Dutch City To Experiment With Paying Citizens a "Basic Income" (theguardian.com)

BarbaraHudson writes: The Guardian is the latest to report about experiments with a basic income, in this case in Utrecht. The idea has been around for more than 2 centuries, and has become a bit of a hot-button topic on slashdot. It seems to be gaining political support now that job insecurity has become the new normal. "To those who say it is an unaffordable pipedream, Westerveld points out the huge costs that come with the increasingly tough benefits regimes being set up by western states, including policies that make people do community service to justify their handouts. 'In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,' Westerveld said, 'but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a "basic income."' Horst adds: 'If you receive benefits from the government [in Holland] now you have to do something in return. But most municipalities don't have the people to manage that. We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.'"

Comments

Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the Dutch have plenty of money to spare and are taking steps to remedy this dire situation. It's unconceivable that a modern European state should have any surplus instead of being in deep debt. Within some months they will have run out of money and all will be well again, deep in the red like all modern European states should.

Re:Good for them

[Opportunist]

Wait and see.

People, especially those that have little, tend to spend locally. In other words, drive the local economy as long as they have money. That they don't is exactly the reason our economy is in the slump it is in: People cannot spend.

Our economy depends on consumption. Local consumption to boot because another thing that is true for our economy is that it is highly dependent on the tertiary sector, i.e. services. Services are really tough to export. But also rather hard to import. Services are also the first thing people cut down on when money gets tight. For obvious reasons, if you're running out of money, what are you going to pay for, food so you can eat another day or the plumber to fix that dripping faucet? My guess would be that the faucet has to keep dripping for a while longer.

I'm really interested to see how this works out.

Re:Good for them

[davester666]

Unlike the USA, which prides itself on having a balanced budget each year, and on the rare occasion when it runs a deficit one year, it immediately runs a surplus for the following years until that debt is paid off.

Re:Good for them

[Kartu]

Sorry, was it sarcasm?
US government debt is at 108% at the moment.
In Netherlands it is 73.5%.
Norway 29%
Denmark 44%

Re:Good for them

[Kjella]

Our economy depends on consumption. Local consumption to boot because another thing that is true for our economy is that it is highly dependent on the tertiary sector, i.e. services. Services are really tough to export. But also rather hard to import. Services are also the first thing people cut down on when money gets tight. For obvious reasons, if you're running out of money, what are you going to pay for, food so you can eat another day or the plumber to fix that dripping faucet? My guess would be that the faucet has to keep dripping for a while longer.

Sure. And if you had a magic well to pour funding into the economy that would be nice, but for the most part being able to put money into the economy involves pulling the same money out of the economy through taxes. The net effect is really to encourage or discourage savings, which can temporarily affect the total flow of money. That is to say in good times you want to encourage people to save excess capital rather than spend it and in bad times you want to encourage spending rather than savings. Which is why the main control is interest rate, if you get high interest you save more and low interest you spend more. Not everybody of course, but the fraction of the population who are in a position to choose.

The problem is that many politicians think the interest rate is the ends, rather than the means. If people have been encouraged for a long time to spend, spend, spend people are already at the limit of their spending. Those with money in the bank have already given up on bank saving and the ones living on credit knows another credit crunch will come and don't want to bankrupt themselves on "free" loans. You've outplayed the temporary measures and you have go back to the basics and create long-term economic growth. And that's a slow and tedious process that can't just be willed into existence by the law, but must be nurtured like a farmer tending his crops.

Re:Good for them

[Opportunist]

You cannot affect the rich with the interest rate, and that's where the money is concentrated today. They have various other means of stashing money available, none of them being in any way directly influenced by the interest rate. They are also not the ones to consume. They want to invest. Problem is, to make investments viable, someone has to consume.

And those that would do that cannot due to a lack of funds. So either we find a way to give them the means to fulfill their role in our economy or we watch the economy grind to a halt while clinging to our money as if that shit meant anything as long as it can't move about.

Re:Good for them

[Alwin Henseler]

Amazing how often people seem to think this would be a net "money sink" by definition. Compare the following situations:

Person A is unemployed, and receives, say € 700 as benefits.
Person B has a job, and makes € 2000 per month. Versus

Person A is unemployed, but gets a basic income of € 700.
Person B gets a basic income of € 700, and has a job to earn an additional € 1300 a month.

It's simply a matter of choosing the numbers appropriately, and adjusting tax levels (and -perhaps- hourly wages etc) as necessary to compensate. Oh wait, that's not counting the large # of government bureaucrats who aren't needed anymore because the rules are simplified. So those bureaucrats can go do something that's more productive than count beans and meddle in other people's private affairs.

In short: there is money to pay for this, period. If only the political will exists. Especially in modern, wealthy western countries.

Personally I'm a big believer in this. For one, it could help greatly to equalize the power balance between employers and employees. In a largely capitalist society, that balance is skewed strongly towards employers. Employees are like water in the ocean, so employers can pick & chose at will. In theory employees can do the same. But in practice, they can't. If they refuse a job offer, they may be unable to put food on the table, lose the roof over their head, etc. A bureaucrat may be breathing down their neck, threatening to cut benefits if they don't take a job. So in practice, they often don't have much of a choice.

When worries about job security (and income security that comes with it) are gone, that could have huge positive effects on the mental well-being of the population. Less fighting between spouses over money, fewer troubles between low-income tenants and their landlords, drug addicts that don't have to go out stealing to pay for their habit, etc, etc, etc. And that's not even taking into account that people will have greater job satisfaction when given the freedom to pursue the jobs they want.

I think over time, the way things are currently done, simply won't work anymore and something will have to change if large-scale social unrest is to be avoided. A basic income would be a big step in the right direction, with potentially huge positive effects on society. The time is ripe for it, let's hope experiments like this will show it's a good idea and actually works.

Re:Good for them

[stud9920]

This is a typical example of "what is seen and what is not seen". What is seen is that the poor will continue to make the local economy run. What is not seen is the tax money the rich won't be able to spend on an import solid gold humvee running on imported gasoline.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. And if you had a magic well ...
You do not get it. We are spending more now. This would mean a cost saving! I do not understand why you do not get that. You are a bad communist and an even worse capitalist.

Re:Good for them

[jandersen]

Looks like the Dutch have plenty of money to spare and are taking steps to remedy this dire situation.

Or perhaps the Dutch have more courage? I think it is bit like how we tackle problems with drugs; we all know that drug use causes big health problems and ruins lives, and that this costs society a lot of money. However, what is more expensive - spending enormous amounts on policing drug users as well as the cost of health care because the available drugs are cut with all kinds of poisons etc, or legalising, taxing, save on policing and health care? A loaded question, I know, but it is the same with unemployment; there are always people who can't find work for very legitimate reasonsthey don't have the skills for the jobs, they can't get the training, and if they get trained, they are tainted by the fact that they have been long-time unemployed etc. What do we do about them?

- Leave them to: rot this was the situation at the time of Dickens; levels of crime and disease were miles high.

- Give them money, but administrate it tightly: this is what they do in Denmark, among others, and the fact is that the administration costs more than what society would lose if people simply got the money and we re allowed to cheat.

- Citizen salary: done right, this may be the cheapest option. There will have to be incentives to lure people out of not even trying, but it may be a lot easier than we think. Most people don't want to sit around idle, believe it or not; having a job gives you status and social contact - what people on benefits don't want, of course, is being "punished" for taking up work, and if having a job leads to you losing your social benefits, that feels like being punished for working.

It may be the Dutch are on to something. (yes, yes, I know, in a country where cannabis is legal, perhaps they are ON something as well, but that's separate matter)

Re:Good for them

[Stalks]

Your two statements have no financial differnce so where does the extra money come from?

Person A is given â 700, a net total of +â 700

Person B has his â 700 given and then taken away, for a net total of â 0

The fact Person B also pays back his â 700 has no bearing on costs.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that they have too much. It's that their overly generous welfare state is too expensive. This is nothing more than an idea to reduce overhead of existing welfare. They believe they can give the same benefits they currently do at a reduced cost by shrinking government. What they've found is that the liberal concept of large government is very expensive to maintain. And rather than trying to solve the unemployment problem (the root cause), they're just trying to reform the welfare reaction problem. They're admitting defeat at growing jobs in saying they need to figure out how to more economically pay for benefits.

Re:Good for them

[teg]

Sure. And if you had a magic well to pour funding into the economy that would be nice, but for the most part being able to put money into the economy involves pulling the same money out of the economy through taxes. The net effect is really to encourage or discourage savings, which can temporarily affect the total flow of money. That is to say in good times you want to encourage people to save excess capital rather than spend it and in bad times you want to encourage spending rather than savings. Which is why the main control is interest rate, if you get high interest you save more and low interest you spend more. Not everybody of course, but the fraction of the population who are in a position to choose.

Redistribution via taxes also have other effects - the consumption patterns are different. If you tax the upper middle class and up and redistribute to the poor, the results are likely to be less consumption of luxury goods (often imported) and services (e.g., travels abroad) and more spending on local services and shops (which these days amount to Chinese imports, I guess.).

Re:Good for them

[teg]

Sorry, was it sarcasm? US government debt is at 108% at the moment. In Netherlands it is 73.5%. Norway 29% Denmark 44%

Talking of Norway government debt being 29% is a tad inaccurate... we've also got more than ten times that amount stashed away in a fund.

Re:Good for them

[Rei]

I'm a big believer in this too. Welfare systems are big expensive patchworks, and you can simplify or eliminate vast chunks of them. Think of all of the different things that could be partially or completely subsumed by basic income:

Welfare
Social security
Unemployment benefits
Disability benefits
Minimum wage
Healthcare support for low-wage earners (US medicaid, for example)
Food stamps
Parental leave pay
Subisidized housing

* ... and about 50 other things. Think of all of the overhead in running these programs and all of the headaches for participants and gaps that they can fall through. Think of the burden on private companies for dealing with all of this. The reality is that, for better or for worse, most societies have decided on the principle that we don't want people starving in the streets and tried to set up safety nets - one group at a time - to prevent this from happening.

It's about time we just consolidate it to a single basic payment and get rid of all of these programs and corporate requirements that effectively amount to an inefficient approximation of the same thing. And then most of the debates between the left and right will simplify down to simply whether to increase or decrease that base level of income.

The consolidation process can be simple and relatively painless.

1) Start out by baselining it at near the middle of typical Social Security payments - call it "Social Security for All" if you want. Benefits paid out should be relatively constant from person to person, but include benefits for dependents.

2) Deduct every individual's basic income payment from all other forms of government support. This will effectively eliminate the majority of people from all forms of government subsidy, while not reducing the net benefit for any citizen.

3) For any program in which a person hasn't received benefits from in several years, automatically unenroll them from it. The membership roles on most forms of subsidy will plummet, vastly reducing their overhead - many will become so devoid of enrollees that there will be no point to keeping them around, further reducing overhead. Such benefits programs should be culled automatically when their budget drops to, say, 1% of its pre-basic-income budget.

4) Eliminate minimum wage requirements, and impose a corporate tax that approximates what companies had previously been paying in terms of minimum wage baselines on everyones' salaries, with the expectation that corporations will reduce salaries correspondingly with the tax.

Steps 1-4 should be implemented in one block and be approximately revenue neutral.

5) Step by step, phase out each remaining welfare program, funneling the funds into raising the basic income payments; however...

6) Programs that were specifically "pay-in", and were paid in unevenly (such as Social Security) should ideally instead be "cashed out", so that recipients feel a sense of fairness.

The above should still be relatively "status quo, but with greater efficiency, fairness, and less headaches for everyone"

7) Conservatives should now be expected to begin trying to reduce basic income to lower taxes on the corporations and top income earners, while liberals should now be expected to begin trying to raise basic income at the expense of higher taxes on corporations and top income earners. Basically the same struggle that's always played out, but on greatly simplified terms.

Isn't this something that both liberals and conservatives could support? I mean, liberals, come on, everybody in the country having a safety net? And conservatives, isn't your dream to drown the government in a bathtub? If you want to shrink it down, here's your chance. To both: it's just the status quo, only more efficient and fair. You can then change it from there.

Re:Good for them

[yes-but-no]

Well said, Sir. I think fundamentally, we humans as a group, like to see the power ladder maintained; some want to feel they are in control of others. I think it's in basic human nature [even in a family the elder brother controls the younger..the origin of the term 'big brother']. With the aid of runaway capitalism, we see the result - extreme polarization of wealth. And all rules/laws are setup to accelerate/maintain this wealth/income inequality.

As you said it's the lack of political-will.. there is no shortage of resources. And today (probably ever since two humans came together) the powerful (read rich) control the policies/politics. So it's a catch-22.. can only move very slowly. But with the free flow of information (internet) and educated masses, we may see real good change (ie forces against the wealth/income equality) in future (hopefully sooner)

Re:Good for them

[Alwin Henseler]

Your two statements have no financial differnce so where does the extra money come from?

Ehm... that was kind of my point. Choose the numbers right, and the financial end result is the same. There is no 'extra' money needed.

But in the old situation, people might be more or less forced to take some job, and you'd need a lot of bureaucrats to keep tabs on people's affairs. Costs for the latter can be cut, and those bureaucrats can go do something more productive.

In the new situation, nobody would be forced to take some job just to have food on the table or a roof over their head. Just a very low minimum standard, not to be confused with: "enjoying the good life" @ other people's expense. Employers may enjoy a lower minimum wage, so they'll be able to get their work done for less. At the same time, they'd lose much of their power to abuse employees simply because they can.

Re:Good for them

[JaredOfEuropa]

Tax euros predominantly come from the middle class, not from the happy few who can afford to spend large sums on gaudy frippery. And that's where the downsides of this scheme will be felt. In principle it sounds simple. Instead of giving only unemployed people €800 / month, we'll simply give everyone that amount, but if you have a job we'll take most of that back in taxes. Where do those taxes come from, though? A 65% tax on the first €2400 of your wages (the tax in that band is already at 35%, not counting the deductible)? Doable, but keep in mind that not everyone makes that much, so taxes for higher earners will have to be increased even further.

In the Netherlands, the marginal tax burden is enormous. In some specific cases (single earner, two child household), the difference between gross minimum wage and the "modal" income is over €16,000 a year. However the net difference is... only €1,800, because of taxes and no longer being eligible for additional benefits. Which is due to another important issue: the complexity of the Dutch benefits scheme is not in the base stipends like dole money, state pensions or workman's comp. It's in the Byzantine maze of extra measures piled on by the state or the councils: child support, health care subsidy (health care is not provided; you need insurance but low incomes get a subsidy to pay for it), rent subsidy, tax breaks for the chronically ill, waiving of certain local taxes for low incomes, transport subsidy, aid in kind, and so on. Many of these measures are not to compensate for low incomes but to account for differences in composition of households. None of this will disappear with a universal basic income.

So why work at a minimum wage or even a better-paying job? You'll be better off just taking the basic income and all it's additional benefits, perhaps doing a few odd jobs on the side, off the books, for a couple of hours a week. The rest is leisure time. And that's the real issue: even if we could make the scheme work at current levels of unemployment, some people will decide that getting up every morning to sit in traffic and work at a sucky job for 40 hours a week isn't worth it. Already economists complain that the gap between the dole and minimum wage is too small to encourage people to find a job; in some cases the gap is negative due to losing many of the aforementioned additional benefits. Opponents to this scheme argue that no one will want to work anymore; proponents argue that people will still find fulfilment in the work itself and will want the extra cash, however small the amount. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle... and that middle part will have to be paid for. It will be expensive. And it will be paid, as always, by the middle class.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here in Belgium, in some cities in Wallonia you lost up to 200€ per month if you got off unemployment into a minimum-wage job...

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

The end game for the 1% is similar to the medieval feudal system. Consumerism was great for them when they were accumulating wealth, but once your rulers are established it will no longer be needed.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, which is why the wealthy politicians (but I repeat myself) would never do anything to slit their own throats, or that of their donors for that matter.

Did you know that a caste system is all about preventing social and economic mobility? If people are conditioned to accept their plight, they'll carry on being a slave without putting up a fuss. Now that's power. That's control!!!

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing the big picture.

Those people will VOTE (the ones that can anyway) for the politicians that give them these things.

This town will turn into the same thing lots of inner cities in the US are; preserves where voting livestock is kept more or less happy, given enough for entertainment and given the ability to act out to the point policing is ineffective, which leads to the drug side of their keepers to get rich. They are let loose to prey on the unprotected producers nearby, but kept away from the politicians they are kept to vote for, and kept stupid and unproductive by the narco-keepers (whom the politicos don't have to pay, because the business is lucrative.)

Basically, voting slaves.

Inner city poor people are the new slave class.

Re:Good for them

[Eunuchswear]

Or perhaps the Dutch have more courage?

Yup.

Re:Good for them

[quintessencesluglord]

Unfortunately the inertia of current system combined with the ability to score political points by tailoring the morass of regulations to benefit specific groups pretty much kills seeing BI in the near future. It's not like the power brokers want to give up their position to pick winners and losers either.

The same arguments can be used for Land Value Tax: liberals get essentially a progressive tax of the rich while conservatives get a vastly simplified tax code.

And that too will most likely never come to pass except for some smaller countries that don't have the luxury of inefficiency in the name of politics.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

You all missing one important point:

If you have basic income and some people decide that it is not worth to work for extra 1300$ then balance will be lost as more and more people decide to stay unemployed thus not paying this 700$.

If someone has about 500$ costs tied to his employment (keeping/servicing his car, paying for fuel, apropriate clothes for work etc.) then it may be easy to dump the work and go frugal.

Note now this basic income is tested in europe and there it is quite expensive to have a car or drive to work. Usually even in poor ccountry like Poland it costs about 200-300$ per month to keep a car and provide fuel to drive to work.
In more wealhty countries (sweden, denmark, norway) costs of keeping a car are even higher.

So it might be tempting to change your life and leave work for basic income.

In my opinion the cricial issue is just how people see their life and work. If they used to think that working is part of their life then they will keep it. If they decide to live without working then the balance in economy will be lost.

Re:Good for them

[gweihir]

Excellent point. The other problem is that work as the main way to re-distribute wealth is not really cutting it anymore. Alternatives that complement that system are urgently needed. With more and more automation, things will only get worse with the old system and will eventually collapse.

Now, some (insight-less) people call a basic income "socialism" or "communism". It is not. Basic income, welfare systems, access to education, medical care, etc. are factors that prevent social unrest and create a favorable climate for enterprises to prosper. Hence if done out of economic reasons, a basic income is an entirely capitalist mechanism.

Re:Good for them

[gweihir]

Actually, this step will save money and that is why they do it. So no impact on that solid gold humvee.

Re:Good for them

[gweihir]

Nice one! (But I am sure there are lots of US citizens that do not realize the numbers of the US are even worse than those of Greece....)

Re: Good for them

[Opportunist]

If history serves as an example, that bit about slitting throats can be arranged if they piss the people off too much. This is not some colony you're managing from a place far, far away. These people don't have to cross oceans to come to your door, kick it in, gut you and take what your took from them.

Re:Good for them

[mrvan]

I think the main problem is that you switch one set of administration and enforcement for another:

Current situation: means tested benefit and an amalgation of special case subsidies, leading to administration/enforcement costs and inviting fraud*

New situation: basic income = zero administration/enforcement cost on top of existing citizen registry, and the ability to collapse/remove a lot of special-case benefits like housing subsidy, health care subsidy, pension, student loans, etc. However, as tax rates will increase it becomes more attractive to work in the "informal" sector on top of the basic income, so there will need to be more enforcement of taxation (or even higher tax rates, but that is a slippery slope, see much of southern Europe). Of couse, it is possible now to work informally next to receiving a benefit, but since the tax rates are lower (relatively) and the benefits are more difficult to get and onerous to keep, it will become more attractive in the new situation.

I believe the balance is still positive for basic income, but it is foolish to think that all administration and enforcement problems will be magically solved.

The real question is what the effect on behaviour will be. How many people now receiving benefits will take small jobs since the net effect is always positive (as the extra income comes on top of the benefits, rather than instead of)? How many people that now have unattractive jobs or difficult home situations quit working? How many people will take more risky steps such as starting a business or switching jobs, since they have the certainty of the basic income to help them through difficult times? And will people be more willing to accept more flexible employment contracts for the same reason?

*) and privacy problems: e.g. old-age pensions and possibly welfare are lower for couples than for two individuals since they can share cost of living, this gives the government a "legitimate" reason to nose around in people's bedrooms. For welfare this is sort of understandable since people specifically request welfare if they fall on hard times, so trading a bit of privacy for government support is understandable - but since everyone gets old-age pension, suddenly the government has an interest in the bedrooms of all >65 citizens (actually, somewhere between 65 and 67 I guess nowadays..)

Re:Good for them

[Opportunist]

Call it what you want, personally I prefer to call it "paying for social peace". Because one thing is certain: People want to live. And people who think they get treated unfairly will revolt. You can either pay some of your money to pacify those that have nothing or you can easily lose everything when you dangle from the next tree.

Re:Good for them

[gweihir]

Most people will favor their own misconceptions even over solid and clearly stated facts. The bullshit statements by many on this is a good example. I mean, even the original story says clearly that they do this to save money and they give sound reasoning why they expect they will.

Some people just cannot grasp that giving something away for free can actually be a very good capitalist strategy in the right circumstances. The idea is too complicated for their tiny minds.

Another excellent (albeit small) example I have seen of this is the following: When there is the annual street-parade here with very loud music, you see people giving away earplugs out of large bags for free. The interesting thing is these employees of private (!) health insurance companies. Turns out that if even only a small percentage of the plugs go to people insured with them, this is an excellent investment with an excellent return and hence a very capitalist thing to do. It just requires overcoming that "shop keeper" mind-set where everything has to be paid for immediately.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a myth that cash savings represent "excess capital" - at the end of the day fiat is a claim on the revenue of the government that backs it, and has value only because it is circulating

Your savings are simply a loan you have provided to financial institutions at a low rate so that they can invest for a higher return. You're generally encouraged to keep substantial savings when your betters want cheap funding.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

That will make it all the more amusing when BRICS reacts to TPP/TTIP/TISA etc. Heh, are you kidding me?--I don't know a single US citizen that has seemed to grasp what you posted here except for a few very close friends that are willing to listen to reason and run the numbers for themselves.

Watch for a Clinton presidency. That will be a sign of the end. Her angsting over TPP is amusing but merely a political bluff. If you haven't started stockpiling when Clinton is nominated by the Democrat Caucus against the slight majority of the electorate in favor of Sanders, it will be too late. Trump is too insane to be electable and may be in Clinton's pocket anyway, but he will get the Republican nomination.

Why start stockpiling when those things come to pass? By 2019, BRICS will begin making noises about the USA making good on its debt. There will be FEMA concentration camps. Stay away from major cities. The walk to the gas station will be for your own good.

Re:Good for them

[aron1231]

I agree with much of what you say. And at this time in human history it is very correct. There needs to be some middle ground, and some incentive for productivity.

However, at some point, we could be so technologically advanced that everything is automated. Literally everything. Will work ALWAYS be a requirement? What do we do when it no longer is? How would we transition to that stage, when so many people who may want to work can't? What if we become so automated that only a fraction of the world needs to work? How do those people live?

Re:Good for them

[dywolf]

i think partially the right word, as those things would probably still need to exist.

BUT, in a system that includes a GBI, they truly are once again safety net programs to catch people when they stumble and prevent them from falling down the ladder, which would dramatically reduce their size (at least on an average; in time of economic emergency they would of course inflate). but still, better than their current status quo, which is effectively an ad hoc basic income as it is.

Re:Good for them

[gweihir]

"Paying for social peace" is entirely fine by me and it usually is an excellent investment. The problem just arises when some think they can have other pay for it and line their own coffers instead. That does not work.

Re:Good for them

[funwithBSD]

What happens to the government workers that represent a portion of that 15 Million?
Laid off?

Probably not, so not the savings you would think from trying to get rid of the 15 Million overhead.

Re:Good for them

[funwithBSD]

How will they save money?

Lay off the government workers and sell off the buildings they currently use?

Pull the other one, it has bells on.

Re:Good for them

[beelsebob]

If you'd even read the summary, you would see that this is a cost saving measure, it's going to be cheaper, not more expensive.

Re:Good for them

[Kjella]

Wall Street primarily cares about high-end, high-margin products like Apple. There's very little profit in the poor either way.

Re:Good for them

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

You cannot affect the rich with the interest rate, and that's where the money is concentrated today. They have various other means of stashing money available, none of them being in any way directly influenced by the interest rate.

Oh and what ways are those pray tell?
The most common way to save massive amounts of wealth are trust funds, hedge funds, etc. all highly dependent on interest rates. You can invest in commodities -- wine, paintings, houses etc. Those are more hobbies then investment, and not only do you to some degree consume them, the part that you do not consume, you must spend money on to keep intact-- wine cellars, controled rooms for paintings, maintenance for houses.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing the friction of government. This plan is to MINIMIZE it, but it does not go away.
700 to person 1
2000 made by person 2 - 800 in taxes
100 to government and NOT PRODUCING A DAM THING!

If you wan to equalize the balance between employers and workers, CUT THE RED TAPE!
The more rules you have in place, the more they benefit the people at the top.
When it is harder and harder to start a business, fewer do it.

Re:Good for them

[beelsebob]

In my opinion the cricial issue is just how people see their life and work. If they used to think that working is part of their life then they will keep it. If they decide to live without working then the balance in economy will be lost.

Yup, thankfully, that's offset by two useful things:

1) You can tweak the value of the minimum income to a point where people are willing to work
2) People have an inherent need to do *something*. They will go out and find work. What they won't do, is go out and work for someone abusive, so it will provide a soft pressure for abusive companies to actually provide people with an income they deserve.

The thing that worries me is actually that all it will do is provide a way of siphoning off a chunk of tax to the rich homeowners. The reason - landlords will immediately know that everyone has $700 "extra" to live off. Every rental property will suddenly become $700 a month more expensive per bedroom. Suddenly all the rich get an extra $700 a month per person renting a house they own, and no one gets a basic income at all.

Re:Good for them

[ahodgson]

The US federal debt alone is over $56,000 for every man, woman and child alive. If the BRICS haven't already figured out that will never be repaid, I don't see how even doubling it will cause them to suddenly see the light.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

And our security personnel won't have any qualms about cutting down the rabble with automatic weapons' fire. The One Percenters can count on private security forces that could take on small countries, and they have the police and the armed forces on their side. What are you going to do?

Re: Good for them

[Opportunist]

Wait 'til the security forces realize that they're not part of the 1%. Then just lean back and watch.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its a worthy experiment, and something local governments should be doing more of in the name of economic innovation. There aren't enough alternative models out there of any significant scale with which capitalism is to evolve to further the prosperity of the general population.
We know the current model is far from perfect. Two major trends of the current global capitalist economic system is clear:
1) it tends to funnel wealth from those who need it most to those that have more than they are able to spend in any productive fashion in their lifetime, and
2) it tends to move wealth out of local economies

We need local governments to step up their game to find ways to keep wealth within their communities, as well as raise the bar of prosperity for its citizens. Relying on the same tired approaches of infrastructure investment and development to feed the tax debt is not progressive.

Re: Good for them

[Immerman]

Except it's relatively cheap to make sure your security forces are better off with you in power than in any other arrangement. They may not be part of the 1%, but as long as they're fat and happy, why would they rock the boat?

Re:Good for them

[ranton]

I sure hope they don't mess it up and give further ammunition to those who are against basic income in the US. I personally think implementing a basic income is a no-brainer, but it has some stiff political hurdles to overcome.

Just using quick back of napkin calculations, if you enacted a $10k / year basic income for all adults you could get rid of almost all welfare programs. In the US local, state, and federal governments pay $512 billion in general welfare, unemployment, and housing. The $212.7 billion spent on police and prisons could also be reduced. Seeing a combined $500 billion in savings is a very reasonable estimate.

Today about 20% of the population pays almost all the federal taxes, the next 40% pay next to nothing, and the next 40% get money back. Using a similar formula for paying for basic income, the top quintile would pay for the benefits of the bottom two quintiles. The other two quintiles would have their taxes raised on average the same amount as the basic income. 20% of the payments would come from increased corporate income taxes (the same proportion of federal income taxes they already pay).

The bottom two quintiles include 80 million working age adults. This would require $800 billion in increased taxes to pay for. Considering society would save at least $500 billion in other taxes, this is reduced to $300 billion. I'm convinced there would be further savings, but for arguments sake lets just stick with a $300 billion price tag. This is a 17.5% increase in taxes to corporations and the top quintile of earners (roughly households with over $110k incomes). Even if we couldn't find a way to make corporations pay more, it would be a 21% tax increase on just the top quintile of earners.

I make a little over $200k per year and pay a little under $30k in federal taxes. I would gladly pay another $400 per month in taxes to enact a $10k basic income (technically $1200 more taxes per month with an $800 basic income). This would probably greatly decrease the costs of low-skill labor intensive expenses I have like the $3200 per month I spend on daycare, so it could be virtually free for many high earners.

Even if we had to increase the deficit $300 billion per year until the benefits of a basic income were felt by the economy, it would be a better use of stimulus than the almost $1 trillion given out since the 2008 crash.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA also pays the deadbeats.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

It is simple. They don't live.

Re:Good for them

[matbury]

Re: "for the most part being able to put money into the economy involves pulling the same money out of the economy through taxes"

This reminds me of a joke I once read: a CEO, a govt. minister, and a citizen are sitting at a table with a plate of 20 cookies. The CEO takes 18 cookies and when the govt. minister reaches out to take one, the CEO screams, "Watch out! The govt's taking all your cookies!"

The majority of people who comment on this stuff haven't informed themselves sufficiently to know what poverty is and how a basic income works. Why not learn a little from someone who actually implements basic income programmes and studies the effects and outcomes?: http://www.guystanding.com/

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds great.

Re:Good for them

[carnivore302]

If the objective is to cut costs, I'm sure the bureaucrats will find ways to spend the savings anyway.

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

The idea is that with the basic income, all those other benefit schemes that you say won't disappear, will in fact disappear. It also removes the disincentive to work because "I'll lose my benefits."

People will also be able to retrain without worrying quite so much about having to work full-time and squeezing it in.

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

China (one of the BRICs) has enough foreign reserves to pay off its foreign debt twice over and still have change. The US only has enough foreign reserves to pay of 4% of its debt. It's pretty obvious that if push came to shove, China (which already on a purchasing parity basis has a larger economy than the US, and will have a larger economy than the US ignoring differences in purchasing power by 2020), can do whatever it wants, because dumping their US-denominated foreign reserves will pretty much be the sword of Damocles, the elephant in the room, in the calculus for any potential military confrontation.

Everyone has known since the accumulated debt passed $10 trillion that it will never be paid back. The question is, who will pull the trigger, and who will be left without a seat when the game of musical chairs stops.

Re:Good for them

[Immerman]

@2 - not even necessarily a higher income, but an enjoyable working environment. I suspect making employment optional would bring the financial costs of an abusive working environment into stark contrast.

As for the property owners siphoning it off, I think that's unlikely. After all very few people are likely to be getting an "extra" $700. The unemployed were likely already receiving comparable benefits, and the reasonably well off will be paying it right back in taxes. It mostly only changes the rules for the working poor - removing both the disincentive to cross "benefit cliffs", as well as the overhead of dealing with the bureaucracy.

Re:Good for them

[Immerman]

@7. Why would the ultra-wealthy be in favor of such a system? Currently they benefit from their machinations being hidden in a byzantine labyrinth of interlocking laws, which they can easily hire lawyers and politicians to comprehend and manipulate. Having their machinations laid bare only benefits the people they are oppressing. Even "liberal" politicians are likely to oppose it, as they too benefit from the labyrinthine laws, which allow them to do things that superficially *look* like they will benefit the masses, while actually being relatively neutral or even benefiting their corporate masters. Ahem, I mean "campaign contributors"

Re:Good for them

[Immerman]

Of course, the reality is the unemployment problem is not going away - automation is advancing rapidly, and by then end of this century it is quite possible that all but the most complicated manual-labor jobs will be done by robots far more cheaply than humans can hope to compete with. Hell, even China is already seeing mass layoffs due to automation. And it's not just "untrained" labor - anything that doesn't need an abundance of good judgment in the face of unpredictable inputs (aka intuition) is a likely candidate for automation. Hell, even middle management is likely in jeopardy - computers are much better at efficient resource allocation than humans.

In the face of that, alternate means of wealth distribution are desperately needed - otherwise we'll see a future where all the wealth is concentrated into the hands of those few who had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time to own the robots, and everyone else will starve (or more likely be slaughtered by security-bots as they try to take back what is fairly theirs.

Remember, there's nothing sacred about capitalism - it's an intensely unnatural state of affairs created by humans and enforced by social policies that allow a few individuals to accumulate far more wealth than they can personally defend, which is the upper limit on personal wealth in the wild.

Re:Good for them

[NormalVisual]

Just using quick back of napkin calculations, if you enacted a $10k / year basic income for all adults you could get rid of almost all welfare programs.

I'm not sure how that works. $10K/year is about 2/3 of minimum wage, and plenty of people making more than that are still on some kind of assistance. Even in a two-parent home with both parents getting $10K each, it's going to be very tight.

This would probably greatly decrease the costs of low-skill labor intensive expenses I have like the $3200 per month I spend on daycare

Now that's just silly. $100/day for daycare? That's more than twice the U.S. national average and closer to about 5 times what most people actually pay. That kind of money would pay for a full-time nanny to watch the kids the entire day. If you do have a nanny, be advised that there are already plenty of ways to bring your costs down.

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

What happens to the government workers that represent a portion of that 15 Million? Laid off?

Probably not, so not the savings you would think from trying to get rid of the 15 Million overhead.

They'll go on basic income if they haven't got skills other employers want. They can use their time to acquire more skills, rather than the "if you go to school we'll cut off your unemployment" toilet mentality (toilet mentality because it's just going round and round and then you are are flushed like a turd).

Re: Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

It is simple. They don't live.

I hear they're making a remake of Logan's Run. You volunteering so they don't need special effects to off people?

Re: Good for them

[aron1231]

Interesting premise... those who don't have jobs should die. If everything becomes automated, everyone should die.

You have a unique version of utopia. I'm glad you don't make important decisions.

Re:Good for them

[Kjella]

Welfare
Social security
Unemployment benefits
Disability benefits
Minimum wage
Healthcare support for low-wage earners (US medicaid, for example)
Food stamps
Parental leave pay
Subisidized housing

BIC is so many things to so many people, it's hard to argue against every variation. But there's a few things I think is plain wrong:
1) We'll never accept that the single mom of three in a wheel chair after a traffic accident will be stuck for her entire adult life at the same income as the deadbeat high school drop out who wants to play WoW in mom's basement for a while. There'll be programs and requirements and bureaucracy and fraud.
2) If you give everyone BIC and remove minimum wage, like hell no people are not going to work for an extra $3/hour. If they do work it'll be black labor, that will be massively more profitable under the obscene tax rates required to support BIC.
3) If BIC is not enough to live by, the whole "simplification" is null and void because everybody needs to supplement it with something which will be just as complex as today. If it is enough to live by, nobody's going to work low pay dead end jobs eroding the tax base.

The main reason there are so many strange effects is that we have hard cut-offs. Thus you get situations like:

$0-19,999: $3000
$20,000-inf: $0
Earn one dollar, lose $3000.

If there were soft cut-offs like:
$0-17,000: $3000
$17-23,000: ($23,000 - x)/2 = $3000...0 at 50 cent per dollar earned
$23,000: $0
Then it just wouldn't happen. Every dollar earned is a bit more in your wallet. But it would require planners who understood a little bit of math.

Re:Good for them

[ranton]

Just using quick back of napkin calculations, if you enacted a $10k / year basic income for all adults you could get rid of almost all welfare programs.

I'm not sure how that works. $10K/year is about 2/3 of minimum wage, and plenty of people making more than that are still on some kind of assistance. Even in a two-parent home with both parents getting $10K each, it's going to be very tight.

The goal of a basic income is not to allow everyone to not work. It is to allow people to live a comfortable life even if their economic value is less than minimum wage. How many jobs could be created if maids could work for $4/hour because they get 50% of their income from a basic income? How many fewer jobs would go overseas if factory workers could have a comfortable life making only $8 per hour? I sure would find a neighbor to split the costs of a full time housekeeper to work 20 hours per week at each house for $500 per month. Beats only getting one cleaning per month for $200, but no laundry or dishes done.

Basic income's end goal is to create more economic opportunity by not eliminating jobs simply because they are not valuable enough to pay a living wage. A whole new category of service level jobs could open up that would have once been far too expensive if everyone needed to be paid minimum wage. You also remove the perverse incentive of needing to work multiple jobs just to put food on the table.

Now that's just silly. $100/day for daycare? That's more than twice the U.S. national average and closer to about 5 times what most people actually pay.

That is for two kids (a toddler and infant), and it is in one of the priciest neighborhoods in Illinois. In this area, even the cheapest daycares where few of the teachers are college educated and ratios are at the state minimum are almost $1500 per month for an infant. I pay $1700 for an infant and $1500 for a toddler. Infants have a state mandated 1:4 teacher:infant ratio, but the ratio is 1:10 for 3 year olds. So parents with infants and toddlers pay far more than the national averages.

Parents without means generally pay far less for a neighborhood stay at home parent or family member to watch their kids. This likely costs around half as much as a licensed day care center, but kids in these types of settings perform moderately worse in school even after adjusting for socio-economic factors.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of computer nerds forgetting about automation, who'da thunk.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

If history serves as an example, that bit about slitting throats can be arranged if they piss the people off too much. This is not some colony you're managing from a place far, far away. These people don't have to cross oceans to come to your door, kick it in, gut you and take what your took from them.

Correct.

That is why this is correct also:

The end game for the 1% is similar to the medieval feudal system. Consumerism was great for them when they were accumulating wealth, but once your rulers are established it will no longer be needed.

We are now seeing the endgame of the middle class in the developed countries. Those that control the wealth and power know this, and have been the orchestrators of it.

Re:Good for them

[wiggles]

As a conservative, I do somewhat like your ideas. However, a couple of tweaks --

Taxation -
      A. Don't repeal the individual income tax. Leave it in place. Tweak the brackets as necessary.
      B. Repeal the *corporate* income tax (yes, that one).
      C. Remove the 'Capital Gains' rate and tax capital gains to individuals at the income rate. CEOs and trust funders will now pay the same rates as the rest of us.
      D. Tax expenses paid to foreign entities (not quite sure how to make this work, but perhaps someone smarter than me can think of something)
                    ---This is to prevent foreign individuals from dodging taxes on income earned in the USA.

The point of all of this is to tax income when it's extracted from corporations. When the money is within a corporation, it is used as investment - hiring, R&D, capital expenses, stuff that pays employees. When the money is paid out to investors or employees (or especially hybrids of the two like CEOs), that's when it's taxed.

What this will do is allow all those corporations with money overseas to repatriate the funds and invest in hiring, R&D, etc. If that money is paid out to investors or as bonuses to employees, it's taxed at a higher rate because of the elimination of the capital gains rate.

There will also be benefits to small businesses as their corporate tax rate is eliminated - they're only taxed on what they pull out of the business.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

"Personally I'm a big believer in this."

Is that because you won't be paying the 45% tax rate on your much reduced salary to fund giving €700 per month to millionaires?

You can believe in it as much as you like but it will never happen - because those who *are* paying 45% tax on their reduced salaries while working 40 hour weeks will start asking what exactly the layabouts are doing to justify their existence.

We don't need guaranteed income. We need guaranteed jobs.

Re:Good for them

[psm321]

Check out this excellent short story, it contemplates 2 possible paths in the scenario you describe: http://marshallbrain.com/manna...

Re:Good for them

[Bengie]

Economics is not a math but a social science. You can do all kinds of magic with money as long as people think it's valuable. The problem is a lot of people think that money reflect value. It does not. There are many cases were spending money on stuff that has no monetary ROI is still a great investment.

They're not doing a math experiment, they're doing a social experiment. You won't know until you try. Money itself was an experiment, yet we consider it a staple of any modern society. Bartering used to be the only way to do anything and money was laughed at.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. You don't keep people around on long-term "make work" programs unless you're stupid. Plus, it's not like there's a shortage of positions for bureaucrats, mid-level managers and low-level office and service workers in private industry.

Re:Good for them

[gringer]

Or perhaps the Dutch have more courage?

Yeah, but it's only Dutch courage.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay 'em well enough to be in the 10% and you'd be surprised the loyalty you can get. They don't have to think they're equal to us. They have to know they're better than you.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that's their choice and not their expectation. A strange assumption to make.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Rent controls would take care of that, as well as a tax system that discourages rentier parasites.

Re:Good for them

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

As a gov't worker, I wanted to point out something you might not know.
Where I work, it takes an act of the general assembly, to lay off an employee. Especially if it's through no fault of his own. In fact, it's cheaper to keep them on, than to tie up the court fighting a wrongful termination suit.
So yes, you might be able to eliminate 15 million public sector jobs in theory, but you'd never be able to do it in reality.
The gov't does not like to shrink. They might be re-trained (might mind you) but their depts. will never go away.

Re:Good for them

[HornWumpus]

We should be scarred of people too lazy to find a job?

That amount a tiny percentage of the population?

No. If they revolt, we shoot them. Simple.

Re: Good for them

[Opportunist]

You know of a security company that pays well?

Re:Good for them

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not all of them will disappear. The basic income will be deemed either insufficient for a single person or too high for a couple living together. And it will certainly be insufficient for single parents, unless the basic income is granted to kids as well. Which will make the income ridiculously high for, say, a family of 5. Or think of the chronically ill with health care bills to pay, or healthy persons without such bills. Keep in mind that here in the Netherlands, we like to think that we can put everyone into a fitting family category, then tweak that category's income to the 5th decimal. Only when we can let go of that notion will a basic income scheme make any sense.

I'm also not convinced about the incentive to work at all under such a scheme. In Denmark (I think it was there) they are trying the opposite: the procedure for getting fired is short (by European standards) and the unemployment benefit is generous but rather short (after that you go on a much lower basic stipend). This seems to work well to keep the job market dynamic.

It's good you mention training. I suspect that a fair few people will elect to work only part time, not just to retrain but also to have more leisure time or time with their families. That sounds nice, but it does mean that tax revenues will take another serious hit, and they'd have to get the shortfall somewhere else. Meaning even less benefit from working harder or longer, and less incentive to do so.

Re:Good for them

[HornWumpus]

It will be paid back. But the currency will be near worthless by then.

It's good to be a fully sovereign nation with your own currency. Not that hyperinflation is good, just better than the alternative.

China's foreign reserves are their banking system reserves. Their banking system is even worse than ours. Loaded with non-performing debt to powerful people they cannot collect from.

When the Shanghai stock exchange continues to run a 70+ average PE ratio, you know the market signals are distorted beyond reason.

What is the true value of China's foreign reserves? What is that value if China crashes the Euro or Dollar? Who has a sword of Damocles hanging over them? (All of us).

Re:Good for them

[HornWumpus]

There are a LOT of otherwise unemployable people sucking the government tit.

In Sacramento we have a separate government department (general services) just so they have someplace to transfer the 'workers' that should be fired. Once there they just settle in and collect checks. It's an entire city block, 6 stories tall, full of non-workers sitting ass.

Re:Good for them

[HornWumpus]

1 - ((1 - Corporate tax rate) * (1 - Capital gains tax rate)) is already more or less the same as regular income tax.

So all you are doing is spending political capital to rearrange the deck chairs.

Re:Good for them

[HornWumpus]

Whatever it takes to keep them away from their rudders.

Re:Good for them

[Stalks]

then balance will be lost as more and more people decide to stay unemployed thus not paying this 700$

There is no balance. Everyone gets the 700$, work or not.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy, at some point the sun will burn out. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick back of napkin calculations:

Population Of US Adults: 245,630,000Ã--$10,000
= $2.4563e12

Please do tell about all the savings.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you overpay them as long as there is no mob yet? This will show signs before it actually happens. And maybe one or two 1%ers will have to take some hits. But then it is enough time for the others to start paying a bit better. And we are not talking your average warehouse security guard here anyway.

Re:Good for them

[tlolczyk]

Sure. And if you had a magic well to pour funding into the economy that would be nice, but for the most part being able to put money into the economy involves pulling the same money out of the economy through taxes.

That does not necesssarily have to be the case.As of now the Fed has two jobs: 1) Taking old money out of circulation and replacing it with new money, 2) Loaning money to banks so that they can lend it to you. The second is hopw money comes into being.

Since the economy is constantly growing and we are introducing things of value, we need to introduce new money into the system. For example iof the total value of goods in the US was $40trillion and went up to $41trillion, we would need to print one trillion dollars to keep the amount of cash sync with the amount of goods.

So instead of introducing that extra cash vid process 2 above, estimate how much more cash you want introduced by estimating the increase in value. Something like (GDP-annual consumption)*fudge_factor. Since it's tied to excess goods produced it's not inflationary. What is more doing something like this causes everyone to have an incentive in the country doing well economically.

Re:Good for them

[Opportunist]

That's why the solution won't come from Wall Street. Actually, they're just part of the problem.

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

You must be working in a different country than me - here, governments are free to lay off workers who are no longer needed.

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

Single payer health care and universal pharmacare solves the problem of the chronically ill. It's pretty much what we have here in Quebec. Also, if more people choose to work just part-time, then if that job requires the equivalent of a full-time employee, others will be able to work the other days. Consider it a form of "job sharing", and those others will also pay taxes.

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

My point was that nowadays, even China can pull the trigger and crash US currency. Sure, everyone gets hurt, but it's better than a nuclear WW3, so there's less resistance to go down that road. This has changed the world's geopolitics in a big way, the same as the US losing it's AAA credit rating did in terms of perceived balance of power.

Re: Good for them

[ranton]

Quick back of napkin calculations:

Population Of US Adults: 245,630,000Ã--$10,000
= $2.4563e12

Please do tell about all the savings.

Considering you didn't read anything I wrote, I will restate that my calculations only included working age adults and assumes only the bottom two quintiles will receive a net $10k increase in income from a basic income. The next two quintiles will pay approximately $10k extra in taxes to counteract their $10k basic income, and the top quintile pays for the bottom 40%.

This is why only $8e9 income is required. And since at least $5e9 in existing welfare and police state could be reduced, the net increase in income taxes would likely be closer to $3e9.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

I did read it. I always considered a base income to be given to everyone of adult age. If you only give it to the poor then who cares? At that point you are just moving money around. They already receive government money. At least with food stamps, wic, etc you can control where the money goes. With a "base income for the poor only" you will just be subsidising drugs, gambling, and bad investments. Unless you are disabled, in general, you have to make some pretty bad choices to stay in poverty in the US. Its these bad choices that necessitate programs that mandate how the money is spent.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a western language, went to a western school, using western technology... Yup, fuck those white guys explaining things.

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

The problem is that many politicians think the interest rate is the ends, rather than the means.

Do they? Which Politicians are those then?

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

The US only has enough foreign reserves to pay of 4% of its debt.

Everyone has known since the accumulated debt passed $10 trillion that it will never be paid back. The question is, who will pull the trigger, and who will be left without a seat when the game of musical chairs stops.

I see these numbers thrown around like it's a problem. My savings would only pay about 1% of my debt (mortgage). Is this also a problem? (hint it isn't because income more important than savings)
And even if I had no income, and no savings, if your asset is increasing at value faster than the interest rate, there is no need to pay a single cent. (Since you are earning a net gain by simply doing nothing).

Re:Good for them

[danbert8]

Yes, that is a problem. Are you seriously saying if you have say an average home mortgage of $222,261 (according to Google), you only have savings of $2,200? I don't care what your income is, put some money in the bank for a rainy day. Minimum liquid savings (not including long term investments like retirement) for a reasonable person is usually 6 months of living expenses. Considering the average mortgage payment is over $1,000/mo your 1% savings would be gone in a month (or less) if you lost your income.

Re: Good for them

[stdarg]

Blackwater Security

Re:Good for them

[dgatwood]

Actually, the CEO has to take 19 of the cookies, not 18, but yes.

Re:Good for them

[dgatwood]

How many jobs could be created if maids could work for $4/hour because they get 50% of their income from a basic income?

None. We don't need twice as many maids. We hire exactly as many maids as we need to serve the people who want maid service. Statistically speaking, raising the minimum wage has never significantly reduced the number of workers or impacted the growth in the number of workers, so it makes little sense to think that lowering it will significantly increase the number of jobs. Thus, a basic income that merely makes up for substandard wages solves nothing. It just puts more money back in the hands of businesses and accelerates the growth of the wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots.

A better use for a basic income is to make up for the fact that there are not enough jobs to keep everyone fully employed. So instead of having ten maids working 40 hours at $8/hour, you might have 20 maids working 20 hours at $8/hour, and they would get the rest of their income from the basic income, making up for the fact that they can't get a full 40 hour schedule. That way, instead of being a money grab by businesses, this approach allows a time grab by individuals, freeing up more time to do the things that matter to them.

This approach also has the advantage of making it possible for people to spend part of their time doing work in artistic fields, where there's no notion of a wage. It would allow them to get by even if they don't successfully sell those paintings or musical compositions or photographs or whatever. You can't really achieve that by making those people work the same amount of time for half the wages, even if you replace those lost wages.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah. Then I guess the 16 billion Walmart earned in 2014 must have been from the wealthy and middle class shoppers that I frequently see at Walmart. I've been wondering about all those motor homes. Obviously, with little to be made off of the poor, Walmart has been focusing on a totally different customer profile. I wonder if they'll still accept food stamps/prepaid credit cards?

Re:Good for them

[BarbaraHudson]

I have a friend who has been doing exactly what you say - refinancing every year so he can use the increase in equity to make his next year's mortgage payments. He's been doing this for 15 years, and if interest rates go up (and they are) or property values go down (they do when interest rates go up), he and his family will be in serious trouble. And they certainly will not be able to continue living the lifestyle they've become accustomed to.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing most people forget is that in the long run, providing bread and circuses is important--you want the people at the bottom feeling indebted and if you sell it right you can rob Peter to pay Paul right up until Peter runs out of money...and then you have options, including slavery of various types.

In practice, socialism has too consistantly been feudalism with fancy new clothes, fake bling, and less honesty.

Re: Good for them

[Cinnamon Beige]

Right now it looks like we're heading to a population maximum, as the factors causing the birth rates to drop below replacement in the First World spread. It'll take a few decades for the drop to show, since this is a place where pure numbers say less than their distribution...which is getting heavier and heavier on the elderly end of the curve.

So, really, the odds are that the excess won't die as much as not be born, and we might even find ourselves in the awkward position of going straight from worrying about overpopulation to having to worry about not having jobs automated fast enough to still be able to maintain our tech base because we lack the people needed. And may still have a lot of people when this hits, as the problem is one of distribution. Insufficient 20-year-olds entering a vital field will not end well regardless of all other factors; people do eventually die, even if society needs them not to.

If this idea really is, as it claims, cheaper than trying to sort everything out--if the costs of giving the money to everybody is lower the administrative costs--then I would hope that the plan incudes clearing out the resulting deadwood and reducing taxes. I expect, instead, for those jobs to become sinecures for the political class to hand out and the savings to meet a similar fate...

Re:Good for them

[ranton]

None. We don't need twice as many maids. We hire exactly as many maids as we need to serve the people who want maid service.

What makes you think this? There are plenty of services people want that are too expensive for them to afford. If those services become cheaper there would be more people who can afford them. Regardless of any opinions about whether having more maids is good for the economy or good for the maids themselves, you have to at least realize there are people who would like to have someone else clean their home but choose not to because of cost.

To remove the human element of it, think of adoption of big screen TVs. 20 years ago owning a 50 inch TV was very uncommon. This wasn't because no one wanted them, its because they cost over $5000 (over $10k in 2015 dollars). Today most middle class homes have at least one TV over 50", but only because they can be found for under $1000.

If the cost of housekeeping saw a similar decline, you would see far more dual earning families paying people to do laundry and dishes.

A better use for a basic income is to make up for the fact that there are not enough jobs to keep everyone fully employed. So instead of having ten maids working 40 hours at $8/hour, you might have 20 maids working 20 hours at $8/hour [...] That way, instead of being a money grab by businesses, this approach allows a time grab by individuals, freeing up more time to do the things that matter to them. This approach also has the advantage of making it possible for people to spend part of their time doing work in artistic fields, where there's no notion of a wage. [...] You can't really achieve that by making those people work the same amount of time for half the wages, even if you replace those lost wages.

That is true, but this is a goal that almost only benefits the people being given "free" money. What do the people paying all of these extra taxes get out of the deal? You may not care about that question, but anyone trying to get legislation to pass sure will. In my scenario, the working class improve their lives because there are plentiful jobs for everyone, and the upper class paying for these benefits are also getting cheaper services.

I think looking for a win-little / win-little solution is more viable than a win-big / lose situation. You are much more likely to get upper middle class tax payers to give up hundreds of dollars a month in extra taxes if they are getting something out of the deal.

Re:Good for them

[NoOneInParticular]

The millionaires are the one percent, so from the money you give, only 1% will go to millionaires. The rest goes to people who can actually use it.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Daesh

Re:Good for them

[Gob Gob]

Which is why the main control is interest rate, if you get high interest you save more and low interest you spend more.

Interest rate have little to do with spending - they are a tool to control borrowing (and inflationary investment). The economic function of interest rates nowadays is to drive credit creation - the ability for the financial sector to create wealth by loaning out the same dollar many times.

High interest rates remove the ability for people to borrow but attract external investment. This can be a useful technique to draw foreign investment into your country.

The quoted point does have value for people with variable rate mortgages. Since interest is a large part of their monthly payment and often people borrow up to 80% of the value of their home, movement in interest rates (not matched with movements in income) will cause - often significant - changes in movement in available cash which leads to the spend/save more scenario. However very little economic academic debate is focussed on the individual hardships of the poor. Economics in general is more focussed on the macro level as constantly demonstrated by the ineptness of the acts of politicians.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-needs-more-tax-lower-interest-rates-international-monetary-fund-20150930-gjyns8.html

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/imf-chief-christine-lagarde-predicts-disappointing-2016-after-us-interest-rate-hike-china-1535407

RE: The article:

In Australia we have a statistical unemployment issue as the many factors can stop you being counted as unemployed (for example not being able to arrange childcare or not being available for work because you are in a course)

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/products/FBE517ECA9B07F63CA257D0E001AC7D4?OpenDocument

In Australia there is a very very very large service industry that feeds on the bottom dwellers of the recruitment sector by getting people into government sponsored courses. They get payments from the government and from the training organisation (who also get payments from the course attendee).

So basically you have millions of government/taxation dollars to fund the apparatus around one aspect of welfare - with the statistical upshoot of showing lower unemployment rates to voters.

If a Dutch town is doing away with the machine that keeps the welfare recipients under the watchful eye of the government to justify their payments in the eyes of voters then I can't help thinking that there is more money being saved and more to go into useful things.

Personally I would want all education and healthcare to be free - an educated and well society will achieve far more than a unemployable one that is ill and most likely broke.

Re:Good for them

[khallow]

Our economy depends on consumption.

Even if that were true and even if consumption were a good thing to optimize for (neither which is true), we still have the problem that you aren't proposing solutions that actually increase consumption. For example, the transfer of wealth from one party to another merely changes who consumes.

My view is that basic income can work, if it encourages employment. So I'd suggest both eliminating minimum wage (and related social programs like public pensions and public unemployment insurance) in order to lower the cost on employers and making basic income conditional on being employed for a certain number of hours, say 1000-1500 hours per year (which can including self employment and organizations not usually considered businesses like charities or volunteer organizations).

No society is near a place where high levels of permanent unemployment are feasible or desirable. Therefore, it makes sense to structure your society so that people are gainfully employed. What I see with this current proposal is that it doesn't encourage people to work or employers to employ. That probably will result in the end or heavy modification of the experiment in a few years

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

"some want to feel they are in control of others."
Typical behaviour for a high-functioning sociopath/psychopath.
The majority of people is not sociopathic/psychopathic.

Sociopaths/psychopaths are not normal people, they lack empathy.
Those people are monsters!

Re:Good for them

[dgatwood]

To remove the human element of it, think of adoption of big screen TVs. 20 years ago owning a 50 inch TV was very uncommon. This wasn't because no one wanted them, its because they cost over $5000 (over $10k in 2015 dollars). Today most middle class homes have at least one TV over 50", but only because they can be found for under $1000.

Ah, but most of those TVs were bought because an old one died, not because they were adding TVs. They got bigger because the major manufacturers have basically stopped selling small TVs, shifting larger models down into the same price class. The number of TVs per household has grown by only about 1.5 over the last forty years.

If the cost of housekeeping saw a similar decline, you would see far more dual earning families paying people to do laundry and dishes.

Doubtful. Cleaning houses is hard work. My cleaning service charges me about $75 for about an hour of work for three people. I realize that the employees don't get all of that, but that small business brings in about $25 per person-hour, and I'd imagine that they make a good percentage of that, because otherwise they would leave and start their own businesses for a bigger cut of the pie. So it costs close to 3x minimum wage just to get people who are legally eligible to work in the U.S., to ensure that they don't do a half-assed job, to ensure that they aren't tempted to steal things to make ends meet, and to convince them to do that level of manual labor. If you start paying maids a basic income whether they work or not, they might have more money to spend, or they might take advantage of the money as an opportunity to work fewer hours. They won't voluntarily choose to work for less, because they basically set their own pay rate, give or take.

If they choose to work fewer hours, the lower availability is likely to drive the price of these services up as people offer to pay higher than the going rate just to get service. This, in turn, will attract more people, and the price will stabilize at a higher price point than the current cost. More people will have jobs, but at a higher price point. If they choose to keep working normally and have more spending money, they might create jobs in other sectors. Either way, I can't see any plausible situation where they voluntarily choose to make less money for the same amount of work so that more people can have jobs.

And for people who aren't essentially independent contractors, the price of labor has no real bearing on the number of people employed. If a restaurant could hire people for half the money, they would pocket most of the money, and would hire very few additional people. There are two main factors in whether a business hires another employee: employee retention and cost-benefit analysis, and neither one would point towards a hiring binge.

On the employee retention side, if employees are fed up and leaving because they have too much work to do, hiring more employees to make the workday easier might help, but if that isn't already happening, then it probably won't suddenly start happening just because the employees are getting part of their income from the government instead of from their employer. And if they do start leaving en masse, hiring more workers probably won't fix the problem, because the real problem at that point would be folks deciding that it isn't worth putting up with that crap for only an extra $4 per hour versus doing nothing. Either way, employee retention isn't going to cause the business to hire more workers after a minimum wage reduction.

This leaves cost-benefit analysis. If the marginal increase in income caused by adding one employee is expected to exceed the marginal cost from hiring that employee, they will hire that extra employee. Now there's always the possibility that the marginal benefit from hiring an extra employee might exceed half the current cost of a new employee, but not exceed the full current cost of a new emp

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

Yes, that is a problem. Are you seriously saying if you have say an average home mortgage of $222,261 (according to Google), you only have savings of $2,200? I don't care what your income is, put some money in the bank for a rainy day. Minimum liquid savings (not including long term investments like retirement) for a reasonable person is usually 6 months of living expenses. Considering the average mortgage payment is over $1,000/mo your 1% savings would be gone in a month (or less) if you lost your income.

You have failed to take into account the value of the asset. Using all those numbers, if the property is worth $2million then it doesn't matter.
This is why the national debt is not really that big a deal.

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

He's been doing this for 15 years, and if interest rates go up (and they are) or property values go down (they do when interest rates go up), he and his family will be in serious trouble. And they certainly will not be able to continue living the lifestyle they've become accustomed to.

