If the world doesn't need more dog walkers, the market will provide ample feedback and the new entrepreneurs will find something else to do. That's the cool thing about the basic income, it just sets up the opportunity and then lets the market decide. By giving people more time to get a business off the ground, perhaps people will choose other lines of work that take longer to develop than dog walking.
If you're not scrambling to somehow keep living when employment is scarce, you have time to make your own employment. And you have the opportunity to do it small scale enough to offer better prices than the large corporation, or at least to offer proper customer service as opposed to a talk to the hand style voice menu leading to a card flipper.
OTOH, if you are correct that there simply isn't enough employment out there in the U.S. then the basic income is a must to avoid active revolt.
And I contend that your scenario won't come about in the first place since far less than half of the people are willing to settle for the bare minimum when they have the opportunity to do better. Your premise is faulty. That does not bode well for your conclusion.
Let's look at the first passage you quoted. You do know that the 'they' referred to is people who have lapsed from their faith, right? And that the surrounding text says that they should be allowed to leave in peace if they will go. It even states that there is no point in trying to convert them back.
Funny how a little context totally changes a thing. Throughout the history of religion, various nutjobs have taken bits and pieces of their preferred holy writing out of context and bent them for their own purposes. You should probably look those passages up yourself and read the surrounding passages.
You should also know that Jews and Christians are explicitly NOT infidels according to the Quran.
Of course, there are a lot of nutjobs in the Middle East taking a lot of things out of context but it is a mistake to paint all Muslims everywhere with the same brush.
My favorite neighbors are Muslim and they are nothing like your description. People read holy books and draw strange conclusions all the time. I think you've been talking to some of those people.
So you contend that given a choice, people will not work for better conditions in their life even if employment is available and on fair terms? In other words, that our current system is based on forced labor?
You also forget that it wasn't that long ago that it took a crew of 20 to do what one guy on a backhoe accomplishes today and that the guy dinking on a spreadsheet used to be 50 guys with adding machines.
It's not false and it has nothing to do with reproduction.
The starting conditions necessary to lead to OPs no-win scenario would be empty housing and homeless people. It stands to reason that if nothing changes, those starting conditions remain the case.
It would reduce involuntary unemployment and so would relieve general economic stress.
It would also allow for informal employment and contract work for people who otherwise couldn't afford to work. Both through removing the penalty for having an income that people on public assistance now face as well as through employers becoming more willing to meet potential workers half way. It would also be a boon for people on disability who can work a little bit on their own terms but couldn't afford the risk of a bureaucrat deciding that them managing 3 hours a week for 2 weeks in a row means they can do 40/week and so don't need disability.
If the people who complain that minimum wage kills jobs are right, there should be more jobs available once people who just want a little extra can afford to take such a job for a little while.
It should hold true where there is high occupancy and little fallow land. The U.S. has a LOT of fallow land. It also has a lot of empty housing. In those conditions, more people who can afford some rent means more properties fixed back up for habitation. The basic income means that people will be able to afford to move to where the housing is, even if they can't replace their low paying job for a few months.
I suspect that after a year or so to adjust, we'd see higher employment rates than ever, at least if you count the sort of informal employment that becomes possible once basic needs are a given. Idleness actually gets old pretty fast.
As Carlin pointed out, pot leads to carpentry. So even with that, it might make an interesting new cottage industry.
Of course that ignores that even if you're homeless, it's better to be homeless with $1500 in your pocket than it is to be homeless with $0 in your pocket. That remains true even if the price of everything goes up by a factor of 10.
It also ignores that while there is no 0 income housing available, there is a non-zero amount of low income housing available. Prices won't move until the surplus is filled at least. In practice, the demand will tend to open up some supply.
Otherwise, our best bet is to each give up $1500 a month (just set it on fire) so the price of everything will plummet until we're back where we are now (yes, that is absurd).
No. I'm fairly sure that the vast majority of people will want more than the basics. At least one of them will be good enough at plumbing that you will want to hire him for a rate he will accept in order to fix your toilet.
Actually, the salt chemistry differs. The salt for solar thermal storage doesn't need to be reactive with uranium, plutonium, and/or thorium to work, so sodium salt can be used. It also doesn't need to circulate as much and a bit of spillage is easier to deal with.
Nevertheless, I think it is past time to build a commercial scale molten salt nuclear plant to get the ball rolling. Interestingly, as long as reprocessing is made part of the cycle, we could see a net reduction in nuclear waste we need to deal with over the first few decades as we use the "waste" from our existing nuclear as fuel. Sounds like a win to me.
I do know this, If I put PV in at my house, I will be sure to include an off-grid mode so I can have power for part of the day when the grid goes down.
Ultimately, we were the beneficiaries of a situation where the rest of the world eliminated itself as competition for the US. That's a pretty strong position, but it was going to be a temporary position as the world rebuilt. In 1950, when we could afford to pay people large sums for unskilled labor, and when the millionaires made enough so that they didn't care about 95% income tax, it could certainly be possible for all things to be in harmony. Today? Maybe... maybe not.
Today, the millionaires make more money than ever and our ABILITY to pay unskilled labor is un-diminished.
Step one is recognizing that while it is up to the public to solve the problem, they aren't the bad actor. There are wolves in the fold and pretending the sheep freely voted to have mutton for dinner is unhelpful.
You've given a good description of why the coal and gas plants aren't really suitable for the 21st century.
Solar thermal is also good since it includes molten salt storage. It can and does produce electricity when the sun isn't shining. It can use the peak solar hours to melt the salt to provide power later. Molten salt nuclear is interesting, but we can't jump directly into it since there are open questions about the extreme corrosiveness of hot fluoride salts.
Modern nuclear designs are a good choice as long as we can break the political deadlock surrounding reprocessing.
It's called learned helplessness. It happens when the shock comes no matter what choice you make. It's been going on for all of the voter's adult lives.
The fraud starts a lot earlier and it is much more Orwellian than that. For example, do you know what an articulate 3rd party candidate can do to be included in the pre-election debates? Nothing. It just won't happen unless they have a few BILLION in the bank like Perot did. If you are the winning Democrat or Republican, you're name is on the ballot. All others must jump through flaming hoops. And did you notice how much voting in the primary looks like an official government function? Ever wonder why that is when the primaries are internal party matters?
Then there's the Gerrymandering.
In other words, while it is not theoretically impossible to beat the system, the deck is stacked hard against it. Vegas Casinos would kill to get a vig like that. Meanwhile, the approval rate for Congress routinely falls below cockroaches. Claiming voters actually want this is a bit much.
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If the world doesn't need more dog walkers, the market will provide ample feedback and the new entrepreneurs will find something else to do. That's the cool thing about the basic income, it just sets up the opportunity and then lets the market decide. By giving people more time to get a business off the ground, perhaps people will choose other lines of work that take longer to develop than dog walking.
Have you considered that ISIS is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity?
If you're not scrambling to somehow keep living when employment is scarce, you have time to make your own employment. And you have the opportunity to do it small scale enough to offer better prices than the large corporation, or at least to offer proper customer service as opposed to a talk to the hand style voice menu leading to a card flipper.
OTOH, if you are correct that there simply isn't enough employment out there in the U.S. then the basic income is a must to avoid active revolt.
And I contend that your scenario won't come about in the first place since far less than half of the people are willing to settle for the bare minimum when they have the opportunity to do better. Your premise is faulty. That does not bode well for your conclusion.
Let's look at the first passage you quoted. You do know that the 'they' referred to is people who have lapsed from their faith, right? And that the surrounding text says that they should be allowed to leave in peace if they will go. It even states that there is no point in trying to convert them back.
Funny how a little context totally changes a thing. Throughout the history of religion, various nutjobs have taken bits and pieces of their preferred holy writing out of context and bent them for their own purposes. You should probably look those passages up yourself and read the surrounding passages.
You should also know that Jews and Christians are explicitly NOT infidels according to the Quran.
Of course, there are a lot of nutjobs in the Middle East taking a lot of things out of context but it is a mistake to paint all Muslims everywhere with the same brush.
My favorite neighbors are Muslim and they are nothing like your description. People read holy books and draw strange conclusions all the time. I think you've been talking to some of those people.
I explicitly allowed for 1000% inflation. You claim it will be infinite?
So you contend that given a choice, people will not work for better conditions in their life even if employment is available and on fair terms? In other words, that our current system is based on forced labor?
You also forget that it wasn't that long ago that it took a crew of 20 to do what one guy on a backhoe accomplishes today and that the guy dinking on a spreadsheet used to be 50 guys with adding machines.
It's not false and it has nothing to do with reproduction.
The starting conditions necessary to lead to OPs no-win scenario would be empty housing and homeless people. It stands to reason that if nothing changes, those starting conditions remain the case.
It would reduce involuntary unemployment and so would relieve general economic stress.
It would also allow for informal employment and contract work for people who otherwise couldn't afford to work. Both through removing the penalty for having an income that people on public assistance now face as well as through employers becoming more willing to meet potential workers half way. It would also be a boon for people on disability who can work a little bit on their own terms but couldn't afford the risk of a bureaucrat deciding that them managing 3 hours a week for 2 weeks in a row means they can do 40/week and so don't need disability.
If the people who complain that minimum wage kills jobs are right, there should be more jobs available once people who just want a little extra can afford to take such a job for a little while.
It should hold true where there is high occupancy and little fallow land. The U.S. has a LOT of fallow land. It also has a lot of empty housing. In those conditions, more people who can afford some rent means more properties fixed back up for habitation. The basic income means that people will be able to afford to move to where the housing is, even if they can't replace their low paying job for a few months.
I suspect that after a year or so to adjust, we'd see higher employment rates than ever, at least if you count the sort of informal employment that becomes possible once basic needs are a given. Idleness actually gets old pretty fast.
As Carlin pointed out, pot leads to carpentry. So even with that, it might make an interesting new cottage industry.
Of course that ignores that even if you're homeless, it's better to be homeless with $1500 in your pocket than it is to be homeless with $0 in your pocket. That remains true even if the price of everything goes up by a factor of 10.
It also ignores that while there is no 0 income housing available, there is a non-zero amount of low income housing available. Prices won't move until the surplus is filled at least. In practice, the demand will tend to open up some supply.
Otherwise, our best bet is to each give up $1500 a month (just set it on fire) so the price of everything will plummet until we're back where we are now (yes, that is absurd).
No. I'm fairly sure that the vast majority of people will want more than the basics. At least one of them will be good enough at plumbing that you will want to hire him for a rate he will accept in order to fix your toilet.
If the referendum passes, they'll implement it. That's a serious consideration.
So nothing like communism then?
So you're saying it's better to have homeless people and empty housing? Because no other starting condition leads to your conclusion.
Then you didn't understand what I meant by Learned Helplessness
Actually, the salt chemistry differs. The salt for solar thermal storage doesn't need to be reactive with uranium, plutonium, and/or thorium to work, so sodium salt can be used. It also doesn't need to circulate as much and a bit of spillage is easier to deal with.
Nevertheless, I think it is past time to build a commercial scale molten salt nuclear plant to get the ball rolling. Interestingly, as long as reprocessing is made part of the cycle, we could see a net reduction in nuclear waste we need to deal with over the first few decades as we use the "waste" from our existing nuclear as fuel. Sounds like a win to me.
I do know this, If I put PV in at my house, I will be sure to include an off-grid mode so I can have power for part of the day when the grid goes down.
Ultimately, we were the beneficiaries of a situation where the rest of the world eliminated itself as competition for the US. That's a pretty strong position, but it was going to be a temporary position as the world rebuilt. In 1950, when we could afford to pay people large sums for unskilled labor, and when the millionaires made enough so that they didn't care about 95% income tax, it could certainly be possible for all things to be in harmony. Today? Maybe... maybe not.
Today, the millionaires make more money than ever and our ABILITY to pay unskilled labor is un-diminished.
Step one is recognizing that while it is up to the public to solve the problem, they aren't the bad actor. There are wolves in the fold and pretending the sheep freely voted to have mutton for dinner is unhelpful.
You've given a good description of why the coal and gas plants aren't really suitable for the 21st century.
Solar thermal is also good since it includes molten salt storage. It can and does produce electricity when the sun isn't shining. It can use the peak solar hours to melt the salt to provide power later. Molten salt nuclear is interesting, but we can't jump directly into it since there are open questions about the extreme corrosiveness of hot fluoride salts.
Modern nuclear designs are a good choice as long as we can break the political deadlock surrounding reprocessing.
It's called learned helplessness. It happens when the shock comes no matter what choice you make. It's been going on for all of the voter's adult lives.
The owners of the panels will see plenty of ROI. Like I said, set the dryer and dishwasher to run at peak sun. Charge the car. Pre-chill the building.
The other benefit is the reduced externalities. That is, pollution.
The fraud starts a lot earlier and it is much more Orwellian than that. For example, do you know what an articulate 3rd party candidate can do to be included in the pre-election debates? Nothing. It just won't happen unless they have a few BILLION in the bank like Perot did. If you are the winning Democrat or Republican, you're name is on the ballot. All others must jump through flaming hoops. And did you notice how much voting in the primary looks like an official government function? Ever wonder why that is when the primaries are internal party matters?
Then there's the Gerrymandering.
In other words, while it is not theoretically impossible to beat the system, the deck is stacked hard against it. Vegas Casinos would kill to get a vig like that. Meanwhile, the approval rate for Congress routinely falls below cockroaches. Claiming voters actually want this is a bit much.