So, what do you think about basic income?

[Laertes]

In London where I live, the archetypical scarce good is housing: there is straight up not enough for everyone to rent their own place. As a result the rents have risen until they exclude a large enough proportion of the population. That's basic supply and demand pricing. If the income of minimum wage workers rises, then they will still be competing over the same finite housing stock, meaning that rents will rise until the same number of people are excluded. (It won't cause significantly more supply to be added either, because new building in London is dominated by the wealthy of other countries wanting a place in London rather than affordable places for locals.)

That's what I meant. Is this the case for all scarce goods or is housing an abberation; and if so why?

What the fuck do you think is a scare good? I mean, 1) You are wrong, if the price of housing magically doubles because everyone is a huge fucking dick and the UK is too stupid to have fucking rent controls, then still you will get more fucking housing. Because the price for housing just fucking doubled, so people who previously didn't rent out their rooms and shit are now going to, and people who previously wanted to turn their plot of land into a corporate office are instead going to turn it into an apartment complex.

Yeah, that... isn't happening. I mean, they are building, but not in the amounts that would be expected. Property development companies in London are buying huge chunks of land speculatively and just sitting on it, waiting for the price to rise; and what building there is tends to be aimed at foreigners who want a place in London, so the prices are based on the income of the wealthy from Beijing and Rio rather than that of the locals. There is little expansion of supply to meet demand. It's a market failure, mostly because investors and landlords are sociopaths but also partly we have a political system where it is political suicide to suggest anything but the harshest of winner-take-all capitalism.

2) You are wrong because if housing prices magically double in london then everyone who could have possible afforded a slightly less costly place than double are going to be able to pay for transportation and rent further out.

Yeah... about that. See, an hour out of London is called "still inside London." Two hours out of London is called "the stockbroker belt" and is where extremely wealthy people live. The commuter zone around London is more expensive than the urban area itself. As such, migrating out is generally not an option.

3) You seriously just made an overly simplistic inflationary argument based on interior London housing scarcity and then asked what about "other scarce goods." Name a second scarce good. It isn't cars, it isn't food, it isn't consumer goods like tvs, it isn't entertainment, it isn't.... anything at all.

Okay, I'll name a second. Children's education in Britain.

See, British middle class people are horrified by one thing above all: that their children will go to a school where the children of proles go. Especially if those proles are (shock, horror) ethnic minorities. As a result they pay through the nose for schools which exclude such children: a single place at an independent British school costs more than the average pre-tax salary. This is intentional: the pricing is designed to keep it unaffordable to those whose children are considered undesirable.

Sadly, because such schools have lots of money, they also tend to hoover up all the good teachers from the state system, leading to a drop in the education quality for everyone else. This aggravates the problem because it intensifies the flight from the state school system.

This can't be written off as a "only rich people do it so who cares" factor, because spending money on their childrens' schools tends to be one of the very first things that people do when their income increases and they start to see themselves as rising in class. (That and buying a house.) If lower waged people were to get wealthier, then those who are already the better off amongst the lower waged would be pushed into the bracket where, culturally, they would expect to be able to buy their children a better education.

Therefore, if the buying power of the poor increased, then the price of posh schools would increase by precisely the same amount in order to keep them unaffordable. I don't know how this would knock on to the rest of the country - I imagine in a bad way, since it would make the financial difference between wealthy schools and state schools even worse, but I don't know. You know more about this than I do, so I'd be interested to hear your take.

Yes, Real Property is often times less supply elastic than most other things (though see above, not as inelastic as you suppose) so? What other super scare goods are you worried about inflating? Hamburgers are maximally supply elastic. TVs are maximally supply elastic.

Considering that housing costs the average British family as much as everything else they consume put together (that being what "half your income" means), I would posit that rent inflation is plenty to be worried about.

Everyone everywhere who is poor spends most of their money on housing. But you know what, who gives a crap. Tenancy is the least price elastic good in the universe. You sign a contract for like a year, at any given time half the people get at least 6 months of the old price even if the landlord really really wants to double the price. Because everyone else is still getting the old price, he can't even get the new market of double right away, he has to slowly phase the price up over months and years in offers to even new customers. And that is not even taking into account actual fucking rent control laws.

I wish Britain had rent control laws. I really do. But as it stands we have a system whereby rich people pay for their retirement by taking their savings and buying a house, then charging poor people to live in it. That's unlikely to change, no matter how much I might like it to.

As for rents being inelastic: yes they are, but supply seems to be not just inelastic but simply non-responsive to market signals (or rather, responds to the signals of the international market rather than the domestic market.) Hence my question to you of how it gets affected by a basic income. I don't know this stuff. You appear to. I am not challenging you; I'm trying to learn from you.

[Occluded Sun]

I'm aware that picking holes in Occluded Sun posts constitutes bullying

I know that it's cruel to you, enticing you to make fools of yourselves, but I just can't help myself.

but... this is statistically incorrect. There is a notable correlation between right-wing voters and net recipients of government largesse, and between left-wing voters and net payers. This can be seen most starkly on a map of the US: red states receive more federal funding than they pay out, blue states tend to receive less.

Red states are less populous overall. They tend to lack the densely-populated cities characteristic of Blue states. The relationships between taxation and received services are complicated.

Nevertheless, the point was not about states, nor about 'government largesse', which an extraordinarily complex topic which cannot be reduced to maxims like "taxes are bad", as hard as simpletons try to do so. The point is about individuals, and the people who are enthusiastic about such programs are usually those who would expect to receive payouts.

The people who would actually support such programs tend not to be nearly as interested. Funny, that. Even people who are generous with their money (after thoroughly checking out the charities involved) tend to have a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for not supporting people's basic needs but actually paying them for nothing.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, that... isn't happening. I mean, they are building, but not in the amounts that would be expected. Property development companies in London are buying huge chunks of land speculatively and just sitting on it, waiting for the price to rise; and what building there is tends to be aimed at foreigners who want a place in London, so the prices are based on the income of the wealthy from Beijing and Rio rather than that of the locals. There is little expansion of supply to meet demand. It's a market failure, mostly because investors and landlords are sociopaths but also partly we have a political system where it is political suicide to suggest anything but the harshest of winner-take-all capitalism.

Maybe people are just genuinely assholes or idiots. Those sorts of market failures happen all the time, and are a big reason why governments should involve themselves in the economy a lot. But the main point here is that you are hypothesizing that if poor people suddenly made a lot more money that wouldn't change based on the evidence that right now it isn't happening. That un sense make. If prices suddenly doubled you could expect a lot of those people currently speculating to sell to people making apartment complexes.

Okay, I'll name a second. Children's education in Britain.

See, British middle class people are horrified by one thing above all: that their children will go to a school where the children of proles go. Especially if those proles are (shock, horror) ethnic minorities. As a result they pay through the nose for schools which exclude such children: a single place at an independent British school costs more than the average pre-tax salary. This is intentional: the pricing is designed to keep it unaffordable to those whose children are considered undesirable.

Sadly, because such schools have lots of money, they also tend to hoover up all the good teachers from the state system, leading to a drop in the education quality for everyone else. This aggravates the problem because it intensifies the flight from the state school system.

This can't be written off as a "only rich people do it so who cares" factor, because spending money on their childrens' schools tends to be one of the very first things that people do when their income increases and they start to see themselves as rising in class. (That and buying a house.) If lower waged people were to get wealthier, then those who are already the better off amongst the lower waged would be pushed into the bracket where, culturally, they would expect to be able to buy their children a better education.

You are wrong. If the poorest person in Britain suddenly made twice as much, but was still the poorest person in Britain because everyone else made more money, they would not fucking be trying to send their kids to parochial schools.

Yes, UK has a problem with rich people being dicks and the government being pussies and not trying to actually provide good education. Pennsylvania has the same problem. Doesn't matter. The poorest people are not going to become confused try to send their kids to private schools so that 100% of Britain's children go to private schools while no one attends public schools that just sit there, that is not how this works.

Literally zero fucking percent of the poor people with more money are going to actually pay even a single cent for private education. Your second example of things poor people are going to spend their money on is literally "something that no poor person ever has or ever will spend money on." You failed the test.

I get that you are apparently some upper middle class schmo who went to a private school or who just barely makes enough that now you plan to send your kids. No one cares, basic income isn't for you. It might accidentally help you out, but no one gives a shit you are right on the border between the people who make so much that they deduct the income from their taxes and the people who make so much that the basic income is minimally useful. You aren't the people who we are counting on to spend more money.

