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How about I just point out the huge flaw here: Bank bailouts, in theory, are to be paid back, with interest. In a lot of cases they were. Not all, of course, b

How about I just point out the huge flaw here: Bank bailouts, in theory, are to be paid back, with interest. In a lot of cases they were. Not all, of course, but the economy turned. Net, bank bailouts were a good investment. QE may turn out to be as well (I may doubt that, but truth it the jury's still out) If that same deal can be made, believably, for basic income, we wouldn't be having this argument: we'd provide basic income, today, as a loan. Hell, I'd fight to add my own money to provide that basic income. Since you pretty much don't like me anymore at this point, why not just go ahead and fully state the problem: What we cannot have in the economy, is a large, and potentially exponentially growing, group of expenses without any useful work. And when I mean "we cannot" I don't mean that I'm denying this to you. I don't mean states don't want it. I don't mean I don't want to give everyone that. I mean we cannot. Any such policy must fail in a limited amount of time. I mean you cannot have basic income for any length of time in the same sense that you cannot paint the sky green. Disappointing perhaps, but simply a parameter of existence, nothing more. You shouldn't blame economics for this. Nor should you blame states, banks, the rich, or anyone. The only things to be blamed for it is thermodynamics. Of course the universe couldn't exist stably without those laws, so maybe math itself should bear the guilt.

pjc50 9y ago
> group of expenses without any useful work. Pensioners? Rentiers?
- candiodari 9y ago
  Rentiers are a very small group that arguably organize resources, they don't do nothing. For instance, it is commonly accepted that the markets that allow for rentiers to exist far outperform communist and the older king/nobility directed markets and even mercantilist markets. Pensioners are a temporary aberration. Of course we can take care of a fixed and tiny percentage of the population while everything else is growing. The issue is, that we've stopped growing. Population growth in the west stopped long ago. That means that for the coming 20 years or so pensioners will "grow" exponentially (or rather exponentially growing birthrates from 50-60 years ago will get transformed into pensioner growth), whereas the working population will actually shrink. Even in China. In Japan it will crash. And in case you feel like automation will save us ... well, where is it ? Productivity growth stopped in the 80s, along with the introduction of large scale automation. Unless something dramatically changes from now on there automation looks like at best it can temporarily prevent worse than the current situation. And what could change ? Having computers organize things is old hat by now. Having factories, actual production automated ... even older hat. Mines, ... just about the only thing with real economic impact remaining is house building.
Retric 9y ago
In risk adjusted terms bailouts lose money by having easier terms than private investments. Further, bailout money came from loans (bonds), and the government lost money both from the loan payment and the higher interest rate from selling more bonds. People in prison do no work yet society has plenty of surplus to cover them. The reality is minimum wage jobs are a tiny slice of the economy because they create so little value. If BI means 1/2 of those jobs don't get done then no great loss.
- candiodari 9y ago
  > In risk adjusted terms bailouts lose money by having easier terms than private investments. That's similar to saying I lost money because a bank offered you your mortgage for 4% when I could have lent you that money at 10%.
  - Retric 9y ago
    You are not the market. If the government pays above market rates for gold then they are clearly losing money. Why do you think there is a difference if they offer a loan at say 1%?
    - uoaei 9y ago
      Transactions do not occur in vacuo. Your question must take into account who is buying, who is selling, and what the alternatives are for both parties. If the government is offering a loan at 1% it's probably because it's a better option than offering a loan at 3% and losing the partner who would otherwise be a net positive for the country.
      - Retric 9y ago
        I doubt buricrats are capable of regularly making that choice correctly. Remember communism failed in large part because central planning is hard. Further, if a company's option is to fail or give up 90% of it's stock it's going to give up 90% of it's stock. The idea the government needs to give great terms to a failed company is simply corruption talking.
flotillo 9y ago
> You shouldn't blame economics for this. Nor should you blame states, banks, the rich, or anyone. The only things to be blamed for it is thermodynamics. Of course the universe couldn't exist stably without those laws, so maybe math itself should bear the guilt. Could you elaborate on how you believe thermodynamics is to blame? I don't quite follow your argument.
madez 9y ago
Your argument fails at the reality. For example in Germany there is social security since a very long time. Some people there get money without doing any work! Still, the country works, pretty good actually. And that is because states don't work always in ways that are intuitive. If you always follow your intuition, you might end up writing what you did.
- koonsolo 9y ago
  Hi, Belgian here. Social security is something completely different than basic income. Social security means that if you lose your job, get sick, or any other unforeseen setback happens, you don't starve. The goal is to get you back to work. And if that is not possible, society is so nice to support you. You know, the people who are able to work. I'm more than pleased to help out people who really are unable to work. Basic income says that your basic income needs to be covered, for everyone, even if you are fully capable of working. So actually anyone can live a 'basic' life without doing work at all. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. In a society where there is no incentive to work, people will work less, less value is created, and due to scarcity, prices will rise. And so your basic income won't cover your basic needs anymore. It's actually pretty easy to reason about economy like this. Just forget about money, and think of people producing and consuming value. If you don't produce, you can't consume, simple as that. Some people argue that in a basic-income world, people work as much as normal. But I would like to see that in practice first.
  - madez 9y ago
    > So actually anyone can live a 'basic' life without doing work at all. So what? That sounds like a problem, but doesn't need to be one. People could already go robbing and killing those around them, but they don't. Anecdotes won't suffice here. > In a society where there is no incentive to work, people will work less, less value is created, and due to scarcity, prices will rise. People do a lot of charitable work without any receiving any money in return. That shows that there is are strong incentives to work other than receiving an income. Besides that, yes I think prices would rise. Not uniformely though. Surely, asparagus would become more expensive, but cars not to the same degree. Picking asparagus is a shitty and hard shop that is outsourced to poor people because it is low paid. No, if the poor didn't need to do that work, they wouldn't. So the wages would need to rise. Finally, for it is long due. The economy and the prices would shift and balance. For the better. > If you don't produce, you can't consume, simple as that. Unless you are simply given part of what is produced. Which is done in reality. As simple as that. Stuff is produced, and will be produced. Because a basic income is just that, a basic income. Want a car or own a house? You have to work. Seems very reasonable to me. Also, machines will happily continue to work. > Some people argue that in a basic-income world, people work as much as normal. But I would like to see that in practice first. Work is not a universal good. I wish poor people wouldn't need to do the horrible job of picking vegetables only the richer eat. I think that work should stop. It's degrading to the workers. Still want your asparragus? Invent better machines or pay a lot more so the people who pick it get a fair wage.
Firadeoclus 9y ago
> What we cannot have in the economy, is a large, and potentially exponentially growing, group of expenses without any useful work. The solution would be to implement it so it forms a self-regulating feedback loop. It is indeed true (and tautological) that a basic income can only be as large as it can be. But it's also quite clear that in most circumstances this amount is not zero. And there is a lot of useful work done by people who don't get paid for it.
dtech 9y ago
> What we cannot have in the economy, is a large, and potentially exponentially growing, group of expenses without any useful work. I'm no economist, but that proposition seems flawed. Income support for people without jobs has more-or-less worked in western countries, in that those people aren't starving to death and are actually buying things. It has similar advantages and disadvantages as other non-investment costs: but x million people decide how to spend the money instead of the government. A feasible way for it to fail would be if enough people decided to stop working and rely on basic income, leading to not enough produced goods and rapid inflation, essentially make basic income too low. I think this is highly unlikely to happen, practically because there will always be people incentivised to work because they will earn more money, and morally because people seek fulfillment in live, and a large amount of people find that in their jobs.
jganetsk 9y ago
We can analyze the effect of basic income using MMT, modern monetary theory. Every dollar spent by the government is a dollar in someone else's pocket. That dollar will be split and used in 3 ways: spending, taxation, saving. So here's the algorithm... int saved = 0, taxed = 0; 1) For every cent taxed, add that to "taxed" 2) For every cent saved, add that to "saved" 3) For every cent spent, recurse So, every dollar spent by the government, with the algorithm fully applied, is completely distributed into taxation and savings. And taxation is simply a return back into the government's hands. So the net effect is that some fraction of each dollar spent by the government goes into private savings. You end up with "twin peaks of debt and savings", in this case government debt and private savings. Government spending is essentially monetary policy... and basic income is government spending that is fair and democratic. But government debt doesn't grow forever, because there's income outside of basic income, and that income is taxed as well.

