7 ms·

"He couldn't hold down a job and regularly missed appointments." I think this is part of the problem - right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold d

"He couldn't hold down a job and regularly missed appointments." I think this is part of the problem - right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment.

dionidium 10y ago
"Basic income removes that harsh penalty" The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it; it's how to convince regular people who get up every day and go work at jobs a lot shittier than most of us here have that that's a harsh penalty. There is enormous social momentum behind the idea that you should work if you can.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it; it's how to convince regular people who get up every day and go work at jobs a lot shittier than most of us here have that that's a harsh penalty. That's not a problem. If a job is shitty and ultra-low pay so that no one wants to do it now that they have a UBI to live on, then the business owner needs to either increase the pay enough to make someone want to do it, or he can just shut down the business or do it himself. UBI prevents people from having to toil at horrible jobs unless they choose to, rather than being forced to in order to survive. That can only be a good thing. It then means that true market forces can now set the wages for jobs.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    UBI prevents people from having to toil at horrible jobs unless they choose to, rather than being forced to in order to survive. That can only be a good thing. I agree with you. My whole point was that most people do not agree with you. There is enormous support for the idea that you are supposed to work for what you earn. Full stop. End of story. Anything less is charity that should, at best, be accepted as a last resort.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Sorry, I misunderstood. You're right: America absolutely has a Protestant work ethic instilled into its culture that will make UBI hard to get passed into law. The problem is, that like most religious concepts and ideals, it's completely obsolete: all the drudgework jobs are rapidly becoming automated, leaving many people unable to find decent-paying work to support themselves.
    - gremlinsinc 10y ago
      the rich claim that the poor and homeless are lazy and by not being lazy they could have all the riches... yet most rich people were born rich, and most rich families have been the richest families for centuries. Furthermore I know many homeless people who work very hard for the little they get, while I know many rich people who sit on their Yachts all day, or take 6 week vacations every year. -- The rich are just as lazy as anyone who isn't rich if not MORE lazy because they CAN be lazy -- especially those who got wealthy by luck of birth.
      - ck425 10y ago
        6 weeks vacation is considered lazy? I don't disagree with your point btw just shocked that that's considered lazy.
        geon 10y ago
        Yay for living in Sweden!
      - ENGNR 10y ago
        And yet many people knows of at least one family of super lazy people who would happily live on basic income. The trouble is convincing them that these people will never ever do anything productive anyway so the best we can do is loss minimisation by ensuring they don't turn to crime and fix basic medical issues early. And that they're not worth a single second more worth of attention compared to the other 99% of society
        10y ago
- gozur88 10y ago
  >The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it... No, actually that's the real challenge, as the author of the article points out. We would have to raise taxes tremendously to give everyone a nontrivial amount (the numbers are in the article) even if we ended all current income redistribution programs. And we'd have to raise taxes even more than you'd think at first glance, since a whole lot of people would stop working in response to higher taxes and UBI. I probably would. Even without UBI I would probably retire early if my taxes were raised significantly, and I can't be the only one.
  - damptowel 10y ago
    But government spending within the national economy is not income constrained, so raising taxes is not a requirement.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      Then why do we have taxes at all?
      - damptowel 10y ago
        Good question, what drives politicians I can only guess. Neoclassical economists have their heads buried firmly in the sand, preferring their a priori fantasies and pushing that as their agenda. Taxes are good for creating currency demand (and large scale markets systems resulting from it), shaping incentives and income redistribution. It can also be used to put a brake on a bubble economy.
      - dionidium 10y ago
        It's a good question, but it's clearly not merely to raise money. They print money.
      - dTal 10y ago
        To control the money supply. It's true that the government don't need to directly fund all spending with taxes, but if more money is issued than collected, the amount of money in circulation increases and the currency devalues. Obviously this should be avoided as the more the currency you're printing is worth, the better off you are. So practically speaking, you do have to fund expenditures with taxes. You can't just create value out of thin air.
- sgnelson 10y ago
  Not to disagree with your point, but shouldn't we examine the reasons behind and for necessitating that all people work? Not to get too existential, but does anyone really believe that's why we're here, or what we should be doing with our lives?
  - thedaemon 10y ago
    This is a very good point. We are at a point in society where we have replaced multitudes of workers with automated machinery. (1st world countries)This in turn is supposed to make way for more high thinking jobs, but in my understanding does not. To me it seems we have reached a point where we should find a way to fund people who want to do creative work, or experimental. To me, yes, we are meant to work. But that work is not just for a company. Perhaps teaching yourself how to garden, painting, etc. Doing something, that's work. To validate the point of work being why we are here I will roughly quote Marcus Aurelius: When you wake up in the morning get up and get going. Why are you wanting to sleep and be lazy? Does the honey bee say forget this and sleep all day? Does the ant forgo his work and sleep and eat all day? No, all creatures go to work. What makes you any different? This is of course out of context, as this is just reasoning for himself to get up in the morning, not a blanket statement about society.
dctoedt 10y ago
> right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment. Historically, that would be an incredible luxury. (I'm interpreting "make an appointment" as a figure of speech that encompasses, e.g., sowing crops at the right time of year, harvesting when the crops are ripe, hunting when the game is afoot, etc.)
- vec 10y ago
  Historically speaking, it's an incredible luxury to expect all of your children to survive past infancy. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a basic expectation for citizens of an advanced modern nation.
kazinator 10y ago
Though it lets people live whether or not they can make an appointment, it doesn't let them live as well as they could and could leave them a bit of a buffer so that they can re-evaluate what they are doing. For some people, the fact that they desperately have to make that appointment on time removes the motivation. You and I enjoy our jobs because we don't desperately have to be on time. If I had to punch a time card, I'd be fucking out of here faster than you can type "logout" and hit Enter. People can probably fix their lives with greater ease and probability of success if they can calm down a little bit.

dionidium 10y ago

"Basic income removes that harsh penalty" The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it; it's how to convince regular people who get up every day and go work at jobs a lot shittier than most of us here have that that's a harsh penalty. There is enormous social momentum behind the idea that you should work if you can.

Grishnakh 10y ago
>The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it; it's how to convince regular people who get up every day and go work at jobs a lot shittier than most of us here have that that's a harsh penalty. That's not a problem. If a job is shitty and ultra-low pay so that no one wants to do it now that they have a UBI to live on, then the business owner needs to either increase the pay enough to make someone want to do it, or he can just shut down the business or do it himself. UBI prevents people from having to toil at horrible jobs unless they choose to, rather than being forced to in order to survive. That can only be a good thing. It then means that true market forces can now set the wages for jobs.
- dionidium 10y ago
  UBI prevents people from having to toil at horrible jobs unless they choose to, rather than being forced to in order to survive. That can only be a good thing. I agree with you. My whole point was that most people do not agree with you. There is enormous support for the idea that you are supposed to work for what you earn. Full stop. End of story. Anything less is charity that should, at best, be accepted as a last resort.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Sorry, I misunderstood. You're right: America absolutely has a Protestant work ethic instilled into its culture that will make UBI hard to get passed into law. The problem is, that like most religious concepts and ideals, it's completely obsolete: all the drudgework jobs are rapidly becoming automated, leaving many people unable to find decent-paying work to support themselves.
  - gremlinsinc 10y ago
    the rich claim that the poor and homeless are lazy and by not being lazy they could have all the riches... yet most rich people were born rich, and most rich families have been the richest families for centuries. Furthermore I know many homeless people who work very hard for the little they get, while I know many rich people who sit on their Yachts all day, or take 6 week vacations every year. -- The rich are just as lazy as anyone who isn't rich if not MORE lazy because they CAN be lazy -- especially those who got wealthy by luck of birth.
    - ck425 10y ago
      6 weeks vacation is considered lazy? I don't disagree with your point btw just shocked that that's considered lazy.
      - geon 10y ago
        Yay for living in Sweden!
    - ENGNR 10y ago
      And yet many people knows of at least one family of super lazy people who would happily live on basic income. The trouble is convincing them that these people will never ever do anything productive anyway so the best we can do is loss minimisation by ensuring they don't turn to crime and fix basic medical issues early. And that they're not worth a single second more worth of attention compared to the other 99% of society
      - 10y ago
gozur88 10y ago
>The real challenge of a basic income isn't how to pay for it... No, actually that's the real challenge, as the author of the article points out. We would have to raise taxes tremendously to give everyone a nontrivial amount (the numbers are in the article) even if we ended all current income redistribution programs. And we'd have to raise taxes even more than you'd think at first glance, since a whole lot of people would stop working in response to higher taxes and UBI. I probably would. Even without UBI I would probably retire early if my taxes were raised significantly, and I can't be the only one.
- damptowel 10y ago
  But government spending within the national economy is not income constrained, so raising taxes is not a requirement.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Then why do we have taxes at all?
    - damptowel 10y ago
      Good question, what drives politicians I can only guess. Neoclassical economists have their heads buried firmly in the sand, preferring their a priori fantasies and pushing that as their agenda. Taxes are good for creating currency demand (and large scale markets systems resulting from it), shaping incentives and income redistribution. It can also be used to put a brake on a bubble economy.
    - dionidium 10y ago
      It's a good question, but it's clearly not merely to raise money. They print money.
    - dTal 10y ago
      To control the money supply. It's true that the government don't need to directly fund all spending with taxes, but if more money is issued than collected, the amount of money in circulation increases and the currency devalues. Obviously this should be avoided as the more the currency you're printing is worth, the better off you are. So practically speaking, you do have to fund expenditures with taxes. You can't just create value out of thin air.
sgnelson 10y ago
Not to disagree with your point, but shouldn't we examine the reasons behind and for necessitating that all people work? Not to get too existential, but does anyone really believe that's why we're here, or what we should be doing with our lives?
- thedaemon 10y ago
  This is a very good point. We are at a point in society where we have replaced multitudes of workers with automated machinery. (1st world countries)This in turn is supposed to make way for more high thinking jobs, but in my understanding does not. To me it seems we have reached a point where we should find a way to fund people who want to do creative work, or experimental. To me, yes, we are meant to work. But that work is not just for a company. Perhaps teaching yourself how to garden, painting, etc. Doing something, that's work. To validate the point of work being why we are here I will roughly quote Marcus Aurelius: When you wake up in the morning get up and get going. Why are you wanting to sleep and be lazy? Does the honey bee say forget this and sleep all day? Does the ant forgo his work and sleep and eat all day? No, all creatures go to work. What makes you any different? This is of course out of context, as this is just reasoning for himself to get up in the morning, not a blanket statement about society.

dctoedt 10y ago

> right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment. Historically, that would be an incredible luxury. (I'm interpreting "make an appointment" as a figure of speech that encompasses, e.g., sowing crops at the right time of year, harvesting when the crops are ripe, hunting when the game is afoot, etc.)

vec 10y ago
Historically speaking, it's an incredible luxury to expect all of your children to survive past infancy. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a basic expectation for citizens of an advanced modern nation.

kazinator 10y ago

Though it lets people live whether or not they can make an appointment, it doesn't let them live as well as they could and could leave them a bit of a buffer so that they can re-evaluate what they are doing. For some people, the fact that they desperately have to make that appointment on time removes the motivation. You and I enjoy our jobs because we don't desperately have to be on time. If I had to punch a time card, I'd be fucking out of here faster than you can type "logout" and hit Enter. People can probably fix their lives with greater ease and probability of success if they can calm down a little bit.