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'We Could Fund a Universal Basic Income With the Data We Give Away To Facebook and Google' (thenextweb.com)
Tristan Greene reports via The Next Web:
A universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities, is something experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployment and poverty, and possibly even eliminate hundreds of other welfare programs. It may also be the only real solution to the impending automation bonanza. According to AI expert Steve Fuller, the problem is, giving people money when they lose jobs won't fix the issue, it's a temporary solution and we need permanent ones. Sounds fair, and he even has some ideas on how to accomplish this end: "We could hold Google and Facebook and all those big multinationals accountable; we could make sure that people, like those who are currently 'voluntarily' contributing their data to pump up companies' profits, are given something that is adequate to support their livelihoods in exchange."
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
Send Google and Facebook the bill, NOT the taxpayers.
There will be a tipping point when enough human jobs are replaced by automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence whereby it'll be in the interest of companies to get behind a Universal Basic Income... otherwise, to whom will they sell their wares?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It just keeps everyone perpetually in poverty, debt slaves to the state, with no hope or drive to move forward. Communism doesn't work. Communism without workers would be even worse, stripping people of their meaning on top of their earnings.
The solution to automation is not to do it. "Because we can doesn't mean we should".
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
UBI is ultimately pointless because the problem right now isn't that people don't have money. It's that the market adjusts itself to maximize profits which will always price some people out. Consider this: A person makes $100 a month and only wants to spend $10 on an apartment. But there is another person willing to spend $15 on that apartment, so that's what the market sets it's price at, which causes a lot of financial strain on the person. Good news! The government passes a UBI law, and provides everyone with a minimum $15 salary, bringing the persons monthly income to $115. The person can now easily afford the apartment, right? Well no. You see, that person gets the salary, but so does the other person competing for the same apartment. The second person is now willing to pay $20 for that apartment. So that's where the market says the price. So ultimately, all the UBI does is raise the prices on everything for everyone.
...Might I suggest 'Who Owns the Future?' by Jaron Lanier. Fascinating reading on how society can survive and thrive in an age of ubiquitous abundance.
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/1451654979
Industry was going to take away all the jobs. The, the tractor was going to take away all the jobs. Mechanization was going to take away all the jobs. Automation was going to take away all the jobs. Outsourcing was going to take away all the jobs. And yet here we are after all of that we have the lowest unemployment rate this country has ever had. Something tells me that with even 3D printing and artificial intelligence Americans will figure out something to do.
To apply a tax on data, we should first establish what a GB of data is worth. Anyone?
Our economic system is first built on land ownership and natural resources, then on services extracting, processing, and delivering product from those resources. Everything else is just moving little green pieces of paper around when those first two groups are done with them.
You can't take something like 'mining personal data for sales and marketing' and turn it into an economy-driving primary natural resource, and any economic scheme that isn't ultimately rooted in property and natural resources is doomed to fail before it is even implemented.
When I add up income tax, Medicare/social security tax, state taxes, property, sales, hotel, gas, airport and the rest I pay, the total is at least 50% of my paycheck, and I am not by any means rich. Taxing the companies more just means that the prices will be higher - your Youtube Red subscription will be $11 and not $9, your Office subscription will be $75 a year and not $69... How about we maybe try cutting waste and abuse of the system and use that money to cut taxes so people can save more money and need less government assistance when a rainy day comes around. .
...universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities...
The reason house prices rise is because people can afford the post-rise price... that is how the whole free market system works. If you give people more money to get them access to things then those things will start costing more money. There is only a trivial relationship between the cost to produce or maintain a home and the market value of that home in many of our more desireable markets.
UBI only works if the cost of goods are not permitted to be inflated to meet what the market will bare.
are too fucking greedy and barcoded to implement anything that benefits the society as a whole on an individually global scale. It just won't happen. Ever. Not unless you are some "Remotely isolated community" segregated from TERRORfirma will you be able to account for each and every one of your citizens.
Evil becomes you ALL! With sirens and guns!
I don't think people realize how dangerous it is to build their lives ever more around government.
Because the government is distinguished by the fact that it is coercive, the more power you give government over your life, the more likely you are to come under the jackboot of that coercion. The AMERICAN way of life is a restricted government that is supposed to play as little role as possible in the lives of The People; how far the Americans have fallen from this ideal... (could this lack of American idealism come from a shifting demographic?)
...Because apartments are a finite resource and no one could ever possibly build more of them and increase competition thus lowering prices.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
By worry that we here on the left have pointless kooks that are worse than useless too. For the record, the correct 'we could fund' talking point it that we could pay our national debt off in ten years with the money single payer healthcare saves.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Or, you know, we could just create it out of thin air like all the other money the federal government uses. If its good enough for the MIC and Wall St, it's good enough for the people.
And learn how money works: Federal taxes do not fund federal spending. Your taxpayer dollars are used for nothing, they no longer exist, stop spreading that lie.
It sucks to be poor if not destitute. It also sucks have to depend upon your breadgiver to know everything about you. People are pissed off when they realize that google is collecting data on them, but they give our dysfunctional government the benefit of a doubt when it does the same thing, even though governments have more power over your life than organizations like google. Whether this idea is under "private" control or managed by the government, I see it as a slippery slope towards serfdom.
The rich and powerful don't pay for anything, you don't get rich by writing checks.
better workers rights at least UBI can give people some to fail back on so they can tell there boss to shove it when being asked to put in a 80 hour week or deal with some of crap at low end fast food places.
The big corporations routinely dodge the taxes they owe now. What makes anyone think that they won't evade paying this?
Google and Facebook provide services in exchange for user information. Of course it's questionable as to whether or not this is a good idea - I'd say a very bad idea - but that's the deal. There is no compensation due.
The reality is that the data of a single user would be near worthless. A stipend for any given user would be near worthless assuming an even division of the money. How would you even calculate the value data down to an individual except in the extreme outliers?
It's a nonsense idea that reeks of socialism's sense of entitlement and lack of real world application in anything but cautionary tales. Universal basic income may have applications, but paying for it this way is a crazy person's idea.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
People are giving away their information without fee under their own free will. It's not anyone's place to get the way of that until they begin to do so at their own detriment. The reason for this is that it will have crossed over from activity to addiction. That said, a proper tax structure is needed to keep a society from destructing. We currently have a regressive tax system which has been shown to be to the detriment of society and yet politicians keep pushing it further. The reason things are moving in the wrong direction is not because of political party X or Y but due to the crony capitalism has bought off the politicians on both sides to ensure that there will and not the will of the people is being executed.
We don't need a miracle solution, we need proper government representation that will work for the people. I've said it before but the less representative a government becomes the greater the level of crime, violence and civil unrest. If we do not do something in the near future then we're going to have riots breaking out sporadically and then regularly. The US has a lot of guns and when people get desperate then they are going to start using them to survive and I don't mean hunting.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The reason house prices rise is because people can afford the post-rise price... that is how the whole free market system works. If you give people more money to get them access to things then those things will start costing more money. There is only a trivial relationship between the cost to produce or maintain a home and the market value of that home in many of our more desireable markets.
UBI only works if the cost of goods are not permitted to be inflated to meet what the market will bare.
And you can ask Venezuelans how well that works....
Government is a monopoly.
Indeed, Government is the worst kind of monopoly; rather than arise to power through voluntary trade, government is founded on violent imposition.
That's what distinguishes an organization as "a government": It can throw you into a cage (or worse) if you refuse to buy its services.
Fundamentally, there is no difference between a warlord, a monarch, a dictator, and a representative democracy, etc.
... If you're not worth a paycheck?
I don't think people appreciate how politics and power structures interface with economic imperitives. Much of the social and political liberalization in the Western world was a direct result of economic changes that made individuals more relevant to the logistical framework of the society.
The more the society becomes a command economy with top down control... the less the individual matters and thus the less the individual will matter. Your political agency will decline.
What is more, if you're economically and logistically irrelevant to the underlying requirements of the society... what is your leverage? Why should the society give you anything?
UBI = not just serfdom... it equals literal marginalization and eventually... Death.
Careful what you wish for...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
All of US corporate profit is running around 1500 billion / year right now.
1500 billion ($) / 330 million (Citizens) is $4,545 per citizen per year.
Leaving aside the issue of what corporations would do if they could not keep their profits, which does not seem likely to be a good thing, it's pretty clear that all corporate profits in the current economy would not suffice to do anything useful.
However, the idea of UBI, or at least, the sane version, is that it would be implemented in an "economy of plenty" where automation was producing goods and services at much lower costs and much higher availability. Those conditions are hand-wavey; we can't quantify them yet, so it's problematic to try and predict the costs of living, etc. But that's why UBI or similar will be required; workers will be out and automation will be in. It's not today's landscape that defines the need.
The current economic model will almost certainly be unsustainable with pervasive automation and the number of citizens we have. That's pretty clear. We also know that although distribution of wealth right now is very uneven, there's enough of it to keep everyone eating and sheltered (which is not to say that always happens... but money in, goods and services out, the numbers work.) So given an economic sea change - a very, very painful one, I'm guessing - UBI or something along those lines should be feasible.
The problem comes when we try to see how it would work today, in the current economy. It wouldn't; it can't. Tests can work - certainly the extra income is welcome and used by recipients - but that's only because such tests are far less costly compared to the amount of money available to fund them. When you count everyone in, suddenly the available funds aren't there. But that's today. The future holds the potential for massive change. "Funds" may not even be the operative mechanism; because if survival is no longer pendant upon an exchange of value, it may not be reasonable to try to quantify and structure it that way any longer.
It's still worth talking about.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Give me a reason to turn adblock off.
I'm modest, 4 figures a week is fine.
If this was implemented we'd quickly discover that our information is currently overvalued. The info they collect is not worth what it is being traded for these days. This would fall apart in short order once everyone realized they're worth a whopping 2 cents per day.
If using Big Brother is a requirement of UBI no thanks!
Yes. Libertarians in a nutshell. Every country is north Korea. *rolls eyes *
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
People always looking for handouts. The only thing my robots will be doing in the coming automation age for the "public good" is throwing dirty hippies/hipsters off my property.
The People may collectively delegate their individual authorities to an organization called "government"; the American philosophy is that rights existed before government (they were "endowed by their Creator"), and that government can merely act as a delegate for the attendant authorities of those rights.
However, no individual ever had the right to walk into his neighbor's pub, smash his beer bottles, and declare that his 100-year-old family business may no longer operate.
Yet, that's precisely what the United States Government did during Prohibition.
They promised to protect "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", but they have done nothing of the sort. Your government is a fraud; your government is a bait and switch.
Before we ask the Venezuelans anything how about YOU try providing any proof for your statements besides quoting yourself and adding strawmen distractions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
..you stop shilling your shit book no one will ever give a fuck about? kthx!
Nice straw man. The other poster said nothing of the sort.
Let's put in American terms for you, though: Even if you're a well-dressed, well-fed slave in the Big House, you're still a slave.
Universal basic income isn't a universal basic way of life.
Unless you call consumerism a way of life, in which case you're wrong. A fire consumes but we don't say that fire is alive, do we?
You can't just give people money and no motivation to work toward anything. Then they just stagnate in their present circumstances. Grow or die. That is the natural law.
And that is the real purpose behind a guaranteed annual income. To placate the masses in such a way that they stop trying to live their lives and eventually die out.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
The main problem with communism is the efficient distribution of limited resources. It's basic information theory - you have a complicated set of interdependent production units that have varying needs for resources on each other. To make steel you need water, to move water around water you need pipes pumps, to make pipes pumps you need steel... and on and on ad infinitum.
A market system works pretty well at distributing these resources. If you make steel you don't need to know anything about demand other than the price of steel.
A planned / communist economy relies on meetings to figure out what gets made. The problem is nobody has all the information needed to plan out production, especially on a large scale. This is why you have perpetual shortages of goods in countries with planned economies.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
If all of this data is being *given away*, then how is it objectively worth any money?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
A Universal Basic Income is a good idea but it will never pass because both sides of the isle have made it pretty damn clear that America was, is, and always will only be about profits over people. Sadly, it is going to take an economic catastrophe that decimates everyone, not just the lower and middle classes. The wealthy need to be taught a lesson that the lower and middle classes have to be stable for a healthy society. We never learned our lessons from the Great Depression. If we had, perhaps there would be a Universal Basic Income and a Universal Healthcare System. Then we had the Great Recession of 2008 and the wealthy became greedier, hoarding more and more of their cash. Experts are predicting another big economic crash and I believe it. Never mind that unemployment is historically low and consumer confidence is good. Those indicators can change overnight; just as the recession of 2008 literally hit.
Our economy is not based on bedrock, but on shale; a collective belief that currency, stocks, and bonds hold value. When that belief gets shaken, the system implodes. The next bubble to go will be the so-called crypto currencies. It will be curious when the bottom falls out from under bitcoin and the paper millionaires will be left penniless.
Send all the money to Bitcoin address 18awryFxpSG2C1PRHWCteoak94HfdFbnfD
Point and laugh. Point and laugh like all the girls he's known.
He isn't very smart if he didn't think about compensation by simply using a profit sharing system.
Sign up and enter your banking or paypal info, profits shares are deposited into the account.
Did Bernie Sanders write this?
Sorry Bernie, I voted for Trump because I am not interested in communism.
The reason companies want someone's data is to sell to them. If you don't have any money to spend, your data is of little interest to them.
Any profit they derive from data is already taxed. Congress actually just reduced that tax massively because people realized that if you tax corporations too much, they move overseas, hide their profits, and/or just close down.
You aren't getting a UBI. You are going to have to work. You will not always like it (and even 'dream jobs' suck ass at times. That's life, not work, you don't and never can control everything and everyone, and attempting to do so is a violation of other people's rights). You will at some point be forced to grow up whether you like it or not. Deal with it.
It would be great to bring these companies to justice for their ill-gotten wealth. You are clearly new to the party - many of us have felt this was from the start. They are the 21st century rail barons. Please stop sharing your every discovery that is not news to anyone else. I will fall over the day you actually let someone else teach you something. The rest of us have better things to do than suffer through your very normal and very age-specific personal development. Do not make us de-facto parents. We aren't, and we do not and will never give a shit. You sound like children playing 'grown up'. Sorry, 'adulting'.
think of the economic boons.... how many people would start a new business if they didnt have to worry about the risk? I know I sure as hell would.....
The difference is that culturally, it is acceptable for Big Government to throw you into a cage (or worse) for refusing to buy its services.
The ability to buy that tantalizing power is what corrupts businesses; it is not the case that Big Business corrupts government, but rather it is the case that Big Government corrupts business.
The Founders of America thought they solved the problem when they created the Separation of Church and State, but it turns out there was a loophole: The government made money the new God, and started telling everyone how to worship.
There needs to be a Separation of Business and State.
--------
If you're going to give the Men-with-Guns a mandate, then it had better be very well defined, limited in scope, and easily monitored. Indeed, the American philosophy is that government is something to be restricted, not grown; that's why the Constitution is one giant list of restrictions.
Get the government out of the business of allocating resources; the sole role of the government should be to ensure that individuals are able to interact voluntarily, where "voluntary" is defined by well defined contracts that are negotiated properly in advance of that interaction; the business of allocating resources should be left to individuals interacting voluntarily. Disputes can be handled as a matter of case law, and refined by legislation when the courts are unable to compose a suitable solution based on existing rules; this precludes the government from allocating resources to anything other than for the purpose of funding the Men-with-Guns in their role as referees.
And, you know what?
That role can be handled by the market, anyway. The most robust and truest separation of powers is not the smoke and mirrors of multiple governmental branches, but rather it is competition in the market; even the most coercive, anti-capitalist, collectivist, authoritarian regimes are kept in check by having to compete among themselves. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons why the Second Amendment is so important; it pits The People against the Government.
That's why there has never been, and there never will be, One World Government.
...than Welfare 2.0, plain and simple.
If you expect to tax the worlds richest corporations to fund UBI, then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today.
Offshore tax havens, tax loopholes, political contributions...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share. What money you might manage to get from them to feed to the unemployable masses in the future will be the bare minimum, and not a penny more.
Ironically, large corporations are fueled by the very individuals they intend to starve in order to hog their wealth. When the masses cannot afford to buy anything other than food, all that extra unnecessary shit vendors peddle becomes rather pointless. They won't be able to even sell the precious data they capture to anyone, because it will quickly become worthless from a marketing standpoint.
The problem with a universal basic income is that the sharks start circling immediately. Landlords see it as an opportunity to jack up the rent. Stores (especially in poor neighbourhoods) raise the price of semi-necessities like disposable diapers. "Hope taxes" like lotteries market their wares more aggressively.
Soon, everybody's doing better except the people a basic income was intended to help, who get picked cleaner than a squirrel carcass at a crow convention.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
"Fundamentally, there is no difference between a warlord, a monarch, a dictator, and a representative democracy" - You are fundamentally a moron.
those few hundred people at the top of the food chain have as much as half of the citizens in your country, not a few million, 150 Million.
The US government can tax US corporations. That's the tool that's presently available. And the US government is responsible for US citizens; not others.
I'm dividing all US corporate profits by all US citizens, and the reason I did that was to show that it's not enough to fund UBI in the current economic model. It doesn't matter how they earn it; it's money that could, in an apocalyptic (and tooth-clenchingly naive) tax environment, be apportioned among the citizens. It's not a viable mechanism under the current economic model, no matter how they make that money, even if you could collect that money without destroying the entities that earn it, which I highly doubt.
If you restrict which profits somehow, that just makes the number per citizen smaller.
The whole idea of taxing FB (much as I dislike them, and I really dislike them) to "fund" UBI is absurd.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
better workers rights at least UBI can give people some to fail back on so they can tell there boss to shove it when being asked to put in a 80 hour week or deal with some of crap at low end fast food places.
Welfare, social assistance, etc already do all of this. But maybe those people should have picked a better job then majoring in the "comparative history of harry potter" or some weird-ass social major like "how blackness affect modern feminism and buffy the vampire slayer." And picked up a good trade. Oh I know, I can hear the whining already...all that hard work.
Om, nomnomnom...
It's voluntary until it isn't.
FAT CHANCE!
You cannot eliminate a program without people getting upset because they thought that the UBI was going to be on top of everything else they were getting. You'll never be able to eliminate anything. It's a pipe dream.
Here's an idea... Stop making it easy for people to be poor. You create a comfort zone / safety net. You give them more money for more kids. You give them EBT cards (because they changed the name from WELFARE), WIC, food, housing, obama phones, internet... etc etc. What reason do they have to work?
They have no reason to work and their children are multiplying geometrically programmed with the same shit work ethic as their loser parents.
This isn't by mistake. This is the American society being destroyed from within by the same plans laid out by Karl Marx.
Subject says it all. Just what we need is to enable people in low income / poverty to be less productive and more dependent on handouts.
> then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today
When you look at it, it's just another income distribution scheme. Somebody's losing wealth and having it given to someone else.
That's not necessarily evil, by the way. UBI solves some of the problems with traditional welfare systems - like being locked in because income quickly cuts your welfare to the point it's easier to not work. It removes some of the stress of poverty because you know you'll always be able to afford food and a warm bed. It saves money because there's less need to police the system for fraud.
In a society that is so productive that it doesn't need large portions of its population to work, UBI is probably the best way to prevent obscene concentration of wealth.
>...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share.
Yeah... our tax systems suck. I don't think corporations should pay taxes on income as a general rule - it all gets passed on to the consumer as a hike in price of items or services anyway. I do think they need to be taxed to internalize costs - a company that pollutes should be paying taxes to cover the cost society bears dealing with cleanup and health issues. A company that produces anything tangible should be taxed to cover recycling costs. And of course they should be taxed to cover land and municipal services to their offices, just like any other land owner.
Of course, you still have to find a way to tax the owners or they'll just keep everything in the company and control their wealth indirectly while avoiding their social tax obligations... and ultimately the required tax laws will have to apply to everyone else. It gets complicated quickly.
No need to read further. By removing the need to work to survive and be minimally comfortable, hundreds of millions of people worldwide would stop working. A UBI would cause unemployment on a scale almost unimaginable, followed by worldwide economic collapse.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Stock market at an all time high, unemployment lowest in years, new tax bill igniting the economy, deregulation across the board and a fine group of level headed honest folks in Washington. Who needs a UBI. In a couple years you'll all be tired of winning. Lucky bastards ;^)
How about the billions and billions of dollars Apple should be paying in taxes but doesn't because they make no-tax deals with other countries?
The people proposing this are the same people that propose "Open Borders".
So you give away money to everyone in your country, then allow a flood of people from poor countries to come in.
So you give away money to everyone that can make it across the Rio Grande.
Wait, the largest influx has been from India and SE Asia with a load of Chinese in the last couple years.
So you give away money to all the people in India and China.
How will that work out?
If you cannot find a way to bring Value to the table, why should you eat at it?
We have been warning about over population for decades.
Maybe this is the real push to stop having babies that the mothers cannot feed.
" so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities "
Even in the non-crazy housing areas, that's going to be one hell of a basic income to afford housing.
Even renting an apartment would easily exceed UBI numbers.
They're either going to have to crank up the amounts they plan to hand out, or address the fact that owning a home is no longer a reality for a vast number of people.
Show of hands, who here can afford a median home where they live on a single salary, maintain all of the bills that go with it, put enough away for retirement, and still have enough left over to actually have a life ?
If you can, you're doing far better than the majority.
This is very unproductive.
Look at the current administration. There is absolutely nothing there that would put something like the burden of universal basic income at the hands of the rich and powerful. Nothing.
In fact, it's practically the opposite. Corporations are being given more leeway to do whatever they want, more incentives and more power. We're going the exact opposite way.
If a government comes that even suggests something like this, it would be overthrown. I'm not even putting this at the political debate level - this isn't about dems vs reps.
It'd be way easier to come up with basic income via taxes, and that's saying a lot - because that's another thing that is pretty much impossible without something like a civil war.
Well, at least in some western countries.
Here's the thing: if we can't pass a tax reform that removes tax incentives for the extremely rich and the biggest corporations, forces US corporations to pay their taxes here, and reduce tax burdens on mid to low class citizens, thinking about a universal basic income system is pretty much a joke. It will never happen.
People think that experiments in some european countries happened so there should be a way for it to also happen here, they don't realize how different the culture or political/economical system is.
A UBI is the only answer the increase population, decrease capitalism, increase in monetary inflation and decrease in opportunities driven by automation. That is the natural order of things, so something has to give.
1. Housing, Food and Entertainment are not going to decrease in price.
2. Population growth is not going to decrease while people can continue to have offspring without approval.
3. Business are going to continue to push until everything that is anything can be automated.
So what do you do? Humanity is reaching the tip of market which will be the apex of capitalism, the only step from there is down. So unless, mankind can get off this planet, there has to be a solution that solves, items 1, 2 and 3 above.
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> then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today
When you look at it, it's just another income distribution scheme. Somebody's losing wealth and having it given to someone else.
That's not necessarily evil, by the way. UBI solves some of the problems with traditional welfare systems - like being locked in because income quickly cuts your welfare to the point it's easier to not work. It removes some of the stress of poverty because you know you'll always be able to afford food and a warm bed. It saves money because there's less need to police the system for fraud.
I agree that it could provide some benefit. However, reducing policing jobs will not be welcome. We've privatized prisons and worked hard to earn the dubious Incarcerated States of America moniker. Also, those with wealth will fight distribution as they always have fought it. The chasm between the 1% and the 99% continues to widen, as they distance themselves from giving a shit about the irrelevant masses.
In a society that is so productive that it doesn't need large portions of its population to work, UBI is probably the best way to prevent obscene concentration of wealth.
Greed N. Corruption is the CEO of America right now. Again, I fully expect any plan to attack or dissolve obscene behavior will be fought. And Greed will ultimately win, as it has for a very long time now. Greed maintains Control.
>...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share.
Yeah... our tax systems suck. I don't think corporations should pay taxes on income as a general rule - it all gets passed on to the consumer as a hike in price of items or services anyway. I do think they need to be taxed to internalize costs - a company that pollutes should be paying taxes to cover the cost society bears dealing with cleanup and health issues. A company that produces anything tangible should be taxed to cover recycling costs. And of course they should be taxed to cover land and municipal services to their offices, just like any other land owner.
It's a good concept due to the environmental impact, but I fail to see why you believe internal costs won't ultimately be passed on to the consumer. If business expenses go up, then the MSRP goes up. It's the only way to maintain a profitable business and ensure CEOs continue to earn obscene salaries and bonuses.
Of course, you still have to find a way to tax the owners or they'll just keep everything in the company and control their wealth indirectly while avoiding their social tax obligations... and ultimately the required tax laws will have to apply to everyone else. It gets complicated quickly.
Other than something extreme like a flat tax, corporate tax laws don't have to apply to "everyone else", because everyone else is not running a for-profit business. And it hardly has to get "complicated". Simplify the hell out of corporate taxation and close the damn loopholes. If corporations continue to avoid their obligations, then they can find themselves heavily fined, dismantled, or outright banned from doing business in the US.
Greed is often found to be very unethical and can cause massive damage and disruption, but it's hardly ever punished to prevent history from repeating itself. A good example of this is the financial meltdown of 2008. There's not a damn thing in place to really prevent that from happening again. If a corporation can make a billion dollars doing unethical and greedy shit and only get fined $50 million for it, then unethical behavior is proven to be profitable, and becomes the business mantra. Wells Fargo is a more recent example. Even with a $185 million dollar fine, they likely still profited from their cross-selling bullshit, and stock value was hardly affected at all. Sadly, over 5,000 "little" people were fired while the CEO was afforded a lavish retirement.
If people don't have an incentive to work, many will choose to not work at all.
...as long as they work.
Plenty of trash needing to be picked up in parks and on roads. Sidewalks and streets cleaned. Social services can use volunteers.
Absolutely NO should someone get paid anything just to sit around on their couch
Doesn't matter. Isn't even in the ballpark.
No, I didn't say that. I said it was unworkable in the context of the current economic system - which is accurate. I also made it pretty clear that we're going to have to do something, once it becomes clear what that something is - which is not yet the case.
That is utter nonsense. The entire federal tax collection in 2016 was 3.46 trillion dollars. That'd be about $24k for 150 million people. Poverty, under the current system. Poverty accompanied by zero government services, no military, no federal law enforcement, etc.
That's not a basic income within the context of the current economic system. That's pocket change. You won't be raising children, owning a home and a vehicle, enjoying the network, consuming utilities, buying new clothing, receiving medical care, etc. on $24k. The economic system will have to be re-jiggered in a major way to make the available resources and services map to the number of people - and that's almost certainly what's going to happen when automation of most jobs comes along. Until then, the environment precludes a working model in other than over-funded, under-utilized small test groups. You can't just swap out the current social safety net and distribute it to everyone - it'll just fall on its face. In only works now (and it barely works, frankly) because the recipients are limited in number and in benefits.
Sure, we know that augmenting income will work when you have income. But when there's no income, and that is what we're going to be facing, augmentation is not a viable solution.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Big LOL, giving France as a good example is like giving Greece as example of easy living :)))).
France's economy is not super competitive (bar some fields ofc). Or do you mean those taxes that sent Depardieu to live in Russia ?
>It's a good concept due to the environmental impact, but I fail to see why you believe internal costs won't ultimately be passed on to the consumer.
You misunderstand me - I recognize they will be, I just want to ensure the full cost of the product's life is included in the cost to the consumer.
>Other than something extreme like a flat tax, corporate tax laws don't have to apply to "everyone else", because everyone else is not running a for-profit business
Again, you misunderstand. I was not referring in this case to corporate taxes, but personal taxes. Efforts to prevent business owners from sheltering their wealth within a corporation would require laws that would affect the personal taxes everyone else too. (Academic answer: "More study is required")
> If a corporation can make a billion dollars doing unethical and greedy shit and only get fined $50 million for it, then unethical behavior is proven to be profitable, and becomes the business mantra.
Agreed. A legal principle of not allowing an offence to be profitable should be standard. A fine that is insufficient to remove the incentive for the offense, that a corporation writes off as a cost of doing business, is not a fine but a tax.
> Sadly, over 5,000 "little" people were fired while the CEO was afforded a lavish retirement.
Another principle is required here... that the general is responsible for the conduct of the troops under their command. Because if you're excused from responsibility on the grounds you were unaware of the crime, you're not a very good general, are you?
Now, perhaps it's a bit extreme to say the CEO should be criminally liable for a VP's crimes... but they shouldn't be rewarded, either. A nice law limiting payouts to responsible individuals in the event a crime is committed by an underling wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Are you really equating feeding the hungry with tying their shoes for them? And equating being poor with being in kindergarten? You're a fucking idiot.
So, you thing the "country" should provide you with everything you need...
Yes. I "thing" that we as tax payers should ensure that every last person in America has food, shelter, and healthcare. Civilized societies shouldn't leave the weak to die.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Universal basic income will totally divorce reproduction from intelligence. Sterilization for everyone on it and I'm on board.
And you can ask Venezuelans how well that works....
I asked a Venezuelan and she answered "it works pretty well."
Alphabet market cap 707 Beelllion, sounds big.
However we have about 300 million people in the US.
That puts out about $2300 per person, and Google is gone.
So in a couple months you could wipe out the biggest companies in America and not make a real dent in poverty.
Merry Christmas
Wherein fellow citizens are forced to provide a monthly stipend. There. Fixed that for ya...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Paying a tax to use water, sewer, or roads is not really theft and I say this as someone almost vehemently against taxes. How about the gas tax? It's service tax, ie non-punitive. IE the only people who pay the gas/fuel tax are those who use the roads. If you don’t drive on the road you aren't paying the tax. What about water and sewer? Again, not a tax. It's a service based fee. You pay for what you use. The more you use, the more you pay.
If I'm not homeless I shouldn't be PAYING for housing or so called necessities for those who don't have them UNLESS I CHOOSE TO DO SO(which I do from time to time, I'm not a complete asshole, although I tend to send my extra funds to the Fisher House). I already provide for my housing and basic necessities of my own free will...not the government or anyone else.
UBI is a scam. Its nothing more then STEAL shit from everyone and FORCE everyone to pay for shit they don't use or need while some gov critter gets fat and happy stealing shit off the top.
UBI is cheaper then jail / prison and there home people who go in and out of jail (say on cold nights or when they need a doctor) and the tax payers foot the bill for it.
Much too drastic and unnecessary. How about simple — and temporary — disenfranchising: whoever has received public charity in excess of $500 within the six months prior to a poll, shall not participate in it. (The figure and the amount subject to change.)
How about that? Those temporarily down on their luck will not care (probably, not even notice) — come next elections, they can vote again. On the other hand, those, who can't support themselves long-term, will not be allowed to govern the rest of us.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Here's the thing I hate about being data-mined, I don't get a cut of the profits. If you're going to use my browsing habits to advertise to me I want my fair share.
For years your retirement account earns interest, the government will seize that interest and give it to others. For years your retirement account loses value, that's on you.
Who wants to play?
Nothing of real value is easy. If it is easy, the value isn't there.
Find something that is hard using a resource that is rare, and that will provide you with the ability to make a good living. A Picasso painting is worth millions because it is rare, famous and highly desired. There are only a few. THAT is why it is worth a lot of money. Sweeping a sidewalk is hard work, but almost anyone can do it, from a complete moron to the smartest guy in the world. That is why it doesn't pay very well.
Pick up a skill(resource), that is rare and provides a service or product that is highly desired, and you'll be fine. Not everyone can do that, which is why there is Starbucks and McDonald's.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Welfare, social assistance, etc already do all of this.
No they don't, in fact quite often welfare makes it worse by requiring you to take crappy jobs at less then minimum wage (to get 'experience', 'learn work ethic', or various other excuses for what's essentially indentured servitude)
and there's plenty of people on welfare who did everything right,
but who...
- simply had their jobs automated or outsourced away, or
- got sick or had a family get sick and needing care
- etc
The long-term solution is education, I agree.
What are you going to do about the people that need help *right now*, though? Remember, the psycopathic/sociopathic answer to this question is "tough luck."
I wish the fucking communists would stop pushing this. But no such luck. It's the same as the fucking russians pushing their democrat minions to impeach trump all the time. Will you commie fucks just fuck the fuck off already?
How about owning those big bad companies? Then, when they make a profit, you, the soon-to-be-obsolete human in this equation, profit, too, and you can be happy. Maybe you won't make as fat a profit as those evil CEOs and billionaires, but maybe, just maybe, you can earn enough on your investment to live. That was, as I understood it, the idea from the very beginning of the 20th century.
The good news is, we don't need to re-invent the whole financial system. This already exists! It's called investing, and it's what we were all supposed to be doing for like the past 150 years or so. So sorry if you didn't get the memo....
Might makes right irrelevant.
Dude, limit your total budget to 1500 bucks a month. See how much you have left at the end of the month. Then, look around for re-education opportunities. See if you can afford any of them. Then, go actually apply for them. See if you actually get into such a program. THEN see if you even have time to attend based on your current schedule, keeping in mind that you and your wife both have shitty min wage jobs that are both only part time AND have changing schedules from week to week and if you cannot adhere to it, you'll be let go, and won't even be able to get unemployment (both the part-time issue AND right to work prevent it).
Yeah, its the "hard work" that's keeping most Americans from getting a better job. So lazy!
also, seriously, this captcha system is starting to freak me out. captcha: trapped
Dude, limit your total budget to 1500 bucks a month. See how much you have left at the end of the month. Then, look around for re-education opportunities. See if you can afford any of them.
Yep, funny that I could but you don't seem to be able to. You want to know what's really funny? I could drop my income to $1k/mo, still qualify for those programs, become a truck driver off those programs. Start making $60k-70k/year plus benefits in the first year, and put money away to further my education.
Yeah, it *is* hard work that's keeping a lot of people away. Especially younger kids who have zero sense of work ethic. Have you ever watched or listened to anything Mike Rowe has said on this? The guy is the poster child of apprenticeships and hard work, and the same poster child in pointing out that it *is* a hard work and work ethic problem that stops these people from going to find that work.
Om, nomnomnom...
The long-term solution is education, I agree.
What are you going to do about the people that need help *right now*, though? Remember, the psycopathic/sociopathic answer to this question is "tough luck."
There are more social and education programs out the ass to get you a better paying job then there were ~22 years ago when I lost my first job due to the heavy industry crash here in Canada. Hell there are more programs in the US for that then there are in Canada.
Om, nomnomnom...
No they don't, in fact quite often welfare makes it worse by requiring you to take crappy jobs at less then minimum wage (to get 'experience', 'learn work ethic', or various other excuses for what's essentially indentured servitude)
Welfare doesn't make take those crappy jobs. Many people take those crappy jobs in order to depress their hours worked in order to *not* lose benefits. There are a few people on welfare who've done everything right, but there's also systemic abuse by a lot of people who simply see it as an easy way out.
Om, nomnomnom...
Pick up a skill(resource), that is rare and provides a service or product that is highly desired, and you'll be fine. Not everyone can do that, which is why there is Starbucks and McDonald's.
10m skilled tradesmen needed over the next 10 years, that's a lot of jobs. If you can read flow-charts you can do quite a few trades. If you're willing to stick with something, you can improve your ability in the few trades that are skill based(welding/machinist/etc). Go be a lineman lots of demand for them. Don't like electricity though and working around high voltage? Go become a truck driver, put up with the shitty work for a year and then go local. Despite the claims that truck driving will be automated in 4 years it's not going to happen. It probably won't happen in the next 20 years.
Om, nomnomnom...
A universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities, is something experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployment and poverty, and possibly even eliminate hundreds of other welfare programs.
These are the same "experts" that brought us Chernobyl, obamacare, the Vietnam war, the destruction of both space shuttles, and other disasters. Government is never the solution to a problem, it is the problem. Here is something you never want to hear: "We're from the government and we're here to help." UBI is a fool's paradise.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
...can never exceed the revenue of the entire marketing industry. Because marketing is the entire reason that the data is valuable. The idea that we could fund UBI with it is ridiculous. Someone doesn't understand math.
COE
Perhaps UBI could be funded by bitcoin. They both provide the same fundamental basic value.
Pro-tip: YOU CAN'T
Facebook, Google, and all other so-called 'social media' can fuck off and die, they're CANCEROUS.
"You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you're incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others—that you're unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler—that you're unable to earn your living by use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of assistant greaser."
See subject & you're ABSOLUTELY correct (human beings EXCEL MOST when they struggle) & Sweden shows you what happens - you become SLAVES to it!
* I see a lot of "no go zones" & RAPES OF THEIR WOMEN in Sweden (wtf - have those dudes LOST THEIR BALLS or what?) - imo as to WHY?
They're in fear of their lives per that UBI slavery there - i.e. "You get outta line & NOT do what we say is 'ok', even raping your women? We cut off your money (your food, water, shelter etc.)"
APK
P.S.=> See subject - it IS "bad news", bigtime, in the long-run... apk
"If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies."
I believe you just described dividends. Go invest in a mutual fund. It's the best solution currently available.
History.
Or you would know that America was a fraud within the first 8 years it was formed (and hadn't even finished the Revolutionary war for the first 2-3 of those!)
The only president to ever lead a (conscripted!) army against Americans was George Washington. Veterans after the revolutionary war got a pittance for their services, then debtor's prison when they couldn't make their interest payments to the Merchant Class, who in turn were heavily indebted to foreign interests to the point where they had to rapidly call in all these debts and imprison any who didn't in order to convince foreign powers to do trade with them, having eroded all credit and credibility during the War and the first few years where the United States was under the Articles of Confederation, having not yet drafted the Constitution (which was mostly done due to economic fraud between states, who were minting their own money and in many cases interfering in interstate commerce while also defrauding people with rampant inflation or coinage shortages.)
If you really go and read US history, you will realize that our modern day actions are not that different from the actions of the past. America has been winging it for 200+ years and the institutionalized corruption and corporate collusion has never left, just changed form as the PR needed to gloss over it changed shape and media format over time.
America's fathers never lived up to the hype crafted to surround them.
Free food, shelter, and healthcare? Why work?
If you're OK sleeping in a homeless shelter, eating every meal at a soup kitchen, and waiting for service at a free health clinic, then I'll support your choice not to work. Most people have loftier goals.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
It's interesting. In the US, people generally trust corporations rather than their government. In Europe on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite, people rather trust their governments than corporations.
I don't trust either, but there's a distinct difference between the two. I can decide to opt out of dealing with any corporation. If I want to opt out of the government, eventually men with guns will come to force me to deal with the government.
