The Liberal premier of Ontario announced details of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot. The provincial government issued a press release saying
Three regions will take part in the study. Pilots will start in late spring in Hamilton, including Brantford and Brant County; and in Thunder Bay and the surrounding area. The third pilot will start by this fall [autumn] in Lindsay.
The Basic Income model Ontario has developed will ensure that eligible participants receive:
Up to $16,989 per year for a single person, less 50 per cent of any earned income
Up to $24,027 per year for a couple, less 50 per cent of any earned income
Up to an additional $6,000 per year for a person with a disability.
[...] The three test regions will host 4,000 participants eligible to receive a basic income payment, between the ages of 18 to 64. By late spring, people in these areas will begin receiving information about the pilot and how to participate. The province is partnering with these communities and other experts to make sure that the Ontario Basic Income Pilot is fair, effective, and scientifically valid.
additional coverage:
- Canoe (editorial)
- The Globe and Mail
- globalnews.ca
- The Guardian
- Business Insider
- BBC News
- Canadian Press via City News
- Reuters via NASDAQ
- Toronto Star
- CHCH-TV
- CBC
- CNN Money
related story:
Ontario is Starting a Universal Basic Income Pilot
Related Stories
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: 4, Flamebait) by edIII on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:01PM (85 children)
Fair would be killing the rich, or grabbing them by their fucking necks, turning them upside down, and shaking out OUR fucking money.
Basic Income is only required when the Owning Classes are stealing so much fucking daily production, that our daily production is *somehow* not enough to survive. Do you need Basic Income to afford some luxuries? FUCK NO!! You need them so that you have enough food to eat. You need them so that you can enough heat through the winter.
The answer is NOT Basic Income. The answer is LIVING WAGES. That's it. All it actually means is that YOU get to keep the majority of your daily production so that YOU can survive. The parasitic executives need to steal less from the workers, and the share holders need to be dragged out the street and brutally gutted with their blood flowing like rivers. They deserve no less for betraying and terrorizing their country by demanding ever more in the avaricious march to the hellish dystopia that is our world.
We live in ABUNDANCE. That's the fucking truth. We don't need some bullshit like Basic Income so that you can stop working and fuck off all day long. What we need is to be able to work and live. WORK and LIVE.
Right now it is WORK and FUCK-YOU-I-CAN-REPLACE-YOU-AND-YOU-GET-SHIT-AND-YOU-WILL-LIKE-IT.
Whatever, if they give Basic Income they only make the problems worse by not addressing the fundamental problem of income inequality. That directly translates into a condition where parasitic people are standing on top of you taking whatever the fuck they want while you try to survive.
KILL THE PARASITES.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by draconx on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:10PM (2 children)
When implemented properly, basic income is equivalent to wealth redistribution. The highest earners pay a portion of their earnings (in the form of income tax) which is directly redistributed to the lowest earners. It directly addresses income inequality to a certain extent.
This plan includes a straight-up 50% tax on the first $17K of earned income, which seems completely backwards. I guess this could make sense if and only if the $17K basic income is tax-free (possible, but none of the articles seem to say one way or the other).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:25PM (1 child)
WHY????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That redistribution is fucking stupid and inefficient, not to mention fucking offensive.
So I work each day, of which most of my daily production is stolen by those above. I'm wholly dependent upon the state not just for healthcare, but now the ability to eat, clothe, and find shelter. Now I'm a lowly slave-wager that clearly deserves his fate because I never learned enough, when to the right Ivy-League schools to learn how to steal from workers. The poor and lower end of the Middle Class are always vilified in a frenzy of victim blaming.
Then the government comes in with Basic Income, which is basically income from them re-stealing it from rich fuckers and mega corps. Either that, or taxes which contain the little trickle of taxes I pay that move upwards. Now I need government help to survive.
Seriously, fuck that shit.
Just pay me a LIVING WAGE. Then I don't need to have wealth redistributed it, because it never left my wallet to begin with. Then it is ME paying for my health care, ME paying for my food, ME paying for my shelter.
BI is a step in the wrong direction. It will institutionalize wealth redistribution without understanding in its own context. In other words, we put some duct tape on it and ignore the fact that the engine itself, as well as the roads, wheels, etc. are systemically flawed.
Fuck BI. Let's just raise up, gut the rich, and get our LIVING WAGES back. Then I can pay for stuff and have the dignity that I'm actually able to take care of myself. BI tells me that I could never live off my own production. That's fucking false.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:29PM
Living wage or a job. Pick one.
Automation will make universal basic income necessary. Or if not basic income, maybe some sort of extreme subsidy for employers to hire anybody.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:12PM
Yes! KILL ELON MUSK!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:12PM (44 children)
And it's your money, how, precisely? You did what, exactly, for them to warrant them paying you? I know you're sure as fuck not going to agree to someone you've never met coming up and demanding your wallet because you happen to have the drive and ambition to make more of yourself than they do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:16PM (7 children)
Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.
Time was desperate beggars would murder you for your wallet. Lucky for you in modern times your surveillance state protects you.
You sir are a pussy hiding behind your nanny state.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:24PM (6 children)
The nanny state doesn't protect me from the poor and lazy. It protects them from me. I could shoot a mugger in the face and sleep like a baby that night.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:34PM (5 children)
You would shoot Oliver Twist?
Speaking of caricatures, do you realize "a mugger" is one? You're talking like "bad" people are spawn in an FPS game, one around every corner. Mugging is not the sort of activity anyone can make a long, successful, and lucrative career out of. Do you think there's any place today in the US where the likes of Oliver Twist and the pickpocket crime boss Fagin can long thrive? In the real world, petty criminals are much, much rarer. They're people, with complicated histories. Sometimes, desperate people commit petty crimes because they want to be arrested, they want some shelter and a jail cell is the best option available. Sometimes, the criminal is a mental patient who didn't take their meds that day, maybe they ran out, maybe they were confiscated by some pigs looking to score points in the War on Drugs during a stop and frisk. Sometimes they're troubled teens. And sometimes, like Oliver Twist, they're being bullied and threatened into taking the risk of being caught, so someone else can profit from the crime. As for criminal organizations, they aren't much interested in chicken feed that has to be taken by force. The bosses are not idiots, they're rational. They'd much rather deal drugs or something else easy than get into shootouts they might not survive.
The last thing we need is for some vigilante jackass to pull out a deadly weapon and start mowing down people who he thinks committed a petty crime.
(Score: 2, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:38PM (4 children)
No, I would drag his ass by the ear to the police though.
And people pulling out deadly weapons to prevent crimes upon themselves is absolutely something we need more of in this nation. It will make crime decidedly less attractive of a career.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:53PM (3 children)
Trolling is a lucrative career, let me tell you. It's great that there aren't any living wage jobs left and the market for part time work is saturated also. It gives us professional trolls so much time to devote to our craft of trolling. And did I mention lucrative? Yes indeed I got paid $0.000 to post this comment. I can take that money to the invisible bank where I keep my imaginary fortune. Soon I'll have enough fantasy money stashed away to buy my own private island on the sea of make believe.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:07PM (2 children)
I'm writing the Troll Board. You need a 50% pay cut for low quality work you're turning out.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:21PM (1 child)
BuahahahaHaha cut all you want! I have a guaranteed basic trolling income of $0.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:52PM
Is it really basic income if you're working for it? Cut another 10% for logic-fail but add another 15% for making me laugh.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:27PM (7 children)
If you were talking about someone in the bottom ninety something percent, I might agree with you.
People worth many Billions of dollars did not somehow earn or merit that by contributing anything of that much value to society in return. They have gamed the system in order to extract money off the backs of everyone else. Example: Bill Gates. He created great language packages for microcomputers in the 1970's. Then Microsoft created other programs, including a microcomputer version of Adventure. He shrewdly negotiated a deal with IBM to sell them PC DOS and keep the rights to sell it himself as MS-DOS. Great! Then he created an illegal monopoly by illegal tying. Then he milked it. There were other OSes for the IBM PC. But when the clones (OEMs) came out, if an OEM wanted to sell any MS-DOS at all, they had to sell MS-DOS on every PC they made -- even if the customer wanted it with a different OS, which means every competing OS is funding Microsoft. But I'm sure there are plenty of other rich billionaires to pick on also.
We could talk about executive compensation packages.
It is not about people who better themselves. It's about people with ambition to steal from everyone else, or somehow skim it on a large scale, or other ways they become so immensely wealthy. In short, too few people have too big a share of the planet's resources for no particularly good reason. Some people deserve a bigger share than others. But not what the 1 % have.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:36PM (6 children)
Really? Take Google or Windows or their car or their utilities or their TV or any number of things that everyone expects as part of life nowadays away from the average human and see if they agree with you.
They earned every penny; you just can't comprehend how or you'd be arguing the same side as I am.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:05PM (1 child)
You are dumber than I thought, and a verified lying sociopath / psychopath through your own admissions. You can't comprehend your own limitations which is why you still utter such garbage.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:47PM
A well thought-out and reasoned response. I stand corrected.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:04AM (2 children)
>"... did not somehow earn or merit that ..."
>"They earned every penny;"
It is a matter of opinion whether what the did was worth what they got. The real problem is that the US is not using anti-monopoly regulations to limit consolidation of businesses. The reason we don't is that the people making the laws favor pumping up the stock market instead of preventing monopoplistic behavior. If we limited companies to having no more than about a 10% share of their market, it would increase employment, increase product diversity, and reduce the concentration of wealth.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:52AM (1 child)
No, it is not. It is a matter of economic fact. If consumers are willing to pay what they ask, every last dime was earned.
I absolutely agree. I am a capitalist and capitalism flourishes only when competition exists in order to ensure that the market works out to the best interests of all parties involved.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:49PM
I disagree. I'll use broadband as an example.
I may have no other choice other than to pay what they demand. (Not ask) Simply because there is no competition. But if there were competition, the prices would go down, the service would go up, and everyone would still be making a profit. Just like other businesses.
You can't say people are willing to pay a monopolist. They simply may have no other choice. Like Oil. Railroads. And until fairly recently Microsoft.
But I also see you are in favor of competition. In my original reply to "kill the rich", my premise is that they are the ones tilting and gaming the system against everyone. Including creating monopolies for their own unjust enrichment.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:40AM
Take Google or Windows
...please!
(Score: 4, Flamebait) by edIII on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:38PM (21 children)
It's my money because I worked for it you dumb mother fucker. They need to PAY ME, because I WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!! You insinuate that we never deserved it in the first place. That's what you forget. It was taking from us. Why the fuck would I work for less than what I need you stupid fucker?!!!!!!!
That's the executives sitting their with the stolen money in their wallets, under the fucking delusion that is their money. Let me rephrase it for your stupid fucking ass:
ME: Hey, Bob! Ummm, I worked pretty hard today. Got all of my targets met, and I uhh, don't have enough to live, eat, and pay bills.
BOB: Gee, why is that?
ME: Well, and maybe you didn't understand, but my money is in YOUR wallet. Please reach into your wallet and give MY money back.
BOB: Huh?
ME: You need to pay me enough so that I can survive. I didn't get that today, because you took some of it and pocketed it. Please take it out so that I can have MY money back.
BOB: It doesn't work that way. I went to an IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL and I know all the big people. It's who you know.
ME: What does that have to do with my production? Do you agree I worked today?
BOB: Of course you worked, but what you don't understand is that I can replace you, outsource you, and that in reality, you have no value.
ME: Ummm, Bob, what the fuck does that have to do with the 10 hours I just worked? You need to pay me so that I can survive.
That's the reality you fucking asshole. I'm working just as hard as Bob, who takes long lunches and puts alcohol on his expense account (of which I don't have) and then shows up at 4pm to tell me that I need to do more work after hours. You can go apply for a job at Walmart and/or McDonald's and be an instant ward of the state. That's wrong because I put in a full day of work.
How about YOU explain why Bob gets so much fucking money, and I deserve to be paid less than what I need?
BI is not required. Only Living Wages are required, and if we get back to Unions being strong as fuck we can have it. Because it is in issue of representation and group negotiation for work offers. Do NOT SIT there and act like American and Canadian workers get paid fairly. Not fucking nearly enough. SO when we ask for that money, that you feel is being asked without merit, we are asking for OUR fucking money back.
WE WORKED FOR IT YOU FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We DESERVE IT!!!
WE ARE GOING TO TAKE BACK WHAT IS OURS, OR THE WORLD WILL FUCKING BURN. Deal with it bitch.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:42PM
Hillary lost. Your million cunt march didn't get you what you think you deserve. Bitch.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:43PM (2 children)
This soylentbob sounds like an ass..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:02PM (1 child)
They mostly are.
I've had unfortunate experiences in my life around executives. Arguments about how the employees are only there to fuck them. From their perspective, it was already an Us. Vs. Them deal.
What pissed me off was watching them drink alcohol during work hours while actively railing against how much water the girls in a call center were drinking. In a desert. Talking 8 hours a day.
Yep. A couple hundred dollars (a day or two of lunch expenses) was too much to spend on those hard working women each *month*. They can bring in their own extra water, paid for by themselves.
That's why I'm so pissed all the time. Workers consistently denied what they need to survive, consistently denied any real chances for advancement, consistently denied workplace safety, and basically consistently denied any time they ask for more. Even though they work for it. Every single day, they work hard enough to deserve dignity.
That SoylentBob isn't just an asshole. He is bound for a spike in hell because of how he treated his brothers and sisters, and how he took so much during his life and never gave back shit.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @04:31AM
Block him from SoylentNews!!! [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:51PM (14 children)
You worked for their money? I think not. I think you worked for your money by giving them a day's effort and they paid you a mutually agreed upon amount for it. That their intelligence allows them to make more of a unit of effort than yours does is nobody's fault but your own. That they're so good at it that they can then afford to subcontract out the labor does not mean you deserve per work unit what they do. You still only deserve what you deserve because your utility is != to their utility.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:08PM (4 children)
Are you secretly the "series of contracts" guy? Sounds like you just want the freedom to totally screw over other people, probably sneak in some bullshit fineprint that makes them your literal slave if they fail to do some insignificant bullshit. People like you make me want to believe in religion, and not for good reasons.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:24PM (1 child)
The series of contracts guy is just some Aspie loser somewhere. He's weird, and delusional, but he doesn't seem evil. More hopelessly dogmatic, something like APK and the hosts file thing on The Green Site. Uzzard here is, as has been mentioned, a self-professed sociopath. He is a good coder, but that's *all,* and you know what your momma says about single purpose devices in the kitchen...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:44PM
You wouldn't know a sociopath if one skinned your cat, darlin. It's just another meaningless label coming from you; like misogynist, racist, transphobe, etc...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:46PM (1 child)
I'm not secretly anyone. I go by the same name on this site that I go by at home and with most of my family. And ask around, I'm not even remotely shy about putting my views under my own handle.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:12PM
Your "views"? You claim your horrible shit is trolling, but then your a no nonsense straight shooter. You lie, you troll for laughs, you have very selfish viewpoints... Your opinion matters less and less as people figure these things out about you. Try being honest and not lying on a daily basis.
(Score: 2) by http on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:32PM (8 children)
You are operating under the delusion that workers and employers come to a bargaining table with equal power.
You're getting very angry for no good reason, and it can't be good for your blood pressure. You would do well to shut up about all things not coding rehash. Both your health and the conversation on SN would improve.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:59PM (7 children)
I'm not remotely angry, man. This is just how I talk. Now back on-topic...
Have you ever, in your entire life, worked in a union shop? They absolutely have enough bargaining power to make it cheaper on a company to pull up stakes and relocate somewhere cheaper. Why do you think manufacturing has been so heavily outsourced?
Me, I have plenty of bargaining power all on my own. All it requires is the knowledge that you can get a job equally as good before you burn through your savings and a willingness to tell your employer to go fuck himself. If you lack either the skills or the savings for that, it's entirely because of your own foolishness.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by http on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:31AM (6 children)
Unions are tangential to the point I'm making, but you're only underlining my point: without ganging up, workers cannot even come close to applying pressure to an employer. When was the last time you heard about someone getting a job and having the company move to them, for example?
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:17AM (2 children)
Do you even read the news? Or do you even read what you write before hitting post? Good grief.
When was the last time you heard about someone getting a job and having the company move to them, for example?
Happens every frickin' day. That is the root of the problem, really. Companies being forced to move the jobs to where the workers are. If you are a rich guy with a factory do you really think you WANT to go to the bother of packing the whole thing up and moving it elsewhere? Why do you think they do it? Because they can't afford workers with the required skills in the area where the factory currently is at. So they compare the all in price of moving workers in vs moving the factory and decide it easier and cheaper to move the factory to the labor. And there goes another few thousand jobs to Mexico, China, Indonesia or some other craphole.
You complaint, and most everybody else here, seems to be you don't like the idea of competing with the whole world for your job. Yea it sucks but lets hear your alternative. The root of the problem is not the inequality within the U.S. or any of the 1st world countries, it is the vast gulf of inequality between the U.S. and the poorest 3rd world country with just enough political stability and infrastructure to allow it to compete for your job.
No Trump probably can't fix this problem without making several worse ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:25AM
it is the vast gulf of inequality between the U.S. and the poorest 3rd world country with just enough political stability and infrastructure to allow it to compete for your job.
Clearly, the solution is to let our infrastructure and political process rot, and then we'll be able to compete with them for jobs.
(Score: 2) by http on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:08AM
This is the perfect troll! Cogent, plausible to the naive, and 100% wrong. Kudos.
Nopody in Mexico aspired to work for Ford/GM/whathaveyou, but when the plant moved there, hey, a crap job is better than no job.
You're kidding yourself. Companies choosing to move to where cheaper workers are available, in hopes of maintaining high ROI and gold plated executive payouts.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:48AM (2 children)
No, unions are the answer to your point. They need not even be localized. They could simply be all class-3 widget makers declaring that class-3 widgets will not be made for under $23/hr across the nation.
Mind you, they're each and every one cannibalistic by nature and will end up destroying the jobs of those they propose to represent; but for a very short time they're actually useful.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:19PM (1 child)
This site is a hotbed for corporate fascists such as yourself. You shouldn't be allowed to claim being a US citizen. But neither should 33% of the population who hate individual freedom and love freedom of profits.
You're all SOOO DUMB. Tmb, jmorris, khallow and sometimes runaway. Promoting the horrors of yesterday.
The WORST part? None of you are actually blithering idiots which makes it that much worse to see it wasted on trolling and shitty ideology.
(Score: 2) by http on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:11AM
EASE UP, there, a.c. They're welcome to their citizenship. I would fucking hate it if they moved away from the US and came here.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:10AM (1 child)
If Bob isn't paying you as much as you want, quit working for him and work somewhere else. You might consider the possibility that your personality is getting in the way of getting paid well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:52AM
Because there's such an abundance of jobs, it's easy to find a better one.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:57PM (5 children)
I basically agree with you on the ownership thing. Commodities (like money) naturally accumulate at the top. Everything does. Seriously the top 1% of unix sysadmins do more admin work than the entire bottom 99% put together. Ditto software dev. Or fine art. Or cooking. Or singing. Or pro athletes. So let people who want to collect tokens collect ALL the tokens. You want to collect "all" the diamonds in minecraft? Have fun! No problemo!
The problem is "we" are arguing two things at once and the other thing argued is how to make a living in a world still pretending that those useless tokens are somehow a currency in an economy thats really not functioning for most of us anymore.
If for the sake of example we were on a space station, we'd need to procure our oxygen somehow, and as a 25% completed education chemical engineer I assume unless theres a better chemist on station (SN does have some excellent chemists that I know of) then I will own 100% of the productive capacity of oxygen. Naturally tokens always flow to the best owner; all of them. None of you will have any oxygen tokens. This would be mildly amusing if we were discussing the means of production of medium spicy taco sauce but unfortunately oxy is a required element for life so there will be much butthurt about my keeping it all. This is very interesting but it pragmatically does not work. Our system suxs.
In the long run "we" pretty much have to have socialism for the minimum required for life. Which has nothing to do with who collected ALL the tokens and has a lot to do with everyone needs air, water, some place to sleep, food, defense dept, public roads, fire dept, public library, last but not least fully socialized medical care. Everything else can be wild barely regulated capitalism. Hands off my designers edition copy of Ogre. Keep the government out of my video game collection. etc.
This is all at least semi consistent with my national socialist political belief system which is always universally supported by all SN readers especially the antifa. Socialism to keep the volk alive and part of the social contract is service in the nationalism half of proud capitalism and proud imperialism.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
Right there. That is your problem. You assume that wealth and earning is a zero-sum game. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wealth is created from the void every time a human being puts forth effort that either they or someone else desires, or makes the effort necessary to accomplish a desired task easier.
If you have issue with how much wealth remains in your hands when you are implementing the ideas of someone else, bargain better. Hell, bargain collectively. Just make sure you don't cut your own throat while doing so. If labor is too pricy a commodity to continue doing business, they won't.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:30PM
I think we agree on more than we disagree about, and your analysis skills are great, but we don't have a common language or set of definitions because here you go on a THIRD orthogonal topic, this being wealth as a social status signal and the attainment thereof as a lifestyle and all that.
So my point of view is there's about three orthogonal topics and are getting incorrectly mixed leading to problems.
1) There's the social contract thing. I'll be a member of your economic system and culture if you keep me alive better than the alternatives. Otherwise its armed rebellion, refugee time, join a motorcycle gang or commune and drop out time. Its hard to rally people around a system that involves their kids dying while another system lets them live. You can't collect anything cool this way like #2, what is the cool collection of "has great police protection" or "hasn't died of poor/no drinking water yet"? You probably can't get rich or cool off the same commodity as everyone gets see #3, nobody cares about my drinking water other than its there and doesn't make you sick.
2) There's the ancient capitalist game of cornering a monopoly commodity market. Harmless if limited to non-basic living issues. Someone collects all the non-meaningful tokens? Good for them, completionism is a perfectly good compulsion. Got all the MtG cards? Cool! Seen all the pr0n on the internet? Cool!. I'm the go to guy at $employer for ETL and system integration I've cornered that market, Cool! Just don't corner the market for drinkable water like #1 or you get the guillotine as you very rightly should. And don't turn it into a rich guys playing field like #3 or people will be unhappy (real estate, collectible cars, maybe)
3) Finally there's social status points, someone wealthy won't stay wealthy for long when playing game #2 if they're collecting black velvet Dale Earnhardt paintings or elvis memorobilia. Maybe it works well if they collect real estate and ETF shares. They won't be wealthy for long if their profit maximization strategy along the lines of #1 above involves killing the villagers children, because the villagers will put the wealthy dude in a guillotine right where he belongs. But if he got social status for good investments or being a really good rock star singer, well, cool!
Its best for a culture and society and economic system to keep those three systems as separate as possible, more important even than separation of church and state. Virtually any cross mixture eventually ends up F-ed up. Needless to say almost anything functional about western civ in 2017 involves those being separate and most things Fed up involve mixtures.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:11PM (2 children)
Survival is optional. In the old days it was even kind of a luxury. Now we've had a brief stint where, at least in the first world, most people could be pretty well guaranteed to earn a living (people are still starving to death in the third world). Going into the future however, we'll see a dramatic increase in the rolls of the unemployable, as the bar for employment rises. You are not entitled to a certain wage just for being there and putting in effort; you have to generate enough value to be profitable for your employer. Fail to generate enough value to cover your minimum wage plus overhead costs (or fail to out-compete automation) and you're out of a job.
This will result in the majority of people being essentially pets, or zoo animals, if those above the bar deign to support them, and dead if not.
So the discussion is really whether or not the productive should support the unproductive, and how many of them, and to what extent; there's obviously a limit.
I hope Neuralink and the like make rapid progress; once memories and skills can be transferred like data and software it will be much easier for people to stay above the bar.
All that said however, I think the worst thing for our economy is the financial "industry". People gathering (not making or earning) huge sums of money simply by moving paper around, being gatekeepers, and skimming off the top of everyone else's production, without generating a bit of value themselves. This include the insurance "industry" and a significant portion of government.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:16AM (1 child)
Given current trends and increasing automation, pretty soon that "generate enough value" term is going to be "the boss not getting his fucking head on a spike".
Why do people think Trump, Brexit, and now France, happened? Racism? stupidity? insanity? - that's bullshit. People are pissed off. Really, really pissed off.
The EIGHT richest people in the world own as much as the poorest THREE AND A HALF BILLION people. Do you think that is sustainable?
And the trend is getting worse, a few years ago it was 65 people. Now down to eight.
Do you think those eight got that much richer, or are the poor getting poorer?
The ruling class can wake up and smell the coffee, or pretty soon it's going to be wake up and smell the smoke.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:55PM
The ruling class are fully aware of that, and that's why they're tracking our every communication. You start rallying people for a revolution and you'll find a drone deployed munition in your lap.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Touché) by Dunbal on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:17PM (16 children)
Fair would be killing the rich, or grabbing them by their fucking necks, turning them upside down, and shaking out OUR fucking money.
That has been tried several times as well. It never goes as well as people think. OK we killed all the rich people. Here's your $120. Don't spend it all at once.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:49PM (5 children)
Thanks now I can eat lobster for a week. Who shall we kill next week? Keep the blood money coming; I'm hungry.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:53PM (4 children)
Sorry, you can only kill the milk cow or laying hen once and that meal is all you get. You don't even get milk or eggs anymore.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:10PM (3 children)
More garbage from the carrion eater, remember people the shit he throws up on to these pages was dead before he ate it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:42PM (2 children)
You eat things while they're still alive? Tell me more. I find it interesting that you lack the culinary sophistication of a caveman.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:35PM (1 child)
There's nothing worse than half-dead racht.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:00AM
Damn, good one. And me without any mod points.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:19PM (8 children)
There are around 7.5 billion people; if each had $120 that would be $900 billion.
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ [worldometers.info]
From a January 2016 article, I see that the 50 wealthiest people were estimated to have assets of $1459.4 billion.* Were they all to (somehow) pay a 62% tax, there would be your $900 billion--and the poorest among them would still have $5.5 billion.
http://www.businessinsider.com/50-richest-people-on-earth-2016-1 [businessinsider.com]
*arithmetic:
14.3+14.3+14.4+14.4+14.5+16.3+16.4+16.5+16.7+17+17.1+18.3+18.5+18.7+18.9+19.5+19.7+20.9+21.7+22.2+22.5+23+23.5+24.8+25+25.7+26.3+26.5+26.7+28.6+28.6+28.6+28.9+29+29.2+33.2+33.5+34.8+37+38.5+39.3+42.1+42.8+45.3+46.8+47.4+56.6+60.7+66.8+87.4
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:23PM (7 children)
Heh not bad for a number completely pulled out of my ass. The whole point is that there are a lot of poor people. The burden of supporting the rich is relatively small. That's not what the problem is. The problem is the disproportionate say in how the world is run that the rich have over the poor. If only rich = smart, but it doesn't. But concentrated money is certainly equivalent to power.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:50AM
Having wealth disparity is not a huge problem: income disparity is a problem.
With large income disparity, you are no longer rewarded for hard work, or punished for being careless.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:47AM (5 children)
Heh not bad for a number completely pulled out of my ass. The whole point is that there are a lot of poor people. The burden of supporting the rich is relatively small.
The richest 1% of the world population own more than half of the world's wealth. If you were to take it from them and distribute it proportionately among the remaining 99%, then everyone else's wealth would double. If you distributed it unevenly skewed towards the poorest, then you'd end up in a far less inequality. If you kept repeating the process, then you'd very rapidly hit diminishing returns, because the next 1% owns far less than the top 1%.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:04PM (4 children)
then everyone else's wealth would double
But you just said everyone else's wealth is practically nothing. Twice nothing is still nothing. OH WOW MY WEALTH DOUBLED I AM NOW ONLY $70,000 in debt! (Average household debt is now $138,000)
As for "taking it from them" - just stop. Do you really think rich people have a massive pile of coin sitting in a vault somewhere that no one can touch? Their money is invested in shares, bonds, land, fancy cars, fancy clothes, jewelry, etc. So their MONEY is actually in circulation. The only thing you would do by "taking their wealth" is changing ownership of all those mansions, Ferraris, Apple shares, etc from them to you. The economy (not to mention the whole population) would not improve one bit.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:18PM (3 children)
But you just said everyone else's wealth is practically nothing
No I didn't, you must be confusing me with someone else.
Do you really think rich people have a massive pile of coin sitting in a vault somewhere that no one can touch?
No, I think that they're using it to extract income from other people's work via rents and so on. You seem to be projecting a lot today.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:32PM (2 children)
No I didn't, you must be confusing me with someone else.
Yes you did. You said "The richest 1% of the world population own more than half of the world's wealth". Which means 99% of the world population own less than half of the world's wealth. Which, when you slice it up into 7.5 billion pieces is practically nothing.
You seem to be projecting a lot today.
Frustrated with an argument so I attack the person I am arguing with. Well played?
The problem with anyone arguing against wealth is that they always the first in line to grab a piece of that wealth if they can, and shut the door behind them. History is on my side. There are no selfless wealth redistribution campaigns. Perfect communism is a fallacy. There will always be rich, and there will always be poor. But let me tell you that poor people in America still fare a HELL OF A LOT BETTER than poor people in Somalia or Haiti. And even poor people in India or Haiti fare a HELL OF A LOT BETTER than poor people anywhere 500 years ago. So I'm in no rush to rock the boat and flip it upside down to see if it sails faster.
(Score: 2) by G-forze on Thursday April 27 2017, @07:20AM (1 child)
This makes no sense. So you're saying that half the wealth of the world is nothing? Because that is what your statement leads to.
FYI, half the worlds wealth divided by 7 billion is still an enormous sum. Even for me, but especially for someone living in poverty somewhere in the third world.
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday April 27 2017, @10:19AM
FYI, half the worlds wealth divided by 7 billion is still an enormous sum.
It is no more than what you have already. How could it be? It's half.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:08PM
If we kill all the rich people, it's not that I would just get my share of the vast amount of the planet's resources that these few people are hoarding. The big gain would be that these people would no longer be around to constantly tilt and manipulate the system against me, trying to make my life worse at every turn. We might even see broadband competition. Imagine that! And many other blessings of not having the rich people. It's just that their hoarded wealth would be distributed. It's that they would stop screwing with our lives in order to hoard that wealth.
So maybe they manage to extract a mere $120 from every person. (But I suspect it is actually vastly more than that.) But in order to do so, they had to screw with so many different facets of my life in order to do so.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:19PM
You either agree to an interaction, or you don't.
Guess what? It's not the factory owner's fault that you depend on a job at his factory to survive.
If anything, you should be angry at your parents for being so cruel to have birthed you; you should be angry with your neighbors for being such slobs who perpetuate the squalor around you; you should be angry at the universe for providing only a finite supply of resources.
If anything, you should be thankful to the factory owner for providing you with at least some kind of structure in which to survive, especially when that structure is voluntary association (agreement before interaction).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by melikamp on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:21PM (12 children)
I think basic income is the way to go. Living wages sound great until there's no more practically necessary work, and thanks to robots and just general efficiency gains, we are getting there. I mean, we are getting into semantics here. If all the practically useful jobs (resulting in feeding, clothing, healthcare, etc.) can be done by, say, 10% of the population, what does that leave the rest with? If you want them to get living wage, you gotta give some bullshit jobs. Basic income is essentially a living wage for a bullshit job you make up for yourself, and as such it's better than some job description imposed by the government. Let the people figure out whether they want to spend their free time and money on getting more education & training, making art, participating in politics, or taking care of the family.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:29PM (1 child)
And asteroid prospecting and robot repair, just like the GNU communist manifesto says.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:37PM
Where's my Jetsons flying car and condo on stilts??
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:46PM (5 children)
That's bullshit though. We are nowhere near the point where robotics can take over to feed us, clothe us, and build and provide maintenance for our shelters and infrastructure. Your point is valid for a future that is decades away, if not more.
Don't know about Canada, but in the U.S our infrastructure is starting to fail spectacularly. Our engineers give us a D- grade, IIRC. There is an incredible amount of work that needs to be done.
I disagree. There are still plenty of jobs left, what you don't see is how many of those jobs have been outsourced to other countries, or taking care of by illegal immigrant labor.
Any jobs that are left must become LIVING WAGES.
Also, in this future of yours, do we still have billionaires? If so, why? If BI eventually comes around then that means we are equal comrade. Except, for the special classes of people that were lucky enough to have parents that stole enough to become the magical dynasty families that live like royalty around the BI class of poor people. When you have BI, there is no reason to succeed, no drive to improve yourself, and no reason to try to reach for the stars.
The stars are already filled with the rich dynasties. Your place will be on the ground with BI hopefully providing enough for you to live, while they live like emperors. Even though, they don't actually do anything either. I'm reminded of Eddie Murphy, "But, what have you done for me lately?"
It is not a stepping stone to the Federation, my friend.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:14PM
in the U.S our infrastructure is starting to fail spectacularly. Our engineers give us a D- grade, IIRC. There is an incredible amount of work that needs to be done.
So pay workers to build infrastructure. Government did it last century by taxing the rich and employing the poor. This century why doesn't Elon Musk do it? Conventional roads are too mundane for him? Not hyperloopy enough? Elon Musk just another greedy egotistical psychopath who only cares about himself?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:29PM
Them: Robots are going to take our jobs, what can we do?
Them: Let's see if BI works!
You: FUCK YOU, I WANT MORE MONEY! I FUCKING *DESERVE* MORE!
Everyone else: Can't wait to see the results.
Bob: Customers have been complaining about your potty-mouth. You're fired.
You (after failing to find a job you think you deserve): Damn, fucking I wish I had me some fucking BI.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:27PM
In 1790, about 90% of workers were employed in agriculture. Now it's about 1.5%. Robots are doing most of the agricultural work with guidance from a handful of agricultural technicians. The same trends are happening in other industries too, just a bit slower / later.
Example: I'm a machinist. I sit at my desk all day and prepare programs for the machine to run. With one machine (robot) and one human assistant I get done in a day what would have taken weeks a few decades ago. That's with a fairly entry-level 5 axis CNC. If I wanted to quadruple my output and had the funding to do so, I could either buy three more of the same machine and hope I can find three more skilled assistants (unlikely), or I could put all the money into one high-end machine with a pallet pool and large tool index and run it with just me and my assistant, and it would be capable of running unattended for days at a time. The latter option would be much more reliable, and by far the better business decision.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:52PM (1 child)
I don't know, mon. Look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg [wikipedia.org]
The productivity been going up for centuries, and now it's outright spiking. The reason many people don't notice it is in the same chart: all the gains been going to the ultra-rich. We can definitely afford basic income at this point, so there is a straightforward utilitarian argument for instituting it. All the arguments against it, on the other hand, are based on the almost-religious attachment to the a caricature of a "free" labor market: no one will work unless out of fear of starvation; and the outright religious (puritan, to be precise) idea that not working is sinful. Never you mind that the ultra-rich just wank themselves all day, while the rest of us are polishing their golden urinals for the hourly wage.
Once we give people a decent basic income, they can and almost certainly will use it to dedicate their life to the most fun activities available: (1) fine art (2) fundamental science (4) politics (3) community service, which sounds boring until you realize it's the same as meddling. Today people sit on the couch chasing a pink dragon because they are marginalized, desperate, and see no way to succeed in the brutal capitalist economy plagued by racism, sexism, and all kinds of discrimination. Give them the true leisure, and sure, some of them will stay on the couch and kill themselves, but most will move on to doing fun and useful things, simply because they will be much happier that way.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:31PM
I'm not doing it. There is no fucking way I'm going to accept being paid off so those fucking avaricious cocksuckers can live like emperors off us. NO. NO. NO. NO!
If we work at all, we need to enjoy the benefits of our production. Otherwise, it's fucking slavery. When you need to spend over 100% of your daily production just to find shelter, for no other reason than the avarice of the property owners, the 1% has lost its soul and deserves to die.
Why would you ever agree to a world where they are propped up? What's to stop them from stopping BI at some point because they don't like it, and we forever gave them all of the control?
It's not like we are self-sufficient anymore, or possess any kind of a work ethic whatsoever. We will be fat lazy entitled cattle screaming for more BI because we can't properly assign value to anything anymore. Nobody works, so how could anyone understand work ethics and similar values.
I could only agree if there didn't exist a rich Owning Class anymore. If they divest themselves of all of those luxuries at the same time, then I'm onboard.
Otherwise, I'll fucking kill as many as I can, as that will be the only path of upward mobility. How do I in this world of no work ethics reach the stars like ol' Elon huh?
BI is a form of slavery and intentional life sabotage. I'm sure you honestly believe that people would better off, but they are not.
I agree that is bullshit. The Owning Classes created the fear-of-starvation method to actively cultivate pools of desperate workers. We have another option though, and will always did. Massive National Strikes and we stand up and DEMAND our lives back. When you are paid a living wage, and are responsible, you will eventually find yourself on very solid ground. What do I mean by that?
You own your own house. You own all of your stuff, not rent. You have a nice veggie garden in the back. You have a permanent benefits life insurance policy growing. You have investments and/or growing assets to aid you when YOU decide that you can no longer work and retire. You have a strong foundation upon which to negotiate work offers... because if they don't give you what you need to survive.. you smile and walk away.
The problem with that is people that need to be subsidized are such a large group the employer can smile too and then just pull from the desperate pool for less and you lose. Therein lies the answer. We need to finally stand up as a people and demand our lives back, self-sufficiency, and a free labor market in which we are equal with the employer and not under extreme and utter duress. We need to not accept the existence of such a large group of hungry and desperate people, AKA, The Scabs. I don't want to beat the shit out of a Scab, but lift them up with us so the Owning Classes can no longer prey upon them.
By the way, not working is sinful. The Puritans had something there. If you look deeper into that wisdom and ponder it for awhile, you may take away what I did. Those ultra-rich wanking themselves off each day? They are going to hell. Nice grand hyperbolic statement, but what do I mean by that? They are unable to assess the value of anything because it is freely given to them, or they are outright manipulating people and stealing from them. None of that is morally acceptable. Entitlement will creep up on us, just as it does with the ultra-rich. They are actually convinced their way is correct, moral, and good, which is completely delusional.
The value of a work ethic lies in not giving in to egotistical desires every other fucking second, but actively working towards a common goal with others to achieve greatness and serve your fellow man. In doing so you will become Godly, or doing God's work. Which sounds very religious and doctrinal, but all I mean is that you cultivate a spirit of love and unity within yourself while being dedicated to making the lives of your fellow man better. I'm not ultra religious or anything, but I understand what they are saying about not serving your own ego and desires, but to serve others instead. You will never find that in a BI world. We would become as abhorrent as the Owning Classes, just with far less luxuries on the ground while they enjoy Elysium in the skys.
100000% disagree here. They will become entitled little shits watching the Owning Classes with awe on their free Internet talk about their latest botox or $10,000,000 tchotchke that got stolen from them. Sorry, dude. I said it before. BI is not a stepping stone to the Federation which is what you just promulgated. I love you for it, I greatly appreciate your heart, but it does not represent reality. Even in the Federation people are working, not just sitting around. To get there, we will need a revolution of spirit, and I think that begins with good ol' fashioned *hard work*, dedication, and a strong moral center that includes the idea of service to your fellow man.
People need to work. The most I can agree to is a Socialist foundation to never let them fall down, or turn into Scabs, and have a foundation upon which to succeed. It protects the rest of us from them being used against us by the Owning Classes, which is exactly what we need. A sincerely equal environment free of duress to negotiate work offers. It is not in our best interests to accept homelessness and poverty around us.
The only compromise I can see is that BI starts off at a VERY low level. Only the most basic housing, slowest Internet connections designed just to deal with errands and work and low end entertainment (720p max). Not nearly enough to afford the luxuries like a PS4 and 8K screens (or equivalent). Subsidized food, but also giving them a small patch of land in front of their literal fucking hut, and teaching them how to grow *something*.
There must be some incentive to reach for the stars. Giving them a small 10x10 room to live in with only the most basic necessities would surely motivate them to go the free market labor pool and negotiate for some work. That way they can get better housing, afford the PS4, afford a restaurant, afford travel, etc. At the same time, anybody that decides to put themselves on a life journey as an ascetic is permanently subsidized :)
Not working is a sin, and I don't mean that in the religious sense. It's not healthy. I want to work and don't need BI. I just need a living wage. That's all.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:49PM (3 children)
Living wages sound great until there's no more practically necessary work, and thanks to robots and just general efficiency gains, we are getting there.
The problem here is that narrative runs counter to how the world actually works. Instead, we're seeing more employment of people than ever. For the past few centuries and up to the present date, automation has created more and better quality jobs than it has destroyed.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:38PM (2 children)
False. Labor force participation rate peeked at 67.30% in January of 2000, and since has dropped to 63%. It hasn't been this low since '77.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by fnj on Wednesday April 26 2017, @04:53AM
Did it "peek" from behind the bushes?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:46PM
False. Labor force participation rate peeked at 67.30% in January of 2000, and since has dropped to 63%. It hasn't been this low since '77.
You're referring to planet US. On planet Earth, it's still increasing. You should ask what the US is doing that lowers its labor force participation rate. There's a lot of policies including retirement, jails, education, etc that remove people out of the labor pool.
In addition, the US has gone through considerable effort to make employing people costly. It should come to no surprise that when someone makes something more expensive, less of it is consumed.
While the developing world has many of these problems as well, it still remains that labor force participation is growing worldwide. China and India in particular have greatly improved their employment situation. Each country has roughly the same population as the entire current developed world.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:28PM
Right now it is WORK and FUCK-YOU-I-CAN-REPLACE-YOU-AND-YOU-GET-SHIT-AND-YOU-WILL-LIKE-IT.
Or you could create your own businesses and employ people in the "fair" way you claim to desire. The glaring flaw in your post is that the world isn't zero sum. Right now, billions of people are improving their lives due to the actions of rich people. If we go "fair" and start killing rich people, we destroy the greatest tool ever for making the world a better place.
The only difference between you and the average CEO is that they can run a business. It's time to get a clue.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:48PM (2 children)
I think you've got it wrong. Here's my vision for a utopia humanity might someday actually reach:
- No one has to work because robots do all the work.
- Robots are repaired either by other robots or by volunteers who get mentioned on the news or something in payment.
- The government owns the robots.
- Everyone gets a certain amount of money each year to spend on luxuries.
- The government directly gives everyone food and housing.
Human dignity doesn't come from working. Working is sacrificing part of your life to do something useful to society because, if too many people didn't do that, society would fail. If you can't work, because you're elderly or disabled, you're still a human, and you still have dignity.
If you _CAN_ work, and you choose not to, well, you're acting unethically by taking advantage of others, but you still have human dignity.
Our society doesn't quite recognize this, and does sometimes tie recognition of human dignity to work. For instance, bad parents will belittle their children by pointing out the fact that the child isn't making money, and therefore, somehow, the child's wants and needs don't matter as much the parent's. But this is just a sickness of our society. Tying someone's human worth to his economic output is no different than tying someone's human worth to his attractiveness, intelligence, physical strength, or fertility. It's just stupid and wrong.
So, stop trying to get recognition for the "real value" of your economic output. If someone's market worth is, in fact, very low, it's best to tell him that and let him do what he wants with his time rather than forcing him to basically do busywork 8 hours a day 5 days a week. It's not demeaning to give someone a basic income; it's demeaning to say, "what you're doing isn't worth very much to us, but we're going to make you do it anyway just because."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:40AM
Robots are repaired either by other robots or by volunteers who get mentioned on the news or something in payment.
While they would essentially be volunteers since all work would be voluntary, I think currency is the best way to allocate resources. I also think that a shrinking proportion of people will be able to competently do the gee-whiz jobs of the future. That's why I like UBI. People who can do and get rewarded with better access to resources.
what you're doing isn't worth very much to us, but we're going to make you do it anyway just because.
I've seen jobs where the amount they job pays is no way enough for the skills needed for the job. We make people who are hopelessly incompetent at a job do a job just because. Call centers are a prime example. Those places are meat grinders, and I don't think they can possibly pay enough to be economically feasible and attract qualified labor. They have no real reason to exist, and they'd go away with UBI for more efficient means of communication such as email or whatever. As it stands, call centers expect way more than their workers can deliver, but they can't pay any more either. So the workers get hired, abused, and fired in an endless cycle of stupidity.
UBI will never happen no matter how much sense it makes, though. It runs counter to too many human instincts. We'd rather have bodies bumbling along fucking up jobs that are just beyond their personal capabilities. At least in a call center, an underqualified worker can't cause much negative productivity. Put people in an office where their job is beyond their capabilities? That's some serious negative productivity. Humans would rather have all that inefficiency than *gasp* let somebody smoke weed and watch TV all day.
Well, unless they have an Official Excuse, i.e. the euphemism of "disability." If they can get an Official Excuse, then they may live without working. But only for Official Reasons!
(Score: 2) by G-forze on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:16PM
Many people like to create things, and most certainly will continue to do so in the future. The difference is, this creation will be completely voluntary, and not a means to survive, but to entertain and/or fulfil oneself, i.e. a hobby. I also think many people will be happy to pay for hand made clothes, furniture etc. even though robot made stuff might be a lot cheaper. Thus, there will be another economy running on top of the UBI, but with the huge and crucial difference to the economy of today, that people participating in it are doing it for their own pleasure, and only in the amounts they themself want.
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:31AM
Killing people is never fair, period. There are situations when killing is an acceptable method of self-defence, but that's not about fairness, that's about self-protection.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:05PM (19 children)
less 50 per cent of any earned income
That's poverty assistance, a welfare payment, not basic income. Basic income is guaranteed income regardless of circumstance.
So basically this is a plot to discredit basic income by paying welfare and calling it basic income.
Nice try.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:09PM
And it will go to the Muslims, so that they don't riot, pillage, and rape...
Oh, wait.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:13PM
One of the side effects of basic income (or this) is that you just give people a chunk of money without employing a hundred thousand people to figure out who deserves a bit and who doesn't.
At a big enough scale, even this flawed experiment would show those savings.
(Score: 2) by draconx on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:16PM
Indeed, that's certainly what it seems like on the face of it.
The only think I can think of is if the $17K payout is completely tax-free, and this reduction was done as a way to fit the pilot project into the current income tax framework more easily.
But it is more likely that the Liberals just fucked it up.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:20PM (2 children)
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. There is no functional difference between basic income and welfare.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:15PM (1 child)
That is because you are dumb and can not see it. The basic income plan would remove a huge amount of required oversight with investigators and general bureaucracy overhead. Please keep showing us your massive level of ignorance, it is a nice counterpoint to your arrogance.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:41PM
Removing bureaucracy from welfare is like putting a bandaid on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. I don't want more efficient welfare paid for by theft, I want no welfare paid for by theft.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:25PM (9 children)
Basic income is guaranteed income regardless of circumstance.
I don't follow what you're complaining about.
totalIncome = baseIncome + (earnedIncome / 2)
Regardless of how much you earn, baseIncome should always be the same, shouldn't it? Or are we making assumptions about taxes? Maybe my definition of "basic" is too naive.
The Basic Income model Ontario has developed will ensure that eligible participants receive:
Up to $16,989 per year for a single person, less 50 per cent of any earned income
ISPs have trained me to be extremely suspicious of anything involving "up to." Zero dollars a year is "up to 17k."
"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 tangomargarine on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
Oh. Or do they mean,
if(earnedIncome < 16989 * 2)
baseIncome = 16989 - earnedIncome;
else
baseIncome = 0; // you don't need it anyway
Probably should RTFA huh.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:34PM
Let's make basic income look bad by giving it to folks who never learned basic math.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:32PM (1 child)
Plus sign, minus sign, what's the difference, I don't even.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:45PM
Up to $16,989 per year for a single person, less 50 per cent of any earned income
baseIncome + (earnedIncome / 2)
Plus sign, minus sign, what's the difference, I don't even.
Point out where I'm wrong. Or if we want to get pedantic, I'll expand it out:
baseIncome + earnedIncome - (earnedIncome / 2)
There's your minus sign. Ya happy now?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:38PM (4 children)
I think his point might be that your minimum wage job now pays 50% for the first $17k. You'd better be making a lot more than that, to have an incentive to bother to get out of bed and put the kids in daycare.
"Normal" fixed UBI doesn't discourage you from working if you want, because everything extra lands in your pocket (minus taxes). Any assistance that decreases with rising revenue does have a "is it worth working" cost.
In this case, the menial jobs would have to go up in salary to attract people on UBI, or go to people not getting the UBI (hence the need for full-scale experiments, as border effects WILL apply).
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:45PM
Around here an entry level wage full time job is about break-even with transportation and child care costs. If my wife got a full time job she'd net about $20 / week after taxes and expenses. That's a no brainer even without cutting the takehome in half.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:59AM (1 child)
Don't worry, you would be paying 50%+ on the rest too, where do you think the money is coming from to redistribute? These rules are only for a pilot program anyway.
I ran the numbers for here in the U.S. and I get it requiring about 22 1/2% of GDP to fund that 16, 989 per adult in the U.S. Or about half of all government (local, state and federal combined) intake. The current welfare state is indeed large, but we also spend a good chunk of that on poorly maintained roads, killing brown people with expensive smart bombs, poorly educating our children, etc. More importantly a large part of the income redistribution portion of the public fisc is related to medical care which isn't included in this basic income crap so it wouldn't be getting replaced by switching to UBI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:40PM
The tax brackets scale, so a much larger portion would be paid by the highest earners. At say 150k / year you are likely getting no benefit from UBI. At $1mil you are paying back at least $300-500k in taxes. Such tax ratios sure worked well back in the day. You "ran the numbers" lawl
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:05AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by driven on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:33AM (1 child)
I also question what a pilot project of 4,000 is going to prove. It's one thing for a small number of people to get this additional income. When lots of people get it then stores will react by raising prices. Then the poor will still be poor.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:12AM
..or they can react by shipping more goods in, increasing the GDP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:49AM
So basically this is a plot to discredit basic income by paying welfare and calling it basic income.
And it'll succeed for the elites wildly. UBI will never happen. Humans would rather kill each other first.
Well, I shouldn't say never. It's always possible that in a million or even a few hundred thousand years, humans might have evolved into a species that has other priorities than bloodsports.
I think the Drake equation looks at filter events wrong. It's not nuclear war that's the filter event or whatever; that can be survived. It's evolving from a species that is merely technological into a species that is finally able to supplant their animal instincts with rationality, despite absolutely no known natural selection pressure to do so.
Humans are the apex predators of the planet. At a population exceeding 7 billion, I'd call that a huge success. Can humans be anything more than apex predators?