pjc50 9y ago

> group of expenses without any useful work. Pensioners? Rentiers?

candiodari 9y ago
Rentiers are a very small group that arguably organize resources, they don't do nothing. For instance, it is commonly accepted that the markets that allow for rentiers to exist far outperform communist and the older king/nobility directed markets and even mercantilist markets. Pensioners are a temporary aberration. Of course we can take care of a fixed and tiny percentage of the population while everything else is growing. The issue is, that we've stopped growing. Population growth in the west stopped long ago. That means that for the coming 20 years or so pensioners will "grow" exponentially (or rather exponentially growing birthrates from 50-60 years ago will get transformed into pensioner growth), whereas the working population will actually shrink. Even in China. In Japan it will crash. And in case you feel like automation will save us ... well, where is it ? Productivity growth stopped in the 80s, along with the introduction of large scale automation. Unless something dramatically changes from now on there automation looks like at best it can temporarily prevent worse than the current situation. And what could change ? Having computers organize things is old hat by now. Having factories, actual production automated ... even older hat. Mines, ... just about the only thing with real economic impact remaining is house building.

Retric 9y ago

In risk adjusted terms bailouts lose money by having easier terms than private investments. Further, bailout money came from loans (bonds), and the government lost money both from the loan payment and the higher interest rate from selling more bonds. People in prison do no work yet society has plenty of surplus to cover them. The reality is minimum wage jobs are a tiny slice of the economy because they create so little value. If BI means 1/2 of those jobs don't get done then no great loss.

candiodari 9y ago
> In risk adjusted terms bailouts lose money by having easier terms than private investments. That's similar to saying I lost money because a bank offered you your mortgage for 4% when I could have lent you that money at 10%.
- Retric 9y ago
  You are not the market. If the government pays above market rates for gold then they are clearly losing money. Why do you think there is a difference if they offer a loan at say 1%?
  - uoaei 9y ago
    Transactions do not occur in vacuo. Your question must take into account who is buying, who is selling, and what the alternatives are for both parties. If the government is offering a loan at 1% it's probably because it's a better option than offering a loan at 3% and losing the partner who would otherwise be a net positive for the country.
    - Retric 9y ago
      I doubt buricrats are capable of regularly making that choice correctly. Remember communism failed in large part because central planning is hard. Further, if a company's option is to fail or give up 90% of it's stock it's going to give up 90% of it's stock. The idea the government needs to give great terms to a failed company is simply corruption talking.

flotillo 9y ago

> You shouldn't blame economics for this. Nor should you blame states, banks, the rich, or anyone. The only things to be blamed for it is thermodynamics. Of course the universe couldn't exist stably without those laws, so maybe math itself should bear the guilt. Could you elaborate on how you believe thermodynamics is to blame? I don't quite follow your argument.

madez 9y ago

Your argument fails at the reality. For example in Germany there is social security since a very long time. Some people there get money without doing any work! Still, the country works, pretty good actually. And that is because states don't work always in ways that are intuitive. If you always follow your intuition, you might end up writing what you did.

koonsolo 9y ago
Hi, Belgian here. Social security is something completely different than basic income. Social security means that if you lose your job, get sick, or any other unforeseen setback happens, you don't starve. The goal is to get you back to work. And if that is not possible, society is so nice to support you. You know, the people who are able to work. I'm more than pleased to help out people who really are unable to work. Basic income says that your basic income needs to be covered, for everyone, even if you are fully capable of working. So actually anyone can live a 'basic' life without doing work at all. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. In a society where there is no incentive to work, people will work less, less value is created, and due to scarcity, prices will rise. And so your basic income won't cover your basic needs anymore. It's actually pretty easy to reason about economy like this. Just forget about money, and think of people producing and consuming value. If you don't produce, you can't consume, simple as that. Some people argue that in a basic-income world, people work as much as normal. But I would like to see that in practice first.
- madez 9y ago
  > So actually anyone can live a 'basic' life without doing work at all. So what? That sounds like a problem, but doesn't need to be one. People could already go robbing and killing those around them, but they don't. Anecdotes won't suffice here. > In a society where there is no incentive to work, people will work less, less value is created, and due to scarcity, prices will rise. People do a lot of charitable work without any receiving any money in return. That shows that there is are strong incentives to work other than receiving an income. Besides that, yes I think prices would rise. Not uniformely though. Surely, asparagus would become more expensive, but cars not to the same degree. Picking asparagus is a shitty and hard shop that is outsourced to poor people because it is low paid. No, if the poor didn't need to do that work, they wouldn't. So the wages would need to rise. Finally, for it is long due. The economy and the prices would shift and balance. For the better. > If you don't produce, you can't consume, simple as that. Unless you are simply given part of what is produced. Which is done in reality. As simple as that. Stuff is produced, and will be produced. Because a basic income is just that, a basic income. Want a car or own a house? You have to work. Seems very reasonable to me. Also, machines will happily continue to work. > Some people argue that in a basic-income world, people work as much as normal. But I would like to see that in practice first. Work is not a universal good. I wish poor people wouldn't need to do the horrible job of picking vegetables only the richer eat. I think that work should stop. It's degrading to the workers. Still want your asparragus? Invent better machines or pay a lot more so the people who pick it get a fair wage.

Firadeoclus 9y ago

> What we cannot have in the economy, is a large, and potentially exponentially growing, group of expenses without any useful work. The solution would be to implement it so it forms a self-regulating feedback loop. It is indeed true (and tautological) that a basic income can only be as large as it can be. But it's also quite clear that in most circumstances this amount is not zero. And there is a lot of useful work done by people who don't get paid for it.

dtech 9y ago

> What we cannot have in the economy, is a large, and potentially exponentially growing, group of expenses without any useful work. I'm no economist, but that proposition seems flawed. Income support for people without jobs has more-or-less worked in western countries, in that those people aren't starving to death and are actually buying things. It has similar advantages and disadvantages as other non-investment costs: but x million people decide how to spend the money instead of the government. A feasible way for it to fail would be if enough people decided to stop working and rely on basic income, leading to not enough produced goods and rapid inflation, essentially make basic income too low. I think this is highly unlikely to happen, practically because there will always be people incentivised to work because they will earn more money, and morally because people seek fulfillment in live, and a large amount of people find that in their jobs.

jganetsk 9y ago

We can analyze the effect of basic income using MMT, modern monetary theory. Every dollar spent by the government is a dollar in someone else's pocket. That dollar will be split and used in 3 ways: spending, taxation, saving. So here's the algorithm... int saved = 0, taxed = 0; 1) For every cent taxed, add that to "taxed" 2) For every cent saved, add that to "saved" 3) For every cent spent, recurse So, every dollar spent by the government, with the algorithm fully applied, is completely distributed into taxation and savings. And taxation is simply a return back into the government's hands. So the net effect is that some fraction of each dollar spent by the government goes into private savings. You end up with "twin peaks of debt and savings", in this case government debt and private savings. Government spending is essentially monetary policy... and basic income is government spending that is fair and democratic. But government debt doesn't grow forever, because there's income outside of basic income, and that income is taxed as well.