Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup financier behind successes like Airbnb and Dropbox, is soon to launch an experiment in offering a Universal Basic Income. At present, the plan is for hundreds of people to receive over 5 years' [time] a recurring sum of money unconditionally. Thereafter, the study will assess the various life consequences such as changes in work habits, entrepreneurship, creativity, or idleness.
Recent waves of interest toward UBI in Finland, Germany and elsewhere see supporters contend the initiative will — in a world facing structural unemployment due to jobs taken by automated AI, robotics and machines — combat resultant poverty and job insecurity. Many however voice doubts.
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Imagine that within two or three decades we'll have morphed into the Robotic States of America. Most manual laborers will have been replaced by herculean bots. Truck drivers, cabbies, delivery workers and airline pilots will have been superseded by vehicles that do it all. Doctors, lawyers, and business executives will have seen their ranks thinned by charming, attractive, all-knowing algorithms. So how will humans earn a living after they've been made redundant?
Farhad Manjoo writes at The New York Times that one idea has gained widespread interest — including from some of the very technologists who are now building the bot-ruled future — is a plan known as "universal basic income," or U.B.I. - just give everyone a paycheck. "Imagine the government sending each adult about $1,000 a month, about enough to cover housing, food, health care and other basic needs for many Americans," writes Manjoo. "U.B.I. would be aimed at easing the dislocation caused by technological progress, but it would also be bigger than that." Supporters argue machine intelligence will produce so much economic surplus that we could collectively afford to liberate much of humanity from both labor and suffering in the sort of quasi-utopian future we've seen in science fiction universes like that of "Star Trek."
There is an urgency to the techies' interest in U.B.I. They argue that machine intelligence reached an inflection point in the last couple of years, and that technological progress now looks destined to change how most of the world works. Wage growth is sluggish, job security is nonexistent, inequality looks inexorable, and the ideas that once seemed like a sure path to a better future (like taking on debt for college) are in doubt. Even where technology has created more jobs, like the so-called gig economy work created by services like Uber, it has only added to our collective uncertainty about the future of work. "All of a sudden," says Roy Bahat, "people are looking at these trends and realizing these questions about the future of work are more real and immediate than they guessed."
Previously:
"Silicon Valley Startup Funder Eyes Universal Basic Income"
Canadian province Ontario is taking the next step toward offering a standard income to all citizens: a Universal Basic Income pilot project, set to unroll this year.
The UBI is seen by some as a better, more efficient and effective replacement for a large collection of public services, (possibly including the minimum wage) and a way to mitigate reduced need for labor as automation eliminates jobs.
“The pilot project will test a growing view at home and abroad that a basic income could build on the success of minimum wage policies and increases in child benefits by providing more consistent and predictable support in the context of today’s dynamic labour market.”
The pilot would also aim to establish whether UBI could lead to social services savings overall.
They are still working out the details but this could be the widest implementation yet, large enough to give meaningful, reality-based data and provide useful insights about how it might work at scale in other places.
Related: Silicon Valley Startup Funder Eyes Universal Basic Income
Technologists Propose 'Universal Basic Income' in Case Robots Take all our Jobs
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @10:54AM
Let us imagine that every man, woman, and child on earth get a "minimum income". That minimum will guarantee basic subsistence, basic medical care, an education, and - what else, exactly? That minimum isn't going to grant title to anything. No land, no tons of iron, copper, cadmium, zinc, or whatever other resources. Oh, you'll get a few baubles, to keep you distracted, amused, entertained. You'll be able to occupy a position in a warehouse, where you can stroke your ego, or whatever else you may wish to stroke. But, you'll have no power to influence any damned thing.
The "ruling class" will control everything of consequence. The exploration of space? That will be for the privileged favorites. The accumulation of real wealth? Those aforementioned pets will be permitted to accumulate wealth, in the name of the ruling class.
Royalty. The real royalty, our "owners" will keep the masses - a controlled mass - alive, in anticipation that some portions of the masses might become valuable.
Minimum income. Serfs had that, a thousand years ago, in the feudal system. So long as you obey the wishes of the royalty, you would get your allotment of gruel, and a few scraps of meat from time to time.
Good luck with your dream. I'll be happy to be part of the rebellious opposition.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Monday February 15 2016, @11:15AM
So exactly like now only without the risk of misfortune leading to starvation.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @11:32AM
No misfortune, huh? Perhaps no misfortune - but if the masters decide that you have no value to them, you will be deprived of your subsistence allowance. Look into your utopia. You have an idea that is anathema to the master's plan. You can't run, of course - your DNA is on record, from birth, and the implanted tracking chip always reports where you are. You can't disappear into the wilderness, and establish your own village. You can't secretly communicate with fellow conspirators to appropriate the supplies you'll need in the wilderness. And, if you managed to do so, you would only condemn your fellow conspirators to death when their subsistence allowance is turned off.
As objectionable as a Donald Trump might be, there won't be any possibility of a Donald Trump challenging the establishment in your utopia.
Some of you folk really need to read a lot more. Read the ancient philosophers. Read real science fiction. Read about people. Read about human nature.
Of course, if you've read all of that, and the idea of becoming cattle doesn't bother you - well - enjoy. You're welcome to beome an Eloi. I refuse, just as I refuse to become a Morlock.
No misfortune. Really. Any rational person can only beat his head against his desk as he reads that nonsense. There will always be misfortune. Have you forgotten about that "global warming"? Do you have some kind of plan to reverse it? Oh yeah - kill off humanity, and stop polluting the atmosphere with green house gases? Yeah, right. If you accomplish that minor feat - you'll still be trapped in an interglacial period, and the earth will continue to warm over the next thousands of years.
The stupidity - it attacks from so many directions. Stupidity. You'll never overcome that misfortune - stupid people will continue to be born, and stupid people will continue to grasp for power, and stupid people will still claim their status as royalty. That bit of misfortune won't stop happening, unless and until mankind goes extinct.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Informative) by Farkus888 on Monday February 15 2016, @11:42AM
I know you can be a little off, but you are in full on MDC mode today. I wish you best of luck in getting back on your meds quickly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @12:15PM
You've never heard of political retaliation for free speech or subversive activities? What meds are you on?
Take the "Internet's Own Boy" Aaron Swartz. Do you think he would have been allowed to keep a government-provided basic income during his prosecution or after earning a criminal record? As far-fetched a basic income is in the current political climate, I doubt convicted criminals will be allowed to keep getting benefits in the form of free money.
If the government provides basic income, you're going to be at risk due to malicious prosecution. If a corporation provides someone's basic income (something like Google's "20% time", but 100% instead), they are probably going to demand all intellectual property related to the work done.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fnj on Monday February 15 2016, @01:13PM
What an extraordinarily unsupported thought. Everyone everywhere is at risk of malicious government prosecution. Universal basic income in no way affects that one way or the other. You need to come up with some objection that actually makes sense.
I am collecting social security, though I speak out with enormous abandon and sharpness against various government failings and oppressions. No man in black has ever confronted me, threatening to take away my social security.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @01:48PM
You're collecting social security, so you've probably amassed some wealth over your lifetime, unless you are receiving payments for disability. If you've lived a large portion of your natural lifespan (I hope you make it aboard the anti-aging train), then there's less of your life to wreck and more money for you to cushion the blow.
If Congress approves basic income at some point in the distant future, there will probably be restrictions for those convicted of a crime, under investigation for terrorism, etc. You can't collect social security in prison, and if your prison doesn't have a prerelease agreement, you need to contact the SSA to start receiving benefits again. What will the restrictions for the convicted look like? Years of probation and surveillance, enough to shut down any subversive activities and monitor you closely? And good luck trying to disappear while collecting a government check.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Farkus888 on Monday February 15 2016, @01:49PM
Agreed. Once again the argument against basic income is that it will cause a problem that already exists. I'm not even arguing for basic income. Just pointing out that they aren't arguing against it either. They just pointed out that they picked the other side in a false dichotomy that they constructed. I want to hear a solid argument against basic income but I haven't yet. Honestly, it bothers me because it doesn't fit well with my world view either. But the earnest small scale tests that I've read about have outcomes that are what I would like to see.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @01:50PM
In today's world, if/when a prosecutor comes after you, you have SOME options. Not a lot of good options, but you do have SOME options. You can go into hiding, and become self employed. You can turn to criminal activities to make a living. You can subsist off of charity. You can try fleeing the country, in hopes that you can find some means of supporting yourself in another country. In a world where a world government issues your subsistence pay, where are you going to hide? What are you going to do to make a living?
GP is precisely on target with his observations.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday February 15 2016, @11:26PM
I've got an option you didn't mention: How about turning up in court with a good lawyer and convincing the judge/jury that you haven't committed the crime you're accused of committing? I admit, that's more likely to happen in the event that you haven't actually committed the crime in question, and are generally seen as a trustworthy and upstanding citizen in your community, but it's at least worth a shot.
Or here's another crazy idea: Instead of running and hiding in Guyana or something, how about paying your debt to society? If you did commit the crime, and it's a relatively small one, odds are you can plea bargain down to something with no prison time involved (and there often isn't for a first-time offender for a relatively petty charge), and then you will lose far less time and money over the whole thing if you do your community service and/or show up to meet with your probation officer and/or pay the fines.
And here's another point: All those options of running and hiding still exist under a UBI scheme, and you'll have access to just as much government support with UBI available as you would have now if you tried that.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @11:42PM
You missed the part where he said that a universal basic income would be coming from a world government, presumably because the word "universal" can only mean everyone in the world.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:47AM
With plea bargaining, you're still a convict. There have been a myriad of examples in which prosecutors trump up dozens of meaningless charges that don't even remotely apply to the "suspect", only to bargain things down from a potential 1000 years in prison, to a mere lifetime in prison.
You do get points with the observation that if you HAVE done something wrong, then you just might "pay your debt to society".
