"Looks like the submitter is trying to market the prosecution too with words like "vulnerable...exploited...". If they have sex and receive money, how is that worse than having sex and getting gifts? It's not worse, and if she needs the money you're doing her a favor by giving her money. [...] As for "previously had made his living off illegal marijuana grows, but moved into prostitution when the drug was legalized."... again marketing a baddie who is bad to the core. It has nothing to do with the claim against these men. [...] There's nothing wrong with prostitution"
Not too smart, are you?
No. What is read between lines is not what you got but this: Bad guys are bad guys but, since marijuana was legalized bad guys needed to go elsewhere. Now, the problem here is *not* prostitution, which is basically another crime without victims, but the fact that, being illegal, it attracts bad guys that exploit people, which *is* the real crime. So if we legalized prostitution just like we did with marijuana the bad guy will need to go -again, elsewhere.
"Should companies retain employees who are incapable of transitioning"
Of course not, they are business, not charities.
"(let's say Phone Support for a discontinued product) to a new role (say Enterprise Linux Administration) "
Why not going from janitor to CFO instead?
Or, wait, why not going from Phone Support for a discontinued product to Phone Support for the new product line?
There will always be people that won't retrain but, for the vast majority it is that the company won't train -at all. What you'll see is not trying to make a borderliner telephone operator into a network engineer; what you see is a senior sysadmin with deep knowledge being fired because he's not been exposed to, say, Ansible or Amazon and a youngster with minimal knowledge of those tools and null knowledge about what to really do with them being hired insted (if IT doesn't get just outsourced, that is).
Its coverage will depend on the local legislation -and I don't know the Georgia case: the insurance company may very well bail out in case of gross negligence, for instance.
Pay attention that the insurance is there to cover the risk of the offender, not the victim. It's only indirectly (by means of making insurance compulsory) that the victim takes advantage from the insurance company... up to the point the insurance company can be legally forced not to avoid the payment.
Another reality check. While I (mostly) agree with what you say, the victim is suing snapchat because: a) She can. b) Snapchat has the money.
In an "ideal" world (but not so ideal that the accident didn't happen), the victim would sue the hell out of the other driver because, certainly, from her point of view all the blame comes from her -and somehow, the victim would be redressed (maybe the government would pay for the part the offender couldn't cover, but that's beside the point).
The offender, on her side, not the victim, would be free to sue whatever third parties she considered to be helpers to her action: Snapchat for producing such a distracting app, the car builder for producing a car that can go 120mph, the road builder for unproperly signaling the risks... whomever. And then, the courts would decide if her demands had merit or not.
But since there's no way the victim will be redressed out of a 18 y.o. girl's money, she tries her luck going after snapchat. Not that it's uncommon: take, for instance, a plane wreak and you'll see the victims representatives going after, say, the plane company instead of just the airline, as it should be.
It wasn't. It was just stating the rational flaw on the parent's underlying argument by showing how unacceptable it became (to him) by just changing the subject on its very own sentence.
Of course "smart guns" are pushed by a political agenda (aka "ideological thought"); my point was that "the unalienable right to bear arms" is *also* pushed by a political agenda (aka "ideological thought"), which means "ideological thought" cannot be brought into the argument one way or the other.
On a side note, the responses to my message show clearly how irrational some USA people come to be when "their" second amendment enters on stage, which is funny, since this kind of people usually are the kind of the Republican this, the Constitution Fathers that, conveniently forgetting that the 2nd Amendment is exactly that: an amendment -it didn't came brand new with their Holy Constitution, which should be a clear indication that "the unalienable right to bear arms" maybe is unalienable, but it certainly is not obvious, or else it would have been right there, in the first version of the document. Maybe that's why I looked like a troll since for the one that can't think clearly, any argument against his preconception probably will look like " inflammatory, extraneous and made with the intention of upsetting people" to his eyes.
"It is not an "ideological thought" to believe that the 2nd Amendment says that people have the right to own guns."
It isn't. That's a fact.
But the thought that there must be a 2nd Amendment and therefore, that there's an intrinsic right to own guns of any kind (much more so above rights to own anything else so it has to have special recognition in any Constitution) *is* an ideological thought.
In fact, the answers I received by making an obvious statement makes my point painfully obvious.
It's funny how you got modded "+4 Insightful" for an obviety while I got modded down "troll" for another one. It is as if having a constitutional right to own guns was not an "ideological thought".
"This is the kind of reaction that is generated by placing ideological thought ahead of reality. I'm not bashing you, but I am bashing your idea that "smart" tech on a gun is or should be required."
This is the kind of reaction that is generated by placing ideological thought ahead of reality. I'm not bashing you, but I am bashing your idea that the right to own a gun of any kind is or should be required.
