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Greece's Former Finance Minister Explains Why A Universal Basic Income Could Save Us (fastcoexist.com)
Charlie Sorrel, writing for FastCoExist: Next time you're having a fight with somebody who doesn't like the idea of a universal basic income, you might employ some of these arguments from Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, he not only refutes the usual arguments against the concept that the government should give everyone a minimum check every month, but he makes them sound quite ridiculous. The interview was published ahead of the Switzerland's vote on a universal basic income (or UBI) in June. If successful, all Swiss adults would get $2,500 per month, and kids around $625 per month, whether or not they have a job. Here are some of Varoufakis's best answers.
First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created. Technical progress means that more and more high-paying jobs will disappear and thus shrink the middle class. This will in turn cause a further concentration of income and wealth in the upper classes. That's why I fight like a basic income for sociopolitical reforms. The robotization [of work] has long been underway, but robots don't buy products. Therefore, a basic income is needed to offset this change and stabilize a society which has an increasing wealth inequality." Then, on why you need a UBI if you already have a good job: "What good is a well-paying job, if you are afraid to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes."Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work.
First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created. Technical progress means that more and more high-paying jobs will disappear and thus shrink the middle class. This will in turn cause a further concentration of income and wealth in the upper classes. That's why I fight like a basic income for sociopolitical reforms. The robotization [of work] has long been underway, but robots don't buy products. Therefore, a basic income is needed to offset this change and stabilize a society which has an increasing wealth inequality." Then, on why you need a UBI if you already have a good job: "What good is a well-paying job, if you are afraid to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes."Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work.
Have to pay Greece?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I don't see robots doing work. I see people making pennies assembling iPhones in China, children working in sweatshops in Vietnam making Nike clothing. This man is a fool. The problem isn't robots. People are cheaper than robots are.
You do realize you actually need demand to outstrip supply to get inflation, right? You don't get inflation by paying down debt, saving for a rainy day, or using cellphone data...
I bring home less than that, albeit by just a hair, working my ass off at a full-time IT job in the midwest USA. So I can get a mid-$40k/year income just by sitting on my ass in Greece? I'm a Republican and have always been against handouts, but you know what, fuck it. I'm done, sign me up to sit on my ass and smoke dope and play video games. What the fuck does it even matter anymore?
How about we put a big fat asterisk next to the output of a resigned-in-disgrace former finance minister from a broke, crooked, can't-stop-capital-flight, had-a-coup-in-living-memory, too-big-to-make-Europe-fail country? Just a thought.
Greece's former finance minister probably has as much credibility in financial matters as Steve Jobs had on cancer treatment.
more jobs are destroyed than created
Is this true? Is it *really* true. Or did we just ship all the jobs to lower wage countries? If it is not true then the reverse is true.
It sounds right but is there actually any numbers to back it up?
Well, if they want to have a toilet that flushes, somebody will have to fix it. DIY is the next big thing, I guess.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Swiss vote on the universal basic income will only take place because it's part of the normal political process here. But even the promoters of it agree publicly that there is no chance at all to be adopted now. There only goal is to force discussion about simplification of the various social income administrations as there is many of them in Switzerland. There also openly admit that the proposed modification of the Swiss federal constitution will not give a clue about how to get the money, and this make the whole affaire just a joke from the point of view of many peoples here.
It's funny to see all the comments dismissing the all article without even reading it. Oh wait, I forgot this is Slashdot after all.
Yet, the Swiss are proverbially good at finance, and they're seriously considering the idea.
Yanis Varoufakis is not the man who got Greece into its current mess, he's the guy who tried to negotiate a way out. The EU and IMF eventually refused to deal with him (he is much better at macroeconomics than they are) and forced the Greek PM to cave in to their demands. Veroufakis resigned as a result but not in disgrace; he was offered another government job but declined.
there's been massive increases in automation and productivity. So much so that China has warned Foxconn not to automate too much to keep from causing social unrest. We already produce enough food to feed everyone. The problem is logistics. What I'm saying is the world doesn't need ditch diggers too.
Why should we create miserable make work just because a few people are uncomfortable with the idea of someone not being miserable in a job 40-60 hours a week? What, specifically, makes you uncomfortable with the idea that when people don't need to work we don't make them?
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There's still some reward for working, but most people can get by without a job.
With a true *basic* income there would be plenty of incentive to work but I'm not sure what the cost of living is in greece but $2400/month sounds alot more than basic. You can't give everyone minimum wage and expect people who were used to making minimum wage to continue to work. Basic income should probably be phased in over time starting at a few hundred dollars a month and should be set at a minimal survival rate. A simple formula might be to set it at what it would take for 4 adults to share a single apartment and buy the food and supplies they need. Just a guess but if 4 adults were sharing an apartment then they could probably get by on $400/month apiece ($200/month each for rent and $200/month each for food) This is considerably lower than the $2400/month that greece is proposing and would still give plenty of incentive to work. We should probably at the same time work on providing affordable efficiency apartments for single individuals as well as free healthcare to complete the safety net.
What about housing? Everyone suddenly gets X per month free, rents go up X as demand increases (more people can afford housing) but no additional housing is built. I doubt it will go up exactly X but maybe .5X to .75X.
"Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work."
It wouldn't be that difficult, given how little "basic income" would pay. Adjusting for the cost of living difference between Switzerland and the US (rent, groceries, etc), their proposal would work out to about US$1500/month, or $18K/year. (This is in the range of what people who are judged too disabled to work get from Social Security.) Yes, there are people who are content to live on that. But not most people. Would you?
Anyone who aspires to a middle-class lifestyle would at least get a part-time job to supplement basic income (maybe regular freelance work, a half-time office job, gig-economy stuff as needed, a creative project that they never had time for, that business they were otherwise afraid to take a risk on, etc) or a full-time job that they might not otherwise be able to afford to take (e.g. teaching, social work, performing arts). And the kinds of people who are used to taking home $1500 or more every week would undoubtedly stick with the jobs they have already, and treat the basic-income grant as "mad money" to spend on something fun.
The idea needs to be tested thoroughly, before being tried on the scale of, say, the US, or even the UK. It may not work as projected based on how it's worked in a few small-population experiments so far. The amount definitely needs to be evaluated. But if you're ridiculing the idea based on the assumption that a just-above-poverty-level income is going to be really attractive to the masses... I'm pretty sure you're mistaken.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
its easier for people to ignore that fact and attach bad history to someone who didn't cause it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Taking advice from Greece on societal economics probably isn't that smartest choice. Seems like this guy wants to double down on the already failed bet.
So are you saying he's wrong?
And if they implement it, they will actually cut all the other programs that a guaranteed income is supposed to replace. I doubt they'll pass it.
Which makes them unique among western democracies. The rest will just add basic income and never cut anything.
It's not an insane idea, but only if you actually follow through and cut the bureaucracy and all other handouts. Which never happens most places.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So you're saying it's better to have homeless people and empty housing? Because no other starting condition leads to your conclusion.
So? You are saying as if communism is automatically "bad".
In the USSR everybody had a job (it was actually mandatory for adults who are not studying), which means that 1) there was less time for drinking (showing up drunk at work was not OK) and 2) everybody had some money, there was no need to look for food in garbage bins.
Now that we are capitalists and free, a lot of people do not have a job. I guess one solution would be to let them starve to death, however, that tends to increase crime (since a hungry person is more likely to steal or rob) and some people oppose it for humanitarian reasons. So we have welfare - give free money to the poor. Most of that money gets spent on alcohol (well, you are poor and do not have a job, you have nothing better to do).
The side effect of capitalism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, however, in the long run that is bad for the economy because more and more money is settling down in the bank accounts of the rich, which means there is less and less "active" money. The rich also find ways to avoid taxes and may end up paying less than a poor man who has a job (because he cannot afford to set up offshore companies for tax evasion purposes etc).
Technology increases productivity, which is great, now everybody can make more in the same time. Which means that in the future, everybody will be working for half the time and producing the same or more than we are now (a prediction from the past). Oh wait, currently instead of everybody working for half the time, half of the people are unemployed and those that have a job, work full time.
I personally believe that some communism would be great. That is, individuals should be free to do what they want (within reason) and private property should be respected, but large companies (companies, that have a too high influence on the market) should be kept on a very short leash - larger companies get a shorter leash.
In which alternative universe is taking economic advice from Greek government officials a good idea? And how do we visit it?
What does that have to do with the correctness of his position?
"Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work".
IMO the huge majority of people who would be perfectly happy to sit around doing nothing with a basic income wouldn't be producing any work/effort of significance anyhow even with our current day standard of "no money with no job". Call center lifers. Fast food lifers. Minimum wage lifers in general.
Add to this the fact that you would then completely scrap the current unemployment/disability benefit systems and the increase in cost across society in tax load wouldn't increase as much as feared. It would increase. Especially on companies and the richest 10% of people.
So nothing like communism then?
If the referendum passes, they'll implement it. That's a serious consideration.
Yes we can learn a great deal about the former finance minister of a bankrupt country. Almost as much as we can learn about world peace from the US Pentagon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They are saying you will have homelessness and and empty housing with or without basic income if housing supply remains fixed. They do not allow for any increase in cheap housing supply resulting from the increased demand provided by the UBI.
Do you think that wages will stay the same if everyone gets X per month from the government? I can imagine that every employee who doesn't have a contract with a dollar amount spelled out in it, would immediately get a letter from the CEO explaining why their pay will be cut the week UBI goes into effect. Lower private wages are one of the assumptions that the universal-basic-income model is based on.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
No. I'm fairly sure that the vast majority of people will want more than the basics. At least one of them will be good enough at plumbing that you will want to hire him for a rate he will accept in order to fix your toilet.
At some point we are really going
Fine. Lets wait until the world has a large enough economy to really worry about it and not at a time where it's unfeasible and will wreck the economy and civilization to the point where we never make it there.
Considering that those same CDs cost that same price 30 years ago, I'd say that you're unaware of a lot of things.
The whole idea that people are inherently lazy and won't work without being forced to always puzzled me. Most of the people I know want to do something productive, but more often than not it's either not something they can get enough income from quickly enough to be able to drop their day job and start doing it full-time or it's not something they can get enough income from to keep the bills paid. Give them a guaranteed basic income and they won't sit around doing nothing, they'll start doing what they want to do (instead of the day job they have to have because it pays the bills).
And on the flip side, what does Donald Trump do exactly? I know he's rich and considered successful, but what work does he actually do? Or Kim Kardashian? It always seemed to me that the more successful you were, the more well-off you were, the less actual work you appeared to do each day. I know there's research involved in say running a major investment fund like Warren Buffet does, but he doesn't do the majority of it. 95% is delegated out to subordinates who do the legwork and write up the analyst reports, Buffet himself just goes over those reports and makes the final decisions. It's something only he can do, but he's not spending 40 hours a week nailed down to a desk poring over corporate reports and newspaper articles and stock trade data, running spreadsheet calculations to figure out what's behind the stock movements and what's likely to happen in the future.
To quote a mill supervisor, "I don't want the industrious guy who'll clean up the mess with a smile. I want the lazy bastard who'll figure out how to stop the mess from happening so he doesn't have to clean it up all the time.".
I've seen a few people say that they would start their own businesses IF they had a basic income to fall back on. It's understandable, because starting a business is a huge risk if you don't have family money to back you if it fails. This doesn't sound like promoting mediocrity to me at all, this sounds like allowing people to find their potential instead of withering away behind a desk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
No, this is social democracy. Basic income becomes just another government program for the good of the people.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> In the USSR everybody had a job (it was actually mandatory for adults who are not studying),
Mandatory via the government, you say? Meaning the police would show up and drag you to work if you didn't show up on time? Sounds awesome!
> which means that 1) there was less time for drinking (showing up drunk at work was not OK)
Yeah NOBODY drinks in Russia. They don't have a HUGE problem with alcoholism.
> and 2) everybody had some money
1/9th as much as their peers in the USA, to be exact. (About $400/month)
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
You're seriously suggesting that cutting average income by over 85% is a good idea? You REALLY want to live on $400 per month? You can do that already, if that's what you really want.
The Swiss are not seriously considering the idea. Activists got enough numbers on a petition to force a referendum, but polling indicates it will fail because the payments will require massive increases in taxation to fund them.
The small scale single unmeans and asset tested welfare payment trials in Utrecht and Finland look like happening though. But they are not a UBI. It will only be for a small number of current welfare recipients. By using a match control of other welfare recipients they will be able to measure the effect on the incentive to work of welfare recipients.
When UBIs where trialed in Canada it did reduce working hours. Mostly for mothers with children who could now afford not to work (there was no subsided childcare back then) and kids staying in high school instead of leaving to work. But that was in a rural area decades ago when un and under-employment were low and the work-ethic was strong. What would happen in a modern service based urban economy where there is a surplus of labour already is unknown. And we won't know until a country tries a UBI and it either works or their economy implodes.
Why would you say that? As long as the majority are NOT taking advantage of programs that will be cut then it will pass, assuming that all the people who have something to lose don't see some other advantage in it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Alot of the current posts suggests that it is redicules to listen to a former minister of economics from Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, on economics. He is also "Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens and a private consultant for Valve Corporation" (Wikipedia), however.
While being minister of economics from Greece might not be good for your credentials (not with standing that he was the guy Greece called in to deal witht the crisis), being a professor at University of Athens and a private consultant for Valve does sound fairly good.
You don't think living above the poverty line will be reason enough for people to become plumbers? Interesting stance.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Actually I don't think a massive taxation increase would be required. The reason is that in Switzerland there is already welfare support for people under the poverty line, which is exactly those 2500$ per month. The idea is basically to get rid of the "usual" welfare, including all the bureaucracy and costs involved and replace it with this "no question asked" basic income. This would basically affect only those under the poverty line, which is a very small percentage of the population, and it would in most cases just replace money they already get, only with a different label.
Bitcoin can't buy enough of the Kool-Aid for you to drink?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's not communism -- communism is an industrial philosophy, and the key point about all industrial philosophies is who owns the means of production. Communism places ownership at the community level, socialism at the level of "society" (in oractical terms almost always defaulting to "state socialism"), cooperativism is about the workers, and capitalism states that ownership starts with money (so how do you get into the system in the first place?)
The idea of a basic income is not directly related to the ownership of the means of production, so cannot be labelled with any of these terms. The reason I feel BI is fair and equitable is that the existence of "society" and the notion of "property" rely on relinquishing certain natural rights. Without society, I would be allowed to hunt, fish or gather wherever I wanted to. Because of society, though, there are rivers that I'm not allowed to fish and deer that I'm not allowed to stalk. Society has removed my right to feed myself for free, and forced me instead to buy food, and therefore has created the need for money. This process has made humanity more efficient and productive (a farmer with a combine harvester can feed hundreds, a hunter with a spear can feed a dozen or so) which improves the average standard of life immeasurably. But if one man can't eat because of that, where is the justice? What have we given him in return for the removal of his natural right to feed himself?
Welfare systems and/or basic income schemes are how we compensate for the loss of those natural rights. Food that buys your hunting rights; housing that buys out your right to pitch a cowhide tent wherever you please.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
That's who we should pay attention to on economics issues. Greece.
all the welfare programs that basic income was meant to replace will be back. Because politicians like creating dependents who will vote for them.
Communism doesn't work because central planning doesn't work. The jobs that people had weren't useful so their system eventually collapsed. The reason why a UBI is proposed is that it's a market-based solution that allows people to spend the money on the things they need, rather than being limited by some government aid program.
If a person is currently on food stamps and has their car break down, the food stamps don't help them at all. With a UBI to replace the other welfare programs, the recipients can make the best decisions for their own personal needs without the need for government bureaucracy trying to run dozens of separate programs. This is about reducing government inefficiency when it comes to providing a social safety net.
"Swiss adults would get $2,500 per month, and kids around $625 per month"
That is more than many (most?) small farmers get now. This would mean a basic income of $52K per year for a family with three kids. I've had many years where I made $14K and supported our family fine. $52K would be luxury and that would be above the $14K - damn nice.
There are many reasons to like the universal income idea. I don't think it will actually make people stop working. People want more stuff. What it will do is give them the chance to do more interesting things. Some won't but many will.
In the alternative universe where human beings aren't by nature racist xenophobes prone to rash overgeneralisation.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The assumption is that there is a finite resource of housing that is distributed based on current income levels and has high occupancy rates. If you raise the income of the people on the lower end they will have the income to live in housing equivalent of this new income level. This could be homeless who can afford housing or people living in small dwellings that want larger ones. Except there is not enough equavent hosing for this new income level so instead prices rise. Example - new college grads often live together in small places because housing is expensive. If you had this basic income they could all afford their own place. Except there is not enough housing for all to have their own place. So demand for nicer housing goes up and therefore rents go up. Then college grads live together again in their small place spending much more on that place than they would have without the basic income in place. The argument should hold true anywhere there is high occupancy.
Of course, the article glosses over implementation details like that.
Sure, I wouldn't mind an extra $2,500 every month. But is it truly an extra $2,500? If the taxes on my normal income will also go up by that $2,500, it's a wash. If inflation makes it so I don't have any real additional purchasing power, it's also a wash. So why add the additional level of complexity in those cases? And won't there be bureaucratic and administrative costs?
Show me the numbers. Show me where the money will come from such that I really will have an extra $30K take-home every year... that I actually benefit from and that won't be vacuumed away in taxes, bureaucracy, and inflation. Show me real, solid, numbers, and sure, I'll support the idea. But in my experience, things that sound too good to be true, usually are.
Imagine all the people...
The big mystery to me, which isn't addressed, is where the money comes from. Do they raise it from income tax? Or from VAT? Is it just going to be one arbitrarily defined class of people paying in and another arbitrarily defined class of people receiving? Or do they think they can just "print" money from thin air as needed? Somehow I don't see that working.
If I were, in fact, called upon to design such a system and attempt to maximize its efficiency, I would suggest. . . An energy tax. Tax the production and import of energy sources. All of them. The most efficient way to raise revenue is by taxing economic activity at its foundation. In agricultural societies, it was land. In a modern industrial society, everything requires energy. Tax it at the source, and then let the energy companies pass the cost on down to their customers. Indirectly it would end up taxing all consumption, but in a much less meddlesome way than VAT. (And we can throw VAT and income taxes alike into the trash bin of history!)
I've got a feeling though, that a lot of politicians would feel threatened by a simple and neutral method of raising revenues. They'd rather have a complex tax code that they can continually wrangle of the details of, and try to score points with various constituents or enact various "social engineering" schemes to encourage this behavior, punish that behavior, etc.
Of course that ignores that even if you're homeless, it's better to be homeless with $1500 in your pocket than it is to be homeless with $0 in your pocket. That remains true even if the price of everything goes up by a factor of 10.
It also ignores that while there is no 0 income housing available, there is a non-zero amount of low income housing available. Prices won't move until the surplus is filled at least. In practice, the demand will tend to open up some supply.
Otherwise, our best bet is to each give up $1500 a month (just set it on fire) so the price of everything will plummet until we're back where we are now (yes, that is absurd).
He is talking about Switzerland, not Greece.
The Swiss are about to vote in a referendum on a $2500/mo basic income. They already have health care and housing and a high minimum wage.
The cost of living in Greece has nothing to do with this Swiss referendum.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
He's JUST the person I would go to for economic advice! I mean, look how well Greece has been run.
Education, day care, police work, and Medicine are still labor intensive.
Here in Scotland there's a pilot "virtual high school" being implemented to try and address a shortage of teachers by getting remote teachers to teach kids from multiple locations. There are always ways to reduce labour.
People still like labor intensive restaurants. I want a lot more unemployment before I will give basic income further consideration.
Labour intensive restaurants are part of what basic income is about. In a post-scarcity economy, subsistence shouldn't need to be an incentive for work -- luxury and leisure should do the job quite nicely. If I have clothes to wear, food to eat and a house to sleep in, then one day's work pays for eating out all week. A week's work, and I might buy myself a basic tailored suit. And for the chef and the tailor, every penny they earn is reward, not survival.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Whereas Capitalism fails only when human beings are no longer required to produce goods and services. i.e. real soon now.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I suspect that after a year or so to adjust, we'd see higher employment rates than ever, at least if you count the sort of informal employment that becomes possible once basic needs are a given. Idleness actually gets old pretty fast.
As Carlin pointed out, pot leads to carpentry. So even with that, it might make an interesting new cottage industry.
It will do at least one other thing: start a black market.
Just look to Seattle. The $15 Now movement (not even a UBI and not completely implemented yet) just drove rent prices through the roof and the bottom tier of our economy into tents under the interstate.
This sort of crap is pushed by big business and property developers. Instead of putting downward pressure on necessities, this just dumps money into the demand side of the economy, pushing prices and profits up.
Have gnu, will travel.
Simply its this: the world doesn't owe you a living, get over yourself and suck it up. Live or die on your own efforts, not mine.
Fine. If robots take my job and I don't get to have part in the production gain I'll just grab myself a Kalashnikov and take what I want.
Glad we could clear this up so quickly.
' be seeing you soon.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Lowering wages is hard to do. Say ubi is 20k a year. Cutting all salaries by 20k is not feasible. Those currently making 20-30k will just stop working. So there is some minimum you have to pay to make it worthwhile to go to work each day. Beyond that the people with more experience obviviously want more money for their more difficult jobs. So no real way to take X amount out of salaries with UBI. Could you decease by a percentage - maybe. But that would require all employers to do that together. Or the ones that do not decrease will get the more talented people and those that did decrease will struggle to find people. However one thing that could bring down the salaries is severe unemployment. If robots/AI take a significant portion of jobs high unemployment could push down salaries.
I don't really care about anybodys arguments for this UBI concept, I know one thing for sure: Somehow, it'll get corrupted, so that I get screwed out of it, have to work, my taxes jacked up, and I'll be paying for some jackoffs to smoke weed, drink beer, and play video games all day long, while I get my pay cut, and as mentioned above, my taxes increased to pay for losers to play all day. I just KNOW it will happen that way.
You want the government to give us free shit? How about we do away with the requirement for healthcare (or paying Danegeld to the IRS if you don't) and give us basic healthcare for FREE instead!? That would make WAY MORE sense than this UBI crap. I'm dead serious about this: If the U.S. Government can't manage to give every U.S. citizen free basic healthcare, then it sure as fuck can't afford to give everyone enough cash to live on every month. Call it a test case. I challenge the Government and everyone who supports this UBI nonsense to make free healthcare for everyone work, first; if that works for, say, a decade, THEN we can talk about your UBI. Deal?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
In the universe where people actually understand who did what. Hint: This guy is _not_ responsible for the Greek financial crisis.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Caution. Most Americans have a Pavlovian response to anything resembling "communism", making them violent and hostile.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Just imagine how hard the transport sector alone will be hit by layoffs in the coming decades. A quick peak reveals that transportation currently employs 7.4% of the American population. What if they fire 50% of the work force due to increased automation? Or worse.
Politicians may stall the inevitable by restricting progress to save jobs, but we know it will get to a point where human error is so unacceptable that insurance firms will demand it.
Communism and Socialism look great on paper; it's when you get a bunch of people involved in administering it, that it gets all screwed up and corrupted. No plan survives first contact with the human race, intact.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This guy's comments could have been replaced with a random phrase generator and made just as much sense. Every conclusion is a non sequitur.
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Unemployment goes up when jobs go away. In this case there would be more people volunteering to leave the workforce. They would not be counted in any unemployment number I am aware of unless you look strictly at the number of people who do not have jobs regardless of if they want One. This actually would decrease normal unemployment measures assuming the number of jobs stays constant.
Give them free money for VR headsets and caffeinated sugar drinks so that type two diabetes can solve the employment problem for you. Yeah that will work, but the unintended evil of it is undeniable.
Wrong. A UBI would put every worker, especially the ones on the lower end of the payscale, in a MUCH better negotiating position. If any fast-food CEO tried this he could expect to see every single bottom-level fast food worker quit instantly. This would be much more of a nightmare than even them all unionizing.
Given the complete collapse of the Greek economy, they are the last ones on the planet who should be offering economic advice.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Overspending did. Cutting spending was a proposed solution to them spending too much. Others believe that when you dig yourself into a hole, you get out by digging further down.
> Seeing as you are posting economic data from the last decade
The word "decade" means ten years. Same root as "decimal". Twenty-five or thirty years years ago is a tad more than a decade.
Unless the currency is so inflated that $1500 (then) is basically worth $0 (today). That the problem with your argument, you are assuming a constant worth of money.
xenophobia and racism.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wow that's fucking original
> If someone (hypothetically) lives in an area where the income is $100 a month, but basic amenities are free
The $400/month includes ALL value available, whether that's delivered via government (what you call "free") or by any other means whatever. You compare different economic systems by looking at GDP per capita. That's the total "stuff" produced by a country (food, cars, gas, radios, medicine, everything ) divided by the total number of people. The Soviet Union produced $400 worth of stuff per person.
How it's delivered, whether by taxation and government allocation, private purchases, or any other method doesn't affect it. Each person in the US got nine times as much stuff each month, on average, because the competitive economy produced nine times as much stuff.
Ok, since the majority of people here very obviously have ZERO clue about the situation in Greece and what role Varoufakis plays in the whole mess, allow me to clue you in.
The whole shit started WAY before Varoufakis was more or less pushed into that position. And he was one of the few intelligent people to grace that position with his presence (seriously, his predecessors were duds), but he had very little chance to actually do anything sensible. The IMF was calling the shots. And if you didn't notice by now, allow me to inform you: The very last thing you can use in your country is the IMF telling you what to do. It's almost granted that they will make matters worse, since they have no interest at all to "help" you. Their job is to ensure that whoever you owe money gets it. No matter how. As far as they're concerned, sell the organs of your people.
To give you an idea what Varoufakis' situation was and how sensible blaming him for the mess is: It's a bit like blaming whoever will be the next president of the USA for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the mess with that Cuban prison.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This will work up to the point where, say 50% + 1, of the population decides that smoking pot, watching porn, and playing video games on everyone else's dime is A-OK. Before that point, there will be enough working people to keep the whole thing going. After that point, it'll be a downward spiral of everyone getting their 2500 MarxBux a month, but not being able to buy anything with it because too many people expect to get free shit for doing nothing to keep the store shelves stocked for everyone else.
The best social program is gainful employment. UBI is a fast track to creating a permanent underclass that lives in squalor and a productive class that will stop wanting to subsidize laziness.
What! No one went hungry??
If communism was so good and a utopia then why weren't farmers making food from the goodness of their hearts?
http://saveie6.com/
It should hold true where there is high occupancy and little fallow land. The U.S. has a LOT of fallow land. It also has a lot of empty housing. In those conditions, more people who can afford some rent means more properties fixed back up for habitation. The basic income means that people will be able to afford to move to where the housing is, even if they can't replace their low paying job for a few months.
The idea needs to be tested thoroughly, before being tried on the scale of, say, the US, or even the UK.
Exactly - on the face of it it seems to offer many advantages: it massively simplifies the system of welfare payments and could also make a lot of employment laws unnecessary e.g. minimum wage, unemployment insurance etc. However if it means that lots of people will sit around and do nothing it will have a huge negative impact on the economy. In fact perhaps what is needed is some negative feedback system so the fewer people working the less the payments are this way the more people who sit around not working the less everyone gets until more people start to work.
I'm an economist; I recently finished my PhD and am now working in the tech industry.
I am hugely in favor of UBI. I think of it in 3 ways:
Is it doable?
Yes, of course. Existing social programs are very costly, and this will replace many of them. Furthermore, there are a lot of profits that have been created by technology in the last 50 years. And yet work weeks have increased, and many people have a lower quality of life than before. You might ask why this is. I'll give you a hint: the answer isn't population growth.
What is the cost?
Social disruption in the short term. Probably a cost to some or many very wealthy individuals. New regulations are required, but these may be less in total than existing regulations.
What is the benefit?
Many. Increased social stability. A simpler social safety net for one. A promise that each individual will be better off as technology improves and jobs may be destroyed.
That last piece I believe to be very important. The looming driverless car revolution has highlighted the risk of technology: jobs lost there have no promise of replacements.
> I suggest cutting rent by 85%. Landlords do not need to be making that much money.
Average rent is about 110% of the cost to own the property- mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, etc. So a property that rents for $11,000/year costs the landlord about $10,000/ rentable year, including vacancy month.
You propose cutting the rent to about $900/year. The cost to the landlord being about $10,000, buying a house and renting it out would mean you'd lose $9,100/year. Obviously virtually nobody is stupid enough to do that; nobody would rent out a house. That's how you end up with shanty towns like you see in Mexico city.
Three years ago, I went back to school. I highly recommend it. Having a clue is nice.
It would reduce involuntary unemployment and so would relieve general economic stress.
It would also allow for informal employment and contract work for people who otherwise couldn't afford to work. Both through removing the penalty for having an income that people on public assistance now face as well as through employers becoming more willing to meet potential workers half way. It would also be a boon for people on disability who can work a little bit on their own terms but couldn't afford the risk of a bureaucrat deciding that them managing 3 hours a week for 2 weeks in a row means they can do 40/week and so don't need disability.
If the people who complain that minimum wage kills jobs are right, there should be more jobs available once people who just want a little extra can afford to take such a job for a little while.
>$2400/month sounds alot more than basic
Mind that anywhere a BUI deploys you will see the price of everything go up. Necessities least, probably increasing in proportion to luxury.
Jobless BUI commoners will be able to afford their rice rations. Those of us who caught a musical chair in the paycheck club will be able to afford the spike in beef with our second income.
We already have test cases for a universal basic income - some of the United Arab Emirates and to a lesser degree Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Citizens can have a public service job and choose to do very little work. It seems you need an army of serfs to then keep the state functioning, ridiculous ideas can proliferate or don't need to change (women driving in Saudi Arabia for example) as there is little pressure to change. Also about 60% of adult citizens in the UAE have diabetes as there are no challenges in life.
A proposal that gives everyone to give up on life in comfort is about as damaging as it gets.
The Greek had such a UBI from the EU and it allowed them to keep their semi-feudal structures much longer than it would have been otherwise possible.
Not recommended.
It's not false and it has nothing to do with reproduction.
The starting conditions necessary to lead to OPs no-win scenario would be empty housing and homeless people. It stands to reason that if nothing changes, those starting conditions remain the case.
Let's see, decade means "ten years", so the last ten years. Do the data cover just the last ten years? Nope.
Or, you can say decade as in 1980s, 1990s, etc. This is the 2010s, so the previous decade would be the 2000s. Does the data stop before 2000? Nope.
Why don't you tell me which definition of "decade" you're using that makes any sense whatsoever.
Even better, why not look at more data, going all the way back to the founding of the Soviet Union. Notice how GDP and other measures of prosperity are ALWAYS at least 90% or so lower than the US during the same time period? Notice how it was so bad the country failed, ceased to exist?
So you contend that given a choice, people will not work for better conditions in their life even if employment is available and on fair terms? In other words, that our current system is based on forced labor?
You also forget that it wasn't that long ago that it took a crew of 20 to do what one guy on a backhoe accomplishes today and that the guy dinking on a spreadsheet used to be 50 guys with adding machines.
I explicitly allowed for 1000% inflation. You claim it will be infinite?
As compared to capitalism, which looks great on paper and somehow *doesn't* get screwed up by people?
Everyone in the job now might quit, but some people now in more demanding jobs will be happy to take their place. If everyone has enough to live on, there will be some who want a little extra money and would be willing to work an unchallenging job, perhaps on a part-time basis, to have a little bit better standard of living.
A universal basic income will simply subsidize industries currently not paying their workers enough to live on.
Communism and Socialism look great on paper
A universal basic income looks great on paper - what's your point?
I don't think it's a bad idea, but it troubles me that there's been very little thought about the long-term impacts it might have. What would it do to the concept of minimum wage? Will people really be happy not contributing to their community? How will abuses and fraud be prevented? These are not trivial details.
The US has lots of available land but not in areas people want to live. Of course the want to live part is usually linked in some way to job availability but obviously lots of other factors like family, climate, etc. It would be interesting to see what would happen with UBI. Would people spread out more than they do today or would everyone stay in the cities and suburbs they are in today and just pay more for their housing. What I will say is UBI will certainly be great for the housing market in most locations. (Detroit not so much).
Uhh... You realized that you just proved what I said? It only took me to write the "cursed" keyword and you react aggressively without thinking about what I meant. A automatic response, you noticed that?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Not too hard to look up Germany too:
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
We see that Germany's per gdp (production per person) is about 18% lower than the US. Of that, government consumption per capita is higher by a similar amount. So the country has a bit less, and the government takes a bit more.
There is nothing wrong with a UBI. In fact it is very good idea if it replaces the other means tested welfare programs and the amount isn't too high. But even if it is too high, inflation will adjust quickly to correct. A UBI is not anti-Capitalistic, rather it is just a variable in the equations of Capitalism that is overlooked b/c it is assumed to be zero. Kind of like the cosmological constant was in physics. (One perk that might convince conservatives: with a UBI it would be feasible to get rid of the minimum wage.)
The Swiss vote promises an amount of $2,500, which is surely too high, but not as high as most non-Swiss probably think because the average wage there is over $90,000 a year.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Well, if the national average alcohol consumption rivals that of Russia, I'd say that there are a few people getting welfare and buying alcohol with that money (you can't really keep a job if you are drunk all the time).
"(showing up drunk at work was not OK)" Not sure about the USSR, but beer was not even considered alcohol in Russian until 2004.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You might see higher employment rates overseas where the cheap crap typically found available to people with little money is actually made.
Sure, Idleness gets old. But if there isn't opportunity for employment now, there will not be much more with a basic income system. In fact, it will likely be even less because the cost of doing business would have just increased making marginally profitable businesses close shop or move overseas where some economical factors like increased taxes aren't hampering their profitability.
You can listen to a lot of people claim there are tons of jobs available with no one to fill them or no one skilled to fill them. The reality is that they are either located on obscure places trying to escape taxes or government regulation costs or they do not want to pay enough to compensate for the hassles of working for them. In reality, it is generally a ploy to get H1B visas and or undocumented workers and has little to do with the availability of skilled workers.
That's neither here nor there though. This is because there are simply too many people not employed compared to the so called understaffed positions available. Giving people money will not magically make positions available. It could for some service oriented positions but the reality is that most of the low end products that lower income people purchase or made in foreign lands and shipped in so they will not even be spending their way to employment.
What needs to happen is that conditions need to be changed to make locating a business in the US outside of services attractive again. These conditions need to be favorable near or in larger cities too. They need to balance cost of doing business with the necessities of protecting the environment along with safety and make it so that relocating to rural West Virginia or Alabama or Texas isn't a massive cost savings affair.
And to me it looks kinda OK. I just compared to how it was with "real" communism, just that in the USSR you had to work for your money (even if the job you did was useless) instead of just drinking alcohol.
The idea of a basic income is not directly related to the ownership of the means of production, so cannot be labelled with any of these terms. The reason I feel BI is fair and equitable is that the existence of "society" and the notion of "property" rely on relinquishing certain natural rights. Without society, I would be allowed to hunt, fish or gather wherever I wanted to.
If by natural rights you mean as found in nature, you'd find most animals are far more possessive of their territory and companions and far more likely to resort to acts of aggression and violence including lethal force than humans. It's all might make right and if you can take it and keep it then it's yours. It works both ways, sure you can't take other people's property but they can't take yours. And it's the little guy who needs protection, the rich and powerful protected themselves just fine long before society got involved.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
and almost no-one would want to live this way so most people would choose to work
As long as they can get a job that is.
I find it quite unsettling that your go to is a fast food joint. When has our employment situation derailed so badly that a career flipping whoppers and wrapping a big mac is anything more than a stepping stone to more productive employment? Why are we thinking about giving people money they did not earn instead of fixing this situation so that meaningful job opportunities exist and we don't need this form of corporate welfare?
Yes, I said corporate welfare. All welfare for working people is a corporate welfare because it allows the corporations to pay less than a living wage and pocket the rest in profits.
And I contend that your scenario won't come about in the first place since far less than half of the people are willing to settle for the bare minimum when they have the opportunity to do better. Your premise is faulty. That does not bode well for your conclusion.
If you're not scrambling to somehow keep living when employment is scarce, you have time to make your own employment. And you have the opportunity to do it small scale enough to offer better prices than the large corporation, or at least to offer proper customer service as opposed to a talk to the hand style voice menu leading to a card flipper.
OTOH, if you are correct that there simply isn't enough employment out there in the U.S. then the basic income is a must to avoid active revolt.
After reading through the higher moderated comments here all I can say is this: if you still believe in individual rights, if you run your own business or trying to start one, learn Chinese, because USA (and many other Western countries) are completely screwed up. The prevailing attitude seems to be that the collective is above the individual, that individual rights are outdated, that private property must be stolen and redistributed.
Diversify, outsource, find alternative means of income in countries that are not displaying this level of decay and rot. It is quite ironic that one of the most capitalist countries out there still has Communism in its name.
If you want to stay a free individual make sure to pay attention to these comments, this trend is a very clear and present danger to everything that respects individual rights.
You can't handle the truth.
Of course you have time to make your own employment. You have that right now too. But does the world (country, society, so on) actually benefit from adding 3000 more dog walkers in NYC or window washers at the corner of every street? That is basically what you are going to get if everyone thinks it is better to start their own business that wouldn't otherwise be feasible without a huge grant from the government.
I am in agreement that the lack of employment opportunities out there needs to change. That problem is a lot more difficult though and will be made worse with a basic income guarantee. The money to give to others will have to come from somewhere and business seems to be the favorite whipping boy currently.
There's the solution: make shopping bots who wear fancy dresses and jewelry. Liberacebot
Table-ized A.I.
It may not be, but if you cannot walk straight, they are not going to ask whether you drank beer or vodka.
With a UBI people won't feel the need, as they do in under developed countries, to breed as many children as they can in order to ensure that some of them will support them when they grow old.
A general observation is that the wealthier the people, the lower the population growth, even reaching negative numbers.
It still would have to be proven, but if this works the same way when people can be assured that they will receive a UBI during their whole life that will at least be able to sustain them on a minimally required level until their demise, then it will be a huge advantage of the UBI which I'm afraid Varoufakis forgot to mention or consider.
With the current trend to austerity, eradication of the middle class and impoverisation of the 99.9% by 'the elite' (who by the way don't work so hard themselves either), their is a serious risk of reversal of this 'natural' depopulation trend (as opposed to vaccines, gmo, pesticides etc. being proposed by 'the elite').
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Either way, I'm pretty sure neither 1960 nor 1990 is the within the last decade.
What about housing? Everyone suddenly gets X per month free, rents go up X as demand increases (more people can afford housing) but no additional housing is built. I doubt it will go up exactly X but maybe .5X to .75X.
In many places, once a person becomes homeless they never again become productive, contributing members of society. And in some places its extremely easy to become homeless.
So, no matter how clever or creative they are, they can become struck down and forever removed from the possibility of participating in society in a positive way ever again. Now they are stuck in a cycle of psychological problems (usually severe depression) and drug abuse (trying to cope with the horror of their predicament) and get very very little help in getting out of this situation. No landlord ever wants to rent to them, no employer ever wants to give them a job and the people of the places they live in just want to run them out of town because they hate poor people (don't kid yourself, this is true).
How does society deal with that? Or is it somehow useful to society to have people living like this?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Communism almost never seems to be voluntary. You want to set up a kibbutz? Go ahead, enjoy your communism. But that is not what we had in the former USSR. We had authoritarian collectivism, we never had a choice. I would never volunteer for any form of collectivism. I do not want to be in a position where my life belonged to any collective. I don't want to be part of any communist, socialist, fascist system. I want to work and find a way to build my own capital, my own means of production, my own income generating property. I have zero interest in any collectivist system whatsoever, but I will happily trade the output of my work for the output of your work on purely voluntary and mutually beneficial basis.
Money that an individual makes belongs to him or her, not to anybody else at all. To make the money he creates something of value to others, that is the contribution to the society and that is what creates an economy, nothing else.
You can't handle the truth.
If you have income that doesn't tie you to a location you just don't try to live downtown in a major city.
If you want that, you have encouragement to do things to receive even more money. Otherwise the population is free to spread out and take up living in parts of the country that could use more people with money to grow their economy. Prices will be cheaper, population more spread out and local businesses will see an influx of customers. It all sounds good.
Yes, with UBI I can find my potential!: http://imgur.com/XT3dfsp
Perhaps with UBI, you could learn how to embed a link?
So you contend that given a choice, people will not work for better conditions in their life even if employment is available and on fair terms?
I'm not sure why you think the terms will be any fairer than they are now. And don't forget that the work they choose to do will be heavily taxed to pay for the UBI.
If this, if that. I started my own business by spending my own savings to build my products. You work, you save rather than enjoy all the consumption and you start your business. You can also borrow. Of course the government including the Fed made saving if not 100% impossible then at least 99% so, thus it is hard, but nobody said it would be easy. Those who say they would do something if the stars aligned their way rather than doing it are full of crap.
You can't handle the truth.
Whereas Capitalism fails only when human beings are no longer required to produce goods and services. i.e. real soon now.
Yep. Macroeconomics 101. The supply-demand curve.
If no one has money to buy your product (no purchasing-power == no demand), then prices will plummet. With no purchases, there is no tax base for government (maintaining roads, law-enforcement, utilities), so your country soon turns into Somalia.
You find it unsettling that it's well known that fast food jobs pay poorly and are generally unpleasant? Why? Were you not aware of this?
Right from the summary:
I'd imagine that you'd see areas that have cheap cost of living right now getting or keeping a lot more people. With more people will come services for said people, which means service job availability, and that includes doctors and such.
Sort of like Florida retirement communities. Warmth, cheap COL(for the most part), etc... Good for people who made their wealth elsewhere to make the most of their limited reserves.
That being said, I think you'd also see a push for housing affordable to those on the UBI.
I don't read AC A human right
Why wait? Why don't you send me $20 for a tutor now. It will be good for society!
We already have test cases for a universal basic income - some of the United Arab Emirates and to a lesser degree Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
I'd hardly call those "basic income" though when they're busting $100k per individual per year. I'd say a UBI would be closer to $6-12k/year. Enough to cover the basics, yet leave them hungry for more.
Also, citation on the UAE and diabetes?
I don't read AC A human right
And under Capitalism people don't starve and aren't purged? (though I would be all for exiling the various banksters to Siberia).
Also, the lie in Russia prior to the Communist revolution wasn't great either (kinda the reason for the revolution).
True Communism and true Capitalism both do not work and cause people to die of starvation. What we need is some of both.
I, for example, am all for Free Market. As long as it is enforced to be free (sound weird I know), that is, no company is allowed to take the market over and establish a monopoly. If some company grows too big ("too big to fail" or simply having much larger market share than the 2nd place), it should become nationalized and democracy should be used to control it (elect the CEO the same way you elect a Mayor or a President or the elected government could appoint one).
The reason is this: As long as there are multiple (almost) equal alternatives, capitalism works better than communism or planned economy. However, once a company grows too large, it can start to buy out its competitors and establish a monopoly. Especially if the entry to market is difficult (like creating a new ISP or a power distribution company). This can result in a situation worse than communism because now the company can afford to pay low wages, raise the prices all to inflate the pockets of the managers and the shareholders (because if there is no viable competition where are you going to go?). In addition, companies should have a "maximum profit" enforced - that is, once the profit of the company becomes x (a large number) times the salary of the lowest paid employee or y (a smaller number) times the combined salaries of all employees except the highest paid 1%, the government should take the "overprofit" away, this is to encourage companies to provide larger salaries for everyone without. The x and y numbers should shrink once a company gets larger. Small businesses can do whatever they want as long as they obey other laws and pay taxes (which should be progressive of course).
If the world doesn't need more dog walkers, the market will provide ample feedback and the new entrepreneurs will find something else to do. That's the cool thing about the basic income, it just sets up the opportunity and then lets the market decide. By giving people more time to get a business off the ground, perhaps people will choose other lines of work that take longer to develop than dog walking.
It will be more fair because otherwise people won't do it. Most of the unfair employment offers out there depend on potential employees being desperate. Once they can afford to say no, the terms will get better.
As for the taxes, it won't be a big problem if they are progressive.
Here, here, here!
I actually did start my own company, and it wasn't such a big success that it would pay the bills, so now I'm doing freelance work which pays nicely (I'm an information security consultant) but is more stressful than a regular job.
I have a long list of things that I would like to do, both in my field and outside. I just don't have time for it, if it doesn't in some way end up as profitable, at least a little bit. With a basic income, knowing myself the first month or two I would do some shit that I've just wanted to do for a long time, but then all the articles I wanted to write, the speeches I wanted to give, the software I wanted to create would appear.
Giving people a survival is the #1 humanity thing that a western society should feel itself morally obligated to do. If we can afford private jets and million dollar wedding parties for the super-rich, how can you possibly make any ethically justifiable argument that the same society has people looking for food in trash cans?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A very small scale. Possibly a few hundred or thousand would be the largest these groups should get. Have a group of this size associate into a collective and support the collective collectively.
Basically like communes. Which is entirely viable in urban as well as suburban as well as rural contexts. If the collective cannot support itself then it isn't going to work on a larger scale either. All going large will do is throw the stone harder... which won't make it "fly"... The stone either flies or it doesn't.
I am a big fan of communes. They educate people on how communal living works and will demystify the elements that people often have so many misapprehensions about. Such as people not needing to work.
And something that is nice about keeping things small is that it maintains accountability. Go big and no one can keep track of anything. People start cashing checks and doing nothing... including not even picking up litter. Nothing. Look at how many cities there are that are full of people on welfare doing nothing whilst the cities are themselves filthy. In a commune that wouldn't happen. If someone has nothing to do, the commune will find something for them to do. It might mean picking things up, cleaning, organizing, basic maintenance.
There is no labor shortage because there is no shortage of things that need to be done. Look at cities that are dirty and falling apart... no work? Things clearly are not being taken care of so clearly there is work to be done. It simply isn't being assigned.
Here people will disagree without actually thinking about it. My point is counter dogmas that people have bought into sadly.
The self supporting commune is the solution. And by self supporting, I do not mean it grows its own food. I mean its needs are met without subsidy. A collective of a thousand people should be able to produce goods and services sufficient to buy what the collective needs. And if it doesn't, then it is being managed by idiots. And a commune that allows itself to be run by idiots is populated by idiots. As to how you deal with idiots... spread them around and dilute their effect on any collective. A failed collective can be dissolved and have its population spread around the successes.
The other thing that is ideal about this situation is that it is entirely the individual's choice if they join and which one they join. If you don't join... then you should not expect to have your basic needs taken care of by a collective. The state should not act as a collective in this context. The basic day to day needs of people should either be taken care of personally through the personal industry of the individual or they should be provided by a collective of consenting adults that are personally aware of the other members of the collective and assign tasks the community needs done collectively.
Look at Greece... does it strike you as a place that is well maintained? They hand out a lot of money for people to do nothing. By all means. Have them get paid. But they should get paid from community resources generated from community profits and those that receive that money should live and work in a way that takes into consideration how they are supported.
What I have a hard time with are people that demand my money but refuse to be at all accountable to me for how they spend it or how they spend their time. That means I give something and get nothing. That is not sustainable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...and what's more we've just spent the last 50 years breeding stupid-useless-lazy people who are getting more useless every year.
/sarc/, sliding faster to the Matrix or some other dystopia
A great way to enter the Age of AI
You're reasoning as if voters vote simply to maximize personal income. That's not how voters vote in real life, and even if they did, democracy isn't supposed to work that way.
It's good if it cuts down on Administrative self-importance syndrome (better known as ASS).
Self-importance from harvest or manual labour seems long gone...
Here in the Netherlands, there are a bunch of people who are on welfare. Or social security, or whatever you may call it. They are in the situation that when they start to work, they will lose their right to that. So the first $1500 they earn each month, they get to keep... almost nothing. Now you wonder why they hang around and do nothing?
If, as a society, we provide everyone with a basic income. Disabled, without a job due to no fault of the person him/herself, too old to work or just plain lazy. Then for every dollar you earn, you get to keep most of it. No reason to cheat by working illegally, not a huge discontinuity when going from "can't work due to medial reasons" to "might be able to work part-time in another line of work".
Mind you.... The $2500 is way too much (at least here). The basic income should be enough that you can live in basic circumstances, but without many luxuries. If you want a car, work for it. If you want a vacation, work for it.
In that particular case, I'd say it's that you're both unaware that they've been ripping people off for years. They were making a handy profit 30 years ago, when they were that same price. They're still making a handy profit now. In fact, the production costs have dropped.
This is not complicated.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The universal income has been tried before in Soviet Socialism.
It has been above and beyond universal income. In a socialist system most of the people had a place to live, a job, education was free, healthcare was free, one or two years maternity and the pay was more or less the same for all professions. Socialism failed miserably and It will keep failing every single time.
It is called rationing. If healthcare is free, that means a random client/patient will be rationed. Education, even if it is free, is not available to everyone in their selected field. A job that paid something: people on average were non-productive and looking for opportunities to steal. Well, if housing is free everyone wants would want to live in most beautiful place. However there is not enough desirable places for everyone.
It was tried before. Did not work then will not work now. Imagine in US they make it a basic income, of, say, $2000 per month. Once rumors are confirmed by less fortunate 50% of the world population, you can guarantee that population of US will double in 10 years. Even Trump's wall will not help, for underground high through capacity tunnels will be developed to meet demand.
Once somebody becomes entitled for $2000 a month, and becomes a voter, it is impossible to change that habit.
Hmm... When I sold my business, I decided that I wanted to make the world a better place. Homelessness turned out to be an interesting issue and I looked into seeing if there was anything that I could do to, meaningfully, lend a hand. The answer, if you're curious, is that there wasn't actually a whole lot and I didn't have enough money anyways. I settled on donations (including time - yes, I've gone and spent a summer building) for Habitat for Humanity.
But, I learned a bunch about homelessness. What you say is, as near as I know, very unlikely to be true. The typical example of homelessness lasts no longer than 6 months, is often covered by "couch surfing" or staying with friends, and they get back on their feet within that time. Yup. What you're addressing are those who are chronically under-housed or homeless. They're a whole other bowl of wax and many of them actually have a small income and make a bit more money than you might think. They're just a bit crazy and like to get wasted. They also have poor impulse control - probably because they're a bit crazy.
At any rate, no... People get back on their feet from homelessness all the time. Unless you're talking about India or South-Saharan Africa, or something. There, from what I've seen, they'll just go find some more plastic, bits of wood, and some corrugated sheet metal and build a new shanty attached to another shanty. They might even risk life and limb and hook up power.
But, seriously, I can't think of anywhere where what you say is true. There are even people on Slashdot who attest to having been homeless and then rebounded with a bit of work. I've never been homeless but I've spent some time with them and I've spent some time learning about homelessness. A huge number of people end up homeless at least once in their lives. You don't see it because they look just like you. You only see the crazy guy down on the corner. The vast majority of homeless people don't sleep outside. They sleep on couches and floors with friends and relatives. Some sleep in their car, some in shelters, and some are street people.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The largest effect of the UBI would be at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Many people who are well paid are very good at their job... and they like it. You do well at what you like. The highest paid are the most skilled. There is a pleasure in doing skilled work well.
At the other end of the ladder, people who are low paid generally do work that is unpleasant, repetitive, and un-satisfying. But they do it because they need the money. With the UBI they no longer need the money to survive. So they quit, and live on the UBI if that's the best they can do. So much less skilled work goes undone. But that work is still necessary to society. Some of it can be automated, but much can't be automated, at least in a cost effective way.
So salary (and working conditions) for low paid jobs goes way up. The salary for the garbage collector now reflects a new scarcity in the labor market. People doing unpleasant work may then be paid more than people doing more skilled and pleasant work. Construction workers may be paid more than lawyers. Neither can do the work of the other. Which is more important to society? Which job is harder to automate?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The largest effect would be at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. The lowest paid will be able to quit unpleasant jobs. But that work is still necessary to society. So work that can't be automated will see a big increase in salary. The garbage man may be paid better than a lawyer. Neither can do the work of the other. Which is more necessary? Which is harder to automate?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Human employment is vanishing. Better technology simply eliminates the need for workers. Where I differ from the man is that we don't need a basic income as it will not sustain the system. Each individual must have disposable income above and beyond meeting their basic needs. The simple reason is that businesses can not make sales unless people have extra income. Businesses still have to compete. Suppose for example that fifty different companies in the US make tennis rackets. The buyer wants the best racket at the least price. So no matter what each manufacturer must compete. The buyer will make the best choice that he can. But if the buyer can only pay for the basics in life that buyer will not buy any tennis rackets at all. Businesses will be forced to do better, simply because the businesses will be paying the taxes that the workers used to pay, in order for the government to send out those paychecks to those that do not work. If we do not confront this now we will have upheaval so radical that we may not survive the issue. The fact is that people are not usually willing to starve and suffer silently. At some point poverty reaches out and touches others, often with a brick or a knife or gun.
If everyone had an extra $1000 a month to spend, I could see prices simply increasing in proportion. For example, housing, which in the US is mostly bought and sold in a competitive market. If you and I have an extra $10,000 to bid on a house, guess what? The price of the house simply goes up, absorbing the UBI and negating its utility everywhere else. So housing becomes more expensive for a person with no other income, reducing the benefit of the UBI for food and other necessities.
Lol.. you are dreaming. The market can support a lot of failures when you don't have to worry about supporting yourself. Idle hobbies will become careers. The value of these businesses added to society will largely be nothing. Certainly not enough to replace the value siphoned off.
Because Communism!!! People voting in their own interest instead of Wall Street's will put Stalin in the White House. Poor people are poor because they're lazy. It's not like bad things ever happen to anyone making it harder to earn a living
The Swiss have treasury with over 630,000 francs of surplus per person living in the country. That is even more in Euro. They could literally give every person in the country over half a million Euro and still have a huge surplus. If they manage to keep the collectivists away from the money, they could stop collecting federal income taxes for 10 years straight. Comparing the Swiss and the Greeks is like comparing a pile of gold to a pile of dust.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah, I call it the, "If I had a million dollars..."
See, they say stuff like, "If I had a million dollars, I'd do something about it!" Well, lots of people have a million dollars. They all said the same thing. The few that actually did something probably don't have a million dollars any more.
If they were going to start a business then they'd have done it already - or be working towards that goal.
"I'd climb that mountain if you'd lift me 99% of the way there and there weren't any risk involved." That's what they're really saying. Basically, they either want a photo op at the top of the mountain, the rewards without the risks and effort, and the accolades without the accomplishment.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The idea of a basic income is not directly related to the ownership of the means of production, so cannot be labelled with any of these terms. The reason I feel BI is fair and equitable is that the existence of "society" and the notion of "property" rely on relinquishing certain natural rights. Without society, I would be allowed to hunt, fish or gather wherever I wanted to.
If by natural rights you mean as found in nature, you'd find most animals are far more possessive of their territory and companions and far more likely to resort to acts of aggression and violence including lethal force than humans. It's all might make right and if you can take it and keep it then it's yours. It works both ways, sure you can't take other people's property but they can't take yours. And it's the little guy who needs protection, the rich and powerful protected themselves just fine long before society got involved.
True and false. Modern society is certainly better for the little guy than feudal society, but it's great for the big guy too, because he no longer has to hire a personal army -- he can expect the aid of public law enforcement when it comes to protecting his property. In a lawless environment, yes one party can use violence as a means of controlling resources, but that's not "property", not "ownership", just (as you say) "possession" -- you hold it, you control it; you let it go, you lose control and someone else can pick it up. The notion of "property"/"ownership" is a mechanism for increased productivity -- if you can reasonably expect others to respect property, you don't have to dedicate as much effort or resource to maintaining possession, and you can get more productive work done. But your right of property denies others their natural right of possession, so there has to be some quid pro quo.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
> (you can't really keep a job if you are drunk all the time)
Hmm... This should be a novella but I lack time, patients, and motivation. In short, you're actually wrong. *You* might not be able to work drunk. *You* haven't built up a tolerance to rival even the stereotypical drunken Russian. I not only worked while drunk, I owned my own (successful) company and dealt with politicians and municipal workers on a daily basis. Hell, I sold my company and retired 8 years ago. I didn't stop drinking until about 3.5 years ago.
No, you can keep a job if you're drunk. You can even do your job fairly well while drunk. You just need to maintain and not get shitfaced. You'd be surprised at the number of functional alcoholics out there.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Because of the “commies” (a term created out of our fear of the Russians and other communist countries), we have an irrational fear of socialism. Now, while I generally feel that people should earn their income, I also don’t think we should let them starve to death.
The main argument that convinces me in favor of UBI is that it would eliminate the waste of the welfare system. All this administration throws away a ton of money just to evaluate people for their fitness for welfare and keep checking up on them. If instead we just indiscrimately gave everyone the same redistrubtion of tax money, it might actually cost less over-all. Also, the welfare system has a disincentive to leave, because if you make too much income, you lose welfare and may end up making less money for your efforts. UBI would eliminate that problem.
UBI would make SOME people lazy, but a UBI of $30K is barely enough to live in some of the cheapest parts of the US. There’s still an incentive to go out and earn more in order to have some disposable income.
One of the things that keeps people from bettering themselves is the fear of becoming destitute. They work low paying jobs merely to survive, with no time or mental energy left to get more education or look for a better job.
And imagine what UBI would do for the homeless. I’d want open up an efficient apartment complex near one of the four-year SUNY schools in upstate new york with bus service to the school. Send the homeless there.
UBI could actually go part way to making socialized medical system work better. If medical treatment has zero marginal cost, then people will abuse it. If there’s a small amount people have to pay out of pocket, then they’ll think twice. Never mind that that money might have come from UBI.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but an economy driven by automation where the people receive enough of the work product (either directly or as currency) to survive is neither communism or socialism. It's a mode that has yet to be tried.
Consequently, most of the posts above (I've not read the ones below yet) are completely missing the point.
If you want to argue this -- either way -- you have to start from the premise that jobs simply will not be available.
Then: What should be done, and how should it work, or, what should not be done, and why not?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The rest will just add basic income and never cut anything.
So you really think Germany will implement UBI for some reason forget to cut "unemployment payment"???
So I can just file for unemployment and get twice the money?
Hm ... I was about to emigrate, but now as you mention this, perhaps I stay.
It's not an insane idea, but only if you actually follow through and cut the bureaucracy and all other handouts. Which never happens most places.
Sorry, that is utter nonsense. The whole idea of UBI is to exactly do that: cut off all other welfare programs.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Full of bullshit.
1) CHF is actually higher than EUR: You need about 1.10 CHF to buy 1.00 EUR: http://finance.yahoo.com/echar...{"allowChartStacking":true}
2) Switzerland have debt and try to reduce it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
3) Swiss National Bank treasury is to manage the CHF speculation and the variation of the revenue or loss change quickly with very high values.
I think you know the answer to that. I don't really have to repeat it now because it is all explained in the few sentences right after the ones you quoted.
Did I hit a nerve with you when I said that careers in being a whopper flopper was silly or something? Or did you think my concern was condescending? Why don't you go back to your safe space for a while longer.
What makes you think you've offended anyone? You've perplexed people, not irritated. As you continue to do. Do you think you are somehow demonstrating anything resembling concern? You're not. You're demonstrating befuddlement and obtuseness.
If you're simply not familiar with the references to fast-food employment in the common economic discussions of the time, I suggest you get back to the 1980s, to see if you can catch up. Or even the 1970s, perhaps the 1960s. It's long been a staple reference, taking over from prior concepts all the way back to the lowly serf tilling a field.
And you think the answer is to pay the guy who makes the fries more money or give it directly to him so the corporations can pay less and less due to the corporate welfare?
Nope, the answer is to empower the guy who makes the fries so he is free to tell the corporation to go fuck itself if they decide to screw him.
There are many ways to do that, but the one under discussion here is the UBI.
Maybe I'm just to old to understand you kids. It's like you want to build a new road in a different location because there is a giant pothole in the existing one and you want to give the people who would have fixed the pothole a paycheck for not fixing it in the first place.
You are obviously having a comprehension problem, yes. It's more like instead of having to keep fixing the one toll road because of the stranglehold it has on your situation, you build another path that is stable yet diffuse, so the entity that controlled the old toll road no longer has power over you.
... and that is to mention that UBI will prevent overpopulation.
With the current austerity and impoverization agendas going on, people will have to rely again on their children to provide them with sustenance when they grow old.
In the underdeveloped world this is custom. Poor people 'get' up to 10 children to make sure their pension is safe, and with the growing wealth of the western countries the population growth has reduced considerably, in some countries even reached a negative value.
Giving (and ensuring--and that is the difficult part with politics) a UBI to people up until their death will take away their necessity for a large offspring and will prevent the population growth from recurring in a more or less natural manner, contrary to the elite's (highly profitable: look at the costs of health care) agenda of gmo, vaccines, pesticides and what not.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Mind that anywhere a BUI deploys you will see the price of everything go up. Necessities least, probably increasing in proportion to luxury.
Why would it?
Your claim is utter nonsense knee jerk reaction.
In a country like Germany or Switzerland about 40% of the population already get social welfare:
* housing aid, because they can not pay the rent
* aid for electric power
* cost free legal advices
* unemployment payments
* early retirement payments
I don't even know how they are all called.
Just because bottom line people have more money, the prices don't rise, why should they? That idea makes no sense at all. Actually if you look at global economy: people have more money than in earlier times. And prices are sinking, for most things. You know: prices are mostly driven by competition about the goods ... not really by available money (but yes, that is also a important factor).
Everyone who is still *unemployed* bottom line has not more money. Only people who work on top of UBI have more.
So a huge deal of people can't spent more, hence there is no way to increase prices.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What it may allow is free roommates. That would work in both ways : you may easily become a roommate yourself, or you can easily find a roommate when needed or wanted. Or for that matter getting into a marriage and creating a family on a single salaried income may be easy and appealing.
The current austerity measures will lead to impoverisation of the West, leading to a big rise in population growth because, as is custom in underdeveloped countries, people will have to rely again on their offspring for their sustenance once they get too old to work (as if their will be any jobs by then).
UBI removes this necessity and will keep the population growth in check.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
more people can afford housing ... Switzerland has a lot of caves, that is true but right now everyone who can not afford housing gets "free money to rent a house" anyway. So: there is no difference between getting "housing aid" and UBI and therefor no increase in demand for housing: as everyone in Europe has a right to get state funded housing anyway!!!!
Where do the people that now can afford housing come from?
I mean
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The USA still spends 1.5 BILLION $/year on rural electrification. 50 years past it's use by date. Hide it in the USDA.
Germany wouldn't hand out double unemployment, they also wouldn't fire the unemployment agencies people.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
My reasoning is that people will be self-interested, which is what I am seeing a lot of in this thread.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
We're talking about poverty money here as a safety net. Not a million dollars.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Germany wouldn't hand out double unemployment, they also wouldn't fire the unemployment agencies people.
Ofc we would. The unemployment agency people would get UBI as well, obviously.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Nonsense. Dog walkers with no dogs to walk will move on to something else as always. After all, they wanted to make some extra cash and dog walkers don't do that when nobody wants them to walk a dog.
What makes you think natural market forces only work when people have a gun to their head?
And on the flip side, what does Donald Trump do exactly? I know he's rich and considered successful, but what work does he actually do? Or Kim Kardashian?
Kim Kardashian has started several successful businesses using microloans and know-how from her father, who had defended O.J. Simpson among other things.
For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created.
The problem with this assertion is that it's wrong. Just because the US or the shittier countries of the EU have trouble with employment doesn't mean that the world does. Instead, we see huge job growth coupled with increasing automation - just as it's been for the past few centuries.
Once again, how about we consider the places that aren't having the problems rather than only the places which are?
That's not a failure, that's a triumph of Capitalism. Not requiring people to fulfil current jobs but automating all of that away would be an enormous testament to the virtue of Capitalism, its ability to produce everything that people need without requiring those people to do the tasks themselves. It's basically paradise.
Now, having that type of productive ability means a huge abundance of supply and this creates huge pressures to lower prices, if there is no human involved, the prices can drop all the way to the cost of mining materials and energy and distribution chain and management of the involved resources. Nothing will be free but the prices will be extremely low compared to prices of today.
In an economy with extremely low prices all you need is freedom from government intervention to allow people to create/run more businesses that would provide the income for the now many unemployed.
With more and more automation and productivity based on it prices should be falling, instead of-course governments prevent prices from falling by pumping more and more fake liquidity into the system (fake, as in nobody worked to create it, it was conjured up out of thin air by the magic of the Federal reserve and the likes of them).
Pumping prices up lets government pretend that the nominal GDP is growing, which lets the government to collect more taxes in absolute values. The entire 'inflation is good' notion is absolutely erroneous, government manipulating money supply, interest rates, inflation numbers, GDP numbers, employment records, all this stuff is what is leading to destruction of the economies and of the societies built by these economies.
Production and automation is the good thing, regulation, manipulation of money supply, interest rates, taxation of income (slavery) is a bad thing. In simple terms: you want more of the good thing and less of the bad thing.
You can't handle the truth.
There are two problems with that assumption. First, many voters don't vote in their self interest. Second, you don't actually know what their self interest is.
In particular, maximizing the amount of government handouts you expect to receive through voting is often not in your interest.
You'er so foolish it is almost cute if it wasn't so pathetic.
You do know you're wasting your time being hostile, don't you?
It's not necessary to be belligerent, and rarely effective. Especially when the focus of your ire is different from the at which target you're shooting
Fast-food joints are nothing more than stepping stones to better jobs. This idea that it is a career is the problem.
Why? Are you bothered by McDonalds having their Burger University? Do you want Subway to be forced to do away with their sandwich artist nomenclature?
I guess if you want to rail against their corporate messaging you can, but don't belabor anyone else with it.
We're on an entirely different page. In a separate book. Located in another library.
If you are anything other than a high school kid or student of some kind, stay at home parent, or a part timmer looking for extra cash and trying to make a living from work at a fast food joint, you are a sad excuse for a human who has made too many mistakes in life.
Your analysis may be a bit limited. There's a few other possibilities. For example, you could be a person recently laid off who decided to get a job in an industry with high turnover. You could also be somebody who is working to break into the field, due to enjoying the industry.
The answer is not to give them more but to correct those mistakes so they can find real employment.
That is your answer to some idea of some problem, perhaps, but those aren't under discussion here. If you want to discuss those, I suggest you reformulate your approach with another methodology that would actually stimulate discussion, rather than continue on the path you have chosen.
Unfortunately that thinking is outdated now as we have ran jobs off so badly that people see them as the only viable choice for employment in some places.
Your answer of handing out money so when the employee who cannot even handle cooking the fries decides it is too hard that he can walk away is simply ridiculous. The answer needs to be the availability of quality jobs with a livable income. Not handouts that allow businesses to pay salaries that are even lower because your basic needs are already met.
It is a complete waste of productivity and a complete waste of resources. Your thinking is defective on this in so many ways.
Or your thinking is defective enough that you can't even see you aren't even proposing any implementable solution, but randomly declaring that there is some other outcome you want. Unfortunately, like many people, you neglected to produce a mechanism to achieve the result you want, thereby rendering your proposal incomplete. That you chose, by your own willful and deliberate choice to present yourself in a hostile and derogatory manner, only further decreases the effectiveness of your counter discussion.
Maybe you should take a step back, and let lose of your own grievances, so you can instead approach the discussion with a less detrimental fashion.
Instead of railing against a strawman of your own manufacture and applying it to others who aren't even saying what you think (no matter how fervently you believe that to be the case, it's often a waste of time even when you are correct, and you aren't even close to accurate on that score), you start with the premise you wish to advocate on its own merits, and develop an implementation of it that you wish to foster.
But I'd really suggest you submit your own proposal separate, rather than try to insert it here, nobody is going to listen to you at this point anyway.
You've cried wolf too much, while proclaiming the sky is falling, and nobody thinks your clothes are anything but lies, so you've destroyed your own ability to contribute.
Most Europeans understand the concept of common good. Only in America do citizens adamantly resist helpful programs from the government.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Thats a very interesting response. Whereabouts are you? Here in Canada the problem seems to be a bit tougher for people to dig themselves out of, at least around where I live. And people seem to be extremely hostile toward them, which I hadn't expected from Canadians.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
1. You cannot force people into communism. It was tried unsuccessfully too many times to count, it fails but in the process it murders people and economies. Communism, like any other form of collectivism goes against the principles of individual freedom and it goes against the natural desire of individuals to better their own lives rather than having been enslaved for the benefit of others.
2. Using the Internet does not make anybody 'part of the system' anymore than the simple act of being born makes somebody 'part of the system'. Being born into slavery does not take away natural desire to break the chains.
3. I did not quote anybody in any more way than I quoted common sense.
4. Money is MADE. Money is the productive output of my work. Fiat currency is medium of exchange that is accepted today because of government encroachment into the economy but the paper itself is no more money than the name of something is that thing. Money is store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. Government fiat is no store of value, it is the means of control and incidentally it acts as the medium of exchange and unit of account, but storing value? It cannot store value, it has no value.
Good luck there.
You can't handle the truth.
Reduce the bureaucracy? That's implementation details you're talking about there. And as the saying goes, "the Devil is in the Details."
So the idea is to put a bunch of people in high paying (relative to minimal wages) white-collar workers out of jobs? They might object to that.
Yes, automation and information technologies in the 21st Century are making it possible to do things the brute force, people-dependent Socialist countries of the 20th Century could not. You cannot (currently) bribe a robot so it is a little harder to have systematic failure due to the involvement of horribly fail-able human beings.
Except any transition is going to require human labor to implement. And if the second system effect is not violated, the new single bureaucracy will be just as large and slow or worse than the current multiple ones.
Will it require new complicated software of any kind? Then it will be the social program equivalent of the United State's Joint Strike Fighter: an expensive way of turning taxpayer money into exhaust gas without even taking off.
The 'not questions asked' part is even hard to do. Imagine the fun of ensuring fraud is controlled. There's enough problems now when every screw, hammer and billable hour is tracked for regular government projects. Just last year the oldest man in Japan turned out to be a long dead corpse kept by the family living off his 'retirement.' To fight this, will universal payouts require any new monitoring and registration systems? How will that work with religious cults that fear any 'Mark of Satan' or the paranoid 'Not in My Backyard' crowds? The tax man already has serious problems on their hands just getting the cash from people who obviously have it. I can imagine the fun of billing someone for getting two paychecks for a lifetime instead of one. Or being declared dead unexpected due to a typo.
My point is your point: The proponents of this 'UBI' apparently can't see past the end of their own noses, which is more or less typical for the average person: a lack of practical vision. All they seem to see is the shiny parts, which boils down to 'I won't have to work anymore!'. I've already looked forward at what this might cause and I don't like the implications of it one bit. I think the main problem is that they're using countries with a fraction of the population and GDP of the U.S. as examples, ignoring that the idea just won't likely scale up at all without falling apart under it's own mass.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Just take out a cable-subscription for your Roomba, too.
And another paid iCloud account for your iCar.
Problem solved!
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
You said that the Swiss will vote for basic income because they won't be affected by the cuts that entails. Now you say that the Swiss will vote not because out of such self interest but because of the "common good". Which is it?
This is why Europeans have voted for governments that reformed and cut welfare and social programs strongly over the last couple of decades?
Personally, I believe it could work - if managed properly (which would not be simple - but what is simple in a complex world?)
I also believe it is not going to happen any time soon, and for a whole different reason.
I think somebody (a Latin author? maybe Horatio?) once said, "I do not love money, but it makes me feel safe."
An universal basic income, to some extent, would make people feel less afraid.
And that would be unfortunate, because so many structures of our civilization are built on fear. (I am sure anyone here could make some example of this.) And significantly reducing the amount of fear in most people's lives would have a dramatic disestablishing effect. So... it is not going to happen any time soon.
However, we tend to forget that civilizations are intrinsically transient - they have been rising and falling for the last 12000 years at least - and this one is not looking good. (My personal opinion - and I may be wrong - is that we jumped the shark sometimes between the 70s and the 80s of last century.) So it is possible that a future civilization, built on different premises, will make it work for good... (The heck, in a few centuries historians will look back to this time of history, and wonder what in hell we were sniffing, smoking, or assuming by any other means!)
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
they were paying people to retire at 50, and then promising them benefits for the rest of their lives. Add in massive corruption and a shadow economy and they had the worst of both crony capitalism and socialism
The answer might be "simple" (cut welfare benefits, root out corruption, make business friendly changes to the tax code that encourage "free market" capitalism) - but by no means easy.
The EU is collapsing, so Greece will default soon anyway ...
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Law isn't the only way to get a minimum wage to exist... competition for workers can set a high floor value too.
No, the text to be voted is almost empty and let all the hard questions to be defined later. So even if the votation is adopted (very unlikely) this will be only the start of the implementation process that will take years and will certainly show how impossible it is in practice. So at some point a new initiative will be voted to remove the text from the constitution as fast as it have been added. This is the normal political process here in Switzerland.
I have not found a list in English, but this is only a list of the popular initiatives in Switzerland https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/... There is also referendum and federal initiatives. Just to show how normal it's here to vote on many different subjects. It's very usual for the Swiss citizens to vote on more than 10 subjects per years.
We've going to need some mechanism to provide basic needs for the countless tens of millions that will be become refugees. Few will have job skills, all will need housing shelter and a commonly agreed upon measure of human dignity. Not all should be cash and some economies of scale will be needed to keep it all affordable. I can see a lot of people going back to a village based agrarian life style and their going to need arable land. A lot of things are going to have to change.
"First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created."
This isn't true - the original Industrial Revolution did the same thing. Most everyone employed in the textile trade in Britain around 1770 had their livelihoods destroyed permanently. The various phases of textile manufacture was by far the largest industry in Britain, and in two decades the entire craft-based spinning, weaving and sewing industry was wiped out. Even producers of traditional textile raw materials, like linen and wool, took a major hit as the new mechanized industry was based on imported cotton at first. By 1800 20% of the population of Britain were paupers. A balance between labor and employment was not reached until 1840 at the earliest, giving 60-70 years (two working lifetimes, four generations) of economic misery to the lower classes. Demographic data show heights and weights of British citizens falling, and lifespans shortening, through the first half of 18th century.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Greece has been known for its generous social programs. It might not have actually been a basic income, but close to it. It couldn't figure out how to stay afloat and pay for all the freebies.
It's kind of ironic that a man responsible for the finances of a bankrupt country would be giving financial advice to other countries that are doing much better!
They only need one or two dogs to walk. Why would they need anything more, they have their basic needs covered. They can even be their own dogs or a family member's dog.
Natural market forces are removed in your scenario. A hobby, or anything can be a job now when you remove the requirements to make a living. You will end up with people doing something that takes 50 man hours to complete for $200 because they do not need to cover their basic living expenses any more. I see it all the time right now, idiots purchase crap from Ebay, polish it up, do a few fixes, and resell it in Ebay for 25% more. They tell me they are making a lot of money but the only way they can afford to do it is because they are not working and getting government assistance. One idiot told me I was stupid when I pointed out that he just paid $35 for something, spent 5 hours messing with it (cleaning it up and taking a better picture) and resold it for $45. I told him that is less than $2 an hour and he says how do you figure, it only took a couple minutes to post it. Those are the type of jobs you will be seeing. Having to make a living and at least break even is probably the strongest market force out there. It is largely gone if you pay people for doing nothing.
Nothing hostile in that at all. The truth can hurt your feelings, but it cannot be hostile.
I'm not bothered by any of it except that people think the rote menial jobs at fast food joints are careers worthy of challenging the human. They are not, they are menial service jobs that create little to no value for society outside of convenience and if you are working for them in any capacity other than getting job experience or extra cash, there is a problem with you that needs addressed.
All outliers not worthy of consideration. Unless that is the only jobs available in the area in which as I alluded to earlier, that is the problem in its stead.
Well, no. Like I said foolish. Any time a problem is identified, all causes of the problem and even the shape of the problem is fair game for the discussion. Your line of reasoning is akin to saying that when a kid doesn't get the answer to a math problem correct and does poorly on a test because he thinks 2+2=3 , that we need to scold the teacher for marking him down instead of making sure he can count and do simple math. Silly I tell you.
Listen, pointing out that the problem is something different and that your solution will only make things worse is a valid point. It's like you blew a fuse and want to change the outlet because there is no power all the while ignoring the blown fuse or the device drawing too much power for the circuit causing the fuse to blow in the first place.
There is absolutely no strawman here. You are wrong about the problem and wrong about the solutions to the wrong problem. When people are trying to make a living from a fast food joint, we have serious problems and giving them money for doing nothing is not the solution. Neither is minimum wage. Either the employment opportunities are broken or the employee is broken and society will be a lot better off if those were fixed rather than encouraging the further decay by supplementing a basic income.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Each person in the US got nine times as much stuff each month, on average
Nope. Each person on average gets stuff that costs nine times as much. Probably it is neither "more" stuff, nor "more valuable" stuff.
Comparisons on GDP make no sense. If you eat 100 fine breads a year and drink 100 super fine bottles of wine and pay $200 for all of that and I pay $400 for the same, my "GDP" is twice than yours. For no particular reason except that everything is more expensive in my country. GDPs based on values like that are completely meaningless.
because the competitive economy produced nine times as much stuff.
No it does not. It produces goods that would have nine times the value on the US market. And that says nothing about the market in the respective country. And it does not say anything about the amount of goods produced.
I would suggest to go once in a poor country, and figure how rich they are. E.g. Thailand or Vietnam. In terms of dollars they are poor. But tin terms of quality of life, health care, food, housing etc. they are rich ... absolutely not comparable to a middle class american or european. When I'm there I have "more money" than they have, but the simplest living people there have a own house, own several cars, a motor bike or two, probably a second house at the sea or in the rural area they come from. In comparison to me: the poor bastards there who only earn $200 a month: are rich Because with those $200 in their country they can afford 10 times more than I can afford with my $10,000 in my country. Ah, let me calculate it correctly: 13,000 Bath / 39 = 333 Euro = $400... ah well, my $200 were a bit off. 13,000 - 15,000 Bath is what a typical person earns there. And from that money they live like upper middle class in Germany. Only a small percentage of Germans has such a decent live style like the average "poor" in a country as Thailand has.
Comparing live quality and even production based on GDP is complete bollocks. In Russia they produce as many breads as they need, farm a many grain as they need have as many cows as they need make as many beer as they need have as many houses as they need, build as many planes as they need have as many dentists as they need, have as many operas as they need etc. p.p. That their GDP looks puny is only because their currency has a different value versus the dollar or euro.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Communism doesn't work because central planning doesn't work.
Who says that Communism must be achieved with central planning?
The Chinese communism combines with a capitalistic market just fine, if you have not noticed yet.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I don't think it's a bad idea, but it troubles me that there's been very little thought about the long-term impacts it might have. ... 39 and a half years or so ... I get 50 in the end of this year.
Why do you say so? The first time I heard about UBI I was something like 10 years old and read about it in a SF magazine.
That was 40 years ago. Ok, I'm cheating
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If speaking the truth that you or the GP is acting foolish is hostile to you, i suggest that the problem is with you and not me. I guess there is nothing more to say here then. When you still insist there is a disconnect after several posts clearly explaining the issues, no progress will come of this and we are wasting our time.
Yes, because Greece knows all about finance. They're the last people to listen to on this.
As for his argument, it has to be crap. Just talk to black leaders in American and welfare. No, not Sharpton ass hole, a real leader that knows something about the black community. They often tell you how the Republican welfare to work program really worked. I work with some people that benefited from that program. How Democrats keep them slaves to the government. No hope, no way out if they can help it.
Give people money, they'll be like cats. They'll be there like clockwork to collect that check. It's stupidity from a country full of stupid leaders.
They only need one or two dogs to walk. Why would they need anything more, they have their basic needs covered. They can even be their own dogs or a family member's dog.
They won't get that nice vacation or new flatscreen from walking one or two dogs. They'll be looking for something more in demand. You're forgetting that this is a BASIC income. Most people are accustomed to more than a basic lifestyle and that means they'll be wanting to earn money.
As for your idiot, opponents of minimum wage claim that there's a lot of labor that isn't worth minimum wage and that we should eliminate the minimum wage to make those jobs exist. They never seem to have a good explanation of how people are supposed to survive on that sort of pay. It seems your idiot was doing one of those jobs out of boredom since he already had his needs met. While not much, it did provide for some economic value at least.
If it's anecdotes you want, there was this lady in England who was living on the dole and spending her time writing a children's book. A few years later, she brought billions into the UK's economy.
But let's take a moment to look at people who have no need to make a living at all. Do you see Bill Gates walking 2 dogs a week these days? How about Larry Ellison? According to you, they have no motive to do any better than that. In fact, they have even less motivation than a basic income recipient.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm
Casteism
"The greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects; In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings."
http://www.boston.com/news/glo...
Casteism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... oppose UBI because they fear you will NOT be subservient to them
Casteism
billions of human leaches that provide nothing.
Please kill yourself. We don't need people with a view of humanity like that on this planet.
You are completely oblivious to anything going on in the world. Fear is a terrible motivator, we know enough psychology today to understand that it inhibits higher brain functions, preventing any kind of invention or progress. For slavery, that is actually a useful feature, but you don't even understand slavery and that it wasn't avoidance of being killed that made the system work.
So please, jump off a bridge somewhere, or in front of a train or whatever you prefer, because it isn't people being lazy that are the scourge of humanity, it is people like you who don't see the greatness in our species, the potential, the fact that if you would only listen and give them a chance, every single human would have one small thing to contribute. Most just live and die without ever getting the chance to do it, and it's because of fuckers like you who don't believe they should have the opportunity, they should do hard work instead, because of that small Stalin in your head telling you that the unwashed masses are up to no good and need to be kept busy, against their will, with hard work so they don't start to do some thinking.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There won't be purchase "power", but rest assured the demand will very much still be there.
Supply is abundantly made available thanks to brilliant advances in several areas of engineering from biological to robotic/automation technology "freeing" humanity to pursue something, for the time being and sadly foreseeable future it is poverty and social exclusion. Unfortunately suicide rates too.
How that demand without purchasing "power" would eventually be "acquired" or satisfied by basic necessity to live without suffering, would be the interesting side of the hypothetical story.
Most suburban back-yards are of sufficient area for a family to grown their own food. And chickens.
So, OK, people would have to buy a new shovel once in a while. Big deal. It is easy to make your own, especially when that 'supply-heavy' curve makes sheet metal super-cheap. Oh, or anyways, shovels themselves. Buy one, and you are set for 20 years. If made by robots, and with an over-supply, such purchases will be trivially cheap.
Even in the hearts of the largest cities in the world, "roof-top farming" is taking off.
The cycle of capitalism requires that demand must always increase, otherwise there are no profits to be had.
Sure. Buckminster Fuller, or so I'm told.
Here's the thing: All the current proposals for this 'UBI'? They're coming out of countries that have a fraction of the population, as well as the GDP, of the U.S.. I do not have any confidence in the idea that it'll scale up and still be viable. Like I said somewhere else: How about you make basic health insurance free for everyone first, getting rid of the ACA as it currently exists, and if the federal government can make that work for, say, 10 years? Then we can talk about giving everyone free money to live on and making having a job 'optional'. As is we don't have anywhere near a balanced budget, nineteen BILLION in National Debt, and no end in sight for any of it, and it would cost trillions of dollars, every single year to give the people free money every month. It just doesn't make a lick of sense to me, and I'm torn between thinking the ostensible proponents of it are either paid trolls trying to ruin the U.S. permanently, or just rose-colored-glasses-wearing blue-sky types who aren't living in the real world, trying to sell everyone on an utter fantasy. So my challenge stands: Get rid of the ACA and give everyone free basic healthcare; expand the existing Medicare system to accomplish that. If you can't do that, then none of this UBI nonsense will work either, plain and simple.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
What would it do to the concept of minimum wage? Presumably eliminate it, since it would no longer be needed. Would they be happy not contributing? Many won't be, which means there will be people doing the work that needs to be done. How to prevent fraud and abuse? Simplicity! Right now, people aren't automatically eligible for government support, which means that there's a lot of people who want to be and will cheat, and a lot of money is spent to make sure nobody gets what they don't deserve. If every citizen is eligible at the same rates, there really isn't much scope for fraud ("borrowing" children, I suppose), and much less money needs to be spent on enforcement.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Also, where did you get this about not showing up to work drunk? The impression I got was that drunkenness on the job was fairly common.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's not a failure, that's a triumph of Capitalism. Not requiring people to fulfil current jobs but automating all of that away would be an enormous testament to the virtue of Capitalism, its ability to produce everything that people need without requiring those people to do the tasks themselves. It's basically paradise.
It's paradise if you have some sort of income, sure. But capitalism does not (AFAICT) provide any remedy for those who have no income because they have been rendered unemployable. Either there will have to be some sort of non-capitalist way to provide them with money (e.g. UBI or some other form of welfare), or they will have to resort to stealing to support themselves.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You are mixing up billions with trillions :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There, that's better. XD
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I find it ironic that when i said there was nothing to be gained continuing this, that you have to post some absurd attempt at slamming me when it is you who is all butthurt because you think your ideas are infallible even though irrelevant.
Foolish child. Give up. It's like you are insisting on putting mag wheels on a car with a blown engine. As i said nothing more would be gained continuing this and you certainly proved it. Here is a hint -you are trying to dress a pig up and call it pretty but are to focused on your new girlfriend to realize it is actually a cow.
And yet you promote fear, which is the #1 source of devastation and suffering.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org