:Didn't we try this in the past? (Score:5, Insightful)
What we have now is not pure Capitalism, what the Soviets had was not pure Communism, and so forth.
Central planning of an economy has been shown to be very inefficient. Rapacious unbridled capitalism has been shown to be rapacious. No pure doctrine has ever survived the test of time. Inevitably a decent economy needs to employ things that also happen to be part of Socialism, Communism, and Capitalism.
How about we have a philosophical/economic debate without immediately siloing ideas and arguments as a way to dismiss them entirely?
Re: (Score:3)
Let's say society just consisted of two people on a desert island. You say "I shouldn't have to work in order not to starve". Does your friend have a moral obligation to give you food so that you don't starve, even though you refuse to work? I don't think so.
So, why should it be any different when society is larger? At what size of a society does "I shouldn't have to work in order not to starve" turn from u
The payments can be tuned... (Score:3)
This is something that I'm seeing a lot of - a seeming assumption that the payments can't be tuned.
As another poster put it - figure it as a redistributive tax - x% of income(they used 17%), equally distributed to all.
As long as you keep the percentage stable, it should quickly settle into a stable amount.
The higher the payment, the fewer/less people work. The lower the payment, the more they work. By the same token, you also have the idea that if fewer workers are available(because they don't NEED to wor
Re: (Score:3)
Universal basic income guarantee is not communism. It's simply a more efficient and low-overhead form of government welfare. Government welfare is not communism, either. Communist is public (or, in practice, usually state) ownership of the means of production. Nothing about UBI implies that, and nothing about it makes it impossible to earn millions and billions through your hard work, if you think you're up for it.
UBI specifically had several trials, and none of them were a failure. Look up "Mincome" for on