"for moderate (net) incomes and moderate housing (renting) prices, it's about 50% (1/2) if you're single, and thus about 25% as a couple if both work."
Yeah, because couples live on average on the same kind of homes than singles (even if they have children, of course).
Or maybe *not*.
"Otherwise, if you earn an average of 1500 euro (net), according to your theory, you'd only pay 150 euro a month?"
Where did you forgot your calculator? 40% of 1500 is 600, not 150. That means that a single earning 1500 net will tend to expend 600 in shelter, or a couple about 1200.
Thanks for the quote which makes exactly my point (and thanks twice, since this is a quote I usually miss when explicitly looking for it).
"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
The conclusion with regards to universal basic income is, again obvious (and the same reached by other paths): do not implement it by means of pocket money but by means of free services.
One of the usually untold advantages of publicly owned business classes (say, healthcare on countries with it) is that it usually takes out incentives for competing private companies doing the same (after all you already paid for those services by taxes, so it's difficult to convince yourself to pay for them again so other provider gives them to you): once private companies are out of the system also go lobbyists and so, affecting laws tend to be simple and focused on the public interest instead of the private corporations.
"let's not forget he supported basic income."
No, he doesn't (not explicitly at least), but he certainly supports progressive taxing.
It always amazes me how many "liberals" (I use double quotes because that kind of "liberals" are nothing but right wing nuts) are so fond of Adam Smith when he was quite spare on opinions and the little opinions that throws in the wealth of nations are quite socialist in nature.
Of course I soon remember that no one of them has read the book.
"Please quote chapter and verse of which part you are referencing specifically then."
I certainly am not inclined to fall for the tricks of an obvious troll, but still, for the benefit of others...
Just the opening of Chapter XI "Of the rent of land" (who would have hinted! I was only talking about "...how (and why) landowners extracted most of the land rents while land renters were left just above starving"), which starts saying...
"Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land."
And immediately follows with...
"In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficent to keep up the stock [...] This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself, without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more."
"If you are on welfare in 90% of all cases you stay in the house you were in before you became a welfare case."
I don't know the exact numbers but I'm inclined to believe yours.
Now, the question is, why is it so?
I'll tell you why: because now, those that need to go into welfare (much more in Germany) are because they are very low in their maslow pyramid so the extra income goes to such basic things as to have a hot dinner every day instead of one out of five, or being able to pay for the heating in winter or hot water for their morning shower. For basically everybody else (and, remember, UNIVERSAL basic income means EVERYBODY gets it) minimal physiological needs are already covered, which means they go after higher levels on the pyramid, namely safety and belonging, which means a better home.
"Also in Germany cheap houses does not mean 'crappy'."
Have you been in Berlin as of lately? "cheap" may not mean "shanty, Detroit ghetto style", but it doesn't mean "basic but still good enough" either.
"If the landlord would increase the rent for a welfare case, the city would provide an alternative flat"
No, it wouldn't. There's welfare support *because* there is *not* universal basic rent. Why the heck should a public instance pay for anything on welfare support ON TOP of Universal Basic Rent, once it is in place? As long as you can afford the cheapest shittiest shelter and the cheapest shittiest food, that's exactly what the Universal Basic Rent is about, which in turn means that the Universal Basic Rent is guaranteed to allow *merely* for exactly that, at whatever the standard for "shittiest" happens to be in your country.
"Nothing at all will change if UBI is introduced."
Only for the petty detail that you current disposable rent goes from X to X+UBI and given that for the vast majority of people housing makes for the biggest expense they affront and still they don't get to their aspirational home, it's just a sensible assumption that your expenses towards homing will increase by UBI*quotient very near to 1.
"In most countries you can not even increase the rent "for no reason"."
I don't know of any single country which doesn't allow to increase the rent for no reason once current contract expires. In example, in my own country the legal limit for the owner is five years, which basically means that, on average, at least 20% of renting contracts are open to free renegotiation every year.
On top of that, even if the contract was unexpirable and unresignable, the average "you" with larger disposable rent would move on its own will to a better housing. What do you think all of average yous trying to move to a better housing would do to real state prices?
"Adam Smith was referencing rents in relation to a land value tax."
Not in the part I'm referring to. Go please read the whole damn book (yes, the utmost boring part about grain price evolution both in England and France too. Yes, the utmost boring part about minted gold and silver price evolution vs productivity of South American mines too) and, specifically, the part about how rental prices (not taxes on land) evolves with respect to land productivity, both in farm or mined land, so most of the gains end up going to the owner, not the producer.
"Back to the point: If rents go up with incomes, it means that there are too few places to rent. If there were enough, landlords would not raise prices because tenants would simply go elsewhere."
Just too true. But "enough places to rent" and "enough rentable places" are quite different things. The fact is that there're a lot of rentable places that just don't go into the market despite price spiking for those that in fact are rented (or sold). This points to shelter not being a true offer/demand market but one pushed by speculative forces outside of the market. I am not going into the long wired argument of why is that the case, but that is obviously the case.
"If prices always increased with incomes, as the post I responded to asserted, then food would still cost 75% (or whatever it was historically - I can't be bothered looking it up - huge) of a family's income. "
Food is even more interesting since all hope for it even resembling a free market is lost. If not, please explain how is it possible that processed food is cheaper now than in the past but, at the same time, raw producers need greater subsidies to even stay in business.
"I suggest you consider that markets have not expanded at "the bottom", but at "the top" and in "the middle"."
I do. And then I look around and see you assertion seemingly makes no sense. You have a lot of lower front-price rubbish but narrower offer and increased total cost of ownership everywhere. * You can buy a rubbish t-shirt for a dollar but try to buy a nice made-to-measure suit and see what happens (not to talk about bespoke). * You can buy a rubbish pair of shoes by almost nothing (which you'll need to replace twice a year), but try to find a good pair of goodyear-welted which would last you two decades and tell me they are cheaper now than thirty years ago on a straight face. * You can buy a pound of frozen croquettes for a dime, but try to buy a fresh orange or a non-processed sirloin. * You can buy fish sticks for almost nothing, but go looking for a fresh sea bream. * You can go for a pair of sun vogues, and you can choose from a lot of shops... while all of them will offer the same products with basically zero variety.
"You are mixing up Europe with big cities like London, Paris or Rome."
Maybe I do, since I have to say I have not deep knowledge about the whole variety Europe encompasses.
I can say, though, that I know quite well Spanish, French, Italian and German markets and 30% to 40% of free income for salaried people ("free income" being what you see month by month going into your bank account, after employer taxes but before end-of-year personal income adjustment) is the median. How is it burdened changes, i.e.: Germany is more of a rental market while Spanish market leans much more to propietorship, but percentages are more or less the same.
"The sad thing about americans is: they don't even know what communism is."
Quite true from my experience too.
Even more: I remember a poll on American people that -at least tried to, took care to avoid political bias (dem vs rep): results being twofold: a) They don't know how their macro-economic expenditure is really organized (what percentage of GDP goes to military, health care, education, etc. how greater 0,1% income is relative to median, etc.) b) Once deprived of political bias, the system they would consider proper (i.e.: what percentage of GDP should be devoted to education, or how many times should on average a CxO make vs minimal wages), is much more "socialist" than, say, the reality of Northern Europe countries.
"If they had a similar model to the UK, they'd save enough cash to half-fund a UBI of $12,000 per citizen right there."
Don't know the exact numbers, but I'll take yours as it doesn't change the argument.
If you can half-fund UBI of 12000$ per capita, that means you can fully fund 6000$ per capita, right?
But 6000$ is not that much! Well, on one hand UBI is not meant to be that much but just barely enough. On the other, don't forget that now you don't have to pay for healthcare out of your pocket so you can add what you are already paying to those 6000$.
"You only have rising prices in the face of insufficient supply."
No, you don't.
You *may* have lower prices on "spare economics". You certainly not on basics. That was true when Adam Smith wrote "On the Wealth of Nations" talking about how (and why) landowners extracted most of the land rents while land renters were left just above starving and it is true now when you saw house prices skyrocketting *despite* having a big percentage unsold or unoccupied just because your "Joe Average" had more disposable income (a fallacy, of course, because all that money was just coming from an uncertain future in the form of mortages).
"Why do you think TVs and cars and food are so cheap today compared to the past ?"
That's not because excess of offer but because opening lower markets. In fact, look around you: while the entry-level TV set is cheaper now than, say, in the 80's, which means more people owns now an entry-level device, the "premium for the masses" is still 600-1000 EUR or US$. Computers? the same. Fresh food? the same (and cheaper processed food has a lot to say about our first world obesity epidemic). Cars? the same. And on top of it, while a single given device might be cheaper, the same company is selling you more devices (the one that used to sell you a TV set is now selling you a TV set, a smart phone and a tablet) so your expenditure on "leisure facilities" is still roughly the same percentage of your household income, except that, on easy credit, you are taking more money from the future that ends up rising present prices (which becomes, of course, a bubble since there's just so much money you can bring from the future, even if it's "reasonable money", not even talking about money that was impossible to be there to start with).
"Apparently the solution when you've got too much debt is to spend more!"
Certainly. You can ask Donald Trump for details.
But that doesn't explain what happened to Greece under Varoufakis. What happened there is that European tycoons got rich at the expense of Greek citizens and when Tsipras' government tried to say "enough is enough" EU acted like the mob to make an example: "You don't say 'enough is enough' to the Mafia" as they were terrified about Ireland, Portugal and, mainly, Spain, doing the same.
"Same thing happened with college/university tuition. Loans became easier to get, like magic, tuition fee's rose to match. Oh, you can get a bigger loan, fee's just went up."
Which lends to an obvious conclusion: don't implement the "basic rent" principle by means of disposable money but by means of guaranteed services. In example: in USA you have to pay for education and that means prices go up to whatever you can afford. In Denmark you don't have to pay for education and that means prices don't go up (prices in this case being costs as covered by Government trough taxes).
"UBI isn't going to affect the demand for housing."
Of course it will.
Home is one of the two most sensible things to "disposable" money (the other being food). Everybody needs shelter and everybody wants it to be as nice as possible which in the end means that everybody throws as much money as possible towards it. Certainly there are minor variabilities from person to person but they are that: minor. It's not news: even Adam Smith had it right some 250 years ago (only it talked about land owners instead of shelter).
"If anything, the housing market is going to be more efficient, since people can actually afford to risk unemployment and thus move away from the expensive growth centers."
We are not talking here about local bubbles here but about price of the entry point. Yes: you could easierly move out of, say New York or Los Angeles, but since the people already living at Nowhere, Oklahoma, *also* get a minimal guaranteed income as high as yours, that's what will set their local prices too. Remember that, no matter what, median home prices will be strongly tied to median local income: if you lower median income differences from place to place, you are also lowering median home prices too.
On the issue of "basic income becomes inflation" I've heard a lot of arguments, one side or the other.
What I usually haven't heard of is comparing them to current already known situations. I.e.: the last economical crisis has been pointed (in part) to "easy" credit pushing up price of home. Disregarding for a moment all the associated backstage (money lent to people unable to return it, packed and resold so it couldn't be traced back) the fact stays: you put easy money in the system and you get a price bubble.
In fact, I came to live to a big European city and saw it with my own eyes: home prices rose all around the way, but they didn't grow exactly the same: the ones that grew the most were the cheapest as their prices were already topping whatever their targets were capable to pay. A simplified evolution, back from the seventies goes like this. 1) Median home prices represent 40% of husband's median income for 15 years, since that's the mortage time banks will allow. 2) So women are entering the labor force and this means that, on average, every household has now two payers? prices double to stay on 40% household incomes for 15 years. 2) So economy goes well and median wages too? prices rise no less than wages to stay 40% of median household incomes for 15 years. 3) So banks are willing to increase the mortage times, up to 25 and then 30 years? prices go up so they still stay as 40% of median household incomes for those 25 or 30 years.
That's on my country, but you can see the same on other countries, adapted to their history, i.e.: USA's or Japan's case, long mortages came earlier, and prices adapted accordingly. Lenders lower required mortage warrantees? prices goes up from 40% to 60% of median household incomes...
The point stays: you inject more money into the systems, prices go up accordingly. This is even more true for whatever is considered "basic" (homes, obviously, but also cars or food). I haven't seen a reasonable argument about why in the case of basic rent it isn't going to happen the same (in the sense that the arguments I had, fail to explain why they didn't work in the cases we *already* know).
And then, I don't see the obvious consequence either: basic rent is about the concept, not the exact means. So it's obvious to me that "basic rent" shouldn't have to be about pocket money but about goods and services, which also happens to be something we already know pretty well how it goes since a lot of developed countries already offer them, up to a point: i.e.: socialized healthcare or education, so it would only be a matter of extend this kind of coverage to, say, food, shelter, and other services considered "basic" (where what's "basic" would probably be different from country to country, as it in fact already happens with current socialized services).
May it be the case, that we are talking about "basic income" instead of "basic services coverage" because of the pavlovian reflex that makes any American foaming at the mouth about everything that resembles "comunism" to them?
"I work in a school. Our switches cost 2000 GBP each, and we have a firewall that costs on the same order."
You are expending too much.
"They have features you cannot get on anything cheaper (RADIUS, et al are "freebie" features nowadays - we're talking direct MDM on the switch and all kinds of security)."
See? You don't need to expend so much.
I know, I know... paying that kind of money (maybe even public money to make things even worse) gives you a sense of accomplishment: "Mum, look at me! I'm using expensive toys because I'm already a big boy!" But, really, you don't need it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Looks like the submitter is trying to market the prosecution too with words like "vulnerable...exploited...". If they have sex and receive money, how is that worse than having sex and getting gifts? It's not worse, and if she needs the money you're doing her a favor by giving her money.
[...]
As for "previously had made his living off illegal marijuana grows, but moved into prostitution when the drug was legalized."... again marketing a baddie who is bad to the core. It has nothing to do with the claim against these men.
[...]
There's nothing wrong with prostitution"
Not too smart, are you?
No. What is read between lines is not what you got but this: Bad guys are bad guys but, since marijuana was legalized bad guys needed to go elsewhere. Now, the problem here is *not* prostitution, which is basically another crime without victims, but the fact that, being illegal, it attracts bad guys that exploit people, which *is* the real crime. So if we legalized prostitution just like we did with marijuana the bad guy will need to go -again, elsewhere.
"Should companies retain employees who are incapable of transitioning"
Of course not, they are business, not charities.
"(let's say Phone Support for a discontinued product) to a new role (say Enterprise Linux Administration) "
Why not going from janitor to CFO instead?
Or, wait, why not going from Phone Support for a discontinued product to Phone Support for the new product line?
There will always be people that won't retrain but, for the vast majority it is that the company won't train -at all. What you'll see is not trying to make a borderliner telephone operator into a network engineer; what you see is a senior sysadmin with deep knowledge being fired because he's not been exposed to, say, Ansible or Amazon and a youngster with minimal knowledge of those tools and null knowledge about what to really do with them being hired insted (if IT doesn't get just outsourced, that is).
"But the 18yo girl had car insurance right?"
Its coverage will depend on the local legislation -and I don't know the Georgia case: the insurance company may very well bail out in case of gross negligence, for instance.
Pay attention that the insurance is there to cover the risk of the offender, not the victim. It's only indirectly (by means of making insurance compulsory) that the victim takes advantage from the insurance company... up to the point the insurance company can be legally forced not to avoid the payment.
"Reality check."
Another reality check. While I (mostly) agree with what you say, the victim is suing snapchat because:
a) She can.
b) Snapchat has the money.
In an "ideal" world (but not so ideal that the accident didn't happen), the victim would sue the hell out of the other driver because, certainly, from her point of view all the blame comes from her -and somehow, the victim would be redressed (maybe the government would pay for the part the offender couldn't cover, but that's beside the point).
The offender, on her side, not the victim, would be free to sue whatever third parties she considered to be helpers to her action: Snapchat for producing such a distracting app, the car builder for producing a car that can go 120mph, the road builder for unproperly signaling the risks... whomever. And then, the courts would decide if her demands had merit or not.
But since there's no way the victim will be redressed out of a 18 y.o. girl's money, she tries her luck going after snapchat. Not that it's uncommon: take, for instance, a plane wreak and you'll see the victims representatives going after, say, the plane company instead of just the airline, as it should be.
"Your original post was most certainly a troll"
It wasn't. It was just stating the rational flaw on the parent's underlying argument by showing how unacceptable it became (to him) by just changing the subject on its very own sentence.
Of course "smart guns" are pushed by a political agenda (aka "ideological thought"); my point was that "the unalienable right to bear arms" is *also* pushed by a political agenda (aka "ideological thought"), which means "ideological thought" cannot be brought into the argument one way or the other.
On a side note, the responses to my message show clearly how irrational some USA people come to be when "their" second amendment enters on stage, which is funny, since this kind of people usually are the kind of the Republican this, the Constitution Fathers that, conveniently forgetting that the 2nd Amendment is exactly that: an amendment -it didn't came brand new with their Holy Constitution, which should be a clear indication that "the unalienable right to bear arms" maybe is unalienable, but it certainly is not obvious, or else it would have been right there, in the first version of the document. Maybe that's why I looked like a troll since for the one that can't think clearly, any argument against his preconception probably will look like " inflammatory, extraneous and made with the intention of upsetting people" to his eyes.
"It is not an "ideological thought" to believe that the 2nd Amendment says that people have the right to own guns."
It isn't. That's a fact.
But the thought that there must be a 2nd Amendment and therefore, that there's an intrinsic right to own guns of any kind (much more so above rights to own anything else so it has to have special recognition in any Constitution) *is* an ideological thought.
In fact, the answers I received by making an obvious statement makes my point painfully obvious.
It's funny how you got modded "+4 Insightful" for an obviety while I got modded down "troll" for another one. It is as if having a constitutional right to own guns was not an "ideological thought".
"This is the kind of reaction that is generated by placing ideological thought ahead of reality. I'm not bashing you, but I am bashing your idea that "smart" tech on a gun is or should be required."
This is the kind of reaction that is generated by placing ideological thought ahead of reality. I'm not bashing you, but I am bashing your idea that the right to own a gun of any kind is or should be required.
"NO, I do not want a gun that relies on a battery.
When I pull the trigger I want it to go "bang" instead of displaying a "low battery" message"
Oh, mate, I understand you just soooo well!
Me?
I do not want a gun that relies on bullets.
When I pull the trigger I want it to go "bang" instead of a disappointing "click" indicating "no bullets".
"for moderate (net) incomes and moderate housing (renting) prices, it's about 50% (1/2) if you're single, and thus about 25% as a couple if both work."
Yeah, because couples live on average on the same kind of homes than singles (even if they have children, of course).
Or maybe *not*.
"Otherwise, if you earn an average of 1500 euro (net), according to your theory, you'd only pay 150 euro a month?"
Where did you forgot your calculator? 40% of 1500 is 600, not 150. That means that a single earning 1500 net will tend to expend 600 in shelter, or a couple about 1200.
Thanks for the quote which makes exactly my point (and thanks twice, since this is a quote I usually miss when explicitly looking for it).
"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
The conclusion with regards to universal basic income is, again obvious (and the same reached by other paths): do not implement it by means of pocket money but by means of free services.
One of the usually untold advantages of publicly owned business classes (say, healthcare on countries with it) is that it usually takes out incentives for competing private companies doing the same (after all you already paid for those services by taxes, so it's difficult to convince yourself to pay for them again so other provider gives them to you): once private companies are out of the system also go lobbyists and so, affecting laws tend to be simple and focused on the public interest instead of the private corporations.
"let's not forget he supported basic income."
No, he doesn't (not explicitly at least), but he certainly supports progressive taxing.
It always amazes me how many "liberals" (I use double quotes because that kind of "liberals" are nothing but right wing nuts) are so fond of Adam Smith when he was quite spare on opinions and the little opinions that throws in the wealth of nations are quite socialist in nature.
Of course I soon remember that no one of them has read the book.
"Please quote chapter and verse of which part you are referencing specifically then."
I certainly am not inclined to fall for the tricks of an obvious troll, but still, for the benefit of others...
Just the opening of Chapter XI "Of the rent of land" (who would have hinted! I was only talking about "...how (and why) landowners extracted most of the land rents while land renters were left just above starving"), which starts saying...
"Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land."
And immediately follows with...
"In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficent to keep up the stock [...] This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself, without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more."
"If you are on welfare in 90% of all cases you stay in the house you were in before you became a welfare case."
I don't know the exact numbers but I'm inclined to believe yours.
Now, the question is, why is it so?
I'll tell you why: because now, those that need to go into welfare (much more in Germany) are because they are very low in their maslow pyramid so the extra income goes to such basic things as to have a hot dinner every day instead of one out of five, or being able to pay for the heating in winter or hot water for their morning shower. For basically everybody else (and, remember, UNIVERSAL basic income means EVERYBODY gets it) minimal physiological needs are already covered, which means they go after higher levels on the pyramid, namely safety and belonging, which means a better home.
"Also in Germany cheap houses does not mean 'crappy'."
Have you been in Berlin as of lately? "cheap" may not mean "shanty, Detroit ghetto style", but it doesn't mean "basic but still good enough" either.
"If the landlord would increase the rent for a welfare case, the city would provide an alternative flat"
No, it wouldn't. There's welfare support *because* there is *not* universal basic rent. Why the heck should a public instance pay for anything on welfare support ON TOP of Universal Basic Rent, once it is in place? As long as you can afford the cheapest shittiest shelter and the cheapest shittiest food, that's exactly what the Universal Basic Rent is about, which in turn means that the Universal Basic Rent is guaranteed to allow *merely* for exactly that, at whatever the standard for "shittiest" happens to be in your country.
"Nothing at all will change if UBI is introduced."
Only for the petty detail that you current disposable rent goes from X to X+UBI and given that for the vast majority of people housing makes for the biggest expense they affront and still they don't get to their aspirational home, it's just a sensible assumption that your expenses towards homing will increase by UBI*quotient very near to 1.
"In most countries you can not even increase the rent "for no reason"."
I don't know of any single country which doesn't allow to increase the rent for no reason once current contract expires. In example, in my own country the legal limit for the owner is five years, which basically means that, on average, at least 20% of renting contracts are open to free renegotiation every year.
On top of that, even if the contract was unexpirable and unresignable, the average "you" with larger disposable rent would move on its own will to a better housing. What do you think all of average yous trying to move to a better housing would do to real state prices?
"Adam Smith was referencing rents in relation to a land value tax."
Not in the part I'm referring to. Go please read the whole damn book (yes, the utmost boring part about grain price evolution both in England and France too. Yes, the utmost boring part about minted gold and silver price evolution vs productivity of South American mines too) and, specifically, the part about how rental prices (not taxes on land) evolves with respect to land productivity, both in farm or mined land, so most of the gains end up going to the owner, not the producer.
"Back to the point: If rents go up with incomes, it means that there are too few places to rent. If there were enough, landlords would not raise prices because tenants would simply go elsewhere."
Just too true. But "enough places to rent" and "enough rentable places" are quite different things. The fact is that there're a lot of rentable places that just don't go into the market despite price spiking for those that in fact are rented (or sold). This points to shelter not being a true offer/demand market but one pushed by speculative forces outside of the market. I am not going into the long wired argument of why is that the case, but that is obviously the case.
"If prices always increased with incomes, as the post I responded to asserted, then food would still cost 75% (or whatever it was historically - I can't be bothered looking it up - huge) of a family's income. "
Food is even more interesting since all hope for it even resembling a free market is lost. If not, please explain how is it possible that processed food is cheaper now than in the past but, at the same time, raw producers need greater subsidies to even stay in business.
"I suggest you consider that markets have not expanded at "the bottom", but at "the top" and in "the middle"."
I do. And then I look around and see you assertion seemingly makes no sense. You have a lot of lower front-price rubbish but narrower offer and increased total cost of ownership everywhere.
* You can buy a rubbish t-shirt for a dollar but try to buy a nice made-to-measure suit and see what happens (not to talk about bespoke).
* You can buy a rubbish pair of shoes by almost nothing (which you'll need to replace twice a year), but try to find a good pair of goodyear-welted which would last you two decades and tell me they are cheaper now than thirty years ago on a straight face.
* You can buy a pound of frozen croquettes for a dime, but try to buy a fresh orange or a non-processed sirloin.
* You can buy fish sticks for almost nothing, but go looking for a fresh sea bream.
* You can go for a pair of sun vogues, and you can choose from a lot of shops... while all of them will offer the same products with basically zero variety.
"You are mixing up Europe with big cities like London, Paris or Rome."
Maybe I do, since I have to say I have not deep knowledge about the whole variety Europe encompasses.
I can say, though, that I know quite well Spanish, French, Italian and German markets and 30% to 40% of free income for salaried people ("free income" being what you see month by month going into your bank account, after employer taxes but before end-of-year personal income adjustment) is the median. How is it burdened changes, i.e.: Germany is more of a rental market while Spanish market leans much more to propietorship, but percentages are more or less the same.
"The sad thing about americans is: they don't even know what communism is."
Quite true from my experience too.
Even more: I remember a poll on American people that -at least tried to, took care to avoid political bias (dem vs rep): results being twofold:
a) They don't know how their macro-economic expenditure is really organized (what percentage of GDP goes to military, health care, education, etc. how greater 0,1% income is relative to median, etc.)
b) Once deprived of political bias, the system they would consider proper (i.e.: what percentage of GDP should be devoted to education, or how many times should on average a CxO make vs minimal wages), is much more "socialist" than, say, the reality of Northern Europe countries.
"If they had a similar model to the UK, they'd save enough cash to half-fund a UBI of $12,000 per citizen right there."
Don't know the exact numbers, but I'll take yours as it doesn't change the argument.
If you can half-fund UBI of 12000$ per capita, that means you can fully fund 6000$ per capita, right?
But 6000$ is not that much! Well, on one hand UBI is not meant to be that much but just barely enough. On the other, don't forget that now you don't have to pay for healthcare out of your pocket so you can add what you are already paying to those 6000$.
"You only have rising prices in the face of insufficient supply."
No, you don't.
You *may* have lower prices on "spare economics". You certainly not on basics. That was true when Adam Smith wrote "On the Wealth of Nations" talking about how (and why) landowners extracted most of the land rents while land renters were left just above starving and it is true now when you saw house prices skyrocketting *despite* having a big percentage unsold or unoccupied just because your "Joe Average" had more disposable income (a fallacy, of course, because all that money was just coming from an uncertain future in the form of mortages).
"Why do you think TVs and cars and food are so cheap today compared to the past ?"
That's not because excess of offer but because opening lower markets. In fact, look around you: while the entry-level TV set is cheaper now than, say, in the 80's, which means more people owns now an entry-level device, the "premium for the masses" is still 600-1000 EUR or US$. Computers? the same. Fresh food? the same (and cheaper processed food has a lot to say about our first world obesity epidemic). Cars? the same. And on top of it, while a single given device might be cheaper, the same company is selling you more devices (the one that used to sell you a TV set is now selling you a TV set, a smart phone and a tablet) so your expenditure on "leisure facilities" is still roughly the same percentage of your household income, except that, on easy credit, you are taking more money from the future that ends up rising present prices (which becomes, of course, a bubble since there's just so much money you can bring from the future, even if it's "reasonable money", not even talking about money that was impossible to be there to start with).
"Apparently the solution when you've got too much debt is to spend more!"
Certainly. You can ask Donald Trump for details.
But that doesn't explain what happened to Greece under Varoufakis. What happened there is that European tycoons got rich at the expense of Greek citizens and when Tsipras' government tried to say "enough is enough" EU acted like the mob to make an example: "You don't say 'enough is enough' to the Mafia" as they were terrified about Ireland, Portugal and, mainly, Spain, doing the same.
"Same thing happened with college/university tuition. Loans became easier to get, like magic, tuition fee's rose to match. Oh, you can get a bigger loan, fee's just went up."
Which lends to an obvious conclusion: don't implement the "basic rent" principle by means of disposable money but by means of guaranteed services. In example: in USA you have to pay for education and that means prices go up to whatever you can afford. In Denmark you don't have to pay for education and that means prices don't go up (prices in this case being costs as covered by Government trough taxes).
"UBI isn't going to affect the demand for housing."
Of course it will.
Home is one of the two most sensible things to "disposable" money (the other being food). Everybody needs shelter and everybody wants it to be as nice as possible which in the end means that everybody throws as much money as possible towards it. Certainly there are minor variabilities from person to person but they are that: minor. It's not news: even Adam Smith had it right some 250 years ago (only it talked about land owners instead of shelter).
"If anything, the housing market is going to be more efficient, since people can actually afford to risk unemployment and thus move away from the expensive growth centers."
We are not talking here about local bubbles here but about price of the entry point. Yes: you could easierly move out of, say New York or Los Angeles, but since the people already living at Nowhere, Oklahoma, *also* get a minimal guaranteed income as high as yours, that's what will set their local prices too. Remember that, no matter what, median home prices will be strongly tied to median local income: if you lower median income differences from place to place, you are also lowering median home prices too.
On the issue of "basic income becomes inflation" I've heard a lot of arguments, one side or the other.
What I usually haven't heard of is comparing them to current already known situations. I.e.: the last economical crisis has been pointed (in part) to "easy" credit pushing up price of home. Disregarding for a moment all the associated backstage (money lent to people unable to return it, packed and resold so it couldn't be traced back) the fact stays: you put easy money in the system and you get a price bubble.
In fact, I came to live to a big European city and saw it with my own eyes: home prices rose all around the way, but they didn't grow exactly the same: the ones that grew the most were the cheapest as their prices were already topping whatever their targets were capable to pay. A simplified evolution, back from the seventies goes like this.
1) Median home prices represent 40% of husband's median income for 15 years, since that's the mortage time banks will allow.
2) So women are entering the labor force and this means that, on average, every household has now two payers? prices double to stay on 40% household incomes for 15 years.
2) So economy goes well and median wages too? prices rise no less than wages to stay 40% of median household incomes for 15 years.
3) So banks are willing to increase the mortage times, up to 25 and then 30 years? prices go up so they still stay as 40% of median household incomes for those 25 or 30 years.
That's on my country, but you can see the same on other countries, adapted to their history, i.e.: USA's or Japan's case, long mortages came earlier, and prices adapted accordingly. Lenders lower required mortage warrantees? prices goes up from 40% to 60% of median household incomes...
The point stays: you inject more money into the systems, prices go up accordingly. This is even more true for whatever is considered "basic" (homes, obviously, but also cars or food). I haven't seen a reasonable argument about why in the case of basic rent it isn't going to happen the same (in the sense that the arguments I had, fail to explain why they didn't work in the cases we *already* know).
And then, I don't see the obvious consequence either: basic rent is about the concept, not the exact means. So it's obvious to me that "basic rent" shouldn't have to be about pocket money but about goods and services, which also happens to be something we already know pretty well how it goes since a lot of developed countries already offer them, up to a point: i.e.: socialized healthcare or education, so it would only be a matter of extend this kind of coverage to, say, food, shelter, and other services considered "basic" (where what's "basic" would probably be different from country to country, as it in fact already happens with current socialized services).
May it be the case, that we are talking about "basic income" instead of "basic services coverage" because of the pavlovian reflex that makes any American foaming at the mouth about everything that resembles "comunism" to them?
Exactly my point.
"I work in a school.
Our switches cost 2000 GBP each, and we have a firewall that costs on the same order."
You are expending too much.
"They have features you cannot get on anything cheaper (RADIUS, et al are "freebie" features nowadays - we're talking direct MDM on the switch and all kinds of security)."
See? You don't need to expend so much.
I know, I know... paying that kind of money (maybe even public money to make things even worse) gives you a sense of accomplishment: "Mum, look at me! I'm using expensive toys because I'm already a big boy!" But, really, you don't need it.