Finland Begins To Shape Basic Income Proposal (yle.fi) 674
jones_supa writes: The Finnish social insurance institution is to begin drawing up plans for a citizens' basic income model. If eventually deployed after an experimental phase, the model could revolutionize the Finnish social welfare system. Under basic income all citizens would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government. The proposal's director Olli Kangas says that the model would see Finns being paid some 800 euros a month in its full form, 550 euros monthly in the model's pilot phase. The full-fledged form of the model would make some earnings-based benefits obsolete, but in the partial pilot format benefits would not be affected, and housing and income support would remain as separate packages. We first mentioned this plan a few months ago, and at the start of the year touched on a program that tied a basic income program with the Fimkrypto cryptocurrency.
Excellent. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really the difference between capitalism as a means to exploit the weak, and capitalism as a means to voluntarily exchange for mutual benefit.
Most people want to work - I have enough money to never need to work another day in my life, yet I still enjoy being productive. Those who say they don't, and that they only work because they have to - those who project their negative image of themselves on the whole of humanity - those who, surprisingly enough, nevertheless seem keen with the idea of earning more than the minimum - are welcome to retire. And to see how it goes for them. Technology doesn't require everyone to be employed 40+ hours/week to keep everyone fed, clothed and housed.
Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. The money will quickly flow back through the system anyway, and will end up as a profit for some company somewhere. People don't just sit on their meager cash.
If everyone in the world got a survivable benefit package for their region, we would be in a lot better shape than we are with the current crony capitalism system.
Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The trick is to let you collect the stipend and make money at a job as well. Up to a certain level anyway.
Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who picks up the trash for minimum wage? Most places around here get $15 an hour starting wage, more if your driving and more if you been at it for a while. The minimum wage is $8 something an hour. And this is in the mid west to central US.
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I'm OP, and I'm one of those people who picks up trash in the street when I walk past it, and tries to keep my street (to the extent all my neighbours approve) tidy. I'd be happy to spend a few hours a week doing this in a more organised manner to benefit the community - perhaps as part of a team of volunteers and people doing community service enforced by the courts for non-violent crime.
As to picking up the trash as a full-time job, this is fairly well paid here - a lot more than 800 euro/month! And while
Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually the other way around. People won't do minimum wage jobs because they don't pay enough to live on, and if they have a job their benefits end. In some countries benefits continue for minimum wage workers (corporate welfare, where they government props up non-viable businesses that can't or won't pay enough for their staff to remain alive and healthy).
That's what will happen here - people will be able to take low paid, part time jobs to supplement their income because the basic income will mean they have enough to live.
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Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Informative)
In the case of benefits, people are in fact disincentivized from working because their welfare checks are reduced by the amount they work -- it's like having to work for free. Basic income fixes this problem because it's not an income-based benefit, a poor person can get a minimum wage job and not lose anything.
Re:Excellent. (Score:4, Funny)
Let's face it, who wants to pick up the trash ?
Ooooh, I think I know this one: Uber drivers working the Jersey shore?
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Just a guess, but people would pick up the trash who want to have more than a basic sustenance, and aren't qualified to do anything else.
There's a tiny percentage of the population who might end up just living on their dole, but I'd rather see them have shelter and food than have them begging in the street.
I really don't want to be a rich man in a poor country. I've been to
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Well mate, it has something to do with morality. Advanced societies believe it's better to take care of each other, because, believe it or not, most of us are going to someday be in a position where we're not "producing" anything of value and we're going to n
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Having been forced to do community service in the past(required to pass a class in HS required to graduate), I can tell you that forced 'community service' doesn't increase 'involvement'.
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If they don't want to do it, then they can pay money instead.
They already do, or should. It's called taxes. The well-off people already pay almost all of them, but still.
Charge based on what an hour of their time is worth.
Let me guess, you'll be in charge of looking each person in the eye and, as Director Of The Ministry Of Worthiness, know how much that is?
I think if you have people have to spend a little time out in their community doing things like picking up trash, etc. that they'll be far less likely to do things like littering.
My observation is that the sort of jerks who throw trash in public places are actually MORE inclined to do so, out of pure resentment, if they are ever made to pick any of it up. That is a cultural problem, not forced labor problem.
Either we can pay for a minimum income or we can pay the cost of dealing the crime and other social problems created by having no way for a lot of people to make a living.
Yeah, because those are the o
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Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Make everyone not working do 10 hours of community service a week.
Making everybody do community service is one of those ideas that sounds like a good idea until people try to do it in reality.
In New York City under Mayor Giuliani, people on welfare were required to do commuinity service. There were several problems with that.
First of all, if they were doing anything useful, they were replacing a paid City worker who would have been making $15 an hour or more for it. But instead, they were getting "paid" in welfare payments that were the equivalent of about $3 an hour. Most people in the program liked working. That raises the question of, "If you want them to work and get off welfare, why not give them a job that pays enough to live on so they won't have to go on welfare?" (Answer: There were no jobs.)
Second, they weren't doing anything useful. It was a boondoggle. The welfare office would send people to city offices, like the Fire Department headquarters, and the managers at the fire department wouldn't know what to do with them. One guy in a municipal building said that they sent people around to empty his waste basket 12 times a day. They could get injured, they could injure other people, they could do damage. It would take more time for a supervisor to teach them how to do something useful than it would for the supervisor to do it himself.
