8 ms·

I dont have a job and never got one easily, so I have nothing to worry either. Minimal income could only be achieved by more and more government intervention.

by id122015 10y ago

I dont have a job and never got one easily, so I have nothing to worry either. Minimal income could only be achieved by more and more government intervention. Answer yourself how good that would be.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
I think billions of people not having to worry about starving or keeping a roof over their heads would kick-start the biggest creative revolution in human history.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Wouldn't you expect communist nations would be the most creative using this logic? There really isn't a good way to measure creativity but I'm curious if that is true.
  - jerf 10y ago
    Well, that would presume that Communism frees you from having to worry about starving or keeping a roof over your head, when historical evidence would suggest that it actually makes those things worse, and adds a healthy dollop of "having to worry about whether the thing I create will get me sent to the gulag" which doesn't exactly do wonders for creative freedom.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Do we have a historical model of communism? Communist Dictatorship feels too far removed from the ideal to work. In UK history some monasteries probably get close to being communist communities, but they're very small scale.
      - srssays 10y ago
        Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
      - jerf 10y ago
        I don't buy the idea that the ideal just hasn't been tried. It has been tried. To the extent that it always instantly degenerates into the same failures when tried at scale, that's not because it hasn't been done right... it's because it doesn't work. They always turn into dictatorships almost instantly because that turns out to be the only way to keep the proletariat from discussing the fact that this Communism thing isn't working out as promised and we should probably throw the bums who made the promises out. Turning into a police state, and based on the evidence, killing a few thousand to a few million of the most talkative[1] to intimidate the rest becomes instantly the only way for the animals-who-are-more-equal to stay more equal. Even the propaganda moves used to justify this to the populace are tediously predictable ("those failures you're trying to talk about don't exist but to the extent they do they're the fault of people trying to keep their ill-gotten gains away from the revolution." Have you ever really thought about why "re-education camps" are called that?). I am not aware of a successful "communism" that scales above the Dunbar number, and while I can point at ones that are arguably successful at sizes below that number there are even more that have failed even below that number. [1]: People who post to the internet about how wonderful Communism are generally posting about how wonderful it would be to have a government who would target them for death pretty early on, as they are the "talkative ones" who would be watched. Same, incidentally, for the people who actively riot in favor of giving the government lots more powers to, oh, say, take "care" of people passionate enough to riot in favor of overthrowing the government, which is really appealing right up to the point that you are the government.
        pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >to intimidate the rest becomes instantly the only way for the animals-who-are-more-equal to stay more equal // If they're "staying more equal" then surely that shows you didn't have a communist state. IMO the transition is nearly impossible because you need those in power to want benevolence and humanitarianism more than power and wealth. >I can point at ones that are arguably successful at sizes below that number // Please do?
    - alexqgb 10y ago
      At this point, places like Scandinavia should have made it clear that socialism per se isn't the problem so much as cult-of-personality authoritarians who use the ideals of socialism as cover for bottomless corruption and ruthless oppression.
  - ant6n 10y ago
    Besides the fact that communism didn't remove the worries about basic necessities, it also didn't reduce the burden to work - communism is all about full employment, so you don't get the time to be creative. Additionally, there were few incentives for people to be creative (you couldn't benefit from your creative work), and also many restrictions on creativity (art/culture was directed by the state, freedom of speech minimal).
- jjt-yn_t 10y ago
  ... peak oil? [ worry about starving... what about the children ? ] UBI of minor amount buys a residence? [ what ??? ] as to the rest of the sentence, I read 'internet, electricity, loudness, what do we know, ' as in biggest: electricity creative: internet revolution: it is louder after dusk nowadays human history: we should maybe ask our elders. I know I should, and the non-TV ones may surmise we should proceed with caution, if we [meaning the say-so NOT needing UBI ] proceed to tax [ half of that latter set taxing the other half, robbing peter to pay paul...] proceed at all, given the not-in-the-surplus area of the US at least, budget at the present time by almost every measure and metric. But am open to discussion, or reply, but to this post, as others, at this time I will be out of time to check a reply to this post even, so this is really more of 'my first YN thread where I reply to any I can reply to', maybe as a one-time occurance, as I've procrastinated for health reasons in many other areas. Apologies.... And as a newbie, I can edit my own posts. Apologies for the third lines above [ above Apologies ] and all the other similar lines in the other posts I've made in this thread, newbie, de facto first day responding vs daily reading. Sorry! /end errata/
neon_electro 10y ago
The idea of universal basic income is to end the practice of means-testing; that is, design a social safety net that requires -less- government intervention into your life. You receive a basic income for life, and what you do with it is your freedom to choose. Yes, it may require higher taxes or new taxes like a carbon tax or land value tax. But is higher taxes == more government intervention?
- petra 10y ago
  All this talk about basic income is so vague. It's almost some sort of a political maneuver. Let's talk numbers: to give every adult in the us a BI of $25k/yr , would require $5T. Current tax base of the US is $1T.
  - imgabe 10y ago
    I think it works best as a negative income tax. If you make no money, you get a refundable credit up to, say $25k/year. This would phase out as you earn income, so that once you're earning over $25k you're paying in and not getting the credit. This way people still have an incentive to work if they want more, but they won't starve if they earn less. This way you're not giving a flat $25k to someone who's already earning $100k. But if that person loses their job, they'll still get enough to live on.
    - petra 10y ago
      Without a reasonable estimate on how much money that will require that's still very vague.
    - adangert 10y ago
      True but you don't want to incentivize not working though
      - ant6n 10y ago
        The incentive to work comes from making the basic income "minimal", but also from allowing people to keep the first couple of thousand they make. Right now if you receive welfare, and you make a dollar, you lose a dollar of welfare. That's the actual disincentive to work.

I dont have a job and never got one easily, so I have nothing to worry either. Minimal income could only be achieved by more and more government intervention. Answer yourself how good that would be.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

I think billions of people not having to worry about starving or keeping a roof over their heads would kick-start the biggest creative revolution in human history.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cmdrfred 10y ago
Wouldn't you expect communist nations would be the most creative using this logic? There really isn't a good way to measure creativity but I'm curious if that is true.
- jerf 10y ago
  Well, that would presume that Communism frees you from having to worry about starving or keeping a roof over your head, when historical evidence would suggest that it actually makes those things worse, and adds a healthy dollop of "having to worry about whether the thing I create will get me sent to the gulag" which doesn't exactly do wonders for creative freedom.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Do we have a historical model of communism? Communist Dictatorship feels too far removed from the ideal to work. In UK history some monasteries probably get close to being communist communities, but they're very small scale.
    - srssays 10y ago
      Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
    - jerf 10y ago
      I don't buy the idea that the ideal just hasn't been tried. It has been tried. To the extent that it always instantly degenerates into the same failures when tried at scale, that's not because it hasn't been done right... it's because it doesn't work. They always turn into dictatorships almost instantly because that turns out to be the only way to keep the proletariat from discussing the fact that this Communism thing isn't working out as promised and we should probably throw the bums who made the promises out. Turning into a police state, and based on the evidence, killing a few thousand to a few million of the most talkative[1] to intimidate the rest becomes instantly the only way for the animals-who-are-more-equal to stay more equal. Even the propaganda moves used to justify this to the populace are tediously predictable ("those failures you're trying to talk about don't exist but to the extent they do they're the fault of people trying to keep their ill-gotten gains away from the revolution." Have you ever really thought about why "re-education camps" are called that?). I am not aware of a successful "communism" that scales above the Dunbar number, and while I can point at ones that are arguably successful at sizes below that number there are even more that have failed even below that number. [1]: People who post to the internet about how wonderful Communism are generally posting about how wonderful it would be to have a government who would target them for death pretty early on, as they are the "talkative ones" who would be watched. Same, incidentally, for the people who actively riot in favor of giving the government lots more powers to, oh, say, take "care" of people passionate enough to riot in favor of overthrowing the government, which is really appealing right up to the point that you are the government.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >to intimidate the rest becomes instantly the only way for the animals-who-are-more-equal to stay more equal // If they're "staying more equal" then surely that shows you didn't have a communist state. IMO the transition is nearly impossible because you need those in power to want benevolence and humanitarianism more than power and wealth. >I can point at ones that are arguably successful at sizes below that number // Please do?
  - alexqgb 10y ago
    At this point, places like Scandinavia should have made it clear that socialism per se isn't the problem so much as cult-of-personality authoritarians who use the ideals of socialism as cover for bottomless corruption and ruthless oppression.
- ant6n 10y ago
  Besides the fact that communism didn't remove the worries about basic necessities, it also didn't reduce the burden to work - communism is all about full employment, so you don't get the time to be creative. Additionally, there were few incentives for people to be creative (you couldn't benefit from your creative work), and also many restrictions on creativity (art/culture was directed by the state, freedom of speech minimal).
jjt-yn_t 10y ago
... peak oil? [ worry about starving... what about the children ? ] UBI of minor amount buys a residence? [ what ??? ] as to the rest of the sentence, I read 'internet, electricity, loudness, what do we know, ' as in biggest: electricity creative: internet revolution: it is louder after dusk nowadays human history: we should maybe ask our elders. I know I should, and the non-TV ones may surmise we should proceed with caution, if we [meaning the say-so NOT needing UBI ] proceed to tax [ half of that latter set taxing the other half, robbing peter to pay paul...] proceed at all, given the not-in-the-surplus area of the US at least, budget at the present time by almost every measure and metric. But am open to discussion, or reply, but to this post, as others, at this time I will be out of time to check a reply to this post even, so this is really more of 'my first YN thread where I reply to any I can reply to', maybe as a one-time occurance, as I've procrastinated for health reasons in many other areas. Apologies.... And as a newbie, I can edit my own posts. Apologies for the third lines above [ above Apologies ] and all the other similar lines in the other posts I've made in this thread, newbie, de facto first day responding vs daily reading. Sorry! /end errata/

neon_electro 10y ago

The idea of universal basic income is to end the practice of means-testing; that is, design a social safety net that requires -less- government intervention into your life. You receive a basic income for life, and what you do with it is your freedom to choose. Yes, it may require higher taxes or new taxes like a carbon tax or land value tax. But is higher taxes == more government intervention?

petra 10y ago
All this talk about basic income is so vague. It's almost some sort of a political maneuver. Let's talk numbers: to give every adult in the us a BI of $25k/yr , would require $5T. Current tax base of the US is $1T.
- imgabe 10y ago
  I think it works best as a negative income tax. If you make no money, you get a refundable credit up to, say $25k/year. This would phase out as you earn income, so that once you're earning over $25k you're paying in and not getting the credit. This way people still have an incentive to work if they want more, but they won't starve if they earn less. This way you're not giving a flat $25k to someone who's already earning $100k. But if that person loses their job, they'll still get enough to live on.
  - petra 10y ago
    Without a reasonable estimate on how much money that will require that's still very vague.
  - adangert 10y ago
    True but you don't want to incentivize not working though
    - ant6n 10y ago
      The incentive to work comes from making the basic income "minimal", but also from allowing people to keep the first couple of thousand they make. Right now if you receive welfare, and you make a dollar, you lose a dollar of welfare. That's the actual disincentive to work.