So, what do you think about basic income?

[Ikeren]

I've been following the issue for a bit and I'm not sure if it's a pipe-dream or totally viable, though I'd love the latter to be true. Anyone got some compelling arguments for why it can never exist?

[GreatGreyShrike]

I don't think that it'll be possible to sell and promote successfully a complete ideology change/shift that a universal basic income would require for politicians to implement it, for either Canada or the US inside the next 20 years. I am not familiar enough with the internal politics and popular ideologies of other countries to say that with certainty about all countries.

I think some sort of effective basic income would probably be a relatively good thing, especially under current prevailing economic conditions. Fundamentally, it's not hugely different from current graduated tax schemes and social security nets for many cases. However, I just don't think that politicians and the PR people etc. would be able to change public perceptions and opinions in that direction soon enough, even if there was a large enough demographic strongly in favor of the idea to create something approaching a popular mandate (and an absence of that group which would explode about communism and the like and would vote against any political candidate espousing it).

[Laertes]

Prior to the current Conservative government, the UK had something like that. The amount was set too low, but our unemployment and tax laws basically summed to the concept. Sadly it led to the peasantry being better off and not needing to grovel, so it got chucked.

[Omegonthesane]

Prior to the current Conservative government, the UK had something like that. The amount was set too low, but our unemployment and tax laws basically summed to the concept. Sadly it led to the peasantry being better off and not needing to grovel, so it got chucked.

Your reasoning and the effect of what the Tories have managed is correct, but part of me feels compelled to nitpickthat the mechanisms are still present... if only they weren't set to "you starve"... and if only every part of the engine operating them wasn't "secretly" briefed to find any excuse to sentence vulnerable people to death cut off benefits.

[Kaelik]

I'm sorry, anything which only pays money to poor people is by definition not a basic income. The one and entire distinction between basic income and welfare is that rich people get it too. Yes, certainly you might have rich people just deduct the income from their taxes in lieu of receiving it and paying it back, but if even one person making 40,000 a year doesn't receive the benefits then what you actually have is welfare and not a basic income.

Saying how your country sort of kind of had it by not having it at all and instead having a slightly better version of the thing every single developed country in the world has is basically just blowing smoke out of your ass through a convoluted piping system back up your own ass.

[Laertes]

Kaelik: in the UK rich people did specifically deduct it from their taxes, albeit in bullshit small amounts. To my knowledge the only people who didn't were people who were entirely economically inactive (for example children residing with parents or members of monasteries) and people whose income consisted of capital gains rather than income.

Omegonthesane is right though: it is being chucked because the thought of an efficient, functioning state is not something the right want.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik: in the UK rich people did specifically deduct it from their taxes, albeit in bullshit small amounts. To my knowledge the only people who didn't were people who were entirely economically inactive (for example children residing with parents or members of monasteries) and people whose income consisted of capital gains rather than income.

So you saw that part that didn't matter, and ignored the part that did because?

Here is the test. Is there a single person in all of the UK who makes 30,000 pounds? If that person does exist, do they receive the exact same amount as someone who makes nothing, or not? If not, then you don't have a basic income. You have welfare. Everyone has welfare. The fact that you have welfare and tax breaks for less than the amount of the welfare does not changed that it is definitely welfare and not a basic income.

[Laertes]

Ah, got you. In that case no, the UK doesn't have a basic income. In the UK a person pays no income tax at all on the first £10,000, which saves them £2,000 annually. This is the same whether they earn £10,000 or £100,000. A person on benefits gets approximately £7,000 - £14,000 depending on how screwed they get by their local outsourced bureaucrats. This amount isn't the same; which if I understand correctly causes low-paying wages to fall. (Which is a bad thing.)

I'm not an economist by any means, but from what I understand wouldn't a general uptick in wages without a corresponding uptick in scarce goods simply lead to inflation?

Also, sadly not all countries have welfare systems.

[erik]

If people had an uptick in wages I expect they would buy more things and mayhap create more scarcity.

[Prak]

Saying how your country sort of kind of had it by not having it at all and instead having a slightly better version of the thing every single developed country in the world has is basically just blowing smoke out of your ass through a convoluted piping system back up your own ass.

sig'd

[Kaelik]

I'm not an economist by any means, but from what I understand wouldn't a general uptick in wages without a corresponding uptick in scarce goods simply lead to inflation?

No it wouldn't. First of all, there is no such thing as a "general" uptick in wages. All wage increases occur for some people, but not for others. First off because a whole bunch of people just straight up do not make "wages" but still have income and should still be considered in whether you truly have a "general" uptick or not. I guarantee that absolutely nothing about paying minimum wage to moderately poor people more money is going to raise the wages of your doctors, barristers, professors, or anyone at any corporation from middle manager up unless it occurs indirectly through increasing the demand for their services.

Secondly, as stated by erik, it definitely will increased demand for services, because everything that has ever fucking at any time been studied shows over and over again that giving poor people more money increases actual consumer spending on consumer goods by a greater than 1:1 ratio.

That means that any inflationary pressure created is going to be the pushed both against and for by people's responses to increased spending that it 1) probably won't occur, 2) Isn't going to happen "because" of the wage increase in any meaningful sense.

Also, sadly not all countries have welfare systems.

I did say developed for a reason.

[Shatner]

A relevant article.

'The big reason poor people are poor is because they don’t have enough money’, economist Charles Kenny, a fellow at the Center for Global Development, dryly remarked last June. ‘It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem.'

[Stahlseele]

What'd be a nice experiment would be to give every child born after a certain point a bank account and put money into that every month as if they were working a job with average pay. then when they become adults, the payments stop and they get access to it and can use it to move into their first own home, buy their first own car and because of that get a job. or pay for better education themselves so they can get a better job a bit later on.

[Meikle641]

The trick there would be locking parents or guardians out from the money, to prevent any exploitations.

[erik]

Making sure the parents have money and can feed the kid and pay the bills is kinda important too.

Just having trust funds isn't enough. It's better than nothing, but it only gets part of the way there.

[tussock]

There was an experiment in Canada at some point for a UBI in some rural area. It worked really well, people went and quit their shitty low-paying local jobs, got and education, and moved away from the UBI into the cities to earn real money.

The people who were left enjoyed higher wages (on top of the UBI), better health, more life satisfaction and other measures of happiness, and increased tax takes from the booming local economy easily paid for the whole thing. So it was shit-canned, buried under several layers of top secret, and not spoken of for thirty years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Basically, we can measure success in people when they have a certain amount of discretionary income. We like to say that's because they worked hard and got an education and bla bla bla everything that those people share. But it turns out it's the other way around. Having money gets you the things like education and good health and a good job, and when you give poor folk enough money for that, they get it all too.


Politically, it runs against the grain of Protestant mythology, that drudgery is good for the soul, and more ancient ideas about money being bad for people (look at how the rich behave, easier for a camel etc.). Money's the source of everything, but people with more money than you like to imagine they "deserve it", and they own politicians, so the myths live on in our laws.

[Laertes]

I'm not an economist by any means, but from what I understand wouldn't a general uptick in wages without a corresponding uptick in scarce goods simply lead to inflation?

No it wouldn't. First of all, there is no such thing as a "general" uptick in wages. All wage increases occur for some people, but not for others. First off because a whole bunch of people just straight up do not make "wages" but still have income and should still be considered in whether you truly have a "general" uptick or not. I guarantee that absolutely nothing about paying minimum wage to moderately poor people more money is going to raise the wages of your doctors, barristers, professors, or anyone at any corporation from middle manager up unless it occurs indirectly through increasing the demand for their services.

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?

Secondly, as stated by erik, it definitely will increased demand for services, because everything that has ever fucking at any time been studied shows over and over again that giving poor people more money increases actual consumer spending on consumer goods by a greater than 1:1 ratio.

That means that any inflationary pressure created is going to be the pushed both against and for by people's responses to increased spending that it 1) probably won't occur, 2) Isn't going to happen "because" of the wage increase in any meaningful sense.

Higher low-waged income drives aggregate demand, and aggregate demand drives the economy, that's basic Keynesian economics. For any goods where supply can respond in a flexible way that's a good thing. My question was based on those goods which are not easy to increase the supply of; and sadly at least in my town those are the ones which people spend the bulk of their income on.

[momothefiddler]

I am also not an economist, but my understanding is that you only get "just inflation" from "give people money" if it's a multiplicative increase, rather than an additive one. Like, if you give everyone a quarter of the money they have now, the total amount of money will have increased by 25% and everyone will have exactly the same percentage of the total money that they did. So in an ideal(?) economy, that's just inflation of 25% and nothing changes.

If you give everyone £1000, though, some people will have twice as much (in fraction of total money) while others will find their situation hardly changed. My understanding of ideal(?) economies is that in this case you also get inflation of some amount, but people who had a lot before end up with less real money while others get more, and that increased equality is, from what I can tell, a good thing. In terms of housing, for example, if one person has all the money, they buy one of the houses and everyone else is screwed. If everyone has the same amount of money, then the people who get houses get houses, and in your musical houses case, the people who end up without houses can pay to have more built or... something. The more I get into this the less confident I am, so I'm gonna stop now.

[Kaelik]

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. 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. 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. 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.

Higher low-waged income drives aggregate demand, and aggregate demand drives the economy, that's basic Keynesian economics. For any goods where supply can respond in a flexible way that's a good thing. My question was based on those goods which are not easy to increase the supply of; and sadly at least in my town those are the ones which people spend the bulk of their income on.

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.

But still, housing is literally the only good that poor people pay for that isn't nearly perfectly supply elastic, so I have no fucking idea why you keep putting a s at the end of the word good aside from a deliberate desire to lie.

[Stahlseele]

Isn't that the problem in San Francisco right now?
The people working in the silicon valley wanting to live there and paying prices that other people can no longer afford to keep up with?

[Occluded Sun]

The question is always where this 'manna from Heaven' actually comes from. The people in favor of such programs usually seem to be among those who would be given money instead of those who would pay it out.

If it would pay for itself, it's surprising that no one's talked some rich individual - say, Bill Gates - into attempting it in a small poor county somewhere. Similar things have been done on an individual level, where someone agrees to pay back a portion of their future earnings in exchange for educational funding in the present. But those sorts of things usually involve binding contracts, and are rarely attempted at any larger scale.

[Kaelik]

The question is always where this 'manna from Heaven' actually comes from. The people in favor of such programs usually seem to be among those who would be given money instead of those who would pay it out.

Of course you would think that it is "Mana from Heaven" because you are an idiot who thinks taxes are evil.

But obviously, there exist a whole lot of not idiots who can figure this shit out, because we understand that the government already taxes people and then uses that money for stuff, including paying it out to people.

Of course you are wrong that only those greedy poor people support basic income. Basic Income would almost certainly provide less actual money to the people currently on welfare and foodstamps who are also staying in Assisted Housing. Secondly, basic income is super unpopular with most poor people because it is evil bad communist, so all the rural poor who would have the actual most to benefit all oppose it. Thirdly of course, it is a super niche and super extremely left wing position that is not even common knowledge as a possibility. So in fact, most people that propose it in any serious fashion are things like professors, and lawyers, and other people who are definitely not so poor as to actually benefit much from the initial payout, but instead people who believe that all of us will benefit from better economic policies.

[Laertes]

The question is always where this 'manna from Heaven' actually comes from. The people in favor of such programs usually seem to be among those who would be given money instead of those who would pay it out.

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

[fbmf]

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

Says who?

Game N,
fbmf

[...You Lost Me]

Isn't that all we do in these threads anyways?