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Finland Begins To Shape Basic Income Proposal (yle.fi)
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.
10 Collect income
20 Goto 10
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.
Summary = entire article?
Millions of people will soon invade Finland, then refuse to do anything as they freeze to death in the chill of winter, forcing the rest of the world to bail them out with more global vwarming.
245million x 28000 is around 7 trillion dollars
Finland - Money for nothing and se...
Income taxes need to back to 90%.
They were a very fair 94% at one point under the Democrats.
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...
With that sort of money, I'd just retire. Seriously, I've figured out retirement plans on less than that.
Bring it on! I can't wait to spend your money unwisely!
Pros
Improved social justice: It's socially just that those who work pay those who don't work, or something.
Perhaps less violent crime, assuming that's currently a problem?
Cons
Cost of living: just went up 550E / mo.
Less economic productivity: More people choose this model.
More property crime: less respect for public and private property since fewer people contribute.
Less tax revenue: More people choose to live with this tax-less model, and more people who don't move out of Finland.
Increased refugee immigration: They'd be stupid to settle elsewhere.
Contagion: Spreads to other countries, having just survived the Greek crisis EU now in peril.
Just brainstorming a bit, I'm sure there's way more in either direction. But Great News!! I think I just solved the mystery of Easter Island. It was inhabited by Leftists.
The top tax rate is now only 39.6% which is unfairly low for those of us that don't work.
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.
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.
- Tempestdata
I think a basic income is a good idea because it would allow us to get rid of other government programs and cut down on the bureaucracy in managing the various welfare, medicare, student loan, food stamp, etc. programs. Simply give everyone a fixed monthly amount and they can locally best determine what their own needs are or how it should be allocated. It's really just a market-based approach to the concept of a welfare-state.
I'm guessing that with a small fixed income it would also help cut down on a lot of other costs that society has to bear (homelessness, etc.) that are merely just cleaning up the mess and not actually solving it.
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. The only real impediment remaining to me is that we would need to be more strict about limiting immigration.
The top tax rate went from a small 70% to a microscopic 28% under Reagan. That proves the Republicans don't care about us.
then I don't see the point of anyone working their ass off, if it's to have the same as someone doing nothing...
then go to work...
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 of this joke." I know people who would continue to work if they didn't have to (I am one) but I don't think that describes anything close to a majority of the population.
The Teapukians want us to starve.
"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.
But the Republicans now only require minorities and the poor to pay taxes.
And 94% was still low. It's sad that the republicans decreased it.
What the point, really ? If you're making enough money, you have access to plenty of options to be paid the bulk of your actual income in "safe haven" or simply under a different legal entity...
...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.
Exactly, but the racists don't want minorities to get free money so they won't allow anyone to have it.
No, it's to have more than some lazy bum, or some disabled individual, or just to get that fancy new car you couldn't afford on a basic allotment. Why is that some people think if the basics are covered, nobody will strive for more, for luxuries, or whatever.
Uhhh, 94% is still not high enough to be fair.
I know right? everyone should just give the government ALL of their money, that way they can give it back to us, well some of it anyway, just enough to get by
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
FDR was a DINO. If he was a real Democrat he would have supported a more reasonable higher than 94% tax rate.
Considering the rates at which people are allowed to have jobs by race, you see how racist the US is. They want us to die and they refuse to pay their fair share.
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?
The story was painfully short and free of detail. it says everybody, does it really mean everybody regardless of income? Because that would really be the only way to make ti fair and not totally undermine incentive to work. It would be a technological socialism, that may ultimately be inevitable. Envision a day when virtually all manufacturing and production is automated. There would be some demand for service sector jobs, but many of those would be automated as well. There would be demand for some intellectual pursuit jobs, designers, engineers, but only at the highest level. All the mundane work can be automated also. It is entirely concievable to get to a state where we only need 10% of the population to do....anything.
They don't want us to be able to defend ourselves against how they constantly rape us. They will never give us a fair income because we would us that money to hire lawyers.
Starve and die. Starve and die.
They are gluttons that refuse to pay their fair share.
No, we want you to get a f&kcing job and fight for your right to keep the money you earn instead of having half of it being confiscated by greedy governments
No, that was still not fair. It needs to be higher to be fair. The Democrats were cowards because they didn't fight to try to get it to 100%
A less than 90% top tax rate proves that the Republicans hate us.
Republicans always refuse to pay their fair share.
That's a very good question, but no one will ever see it since the conservative moderators here marked it as a troll.
If you get a monthly check on the 15th, then on the 14th it is natural to think 'where's my damn check'.
This 'you deserve them because you have gotten them before' is the essence of entitlement.
Once they start this, there is no way that they can stop or slow it , except perhaps with inflation or revolution.
Which the Euro makes problematic.
Assuming they can implement one human, one check, then it will eliminate a bunch of corruption and overhead associated with deciding who is needy.
This is good unless you happen to be one of the folks no longer needed to administer the old welfare system.
800 Euros/month is about $10k/year.
The national budget appears to be $25k per person, (136b/5.5m) so this is a significant spending choice.
Perhaps they are trying to compete with Greece?
But the Republcans won't allow minorities to have jobs.
Looks like the moderators disagree with you since they moderated you as a troll.
FDR did this because he was a good man rather than just to pay for a war he decided to participate in. Saying WWII had anything to do with that diminishes his legacy.
>> would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government
By the _government_? Really? Or by Finnish taxpayers?
You're a piece of shit CONservative.
Wrong. WWII was not an important political issue in1944.
They only give jobs to whites.
What do you think is a fair rate to tax white people with jobs? 75%. The rate is only a tiny 39.6% right now.
Correct. It needs to be more than 94% so we can pay basic income.
That would give whites less disposable income to use in their rapes.
Only cocksuckers think that a tiny 40% tax rate is reSonable
Reagan wanted all minorities to die. To die.
His lowering of the tax rate from 70% proves that.
If they paid basic income we could afford to defend ourselves against their constant rapes.
One of those Republicans raped me with a tire iron, and I almost died. If we had basic income I could have afforded a lawyer to make sure the Republican that raped me was punished. Instead, the Republicans do not pay their fair share.
Exactly. People lucky enough to have a job do not pay enough to pay their fair share.
But the Republicans will not allow minorities to have jobs.
I could survive on 800 Euros a month. I am outta here!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But we can't since the republicans that rule us will not allow us to have jobs.
But since the Republicans that rule all of the corporations in the US won't hire us, that is only fair.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Why are u defending racism?
It's racist to not support basic income.
And the Republicans won't let us have jobs.
Gluttons are against basic income.
It usually runs into trouble in high end due to marginal taxes and surcharges etc that could reduce after tax income at some odd income points. Usually near the rate slab thresholds. Usually they make sure it does not happen. But sometimes it does. India very specifically has a provision to pay all the income over the threshold point to stay in the lower slab if they bureaucrats mess up and one additional rupee triggers more than one rupee of additional taxes.
In the lower end, the phase out of government benefits and dole is not very smooth. There are many odd points where going to work would reduce one's overall income. These quirks in the graph are the ones that trap people into dependence, not the welfare programs by themselves.
If the curve is positive sloped everywhere, it does not matter where it cuts the y axis. Usually zero effort would be zero income in developing nations. But we could easily support substantial y intercept without impacting motivation to work, if we take care to maintain monotonicity of the curve at low X values.
Anyway these people are the custodians of future tax payers. On an average if they raise more responsible children who grow up to become tax payers, the government would come out ahead. Think of it as very long term venture capital investment.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But what do you suggest we do about resources like housing or land that can never be made non-scarce?
That is why we need to start taking as soon as we can. It's going to be harder to do it later.
Interesting question, and a good point that the later we solve this problem, the harder the solution is going to be. I don't understand why the moderators voted that point down as a troll.
No matter how many robots there are you still need to bring value to the table to be fed. Work or die and DC Stop Spending MY MONEY!
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
Haven't we already played this game?
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?
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.
No, even that wasn't high enough to be fair.
That is too low to be fair.
Reality will catch up with them eventually.
There will always be someone above you who uses a part of your income or whatever to support the community as a whole. This can be done fairly well or poorly
I've seen this movie. (***spoiler alert***) It's going to be done fairly poorly because they don't care, are incompetent, and/or feathering their own nest.
You think you're self sufficient. You are not. You think that you don't need government. You do.
And you think you're not a patronizing idiot. This is going to turn into another burning straw man argument where you're going to argue that libertarians believe all sorts of crazy shit because your uninformed opinion. How about you carry that exercise offline? We don't need to hear, yet again, the bullshit about how caring bureaucrats carry our food from the farm straight to our dinner table, spoonfeed us, and wiping our asses for us.
You can be self-sufficient without growing your own food, shooting your own burglars, and building your own roads. You don't need the latest crazy patronage scheme or bribery scandal in order to survive. You most certainly don't need some nanny to watch what you say or do. We don't need (in the US) expensive food, real estate, health care, or education (because some helper made them more expensive). There is a lot of government we don't need and never will.
Why don't you read up on actual libertarian grievances (and actual tyranny of history) rather than just being another uninformed idiot on the internet? I don't expect most people to buy into the program. I don't fully buy in either. But this kind of ignorance and stupidity you demonstrate here is inexcusable.
The population of the United States is about 58 times that of Finland, so before anyone starts saying it again: It won't work here. I also doubt it'll work there, either, but it's got a better chance of working there, in a tiny, sparsely-populated country, than it does in the U.S..
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Funny how some parts of the inelastic demand can still move up in value...
Hard work and money are unrelated (in a US style economy).
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.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That for less than the cost of our social welfare state, you could just cut a check for $30,000 (1980s money) to every family of four in the U.S under the poverty line. And it would be an order of magnitude more efficient (i.e., in terms of the money spent actually getting to the intended recipient).
These proposals have been floated around here in Finland dozens of times by various commie youth groups. Ain't gonna happen. Stupid crap based on the idea that if the government hands out pieces of paper with "20 Euro" written on them, we can all sit around in out underwear playing Xbox all day long. That really is what these "basic income" guys are all about.
