5 ms·

And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.

by speeder 13y ago

mtoddh 13y ago
And where the money to pay for that will come from? Apparently corporations will be subsidizing this: "How would we pay for it? We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes. As I mentioned above, corporate profit margins have hit an all time high, and that money will circulate far faster if it’s placed in the hands of consumers."
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  I think reducing the bureaucracy around the current welfare system would also help a lot.
nawitus 13y ago
You tax everyone more and give everyone more money. The average person will receive x euros more every month and pay taxes x euros more every month in income tax. The richer than average will probably slightly lose net income and the poorer than average will probably slightly increase net income. There are various income models, and that's just one example.
streptomycin 13y ago
I suspect that the rich would rather pay higher taxes than face civil unrest from the ever-increasing fraction of the population that can't find work.
- cpursley 13y ago
  Money and business moves to where it's most welcome for the same reason people move to neighborhoods with low rates of theft (after all, taxation and inflationary monetary policy is theft no matter which way it's painted). The reason people can't find work now is due to the failures of central planning, not the lack of it. Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. The only exceptions are where the basic income is funded through resources, not confiscation of wealth - and even this takes wise, benevolent leadership. When you confiscate wealth to provide a basic income, you create a disincentive to create wealth and an incentive to not work in exchange for basic income. This creates a rapid increase in both, which backfires because you have more people to support with basic income and less revenue because business owners scale back. It all sounds good in theory, but in practice... Edit: Interesting on the downvotes without the explanations. Do any of you live in the real world?
  - summerdown2 13y ago
    > Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. I know of a few short lived experiments, but I'm not aware of any country that has implemented a basic income, let alone failed at it. Could you let me know where you're thinking of? > It all sounds good in theory, but in practice... ... where has it failed in practice?
    - cpursley 13y ago
      You're looking at the effect, and not the cause. What caused the global banking crisis? 1.) Cheap money via gov't Fed Policy (created the artificial boom) 2.) Government mandates in mortgage lending (caused a lot of people to buy homes when they weren't in a realistic position to do so)
      - steveklabnik 13y ago
        You completely ignored their direct question. Which communist countries implemented basic income?
        cpursley 13y ago
        So sorry I didn't address all your points. I need to get back to work so that others don't have to.
        steveklabnik 13y ago
        If you knew the answer, it would have taken you less time to type it than it would have to make yet another meaningless platitude.
        cpursley 13y ago
        I'll bite. What I mean is people were paid a basic wage to do very unproductive (even counter-productive) work. So I suppose that's a little different than getting a basic wage without working at all. At least that's what my USSR-born wife explains.
astrodust 13y ago
The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately. The Mincome experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome) dabbled with this idea and the results were rather surprising. Most people seemed to want to work rather than loaf around and collect benefits. Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"?
- effn 13y ago
  > The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately. This idea does not stand up to any scrutiny at all. The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the cost of a BI program. > Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"? None of those suggestions would come anywhere near the amount of money needed for a BI program.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the cost of a BI program. Most of the cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is in validating and enforcing the conditions on beneficiaries. Unconditional Basic Income avoids these costs quite directly.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- JonFish85 13y ago
  I honestly don't think any bureaucracy would be trimmed whatsoever; it'd be replaced. All of those government jobs wouldn't be cut, they'd be moved to the new program. No matter how simple you try to make it, something like this would end up ridiculously complicated. You'd need a bureau in charge of deciding how much a person in each zip code gets, how much taxes to raise, which taxes to raise, monitor improvement, monitor areas for local government abuse (billing the federal government for fake people to get the extra cash, as an off-the-cuff example), etc.
datasage 13y ago
In the short term yes, but these trends are not limited to one region or country, they are global. Its likely that we will see most developed countries adopt some from of basic income sometime in the future, at which point there wont really be anywhere reasonable to go to escape it.
rayiner 13y ago
That's probably true, but its worth thinking through. If the rich leave and take their automation capital with them, then there will again be work for people to do, reducing the need for basic income. The question is: how much other capital can the rich take with them? They should be entitled to their property, of course, but how much of it is totally theirs to take over to say China? Google's IP is its capital. It is the result of the efforts of Google's founders and investors, of course, but was also massively subsidized. It was created by Berkeley and Stanford educated engineers, institutions that receive major federal support. It was a use of the internet, a system that was created by the DOD. They of course benefited from roads, etc, and all the other public utilities. How much of an equity share in the company would Google have given out to replace these services and inputs from scratch? That's a difficult and nebulous question but I don't think the answer is zero. I think that amount, whatever it is, would be a reasonable expatriation tax.
- ihateloggingin 13y ago
  Google's capital is its social organization. If they "leave," the social organization collapses, and all of those engineers can reorganize. Thus, google leaving creates the conditions for its replacement. No worries.
ExpiredLink 13y ago
> And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy Quite the contrary! The "Basic Income" idea stems from the rich. They would simply cut all welfare expenses, including medical.
vijayr 13y ago
Are there any models that can prove/disprove these ideas? Like - take today's situation, plugin all the numbers starting from income taxes to welfare etc and simulate it and see? It would be very interesting to see that. Also, these kinds of ideas should be tested on a smaller scale - may be a town of 25,000 people? That would be really interesting.

And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.

by speeder 13y ago

And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.

mtoddh 13y ago

And where the money to pay for that will come from? Apparently corporations will be subsidizing this: "How would we pay for it? We could start by getting corporations to pay their taxes. As I mentioned above, corporate profit margins have hit an all time high, and that money will circulate far faster if it’s placed in the hands of consumers."

jeffasinger 13y ago
I think reducing the bureaucracy around the current welfare system would also help a lot.

nawitus 13y ago

You tax everyone more and give everyone more money. The average person will receive x euros more every month and pay taxes x euros more every month in income tax. The richer than average will probably slightly lose net income and the poorer than average will probably slightly increase net income. There are various income models, and that's just one example.

streptomycin 13y ago

I suspect that the rich would rather pay higher taxes than face civil unrest from the ever-increasing fraction of the population that can't find work.

cpursley 13y ago
Money and business moves to where it's most welcome for the same reason people move to neighborhoods with low rates of theft (after all, taxation and inflationary monetary policy is theft no matter which way it's painted). The reason people can't find work now is due to the failures of central planning, not the lack of it. Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. The only exceptions are where the basic income is funded through resources, not confiscation of wealth - and even this takes wise, benevolent leadership. When you confiscate wealth to provide a basic income, you create a disincentive to create wealth and an incentive to not work in exchange for basic income. This creates a rapid increase in both, which backfires because you have more people to support with basic income and less revenue because business owners scale back. It all sounds good in theory, but in practice... Edit: Interesting on the downvotes without the explanations. Do any of you live in the real world?
- summerdown2 13y ago
  > Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. I know of a few short lived experiments, but I'm not aware of any country that has implemented a basic income, let alone failed at it. Could you let me know where you're thinking of? > It all sounds good in theory, but in practice... ... where has it failed in practice?
  - cpursley 13y ago
    You're looking at the effect, and not the cause. What caused the global banking crisis? 1.) Cheap money via gov't Fed Policy (created the artificial boom) 2.) Government mandates in mortgage lending (caused a lot of people to buy homes when they weren't in a realistic position to do so)
    - steveklabnik 13y ago
      You completely ignored their direct question. Which communist countries implemented basic income?
      - cpursley 13y ago
        So sorry I didn't address all your points. I need to get back to work so that others don't have to.
        steveklabnik 13y ago
        If you knew the answer, it would have taken you less time to type it than it would have to make yet another meaningless platitude.
        cpursley 13y ago
        I'll bite. What I mean is people were paid a basic wage to do very unproductive (even counter-productive) work. So I suppose that's a little different than getting a basic wage without working at all. At least that's what my USSR-born wife explains.

astrodust 13y ago

The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately. The Mincome experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome) dabbled with this idea and the results were rather surprising. Most people seemed to want to work rather than loaf around and collect benefits. Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"?

effn 13y ago
> The idea seems to be that you can free up a lot of the money wasted on bureaucracy and pay out to everyone indiscriminately. This idea does not stand up to any scrutiny at all. The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the cost of a BI program. > Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"? None of those suggestions would come anywhere near the amount of money needed for a BI program.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is minuscule compared to the cost of a BI program. Most of the cost of administering a welfare bureaucracy is in validating and enforcing the conditions on beneficiaries. Unconditional Basic Income avoids these costs quite directly.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
JonFish85 13y ago
I honestly don't think any bureaucracy would be trimmed whatsoever; it'd be replaced. All of those government jobs wouldn't be cut, they'd be moved to the new program. No matter how simple you try to make it, something like this would end up ridiculously complicated. You'd need a bureau in charge of deciding how much a person in each zip code gets, how much taxes to raise, which taxes to raise, monitor improvement, monitor areas for local government abuse (billing the federal government for fake people to get the extra cash, as an off-the-cuff example), etc.

datasage 13y ago

In the short term yes, but these trends are not limited to one region or country, they are global. Its likely that we will see most developed countries adopt some from of basic income sometime in the future, at which point there wont really be anywhere reasonable to go to escape it.

rayiner 13y ago

That's probably true, but its worth thinking through. If the rich leave and take their automation capital with them, then there will again be work for people to do, reducing the need for basic income. The question is: how much other capital can the rich take with them? They should be entitled to their property, of course, but how much of it is totally theirs to take over to say China? Google's IP is its capital. It is the result of the efforts of Google's founders and investors, of course, but was also massively subsidized. It was created by Berkeley and Stanford educated engineers, institutions that receive major federal support. It was a use of the internet, a system that was created by the DOD. They of course benefited from roads, etc, and all the other public utilities. How much of an equity share in the company would Google have given out to replace these services and inputs from scratch? That's a difficult and nebulous question but I don't think the answer is zero. I think that amount, whatever it is, would be a reasonable expatriation tax.

ihateloggingin 13y ago
Google's capital is its social organization. If they "leave," the social organization collapses, and all of those engineers can reorganize. Thus, google leaving creates the conditions for its replacement. No worries.

ExpiredLink 13y ago

> And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy Quite the contrary! The "Basic Income" idea stems from the rich. They would simply cut all welfare expenses, including medical.

vijayr 13y ago

Are there any models that can prove/disprove these ideas? Like - take today's situation, plugin all the numbers starting from income taxes to welfare etc and simulate it and see? It would be very interesting to see that. Also, these kinds of ideas should be tested on a smaller scale - may be a town of 25,000 people? That would be really interesting.