There were other problems like, where does a mother on welfare get someone to look after her kids when she's working? A lot of those mothers would have been working, if they could have gotten child care.
A third problem is, who else is required to do "community service"? Criminals, who are sentenced by the courts. Giuliani was treating people on welfare as if they were criminals.
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Agreed. Plus, it is a much bigger problem when a company starts paying one group of workers much higher wages than the average worker in the area, like some IT people in San Francisco. That's when rental rates go sky high, not when you give poor people a barely living stipend. So if you are going to complain that giving people enough money to not starve is going to cause this, then you have to admit the problem with companies paying workers a much higher salary than average is an even bigger problem. In fac
People working when they don't have to (Score:2)
Most people want to work
You must know different people than I do. Most people I know would MUCH rather not work even if it is good for them. I've had a number employees of mine fraudulently claim disability. There isn't a single person on my staff at work that I believe would continue to work for a paycheck if they didn't have to.
I have enough money to never need to work another day in my life, yet I still enjoy being productive.
Even if that is true, it is not representative of a large portion of the population. I like the way Wanda Sykes put it in her stand up act. "If I won the lottery I'd walk off the stage in the middle
Re:People working when they don't have to (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a huge difference between "winning the lottery" and "basic income".
Some people would be happy to sit at home and do nothing except watch TV all day. So?
Other people would keep working in order to afford more options.
Some would keep working because they enjoy the job they do.
Some would keep working because they were not happy sitting at home watching TV all day.
The question is, is the group of people who are happy-not-working large enough to bankrupt the group of people who would keep working?
Re:People working when they don't have to (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people I know would MUCH rather not work even if it is good for them.
I think it would be more accurate to say that most people would much rather not work at shitty, tedious, mind-numbing, soul-destroying, low-paying jobs that they hate.
I suspect that most people would happily work at a job that fit their interests, and that they found psychologically rewarding; the problem, of course, is that most jobs (and especially the kinds of jobs that are available to untrained/uneducated people) are of the tedious and mind-numbing variety.
On the optimistic side, computers and automation provide us with the opportunity to let machines to the tedious necessary work, freeing up people to find jobs that are more compatible with their own tastes. Of course, it's likely that many of the jobs that people would choose for themselves would not be particularly economically productive -- in a previous era, they would be referred to as "hobbies" -- but that is not a problem in a society where machines provide a surplus of wealth so that humans no longer need to be dragooned into service on threat of starvation.
If nothing else, being able to quit a job you hate without fear of starvation and/or homelessness frees people up to look for a different kind of employment that they would like better, and it frees people to get the education necessary to do that job competently. The endgame is a society with more people doing jobs they want to do rather than jobs that they are forced to do, and therefore a society where more people are enthusiastic and therefore good at their jobs.
Re:Excellent. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not a voluntary exchange if the alternative is starvation/homelessness.
Consider a slave: they are not in a literal sense forced to work, but if they don't work, they endure something horrid e.g. whipping. Nobody can be forced to move their hands in a particular way, or to think about a particular thing. It's just that they had two choices, and the "get on with work" choice was the least horrid.
Slave = does work;
Slave-owner = gives slave food rather than a whipping.
Alternative: slave gets whipped, or dies of starvation.
Under pure capitalism:
Wage-slave = does work;
Owner = gives money to pay for food;
Government = does not lock up the wage-slave for stealing food.
Alternative: wage-slave gets locked up, or dies of starvation.
The owner under pure capitalism outsources the job of punishment for non-compliance with the system. The obvious capitalist counterargument is "but the wage-slave could start up their own business!" - this is true for the small proportion of people who have the intelligence and health to start up a successful business. The second counterargument is "but the wage-slave could better themselves and save up, so they are no longer a wage-slave!" - this is again true only for a proportion of people who have the intelligence and health etc. etc., and that proportion is always diminishing with the advance of technology. Ultimately, the vast majority of people end up as wage-slaves.
The reason regular slavery is not like wage-slavery isn't because the economics are much different, but because we have a whole lot of regulation designed to prevent people being worked to death like animals. It's still a bandaid over the far more sensible solution: a basic income to cater for basic (universal) human needs, with improvement coming through voluntary exchange that no party needs to get involved in, but chooses to.
Is it just me (Score:2)
Summary = entire article?
Inflation? (Score:3)
I'm curious how inflation will not eat up most/all of this. I'm also curious how many people will simply decide to do nothing and live on the dole.
I think the intentions are good but I'm pretty dubious this will actually work and be net beneficial to society. Hope I'm wrong but doubt I am...
Re:Inflation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, it's not 800 Euros a month hot off the printing press; it's 800 Euros that were taxed out of the economy then put back into the economy in a different place. It'll surely effect the prices of many things, but net there's no more total money in the economy.
I suspect the thinking is that many of the things that people on the lower income end of the spectrum have relatively inelastic demand: housing and foodstuffs. Things that are discretionary purchases for those people are bound to become more expensive.
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Funny how some parts of the inelastic demand can still move up in value...
That's because housing has extremely inelastic supply in many areas, especially in areas where people want to live.
Most other things that poor people pay for tend to have elastic supply, so those prices are not going to increase by any noticeable amount.
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Re:Inflation? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the $27 trillion that the banks have gotten for free since 2008 hasn't caused inflation, why would $7 trillion, going to actual human beings?
Total lack of power analysis (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with all these basic income schemes is that they will cause (or speed up) a gradual, but eventually overwhelming, shift in power from regular people to the super rich.
If you draw a simple diagram of how money must flow in the economy you will see that the only long-term sustainable way to fund a basic income scheme without creating massive inflation is by taxing the rich and/or the corporations that they own. This sounds great, until you realize that once the rich pay all the taxes and the rest of us pay virtually no taxes, the rich will effectively own the government. It will no longer seem corrupt when the government does their bidding. Kids will learn in school that the big corporation and their glorious and intelligent owners own the government fair and square and are the source of all of our wealth.
And of course, once the rich literally own the government the rest of us will pretty much have to settle for whatever they care to give us.
The current system is far from perfect, but it is a system where the government gets its money from the hands of regular people and therefore has to at the very least make believe that it is serving regular people.
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Aren't we already at that point? Even without a basic income?
If you have enough money, you can "buy" politicians to support any cause you want. Even restructuring the tax laws in your favour.
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This will make no difference to the tax take. People without jobs pay no income tax now. People who do work pay income tax, and will continue to at the same rate.
In any case, paying tax doesn't mean that the government works for you. At least not in a democracy.
Re:Total lack of power analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that shift has happened a long time ago. The thing a basic income would ensure is that people are not powerless _and_ poor.
It is more like the poor extorting the rich (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to think of it a bit differently.
In my view of things, in any democratic society governed by the rule of law, people can only become as wealthy as the masses are willing to tolerate.
Maybe some of those who are rich managed to get there by hard work and talent, or maybe they were born into it. Either way, the only reason that the rich are able to stay rich, at a fundamental level, is that every other person in that society is willing to tolerate it. If the poor become angry enough, they will basically either steal all the shit that the rich person has by force, or just outright murder the fucker by forming an angry mob and going after them.
The basic income scheme can be viewed as the rich and powerful having enough foresight to see this possibility and trying to placate the mob sharing the wealth.
Besides, it also helps to keep in mind that those who are truly wealthy are in a position that which country they chose to live in is a near trivial matter of choice. If you have a billion dollars in the bank, and do not like the taxes in one place, you can afford to move to another place with a more hospitable tax regime.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Total lack of power analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit on this.
All of your assumptions are unproven and I dare say wrong. Why would this only be sustainable by taxing the rich? The money needed for the basic income already exists. This is not so much free money, as a different way of assigning it. We already have welfare systems, but we spend a huge amount of effort and money into the whole management of it in an attempt to make it "fair".
Your assumption that normal tax income cannot finance a basic income scheme needs proof, and you've not provided any.
A good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally support something like this, and believe in the future, a basic income system will be inevitable in most modern societies. The current welfare systems are too complex, shaped by special interests, people exploiting loopholes, or gaming the system for benefit. There is too much abuse, wastage and a large chunk of the population feels a sense of resentment.
Shift to a basic income for all, and you now have a level playing field. It is more efficient, it is harder (or impossible?) to abuse, and no one can argue that laziness or poor health decisions or poor financial decisions are being rewarded. All, from CEOs to Rockstars to unemployed alcoholics are being given a basic income.
The two downsides to something like this :
1) It will be much harder to find individuals willing to do certain categories of high risk or menial labor. You would end up having to pay a LOT more.
2) Inflation for certain goods and services could eat away any gains that a system like this could bring. It is similar to how lowering interest rates does not increase house affordability or put more people in homes, instead it just causes house prices to go up and affordability to remain the same.
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I think it's a good idea (Score:2)
I'm guessing that with a small fixed income it would also help cut down on a l
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The usual object to this idea is that no one will want to work, but I would imagine that a stipulation that you're required to do so many hours of community service every week if not working would probably help balance things out a little bit.
'Work or starve'?
Why should I have to work to get my 'basic income'? I have rights!
(And you have just reinvented the huge government bureaucracy you just said you were getting rid of)
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Re:I think it's a good idea (Score:4, Funny)
money tree (Score:3)
"all citizens would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government"
But gee, where does the government get that money from? Of course, the citizens would pay, on average, multiple times that "benefit sum" to the government.
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"all citizens would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government"
But gee, where does the government get that money from? Of course, the citizens would pay, on average, multiple times that "benefit sum" to the government.
So what... there is many countries that have talked about this... The main arguments here hear for this is about ensuring everybody has some level of income.
To ensure that unemployment doesn't destroy you and that there is less stigma to the issue. It's also about removing bureaucracy and providing people with freedom to try crazy things weather that means spending time doing art work, watching TV, studying, doing a super risky startup (without a VC).
As always there are pros/cons, if can get to society w
Money is humanity evolutionary block (Score:3)
The 20 century model of paper work and bureaucracy to get welfare is inhumane, degrading and a waste of money.
If you remove the burden of the worry of income from people you open them up to turning their attention to working on things that they are interested in doing.
This is, in the long term, is a better economic model as it encourages growth in areas untouched or ignored due to fear of failure and hardship.
The capitalistic model is to ask for funding from investors to try something new and innovative.
The problem there is that you need to convince them they can get a return on their money.
Not all good ideas and great work should necessarily be locked down by investors or the need for monetary return/gain.
Where would we be without the free, and open source, software movements?
How much more productive, creative and efficient would our technology be if more of it was written for free?
Does Finnish money grow on trees? (Score:3, Insightful)
>> would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government
By the _government_? Really? Or by Finnish taxpayers?
Smart move. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the next step for a modern post-scarcity economy and society - the ultimate consolidation of wealth transfer into one basic package. I wish Germany would be this close to conditionless basic income.
But with Pegida, the ongoing Greece bailouts and the conservative right crawling out of their holes and popularising conspiracy theory bullshit and fascism once again, I'm afraid Germany is moving away from this sort of thing again.
It's a shame actually.
Berlin Wall Take 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
After WWII the West and the Soviets split Germany. East Germany has socialism, where everyone's needs were provided for. West Germany had a capitalist system, where people got what they worked for. Well it didn't take long for people working in the East to figure out that they could do much better in the West, so they left. Yes, some of it was politics, yes some of it was about freedom. But the Berlin Wall wasn't built to stop political activists, pensioners, university students, or those in need of longterm care from fleeing. It was to stop professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers. The drain of those with the largest net contribution to society was crippling the East German economy. So they built a wall to stop them. It's not an accident that most socialist countries enforce(d) exit visas.
Here in Canada we already enjoy a brain drain of our medical professionals. Why stay in Canada with lower incomes and higher taxes, when you can jump across the boarder and make out so much better. And I predict that Finland will see the same thing. Many Fins already speak Swedish and English so the barrier to exit is low. If you are a high paid professional why lose a huge chunk of your income to those who don't work when you can leave via the Schengen agreement.
Now might say that it won't cost extra because we will cut funding in other programs. Well that's bullshit. But don't take my word for it, or the media's word for it, sit down and do the math yourself. Basic income that provides any meaningful level of income is crazy expensive, well beyond what a few cuts here and there is going to cover.
You might say that only a few people care enough about higher taxes to leave. And you would be right. The problem is that it is the people who pay the most taxes who are going to leave. And when they leave the tax burden on those who stay goes up. Which creates more incentive for people to leave. It's a vicious cycle where the highest taxed leave and the next highest tax bare the burden.
I'll leave you with a thought experiment. Let say a nice liberal state like Vermont decided it's going to implement basic income, but no other state in the union follows suite. What do you think would happen?
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No we haven't.
Communism has become the "cold fusion" of political ideals.
It's a dirty word used to black list any alternative, "left wing" political movements that (appear to) oppose capitalism.
Finland isn't talking about setting up a Satsi, encouraging family members to spy on each each other, covertly installing listening devices in their homes and putting up travel restrictions (although according to Snowden your "free west" is doing exactly that right now).
Nor has anyone, yet, imposed economic sanctions
Sadly, many people are financially illiterate (Score:4, Insightful)
Given $x, large number (fortunately, not a majority, but a disappointingly large number) of people seem to be unable to budget for a place to live or food to eat. They will spend their money on things like gambling, booze, drugs, get-rich-quick schemes, fortune tellers, and other scam artists (or perhaps shady financial advisers), and we will still have to bail them out.
The real question is it better to give people raw money (e.g. basic income) or vouchers that they can only spend a certain way (e.g., the current bureaucratic welfare system). The answer will depend on where you are in the political spectrum. If you want to bail these people out anyhow after they fritted away the basic income money, you are a liberal, if you resent that basic income was wasted and want to control what they spend you are a conservative, if you don't think the government should be in that business in the first place, you are a libertarian.
FWIW, in my opinion, I think the real problem is giving people "basic-income" money w/o teaching them about money. You can see this problem in 5-year olds, and 21-year olds and sadly 50-year olds. Giving out basic income w/o teaching people about money would be like giving your 15-yo the keys to a car w/o driving lessons. Sure, some of them might know enough to drive already (and have been driving since they were 12), but odds are, most still would need practice as they still make mistakes and then there's always the question of what do you do with the small percentage of them should never be behind a wheel?
IMHO, there should be a benefits licence for basic-income. If you can't pass the test, you get state-welfare instead. Also, like a driver's licence, there should be a learners-permit time where someone has to "drive" with you before you are allowed to go on your own. In addition, even when you are on your own, if you "crash" too many times (e.g., need supplemental welfare because of poor budgeting), your licence for basic income should be revocable. It should be a "privilege" to get basic income, not a right. The right is to simply survive.
However, I'm sure that's not how this is going to work anywhere. It will simply be organized as a "block-grant" welfare program because the liberal politics behind it.
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I don't disagree, but what constitutes "the basics"? To my way of thinking the basics are
1) Food - simple staples like flour, root vegetables, legumes, inexpensive proteins, milk, and seasonal fruit. No chips, soda, factory-made pastries, etc. The WIC program is a good starting basis for this.
2) Clothing - no luxury brands, just the basics.
3) Climate-controlled shelter (heat in the winter, A/C in the summer)
4) Transportation appropriate to the area - a mass-transit pass for cities with functioning mass-
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I don't disagree, but what constitutes "the basics"? To my way of thinking the basics are ...
Payment for this should be in the form of vouchers, rather than cash to the individuals.
You are completely and totally missing the point of a universal basic income. We have already tried it your way.
The current system is a hodgepodge of EBT cards, Obamaphones, bus passes, Medicare, low-income housing, and ten thousand other independent, dependent, and partially dependent systems which require a massive army of government workers to administer, because people like you demand that each and every nickel be tagged and tracked and audited and squeezed until Thomas Jefferson shrieks, resulting in
Deductions (Score:2)
...and that marginal tax rate of 90% featured a ridiculous amount of deductions, along with a lot of things that didn't qualify as "income."
Overall, the effective tax rate (as in the amount actually paid after deductions) was slightly LOWER for rich people in the 1950s than it is right now.
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...and, again, that "94%" wasn't really 94%.
You really, REALLY need to learn the difference between "marginal" and "effective" tax rates.
"Marginal" would be the "94%" you think they paid. "Effective" would be the much, much lower number they actually paid (30% or less), because they could deduct pretty much EVERYTHING, including that company-supplied summer house (with full staff), the nice apartment in the office building (along with staff), chauffered limo, et cetera - and those benefits weren't taxable,
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Your dream is to retire with an income of $10,568.40 a year?
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Unless you're willing to live on the South or West side of Sacramento, your one bedroom is gonna cost you about $800/mo. You gonna eat and have electricity, hot water and be able to buy soap for $200/mo?
It's cutting it pretty close.
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Why? If people don't need to steal to get money why would they risk going to jail? Do you think that theft is just random?
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If you don't want to pay taxes then go somewhere with no taxes (Somalia?)
Otherwise you have to accept that the majority where you live decided that taxes would be mandatory, and just like they decided that murder will be illegal the law will be enforced. With force if necessary.
Work to change it (good luck) or leave.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Funny)
If you don't want to pay taxes then go somewhere with no taxes (Somalia?)
You misspelled Greece . . .
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If you don't want to pay taxes then go somewhere with no taxes (Somalia?)
You misspelled Greece . . .
Greece has taxes. They were just not very good at collecting them...
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Greece's problem is more that rich assholes think they needn't pay the existing taxes and government siding with them.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
So, according to you, if the majority decides that slavery should be legal, we should just "have to accept that"? According to you, if the majority decides that Jews should be deprived of their property, liberty, and/or life, we should just "have to accept that"? That's the way fasicst think; it reveals a lot about you.
Somalia is such a rotten place due to European colonialism followed by socialism. Since the fall of socialism in Somalia, conditions have actually been improving a bit. Of course, Somalia still has taxes and government, it simply doesn't have a national government within the arbitrary borders drawn by Europeans.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Interesting)
Somalia is such a rotten place due to European colonialism followed by socialism.
Just because dictators love calling their party "Democratic People's Republic" or "Socialist party" doesn't mean it is. Yes, the military dictatorship called itself "socialist party" but it was never socialist. That was never tried. And the fact that you have no idea of the basic government or economic system there speaks for itself.
Of course, Somalia still has taxes and government, it simply doesn't have a national government within the arbitrary borders drawn by Europeans.
Yeah, it has warlords and theft. Though this is in a thread about taxes being theft, so that may be appropriate.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Informative)
The US Supreme Court would likely still rule slavery to be illegal and in violation of equal protection and other clauses.
Majorities are insufficient for passing laws that deprive citizens of fundamental rights.
No, sorry, utterly wrong. In fact, no major democracy would allow slavery to be reinstituted simply because a majority wants that to happen.
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Read your Constitution, all it takes is 3/4ths of the States to amend it and those amendments can do anything including removing all the other amendments including first 10 that make up the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and whichever other ones made slavery illegal. Once the Constitution has been changed, the Supreme Court has to make rulings in line with it.
In a democracy all it takes is a strong enough majority to change things, 3/4s in the case of America I believe.
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Taxation is the price I pay for civilization. I live in Texas, where it may be a crime to have more than four dildos... but barring a statistical anomaly, I am not going to get shot up or robbed when I leave my residence to go somewhere. My car rides on a well maintained road, and driving to another city doesn't mean worry about bandits or roadblocks.
Contrary to the local Libertarians, who actually want the state to stop maintaining roads unless the people using them pay for the trucks... government has i
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
By your logic, you should never have to pay rent either. You have entered into a contract and in return from certain state-provided services you pay taxes. In case you didn't know, you can enter into contracts through conduct even though I'm sure you have done it many times - e.g. by parking your car in a certain lot. In the case of taxes the conduct is that you choose completely freely to reside in a certain area in which you indeed do benefit from what is funded through taxes. Your example further fails for you as an individual because the history in your case is that you received a shitload of services and benefits before you were even able to defecate on your own - let alone wipe your own ass. You got protection from foreign military threats, criminal threats and had e.g. emergency services were you to have needed them. All that was set up before you were born so you cannot argue as if a bunch of people got together and set it up now against your will. And before you were able to produce any value whatsoever yourself, you had received a lot more. But unlike a typical landlord, you're perfectly free to leave (any Western democracy) without paying anything back of what you have received. You only need to pay whilst you choose to stay and benefit from the state (and if you cannot pay because you don't earn anyhing, you don't even get "evicted" - you don't even have to pay then!). Now, on a more general level it's obvious to any rational person that your system (anarchism/libertardianism) fails because no such society has survived as is evident by looking at the world. If you wish to prove me wrong you can go to the handful of unclaimed areas in the world and do whatever you like there. Attract like-minded people perhaps? If your system is as good as you imagine, it should turn any such area into an appealing place for many. Personally, I suspect, though, that you'd at best reach a Somalia level of society. If there's no enforcement mechanism of your precious property rights, it's indistinguishable from a situation in which you don't have property rights. Then whoever has a bigger gun than you, gets whatever they want from you. And I suspect that that would be a lot more than current taxes.
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Murder and taxation are quite different things.
The Economist once quipped that taxation is like plucking a live goose for feathers for a pillow: You want to get the maximum amount of feathers, with the minimal amount of fuss. This is why there is no point in taxing the rich . . . they will just park their cash in the Cayman Islands or wherever. When I read the story about Cassini's Dive Through the Geyser of Enceladus, I actually thought that this was a scene from rich international corporations to hide their profits there.
Anyway, I think the "Mont
Re:Basic income (Score:5, Insightful)
Murder and taxes are not so different. If one person, or a small group of people, control all the resources everyone else starves to death. Taxation and more generally limits on what an individual or group of individuals can down and control prevent that.
You also have to remember that you are not entitled to monetary wealth by some kind of natural law. Money only has useful value because society recognizes it. You were only able to enjoy your wealth because society enabled you to. Even if you live self-sufficiently off the land in your remote cabin somewhere, society provided an army and legal system to protect you. In exchange for this, you are required to pay taxes.
As I said before, you want to opt out then you need to get out. Otherwise, no matter how self sufficient you are, you are still ultimately leeching off society without holding up your end of the deal.
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because the mob can gang up and kidnap and kill any singular individual.
Welcome to reality. The only morality that exists in any meaningful way is the morality shared by those with enough power to enforce it. In our society, neither you nor I have that power.
In which case, your only hope is to influence enough people by persuasion to make your morality the dominant one.
Given the way of government growth, you've failed in that task.
Persuade harder.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you live self-sufficiently off the land in your remote cabin somewhere, society provided an army and legal system to protect you. In exchange for this, you are required to pay taxes. As I said before, you want to opt out then you need to get out.
Get out to where? There's no free land left where you can plant a flag and declare your own independent nation, not even in Somalia. And in any foreign country you wouldn't even be a citizen, if they'll even permit you to come. Surely the strongest claim is to your birthplace and homestead. Let's face it, every country has a strong hypocrisy when it comes to its own existence. The US seceded from the British Empire. The US refused to let the Confederation secede from the union. The only way you "get out" is with enough military force to stop those trying to keep you in. Or to use a classic analogy, it's two wolves and a sheep where the sheep wants to declare independence and create its own laws to protect it from becoming dinner. But the wolves have democratically decided the sheep can't secede. It's the tyranny of the majority, where the majority has also decided who gets to be counted.
You got an alternative?
A Libertarian Utopia is untenable in the long term, because with no government to enforce contracts businesses have very little idea what they've agreed to do, employees have very little idea what their employer has agreed to provide for them, etc. And if somebody is screwing someone else there's virtually no recourse.
Especially if the screwer is wealthy (say, your cable company), because they can just pay a couple goons to beat the shit out of the screwee (say: you) until you stop whining about the bill. Now you can band together with your friends to beat up the Cable Company goons, but you've just recreated the tyranny of the majority.
And soon enough you'll have a real welfare state, as the majority does not like it when Grandma starves while the Cable Company heirs eat Dodo eggs from the flock they spent $157,000,000 recreating with advanced genetic engineering techniques.
You ever heard that old entomologist joke that Communism is the perfect system for ants? Libertarianism would also be great. For domestic cats.
For us big, hairless, empathetic apes the options are pretty much a) Democracy with some sort of Mixed Market economy and b) Dystopian hellscape. Any option c) will turn into a) or b).
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There's no free land left where you can plant a flag and declare your own independent nation, not even in Somalia.
You can plant your flag anywhere. Even Somalia. The issue is that if the area you can defend is 10 square feet in a back alley in Somalia, it won't be considered a nation by the UN. That's never been the case. The first 10 people in the US couldn't have declared themselves to be an independent nation. They first had to have enough people to defend the area. If you bought a large army and were the largest warlord in Somalia, then you would be able to plant a flag and be independent. Military coups hav
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Interesting)
Taxes are basically a bill (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, where do you get such a negative attitude toward taxes?
Look the best way to look at it is the following: just by existing, you require stuff. Food, clothing, shelter, and then the slightly more luxurious things such as heating your home in winter (unless you use lumber you chopped yourself exclusively), or using internet to leave the comment. Unless you don't use the internet or electricity and don't have a job and feed yourself exclusively through farming, then you use or require something provided by the public.
Oh, but "I pay for my own internet/electricity/whatever", right? Something like $1 of every internet bill I get is a "Universal Access Fee", which gives people in the middle of nowhere access. Why? because business decided that it's not worthwhile to support you, and we as a society decided it was worthwhile to do. So, we pay a fee (tax, really) that subsidizes costs. Electricity is generated from things dug up from the ground, and that may have caused environmental issues to another region. To be fair to them, we help them clean it up. Goods are trucked in via roads that were paid for by the public. Your healthcare, even if you paid totally out of pocket for doctor and medicine, largely came about due to the US government guaranteeing student loans for doctors (otherwise, banks would not provide such a large amount of money with no collateral) and the fact that public tax money helps subsidize medical research (even if that research ends up owned by a private company, but that's an ethical issue for another day...).
Essentially, by existing, you require stuff, and some of that stuff is not something a free market will support. Too much risk, not enough reward, whatever. So, we as a society get together every once and while and say "Well this needs done anyway, so if business won't do it, how do we pay for it?". We negotiate a small amount every citizen pays into the pool to do these things, and send everyone a bill for the services. This bill from the government is called "taxes".. What, you expect everything to be for free?
Taxes is the bill you get for society to provide you with a modern lifestyle. Now the nice thing about it is that this bill is somewhat negotiable; through voting and our system of representatives, you are more than welcome to be part of the process and haggle for cost and even which services we consider important enough to do/offer. If all you do is complain online and never be involved in government affairs, you're kind of missing the point of living in a democratic society.
So, stop complaining and pay your damn bills. If you're not happy with the service/cost, feel free to get involved in government and change it. At least you have a chance with government... if you're unhappy with your private sector service, they just tell you to get lost.
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Wow, where do you get such a negative attitude toward taxes?
The US has 19 aircraft carriers [wikipedia.org], and is building 3 more.
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When the gang of 7 show up at your house, you stand aghast as they explain that you need to give them some wood you have in the back. Wood you chopped, dried, and wanted to use for firewood that winter. And when you fight them?
Why is it your wood? Did you call the land on which the trees grew into existence with the sheer force of your will? Did you design the DNA of the trees? No. Somewhere many generations ago someone came along and said "This is mine." And then some earlier "Gang of 7" started enforcing some artificial notion of "property ownership" because they thought it was in the collective interest.
True freedom would be anarchy - law of the jungle - the strong take from the weak simply because they can. In a world of tru
Re:Basic income (Score:5, Insightful)
But to build a park bench? Buy art? Take money and give it to everyone, even if they don't need it? Give money to warlords, overthrow foreign governments and put puppets in place of them? Build, create, and do all sorts of non-essential things?
You're acting like you don't get anything in return for that taxation. Not only do you get a nice park (which you may or may not use) but you end up living in a nicer area (which you may or may not care about) but at the end of a day there's every likelihood that close proximity to that now nice park with benches has increased property value which is something that has a direct impact on your financial base.
You give people basic income, that can have a benefit as well in the form of them not trying to sleep on your front lawn or breaking into your house overnight and stealing your food for survival. As for overthrowing foreign governments come back and cry to me when you pay a proper price for your resources. America doesn't overthrow governments for shits and giggles, the running joke is the only government safe from America is one without oil.
Re:Basic income (spoiler) (Score:4, Insightful)
You can be self-sufficient without growing your own food, shooting your own burglars, and building your own roads.
Okay, I'll bite... how?
One can make the argument that any time a group of people come together and pool resources to achieve a goal like a road or like collective security it's a form of government. A Homeowners Association is a form of self-imposed government. A town is a form of self-imposed government, at least at its initial charter by the people that lived in an unincorporated area and chose to incorporate it.
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Yeah, Anarchy is the only real way! With a tough and mighty Anarch on top...
Re:Basic income (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point, those that are doing a disproportionately greater amount of work than the rest will say "to hell with this" and stop producing
At some point, those doing the work will all be machines. If they go on strike, we'll have bigger problems. :)
There has to be incentive to work.
Fear of homelessness or starvation is not the best incentive to work. It's only enough to keep someone showing up; it's not going to produce much inspired output. At some point mankind needs to advance beyond the slave "he who does not work does not eat" mentality and find more meaningful reasons for working.
Things that are given without being earned have no value.
I'm sure you'll keep that truism in mind if you're ever starving and someone offers you some food.
Hard work and money are unrelated (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not just a common-sense interpretation of the world around me, it's a mathematical fact. Somewhere on the internet is an economics paper written by a physicists. In it there is a thought experiment where every time anyone leaves the house in the US they take all their money with them. Whenever they meet another person they throw a random amount of money at them, and the catch all the money thrown at them. The resulting income distribution curve within this hypothetical economy very neatly mirrors the income distribution in the US, the smoking gun is that the size of an individual's pile is unrelated to the time spent outside the home.
On a common-sense level, if wealth was related to effort there would be no such thing as the "working poor" - who (in my experience as a past member) actually work a hell of a lot harder than you and I.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine restricting financial misery via the tax system so that the least financially miserable people can only ever aspire to having (say) 10x the (personal) income of the most miserable, is that too much sacrifice for the least financially miserable to bear in the US? The people in Finland/Norway/etc don't seem to think so, they already have that kind of system, and they have consistently topped "standard of living" charts for decades.
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
Your selfishness does not offend me as much as your stupidity. "Your money"? What makes you think its entirely your money? You belong in, and benefit from, a society that gives you a foundation on which you can make "your money." Unless you handle your own water, sewage, transportation, security, etc. etc. you are directly and indirectly benefiting from having an organized society and government.
It appears stupidity and selfishness is a deadly combination, leading to idiots like you.
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Re:Basic income (Score:4, Interesting)
And now to make your metaphor more realistic, let's count the loaves of bread that you acquire and those that the Finnish government takes:
1 loaf of bread is 1.77 euros.
In the fiscal year 2011 your first 8813 loaves of bread were tax free.
Of the next 4293 loaves of bread that year the government only took 279 (6.5%).
Of the next 8248 loaves of bread that year the government took 1443 (17.5%).
Of the next 17175 loaves of bread that year the government took 3692 (21.5%).
And every third loaf of bread from there.
Now, I don't know how much bread you eat, but I wouldn't go hungry because of those taxes. But I understand that whining about being able to get 1 yacht instead of 2 doesn't get the same sympathy...
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Except in this case it's really more like:
10 Government takes money from me at the point of a gun
20 An army of bureaucrats takes out their cut in exchange for processing the paperwork at $100,000/year plus pension
30 Whatever's left goes to some people who may or may not be starving, it comes with strings attached in the form of EBT vouchers that can be exchanged fraudulently for cash, piss tests, a requirement to waste e
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Of course this i
Re:Basic income (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand the concept that if I have a loaf of bread, that I worked all day for...
I may be able to help there...
Money isn't something tangible, like bread. Money is a game token. It's like D&D hit points. It has value in the context of game, because other players are playing by the same rules. My dwarven cleric has 43 hit points, and my American corporation has three million dollars. Same principle.
If you just bake a loaf of bread, nobody cares. But if you convert your bread into game tokens, then other players will expect you to play by the game rules. If the local game rules include a tax on your tokens, and you hide tokens under the table, then the other players might accuse you of cheating.
Now, I'm not saying our local game rules are perfect. Maybe they'd benefit from a revision. But if you start thinking of money as something real, rather than as a game token, you're going to get confused. You're speaking in terms of "stealing," when you should be speaking in terms of revising rules to improve the game.
On the separate question of whether our game rules should include tax, I'm not an expert. But I found a list on of countries by taxes as a percentage of gdp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
For the most part, countries on top half of the list seem like nicer places than countries on the bottom half. There are exceptions, but overall it's hard to deny the trend. So I'm not sure lower taxes actually lead to a better-functioning game system.
Right now, I pay a lot of taxes. If I moved to Hati or Guatemala, house rules would allow me to accumulate tokens faster. But I'd rather stay here. Our local rules seem to make fo a better game, despite the annual drain on my tokens.
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Because there are lots and lots of bits of work that people do, that do not involve taking collective resources.
No, there aren't. Because every adult in the country has benefitted (and continues to benefit) from the services that are automatically provided to every resident: military and police protection, fire prevention and suppression, the legal system, public schools and universities, roadways, bridges, airports, curbs on pollution, water and sewage systems, enforcement of property rights, regulations and inspections that keep the food supply safe and affordable, building codes, communications infrastructure, a
Re: (Score:3)
Actually a faster road to the downfall of society is having an ever growing part of your society hating the other part. That over time feels more and more distanced and disenfranchised. That over time attacks the included part of your society, cause increases in wasted expenditure such as security, police forces, incarceration and insurances. That over time causes a net economic drag on your society that far exceeds the cost of the welfare in the first place.
Think of welfare as societies insurance. If y
Re:Basic income (Score:4, Insightful)
Saskatoon just a few years ago spent about $120k/year/homeless person in medical and policing costs.
A single bedroom unit in an apartment complex goes for about $600-$1200 depending what building you rent in. A half decent unit would be about $800 - only $9600/year. That is peanuts compared to the medical/policing costs and would provide opportunity to have a place to shower and sleep, take whatever medication they need and find work. I do think this could exacerbate the cost of living and some amount of inflation if large droves of people fall onto government assistance with no capability to work.
The alternative is pretty much the equivalent of killing the poor in some odd sociopolitical passive aggressive manner.
It's ironic that the blue collar guys I've worked with in the past who keep berating people on welfare or social assistance will likely need medical care past retirement that could easily surpass 10 years of working full time. The economic burden isn't your local homeless drunk - the baby boomers in long term care are.
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So? The GDP of Finland is .3 trillion dollars. The GDP of the USA is 16.77 trillion.
It is redistribution of wealth. When people hear that they freak the fuck out. It's an uneven distribution of wealth. Your six or seven or however large income isn't going to be split evenly.
In America wages have stagnated and productivity has skyrocketed.
Quite frankly as long as being poor doesn't suck and isn't humiliating, I don't care how bad the gap between the wealthy and poor gets. If the economy grows, everyone wins