Correct. It needs to be more than 94% so we can pay basic income.
Exactly. In order to pay everybody who doesn't want to work a basic income, we would have to collect well over 100% in taxes. Then once the program really got rolling and people realized how foolish it is to work when you could just get handouts from the government, we will have to raise that percentage to infinity percent.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
No, it's to have more than some lazy bum, or some disabled individual, or just to get that fancy new car you couldn't afford on a basic allotment. Why is that some people think if the basics are covered, nobody will strive for more, for luxuries, or whatever.
Because for 0% effort you can sit in front of the TV and play Xbox all day long. You have to work infinity times harder than that to be able to afford the fancy new car. The math doesn't work out.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Are you suggesting that minority races are too lazy or too stupid to work? You are a racist.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Looks as though Finland may be officially giving up on the long-standing idea that government policy should be to encourage full employment, which is generally defined as keeping 97% or more of the work force employed. The challenge: if social peace is to be achieved by subsidizing everyone up to a basic level of income, is there any way to do this without disincentivizing work by those on the job? Would Finnish culture degenerate into a society in which everyone is officially unemployed and drawing the basic dole, with motivated workers taking hidden side jobs for extra cash?
Mitlon Friedman, a very conservative economist, backed the negative income tax.
I haven't seen a spreadsheet version of specific amounts or tax rates, but the idea is that people with zero market income would get a minimum income. Every dollar they make gets taxed a certain rate which reduces their guaranteed income. So if your basic income was $20,000 and you earned $10,000, you'd be taxed some amount on that $10,000, an effective reduction in the basic income.
I think the tax and benefit reduction scheme is key and I haven't seen an exact table explaining the math. But I think the system is designed to make even low wage jobs profitable (ie, you end up ahead of the basic income even with a small market income) until you make so much money that your tax bill is greater than your basic income payment.
I think as policy part of its claimed economic advantage has to do with eliminating many other social benefit programs, like food stamps, housing vouchers, etc and delivering the same benefit more efficiently and allowing people to make more efficient resource allocations.
If income inequality is a serious problem, I think a negative income tax makes sense. For one, it raises the wage floor a lot, forcing employers to pay more for labor. Higher labor rates would seem to force businesses to cut executive compensation or profitability to meet labor costs. It would probably have some stimulative effect on the economy, since it would be putting more money into the consumer economy (but it I could see where it might be slightly inflationary, too). Since by design it's not meant to be punative, even low wage jobs have an incentive because you will gain an income higher than the basic income for any work.
It's hard to know the bureacucratic efficiencies that would be gained, but I suspect they would be major. I don't know if the concept implies an end to the social security system, but you could see where it would be redundant or could be reduced. It also lets people spend the money in the way that helps them the best, at market eficiency, versus less efficient means (ie, you can rent whatever apartment makes sense to you, versus having to live in a project or qualifying section 8 housing). The lack of complex access and screening mechanisms would mean fewer people stuck in a system and more able to focus their energy on obtaining better jobs or fearing losing their benefits.
I think it would require moderately higher taxes on very high income people and corporations. I don't think this is necessarly bad and you could argue that part of the economy's inequality problem is corporations and very high income individuals sitting on cash because they don't have investment alternatives (think Apples billions in cash) -- as long as that money is held in short-term deposits and short term securities, it's not doing produtive work in the economy. Taxed and returned to the economy, it produces economic activity.
About the only other idea I've found compelling for reducing inequality is a tax incentive to companies that reduce salary ratios between the highest paid and othe employees. Whatever the loss in tax revenue shold be offset by increased tax revenue from better paid employees and increased sales taxes as the money is spent.
I'm really surprised that more capitalist corporations don't support this everywhere.
With a guaranteed basic income, there wouldn't be as much pressure on corporations to increase minimum wage, the corporations wouldn't be required to pay into unemployment or provide retirement plans (except as incentives). There would be less white-collar crime - and less crime overall. The employees would be more productive because they would actually want to be there. Etcetera.
With the addition of legalizing all drugs (on the Portugal model) and prostitution (on the New Zealand model), there would be a major decline in not just all crime, but organized crime would be substantially curtailed as well.
Don't let the bread lines hit your ass on the way out!
No kidding. How did that get on my internets?
Wow, see how that goes with millions of crazed Islamists moving in to your home and shitting on the floor and fucking your kids and goats. and YOU get to pay for them.....heh
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
No. It's a form of organization. Else we end up with the silly situation where the local bridge club is considered a government.
Further, even if we do allow generously for your interpretation, so what? Just as government semantically shifted here so did libertarianism. As you probably have heard, a common philosophical foundation for libertarianism is the non-aggression principle, basically that one doesn't initiate unprovoked aggression (coercion, force, fraud, etc) on another (responding to aggression with aggression is usually allowed however).
This leads to certain organizational principles such as anything is allowed which doesn't significantly harm any one other than the actor (and you usually have to have standing as a precursor to demonstrate harm too). In other words, a permissive society where just about anything goes versus a society where things need to be explicitly allowed. In other words, bad behavior has to be blacklisted instead of good behavior being whitelisted.