And if they don't, he wins. For the last 20 years (where I live) property has risen faster than interest rates. Nothing I have seen makes me believe this will change any time soon.
And unlike private investors, the government has other means to control such changes, so I wouldn't be hitting the panic button just yet.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

They got bigger because the major manufacturers have basically stopped selling small TVs, shifting larger models down into the same price class. The number of TVs per household has grown by only about 1.5 over the last forty years.

You say that as if the number of TVs per household growing by 1.5 isn't almost doubling the average. Just goes to show if you make something better and or cheaper people will even increase their budget to get more of it. Computers, tablets, and smartphones are also new items that find their way into people's budgets if there is enough benefit. And I'm willing to bet never having to do laundry or dishes again for $500 per month would find its way into a lot of upper middle class budgets, even if they may only spend $200-300 on a monthly or bi-weekly cleaning today.

My cleaning service charges me about $75 for about an hour of work for three people. I realize that the employees don't get all of that, but that small business brings in about $25 per person-hour, and I'd imagine that they make a good percentage of that, because otherwise they would leave and start their own businesses for a bigger cut of the pie

Similar to contracting prices, those cleaners are not seeing anywhere close to $25 per hour. Last time I worked for a contracting company I will billed out at about $150/hr (depending on the job), but only made $105k per year (about $75/hr including great benefits). My guess is those maids are making about $10-12 per hour.

Either way, I can't see any plausible situation where they voluntarily choose to make less money for the same amount of work so that more people can have jobs.

Almost anyone who cleans homes for a living does it because they have almost no other options. In my area (wealthy Chicago suburbs) it is because they don't speak English so they can only hold jobs where they don't have to. These are the immigrant parents giving their children a chance at a better life.

Your whole analysis seems to assume low wage workers make the same cost-benefit analysis that a highly paid professional does when accepting work. But in reality everyone working for $10/hr in this country either has severe disadvantages that limit options (like lack of formal education or language barriers) or they are incredibly unmotivated. Those already motivated to be independent contractors are not the people in the bottom 40% of earners who would benefit most from a guaranteed basic income.

And for people who aren't essentially independent contractors, the price of labor has no real bearing on the number of people employed. If a restaurant could hire people for half the money, they would pocket most of the money, and would hire very few additional people. There are two main factors in whether a business hires another employee: employee retention and cost-benefit analysis, and neither one would point towards a hiring binge.

I agree that a hiring binge would not come from businesses providing the same services with less costs. The hiring binge comes from being able to offer new and better services that were impossible when labor costs were too high. Restaurants are incredibly low margin businesses and they basically sell a commodity, so if they could get another 10% reduction in costs (from labor and lower supplier costs) that would result in an almost equal 10% reduction in the cost to eat at a restaurant. As more people start eating at restaurants because it is cheaper now, the number of restaurant workers goes up. In this example, and most examples, the number of new jobs would not be that significant. But with unemployment numbers in single digits, even slight increases in employment would have drastic effects.

Put another way, if a company needs more employees, it will hire more employees, almost without fail, no matter how expensive employees become. Similarly, if it hasn't hired them already, it probably won't do so

Re:Good for them

[dgatwood]

You say that as if the number of TVs per household growing by 1.5 isn't almost doubling the average. Just goes to show if you make something better and or cheaper people will even increase their budget to get more of it. Computers, tablets, and smartphones are also new items that find their way into people's budgets if there is enough benefit. And I'm willing to bet never having to do laundry or dishes again for $500 per month would find its way into a lot of upper middle class budgets, even if they may only spend $200-300 on a monthly or bi-weekly cleaning today.

Except it wouldn't be never having to do laundry or dishes again for $500 per month. Nobody is going to give up that much of their time for that little money. And it doubled over forty years. In 1975, $740 would buy you a 25" TV. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $3350 today. A 24" TV costs $140 today. So the price dropped by a factor of 22, and the number of TVs bought increased by only a factor of two. The reality is that people mostly buy TVs based on needing to have a TV in a particular room, with little regard for much money each TV costs. People who don't have the money tend to buy it on a credit card and pay it off over time (if they pay it off at all). There's just not a strong correlation between people's purchasing habits and price anymore except possibly among people who are barely surviving financially.

Almost anyone who cleans homes for a living does it because they have almost no other options. In my area (wealthy Chicago suburbs) it is because they don't speak English so they can only hold jobs where they don't have to. These are the immigrant parents giving their children a chance at a better life.

So I can only speak for my area, but I'm friends with a family where the mother and daughter clean houses for a living. The daughter (who speaks perfect English) does it to help her mom out because her sister (also perfect English) has a newborn, and she does this while attending college full-time. And although the mother isn't a native English speaker, I've never had trouble understanding her and vice-versa, so I wouldn't think she would have trouble finding other jobs, particularly in an area with such a large Hispanic community. I've never thought to ask what they bring home per hour, but I can only assume that it pays better than the alternatives, or that it provides some other tangible benefits (such as flexibility in working hours).

I agree that a hiring binge would not come from businesses providing the same services with less costs. The hiring binge comes from being able to offer new and better services that were impossible when labor costs were too high. Restaurants are incredibly low margin businesses and they basically sell a commodity, so if they could get another 10% reduction in costs (from labor and lower supplier costs) that would result in an almost equal 10% reduction in the cost to eat at a restaurant. As more people start eating at restaurants because it is cheaper now, the number of restaurant workers goes up. In this example, and most examples, the number of new jobs would not be that significant. But with unemployment numbers in single digits, even slight increases in employment would have drastic effects.

You're assuming that the unemployed would be willing to go back to work when they could get half their salary without lifting a finger. I don't know anyone who would put up with annoying customers for only $4 per hour, and that includes people who work in those sectors today. You'd average more than that by asking for handouts on the street.

Very few people in the top 20% of earners (the people who would be paying for basic income) worry about safety much. Crime is a problem that almost only affects the working class and poor, because the upper middle class pays insane property taxes to ensure they don't have to worry about crime. Our entire judicia

Re: Good for them

[KenHansen]

$100/day for daycare?

Uhm, the kids are not in daycare on weekends (I assume), making it more like $150/day...

Re: Good for them

[KenHansen]

Just using quick back of napkin calculations, if you enacted a $10k / year basic income for all adults you could get rid of almost all welfare programs.

No, you couldn't - but I suspect you are ignorant of the extent of our current welfare system - would $10,000/year replace: Welfare payments, SNAP benefits, Aid for women with dependent children, Section 8 housing subsidies, and Affordable Care Act healthcare coverage? That last item (Obamacare) itself is nearly $10,000/year per covered adult, and section 8 housing subsidies frequently exceed $10,000/year per adult.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it wouldn't be never having to do laundry or dishes again for $500 per month. Nobody is going to give up that much of their time for that little money.

A housekeeper could probably keep up with three homes at a given time if they did all laundry, dishes, and cleaning (cleaning about half of each house each week). That is $1500 per month. With basic income the difference between not having a job and having this job is $28k per year and $10k per year. That is a significant enough jump that I think plenty of people would work a 40-45 hour week for it. Even if they only did two homes and worked 25-30 hours a week, the difference is $22k vs $10k. Seems like plenty of incentive to me. I have worked harder jobs for less yearly salary before. At least in this case the hard working housekeeper makes close to $30k per year instead of the $20k they make now. And they have the choice to make $20k per year instead of $15k if they decide to work less.

You're assuming that the unemployed would be willing to go back to work when they could get half their salary without lifting a finger. I don't know anyone who would put up with annoying customers for only $4 per hour, and that includes people who work in those sectors today. You'd average more than that by asking for handouts on the street.

Hopefully people would finally stop giving money to beggars if a guaranteed income was started. But considering beggars tend to make more than minimum wage already, I assume the stigma and bad working conditions would still keep people away.

While I might agree with $4 per hour being too low to motivate people, I have worked for just over minimum wage before and there was a big difference between $17,500 per year and $10,000 per year. There would be a strong incentive to still work an easy job like KFC (where I worked) so I could have an extra $500 in spending money each month. I'm almost certain I would have worked for $1300 per month take home instead of staying at home all day for $800 per month.

But in most cases we aren't talking about $4 per hour. The housekeeper salary figures I have been using assumed a wage closer to $7-8, instead of around $12-15 today. Now we are talking about the difference between $1800 take home per month and $800. I'm sure this is plenty of incentive to get most people to work.

Also, the social stigma of being a bum will not go away. Young men would keep a job just so they could get a date.

That's probably true for the top one or two percent. It is not true for the top 20%. [...] So no, a decent percentage of the top 20% most certainly do worry about crime. If you live in a city, you worry about crime.

I will concede this point. I have always lived in the suburbs but can see your point about city living. Although I also think no amount of minimum income will remove all crime. If you live in a highly densely populated area, like a major city, you will still worry about crime. A 50% reduction in crime would not be enough for you to stop locking your car door. That would take the near 0% crime rate you have in the suburbs.

And you're also assuming that all these people would live on only $10,000. Most people save up a portion of their salary to use when they retire. Obviously some of that is tied up in a 401k, but if you're actually saving enough money to retire, you should also have money that isn't, ideally invested in highly diversified funds. You can turn those into a temporary income stream (by taking dividends as cash, or if necessary, by periodically taking market growth as cash) to augment that $10,000.

I agree it is not as simple as I made it out to be, but I think you are simplifying things even more at the other extreme. $10k per year tax free only pays for day care for one of my daughters for six months. It is such a tiny amount for

Re:Good for them

[ahodgson]

OK, I'll bite. What asset backs the US national debt?

Re:Good for them

[dgatwood]

Also, if they have other revenue streams keeping them closer to their current lifestyle, they are probably still being taxed enough that they are not receiving a basic income at all. Well, they are still receiving it but their taxes are $10k more to compensate (someone is still paying for this). I would love to see more government programs helping working professionals start their own companies, but I don't think a basic income would be a big help in this department.

It depends on how they tax it. If they tax it like normal income and you have $20k of income from other sources, you'd pay 15% in taxes on that $10,000, which means you would still get $8,500 of basic income. Of course, the tax status of a basic income is entirely at the discretion of the people who design the basic income. They could make it tax-free, they could make it subject to the normal tax brackets, or they could put it on a sliding scale similar to tax credits, where you get progressively less as your income increases, up to the point where you don't get any. So you're right that it wouldn't be a big help, but it probably would be of some help. Every little bit of additional income brings you a little bit closer to being able to do something that you otherwise could not do.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

People weren't just left to rot in Dickens days. The state funded parish councils to administer welfare to poor families. There were also workhouses, pretty horrible places but they did provide food and shelter.

The only trials of a Universal Basic Income were in small rural communities with mining or forestry industries during the 1960s when low skilled wages were several times what they were today. What happens in a modern society where there is a large surplus and lost of low payed shift work in the service industry is completely unknown. Hence why limited trials are a good idea.

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

OK, I'll bite. What asset backs the US national debt?

Anything owned by the US people.
Based on a standard business valuation, you'd be looking at least 10:1 P/E ratio (General Motors which is tanking is currently 11:1). US GDP is about 17T, meaning a value of 170T for the USA nation.
I just did a quick Google and there's 130M private dwellings in the US with a median value of just under $200k. So that's $25T right there, and that's without digging into corporate assets.
Debt is about 18T, so I don't see too many reasons to panic just yet (these are obviously rough numbers but should be enough to demonstrate that it's not as bad as it looks on the surface)
Out of interest, what do you think the debt should be?

Re:Good for them

[danbert8]

If you have a mortgage of $200,000 on a property with a value of $2 million, it still matters if you can't afford to make the mortgage payment. The bank can still repo the house unless you can sell it within a month (which you can probably do at a significant loss of value). You might believe along with most Americans that debt is meaningless if you have a lot of income, but it'll bite you in the ass before long.

The national debt IS a big deal. Regardless of whatever value we can sell off government assets to cover the debt (or just print money), we are spending money that a future generation will have to pay back. That is worse than spending yourself into debt, it's spending the next generation into debt. The government is spending money it never intends to cover, that's for their successors to deal with. Kicking the can down the road. And they think climate change is going to fuck over our children...

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

If you have a mortgage of $200,000 on a property with a value of $2 million, it still matters if you can't afford to make the mortgage payment.

No it doesn't. I can go to my Bank Manager and tell him I'd like a line of credit for $1M and sign the house up as collateral. I can then use that credit to pay Interest on the debt.
Even if I earn no more money, and spend all of my credit, I still own $800k in assets.

The national debt IS a big deal. Regardless of whatever value we can sell off government assets to cover the debt (or just print money)

You don't have to sell it. Debt is an offset against assets or potential earnings. As long as you have those there is no reason to ever pay off your debt.

we are spending money that a future generation will have to pay back.

No they don't, that is the misconception a lot of lay people have about debt.

That is worse than spending yourself into debt, it's spending the next generation into debt. The government is spending money it never intends to cover, that's for their successors to deal with. Kicking the can down the road.

No, because inflation has a nice way of trivialising debt. Back to the house example, a $200k mortgage in the 1980's (on say a $250k house) would be unachievable for your average family. Had you got a mortgage in the 80's for $200k, and only paid the Interest, you'd still have a $200k mortgage now, except a $200k mortgage is now peanuts. And your $250k asset is now worth $3Mil.
You could in theory now sell your house, and pocket $2.8M without ever paying a cent off your debt (but the smart thing would be to leverage that asset and buy another house, rinse and repeat, and get rich). For some reason a lot of people think debt is bad. Rich people have debt, it's how you get the most value from money.

Re:Good for them

[danbert8]

Rich people have debt. But they also have liquid assets to pay for the debt. Leveraging all of your capital into collateral for debt works great until the debt faucet turns off and people expect to get their money. That's how banks collapse, they don't have any assets to cover the debts when people come calling.

You could in theory now sell your house, and pocket $2.8M without ever paying a cent off your debt (but the smart thing would be to leverage that asset and buy another house, rinse and repeat, and get rich)

Sounds like a housing bubble to me. That didn't work out so hot a few years ago. A lot of people ended up homeless from short-sighted thinking like that. You're plan only works if things always appreciate in value. That's a bad long term assumption. Inflation does trivialize debt due to an effective tax on people who have real assets. Inflating your way out of debt might just piss off people who didn't max out all their credit cards. They are probably the ones providing the credit and they may just turn off the tap if you stick them with the bill.

Re:Good for them

[ahodgson]

Hey, if you're going to count private property, which the US govt has no claim to, you'll also need to count private debt. So now you're over $60 trillion.

But as to what's reasonable, well, that depends on interest rates. I think since the Fed started monetizing the debt though that everyone in power obviously has realized the reasonable point is well past.

Long term, if your debt is growing faster than GDP, you're going to eventually be screwed, regardless of the interest rate.

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

Leveraging all of your capital into collateral for debt works great until the debt faucet turns off and people expect to get their money. That's how banks collapse, they don't have any assets to cover the debts when people come calling.

Yes but that's why you should have regulations controlling what types of debts that public institutions should be allowed to take on. In freedom loving, capitalistic fuck yeah USA, there weren't any, so the banks gambled and failed. In Australia, where there are some of the strictest banking regulations, they survived the GFC intact and making profits.
Debt as a concept is not the problem.

Sounds like a housing bubble to me. That didn't work out so hot a few years ago.

It did in countries that have sensible economic policy.

Re:Good for them

[Jack Griffin]

Hey, if you're going to count private property, which the US govt has no claim to...

The government are merely representatives of the people. If for whatever reason they screw up, you better believe it is you who are on the hook for it.

you'll also need to count private debt. So now you're over $60 trillion

Not sure where you get you're numbers from, but the figures I found say closer to $15T, much less than the assets in private property. So we're all good there.

Long term, if your debt is growing faster than GDP, you're going to eventually be screwed, regardless of the interest rate.

Only if it is constant, which I'm assuming the people charge don't plan for it to be that way. I remember reading somewhere that Republican Administrations have a pattern of blowing out debt, and Democrats get it back under control ( found it).
Obama has been the exception because Bush left the economy in such a shambles that the recovery will take much longer than this administration or the next.

Re:Good for them

[wiggles]

Net effect on tax revenue should be positive in favor of the government - this effectively raises taxes on the super rich who make all their money through capital gains. Net effect on corporations will be positive - no more taxes for them to pay. Corporations can repatriate all that money they have sitting overseas. Corporations offshoring due to tax reasons will be screaming to come here instead.

Where can I signup?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to do whatever I please and still get my basic income.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Opportunist]

Really? You could get by on a couple hundred a month? For real?

Fuck no. I wanna live. Not exist.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not enough to do whatever you please. You can afford to eat, but you probably can't afford an iShiny.

Re:Where can I signup?

[bytesex]

Don't discount the power of the left in the Netherlands. We had some computer shop trying to donate old equipment to welfare recipients not so long ago. It was rejected on account of the computers being 'too old'.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean refusing inefficient machines that overuse electricity, have high failure rates and are out of warranty, and are inadequate for job training or even exposure to workplace computing environment is somehow a sign of irresponsibility? It is the opposite.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic income is not instead of other income, it is in addition to. This, incidentally, is precisely why it won't work. The money has to come from somewhere, which means tax increases and thus disincentivising working even further.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something not perfect is often better than nothing at all. But then, if you are used to getting free money and free new goods that people who are actually productive members of society (and thus paying for all the freebies) might not even be able to afford, that can be hard to see.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to be careful with this. Many companies try to offload old IT equipment to welfare, so that they don't have to pay for disposal. This are often Windows 95 era that barely work.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Eunuchswear]

This, incidentally, is precisely why it won't work.

Argument from incredulity. Try it. If it fails, you know it doesn't work. If it doesn't fail then you know your preconceptions are wrong.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Opportunist]

Realize that companies can then get away with paying WAY lower wages too since they only have to offer you an incentive to work rather than paying for your whole salary. You don't have to pay your burger flipper 800 bucks anymore because he could stay on unemployment and get 600. If he gets 600 anyway, paying him 300 would already look to him like a raise while you cut your wage more than in half.

Re:Where can I signup?

[Cederic]

Fair point. Means basic income needs to be matched with proper corporate taxation, which is where the EU's totally fucked - too many loopholes.

Re:Where can I signup?

[UnknownSoldier]

Exactly.

Robbing from Peter to pay Paul means you eventually run out of Peters.

A society built upon a bunch of freeloaders and moochers is not sustainable.

Re:Where can I signup?

[BarbaraHudson]

It won't work that way. Do you believe anyone making several times the minimum wage is going to agree to a $10k per year cut because they now get basic income? You can be darned sure they won't. And the jobs that pay minimum wage will stay at that wage, because people won't work for an extra $2 an hour, when the expenses of making that extra cost more (transportation, clothes, lunches, etc) than they're going to make.

How many of you would be willing to go on unemployment/welfare and work under the table for an extra $2 an hour cash? Be honest. You'd rather look for a better paying job, one that the employer doesn't "tax" you for receiving basic income.

Re:Where can I signup?

[BarbaraHudson]

Come on, would you think you're doing someone a favor by giving them a rusted-out jalopy that needs a ton of work just to be put back on the road? That "free" car is going to cost more in gas, more in registration fees because it weighs more, more in day to day repairs, more in lost wages and towing because it broke on the way to work ...

That sort of "free" comes with a huge cost. Giving someone an obsolete computer from the last century is like giving them old jeans that have holes in the knees. You're just giving away your garbage instead of (in the case of computers) having to take it to a recycling center and pay the appropriate electronic recycling fees.

Re:Where can I signup?

[AttillaTheNun]

On the contrary, the burger flipper now has less incentive to accept a low-paying wage for survival and can instead pursue more meaningful and better-paying positions. Effectively the company now has greater competition in the wage market.

Re:Where can I signup?

[david_thornley]

Last time I donated computers, I bought three identical ones, kept one, and donated the other two. Nowadays, I'd rather donate money, since there would doubtless be a system in place with requirements, and giving them money means they can get one that fits in and doesn't cause extra work.

Here's an idea...

[h33t l4x0r]

if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.

How about if they have to be the people who see to that. Seems obvious to me.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Opportunist]

That goes only so far. You can employ capos, but you also need a few real wardens at the top of the chain gang.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep - it sounds like they DO "have the people to see to that".

We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that

Certainly some of those 10,000 people can "see to that'.

Re:Here's an idea...

[peragrin]

True, but you can also assign those people to all the menial task jobs, street cleaners, park and rec workers, road work crews, politicians, secretaries etc

The types of jobs where intelligence doesn't matter.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Opportunist]

It's not about intelligence, it's about working itself. What kind of incentive does your capo have to do his job right? Worse, what incentive do the others have to follow his orders? Or to keep the tools you gave them in order? Accidents happen, you know, and whoopsie, we hit the gas pipe, awwww, can't dig any more 'til that is fixed...

Re:Here's an idea...

[peragrin]

What incentive does the average minimum wage worker have to not screw up? The answer is none. $0.10 an hour raise isn't a huge incentive to make burgers faster.

What incentive does anyone earning less than 50k a year have to do a good job. Answe nothing. Their bonus? Is maybe $200 a year.

Most people don't get a bonus equal to 20% of their paycheck. Or like banks they don't get bonuses even if the company declares bankruptcy.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Dragonslicer]

True, but you can also assign those people to all the menial task jobs, street cleaners, park and rec workers, road work crews, politicians, secretaries etc

The types of jobs where intelligence doesn't matter.

I've worked in offices where the administrative assistant (a.k.a. secretary) was pretty much the only person who knew what was going on.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.

How about if they have to be the people who see to that. Seems obvious to me.

This reminds me of the incident where the giant rock concert hired the Hells Angels to do security. The resulting violence, and the death of a concert goer, essentially marked the end of the hippie era.

Some (far from all) people on public assistance are crooks and/or cheats. The primary job of administrators of public assistance is to make sure the recipients are qualified to receive the benefits, getting what the program says they should be getting, not getting more, and not on the rolls more than once. Hiring administrators from among their number is a recipie for getting enough bad apples to create a horde of imaginary recipients and bankrupt the program, along with the citizens of the polity that sponsored it.

It's a pity, too. Much of the point of a "Basic Income" program is to reduce the horde of bureaucrats needed to administer the other programs it replaces. It similarly seems reasonable to just let them go right off the bat - they could survive on the program until they find more lucrative work (if they still desire to work). They'd have (or SHOULD have had) the skill set necessary to do the adminstration, so there'd be no shortage of skilled workers among the program recipients.

But if you want them to do a good job, you'll have to pay them something like what other bureaucrats are getting. Otherwise you have a similar recipe for worker dissatisfaction and poor performance. And now you're bak to just another "workfare" program. Oops!

So to achieve the point of the program - minimize the overhead by not making it contingent on a set of qualifications and behaviors that require a highly-paid staff of experts to micromanage the recipients - you have to limit the administrative function to just sending the checks out and making sure everybody who receives them is real, still alive, and only on the list once.

Re:Here's an idea...

[BarbaraHudson]

True, but you can also assign those people to all the menial task jobs, street cleaners, park and rec workers, road work crews, politicians, secretaries etc

The types of jobs where intelligence doesn't matter.

With an attitude like that, maybe you'll eventually figure out why you don't seem to be able to get past the receptionist and secretary to see the boss. When I was working as one, one of my jobs was to make sure you never got any further. When a boss really wants to know what's going on elsewhere in the business, he doesn't ask the yes-men around him - he asks the people whose "intelligence doesn't matter."

Re:Here's an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

The incentive isn't the $0.10 raise, it's the loss of job if you screw up enough because you're a replaceable cog.

Re:Here's an idea...

[HornWumpus]

Never ask an admin for permission for _anything_. Just walk past them to the people that matter. What are they going to do?

Re:Here's an idea...

[BarbaraHudson]

Never ask an admin for permission for _anything_. Just walk past them to the people that matter. What are they going to do?

Kind of hard to do if you don't know which door conceals the person you want to see. It's also criminal trespass when you've been denied entry beyond the reception area. Your way lacks imagination. My way was better - put on a white hard hat and clipboard and gain entry via the loading dock area. You'd be surprised how much people will avoid confronting you if they assume you're just another pain-in-the-butt inspector.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Jack Griffin]

Never ask an admin for permission for _anything_. Just walk past them to the people that matter. What are they going to do?

Well in my experience, after you've left the PA tells the boss what an obnoxious prick you are, and that's the last you'll ever have to do with either of them.
A PA is an Exec's right hand, their agony aunt, and trusted adviser. Shitting on them is the same as shitting on the boss.

Re:Here's an idea...

[weweedmaniii]

Had a friend who was a mid-level manager for a large healthcare company. After every job interview, he called his assistant in. His only question to her was: "How were you treated?" The interviewee's attitude and actions toward her were probably as important as the actual interview. She was not just a coffee fetcher, who reminded her boss of his schedule and bought gifts for his wife, she was the feminine half of a successful team. When my friend was downsized she immediately submitted her retirement packet and as he understood made everyone's life miserable until they fast tracked her paperwork. The couples still vacation together.

Re:Here's an idea...

[MoarSauce123]

That would mean that those people have extensive management and project leading skills, hardly those who are unemployed or who stay unemployed when they pick up these skills. It is much better to promote and reward engagements with organisations that already have project management in place. That can be anything, including technical tasks such as UX testing for open source projects, writing docs, etc. In some way it gives back to the community that goes beyond the municipality. But sweeping streets is also welcome as is tending to public spaces, be a walking info booth or anything that the creative minds can come up with. Have folks do what they like or are good at. Even if it is sitting on ass and watch TV, they can be QA for TV stations pointing out on air errors such as commercials that were cut off.

Re:Here's an idea...

[rtb61]

How about instead of being slavers we allow those people to live subsistence existences. We do national parks for animals to subsist free, why do we treat other humans with less rights than that. Now if we want to steal access to the environment away from, deny them more than we deny wild and free creatures, should we not pay penalty for that.

We routinely deny people the right of free existence and deny them the right to access the resources provided by our environment, we steal existence from the. Should we finally stop stealing that, should we not contain our extremely violent greed, after all have will not killed to excess enough yet, the seizing of land, genocide of free living people and the subsequent demand of forced labour.

Living a subsistence existence is a human right, we either allow it as would be natural or pay for it's replacement, pay for what is stolen without consent. How about instead of assigning harmless people to ordinary jobs, we assign aggressively greedy, the blatant thieves of human right to insane asylums, I know which would make life for the rest of us whole lot better and isolating the 1% would certainly do that.

It will fail

[rossz]

Since they admit to not having the people to manage a system where you have to do something in return for the money, you are going to just give it away? No questions asked? And is there a system that requires you to be a resident for a minimum time before you are eligible? If not, you will attract a lot of people who want free money. That can not be sustained. You will run out of "other people's money". Either because people move away because they don't want to keep paying for a perpetual welfare machine, or because you've raised taxes to pay for it to a point that it destroys your local economy. Or a combination of the two.

Re: It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

That's never been a problem for the State. They have all the money they want: yours.

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you're wrong. Please investigate the guaranteed basic income idea, not on wikipedia or any political website, but through economics and geography. Money from one area can be used to support another (foundation of the nation-state itself) which improves overall welfare (quality of life). Providing money that can be spent stabilizes demand for business, improving their forecasting capabilities and decreasing their costs. Everyone benefits.

Re:It will fail

[Opportunist]

Actually I'd expect the opposite to happen.

I agree that it would depend on people having to have been residents for a while, but I'm pretty sure they have thought of a system that takes care of it. But even if not, let's ponder for a moment how it would work, shall we?

First, I don't know of a single such "free money" idea that could make you rich in the short or long run. We're talking a few 100 bucks a month, barely enough to sustain yourself. In that way, it is by no means different than the unemployment money already in existence. Just without the bureaucratic overhead behind it. You're still way better off having a job. Be honest, would you WANT to live on a few 100 a month just so you don't have to work? If so, get another job.

The more important aspect is, though, that these people who now have money also need to exist. They need housing, they need food, they need clothing, they need various other things, and all of them have to be provided locally. You need to live there (for obvious reasons, or you won't get no money). And it's fairly unlikely that people who barely have enough money to get by would drive around in fancy cars to go shopping abroad. That creates jobs. Someone has to build those houses and keep them in repair (not to mention that property value would probably go up with increased demand), someone has to work in those grocery stores to sell them food. And that entails a whole lot of other services that are simply required, and then also requested because there are people who can actually pay for these services.

It is in the end the customer that creates jobs. No shop owner "creates" a job because he feels so generous and wants company. The job is created out of the necessity because more customers demand goods and services, and only then the shop owner has to employ someone to meet that demand. Without demand, no jobs will come into existence.

And demand depends on money being available on the side of demand. Consumers need money to consume. And without consumption our economy will not thrive.

Re:It will fail

[scsirob]

...Money from one area can be used to support another (foundation of the nation-state itself) which improves overall welfare (quality of life).... Everyone benefits.

As a Dutch citizen, I am seeing this idea being tried in real life. On multiple scales. Like, Northern Europe subsidizing Southern Europe. And soon Ukraïne. And like, Northern Europe engulfed in immigrants, forced to pick up the tab, and East Europe taking none. Let me assure you, "Everone benefits" is a lie.

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are just political talking points valid only from limited perspectives. Try again. What happens when part of europe is wealthy and their neighbors struggle? Wars. Those are very expensive, and while the recent ones have been global in scope thousands of others involved only a few countries fighting bringing all down.

Re:It will fail

[scsirob]

Well, perhaps wars are the only way to work this out. Throwing a large blanket over the continent, calling it European Union and then redistributing wealth still has the same effect, that those who have, want to keep it, and those who don't, always want more from the wealthy neighbours. Removing borders to make the nation state disappear does not change the way people behave.

Re: It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

The poor countries of Europe are welcome to declare war on the richest and be wiped away. No more poor countries, no more problems. Go ahead, poor chumps.

Re: It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

That is shooting yourself for spite. War disrupts trade, and trade disruptions hurt everyone.

Re:It will fail

[thegarbz]

you are going to just give it away? No questions asked?

The money is already assigned. The only difference is now people don't need to do meaningless busywork to qualify and less resources need to go into managing the situation. End result more money to the people and slightly more garbage in the parks and streets.

This alone is not something that will determine if it will succeed or fail. (I personally think it will fail too, but for other reasons)

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Dutch citizen, I am seeing this idea being tried in real life. On multiple scales. Like, Northern Europe subsidizing Southern Europe. And soon Ukraïne. And like, Northern Europe engulfed in immigrants, forced to pick up the tab, and East Europe taking none. Let me assure you, "Everone benefits" is a lie.

No, you are not "seeing" that.

The benefits we are talking about is one that comes after a generation or two. Depending on your age you will not be able to observe them in your lifetime.
If you want to observe the benefits, look at the state the Nordic countries were in before the current averaging process. That was the result of previous centuries subsidizing of poor citizens.
Unless economy suddenly have started to work differently we will see a tremendous improvement in the European economy in 50 years or so.

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

...Money from one area can be used to support another (foundation of the nation-state itself) which improves overall welfare (quality of life).... Everyone benefits.

As a Dutch citizen, I am seeing this idea being tried in real life. On multiple scales. Like, Northern Europe subsidizing Southern Europe. And soon Ukraïne. And like, Northern Europe engulfed in immigrants, forced to pick up the tab, and East Europe taking none. Let me assure you, "Everone benefits" is a lie.

didn't southern europe just rescued your f* banks, which are unable to calculate risks properly?

Re: It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

If war is unavoidable because the poor countries can't or won't get their act together, better get over with it now rather than suffer them to drag the continental economy to the bottom. And what trade would it disrupt? They have nothing worth trading that we cannot take by more efficient means.

Re:It will fail

[AmiMoJo]

Schemes like this usually require you to be a registered resident of the area. In Europe we have relatively generous benefits compared to the US anyway, and this replaces them. Some people will actually be worse off, especially if they are disabled.

Keep in mind though that in Europe it's normal to have this kind of welfare. We decided that we don't like seeing people crippled by curable disease, going on rampages for lack of mental healthcare, sleeping on the street when it's cheaper in the long run to provide housing and assistance etc. The "what's mine is mine, fuck you" attitude isn't very popular because most people realize that they could be the ones being fucked if they get cancer or can't work due to some accident or something, and that it's better to try to give kids the stuff they need rather than locking them up indefinitely later etc.

So it's only really free money if you are short sighted or prefer living in a walled compound with your guns, but for most of us in Europe it's just the price of security, civilization and a [more] pleasant [than American] society.

Re:It will fail

[TheRaven64]

No, taxpayers in Northern Europe bailed out the banks. That was difficult to sell politically, so it was spun as a bailout for the southern countries, because taxpayers in Northern Europe have more sympathy for poor farmers in Greece than for rich bankers in London. They also spun the fact that the German economy has benefitted hugely from an artificially weak currency promoting exports and that the Greek economy has been harmed by an artificially strong currency inhibiting exports as those nice Germans coming to the rescue of irresponsible greeks.

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't thought this through enough. You have started, but you need to continue. For one, you need to think about what the alternative(s) could be, in the long term.

Hint: If you think killing people off (due to there being too many) is not acceptable, you will soon run into problems if you dismiss the idea of guaranteed basic income. Yes, really.

Do try to stay away from political dogma and take on the challenge objectively. The typical trap people tend to get stuck in is just that: Previously acquired dogma.

Note: I hope I don't need to mention that one of the most serious suggestions that some sort of guaranteed basic income will sooner or later become necessary came from the political right, rather than the left...

This has nothing to do with right or left.

Re:It will fail

[Rockoon]

Since they admit to not having the people to manage a system where you have to do something in return for the money, you are going to just give it away? No questions asked? And is there a system that requires you to be a resident for a minimum time before you are eligible?

First I will point out that I am a huge free market fan. Free To Choose and all that.

A mistake made by armchair economists and even some professional ones is a mistaken focus on money instead of goods and services. Currency is just a proxy for goods and services. All governments that I know of provide some basic level of goods and services, and yes its often through the violence of taxation (but thats another debate.)

The important factors are which goods and services, and how much to provide. The first factor is a big free market win here, because the answer is the goods and services that the people (rather than government) choose. The second factor is self-balancing, supply and demand, again decided by the people instead of the government.

The government is already handing out goods and services and you can't expect it to do otherwise any time soon, so a change to this new model is a big win for free markets.

Re:It will fail

[Lendrick]

So, question for you. What if it doesn't fail? Would you re-evaluate your opinion?

But it will!

This is just a hypothetical. I'm just asking you what you would do in the event that you're wrong.

Re:It will fail

[Maxo-Texas]

Almost all the money will be spent.

And it will circulate in the local economy until someone buys a product from a big box store that extracts the money from the local economy.

A little will be lost every time around to buy raw products from outside of the city but part will return as labor wages (and local jobs).

Re:It will fail

[Jack Griffin]

.Let me assure you, "Everone benefits" is a lie.

Everyone benefits when you round up your numbers.
The thing with globalisation is that we in the west are the minority population, but hold the majority of wealth. So for "Everyone" to win, it will involve a shift of wealth form West to everyone else. That might suck if you're on the margins in the West, but if you were an alien looking down on the Earth, it would appear as though "everyone" were getting better off.

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already been done, and was successful. It was done in Manitoba, Canada. It ended up being shut down because of conservative politicians. But it actually did work, better than welfare has done since.

Re:It will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

A notable minority of people are quite happy with "A few hundred a month." The punk who stole my crappy Sanyo stereo from my van would have made more money at McDs than the time he spent casing it, breaking in, cutting it out and taking it to the pawn shop for $5 (He had time to smoke two cigarettes in my van).

Such genetic failures will never work, and will still commit crimes if enabled with free money.

Society is better when such dregs starve in the gutter. We can hire a few people who want to work to dispose of the bodies.

And any straw man in my argument is far more believable than the crapton of them you spew.

Wishful thinking

[scsirob]

I live in The Netherlands, and work in Utrecht. Large areas are quickly turning into islamic no-go areas. Young people from those areas dress like they grew up in a kaliphate and are openly sympathising with IS. Meanwhile they blame Dutch society for not offering them employment, and call every employer that turns them down a racist. Everything is someone else's fault. They are happy to take from the society they despise, they are unwilling to participate in any way.

Utrecht is a notorious left-wing city. They dream up pie-in-the-sky ideas all the time, without thinking who will pay for it all. The Dutch are at the limit of what they will tolerate for taxes, and also for islamic influences shoved down out throats. 2016 looks like it will become a pivotal year in The Netherlands.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Opportunist]

So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.

I miss my old left.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Chrisq]

So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.

I miss my old left.

No need to be anti-religion, just a realistic understanding of Islam. In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.

I miss my old left.

The left are still anti-religion, or rather, they don't want the government to take a stance regarding religion and as a result they don't want to forbid Islam or their religious symbols.
Extremists have a tendency to go to the "Either you are with us or you are against us" mentality and as such neo-Nazis interpret this stance as supporting Islam.
Not really any different from ISIS view on the subject. Anyone not extreme enough is our enemy.

Re:Wishful thinking

[drinkypoo]

In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother

Well, no. In general, they all have historically exterminated and killed each other (except Wiccans, which did not exist until recently.) It's only the influence of secular government that has changed that, and apparently, only temporarily. History shows us that when people run out of resources they go to war over any bullshit excuses they can use to justify grabbing everyone else's stuff. They also kill one another within their sects over their beliefs, especially Christians and Muslims. Shit, more Christians are believed to have killed one another over the nature of the holy trinity than were killed by the Roman government. Religion is bugfuck crazy, and no amount of excuse-making for it will change that.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in The Netherlands, and work in Utrecht. Large areas are quickly turning into islamic no-go areas.

Large areas of your brain have been filled with PVV agitprop.

Re:Wishful thinking

[scsirob]

At least I'm not posting anonymous, coward.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

You are.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Halo1]

No need to be anti-religion, just a realistic understanding of Islam. In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother

That's exactly the sort of reasoning that ISIS uses about 'the West'. In general, the world's countries do not regularly invade other countries, perform summary executions using drones that kill a lot of innocent people at the same time, interpret a "no fly zone" mandate by the UN Security Council as a license to bomb the hell out of everything below, have a pretty bad history in terms of the regime changes they supported or instigated, ... The West is however full of countries that either do this, or virtually unconditionally support those who do. Hence, the "realist view" of the West is supposedly that they are dangerous killers if you live elsewhere in the world, and that they should be fought/excluded by all means possible.

Realism is a very abused term, because reality at a societal level is so complex that it is seldom possible to make generalised statements about it that reflect reality as a whole, rather than just a part of it. E.g., regarding Boko Haram (the group that kidnaps school girls and destroys entire villages, using Islam/sharia as justification), have a look at an earlier post of mine and the linked articles. The violence and killing in that case may well have nothing to do with Islam at all in the end.

Re:Wishful thinking

[goarilla]

Do you work for Geert Wilders ?

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother

Well, no. In general, they all have historically exterminated and killed each other.

It's the usual apologists argument - other religions did this hundreds of years ago so present day Christians, Sikhs, atheists, etc are just as bad as present day muslims.

Re:Wishful thinking

[drinkypoo]

It's the usual apologists argument - other religions did this hundreds of years ago so present day Christians, Sikhs, atheists, etc are just as bad as present day muslims.

They are just as bad because they are making their decisions on the same bullshit basis that led to violence previously. It only leads to more violence. People are being killed over their religion somewhere in the world all the time. Politicians even in this country use religion as their excuse for bombing brown people. God wants us to do it. Refusing to think is just as bad now as it ever was, and you're claiming that to suggest otherwise is to miss something. That's an obtuse argument at best.

Re:Wishful thinking

[JaredOfEuropa]

"'The left", for lack of a better word, have never been anti-religion or even anti-establishment (they are the establishment now, in most of Europe). They are against conservative, nationalist, content people, and will back anything that upsets them. Even if it means backing a religion with vile values (in scripture as well as practise) next to which the supposed inequities of their former enemy Christianity pale in comparison. And in that sense the left is truly anti-conservative: they never sit still, always look for ways to further "improve" society. And if they have nothing to improve, to fix, or to complain about, by god they will find something. See "Zwarte Piet", "micro-inequities", and other such nonsense. Maybe they don't really dislike a specific group of people, but just need to be in a constant state of agitation. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because they grew up protesting in the turbulent 70s. A bit like those hard core separatists who keep bombing stuff even if their own erstwhile supporters beg them to stop: it's what gave them purpose in life, and it's all they know.

Re:Wishful thinking

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not really. The left, at least in the Netherlands (and worryingly also in Brussels) increasingly ask the government to take a stance to protect religion and to condemn and even punish those who insult, criticize or ridicule religion (especially Islam). The same left calling for what amounts to anti-blasphemy laws to protect Christianty a few decades ago is unthinkable

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

How is posting nonsense under a nickname any better than posting sane things as an Anonymous Coward?

Re:Wishful thinking

[Eunuchswear]

other religions did this hundreds of years ago

Hundreds of years ago? Try between tens of years ago and now.

Do you think muslims are the only people in the world today killing people over religion? Are you really that badly informed?

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.

I miss my old left.

No need to be anti-religion, just a realistic understanding of Islam. In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother

i get different impressions looking at fox news

Re:Wishful thinking

[funwithBSD]

Secular government did not stop the killing, it just made it more efficient.
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot... they ring a bell?
What religions have done pales in comparison.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Every dirt poor country has vastly lower unemployment rates than the EU... why?

Re:Wishful thinking

[BarbaraHudson]

How is posting nonsense under a nickname any better than posting sane things as an Anonymous Coward?

Good point - so does that mean you'll do like me, and post under your name instead of as a anonymous coward or using a nic? Or are you just babbling for babbling's sake? (rhetorical question - anonymous coward is coward)

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you still do it if you had an very uncommon name and any loon with an axe to grind could pick your home address and personal history from the first results in google?

Re:Wishful thinking

[BarbaraHudson]

Would you still do it if you had an very uncommon name and any loon with an axe to grind could pick your home address and personal history from the first results in google?

I've already posted my home address here and elsewhere, and anyone reading my journal already knows lots about my personal history. You can't "pay it forward" if you're too afraid to stand up and be counted.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

I read you're seriously deranged and a liar troll http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:Wishful thinking

[dave420]

There you go yet again confusing fanatical and moderate Islam. If you were right, there would be endless bloodshed between the millions of Muslims in Europe and the rest, where the violence is incredibly limited to just those practitioners of Islam who have been affected by fundamentalism and fundamentalists. You are not helping your cause by making up nonsense, and you are not helping yourself by doing so either - you make your cause look woefully ignorant and out of touch with reality, and you a blithering idiot. You should get a refund on your education, as it doesn't seem to have worked at all. Well, I'm impressed you didn't choke to death on your keyboard while writing your post, so I guess there's that.

Re:Wishful thinking

[dave420]

I think you have a cursory understanding of this issue. Christians in the west have been the majority of years. Of course comparing legislation designed to protect a minority seems ridiculous when you apply it to protecting a powerful majority - there is no other outcome possible, making it a purely rhetorical device devoid of useful application. You saying they are comparable makes you look, well, irrational. And I guarantee there are uncountable different flavours of "the left" in the Netherlands, so you lumping them all together is making you look like you don't fully comprehend this discussion, as you are tilting against a monster of your own creation. "See this massive generalisation I'm making, and ascribing motive to, well, they're bad! Therefore whatever I seem to claim is right!". Nope.

FYI

[bytesex]

Famous right-wing rag The Guardian had a piece not so long ago on why basic income doesn't work:

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean someone posted a comment on there? Did you even check what you linked to?

Re:FYI

[Opportunist]

Their main argument being "the sky is falling if people get into long term unemployment". Newsflash, Guardian: There ain't enough work for everyone anyway. Yes, I can understand that we all like to have more people fighting over the few jobs available so the race to the bottom continues, but somehow I cannot sympathize.

Then their example of how new moms got back into work as soon as they were forced to. Well, duh. And duh again that mothers valued staying with their children in the earliest moments of their lives higher than money. Who would have thought that? They really want to tell us that this is comparable to ANY other situation? Seriously? Are they so detached from any kind of human emotion to seriously consider this a sensible example?

Oh, wait, they even admit it. Quote: "It is hard to see why this lesson would not apply equally to a basic income scheme." Yup. Sums up pretty well how much they know about human nature.

Sorry, but to take this drivel serious, I first have to have a sizable portion of my brain removed. It should include the areas for emotion and logic at least.

Re:FYI

[thesupraman]

Ah yes, even as a 'right winger' myself, I wonder if you realise just how silted and contrived that 'article' is.

What is basically boils down to is the story you will hear from both sides of the political fence these days -
'For your own good, we know best - and we need more control! trust us! fear each other!'

People have forgotten that there are two axis to politics, left/right, and Totalitarian/libertarian.
Do we so quickly forget the second axis because the labels are 'harder'?
You can certainly have left and/or right totalitarian regimes, and we seem to be busy constructing quite a few at present.
You can also have left and/or right Libertarian regimes.
(For the Americans in the audience, Libertarianism is confusing to you I know, it has very little to do with your liberal party, or
your odd view of political/religious matters, so try and allow for that).

That article is a pretty simple attack in support of the new Totalitarianism - what a surprise. The message is 'You need us, your
government, to force the nogoods to do the right thing, or they will take advantage of you! give us more power!' Because apparently
society itself is incapable of social pressure - oh how times have changed, apparently.

On the idea of basic income? why not, the transition would be the problem - but I doubt we will see it in any major implementation for
a long long time, because governments worldwide are on a power trip right now, and giving up an area of control of their people is not
part of that playbook now, is it.

One of the more interesting parts however of a solid basic income package, which hardly ever gets mentioned, is removal of minimum
wage. This frees up a whole pile of minor jobs which are simply not economic (looking after the neighbors kids after school, mowing lawns,
etc) and are often now done under the table.. minimum wage becomes much less needed, as there is less 'force' for people to have a job
at any cost.

But hey, it doesnt help grow state control, so good luck with that. We are better worrying terribly about the reds under the bed - oh sorry, I
mean ISIS, or whomever they choose in another year or so.

Re:FYI

[Tom]

a whole pile of minor jobs which are simply not economic

Why are they not economic? I challenge the base assumption. Why should a simple job such as mowing lawns be paid a starvation salary? Why can't someone who mows lawns for a living not make enough money for a simple life?

I will tell you why, the real reason: Because then the minimum-wage jobs would need to move upwards in salary. Someone who does something a little more qualified than mowing lawns would have to be paid slightly more. But that means the tier above that also needs to move up.

In other words: If you would cut out starvation salary jobs, and enforce minimum wage, all salaries would have to increase.

And now magic happens: People who couldn't afford to pay the cleaning lady or the lawnmower man a decent salary now can. Because they are making more money as well.

All this additional income will, of course, have to come from somewhere. There are two possible sources. One is inflation - which would create a self-reinforcing cycle because then you would have to raise wages to compensate for inflation. The other is less profits for those who own the companies, i.e. who make their money not out of salaries.

Guess who has in the past, is currently and will in the future spend millions and millions to both politicians and media to ensure that real minimum wage with no loopholes and exceptions doesn't happen.

Re:FYI

[ThosLives]

Why can't someone who mows lawns for a living not make enough money for a simple life?

This is a good example, actually. In the limit, the activity of mowing a lawn does not generate enough production of real wealth to fund its own existence.

Specifically, I mean this: the increased production of food, tools, etc. from the landscaped lawn combined with the reduction in costs of dealing with rodents, bugs, difficulty of travel, etc. you'd have if the lawn wasn't landscaped is not enough to pay a person "well" for that landscaping.

Now, you might argue that people may be willing to pay a landscaper excessively to maintain an image, etc. This may be possible for a time, but if you're paying them more than their efforts generate, you're going to deplete your savings and eventually have an issue.

But this example also shows an artifact of the political methods of assigning people wealth in conflicting ways: "the landscaper should only get paid based on the economic value they directly produce" but "property owners should be compensated for people using their land, even though property owners don't necessarily do any direct work." Or said slightly differently: risking capital is physically different than performing labor, but many systems don't account for those differences.

Re:FYI

[ThosLives]

Ah actually, I see I misread the original quote, which was "a simple life." Are you saying that landscapers don't currently lead "simple" lives?

I know a fair number of landscapers, and they live pretty reasonable middle-class lives. But not luxurious ones. (Excepting the owner of the landscaping company, they live upper-middle-class.)

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

And now magic happens: People who couldn't afford to pay the cleaning lady or the lawnmower man a decent salary now can. Because they are making more money as well.

They could pay more but it would not be decent because all the salaries did increase. It does not make sense to enforce minimum salary. It makes sense to enforce publishing salaries paid to each worker. So that people hunting for jobs actually know what which profession brings in and can negotiate the proper compensation for work. And, very important, enforce any non-compete agreements invalid. This would help people much more.

Re:FYI

[gweihir]

Indeed. Low- and medium-qualification jobs are vanishing. High-qualification ones continue to do well, but they are a small sub-set. In the end a lot of people have to be able to get enough money to be able to live decently and many of them will not be able to do it via a job. Of course, you can say "tough luck". What you get in addition with that stupid, egotistical attitude is social unrest and crime, both major cost factors for an economy. Hence the "tough luck" attitude does not even qualify as capitalist, it is just unmitigated stupid.

My take is that there is just a type of small-minded human being that cannot stand that anybody gets something for "free", no matter how beneficial that is overall. These people believe everything needs to be earned the hard way and that everybody has to constantly struggle to make ends meet. This is basically fundamentally misanthropic, and anti-society. This is the "if everybody cares only for themselves, everybody is taken care of" crowd. Unfortunately, there are many of those people and if they determine where society is going, it can only go to full collapse sooner or later.

Re:FYI

[electroniceric]

One of the more interesting parts however of a solid basic income package, which hardly ever gets mentioned, is removal of minimum
wage. This frees up a whole pile of minor jobs which are simply not economic (looking after the neighbors kids after school, mowing lawns,
etc) and are often now done under the table.. minimum wage becomes much less needed, as there is less 'force' for people to have a job
at any cost.

This is a pretty interesting point, and I'd be curious to hear more of your thoughts on it. Thinking a bit about it now, it would address some of my biggest concerns about the "Uber economy", i.e. that the employer is pushing off all kinds of risk onto the employee. With a basic income, the relationship between working more and getting more would be much more straightfoward. It might conceivably create a world where people can mow lawns in an excellent way, because they're not as strapped to get on and mow someone else's lawn so they can pay the bills. In other words, people might more inclined to do minimum wage jobs for satisfaction and not just for money.

In an ironic political twist this "center leftie" does share a lot of concerns that a universal income would promote idleness and sloth. I say this based on my own personality traits: when I've been unemployed for substantial periods of time a deep torpor settles in and I get less and less motivated to do anything. That is not a life well lived, and while it's not for me to judge whose life is well lived and whose is not, I find it hard to fit that in with the principle that social programs help humans fulfill their moral responsibility to take care of one another. For example, wouldn't it be especially easy for people with substance abuse problems to fall into absolute squalor where they just collect their UBI and spend it all on feeding the beast? I realize the libertarian answer might be that they are freely choosing that life and society has no right to judge or force them to live differently (which I don't entirely disagree with), but with addiction problems the free will part gets complicated fast.

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

"Low- and medium-qualification jobs are vanishing"

Really? Janitorial jobs are going away? Retail jobs are going away? Supermarket jobs are going away? Restaurant jobs are going away? We argue that we NEED to have illegal immigrants to do all of low paying work that exists because no one else will do it, so are those jobs going away?

Apart from the bureaucracy that will now doubt form and suck millions away from the program, what is the harm in saying "To get this money, you are either a stay at home father/mother or you spend 4 hours during the day cleaning up the neighborhood or doing odd jobs." If you are truly in need for the money to live, why can't you do a little work to get the money, work that the community needs. We hear all the time about how so many programs need volunteers to help. Why rely on volunteers when all of those positions can be paid for by the government? Wouldn't that be a reasonable thing to do? Or do people really need to be able to do whatever they please if they so choose with the money.

Not to mention the fact that for a basic income to be just that, it needs to go to everyone. Even the family in the big house making $200,000 a year. But in the United States, we don't like the idea of giving those people anything. So there will be a means test, there will be a cut-off. And then there will be a bureaucracy to manage all that, the very thing the article is talking about doing away with.

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Arts and entertainment? Do they generate enough "real wealth" to justify their existence?
Something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it (free market), not the "real wealth" generated minus the costs to produce it (Marxism).

Re:FYI

[phantomfive]

Why can't someone who mows lawns for a living not make enough money for a simple life?

Uh, I know people who've made enough money for a simple life by mowing lawns (although they added other typical landscaping tasks to it, too)

Re:FYI

[swillden]

Guess who has in the past, is currently and will in the future spend millions and millions to both politicians and media to ensure that real minimum wage with no loopholes and exceptions doesn't happen.

Which is good, because minimum wages are a bad idea, especially today.

We're on the cusp of a massive economic upheaval, as we become able to automate huge swaths of unskilled and low-skilled labor. This upheaval is going to come, regardless, but we have some ability to control how fast it comes, and when it comes to massively rearranging your economy it's a really good idea to keep it slow enough that people can adapt to the new reality. The biggest lever we have is the cost of paying humans to perform those automatable jobs. The lower that cost the longer it will take to automate those jobs.

Instituting a basic income (which we're going to need anyway) and abolishing minimum wages would allow low-skilled people to continue making what they are now while reducing the cost of low-skill labor, and delaying automation. Note that from a pure economic perspective this is a bad thing, because when the total cost of a human (BI + low wage) exceeds the cost of the machine, it's more efficient to switch to the machine, but this approach would stay with the human until low wage alone exceeds the cost of the machine.

However, BI won't create your utopian vision of low-skilled people being able to live comfortable lives (though massive automation likely will) because the BI will have to be set low enough that living on BI alone is uncomfortable. And the real market value of a job like lawn mowing is likely going to be low enough that it doesn't lift someone to the level of "comfortable"... but it will life someone a little.

Re:FYI

[BarbaraHudson]

Really? Janitorial jobs are going away? Retail jobs are going away? Supermarket jobs are going away? Restaurant jobs are going away?

Better floor waxes means fewer waxings
So fewer janitors polishing floors
Robot window washing systems
Means fewer washers entering your doors.
Automatic checkouts mean fewer cashiers
At grocery stores, and soon at Sears.
Your fast food will be faster than ever, you'll say
Because robots are handling it all the way.
Robots now harvest a lot of crops
Migrant workers will just get the slops
You say make them work for jobs they don't know
Hope you're not not in the nursing home where they go.
Basic income is coming your way
Just in time as the robots hold sway.

Burma shave

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Wage isn't always based on how much production is created by the individual doing to work. If a high production/value worker can avoid spending 2 hours a week mowing their lawn and instead spend that time being productive or creating value by paying someone else to perform those tasks, isn't the value of the lawn mowing related to the time saved for the "employer" and not for the work itself?

Re:FYI

[khallow]

There ain't enough work for everyone anyway.

Then why doesn't China have this problem? There's plenty of work, but we in the developed world punish employment. Long term unemployment is a disaster which the developed world actively encourages. I want to see someone actually try to make these problems better first.

Re:FYI

[penguinoid]

the activity of mowing a lawn does not generate enough production of real wealth to fund its own existence.

Then try this experiment: stop mowing your lawn. Don't hire anyone to mow it, and don't mow it yourself for a year. Let me know how that works out for you.

Re:FYI

[Shortguy881]

All too funny coming from an Opportunist...

Re:FYI

[Avarist]

There ain't enough work for everyone anyway.

Then why doesn't China have this problem?

I just come back from a year in China. There they hand out jobs like no tomorrow. On the other hand, you see homeless-looking people 'sweeping' (read stand idly staring about and occasionally move their 'broom' about) with the party's offical jacket. People everywhere 'work' but most cashiers spend more time blatantlychecking their phone and look utterly annoyed if you dare come bother them.

Re:FYI

[HornWumpus]

No it's not.

My opportunity costs are mine, I worked hard to get those skills. The gardener has a cost, which reflects his skills.

Re:FYI

[HornWumpus]

It's uneconomical to pay someone to mow my lawn with children's scissors.

So someone with capital comes along and buys a zero turning radius mower, hires a driver for the mower for minimum wage, mows 20 lawns in the time it would take to scissor down 1 lawn, and gets a fair ROI for the price of the mower.

This is good.

Re:FYI

[Opportunist]

You mean, like, the people in all the barely-making-minimum-wage jobs in the US who don't really give a fuck whether they get fired because, hey, it can't really get worse?

Re:FYI

[Tom]

Which is good, because minimum wages are a bad idea, especially today.

Minimum wage is an absolute necessity, especially today.
It ensures that there is a stopping point in the race to the bottom for jobs that are so simple, everyone can do them. For qualified jobs, there are natural stopping points - more and more people will drop out as the price goes lower, until only one person remains and he can say "pick me at this price or you have nobody". But for simple jobs, there will always be one other person offering to do it for one cent less.

The lower that cost the longer it will take to automate those jobs.

You live in the early 20th century, not the early 21st. There are enough jobs. The unemployment we have is not because there aren't. We have it because qualified people earn a pittance, because the fuckers at the very top are too greedy.

I'm lucky to earn well, being in IT and all that, but I can't afford to have a full-time servant in my house. Neither do I know anyone who has. But a hundred years ago, that was not so uncommon. Everyone in the upper class had at least one servant. Many people in the higher middle class had. Not just the filthy rich.

However, BI won't create your utopian vision of low-skilled people being able to live comfortable lives (though massive automation likely will) because the BI will have to be set low enough that living on BI alone is uncomfortable.

You don't understand basic income. The very point is that it should not be at starvation-level. That it should be sufficient for a simple, but acceptable life. It should be enough that someone who decides his talent is art or music can live on just the basic income comfortably enough to focus on this, until it brings money, even if that is many years in the future. And especially it should be enough that salaries need to be high enough to be worth your time, or you won't bother.

People who don't understand basic income regularily think that salaries will drop, because they don't need to cover basic existence anymore, only the difference to a slightly more comfortable life. In reality, it is widely expected that salaries will rise, because when you're not afraid to starve and live on the street, nobody sane shovels shit for a few bucks.

Re:FYI

[Tom]

This is a good example, actually. In the limit, the activity of mowing a lawn does not generate enough production of real wealth to fund its own existence.

Specifically, I mean this: the increased production of food, tools, etc. from the landscaped lawn combined with the reduction in costs of dealing with rodents, bugs, difficulty of travel, etc. you'd have if the lawn wasn't landscaped is not enough to pay a person "well" for that landscaping.

Go out and get a girlfriend.

After she has explained you the difference between Channel and Luis Vutton hand bags and why she wouldn't be seen dead with a $20 bag from WalMart, you will still not understand women, but you will understand that at least half the people in this world don't have an economics calculator in their head when they make buying decisions. Utility is not the only factor deciding whether something gets done or how much someone is willing to pay.

Now, you might argue that people may be willing to pay a landscaper excessively to maintain an image, etc. This may be possible for a time, but if you're paying them more than their efforts generate, you're going to deplete your savings and eventually have an issue.

It's called surplus money. Even normal people used to have some back when our economy was not a robbery case. Once all your needs are met and all your debts paid, when you have money left over, you could decide to simply spend it because you enjoy a mowed lawn. Not because it gives you any profit, just because you like it and you have the money to get what you like.

Re:FYI

[Tom]

I wasn't talking about landscapers. I was talking about lawnmower men.

Re:FYI

[khallow]

Compared to say 1980 when virtually everyone was in a makework job? My point is that China has created hundreds of millions of productive, low skilled jobs (far more incidentally than could be explained as being transferred from the developed world.

The point remains. And I think the answer is developed world labor policy that is completely at odds with reality.

Re:FYI

[tlhIngan]

In an ironic political twist this "center leftie" does share a lot of concerns that a universal income would promote idleness and sloth. I say this based on my own personality traits: when I've been unemployed for substantial periods of time a deep torpor settles in and I get less and less motivated to do anything. That is not a life well lived, and while it's not for me to judge whose life is well lived and whose is not, I find it hard to fit that in with the principle that social programs help humans fulfill their moral responsibility to take care of one another. For example, wouldn't it be especially easy for people with substance abuse problems to fall into absolute squalor where they just collect their UBI and spend it all on feeding the beast? I realize the libertarian answer might be that they are freely choosing that life and society has no right to judge or force them to live differently (which I don't entirely disagree with), but with addiction problems the free will part gets complicated fast.

It's a "problem" in name only in the end. Because the basic income is supposed to pay for basic living - and by basic, we're talking basic - think dorm-style or barracks style living. Yes, you have a bed, you have a room, you're sharing it, sharing a kitchen, sharing a bathroom, etc. You can be idle and lazy all day and live like that.

But a funny thing happens - humans are generally competitive by nature, and they'll want to upgrade, but upgrades aren't covered by the basic income (even if the upgrade is to move from a 4/6/8 person room to a 2 person shared room), so they'll start to work - perhaps by mowing the lawn or other basic task. And then after moving in, they'll want a private room, then maybe an apartment of their own, etc., and they'll work towards that.

SO yes, you'll have the lazy. Leave them be - basically ensure they have their basic needs met (otherwise you'll have crime and society will have to pay for them). If they're truly lazy, you really don't want them doing a job anyways - the worst thing in the world would be to hire a lazy unmotivated person. So just leave them be - as long as their needs are met, they're on the their own.

And we really should be moving towards such an economy - as robots start to take over more and more jobs, a basic income leaves the robots to do their work, and humans free to explore and do whatever.

Re:FYI

[Jack Griffin]

Jobs are merely shifting. We've had 3 craft breweries start up in my suburb in the last 10 years. That's more than I've ever known in my life. We've also got more coffee shops than I can count, most of which opened up in the last 5 years. Gourmet bakers and butchers are also popular.
So yeah automation is taking some jobs, but new jobs are being created as new trends develop. This has always been the way.

Re:FYI

[ThosLives]

It's called surplus money.

Exactly - I even explicitly stated that: you can pay for things that provide less economic benefit than they cost only until a surplus runs out. Doesn't matter if it's a designer handbag or a textile factory or the latest app.

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir. You are a visionary and I am very much obliged. I will doff my cap and immediately proceed to buy stock in Birma.

Re:FYI

[BarbaraHudson]

The problems with this are two-fold. First, the jobs created are neither in sufficient quantity nor quality to the jobs that were lost. Obviously people can only drink so much coffee, and your market will hit the saturation point sometime (if it hasn't already) and most of those coffee shops will disappear. It was the same with Krispee Kreme. From boom to bust - we had one here that didn't stay open a year. Same thing with all these replacements. And here, we've already automated the gourmet butchers, and the chain has squeezed out a lot of those independents. Pretty much anything can be automated, including craft breweries.

Re:FYI

[david_thornley]

You mean like the guy I pay to mow the lawn and rake and stuff? He seems to be living a reasonable life, although definitely not luxurious.

Re:FYI

[gweihir]

The closed the human race ever came to wide-spread automation is to hold slaves. That has completely different characteristics though. So no, this has never been the way, because this is something that has never happened before. Before you could always expand other areas that were actually needed, not so this time.

Sure, expanding production of luxuries has some merit, but it is not a stable or large enough market and it hugely depends on the people buying having extra income and the people offering having special skills. A gourmet barker is not just somebody that decided to be one, it is somebody with special skills and very likely special education and experience. These people were not in any danger to lose their jobs anyways. They might just have been fed up with their former jobs. For example my hair-dresser has a small shop, 3 people of which two work part-time and all of them can run the shop alone without any problems.They are very good at what they do and thrive in a spot where 6 other businesses went bankrupt before in a short time. But turns out the owner was the manager and of a 25-employee hair-dresser establishment before and she was just fed up with that and not being able to do the job she learned and loves anymore and not having time for her family. You will find similar stories on many of the establishments you quote. The thing is, these people have valid exit-strategies and will have no problems finding regular employment again. They are exceptions in that.

A major shift to luxuries to keep people alive is a recipe for disaster as is is a completely different thing.

Re:FYI

[gweihir]

Indeed. And this is not about full automation either. Full automation is hard. Automation to a degree that a single person can run a brewery or bakery is not that hard and being done and the missing jobs are re-created nowhere. They are just gone.

Re:FYI

[Tom]

Now if you go back to what this was about (hint: Not your personal case) you will see that "lawnmower man" is metaphorical for people who are paid less than minimum wage. Mowing lawns was just one example because it's a typical neighbourhood kid job.

Re:FYI

[Jack Griffin]

Pretty much anything can be automated, including craft breweries.

You seem to assume that the only reason I go to coffee shop is to consume coffee? As automation takes over, people are chasing the experience you can't get with automation, ie talking to the brewer/barrista/butcher, engaging is discussions with other like minded souls, and building relationships with other humans.
If you are going to chain stores for everything than I can only assume you have a preference for quantity over quality.

Re:FYI

[Jack Griffin]

Indeed. And this is not about full automation either. Full automation is hard. Automation to a degree that a single person can run a brewery or bakery is not that hard and being done and the missing jobs are re-created nowhere. They are just gone.

Who fixes mobile phones? Those jobs didn't exist 20 years ago.

Re:FYI

[Jack Griffin]

But it is not a stable or large enough market and it hugely depends on the people buying having extra income and the people offering having special skills.

Well we know that wealth is increasing, even if some segments are worse off, so there is money there. We are just shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, which will come with some pain, but I don't think it is the end of the world.
We had all the same arguments in the Industrial revolution, but as the saying goes, the car didn't cause the horse to go extinct.

Re:FYI

[BarbaraHudson]

You can get the same company and for a lot longer by going to the library and joining one of their activities.

Re:FYI

[gweihir]

Nobody fixes nobody phones. They get thrown away when they are broken. Seriously. They are not even designed to be repairable.
Sure, there are some very few exceptions to this, but not enough to matter or give your argument any validity.

But that is not actually a problem. Automation makes a society as a whole richer. The problem is that the old way of distributing that riches (which never worked well anyways) breaks down and needs to be replaced by a different mechanism. Of course, that also means that quite a few people that defined their own worth h by the job they do will have to look for another fake measure. For many of them it turns out that they were not that useful after all. That looks to me to be the real reason why so many defend the classical capitalist model, even if it screwed them over repeatedly.

Re:FYI

[david_thornley]

The GGP of my earlier post said that mowing lawns did not create enough wealth to base a living on. If someone wants to talk about paying less than minimum wage, they should either pick a better example or be clear about what they're saying.

A typical neighborhood kid job can indeed pay more than minimum wage. If you pay five bucks to a kid to take twenty minutes mowing your lawn, that kid is making $15/hour.

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

All this additional income will, of course, have to come from somewhere. There are two possible sources. One is inflation - which would create a self-reinforcing cycle because then you would have to raise wages to compensate for inflation. The other is less profits for those who own the companies, i.e. who make their money not out of salaries.

Well, you have it partly right. Minimum wage increases lead to a number of negative side effects. One of them is inflation. Another is fewer hours worked for hourly workers (which means they have to get an extra job, and gain an extra commute, to make up the lost hours). Yet another is increased automation (which has both positive and negative aspects for society). Yet another is reducing the quality of goods (it might seem like this wouldn't work, but it does in many business sectors, for a variety of reasons, which is why so many goods today are shoddy). Yet another is greater unemployment, and more willingness on the part of businesses to fire workers, which in turn makes workers more concerned with covering their asses then doing their jobs with competence, honesty, and integrity. It's not an accident that EU nations with higher minimum wages generally have more unemployment problems than other places. Yet another effect is that people spent a longer time in poverty (it's more difficult to escape from poverty, as individuals lose the opportunity to build their human capital through work experience, with the side effect that societies move in the direction of permanent class systems, or sustain existing class systems that no longer serve a legitimate function).

Inflation is tricky. It's almost never the case that minimum wage keeps up, and it really can't keep up, because measures of inflation don't necessarily measure inflation as it is experienced by the poorest members of society. Also, inflation can be hidden by monetary policy, but this always comes at a cost to society that usually hits the poor the most (for example, if monetary policy is being used to hide inflation, it loses most of its power to shorten recessions, which hurts the poor the most). In other words, inflation due to minimum wage actually ends up being a regressive tax that affects the poor more than the rich. For this reason alone, minimum wage is a really bad idea.

On the positive side, students tend to stay in school longer as a result of minimum wage increases. This is generally beneficial to both society and the individual.

Unfortunately, it's seldom the case that the profits of company owners are affected. Executives, as they are required to under typical formulations of corporate law (look up the phrase "fiduciary duty"), find ways to keep this from happening.

The only way to get the rich is massive reform of the tax code. Get the 4700 pages of federal tax law down to about 20, and a lot of loopholes will go away. In practice, today we have a mostly flat tax, and some of the wealthy actually pay a lower tax rate then anybody else in their workplace. Get rid of the loopholes and a progressive tax becomes possible (possibly allowing the long term funding of better medical care, and a basic income system).

Yet another idea for replacing minimum wage would be to require the workers in any business be given tangible shares of ownership as part of their pay (perhaps as much as 1/3 ownership of the business, collectively: any more than that would be socialism and would come with all kinds of negative consequences), with appropriate restrictions and rules with respect to both the business and the workers to prevent abuse. Unlike minimum wage, this would give workers a real stake in the business, and it doesn't create as much incentive for the executives to screw the workers, as the executives now owe the duty of fiduciary care to the workers.

Re:FYI

[Jack Griffin]

People still go to the library? I haven't been to a library since the World wide Web was invented, so it follows that the people I would like to engage with also don't spend much time there.

Re:FYI

[Jack Griffin]

Nobody fixes nobody phones. They get thrown away when they are broken. Seriously. They are not even designed to be repairable.

Ok you can stop right there, since you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
I have three (three!) mobile phone repair shops in my local shopping centre alone. None of them existed 10 years ago, and all of them have been expanding recently.

Sure, there are some very few exceptions to this, but not enough to matter or give your argument any validity.

Google "iphone repair" and see how you go. Prepare to be shocked...

Dear Barbara

[maestroX]

This is not basic income. This is about getting social benefits without validating the receivers on a regular basis.

A basic income would also be issued to working inhabitants of Utrecht, this is not the case.

Also, this is a lousy experiment even if all inhabitants of Utrecht would be paid basic income,
because it is *locally* and not country-wide: the rest of the country simply supports Utrecht in this case
one way or the other, this is social "dampening" the same way, *without* safeguards.

It is simply impossible to distribute benefits *without conditions* (=basic income) because it would literally bleed to death;
it is not a closed system (e.g. buying oil) however much one wants it to be.

After that, considering the open nature of the system, the next logical question is: who's going to pay these benefits?

Re:Dear Barbara

[nctritech]

Who's paying for the welfare programs that BI completely replaces? There's your answer.

Re:Dear Barbara

[judoguy]

Who's paying for the welfare programs that BI completely replaces? There's your answer.

In many countries, our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren forever and ever, are being asked to pay for the welfare programs. In the US, it's all just "borrowed". No intention to ever pay for it. Hoping it will all just go away some day.

Re: Dear Barbara

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed.

Power of the left?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

Closed System... It Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Excepting Sunlight and Loss... the Earth is a closed system. Income generation depends on the work of others. No work, no income. "Free" income reduces work. Regardless of how you funnel the money around your society and institutions... tax and redist, profit and donate, work just enough, etc... it's all zero sum. BI is just another shell game.

Re:Closed System... It Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. Free basic income gives security so that talent is applied where it is most effective rather than at whatever job is conveniently found in a short search driven by threat of starvation and exposure. Lay off the rand-roids and the tea.

Re: Closed System... It Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realise it was talent that distinguished the rich, I thought it was mainly the random fortune of who your parents are.

Re: Closed System... It Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are suggesting that there is significant overlap between the "talent" and the 1%, you are hopelessly out of touch with reality.

Re: Closed System... It Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

So.. you, my fine parent poster are of the Mighty One Percent... or are you like the majority of the population (presumably including the /. community) who "have no talent to speak of and are completely interchangeable and equally useless". Those WERE the two alternatives you offered...

Let us say that a true basic income became universally available*. By "true basic income" I mean at least lower middle class (US standard) -food, housing, transport, medical provided whether you work or not. I also set the condition that if you chose to work^H^H^H^H generate economic value you would retain a significant part of that value for your own use.

QUESTIONS:

(1) What fraction of the population would "do something" with their lives resulting in a net-positive return.

(2) Concerning those who would not choose to or were not able to generate a net-positive return: would forcing them to do "pseudo work" have a significantly more productive result than letting them stagnate in peace?

Hypothesis:
(1) Over the course of fifty years or so the (vast?) majority -those who could become productive would do so.
(2) The worst of the present tendancy toward gross income inequity would at least moderate.**
(3) Much of todays "one percent" would themselves stagnate into irrelevance

Interesting speculative fiction relevant to the discussion: "Tegs 1994, an anticipation of the near future " http://www.amazon.com/Tegs-1994-anticipation-near-future/dp/0804005109
(initial publication 1971)
by Robert Theobald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Theobald

* "A wizard did it!" -Lucy Lawless (- The Simpsons: Desperately Xeeking Xena")
** especially if an alternative outlet could be conceived for the compulsion to pile up money beyond reasonable use (after the second or third billion, what is the point?).

Re:Closed System... It Won't Work

[nctritech]

Exactly. With BI, people can leave abusive or unsuited jobs without fear of falling off a financial cliff, becoming homeless, etc. Plus, people who can't work a traditional job due to serious mental or physical difficulties and are already on disability get a more reliable base income so they can live with some degree of dignity and perhaps even contribute back to society in whatever small ways they can.

Re:Closed System... It Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

The ignorance and arrogance of the comments here just baffles me: Who are anyone of us to say who "deserves" to live or not?

Most of the artists, most of the geniuses in history, where they business people living off of other's people's hard labour?
How many brilliant minds have died of starvation or sickness in poverty?

Truly baffling how ignorant most people really are.

That's not the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

... all have to do something in return for welfare ...

Of course, that's a dumb idea but busy-work is not the problem. First problem is where does the money come from? The automatic response will be employees, now that a job is a privilege, not a necessity. But that's ignoring the fact the government doesn't control this privilege. It would be better to increase the corporate tax rate; the corporation isn't going anywhere (in the short term). Which brings me to the next point: Because wages are no longer needed for basic expenses, they will deflate, not so good for government revenue. The decrease in wages must be matched by an increase in corporate taxes because the corporation is no longer responsible for that expense. Because a job is a privilege, the very thing corporations value, short-term employment, will increase, not because of employers but because of employees. How will corporations, those few who value institutional knowledge, hold onto the employees that aren't replaceable?

Re:That's not the problem

[bjs555]

>First problem is where does the money come from?

Part of the money comes from reduced cost of administration compared to welfare, unemployment, etc. For some of the rest, why not tax those who cause the problem and benefit from it? That is, tax the robots (actually the owners of the robots). The robot owners realize an enhanced profit from reduced employee expenses. Maybe a fraction of the increased profit due to each robot could go toward funding a basic income for all. The robot owner would still get a larger profit compared to hiring a person but not all the benefit accrues to him. The robot owner must pay some part of the social cost of replacing workers with machines. Does that seem fair?

I think you're saying almost the same thing as I am but a general increase in corporate taxes penalizes some who aren't really causing the problem.

Its not private sector jobs though

[Anonymous Coward]

Its still welfare, and its not real private sector jobs creating private sector sales, which create private sector taxes. Its a lack of private sector jobs that is not being addressed. Its been called a lot of things by politicians. From stimulus, to rebuilding funds, to getting this country back to work. Truth is, that any of this paid for by government funds is just someone else paying more taxes to do so. This means those paying taxes have less money to spend buying products. Its kind of like those programs for buying old cars, or cash infusions in tax breaks supposed to stimulate buying of products. When if fact, most people riddled with debt just pay down debt. In America people can get jobs, it not about jobs in the private sector gone missing. Its about jobs that can pay for a lifestyle people want that have gone missing. Government can't fix that, you need people with skills, education, private sector investment, and a economy that is expanding not just treading at 2% or less GDP.

Basic income methodology

[Firethorn]

Your figures are off a bit from what I'd think.

It's more along the lines of
A: Unemployed: Paid $700 in benefits. This could be through traditional welfare programs(costing $900 because of management expenses), or through a BIG, costing approximately $0 in expenses because 'direct deposit to every citizen' is cheaper when you're not trying to means test it.
B: makes $2k/month no matter what in salary or whatever. However, in the current situation he's paying $700 of it in taxes, but for the purposes he's at the 'break even point' he's paying $1400 in taxes, but receiving a $700 BIG. Even though he's seeing no benefit from the BIG, the automatic deposit means that if he loses his job he automatically, without the need to file, still gets the BIG, so it acts like unemployment insurance.

And yes, people need to realize that the BIG payments are 'tunable'. You don't have to, and probably shouldn't, set it at a level where a person can live comfortably in his own place. Let's look at the USA: $500/month would probably 'work' if you separate out health care. A household of 4 adults(or children if they're included), would receive $2000/month, which is around poverty level for a family of 4.

Besides reducing management expense, arranged right it eliminates welfare cliffs where somebody is better off working/earning less.

I remember reading the write-up of the experiment in Canada. The results were that people really didn't work less*, did take a little longer to find a job, but generally obtained better ones as a result.

*Well, except for women staying home with newborns and teenagers staying in high school and actually graduating.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

So where does the $700 for person A come from? You've already spent it on B.
And what makes you believe person B is interested in earning $1300 extra when he can simply stay in bed and be happy with the $700 base?

Of course you will have to tax those that work to pay those that don't. The longer the scheme is in place the fewer the people will be who still work and pay taxes. Hence taxes will raise. And since more people have more leisure time to spend money, inflation will raise too. To compensate the base income is increased and the taxes raised again. Those who still work realize they are at best just a few $100 above the base income and that working really is just a hassle for nothing. Hence, most people will quit their jobs, or actually are made redundant because of course being an enterpreneuer also is no fun as all earnings are immediately taxed 100% to finance the greater good.

This soon leads to the state having to force some people to work simply to keep production of essential goods up. The smart ones will see that this leads nowhere and leave the country. At which point borders will be closed and harsh sanctions imposed on those that try to flee, e.g. put them in prison or at worst shoot them. That's nothing personal, just good governance, punish one, teach many, as Mao put it.

As always in the real world, socialism eventually and unconditionally produces a violent regime to keep things under control.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

Quack, quack, quack, quack. No-think is goodthink. Just quackback the same tired old Party line. Doubleplusgood for you.

Actually, we already have something approaching a Basic Income in the USA. It's called "Social Security". Granted, it's not a guaranteed minimum income and you have to be a certain age to receive it, but it's there.

And certainly a lot of old people do stay in bed, if only for health reasons. But a lot of them pour that money back into the local community by spending it eating out at Denny's, traveling around the country, supporting their deadbeat relatives, buying gardening supplies, lobbying congressthings and so forth.

And, of course, helping out the Medical industry, both via Medicare and via purchases made at the local drugstore for their own comfort.

Unlike billionaires, who can simply buy-and-hold, these people are spending money everyday, keeping it in circulation, keeping people employed. Mostly at Wal-Mart, where the Waltons can ship it off to China, but still, there are a LOT of them, and they never stop.

Re:Basic income methodology

[nctritech]

Giving a full basic income to offspring incentivizes reproduction. We'd need to be careful about rules regarding that. One of the major problems with existing welfare systems is that they effectively give people bonuses for cranking out babies and the world is already overpopulated without the help. Also, $500 a month for a single person (some people don't have a spouse and two kids, don'tcha know) won't even pay the rent. If the point is to prevent people from "falling off the cliff" then $500 is grossly insufficient, regardless of location.

Re:Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US version of the problem, only a few actually 'crank out babies' for the increased income. Much more common is for a group of friends to pool their children so every wellfare family on a street is showing up with a dozen children and claiming them all. I'm not sure how much of it is policy, how much is intimidation and how much is just apathy, but the local bureaucrats often just write down '12 dependents' and submit the paperwork.

Re:Basic income methodology

[techpeon]

The "experiment" in Dauphin, Canada lasted 4 years and seems like it was terminated for political reasons, not because of failure. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re: Basic income methodology

[vel-ex-tech]

I'm not sure what strawman you're tilting at, but please try to use your noggin a bit. Let me help!

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for an $800 per month guaranteed income for the entire USA. Granted, I didn't figure in overhead, but I'm assuming that will amount to a rounding error. I picked $800 because it's possible to get by over here in flyover country on that much. Many moons ago, I managed at that level of income, and the major prices haven't changed since then where I live (rent, electricity, phone/internet, although food has gone up in price a bit).

My result was roughly $4,100,000,000 per year to fund the thing. As big as that number is, it's still an order of magnitude less than the USA's GDP according to the CIA World Factbook. So it really is correct that we could do this today if we really wanted to.

most people will quit their jobs

This is demonstrably false and will be shown as such once more in this case. Some people do quit their jobs, however, except they do so because they have an idea and want to innovate, invent, and start a new business. Others work less but contribute to the community in other ways.

There will always be a deadbeat here and there, but there's not much you can do about that. In fact, you may already be paying for said deadbeats. If you have the right medical condition, say you had a seizure once or you can successfully make a convincing presentation of back pain, you'll get social security disability and food stamps currently. You can also get subsidized housing, too. This all happens right here in god-fearing, Puritan work ethic flyover country right now already.

My major recommendation is to get rid of minimum wage when enacting a basic guaranteed income. Some of those deadbeats are only deadbeats because they're not worth $8/hr and certainly not worth $15/hr in places where that's the minimum wage. Most everybody has an intrinsic need to feel useful.

because of course being an enterpreneuer also is no fun as all earnings are immediately taxed 100% to finance the greater good.

Oh, and fuck Pomperipossa if that's who you were thinking of. That tale makes no sense at all even if it did actually happen to somebody. The only way a 102% tax rate can happen is through bad policy (such as double-dipping income tax, but income tax for individuals at least should be repealed as well).

There are some real synergies to be had between a basic guaranteed income and the free market.

As always in the real world, socialism eventually and unconditionally produces a violent regime to keep things under control.

I'm not sure that capitalism, given a narrow reading that you seem to be giving your "socialism" demon, has a much better track record. I think you're confusing socialism as practiced in Europe with fascism elsewhere and socialism as practiced in the USA.

You do know that the USA has several socialist policies such as the aforementioned social security disability, no? The problem with pretty much all of them is that the minute you return to work (and this applies to Pomperipossa as well), you lose basically all benefits except food stamps, and those shrink away too if you prove to be a good worker worth promoting and giving raises to. What this means, getting back to the deadbeats, is that they are actively encouraging people not to work.

There are people right now living in my town in flyover country who want to return to work. They feel out the job market now and then. The problem is that the minute they become employed, the income+benefits they'd get is less than the value of the benefits they're receiving now. This is wrong. This is wrong as hell on so many levels.

A basic guaranteed income has the completely opposite effect. Everybody gets it. You, me, Bill Gates, everyone. So choose your poison: socialism that discourages work and encourages stupid angsting like the completely discredited notion that those deadbeats are "doing drugs" or socialism that encourages free market activities and frees people up who are working meaningless jobs to become innovators.

Re:Basic income methodology

[Immerman]

> If the point is to prevent people from "falling off the cliff" then $500 is grossly insufficient, regardless of location.

True, but $2000 is generally sufficient for 4, at least assuming you also have at least mostly-free medical coverage. Still kinda tight, and in some places you might be eating a lot of beans and rice and sharing bedrooms, but you can get by. Think roommates and a paying-your-own-way college student lifestyle. Not ideal, lots of incentive to get out and work, but you can *survive* indefinitely.

I agree about the problems with a full income for children, but there are lots of options depending on how you want to shape reproductive behavior. If you want to discourage reproduction you could give children just barely enough to cover food and clothing, since there's no *need* for better housing, utilities, etc. Plenty of cultures in the world have kids sharing the bed with their parents for many years. Or, you could give kids nothing, and every adult enough to cover basic survival for themselves and a child, and if they avoid reproducing they can afford a sliver of luxury for themselves instead.

Or you could be more generous - after all there's not yet a lot of real-world data to base plans on, mostly it's speculation based on ow people have exploited systems with very different boundary conditions. You're not committed to maintaining the same levels indefinitely, you could easily start out extremely frugal and gradually ramp things up until problems started manifesting. (going the other way would probably cause a lot more social unrest). That would also give employers a chance to gradually adjust to the fact that employment has become a source of personal satisfaction and luxury funding, rather than a necessity, which has the potential to radically shift the balance of power towards something more equitable.

Re:Basic income methodology

[orgelspieler]

One thing people always forget about with this "people would stay home and not work" argument. There are hundreds of thousands of people that don't even use up all of their vacation days every year. Sick employees come to work even when their company has a sick leave policy. People clearly have a bad habit of coming to work when they shouldn't. What drives that? There are several factors, but I think two are the biggest.

First, people like to accomplish things. I was shooting the breeze with one of my hourly employees, and he actually felt uncomfortable because he wasn't getting some work done that he had planned to get done that day. My father-in-law retired with millions in the bank. Yet he still consults from time to time. Does he need the money? No. He just likes to be doing something.

But I think the second factor is even larger, at least for men. Being at work is a lot less stressful than being home dealing with the wife and kids. I reckon after about two or three weeks of staying at home, once all the Legos were sorted and I finally got good at that guitar riff, I would be pounding the pavement pretty hard looking for a job. Any job. And I have a pretty nice family life. I imagine that drive to get back into an office would be even stronger for somebody with four brats and a bitch-on-wheels mother-in-law staying at his house.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

Your back of envelope calculation should have included the numbers you used because $800 per month totaling 4 billion per year means a grand total of 427,000 people get it. Even if you just pay adults, all 242 million of them, $800 is $193 BILLion each month or 2.3 TRILLion per year. Or a cool 3 Trillion if you include every citizen. And that is why the concept doesn't work. You can't just magically make wealth appear. Yes you can print money, but that will devalue everybody's wealth. You spent so long on your post but so little time on the basic math needed to support your assertions. Yes, a tax rate of 102% would actually be the least thing required to make that actually function. And you finish with a false dichotomy as if having a basic income will magically make people become more productive in society. To achieve this semi-utopian society there would instead have to be some discovery making the basics of life freely available at no cost.

Re:Basic income methodology

[BarbaraHudson]

What's to prevent two people combining their basic income to rent a place with two bedrooms? It's not like 2 bedrooms cost twice as much as one ...

Re:Basic income methodology

[BarbaraHudson]

You forget the biggest - if they take the vacation time, they're seen as a slacker and not a team member. Big problem in the tech world.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

There would be nothing wrong with that. It's not welfare. It's supposed to be an amount distributed evenly among all with no consideration of the individual's situation.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

Your math is way way off. $800 month * 12 months = $9,600 per year per person. * 320,000,000 people in the US = $3,072,000,000,000 that is just over $3 trillion dollars. US GDP is about $17 trillion. Total US tax revenue is $6.5 trillion dollars. Currently total spending on benefits (welfare + Social Security) is $1.8 trillion. So that spending would have to double. Not saying this is an entirely bad idea just your numbers are wrong.

Another note our tax structure needs to change. We need to tax consumption, change in net worth and net worth. Income is a bad method of taxation. The wealthy can control their income by delaying sale of stocks. Average people cannot. The tax rates should be highest on consumption which will encourage people to save, a lower rate will be imposed on the change in net worth. If you have a bad year and have to spend more than you make the loss will be somewhat compensated for the higher expenses say due to large medical expenses or education costs. The lowest rate would be on total net worth. This will allow you to accumulate savings however the more you have the higher your tax bite if your net worth is negative you get a subsidy. The base income for low earners and retirees works like a subsidy and safety net. Essentially when you are doing well you must share the wealth when you are doing poorly you are helped out. Simple reporting that would also help people focus on getting ahead. If you see your net worth going down each year you know you are doing something wrong.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Pics or it didn't happen. Sounds like bullshit urban myth to me.

Re:Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

It was terminated because it was determined (correctly) that the scheme could not scale.

Re: Basic income methodology

[BarbaraHudson]

That was my point - there IS nothing wrong with two people teaming up to rent a place (the poster I was responding to said it wouldn't be enough to rent a place even in fly-over land).

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell does this get rated +5? The math is dreadfully wrong. I'm not insulting the author because everyone makes mistakes. That said, this comment should never have been given +5.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe that a single person should be forced to combine resources with other single persons in order to minimally survive; otherwise it's not a "basic income" in spirit. It becomes the equivalent of "the kid who gets picked last in gym class" being the one that gets screwed, and that person is almost certainly the one in the strongest need of the support in the first place. Not everyone is "likable" and not everyone is capable of forging a workable relationship with others. A very important part of the basic income concept (in my view of it) is that even the societal outcasts can still live a remotely dignified existence regardless of the willingness of others to live and work with them.

One of the big things that made me think of "basic income" on my own before I knew it had a name is my acquaintance with a few high-functioning autistic adults who are unable (legitimately so, not just "being lazy") to find and hang on to any semblance of normal gainful employment--and not for lack of trying! They could contribute to society in at least some ways if they weren't always so worried that they'll end up living in a tent in the woods because of any sort of support they depend on for the basics of survival being dropped; they'd fare quite poorly if expected to pool incomes with others to survive, which means they'd still be in the same dilemma.

Re: Basic income methodology

[BarbaraHudson]

Why shouldn't single people combine resources instead of living alone? It's the natural state for most animals, including humans.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Firethorn]

There are people right now living in my town in flyover country who want to return to work. They feel out the job market now and then. The problem is that the minute they become employed, the income+benefits they'd get is less than the value of the benefits they're receiving now. This is wrong. This is wrong as hell on so many levels.

Correct, this is why I mentioned welfare cliffs.

The AC, pretty much without reason, proposes that people will quit their jobs(to be fair, some will) in mass, in order to live off the shitty life they can afford with the BIG payment. He also proposes, again without reason, that we would, for some damn fool reason, raise the BIG payment even as more people get on it, because inflation from the wages demanded by the remaining workers reduces their income.

In reality, if you think about it, as more people get on the system the government can do the opposite - lower BIG payments, let life on the BIG get worse. ANY job will put you ahead, income wise. So most will still work. Indeed, most will work enough that they get the BIG taxed back.

Also, most of the *NET* expense would be covered be eliminating existing social programs. The rest would be dealt with by increasing taxes enough to neutralize the BIG payment at some income level.

Re:Basic income methodology

[Firethorn]

The cranking kids out thing is, at this point, mostly myth. Besides, we're at 1.9 children per female in the USA, and it needs to be at least 2.1 just to maintain population levels.

The fears of global-overpopulation have been disproved - a first world living standard, or even just close to it, is the real fix for overpopulation. In the coming years, Japan, Russia, most of Europe, China, and many other countries are going to experience severe population decline.

We may end up offering a BIG for children simply to try to get the birthrate up.

Re:Basic income methodology

[Firethorn]

Think roommates and a paying-your-own-way college student lifestyle. Not ideal, lots of incentive to get out and work, but you can *survive* indefinitely.

Thank you! Just the level I was looking for.

And I agree - you'd be able to tune the levels of support fairly easily.

One interesting proposal I heard is that it might encourage entrepreneurship - with the basic level of income assured, they can afford to take the risk in opening their own business.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Firethorn]

My thought towards the AC is that the high-functioning autistics can become roommates if necessary.

Re: Basic income methodology

[Jack Griffin]

As always in the real world, socialism eventually and unconditionally produces a violent regime to keep things under control.

Just like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, New Zealand etc. All of which have better standard of living, higher life expectancy, and lower violent crime than the US. Or maybe your version of the real world is whatever propaganda Fox News feeds you.

Re: Basic income methodology

[danbert8]

What makes the parent think B will get a legitimate job with reportable, taxed income? Ever seen someone in front of you in line at the grocery store pay for their food with an EBT card, and then whip out a roll of cash to buy alcohol and cigarettes in a separate transaction? You can collect unemployment while working under the table...

Re: Basic income methodology

[david_thornley]

From what I've heard, the biggest reason not to take a job in the US is medical benefits. This is slowly changing, but a mother with a sickly child will do almost anything to stay on medical assistance. That isn't the case in countries with first-world medical systems.

Re: Basic income methodology

[david_thornley]

Personally, because having roommates bothered me. People more social than I am (the bulk of the population) may not have that problem.

Re: Basic income methodology

[BarbaraHudson]

Sure, everyone likes their privacy, but if you are faced with the choice of either (a) not having enough money to keep a roof over your head or (b) doubling up with someone else and having a roof over your head and food and a little bit extra, I would hope you would go with plan b. After all, better to have one roommate, each with your own separate rooms, than sharing a room in a shelter with 300 other homeless people.

Re:Basic income methodology

[the_povinator]

Even in the short term, the Economist analyzed the implications of a full basic income and found it unaffordable

http://www.economist.com/news/...

It's important to note that for people who are working, getting $800 from their job vs. $800 from the state are not equivalent at all, because the $800 from the state requires higher taxation, and taxation disincentivizes economic activity. C.f. the "dead hand of the government".

Re:Basic income methodology

[nctritech4738]

You ought to click through and read the comments.

"This article has gone haywire in its estimation of the the supposed costs. Tobin's calculation is based on national income. The article's first mistake is confusing national income with average income. We read that "Paying for a basic income worth 20% of the average income requires average taxes to be 20 percentage points higher, at 45%." No, that's the effect of paying 20% of National Income. Think it through: even if all GNI is allocated equally to individuals, the median income must be less than 50% of income received and 20% of the average income must therefore be less than 10% of GNI. It is actually much less than 10% because (a) GNI is not held exclusively by individuals and (b) people in the top half get more income share than the bottom half. The income share of the bottom half in the UK is just under a quarter of personal income, which means that the cost of a Basic Income at 20% of median income would be about 5% of total personal income.
Then there is the assumption that paying 60% of median income is equivalent to paying 60% of GNI. As the median income level is close to 25% of all personal income, 60% of the median ought to be about 15% of total personal income, not 60%. The actual cost would depend on the design of the benefit. Costs should be offset against social security reductions (which is one of the key reservations to make about Basic Income schemes)and the abolition of tax allowances."

Or this one: "Yes, the analysis full of errors. Most significant: (1) assumes payment of full basic income amount to all, regardless of current income, (2) conflates median and average.
In 2010, US household income median was about $50K, average was about $70K. To top up low-income households to 60% of median income ($30K) would require additional tax averaging about $4200 per household (all households), or a little less than 6% of average household income. (Source: commenter's spreadsheet using 2010 US census data)
It's bewildering and dismaying that the Economist would print a piece of such obvious poor quality."

Re: Basic income methodology

[david_thornley]

Sure. However, I consider (a) and (b) undesirable, and would work to get out of either situation. I'm dubious about the idea that having a more or less random roommate is natural for me. (Living alone is dangerous, particularly as you get to my age and older, but living with wife and son is a bit different.)

Re: Basic income methodology

[BarbaraHudson]

And if work is just not available? It happens. Also, I've been living alone for almost 30 years, because I didn't want the hassles of a roommate sharing my "space." This year I found out just how stupid I was - I rented out my spare bedroom twice this year for 4 months at a time to two different guys, and it as good to have company around.

The last one left 2 weeks ago, and I just finished showing the place to a woman via skype, we talked, she's moving in early in the new year. I'm looking forward to it.

A "random roommate" is probably the best way to choose - a friend could put a real strain on a friendship. And it's not like you can't pick and choose through the people, and vice versa. Plus, adjusting to the vagarities of a new roommate will keep your brain from ossifying (and since you mentioned getting older, that's a big concern).

Re:Basic income methodology

[j-beda]

The "experiment" in Dauphin, Canada lasted 4 years and seems like it was terminated for political reasons, not because of failure. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

This was interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...

https://motherboard.vice.com/r...

"Forget documented a decline in doctor visits, an 8.5 percent reduction in the hospitalization rate, and more adolescents continuing into grade 12"

Re: Basic income methodology

[Anonymous Coward]

4.1 billion dollars divided by $800 per month for 12 months comes out to basic income for 427,000 people. As there are over 200 million adults in the United States, the actual figure to fund $800 per month for 12 months ($9,600 per year per person) comes out to 1,920,000,000,000 (roughly 2 trillion). You were only off 50,000%. Considering the 2015 total revenue for the US Federal Government was just under 4 billion, this simply doesn't work as is.

The rest of your post has some merits, and some further inaccuracies, but without a legitimate way to fund it, that is all pointless.

Guardian critique

[Firethorn]

But markets aren’t perfect: most risks are not insurable in private markets – that’s why we have social security systems.

Uh, say what? They are writing from England, where Lloyd's of London is located, the insurance firm notorious for being willing to insure anything?*

Of course you can have a separate system that pays for long term disability.

*Though you might not like the premium.

Doesn't work locally

[goodmanj]

Uh, guys? I'm politically liberal and in favor of a basic income, but it really doesn't work on a small local scale with open borders. Utrecht says it's cheaper to pay their 10,000 unemployed people a basic income than to administer a draconian welfare bureaucracy, but if you're handing out money with no strings attached, a lot of unemployed people from around the EU are going to move in to take you up on the deal. How does the cost/benefit look when you're trying to support ten times as many unemployed people as you had before? Sure, the idea is that some of them will get back on their feet and start contributing to the tax base, but that's not going to happen if you can only afford to pay them 1/10th of a basic income, or if you up the taxes on their potential employers by a factor of 10.

To keep this from happening, you need to either restrict immigration into the basic income zone -- which you can't do in the EU -- or implement it on a large enough scale that the tax base can handle the immigration spike, and national, cultural, and language barriers limit the size of the influx.

You can do this across the EU or US. Doing it for one small European city is just madness.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[umafuckit]

To keep this from happening, you need to either restrict immigration into the basic income zone -- which you can't do in the EU -- or implement it on a large enough scale that the tax base can handle the immigration spike, and national, cultural, and language barriers limit the size of the

Or you only give the benefits to Dutch nationals who've lived in the city longer than X years.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[stud9920]

There are provisions against social tourism in the Maastricht treaty. And they are being used. Sure people can come back any time they want on a tourist visa, but that doesn't entitle anyone to benefits.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[hackertourist]

AFAIK, you only get benefits if you are a registered citizen in the town where you apply for benefits. To be a registered citizen, you need to live in the town. No address, no benefits. There's a separate arrangement for homeless people.
Utrecht suffers from a lack of affordable housing and has long waiting lists, so that will limit the number of people moving in.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[ray-auch]

Or you only give the benefits to Dutch nationals who've lived in the city longer than X years.

Just like the David Cameron wants to do in the UK... but cannot because it is against the EU rules.

After as little as 3 months (I believe), they have to treat any migrant from within the EU _exactly_ the same as a Dutch national resident for 50 (or whatever) yrs. The EU migrant can also claim local benefits for non-resident family back home, we know this because they already do it with UK benefits and it cannot be stopped because "EU rules".

Re:Doesn't work locally

[AmiMoJo]

You can't just physically move there, live in a cardboard box and claim a basic income. It's not allowed and you wouldn't get the basic income anyway.

EU migration is already restricted. You can migrate for work, not for benefits. If you become unemployed you can claim benefits for a while as you look for a new job, but there is a time limit set by each member state.

Also, it's not "no strings attached". It's "live a very basic life in crappy accommodation or look for work", and experience has shown that when not constantly pressured most people will actually try to better themselves. Those that don't often have other issues that need attending to, such as mental health problems.

Re: Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure registration as a local resident is just a matter of showing your ID card. So it's basically "please register at counter B first, then come claim your benefits".

Eventually the city will need more staff to manage new registrations, especially once they start to realize the surge of people moving into the city...

The whole scheme looks a lot like a McKinsey kind of solution, analyze one problem at a time and solve it as if it was not connected to anything else. Then solve the side effects, and their side effects. If you still have problems, call us at 1-800-MCKINSEY and will be glad to come sort out your mess.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[goodmanj]

What's the "special arrangement for homeless people", and does it lock out the economic migrants I'm talking about?

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why there are many people that think the EU is going to rip itself apart if it doesn't improve immigration control with regards to income.

Honestly, I think the EU itself should manage basic income across the entire region when it comes to the point where more than 1/3 of the countries start getting behind it. It will happen, it is inevitable. It was already a good idea before it gained country-wide support in a few occasions, but now that most countries see the enormous benefits of it, it will grow in numbers very quickly.

Of course, David Cameron in the UK would be against that completely because he is a total chode and his shit party believe in punishing welfare systems, but his opinion doesn't matter and he will be gone forever in a few years. Thank fuck.
That prick has even tried to kill human rights and force slave labor, and because the EU prevented it, now he wants to leave the EU.
His party have destroyed the NHS in England and Wales, one of the best healthcare systems in the world, in the top 5, and the ones above it paid more per head in to their healthcare systems. Now in the NHS, there were 20 odd hospitals declaring emergencies JUST IN THE PAST MONTH.
And that Jeremy Hunt guy, the guy in control of health, he had the cheek to insult them and tell them they don't work hard enough, and don't work 10 days a week, while HE gets a pay rise!
The Tories will never be re-elected as long as they exist, after this term. They will dissolve before that happens.
Hell, at this rate, I honestly expect more rioting to happen. Tories always incite riots.
I just worry that people in the UK will be so retarded they will leave the EU over terrorism bullshit.

The EU is on the very boundaries of existing or collapsing. It needs some serious work done to help get its shit in check.
It can be done. But some countries won't be happy. ("countries", read: greedy leaders)

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it's not true. You have to have the same _rules_ regardless of nationality. But old age pension for instance can be a "saving scheme" where each year of paying tax contributes to the pension. Or have unemployment benefits linked to the length of the previous employment.

And yes, you can't discriminate on the nationality of family either. If you pay for children, you pay for them. Lack of creativity really. Pay for (local) daycare instead, pay for schools etcetera. Plenty of methods to keep money local.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[goodmanj]

This is why there are many people that think the EU is going to rip itself apart if it doesn't improve immigration control with regards to income.

Economic disparity between states is almost as bad in the U.S., but Minnesota doesn't complain that Mississippi is stealing all of its wealth -- well, not much anyway -- because we're all Americans. In the end it comes down to national identity, and where you draw the line between "us" and "them".

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

"Or you only give the benefits to Dutch nationals who've lived in the city longer than X years."

What are you saying? That people who aren't Dutch that live in the city aren't worthy of that money? Are you racist? That they don't have families to support? And the new arrivals, how are they supposed to survive? Are you saying that their families deserve to starve in the gutter? What about the refugees from war torn areas that arrive? Must they be the poor and destitute of your utopian city?

Take every argument used in the United States for why not helping illegal immigrants is evil, and use it in this case. Because that's exactly what you'll start to see as you expand these sorts of programs.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely true. This is public policy that must exist at a national level.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

After as little as 3 months (I believe), they have to treat any migrant from within the EU _exactly_ the same as a Dutch national resident for 50 (or whatever) yrs. The EU migrant can also claim local benefits for non-resident family back home, we know this because they already do it with UK benefits and it cannot be stopped because "EU rules".

If that is true, then as a citizen of the USA, I think, "holy fuck, the EU is doomed"

Re:Doesn't work locally

[goodmanj]

If that is true, then as a citizen of the USA, I think, "holy fuck, the EU is doomed"

Hey, I "migrated" from my home state to Massachusetts for work, and became eligible for Massachusetts benefits the day I signed a lease. What's the difference?

Re:Doesn't work locally

[judoguy]

You can do this across the EU or US. Doing it for one small European city is just madness.

How can this be done in the US when immigration is not merely allowed but even encouraged without regard to immigration law?

People flood into the US for the free stuff as it is.

Give more free stuff? Yow!

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

"Utrecht says it's cheaper to pay their 10,000 unemployed people a basic income than to administer a draconian welfare bureaucracy"

And the people administering the 'draconian welfare bureaucracy' (aka asking people who receive money to work for it first - like the rest of us have to) who used to be on a decent public sector wage, will be employed in the future by whom exactly?

Essentially what these 'progressive left wing' individuals are doing is sacking a load of process clerks so that they can fulfil their ideological obsession of giving €660 per month to millionaires.

Very progressive.

Re: Doesn't work locally

[hackertourist]

I'm sure registration as a local resident is just a matter of showing your ID card.

No. In the Netherlands, you're not a local resident and eligible for local benefits until you can prove you have a local residential address.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[T.E.D.]

If that is true, then as a citizen of the USA, I think, "holy fuck, the EU is doomed"

This isn't significantly different than the USA has with high-growth states dealing with "immigration" from poorer low-growth states (eg: Mississippi to Nevada). There are some residency requirements for things like in-state public school tuition, but for the most part if you are a citizen, you are a citizen.

If the emigrating state has much lower educational standards and health-care standards, and people from there speak funny their whole lives, and have religious and/or social views longtime residents don't agree with, well we just have to deal.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[ray-auch]

You say it's not true and then agree with me. Yes of course you can have fancy complex contributory benefits schemes with same rules for everyone, that is what the dutch already have - but the whole _point_ of a basic income scheme is to get away from that and have a _simple_ scheme effectively with no rules, or only very simple ones. Just that everyone gets paid, the same. Presumably they will pay the parents for kids as well, the only logical way to do it. That is essentially the same as child benefit in the UK, which suffers from the same problem - people can claim for kids who aren't even here, and who may not even exist and that cannot be checked without going through another country which is getting the money...

The essential problem is that "everyone", or every child, effectively becomes everyone in the whole of the EU, there cannot be any nationality requirement or (time of) residence requirement. All that would be needed would be an address in the city, which any EU national is entitled to. Twenty to a studio flat - no problem, it's not as though you are going to be there long, if at all, it's not as though anyone is going to check - the whole point of the system is to get rid of the cost of having people to check on the rules...

Re: Doesn't work locally

[HornWumpus]

How many register using the local mosque's address?

Re:Doesn't work locally

[HornWumpus]

When you're carrying 5 passports you have options in that situation.

Re: Doesn't work locally

[hackertourist]

The Dutch government has an extensive database of all addresses and their legal use (residential or otherwise). Anyone trying to claim their local mosque as their home address gets found out quickly.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[Anonymous Coward]

It helps compensate distortions in the labour market ( he might be valuable but we simply will not hire him ), and acts as an incentive to INITIATIVE and ENTREPRENEURSHIP (he can work but living solved he can... uh, write a movie script?).Then OF COURSE it all depends on speaking of PEOPLE or of terminally ill mental cases (morons, schizophrenics), who just cannot reach the labour market; I am thinking of homeless who become janitors once out of the soup kitchens, for instance. If they want to keep alive all idiots... LABOUR is not the only source of income, but without some financing NOTHING is a source of income. -

Re:Doesn't work locally

[dave420]

If they say "you can get basic income if you have participated in welfare for X years", they have to apply that to Dutch and non-Dutch alike. They can set that X to 0, 5, 10, 50 years if they wanted. That's the thing. Get a grip.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[dave420]

I don't even. No. How does that work? You still need to be registered. It seems from your post history that you are looking for any excuse to get angry at immigrants, yet you can't be bothered educating yourself as to why they are not a threat. Your laziness is dangerous.

Re:Doesn't work locally

[HornWumpus]

They are registered, 5 times under different names. You knew that, but for some reason think playing stupid is a plan.

Well, we used to talk about

[Anonymous Coward]

a leisure society, because it was obvious 40 years ago that with technological progress there simply won't be enough real things to *do* anymore.

It's too bad we need to frame everything in terms of " job insecurity has become the new normal".

There are simply limits to how much we can consume and how much we need to constantly shuffle around symbols ("money") in order to satisfy some primitive part of the human brain ("why isn't he working?"). There are limits to how abstract work can become, there are just so many ways to tattoo each other, cut each other's hair, prepare each other's food, and sell each other more symbols before you realize this isn't a life anymore.

I would love to not have to work anymore. I have a simple life, why can't I just read all day long if we have enough machinery and resources for everyone?

Re:Well, we used to talk about

[Anonymous Coward]

Not working is a sign that Hell has been destined for your soul. This is why people will try desperately to find work.

Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[yes-but-no]

Just giving money to all, will only raise cost of goods [inflation]. Once a landlord sees, the poor can afford more, he will jack up the rent. Also it leads to cheating -- grab the basic-income money from say a drunkard/drug addict. The underlying force at work is polarization of wealth.. income inequality. So a better solution is to provide the basic-needs of a human in a form which cannot be exchanged -- things like food-stamps, introduce similar ones for rent .. like rent-stamps, medical-stamps. And govt should ration these -- provide to each individual say monthly [great, if all are done electronically -- like a digital-benefits-wallet] and make transferable illegal. Might even make the stamps expire after say 3 months [so it's use it or lose it]

just doling out free money (cash or electronic) ..will just stabilize the society in a new equilibrium..where the amount of homeless and drunkards will stay the same.. just the extra money will be siphoned off by the rich.

Re:Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[fnj]

Sorry, giving out foodstamps, rent stamps, and other "use-assigned" benefits really is no different from giving out free money. All that happens is that a black market in stamps arises. There is no neat, tied-in-a-bow solution which allows personal choice.

One thing that WOULD work is giving out meals and housing, etc. in lieu of any kind of money or chits. Somebody with common sense would make the selections. No fine cuisine in palatial restaurants; no glitteringly expensive housing. And usage is AUTOMATICALLY regulated. You can only eat so much food with your own mouth. You can't occupy two separate housing units with your one body. When things get REALLY BAD (Great Depression, other hellish conditions), people do get the point and resort to this (soup kitchens, tent cities), but powerful interests keep them from seeing it as a policy which should always be in place.

But my idea is just inviting brainwashed stupid people from labeling me as a nut.

Re:Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[Orgasmatron]

The landlord doesn't "jack up the rent". One potential tenant will want it more, and offer more for it. Rents rising is a natural and inavoidable consequence of more money in the system.

You haven't ever wondered why things with the fastest increasing costs are the things with the most "free" money available? (Education and medicine, in case anyone was wondering.)

Re:Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[Anonymous Coward]

[yes-but-no here ..some reason it is posting me as AC]

yes, I see your point. Black market will surely arise; just that it may dampen the effect of the money quickly vanishing into the hands of the rich/1%/capital-or-house owners. Some truly needy may not sell the stamps in black market. Also since it should be made illegal, they may also fear or don't want to be harassed by the police.

When you say 'give out food/shelter'.. how will this be done? the moment the owner realizes the poor guy has extra money in pocket (he got thru' the basic-income), he is going to jack up the price. Unless there is pure supply-demand forces at work, efficient market with no anti-competitive behavior, this won't solve the problem. Only if the seller is govt and is not interested in jacking up the price.
Why housing is expensive is because, the owners of the good, didn't want to glut the market with supply. So they will keep the amount of nice/affordable rental places artificially low.. it may not be obvious..but if you find the trail of the money/power/laws, it is evident. Otherwise, the real cost of building 4 walls and putting a roof is hardly anything.

Re:Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[Anonymous Coward]

And the problem with "stamps" and supplying basic needs directly boils down to administration. You have to administer the products of the program (e.g. send out the stamps and make a list of eligible items for purchase). You also face political pressure to nominally reduce fraud: ensure only eligible people receive the stamps or benefits (how is eligible defined), only eligible products are purchased, that the stamps or extra meals are not traded for money, etc., etc., etc.

It's the fraud prevention and administrative costs that eat up these systems. They become more draconian over time, which increases costs of administration. There is always a level of fraud--it's unavoidable since the prevention and detection units are cost prohibitive--and there's always citizens disgruntled as a result.

The promise of a direct payment basic income is that it eliminates most of the administrative functions. You no longer have separate administrations for each product or "stamp", it's all one unit. And fraud is simply identifying citizens versus non-citizens, which may be a shared cost with other government functions. If thought through it's logical conclusions, a basic income replaces all forms of stamps or and direct product benefits. You buy your own food, housing, day care, etc. I think medical costs are a different beast (and most national health care systems are sufficient).

I guess you have to trust that all citizens will use the basic income to actually purchase their needs instead of blowing it on useless things (e.g. alcohol, smokes, drugs, elaborate trinkets, etc). I also think something should be provided for children, but that gets into much the same issues as "welfare babies" (more babies is more income in the household). My only thought towards regulating that is for minors to participate with an "approved" list of items (e.g. food, school supplies, tuition, etc.) or give a lump sum benefit at age of maturity to get them started in life.

Re:Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[Whorhay]

For food you could run a soup kitchen/caffeteria. Beneficiaries can simply show up to eat their free meal and leave. Although this has holes as well, legitimate beneficiaries could sell their access to someone else. Housing could be handled in the same kind of way, you show up and are directed to a cot for the night. Again though it's still possible to defraud this system by selling your spot for the night.

All the possibilities for fraud along with the cost of fighting that, are one of the driving arguments for a basic income. It may well simply be cheaper to society to give everyone an allowance, whether they need it or not. There would be considerable savings in the cost of administering benefits and defending against fraud.

Yes, the costs of some things might rise in some or all markets a bit. This isn't really the end of the world though and would possibly be a good thing. Right now for instance we actually have a sizable glut in the housing market. Some specific markets are expensive while others are remarkably cheap. If we eliminated all the government subsidies for housing and the behemoth administration for it and just gave every citizen a monthly check you might start seeing people move to parts of the country that have ample cheap housing.

Re:Give food-stamps, rent-stamps, not money

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of hundred years ago your currency didn't exist. Currencies tend to devalue 99% over longer periods like 100 years, and simply vanish or become converted into a new currency - often a currency with a similar sounding name. There is no inherent wealth in currency, and it'll all go away over the longer run. As humans, we just don't tend to notice the exponential devaluation, because our perspectives are very limited and small.

What you are suggesting is historically called prison or the "poor house". It's been tried before many times. I'd suggest you open your mind just a bit.

Surviving ones society shouldn't be called welfare

[Anonymous Coward]

Surviving ones society shouldn't be called "welfare" (when no welfare is to be had), so no wonder that this idea of a basic income shows up.

Welfare is nice, if you can get it, but the welfare state is a lie, because the state doesn't give a crap about you, and you probably have no rights as such to a single coin.

Wealth re-distribution

[Alwin Henseler]

That's overlooking at least one thing: research has shown that when income inequality is kept in bounds, everybody gets happier. Including the rich folks.

Some difference is okay. It motivates people to go out & earn money by producing stuff, or provide useful services.

Too much difference just causes trouble. Poor folks who are struggling every day to make ends meet, rich folks who have waaaayy more than their fair share of the overall wealth. Enjoying that share less than the poor folks would enjoy it if distributed more equally. Take rich <-> poor differences too far, and you get riots in the streets or even all-out war. Which makes everybody worse off. Including the rich folks.

This holds both for differences between people in one country, as for between countries as a whole.

Secondly: as the poor folks become richer, their increased buying power adds new customers to the economy. We're seeing that right now with countries like China. They used to be mostly poor people who scraped a living by producing goods for western countries. In return, their average wealth / middle class has grown, making them potential buyers for a lot of western countries' products. Win-win.

Re:Wealth re-distribution

[Lennie]

I mostly agree.

But for now the rich are still doing fine.

This is probably because of improvements of technology and most of the money is just circulating in the finance sector instead of the real economy:

http://andrewmcafee.org/2012/1...

My guess is, the reason the economy is in a slum is exactly because of the medium incomes aren't doing well.

"Too Old"

[voss]

We get that here in America where people get in a tiff because their public school or charity wont accept their "kind donation" of
an XP machine and tube monitor.

Re:"Too Old"

[Oligonicella]

Which is worse than no machine or monitor how?

Re:"Too Old"

[TheRaven64]

Because no machine is probably not going to catch fire and burn the building down. Because no machine is not likely to become infected with malware and steal money from the people who use it for email or Internet banking. Because no machine doesn't cost electricity to run and employee time to maintain. Because no machine doesn't cause people who want to use it to expect it to actually work and complain that it's a pile of crap.

Re:"Too Old"

[Anonymous Coward]

Incompatibility.

Today's software is horribly bloated for the old boxes.

Maintaining old hardware is difficult. Replace parts are hard to find and expensive.

Re: "Too Old"

[Ginger Unicorn]

In that it's an obsolete pile of trash taking up space and doing nothing useful that will cost the school money to dispose of. Even if they can make do with running ancient software or some modern software excruciatingly slowly, this old gear is likely to fail very soon, then all of a sudden you're shelling out for disposal costs. Accepting people's garbage is almost always a false economy. They threw it out for a reason.

Levels are not sustainable

[teg]

In Western Europe, there are many government handouts that will replace all or part of your income. Maternity leave, unemployment benefits, retirement benefits, sick leave, disability benefits etc. These are the lion's share of the payouts that the basic income will replace... social benefits to the poor are dwarfed by these.

These are typically tied to what you have been earning, either as a full compensation or partyly/capped. If all of these were to be replaced by basic income, the levels would be dramatically decreased - and losing your job, getting a child or being sick would imply severe consequences.

Re:Levels are not sustainable

[Blaskowicz]

That's an interesting question, compared to some other rants there. Here in France disability is shit pay so not much change, or just leave an additional pittance for disability.
There is already an actual small income given to all parents that have children (depending on number, except if you have only one, older than three years..) : allocations familiales. Basic income proposals seem to give quite more, like half an adult's basic income, per children.

Now for the rest that's a real problem, although I don't understand much why currently someone who has not worked for 6 monthes gets to earn twice or more (or much more) from unemployment than a long term unemployed does. But it's somewhat fair I guess.
But well, there are solutions :
- savings (even someone on basic only may save a few % of income)
- buying supplemental private insurance. It already exists. Similarly, there's already insurance in addition to universal healthcare that most everyone has to get anyway (for things like vision glasses, dental work deemed not "vital", some medicine or part of their cost..)
- getting mortgage payments and such postponed in whole or part for three monthes, six monthes etc. (that's some kind of insurance and if I have to guess, it exists?)
- employer benefits such as aforementioned insurance, maternity leave etc. [sick leave is paid by healthcare here and the employer may pay some more above that minimum]

Another post said that employers would have hard time retaining employees but with such "additional" benefits, they can! or what about such things as pay increases with seniority. By this point I'm not being very original.
For dead end jobs without those things well the "underclass" working them can quit them, or can work them a bit if they didn't work at all before, and the security from basic income will be appreciated more than the current system.

Re:Levels are not sustainable

[teg]

You could argue that today's system is just that - insurance, although a mandatory one. And when you pay more, you get more if you need it - e.g. I pay a lot of taxes, but if I get sick or an accident occurs, I get unemployed etc, I get back for in proportion to what I've paid. Insurance and health also seems to be a problematic match - the US pays a lot more in % of GDP than anyone else, despite many not being covered and getting rather poor results. The market seems to deviate too much from a perfect market that we get the benefits.

One very good argument for basic income, is that with various benefits and services being priced based on your income you'll have less incentive to earn more as the net income increase can be rather low (or in some cases, even negative).

So let me get this straight....

[codeButcher]

We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that.

So let me get this straight.... On the one hand, you have people that are not employed (and thus not earning an income). On the other hand, you do not have enough employees to manage the handing out of dole. Need, let me introduce you to Opportunity. Have you ever heard about the adage of "killing two birds with one stone"?

It could of course be that said unemployed people are not suitable even to become civil servants... in which case I expect useless dole-seekers soon outnumbering tax payers in your city. Wait, I already expect that.

Re:So let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of you are missing the point: Companies are at all time high profits while salaries are at all time lows. If this continues, of course the economy is gonna tank.

They want you to sell your ownership. Period.

Why would anyone hire people in such a climate if they can find a more efficient solution? It's basically consequences of an unsustainable race to the bottom.

Re:So let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another interesting fact: I am from the Netherlands and have experienced the work-for-dole program, and these work projects all used to be normal minimum-wage jobs. So where it used to be the case that a company would hire somebody, they now tell a quango ‘here, we've got some work for your unemployed people’. Often people end up doing the same work after losing their job as they did before, they just get less money, and they get it from the government = the taxpayer instead of their boss.

Re:Financing ISIS terrorists

[jareth-0205]

It must take actual talent and effort to write a post that is 100% bullshit. Like to back up your claims with some evidence there?

Oh Nooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, they didn't ask US first.

Do gooders indulge themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called communism. It's a short walk to deciding what the people should be doing for that money and as the amount of 'entitlement' goes up so will the dissatisfaction from those who do work until people withdraw their labour. Government has no track record for this sort of thing, socialists go home and polish your do gooder badges cos it'll end up the same way as it always does. People need to realise that it is not the free market that has a problem it is the fiat money system and unchecked printing of money that leads to this situation, always has been and always will be.

Re:Do gooders indulge themselves

[nctritech]

No, it is not as you describe. The ENTIRE POINT of "basic income" is that it is a flat amount given to all people, period.

Food and shelter is a basic human right

[Morgaine]

Excepting Sunlight and Loss... the Earth is a closed system.

That's like saying "Except for a few billion people, the Earth is unpopulated." The statement makes no sense because the alleged "exception" shows that the exact opposite is true. And in the case of processes on Earth, the Sun's energy input to the planet is so colossal that it determines everything else, including all resources for human activity. As a consequence, the Earth is not a closed system.

That aside, our activities on the planet are all about raising human civilization out of the barbarism that once required human labour for survival. We're well past those primitive conditions now, and basic food and shelter has become a fundamental human right in civilized countries. That's why we have social safety nets, so that the less fortunate don't starve or die of cold in the streets. A basic income for all is merely the next step in this evolution of civilization in an intelligent social species.

Starting with Europe where we have many programmes devoted to raising quality of life and improving social conditions, this is clearly one of the markers on the road ahead.

You get what you pay for.

[jcr]

Give people money for doing fuck-all, and you'll get a lot more people doing fuck-all.

-jcr

Re:You get what you pay for.

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to them getting a job they don't want and doing fuck-all there, hurting a company in the process?

Re:You get what you pay for.

[nctritech4738]

This takes away welfare and replaces it with a flat payment to all people regardless of situation. It will actually decrease the amount of money the welfare system costs due to the massive overhead being eliminated. It also forces employers to treat employees better since they won't be wage slaves anymore, and anyone who would "do fuck-all" because of BI probably isn't a person you want trying to do a job in the first place. Most normal people want more than the basics, and they'd still need to get a job to have that, so your statement doesn't really make sense.

Re:You get what you pay for.

[Cederic]

As one of the people that would be helping fund a basic income, I'm generally in favour.

As you say, a lot of cost and bureaucracy would disappear, so it's likely to be cost neutral at worse. On the flipside, I'd also get it, so I'd actually finally be getting a small return on the vast sums I hand over to governmental bodies.

Even people on above median incomes would benefit. What's not to like?

(Obviously I'm disregarding societal and subsequent economic impacts from behavioural changes induced by giving everybody financial security).

Re:You get what you pay for.

[jcr]

Giving welfare to everybody isn't taking away welfare, sparky. It's expanding it. Do try to keep up, will you?

-jcr

Re:You get what you pay for.

[HornWumpus]

Fair enough. We'll consider it once the Rural Electrification program Bureaucracy disappears.

Bureaucracies are self perpetuating. They need to be nuked from orbit or they go on forever.

Re:You get what you pay for.

[nctritech4738]

Define "expanding." If you mean that (in raw numbers) more people will receive some form of welfare, then you are certainly correct since there are currently citizens who don't and BI gives the same exact size of welfare check to all of them at once. If you mean that more welfare money will be issued to people, that's not easily proven correct and the estimates I've seen for the cost of BI tend to float around the existing amount of the existing welfare systems that would be eliminated. If you mean that more welfare programs would exist, you're dead wrong because BI replaces the majority of existing programs with a welfare system that by its nature cannot be "unfair" in its disbursements.

If you're thinking "all the existing welfare programs will stick around and BI will just be added on top as yet another program" then you're missing that the entire idea of basic income is replacing the welfare patchwork with a fair, simple system of keeping people from "falling off a financial cliff." It is NOT supposed to be added to existing programs.

It's not basic income

[johannesg]

"Basic income" is understood as paying _everyone_ the same amount each month. This scheme is only for a small, select group of claimants (and indeed, I read the article). I have a bunch of questions about it:

1. How will participants be selected? The article gives the impression that people will be selected based on how "difficult" they are; it mentions people that walk out of jobs. Wouldn't this scheme act as a reward for anti-social behaviour?
2. One of the tenets of basic income is that it's cheaper because no other subsidies are required. Will that be the case, or will other subsidies remain in place? Note that such subsidies are largely derived from national law and cannot be rescinded by the city.
3. Will participants pay income tax (38%, in that bracket), or are they cut free from the system entirely?
4. Doesn't this amount to society writing these people off? "Here's some money, please don't bother us again"?
5. What's to stop this system from ballooning to completely unmanageable proportions, as more and more people flow in but nobody ever leaves?

Re:It's not basic income

[judoguy]

5. What's to stop this system from ballooning to completely unmanageable proportions, as more and more people flow in but nobody ever leaves?

Nothing. Don't feed the bears.

Re:It's not basic income

[Reziac]

"You don't come here to hunt, do you."

Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic income"

[burbilog]

Amazing. Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic income": if it is going to be implemented, then the next thing ANY politician is going to do is to advertize for increasing it. Sure way into the office, appeals to 99% of people. Voting against it would be suicide for any politician. So, within a very short amount of time basic income will grow beyond any reasonable control and over budget. It's going to be like recent Greece crisis, but much, much worse.

Lots and lots of words...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple, in fact:

1 - everything has an optimal point: it's the age old "in medio stat virtus" proverb -- virtue is in the middle.
        Incentives are no exception to that:
        * give a lot of money -- people stop working;
        * don't give any money -- people stop working.

2 - if you think farming is bad because 70% of the seeds are bad? Fine, don't sow.
          Tell me later how did it work for you when harvest time comes.

Why was this modded flamebait?

[walterbyrd]

The poster is clearly sincere.

Re:Why was this modded flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

This what happens when you have a site full of left leaning brainwashed 20 somethings who are scared of the truth and try to suppress anyone who states it.

Re:Why was this modded flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

And some COWARDS who are AFRAID of WORDS, flagged and reported it and it got CENSORED off of here... what fucking BABIES y'all are.

tough benefits regimes penalize work minimum wage

[Joe_Dragon]

tough benefits regimes penalize work in some case just a higher minimum wage has forced people to cut hours or lose there disability health insurance plans with a work place that can't pay for there own health insurance plans.

Re:Financing ISIS terrorists

[fnj]

In just Sweden, 20 000 fighters already disappeared in thin air.

Which is exactly where they should end up. Sounds good to me.

some from of minimum wage is needed to stop abuse

[Joe_Dragon]

some from of minimum wage is needed to stop worker abuse.

Workers under X wage should not be forced to pay for uniforms, or other items which are considered to be primarily for the benefit or convenience of the employer.

Re:Financing ISIS terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

"It must take actual talent and effort to write a post that is 100% bullshit."

Well you would know.

"Like to back up your claims with some evidence there?"

If he lives there I imagine he has all the evidence he needs. Unlike yet another liberal useful idiot like you.

Freelance + Basic Income

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically just say you're unemployed and just do a freelance work so you can double dip.

Nonsense

[zmooc]

This is nonsense. What Utrecht and Nijmegen are doing is simple welfare reform. It has absolutely nothing to do with basic income. I don't get how The Guardian failed to see that. Why these politicians keep calling it "basic income" is completely beyond me.

For real basic income, look at Finland; they're actually doing it.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

The Finns are not doing it. They are doing exactly the same as the Dutch - reforming the welfare system at a very low level to replace the myriad of income support schemes they currently have.

It's the same argument again - cheaper. Well it can only be cheaper if you sack people currently doing the unemployment processing - so that you can hand out money to millionaires.

The whole idea is bonkers ideology gone mad.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm not mistaken the Finns are also replacing the income tax exemption with their basic income, making it apply to everyone, effectively terminating welfare. But I might be wrong. And, no, the whole idea is not bonkers as long as you fix the funding. We could all be shareholders of planet earth receiving dividend if we didn't just freely give away the entire planet like we do today. It can be done; just get the planet back and start renting it out. Get the atmosphere back and start taxing CO2 dumping. Etc. etc. And it must be done before automation gets to the level that some groups of people have no marketable skill left that cannot be done better by a robot/computer. And we're approaching that point very rapidly.

Re:Nonsense

[NewYork]

> For real basic income, look at Finland; they're actually doing it.

http://qz.com/566702/finland-p...

Seems an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

A little while ago I did some research on the amount of money spent on distributing and policing employment insurance in Canada. I found out that the government could save money by simply paying every person living below the poverty line (not every family, every person) $5,000 per year. So if you had a family of three that claimed less than $25,000 on their income taxes, they could be given $15,000 with no questions asked. This would cost less than the current EI scheme and require much less red tape.

It seems like a no-brainer. Government saves money, citizens are better off and it isn't enough money to discourage people from going out and getting jobs to improve their standard of living. Under the current system a person on EI can make up to around $4,000 per month to stay home and do nothing for a year. So which approach do you think makes more sense?

Re:Seems an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking moron.

Sounds like you have ignorant planners

[BitZtream]

I'm going to ignore the financial and resource related reasons why this won't work and simple focus on the ignorance of the politicians involved.

We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.

In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,' Westerveld said, 'but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a "basic income."'

So you have 10k people that don't have a job ... and need to have a job ... and you're paying them 88m ... and then employing more people ... at 15m ... to handle paying the first group?

Why the fuck don't you make some of the people drawing your handouts work for the system by providing those services. You just employed several people and cut 15m off the top.

Of course in reality whats going to happen is that the 15m will increase because its going to take more bureaucracy to deal with the massive amount of lazy fucks that immigrate toy our city with the intention of never doing shit and getting the free ride.so instead of paying a little more than 100m ... you're going to pay multiple times that to deal with your new 'citizens'

And you're not even smart enough to use the people who need jobs in an intelligent way? You guys are fucked.

Re:Sounds like you have ignorant planners

[Areyoukiddingme]

Why the fuck don't you make some of the people drawing your handouts work for the system by providing those services. You just employed several people and cut 15m off the top.

Because they can't. There are existing national laws that say that in order for those people to be employed as civil servants, the total cost must be £15 million. It's illegal to pay less. The combination of mandatory salaries and capped maximum case loads demands it.

The city is not offering a basic income. They're trying to get around the maximum case load cap. They're essentially doing an end-run around the law in order to try to increase efficiency. Branding it "basic income" is a sleight of hand to try to get away with it. They may or may not succeed, but regardless, they won't create anything like a basic income in the process.

There are two issues here

[aron1231]

There are two issues here. The first is that of freeloading. I'm sure it has been touched on, but a basic income encourages free loading, or discourages productivity, or both. That being said, those who are in poverty and don't have their basic needs met are much more likely to commit crimes. Meeting those basic needs is not only humane, it is stabilizing. The trick is to still encourage productivity to the greatest extent possible while also assisting those who need it.

The second issue is job growth (or, in reality, job shrinkage). The earth's population is growing exponentially. While, at the same time, technological advances are continually and increasingly automating processes, to the point that we don't need people for many of the jobs we used to need them for in the past. At some point, there simply won't be enough jobs for people that want jobs. Its inevitable, aside from a massive reduction in population or a massive technological regression. The benefits of these technological advances shouldn't only benefit a few people (at the expense of the people who now no longer have jobs) - everyone should benefit, including the displaced workers. A basic income could be a solution to this problem.

The issue is much more complex than can be discussed in a couple paragraphs, but the two issues above are a summary of the most pressing issues that currently NEED to be resolved, or civil unrest is a certainty.

NO NO NO!

[p51d007]

This destroys the basic human need to "do better". Look at over 50 years of welfare in the USA and you can see "giving" people money to exist, does nothing but promote a segment of society to become BUMS, gang members, "baby daddies/momma, drug users etc. They have no purpose in life! The USA, before it was a nation, experimented with the communial, all for one life and the settlers who first came to the North American continent just about starved to death. Only the hard workers actually worked, only to have the fruits of their labor, taken from them, for the entire settlement, which means that there was not enough to go around. After seeing that didn't work, they carved out sections of land, and left each person or family to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, using the barter system, one mans labor had purpose. You want to go down that path, so be it, but speaking for a person in the USA, DON'T DO IT! Once it starts, the government will spend more and more, from the producers, to give it to the non producers. "Oh, but it is only an income". Yep, and the USA's social security, started out "only" as an old age pension fund. Then they added this, added that and NOW it is nothing more than a vote buying gimmick. Keep a segment of the population DEPENDENT on government, to guarantee they will continue to vote for one segment of government, the group that gives them free stuff. Once you reach close to 50% of the population under government dependence of them, the nation is ruined.

Re:NO NO NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic income TAKES AWAY existing welfare programs including Social Security and replaces them with a system that the "bums" you speak of can no longer "game." As more jobs are automated away and more of the population can't obtain gainful employment (you can't get a job that doesn't exist) there will be no choice for our societies but to implement basic income. The "useless" people you're talking about will exist regardless of any "help" they receive to get them out of the gutter.

Some people will blow their basic income on drugs and there's nothing that can be done to stop that, but they're already (in the US at least) collecting disability checks, food stamps, WIC, Section 8 housing, and "Obamaphones."

Basic income TAKES AWAY their combo package of disability checks, food stamps, WIC, Section 8, and Obamaphones, and REPLACES all of those with one flat check that is no bigger than the check you and I would also receive. Your "bums" would lose the fat government payouts that enable them to live more comfortably than gainfully employed lower-class people and instead be given only enough to pay for cheap rent, food, water, and MAYBE some personal needs. If they want to get cable TV, they'll have to get a job.

Do you REALLY have a problem with taking money away from "BUMS, gang members, baby daddies/momma, drug users etc." and giving it to other people that are actually doing something productive?

Re:NO NO NO!

[david_thornley]

Last I checked (and it was some time ago), the average stay on welfare was three years. That means that the typical welfare recipient would have problems and collect welfare while getting on her feet again, and leave the system.

Your history and economics and sociology also appear to be without basis, and stuff you or someone you listened to made up to suit your prejudices.

Re:some from of minimum wage is needed to stop abu

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't read the post you replied to. But wanted to reply to you, and comment in part on the post you replied to. Oh well, here I go...

I agree. Employees earning less than a certain wage shouldn't be held responsible for paying for their own uniform. I think a good compromise, if the uniform is going to be given to said employee (and not to be returned to said employer once the employee leaves) would be to have it become the employee's property after 1000 hours of work.

Something like...
If employee's wage is less than $15/hour (or $30k/year for salaried), then the employer is responsible for the uniform. If the employee is working more than 20 hours per week, then it might be best to require two uniforms to be provided (probably just a shirt since pants are generic). Reason: laundry
After an employee has worked over 1000 hours, the uniform becomes the employee's property. Even if the two uniforms were $100, this is like 10 cents an hour for the cost.

As for the basic income idea...
Just like Medicaid was expanded to those under 138% or so of the poverty level, in most states. I would propose that Social Security is expanded to all citizens and permanent residents (Green card). $500/adult/month and $250/child/month. Adult is 22+. Basing that age on the 22+ for S.N.A.P. If SNAP is eliminated, increase the per person per month amounts by $200.

Assuming 300 million eligible.
75 million children. 75 million seniors. 150 million other. Really rough estimates.
Seniors are probably covered already. And this isn't an addition to those on Social Security. This is a MINIMUM.
So, we assume 225 million would be receiving this. 75 million at $250/child/month is $225 billion. For 150 million at $500/adult/month, it's $900 billion. Shouldn't be more than $1.125 trillion.

Cover the cost with higher taxes. Also, I'd have a 10% tax on AGI. Perhaps (AGI - $2000) * 0.10 = UBI tax. UBI being Universal Basic Income. For a single person, they'd get $6k in this expansion, but would break even at $60k probably.

Not Holland

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantic Man here, Neither Utrecht nor Nijmegen are in Holland. Humorously, Utrecht is in Utrecht. Although all of them are Dutch and in the Netherlands.

Re:Not Holland

[Cederic]

The Dutch live in Holland and call it Nederland, which literally translates as either Netherlands or The Netherlands (and I don't really care which).

Within Holland there's a region the Dutch also call Holland. That people outside of Holland call Nederland Holland means that unless you live in Holland Utrecht is indeed in Holland, although I accept that if you live in Holland then Utrecht is probably not in Holland unless you're speaking with someone that does not live in Holland.

See also : holland.com

Re:Not Holland

[dave420]

The Netherlands (meaning "lower countries") is a country made up of 12 provinces. Two of these provinces contain the word "Holland" - North Holland and South Holland. Utrecht is in neither. Some people outside the Netherlands call the Netherlands Holland, just as some outside Britain call Britain England. Them doing so doesn't make it right, and a tourism domain isn't exactly evidence you are right, just that people often get it wrong, as you have.

Not enough work?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not enough work"? If you cannot figure out a way to bring value to the table, what gives you the right to take food off of MY table? (raise my taxes).
What gives you the moral superiority to TAKE MY money at the point of the IRS gun? Why do you deserve to eat?
I work hard for over 40 hrs a week to pay for my family to eat. I PAY more than I get. Why should I feed YOU?
Stop sitting on your ass and spitting out babies!
I give to charities, but they usually have some standards of whom they help.
The government has less and less standards and gives more and more money to those that can barely vote.
Explain why YOU deserve to take food from MY table.

Re:Not enough work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nicely said. I too await an answer.

Re:Not enough work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreeing not to kill you so that I can take all your food.

I'm fine with it, but are YOU?

[argStyopa]

I hear lots of groundswell being generated around 'basic income' systems re the OP and in Finland. I'm a very politically conservative person, so it might surprise you that I'm strongly in favor of them. For those liberal-minded folks who claim to be in favor, I suspect that you haven't REALLY thought through the consequences?

A "basic income" system is generally posited as a more humane and efficient way to deliver services to poor people, rather than a massive, expensive, Byzantine, rules-laden (and thus easily exploitable) bureaucracy. So far, so good.

However, the flip side of delivering funds in this NEW way is stopping them the OLD way. Otherwise, what's the point (except if the real intent is letting people double dip by getting a basic income AND STILL having the whole welfare state remain in place)?

So these poor folks would ostensibly get a basic, living income in lieu of services.
That means NOBODY is controlling these funds except them. We're writing them a check and saying "ok, take care of yourself!"
All the other services that are specific or constrained to be as idiot-proof and un-gameable as possible - public health, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, cheap school food for poor kids, whatever - GONE.

Haven't these people already more or less proven that they can't do this by the very fact that they're poor?

Is the homeless crackhead on the street going to take that 'basic income' payment and get an apartment? Is he going to go get treatment or even basic medical care? Food? Clothing?

I'm *perfectly* fine with people getting a basic income, and then living (or not) with the consequences of their choices with that money.

I suspect that most people really, in fact, aren't. Most are likely assuming (deliberately or no) that the 'basic income' would just be another added benefit program to all the ones that exist today. In which case, let's make sure we're discussing it in THAT context - simply a giant new payout of funds - and then STILL ask the question: ok, if we don't feel that these people would responsibly spend those funds in my more draconian model, why are we assuming that they would in ANY model?

Re:I'm fine with it, but are YOU?

[Anonymous Coward]

"All the other services that are specific or constrained to be as idiot-proof and un-gameable as possible - public health, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, cheap school food for poor kids"

Those services are NOT "idiot-proof and un-gameable" by any means. In fact, they're so messed up today BECAUSE they're gamed so hard. People in legitimate need go through HELL to try to get these services because scummy people who may or may not have a legitimate need will put out an astonishing amount of hard work and/or lying through their teeth to get on those government doles and milk them for all they're worth.

The homeless crackhead may very well stay a homeless crackhead, but that's not going to change regardless of how money and services are structured. The benefit to basic income is that the people who currently get to "game the system" can't do that anymore because stripping existing welfare systems and instead receiving a flat check per person per month is much harder (but not impossible) to game. There is no "consideration of need" or "evaluation" so there is close to zero subjective flexibility with which to suck more milk out of the federal teat. If they spend their check on crack, I hope it's got a lot of fiber and comes with a free cardboard box to live in.

Basic income piled on top of existing welfare programs is absolutely not a sustainable option in any way and merits no real discussion. Anyone who thinks it is supposed to be tacked onto the pile of existing welfare systems is incorrect in their understanding.

Border and Import Restrictions

[Baldrson]

Autarky enabled by unconditional basic income (aka "citizens dividend") promotes more global socioeconomic resilience than does global interdependence. This happens because the governments distributing the funds are faced with two very practical problems: Keeping the world's population from invading their territory and keeping the economic stimulus from draining, almost immediately, out of the country to pay for cheaper goods and services offered abroad. Both of these require much stronger border controls. By having a much larger number of jurisdictions with much stronger border controls, the degree to which disruptions can propagate is curtailed and the degree to which environmental impacts can be externalized via jurisdictional arbitrage is likewise curtailed.

All in all, this is a great strategic move not just for particular nations, but as a global trend.

Doesn't work at all

[Solandri]

A basic income, and attempts to make a minimum wage into a livable wage, suffer from the same problem - an assumption that money has a fixed value.

Money doesn't have a fixed value. Its value is the sum total of all the productivity of your citizens, divided by (roughly speaking) the sum total of how much everyone is paid. Consequently, an increase in real income (amount of stuff you can buy with your income, not the amount of money you're paid) depends entirely on increasing the average productivity of your citizens.

If you try to increase income by just increasing the amount people are paid, without a corresponding increase in productivity, you're just increasing the denominator. A fixed amount of productivity is now represented by a greater amount of income. Or in other words, the price of staple goods and services will rise to match your legislation mandating increased wages. Think about it. If the government announced that on Jan 1, everyone's income and savings would be increased 100x, would that really turn everyone into millionaires? No, prices would just rise 100x to match, and you would be able to afford to buy exactly what you can now. The only change would be that the denomination of your bills would have a couple more zeroes on it.

That's not to say these programs are useless. They're essentially wealth redistribution, which can be handy to counter forces leading to income inequality (e.g. the stratospheric pay of CEOs, though IMHO these these are better tackled directly). And as temporary income (e.g. unemployment pay) they can help increase economic stability. But a system built entirely upon their premise will simply see prices rise until it's no longer a livable wage.

The only way to avoid that fate, the only way for this to actually work, is if your average productivity is sufficiently high enough that a livable wage constitutes a small fraction of the mean productivity. Small enough to basically be roundoff error so (1) those doing more productive work don't really notice nor care and the incentive to do more productive work remains, and (2) the excess income it generates isn't enough to cause a large rise in prices. But considering the GDP per capita of the U.S. (one of the wealthier nations) is only around $55k/yr, a modest livable wage of say $20k/yr is a substantial fraction of that average. A 5:1 or 10:1 ratio is about where I think it would start to have a shot of working. To reach that point, you'd first need to massively increase average productivity, which is why this sort of thing works in futuristic settings like Star Trek. But that sort of massive productivity increase relies upon using cheap energy to leverage each individual's work to multiply their productivity. And ironically the people advocating a livable wage are often the very same people advocating more expensive energy and a throwback to older inefficient production methods like growing your own food in a garden.

Anyways, never forget that real wealth, real income increases come only from increased productivity. It's not something you can legislate by mandating higher incomes. People have to actually go out there and do more work, or figure out more efficient ways of doing the same thing with less work (and use the time that frees up to do more different work).

Re:Doesn't work at all

[Pfhorrest]

Money doesn't have a fixed value. Its value is the sum total of all the productivity of your citizens, divided by (roughly speaking) the sum total of how much everyone is paid. Consequently, an increase in real income (amount of stuff you can buy with your income, not the amount of money you're paid) depends entirely on increasing the average productivity of your citizens.

But the amount of stuff that gets bought varied with the distribution of that income. If the sum total of how much everyone is paid is concentrated in few hands, much less of it will get spent than if it was spread out across many hands. The difference between those two figures, how much that money could be buying and how much it does actually buy, is a measure of the inefficiency of the economy due to a few people parasitizing the economy at the expense of the rest of the people.

There is also marginal utility to consider, which is really the same thing in different terms. Your millionth dollar is worth less, to you, than your second dollar was worth, to you. Given the same amount of dollars in circulation, and the same productive activity, you can increase the actual value held throughout society by taking someone's millionth dollar and giving someone else a second dollar; the loss felt by the first person is less than the gain felt by the second.

Re:Doesn't work at all

[goodmanj]

You're falling into the trap of assuming your opposition is naive rather than trying to actually understand their position.

That's not to say these programs are useless. They're essentially wealth redistribution, which can be handy to counter forces leading to income inequality

That's not a handy side benefit, that's the whole damned point. Some of the folks pushing mandatory minimum wage laws and basic income requirements have taken Econ 101, they know that transferring money to the poor will raise prices. But the net cost will be borne by the middle and upper classes. (A little too much the middle class for my taste, but Robin Hooding ain't easy.)

the only way for this to actually work, is if your average productivity is sufficiently high enough that a livable wage constitutes a small fraction of the mean productivity. considering the GDP per capita of the U.S. (one of the wealthier nations) is only around $55k/yr, a modest livable wage of say $20k/yr is a substantial fraction of that average. A 5:1 or 10:1 ratio is about where I think it would start to have a shot of working.

The U.S.'s GDP per *capita* is $55k/yr, but we're not paying basic income to children, and retirees already have one. What matters is the U.S.'s GDP per *worker*, which is $115k per person -- that's above the 5:1 ratio you think might be feasible. So according to your criterion (which, I should mention, is entirely pulled out of your ass), it's worth giving basic income a shot.

Re:Doesn't work at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you think you're smart by pointing out that money doesn't have a fixed value. What you fail to realize is what actually fixes the value which is the big banks not just in this country but around the world.

People weren't laid off leading to the new great depression. People were laid off because mortgage investors kept trading bad loans until the buck finally fell. This lead to banks foreclosing on assets to recoup losses which lead to a freeze on business lending which froze business growth which killed job growth. So why were banks investing in bad loans? Why were people taking out bad loans? A lot of the answer lays in the fact that while incomes have risen for the very rich they have been stagnant for the rest of the population. So the rich look for new ways to extract blood from the turnip leading to predatory loans preying on the idea of the American dream for people that clearly couldn't afford it. Now the victims should have known better but how can someone making $40k/year afford a $200k mortgage, why would they have even been approved?

Blame a lot of this on the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act which repealed the Glass–Steagall which protected everyone from the collusion of the different types of banking we have today. This has a lot to do with why we now have credit card interest rates at almost 30% interest for a lot of people. A rate that used to be considered not just illegal but also highly immoral.

Now let's also consider that you're completely wrong about raising the minimum wage as you're statement only applies if you raise it too high instead of adjusting for inflation which is what people are attempting to do. There is no evidence to support your claim. Raising minimum wage does not increase the cost of everything else. You might also keep in mind that someone making a living wage is more productive in the work place. A lot of teachers do a crappy job because they are also waiting tables or bartending to make ends meet since teaching doesn't pay crap anymore until you do it for 20 years. They are far from the only profession suffering the same fate.

Re:Doesn't work at all

[Avarist]

Except that productivity has increased many times over while pay hasn't and purchasing power has actually decreased.

Re:some from of minimum wage is needed to stop abu

[Joe_Dragon]

It's more then just uniforms other stuff has been pushed to workers that is banned by law. Dine and dash / breakage / errors / damage / cash register shortage / CC fees (manly for some tipped workers) / bad checks / counterfeit bills / stolen CC cards.

Even with uniforms some places say we have new uniforms that you have to buy / we changed the uniform, you have to buy / use our jacket etc.

not enough people

[Anonymous Coward]

"don't have the people to manage that". Yes you do.

terrible idea

[e3m4n]

This is the same 'logic' that created our welfare system mess in the USA. It seems easier to just hand out money than it does to hand out jobs. While the math may make sense in that there are less management costs associated with it, the cost to basic human and social values is devastating. Anyone toying with this idea must not have children or else they have some very spoiled and very 'entitled' children that will find survival as an adult a rather difficult endeavor. We arent raising children, we are raising adults. By the time they turn 18 its our job to prepare them for the wild jungle of life on this constantly changing and crazy planet. Adults are managed much the same way. What sort of values and ethics are we instilling if we deny someone the self respect and pleasure one gets by making it on their own? I am not advocating not helping. I am advocating a public jobs program where jobs can be had and rewarded on a task-based relationship. It provides people with the self respect of providing for themselves instead of feeling like a failure for needing help. It gives them work ethics that hard work is rewarded. It provides instant feedback to the worker as his pay is rewarded upon completion. Does it cost more? Yes, but the benefits to humanity justify this arbitrary value we put on a monetary system. I argue that not building ethics and values is a significantly greater cost to humanity in the long run.

Re:terrible idea

[david_thornley]

It's harder to hand out money, with all the right-wing idiots who'd like to spend two hundred dollars to make sure somebody doesn't get a hundred more than they rate. A basic income would cut out a great many of those programs, saving money and administrative costs. (As long as you're tossing out unsupported assertions, my son has worked hard on his education and is well-equipped to live in the modern world, and I like the idea of a basic income.)

A jobs program would have to take into account all the physical and mental disabilities people have, and the fact that some people simply can't hold down a job. I have a friend who would be completely unreliable, as she has unpredictable good days and bad days. I have a relative who can't do anything that involves walking or standing for any period of time. I have another who is incapable of most things, and she's actually improved over the last year. I know these people. They've got good work ethics. The last one I mentioned surprised a doctor by saying she wanted to get back to work instead of being certified to collect disability benefits.

You're not going to find real jobs for a lot of people, and I don't see that a makework job is any better than giving them money. They would still be paid money while they're not doing anything productive.

In the meantime, this doesn't deny anyone who wants to make it on their own the chance. I wouldn't live on the basic income when I can live in a much better style by working for a living.

What do you recommend next? Removing public high schools? That gets a lot of people better able to work.

Florid prose

[iwaybandit]

Politics is not the motivation behind basic income. Note how there are words to appeal to both left and right oriented political factions. That is the florid prose that covers the reason for the program.

This is the helicopter money that Bernanke spoke about, packaged in politically palatable language.

Here in the real world

[sjbe]

People have forgotten that there are two axis to politics, left/right, and Totalitarian/libertarian.

Must be nice to live on a planet with such simple political distinctions. Here on Earth things are rather more complicated than that.

Re:Here in the real world

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be expanded more ... Left/Right doesn't make any real sense because those are just terms thrown about without any real distinction.

Social Constructs is really Totalitarianism (one extreme) vs. Anarchism (other extreme) with everything else in the middle as you move along the scale. There's where you can find your more "mainstream" viewponits and social setups. "Libertarian" is not the anti-thesis of Totalitarian, never has, and never was.

Left/Right needs to go away. The correct "other" axis is Communism (one extreme, and it really does not matter what side of the axis you put it as) vs. Neo-Liberalism (other extreme, relates only to economics) and all the viewpoints you find in the middle of those (how far along the scale towards one or the other is another story).

**Addendum** This is in response to the comment of "People have forgotten that there are two axis to politics, left/right, and Totalitarian/libertarian." Which I concur is not accurate at all and way too simplistic.

You HAVE to work for it

[skovnymfe]

A system like this doesn't work if people HAVE to work to receive their benefits, because as Holland so clearly points out, if you HAVE to contribute then you HAVE to have people who oversee it, and so on. Instead they should just encourage people to contribute. You have 8 hours of free time every day and you get a stack of money. Why not do something with that time? Teach a course in something, go clean the park, help the elderly, whatever.

I foresee a problem

[mark_reh]

My observations have taught me that people who have time and money and nothing specific to do tend to get into mischief. This applies at both ends of the economic spectrum, though people with lots of time and money also tend to fund some interesting and beneficial things as well as their own self-destruction.

I'm not saying don't give them the money. I'm just saying there is a potential problem that should be anticipated and may need to be addressed. Will people seek jobs if you pay them a basic living without demanding that they work? Certainly some people will and some won't. Does the handing out of money create a permanent underclass? Does it create something else- a permanent artistic class who devotes all its time to "unproductive" activities such as music, dance, and art- all areas that are traditionally difficult to earn a comfortable living? Both?

Labor mobility

[sjbe]

Economic disparity between states is almost as bad in the U.S., but Minnesota doesn't complain that Mississippi is stealing all of its wealth -- well, not much anyway -- because we're all Americans.

Umm, no. The reason nobody complains is that a citizen of Mississippi can move to Minnesota if that is where the jobs are. Labor mobility matters. A lot. The problem Europe has is that citizens of one country (say Greece) cannot become citizens of another country (say Germany) simply by moving there. In the US I simply pick up my things and move to the new state and boom, I'm a citizen of that state. This matters because it very naturally adjusts the price of goods to match the relative economic prospects of a particular state. If European countries were like the US you would see mass migration out of places like Spain and Greece to areas with better prospects. This would help normalize monetary pressures. You either have to be able to adjust exchange rates or have labor mobility. The problem with the Euro is that they have neither. Exchange rates were fixed when they joined the Euro and moving between countries is more difficult than it is in the US.

Re:Labor mobility

[esonik]

I believe you are totally unaware of the realities in the E.U. We have the Free Movement principle in the European Union:

http://ec.europa.eu/social/mai...

In fact, there was strongly growing emigration from countries like Spain and Greece (to stronger economies like Germany).

Source:
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/t...

Re:Labor mobility

[dave420]

You really should stop discussing this topic! More difficult? It's precisely the same - want to move from the UK to Spain (or vice versa)? Jump on a plane. Done. From Germany to Denmark? Drive across the border. Prices also vary across country - or do you think prices in the Greek countryside are pegged to those in London? PLEASE keep posting - it's hilarious.

10000 unemployed?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're going to have a hell of a lot more than that right after this is introduced.

Basic income as power for labor over capital

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of comments to read through. I'll bring up my three concerns / points: A benefit, as mentioned by the original post, is low administrative costs. If you do ANYTHING to make it variable, you add huge administrative costs. Basic income should be just that, basic. No graduated benefits.

The questions I have, and we will soon have a country experimenting with it (Switzerland?), if you have a basic income, how do you deal with immigrants? Start benefits post naturalization? Will nations have to keep a tight grip on immigration to maintain the economic benefits without suffering large scale non-job seeking unemployed?

Also, at what dollar amount will unemployed increase? I feel like, removing min-wage and implementing basic income would give people the flexibility to work at a wage of their choosing. 1) Giving power to labor to decide whom they work for (this would be huge) and 2) increasing employers ability to create economic endeavors at lower wage prices, e.g., small scale manufacturing with American labor, etc. --- this may mean that MANY more people could find employment with low skill levels. These two things need to be tested!

basic income vs job guarantee

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic income is a temporary fix. It will do a lot of good initially (eg: aggregate debt of private sector is too high and people will pay down debt with it)
But unfortunately its basically a stimulus that wrecks the automatic stabilisers of an economy and could in long term be inflationary.

Job guarantee is superior IMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMshp0-odH0&feature=youtu.be

slaves

[Anonymous Coward]

One part of the population is slaves for the other!

Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute...

USA right? 319 million people. 800 a month. 12 months a year.

(* 12 800 319e6) = 3,062,400,000,000.0 = over 3 trillion dollars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_outlays_in_recent_budget_submissions shows the 2014 budget (most recent data) at 3.5 trillion.

I think I see a problem here...

Our employment/population ratio floats at around 60%. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

Re:Wait a minute...

[vel-ex-tech]

Crap, I had thought I had submitted my back-of-the-envelope calculation to the red site. I guess I hadn't. I'll attempt to repeat the calculation tomorrow, when I'm less influenced by the b33r. (I hate doing calculation while drinking b33r, but I'm certain I didn't perform that one with b33r.)

Here are two links from the red site the folks there seemed to like wrt basic guaranteed income:

Re:Cutting corners, dealing with Pomperipossa again.

Re:Socialism, regarding the synergy of a basic minimum income and a free market.

-- vel-ex-tech (When will I be able to post comments while logged in again? Not that I much care as concerns this site, lol.)

Re:Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh goody! It's working again!

Er... maybe not. Whatever the fuck. The Commonwealth needs me!

WTF? I'm logged in one moment and not the next!

Oh, I give up!

Synchronicity, y'all!

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'all,

I was LITERALLY JUST THINKING about the wise policy of a "guaranteed basic income" while checking slashdot (my daily habit for 11 years now). Coincidence?

Richard Nixon, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek, Ralph Nader and many others support this. In today's U.S. discourse, this idea sounds radical and you won't find many who consider themselves "conservative" to take any idea like this seriously.

Re:some from of minimum wage is needed to stop abu

[Dragonslicer]

some from of minimum wage is needed to stop worker abuse.

I think the idea is that a basic income would replace minimum wage. There isn't much difference between working for $7/hour and working for $0/hour with a $1000/month basic income (or whatever numbers make the math work out). If an employer is being abusive, a worker can simply quit, since they know that their basic income will let them continue to live in their home and have food to eat. People generally only work for bad employers because they have no other choice (having health insurance tied to employers is another big reason for this). Once people don't have to choose between getting away from an abusive employer and eating, you'll probably find that the employers will start improving if they want to find anyone to work for them.

Workers under X wage should not be forced to pay for uniforms, or other items which are considered to be primarily for the benefit or convenience of the employer.

I think this issue is mostly orthogonal to the discussion of a basic income. For stuff like that, it doesn't really matter where the worker's income comes from.

Welcome to the future

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how it works when everything becomes automated. Welcome to the future where robots and computers do everything. What else did you think was going to happen? Without money to buy anything you won't need to make anything, so either you have to give people money or just stop making stuff.

You have that all wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the welfare isn't to ensure that people who deserve welfare get it, but to ensure that nobody is made a wage slave, having to have a job at a low pay because it's either that and two other crappy jobs or starve.

If the low paid job of janitor can't get anyone for minimum wage working for it unless their life is at stake, then the free market of the job market CANNOT be saying that janitorial staff is a minimum wage job.

For example, how much would you have to pay the CEO to do the janitor's job? The same? Twice? Ten times? Then the job *to the CEO* is worth many times the salary offered.

Re:You have that all wrong.

[HornWumpus]

The value of a job is not what you would have to pay me to do it.

It's the price the dumbest qualified shit sack out there will take to do the job.

Ah, irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you claim that others do not think things through it is ironic that you haven't thought things through except on your artificial axis.

It isn't what revenue someone makes as a result of mowing lawns, but how much people with more money will pay willingly so as not to have to have a shite lawn.

How much would Bill Gates offer if the alternative were to mow his own lawn?

THAT is how much a gardner would be able to make. Admittedly only one of them, but someone would get paid a little less for someone only as wealthy as Tim Cook who would prefer to pass off some cash and not have to do the garden.

Re:Ah, irony.

[HornWumpus]

You are a moron aren't you? Mowing yourself is not the only alternative.

Re:Ah, irony.

[Tom]

It isn't what revenue someone makes as a result of mowing lawns, but how much people with more money will pay willingly so as not to have to have a shite lawn.

Which directly depends on the revenue that they earn.

How much would Bill Gates offer if the alternative were to mow his own lawn?

Basically yes, except that the ridiculously-rich are a bad source of numbers on a scale where they don't give a fuck, just like the poor are a bad source for estimating the value of masterpiece artwork and diamond rings.

The difficulty in using this metric is that it doesn't work. Supply and demand set prices. If Bill Gates offers $1000 per hour, just because he can, someone will offer to do it for $999, and someone will offer to do it for $998, and so on, just to secure the job.

That is exactly why minimum wage was created, to ensure that there is a stopping point in the race to the bottom for jobs that are so simple, everyone can do them. For qualified jobs, there are natural stopping points - more and more people will drop out as the price goes lower, until only one person remains and he can say "pick me at this price or you have nobody". But for simple jobs, there will always be one other person offering to do it for one cent less.

Germany lost both World Wars

[Dareth]

Germany lost both World Wars, but they seem to be the last viable military power in Europe and the most financially stable. They didn't have to fight a war to "win the EU", the effectively bought it.

Re:Germany lost both World Wars

[dave420]

You should see the state of Germany's armed forces, then maybe you'd realise the level of nonsense you just wrote.

Milton Friedman liked the idea.

[demented_hedgehog]

In essence this is a type of negative income tax. I've seen a lot of of argument-to-authority points made on the list. My point is Friedman, who won a Nobel prize in economics, thought it was a good idea. So forget the nay-sayers and come to your own conclusions. Usually, this is tied to getting rid of minimum wage limits which, it has been argued, are the cause of unemployment.

Re:Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic inco

[HornWumpus]

We're already fucked. More than 50% of the US population are already government tit suckers.

Has to be much higher in Europe.

Nationalist Socialist Dutch

[Anonymous Coward]

Dutch are renown for their tolerance and pro-European sentiment but in recent years there has been a shift to ethnocentrism and even racism, Polls show one of the most popular Dutch political figures is "freedom" loving Geert Wilders. Essentially by "freedom" what Geert really means is he is a chauvinistic megalomaniac xenophobic extreme nationalist that just injects "freedom" in his speeches (...to feed local populist morons. Also see Trump for America's version of this).

The Muslim :"problem" is an easy one to exploit given the behavior of groups like ISIS (as if all Muslims are terrorists). As long as you're not Muslim it's "free speech" to demonize over a billion people (as if all Muslims are terrorists).. Apparently banning the Koran also "free speech" to Geert too.

Of course if one keeps listening to the Wilders of the world one discovers that Muslims aren't the only "problem". Russians are problem....Bulgarians are Greeks... Poles are a problem.... Greeks are a problem.... Slovenians are a problem... Chinese area problem.... and so on. Those that think they won't be put on the list eventually need to read Martin Niemöller's poem carefully. Everyone eventually makes the list.

One can only hope the tolerant Dutch that continue to oppose racism will win back the day against the rising tide of extreme Dutch nationalism.

Inch by inch a democratic version of nationalist socialism seems to be in fashion. Although of course not nearly as bad as dictatorial national socialists of a few decades ago one can only hope enough people see the very danger of mixing socialism with nationalism. If every nation starts going in that direction again, the world is in big big trouble

Barb, you're 1 of a VERY few here... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

That actually DO use their REAL name: Most of the little twit "registered lusers" around here (trackable as hell for retrolling, I use it all the time on their post histories) live in "phantasyland" in their delusional minds with their fake name bullshit... no character, no integrity, and fucking weasels & whimps that they are.

I mean, for shit's sake: They "talk" computing (after reading what others wrote & BEING MINDLESS DRONES THAT THEY ARE, ARE ONLY SPITTING IT BACK MINUS ANY CRITICAL THINKING OF THEIR OWN) - BUT HOW MANY ACTUALLY MAKE THINGS IN IT OTHERS LIKE OR FIND USEFUL?

DAMN NEAR ZERO AROUND HERE...

APK

P.S.=> A few of those little shits I've crushed in tech debates here are now "butthurt" trolling me by ac (which yes, YOU HAVE MENTIONED, & I wouldn't put it past you to do so yourself since you've done a few sneaky crap things to me here in the past trolling me only to fail on hosts vs. me (lol, that ought to provoke a reaction from you)) - which only really proves 1 thing I've been saying to them lately in response to it (when they 'impersonate' me the most): YOU WISH YOU WERE ME (that's a fav of mine in real life to even my pals giving me guff) - after all - IMITATION IS TRULY THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY... apk

Re:Barb, you're 1 of a VERY few here... apk

[BarbaraHudson]

Life is too short to keep messing around ... now that I'm out of the business, I can take a few steps back and realize that in the great scheme of things, I'd rather be friends with people than argue with them. There's a good side to everyone (yes, even evil me :-) Besides, you can never have too many friends, but even one enemy is one too many.

Me, I'm just learning how to enjoy being prematurely retired from the biz - something I never thought would happen. I still miss it in some aspects, because I really liked developing things and seeing them work (and getting paid to do what I like - which was a real bonus, because not everyone likes their job). My eye problems are partially resolved - to the point that I can read with my right eye, even though things are distorted a bit, but the side effects of the antidepressants have really knocked me down, and I really don't want to go back to the mental black hole I was in for 6 months, so until the doc says otherwise, gotta live with not being able to stay awake more than 5-8 hours at a stretch, and not being able to get "in the zone". Oh well, I'm sort of human, I'll adapt. :-)

YES!!! Thanks for the info. ... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Great flick - "Last Day Capricorn" & "box... Box... BOX!!!" - classic! Love that film...

* Psyched to see it in fact!

(Run RUNNER - or should I in particular, say "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"? (lol))

APK

P.S.=> I am truly Peter Ustinov's character nowadays... apk

Re:YES!!! Thanks for the info. ... apk

[BarbaraHudson]

I pulled out the dvd and watched it, which is why it was rattling around in my head. From a cinematographic point, it could really stand a refresh, but the underlying themes are probably more relevant today than when the movie was being made.

BarbaraHudson hypocrite BUSTED

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject you lying sick tranztestikle fuck: Tell us about how you stalk & harass me by ac posts http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

APK

P.S.=> You sick in the head http://slashdot.org/journal/15... ADMITTED troublemaking fuck http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:BarbaraHudson hypocrite BUSTED

[dave420]

What is it called when you stalk and harass people by AC posts? Is that somehow cool because you do it, but abhorrent when others do it to you? If you can't see a problem with this, you need even more help.

Re:Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic inco

[stdarg]

Hopefully... HOPEFULLY... early on another politician will capitalize on the majority who pay far more than they receive in benefits and campaign on restricting benefits instead, or making people work for benefits.

Trickle Up Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Trickle down economics isn't working, so why not try it from the other end?
Since the current system is designed to funnel wealth upwards, why not feed into it at the bottom rather than the top, where it is more likely to work its way through more levels of the system before it reaches its ultimate destination. This is a more efficient recycling and redistribution of wealth than what is currently the norm.

Barb, read this... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

* Don't go telling it how it wasn't Barb!

Not smart, as I have it all, to this very day, bookmarked (for legal purposes to be straight with you, on the advice of law enforcement in fact I do so) WHO STARTED UP WITH WHO & kept it up!

(You with me libeling me, no questions asked & I proved otherwise with concrete, verifiable, & UNDENIABLE evidence (that you in turn never provided when challenged))

AND what YOU TOLD OTHERS TO DO HERE ON /. TO ME - stalk & harass me by ac posts...

For Pete's sake - wtf! Don't lie other others about me - it only convinces me either you can't remember what's what (/. posts do that though, no denying them) in YOUR WORDS & ACTIONS!

Lastly - THIS is the "YOU" I like... I bet you're really not that bad, but when you 'lose it', you lose it, & Barb, you lost it telling others "apk is a bad guy" when I can PROVE who really is being a hypocrite (you) on ac posts.

APK

P.S.=> And, you had the NERVE to TRY shit on me saying "I don't like ac posts" etc. to others who defended me (I'm no spammer & certainly no troll unless someone f's with me then I come down as hard as possible like in a streetfight (I've lived that too many times in inner urban life not to or you die a 1,000 deaths OR a real one Barb))... Barb, your hypocrisy & telling lies about me (or telling others to ac stalk me but ridiculing ac posters too? COME ON)? NOT cool... apk

Re:Barb, read this... apk

[BarbaraHudson]

Well, at least you've calmed down in the last little bit to not threaten to smash my face in. You accuse me of being a backstabber when we had made peace, but if you read this, and my reply, instead of jumping to conclusions, you would know that I wasn't the one who brought you up. I was responding to someone who claimed that the people running the site delete comments, specifically yours. How is this reply offensive?

No, his posts are not deleted by moderators. You've obviously never seen the huge quantity of posts he makes when he attacks me - years later, they're still there.

And I've been known to change my views or admit I was wrong on-line. It's no big deal - it's just the internet. As an example, we're no longer fighting because there's more to life, he's an okay guy on other topics, and what the heck, if you don't like it, just don't browse at -1 :-)

You can try to restart something that was settled, but I'm simply not interested. I'm out of the business, but as far as I'm concerned, say whatever you want about me that floats your boat if it will make you feel better :-)

Re:Barb, read this... apk

[dave420]

You are a spammer, though. Let me help:

Spam: irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the Internet, typically to large numbers of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc.

You constantly posting adverts to your software (that no-one asked for) is the very definition of spamming. So yeah, you are a spammer. If you are not a spammer, register an account and shut us all up. I won't hold my breath. I look forward to you posting lots of AC posts mentioning how "apk destroyed [me]", or you trolling my post history and adding 3 comments to each of mine in some strange attempt to look like a normal, functioning human being. You are not a troll, though, as you seem to believe what you write. Saying that something is "not cool" and should not be done is rather hypocritical of you, APK, as you know that spamming is not cool, yet you continue to do it anyway.

How to make this happen

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

You have to use a concept from judo, in which you use your opponent's strengths against them. To make this work you have to frame it as a Republican/Libertarian project that uses a universal dividend (not income) to every citizen to eliminate the voter bloc-creating effects of identity and victimhood politics, then appeal to Democrats/Lefts as the party of care-givers and soft hearts to let go of their special interest groups in favor of a fair and equitable basic income. Do NOT apply a means test, let your progressive tax rates take care of that issue. Take away the tax on corporations in exchange for overturning Citizens United, and again, let your progressive tax rates take care of the distributed income (no special category for capital gains).

At this point you have gored enough sacred cows to bring out a tsunami of lawyers and lobbyists to defeat you, but maybe that tsunami itself will be enough of a signal to the taxpayers that they will finally grow up and pay attention.

SIMPLIFY

[Anonymous Coward]

The article fails to do the concept justice. The idea in various forms is supported on both (actually all four) sides of the aisle. It is taking a patchwork of various social services and transfer payments, some of them basic, and simply putting them into one bundled benefit. Unemployment insurance, food stamps (their version), transportation vouchers, etc. It is not completely unlike the Earned Income Credit in the US. As is scales from getting a full credit to nothing depending on income. I won't argue social responsibility or moral hazard here, but given that the electorate supports extensive social services and benefits in their country/cities, this program really just consolidates and streamlines the process.

Think of it as Social Security for everyone. A subsistence level income. Not a bad analogy since SS recipients in the US didn't earn their SS either past the age of 74.

Re:Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic inco

[david_thornley]

Nope. There aren't that many people on government assistance, and there are other taxes besides income taxes.

Barb, I don't have to do anything... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I merely let people like YOU do it to yourselves, I don't act on it... those like you, do & fuck themselves with their own actions AND DO ACT ON IT (see my last post) nefariously. Not good. For you or me.

I am asking, for literally the 4th time now (as I've tried to "make peace" with you before here via webmistressrachel in fact your buddy), let bygones, be bygones.

I've had the chance to get to "know" (online, not really that good) a DIFFERENT SIDE of you... you aren't all bad, but I do know from YOUR WORDS, that you do have a 'chip on your shoulder' your pals even noted... knock that fucker off of it, & don't shit on me to others when I can show who started what + what the ultimate results were (in my favor on hosts for sure & on my "being a know nothing never in the industry" you kicked the entire madhouse off on... doing what you did w/ the ac this week who defended me no less NOT telling him you started it + TOLD OTHERS TO STALK & HARASS ME BY AC POSTS!)

APK

P.S.=> IF you're going to talk about me to others? At least tell them your mistakes, or I will... it's that simple, but better yet? You do yours, I do mine, & peace results (like that ac told you? I'll throw down WITH ANYONE, PhD's notwithstanding as I've torn them up too in the art & science of computing - it's what life's shown me works, in the street & yes, online (anywhere, if you're correct & can back it? BACK IT UP & defend yourself & reputation... only FOOLS that die a 1,000 times don't (milksops or wrongdoers imo))... apk

Re:Barb, I don't have to do anything... apk

[BarbaraHudson]

Again, how is saying something nice about you an attack on you? The AC was not defending you. They were pointing out that your repetitive postings about host files were a PITA and that they were deleted by slashdot, and I pointed out that they were not. The thread had nothing to do with you - it was about censorship.

You always insist on making it about you. It's not. And it's not about me either, no matter how hard you try to make it that way.

The original post I made in 2010 was to tell people to adopt the same tactics you were using, and continue to use. If you have a problem with that, then the simple solution is for you to stop doing it. I've only made one post anonymously in years, and that was because I wasn't used to the mobile interface. Nothing malignant there. I don't hide behind anonymity.

I did NOT attacked you! Also, if you think I'm posting anonymously, you're just plain wrong, and I have and will continue to be willing to let bygones be bygones. But if you want to continue this, be my guest ... keep attacking me, it doesn't affect what others think of me.

In other words, the unemployed have negative value

[Anonymous Coward]

Having them not work is actually more efficient than having them work, apparently.

Prove it Barb & tell the ENTIRE truth... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: He also said my posts help gratis (which I am FREE to post, no law broken, especially if almostalladsblock fans do - I inform them of a FAR superior method is all on many levels)

Censorship.this place? For ALL of its "freedom of speech" b.s. SJW's etc.?? They're the WORST ABUSERS via downmods!

(all I EVER ASKED is those here who are my 'naysayer detractors' is prove me wrong - I'm using them to HELP me by finding weakspot objections I must overcome but they rarely, if EVER, do on PRACTICAL things that matter (only real weaknesses hosts are BGP which I've admitted & was +5 upmodded for, + ads served on the same site (not practical which is why it's not seen: admen don't trust websites & I don't BLAME them.. I do for negligence on openbid ads that EXPLODED threats on us, & I know... it's gotten 10x as bad in 2-3 yrs time which I see in my daily blocking datagathers). I am doing something about it. Not for altruism (there is none, not really, even if it 'makes you feel good', it's selfish) purely. I know it's right - those here help me PROVE it.

ASK TEPPLES ABOUT IT BARB - he's even put up a site where others can TRY 'take me down'... like here? NOBODY can! I won't allow it.

DOWNMODS minus validly proving me wrong? Censorship & I'm not dumb - I am fairly SURE who's doing it (adblock for sure, I did so on their forums... they deleted my posts on hosts)... there you go. Want proof? I'll provide it. Unlike you.

Matt Damon barb the world series of poker in "Rounders" as my background's NOT much different than his there, just another ballcourt (this one tech). Adblock can? So can I w/ better something you have natively that does far more for far less - & even cleaner than a firewall since it has to LAYER IN FILTERING DRIVERS, where hosts don't. Pipedream?? We'll see.

BE OF SERVICE TO OTHERS (helps like YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE) & it does pay.

APK

P.S.=> Barb, PROVE I do it... I can with you & have via your word... apk

Re:Prove it Barb & tell the ENTIRE truth... ap

[BarbaraHudson]

As I've pointed out in the past, your repetitive posting 5-10 times to a comment are not designed to go over well. Adblock doesn't have to downmod you - the regular users have expressed their dislike of that practice. Your posts simply aren't visible to anyone browsing at anything above zero. You would have more chance of being heard if you logged in, and posted ONE reply to each point.

On a more personal basis, many of us got into this business to better our lot in life by being paid to do what we like doing, so I get it. Just saying that there are better ways to achieve your desired outcome.

Adblock has something to lose

[Anonymous Coward]

Which they have & money pays trolls (possible): Who stands to LOSE here Barb? AlmostALLAdsBlocked, even censoring my posts via deletion on THEIR FORUMS (downmods here could be paid for sockpuppets - don't even TRY tell me they aren't possibly doing it Barb... the REAL WORLD does do it, & we have ADMITTED PAID TROLLS here (Cito, look him up)).

Advertisers
Inferior Competitors
Webmasters
Malware makers (doubtful, they just make MORE bad doritos which I help stop via a clearly SUPERIOR method nobody proves me validly technically wrong on vs. inferior competition... imo, the BIGGEST ones w/ their allies who bought them up who are 50% & counting LOSING adviews).

Rightfully so - the shitheads ADMIT they f'd up finally http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... & NOT JUST THERE (OpenBID networks ARE negligent & I see the amounts every day for years... it's far worse now, & I help stop it, gratis).

APK

P.S.=> Anyhow... there you go... apk

Re:Adblock has something to lose

[BarbaraHudson]

Can't disagree with the suckage of OpenID :-) Look, I really hope you succeed in moving to somewhere else (it's nice north of the border :-) but I really believe you would be helping yourself more by toning it down a bit ...

Central Europe/Poland... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am fluent in language there, have family & I immensely respect my people I come from - they are kicking the "european union" IMF front is why, cleaning HOUSE in the government corruption recently to do so... we're an HONEST hard working people (& yes by birth I am a citizen there to them via my parents, matrilineal mostly & My mom has dual citizenship iirc) - that OR South America, possibly Alaska (follow the money, wealthy are grabbing lands there to NO end like they KNOW the dollar collapse is near).

I'd hate leaving what I know & love (my home) - I've put a LOT into it (better than putting money in the bank nowadays is why, better ROI in tax writeoffs alone)... & it's mine + yes, "home"... I know it & love my city. We're a 'hard' city but a good one (mostly) on many levels.

I am deciding but not sure. I may or may not 'fly' but like Tony Stark said in IRON MAN? "Yea, I can fly..." and the reactions of my competition deleting my posts on their forums, avoiding fair challenge by email 2x by 2 diff. accounts? Tells me so.

So do the 'downmoderations' but not validly technically EVER proving me wrong.

Barb: When you're @ the finish line or nearing a goal (I played your nations national sport for a national champ in the states here & played your national highschool level champ team (kicked the snot out of us, that damn behind the back which they taught me & came in handy later @ the collegiate level where I was a starter & lettered BEFORE injury stalled me))?

YOU POUR IT ON. It works like that imo & experience.

APK

P.S.=> Who's doing it? Come on - doesn't take a 'brain' - who's adversely affected in their money tree (advertisers cronies & sockpuppets, webmasters, & INFERIOR COMPETITORS too - am I wrong?? I severely DOUBT it... follow the money, it's the answer to 99/100 questions + ONE HELL OF A MOTIVATOR (except it's usually one that makes folks rotten))... apk

Protection money

[NewYork]

It's Govt way of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

And what about the social workers...

[KenHansen]

'In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,' Westerveld said, 'but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a "basic income."'

How many former cival servants will lose their jobs for a more efficient public assistance program? I expect the public assistance roles to increase by an amount roughly equal to any anticipated savings their job losses were going to bring.

Not A Universal Basic Income

[Anonymous Coward]

Utrecht like Finland is not introducing a Universal Basic Income. They are introducing a limited trial of a universal welfare payment without means testing, income deductions that create an incentive not to work and obligations to do in job applications a week and community service. The left are lying and this claiming this is, or will inevitably lead to a UBI to push for UBIs. It will allow people to keep the income their earn when they start working. But after a time getting a secure full time income they will no longer become welfare recipients. And they are also trials with a small sample of current welfare recipients if it does produce better outcomes and the savings in administrate costs do out way the extra costs in payments. This is sensible.

Switzerland on the otherhand is going to a hold a referendum on a generous real UBI. However, the proposal is massively expensive, provides a large incentive not to work low payed shift work in the service industry and is jumping in blind at the deep end. It will likely be defeated by a large margin.

Re:Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic inco

[HornWumpus]

Government tit suckers also include 'workers' and contractors dependent on crooked procurement processes.