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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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
"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.
Your dream is to retire with an income of $10,568.40 a year?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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.
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
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?
>More property crime
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?
More like:
10 Government takes money from me at the point of a gun
20 Others get it
30 Goto 10
The ultimate end threat of all taxation is... force. Even in countries (like Canada, where I live) that just take your stuff if you don't pay, they still do so with force.
Or, imagine what happens if you try to stop these strangers from taking YOUR things! You end up with assault and obstruction charges!
I don't understand the concept that if I have a loaf of bread, that I worked all day for, I should have thugs with guns come and steal 1/2 of it for the guy that didn't work.
Of course, the argument is larger than that. The collective good. The list goes on. But, when there's absolutely no restrictions on who gets to take my money, and people say 'fuck it' and just give my money free to everyone else, it seems bizarre.
Steal my money, and interview / assess cases and then give it to actual starving people? Well, I can at least stand that. Steal my money and just walk into the middle of the room, throw it into the air, and say Wheeee!
Wtf?!
more people with more time on their hands and nothing to do results in more crime every time
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
But they have things to do. They'll be able to afford the internet, maybe even a game console.
If you don't want to pay taxes then go somewhere with no taxes (Somalia?)
You misspelled Greece . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm retired on ~$12k/year + benefits.
Though I'm also back in school, upgrading my degree, have a student job, etc...
That being said, I've worked out how I can live on the $12k alone, but that involves things like selling my house, most of my stuff, and living not quite homeless.
I don't read AC A human right
>> would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government
By the _government_? Really? Or by Finnish taxpayers?
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.
Watch out! The SJWs will be along in a minute to mod you down!
Is it even as much as mildly insulting when a coward gets modded down? I have a frame of reference...
One time, when I was a bit younger, I took all the candy off a tray of Halloween goodies. I presume the next few kids might have said, "WTF? What sorry motherfocker was here right before me?"
And yet, full-bellied, I slept the untroubled sleep of the anonymous coward.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
you left off the sarcasm tag
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You're never going to be the top of the food chain. 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, but you're kidding yourself if you think that a libertarian wonderland is going to end up becoming anything other than a fucking nightmare.
You think you're self sufficient. You are not. You think that you don't need government. You do.
Libertarianism is fucking retarded.
It's called "civilization". Without taxes you would not have the support of the government. Without that support, there would not be anyone stopping other people from taking ALL your bread. And putting chains on you and forcing you to get more bread for them.
There are a few places like that in the world. No taxes at all. But you might want to look at the living conditions there before claiming that the "thugs" are taking some of your bread.
I don't understand the concept that if I have a loaf of bread, that I worked all day for, I should have thugs with guns come and steal 1/2 of it for the guy that didn't work.
Speaking of that, can you get some honey wheat or sourdough next time? This rye isn't bad, but hey, a little variety? Thanks, dude!
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
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...
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.
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.
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
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 "Monty Python" crew summed it up best with their sketch that suggested, "I think that we should tax foreigners living abroad!"
Everyone loves a tax that the think someone else is going to end up paying for.
And they all love "free" benefits and entitlements that they think cost nothing to nobody.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So, according to you, if the majority decides that slavery should be legal, we should just "have to accept that"?
Fortunately we live in a Constitutional democracy, that won't happen. The Constitution overrides the will of the majority, and the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.
The Constitution does not say that taxes are unconstitutional -- quite the opposite in fact, it explicitly grants the government the right to levy taxes.
That's the way fasicst think; it reveals a lot about you.
Your ad homeinem attacks and lack of basic knowledge about how the government works reveal a fair bit about you as well.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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 employers' time by showing the umemployment they've filled out job applications for jobs they don't actually want, etc. etc. etc.
40 Goto 10
And what's on the table involves cutting out the middlemen, like this:
10 Government takes money from me at the point of a gun
20 An army of bureaucrats is summarily fired and gets $800/month the same as everyone else
30 I also get $800/month of it back, which is better than tne $0 I get back now
40 Goto 10
If you have a libertarian objection to UBI, might I remind you that none other than Milton Friedman endorsed something very similar in the form of a negative income tax.
The money you have earned probably came from either a business you own, or a job you were hired to do. Both exist *at all* because of the stability and safety of the place in which you live. You owe all of that to the taxes paid by people who came before you, and by your neighbors.
You sound ridiculous, reaping all these benefits and then insisting that it is morally wrong for you to pay for them at the same rate everyone else does.
Taxation is the price we pay for civilization. If you don't like it, too damn bad, because the rest of us do.
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
There is no such thing as 'natural law' in the first place. Money is store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account, the question is not about money, the question is about the time of a singular individual on this planet and why should any amount of time of that singular individual be stolen from him by the collective to supply some other individual or individuals with the fruits of labour that the time of the first (taxed, robbed) individual has produced?
The answer is obvious: because the mob can gang up and kidnap and kill any singular individual.
When you say 'society' you mean the mob, because except for the mob and its violent representative government there is no such thing as 'society'.
'Go to Somalia' is a silly proposition, people do go where they can to avoid taxation, it doesn't have to be Somalia, all that it has to be is a place where the taxes on production and thus robbery of life by the mob is lower.
You think that it is not happening? USA has no productive capacity left because of that happening over the last 40 years, as the mob votes in government that promises to steal and redistribute, especially after defaulting on the gold dollar in 1971. The tax of inflation is what drove business out of USA, not just other income and wealth related taxes. At least originally those insured that people spent everything instead of saving. The lavish business offices, expensive buildings, expensive furniture, whatever business expenses - so much of those are a complete waste and would not happen if the tax system did not make it totally worth while just to spend money instead of saving it for the rainy day.
The mob has destroyed the ability of individuals and businesses to save and destroyed the very concept of sound money with all that taxation. Eventually the only tax that could be applied in that system is the tax of Inflation, but for people with means this is the tax that can be avoided fairly easily. It is the poor who suffer the most from inflation, not the wealthy.
This Finnish experiment is going to speed up the eventual (and inevitable) collapse of their economy, there is no question about it, it's just a matter of time. Given the current movement of various African and Middle Eastern immigrants around the world, it is the exactly wrong time to start experimenting with more socialism, because even the most staunch socialists understood that international socialism and Marxism is completely and utterly unsustainable in a very short term even, which is why those were replaced with national democratic socialism in Germany just after Keiser and we all are aware of the path that the world took after that...
You can't handle the truth.
Conservative Canadian here, and I support the idea of minimum income to a point. The reason I do is because we are already wasting money on salaries for case workers who decide who is needy enough to warrant welfare payments. We also pay money to process and jail people who commit crimes of necessity. By cutting out the bureaucracy of wealth redistribution we could implement a system where people are paid a minimum income.
Also our current system introduces a perverse incentive for people to not look for work while taking welfare or employment insurance. If you do get a job then you are kicked off the program right away. If you loose your job again after 3 or 6 months then you have to go through the application process all over again. This means that people don't want to take the risk of loosing their benefits so they don't look for work. If everyone was given a basic amount we wouldn't have that problem so people would be free to look for ways to increase their incomes.
Also we could do away with the idea of minimum wage. Since everyone would already be getting a basic amount then employers could pay people what they thought the work was worth. This could then open up opportunities for people with disabilities or other issues that prevented them from holding regular jobs.
Not everyone wants to live in a trailer on the outskirts of Ponca, Oklahoma.
Well, you can hardly live on $12k with a wife and kids.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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, air traffic control, automotive safety regulations, public libraries, the Internet, etc etc etc. All of those things require collective resources to implement and maintain. It's just that they work so well that many people have forgotten that without taxes they would not exist, and now take them for granted because they can't imagine life without them. Hence the emergence of entitled libertarians whining about the government "stealing" their work because they are too comfortable to notice all the benefits that they are receiving in return.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The Fore people of Papua New Guinea subscribe to your principle. They share nothing outside their closely knit extended family clan. Absolutely no taxes and no sharing with anyone. No rules either, they will kill each other. That is why they remain small undeveloped brutal tribe in some land. They will never build a city. You are worse than Fore. You don't even understand how the mere existence of government and peaceful conflict resolution benefits you. Please leave America to civilized people like us and go live with the Fore.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Your money is actually the property of the US government, it is supposed to represent hard work, but there is no correlation whatsoever with hard work and there never has been. This is about equity, in Scandinavian countries equity is enforced via tax, the richest people earn ~10X the poorest. it's a kinder capitalism where the phrase "working poor" doesn't make sense - in other words hard work is rewarded by the tax system, luck and greed get you nowhere near as far as they do in the US.
Of course this idea would never fly in a nation where taxation is widely perceived as a form of armed robbery.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Actually it's not quite that simple. A 1% majority is hardly a mandate. You can push people so far but it would be impossible to force on the 49% anything they absolutely don't want to live with. The violence would destroy everything the 51% had and they might even lose considering the 49% might be more innovative and intelligent.
Except it's true? Every cent a person makes relies on society to function for its value. Money is a artificial construct that is used to signify an entities value to society. Government contributes to society (and can also be a detriment, mind) and allows a working person to function within it so it gets a cut. Don't wanna share your cut? Well fuck you buddy, if you aren't gonna play ball with society, make a raft and head out into the ocean because society ain't gonna play ball with you.
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
We weren't talking about "how the government works", we were talking about AmiMoJo's political beliefs related to majoritarianism. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, AmiMoJo lives in Great Britain, so I don't see what US government has to do with this discussion anyway.
Pointing out that AmiMoJo's arguments for majoritarianism are fascist in nature isn't an "ad hominem", it's an objective fact about his political beliefs and how they relate to fascism. If you don't understand the relationship between majoritarianism and fascism, I suggest you do some more background reading; a good starting point is the actual political programs of European fascists, historically and in present times.
And, in fact, there is no particular guarantee that the US Constitution is fully consistent with liberty or justice, in particular after the amendments passed during the Progressive Era. A much better question you ought to reflect on is why the Founding Fathers apparently intended to restrict this power in the first place.
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.
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.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So, according to you, if the majority decides that slavery should be legal, we should just "have to accept that"?
Fortunately we live in a Constitutional democracy, that won't happen. The Constitution overrides the will of the majority, and the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.
No you are only fortunate that the majority don't believe in slavery.
In the same way that once upon a time the majority decided to elect representatives who wanted to abolish slavery, and did so through changing the constitution, the majority in the future could always elect some nutjobs who could then propose an amendment to nullify the 13th and make slavery legal.
So in summary...
Yes you do have to just accept what the majority decides will be the law. That is how democracy (and all flavours of) work.
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 true freedom, anyone who was stronger than you could come along and take your wood simply because they were stronger.
Property ownership is not freedom: it is actually a limit on freedom - not that that's bad - we do need to place limits on freedom. But, fundamentally, the point is to set up a society where most (ordinary) people can live out simple comfortable lives. And limiting freedom through things like property ownership is a necessary evil. But so are taxes.
At the end of the day, it's all just random chance and the laws of physics. But we can impose artificial "laws" that make things better for most people. But these are not natural laws: they are artificial laws for our collective convenience.
Clearly, because Venezuela and Greece have proven what utopias socialism can achieve!
Enjoy beating your neighbor to death in the food lines.
Someone clearly has no concept of how modern society works, or what a social contract is.
The government and you have an agreement. The government provides basic services, like roads (to deliver your things to the stores you shop at), schools to provide education up to grade 12 for not just you but for the people around you so those people can get good jobs and afford the things you make or the services you provide at your job, writes laws which set the rules by which all those living around you should abide by so you don't have to kill each other when a disagreement happens, and neutral law enforcement to administer said rules. In return you pay a portion of your income. The more you gain from society the more you pay. This is called a social contract.
If you don't want to pay your taxes you are welcome to not do so, and the government will not take it from you by force. However you are then canceling the social contract with the government and therefore must leave the territory it governs. If you want to stay but not pay taxes, well then the government is upholding their end of the deal and you are not; they are entitled to take what is due per the agreement by force.
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.
While I'm not saying it's a good thing, if the majority do decide that slavery is legal and somehow manage to repeal all the laws/constitutional clauses that ban it, then it's going to happen. In fact it does happen sometimes, e.g. parts of the US basically enslave criminals by giving them heavy fines and garnishing their wages.
Note that I'm not saying you have to accept it - you can fight all you like. I'm saying it's how the world works, and for the most part it's the least bad system.
Also, I don't think you know what a fascist is.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Beats making all kinds of money, but having no time to spend it on anything or being able to take off for a few months on a diving trip to Costa Rica or climbing trip to South America.
Yep, if you want to start your own country you are going to find it hard. It wasn't a serious suggestion, since the only options are to displace other people or terraform Mars.
A much more practical option is to find somewhere with like-minded people, and join with them to effect democratic change.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
We are the most social of all social mammals, we cooperate and compromise with others or die. Personally I don't see paying tax as "avoiding death", I have the "it buys me civilization" attitude. An example of me avoiding death would be something like allowing Broome airport staff to "steal" my fishing hooks and lures in the name of national security. I raised my voice while protesting but I am a large male and I was very careful not to be a "serious threat" to the dozen or so airport goons studying me. I was not arrested because I'm old enough to know that if you want to change a cop's mind you have to do it before he makes the call.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
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.
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/...
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.
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).
"If you don't want to pay taxes then go somewhere"
The question is always: how much is enough?
"society provided an army and legal system to protect you"
What you call society has no legal obligation to provide anything to you, especially defence.
I never try to change the world for anybody, I use the system as it is given to me to work around its edges and corners, we have very limited time span on this planet, trying to change the way of the world will only lead to personal suffering. My position is that while I will explain my point of view (and I do so on this forum as an example), I will use the system against itself, hacking it, figuring out corner cases, finding ways around the barriers and walls and guns. The system is the rock, don't try to break the rock with your head, figure out a way to move around the rock, do not disturb it as it flies by you, let it crash on its own terms, use the path that it breaks through the environment for your own purposes.
You can't handle the truth.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." - Churchill.
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.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
A majority isn't sufficient; it takes a lot more than that. In fact, in the US and Europe, some rights likely couldn't be taken away even by constitutional amendment because the various supreme courts would block it.
What you were saying is that a majority is sufficient, and that is factually wrong. To deprive people of life, liberty, and/or property takes a lot more than simply a majority decision.
And I think you are politically naive.
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.
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.
You fascist gramma nazi
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.
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 its uses. Paying for a security patrol, treaded vehicles to go down unpaved roads (Max Max style), electric fences, water, waste water, power (especially the heavy amperage A/Cs require) would be extremely tough for an individual. I don't mind a relatively small chunk of my taxes (under Reagan, more than half your income went to Uncle Sugar) going to keeping the violent guys well away from me.
I pay my taxes happily. Sure a lot cheaper than carrying an AR-15 around just to make it from the house to a store without getting robbed or killed.
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?
Where are you getting 245 million? Only 56 million are on social security. And if those people who are on SS had been allowed to keep the 12.4% that they paid into SS and put it into the stock market, they would have millions of dollars when they retire, not a meager $28k a year for 11 or 12 years.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
Socialism was never in Somalia. America is far more socialist than Somalia EVER was. Somalia is the perfect example of free capitalism without regulations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
With $12K/yr you could live in a one bedroom apartment in Sacramento, California. Not luxury, but beats a tornado magnet. Certainly couldn't do it with kids though, correct.
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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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not everyone wants to live in a trailer on the outskirts of Ponca, Oklahoma.
As I mentioned, I'm also back in school, with another job. I certainly don't want to be permanently retired on just that. It'd be substantially easier if my house was fully paid off.
Well, you can hardly live on $12k with a wife and kids.
Funny, I meant 'only on the $12k.' IE no other income, but yeah, while a wife would make it more difficult, what kind of retiree is still raising kids?
I don't read AC A human right
I think that's kind of the point. Roughly $1k/month in the USA is enough to leave people feeling 'safe'. IE they can afford to think strategically. It's also low enough that most will at least still be 'hungry'.
A person who knows that, worst case, they can move to a cheaper part of the city and live decently, is going to be less worried than one that has to worry about losing everything and becoming homeless.
I don't read AC A human right
I think you have some reading to do.
Government: Marxist–Leninist single-party state.
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).
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.
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 in that model. Granted, if the economy shrinks, everyone loses but people hit the ground in less critical ways.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I had a $600 rent in a decent suburb (Carmichael) with most utilities covered. That wasn't even a subsidized low-income place.
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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.
Except taxation benefits everybody. The taxed as much as everyone else by providing services, sharing risk, and maintaining a civil society. If you reject taxation you reject all of that.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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
By definition if the majority want to reinstitute slavery then the democracy will re-introduce slavery. Otherwise it isn't a democracy. It may need to be a super-majority - ie over 75% depending on the constitutional challenges it has to overcome but that doesn't change the fact that a democracy follows the majority.
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 you insure your car and your house you should insure your society with welfare.
As much as you are in favor of re-legalizing slavery because it would make some businessmen some money, sure.
So you're one of the laureates who inspired this video. Enjoy your cholera.
You made the conscious and deliberate choice to not move out of Canada. So you agreed to the taxation. When the government shows up to make you honor your part of the contract, you object. Good for you. But that doesn't change your responsibilities. If you don't like it. Move. You can't opt out of police and roads and such to refuse taxes.
Learn to love Alaska
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 have happened pretty much just like that.
There hasn't been open land like you describe for thousands of years. Even when England claimed Singapore, an uninhabited island at the time aside from migratory fishermen and such, Malaysia and China instantly claimed it when someone was interested. England defended the claim and held it until they surrendered it to Japan, who showed up with more guns, and England never took it back. It followed the path to independence after the Japanese relinquished the claim at the hands of the American military.
What you are wanting never really existed. If you could get there to claim it, someone else had already claimed it in almost every case. Or, as happened with many small uninhabited pacific islands, the moment you claim it, someone else asserts a claim, so any way you cut it, you have to be able to defend it to have sovereignty. And even those established for a long time require a military to defend it, or someone else would claim it.
Though, if you buy land in the middle of nowhere Alaska, there'll be no tax on it, so you are "sovereign" in that if you can live off the land, it's likely nobody would ever bother you. That's about as close to sovereign that you can get in this day and age.
Learn to love Alaska
You live in an isolated, small town.
So you rent a small place? And they are taxing the owner's wood? Why does that bother you? That they are taking your labor in cutting it down as the tax?
Learn to love Alaska
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...
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.
Learn to love Alaska
A majority isn't sufficient;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajority You are incorrectly assuming "majority" to mean "simple majority". But if you take "majority" to mean "majority (of any kind, including supermajorities) then you are 100% wrong, and the person you are responding to is 100% right.
Why do you assume the worst in others? Why not assume they are right, when the words allow them to be?
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, and North Korea is a Democratic People's Republic. They say so, so it must be true.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
I didn't see any sarcasm. The guy didn't state whether he owned land or rented. Based on the attitude, I'd hope he owns it and it's paid off.
So, he'd have a clear title, issued by the government, and defended by the govenrment, and as a condition of buying that land he freely bought, he agreed to pay taxes on it. If he didn't like it, he didn't have to claim that piece of land, and he'd have no burden. So he freely entered into a contract with the government where in exchange for them recognizing his claim to that land, he will pay them a portion of the value of that land.
Now he has the land, he wants to break the contract and get everything for free. And you think that's fair and right?
Learn to love Alaska
A majority isn't sufficient; it takes a lot more than that. In fact, in the US and Europe, some rights likely couldn't be taken away even by constitutional amendment because the various supreme courts would block it.
If a large enough part of the population wants it for enough time, it would pass. They'd change laws, change constitutions and leave the treaties which prevent what they want - and also replace judges in due time.
E.g. in Norway, to change the constitution you'd need 2/3rds majority after the next election to pass a change you proposed before the election.
Misquoting him to make him appear facist is intellectually dishonest: arguing about whether that dishonesty is ad hominem or not is simply ducking the issue. The part of his post that you cropped from your response said:
Taken together with his other line of argument this shows a basic respect for the democratic process. Hardly the stuff of facism unless you pull one part of what he said out of context. What do you think this is, Journalism 101?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Greece's problem is more that rich assholes think they needn't pay the existing taxes and government siding with them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, Anarchy is the only real way! With a tough and mighty Anarch on top...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the goose tries to get away, chop off the head. Then you have all its feathers and you can even process the corpse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But, when there's absolutely no restrictions on who gets to take my money, and people say 'fuck it' and just give my money free to everyone else, it seems bizarre.
You may be familiar with this principle in its most common applications, the armed forces and the Police.
In a couple of generations, when probably upwards of 50% of the population is literally unable to work because there's nothing they can do a robot or AI can't do better/faster/cheaper, we will need the sort of societal rethink that starts with a universal basic income.
No, that's incorrect. It takes a 2/3 supermajority of representatives in both the House and the Senate, followed by ratification in 3/4 of the states. That is not "a majority where you live", it is "a supermajority of elected representatives". Furthermore, SCOTUS doesn't just literally execute instructions from the Constitution; in fact, it has the power to invalidate amendments or even preventing them from being considered.
The discussion started with AmiMoJo's claim that "you have to accept that the majority where you live decided that [something should happen]" and accept state violence if you disagree. That statement is wrong both as a factual and as a normative statement (he is ambiguous about which he means). And it's important to point that out, because that naive belief about government and majorities is used in political arguments, when people keep claiming that this-or-that policy doesn't coincide with polls and that therefore our form of government is somehow defective. The fact that majorities often don't get what they want is an important feature of US and European democracies, not a flaw.
Somalia was governed by the "Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party", and they took the usual path of countries run by socialists: they deteriorated economically to the point where they finally fall apart. That is the historical inevitability of what happens when socialism gets put into practice. Yes, socialism was in Somalia, and it did what socialism always does: it leads to totalitarianism and economic failure.
Much of Somalia is under Sharia law and there are still local governments. But to the extent that "free capitalism" exists in Somalia, it has helped improve conditions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course it takes a while for free markets to fix socialist shitholes, so you can't expect Somalia to turn into Switzerland overnight.
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.
It is true: the term "Democratic People's Republic" refers to socialist and communist states.
Maybe you get hung up on the term "democratic", but it is used correctly according to socialist and communist theory: theoretically, those forms of government deliver "democratic" government. In practice, of course, they reliably deliver totalitarian hell holes.
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.
So, you propose that the only 'way forward' for any of us is to scavenge around the edge of the economy and get what we can, how we can, before the whole thing collapses?
Great plan. For a sociopath.
Fortunately we live in a Constitutional democracy, that won't happen. The Constitution overrides the will of the majority,
You mean the way that the Constitution requires that all bills involving revenue originate in the House, so the Senate took a bill that originated in the House, removed everything the House had put in it, replaced it with the Affordable Care Act, and claimed that it could be passed under reconciliation as a revenue bill since it was a bill that originated in the House (even though all that remained of that bill was the number).
I'm sorry, but if they can do that, they can find a way to pass a law legalizing slavery once more.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
Realist. By the way, I see the collectivist society that you are so fond of as a bloody murderous cancer of humanity. This is the same society that started WWI and then WWII and then every other war after that. The society is the murderous bloody idiotic thoughtless disease. It steals, kidnaps, murders, that is all that the society is and does. The collectivist slogans are only a veil of the ugly beast.
For my taste I prefer to deal with individuals and businesses they run, not any governments and their thug enforcers.
You can't handle the truth.
Of course, socialism was "tried", and it failed, like it always does. You're simply deluding yourself into thinking that socialism could be anything else.
But, in any case, whether Somalia was real socialism or just real-world socialism is irrelevant; the point is that Somalia is not an example of (1) a country without government, or (2) the result of capitalism, free markets, or libertarianism.
Apparently, I have a much better idea of the past and present economic and political system there than you. And while I haven't experienced Somalia's socialism, I have experienced other forms of socialism, you know, the real-world kind.
Without European colonialism, there probably wouldn't be an state called "Somalia".
Furthermore, you're implicitly contemplating a false dichotomy: European colonialism or nothing at all; there are many ways in which Europe could have interacted with, or even governed, the Somalian territories that would have had better outcomes.
From a business point of view, slavery is inefficient; that's been understood at least since Adam Smith. Free markets, of course, include free markets in labor, and slavery is the antithesis of that, since it forcibly removes labor from its rightful owner (the slave) and hands it to a politically connected rent seeker (the slave master). The economic inefficiency of slavery was also the reason why the Southern states were in such poor shape: they couldn't compete with the North.
Slavery is something rent-seekers favor; it's no accident that the party of rent-seekers, the Democrats, supported slavery back then. So, I'm afraid you are projecting your own desires onto others.
Again, you're simply projecting your own ignorance onto others. The state of Somalian beaches is, quite literally, the result of real-world socialism.
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.
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.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, discussions aren't about proving who's smarter or who has more knowledge, they are about gaining better understanding. Ambiguous statements or statements that are subject to multiple interpretations are detrimental to that. Furthermore, "the worst" assumption would not be that AmiJoJo is wrong, but that he engages in dissembling, that is, deliberately making ambiguous statements in order to derail the discussion. I don't think he does that.
In any case, AmiJoJo's statement that we have to accept the decision of "the majority where you live" is ambiguous in several ways, but it's wrong in all of the possible interpretations that I can see. First of all, it's unclear whether he means that as a descriptive or normative statement. As a normative statement, of course, it's easy to simply disagree with it and pronounce it wrong.As a descriptive statement, it's wrong because it describe no government that I know of. The US and Europe both have representative democracies, and decisions are made by majorities and supermajorities of representatives, not residents. And the decisions of representatives often differ from the preferences of majorities of residents or voters.