It also leads to the principle that you don't take by force from others for your own benefit, sometimes (depending on the flavor of libertarian) even in the case of absolute desperation. But it is just fine for others to decide to help you either on their own initiative or by creating a voluntary group which satisfies such needs (like a soup kitchen).
The Objectivist approach where most welfare and charity is considered to some degree immoral or evil is not commonly accepted in libertarian philosophy nor rejected.
The point here is that libertarians view everything that you might need for survival due to a turn of remarkably bad luck can be provided by voluntary association rather than by forcibly taking stuff away from the rest of society. Meanwhile under a fairly broad range of outcomes, you can insure yourself against most of the bad stuff that the world has to offer. And that's as self sufficient as most libertarians care to be.
free the people of the desire to solely collect wealth, They will tunnel their effort into collecting knowledge... imagine that.
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.
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-transit, a bicycle, or fuel-coupons to help off-set the expenses of gasoline.
5) Healthcare - preventative medicine, yearly check-ups, emergency surgeries.
6) Landline phone - for calling employers about jobs when you've decided you want a better standard of living.
Payment for this should be in the form of vouchers, rather than cash to the individuals. If the taxpayers are footing the bill, then the taxpayers have a right to know their money is being spent on the things they approved it to be spent on.
The problem I foresee is people continuing to stretch the definition of "basic" to include things like cable/satellite TV packages, or high-speed Internet access, or smartphones. To be clear, I'm not saying everyone on welfare has an entitlement mentality, nor am I saying entitlement mentality exclusively applies to those on welfare. However, unless we, as a society, figure out a way to either curb the entitlement mentality or have the backbone to say "no" to folks who continually attempt to stretch the definition of "basics", the minimum income is always going to get stuck in the craw of those who work.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Yeah, imagine pie in the sky social systems that treat people with respect like they are educated and well meaning. Reality check, in Europe we are now invaded by illiterate muslim barbarians that come here for the free money, want Sharia and reproduce as fast as nature allows. Political correctness made us incapable of defending ourselves, we don't stop them at the border, we just submit like sheeple to be slaughtered by Allahu Akbar yelling jihadists. Our civilization is going extinct, a new dark age begins now and who knows how much is going to last.
Giving away tax generated money is never a good idea.
The math doesn't work out because infinity doesn't apply in the real world. Besides, even a comatose body extends significantly more than 0% effort.
Self sufficient in the sense that you can trade for the things you don't have.
That's literally not self-sufficiency, unless you only trade for things you don't need. If you depend on others and their work, you are not self - sufficient.
I'm extremely interested in this. For years now I've been thinking that there's plenty of wealth to go around; that we can assure basic standards of living for everyone while still leaving room for people to achieve arbitrary levels of wealth through work. I hope this program works out.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
To get the shiny new car in Xbox all you need to do is steal it. And why would you care about your meatself? As long as you still have the dexterity to hold the controller.
That's literally not self-sufficiency, unless you only trade for things you don't need. If you depend on others and their work, you are not self - sufficient.
Well, now you know what libertarians mean by self-sufficiency.
Obviously the government of Finland is more in touch with certain realities. The days of human employment are ending. Technology will replace both skilled and unskilled workers quite quickly. In order for businesses to survive they must have buyers who can actually buy their products. The only answer is to issue real paychecks by the government. Sales taxes can be slanted such that luxury goods and sin taxes are applied. Businesses will have to make up the tax differences, The public will effectively control businesses by deciding where they will spend their money. Yes, it is a form of socialism. It is also a proof that socialism is hardier than capitalism. Capitalism can not exist with advanced technology changing the playing field but socialism can thrive under the changes.
In the US, at least, a huge swath (upwards of 45%) pay a grand total of $0 in federal income taxes. Further, a very large subset of that group receives refundable credits (e.g. EITC), that cause their federal income tax bill to be negative (the lowest quintile of filers pays an average of -7.3%, the next quintile pays an average of -1.1%). A large subset of those further pay no payroll taxes, as their income tax refundable credits exceed their payroll taxes *and* their payroll taxes (so *not* "contributing" to Social Security).
So these people are skipping out on paying for the federal government, except through a pittance in excise taxes on gasoline, phones, etc. But they can vote for more free stuff! They can pay negative taxes *and* pick up foodstamps, housing subsidies, heating subsidies, phone subsidies...
We're not all in this together.
I'd invest my time in trying to build robots that can do those tasks if I had the time.
Many people already would like to build such things.
Or to create art, could be pictures, 3D models, movies, cartoon movies, cgi movies, computer games, other...
What happens when what your being forced to "contribute" becomes more than you think is your "fair share"? How many people are you willing to subsidize to sit on their ass all day while you keep working for less and less personal gain.
Will you still be smiling and happy when taxes eat 70% of your income? 90%? A $100k salary plus 75% taxation leaves poverty level effective income for a family of four. Easier to stop working and take the free stuff, right? Or at least trade down to a $25k job with that much less pressure.
