Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Really? You could get by on a couple hundred a month? For real?
Fuck no. I wanna live. Not exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
-- Will program for bandwidth
It's not enough to do whatever you please. You can afford to eat, but you probably can't afford an iShiny.
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'.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.
I miss my old left.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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...
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
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.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
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?
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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]
..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.
just doling out free money (cash or electronic)
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.
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.
At least I'm not posting anonymous, coward.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
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.
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.
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.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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.).
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.
Donate free food here
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.
Do you work for Geert Wilders ?
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.
Shiny New Australia.
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)
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"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?
"'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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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...
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
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
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.
>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.
The poster is clearly sincere.
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.
Or perhaps the Dutch have more courage?
Yup.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
0x or or snor perron?!
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually, this step will save money and that is why they do it. So no impact on that solid gold humvee.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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....)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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..)
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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?
-Styopa
"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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
Seastead this.
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.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
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.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
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.
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.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Wall Street primarily cares about high-end, high-margin products like Apple. There's very little profit in the poor either way.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wait 'til the security forces realize that they're not part of the 1%. Then just lean back and watch.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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?
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: "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/
Fair point. Means basic income needs to be matched with proper corporate taxation, which is where the EU's totally fucked - too many loopholes.
If the objective is to cut costs, I'm sure the bureaucrats will find ways to spend the savings anyway.
Please login to access my lawn
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
People will also be able to retrain without worrying quite so much about having to work full-time and squeezing it in.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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).
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
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
@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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
@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"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
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.
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.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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).
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Giving welfare to everybody isn't taking away welfare, sparky. It's expanding it. Do try to keep up, will you?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Check out this excellent short story, it contemplates 2 possible paths in the scenario you describe: http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
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.
Or perhaps the Dutch have more courage?
Yeah, but it's only Dutch courage.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
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.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You know of a security company that pays well?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Whatever it takes to keep them away from their rudders.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You are a moron aren't you? Mowing yourself is not the only alternative.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
We're already fucked. More than 50% of the US population are already government tit suckers.
Has to be much higher in Europe.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
That's why the solution won't come from Wall Street. Actually, they're just part of the problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You must be working in a different country than me - here, governments are free to lay off workers who are no longer needed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The problem is that many politicians think the interest rate is the ends, rather than the means.
Do they? Which Politicians are those then?
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).
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.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Blackwater Security
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.
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.
Actually, the CEO has to take 19 of the cookies, not 18, but yes.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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. :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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 :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Nope. There aren't that many people on government assistance, and there are other taxes besides income taxes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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...
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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 ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
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.
It's Govt way of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
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.
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).
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Uhm, the kids are not in daycare on weekends (I assume), making it more like $150/day...
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.
OK, I'll bite. What asset backs the US national debt?
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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?
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...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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.
Government tit suckers also include 'workers' and contractors dependent on crooked procurement processes.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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.
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.