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VC, Entrepreneur Says Basic Income Would Work Even If 90% People 'Smoked Pot' and Didn't Work (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader cites a story on TI: The chief complaint people lodge at universal basic income -- a form of income distribution that gives people money to cover basic needs regardless of whether they work or not -- is that it'll make them lazy. Sam Altman doesn't buy it. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast, entitled "Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?" Altman argued basic income could support huge amounts of productivity loss and still carry the economy on its shoulders. "Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win," Altman says. "And the American puritanical ideal that hard work for its own sake is valuable -- period -- and that you can't question that, I think that's just wrong." [...] The complaint Altman addressed on the Freakonomics podcast is a common one. Study after study, however, has shown that giving people extra money makes them feel financially secure. That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
Several months ago I heard the BBC World Service's in depth discussion about the Scandinavian country that was going to be rolling out a trial of it. The supporters of it in that already socialized Scandinavian country realized that you would have to stop all other assistance programs for it to be effective. They also realized that it really would have to be universal since we do have an ingrained sense of fairness so it goes to all who would be of the age of majority who are citizens. Another point that was brought up is that in such a situation since everyone gets some basic income that the minimum wage should also be eliminated as the amount that was begin proposed was enough to subsist on. Keep in mind that programs like k-12 education and those European socialized medicine programs would be untouched but things like housing, food, transport, and some others I am forgetting assistance would all be ended.
Time to offend someone
Yes, so much rampant misery in Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Canada, Sweden and Norway.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And if you give everyone in America a check for something like $20,000 every year,
The federal and state budgets of the US totaled around 5.5 trillion dollars. There are around 210 million US citizens over the age of 18. This comes out to around $26k per person. This is if you spend EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR ON THIS PROGRAM. But let's say we settle on something smaller (like $13k). You are still going to have to roughly take in 50% more tax just to cover this program. And if the overall economy shrinks because of a drop in worker participation, won't that make it even more difficult to fund this?
I have a suggestion, rather than everyone sitting around drawing conclusions out of their asses, lets see what actually happens when someone tries it. Let them prove or disprove it and then we will have some results to examine and criticize.
Been done, forty years ago. And the results (WARN: PDF) seem fairly positive. Now, one test is never good enough but it didn't reduce the town to a smoking ruin. So why shouldn't we throw some more at the wall and see what sticks?
Oh please, this isn't that hard. The Basic Income is simple: everyone gets the same amount, period. (As I understand it; if I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but I don't think I am.) You don't get more money for living in NYC than in Bumfuck, Idaho. So if that basic monthly paycheck (which isn't going to be a whole lot by NYC standards) isn't enough for you, then you need to pack up and move somewhere cheaper. But guess what? Now that you have a guaranteed basic monthly income, you have money to move, and you don't have to worry about losing your job and not having a source of income, so you can afford to abandon the high-price city and move someplace cheaper and see if it works out for you. If it doesn't work out and there's no jobs there or you just plain hate it, no problem, you still have that basic income, so you can pack up and move again. Moving isn't that expensive when you don't have a lot of stuff anyway, the problem is the danger of losing your job and that paycheck, and not finding a new one in the new location. BI solves that.
Now, with that out of the way, real estate prices are pretty simple: leave them to market forces (to an extent). If a city makes itself so expensive that all the janitors and cooks and meter maids can't afford to live and work there, oh well! They'll have to figure out a solution on their own, such as building some lower-income housing, or they can just suffer the consequences.
In fact, this will probably be a really GOOD thing for getting rents lower: with the lowest-income people no longer required to work for a living, and only working because they want more money so they can buy iPhones or whatever (BI isn't going to provide them enough money for any luxury, just the basics), they're not going to put up with shitty jobs in high-rent cities any more, a bunch of them are going to move out to cheaper places. It'll be better for them to move to the middle of nowhere, collect their BI check, and smoke pot or watch TV or maybe start a small business than to hang around some ultra-high-rent city like NYC working their ass off just to pay the rent (or commuting for hours every day to live someplace more affordable) because the BI isn't close to sufficient to pay the rent there. This will force rents to come down in those cities, one way or another.
So, for your SanFran example, the city will basically implode, which is a good thing. Usually, things need to completely fall apart before people will fix them.
Yes, but you shouldn't underestimate the effects. The government won't just be offering a service or some benefits. They will stand in for every single employer out there. You can argue that this is no different than any other employer paying someone, and certainly there are parallels.
However, think about what employers are sometimes able to make their employees do.... If people become used to having a basic income, it absolutely *MUST* be no strings attached. That means:
No removal of basic income for felonies, including serial killing or terrorism.
No removal of income for saying things that no one likes, including the most vile racism, sexism, or ethnocentricity you can think of
No removal of income for failing to vote
No removal of income for anything at all except dying, and only then if we have a death certificate or a legal process declaring them dead.
And that needs to be made a Constitutional Amendment that Congress would have zero power to adjust or amend.
I am actually *FOR* a basic income. I believe that it is what greater automation and productivity of humanity should be providing us with. What I do NOT want to happen is it becomes a social engineering experiment for ANYONE.
In fact, I'd prefer if the political system had no control over the basic income at all. Zero. It is controlled simply by a directorate who can only change it based on things like the value of the dollar or the GDP or something. No exemptions, no incentives, nothing but X amount of money delivered to every citizen over the age of 18. Their only job is to ensure that the plan does not sap the economy by an unrealistic expectation of what people can get out of it.
Calling what the Soviets did 'Marxism' makes Karl Marx roll over in his grave. His sole idea was that the power of production needed to be in the hands of the people who did the labor. The Soviet state may have said that was their goal, but that's not what they did. Instead a select few people mandated all production for the country combing means of production and labor into a single whole under their authority. We call this a 'centralized command economy' not 'communism' or 'marxism' even. The biggest lie ever told was that of those who promoted a 'centralized command economy' as the desire of Marx and those like him.
Real 'Marxism' does exist. I've heard of more than a few companies that are run by that method with the companies 'shares' owned by the workers and everyone having a say into the shape of the companies future. They tend to be highly resistant to downturns and profitable for both workers and the cities and towns they work in.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
English speaking countries have a LONG history of wanting to punish people taking public money to survive. Look into the poor houses of 1700s where by law they could serve nothing but gruel and the patrons were required to work 18 hours a day in back breaking labor or they didn't even get their gruel. They were forbidden from leaving, if they by chance got their hands on money it was immediately seized.
I have no doubt in my mind there are people right now in the US and reading this forum that think such a thing would be a great idea.
But could it be that capitalism is practiced a little more ideally in the U.S.?
That, or maybe American tax dodgers just set up their sketchy shell corporations in Delaware or Nevada.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything