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Sorry, but I don't feel like paying more in taxes so that people can "create art" and take care of their own families. When did it become my responsibility to w

• damon_c 11y ago
  You could look at the idea of people creating art, new business, making movies as something that you and your family could benefit from. Art, one could argue, is the whole point isn't it? Otherwise, what else do we as a species leave behind?
  • strictnein 11y ago
    People have things called hobbies. I have several, but I don't expect to be paid for them. I do them during my free time.
• themartorana 11y ago
  Answers like this consider a society of one (or one plus family) and doesn't comprehend how the health and well being of a society directly correlates to the health and well being of the one. But put that aside for a second. You also get this basic income, which is basically just printed money, so your taxes aren't helping someone else create art with UBI (but they sure are now, in actual reality). Your moral outrage about someone "creating art" as though it's less hard than your job is laughable, and oh by the way, your reward is income far above UBI, so you exist on a different financial plane for your hard work anyway. But lower crime and happier people and less burden on courts and properly fed kids that lead to a better educated generation and less terrible schools in inner cities and every other benefit you receive from basic income and not one ounce of your "hard work" is just a step too far for you?
  • strictnein 11y ago
    So we're just printing all this money? Wow. I can't see anything wrong with that. If it's that easy, let's start at $1 million a person per month. We'll all be rich!
  • aklemm 11y ago
    An excellent answer. It's alarming how easy it is for young, childless, well-off people to simply not have any capacity to understand these points. I say that having been such a person, so it really is sad how long it can take to learn such lessons!
    • LyndsySimon 11y ago
      It seems like you're projecting your own bias onto those who disagree with you. What makes you think the GP is young, childless, and well-off? I oppose this, and I certainly don't fit your preconception.
      • aklemm 11y ago
        You'd be right if I said all young people feel that way and all parents above a certain age felt my way. But I didn't say that, and I don't believe that. To rephrase: it is alarming the rate at which young, childless, and well-off do not support family-centric public policy. Do you make a distinction between "projecting" and simply having an opinion? I do.
        • LyndsySimon 11y ago
          You said "It's alarming how easy it is for <group>" - that does not imply that you are alarmed at the rate at which something occurs, but that you believe that the condition is an attribute of group membership. My sincere apologies if I've misread your intent, but it certainly seems to me that you've taken a viewpoint with which you don't identify, and assigned it to a group with which you also don't identify. If you have any evidence that young, childless, well-off people tend to hold these beliefs, I'd love to see it.
• madengr 11y ago
  Yep, a universal basic income guaranteed by government (using violence at gunpoint to redistribute other people's money). The socialists leave out the part in brackets.
  • overgard 11y ago
    The government already uses implied violence at gunpoint to redistribute money, socialist or otherwise. The question is, does that terrifying government power mean that money goes to the rich banker, or the struggling clerk?
  • aninhumer 11y ago
    As opposed to a property system guaranteed by government (using violence at gunpoint to enforce distribution of resources according to particular rules). The libertarians leave out the part in brackets.
• jayd16 11y ago
  Why pay for roads other people use or public education or the fire department? There are plenty of things you're not using right now that are good ideas.
  • strictnein 11y ago
    That's not what's being discussed here at all, nor did I say I don't want to pay taxes. I said I don't see the moral good in paying more in taxes so that others can work less and avoid "menial" jobs.
• SolarNet 11y ago
  Basic income creates a more robust consumer base with fewer workers, allowing you to get better jobs from your willingness to work. You won't have to work harder, your wages will go up because you are willing to work at all. Also you would likely pay the same taxes. Remember the system gives you (and bill gates) money too. But still taxes on income. If you're making over 150k, then yea maybe you might pay more for this system. On the other hand you already control more resources than 99% of the people in the world.
• overgard 11y ago
  Your premise relies on the idea that without the (rather severe) consequence of becoming homeless, people will not be inclined to work. I just don't buy it. I don't think that if you remove the draconian consequences of not working a shitty job, that people will suddenly just sit at home and watch jeopardy all day. And the people that would sit at home watching jeopardy all day regardless -- would you really want to employ them? This probably won't be a well received idea, but not every person is actually economically useful, at least not in the current system. Unemployment is high because to a certain extent, there's probably 5-10% of the population that most companies look at and go "yeah, we probably don't need that". I'm not saying scarcity no longer exists, but the US government literally sets excess grain on fire to subsidize farmers. When people starve to death, its not because we don't have enough food, it's because the food doesn't make it to the people that need it. Our biggest societal health problem is that people are getting too fat. The whole "you need to work for the food you eat" system is based on a context that hasn't existed in first world countries for quite a while.
• svalorzen 11y ago
  > Taking care of my family involves me working hard, so why are you willing to make me work harder so that others can work less? Nobody would make you do anything. You'd make exactly the same as other people. If taking care of your family for you means giving a certain standard of living, you'd certainly get a higher standard of living since you are working and getting more money than other people. Otherwise, if you're content with the bottom line you can just stop working and coast along. > Taking more money from me to pay you to take care of your family, on the other hand, is morally wrong. Can you stop thinking in terms of money for just one second? In the Middle Ages there were around 80-90% farmers in order to feed everyone. Now we need less than 5%. Sure, now there are new jobs, like making phones, travel, and millions of other things. But the other things nobody needs to be alive. Thus, why would we not take advantage from this huge technological advance by giving everyone enough money to eat, since making food is now so incredibly cheap? And if people stop working because of that, well, maybe they don't give enough shits about smartphones and they were there just to make a perverse economy to work. It's not about those things. It's about food and a roof - both things we can make in an incredibly cheap and automated way (we can 3d print houses, would you have ever believed it??).
• saulrh 11y ago
  > When did it become my responsibility to work harder so that they can do that? That's the thing - it isn't and won't be. Basic Income is designed for, and in fact only works in, civilizations with enough excess productivity that they don't have to have their entire population working their assess off to maintain homeostasis and well-being. The USA is just about to get there. Some of the Nordic countries were there probably five or six years ago. There's a reason they're implementing it before us. BI isn't "so that people can sit on their couches and do nothing all day while I support them". BI is so that people aren't required to have jobs to survive. Because when your civilization has sufficiently efficient per-person production, you end up with an issue where you're not just overprovisioned, but so overprovisioned that companies must start laying off large portions of the population to avoid wasting money hiring uselessly overproductive employees. At which point you end up with 30% or 60% unemployment and you have to choose between letting a third of your population starve or implementing something like BI. That's the situation. BI isn't here to make it your responsibility to support everybody. BI is here because it's become so easy for people to support others that the economy, which up until now has assumed that there'll never be enough support to go around, has fallen apart. It's set up so that you can choose to support others instead of taking care of your family, and still have everything make sense.
  • ikeboy 11y ago
    The case needs to made that we're at this stage. And high unemployment is a result of the financial crisis, not over production.
    • AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      There is no "this stage" -- a basic income provides a smaller disincentive to work than providing low income people with the same amount in mean-tested welfare programs, because you don't lose the basic income when you get a job. If you're in a society that can afford welfare programs at all then it can afford the equivalent basic income.
      • ikeboy 11y ago
• js8 11y ago
  Why it would be your responsibility to work harder? In fact, you could also decide to work less. Your comment is based on misunderstanding of what actually is money. Money is just a claim for some commodity, like resources or work; it's not a commodity in itself. From microeconomic perspective it is interchangeable, but not from the macroeconomic one. In fact, under UBI, someone may decide to pay you more money exactly because you're willing to work hard. If you really have the choice of not working, you will have to be more incentivized (with money) to actually work. In reality, UBI is just a different money redistribution scheme (compared to capital investment), nothing changes much for people who work. It won't however make the people who invest and live from rent (capitalists) very happy, because they will get less of the pie to compete for.
  • strictnein 11y ago
    It would be my responsibility to work harder because all of this money has to come from somewhere. It doesn't just come from the magic money tree, it comes from people who work. No one is going to pay me more under UBI than I earn now because I work harder. I already get paid to work hard.
    • aninhumer 11y ago
      >It would be my responsibility to work harder because all of this money has to come from somewhere. You don't work because it's your responsibility to make the economy function. You work because people give you incentives to do so. UBI just changes the incentives slightly: You can choose whether you want the minimum or whether you want to earn some luxuries. You can argue about how many people are going to take the latter choice, but it's ludicrous to suggest you would be forced towards it by your "responsibility" to the economy. >No one is going to pay me more under UBI than I earn now because I work harder. If lots of people stop working, then those who continue to do so will become a lot more valuable, and companies will have to pay them more as a result.
• Frondo 11y ago
  Happily, what we're now talking about is a matter of policy, not of principle. You don't feel like paying taxes so that our society can support artists, fine. You might not feel like paying taxes to maintain rural roads (after all, you never drive there) or a public education system (you can pay for your kids' schooling). And that's all fine, but you're already doing all that, just in a relatively clumsy way. "Taking more money from" you to support my family is something that taxes and society have done from the very start. This just shifts the bar a bit further. It's a matter of degree and not of kind.
  • strictnein 11y ago
    Nope, I happily pay money for schools, roads, government, police, etc. I vote for almost every tax increase that comes to the ballot. I do understand why people keep trying to make this argument because it's far more effective than the "let's pay people to make art and not do unfun jobs" argument.
    • Frondo 11y ago
      Well, great, then it really won't be much of a stretch to add one more tax, this one to ensure that everyone has a basic guaranteed income!
• acdha 11y ago
  > Taking care of my family involves me working hard, so why are you willing to make me work harder so that others can work less? Because when you decide you'd like to launch a startup, you don't want the failure mode to be “I lose my house and live out of my car”. Because in a year when you or a family member develops a debilitating disease, you'd want there to be an option available which is better than “I go bankrupt and end up on the street”. Because if you or a family member decides they want to switch careers, go back to school, etc. you'd like food, health care, etc. not to be a major source of stress unless you're independently wealthy. Because if you or a family member ends up in a bad relationship and needs to leave in a hurry, the answer isn't hoping there's room at a shelter because all of the landlords in town want a deposit or there's a year delay getting the subsidized child-care needed to actually be able to get a job. Most of the people in the United States who go bankrupt were willing to work hard and didn't think that would happen to them. That went well until they had medical bills, a major employer left the area, etc. and they either couldn't work or were unable to find a job. People like to say you should keep 6-12 months income in the bank, which is certainly great advice but even if you're one of the relatively fortunate people who can afford to save that much money it can disappear faster than expected if more than one thing goes wrong at a time. As a society we've decided we don't want to live in a world where poor people die on the street (or are forced into terrible jobs, begging, prostitution, etc.). The problem UBI tries to solve is that the existing systems are incomplete, often create bad incentives, and require hugely expensive bureaucracies to review people at every step of the way. Providing a consistent income to everyone avoids things like someone getting the support they need to get a job, working hard and then having it all fall apart when they get a raise which is large enough to disqualify them from housing/child-care support but not large enough to replace it. It doesn't get rid of the incentive to do more, however, unless you really think that most people in society will hit the basic minimums needed for life and never want nicer food, housing, entertainment, etc.
• varelse 11y ago
  I mostly agree and I find that most of the arguments put forth in favor of UBI seem relatively narcissistic in nature (Your startup fails and you end up on the street? Yeah, not my problem actually, nor would it be my problem if you spent your entire paycheck on losing powerball tickets etc). That said, I think Martin Ford has made a decent case towards imposing an automation tax to fund the UBI for displaced workers. And I agree 100% that the only way this is remotely viable is in a society where there is insanely excess productive capacity such as what is likely to happen with the automation of jobs.
  • aninhumer 11y ago
    >Your startup fails and you end up on the street? Yeah, not my problem It kind of is though. The cost of making failure painful is all the potential innovators who decide to get a safe job instead.
    • varelse 11y ago
      Utterly false dichotomy. You can innovate from a safe job(tm) as well (not that any job is safe in an age of at-will employment). The difference is that in exchange for a lower payout for success, one gets a much higher payout for failure, a sort of UBI if you will.
      • aninhumer 11y ago
        >You can innovate from a safe job(tm) as well To some extent, but big companies are likely to be much more conservative towards new ideas. If they weren't, there would be little benefit to being an entrepreneur.
        • varelse 11y ago
          Another bogus assertion: Big companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple etc. are constantly iterating on innovation. Most of that innovation never sees the light of day just like most startups are destined for failure. IMO the benefit to being an entrepreneur is that if you truly have a winning idea, you can own a lot more of its fruits by pursuing it from your own business. For it requires nearly the same skillset to procure VC as it does to persuade a large company to let you build something. Risk is and should be proportional to return. To that end, I have nearly 20 patents filed from within large companies, most of them single inventor. And my salary amortized over a 4-year startup life cycle is on par with what I would have gotten as a non 3-letter title at an acquired startup that wasn't a Google or a Facebook. So why take a chance on failure without the chance of a big payout? And except for the 3-letter titles, that's what a lot of newbies unknowingly sign up to do, risk >>>> return. I have no desire to socialize this learning experience for them.