I foresee some form of UBI being enacted, promising to eliminate the other programs. The existing programs would be promised to be phased out as the UBI is phased in, but before the existing programs can be eliminated someone finds a reason why *this* program needs to be preserved, then *that* program...
So we end up with both and now way to pay for them.
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 $11,770 (2015).
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 $15,930. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
A baseline 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 $11,770; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $15,930; and so on. It is worth noting that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $11,770 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,610 in UBI), so at least some will avoid living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their UBI total.
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 $18,010. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.242 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 just this week 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 $2.242T to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.715T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in and either-or situation reduces this a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the exisiting 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 $2.242T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.021T.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
My colleagues regularly discuss various security theater we observe and how easy it is to bypass, circumvent or otherwise thwart (in this case, use it against itself).
I understand that in Brussels now they have checkpoints on the road to the airport...
Not exactly a "call for depopulation" but a number of sources have comments like:
"Our species’ demographic growth since its birth in Africa 200,000 years ago clearly contributed to this crisis. If world population had stayed stable at roughly 300 million people—a number that demographers believe characterized humanity from the birth of Christ to A.D. 1000 and that equals the population of just the U.S. today—there would not be enough of us to have the effect of relocating the coastlines even if we all drove Hummers. " [Scientific American]
The implication is strong that we'd be better off with dramatically reduced population.
As noted by others, the Georgia Guidestones have it as a commandment:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity. Unite humanity with a living new language. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. Avoid petty laws and useless officials. Balance personal rights with social duties. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
It can be hard to find the original sources outside of conspiracy sites, but there are things like The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense." "The sooner we go extinct, the greater the biological diversity we’ll leave behind to carry on." "[O]ur voluntary phase out, begun soon enough, would avoid the tragic collapse of both our global civilization and the biosphere. Humanity could improve conditions for all life while enjoying renewed bounty from restored ecosystems. Abundant resources would make world peace possible, and our shrinking human family could grow closer together."
Not to mention environmental fascist wackos like Pentti Linkola:
"If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die." "We even have to be able to re-evaluate Fascism and recognize the service that philosophy made 30 years ago when it freed the Earth from the weight of tens of millions of overeating Europeans, six million of them by an almost ideally painless, environment-preserving means."
I've seen more than one claim that the earth can only sustain 500M people. If we would only get rid of the other 7B or so, then a select group of 500M could live a life in perpetual balance with nature.
The final drainage of Lake Agassiz contributed an estimated 1 to 3 meters to total post-glacial global sea level rise. Much of the final drainage may have occurred in a very short time, in two or one events, perhaps taking as short as a year.
Sea level rise has been about 8 inches in the last 100 years.
It sounds like these islands would be barely above water on a calm day, and any day with any wave-action would submerge them every few seconds anyway.
But it sounds better than "5 reefs, usually only 10 inches below the surface of the ocean 100 years ago, are now under almost 20 inches of water!", which I'm sure a generally true condition somewhere in the Solomons, too.
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' Isaac Asimov
Are there a lot of people who think that our educational spending is done efficiently, especially with respect to the task of providing a certain level of education for as many children as we can? Or are resources squandered? Are we overspending on a tiny fraction of students who will never reach a "normal" level?
It's certainly not a simple matter that "Spend more money and we fix the problem."
Or put another way: How much would be *enough*? The most persistent answer is simply "more".
precious snowflake convinces their parents to allow them to purchase *just this one things this one time* and then the parents forget to relock the account; or when some precious snowflake with more savvy than their parents uses the parents password to purchase stuff.
"Why the FUCK should Canadians obey American laws IN CANADA?"
They don't need to. Agree 100%.
But they shouldn't complain when Netflix is trying to prevent American laws from being broken in America, or more to the point, Netflix is trying to protect their contractual rights and obligations vis-a-vis distributing licensed content AND trying to not violate the exclusive rights for content distribution to Canada held by others.
Yeah, Netflix has some original content that they own and can license anywhere they want. But the vast majority of the catalog is subject the the restrictions imposed by the rights-holders and passed on by contract to Netflix. Netflix contractually has a responsibility to make good faith effort to protect the rights of the content in accordance with the rights-holders demands.
Again, not defending the rights-holders, but it is their content and they can do with it as they please.
R&D is not the only big ticket cost for drugs. Every drug put on the market for the last 20 years or so has been the subject of huge "bad drug" lawsuits--often quite dubious--with billions of dollars of settlements required. It's no wonder that pharma companies have to charge extra to fill those reserves to pay off the inevitable suits.
Slashdot Mirror
Replaced dozens of men using axes and two-man saws. A small crew of 4-5 loggers and one man running a yarder can harvest acres per day.
But somehow putting self-service kiosks at McDonald's represents the collapse of society.
Do you want to go back to digging ditches with shovels and pick-axe?
Not to mention chain saws, jack hammers, hydraulics of every form, personal computers, email...
History is replete with technology replacing human labor.
I foresee the opposite of what paiute foresees.
I foresee some form of UBI being enacted, promising to eliminate the other programs. The existing programs would be promised to be phased out as the UBI is phased in, but before the existing programs can be eliminated someone finds a reason why *this* program needs to be preserved, then *that* program...
So we end up with both and now way to pay for them.
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 $11,770 (2015).
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 $15,930. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
A baseline 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 $11,770; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $15,930; and so on. It is worth noting that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $11,770 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,610 in UBI), so at least some will avoid living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their UBI total.
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 $18,010. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.242 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 just this week 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 $2.242T to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.715T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in and either-or situation reduces this a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the exisiting 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 $2.242T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.021T.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
In a 100-0 vote, the Senate passed a security bill that would put all 28,000 screeners and other airport security personnel on the federal payroll.
The USA PATRIOT Act passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1 and passed the House by a vote of 357 to 66.
My colleagues regularly discuss various security theater we observe and how easy it is to bypass, circumvent or otherwise thwart (in this case, use it against itself).
I understand that in Brussels now they have checkpoints on the road to the airport...
Don't you remember?
"You can't professionalize unless you federalize," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
Not exactly a "call for depopulation" but a number of sources have comments like:
"Our species’ demographic growth since its birth in Africa 200,000 years ago clearly contributed to this crisis. If world population had stayed stable at roughly 300 million people—a number that demographers believe characterized humanity from the birth of Christ to A.D. 1000 and that equals the population of just the U.S. today—there would not be enough of us to have the effect of relocating the coastlines even if we all drove Hummers. " [Scientific American]
The implication is strong that we'd be better off with dramatically reduced population.
As noted by others, the Georgia Guidestones have it as a commandment:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
It can be hard to find the original sources outside of conspiracy sites, but there are things like The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense." "The sooner we go extinct, the greater the biological diversity we’ll leave behind to carry on." "[O]ur voluntary phase out, begun soon enough, would avoid the tragic collapse of both our global civilization and the biosphere. Humanity could improve conditions for all life while enjoying renewed bounty from restored ecosystems. Abundant resources would make world peace possible, and our shrinking human family could grow closer together."
Not to mention environmental fascist wackos like Pentti Linkola:
"If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die." "We even have to be able to re-evaluate Fascism and recognize the service that philosophy made 30 years ago when it freed the Earth from the weight of tens of millions of overeating Europeans, six million of them by an almost ideally painless, environment-preserving means."
I've seen more than one claim that the earth can only sustain 500M people. If we would only get rid of the other 7B or so, then a select group of 500M could live a life in perpetual balance with nature.
The final drainage of Lake Agassiz contributed an estimated 1 to 3 meters to total post-glacial global sea level rise. Much of the final drainage may have occurred in a very short time, in two or one events, perhaps taking as short as a year.
Sea level rise has been about 8 inches in the last 100 years.
It sounds like these islands would be barely above water on a calm day, and any day with any wave-action would submerge them every few seconds anyway.
But it sounds better than "5 reefs, usually only 10 inches below the surface of the ocean 100 years ago, are now under almost 20 inches of water!", which I'm sure a generally true condition somewhere in the Solomons, too.
When the lead-in inflammatory comment is the sarcasm flag...
With a UBI or GBI, then everyone can stay home and perfect their gaming skills because no one eve has to work again!
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' Isaac Asimov
Spending less that the most underfunded.
Are there a lot of people who think that our educational spending is done efficiently, especially with respect to the task of providing a certain level of education for as many children as we can? Or are resources squandered? Are we overspending on a tiny fraction of students who will never reach a "normal" level?
It's certainly not a simple matter that "Spend more money and we fix the problem."
Or put another way: How much would be *enough*? The most persistent answer is simply "more".
At a plush central school district office, plus a half-score of vice-principals, resources directors, etc.
Except for people in other countries where their emergency code is 999 or something else.
precious snowflake convinces their parents to allow them to purchase *just this one things this one time* and then the parents forget to relock the account; or when some precious snowflake with more savvy than their parents uses the parents password to purchase stuff.
It's *always* someone else's fault.
"Why the FUCK should Canadians obey American laws IN CANADA?"
They don't need to. Agree 100%.
But they shouldn't complain when Netflix is trying to prevent American laws from being broken in America, or more to the point, Netflix is trying to protect their contractual rights and obligations vis-a-vis distributing licensed content AND trying to not violate the exclusive rights for content distribution to Canada held by others.
Yeah, Netflix has some original content that they own and can license anywhere they want. But the vast majority of the catalog is subject the the restrictions imposed by the rights-holders and passed on by contract to Netflix. Netflix contractually has a responsibility to make good faith effort to protect the rights of the content in accordance with the rights-holders demands.
Again, not defending the rights-holders, but it is their content and they can do with it as they please.
artists in the US?
That limits the number of foreign (including American) movies, TV shows, songs, etc. that can be aired?
Meanwhile, let the Canadians make their own damn movies and STFU if they don't care for the American laws protecting American IP.
Disclaimer: it's not that I think USA copyright laws are right or correct.
But for some reason no one is willing to sell them to me. I guess I'm entitled to just take them?
R&D is not the only big ticket cost for drugs. Every drug put on the market for the last 20 years or so has been the subject of huge "bad drug" lawsuits--often quite dubious--with billions of dollars of settlements required. It's no wonder that pharma companies have to charge extra to fill those reserves to pay off the inevitable suits.