It sounds like you need supermajority of representatives not the majority of residents. Big difference.
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.
You're off by a factor of ten. The per capita GDP of Finland is not half a million a year. It's 50,000.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
While I disagree with the grandparent, you should look at the turnout figures in recent elections. It's not uncommon for governments to be elected in western democracies with around 30% of total votes: turnout of around 60% and the winner getting a small majority. The winning party absolutely claims to have a strong mandate from the people and push through things that 30% of the population hated and 40% were apathetic about. If governments needed 51% of the population to agree, they'd never manage to do anything.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes you do have to just accept what the majority decides will be the law. That is how democracy (and all flavours of) work.
With minor variations, that's how all forms of society work. It is very difficult to rule without the consent of the governed. Even in a despotism, your army can't be everywhere enforcing your will and eventually people will stop doing the things necessary for your society to function and it will collapse. Or they'll come around with pitchforks and flaming torches one evening.
That said, slavery is never a stable situation. It produces economic imbalances when you have a lot more people producing goods than consuming them and it produces social imbalances. The Spartans had to live as if every free citizen was a soldier to prevent uprisings by their slaves, and even that proved not to be enough.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Even a factor of 100 for truly exceptional people seems fine to me. I personally consider most sports personalities to be a colossal waste of space, but if what they're doing is enjoyed by a few million people and those people are willing to redistribute enough of their wealth in that direction that they can git the 100x-the-poorest line then I won't object. But when the difference is a factor of well over 1,000,000 that it's difficult to accept. When some people's annual income solely from owning property is greater than many people earn in total from working their entire life, it's hard to justify.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I got news for you, friend: I already live somewhere where there is a 'redistribution of wealth', it's called the United States and the so-called 'Affordable Care Act' (or 'Obamacare' as some like to call it), and it sucks ass. I don't make 6 figures, yet I get a gun held to my head forcing me to purchase overpriced shit-tier health insurance that I don't need and that doesn't benefit me enough to justify there being a few hundred dollars less in my pocket every month, so that fatasses who can't be bothered to take care of themselves can get bariatric surgery, diabetes treatment, and heart bypass surgery for FREE. Meanwhile I literally worked my ASS off and am legitimately an athlete in addition to working 40 hours a week, and I have to pay? Fuck that. I'd almost be tempted to vote Republican, if it meant they'd get rid of this stupid ACA crap and stop dictating to me how I live my life. Meanwhile the same lazy fatasses who can't be bothered to take care of themselves or better themselves in any substantial way, are the same people who want this 'redistribution of wealth', meaning 'take what little money I have and give it to lazy fucks so they can buy drugs and alcohol with it'. Also fuck that shit. The only way that works for me? Is if I don't have to work anymore, can maintain my current standard of living and otherwise do what I really want to do with my life instead of having to put up with going to some job or other every day. But guess what? Ain't gonna happen. They'll make guys like me work my ass off, take most of what I earn and 'redistribute' it to people who can't be bothered to do anything with their lives other than be lazy fucks. Meanwhile the one-percenters will find loopholes or tricky ways out of giving up their money, and stay rich, effectively putting all the burden of this so-called 'redistribution of wealth' squarely on the backs of the Middle Class. No. Fucking. Way. I'd sooner see the whole country blown to oblivion and me along with it than put up with that shit.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Do you also believe that the government shouldn't use force against counterfeiters?
Most people choose to live in expensive areas ONLY because they MUST to get a good-paying job, not because they really "want to." With a large enough basic income, many people will be happy to quit their jobs and move somewhere much cheaper. We see this pattern repeated quite frequently with retirees. A basic income would just extend the behavior to younger people who were working hard but barely getting ahead.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
But why shouldn't the game console just be free too? i mean they're already getting food for free, aren't they entitled to more?
Stop it. The OP doesn't have a problem with taxes in general (nor do i, i like roads and fire departments), he specify doesn't like working to provide from himself then being forced to give it to someone that could but chooses not to.
It depends on what the taxes are used for. It doesn't benefit me at all to give my tax money to someone else so they can do nothing but watch TV.
You don't seem to get it. If the will of the people is strong enough, we could repeal the 13th Amendment and get slavery back.
So you're argument of just accepting it is nonsense. Majority rule is mob rule, and that's exactly why we have things like the electoral college.
Where do you get this crap? The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land which the court must follow, so there is exactly zero legal way for them to invalidate an amendment. If an amendment went in making slavery legal again, and nullified the amendments used for equal protection and such, the CANNOT invalidate it.
The problem with your fantasy is that the world you based it in doesn't exist. No one can claim to have staked their claim on anything that isn't already accounted for. Show me the land where you can build your little homestead that HASN'T already been secured by the force of the military of our government and the taxes that make that possible. We are all tempted to look back fondly on a bygone era and romanticize how "great" it would have been but to believe that we should try to somehow bring that model of the world back into existence is worse than living in some fantasy world via a video game in the basement of your parents house! Your fantasy becomes a distraction for everyone as it only creates more of a clusterf$&@ in our already overburdened political system. Making it harder for any politician who wants to change things for the better while making it easier for others to serve themselves in the smoke screen of your revolutionary fantasy. So put on your three cornered hat and grab your musket but try to remember that many of us wouldn't exist without the collective force of our government. The pilgrims who first came to this land centuries ago lived in little towns just as you describe and their struggles quickly led them to do exactly what you suggest and you better believe that if you WERE the type of person that wouldn't have already brought your share of goods for contribution you would no longer be a member of that community and rightly so. I think people need to ask themselves what they're really trying to be free from. Is it really freedom from taxation? Do you think that food is actually be taxed out of your mouth? It's more likely that you're being taxed out of the Porsche you've always wanted or even just that Toyota Highlander (hybrid maybe) for the family car, now that I can relate to. Will tax cuts make that happen for you? Really?! I don't know how much money you have to make for tax cuts to make a significant impact on your quality of life but I make enough to qualify as middle class and I think the last time someone cut taxes to better my life I got enough to put floor mats in my new Honda CRV. No one wants to work their a$$ of and have a significant amount of there income (child's college fund, retirement, or God forbid a family vacation) be taxed into the fabled "piss Christ" exhibit or the "40oz slush fund" of all the degenerates Ayn Rand warned us against. But at the end of the day you'll have to look at yourself in the mirror and decide if you yourself aren't one of those degenerates that Ayn was talking about or perhaps you think that by trying to shrug us all off you will appear to be.
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.
Or instead of welfare we could force out those that don't want to work and remove them from society. Perhaps send them to Finland, for example.
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.
Yeah, that's right. Just like George Bush (and Obama, too---the Drone King) once said: "Amerika: love it, or leave it." [...or we'll drone your ass]
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
No disrespect intended, but when "they" come for *your* shit (stuff *previously* not "taxed"), you will be one of those squealing like a pig. Good luck with that. Just saying.
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
When I hear idiots like you running off at the mouth, I wonder if you have locks on your doors and cars and insurance and such; you know, in case of "theft" and such. Oh, wait, according to tools like you, *none* of it's *really* yours? WTF? Hypocrite much? Or just really, you know---STUPID?
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
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.
In fact, no major democracy would allow slavery to be reinstituted simply because a majority wants that to happen.
And by which political means would a democracy prevent that?
If the parliament votes "yes" or in Switzerland the 'people' vote "yes": how would any democracy be able to counteract that with purely political means?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You forgot to mention: housing, clothing, electricity, roads, hospitals and medicine and first of all: education. Which he lacks obviously ;D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Your money doesn't make much money in the Cayman Islands. You put some there, I suppose, if you want but there are better stores of value and far more productive stores. Instead, you put your money in slow growth and stable markets. Then you live off dividends and interest, quite handsomely too, and don't actually pay a whole lot of taxes. So long as your money is in the market, or goes unspent, you generally don't pay much in the way of taxes.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Growth continues to increase... It's a myth that production is no longer done in the US.
http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/d...
Additionally, I know exactly no one who's ever considered moving due to taxation - nobody with any wealth does. The noise about taxation seems to come from those who have no assets to tax. I don't know why they worry. I pay my taxes and have ample means of tax avoidance if I so desire. I don't mind my taxes, at all, but I do mind how they're spent.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
To take this horrid metaphor even further... It's cheaper for me to give you the money to go buy your owned damned bread than it is for me to repair the damage from you breaking into my house and stealing it and it's damned sure cheaper than me needing to hire goons to prevent it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
it'd be awfully nice if we had single payer, then you wouldn't be forced into paying for shit tier insurance.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It does if the alternative is for them to rob you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As has been pointed out frequently, parliament frequently does not vote according to what the majority wants. Progressives frequently cite that as a defect in our system of government, but it isn't.
In addition, supreme and/or constitutional courts generally can override votes and even acts of parliament.
I think there is some common sense in what you have proposed. A basic minimum income with ability to supplement. For 97%-99% of people it might work. There will still be those that choose to be homeless - the 43 year old addicted to crack and those with mental health issues...
I do wonder sometimes about the homeless people who are capable of organizing sustained protests regarding "tent cities" but are seemingly not able to find a suitable job. I know that many homeless are there because of unfortunate circumstances - unexpected illness, EI runs out, savings run out, awaiting approval for CPP...
The fact that people are "punished" for getting work in Canada is absurd. Single mom's are better off staying on welfare - they cannot afford daycare on even a job that pays $15/hr - at least not here in the lower mainland of BC. A living wage for 1 person is $15/hr.
If the basic amount were to happen then I would also suggest that for some people the money be rationed - so much paid directly for rent and utilities, so much in food and so forth - that people be taught how to budget (which I think should be a mandatory course taught in grade 11/12).
But where is the accountability? How "responsible" are they for where they are now? A youth running away from abusive parents - none. A single mom - there should be some - and I speak from experience - I was one for 3 years. I took out a student loan, I did get daycare paid for and I was blessed to have my ex pay his child support regularly but I paid every cent of the student loan off. I worked hard to educate myself and provide for my children (I'm not looking for glory - just an example). When I took my children grocery shopping they were actively involved - we had a dollar amount and a grocery list. If we went under they were able to buy a treat (ages 4-7). Now adults, they budget just fine.
Part of the problem in Canada is the constant shuffling of responsibility and revolving door of feasibility studies. The proposals always change and nothing ever gets done - except to close down "antiquated" facilities (and push more people into a homeless life).
Another part is the hiding of tax money offshore - billions of dollars which could be used... (like they really need all that tax money to live on?) Some of the politicians have registered companies offshore to avoid paying taxes in Canada... and don't get my started about the companies who are given massive tax breaks (2008) to keep jobs in Canada and then 3 years later renege (they should be told once they have built the factory they will get the tax breaks).
Then there is the tsunami of the Baby Boomers who are starting to test the system... we are not prepared...
Oh - if we didn't live in an oligarchy society...
Sigh. God you're dumb. How is it that you cannot think more than one step?
Person A wants to work and goes out and gets a job. Something happens, injury, illness, company folds up. Is now unemployed. Has costs they have to meet, kids to feed, bills to pay. Starts off selling down assets. Assets are now gone. Kids still need to be fed, shelter provided. Now what? Injury may prevent them going back into their old line of work, but can't retrain as there is no support. Perhaps can't relocate for work because of family, or perhaps can't afford to because relocating is not free. Person gets desperate. Someone says "you sell this bag of pills and you will earn $5k" guess what, it gets serious thought. Now a productive member of society is now someone who damages society.
Person B, wants to work, goes out and gets a job. Something happens, injury, illness, company folds up. Is now unemployed. Has costs they have to meet, kids to feed, bills to pay. Receives small welfare payment from the government. Is able to feed kids and recover from what ever set back occurred. If it is injury / illness they have time to recover. If it is job changing injury they have time to retrain. If they have to relocate for work they haven't burnt all their assets surviving so they can afford to move. Person gets new job, they start paying taxes again, 3 months later their taxes have exceeded the amount of welfare they received. Society is a better place.
Person A (b). Person doesn't want to work. Is a lowlife. Goes out and joins a gang that is full of people who also don't want to work AND people who are disenfranchised because they fell through the gaps. The gang has a huge number of members and is organised into a significant criminal organisation. Many people are harmed by their actions. Large areas are essentially controlled by these gangs. Ends up in prison after shooting a 7-11 shop keeper. Is one of 570 people sentenced to prison this week.
Person B (b) Person doesn't want to work. Is a lowlife. Goes out and joins a gang that are similar losers to himself. Overall the gang is pretty small and none of them are particularly motivated or intelligent. Motivation is pretty low because all of them receive enough cash to buy their food, booze and cigarettes They run some small scale drug operations, mainly dope and ecstasy. They don't have the critical mass to take over whole suburbs. Ends up in prison when he tries to sell drugs to an under cover cop. Is one of 120 people sentenced to prison this week.
Uh huh. I want you to just think that through. You want armed units going to houses, dragging people out and shoving them over the border? And what counts as not wanting to work? Being out of work for 3 months? Being a stay at home parent? What?
They can't just say "this amendment is invalid because we don't like it", but they can certainly say "this amendment is invalid because it wasn't passed properly". They might, for example, take the position that even voting on an amendment that violates equal protection itself violates equal protection, and that therefore Congress can never legally repeal the Equal Protection clause.
SCOTUS is the final arbiter of what the US Constitution means. And if you read SCOTUS decisions, you'll get an appreciation for how creative they can get.
Read your Constitution, specifically Article 5. Here it is,
So one way is for 2/3rds of a quorum (simple majority of members) of the House and Senate. The other way, in case Congress doesn't want to go along with the amendment, is for 2/3rds of the States to apply for a convention. Either way a super majority of States (3/4s) can amend the Constitution with the only exception being limiting a States equal representation in the Senate.
The Supreme Court is supposed to follow the Constitution and an amendment could remove them and even declare "Dear Leader President for Life".
America is an extreme case this way as almost anything goes if a large enough majority is in favour. Here in Canada, where it generally takes 7/10ths of the Provinces and those Provinces representing over 50% of the population to amend, the Constitution (1982) has limits on what can be easily amended including a small list of amendments that take 10/10ths of the Provinces and Parliament to pass. Things like removing the Queen, certain balances of the Senate and House of Commons, the Supreme Court and the amending formula.
Now it is possible that a military coup would prevent a bad amendment going through and history has shown that the American Federal Government can use the military to force an amendment through by showing up at the State Legislature and threatening violence if the Legislature doesn't vote the right way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Where did I misquote him? He said "you have to accept that the majority where you live decided...".
It shows basic respect for a particular democratic process, namely majoritarianism. That is just one of many forms of democracy, one that exists almost nowhere, and one that is closely linked to fascism. It is closely linked to majoritarianism and fascism place the interests of society as a whole above the rights and liberties of individuals. And the link between majoritarianism and fascism isn't accidental: European fascists were often very popular within their countries, as were their repressive policies.
That is why most democracies in the world are not governed by majoritarianism, they are governed by representative democracies with constitutions. And AmiJoJo seems to lack "a basic respect" for these kinds of stable, just, and liberal democracies.
Of course, socialism was "tried", and it failed, like it always does.
So the European socialism in the UK and Sweden and such has failed?
But, in any case, whether Somalia was real socialism or just real-world socialism is irrelevant;
It was never any kind of socialism. It was a dictatorship. Or do you think all dictatorships are socialist? Or none of them?
Learn to love Alaska
Sorry, you aren't reading that correctly. Google if the Constitution is too difficult for you to decipher.
Well, I'm happy for you. I still rejected Canada for the US.
In any case, you're missing the point: in both Canada and the US, a majority among voters or residents is never sufficient to pass a constitutional amendment.
Neither the UK nor Sweden have "socialism"; they are European-style welfare states. And they have become even that only fairly recently. (And, in any case, they spend less per capita on social welfare than the US.)
What I think is that all attempts of instituting socialism ends inevitably in totalitarian states. There are plenty of economic papers on why that is. I've also seen it in person.
The ol' "No True Socialist" fallacy. Gotcha.
Maybe you need to go back to the definition of socialism:
How exactly do the UK or Sweden fit this definition?
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.
The fact that you can equate paying taxes with Slavery or the Holocaust reveals an awful lot more about you.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In addition, supreme and/or constitutional courts generally can override votes and even acts of parliament.
Only if there is a higher law, that is violated by the new act.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"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
more people with more time on their hands and nothing to do results in more crime every time
Not everyone is a penniless fourteen year old.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In the US, SCOTUS could invalidate the process by which the amendment was passed, or keep the amendment from even being voted on at all. There are probably other creative things they can do; just look at the recent decisions on Obamacare and gay marriage.
In Germany, a number of constitutional clauses are irrevocable even by amendment, as you should know. This was done because Germans previously had chosen, by democratic means, to end democracy and human rights in the country; Hitler was popular and had widespread support, and nobody stood up to him. In fact, the German supreme court could likely have intervened, but it too chose not to.
The US and German examples also show that AmiMoJo's statement that "you have to accept" the outcome of democratic processes is wrong. Slavery in the US was the result of lawful and democratic processes, but Americans believed it to be wrong and fought a civil war over it; many other changes in the US happened because people did not "accept" the outcome of democratic processes or the preferences of majorities. Germans, on the other hand, overwhelmingly "accepted" the outcome of their democratic processes in the Weimar Republic and followed Hitler.
I didn't "equate" them, I asked you to think about how far your concept of "accepting the majority" goes. And the fact is that the Holocaust was indeed the result of Germans accepting the outcome of democratic processes instead of rebelling against them. The idea that "you have to accept" what people vote for or else leave the country is wrong and dangerous.
(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.
Your figures don't add up. Unless by "30% of total votes" you mean "30% of potential votes". Trying to claim anything based on those who don't vote is like saying the goalie kept a clean sheet in a game where he didn't play.
You also seem to be assuming that elections only concern a single issue, which they don't for people who aren't nutters.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Given a basic income, you'd get $1K/month, and your wife would also, so as a couple you'd get $2K/month. It isn't anywhere near luxury, but it's livable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
Well, if you have a loaf of bread, your good. If you have 100 loafs of bread, you might have to give up 25. If you have 10,000 you might have to give up 4000.
Trust me, it's a better deal then having 10,000 poor people come to take you 100 loaves.
Cheap storage VM.
That's why the US is a republic, not a true democracy.
Cheap storage VM.
Sir, I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Actually I'm not aware about anything in the german constitution preventing changes that are made democratic.
The claim that the US civil war was fought about slavery is wrong. The slavery argument came months if not years after the war broke out. It was a trick of Lincoln to get volunteers.
The war itself was over the secession of the south from the union.
Behind that where mainly trade and economoic reasons which ultimately where ofc based in the southern way of having slaves and the quick industrialization in the north. However: there was never a "you hold slaves and if you don't stop, we go to war" thing going on. That is more or less a made up thing by the winners.
Germans, on the other hand, overwhelmingly "accepted" the outcome of their democratic processes in the Weimar Republic and followed Hitler.