Convincing the judge and jury that you've done nothing wrong? That's the best idea, if you can afford a lawyer. Why didn't I list that possibility? Well, primarily because I was thinking of "political crimes". I'm thinking globally here, not locally. This lady is an example of political prisoners - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi [wikipedia.org]
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:39PM
So according to you, a democracy with UBI is identical to a military junta (as Burma was until very recently, when Aung San Suu Kyi's party won control of the government) without UBI. Got it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 15 2016, @01:59PM
What an extraordinarily unsupported thought. Everyone everywhere is at risk of malicious government prosecution. Universal basic income in no way affects that one way or the other. You need to come up with some objection that actually makes sense.
I see it as vote buying. Fiscal responsibility and anti-corruption is code for "they'll take your basic income away".
I am collecting social security, though I speak out with enormous abandon and sharpness against various government failings and oppressions. No man in black has ever confronted me, threatening to take away my social security.
Social Security is the third rail of US politics. Politicians can advocate all sorts of reforms. But if they touch Social Security, they don't have a career.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @01:51PM
You actually motivated me to look it up to verify, and he was never convicted. Very few existing benefit plans cut back on people "with a record". Messing with peoples ability to pay their lawyer intentionally to screw their defense sounds like an effective way to get a mistrial declared, get out of jail free.
I do agree that convicted sentenced criminals would probably have 100% of their income, plus or minus child support, deducted for various fees and restitution. Its very likely this could be abused, although it might do some good. Some immigrant rapes a woman, his money pays for her psychological counseling, I'm not seeing a huge problem with that. Arsonist burns down a house, pays for a new one, again not a huge problem here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @03:23PM
I doubt convicted criminals will be allowed to keep getting benefits in the form of free money.
Why not? Paying for their food and shelter in a guarded prison can be about as expensive as paying for their entertainment, food and shelter out of prison.
I figure I'm going to have to pay one way or another whether via their crimes or via $$$ for the prison. If they prefer doing bad stuff and going into prison then keep putting them in there, but they might eventually get tired of that and find a legal lifestyle that suits them. Also, some criminals will do bad stuff no matter what, but many others may stop bothering with the crime stuff if the basic income is high enough. Committing crimes that you can get away with does take some effort and risk, why bother when you can do your griefing comfortably and safely in some MMO while the State pays the bills?
It's paying billions for the few _rich_ crooks at the top that I'm more unhappy with. I've been "robbed" far more by them than by petty criminals.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday February 15 2016, @03:48PM
That would be just about every aspect of Bill Clinton's welfare reform.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday February 15 2016, @07:45PM
Given the outcome for Swartz even without a Basic Income, I am more inclined to agree with Farkus888.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @12:23PM
you will be deprived of your subsistence allowance
You seem to be missing the point of a basic income entirely.
Although I wouldn't put it past racists to try to limit it by race, or sexists to try an limit it by gender, but at least in theory it would apply to everyone. Also in existing practice where its been deployed its applied to everyone, which kind of invalidates the study and turns it into more of a very small scale lotto winning.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:09PM
Theories are wonderful. But, theory doesn't necessarily work when it is applie in the real world.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @03:44PM
Sure, sure. Just like there's no past experience in the field. Its not exactly the first government payment program. I don't see the GI Bill or Social Security blocking all payments to white people for being white, or to men because they're men (or worse, both at the same time). There's no greater hated group, politically, and nothing is happening to them today in a bazillion existing programs, therefore the .gov will start screwing up with this new program, because.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @04:30PM
Perhaps you're unaware of the numbers of veterans and disable veterans who are left to die in the hallways of VA hospitals, because the VA supposedly lacks funds.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @04:03AM
Yup. A handful out of millions. Clearly a epidemic that proves your point.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 16 2016, @03:22PM
One would be to many. But, it's more than just a handful. Maybe you should visit a VA hospital, and compare it to most hospitals. Granted, any hospital has it's good days and bad days, and they can all be hectic. But, it literally takes hours to get through the red tape, and it can take months to have a procedure done in a VA. The VA is under staffed, under funded, and thoroughly tied up in red tape.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fnj on Monday February 15 2016, @01:07PM
Then, by definition, it would't be universal basic income, would it? Certainly, any system can be corrupted. Certainly capitalism and communism have been. Thoroughly so. That doesn't mean you don't make any effort at all to improve the system or even contemplate improving it!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @01:54PM
If 98% of the masses find refuge in that universal income, then it will be deemed "universal". Look at medicine today. Each and every vaccination claims lives. Perhaps as few as one life in half a billion inoculations, but they claim lives. (the numbers are higher than I've given for virtually all vaccinations)
Despite the odd fatality, the authorities deem it well worth the risk.
You will see the same mindset regarding the deprivation of the "universal" income.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Monday February 15 2016, @04:01PM
He is right, to a limited extent.
I think UBI is a good idea and would / will be a net benefit to society. But it is not perfect, as nothing is.
For example, if someone is convicted to "terrorism" or child molestation, - once they get out of jail, do they get the UBI again? I expect at least some politicians to see not paying "terrorists" a UBI as a way to lower taxes and prevent crime.
Obviously, nobody gets paid a UBI while they are incarcerated. Do you lose your UBI if you spend a couple of nights in jail? Do they get paid while serving 'house arrest': they are a convicted criminal. Are there some crimes that impair your UBI as punishment?
The rational thing would be to always fully restored UBI once you are out of jail. But as we have seen politicians do not always do the rational thing.
I hope we try a UBI out on a wide scale as I think it will be the best option as more automation takes over and eliminates large swaths of jobs.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday February 15 2016, @07:02PM
I have a better proposal wrt inmates. One of the attractive things to me about UBI is that it holds promise to shatter layer upon layer of bureaucracy.
I'd propose that we continue to pay inmates the UBI. However, the UBI would be garnished for living expenses while incarcerated. The state would still pick up the tab outside of the UBI system for the security-related aspects of keeping prisoners.
I'm sure the very profitable private prison lobby would disagree with both of us and insist that UBI benefits should be permanently suspended upon conviction, ensuring recidivism and a steady gravy train of profits at the taxpayers' expense per individual far beyond any expense needed to allocate a UBI.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by schad on Monday February 15 2016, @07:02PM
You get the UBI when you're in prison, of course. But you have to pay room and board. The UBI would, by design, be the amount required for room and board; therefore, your entire UBI would be taken by the prison.
The real "danger" to a UBI, in my view, is that it's guaranteed. The only way you might not collect next month's check is if you die first. That means there will be lots of people all too happy to give you a loan. Debt would go from a dollar amount to a span of time. "This new car will cost you 3 years." Meaning that for 3 years your entire UBI goes to somebody else. Uh oh, you lost your job 6 months into your 3-year loan. Well, just borrow from your future UBI. Pay a little interest, of course, to reflect the risk the lender is taking; perhaps you get 1 year of UBI today, in exchange for 1.2 years of UBI later down the road. The older you get, the higher the risk; the higher the risk, the more of your future you have to sign away in order to support the present. I can imagine a lot of people getting themselves into an impossible-to-escape situation without ever realizing it. Hell, they may not realize it until a decade or more later, and obviously it's far too late to do anything about it by that point. Literally mortgaging your future, and it could start with something as simple as a desire for a fancier cell phone and a little bad luck.
By the way, this will be the solution to the politicians' conundrum of whether to pay UBI to convicted felons post-release. Prison costs more than a one-bedroom apartment. The UBI might not be enough to pay room and board. No big deal. Take their entire UBI while in prison, and 50% or more after they're released. Maybe a straight 1-to-1 relationship -- in for 10 years, pay for 10 more after you get out -- or maybe more. It all depends on how tough on crime you want to appear to be. Or, I suppose, how much it costs; making prisons profitable is another well-known problem that I don't think I need to get into.
You can't really stop UBI-backed borrowing. If you make it illegal, you just go out and spend your entire UBI on something fungible, like gasoline or whatever, and then that's the currency. Obviously the lender would require more gasoline, then, to reflect the risk in commodity prices as well as the added costs of storage, transportation, etc. Trying to outlaw it would only make it worse. The only real solution is not to give out a UBI at all, but instead to hand out what the UBI is meant to buy. That is, an apartment, food, water, and whatever else you deem essential. Some of those things (apartment) can't easily be traded, and others (food, water) are directly enough associated with survival that people will be less ready to trade them for pointless frippery. But that turns into a whole new problem ("round up all the poor people and stuff them in the cheapest possible shithole, and feed them protein-enriched sawdust so they won't die in such great numbers that it inconveniences the wealthy").
It's not possible to discuss UBI without describing a dystopia. Even if it works exactly the way its adherents hope, it's still a pretty miserable world. Just less miserable than the one we'd get without it.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Wednesday February 17 2016, @06:01AM
I really like your post. UBI just seems like foodstamps 2.0 to me, with more problems. There are some out there that are so bad at figuring out living that they will gamble or glut away their food stamps and let their children starve. UBI seems worse to me in that regard.
It's tough though, we have so much prosperity that there shouldn't be anyone malnourished or living on the street.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday February 15 2016, @07:50PM
No misfortune, huh? Perhaps no misfortune - but if the masters decide that you have no value to them, you will be deprived of your subsistence allowance.
We already have that when the "job creators" don't create any jobs for you or when they refuse to pay enough for you to actually live.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @12:00PM
Minimum income. Serfs had that, a thousand years ago, in the feudal system. So long as you obey the wishes of the royalty, you would get your allotment of gruel, and a few scraps of meat from time to time.
We pledge our loyalty to the Funders, from now until death.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @12:05PM
I notice that none of your complaints/worries actually have anything much to do with UBI. AFAIK nobody's claiming it will fix all of the world's ills.
That said, I'm pretty sure it'll help balance the employer/employee power differential, which should be a good step toward bringing the owning class back down to Earth.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @01:57PM
Fine, you be sure. I'm certain that it will NOT. If anything, it will separate the classes even more than we see today. A prole is a prole, and that won't change if the prole system awards ten dollars per month, or a million dollars per month. You are still disenfranchised, and at the mercy of the people who are writing the checks.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday February 15 2016, @03:53PM
Let's see -- who is better off:
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday February 15 2016, @04:55PM
And if you make the same money working for Wal-Mart as not, obviously Wal-Mart has to raise wages to actually keep any employees.
Plus the whole part where WM would then necessarily be paying at least a living wage.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday February 15 2016, @05:11PM
I'm not sure that part is as clear cut. At the moment if someone is receiving benefits, their benefits would stop if they got the job, so the pay has to be at least as good as what they were getting before. With UBI, they'd get both, so the pay wouldn't need to match the benefits. On the other hand there are some people that don't or can't claim benefits currently, who accept the low wages out of desperation; in this case your argument holds.
What we don't want to happen with UBI is for prices to get hiked. If the supermarket had to raise wages, they'd likely try and hike prices to compensate. Others have said that automation should keep prices down, which it could, but corporations will charge what they can get away with, especially for inelastic goods like basic food.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 15 2016, @12:39PM
Makers (including software). Don't care about the wealth of others or the ruling class if/when they can create.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:01PM
Alright - you do have a point. If I can follow my dreams, whatever I might be passionate about, I'm happy. That universal income will permit me to own a motorcycle? A car? An airplane? How 'bout a spot aboard ISS? Will it enable one or more persons to pool their resources to start a colony on Mars, independent of some corporate effort to establish their own colony? I suspect that proles will be very limited, regarding their ability to follow any dreams. You'll be permitted to be a spectator to all of mankind's grand accomplishments, but you'll not be a welcome participant.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday February 15 2016, @04:47PM
I'm not sure I'm in favor of a basic-income scheme, but your arguments against it don't make much sense, as they seem to presume there will be no or few jobs available -- while the details are complicated, you can quickly sketch it out like this: If the basic income amounts to, say, $6/hr (over a 40 hour week), wages will basically drop $6/hr across the board, and that decrease will mostly offset the increase in taxes to pay for it. Since $6/hr is less than minimum wage, everyone in a job keeps the job, and keeps about the same income. Everyone without a job suddenly gains $500/week income; obviously those with jobs will be taxed a little more (i.e. take home a little less pay) to fund that, but basic income advocates assure us this will be small. (I haven't run even rudimentary numbers on that, but I suspect no more than about 10% tax hike, depending how successful we would be at eliminating existing welfare programs rendered redundant by the basic-income program.)
So there will be more-or-less the same jobs available, for those who want them. (The supposed reduction in jobs and massive unemployment through automation is often proposed as a reason for basic-income schemes, but it's not here yet, and (if it happens) will happen regardless of whether or not we adopt basic income.)
The universal income will "permit" you to have three square meals a day and a roof over your head (and probably a mobile phone and TV), but unlike means-tested welfare, it combines with any wages from any job you might get:
Basic income seems much better than conventional means-tested welfare programs, because while it still enables the already lazy/unambitious to live a contented life of dependence, it doesn't create the toxic incentive structure where earning more wages doesn't get you ahead, you just receive less welfare money. There are two rational reactions to that: the best one is to simply lose whatever ambition one had. Worse, one can channel one's ambition to criminal endeavors, where the extra money is secret, and thus doesn't reduce your welfare check. In that light, a basic-income program looks pretty good, doesn't it?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 15 2016, @10:29PM
That's an interesting idea, but would it work? I guess that's kind of what Y Combinator is testing. I'm wondering, if it would devalue the American dollar at all or have some other adverse effect. While I'm not generally for raising taxes, I might could actually get behind something like this. Though, how much of that money would come from the corporations? Would they indeed pay enough into the system to offset the cost? Would this essentially be taxing the working population while giving a great big huge bonus to the corporations? While it could be handled well, the potential pitfalls from messing with an economy the size of the United States could be devastating.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Monday February 15 2016, @07:05PM
You'll be permitted to be a spectator to all of mankind's grand accomplishments, but you'll not be a welcome participant.
That's exactly the situation almost everyone is in anyway. Worse, our current system squanders many potentially brilliant minds by forcing them to earn a living through menial labor which takes up the majority of their life. They don't reach their potential because they are concerned with day to day survival instead of intellectual development. So in this regard, under UBI, most people are exactly as bad off as they are now and some are better off.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fnj on Monday February 15 2016, @12:58PM
You utterly miss the point. By definition, universal basic income is delivered to every individual without exception. It is not conditional on anything. It cannot be withheld. There are no "wishes of the royalty" to be obeyed in order to receive it. It does not enforce class boundaries, but rather opens them. Since you are not a slave or serf, your time is your own. You are free to educate yourself and to work to better yourself. You are free to invent, create, be an entrepreneur, to market your ideas, services, and goods. All without the repressive regressivity of having that universal basic income reduced or withheld the moment you try to better yourself.
UBI is a socialist ideal, yet is also very compatible and favorable to a true free market. I am not talking about the warped oppressiveness of capitalism, but a true free market.
Please, please try to open your mind. Believe me, I know how difficult it is to embrace ideas beyond one's preconceptions, but I am living proof that it is possible to open one's mind. It is not an either/or proposition. No one would be stuck with being limited to UBI alone, or self support alone. Neither the regulated hive nor the noble lonely, utterly selfish free actor is the answer in stark purity. We can most certainly do a hell of a lot better than the present system.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:07PM
You only need look to Social Security, here in the US to realize that it is a fool's dream. SS has been proven to be a pyramid scheme. It was sold to our great-grandfathers (for many of our members, great-great-great-grandparents) as a failsafe system to ensure that we would all be provided for in our old age.
Have you bothered to look at what retirees get, today, when they retire? For full benefits, I have to work until I'm 72. (fat chance of that!) Those "full benefits" won't provide much of a living at all. Pretty much all retirees who rely on SS have to decide whether to buy medicines, or to buy food, or to pay the rent, or to pay the unitilities. They might do two of the above, but they can't do all of them.
And, this new system will be better - how, exactly?
You're buying a pig in a poke. Good luck with that.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @02:24PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/science/12retire.html [nytimes.com]
http://daily.jstor.org/your-brain-on-retirement/ [jstor.org]
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-demanding-jobs-idUSBREA3223320140403 [reuters.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:58PM
Uh-huh - I agree with those articles. I've said as much to associates and freinds who have retired. I've always encouraged healty people to keep on working as long as they could.
Alas - I don't see my health holding up for another twelve years before retiring. I am NOT the man I was at age 20, or 40, or even age 50. Twelve more years? I've no reason to expect that I'm going to LIVE that long, much less work that long. I'm not yet visibly falling apart, but with each year that passes, I find myself to be a little less capable. Note that I don't fill a desk position. A large part of my job is physical, and I simply don't have the strength or stamina that I had a decade ago.
Retirement at age 72 may seem reasonable to some people, but to me, it's nothing more than a fantasy.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday February 15 2016, @04:18PM
The problem seems to be with people who sit around doing nothing and do not engage their brains. There is no reason you have to work at a job to do that.. You can find your own things to do.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday February 15 2016, @04:28PM
It will be better because you won't have people who were forced into jobs they despise ruining the quality of the products or services they are producing.
Do you ever get the feeling that you can't buy quality anymore, even when you pay over the odds for something? Ever feel like standards have slipped and that so-called professionals just don't seem to care these days?
Well, ideally, people working under this system, do so because they want to, so more often and not they will take more pride in their work. Quality, brands, and the economy in general should prosper as a result.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @04:38PM
I can state that part of that loss in quality is due to automation.
Our production people come in all different qualities. Some of them aren't worth the powder to blow them away. Some of them are extremely good at their jobs. When the robots take over, production eliminates the total screwups - but it also indiscriminately eliminates those who are great. Quality is consistent, but, mediocre. You no longer get a screwup putting parts together upside down or inside out, but you also lose that craftsman's touch.
There is a tradeoff here.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday February 15 2016, @08:04PM
Disagree: generally automation is better then 99% of the people it replaces. There are a few that will always be better then the machines; but that is because they are probably under employed; they could be doing more complicated work but for whatever reason they are not.
e.g. a CNC lathe vs a manual lathe; the CNC lathe is better then a human and it is consistently that good (until a breakdown). e.g. a modern packet switched phone network vs having operators. There are millions of examples where machines are better then humans. Generally as long as the machine is setup correctly it will always out preform a human.
Also quality is great in modern stuff. Look at cars; modern cars will do 300,000 km with regular maintenance (fluids and filters); a car from the 60's / 70's would require a significant rebuild every 50,000.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday February 16 2016, @08:07PM
I strongly disagree about quality in modern stuff. You do have a point about modern cars in general going further though I also find them bloated, overcomplicated and expensive to fix when they do go wrong.
The real issue is that products are designed now to use the minimum raw materials that they can get away with, to maximize profit margins at the expense of durability. Refrigerators that used to have sturdy metal doors are replaced with flimsy plastic ones that don't shut properly. Even the most expensive earphones have the thinnest wires possible that will wear down and snap after a few years of use (if someone knows a brand with chunky wires - please tell me it!). The old meme that "they don't make them like they used to" really does ring true.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday February 16 2016, @09:43PM
In some things I agree; but it is also a function of consumer demand for cheap over any other metric. I bet if you go buy $5000 headphones they will have all the aspects you want and be durable. However if you pay $500 you are mainly paying for a branding exercise.
It is the same with many products; most people have been conditioned to look at average prices across the board and expect all prices to be low. My dad purchased a small socket set (fits in one hand) in the early 70's during his apprenticeship for $48NZD, his wage at the time was $36NZD / fortnight; they are still good 40 years later. Apprentices are currently paid around $400NZD per week; if you go and buy a small socket set for approx $1000NZD now they would be gold plated and be of the highest quality imaginable.
With laptops I agree completely; it is almost impossible to find a really good quality laptop at any price. My current laptop (Asus Zenbook) is great but the manufacturing isn't as good as it could be. And they are getting worse as the margins in the computer industry are getting squeezed even further.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday February 15 2016, @10:33PM
Quality is consistent, but, mediocre. You no longer get a screwup putting parts together upside down or inside out, but you also lose that craftsman's touch.
99.99% of the products out there have no room for a craftsman's touch. The bespoke products that do benefit are already made by artisans, not minimum wage drones.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday February 15 2016, @04:57PM
And, this new system will be better - how, exactly?
By raising the damn taxes. We need to stop this "we demand more for less; keep lowering the taxes!" bullshit.
Also cutting our ludicrous "defense" spending a bit would go a long way. But yeah yeah, I'm way off in fantasyland ;)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Tuesday February 16 2016, @02:30AM
You utterly miss the point. By definition, universal basic income is delivered to every individual without exception. It is not conditional on anything.
I actually am not sure that this is such a great strategy. I think UBI is a great idea, but there are better ways to solve the problems that UBI aims to solve. For example, I would hate to think that government funds for UBI would go to unnecessary expenditures like luxuries, vacations, and the like. As such, I would propose that UBI cannot be used to build equity (if you don't use your weekly/monthly allotment, you lose it), and can only be used for basic life essentials (housing, food, clothing and other life necessities... ie. medical care items). In fact, I believe that this is how many government food assistance programs are run right now. Doesn't that do a better job of resolving the issues that UBI aims to solve?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:55AM
URL to get free money currently unavailable.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday February 15 2016, @12:05PM
The problem is that for a scheme like this to work, you need more suckers than freeloaders. You have to have enough stupid people working and earning money to support the freeloaders. Eventually, there's a tipping point where suckers get discouraged because their efforts are going to support freeloaders, and they want to be freeloaders, too. Then the whole thing collapses.
The idea of a universal income is the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. Where is the money going to come from? Are you going to tax the freeloaders and use tax revenues to pay the universal income?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 5, Informative) by gargoyle on Monday February 15 2016, @12:20PM
the suckers are going to be machines, the reason the idea of UBI is getting so much coverage at the moment is because people are looking at the trend of automation and wondering what will happen to all the people we don't need in the future. UBI is one of the suggestions to avoid a really nasty end, nasty as in a big proportion of the population dying off one way or another (traditional inter country war, internal fights from riots up to civil wars, starvation, disease etc).
(Score: 3, Informative) by AnonTechie on Monday February 15 2016, @01:14PM
[Related]: Robots will steal your job: How AI could increase unemployment and inequality [businessinsider.in]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @02:15PM
Automation could definitely increase inequality. If you have enough of the right robots, you could manufacture everything you possibly want and be nearly self-sufficient, or at least manufacture enough of one thing to trade for the rest. But you still need land and the capital to obtain and operate the robots, as well as resources. Rich people own lots of land and can get access to resources. Poor people rent rather than own. Even if poor people banded together into co-ops of some sort, they would face higher barriers to entry.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @02:07PM
The other "suckers" are going to be highly paid employees. Most UBI proposals seem to be a healthy fraction of the median income. The problem with that is when I file my fed taxes our household family income is around four times median income, which is a very luxurious upper-middle-class lifestyle in non-coastal area. I'm pretty happy at 4x median income and I'm not going to walk away for a mere 1/2 median basic income.
Now a cashier at walmart working 29 hours/wk with no benefits, she's out of there so fast there's a sonic boom as she leaves. Everything's moving to Amazon deliveries anyway, who needs walmart anymore?
What it would do is stick even more money in my investment accounts. If you think my income statement looks nice today, imagine what my balance sheet will look like after 10 years of UBI. So roughly an extra 1/8th of my income above what I already 401K and other investments. OK, not bad. Once I have a nice UBI-assisted cushion I'll buy a nice business perhaps, or bootstrap my own business. For me, UBI means I'm going to be even richer than the median joe six pack.
What a UBI does is trade even higher income and wealth inequality, for making conditions survivable, even civilized, for those at the bottom. It that way it serves the rich. Much like welfare doesn't exist out of the goodness of the wealthiest people's hearts, it exists because they don't want an eternity of something like the LA riots in every city until everyone starves to death or is shot. Its cheaper to run a welfare system than a 3rd world favella. The UBI people say the bureaucrats and administrator classes have captured the welfare system such that a UBI would be even more effective and even cheaper at suppressing bread riots. Well, OK, give it a try.
I'm not entirely morally bothered. In the bad old days before EPA only rich people got nice unpolluted land, and even that was getting polluted. With some government meddling, all of us have great unpolluted land (mostly by moving all the pollution to China, but I digress). The franchise always expands over time and I'm OK with that. We let everyone vote, give everyone almost too cheap to meter safe drinking water, give away free police and fire coverage, more or less give away military protection, soon we'll be giving away medical care and a basic income level (probably crappy level) of food and shelter. Its not that big of an expansion. Compared to say, public roads, or public libraries, or public fire departments, its not that controversial.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:15PM
You're going to have a tough time luring the UBI proles out of their living rooms to work for wages that you don't consider "exorbitant". You want to pay someone $100/hr to stand around and look stupid?
Oh yeah - you're going to automate it all, right?
Good luck, man! Startup costs are going to eat you up! Robots are, and will remain, high dollar items.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @03:36PM
Robots ... will remain, high dollar items
Why, out of all other computerized mechanized things where the price drops to zero due to automation? I mean, look at the price of 3d printers over time, and how they're not going up.
And again, why would I care? The straw dog was walmart increasing pizza prices to $50 each. Because they can as a monopoly robot provider. The solution isn't buying an assembly line of robots to make VLM-brand pizzas but hiring say 10 unemployed (like everyone else) Italian Grandmothers to hand make pizzas I sell for $10 each. The grandmas, once they get moving, if they cooperate a bit, can quite easily each make six pizzas per hour without sweating excessively. In practice I'd probably make a hand operated assembly line rather than artisinal craftswomen, but this makes the math a little simpler. So I'm making $60/hr per employee revenue. Figure $30 of raw material costs and other kitchen costs, I pay the grannies $25/hr, I make $5/hr profit per grannie at ten grannies thats $50/hr total profit for me.
The grannies could make UBI equivalent of $5/hr or whatever it works out to, but they can buy potpourri and framed velvet Elvis pictures and candy to spoil the grandkids with about five times faster when they're working for me. Thats kind of motivational and is a totally affordable pay rate for me. And some of them like to cook anyway. I'm happy at $50/hr profit as a pizzeria owner, even if its only part time or a short term gig. In fact everyone is happy except walmart who thought they would make $49 off every $50 robotically made pizza, and of course walmarts suppliers who now have zero orders. Whoops.
In the real world there would be a smooth continuum of robot pizzas all the way up to 5 star Michelin hand cooked dining for the foodies.
So what else is there to the argument that "robot owners will monopoly price"? Without a UBI the only difference is they'll have roughly zero sales because everyone will be unemployed, because "robots". So obviously adding a UBI can only improve that situation.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @04:28PM
Intellectual property is why.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Demose on Monday February 15 2016, @12:24PM
Schemes such as this rise out of necessity such as when there's a plane crash and a limited amount of food. This will come to pass when the job losses due to automation start coming in full force (You don't need one tech per robot). Do you honestly believe billions should starve because some people feel *entitled to disproportionate amounts of wealth?
*Yes entitled, men can and have worked tirelessly for years of their lives with little to no reward. Need an example? Nicola Tesla.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Monday February 15 2016, @12:59PM
Show me the data supporting your point of view.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday February 15 2016, @01:12PM
No, you don't need more "suckers":
1. Most people want more than the bare minimum survival. Some of the things that UBI isn't enough to pay for: A house, a car, a restaurant meal, nights on the town, travel, a video game habit, and a wedding ceremony. Those kinds of things will keep a lot of people working, not because they have to but because they want to.
2. There's been a steady reduction in the amount of work that actually needs to be done. As in, we could as a society probably have about a 30-hour work week and be living perfectly comfortably. We don't because if you have some people working 60 hours a week and other people unemployed you don't have to pay for the unemployed people and can more easily bully the people who are working.
3. There are a not-insignificant number of people who genuinely like working. I'd expect them to want to continue to work regardless of the economics of it.
4. For a majority of the "suckers", they win rather than lose with a UBI. So, for example, if there's a UBI in the United States of $15,000 a year per person, that would cost about $4.8 trillion or roughly 25-30% of the US economy (that's probably a high estimate, since I'd expect them to make the UBI for dependant children lower than that of adults). So if we imposed a 30% tax on wages and capital gains to pay for that, and you're making less than $55K a year now, then the UBI is actually a net benefit to you. And since the median household income is around $50K a year, that makes UBI a net gain, not a net loss, for a majority of citizens.
5. Most UBI proposals view this as a replacement for existing welfare programs, so the costs of, say, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8, etc go away helping to offset the cost. And since much of the overhead of those programs goes to determining who's qualified and who isn't, you can even reduce government bureaucracy in the process.
It could work, and it would quite possibly make the country a better place to live in if it did, because it would remove the economic sword hanging over the majority of citizens of this country.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gnuman on Monday February 15 2016, @03:46PM
6. There are lots of people that want to be artists, musicians or sculptors or whatnot, but they CANNOT because they are stuck at a 9-5 pushing papers and doing nothing productive. UBI frees these people to pursue their passions without the risk of being destitute.
Star Trek world is about human beings not being driven by accumulation of wealth, but they want to improve themselves and the world around them. UBI is a first step in changing human thinking towards something else than money.
The bottom line is, capitalism didn't exist few hundred years ago. Your wealth wasn't equated with capital, but with land. Soon enough, we'll need to have another paradigm shift where capital is not longer important either. Maybe future wealth will be all about Intellectual Property (for lack of better word).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @05:15PM
The bottom line is, capitalism didn't exist few hundred years ago.
Please define capitalism -- markets are about as old as the alphabet; speculation, shares and stock manipulation were known [academia.edu] already with the Romans.
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Monday February 15 2016, @04:15PM
I agree to every single point you make. I have nothing to add.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday February 15 2016, @09:03PM
One other point I neglected to add: Right now, those who qualify for various welfare programs will lose that aid if they earn too much money themselves. That means that they actually have an incentive to not work. By contrast, under a UBI scheme, about 3/4 of that first dollar is theirs and they lose nothing for it, so it would encourage those who are not working to prefer working 5-10 hours per week over not working at all.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Monday February 15 2016, @01:38PM
You seem to imply that people doing what they enjoy doing are "suckers" and that one wins something by rotting on a couch versus pursuing one's own interests, to somehow spite society at large by depriving it of your no doubt extremely valuable talents and skills.
Thankfully, I personally wouldn't stop doing what I love just to spite other people who would benefit from my work FOR FREE (the nerve of some people!) and instead feel miserable not doing what I love, because I don't enjoy seeing other people deprived of potential FREE benefits (the nerve of some people!), although your words imply that I am in the minority, and most people would avoid doing what they love just to spite others who would otherwise benefit from their work FOR FREE (honestly, the nerve of some people! Benefiting from others' work, FOR FREE!?).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Monday February 15 2016, @03:08PM
The idea of a universal income is the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. Where is the money going to come from?
The money comes from income tax and other taxes on wealth creation. If you can't find some way of making this work, then either your economy isn't generating enough wealth to support the population, or the Eloi are hoarding all the money. Long-term, whatever you do you're on a one-way trip to Dystopia and you'd better pray that when the gates slam shut you're going to be standing with the Eloi and that your fences are truly Morlock-proof.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 16 2016, @01:24AM
The two aren't mutual exclusive, though.
Happens in countries where corruption is endemic.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @04:58AM
Heh. I thought I'd have to find a quotient from the raw data, but they knew what I was actually after.
USA, GDP per capita: $53,041.98 [google.com]
A family of 4 can exist quite comfortably on that.
Plenty of wealth exists.
The problem is the way the nation's wealth has been so unevenly distributed for the last 4 decades.
...and actual Socialist economists (e.g. Prof. Richard Wolff) reject the notion of Universal Basic Income.
I have also noticed that we still have Soylentils who think that Markets and Capitalism are one and the same.
...and at least 1 who uses the work "Socialist" with no hint of a reference to "the means of production".
Heh. Send them to school and they just try to eat the books.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday February 16 2016, @05:25PM
Heh. I thought I'd have to find a quotient from the raw data, but they knew what I was actually after.
USA, GDP per capita: $53,041.98
Right. Now announce that the USA will, in future, be distributing all of its generated wealth evenly amongst the population. See what that does to GDP and the value of the dollar... (Top tip: buy gold before making the announcement). The question is, how much of that can you capture by taxation and use to improve the lives of the poorest without destroying the wealth-generating power of the economy.
I have also noticed that we still have Soylentils who think that Markets and Capitalism are one and the same.
Countries that are governed successfully on the basis of pure textbook Capitalism are about as common as those governed by pure textbook Socialism (see: hen's teeth). That could mean that neither has been given a fair chance... or maybe it could mean that they're both proven failures. You can point to failures and say "yes but that was not true Capitalism/Socialism" but the reality is that they were what happens when humans try to do Capitalism/Socialism.
If you didn't notice, Capitalism failed at some time prior to 2008, at which point it was bailed out by the taxpayer (and don't say 'but the money was paid back' - even if that is true, if the money hadn't been available when needed, chaos would have ensued). Note I didn't say it failed in 2008 - that's just when the corpse exploded - it failed at whatever point you feel that it ceased to be capitalism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @08:58PM
how much of that can you capture by taxation [...] without destroying the wealth-generating power of the economy
Saez and Pikkety say that number is 83 percent. [google.com]
...and that's not "destroying" it--simply affecting it.
History gives us some other numbers that might be saying that figure is low.
From FDR till Ike left office, marginal tax rates on billionaires were at least 91 percent, peaking at 94 percent.
(The link to my favorite graph no longer works.)
We should note that those years were characterized by a recovery from the Great Depression (after Republicans' disastrous experiment with low taxes on the rich) followed by an extremely strong and stable economy.
governed successfully on the basis of pure textbook Capitalism [or] pure textbook Socialism
First, we should note once again for the unattentive that Capitalism and Socialism are *economic* systems--NOT governmental systems.
...and that Capitalism can exist under even the most repressive regimes while Socialism requires a highly functional Democracy.
hen's teeth
Go ahead and say *zero*.
The powerful are always reluctant to surrender their power and, as Pikkety shows, they end up buying up the government where there is a Capitalist economy.
Socialism, being a bottom-up concept, doesn't work as a top-down construct and has failed when tried as such.
Attempts at transition at a national level are messy at best.
They tend to end up with State Capitalism and Totalitarianism (USSR and Red China).
I would say that Cuba has come closest to getting it right but, again, a top-down construct misses the point of Socialism.
They really need to put an effort into instructing folks on how to form co-ops.
With their phenomenal success in education, this shortcoming just confounds me.
I'm confident that the giant experiment in Socialism (worker-owned cooperatives) in northern Italy will continue to scale up to regional level then to a national level--and I hope will serve as a template for other places.
Mondragon, in the Basque country of Spain, has over 100,000 worker-owners and continues to grow and to gain attention as an exemplar of Socialism.
The town of Marinaleda, also in Spain, has extended Socialist ideas to government and everyday living with some notable success.
The fact that they disbanded their police department because they found they didn't need it is a pretty great accomplishment.
Now that the Reactionaries have been routed from control of national gov't in Spain, I'm
interested in seeing how Marinaleda does without constant harassment from the national gov't.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday February 17 2016, @11:30AM
First, we should note once again for the unattentive that Capitalism and Socialism are *economic* systems--NOT governmental systems.
You seem to think there is a difference... Setting, enforcing and maintaining the laws governing labour and commerce are pretty central to the role of government.
I'm confident that the giant experiment in Socialism (worker-owned cooperatives) in northern Italy...
Now, there's the problem going forward: technology is slowly eroding the need for "workers". One of the things slowing this process down is poverty wages and globaisation (exploiting the wage differences between mismatched economies) artificially keeping the cost of labour below the cost of automation.
We do have one good model of post-scarcity socialism, albeit in a very limited domain: the free/open source software scene and the "good old days" of the Internet. All made possible because the 'marginal costs' of distributing software or publishing web pages were negligible. The failure mode of that is quite clear: something wonderful gets built but nobody gets rich until the capitalists walk in and buy everything, then start monetising.
Same thing with a workers co-op: if its successful, capital will walk in and woo the workers with handfuls of gold. The only thing that can protect against that is a sympathetic government prepared to pass anti-capitalist laws.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @08:39PM
You seem to think there is a difference
...but, as I already noted, Capitalism can exist under -any- governmental system.
To exist, Socialism requires Democracy everywhere (often used as a shorthand definition of Socialism).
technology is slowly eroding the need for "workers"
...but, if the workers that -are- still in the system make sure that they are all in worker-owned co-ops, that's a great point of leverage.
That's orders of magnitude better than what's in 2nd place (labor unions).
poverty wages
Self-employed people don't pay themselves poorly.
The problem is Capitalism.
and globaisation
Self-employed people don't export their own jobs either.
Again, the problem is Capitalism.
...and we should mention that the trade deals of the last 3 decades have been anti-worker--in no small part because the officials of labor unions have been on the side of Capital and have been doing a lousy job of representing Labor.
I don't understand why workers tolerate such representation in their unions or in their legislatures or in their political executives.
More workers need to consume the weekly Economics Update webcast done by Prof. Richard Wolff.
one good model of post-scarcity socialism [...] the free/open source software scene
I am shocked that we don't see that analogy mentioned here constantly.
and the "good old days" of the Internet
Amen.
if [a workers' co-op is] successful, capital will walk in and woo the workers with handfuls of gold
...at which point the workers have no ongoing source of income.
Mondragon is in its 60th year of operation.
They haven't sold out in the manner you described.
You clearly aren't giving worker-owned operations the credit they deserve for common sense.
(The FOSS meme of Freedom has an analogy that fits here.)
It amazes me that more workers who have seen jobs disappear to another location haven't made the direct connection with ownership by people other than those who actually do the work.
It also amazes me that local governments don't use e.g. Eminent Domain to assure that jobs (and a strong tax base) remain in their communities.
"You, Mr. Capitalist Business Owner, can move wherever you like; the factory stays here."
Governments don't necessarily have to pass "anti-capitalist laws"; there are existing laws that SMART and CARING politicians can use.
Uh oh. I see 2 problems already existing widely in the status quo.
Places need to elect politicians like the Socialist mayor of Marinaleda (since 1979). [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @08:43PM
Eventually, there's a tipping point where suckers get discouraged because their efforts are going to support freeloaders, and they want to be freeloaders, too. Then the whole thing collapses.
Are you implying that this has not already happened? The coming of Bob has occurred! Bob wants YOU to Join the Church of the Subgenius! Unlimited slack is yours for the taking! [youtube.com] Await Bob's return in style!
Posted from my Slackware slackstation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:46PM
If you call wanting more than $500 a month and being willing to work for it as being a sucker, than yes, feel free to consider me sucker. I think there will be far more suckers than freeloaders.
You can live in your tiny apartment. I'll have a house with pets and will be able to go places and do fun stuff.
(Score: 2) by bziman on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:22AM
Yeah, except a "basic income" provides for an apartment where you have to take your clothes down the hall to a shared laundry room; where a fancy night out is at McDonalds; and where you buy your clothes and furniture at thrift stores. Some (most?) people want a little more than the bare minimum lifestyle.
I'm neither a sucker nor a freeloader. I work and am happy to pay taxes. And I'd happily pay two or three times as much in taxes (which would be more fair, anyway) if it would feed the hungry and house the homeless. That wouldn't at all cramp my style - I'd still be able to afford court-side NBA tickets, a subscription to the opera, exotic vacations, etc. The main difference is that if poverty could be eliminated, I wouldn't have to worry quite as much about being mugged outside the theater.
Considering everyone either a sucker or a freeloader is why poverty exists. Your greed and laziness lowers the standard of living for everyone but the most super wealthy.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday February 15 2016, @12:16PM
Whilst I don't agree with the doubts raised in the Guardian link (things like Disability could still be handled separately), my main worry is that corporations will find a way to take this basic income away from everyone, probably via inflating the prices of essentials like food and shelter to swallow it up. Of course it could be inflation linked, which could work if it was linked directly to food and shelter prices, but that would likely cause inflation to spiral out of control.
The inflation scenario shouldn't happen if the population are worse off on average under UBI than they are on average with the current system. That could still work to avoid starvation but I imagine it would have to be a pretty low amount.
Can anyone tell me any reasons why the above issues wouldn't apply?
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @12:21PM
If automation becomes cheaper than human labor for many jobs and large swathes of manufacturing/service jobs are lost, the prices of those goods and services should fall, since less capital is needed to provide them.
The problem is that while these things will be cheaper, A (for example) 5-50% reduction in price is not too useful to someone who went from 1.0 jobs to 0 jobs. They might fill in the gaps with part-time work or freelancing, but it will be less stable income with much more competition due to the mass unemployment.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Capt. Obvious on Monday February 15 2016, @07:57PM
As automation increases, capital requirements are increased, and therefore competition is decreased. Labor costs are decreased, but that doesn't have the same price-dropping benefits.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @01:16PM
The TLDR is the freeholders have too much spare time.
Say walmart wants to charge $50 for a pizza instead of the mfgr cost of $1 marked up to $5 like now. Transport and freezers and retail employees and buildings are very expensive, this number isn't too far off reality.
I have a job that pays a hell of a lot more than making pizza, and I can't compete with a top quality product at those prices. So thats why I'm not in right now.
It IS very inefficient to work at small scale, but as a basic income dude who likes gourmet cooking I could make a totally homemade delicious off the charts pizza for perhaps $10. Not "acceptable" not "good" but the best freaking pizza you've ever eaten. Because I like to eat and I like to cook for relaxation sometimes and with $10 as a sales price (maybe $5 ingredients and $5 labor/profit for me?) then I can make the best pizza you've ever freaking eaten ever. Maybe I could hand make a bottom tier pizza, still better than walmart sells, for $5. Maybe. But I'm sure I could become rich at $10, and with the competition selling an inferior product for five times the cost, there might be a little demand...
Lets say we're all unemployed because "robots" and I'm chilling on my basic income posting to SN and watching Judge Judy reruns on daytime TV bored out of my skull. Actually I'd probably be hiking the Appalachian Trail. But whatever. Anyway, go ahead walmart, go right ahead, make my F-ing day, I can't compete at a markup of 500% on $1 of ingredients but you try 5000% and I'll be rich beyond my wildest dreams, probably employing a team of investors also interested in becoming wealthy.
See the basic income thing is never implemented in practice so far, or in theory, as a welfare program where you get regular income you lose the basic income. And its not like the worlds luxuries are going to get any cheaper, all these fun-employed people mean demand will be higher than ever for robot manufactured giant TVs or WTF.
Now this doesn't mean the whole business world is going to sit at the campfire and sing girl scout friendship songs together. I'm sure walmart will try all manner of price increases and sales, just like they do now. Its just pretty easy to prove the extremes of "10x prices" or WTF simply can't happen.
Another example is land/rent. Sure if you "need" that $225000/yr tech job in SV I guess you "need" to pay $1M for a dumpy shack in the worst part of the ghetto. But if you have a basic income why would you live in hell, an expensive hell, if you always wanted to live on a deeply rural lake in Minnesota anyway? I mean, if you "like" living in an urban hell of a rabbit warren, and a lot of people agree with you (they put something in the water?) well you best think up some way to make a ton of money to compete with them. But a lot of your competition is going to be fly fishing in the rockies not trying to outbid you for a shack in the slums of California.
To some extent, much like the most intelligent way to do health care is extend medicare down to cover everyone, the most intelligent way to handle a basic income is to slightly modify and extend social security down to everyone.
Whats not been a huge problem at a small scale, when steadily advanced slowly lets say 5 years of age per calendar year deployment, will likely continue to not be a huge problem.
I'm already de-corporate with this organic farmer friend of the family who sells me halves of beef occasionally (note to self, need to buy another, summer grill season is coming up). Go ahead Target, make me laugh, try to sell burger meat for $50/pound, my friend of the family dude isn't farming to get rich, but that would make him wealthy beyond his dreams. Go ahead, Target, make his day...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @02:08PM
I don't understand the premise that assumes huge price increases.
If robot labor is cheaper than human labor, most of the humans will get fired and the costs to make and transport the pizza/beef/goods will go down.
If people are buying less stuff because there is massive unemployment during a transitional period from pre-automation to post-automation, then the demand for those goods will fall.
So the costs are falling and the demand is falling... that means the prices will go down, not up. Even less factory workers required to create that frozen pizza, less workers to transport the stuff due to autonomous vehicles (a trucker I've talked to doesn't think autonomy will come to trucking anytime in the next 100-200 years), and possibly less need for a human-friendly brick and mortar storefront if drones or another form of delivery gets groceries to your house.
In the burger meat example, there's also lab-grown beef to consider. Researchers are working on it, and it could be successful if it manages to lower costs to below those of traditional ranching and meatpacking (that is to say, it needs to be able to compete with the traditional product on a cost basis rather than something like "less/zero animal suffering"). Burgers in particular will be an initial target since it's a lot easier to create ground meat with fat in it than a delicious and complete marbled cut of beef. A lab-grown meat factory would likely be automated, and transportation costs are lower still since they can be located nearer to or within urban areas.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @03:41PM
I don't understand the premise that assumes huge price increases.
Because to get past the bump in the road of the transition, we have a huge financialized debt based economy that needs to be wiped away. That $100K of student debt for art history? Yeah you've never going to get a job that can pay that off without inflation. That $2M silicon valley house thats worth about $50K if its not in SV and SV is dead post UBI? The bank needs inflation to cover their losses or the whole system is going down, etc.
Yet massive Wiemar Germany style hyperinflation can't lead to anything good. So the worry is preventing huge price increases.
The TLDR is the banking system owns the political system and the banking system is going down without wage inflation or psuedo-wage inflation in the form of a UBI. Take your pick, we're going to pay to bail them out anyway one way or the other.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday February 15 2016, @05:03PM
I don't understand the premise that assumes huge price increases.
Because they can, obviously. I can already hear the excuse now, "Well just look--now they've got $15,000 a year (or whatever) that they're just getting for free. They can afford to spend more now."
Hopefully the rollout of a universal income system would be matched with (or preceded by) reining in capitalism a bit.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Orion Blastar on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:45AM
You forget when jobs went to China to make things, the prices stayed the same. China has cheaper labor casts, but the retail prices of Apple products that now are made in China stay the same.
The same for athletic footwear, made by cheap foreign labor, but still costing hundreds of dollars.
So when robots and AI programs take over, prices should stay the same because companies want more profits. They won't lower the retail price of the product and risk less profits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporations-hoarding-trillions.html [nytimes.com]
Corporations are hording trillions of dollars instead of creating new jobs and investing the money. They already offshored work to cheaper labor markets in foreign nations and they hide money in foreign shell companies that act as tax shelters.
Those trillions of dollars could have been taxed and the money used for a UBI to offset the jobs that could have been created with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kromagv0 on Monday February 15 2016, @03:31PM
I feel as if I just read something I wrote. Sadly I couldn't agree more especially about living in California. I get called by recruiters and HR drones out there all the time and when they tell me where the job is I respond with they couldn't pay me enough. They play the game of saying it is a well paying job and I respond with that I don't plan on reducing my standard of living so I require to be paid enough to afford the minimum of:
a 1900 sq. ft. house on a half acre lot that backs up to a large wooded park
The house will be paid off in 10 years
The house is located in the best school district in the state
I have a max 45 minute commute to work
I have a multi acre lake property with over 200 feet of shore line, great fishing, and within a 2 hour drive. This is owned outright
The lake property abuts well over a square mile (almost 2) of public land open to hunting.
To have all of that and then be able to put away over 30% of my income for retirement.
After that they realize that they really can't pay me enough and that doesn't even get into the premium I would need to deal with people in California.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday February 15 2016, @01:08PM
As with so many well-intentioned ideas, UBI shatters on the rocks of reality. The biggest problem comes from basic economics: When you put so much money into the system, prices will rise to compensate for it. Raise the UBI, and prices will rise again.
You can already see this on a small scale, in certain social experiments. Portland, Oregon introduced a massive hike in the minimum wage. What a surprise, housing prices have soared [oregonlive.com]. More people had more money, raising demand, driving prices upwards. This is inevitable, unless you regulate rents. Regulate rents (see New York, San Francisco, etc.) and you create another set of problems.
The second big problem is equally simple: "It's easy to spend other people's money". In this day of massive government debt, exactly where is one going to get the money to pay UBI? Some people make the argument that all of the other social programs will then be ended. If you believe that, there's this really great bridge for sale. Even if it were true, the costs of UBI are massively higher than the costs of existing social programs, because everyone receives UBI.
The third big problem is the impact on people who are currently working, i.e., paying the taxes that would finance the program. As TFA notes, a universal income is coming up for a vote in Switzerland*. There have been good-quality surveys asking: "what would you, personally, do - if a universal income existed". More than half of the people surveyed said that they would work less, or not at all. Lots of good reasons: "go back to school", "spend more time with the family", etc.. That's all great, but: less work = less productivity = lower tax income = you really can't pay for this.
tl;dr: Another program with good intentions, in desperate need of a reality check.
* It's true that this is coming up in for a vote in Switzerland (June 2016). This is also meaningless - any competent movement can get something on the ballot here. Getting it passed is the hard part. This initiative will be lucky to get more than maybe 15% approval. One of the cool things about Switzerland is that we have a well-educated populace, and those who bother to vote tend to actually think about the issues. The few who vote for something like this will be voting for the "good intentions"; the vast majority will realize the problems involved.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Monday February 15 2016, @01:28PM
Thank you for a well thought-out summary of most of the substantive arguments con UBI. I couldn't find a single other commenter doing anything more than knee-jerk valueless criticism.
My own viewpoint is expressed elsewhere in the comments; I won't belabor those points here. One question. Does Switzerland not have welfare, unemployment, and disability payments and the like? Can you compare the effectiveness and efficiency of UBI to these? They are largely an either-or choice.
In other words, beyond a doubt, welfare, unemployment, and disability payments have the same kind of work disincentive as UBI. I would say more so, because they are almost always regressive in my experience. I.e., the moment you try to better yourself, such payments are reduced or withdrawn.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday February 15 2016, @01:43PM
Yes, Switzerland has the usual array of social programs: welfare, unemployment, disability, social security, etc.. There's really no way to compare this directly to UBI, since UBI doesn't actually exist.
That said, Switzerland does have a serious problem with fraud on social programs (presumably most countries do). For example, there are people who want their doctor to declare them "disabled", and the government has to spend too much time tracking these people down. Several well-publicized prosecutions in recent years seem to have helped, but it remains a problem.
I think these problems are indicative: there are plenty of people who wouldn't work, if they didn't have to.
The problem many people see coming is that there isn't enough work to go around. That's like of a silly argument. It used to be that most people worked in agriculture; if you could have measured their hours, likely you'd have come up with 80 or 90 hours per week. With the industrial revoluation, people moved to the cities, and worked 60 hours weeks. Nowadays, most western countries work 40 hour weeks.
Maybe this needs to drop to 30 hours, or even less, why not? Seems like a much more sensible solution than UBI.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Monday February 15 2016, @04:02PM
There are two sides to the matter of disability issues. My father went round and round on this. When he reached about age 60 he encountered a neurological problem that severely interfered with work and other activities. It was never satisfactorily diagnosed. The mechanism in place absolutely refused to recognize him as disabled, though he certainly and without question was. It was obvious when you saw him stop and sit on the ground with his head in his hands, shaking.
It eventually led to some bitterness on his part, and a very great deal on my part. He had to eke out an existence, including supporting my mother, on an absolutely miserable social security payment amount, because he was unable to continue his job until full retirement age. I helped out as best I could.
As you can see, I am at least as concerned about people who cannot effectively work being gypped, as I am about people too lazy to work scamming the system.
As I see it, UBI sidesteps this issue in principle, since the idea is to support people who may or may not be working, regardless of why.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @01:56PM
That was Seattle. The huge increase in real estate/rent prices in Portland is totally unrelated.
You're the worst sort of debater.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:38PM
You are right, if not terribly polite about it: I got my cities mixed up. So, let's look at those Seattle housing prices [seattletimes.com], shall we?
Meanwhile, the reson I was thinking about Portland in this context, is because they are intending to massively increase the minimum wage [oregonlive.com]. Perhaps the run-up in housing prices is, to some extent, anticipatory.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @03:20PM
I doubt the 508k houses are within the budget of a worker on minimum wage.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday February 15 2016, @08:00PM
Perhaps the run-up in housing prices is, to some extent, anticipatory.
Perhaps, or maybe the entire connection is imaginary? Perhaps brought on by ideology masquerading as micro-economics that does not apply at the macro level?
You are right, if not terribly polite about it: I got my cities mixed up.
I thought the GP was excessively polite about pointing out how you were so egregiously wrong as to only possibly be trolling. This is almost as bad as Runaway on Chinese populations, Ethanol on race relations, or jmorris on just about anything. Seriously, shooting off your mouth with not only no backup, but totally question-begging arguments destroys whatever credibility you might have. Sadly, I can no longer read your posts. Not a great loss.
In other news, the state of Nevada has abolished rents, especially on BLM, because MLM, too! That will teach those Pot-Legalizing, Minimum-Wage raising Liberal Oregonians!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @08:34PM
Seattle's high housing prices have nothing to do with minimum wage. I doubt many of the people earning minimum wage can afford to live in Seattle. The issues are with zoning meaning that Seattle is way behind on building enough housing to satisfy demand, and isn't in any rush to build more.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday February 15 2016, @04:35PM
Among the reasons I moved to Portland from San Jose was that I wanted to take part in all the software development that was taking place in Portland. Developers earn quite a lot of money, they can afford to pay for the expensive housing.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @05:11PM
So permit (or force) all businesses to cut everyone's pay by the UBI amount.
That way, everybody starts the scheme making just as much as before, and businesses get the bonus of reduced staffing costs, which means they could (in theory) even *reduce* prices, and still be just as profitable!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @10:05AM
> everybody starts the scheme making just as much as before
Not everybody, only the ones who are employed and making at least as much as the stipend. Those who hold low-paying jobs (paying less than the basic income) would have no immediate financial incenti> everybody starts the scheme making just as much as before
Not everybody, only the ones who are employed and making at least as much as the stipend. Those who hold low-paying jobs (paying less than the basic income) would have no immediate financial incentive to keep working, since they'd receive just as much money if they were unemployed.ve to keep working, since they'd receive just as much money if they were unemployed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Monday February 15 2016, @01:23PM
However one potential issue in the future would be unsustainable population growth. If that happens you may have to introduce potentially unpopular measures like limit reproductive rights (e.g. you can only have a maximum of X children based on your UBI + other income + committed sponsorship from other parties).
I'm well aware that population is declining in many countries. But the fact is some people are still breeding and many other people aren't breeding merely because they're too busy with work or don't have enough $$$$. The non-breeders don't count in the long run. You would be breeding for people who would breed in such an environment - this is evolution at work. And in absence of other pressures/selection, you would be breeding for people who would breed indiscriminately (e.g. if they get 100% UBI for each child).
Sustainable growth in a finite world is impossible.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @01:44PM
One obvious limiter I've seen proposed is kids don't get income till they're adults. They're not participating in culture, they're not theoretically up for draft, legally they don't exist until 18 for contract law and criminal law is somewhat weird.
There's plenty of justification for not paying UBI to kids.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @03:09PM
That is all assuming it really becomes a big enough problem. Better to leave it for future politicians to deal with, why sacrifice votes and political capital for something that may not happen in your lifetime ;).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @02:48PM
Then other countries can adopt it if it works. Hmmm wasn't Venezuela already an example of failed UBI ? And Saudi Arabia now facing budget deficits due to oil's price drop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @03:01PM
Remember the point is the slaves do much of the work and the robots are to be the slaves. And that's how you get the necessary productivity for the basic income even if the humans don't work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday February 15 2016, @01:37PM
hundreds of people
Too small. You don't get cultural data on something new, you get data on lotto winner psychology. Winners guilt, sponge relatives and friends, windfall compared to everyone else. Its a lotto not a basic income. This lotto money will pay off the spouses student loans, go in the kids college fund, go in the retirement fund, pay off credit card debt, its not "real" basic income.
5 years
Too short. I have a bug for hiking and sailing and woodworking and ham radio and it would take at least that long to get the bug out of my system and begin to follow my true destiny, which would probably be something like a computer science academic. The type that gets all sweaty and excited when he finds a new lower O(n) limit for some obscure algorithm. I can't do that now for racism and sexism reasons and I can make so much money in the private sector it makes no sense to leave it laying on the table, but if machines unemploy us all and I have a basic income... Given a permanent lifetime income I'd never need to explain to some smarmy HR SJW in ten years why my resume has a two year gap because I sailed the Caribbean instead of volunteer tourism in starving Africa or participating in BLM protests or whatever that type thinks is "more important" and giving up my career wouldn't mean much if I didn't need it for the rest of my life. Basically I'd do today what I currently plan to do at 65, assuming I make it that long (which I probably will, my grandparents all made it till their 80s, all of them...). Why not sail the world when you're young, instead of when you're 70?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @01:49PM
For what Australia currently spends on policing benefit related fraud - around 3 billion AUD - it has been suggested that the programs and systems all be scrapped and the money paid to everyone at a flat rate.
It certainly would be easier.
People would still have jobs and go to work. We would all have a minimum safety net.
Although, this would only apply to Australian citizens and specific cases. You migrate here then you are on your own no handouts. Otherwise we would be flooded with economic migrants like Germany.
So. How much minimum per month would you need to get to never work again yet still meet rent, have food to eat, pay bills and have quality of life? (assuming you slack and do not work)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @02:44PM
Fair question. How much do I "need". Not want, but "need". Right around $2,000, maybe $2500/month. But, you did add in there "quality of life". To do things that are meaningful to me, I need a good bit more. We're up to about $5000/month. If I insist that I want to make my life "more meaningful" - that is, with all my spare time, I want to do the things that I can't do now - somewhere between $7500 and $10000/month. There are a LOT of cool things I'd like to do, but I simply don't have time for, and/or never had the money to do.
For starters, I'd like to retire my motorcycle, and purchase a new state of the art machine. Walk in, slap the cash on the counter, and ride off. Of course, there are days when I'd rather not ride. I want a comparable car for those days. So, motorcycle and car - we're looking at ~$60,000 up front. And, you'll notice that at that price, I'm not even talkng about a high dollar luxury, or sports, car - just something high performance, and sporty.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @05:09PM
purposely inflated numbers are inflated
Without dependents, I can currently get by on a little over 1k/month. Counting yearly expenses, say 1250, assuming I don't need to replace my car. And that's enough money to afford an Internet connection, eating out a few times a week, and a steady (considering how much I drink) supply of decent booze.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @05:24PM
I really don't think my numbers are all that inflated. I suppose that you could subtract the price of ~20 gallons of gasoline per week from my minimum figures, or ~80 gallons per month. If I didn't have to go to work, I wouldn't be burning that gasoline. On the other hand, if I weren't working, I would be burning a lot of that gas traveling to more interesting places than work.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @06:29PM
UBI is supposed to provide the basics to get by, while in this thread you seem to be treating it as funding for your dream permanent vacation. This is why your numbers are inflated.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @06:54PM
UBI - post scarcity watchacallit, right? We're talking about society's future. Almost no one has a job, because robots are doing it all. So - UBI equals the barest, most meager of subsistence levels? Poverty level? But, this is post-scarcity. Why poverty? Everyone should enjoy good eating, and everyone should be on a permanent vacation, not to mention everyone should be intitled to an education.
Can't have it both ways now. Either you want to maintain everyone at poverty level, or you want to free people from the necessity to work as the world grows more automated. The two things are not synonymous.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday February 15 2016, @06:04PM
Fair question. How much do I "need". Not want, but "need". Right around $2,000, maybe $2500/month.
That's how much you want. $2k a month is $24k a year. You can pick up rent for say $500 a month, food for another $200 (remember you won't be working 80 hours a week, you'll have time to cook), $200 on utilities, that's about $1k a month.
What a guarentee of food, shelter, healthcare, sanitation, electricity, internet -- the basics -- gives you is time to risk things. People with rich families can easilly risk starting up a business, if it goes pearshaped they can fall back on the family. People on their own have nowhere to fall back to, so even if a business doing something useful could succeed, the risk of destitution outweighs the comfort of earning say $60k a year making wooden chairs, or whatever people like to do.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 15 2016, @06:18PM
$500 rent? Man, I live way out in the boonies, and cheap apartments are more than that. One quick search, picked a random link on the results page, the lowest price I see is $450. And, we all realize those lowest prices are almost always unavailable when you arrive to look at them. http://www.apartmentguide.com/apartments/Texas/Texarkana/ [apartmentguide.com]
$200/month food? Dude, you're killing me here. I do like some meat in my menu, now and then. Welfare people today don't live on macaroni and cheese, rice, and potatoes - they buy beef, chicken, fish, and more.
My monthly electricity is 50% higher than you estimate.
If my expenses are that high - what about people in New York, or LA? Nobody is going to have any kind of "quality of life" on $1000/month.
If I get $1000, and the wife got $1000, and we combined our resources, we would "get by" - and that's just about it.
And, where does health insurance fit into all of this? I'm sure as HELL not going to be able to pay any premiums out of that sum of money.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday February 15 2016, @07:17PM
I looked at 1 bed houses in nebraska at http://www.zillow.com/ne/rent-houses/, [zillow.com] sorted by rent, low to high, there's a fair few under $500 a month. PA is the same [zillow.com].
Food fits between the "thrifty" and "low cost" plan [lifehacker.com]
Electricity for 908kWh [npr.org] at 13c/kwh - 72% of states are cheaper - is $118. Just because you waste electricity doesn't mean you need to.
And, where does health insurance fit into all of this? I'm sure as HELL not going to be able to pay any premiums out of that sum of money.
The crazy situation of US healthcare (which is twice as much as any other western country) is a whole issue by itself I agree. The market has failed. 17% of the US GDP goes on healthcare, compared with 12% in France, 11% in Canada, 10% in Japan, 7% in Israel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @08:38PM
Um, yes, the lifestyle you are going to be able to live on any reasonable UBI plan is going to be pretty minimal and not desired. Getting more than you need to survive is what a job is for.
I know someone who is on disability and food stamps who is able to live on $100/mo for food. It's possible, but certainly not easy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:02PM
Perfect reply and nails the point. With a universal imcome out society can change to allow people to drop out of the rat race, try new things with minimum risk and spread society out more.
I calculate I would need $1100 $AUS a month minimum. However, that is taking into account that if I liqiidate everything I have I can buy land and a 50$K fitted out shipping container. Not everyone's cup of tea.
I posed this question to people I know around here. Many of them would move up near the Snowy Mountains. Write a book. Paint. Create android apps. Invent. Do community work. One guy said he'd love to spend his days weeding a suburb and removing grafitti.
UBI could really help to rebuild a community. And make new ones. What we have right now sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @04:17PM
"So. How much minimum per month would you need to get to never work again yet still meet rent, have food to eat, pay bills and have quality of life?"
In Silicon Valley? New York?
More than most of the middle class currently make.
But everyone who can in SV is on the inflationary hamster wheel, the rest are leaving or living in their cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:30PM
Simpler and cheaper is exactly why it won't happen. You don't need a huge bureaucracy to handle a UBI, like you do with the mishmash of welfare programs every big nation has. The bureaucracy will never agree to downsize itself, and it (collectively) knows where all the political bodies are buried. Thus, this kind of proposal is dead absent some kind of major revolution, or else the implementation will bloat until all the possible benefits are gone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @02:25PM
The people who are busy inventing the robots, AI and software infrastructure that would allow or compel everyone else to work less aren't interested in working 25 hour weeks. They'll be working 60-90 hr weeks because it's fun and creative work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @04:36PM
I n order for UBI to work, you have to eliminate capitalism and free market economics.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday February 15 2016, @05:22PM
In order for UBI to work, you have to eliminate capitalism and free market economics.
Which eliminates the excess wealth that allows stupid people to dream of redistributing all that wealth. Perfectly circular.
The only good thing in this article is that people are putting their own money into this experiment instead of stealing from others and claiming the moral virtue for themselves.
The problem is the results will be tainted by the participants knowing the experiment has a end date so we won't see the full pathology we would expect from a promise of 'lifetime' (really only until the implosion....) UBI.
Most of the posts have demonstrated not only a shocking ignorance of economics but human nature as well.
The root problem here is democracy. It is a system where the looters quickly outnumber the productive and set out to expropriate them, socialism doesn't work, economy crashes, next government. The problem is that socialism is great IF you can enslave the productive and keep them producing while stealing all of their output. Walls are built to keep them from fleeing, but they still escape or just stop producing. The mixed system the U.S. Founders implemented retarded that 'progress' but didn't entirely succeed. So sooner or later, Kaboom!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 15 2016, @05:07PM
That being, hungry people are violent people. The inevitable consequence of this is either massive die offs due to post-scarcity economics (no jobs) with pre-scarcity wealth movement, or we get dragged into the equivalent of UBI anyway.
And if we go the first route, rest assured, the poor will swarm your gated compounds, dam the rivers with their dead, overwhelm ypu, drag you to the ground. We will tear huge chunks of flesh off you and rip your organs out, devouring them in front of you as you scream the whistling, agonized scream of a trouser-wearing ape in moral pain and fear, begging for mercy from a God that does not exist and would immolate you in eternal Hellfire for your greed if it did.
THAT is why we don't let it get to that point, okay?
Sure, if you have enough weaponry and clout you can kill us all...but if you do, I give it perhaps 20-50 years before the world you have left is so hellish you'll wish you died with us...and when you do, we will be waiting for you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:07PM
You mean lime they have done in Germany, France and Belgium?
Not disagreeing here.
What you have described is the war muslims want
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @03:39AM
People who are desperate sometimes turn to religion. If you want fewer Muslims, bring them out of desperation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @05:09PM
The economy becomes 1.5% more efficient each year, by virtue of everyone trying to do 'better'. For the last thirty years, 1% of that enhancement in efficiency we all built has gone to the "richest one percent" of the population - ala reaganomics.
They claimed those "rich guys" are "job creators", but now we know that is just BS.
If the increased efficiency of production we all contributed to had been shared equally with all of us, minimum wage would be around $16.00 per hour and a $50k household would be bringing in around $90,000.00 per year.
The phenomenon of 10% of the population claiming / exercising 'title' to the 'land' has been a reoccurring theme for eons... royalty, government, heirs etc.
Theoretically, the U.S political / economic system is set up to adjust the 'ownership balance' from time to time.
The correct distribution model is that we all can benefit by working together, though what actually happens is the 'moneyed class' manages to catch a little break here and there. Over time, the cumulative benefit of 'land' of depreciation, a tax credit, a give away when some of the employees need food stamps etc. -- These 'efforts to help the economy', go to the 'land holding class' because they can afford to 'drink with the politicians'.
Universal Basic Income efforts are merely trying to regain historic rights. The birth right of free air, decent water and a place to farm enough to live and survive was 'the norm' for all humans. As the political and economic systems have changed over just 200 years, along the way some people tricked us into paying for food (because we have no land rights) - water (because we have no water rights), - even privacy (because ... why?).
So, whether it be an increased minimum wage, a reduction of taxes for for poorer classes or an increased tax on the profits 'from the game', we need to reward ALL the participants who made the increased profits exist.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday February 15 2016, @05:49PM
100% inheritance tax. The implementation is tricky, plenty of loopholes, but accepting the concept that you should only get out of life what you put into it should be a fundamental part of a fair society.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday February 15 2016, @05:52PM
I'm all for UBI for CEO's... they get 10X what i make: i think that is fair... i've seen some good CEO's come and go and the same for SH*T ASS CEO's, and they all seem to make the same amount.
The Target CEO got paid, what, $69-74 million for FAILING.... EPIC FAILING.......!!!!!!!!!
The Target employees got some handouts and the shaft.
I work hard and am honest: the one CEO i 'worked' for, it seems by reading between the lines, 'sucked' and was corrupt (he got his walking papers from the board of directors) and he made MUCH more than me... this is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!
I fail like the Target CEO, i get fired... he fails like he did and he gets HUGE MONEY!?!?!?!?!?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @06:15AM
I like your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday February 15 2016, @08:48PM
You know who else was in favor of a Universal Basic Income? Well, do ya, punk!
That's right!
Milton Friedman!!
And all true conservatives. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 2) by kbahey on Monday February 15 2016, @09:23PM
With automation expected to drive a large portion of people out of the workforce, a universal basic income scheme is about the only realistic option to prevent wide scale riots from unemployed people.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:32PM
For six years, a building supervisor in Spain quietly collected a $41,500 salary from his local government without showing up for work.
..
"I wondered whether he was still working there, had he retired, had he died? But the payroll showed he was still receiving a salary," Blas told Spanish newspaper El Mundo, according to The Local.
“I called him up and asked him, ‘What did you do yesterday? The month before, the month before that?’ He didn’t know what to say,” Blas said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/man-skipped-work-for-6-years_us_56c1d32ae4b0b40245c72512? [huffingtonpost.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:29AM
That story, and the collective stories of lottery winners and heirs of rich people tell us the answer without need for further experiment. A few people who come into money manage to make more. A few more use it wisely (hire trustworthy, competent people to manage it) and don't do anything useful for the rest of their lives. Others squander their fortune and return/descend to the ranks of the poor. The idea that UBI will result in people who live on it contributing anything of much value is not based in reality.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:44AM
FYI: If the UBI is applied by govt, then the proposal should/shall also eliminate the minimum wage.
This is one of the benefits of the minimum wage as it reduces government interference in the markets while the UBI sets a floor so people can choose to work, or not, for a given wage without starving.
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/minimum-wages-vs-universal-basic-income_b_7957850.html [huffingtonpost.com]