I suppose you've not heard of the Pinkertons then? Hired by corporations to violently suppress labor strikes in early 1900s. Corporations world-wide have hired private security forces to impose their will on whoever opposes them, typically in countries with weaker central governments in Africa and South America, but it really happens everywhere. In the US they typically use armies of lawyers rather than military, because that works for them so far in our corporate two-party duopoly, but make no mistake how corporations would behave when deeply threatened, history tells us exactly what they do.
"Government" is too abstract a term. We're really talking about who holds the power. What you and the parent post both are concerned about is someone having power over others -- in other words, unequal power. Inequality comes from centralization, we empower one individual (or a small group) to have more power and authority than others, and any time that happens, there is the possibility that someone will take advantage and use it to coerce people.
The real key difference is democracy. The typical corporate structure is extremely top-down, centralized power in a CEO and board of directors that essentially act as dictators (maybe oligarchs is the better word) within the company. What they say goes, and even if middle management or workers or even customers disagree, the CEO is under no obligation to care at all. You don't have much recourse against a centralized authoritarian heirarchical power, what they say goes, and if fight too much they'll simply fire you or cut off service to you. At best you could quit and find a job somewhere else (or as a customer, "vote with your wallet" and go elsewhere), but that is only at best supporting one dictatorial corporation over another. Over time, capitalism encourages corporations to merge and become monopolies (to lower costs and maximize profit since there is no longer competition), which makes the top-down centralized power even worse.
To be fair, some governments evolve this way too. I absolutely hate the recent trend of "we need to run government like a business" because implicit in such statements is that top-down centralized corporate power. It breeds this attitude that the president and Congress are like CEO and board of directors, that what they say goes, and that's the end. That is the pathway to authoritarianism and government dictatorship, and we really need to reverse that trend.
But in principle, we value democractic governments. Why is democracy such a big deal? Because rather than centralizing power in a small group (or even just one person), democracy puts everyone on a level playing field. We ALL have a say so, we all have a vote, we all have the same legal power. There is little to no power inequality between individuals because every individual's concerns can be heard and address as the group deliberates and decides together. Recent history has made representative democracy (a slight oxymoron but we'll overlook it) more feasible because of the large amounts of people in each country (and the distance necessary to travel to Congress before cars and airplanes!), but I think modern technology and methods allow us to lean more towards pure direct democracy. Do you always get what you want in a democracy? No. But you are guaranteed a voice and a vote, which is more than you are guaranteed in today's authoritarian corporate structures.
What we really need are more democratic structures that protect individua
Google and Facebook combined had around 30 billion in profit last year. There are 125 million households in the US. So even if these two companies gave every penny of profit, you can still only give each household less than $250. People that suggest this 'basic income' fail at math. Every. Single. Time.
What is amazing to me is that a person whose life totally is totally defined by his use of American technology, subsists on the products of American innovation, and requires American military might to secure his county's freedom since he is to weak/lazy to handle it would have the gall to think that he is civilized instead of a mere pet.
Your post and ones like it can be summoned up by one awful truth: Europe spent over 400 years fucking up the world, and you are angry that it is taking America too long to clean up your shit. In that time, you have given the world the gifts of slavery, racism, and unfettered greed. You had robbed the resources of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and many parts of the world are still reeling from your selfish abuse. Where you saw weakness, you stole. Where you saw culture, you pillaged. Where you saw unity, you created dissent. History judges you as some of the worst people ever. To call yourself civilized now or at any point is such a tragic misuse of the word, it defies all cognition.
So yes, you left us with the mess of slavery. You left us with a balkanized world. You left a swath of nations who you raped for centuries, trying to overcome your legacy of shame and poverty. The world you made is an absolute mess. The difference between YOU and the U.S. is that we try to fix it. We try to make a situation where a rising tide lifts all boats. As a result of these efforts, in the American century, we have seen world poverty begin to decline. By all measures, the difference between being civilized and and that of pathetic barbarism is exactly the gulf between us and you.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
I will NOT pay any more taxes. I will withhold all taxes if there is an attempt to get more.
I will NOT pay for that even if taxes don't go up because it's too much control in government hands
I will NOT tolerate UBI because 16th Amendment only allows government to collect taxes on forms of Income.
I will NOT tolerate socialism or communism in any way..
I will NOT tolerate some other government agency attempting to assert more control over me.
Yes. I "thing" that we as tax payers should ensure that every last person in America has food, shelter, and healthcare. Civilized societies shouldn't leave the weak to die.
If you want to help someone, then go ahead. No one is stopping you.
See a hungry person? Buy them food.
See a homeless person? Bring them to your home and let them live with you.
You can do these things - that's your freedom.
But stop trying to use force to make other people follow YOUR morals... or accept when they want to make you follow theirs by banning abortion, or requiring church attendance.
But stop trying to use force to make other people follow YOUR morals... or accept when they want to make you follow theirs by banning abortion, or requiring church attendance.
Yes, by banning abortion, or requiring church attendance, or by banning rape, or enforcing road laws. These things are all obviously the same... I don't know why I thought it was OK to make laws for the public good.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
After all, the data we "give" away to Google just doesn't magically turn into money that gets stuffed into a mattress somewhere, ready to distribute to the poor. Google also provides a lot of free tools and functions to a lot of people, so that money is generally being SPENT already. But there are a lot of paid services, too.
It's the same kind of marketing fantasy-land that drive marketers push the Dot-Com bust, by imagining the Internet full of an un-tapped cash potential just ready for even the stupidest product. In reality, the internet was full of the same cheap bastards that weren't buying your product in real life.
The government having entities like MSHA/OSHA/DOT/Minimum wage and etc... That effect industry with an umbrella organization are seriously detrimental to the unions and independent bargaining for each industry as the Fed has already defined their application and design as adequate while it is not in many cases. Moreover the level of divisionism in many unions renders them effectively useless for collective bargaining.
Welfare, social assistance, etc already do all of this.
No, they don't. At least not as presently structured in the US. Most importantly, they are time-limited; max of 2 years over a lifetime, IIRC. And you can't actually have enough income to live on under those programs due to a combination of the benefits going away if you have any income and the benefits being so low.
experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployment and poverty [who?]
Fundamentally, there is no difference between a warlord, a monarch, a dictator, and a representative democracy, etc.
So what you are saying is fnudementally every form of government is as bad as Hitler?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
UBI doesn't math. Has never mathed. And anybody who thinks they are sticking Google/Facebook/Apple with the UBI bill is delusional too.
