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The Campaign To Get Every American Free Money, Every Year
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
Because you live in the same society. UBI is a way to uplift everyone and make society as a whole a better place with fewer homeless, less crime and generally just more pleasant. If it were put into place, services like welfare could be eliminated entirely. In counties where a basic income exists, there is are lower unemployment rates.
Also, YOU would benefit from it too, since it would be paid out to everyone. What, you don't like money?
What do you propose? The death penalty for neck tattoos?
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.
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 for labor.
In a world that's all robots and computers where fifteen people do the work of thirty thousand (think Instagram vs. Polaroid, that sort of thing) or a bunch of robots do the work of a hundred thousand, almost nobody is in a position to come out on the right end of that 'survival' equation. They are needed to purchase the products created by the robots and computers and fifteen-people corporations worth billions, but they do not have labor to do. In order to keep up with that poverty level, they have to do more and more, and the people worth billions have to do less and less.
At that point, survival of the fittest is a really stupid idea because you're pitting humans against computers, robots, and corporations.
Goodbye humans: and robots don't buy goods for themselves (yet!)
So forget the whole survival of the fittest/motivation argument. It depends on pre-industrial industry efficiencies, such as existed in Ben Franklin's day. Human labor was the electricity of the day.
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.
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.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It comes from, surprise surprise, the cyclical economic pool.
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.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
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.
most people though don't think a used pinto should be a million dollar car
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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.
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)