5 ms·

Perhaps the beauty of the notion of BI (and thus its growing popularity) is that you can attach whatever level you perceive as basic living expenses. To one ma

Perhaps the beauty of the notion of BI (and thus its growing popularity) is that you can attach whatever level you perceive as basic living expenses. To one man BI is to prevent starvation, to another it's not BI if it doesn't cover at least two car payments.

mjevans 11y ago
Define car payment; actually please don't, I can't see any point other than inflammation. A 'basic' income should ideally fulfill the basic structural needs of someone living in an area. * Adequate Shelter * Food (possibly basic, but it should be healthy. Food does tend to work better in bulk though, so not-for-profit health kitchens are something I'd recommend) * Health (including cleaning supplies/etc) * Enough whatever (transit, clothing, education, etc) to get a better job. * //basic// entertainment In these last two points I see work uniforms, transit, probably paper/notes, and likely --basic-- computers (think Raspberry Pi 3) with Internet access (generic TV/work). Edited: Added even more newlines
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  Actually if it doesn't do this it would likely just end up acting as a subsidy to low wage employers. Only if it's enough to give people the freedom to walk away from their jobs is it actually meaningful, and realistically it's not going to be introduced at a level where it would.
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    And that leads to the other core issue few address: "supply and demand" still rules, and the economy would merely shift prices to drive beneficiaries right back where they were before. If you don't have to actually do anything to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, prices will rise until you once again have to work about 20 minutes of menial labor to earn whatever "extra" you need to buy it. Most people benefitting from BI wouldn't be using it to go start a business or produce fine art, they're going to sit around watching TV or procreating or finding some new imputed need to demand even more BI to cover. Harsh, yes, but fits my dismayed discoveries whenever I go out serving the poor (doesn't stop me, but does increase bitterness).
    - arebop 11y ago
      Do you also believe that welfare recipients would not miss welfare payments if they were suspended today, or does "supply and demand" not function presently to neutralize the effect of transfer payments in society? The second bit about people squandering resources has been nicely answered by Friedman in his discussion of negative income tax: it is better to have individual market participants make occasional mistakes than to suffer the greater inefficiencies of central planning [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM].
      - AstralStorm 11y ago
        Of course such a tax is progressive, which hurts rich people much more than a flat payout. Other points made by Friedman are hilarious, especially the part about people not wanting to go to work when on basic income. It's basic. I don't know a person who wants to live in a near poverty situation.
        ctdonath 11y ago
        It's not that they want to be poor, it's that you're making it viable for them to lounge instead of work. A great many would rather sleep in and watch TV all day, instead of get up early and work hard for not a significant improvement in living. Every time I go to help the poor at their homes, I'm amazed at how many choose their conditions by opting for behaviors causing their poverty.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      >And that leads to the other core issue few address: "supply and demand" still rules, and the economy would merely shift prices to drive beneficiaries right back where they were before. If you don't have to actually do anything to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, prices will rise until you once again have to work about 20 minutes of menial labor to earn whatever "extra" you need to buy it. That's not how supply and demand works. The supply elasticity of a price of bread in particular is very high because it's trivially easy to ramp up production. It's the same for most industrial goods - industrial slack (google it) means that increases in demand do not correspond to increases in price. The price of goods and services which have a constrained supply (low elasticity goods) would go up in price to match the new level of spending. The only one I can think of that would qualify these days is land, but it would be trivially easy to throttle spending on that at the same time by raising taxes on it.

mjevans 11y ago

Define car payment; actually please don't, I can't see any point other than inflammation. A 'basic' income should ideally fulfill the basic structural needs of someone living in an area. * Adequate Shelter * Food (possibly basic, but it should be healthy. Food does tend to work better in bulk though, so not-for-profit health kitchens are something I'd recommend) * Health (including cleaning supplies/etc) * Enough whatever (transit, clothing, education, etc) to get a better job. * //basic// entertainment In these last two points I see work uniforms, transit, probably paper/notes, and likely --basic-- computers (think Raspberry Pi 3) with Internet access (generic TV/work). Edited: Added even more newlines

crdoconnor 11y ago
Actually if it doesn't do this it would likely just end up acting as a subsidy to low wage employers. Only if it's enough to give people the freedom to walk away from their jobs is it actually meaningful, and realistically it's not going to be introduced at a level where it would.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  And that leads to the other core issue few address: "supply and demand" still rules, and the economy would merely shift prices to drive beneficiaries right back where they were before. If you don't have to actually do anything to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, prices will rise until you once again have to work about 20 minutes of menial labor to earn whatever "extra" you need to buy it. Most people benefitting from BI wouldn't be using it to go start a business or produce fine art, they're going to sit around watching TV or procreating or finding some new imputed need to demand even more BI to cover. Harsh, yes, but fits my dismayed discoveries whenever I go out serving the poor (doesn't stop me, but does increase bitterness).
  - arebop 11y ago
    Do you also believe that welfare recipients would not miss welfare payments if they were suspended today, or does "supply and demand" not function presently to neutralize the effect of transfer payments in society? The second bit about people squandering resources has been nicely answered by Friedman in his discussion of negative income tax: it is better to have individual market participants make occasional mistakes than to suffer the greater inefficiencies of central planning [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM].
    - AstralStorm 11y ago
      Of course such a tax is progressive, which hurts rich people much more than a flat payout. Other points made by Friedman are hilarious, especially the part about people not wanting to go to work when on basic income. It's basic. I don't know a person who wants to live in a near poverty situation.
      - ctdonath 11y ago
        It's not that they want to be poor, it's that you're making it viable for them to lounge instead of work. A great many would rather sleep in and watch TV all day, instead of get up early and work hard for not a significant improvement in living. Every time I go to help the poor at their homes, I'm amazed at how many choose their conditions by opting for behaviors causing their poverty.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >And that leads to the other core issue few address: "supply and demand" still rules, and the economy would merely shift prices to drive beneficiaries right back where they were before. If you don't have to actually do anything to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, prices will rise until you once again have to work about 20 minutes of menial labor to earn whatever "extra" you need to buy it. That's not how supply and demand works. The supply elasticity of a price of bread in particular is very high because it's trivially easy to ramp up production. It's the same for most industrial goods - industrial slack (google it) means that increases in demand do not correspond to increases in price. The price of goods and services which have a constrained supply (low elasticity goods) would go up in price to match the new level of spending. The only one I can think of that would qualify these days is land, but it would be trivially easy to throttle spending on that at the same time by raising taxes on it.