In the US, if we taxed every dollar made by anyone with more than $1M in income, we come up with about $900B. FYI, they're already paying about $300B in taxes now, so this 100% tax rate would garner about $600B more. And that's taking *every* dollar of income, not just the income over $1M. Deficit last year was about $500B, right?
But what would be the incentive at that point to earn $1M or more per year? No one in their right mind would want a salary or CG or anything in income that would put them in the $1M+ category--that's just signing up for 100% confiscation. So instead of getting $600B more in taxes, you lose $300B, because all those people will rig their incomes to be $999,999 or less, so there won't be anyone paying that tax.
So they mean that they need the organized efforts of others. Got it.
Starting to sound like government again, at least in some aspects...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Using this simplistic formula is not useful in real world economics.
There are all kinds of factors impacting needs and wants.
So they mean that they need the organized efforts of others.
Via trade. Namely, it doesn't require government bureaucrats to bless the organized effort. I still don't recognize the claim that organized effort is government BTW.
But this feel-good tactic is completely WRONG. Primarily because a voucher system gives the recipient NO INCENTIVE to find ways to SAVE money on some or all of those (rent being the biggest). Just start with a basic income that is slightly LOWER than the average cost of those voucher programs, and if recipients find a way to save enough money on their necessities that they can afford cable TV, then good for them, nobody is being harmed and it might even help the economy.
In addition, the basic income eliminates the risk of fraud, and eliminates all that administrative overhead involved in administering and policing the voucher system.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Like they do about everything, I look forward to the fanciful bullshit they'll spew about Finland. They have to, since this is a historic event that proves almost every ideal Conservativism is based on is superstition, lies, and lowest common denominator appeals.
I'd respect Conservatives a little more if they weren't such whores for the ultra rich, the warmongers and arms peddlers, and the overt liars, i.e., religious people.
Concept is right but all world govt is same ...
I dont know where they use lot of money applesta.com
not a clue among you... neither people for or against
More SJW drivel on Slashdot.
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 endless cycles of stupidity of waiting in government offices to prove for the 14th time eligibility for some benefit or other that is worth so little that we're basically paying the beneficiary minimum wage to stand in line. Forever.
It's ridiculous.
A universal basic income, done right, dispenses with ALL of that. Nearly all of those government workers are laid off, the remainder doing the job of administering the new system, which consists of four questions: Are you a citizen? Are you alive? Have you reached the age of majority or are you an emancipated minor? What are your bank account details?
That's it. And every single person in the country, poor or rich, employed or not, including you, who can answer those three questions in the affirmative and provide their details, gets money every single month. Verify the questions once per year, and if somebody dies in the middle of the year, we don't care. Their heirs get to keep the extra payouts, because it's more trouble than it's worth to us to try to get it back.
And the laid off government workers? Instead of becoming homeless because they're jobless, they become beneficiaries of the plan, and most of them will go find a different job anyway, one that's actually productive. The people being paid to wait in line can now get jobs too, without endangering their benefits. Many of them will. Many marginal part time jobs will get filled that previously went begging, because they needed work done, but not enough work to live on. Now people can perform those jobs, and never miss work because of an appointment with some bureaucrat who wants to quibble over $12/week in EBT that they might not be eligible for anymore because they moved in with their significant other who has an Obamaphone, but might get to keep because of subsection d) of part 3) of rule e) of this year's new rules but it can only be backdated 3 months unless they've been beneficiaries for 6 months or less in which case it's 4 months blah blah blah...
There are two major questions to answer in the design of such a system. Should the minimum wage be eliminated? And should the benefit accrue to every natural person regardless of age, the benefits of minors being administered by their guardians?
Both answers depend quite heavily on the amount being considered. If the amount is inflation-indexed, using an honest valuation of inflation, and really does cover living expenses, then it's not just reasonable but actively desirable to eliminate minimum wage laws entirely. Marginal jobs can be filled by labor working for a mutually agreed price, with actual mutual agreement, instead of the one offering wielding the whip hand over the one accepting. I suspect this will drive a generational sea change in the attitudes of management to labor, where the flaming dickheads who enjoy being tinpot dictators will discover that no one at all wants to do the work they want done. Actual effective managers (not necessarily nice, but effective) will be able to get the workers they need, from the niche to the massive, and overall societal happiness will probably be measurably better.
If the amount being considered is enough to support minor dependents, only people who can answer the three questions
There is a huge difference between "winning the lottery" and "basic income".
There are plenty of people who treat them basically the same, weird as that sounds.
Some people would be happy to sit at home and do nothing except watch TV all day. So?
So I have no interest in paying for them to do that. If they want to earn enough money to do that, fine. (and I consider stay-at-home parenting to be value added activity so that's fine too) Then they have contributed something to society. If all they want to do is sponge off others when they are perfectly capable of working then they can just go ahead and starve as far as I'm concerned. I have enough on my plate supporting myself and my family. I don't need to support others who can support themselves.
America went to the moon and built a 3.2 mach spyplane in the same decade.
We did it with cost-plus private contracting and milestone based oversight.
Somehow we've ended up with a mess of resentment groups and grotesque models of affordability management (minimum wage, stabilized human primate infestation count).
The entire mindset of the engineer or business person, the "better, faster, cheaper" ideal, has been completely lost in a demographic, resentment based, legalistic, pay-for-play bureaucratic nightmare of 18 executive cabinets with a mishmash of overlapping, forever funded mission statements and one goal alone : political incumbency.
The Mercatus study shows that several regions of the nation, particularly the deep blue democratic strongholds, are in for big trouble. Many people in Greece and Detroit are going to end up with 10 cents on the promised entitlement dollar. The social utopia of Chicago was lowered to junk bond status earlier this year.
Looking at new methodologies is good, but it's the tip of the iceberg, and we are the Titanic, OM.
I want to work. I DON'T want to work at drudgery! Who does? No one... but I'll gladly do interesting work.
I don't really care if you enjoy your work or not. That's your concern. I genuinely hope you do like what you do but we all have to do things sometimes that we don't enjoy. Deal with it if it isn't fun and work towards something better but don't pretend you are entitled to only do things you enjoy, particularly if others are paying the bills. I've worked a number of jobs that were anything but fun. My parents worked jobs they hated for good portions of their lives to take care of me and to build a better life in the long run. Wasn't always fun and they certainly didn't feel they were entitled to avoid everything that didn't interest them. Life just doesn't work that way.
With a basic income, and basic healthcare, I would quit my $70k/year job and the benefits, and work on my side business of building musical instruments.... Work I already do, because I love it.
So you have a side business but you haven't figured out how to make it profitable yet? I've done that myself and that's great. But if you cannot eventually turn that into a sustainable enterprise I have NO interest in supporting your hobby indefinitely. Ask your family to support you if they are willing. If you want to come to me looking for an investment we can talk but pay you with my tax dollars to support your hobby? No thanks. Figure out how to fund that yourself.
I think you're just a curmudgeon, and like most people, you think everyone is like you. They're not.
"Curmudgeon" huh? So thinking that everyone should do something productive and valuable to society makes me a curmudgeon? (A bad tempered or surly person) Weird logic you have there. I very much do NOT want everyone to be like me. That would be a very boring world. I'm also something of a relentless optimist. But I'm old enough that I don't have any delusions about human nature either. People who have nothing demanded of them routinely produce nothing of value.
You're off your rocker.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Under capitalism people are not wage slaves. They can choose to work for someone else or they can choose to work for themselves or they can choose to live on no money. There are people who do each of these things. Your analogy is completely false.
I'm not arguing against a basic income at all. It's a great idea. But don't think wrong.
The primary advantage that I can see for a BASIC INCOME is that it should be less expensive to administer with fewer agencies and bureaucrats. This was why Milton Friedman proposed the idea which he called the NEGATIVE INCOME TAX.
3) Climate-controlled shelter (heat in the winter, A/C in the summer)
Uh, it's Finland we're talking about. Heat in the very long and very cold winter is required. A/C in the (merely cool) summer is not. The record lows were below freezing in June (-7C), July (-5C), and August (-10.7C), so heating would be needed. In winter, it gets even colder (-51.5C). Finns worry about global warming too: it might reduce the snowfall or make snowfall at midsummer rarer (just sleet at midsummer last year).
Here we have underground containers and special trucks take them out and put an empty one in really fast. It works with a chip card, only people in the street can use it. I don't even remember what day garbage day is. If they are full before pickup date you can call and they replace it. Happens 1 time per year or so.
In streets without room for the underground container people have rolling containers that take 3 or 4 bags. Those are picked up by trucks too. It is already cheaper that way but I'm sure they will get faster, more fuel efficient, self driving, etc etc Progress will happen.
Of course we don't get the schadenfreude from forcing others to do our dirty work. That is the price we have to pay for progressing beyond the dark ages.
If u allow rich to monopolize any country's resources, then maybe u need to protect the poor. Great idea. Especially with robotics looking like taking majority of jobs soon.
This is a migrant magnet. If there isn't a huge migrant problem already, this will simply make it explode. "Go to Finland, and you get a free income"
The millions in the Jew tribe control all countries, the fraud 'government', they destroy by using scum 'tax' fraud 'military', making up bogus 'law', forcing 'socialist' 'communist' shit on those who work so scum jews rule over all, the jews use parasites to bleed down the strong. Those who are strong FAIL to make tribes and take physical action to stop the scum jew tribe and their mass assaults. Now the world mass murder will be in this territory. Chemtrail virus. The mass of scum immigrants are herhttp://politics.slashdot.org/story/15/10/31/2125226/finland-begins-to-shape-basic-income-proposal#e to replace nordic whites who will be killed first. The 'white' ashkenazi' are not nordic white, most 'whites' in fraud 'government', liar 'media' liar 'scientists' 'dokters', 'lawyers' 'judges' are Not nordic whites they are 'white' skin ashkenazi JEW race.
Know who owns you. I posted specific information on the mass scheming jew tribe along with links on this thread - http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/083219/nasa-study-shows-net-gains-for-antarctic-ice
-also this thread
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/10/24/1946258/judge-tosses-wikimedias-anti-nsa-lawsuit-because-wikipedia-isnt-big-enough
- click load all comments, Also slide bar over, may have to do it twice for my posts to show. scum jews 'score' up their own posts and computer generated crap to push my down the thread when they originally were near the top, also note the jews distracting from my posts. You would Never find the information in my posts on your own, beside most info being wiped off the web the information I specify took years of work. Time is short, the scum jews have already far more than just chipped you, they are behind all the destruction, they've nearly taken over the world, killed over a billion people because your breeders and their breeders and their breeders sat on their asses paying 'tax' and following fraud jew 'government', now comes chemtrail virus. They live, you die.
copy the posts on the other thread to re read, give links to others -
pumping the 'chip' bs jew scum communist 'progressive' meme. Everyone has already been physically chipped by the nano chip chemtrails. The post above is computer generated bs so are most posts. See jew communist post below.
I really don't approve this message. Finland is sosialist-state and I truly hate that you can get up to 2000€ easily just by sitting at home.
"all citizens would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government."
"Free of charge" and "taxless" after the government has confiscated the wealth of working people (aka "taxes") to pay for this "free" benefit?
Will people never understand that governments have no money to "pay" for anything and no wealth with which to provide benefits "free of charge"?
Correct. It needs to be more than 94% so we can pay basic income.
Exactly. In order to pay everybody who doesn't want to work a basic income, we would have to collect well over 100% in taxes. Then once the program really got rolling and people realized how foolish it is to work when you could just get handouts from the government, we will have to raise that percentage to infinity percent.
But as people keep pointing out, you won't be able to live very comfortably on the basic income, and so you'll most likely be working in one way or another anyway. If you have any sort of interesting career, you'll still be following that. If you're an entrepreneur, you can use your basic income as fallback while you start your next business. And so on.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The Basic Income will quickly result in businesses stalling or even dropping wages paid to workers, so that they can effectively transform the Basic Income into a massive subsidy for businesses.
On top of that, the Basic Income is the perfect way to trojan-horse the welfare state, by using it to end all other welfare payments, and then attacking the Basic Income as soon as a big enough economic crisis hits - calling for its abolition, or a severe cut in payments well below living wage (or permanently blocking increases, so it withers through inflation), because "we can't afford it anymore" - without restoring any of the original welfare programs it replaced.
Why not do something far more sensible, with a proven track record, and just employ all of the unemployed, into public works type programs? That way, you can keep wages propped up in private industry, as people won't have the threat of unemployment hanging over them anymore - and you actually get something productive for the money.
(why work if you can get money for free?)
This is a linchpin of your entire argument, and I do not believe it stands up to basic scrutiny.
First of all, I don't think anyone's proposing a basic income that would put someone who does not work for a living at a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Particularly in its early stages, I would expect such a provision to net you about what you'd get working full-time for minimum wage—which, right now, is somewhere between $15k and $20k per year.
I dunno about you, but if that were my "basic income," I'd still feel a need to work for a living. It would be a huge relief to know that I had that safety net—that if I lost my job, I'd still have that much guaranteed to me—but I would have no desire to rely upon it as my sole source of income.
Second of all, even if the basic income amount were enough for you to live at a level you were content with (and note that that would have to include any discretionary spending you wanted to indulge in, like travel), I know a lot of people who would just never be happy without some kind of meaningful work to do. Sitting at home doing housework, watching TV, or surfing the web would get old for some of them within a month or two, for others no more than a few days.
Third, one thing that prevents a lot of people from getting work is the fact that they don't have enough money to, for instance, own a car to commute in. Basic income would go a long way to ending homelessness, and allow people who want to get jobs, but can't get together enough money to look presentable for a job interview, or even travel to a job interview, to do so.
Beyond these basic points, it's also important to consider the ways in which basic income would change the shape of employment. Liquidity in the labor market would skyrocket, for one thing. If the consequence of quitting your job because you hate it, or standing up to an abusive or negligent employer, is no longer "homeless within 6 months, dead within a year", a lot more people are going to be willing to do that. This shifts the balance of power hugely away from employers and toward employees, compared to where it is now—especially when you consider that there will, in all likelihood, be a fair number of people who do voluntarily leave the workforce entirely to live on basic income. Furthermore, part-time work starts to look significantly better when you don't really need the money that working an extra hour or three a day gets you. So not only are you much more likely to get a job that you actually like (assuming you're bright enough to have gained the skills to do such a job), you get to have more leisure time to do the other things that you really enjoy. And if you don't care about making most people's lives better...then just consider that there are probably a dozen other ways in which the fundamental shape of things will be changed by implementing a meaningful basic income, so assuming that it would be impossible to pay for because "no one would work if they got paid for living" is just lazy and unsupportable.
In the end, it's quite possible that basic income would provide a net boost to the number of people employed, and nearly certain that it would provide a net boost to productivity.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
But what would be the incentive at that point to earn $1M or more per year?
Flip that around: What's the justification for anyone making more than $1 million per year? At least when there's a large percentage of the population attempting to subsist on jobs that pay less than $20,000 per year.