"But those companies OWE us!!!" ... no, in fact they don't. We willingly give away our privacy to them every day. I challenge you to make a stand and choose NOT to give away your privacy to them instead.
"But those companies have huge piles of cash!!!" ... yes. And they have institutional investors. Just imagine how 401Ks across the country would tank once the government started dipping its paws into corporate bank accounts to pay for the next wave of social welfare. You would literally be funding UBI by destroying the middle class's retirement savings.
Listen. Math is not that hard. Try this exercise. Let X equal the number of citizens who would qualify for UBI. Let Y equal the amount of UBI per year they would receive. The formula is then Z = X * Y ... where Z is now the amount of money it takes to fund UBI for a year.
There are 326M citizens in the US according to the census bureau. How many of them would qualify for UBI? For the sake of maths, lets say "all of them".
Now, lets set UBI income per year at a level that really doesn't help all that much. $10k? For the sake of the experiment, sure. That wouldn't cover the cost of rent in many major metropolitan cities, but we'll roll with it for now.
326M * $10k = $3.26 trillion per year.
Woah. Now the shocker. The entire federal revenue for 2015 was ... $3.18 trillion. For 2018 it is expected to be $3.65 trillion. Sooooooo ... to fund this marginally helpful UBI would take pretty much the entire federal revenue. Or said another way, roughtly 3x the total federal spending in defense predicted for 2018.
UBI. Uh huh.
Come back with it maths better.
a. Reduce the cost of the product - selling more of them at the same profit margin causing revenue and profits to go up (more tax)
b. Improve gross margin on the product - selling the same amount of them, making the same revenue - with lower costs causing profits to go up (more tax)
c. Some combination of the above
So why do you need an additional confusing tax on automation?, do you draw the line on adding new automation - or do you calculate the tax based on how much it would take a man without any tools to do the job, and tax the labor reduction from there?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
From direct sales, yes. From re-investment in other corporations and bonds and so on, no. And in any case, corporations use resources: when a corporation moves in, should all the people pay the taxes for the fire support, the roads, the water mains, the traffic control, the sidewalks, the regulators... ??? Or should that be rolled into the product/service cost, and so only those who use the product or service pay for those product/service-related costs? Think about it.
Or, l can put it this way: under the present economic model, why should you have to pay the governance and service costs for my widget and fluffing?
But so what? Doesn't even move the goalposts. You still can't take all corporate profit under the current system, and it would take that, and more, to create any more than the most pitiful form of UBI for a broadly unemployed populace.
Either the system changes, or it crashes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well yes, that's part of the current system - they won't let you do it, and they are most definitely in control at this point. But there are other reasons. Right now, businesses operate as enablers for people to advance. Corporations are microcosms of that very effect; if you break them - and if you take all their profit, you will break them - they will no longer be serve that function, and they will devolve into less effective entities. They will have no stock value; no one will invest; there will be no margins for raises, growth will be difficult (and financially pointless to the individuals who would cause that growth) etc., etc.
With broad automation, the human motive is sidelined, or perhaps even eradicated. You'll still have production.
But we aren't there, not even close. Until we are, you can't break the system in place.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If I were to run a "plan" economy country I'd steal a page from the market economy playbook and have them all do internal billing in Government Credits. You technically don't need private industry to have an internal market. And then you could watch prices and if steel got too expensive build more steelworks.
That's a great idea in theory. What happens in practice is, now that you've essentially politicized the economy, whom gets the credits (and how many credits are available to use) is now a political matter. Assuming this is a democratic affair, whichever political group promises the most credits to the most powerful industrial collective will get the votes. Again, you see this play out in other planned economies. In the Soviet Union, you saw a lot of resources allocated to the industrial and technology sectors. The farmers got screwed when it came to resource allocation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You have the same problems of capitalism that communism was supposed to fix, they've just been transferred to political organs instead of the market.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Why is it that random people or companies can't throw you in a cage?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Well, the best way to do that is to provide the opportunity to get a good job to as many people as humanly possible. We have around 94 million people out of the work force, if we could drop that to only the people that are retired or otherwise independently wealthy, then the few left over that cannot work for physical reasons, the rest of those who are working and enjoying prosperity could contribute "a little" in taxes and have mountains of money to take care of those who can't care for themselves due to the vast number of those contributing "a little" and the diminuitive number of those who require assistance.
the rich folks who stand to profit by automation, this will never happen.
It's funny the number of people who post every time UBI is discussed about "giving poor people more money won't help them" or some other criticism that is filed against more welfare in general. That's not what UBI is, at least not to me.
For me, UBI could not propose increasing welfare at all and I'd STILL be for it. To me it's about removing the complicated network of welfare and simplifying it. It's about removing the negative stigma. You can argue for higher, or lower UBI, and I'd STILL be happy that at least we've 1. simplified the system and 2. shown the U.S. that there are advantages to systems like these.
Do I think it'll work as pretty as it is in my head? No. But you can't tell me it's not worth trying to improve our current system, regardless of politics.
We are SUPPOSED to have a government of the people, for the people, by the people.
INSTEAD
We have a government of the cronies, for the cronies, by the cronies.
Tell me again why it's a good idea to pay people for doing nothing?
Why? You don't mind enforcing your moral of "thou shalt not steal not matter what", I want to enforce my moral of "thou shalt not steal unless it is to make sure poor people can get to a hospital".
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Why do we keep seeing slackers and those that are uniformed... voting for other slackers and a vehicle to pay for their slack-age? UBI assumes you don't have to provide value for your existence. Nature abhors a vacuum so why should you expect.. as someone with presumably opposing thumbs.. that your presumed existence must be supported by others who provide value? How about in the realm of natural selection.. should the ants that want to stand by and listen to music, stare at the stars, whistle their favorite tune while they provide no economic value to the collective... survive?
We already have governmental programs that support Art for Art's sake. Why should those that bust their ass to meet their goals.. be burdened with those that don't get two-fifths of a shit about anybody else get room/board/food?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper
Welfare systems that are designed to improve the welfare of a state only serve to create a welfare state. Why go out and get a job when I can just sit at home and collect a check? Americans are some of the most generous people on the planet. If the government stopped taking 20-30% of our income, a majority of us would be much more willing to donate to Local charities that benefit Local families in times of need. But only until said family can get back to a point of being self sufficient.
And I don't want to hear any of that talk about not enough jobs. I couldn't count the number of "help wanted" signs I see on my drive to work every day.
WHY OH WHY did that stupid company end up with all those billions of dollars, for something we despise... ads?
One day, we could be without money. You never know. In any science fiction, when writers portray the future, there's no money. So deep down inside, it's what people want.