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Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in His Harvard Commencement Speech (fortune.com)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest major tech figure to call for universal basic income as a solution for inequality, joining a growing chorus from Silicon Valley. From a report: "Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech at Harvard University. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on.
That's my plan.
Across Europe Socialist parties are collapsing because they have become largely irrelevant as all they are seeking to do now is create more bureaucracy. Governments need to learn to be lean and simple. UBI accomplishes this.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
Why should the wealthy have to give up their money for others to not work? I know the leftists love this idea, but it takes away incentive to do business in countries with UBI. Someone has to pay for it, and inevitably those who do work (the wealthy) will be taxed to pay for those who don't work (those who receive UBI). Dems love this, but it's a terrible idea. There's no such thing as free money, much to the disappointment of leftists.
- snruter rotsac
UBI has been getting more press lately and it's a little hard for me to see how it makes sense. It seems like welfare for everybody, regardless of need. IMHO it tries to solve the problem from the wrong direction. One of the most important things for human mental health is to have something to do. UBI does nothing to address that, and without opportunity the money will just be used for drugs far too often. Programs like the New Deal make a lot more sense. Paying people's expenses while they are in training also make sense. Blank checks require more personal responsibility than you can expect out of the population at large.
I read the internet for the articles.
... to let people starve in the streets, why not?
We run these patchworks of programmes to try to approximate the effects of universal basic income. Lost your job? Unemployment insurance. Chronically unemployed? Food assistance, welfare, etc. Homeless? Housing assistance / public housing / shelters. Too old to work? Pensions / social security, and in the US, Medicare. Too poor for health insurance in the US? Medicaid. Physically can't work? Disability. Job wouldn't pay enough to afford basic expenses? Minimum wage. On and on.
Isn't it about time that we just simply accept what we're trying to approximate, and just do it directly? Then scrap the patchwork of programmes that try to approximate it, and all of their overhead (ex: all of them), market distortion (ex: minimum wage), and perverse incentives (ex: trying not to earn too much to avoid losing benefits). People can reasonably differ about the amount that defines "basic needs", how much if any to boost people who "permanently can't work" vs. those who simply don't have a job for whatever reason, how to deal with dependents, etc. But it certainly simplifies the debate versus having a whole complex and inefficient patchwork to argue over.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Perhaps he can take $60 billion of that and fund 10 million people with a $6,000 UBI all by himself? He'd still have that massive $3 billion to live on and feel guilty about...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
He doesn't need unskilled workers he can make slave away for pennies, knowing that their option is to either work 20+ hours a day for you or starve to death!
The world is going to come to an end if we actually had to pay people to flip burgers, stock stores and bag your groceries enough money that any person with a sliver of self respect would do it! If we cannot press people to slave labour anymore, our way of life is going to come to an end. People will have to bag their own groceries, like those Euros where minimum wage exists and you can't afford baggers!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He could pay off the debt of all of the students attending his speech and not even notice, but no... Voluntary help just will not do.
He wants other people's wealth to be "spread around" at gun-point...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Facebook are one of a number of companies that have a habit of using exotic international tax vehicles to move profits from countries where corporation taxes are reasonable to countries where they are super-low. As a result of this, personal taxation in the countries where Facebook export their profits have to be higher. Which pushes down the standard of living for citizens in those countries.
I get that this speech was more about marketing and PR than actually intending to do anything useful, but in the event that Mr Zuckerberg would like to make a positive start to inequality, can I respectfully suggest that he pays taxes where they are due, and makes a declaration that Facebook will no longer use "international tax vehicles" to move profits around and thereby avoid paying taxes.
If Mr Zuckerberg and/or Facebook aren't willing to do that, then can I respectfully suggest that he is full of ####.
He should have finished school. That way he might have taken a basic economics class, which would have taught him that economies of scale adjust out all imposed constants. You can, for example, add X to everyone's income, and the price of everything will simply rise to adjust out X, returning the system to peak efficiency. This will make what money low income earners do make even less valuable, increasing poverty and shrinking the middle class.
Every economist with a shred of intellectual honesty will admit to this - imposed constant offsets like UBI, Minimum Wage, and the like, only increase poverty.
Zuckerberg wants a universal income, he can hand over his own money to set the example.
What? He's not going to voluntarily give up his billions so others can have a basic income? How strange.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Don't we have welfare in this country? Isn't that what Millionaire Mark wants? You have money sir, open a shelter or hand out food... You can afford it.
It's *really* easy to spend other people's money you know, especially when you use the money to "help the poor" into the voting booth to vote for you. You sell it as "compassion" but it's really just a bribe to buy votes and build a dependency in your voting block. This country did just fine by the poor prior to FDR, even during the great depression when few had any money.
Now we have all kinds of welfare programs that give away billions and billions and are racking up Federal debt in the Trillions each year.... What more do you think we should do? You can only hand out so much money before it becomes meaningless and we all go bankrupt and EVRYBODY becomes poor...See Venezuela for an example of where this kind of thinking leads you.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I think he knows it all too well.
First of all, please stop confusing economy and finance. At no point in history those two were further apart then today. Economy is about people doing and making things for each other. No money is needed for economy. If you need an example, look at any parent who raises a child.
Finance, on the other hand, is all about money. That money used to involve work, but the financial sector found out long ago that automatic gambling machines yielded more than actual work. The fiat money of today can be (and is) conjured out of thin air by banks and central banks. During the recent crises, central banks have made up more money than ever before, to stabilize their "hopes and dreams".
Alas they spent it on the wrong people. The European Central Bank, for example, buys "financial products" from internationals without ever caching them, they cant: it is their way of getting money into the virtual economy and caching would take it out again. In short, multinationals already DO have a Universal Basic Income. If you know that, why on earth would it be good to give it to multinationals and bad to give it to real people? Hint: real people might be lazy and greedy, but multinationals are guaranteed to be!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
How are you going to afford all that dope on only basic income - living in tent? I'm not sure what most people picture when they think of UBI, but if it's going to replace existing "social safety net" programmes, then life on UBI alone means living like life on existing social safety net programmes. Aka, you'll survive, but it won't be a pretty life.
You seem to be picturing the simultaneous implementation with UBI and a massive downwards transfer of wealth to boost the basic UBI to far beyond existing social safety net levels. While that's certainly possible to do, and I'm sure there's a good section of the population that would support that, it is in no way a fundamental requirement of UBI.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
So does this mean that Facebook is going to start paying their interns this summer?
Scandinavia uses very socialist policies and they're some of the most prosperous and happy countries in the world.
Norway is not nearly so happy.
At least not since the bottom dropped out from under the oil market that was propping up its national infrastructure. It was a non-fungible resource for a very long time, but it always had a timer on how long it's going to last. Any resource export based economic system always does.
The refugee problem has not helped; Scandinavian countries were among the first to begin refugee deportations, since they simply can't handle the influx, and absorb them into the existing social fabric, rather than having them create social enclaves.
Now Europe is dealing with the issues that the U.S. has always had to deal with, regarding multiculturalism.
Even Merkle, in her speech with Obama the other day, acknowledged that Germany is starting to hop on the deportation bandwagon, and promised only to make the processing more efficient.
as a solution for *inequality* from a front-man pupet billionaire LOL! just LOL! Inequality has no solution. Inequality (genetic, social and economic), including gender biological specialization, is the fundamental aspect of the process of evolution, of which everything in Nature, including Zuckerberg, is a product.
Story explaining how Zuckerberg will never have to pay taxes again. Also include a sentence about Buffett never paying taxes on his $50 billion.
Funny how those super rich who don't pay taxes are always the first to say the middle class need to be paying more.
To be fair (or cynical), Buffett has repeatedly said it is ridiculous that he pays less in taxes than his secretary and that the tax laws should be changed, but until they are it is in his best interest and prudent to use the existing law to reduce his tax burden as much as possible.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Confiscate Zuker's Wealth to kick start it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
He speaks exactly like an intelligent rich kid who's had the great fortune of an extremely successful life. The truth is that meaningful roles aren't for the average working-class person. I know because I am one, and I can verify that, as you might have guessed, there's not much meaning to be found in a working-class job. For the average person, a meaning in life must come from outside work, not inside work.
Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will. Either that or we have some horrible social upheaval like the French Revolution and start from scratch.
An example.
Everybody like the new self-driving car craze? Google's car passed 300,000 miles without an incident, all that? Can't wait to have your car drive your drunk ass home from the bar, or have your car take your elderly mother to the store for you? Sounds 100% good doesn't it?
Check out these two links. Self driving truck delivers beer. There are 3.5 million truck drivers employed in the USA.
Now I ask you. When, and that's not if but when all 3.5 million of these people are unemployed...what are we going to do with them? It's going to happen and nobody is planning for it.
How about some others?
Robots could possibly wipe out 6 million retail jobs.
Agriculture set to lose 1 million jobs to robots
Coal industry set to lose half their workforce inside of 10 years
We're going to have to do something, and soon.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Too true, if only we had an entire continent full of examples where democratic socialism was thriving.
Alas, since Venezuela is literally the only example of socialism ever in the history of anything, we know socialism is a death warrant.
Maybe we should get the European Union to study this problem.
Story removing any "to be fair" to Buffett. He fought tax bills tooth and nail, WHILE saying taxes should increase.
All while complaining he paid less taxes than his secretary. Perhaps if he PAID his legally owed taxes instead of not paying them and fighting the IRS about it that wouldn't be the point.
So you have sympathy for a guy who has $50 billion, doesn't pay taxes he is legally obligated to pay, and your reasoning is he asks for higher taxes? He asked for higher taxes for others, not himself.
I don't claim to be well read on the subject, so perhaps this is old hat to others. But I hadn't heard the argument about encouraging exploration and risk taking through a universal safety net. Interesting. My first thought is that this is unlikely, at best we might see more sure fire failures like beanie baby stores. But that's the nature of this sort of exploration, there would be a lot of failures.
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This is a classic billionaire, entitled, socialist idea. It's really easy to say "we should" or "you should" when you will never, ever want for anything in your life again. Mark wants to impress what he believes on everyone else because he thinks he's smarter. I have news Mark, you got lucky, that's it. You probably aren't as good of a programmers as I am but you had a flash in the pan idea and it stuck.
I make good money despite my lack of education but I know, with 100% certainty, that any new government program will eat more from my paycheck. Mark doesn't have to worry about that so he starts blathering about some crazy idea that in addition to costing people like me more every week, it will evaluate our currency just like raising the minimum wage does.
Everyone should work, that gives value to all money earned.
Yes, I would rather people be campaigning for Universal Basic Employment. That is, a system where everyone would always have access to a job that paid basic living expenses, a job built around each person's particular skill set.
Is there enough work for each skill set? Can we mandate that work? What if someone wants to change careers later in life and doesn't *want* to keep that skill set? What about people with little technical skills in a computer-dominated world?
My fear is that mandating employment will reduce down to people being assigned to unnecessary jobs just to fulfill the requirement. Extra secretaries, building extra housing beyond our population needs, etc. Plus, this assumes that people are happy working these types of jobs -- many people will be miserable working some jobs and you will have still not addressed the psychological health issue OP brought up.
No I think Universal Basic Income is the win here. We all earn it from corporations buying our publicly owned property (forests, parks) and privatizing it. It's time we started collecting royalties on it. We're not talking a giant income here, but enough for very modest housing and food. But those are the big stresses in life, worrying about if you will have enough to eat or will go homeless. Without those in the equation, people can decide their own lives.
With UBI, you can always eat beans and rice. Nothing fancy, but you can survive. But surely you want more from life than that -- a rewarding career, to volunteer in the community, to become an artist or actor or scientist, or at the very least enough money to get that big screen plasma TV and sometimes go to a football game. You need more income for that stuff, UBI only covers the bases, so most people (unless you are happy to live a spartan monk-like lifestyle in a studio apartment with beans and rice all day, and if so, more power to you) will want more and seek more employment. That isn't a problem.
Except now you've opened up an ACTUALLY free market. Right now corporations hold all the cards, many are forced to take low paying jobs with low/no benefits precisely because they're concerned if they wait any longer they won't be able to afford food or a house. Now with UBI, workers can pass on terrible job offers. They can survive so they don't NEED to work a terrible job for super low pay. They can wait for a better offer. So now corporations have to compete on the best pay and benefits that makes their jobs worthwhile rather than a race to the bottom.
Furthermore, with the UBI safety net, even more people can open that business they always wanted to but were afraid to do so. Open a restaurant, retail store, handyman shop, whatever. Previously people worried about the business failing and how they would get money to survive. Now under UBI, sure ideally the business would excel and make lots of money, but if it goes under, the person feels confident that at least I have UBI to cover my house and food. If the business fails, might have to cut expenses a while, but it can be done. It takes the pressure off, allowing more workers to become confident business owners, which further increases market competition.
Plus UBI allows things not possible before. Look at the people willing to donate their time to open source projects for free right now. If we had UBI, no doubt some programmers would choose to live on UBI and maybe only part time work to dedicate more time to open source. Remember, it's not a job for money necessarily that's healthy, it's having any sort of community contribution. There's plenty of non-profit volunteer positions that currently don't get many applicants but would likely see surges under UBI as people have more options to take less crappy jobs that give them enough free time to volunteer more. These volunteer positions are not any less jobs than paid ones; in fact, some volunteer positions can be very important to the community! Again, with UBI, workers have some restored bargaining power with employ
When you start thinking of socialism as a tool of corporate monopoly.
That just demonstrates the magnitude of the expense of UBI and other similar government programs. One of the richest individuals in the world would have to give up his entire fortune to provide a low level of funding for such a program for a single year, for a minuscule portion of the American population.
Probably we could get some Greek economists to work on the issue.
is he willing to contribute to the cause? Because I'm betting that number is zero.
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
Well I can't speak for Zuck's motives, but in general advocates say it comes from restoring taxes that used to exist on the wealthy. We've had decades of reduced taxes and tax loopholes for the rich that they pay hardly nothing anymore. During the most prosperous periods in modern US history, the tax rate was as high as 90% on the top tax bracket. Plus, there's plenty of infrastructure and environmental problems that have to be paid for by the people despite the fact that private interests caused it and profited off it. They must pay their fair share commensurate with the amount of money they make as well as the resources they take from the public (when you harvest things like oil now, it's gone for future generations; don't they owe something to our grandchildren and future generations who never get an opportunity to build that industry themselves?) and the infrastructure (trucks cause something like 10,000x the damage to roads than cars, do they pay for the roads?) and environment (many oil pipelines leaks over the years, not to mention all kinds of other runoff, a lot of it comes from agricultural pesticides too) that they damage in the process.
How are you going to afford all that dope on only basic income
Grow it in a window box.
I'm not sure what most people picture when they think of UBI, but if it's going to replace existing "social safety net" programmes, then life on UBI alone means living like life on existing social safety net programmes. Aka, you'll survive, but it won't be a pretty life.
True. Just be aware that some people will make that choice. Perhaps including the GP.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
By paying a big chunk of workers wages, for those businesses - shocker, eh? I don't understand how people are so thick, that they don't see that the UBI is a massive business subsidy, more than anything else.
Just think of how much more time people will have to spend on facebook if they don't have to keep showing up at those pesky jobs all the time.
Ergo, my reference to the gun point, which is how all taxes are collected...
Let me ask a question. When you receive your electric bill or winter gas bill or water/sewerage bill, do you call it a forced bill "at gun point" from the utility company? Or do you just pay it because you're paying your fair share of bills for what you used?
Taxes are just our bill for our fair share of government and government services. It pays for military defense, a court system to allow you to file greviences against neighbors businesses or even the government itself, roads and bridges and other infrastructure, inspectors that ensure our buildings are constructed to code and food is safe to eat, and way more than I can list here. You use plenty of government services every day and don't even realize, so yes, you need to pay your bills for those services.
Now you could argue that our taxes are not always used wisely. I'd personally love to see our taxes go more to domestic programs rather than more middle eastern wars. And you might argue government is wasteful, and sometimes it is. But then I have a news flash for you, have you ever worked at corporate? Corporations are *at least* as wasteful as government services in many circumstances, so it's not particularly unique to government. If you'd like to see changes and waste cut, contact your representative and vote against them next election if they do nothing, that's why we're a democratic republic, we can vote and change things. At least you can do that, with private corporate control you have absolutely no say about what the CEO does.
So, of course, "UBI" and other attempts to forcibly "spread the wealth" to address the non-problem of "income inequality" are foolish and oppressive.
If you've never been poor I suppose you don't understand inequality, so let me give you a brief overview. Income is a huge part of it, but not all. Neighborhoods gentrify and rent increases meaning you must leave your long time neighborhood since you can't find a better job, because you don't have free time between 60+ hours a week job at several stores or money to attend college to get new skills. You might ask why they don't just buy a house. Good question! When your income is that low, you don't have the credit necessary to buy. Except landlords need to make money off of you, so their rent is almost by definition *more* than a typical mortgage (it has to be more than the mortgage to make a profit, right?). So you have to pay a lot and need more jobs. Many jobs are not on bus routes in my area, so you need a car. You get a cheap one at a used car lot, but since your credit is low, you don't get the typical 2 or 3% interest middle class gets, you get 8 or 10% interest, again having to pay *more* than middle class. But it's used car so you can make small payments over time so you try to make it work out. Then you get to work and your boss tells you to go home. They found someone new, or just plain don't like you, and they fire you on the spot. They can do that in many states because "right to work" really means employers have the right to fire you at any moment. Or even if you're not fired, it's a slow day, so he sends you home. Now you're short a day of pay, and your bills are stretched thin, so you can't make the car payment until the next paycheck. Now you're late and have penalty interest, and they possibly come to repo your car if you wait too long and they don't want to work with you. Or, you decide to take a payday loan on your next paycheck so you can have the money now rather than waiting two more weeks, so you pay your bills, but your payday loan was at obnoxious 25%+ and has to be paid back immediately at the next paycheck, which of course you don't have, so you sink into more debt. Which means your credit score dips lower, you have to pay even higher interest rates, now you don't even qualify for car loans and even rental units star
Trump campaigned on a populist agenda too and backtracked on all of it. If be more impressed is he came out for something that's really on the table like Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill (HR 676)
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His co-founder, Chris Hughes, donated several million to a pilot research program in NYC called the Economic Security Project that is performing research into the viability and execution of a universal basic income (UBI). Two-year research program; I happened to interview for them. I'm not sure about the viability because I have not delved into the research necessary for it, but a large portion of executing it has to do with the ability to put the right PR in place. As it stands now, overcoming the kind of negative stigma that is attached to anything perceived as socialist in the US (excluding all the socialist programs that precede anyone born after 1950 or so) is one of the largest obstacles after finding the best means to pay for this.
It is very interesting and idealistic though by Facebook CEO Mark. If this ever become reality, everyone can make their life more meaningful and can enjoy more.
Hmmm. I've read this book, and it doesn't end well.
Incorrect. He did what he did because there was a free market to entertain his ideas. And his family was financially sound. How many on food stamps made it to college and succeed in life? Could be a handful at best. Making that a norm is fallacious.
Otherwise STFU...
Doing a little math...
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this cost a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
Depends on similar "magic" of free energy in the form of matter-antimatter conversion and the advent of replicator technology. Essentially unlimited energy driving replicators that can fashion virtually any and all food and consumer goods means a general lack of want for the basics and even the luxuries.
I like Mark's comments and ideas. We just have to separate the means, the ends, and the values.
Mark is describing the ends. It's a vision for a new social structure of the future. It has a lot going for it - if we ignore for a moment how we pay for it, everyone here (I hope) will agree that it would be a Great Thing if everyone had food, clothing, shelter, quality education, and good health care. That's a good basis for a great society. If we had the choice, why would we choose to have hunger and starvation, homelessness, under-education and people dying of preventable and curable problems?
But we have to pay for it. UBI was one idea to investigate (and that's pretty close to his wording). The global worth of mankind's output is growing - mathematically, the average standard of living of the world should continue to rise over time (I see no limit in sight).
Much, much more importantly - we also have to figure out a value system around it. Mark's ideal here is a safety net to let people climb higher. That's a great thing. It can also be viewed as a motivation to not climb at all. That's a terrible thing. All social programs struggle with this fundamental issue. It doesn't mean the goals are bad. It means that when society gives, some people give back, and some people take. The ideal society happens when everyone gives and everyone gives back. Society collapses when everyone takes and nobody gives back.
Giving to the poor and needy is risky. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a higher society than one that invests in the poor and needy.
Side note: I see no better way to handle the moral issues here than in our own lives and our own homes. Do we give back when we take? Do we teach our children the value of work, progress, ambition, and selflessness? Are setting the right example ourselves and teaching others?
We can't have that utopian society unless we have utopian people to put in it.
Other side note: I'm a wealthy, small-government conservative who hates paying interest, taxes, and poorly managed, poorly used social programs. I also believe I have a responsibility to meaningfully help those who have a tougher hand to play than I do. And I struggle (a lot) to find good ways to meaningfully help.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
Most rich people earned their money. A lot of those are first-generation rich.
Forbes says that 30 percent of the Forbes 400 members inherited their wealth and the remaining 70 percent are entirely “self-made.”
United for a Fair Economy breaks down the Forbes list using a baseball analogy. It says 35 percent of the list was born in the “batter’s box,” with a lower-middle class or middle-class background.
That includes people like Larry Ellison of Oracle , who was born in a lower-middle class part of Chicago. It also includes Harold Hamm, a one-time gas-station attendant who built an oil and gas empire.
The report says 22 percent of the list were born on first base: they came from a comfortable but not rich background and might have received some start-up capital from a family member. This group includes Mark Zuckerberg and hedge funder Louis Bacon, who started Moore Capital Management with help from a small inheritence.
Only 11.5 percent were born on second base, the report says. Second base is defined as people who inherited a medium sized company or more than $1 million or got “substantial” start-up capital from a business or family member.
The report says 7 percent were born on third base, inheriting more than $50 million in wealth or a big company. The report includes Charles Koch and Charles Butt on third base.
The report says 21 percent were born on home plate, inheriting enough money to make the list.
Then take Elon Musks and Warren Buffetts. We can work our way down the billionaires list and take it all until there are no billionaires left.
America boasts 540 billionaires, more than any other country on the planet and more than all of Europe combined. In 2016, 221 former billionaires fell off the list, though 198 newcomers joined.
If we take all their money--on average they are each worth $4.44 billion--we would be able to come up with $2.376T, which could pay off about 11% of the national debt leaving us about $18T in the hole.
That's of course a one-time deal, because after that there aren't any billionaires and probably won't be any new ones one the policy of confiscation billionaires money becomes a thing.
Maybe they'll get paid more, or maybe they won't and they'll have to cry themselves to sleep every night living in a prosperous, happy, and stable dystopia where people who work hard doing useful jobs aren't massively less wealthy than they are.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Eating shrimp on his yacht with Zuck and Elon Musk. Think these guys are busting hump more hours per day than most people?
At one of our dinners, Milton [Friedman] recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
A UBI isn't a massive business subsidy because with a UBI, you don't have to work to survive. It might even lead to an increase in wages to encourage people to work when they don't need to.
You know what is a massive, and unorganized, business subsidy? A sub-livable minimum wage. Society has to fill in the gap for those who can't afford to support themselves somewhere, whether it's through government programs or friends and family helping out.
An excess of human labor also helps to keep wages down, and government pays for all those people who can't find work to stick around and be ready to desperately grab any low-paying jobs that others aren't willing to settle for.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"He who shall not work, shall not eat."
Still meant something. Those were people who didn't *want* handouts, they *wanted* to work, to do *meaningful* work. They were ashamed of their dire straits and went to great lengths to get out of them.
Compare to today's entitle welfare recipients.
of automation and productivity increases making a large # of people obsolete. That's the real reason we're talking about UBI. Unless you're going to make tons of pointless work for those folks you're not gonna have employment. Worse, half the point of UBI is to let folks live decent lives outside the big cities where cost of living is really high. But if they still have to move to where the work is they can't do that.
Now, if you're goal is to have the appearance of taking care of those people while either not doing it or just plain exploiting them... Not trying to accuse you of that but I'm saying that somebody is going to want to use your idea for just that.
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Oh, none? Wow, I'm shocked.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
It's Universal _Basic_ Income. The point of UBI is to neuter the Rich's main source of power: the threat of death from starvation when you lose your job. People can and will still work for extra money for nicer things. As an added benefit that folks no longer have to move to the expensive cities where the jobs are. They can spread out and make better use of their space.
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In Star Trek, the Federation benefited from development of matter-antimatter reactions to produce nearly unlimited energy. They used that energy to drive the replicator technology. With replicators capable of providing virtually any and and all food and material goods (consumer goods), essentially for free, there was no need for buying normal consumer goods. So no one had to go without basics. Money, such as it was, was used to buy artisanal works or the odd thing that cannot be effectively replicated. It is also assumed that they had perfected birth control so that over-breeding became an issue. And of course, earth was nearly destroyed several times over, so that helped keep the population down for awhile.
nobody there has any debt. If you made it into Harvard you either got a full ride or your parents are rich. He's addressing the American Ruling Class and a few geniuses that will serve them.
And voluntary help has _never_ done. How many Christians do you know paying their tithe? Left on their own people get picked apart by scoundrels and blaggards. John Galt is a myth. A nasty one at that. In a civilization you're forced to work together for the same reason you're forced to obey the speed limit. If you don't want to there's a perfectly cave in the Ozarks you can go live in. The rest of us are trying to run a society here.
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If you limit the payments to only low-income people, it's welfare and not universal income.
so you could actually analyze the effect of giving everyone a UBI. Low income earners income becomes much more valuable when it's _consistent_. They can take risks they normally couldn't (like move to a city where the cost of living is low and education is affordable).
We also heavily control prices of basic goods in this country. Food is subsidized and farming is regulated and planned. Housing is also heavily subsidized in the form of infrastructure spending (you thought home builders paid for their own sewer, gas, electrical lines or even preparing the land for use? silly). Our government interferes in the free market constantly to prevent it from doing exactly the sort of things you're describing because when we didn't we got dust bowls and great depressions.
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It would almost certainly be easier to just pay the UBI to each and every household, even the very rich, and then collect it back in taxes than it would be to have an entire different bureaucracy that approves who gets UBI and who doesn't.
The lime shovelers earn a wage for their productive labor.
So what? People already make that choice. Working for 3 months to earn 6 months of unemployment is certainly not unheard of in Nevada, for example, and other forms of welfare, disability, Medicaid, social security, food stamp, Section 8 housing et al abuse still exists. Note, I'm not saying that abuse exists to problematic levels, just that we already allow people who really don't want to be productive to do exactly what the commonly cited downsite to UBI allows people to do. At least this way, we can more easily see what is going on, and if it causes problems, adjust policies more sensibly to continue society functioning.
Ah, the Warren Buffet canard. First of all, Mr Buffet isn't making billions. He holds assets that represent unrealized capital gains in the several tens of billions (primarily shares of Berkshire-Hathaway; if BH were to go belly up tomorrow, his holdings there become worthless). His company pays him a salary of about $100,000 each year, and he "earns" a few million dollars every year in interest and dividends. This income, plus his salary, and whatever CGs he may realize, is what he pays taxes on, much of which is taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than income tax rate. Quoting his tax rate, based on CG rates compared to his secretaries, based on income tax rates (and not at his or her *effective* income tax rate, at that) is apples and oranges.
Mr Buffet takes full advantage of the tax system to minimize his taxes. He has accountants and tax lawyers. He has clearly structured his affairs to minimize his taxes, as, for example, when he established trusts for his children.
It is further worth noting that when Mr. Buffet and his friends Bill & Melinda Gates set out to figure out how to improve the world, they created the tax-exempt foundation and donated billions of dollars to the foundation, rather than simply letting the government have that money. We have to ask why? Didn't they trust to government to do the "right thing" with that money?
Finally, note that both Gates and Buffet, when they donated to the foundation, did so by giving away appreciated shares of their respective companies, thus garnering for themselves the largest tax break possible--not only did they not have to pay GC taxes on the gains (substantial they were, too), but they get to claim the *appreciated* value as a deductible charitable contribution. So, if WB had been granted one share of BH when it sold for $1000, he would owe income taxes on on the $1000. But if he held that share until BH sold for $200,000 per share, he would owe income taxes on the $1000, and CG taxes on the $199,000 difference. But by donating the share to the foundation, he still owes income taxes on the $1000, pays no CG taxes, and gets to claim $200,000 charitable donation (which can go a long way to offsetting any other income he has).
Buffett told [interviewer Charlie] Rose his 2010 adjusted gross income was $62 million. He implied that most income came from long-term capital gains and qualifying dividends currently taxed up to 15%. Only a small portion of his gross income – a few million dollars for Buffett – is ordinary income, like wages and interest income, taxed at higher ordinary income tax rates currently up to 35%.
Buffett [said] that he uses the maximum 30% charitable contribution deduction each year – for appreciated property – and he has a $10 billion carryover of charitable contributions for subsequent use too.
Buffett’s 30% charity tax deduction offsets his entire ordinary income, and next it offsets his lower long-term capital gains income. Hence, he pays approximately 15% long term capital gains tax rates only, and – as he likes to say – it’s a lower tax rate than others in his office pay.
Buffett also avoids nasty alternative minimum taxes (AMT) of 28%. Charity is a powerful tax savings tool to avoid income, AMT and estate taxes.
There's also Cuba and North Korea.
Why must voters vote for an unsustainable level of UBI? I dont see that as inevitable at all.
Just look at our poorest states with the highest percentages of people on welfare. They're all red states and regularly elect fiscal conservatives who are generally trying to trim social programs.
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My house and car are paid off and I have no debt to speak of.
Yeah, that's a real great deal. 50 years fighting the war on poverty? How's that working out?
Eat a soup kitchen, spend your food money on dope. Or beer.
At least, that's how homeless people I know do it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If there isn't enough work for people to do, then reduce the work week.
You're ignoring the fact that the people receiving UBI (everybody) are the same people paying for it, so most of those taxes are cancelled out by the UBI they pay for. People in the middle neither pay nor receive much of all in net. The many people at the bottom get a lot as a percent of their income, while a few people at the very top pay a little as a percent of their income to fund it.
See for a numerical examples this post I just made in a different thread showing approximately the net cost/benefit to people with different incomes.
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Some of us will finally be able to dedicate our lives to drinking and smoking.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
some of the minimum wage rules need to be place or you can have people working an job that own money to restaurant or other places for dine and dash / bad checks / change backs / fake bills / etc.
you can't get good medical insurance on your own other then with the ACA at high prices for some.
What I picture is UBI metastasizing drastically, like every other social program has. Keep in mind that while recipients might not work, they will certainly vote, and most likely they'll be voting themselves ever increasing benefits, aided and abetted by "enlightened" souls such as yourself. This, in turn, will encourage the marginal cases to abandon working entirely and become reliant on UBI.
Look at the history of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, assistance to single mothers, etc. Not a single one has ever decreased in scope, and every one of them has increased it's client base radically. While you may start out providing a tent (as if!), I doubt many election cycles go by before I'm hearing "enlightened" sorts such as yourself whining that "It's criminal that we have people living in tents! Why doesn't the government do something?".
No thanks!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
"We should do this!"
"We should do that!"
"We should, we should, we should..."
As soon as you can come up with a viable cash source to pay for it!
Until then, this is the US. The land of the free. Where, if you are a lazy fuckwad, you're free to STARVE.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
By me from 2009 after trying to explain the merits of a basic income to a millionaire: http://pdfernhout.net/basic-in...
"One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?"
Highlights:
* safety net for millionaires if they go bankrupt
* safety net for millionaire's kids
* happier and safer streets to stroll through
* more beautiful communities to spend time in
* more variety of goods and services from niche producers
* more free software and free content reducing expenses
* more interesting art to look at
* bigger markets with reliable incomes
* less gold diggers to worry about
* less kidnapping
* universal health coverage (implicit in the idea)
* emergency medical services could be sized for national disasters
* being a doctor would be more fun (many are millionaires)
* no need for companies to pay social security taxes or unemployment taxes
* no need for affirmative action or anti-discrimination laws for businesses
* no need for reparations for slavery
* no resistance to businesses going to full automation even if massive job loss
* no need for a minimum wage
* employees you hire really want to be there to work
* happier managers and CEOs
* more innovation in the economy
* no need for public schools
* more homeschooling
* happier children
* less drug addiction
"So, for all these reasons, millionaires and billionaires could sleep more soundly at night, especially those with social consciences. Those with social consciences would have recognized that while the market is great at creating wealth, it is also great at concentrating wealth which creates problems, since the market does not hear the needs of those without money to shout out for them. But, a basic income gives everyone in a society a voice with which to talk to the market, whether the market needs their labor or not. And with rising automation like AI and robotics, better design, and limited demand because the best things in life are free or cheap, more and more the market will not need humans to be involved in production, and so there will be less and less jobs for humans to do. So, this approach deals with a fundamental problem with divide-by-zero errors in mainstream economics, the kind of errors that cause unrest of various types. The fact is, the basic income is already about what most millionaires might be earning off their investments after inflation (assuming they have anything left after the recent market crash). So, in a way, this proposal makes everyone in the USA into effective millionaires (or close to it). So, that means that millionaires have a lot more potential friends in the local neighborhood with a millionaire-level of spare time to do fun things with during the day. So, being a millionaire will be a much less lonely thing in our society. And should a millionaire have children, the millionaire knows, no matter how irresponsible with money their kid might be, that child will always be a millionaire, in terms of a basic income. ..."
===
Glad to see more and more discussion of the Universal Basic Income idea. A healthy society has a good mix of subsistence, gift, exchange, and planned interactions (and little theft), so we need to continue to improve in all those areas even if a basic income helps improve the exchange economy:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I think that for UBI to work, a few restrictions would be in order:
1. To receive UBI, you must be on birth control. Males and Females. You want to make more people, you provide for them. (We're close enough to male birth control for this to happen in the next decade I think)
2. To receive UBI, you must not be a smoker. (drinking we'll allow, because but tobacco no. Mostly just to push the numbers down a little)
Really, with these two restrictions, it will shrink the number of people willing to subsist on UBI just enough to make it vaguely reasonable, abet still unpalatable, for the working/taxed wealthy class.
Or maybe I suggest these just to throw gasoline on the argument, and see where it goes.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
> a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Easy peasy. Adjust the amount based on legal status. X if you're a dependent, Y if you're not. Two people living together (regardless of marital status) would be more efficient, encouraging people to cohabitate... which is good from the perspective of government service delivery. Doesn't matter if you have kids, or if you like people with the same kind of sex organs as your own.
Children get an amount sufficient to care for them, but not enough to be a profit center. Now I'm going to go all 'Orwell' on you. What if you got money as an adult, but kids resulted in a special benefits card that could only be spent on things for kids? Clothing, toys, age-appropriate books, etc. Limit the ways in which people could use kids for the monthly payout.
Now, in regions where the population is shrinking despite resources available to support it, you could add a bonus to the regular payment of parents of dependent children to make it easier on people to have children, but that would be done separately from the standard adult UBI and the dependent amount.
Where things actually start to get complicated is when it comes to the things that will remain scarce in a the shiny future 'post-scarcity' economy. Land, water, food, and energy. You are very definitely going to need a cost-of-living adjustment to allow people to afford living in denser areas where you need them to support economic activity.
>So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare.
Basic medical treatment - that which ultimately saves the state money in the majority of cases - needs to be universally available in a UBI economy. Let the rich buy better medical care, but don't let anyone go without the essentials. Everyone gets their shots, everyone gets their teeth cared for, broken bones get set, you even get glasses if you need them. Obliterate all other medical assistance programs. After all, we're talking about UBI because we've become so productive there isn't enough work to go around! We're already admitting that every human in our society deserves a share of its wealth... why artificially segregate health care from that share?
Same goes for education, though I'd say formal post-secondary education should be funded based on ability - let the dumb-but-rich buy their way through and fund access for the smart-but-poor.
The UBI is going to be paid to everyone who DOES work as well - i.e. it's going to be subsidizing a gigantic chunk of the wage bill for every business in the economy. That's a fucking massive business subsidy.
Well then look at it this way: you'd be taxing the shit out of them on the other end to pay for all this, so it's not exactly a giveaway.
Any decrease in pay on the introduction of UBI would create a golden opportunity for workers to quit and find other work (or just quit) - they'd have nothing to fear by quitting. So companies wouldn't be wise to slash pay.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I agree with you. Supporting some freeloaders is just an unavoidable side effect of helping people who really need it, at scale. A more complete explication of my view: https://slashdot.org/comments....
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Why must we produce STUFF? Most of the economics talk is predicated on producing STUFF, which is often only brought into existence to serve as an object for sale for the purpose of showing a profit: the producers have done their jobs, showing the success of a sale. In reality, this viewpoint has encouraged the wonton destruction of the planet by basing success on amassing imaginary value: money. We need to change the game so that our use of the physical game pieces (the planet's natural resources) is reduced to levels and processes that respect the natural systems that have evolved to support all life on the planet: We just have to change what we base the games of "sales" and "profits" on, by not allowing our obcession with amassing fortunes to interfere with how the species must sustainably use resources in order to physically survive at a level that our technologies can now supply. Look at all the "convenience" that the affluent urbanized human species have in our daily lives which involve the momentary use of some physical resource, which then becomes a piece of waste: a problem to be disposed of. I contend that it is a flaw in the mental development of the species, which is at the crossroads of our ability to direct our own evolution or allow our obscessions drive us and life as we know it on our planet into extinction. Our "throw-away" lifestyle, with no accountability for the destruction of the planet's natural systems, which we call the free market and capitalism, must be fundamentally restructured and built around the competing necessities driven by the best and worst of our human natures. How can we self-evolve the human species and change the whole game?
PlaynBass
This is such a terrible idea. It will give people a way out, to do nothing. They are scared to take a chance on anything. So they do nothing. If they have no choice, they take that chance and some of them become CEOs of big companies. I talked to a black man yesterday. He was thinking about flipping some houses. Went to Trump university. I flip houses. He has everything he needs, but the courage to actually do it. It's just like the Rich Dad program. You can fail out of that program too. It's a lot of hard work. You don't get anything for free in this world, well except if we have UBI. Where we steal from other people to give money to the hostile dependents of the world. What's a hostile dependent? Easy, those people that will throw up all kinds of road blocks so they don't have to do something. I've heard all of these - too tired, too sick, I can't get there, I'm black, I'm too fat. None of which was a real reason in that case. They ALWAYS have an excuse to not do something. If you push them, they often get nasty. Tough nuggies, I've worked with a broken back and other real problems. More pain than I knew I could feel. I got my job done.
The money isn't free. Someone will have to pay for that program. If Zuck can figure a way to pay for it without us paying for it, fine. He needs to realize that he's feeding someone fish instead of teaching them how to fish. This is a very old lesson. Learned thousands of years ago. They had lazy people back then too. They teach this and other real life lessons in something called a church.
Sounds like her read Utopia for Realists
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Yet, in return, everyone needs to provide some service to qualify; unless disabled.
Any person with half a brain can see that one of the major problems with our society is the pervasive feeling of entitlement without justification.
I sacrificed and worked my ass off to get anywhere, and I object to the lazy drunk down the street not sacrificing a daily drunkenness to allow some brains to get out there and make some effort to be a productive member of society!
With what would amount to more welfare will NOT fix things; yet, would perpetuate half-brained feelings of entitlement and laziness.
I say that such recipients need to be required to meed some standards and provide some contribution for any 'gift' our government sees fit to distribute.
Oh, by the way, we need to get the super rich, like Zuckerberger, to pay a considerable chunk of those welfare dollars!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Can we start funding it by confiscating all his $
By your own numbers, his entire net worth (which took him a decade to earn) will last 8.9 days of UBI, assuming he can even convert it all to cash.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Why are you doing this the complicated way? Just take all working-age adults (about 190 million citizens, 10 million others) and multiply by $12k, then take all children (about 60 million) and multiply by $4k or whatever you want each child to get. You end up with a number roughly in the same ballpark with much less math and much fewer explanations.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this cost a bit.
Why would you give UBI on top of SS? Do you think they're not making enough already and want to increase their income? Any reasonable plan would leave their income unchanged.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues.
If that's too much for you, then don't give people $12k. Choose a number that makes sense. People living purely on UBI might have to share a room or move to a cheaper location but they can manage even if they only get $6k a year.
I think you're close, but missing a few things. Firstly that UBI would make it somewhat more easy for people to destroy themselves, so there might be fewer people in those kind of dire straights. However, it will also suddenly become much more profitable to provide housing for people with medical or social issues preventing them from working. The homeless person suddenly represents an income stream to be captured: we can probably see an expansion in facilities designed to provide people with a minimal amount of vital services, in order to capture UBI plus whatever the family can afford in the way of special treatment. At which point we'll perhaps need some sort of quality-of-life rules about such facilities.
Right now we as a society have decided that people are worth the value of their labor, and nothing more. This has historically been a good proxy for the value of an individual, but the value of human labor has been on a downward trend lately, and it has this unfortunate flaw of considering anyone not working to be valueless. We say to both the student and the drug addict that it's unimportant whether or not they drop dead in the streets, except in the sense of having to do something about the corpse. Generally, this is inefficient. UBI recognizes that simply participating in the economy, simply being a revenue stream to be captured, is actually of some inherent value.
There is an equal danger of viewing people as only a potential revenue stream, but at the moment we're simply wrong about how we as a society assign value to ourselves. Some people who don't work really are of no value or of negative value to society, but assuming that this is true of everyone that doesn't work is becoming painfully stupid in a very broad economic sense.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Someone once said: "It's not enough that i succeed, all others must fail" https://yro.slashdot.org/story... Controlling the incomes of others, and keeping them low, sounds like the way to do that (also sounds like Communism)