No one in their right mind would want a salary or CG or anything in income that would put them in the $1M+ category--that's just signing up for 100% confiscation. So instead of getting $600B more in taxes, you lose $300B, because all those people will rig their incomes to be $999,999 or less, so there won't be anyone paying that tax.
So, what, you think that money's just going to vanish into thin air?
If the owners of a company are looking at a 100% taxation on incomes over $1 million per year going into effect in the near future, they're not just going to take the money that they would have spent on those salaries and burn it. Some of it they'll just stash, but I bet you that any business owner worth his salt is going to try to grow the business. Hire more staff, add more production, try to grab more market share. Because even though they might not be able to increase the amount of tokens they walk away with at the end of the year beyond what they're going to make this year, they're still going to be competitively-minded. They'll still want to "win", and if they can't stack their tokens higher, then they'll want to increase the size of their empire, or the number of people who say they prefer their brand.
And when they're spending the extra several million dollars on salaries for more people, that generates more payroll taxes, and when they spend it on equipment, that generates more sales taxes, and when they spend it on improving their infrastructure, that increases property value and thus generates more property taxes...so the government's going to be getting more money out of them one way or another.
Unless they just decide they want to cut off their own noses to spite their faces, and just stash the money somewhere. Then they're not giving the government more, but they're also not gaining as much for themselves as they could be.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I would expect that any libertarian or small government idealists would really like this, since it both simplifies government, and allows the recipients to decide how best to spend the money.
There are still government institutions where this won't work (anything involving BIG infrastructure, such as military, roads, environmental safety, space exploration, and yes health care) but I really like this model of just giving people a lump sum and allowing them to spend it as they see fit.
However, I do not think this is a perfect solution for the poor, as you will now be enabling people to make dumb decisions about how to spend that money. Which is why I would also suggest putting together some kind of educational package to teach those who want it how to manage their money effectively.
Also, I worry how this could exacerbate the drug 'problem' with everyone now having additional funds to spend on their habit, instead of say food stamps etc.
In France there was the RMI (revenu minimum d'insertion) since 1988, which has evolved into the RSA (revenu de solidarité active) since 2009. For a single person without activity it guarantees a minimal income of 524,16 € per month, but the condition is to search for a job or to have a professional project. The goal is to reduce the barrier to return to work.
Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarit%C3%A9_active
Well, first it's not 'someone', it's 'family'. For maximum benefits, single mother, multiple children.
I can't find the $70k figure at the moment, but have a $36k one for cook county, CA.
It doesn't hit ~$65k until the mother is working full time at minimum wage.
I think the figure I remembered would probably be for NYC, and probably with 3-4 kids.
I don't read AC A human right
--David Weber went into some of the ramifications / effects of having a significant percentage of the public on "the Dole" in his Honor Harrington book series. Worth reading.
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wi...
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wi...
--Distilled down a bit (this is my impression, feel free to chime in), if you have a bunch of people receiving money for effectively little-to-no work, you get a bunch of apathetic and Entitled lazy mofos.
--Technical/artistic progress stagnates and nobody is really motivated to improve much because well, they get paid anyway. Remove the stick and give them the carrot anyway, and eventually they will fall behind and get conquered because of survival of the FITTEST. Someone hungrier than you and driven to succeed will end up eating your lunch, and your identity as a people will be lucky to survive - worst case scenario here is actually not dying, but becoming a slave to the conquerors and losing that comfortable life that you thought was assured.
--Humanity needs something to strive for.
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
like many i to enjoy working ( altho as i get older my productivity is droping ) , one needs a certain income to survive . the odd thing is that a number of managers stated " we are only here for the money " this was something i could not agree with ! i wanted to do the best possible job . studyes show many people have a similar view . with this i mean , money is only one motivator , having an interest in the thing one does is another , as is learning new skills , helping others , the primary motivator differs from person to person . i may be wrong about this but it seems that if the primary motivator is power , control over others , the people working with this at the top of the list generally make things more difficult for others . as to management ( i'v done a bit of this ) there are widely different styles , ie one type is to order others , another is the manager working as a facilitator . with this i mean the manager makes it possible for workers to do a better more satisfying job ! using this style has the fringe benefit of earning the owner more money . many of the people who only give orders ( at all levels of society ) instead of contributing , just make working and living less enjoyable . thus reducing chances for happyness and profits ! we know that aprox 3 % of the population do not want to work , this percentage applies to people who have no intention in repaying money borrowed , returning to order givers , at times it forces workers to be maliciously obedient , in other words at times , carrying out the order causes things to go wrong . the worker has no realistic way out . its do this or quit . i have seen this at the basic level . when told to spread a nutrient around trees , i did as told cos it had to be done , 2 days later i was told to do it again , but things had changed , spreeding more so soon after the last time held back growth ! just because a bit of salt , sugar makes food taste better does not mean that a stack of salt , sugar will make food taste even better ( i used this example at a meeting , i have not heard anyone else using this statement before , hopefully my fellow members here can make use of it :) )
the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL