7 ms·

A New Golden Age Part III: The Basic Income Guarantee

70 points by nkurz 11y ago

jboggan 11y ago
"The last time the economy was in this bad of shape, it took a world war to restore prosperity." Pros and cons of basic income aside, this is likely what we are seeing already. I don't know how else to describe a proxy conflict in Syria with U.S., Russian, Chinese, and Cuban actors. On the main topic of the piece, the danger of inflation is just waved off and the function of creditors ignored. How would say the Chinese government feel about significant inflation that makes our Treasury debt more easily repaid with devalued dollars? These kinds of considerations loop back to the first point.
- Diamons 11y ago
  I've heard this many times before and I've even been taught this in history class. What is the reason for this? The explanation is often that it stimulates the economy, but really, is war effective at fixing the economy because it just acts as a giant reset button? If there's too many workers and not enough job, the easiest way to fix that problem is to kill X% of the population, and what better easier and cleaner way to sell this to the American people than your country is under attack and it needs your sacrifice?
  - derefr 11y ago
    I don't think the deaths are the most important thing; rather, it's the absences: • Presume that a job market contains people with job-skills, and people without (i.e. "lemons"). • Presume that businesses function better when they can select from a talent pool with fewer lemons; and that lemons in a job market create "noise" in the hiring process that cause openings to go unfilled for longer. • Now, presume either a draft (which doesn't care about job-skills, but does care about age, tending to select for younger people with fewer job-skills), or simply a military with lower job-skill requirements for entry than most occupations. Thus, a military on a war footing will selectively withdraw more lemons than non-lemons from the job market, leaving it full of higher-quality candidates, making the businesses in that market more efficient. For this hypothesis to be accurate, the same thing would have to happen if we just gave all the people being sent to war public-sector jobs (or Basic Income) instead. Though that would perhaps work better than a war for stimulating the economy: people remaining in the country would be spreading their demand across the market, rather than consuming goods exclusively from the military's line-of-supply contractors.
    - Retra 11y ago
      The military doesn't have lower skill requirements than the average job. It does have very large and expensive training programs to make up for that.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Which looks the same at the input end of the process - they'll suck up anyone with four limbs and both eyes, regardless of the skills they have prior to enrollment.
    - darkmighty 11y ago
      Attributing all WW economics to HR hiring noise is a bit of a stretch, I think. There are many other factors, from psychological "we must produce maximum to guarantee victory" to huge belic investments leading to advances in key technologies.
- chipsy 11y ago
  In truth, we don't have a very good picture of how to model the inflationary effects of BIG, except by crudely analogizing one demand increase with another. IMHO the main thing to keep in mind is who immediately gets money as a direct consequence of a policy change, what they feel obligated to do with it, and how that might turn into a bottleneck later. Traditionally when money is "pumped into" a economy, it's via lending to banks(producing a "multiplier" effect). That money lands in the hands of the biggest capital-holders first - big businesses, investment firms, etc., so it acts to stimulate supply more than demand. The hope is that firms will see the easy money as a signal to expand their operations and take on bigger projects. If it doesn't work - and efforts like QE have basically stopped working - all you're going to get is greater inequality of wealth, as the money stops being put to use and feeds itself back into the capital markets. And when we stimulate demand in the fashion done in the post-war era, with a huge expansion of government spending, the money is mostly landing on people building war machines and associated technologies. People are being employed and paid, but they're locked into employment of a certain nature which isn't directed at consumers - so more money is chasing a broadly similar basket of goods. The late 60's and 70's saw rapid inflation, and the technical advances and new markets that opened up from that period to today are pretty much all rooted in that early investment in military R&D. On the other hand, when you have money land directly into the hands of consumers, that money is only skewed by cultural values. They could go Kickstart some wacky project. They could push for higher quality goods. They could pay off debts, change residences, and go back to school. Consumers aren't purely profit-seeking or utilitarian - how the macro situation would change is one huge unknown, but the main point of appeal is that it would be a very fluid kind of demand, and if consumers start disliking their ROI in one category, they can smoothly transition to something else - which means the traps and bottlenecks of other policy changes may not apply.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I think an actual war (as opposed to the stuff US is doing in Iraq and Afganistan), in which you and your family could get hurt, does wonders for productivity because it forces people to keep things real. There's less time and will for graft and bullshitting, you need to work because your survival depends on it.
dicroce 11y ago
I don't know enough to form an opinion, but a question comes to mind (actually, same question comes to mind whenever minimum wage increases come up)... What stops everything from simply getting more expensive and offsetting the BIG?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Detrus 11y ago
  I don't know either but it seems like yet another way of doing inflation. You can infuse money various ways and to various sectors of the economy. Quantitative easing, playing with interest rates, funneling 401K into stock indexes gives it to the rich. And prices for what they buy or where they live go up. The expectation is more money moves around, doing something useful. BIG should do the same for consumer goods and poor areas, increasing prices and maybe increasing economic activity.
- mrfusion 11y ago
  Here ya go https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7 https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
  - 0x49 11y ago
    I read the article and i just dont agree on some points. One point is that basic income would mean an increase in new businesses forming. The problem is that while yes, more people will have the ability to start a business. The increase burdon of taxes and most likely, regulations that go along with it, will make it difficult to move from the startup phase to actually running a profitable company. Countries like denmark and sweden are great examples of this in action: small companies are scarce,the majority of investors avoid them, and most people either work for the government or a large company.
    - BBlarat 11y ago
      Do you have any links to back up your claim about sweden and denmark? I live and work in Sweden and my view is that there is great many small companies here.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
This article is internally contradictory. First, the article claims consumption will go up: No longer will poor Americans have to choose between heating oil and food, between medicine and shoes for their children. Then it claims investment will go up: Also, demand increases — giving firms reason to expand production and hire new workers. Firms may have reason to expand production, but the resources needed to expand production are instead being consumed. Rather than building a factory, workers are making shoes for poor children. (At least the ones who didn't tell their boss to "take this job and shove it" - a direct quote from the article. That's just a deadweight loss the article ignores for no apparent reason.) I really wish someone would write an article about BI that was more than just clueless pop Keynesianism - "Demand Good, Investment Bad, Free Lunch for All."
- kaonashi 11y ago
  You're assuming the economy is running at full capacity.
  - tcbawo 11y ago
    It would be interesting if basic income were tied to some combination of the Gini index and inflation rate. It would serve as a nice automatic offset to deflation, then fade away as the economy took off and wages increased.
    - ItsDeathball 11y ago
      What I'd like to see - and never see suggested in these discussions - is starting with a revenue-neutral carbon tax to fund a BIG. Since the tax would internalize the externalities of pollution and climate change, the government could cut subsidies and tax breaks for energy production and efficiency, and throw those savings into BIG as well. Anyone willing to be a below-average greenhouse gas emitter comes out on top, while anyone who owns a private jet is doing well enough not to care.
      - cmacpher 11y ago
gortok 11y ago
Some libertarians support the Basic Income Guarantee only if our only choice is between our current system and abolishing it for the Basic Income Guarantee. I can't speak for all libertarianism, but generally speaking libertarians do not support federal government welfare systems, for the following reasons: - They usurp the role of private welfare, or even local community run welfare, where you know who the money is going to and whether or not they're abusing it - "Top down" social programs only last as long as you have more producing than non-producing (or in our case, as long as you can borrow money to pay for it). They lead to financial ruin and in the long run will cause disaster for the generation holding the bag. - They increase the amount of force and coercion; suddenly using welfare as a weapon, the left can increase the size of government, the right can increase the size of the military (I do not differentiate between Veterans welfare from the VA or civilian welfare). - They take money from those that produce and give it to those that do not And I haven't even gotten into the economic issues with a basic income guarantee. You notice that whenever the government gets involved in an industry, those costs immediately go up? The government literally gives away money every year (and even guarantees loans without even asking what your loan is for), and the cost of college keeps rising and rising. This is classic inflation. What do you think will happen to the cost of goods if we are suddenly printing money simply to give to every last human being on this continent? If you don't expect prices to rise, you haven't been paying attention to either healthcare or education.
- vacri 11y ago
  Libertarianism massively overstates private welfare. Massively. We've already seen society that only had private welfare - look to our societies before public welfare existed, and you'll see that private welfare was basically a toy. It doesn't even pass the sniff test; the idea that all these people whining about having to give up their money to other people would start giving up their money to other people if it was 'voluntary'? And people actually get sucked in by this argument?
  - jleader 11y ago
    Keep in mind that under our current system, to a large extent giving up your money voluntarily to other people (charitable donations) gets you an exemption from giving up your money involuntarily (taxes). So if they're not giving it to charity to avoid paying the taxes they whine about, why should we believe that they'll give it to charity if we get rid of taxation?
cjalmeida 11y ago
Brazil has being doing something similar for almost a decade. It's by far the most efficient poverty reduction program in place.
- dnautics 11y ago
  And now Brazil has twice bad crippling inflation that threatens a drastic revaluation of the currency (the first time they even had to rename their currency the "real" - who knows what's next) which threatens to retrace much of the progress made in reducing poverty. Who knows how much of that would have happened anyway due to economic liberalization and technological improvement?
  - ufo 11y ago
    I think its too harsh to blame fBolsa Família for the current state of the Brazilian economy. Its share of the budget is not even that big in the grand scheme of things. For example, subsidized loans the government/BNDES gives to large business (who coincidentally happen to be campaign contributors) are responsible for a bigger hole in the budget than the bolsa família. Also, the reason we had to rename the currency last time was because Brazil had suffered from hyperinflation for so many decades that even after the government stopped printing money prices kept goingup out of sheer inertia. To give an idea, most supermarkets hired a person that would go around the aisles restickering things and mindlessly bumping prices by 2% every day. Nowadays the government again has gone back to the times of a screwed up monetary policy but we are still far away from hyperinflation.
- 0x49 11y ago
  I went to brazil last year and i saw some of the poorest people on my entire life. Brazil isnt a good example of this idea working...
  - cmacpher 11y ago
    It was MUCH worse before. a 27% reduction in poverty is pretty impressive in 4 years
judah 11y ago
The article suggests that the Bible commands basic income and that economic conservatives like the idea. As a lifelong student of the Bible and as an economic conservative of 20 years, I can say with certainty that this premise of the article is faulty. Very early on in the Biblical text is the divine command to work and provide through labor. Basic income undermines and ultimately aims to eliminate this divine directive. Among economic conservatives, we generally see Basic Income as a fool's errand and a pipe dream pushed by idealistic, Utopian thought disconnected from real world economics. We see Basic Income as a foolish idea with disastrous implications for the economy if attempted.
- beatpanda 11y ago
  >with disastrous implications for the economy if attempted. Oh? How would you characterize the results of implementing conservative economic ideas, as we've been doing in the US since the late 70s?
  - beatpanda 11y ago
    Man, you all get in your feelings over nothing. That was a serious question.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  It's not so much a command as a curse: 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
  - dhd415 11y ago
    It's pretty widely held among both Jewish and Christian Biblical commentators that work existed before the curse per Gen 1:28. The curse just made work more difficult and unpleasant.
theworstshill 11y ago
A New Golden Age won't come from basic income, it can only come from cheap, abundant energy. I won't dig out the sources atm, but its pretty obvious that coal, and later oil drove the last two centuries of rapid progress. Unless another abundant and cheaper source of energy is found, the world economy is in for a slowdown.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  We have one. The only thing that stands between it and us is irrational fears of the public. I'm talking about nuclear (fission) power, obviously. It's more than enough to keep us up and running until we crack fusion.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    There's also Methane Hydrate. Sure its a CO2 producer; but it is easily drilled for and delivered to coastal cities, which is where most of the (US) population lives anyway.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Isn't that the thing we could easily cook the planet with if we released it by accident?
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I don't know about that scenario. Seems unlikely - the bottom of the ocean is cold; Methane Hydrate is locked in ice nodules under the ocean floor. Warming it slightly will release it as gas - making free natural gas wells. I guess its a question of, is there oxygen down there, that could cause a fire if released? Thus creating a runaway reaction. Could be. If that were true, I'd suppose there would be no more deposits, as Earth is hit by meteors regularly and they would pierce/heat the deposits. So history/geology seems to say No there's not a problem. Anyway, the Japanese already have test wells. They're ocean-locked and have no native fuel sources. So they're extremely interested in harvesting fuel from the sea.
tolmasky 11y ago
Like most basic income proponents, this article conveniently forgets the actual problem with basic income: it hurts immigration. Granted, with the amount of people against immigration maybe it would actually help these arguments, but the truth is that such a plan can be potentially devastating to the long term health of the economy (if you know, these dreams of the end of scarcity don't pan out). The basic problem here is that these plans mis-consider the US as an isolated economy. If you have basic income, what is the policy on immigrants? The options appear to be: 1. Open immigration and same benefits to everyone. Maybe you can argue that we can afford basic income for current US citizens, I think it would be a stretch for anyone to argue that we could afford it for anyone that comes into our borders, and thus... 2. Get even more hard line against immigration. America is already pretty anti-immigration, just wait how opinions turn when anyone inside gets a guaranteed income. As usual, anti-immigration laws will hurt the next round of brilliant foreigners from coming to the US and bringing their great ideas and prosperity here. Its already the case that we're increasingly lending foreigners our education system and then not letting them stay and thus exporting that knowledge and prosperity. 3. Make basic income only available to US citizens. Congratulations, we have now fully devolved into a classist society, where an 18 year old that wants to "figure things out" will be granted a monthly salary, but an immigrant who has 3 kids won't. To make matters worse, they probably WILL pay taxes on their income that will go for said basic income. Arguably we have this partially now, but since its services its not as unfair as giving a check to someone by birthright while the other person has to labor. For all the talk of automation the reality on the streets today is that immigrants largely do our back braking labor, and if you now "buy out" all Americans from menial jobs, you are cementing that these tasks are for outsiders. Milton Friedman put it best: you can't have open immigration and a welfare state. We already see the effects of our current system hurting immigration. These proposals always have the ring of "post history" to them: we've figured out supply, now its time to just find out how to split up the goods. I think they greatly underestimate that the world economy is still not figured out and we could soon find the US behind other states.
- Retra 11y ago
  "Make basic income only available to US citizens. Congratulations, we have now fully devolved into a classist society" Do you honestly think that this is a fair description of the consequences of that course of action? There are plenty of things only available to US citizens. Voting. Running for office. Any kind of federal assistance. Military enrollment. Diplomatic protections. I really don't see how this option is anything different from what we already have. It would be federal assistance, after all, and non-citizens already don't get that.
agumonkey 11y ago
Reading the title I had a vision (sorry no grandiose talk here) of homeless free cities. Just being able to afford the slightest amount of private shelter, hygiene and nutrition.
tghw 11y ago
"Once more of us are familiar with it, the Basic Income Guarantee should be an easy sell politically. It gives money to poor people, reduces taxes for rich people..." I don't have my work from the last time I ran the numbers, but I recall that the break-even point on increased taxes vs. guaranteed income was at about $70,000. This didn't take into account the potential of eliminating social programs, but even without those, a BIG would require tax increases on the order of doubling the US federal government revenue. While I like the concept, I don't think you can sell it this way.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  Also you'd have to get over the hurdle of people calling it communism XD That would be very tough.
tuxidomasx 11y ago
I think it would be awesome for people to be able to chill out and not work for a couple of years while they figure out their next steps in life, without going broke and/or racking up debt.
- stvswn 11y ago
  Can we all do that? Wouldn't that be great -- everyone just does a collective 3 year chill-out?
not-humanist 11y ago
Two main issues with Basic Guaranteed Income: 1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die. 2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape.
- Redoubts 11y ago
  > I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die. I imagine that sentiment is rather uncommon.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    I dunno, his dog is pretty amazing.
- pikzen 11y ago
  What the flying fuck >1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die. If you thought the trolley problem was a nice ehtics question, that right there is pure neglect for the value of human life. Can't do anything about that for you mate. >2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape. The term "basic" income is stupid, and should not be used. What is basic is being able to live in reasonable conditions. As it stands, the only way to do that reliably right now is to have a guaranteed income. Sex is not necessary for you to survive. And contrary to what you might think, no, basic income is not stealing. Taxes are not stealing. That's part of living in a society. If you wish to not have things stolen from you, I highly recommend going to live in a remote part of the world, where noone will prevent you from doing your job. Of course, your job is probably only possible because of the whole framework that your society has put into place.
drblast 11y ago
This might be politically impossible because of my mom: Mom: "The democrats are taking away Bush's tax credits. They're a bunch of idiots. It's my money, not the government's." Me: "Yeah, I think it would be great if we established a basic guaranteed income." Mom: "But that's socialism."
deleted 11y ago
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kaonashi 11y ago
Why not bring back the WPA? The program was enormously successful and was only disbanded due to the need to focus on the WW2 effort.

70 points by nkurz 11y ago

"The last time the economy was in this bad of shape, it took a world war to restore prosperity." Pros and cons of basic income aside, this is likely what we are seeing already. I don't know how else to describe a proxy conflict in Syria with U.S., Russian, Chinese, and Cuban actors. On the main topic of the piece, the danger of inflation is just waved off and the function of creditors ignored. How would say the Chinese government feel about significant inflation that makes our Treasury debt more easily repaid with devalued dollars? These kinds of considerations loop back to the first point.

Diamons 11y ago
I've heard this many times before and I've even been taught this in history class. What is the reason for this? The explanation is often that it stimulates the economy, but really, is war effective at fixing the economy because it just acts as a giant reset button? If there's too many workers and not enough job, the easiest way to fix that problem is to kill X% of the population, and what better easier and cleaner way to sell this to the American people than your country is under attack and it needs your sacrifice?
- derefr 11y ago
  I don't think the deaths are the most important thing; rather, it's the absences: • Presume that a job market contains people with job-skills, and people without (i.e. "lemons"). • Presume that businesses function better when they can select from a talent pool with fewer lemons; and that lemons in a job market create "noise" in the hiring process that cause openings to go unfilled for longer. • Now, presume either a draft (which doesn't care about job-skills, but does care about age, tending to select for younger people with fewer job-skills), or simply a military with lower job-skill requirements for entry than most occupations. Thus, a military on a war footing will selectively withdraw more lemons than non-lemons from the job market, leaving it full of higher-quality candidates, making the businesses in that market more efficient. For this hypothesis to be accurate, the same thing would have to happen if we just gave all the people being sent to war public-sector jobs (or Basic Income) instead. Though that would perhaps work better than a war for stimulating the economy: people remaining in the country would be spreading their demand across the market, rather than consuming goods exclusively from the military's line-of-supply contractors.
  - Retra 11y ago
    The military doesn't have lower skill requirements than the average job. It does have very large and expensive training programs to make up for that.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Which looks the same at the input end of the process - they'll suck up anyone with four limbs and both eyes, regardless of the skills they have prior to enrollment.
  - darkmighty 11y ago
    Attributing all WW economics to HR hiring noise is a bit of a stretch, I think. There are many other factors, from psychological "we must produce maximum to guarantee victory" to huge belic investments leading to advances in key technologies.
chipsy 11y ago
In truth, we don't have a very good picture of how to model the inflationary effects of BIG, except by crudely analogizing one demand increase with another. IMHO the main thing to keep in mind is who immediately gets money as a direct consequence of a policy change, what they feel obligated to do with it, and how that might turn into a bottleneck later. Traditionally when money is "pumped into" a economy, it's via lending to banks(producing a "multiplier" effect). That money lands in the hands of the biggest capital-holders first - big businesses, investment firms, etc., so it acts to stimulate supply more than demand. The hope is that firms will see the easy money as a signal to expand their operations and take on bigger projects. If it doesn't work - and efforts like QE have basically stopped working - all you're going to get is greater inequality of wealth, as the money stops being put to use and feeds itself back into the capital markets. And when we stimulate demand in the fashion done in the post-war era, with a huge expansion of government spending, the money is mostly landing on people building war machines and associated technologies. People are being employed and paid, but they're locked into employment of a certain nature which isn't directed at consumers - so more money is chasing a broadly similar basket of goods. The late 60's and 70's saw rapid inflation, and the technical advances and new markets that opened up from that period to today are pretty much all rooted in that early investment in military R&D. On the other hand, when you have money land directly into the hands of consumers, that money is only skewed by cultural values. They could go Kickstart some wacky project. They could push for higher quality goods. They could pay off debts, change residences, and go back to school. Consumers aren't purely profit-seeking or utilitarian - how the macro situation would change is one huge unknown, but the main point of appeal is that it would be a very fluid kind of demand, and if consumers start disliking their ROI in one category, they can smoothly transition to something else - which means the traps and bottlenecks of other policy changes may not apply.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I think an actual war (as opposed to the stuff US is doing in Iraq and Afganistan), in which you and your family could get hurt, does wonders for productivity because it forces people to keep things real. There's less time and will for graft and bullshitting, you need to work because your survival depends on it.

dicroce 11y ago

I don't know enough to form an opinion, but a question comes to mind (actually, same question comes to mind whenever minimum wage increases come up)... What stops everything from simply getting more expensive and offsetting the BIG?

deleted 11y ago
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Detrus 11y ago
I don't know either but it seems like yet another way of doing inflation. You can infuse money various ways and to various sectors of the economy. Quantitative easing, playing with interest rates, funneling 401K into stock indexes gives it to the rich. And prices for what they buy or where they live go up. The expectation is more money moves around, doing something useful. BIG should do the same for consumer goods and poor areas, increasing prices and maybe increasing economic activity.
mrfusion 11y ago
Here ya go https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7 https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
- 0x49 11y ago
  I read the article and i just dont agree on some points. One point is that basic income would mean an increase in new businesses forming. The problem is that while yes, more people will have the ability to start a business. The increase burdon of taxes and most likely, regulations that go along with it, will make it difficult to move from the startup phase to actually running a profitable company. Countries like denmark and sweden are great examples of this in action: small companies are scarce,the majority of investors avoid them, and most people either work for the government or a large company.
  - BBlarat 11y ago
    Do you have any links to back up your claim about sweden and denmark? I live and work in Sweden and my view is that there is great many small companies here.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

This article is internally contradictory. First, the article claims consumption will go up: No longer will poor Americans have to choose between heating oil and food, between medicine and shoes for their children. Then it claims investment will go up: Also, demand increases — giving firms reason to expand production and hire new workers. Firms may have reason to expand production, but the resources needed to expand production are instead being consumed. Rather than building a factory, workers are making shoes for poor children. (At least the ones who didn't tell their boss to "take this job and shove it" - a direct quote from the article. That's just a deadweight loss the article ignores for no apparent reason.) I really wish someone would write an article about BI that was more than just clueless pop Keynesianism - "Demand Good, Investment Bad, Free Lunch for All."

kaonashi 11y ago
You're assuming the economy is running at full capacity.
- tcbawo 11y ago
  It would be interesting if basic income were tied to some combination of the Gini index and inflation rate. It would serve as a nice automatic offset to deflation, then fade away as the economy took off and wages increased.
  - ItsDeathball 11y ago
    What I'd like to see - and never see suggested in these discussions - is starting with a revenue-neutral carbon tax to fund a BIG. Since the tax would internalize the externalities of pollution and climate change, the government could cut subsidies and tax breaks for energy production and efficiency, and throw those savings into BIG as well. Anyone willing to be a below-average greenhouse gas emitter comes out on top, while anyone who owns a private jet is doing well enough not to care.
    - cmacpher 11y ago

gortok 11y ago

Some libertarians support the Basic Income Guarantee only if our only choice is between our current system and abolishing it for the Basic Income Guarantee. I can't speak for all libertarianism, but generally speaking libertarians do not support federal government welfare systems, for the following reasons: - They usurp the role of private welfare, or even local community run welfare, where you know who the money is going to and whether or not they're abusing it - "Top down" social programs only last as long as you have more producing than non-producing (or in our case, as long as you can borrow money to pay for it). They lead to financial ruin and in the long run will cause disaster for the generation holding the bag. - They increase the amount of force and coercion; suddenly using welfare as a weapon, the left can increase the size of government, the right can increase the size of the military (I do not differentiate between Veterans welfare from the VA or civilian welfare). - They take money from those that produce and give it to those that do not And I haven't even gotten into the economic issues with a basic income guarantee. You notice that whenever the government gets involved in an industry, those costs immediately go up? The government literally gives away money every year (and even guarantees loans without even asking what your loan is for), and the cost of college keeps rising and rising. This is classic inflation. What do you think will happen to the cost of goods if we are suddenly printing money simply to give to every last human being on this continent? If you don't expect prices to rise, you haven't been paying attention to either healthcare or education.

vacri 11y ago
Libertarianism massively overstates private welfare. Massively. We've already seen society that only had private welfare - look to our societies before public welfare existed, and you'll see that private welfare was basically a toy. It doesn't even pass the sniff test; the idea that all these people whining about having to give up their money to other people would start giving up their money to other people if it was 'voluntary'? And people actually get sucked in by this argument?
- jleader 11y ago
  Keep in mind that under our current system, to a large extent giving up your money voluntarily to other people (charitable donations) gets you an exemption from giving up your money involuntarily (taxes). So if they're not giving it to charity to avoid paying the taxes they whine about, why should we believe that they'll give it to charity if we get rid of taxation?

cjalmeida 11y ago

Brazil has being doing something similar for almost a decade. It's by far the most efficient poverty reduction program in place.

dnautics 11y ago
And now Brazil has twice bad crippling inflation that threatens a drastic revaluation of the currency (the first time they even had to rename their currency the "real" - who knows what's next) which threatens to retrace much of the progress made in reducing poverty. Who knows how much of that would have happened anyway due to economic liberalization and technological improvement?
- ufo 11y ago
  I think its too harsh to blame fBolsa Família for the current state of the Brazilian economy. Its share of the budget is not even that big in the grand scheme of things. For example, subsidized loans the government/BNDES gives to large business (who coincidentally happen to be campaign contributors) are responsible for a bigger hole in the budget than the bolsa família. Also, the reason we had to rename the currency last time was because Brazil had suffered from hyperinflation for so many decades that even after the government stopped printing money prices kept goingup out of sheer inertia. To give an idea, most supermarkets hired a person that would go around the aisles restickering things and mindlessly bumping prices by 2% every day. Nowadays the government again has gone back to the times of a screwed up monetary policy but we are still far away from hyperinflation.
0x49 11y ago
I went to brazil last year and i saw some of the poorest people on my entire life. Brazil isnt a good example of this idea working...
- cmacpher 11y ago
  It was MUCH worse before. a 27% reduction in poverty is pretty impressive in 4 years

judah 11y ago

The article suggests that the Bible commands basic income and that economic conservatives like the idea. As a lifelong student of the Bible and as an economic conservative of 20 years, I can say with certainty that this premise of the article is faulty. Very early on in the Biblical text is the divine command to work and provide through labor. Basic income undermines and ultimately aims to eliminate this divine directive. Among economic conservatives, we generally see Basic Income as a fool's errand and a pipe dream pushed by idealistic, Utopian thought disconnected from real world economics. We see Basic Income as a foolish idea with disastrous implications for the economy if attempted.

beatpanda 11y ago
>with disastrous implications for the economy if attempted. Oh? How would you characterize the results of implementing conservative economic ideas, as we've been doing in the US since the late 70s?
- beatpanda 11y ago
  Man, you all get in your feelings over nothing. That was a serious question.
bradleyjg 11y ago
It's not so much a command as a curse: 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
- dhd415 11y ago
  It's pretty widely held among both Jewish and Christian Biblical commentators that work existed before the curse per Gen 1:28. The curse just made work more difficult and unpleasant.

theworstshill 11y ago

A New Golden Age won't come from basic income, it can only come from cheap, abundant energy. I won't dig out the sources atm, but its pretty obvious that coal, and later oil drove the last two centuries of rapid progress. Unless another abundant and cheaper source of energy is found, the world economy is in for a slowdown.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
We have one. The only thing that stands between it and us is irrational fears of the public. I'm talking about nuclear (fission) power, obviously. It's more than enough to keep us up and running until we crack fusion.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  There's also Methane Hydrate. Sure its a CO2 producer; but it is easily drilled for and delivered to coastal cities, which is where most of the (US) population lives anyway.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Isn't that the thing we could easily cook the planet with if we released it by accident?
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      I don't know about that scenario. Seems unlikely - the bottom of the ocean is cold; Methane Hydrate is locked in ice nodules under the ocean floor. Warming it slightly will release it as gas - making free natural gas wells. I guess its a question of, is there oxygen down there, that could cause a fire if released? Thus creating a runaway reaction. Could be. If that were true, I'd suppose there would be no more deposits, as Earth is hit by meteors regularly and they would pierce/heat the deposits. So history/geology seems to say No there's not a problem. Anyway, the Japanese already have test wells. They're ocean-locked and have no native fuel sources. So they're extremely interested in harvesting fuel from the sea.

tolmasky 11y ago

Like most basic income proponents, this article conveniently forgets the actual problem with basic income: it hurts immigration. Granted, with the amount of people against immigration maybe it would actually help these arguments, but the truth is that such a plan can be potentially devastating to the long term health of the economy (if you know, these dreams of the end of scarcity don't pan out). The basic problem here is that these plans mis-consider the US as an isolated economy. If you have basic income, what is the policy on immigrants? The options appear to be: 1. Open immigration and same benefits to everyone. Maybe you can argue that we can afford basic income for current US citizens, I think it would be a stretch for anyone to argue that we could afford it for anyone that comes into our borders, and thus... 2. Get even more hard line against immigration. America is already pretty anti-immigration, just wait how opinions turn when anyone inside gets a guaranteed income. As usual, anti-immigration laws will hurt the next round of brilliant foreigners from coming to the US and bringing their great ideas and prosperity here. Its already the case that we're increasingly lending foreigners our education system and then not letting them stay and thus exporting that knowledge and prosperity. 3. Make basic income only available to US citizens. Congratulations, we have now fully devolved into a classist society, where an 18 year old that wants to "figure things out" will be granted a monthly salary, but an immigrant who has 3 kids won't. To make matters worse, they probably WILL pay taxes on their income that will go for said basic income. Arguably we have this partially now, but since its services its not as unfair as giving a check to someone by birthright while the other person has to labor. For all the talk of automation the reality on the streets today is that immigrants largely do our back braking labor, and if you now "buy out" all Americans from menial jobs, you are cementing that these tasks are for outsiders. Milton Friedman put it best: you can't have open immigration and a welfare state. We already see the effects of our current system hurting immigration. These proposals always have the ring of "post history" to them: we've figured out supply, now its time to just find out how to split up the goods. I think they greatly underestimate that the world economy is still not figured out and we could soon find the US behind other states.

Retra 11y ago
"Make basic income only available to US citizens. Congratulations, we have now fully devolved into a classist society" Do you honestly think that this is a fair description of the consequences of that course of action? There are plenty of things only available to US citizens. Voting. Running for office. Any kind of federal assistance. Military enrollment. Diplomatic protections. I really don't see how this option is anything different from what we already have. It would be federal assistance, after all, and non-citizens already don't get that.

agumonkey 11y ago

Reading the title I had a vision (sorry no grandiose talk here) of homeless free cities. Just being able to afford the slightest amount of private shelter, hygiene and nutrition.

tghw 11y ago

"Once more of us are familiar with it, the Basic Income Guarantee should be an easy sell politically. It gives money to poor people, reduces taxes for rich people..." I don't have my work from the last time I ran the numbers, but I recall that the break-even point on increased taxes vs. guaranteed income was at about $70,000. This didn't take into account the potential of eliminating social programs, but even without those, a BIG would require tax increases on the order of doubling the US federal government revenue. While I like the concept, I don't think you can sell it this way.

bitJericho 11y ago
Also you'd have to get over the hurdle of people calling it communism XD That would be very tough.

tuxidomasx 11y ago

I think it would be awesome for people to be able to chill out and not work for a couple of years while they figure out their next steps in life, without going broke and/or racking up debt.

stvswn 11y ago
Can we all do that? Wouldn't that be great -- everyone just does a collective 3 year chill-out?

not-humanist 11y ago

Two main issues with Basic Guaranteed Income: 1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die. 2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape.

Redoubts 11y ago
> I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die. I imagine that sentiment is rather uncommon.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  I dunno, his dog is pretty amazing.
pikzen 11y ago
What the flying fuck >1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die. If you thought the trolley problem was a nice ehtics question, that right there is pure neglect for the value of human life. Can't do anything about that for you mate. >2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape. The term "basic" income is stupid, and should not be used. What is basic is being able to live in reasonable conditions. As it stands, the only way to do that reliably right now is to have a guaranteed income. Sex is not necessary for you to survive. And contrary to what you might think, no, basic income is not stealing. Taxes are not stealing. That's part of living in a society. If you wish to not have things stolen from you, I highly recommend going to live in a remote part of the world, where noone will prevent you from doing your job. Of course, your job is probably only possible because of the whole framework that your society has put into place.

drblast 11y ago

This might be politically impossible because of my mom: Mom: "The democrats are taking away Bush's tax credits. They're a bunch of idiots. It's my money, not the government's." Me: "Yeah, I think it would be great if we established a basic guaranteed income." Mom: "But that's socialism."

deleted 11y ago

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kaonashi 11y ago

Why not bring back the WPA? The program was enormously successful and was only disbanded due to the need to focus on the WW2 effort.