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At what point does the government controlling your income start to impede personal freedom? Wouldn't any politician campaigning to increase the basic income be

by influx 9y ago

At what point does the government controlling your income start to impede personal freedom? Wouldn't any politician campaigning to increase the basic income be almost automatically elected?

ianai 9y ago
Economists largely consider payments like this to be the best way to enact policies. It gives people more options instead of trying to control through legal pressures.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Economists largely consider payments like this to be the best way to enact policies. It gives people more options instead of trying to control through legal pressures. That's not true at all, and in fact, the last time a large number of economists were surveyed about a proposal, the response was overwhelmingly in opposition: http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/universal-basic-income http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/universal-basic-income Many economists would agree that, ceteris paribus, cash is "better" than an equivalent amount of earmarked money in most situations, because cash is more flexible. But that's a very narrow statement that isn't applicable here, because it's assuming that the set of people receiving the money would be the exact same (it's not, by the definition of "universal"), and it's also assuming that there are no other external consequences to the proposal (another topic which is, at best, debatable). So even that point of agreement among economists isn't relevant to this proposal.
  - Jemaclus 9y ago
    Citation needed (from both of you).
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      I can't talk to the claims about economists but I can tell you that Friedman and people across the political spectrum agreed that this was good public policy. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-are...
  - ianai 9y ago
    The way that question was worded was a straw man. I’m referring to a general principle regarding transfer payments. They’re usually more simple ways to reach a desired outcome than alternatives.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > The way that question was worded was a straw man. I’m referring to a general principle regarding transfer payments. They’re usually more simple ways to reach a desired outcome than alternatives. Yes, and I'm explaining that that statement isn't true (in the sense of consensus among economists) in any way that is applicable to public policies. Certainly not this one, because that's explicitly not a dichotomy being proposed - there's no tradeoff being proposed between the $1000 stipend and all of the other forms of public assistance that the participants could be or are receiving. It's only true (in the sense of consensus) on a micro level, looking at the value to an individual of cash vs. in-kind payments, ignoring secondary factors, ignoring externalities, and ignoring positive or negative feedback. That's not a relevant framework when discussing public policy.
jjallen 9y ago
Two thoughts: I'm nearly positive that basic income means _part of_ "your income", and not "your income". The intent of basic income I have read about is to increase the personal freedom and provide a flexible safety net for the poorest individuals. And for personal freedom I'm guessing you can take or leave the basic income -- but none will because it's money right? And about your second thought, you could use evidence for politicians elected based on their promises to raise or lower taxes -- which is essentially an income increase or reduction (for various income subsets of the population).
- goodcanadian 9y ago
  The freedom is freedom from immediate starvation. Rather than be forced to work a crappy job just so you can eat, you have more freedom to pick and choose your employment, spend time on education, work on art, or whatever.
NickLamp 9y ago
Is everyone currently clamoring to elect politicians that want to increase welfare and other "Great Society" programs?
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Is everyone currently clamoring to elect politicians that want to increase welfare and other "Great Society" programs? People aren't clamoring to increase welfare because the people whom it's perceived to benefit aren't the ones who actually have the largest voting power. People absolutely do reward politicians for securing funding for their constituents, usually in the form of earmarks, targeted tax breaks (e.g. disaster relief, geographically targeted bailouts), and stipends. In fact, it's one of the strongest predictors of support for politicians representing smaller districts. Only at the national level (ie, when running for president) does it become problematic to be perceived as having spent Congressional funds on your own district, because the new constituency includes people who had their money "taken away" in order to provide those earmarks.
  - NickLamp 9y ago
    I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. And I don't disagree with those last two points.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. Huh? No, the point isn't what the richest people would think - they have an incentive to oppose either welfare or cash handouts. The point is that currently, welfare only targets the people with the lowest voting power, because they're both a very small bloc and also a bloc that doesn't vote very consistently in the first place. So there isn't a huge political incentive to increasing welfare. As soon as you make that a handout that targets everyone (or appears to target everyone), you've suddenly put the largest voting bloc - those who are neither very wealthy nor on welfare - in a position where they will start to clamor to increase it more and more, because they'll see that as money flowing towards themselves.
SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
You're still free to seek out other sources of income under these models and the amount recieved from the government effectively decreases as income is raised due to taxes you pay into the system. >Wouldn't any politician campaigning on this automatically get elected? No, lay people would be quick to confuse this with communism. The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy. Milton Friedman did not say that this should be part of public policy, though his words are commonly interpreted very generously to imply that he did, by people who wish to demonstrate that this is a policy with "conservative support". What Friedman actually said is that the cash value of all welfare and other support systems is greater than the in-kind value. That's a pretty narrow statement. In theory, that sounds like it's a statement of support, but it's really not. In practice, basically nobody is actually proposing doing away with all welfare, social security, government subsidies, etc., because it would be a political non-starter. Even if we scope this discussion to the context of the YC research experiment, that's plainly evident, because there's no stipulation that the participants abstain from all other forms of public assistance, as well as deduct the cash value of every other stipend and subsidy that they receive from the $1000 payment. Comparing what Freidman wrote about to this proposal is like trying to discuss Adam Smith in the context of the political left, on the basis of the common term "liberal". Yes, there technically exists a frame of reference in which that's a meaningful comparison, but it's not a particularly useful or relevant frame of reference, and it does nothing but mislead and obfuscate the actual details of the underlying facts.
cortic 9y ago
At the point where they start to put back the conditions we have around welfare today. Or at the point they start to treat us the same way employers treat us today. Sure, for a time, it may become impossible to have a runaway defense budget, might even indirectly make going to war less appetizing, certainly would decrease petty crime and the expense that comes with this.

by influx 9y ago

At what point does the government controlling your income start to impede personal freedom? Wouldn't any politician campaigning to increase the basic income be almost automatically elected?

ianai 9y ago

Economists largely consider payments like this to be the best way to enact policies. It gives people more options instead of trying to control through legal pressures.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Economists largely consider payments like this to be the best way to enact policies. It gives people more options instead of trying to control through legal pressures. That's not true at all, and in fact, the last time a large number of economists were surveyed about a proposal, the response was overwhelmingly in opposition: http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/universal-basic-income http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/universal-basic-income Many economists would agree that, ceteris paribus, cash is "better" than an equivalent amount of earmarked money in most situations, because cash is more flexible. But that's a very narrow statement that isn't applicable here, because it's assuming that the set of people receiving the money would be the exact same (it's not, by the definition of "universal"), and it's also assuming that there are no other external consequences to the proposal (another topic which is, at best, debatable). So even that point of agreement among economists isn't relevant to this proposal.
- Jemaclus 9y ago
  Citation needed (from both of you).
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    I can't talk to the claims about economists but I can tell you that Friedman and people across the political spectrum agreed that this was good public policy. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-are...
- ianai 9y ago
  The way that question was worded was a straw man. I’m referring to a general principle regarding transfer payments. They’re usually more simple ways to reach a desired outcome than alternatives.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > The way that question was worded was a straw man. I’m referring to a general principle regarding transfer payments. They’re usually more simple ways to reach a desired outcome than alternatives. Yes, and I'm explaining that that statement isn't true (in the sense of consensus among economists) in any way that is applicable to public policies. Certainly not this one, because that's explicitly not a dichotomy being proposed - there's no tradeoff being proposed between the $1000 stipend and all of the other forms of public assistance that the participants could be or are receiving. It's only true (in the sense of consensus) on a micro level, looking at the value to an individual of cash vs. in-kind payments, ignoring secondary factors, ignoring externalities, and ignoring positive or negative feedback. That's not a relevant framework when discussing public policy.

jjallen 9y ago

Two thoughts: I'm nearly positive that basic income means _part of_ "your income", and not "your income". The intent of basic income I have read about is to increase the personal freedom and provide a flexible safety net for the poorest individuals. And for personal freedom I'm guessing you can take or leave the basic income -- but none will because it's money right? And about your second thought, you could use evidence for politicians elected based on their promises to raise or lower taxes -- which is essentially an income increase or reduction (for various income subsets of the population).

goodcanadian 9y ago
The freedom is freedom from immediate starvation. Rather than be forced to work a crappy job just so you can eat, you have more freedom to pick and choose your employment, spend time on education, work on art, or whatever.

NickLamp 9y ago

Is everyone currently clamoring to elect politicians that want to increase welfare and other "Great Society" programs?

chimeracoder 9y ago
> Is everyone currently clamoring to elect politicians that want to increase welfare and other "Great Society" programs? People aren't clamoring to increase welfare because the people whom it's perceived to benefit aren't the ones who actually have the largest voting power. People absolutely do reward politicians for securing funding for their constituents, usually in the form of earmarks, targeted tax breaks (e.g. disaster relief, geographically targeted bailouts), and stipends. In fact, it's one of the strongest predictors of support for politicians representing smaller districts. Only at the national level (ie, when running for president) does it become problematic to be perceived as having spent Congressional funds on your own district, because the new constituency includes people who had their money "taken away" in order to provide those earmarks.
- NickLamp 9y ago
  I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. And I don't disagree with those last two points.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > I don't think richer people would think that the government giving $1000 a month to everyone would see that as benefitting themselves, there's your opposition to increasing BI or having it at all. Huh? No, the point isn't what the richest people would think - they have an incentive to oppose either welfare or cash handouts. The point is that currently, welfare only targets the people with the lowest voting power, because they're both a very small bloc and also a bloc that doesn't vote very consistently in the first place. So there isn't a huge political incentive to increasing welfare. As soon as you make that a handout that targets everyone (or appears to target everyone), you've suddenly put the largest voting bloc - those who are neither very wealthy nor on welfare - in a position where they will start to clamor to increase it more and more, because they'll see that as money flowing towards themselves.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago

You're still free to seek out other sources of income under these models and the amount recieved from the government effectively decreases as income is raised due to taxes you pay into the system. >Wouldn't any politician campaigning on this automatically get elected? No, lay people would be quick to confuse this with communism. The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy. Milton Friedman did not say that this should be part of public policy, though his words are commonly interpreted very generously to imply that he did, by people who wish to demonstrate that this is a policy with "conservative support". What Friedman actually said is that the cash value of all welfare and other support systems is greater than the in-kind value. That's a pretty narrow statement. In theory, that sounds like it's a statement of support, but it's really not. In practice, basically nobody is actually proposing doing away with all welfare, social security, government subsidies, etc., because it would be a political non-starter. Even if we scope this discussion to the context of the YC research experiment, that's plainly evident, because there's no stipulation that the participants abstain from all other forms of public assistance, as well as deduct the cash value of every other stipend and subsidy that they receive from the $1000 payment. Comparing what Freidman wrote about to this proposal is like trying to discuss Adam Smith in the context of the political left, on the basis of the common term "liberal". Yes, there technically exists a frame of reference in which that's a meaningful comparison, but it's not a particularly useful or relevant frame of reference, and it does nothing but mislead and obfuscate the actual details of the underlying facts.

cortic 9y ago

At the point where they start to put back the conditions we have around welfare today. Or at the point they start to treat us the same way employers treat us today. Sure, for a time, it may become impossible to have a runaway defense budget, might even indirectly make going to war less appetizing, certainly would decrease petty crime and the expense that comes with this.