They did not only accept it but supported it, like Stalin in Russia, Franco in Spain and Musselini in Italy and plenty more 'facist' leaders in other countries. It was simply the mental health/education/development of that time.
At the same time the USA still had eugenic programs (from which the german Nazis copied) with their ideas about killing or neutering mental disabled or otherwise handicapped people.
Regarding my TV comment in the other post, I saw an interview with an old Lady in an 'anti war documentary' perhaps 15 years ago. She was about 100 at that time, or 95, does not matter. But she wittnessed WW I and WW II.
Asked about how the madness of WW II could have occured after the 'lessions learned' in WW I, she said: "you know when WW I started we where told, the war is over in 3 weeks. At the latest in 6 weeks. Neither the english nor the frensh have the guts to fight our brave germans for more than a few days. You know, the english want to do their sports, drink their tea and do the betting on the derbies. And the frensh are all gay anyway and want to do their fashion stuff, eat fancy and spend their money on parfum.
After a month they simply go home and the war is over and we have won." The population believed that for a while ...
Surprisingly when WW II started, Germany conquered north France indeed in a few weeks ...
So for some reason all believed: this war is running good.
Just wanted to give a picture of the general attitude of the population at that time.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It sounds like you need supermajority of representatives not the majority of residents. Big difference.
True, it's a supermajority of representatives. That said, the difference isn't as big in Norway as it could be in e.g. the UK or other countries with "first past the post". In Norway, there are many elected from each area - in addition to some that are handed out in order to make sure that the number of electives matches the election result even closer. The main problem with the Norwegian voting system is that non-central areas have too many representatives, but along the party lines it's pretty close.
Well, as I explained elsewhere, I don't consider that a good thing.
No, the claim is correct, and you just confirmed it; while politicians certainly may have had various self-serving motivations for wanting to fight the civil war initially, the people on the ground, the people who actually were necessary to fight the war volunteered because they opposed slavery. In the context of this discussion, we are talking about individual choices vs the state, so it is the individual choices of the soldiers that matter here.
You're absolutely right: it was part of America's progressive era. However, a key difference is that the US never legalized involuntary euthanasia, while Germany went on to kill millions in gas chambers. The US experiments with many bad ideas, but usually has the good sense to stop in time. It takes German dedication and obedience to the state to carry out bad political ideas to their bitter end.
These days, unfortunately, the political heirs to those programs are still very much in power in the US in the Democratic party, and they try to push many of the same broken ideas as they did back then. And in Germany, most Germans deny that their current political views and culture are actually not so far removed from those a century ago.
I would guess I know a lot more about the "general attitude of Germans" then and now than you do.
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
Oh, I agree. While I support a BIG(Basic Income Guarantee), I tend to surprise people off because rather than calculating a 'reasonable' amount for a single person to live alone, I tend to calculate on a household size of 4, which is about the maximum I figure we can get away with and still be stable for most. Because let's face it, a payment that can keep me 'minimally comfortable' in my own place - roughly $1500/month in a cheaper area of the country, is outright luxurious once you get 4 adults together and have a household income of $72k/year. $18k for a single is poor. $72k for 4 is middle class.
With that, and admittedly hand-waving medical as otherwise provided, I tend to end up with about $500-$1k per adult. $24k-$48k per household(parents and adult children, perhaps?) is 'reasonable'. Provisioning for children is more complex - I want it to be low enough to not encourage single parents*, but high enough to make sure the kids are taken care of.
*One thing about a BIG - it'd flip the current disincentive for getting married among the poor. Right now marriage can often cost them benefits, so they don't get married.
I don't read AC A human right
In theory, yes.
In practice it's virtually impossible to get a libertarian to admit that his ideas would require an increase in the amount of lawyering, as the people who currently go to the Federal government to (for example) regulate carbon monoxide would instead need some sort of tort against polluters.
Yea some of us dream bigger than others. You know than in many EU countries if you don't have a job, you would get that much also. Basic income is as much as simplifying the welfare system as anything.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
They can try to rob me, but a bullet to the head should stop that. It 's not like i'm not allowed to defend myself.
If the amendment is passed properly, they can't cite a now repealed amendment to throw out the new one. What you suggest would clearly not be allowed since that logic could be used to throw out any law passed. They can't rule on anything without a case before them, and the case required would only be possible after the new amendment passed.
Nice try, but thanks for playing.
Sure, if you commit a crime while on welfare, out you go.
Of course I was being facetious. The easiest solution is to end welfare programs like snap. Get a job, or take a shot at some charity helping you out, and hope they do or you starve.
--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.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
It may sound bizarre but it actually solves one of the biggest problems with benefits - that the poor become better off if they don't work. In this system any amount of work always makes you better off. The base benefit is not generous either - just enough to eat and pay for low cost rents and utilities. It also cuts down on a vast amount of government bureaucracy and snooping. No one knows whether this will work, it is an experiment and has never been tried before.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Inflation doesn't hurt the poor if minimum wage, welfare payments and so on are adjusted for inflation (statutory wage levels are increased too). They also have either debts and no savings, or no debt and no savings. So inflation tends to be neutral or beneficial. Of course the inflation indexes may be slanted (such as flat screen going down and food costs going up), manipulated or government policies to increase the cost of tobacco (for example) hurt the poor.
What if my savings are $100, they're remunerated at 1% at the end of the year but the inflation is 2%. Now I only have an effective $99. Big fucking deal lol.
I would guess I know a lot more about the "general attitude of Germans" then and now than you do.
That's doubtable, as I'm german and live in germany since roughly 50 years.
"The claim that the US civil war was fought about slavery is wrong" ... ;)
No, the claim is correct, and you just confirmed it
No, I insist it is wrong. When the war started slavery was not an issue at all.
Especially the south did not continue to fight 'because the northern soldiers where motivated to terminate slavery', but to become independent. If you want to say the north partly fought to end slavery, yes, we all agree. But that is not the cause or reason for the war. The war is officially called: secession war, for a reason.
Considering that black people lived in apartheid till the 1970s and are still considered lower level in the USA, I would say there is still lots of progress to make
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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
No disrespect intended, but when "they" come for *your* shit (stuff *previously* not "taxed"), you will be one of those squealing like a pig. Good luck with that. Just saying.
I'm sure there is some theoretical point my tax burden could be raised to that would be enough to make me complain, but I already pay quite a bit in taxes and it doesn't bother me much. It's the price I pay for living in a nice area of a well-cared-for state in a first-world country, and I'm happy to pay it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.