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The reality is that if you want to cover everyone's basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That's the convers
by petra 9y ago
The reality is that if you want to cover everyone's basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That's the conversation we should be having.
But that than becomes a painful and complex conversation, talking about huge changes in the structure and possibly quality of real-estate, healthcare, transportation and roads, universities, etc and maybe some core tenets of capitalism.
But there's no way for this conversation to be fruitful and have really big changes - until we have a real crisis - because that's how democracies work in general.
but here's a starting point, anyway:
1. Transforming real-estate, from a system largely aimed at profits, into a system that is focused on offering decent living conditions as cheaply as possible.
2. Inserting disruptive innovation and real cost reduction into healthcare. And yes, like all disruptive innovation , it probably means lowering quality, at least for some time.
- p1esk 9y agoyou need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? Automation.
- WalterBright 9y agoThe US free market has been very successful at radically reducing the cost of goods and services. Where it has failed to do so are in areas that are not free market, like health care.
- stevenwoo 9y agoIt seems like the health care system has been gamed in the USA so that health insurance companies and big pharmaceutical companies get a huge profit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this is the case anywhere in Western Europe/Canada or most other countries that have a functional health care.
- WalterBright 9y agoThe massive regulation and government interference in health care in the US has definitely resulted in companies gaming it for profit. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame... https://www.amazon.com/Competition-Monopoly-Medical-Care-Frech/dp/0844738840 https://www.amazon.com/Competition-Monopoly-Medical-Care-Fre... https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Pharmaceutical-Innovation-Amendments-Evaluative/dp/0844731285 https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Pharmaceutical-Innovation-...
- nickpp 9y agoHealth care costs are high in other western countries as well. They are just paid indirectly, from the much higher taxation level.
- rifung 9y agoIs that really true? I was under the impression when people talk about the cost of healthcare they aren't talking about the cost of insurance. Unless you're saying the taxation somehow subsidizes healthcare in addition to providing insurance? For example, medication is more expensive in the US right?
- _Tev 9y agoNo, USA pays much more than any other developed country, see: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_hig... (below graph is sortable table)
- rbanffy 9y ago> The US free market has been very successful at radically reducing the cost of goods and services At the expense of generating poverty either in the form of people working two or three part time jobs (so that "costs" like healthcare can be avoided) to barely make rent or abroad, in factories where one needs to extend nets to prevent suicides.
- nickpp 9y agoPoverty is where we all started from. Free market is the one responsible of the reduction of poverty in most western countries. To see the result of tightly controlled market, check out Venezuela and the old Easter European communist regimes.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoIn support of this, have you happened across Deirdre McCloskey, and her tomes Bourgeois Dignity and two books that follow. She does a decent job of thrashing out, at length, why the dignity to participate in the free market by innovating and bringing those innovations to market is the thing that created the modern world. In her own words she gives a "full scale defence of capitalism."
- SamReidHughes 9y agoThe suicide rate at Foxconn was less than that of the general Chinese public. The people in poverty in America are well-off as measured by consumption rates. Note that a social safety net is not inconsistent with free markets.
- WalterBright 9y agoThe US has been the greatest bootstrapper of poor people into middle class and wealth history has ever seen. The US was populated by poor immigrants with little more than a suitcase. Wealthy people didn't immigrate to the US. Look at the statistics on height, longevity, and infant mortality from 1800 to today. It's a little hard to argue that the free market impoverished people. As for healthcare, that has not been a free market in the US at least since WW2.
- gnaritas 9y ago> Where it has failed to do so are in areas that are not free market, like health care. Alternatively, the free market has failed to work in certain areas forcing the government to get involved to attempt to fix things. If the free market worked for health care, we'd be using it.
- greedo 9y agoThe free market, whatever that really means hasn't been involved in healthcare in the US since WW2.
- gnaritas 9y agoNot disputed, so what? What point are you making? That we need to give the free market another try so it can fail again? Healthcare lacks basic price transparency, consumer choice, even the ability to know what you're buying before you need to buy it. The free market solution to something like healthcare is insurance, how's that worked out? It's not something that can work well in a free market. I'm a capitalist, I believe capitalism is awesome, however capitalism doesn't work on everything, just most things. It's not a golden hammer that will solve all problems.
- greedo 9y agoYou stated that if the free market worked with healthcare, we'd be using it. But we don't know if it would improve the situation since it's been so long since the market was free in any sense. Look at Lasik eye surgery for a counterpoint. Yes, this is regulated by requiring licensed practitioners, but it's not controlled by insurance companies, Medicare/Medicaid etc. The cost for this procedure has dropped dramatically, while the procedure itself has improved in the last decade.
- nugget 9y ago> you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services Yes. Starting with housing, most people's #1 expense (and, complicating matters, many other people's #1 investment).
- zo1 9y agoOnly because we live in a weird generational "reset" society, for lack of a better term. Instead of parents passing off their house/savings to their progeny, it's expected that each person must start off from zero when they come of age. We should be promoting solid wealth creation and stability, and the passing of it to future children.
- kobeya 9y agoWe should be promoting therapies which lead to healthier, longer lives. Dependence on generational wealth transfer throws an incentive kink in that.
- zo1 9y agoI don't see any reason why you can't do both? Then the problem becomes one of how to "promote generational wealth transfer" while "keeping people health and living longer". I don't buy the whole "you need to work yourself to death in order to get ahead" stuff. Also, no need to make your children "rich". Just make sure they have things quantitatively better than you had. Just having a home for their children to subsequently live in without worry is definitely attainable for most people if they don't do anything stupid.
- kobeya 9y agoI was trying to imply “live forever” without saying it since that results in a bunch of ignorant responses (not yours). If you don’t die — which should be the end goal, no? — how do you leave a sufficient amount to your kids while keeping enough to live well yourself? If you never move into a nursing home — because you are as healthy at 65 as you were at 25 — then how do they stay in your house? I’m against burdening our young people with debt, for sure, but I don’t see generational wealth as a long term solution to that either.
- humanrebar 9y ago> Transforming real-estate, from a system largely aimed at profits... I think profits from productive use of land (rent, farming, logging, tourism, etc.) is fine. It's the speculation on family residences as if it they were an appreciating commodity (like gold or oil) that seems to be the current issue.
- godzillabrennus 9y agoThe free market meets demand better than any planned system. Let it find a way to make a profit with allow free people to decide how to spend their minimal viable income. Then again, I think the minimal viable income needs to be $30k/year to everyone. A reverse income tax if you will. This would spur more economic development than any other program the government has ever tried.
- kobeya 9y agoThe alternative is not necessarily a planned economy. Consider a Georgist land tax, for example.
- freeflight 9y ago> The reality is that if you want to cover everyone's basic needs with $12K, you need to radically reduce the cost of goods and services. How ? That's the conversation we should be having. Why even insist on that $12K number in the first place, isn't that like approaching the problem from the wrong end? It's something that always puzzled me about economic policymaking, regardless of which country; Changes seem to happen at a pace of years and only with static values, which makes reacting to our modern volatile and interconnected markets, in any useful way, impossible. Case in point the basic income: Ideally the amount of money people get could be linked to the general living costs, adjusted to their area of residence, and some national economic index. Sure the first one could be abused by people registering in more expensive areas while living in cheaper ones, but in the long run, and economic big picture this would only lead to rising prices (and basic income) in the cheaper areas, generated through the spending by the "cheaters". Imho something really underestimated is how much of an economic boost a basic income would be, it'd be like the government directly subsidizing general purchasing power, and lot's of that will come back to the government in the form of taxes. It's like the opposite end version of corporate bailouts and tax giveaways. Looking at a number like 7 trillion from that side, suddenly makes it way less intimidating and way more appealing. It's not like money is some finite resource that has to be mined in deep and dangerous caves; When it's about saving banks, Big Whatever or waging wars, against something or somebody, there always seems to be more than enough of it?
- roenxi 9y agoIt would be even easier if a 'basic living standard' could be established. Something measured in terms like quantity of food & size of housing. Money & markets are a fantastic system for taking the limited resources we have as a society and splitting them up. We haven't found a system that is more effective at increasing the average living standard. Basic income screws around with some fundamental structures of the markets. It would be easier to reason about if we knew what resources were being guaranteed by the government back in the real world. It happens that physics cannot be legislated into existence; so we will need some planning to be done to make sure that the spirit of the law can be identified and met practically.
- kobeya 9y ago
- newsmania 9y agoOne problem I’ve thought of with UBI is that it may very well make everything more expensive. Since people will have more money they will not need to work as much. When people don’t work as much, of course the amount of goods and services decrease. And when supply decreases, prices go up.