Considering that housing costs the average British family as much as everything else they consume put together (that being what "half your income" means), I would posit that rent inflation is plenty to be worried about.

If it comes at the cost of half the money you didn't have yesterday then you still have more money then yesterday. And since as before, prices will not actually double, even better.

The point is about individuals, and the people who are enthusiastic about such programs are usually those who would expect to receive payouts.

The people who would actually support such programs tend not to be nearly as interested. Funny, that. Even people who are generous with their money (after thoroughly checking out the charities involved) tend to have a remarkable lack of enthusiasm for not supporting people's basic needs but actually paying them for nothing.

Except the part where the basic income is exclusively advocated by intellectuals and zero percent by actual poor people because actual poor people don't write articles or do studies.

[Occluded Sun]

Except the part where the basic income is exclusively advocated by intellectuals and zero percent by actual poor people because actual poor people don't write articles or do studies.

But they do post to the Internet.

[Kaelik]

Except the part where the basic income is exclusively advocated by intellectuals and zero percent by actual poor people because actual poor people don't write articles or do studies.

But they do post to the Internet.

They also don't advocate for basic income on the internet, because as previously established, it is an extremely niche left wing view that most people have never even heard of, much less put any thought into.

[DSMatticus]

Time for another Occluded Sun recap! In this thread, we have:

1) "Stupid greedy poor people. What kind of selfish asshole wants to be able reliably count on their ability to eat food and sleep in a bed?" Hilariously, as was pointed out, America's most dependent states are a who's who of red states and poor education. And of course, it is the case that the higher your level of education the more your political views slant liberal and the more your voting tendency slants Democrat (if you control for race, anyway - the Southern Strategy of winning white voters in the south by promising to be racist assholes means they do not get votes from uneducated black voters). But to be honest, I'm 99.99% sure Occluded Sun isn't trying to make a point here, and is just trying to talk smack with "lol look at the poors." I think he's starting to understand how incredibly shitty these arguments go for him, and as such is falling back to what virtually all of our conservative posters have ended up falling back to: trolling and butthurt. And of course, in Occluded Sun's world view, poverty is an insult and moral failing for which you can be criticized. And if you think that has creepy racist overtones, well... we are talking about the guy whose track record includes "I miss the good old days when Americans were free - free to own slaves!"

2) "If it would be a good idea for the government to do it, why hasn't some rich person already done it?" I guess that's not surprising coming from a libertarian, but anyone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about at all is aware that incentives for groups of individuals are not the same as the sums of the incentives of the individuals in that group. It's a very fundamental and important thing that you have to understand before you can stop making an idiot out of yourself trying to talk economics or politics in public.

For example: the economy benefits from having high enough consumer demand to run at capacity. The multiplier for giving money to people who are broke is >1, such that the demand caused by spending that money is greater than the cost of giving them that money. And if you accept all of that to be true and then immediately conclude that Wal-Mart should helicopter-drop cash into poor neighborhoods near a Wal-Mart, you are a fucking moron. Even if it is the case that every $1.00 so helidropped generates, say, $1.10 in demand, Wal-Mart is not the only business in the economy. Some of that money is going to go to McDonald's, and Amazon, and Kroger, and so the fuck on. There's a reason taxes are a little bit from a bunch of people.

Individual action is not and never will be a universal substitute for collective action. Everyone benefits from having a healthier economy, but individually we want to be excluded from paying for the costs of that healthier economy. And because our political system is so extensively corrupted by wealth, when the wealthy demand that other people pay for things that would benefit society (and even frequently benefit them) they very often get their way.

[ishy]

What benefits does basic income have over welfare?

[Kaelik]

What benefits does basic income have over welfare?

A lack of conditions and means testing, and no period of waiting to be confirmed means:

1) Anyone can quit their job at any time without worrying about being denied benefits.
2) People who otherwise do not qualify for welfare because they are working a shitty job or going to school can still benefit.
3) No one will ever be incentivized to not look for or take a job because they will end up worse off.
4) Less administrative overhead means benefits are more efficiently distributed. It takes a lot less money to hire people responsible for distributing income evenly across all citizens and residents then it does to run all the different welfare programs that also have to decide who gets money, take money away, investigate fraud, ect.

[Essence]

There's also a huge one in that basic income doesn't put any restrictions on how the recipient spends it, which is a HUGE problem with US-style welfare. If what you need to get a job is a new suit, there are fuckall for welfare programs that can help you.

Basic income allows each recipient to spend the money on the things they actually need to improve their circumstances, and the result is that people get unpoor a fuckload faster with it than they do with welfare.

[Fwib]

4) Less administrative overhead means benefits are more efficiently distributed. It takes a lot less money to hire people responsible for distributing income evenly across all citizens and residents then it does to run all the different welfare programs that also have to decide who gets money, take money away, investigate fraud, ect.

Definitely agree with that, but you'd still need some fraud investigation, though likely a much smaller amount.

[tussock]

What benefits does basic income have over welfare?

What Kaelik said, only backwards.

1) Welfare deliberately punishes certain kinds of behaviour, even if they are sensible things for poor people to do, even if they benefit the economy (by harming shitty employers, say). Almost everyone does the self-beneficial thing if you just let them.

2) Various methods of gaining long-term wealth are out of reach because they take away the Welfare very quickly. It's called a high marginal tax rate. It's a bad thing, people get a bit crazy around them.

3) The perverse incentives and other sad stories of directed Welfare are huge. Having food stamps when someone steals your anti-psychotics and you need a refill now, that's not a common thing, but lesser problems are enough to drive a large criminal black market and kickback system. Which is a kind of economic benefit you probably weren't aiming for.

4) Overheads, rent-seeking, monopoly grants. In NZ it's estimated that 90% of welfare fraud is committed by the people who are supposed to be checking up on the welfare recipients. People on the dole have to spend about half their time ticking all the boxes needed just to stay on the dole, and it's super-stressful. The whole thing is just insanely Byzantine and quite heavily corrupt, under the hood.


#Fraud, you basically use the unique government identifier tag that every first world government issues (social security in USA?, IRD number in NZ). Make it opt-in to avoid accidental doubles, done. The checks are basically twice in a lifetime: born, died. Much like getting the pension at 65 or whenever, it just happens.

Compared to welfare where you have to prove all that, and that you had a job, and that you lost it, and that your former employer agrees, and that you're jumping through the right number of hoops at the right time, and that you have xyz family relationships and rent bills and special needs and fucking weekly meetings and receipts and training courses (that aren't real and don't fucking help) and bullshit work programs and .... Crazy.

[Laertes]

Welfare anti-fraud programs are bullshit and everyone knows they're bullshit. The only reason they exist is that working-class right wing people want to have someone to spit upon, like all right-wing people do, and so they demonise the unemployed underclasses.

[Occluded Sun]

The only reason they exist is that working-class right wing people want to have someone to spit upon, like all right-wing people do

Isn't that a little selective? I'm pretty sure that all people enjoy having someone to spit upon.

[erik]

The only reason they exist is that working-class right wing people want to have someone to spit upon, like all right-wing people do

Isn't that a little selective? I'm pretty sure that all people enjoy having someone to spit upon.

Not really. No. I'd say this was an informative insight to your psyche but it's just confirmatory at this point.

Laertes is wrong too (at least wrt the quoted segment), but damn.

[Koumei]

This just in: Occluded Sun is a tossbag. News at seven.

[Occluded Sun]

This just in: people demonstrate the invalidity of the claim that people enjoy spitting on others by rhetorically spitting on the person making the claim.

It would have been incredibly easy NOT to make me right... but you couldn't help yourselves, could you.

[erik]

No, ya fuckwit. It is not spitting on you to say that you believe despicable things, when up and down you keep stating that you believe despicable things.

And even if we did spit on you that still doesn't make you right.

[fectin]

Who will be the one to tell Occluded Sun that basic income is a libertarian proposal?

[Kaelik]

Who will be the one to tell Occluded Sun that basic income is a libertarian proposal?

To be fair, it is a libertarian proposal from the almost vaguely sane kind of libertarians who believe that the government should exist.

Occluded Sun is one of the crazier kinds who think that taxes for police is a moral wrong. (But also a moral right, because it exists and all things that exist are moral rights, except that in the future it totally won't exist and he knows that in advance and so that is why he knows what is moral and we should take his word.)

[Occluded Sun]

No, ya fuckwit. It is not spitting on you to say that you believe despicable things

They're both true and obviously so. Whether they're 'despicable' is irrelevant.

Unless, of course, you attempt a holier-than-thou based on it. And at least you didn't have to make up ideas and attribute them to me - I'll give you that. Of course, that sort of thing demonstrates the original point. People need to beat up on people to the point that they'll make up excuses to do so.

[DSMatticus]

This just in: people demonstrate the invalidity of the claim that people enjoy spitting on others by rhetorically spitting on the person making the claim.

It would have been incredibly easy NOT to make me right... but you couldn't help yourselves, could you.

Is there ever a time on our forums you aren't going to fail miserably at some elementary task of reasoning? Your thesis is that everyone enjoys having someone to spit on, and you are taking as proof the fact that some people are spitting on you. But let me be the first to say I would love for you to fuck off and leave to some place where I cannot spit on you. And I would love it even more if by some miracle you stopped being a dumbass shitbag who so clearly deserved to be spat upon metaphorically and literally. In much the same way I would rather serial killers not be serial killers, and in the absence of serial killers I would not start bitching about how terrible jaywalkers are. We don't hate you because we want someone to hate; we hate you because you are a despicable human being who is worthy of our contempt. And projecting your shitbaggery out onto everyone else in order to justify that shitbaggery to yourself is exactly the sort of reason we (correctly) think you are a despicable scumsucker.

[Username17]

Basic Income is a libertarian proposal created because it would, obviously, require less administration than the hodgepodge of means tested programs we now have and could thus be used to shrink the government by having less bureaucrats. Libertarians live in a fantasy world where there is a giant bureaucracy that handles Welfare disbursement and the government could be meaningfully shrunk by having less administrators in those programs.

Many liberals (for example: Paul Krugman and Mike Conczal) deride the basic income movement on the grounds that the massive government waste it is designed to combat doesn't actually exist. Administrative costs of food stamps and welfare and such are already pretty low and those programs are effective in reducing poverty.

On the other hand, many liberals (including myself) are cautiously optimistic about the proposal on the grounds that once such a program was in place it would be much harder to dismantle the welfare state than it is now. If everyone was getting a basic income check, the political economy of strengthening that support would be much stronger. Right now, congress can seriously cut SNAP funding, and in the last budget cycle totally did - and while it's certainly monstrous to literally take food away from hungry mothers and babies - that didn't cause a popular revolt because impoverished mothers are still a minority that can be attacked by congress with impunity. If instead we were talking about the size of a check that everyone received, you'd have a super majority of people pissed off if congress tried to cut it.

So while Krugman and company are correct that basic income was created by delusional libertarians to combat problems that don't exist, I think it could actually be implemented in a way that would solve problems that do. And I think as soon as the anti-government libertarians who floated the proposal in the first place notice that, they will withdraw their support entirely.

-Username17

[Prak]

Isn't that all we do in anymore anyways?

Fix'd.

The only reason they exist is that working-class right wing people want to have someone to spit upon, like all right-wing people do

Isn't that a little selective? I'm pretty sure that all people enjoy having someone to spit upon.

Not really. No. I'd say this was an informative insight to your psyche but it's just confirmatory at this point.

Laertes is wrong too (at least wrt the quoted segment), but damn.

I don't know about anyone else, but much like DSMatticus said, given that I primarily spit on people who are ignorant and stupid*, I'd actually much prefer not having people to spit on, because it would mean there are fewer stupid and ignorant conservatives religious nuts people.

*shut up, Kaelik, yes I'm stupid too.

Anyway.

Checking Aaron Williams' site today, I found this interesting video.
(comments here)

Obviously, the second comment is correct, the solution is to decouple subsistence from work. The vast majority of work can be done by robots, and even people who like to visit a brick and mortar store could be satisfied with a minimally staffed showroom and a highly sophisticated, very fast, automated order fulfillment system. And the showroom only needs staff because people are animals. There's probably no reason that you can't have robots keeping things in order in the showroom too.

The topic for discussion then, which dovetails with this thread, is how would one go about decoupling those ideas?

[Meikle641]

The topic for discussion then, which dovetails with this thread, is how would one go about decoupling those ideas?

Manna

[erik]

.htm, not .html

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm