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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.
This is the capitalist version of "let them eat cake." Because god help them if the proles feel like they deserve some of the money they're making capitalists.
That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
The powers that be don't want us plebes being empowered.
I strongly suspect that my level of "basic needs" I'm willing to "give" to someone who smokes pot and plays video games all day is much lower than they will demand.
Simply doesn't work at the moment http://www.economist.com/news/...
The entire American capitalist system is predicated on the idea that workers don't have the freedom to just leave their jobs, no matter how bad the conditions. This is maintained by a careful system of salary collusion, artificial means of keeping wages stagnant and low (using H1B's and outsourcing, among other methods), and union busting.
A guaranteed income is a guarantee that your workers will no longer have to take whatever shit you sling at them.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
just not with my money. We could end crime by embedding a chip into everyone so we could track everyone's movements and know exactly were everyone is at every second. I don't see anyone jumping at that idea.
Peace, or Not?
In the war between facts and dogma, facts have a habit of coming second. Facts are hard to think through and analyse properly, and proper analyses are detailed and tough to understand. Dogma doesn't have any of these drawbacks.
John_Chalisque
Except you are confusing this and welfare. It is not the same thing. It is also not "free" it is basic. Everyone gets it, even those who work. There is a lot of overhead that could be saved in managing welfare systems by doing something like this.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Under guaranteed income, I would still work. I wouldn't be happy with the minimum. I'd be fine knowing a person that could make do with the minimum didn't really have to work.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Right now, when the government wants to expand the money supply, the Federal Reserve just sort of dumps money on the biggest financial institutions. Then it pays them a small interest fee for their service of having use of the money (0.25% according to this Investopedia article).
If the government really must inflate the money supply, then it seems to me that the best way to do it would be to spread the new money evenly among the citizens. It's just part of reality that when you have lots of money, it's easier to get more money, so almost all the time when we are talking about the economy, everything benefits the rich more than the poor. Here would be a direct payment that would definitely benefit the poor more than the rich.
Inflation effectively steals part of the value of the money. This is hardest on the poor, and people trying to live on a fixed income. Directly paying the inflation to the people would offset the harm, at least partially.
P.S. I'm a minarchist libertarian, so I don't really like seeing the government messing with the money supply at all. I'd rather just see prices deflate, so that maybe a hamburger would go back to costing a dime, and even a small income would be enough to live on. However, I'm not a trained economist, and apparently Milton Friedman believed we need to inflate the money supply as the economy expands. If you have to bet on whether Milton Friedman was right or I am right, you should bet on Milton Friedman. And if we accept that we need to inflate the money supply, I'd just as soon do it by paying the new money out to all the citizens.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Robots. Every time raising the minimum wage comes up, people are quick to claim such a raise in labor costs will just accelerate adoption of automation. But if we had basic income in lieu of a minimum wage, then such automation would be unequivocally positive.
Exactly. I'm very surprised we haven't used statistical information to cut down on rent seeking behavior. Useless middlemen must wield far more power than those that desire an efficient, equitable market.
It's not just elimination of the people maintaining the system, it's eliminating the need for the system at all.
When they ran the experiments in Canada in the 70s, only TWO groups of people worked less:
1) Mothers
2) Teenaged boys.
The mothers stayed home with their kids, freed from the burden of trying to take care of children and provide for them at the same time. That's bound to have good outcomes.
Teenaged boys stayed in school. Instead of abandoning their education to get a farm or industrial job at 16, they finished high school. The correlation between education level and productivity is fairly well established.
Additionally, visits to hospitals decreased and the number of mental health cases significantly decreased--huge savings in a system that is already government funded. (An 8.5% drop in hospital visits gives an outsized return; hospital visits are far more expensive than normal trips to the doctor.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There's nothing 'puritanical' about that idea, either. People wither away when they don't have a purpose in life. Sadly most people aren't too driven to find a purpose, they would just sit around, get fat, and do nothing -- except maybe get into some sort of trouble or other, or worse, keep reproducing out of sheer boredom. Work is good for people whether they themselves believe it or not, and that's my totally unscientific opinion on the subject, based on 50+ years of observations of people in general -- and note that this is also coming from someone who would benefit greatly from not having to work, yet be provided for the rest of his life. I'd just as soon not have to bother with some stupid job or other, and I'd spend my time going back to school, and riding my bikes, which is much more than I think the average person would end up doing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
You people categorically against this do realize we are rapidly approaching a point where large parts of the population don't really have to work to support our basic societal infrastructure? So what happens then? Do we actually reevaluate our economic system or just proceed as we've been going with increasing economic inequality and subsequent societal unrest? Are you people so selfish that you would deny basic support for all if our society could afford it? There will always be an incentive for work because you'll be able to make more money and have more things.
If you have lots of money, but have trouble with the idea of a basic income think of it as guillotine insurance!
-Some meme I saw somewhere
If by "happiness" you mean "millions of dead and suffering people" then yes indeed, all socialist countries produce is "happiness". Just look at how "happy" Venezuela is these days!
Doesn't matter though if you manage to get in good with the rulers, and can bask in the reflected opulence. Sucking-up to the overseers is on hell of a retirement plan.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's clear up a bit of garbage that some idiots don't understand
1) Basic = to what we give them in prison, minus the security. Food, housing, cheap clothing. In fact, it's CHEAPER to give people a Basic Income than it is to put them in prison (guards are not cheap)
2) No one, and I mean NO ONE, that's willing to live at that level of crap (and it is crap) is ever going to amount to much of anything. If you are stupid enough to live like this, you were never smart enough to significantly contribute to society. People that know how to write, dance, invent, discover, repair, etc. should and will continue to work and earn more.
3) The main areas where we would (and currently do) give more money is not for the people on Basic Income, but instead is for their children, which would need education etc. so that they don't get stuck at the Basic Income.
4) We already do this for many people already. It's called Social Security and Disability. Not to mention Prison and Institionalized - though those last two are a lot more expensive, they basically do the same thing.
5) The people we currently provide a basic income for (old, disabled, criminals and insane) are not considered free loading, lazy shmucks because we recognize that for various reasons, they can't meaningfully contribute.
6) All we are really talking about is adding "below average intelligence" to the category of disabled.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well, to be honest, there is no other human choice.
What is the percentage of people that are useless? 30%, 40%? It has to be higher than the unemployment rate, given the amount of bullshit jobs that exist nowadays. This percentage is increasing thanks to the machine intelligence going on. One guy with modern tools can do the same work as many guys that hadn't those tools back then. Most of the population cannot become PhDs (lack of capabilities, money, lust, whatever), and even if they could, we just don't need 10^9 PhDs. What will be that percentage in 30 years? 80% 90%?
What do we do of these people? Let them starve and have social unrest? Give them what it takes to smoke pot and play video games and have most of the population happy?
We built all our previous civilizations on the value of human work. You have to realize that the value human work is very rapidly plunging towards zero. This is unprecedented in history. Do you really think we can continue business as usual and it will be fine?
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Exactly. I'm very surprised we haven't used statistical information to cut down on rent seeking behavior. Useless middlemen must wield far more power than those that desire an efficient, equitable market.
The problem with that theory is that we are essentially replacing the existing private middlemen with government middlemen. Any time the government offers a service or benefit it comes with strings attach. The government can't resist doing so. Engaging in some sort of social engineering for "your own good". Want government housing, then your behavior must conform to these government requirements. There will still be middlemen, there will still be management, they will merely be government ones looking not for a profit but to enforce compliance with whatever the social engineering "its good for you" idea of the day is. Actually that's a bad metaphor, it implies one idea is replaced with another, this is government we're talking about ... the ideas don't get replaced, they just stack new on top of old, they rarely go away.
It will most likely just give government new avenues of control with inevitably lead to new avenues of government corruption. Congress can not resist meddling with these avenues of control, either for their well intended social engineering or political payback to friends and enemies, as we see in today's tax code. The tax code probably being the greatest delivery vehicle with respect to influence buying and corruption.
If everyone gets it, where does it come from? All I see is inflation of the money supply. In other words, more unpayable debt to the fed bankers who loan money to the govt.
I come here for the love
Good grief I'm tired of you people attempting to blame the system for human nature. Human nature is why we have corruption, and have had corruption in every system of power since the beginning of civilization. A Capitalist Republic is the best system humanity has ever implemented to reduce and control the impact of human nature. The US was not a half ass Republic like we saw in other countries which still hold/held Monarchies and and Noble classes/families. It was fully implemented from ground up as a Capitalist Republic. The fact that it took well over 200 years for the system to become so noticeably corrupt speaks volumes for how well it works. Name one communist country that has been clean for more than a week. Name a Socialist country that has been clean for more than a year.
To GP, I call complete and utter horse shit. There is no expectation of a stagnant worker in Capitalism, in fact that view defies any writing by Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and countless Economists in between. Economic mobility is one of the keys of Capitalist theory. If workers don't believe they should work for X dollars at Employer-A they try to work for Employer-B at Y dollars. People being stuck means that competition is lacking, not that workers are intentionally stuck. Workers who are "stuck" should be able to start their own businesses to compete. Competition exists at each of the 3 legs of capitalism, or at least it should.
What you may be attempting to claim is that "starter" jobs should pay as much as "professional" jobs, which is horse shit. Who would want to work hard when there is no payoff or benefit? Oh yeah! That doesn't work very well, which is why worldwide innovation is relatively flat. The US innovation bubble is a fluke of Capitalism.
I realize that it's trendy and cool to say the US is bad. I fully admit that corruption is a huge problem that I don't know we can fix without a reset. I am a US Citizen who denounces the corruption and entrenched politicians all the time. That does not make Canada a "better" Government.
In a do-over would you choose another Capitalist Republic or go Communism? If you say Socialist I implore you to determine how you are going to be different than communism to succeed. The Socialist governments in the EU are really not doing as well as many are being led to believe.
Me, I'd do another Capitalist Republic.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And if that is the way modern capitalism worked, you might have a point. But when you consider the amount of corporate welfare in most industrialized countries, and couple that with the fact that, as the Panama Papers show, the very wealthy are so powerful that they can actually manipulate, if not outright force the political system to make sure not only profits are guaranteed, but large amounts of cash is protected in tax shelters. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when being wealthy effectively creates a whole new political class, capable of overawing politicians to guarantee compliance and leniency, then i'd say we've left behind the idealized capitalism and are well on the way to kleptocracy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Venezuela made an attempt at a control economy and belly flopped when the oil revenues ran out. Greece's problem was more subtle - ultimately a failure of the tax man to collect what was owed in the context of a generally free market system. Both got into trouble when the money ran out, but not for the same reasons.
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?
First, the basic income replaces a lot of other programs, so it isn't as expensive as it looks. It's far cheaper to administer than welfare programs. Second, we raise taxes to cover the rest. Everybody's taxable income goes up.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But almost certainly at levels of income that will not be satisfactory to them.
I don't think anyone should starve, so I would be happy to provide funds for as much beans, rice, and vitamins as would be necessary to prevent starvation. But I'm not happy about being asked to provide lobster, filet mignon, or even fast food.
"Basic needs" at this point though seems to be something like "a nice 2br apartment with all amenities and easy access to all the nice services, in a good school district, 400 channels on 50" 4k TV, 100Mbit internet, smart phone, game console" and "free pot". IOW, they expect my lifestyle without working for it (although I don't smoke pot), and demand instead that I reduce my lifestyle to fund theirs.
Everybody who likes to point out the fact that humans "need" to work (let's call them the Idle Hands contingent) doesn't realize the fact that motivation is multifaceted, and only for the most menial types of labor does more money = more motivation. (See Daniel Pink's "Drive" for lots of discussion of this)
Honestly, welfare, disability, and social security pay already exist - if someone really wants to be a bum, they can, and either end up sleeping on a girlfriend's couch, living in Mom's basement, or going to prison if they have no other options and want 3 solid meals and a bed to stay in.
The truth of the matter is that people do work far more for social and personal reasons than just pure monetary gain. They want freedom, they want to learn, they want prestige and recognition from their peers, they want to see the world, they want to express themselves... look at stuff like Stack Exchange and all sorts of other "gamified" systems online. People will work their asses off for a virtual merit badge or to increase a progress bar on a screen.
Corey Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" is an interesting look at how a post-scarcity economy based on prestige might work. We're going to have to figure out what to do with the majority of the human race when AI and robots are better and cheaper than the average untrained human. It's only a matter of time.
Because all these people who had no money to buy eggs before are now able to buy eggs because they have the means.
There will still be incentives to work and have a business. These systems are all about taking care of people so we know they have enough to survive.
If I had a basic minimum income, I would be able to go back to school and get a Masters degree. I think that would be a net benefit both to myself and to society. But the short-term costs mean that I have to defer plans like that for a while until I'm sure I can survive the transition.
I think everyone that complains about this system is projecting their own laziness into the system. If *I* had some guarantee of income, I could do a LOT. I could take some risks and not worry where my rent and food money were coming from. I'd go back to school and contribute to a much greater degree than I can now, I would just need the support of other citizens to keep me fed during that time. It's not a huge tradeoff.
And if you DO want to stay at home and be lazy on very little money, you know what? Okay. Go for it. Who am I to get in the way of your happiness? Society wasn't meant to be a huge bummer.
Today, doing nothing really isn't an option. You *have* to work somehow. By offering a basic income, you are, in effect, creating competition for those jobs. If I have the leverage to say "no", if some people find "nothing" a competitive alternative, then supply-and-demand for workers says that prices (ie, salary) will have to go up to match.
It's a double-whammy against the wealthy, in that they will have to pay a large chunk of *both* the basic income and the delta in salaries. On the other hand, they have benefited the most from income/wealth inequality over the last 3 decades, and increased automation will only make a basic income more necessary.
I'm not sure *anyone* has fully thought through the action-and-reaction of basic income, so I can't honestly say that it's "good", but one way or another its time may be coming.
I write software and smoke Pot, I make over $200K/year, maybe this view that if you smoke Pot, then you're a a slacker should be thrown out. Also, I live in Southern California, I don't think of myself as "Rich". I kinda of laugh when I see people get upset over $15/hour basic wage since you're definitely way below the poverty line in Southern California at $30K/year.
It all depends on just how basic the basic income is. I would go with something less than $10k per adult per year, regardless of local. So if you want to live in an expensive part of the country without working any extra you're simply not going to make it. At that rate in Average Hometown America, you'd need to have roommates, prepare your own food, and probably ride a bike for transportation. Depending on how the economy turns out to be going we could gradually increase the UBI and maybe if the robot utopia ever comes about we can all live at a luxury level on UBI.
Odds are most people wouldn't be too excited to live in BFE and subsist on the bare minimum, I know I wouldn't. I mean that BFE is fine with me so long as I've got access to the internet with reasonable speeds, and can enjoy my hobbies. It would definitely mean I'd have to keep a job to pay for everything above the basic necessities. But it would mean I would have a lot more freedom in selecting the job I want to do, as going without a job wouldn't be as catastrophic as it is today.
but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth
And what happens when that "90%" includes all the teachers, law enforcement, hospital workers and fire crews? Basically the people who do the shitty, but necessary, jobs that keep societies running?
It's fine for the aspirational people to assume that everyone is like them - but they aren't. Most people do the least-worst job that allows them to keep a roof, feed their kids and keep the lights on. Remove the need for them to work to do that and the food stops coming, the lights go out and the roof doesn't get repaired. If you will rely on those with some sort of moral imperative to earn, or those for whom work is a joy rather than an inconvenient necessity, then your society won't last a month.
Would you do a dangerous, unpleasant, stressful or demeaning job if you didn't need to? I don't see those sectors having many volunteer workers.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I have lived and worked in the Netherlands, you have no idea what you are talking about if you think the Dutch mindset is in any way socialist in nature. They were the original capitalists, which made them wealthy beyond measure.
The mindset of people in the Netherlands is very far from that of the socialist...
Mainly you can tell they are not socialist by the fact they are (a) permissive, and (b) happy - neither the sign of socialism at work (as well know all too well from countless historical examples, socialism and totalitarianism go hand in hand).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nobody would work as a janitor for shit wages, you're right. I guess we'd have to pay them more.
"Wait! But being a janitor is a low-skill job! Why should we pay them more?" Well, because nobody else is willing to do it. There's the invisible hand, working to fill a demand.
If you don't want to do it, and it needs to get done, you need to be willing to pay for it. Or pay for a robot to do it.
I htink we were collectively distracted by the poor term "the 1%". The actual 1%, the moderately wealthy, the successful doctors and dentists and lawyers and small business owners, they aren't the issue here. The 1% aren't the people in the Panama Papers.
We should instead be upset at "the richest 100 families", who IMO have been causing so many problems. In some ways, the difference between "ideal capitalism" and "capitalism as practiced in the US" is the difference between the 1% and the richest 100 families.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
It also eliminates the need for a minimum wage which alleviates a lot of pressure on small and fledgling businesses. This is how you bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
We just finance this with a tax on venture capitalists. Right, Mr. Altman?
Have gnu, will travel.
However, each of those programs will slowly be reintroduced because "basic income" isn't enough to provide adequate nutrition to children (WIC returns) or housing (section 8 returns) or medical care (medicaid returns) or phones (lifeline phones/rates return) or that disability is too disheartening on the "basic income" (Social Security disability program returns). As well, it will soon be determined that those who don't "need" the basic income really shouldn't get it (after all, does an tech who is already making twice the basic income really "need" more?). I'd give it thirty years before the system looked pretty much like it does today -- except "just not bothering to work" would actually be a viable option for many.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
It will push more people into taxable territory, raise profits, generally generate tax revenue.
Yes, inflation at the Fed tap but that is a step up. Currently we let the fed create money out of air (if it's digital, they buy notes at printing cost for currency) and loan it to banks, then for every program we generate a bunch of treasury bills to pay for it. The banks who borrow from the fed buy those higher interest t-bills and tax payers pay the higher interest on the t-bill. So, actually getting money without two tiers of banks between us and the Fed is a good deal.
I think the VC's claim is a little strange also:
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,
Yes, people will continue to invent, they will create new products and services, music, art, etc. But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I fully agree, in particular to your last paragraph. But I think it is even worse: Many of those people destroy productivity by hindering the few that are still productive, e.g. by establishing bureaucracies. My personal estimate is that we have now something like 1 in 8 people actually having positive productivity and the rest "work" at reducing that and destroying that productivity partially. Just make sure the seven incapable ones never "work", and _everybody_ is better off!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think the real obstacle to a UBI system isn't the perceived resentment of people "getting something for nothing" but the fact that employers have to shift to a 100% positive incentive system for employing workers.
With a UBI they won't be able to use the coercive power of poverty or financial ruin to motivate, harass or intimidate employees.
I just don't think the people in positions of employment authority would accept the idea that they no longer had this kind of power over people. I think a significant part of their entire management "philosophy" is based on coercive power -- put up with my shit, work late, etc.
This is probably more true in low-paying jobs because these employees have accumulated less wealth and are at a greater risk of financial disaster in losing their jobs -- or more inclined to put up with coercion to keep them.
It's probably more complicated for people in higher wage jobs. Usually the wage is higher because their skills are more in demand, but they also tend to have better working conditions and less coercively accept employer demands given the higher payoffs.
Regarding menial labor, why do we need to worry about who will do that junk? Nobody needs to! The only reason unskilled labor is cheaper than robots who could do their job better this very minute is that there is an endless supply of people desperate to feed themselves at the cost of their health, sanity, and dignity. Even without UBI in place, that tipping point is fast approaching in many industries. What are you going to do with all those poor souls when nobody wants them for burger-flipping?
As for law enforcement... What are you smoking? There are legions of people thirsty for pretty authority who like to convince themselves they are driven to protect others. I eagerly await the day when we can safely stop allowing humans to enforce the law.
If 90% aren't doing anything except sitting at home on their basic income, what kind of domestic market are those 10% going to have for their products?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yeah, kleptocracy, over the years we drastically reduced the progressiveness of taxation because it would supposedly help the economy by motivating the wealthy to be more economically productive (as if that were true), but of course it didn't, and the wealthy's take didn't trickle down -- it just gushed off-shore.
It's a trap and even worse can be a weapon used against people in need. Husband lose his job and you were a single income family? Kick him out and we'll give you money! Stay with him and we'll make sure you burn together. What the fuck sort of message is that?
It may not be only single mothers caught in the trap. After all I've not only seen, but I've known men who are effectively 'playboys' who simply knock up women and then say they care for these children to 'earn a living'. My ex-fiancee had two children before I dated her. One from her boyfriend in high school and another from one of those 'playboys' who knocked her up to have another kid he could mooch off of. My Ex is a nurse and as is typical the caring type of person, though not always the smartest. Even so she never intended to have a second child, the guy went to quite some lengths to get another kid he could claim is his. One of our constant issues while we were together was that she'd lose part of her government provided income if I ever married her. She could qualify for welfare while working full time because of the kids and got free medical coverage and 'food stamps' to go with it.
When I lost my job and my unemployment expired? "You don't meet our standards of need or protected status for any type of support." Ironically if we would have gotten married and I lost my job I bet I'd have qualified then because I would have been 'supporting two kids'... The whole system is shit and couldn't see need if it bite it in the ass. It's rife for abuse because we decide some people deserve help and others don't. Making it universal would finally be a means of destroying the traps and weapons and creating a balanced environment without bias.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
That doesn't happen a lot today, so why would it happen under the new regime? People who cannot afford to live where they do now rarely just up and move; they prefer to sit and whine about how the cost of living is too high and there needs to be a higher minimum wage.
They can't afford to move now because they're wage slaves: they can't afford to lose their job because they're living paycheck-to-paycheck and have no money to do anything differently. Of course, you have no comprehension of this because you've never had to live it.
The guy who goes to work at Mickey D's to be able to afford better pot isn't creating incredible new products or wealth.
Nice strawman. It only takes a small minority of people creating hugely successful enterprises (like Harry Potter, written by a woman on welfare) to make the system work for everyone. And Mickey D's isn't going to need many workers in the future because their jobs are being automated, so how exactly do you propose to handle that?
And it isn't going to get rid of the rich people; they'll just stop working and take the free money.
Wow, you anti-BI people are an incredibly stupid lot. I'm sure rich people will be perfectly happy to live on $1k a month in a tiny apartment with roommates...
This sounds nice on paper, except you still haven't dealt with the problem of those who feel they have the "right" to live there.
Sure I have: they don't have any such right. They have a guaranteed monthly income, and they can spend it how they like. If they can't afford the rent in Manhattan on that, then they'll have to move.
Remember also that New York was one of those states that wanted to justify having unemployment for longer than 99 weeks.
You don't need unemployment with BI, just like you don't need "disability", SNAP, etc. All these social programs are band-aid attempts to fix the problems caused by poverty. Eliminate poverty with a basic income and you don't need them any more.
Exactly.
Now one problem I do see is that a bunch of people are going to whine that the BI isn't enough to pay for their Manhattan apartment, and that they don't want to move because their family is there or whatever, and a bunch of bleeding hearts are going to try to "fix" this somehow. That needs to be fought against. The system won't work if they try to do some BS like giving people in Manhattan some huge BI (too many people will just want to move where the BI is higher, and the cost will be unaffordable, plus it'd drive up rents even more, bringing demands for even-higher BI in high-rent districts).
So BMI is going to be less than they're making today and they won't be able to afford it tomorrow, either.
They'll be able to afford it tomorrow because they don't have to worry about losing their fucking paycheck!! Holy shit, are you really this stupid?
The VC analysis uses the number "10%" doing this. There aren't 10% doing it today, and there won't be 10% tomorrow, especially when it's only 10% who are working at all.
There's only 10% creating real wealth. Most people's "work" is just make-work, or will be automated away shortly.
And you pro-BMI people are insulting and rely on ad hominem too much.
Well maybe if you didn't spout such stupidity, I wouldn't have to point out what morons you people are.
You can live pretty well on $3k/month when everyone else is at $1k.
Not if you want to drive a Ferrari or live in an exclusive place like next to Central Park or in Hawaii. What makes you think rich people are going to give up on wanting those things and be happy with a measly $3k/month?
A guy with a million in the bank can go 41 YEARS without working another day on that "income",
So what's stopping that guy from doing that *right now*?
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
Yet various surveys and reports consistently show that more than half of Americans have less then $1000 saved to cover unexpected expenses, let alone leave their job for several months. You are fortunate. Most are not.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence