Slashdot Mirror
Silicon Valley Continues To Explore Universal Basic Incomes (siliconvalley.com)
A Silicon Valley Congressman "is pushing for a plan that has been described as a first step toward universal basic income...a long-shot $1 trillion expansion to the earned income tax credit that is already available to low-income families." An anonymous reader quotes the Mecury News:
Stanford University also has created a Basic Income Lab to study the idea, and the San Francisco city treasurer's office has said it's designing pilot tests -- though the department told this news organization it has no updates on the status of that project... The problem is that giving all Americans a $10,000 annual income would cost upwards of $3 trillion a year -- more than three-fourths of the federal budget, said Bob Greenstein, president of Washington, D.C.-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Some proponents advocate funding the move by cutting programs like food stamps and Medicaid. But that approach would take money set aside for low-income families and redistribute it upward, exacerbating poverty and inequality, Greenstein said... Jennifer Lin, deputy director of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, is skeptical that basic income can do much lasting good in Oakland. What the city needs is more high-paying jobs and affordable housing, she said... The idea, [Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator] said at the Commonwealth Club, tackles the question not enough people are asking: "What do we as the tech industry do to solve the problem that we're helping to create?"
This summer Y Combinator is expected to announce a larger Universal Basic Income program, though the article also describes "small pilot studies" in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada and in several U.S. states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana, where "Some studies showed improvements in participants' physical and mental health, and found children performed better in school or stayed in school longer. But some also showed that people receiving a basic income were inclined to spend fewer hours working."
This summer Y Combinator is expected to announce a larger Universal Basic Income program, though the article also describes "small pilot studies" in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada and in several U.S. states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana, where "Some studies showed improvements in participants' physical and mental health, and found children performed better in school or stayed in school longer. But some also showed that people receiving a basic income were inclined to spend fewer hours working."
...That will work flawlessly.
.
Right up until they run out of other people's money.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
>"Some proponents advocate funding the move by cutting programs like food stamps and Medicaid. But that approach would take money set aside for low-income families and redistribute it"
If it does not *replace* all the other social income and welfare programs, then what is the purpose? That is the only way it could even remotely be affordable; and even then, it is still questionable. Basic income is not based on need, it is based on equality- that everyone would get an amount of subsistence money, regardless of what they choose to earn or already have. A program with zero red tape, almost no overhead, and without trying to create standards for who supposedly "deserves" money. Otherwise, all we would be doing is starting another absolutely massive, unaffordable, unsustainable, unfair, corruptive social welfare program to add to the dozens that already exist.
You might want to look at the history of the idea before you start labeling it incorrectly, I think you'd be surprised.
So here's a solution that should be stable: unless you pay taxes or do something that will bring extra taxes in the future (education, maternity leave), you don't get to vote.
If left unchecked, the dolists would vote themselves extra benefits. "When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." -- Ben Franklin (quote disputed). But if giving those handouts is the only way those who actually work can keep the political power, they need to keep the basic income high enough (or they'd be voted out again).
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Any 10K per year would entirely replace food stamps and all other welfare measures. Why would you have UBI and still have a foodstamp system? It should also replace the tax threshholds. UBI + flat taxes + no other welfare. That's how you make it work, because it simplifies (abolishes) a whole pile of existing programs that are designed to be redistributive and massively simplifies the tax system.
Greenstein misses the point, while a UBI does pay out to everyone, and you do get some back from eliminating newly redundant programs (not health, though, that needs to be expanded separately, not as part of a UBI), you also increase taxes as well.
If you make it a straight flat tax increase you can adjust the level of the UBI and the tax increase to set the income level where it's break even. The UBI for people above that level is just a tax refund.
Figure out, for example, what the effective and marginal tax rate is at various income levels with a flat tax of 50% and a UBI of $2000/month.
I really am tiring of this bs "against their wills" crap wingnuts keep espousing. You idiots keep wanting us to do stuff against our wills all the time, but if it benefits you thats ok? As the latest with Trump and Republicans show, their is no ceiling or floor to your hypocrisy.
1) I don't want my hard earned tax dollars spent on constant wars for oil or whatever, and yet conservatives see no problem with spending tax dollars "against our wills" on the military
2) I dont want my hard earned tax dollars spent on subsidizing old rich white men, but with all the loopholes in the tax code, they have a lower effective tax rate than working class slobs like myself. But you guys keep shoveling tax cuts in their direction "against our wills"
3) I dont think my hard earned tax dollars should be spent subsidizing private schools through vouchers but you guys keep shoveling tax money for voucher programs that are proven not to work or lead to better outcomes.
I think the only way to settle this once and for all, because I know higher level civilization is a concept wingnuts can't accept is to make everything fee-based, including the military. You want to thump your chest, yell Amurica and send troops to foreign lands? you pay for it, and dont force people who don't want that to pay taxes.
Before anyone complains about a flat tax being regressive, a flat tax + UBI is actually progressive.
What I'do like to see is a flat tax plus VAT with a UBI. Split the entire budget (including the UBI) 50-50 between a flat income tax (personal and business) and a VAT. A spending bill is automatically a tax bill.
A UBI of $2000/month ($800 for dependent children), flat tax around 45-50% and VAT around 25% works out as a first approximation. A lot of adjustments would be needed, of course.
1. Many Republicans have long been supporters of EITC.
2. It is the Democrats who are generally opposed.
3. EITC is means tested, and requires people to work, so it is pretty much the opposite of UBI.
Expanding EITC has two big advantages over UBI:
1. It is politically realistic.
2. It addresses a real problem rather than an imaginary problem.
EITC addresses inequality, which is a real problem, by applying a negative income tax (subsidy) to people earning low incomes.
UBI addresses the problem of jobs disappearing completely, which is imaginary since there is no evidence that is actually happening.
UBI will never work on large scale because giving money doesn't solve any problem.
You practically need to manage people's lives, you tell them they are only allowed to buy food and a bunch of them still manage to go hungry.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Downside of that solution is that in any society, if the non-voters get too pissed, they start a violent revolution. The benefit of democracy is to allow social change without violence.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have often thought it should be that way (or, similarly, if one is accepting public assistance, he/she can't vote).
I'm retired. My income consists of Social Security and compensation from the VA because I'm 30% disabled. (Service connected.) The compensation isn't considered income for tax purposes, and it's been at least a decade since I've even had to file a tax return. Does that mean that you think that I shouldn't be allowed to vote?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
People get to elect the representatives that will decide the taxes they pay. The Founding Fathers didn't ralley to "No taxation", they rallied to "No taxation without representation."
Learn your history and pay your taxes. Libertarianism economics is nothing more than a sociopathic fantasy ideology espoused by the insanely greedy and the utterly stupid.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
you tell them they are only allowed to buy food
That's precisely not how UBI works. You don't tell them what to do with the money; you don't check up on them. There are no tests.
You just give them the money, and you save a whole bunch already because you no longer need a staggeringly inefficient bureaucracy to manage it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Productivity has been sky rocketing for decades. Wages have not. That's to be expected. As workers produce more demand for their services declines. Massive changes in technology and society might fix that, but even when they do they take decades to happen.
It doesn't take massive changes, it can be done incrementally. We might eventually get to a UBI but we are not ready for it. There is a much smoother transition. As you state, the reason that jobs are declining is because the supply of labor is greater than the demand for labor. The solution is not to put the people out of work on welfare. That really doesn't reduce the supply of labor as people still want good paying job. Instead of jumping straight from full employment to full idleness, it would be better to evenly distribute both the employment and the idleness. This can easily be done by reducing the work week. If we slowly reduced the workweek by say 5 hours a week per decade then as automation takes over, the number of hours each person works slowly drops to take up the slack. Eventually, we might get to the point where everyone only works 5 hours per week or noone works and everyone gets a UBI but we would have done it without creating two classes of people, the class that works and the class that lives on only what UBI provides instead everyone would still get the benefit of still working and everyone would still get the benefit of more leisure. This is a much smoother transition that trying to force UBI on people with the hope that it somehow magically solves poverty. It won't. But reducing the hours worked at high paying jobs by 5% should instantly create 5% more high paying jobs as those hours presumably still have to be filled by someone.
UBI will never work on large scale because giving money doesn't solve any problem.
You practically need to manage people's lives, you tell them they are only allowed to buy food and a bunch of them still manage to go hungry.
Such a tried and true polemic! Remember Reagan's welfare queens, and strapping young bucks? Find the worst and most objectionable behavior within a class of people (or don't find it, just make it up), and be that only a tiny percentage, paint the entire lot with the same brush. Let a thousand starve because of one abuse!
But really it's even uglier than that - most people don't have a problem with social programs, as long as the benefits only go to white people.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." -- Ben Franklin (quote disputed)
Kinda seems like you were trying to rack that quote to justify your seemingly unfounded opinion.
Here's the real quote from the real author:
âoeThe American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.â
â Alexis de Tocqueville
The root of the problem is not the common people, it's how they are handled by the higher classes. They are just hungry and confused and not particularly conscious.
Of course they are going to act on base instinct. Obviously they aren't organizing and hatching plans to "steal" "free" stuff from "hard workers". That's what the upper classes do. They organize to get more stuff. But when they do it most people tickle their balls with compliments and say they "earned" it.
The immediate problem isn't even the elite, it's the middle class. They have access to both worlds, but are utterly complacent with this resources, refusing to look into things for themselves and direct their own educations. Until the middle class stands up and revolts against the elite, every evil of the world will continue to proliferate.