8 ms·

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidize

by jaibot 13y ago

Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety-net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income .

KiwiCoder 13y ago
Guaranteed minimum income is based on need, basic income is based on citizenship.
sz4kerto 13y ago
I might agree. However, most people will want basic income as an extra, not as a replacement. I would bet a significant amount on that (i.e. basic income being popular only until poor people figure out what are they going to lose). The masses don't like taking care of themselves. Not even if they get 'free' money for that.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  Any proposed government program that causes the net wealth of any distinct group of people to increase or decrease is going to be supported or opposed by various people for self-interested reasons. But the point is not to to wage war over who steals money from someone else and gives it to themselves by way of government bureaucracy, the point is to do something that results in a net benefit to society, for example by reducing the disincentive to work created by the discontinuation of government benefits when one finds gainful employment. The net result of that is to reduce unemployment and underemployment, which increases the tax base and allows a given level of government services to be provided at a lower tax rate (or an increased level of government services to be provided at the same tax rate, depending on your policy preferences).
jiggy2011 13y ago
The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income. Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there. The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy." But in this case, they would be able to offer each other money for providing each other services. Congregations of people would inherently be able to realize some demand, which is not presently the case (or that demand is filtered through bureaucrats).
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil. It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      "Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil." I'm not really sure what you are saying here. My understanding of the favelas is that there is a great deal of economic activity going on there, and a lot of people working actively to better their situations. Limited resources coupled with sparse, unequally applied regulation and rule of law leads to some bad situations, but those in the favelas are living in the favelas primarily to have access to the economic activity of the city. Resources go to the favelas only in proportion to the earning power of the residents, which dynamic basic income specifically changes, and it is this change specifically that I am saying is likely to produce better results. It's totally possible you were saying something I'm missing; if so, please clarify. "It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them." Physical location matters, but it matters less than it ever has before. Ideally, we want more places with opportunity, not ever higher rents in SF and Manhattan.
SEMW 13y ago
Correct link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income. GMI is different.
berrypicker 13y ago
For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs. Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.
- jaibot 13y ago
  Milton Friedman proposed negative income tax _in addition to_ guaranteed income. Worth noting that the US has partially implemented negative income tax (we call it EITC) - it's working really well and should probably be expanded (probably worth taking money from other welfare programs if it comes to that).
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    EITC is not a negative income tax. In a negative income tax, below a certain level, each marginal dollar of reduced income produces an additional negative amount of income tax (or, equivalently, positive amount of refundable credit.) EITC is a work incentive program that provides additional income tax credit with increasing labor income up to a certain amount -- the feature for which it is named as a tax credit for earned income -- and then tails off above a certain point. In the range from the peak to the tail off, it might be mistaken for a negative income tax, but that's true of any tax credit (or even, really, a tax deduction) that has a soft cap. But that's not really the basic design or function is, and, while the EITC may work fairly well, there's no good argument I can see that the negative-income-like portion of the top end of the EITC benefit curve is a contributor to its beneficial functioning, except perhaps if you consider it only against having a sharp cut-off where the benefit drops from the maximum to $0.
benihana 13y ago
>Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Is this empirically proven somewhere? Or is that what its proponents are saying? Forgive me if I'm a little cynical when someone tells me an idea they support is a much better form of welfare than what we currently have but doesn't back it up with proof.
- MarcusVorenus 13y ago
  How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? At the very least we would save a ton of money on bureaucracy and corruption.
  - JackFr 13y ago
    Why? Do you think the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the social services industry would sit idly by while their jobs are eliminated? Of course not. And that is the real reason it will never be implemented. For this to be palatable to the right, it's got to credibly eliminate a large existing bureaucracy -- something which might be palatable to the left, but for the specific interest of that bureaucracy.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? You would get supporting evidence for each of a set of propositions, from which the efficiency (however that is operationalized in context) of the particular plan being proposed follows. The whole point of the scientific method is that it allows us to have justifiable (even if not certain) evidence-based predictions of things that haven't been tried yet.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  "Efficiency" is ambiguous. In terms of (benefit dollars delivered)/(benefit dollars delivered + administrative costs) its almost true-by-definition, since the absence of means testing removes most of the source of administrative requirements in traditional welfare programs. In terms of effectiveness at achieving the goals of welfare programs, it is far less clear, though there are pretty clear arguments that certain features of basic income -- particularly the lack of disincentives to outside income -- are beneficial in that regard. OTOH, there are also pretty clear arguments that the lack of need-based focus -- which is intimately tied to the lack of disincentives -- are potentially negative, especially when replacing welfare programs whose existing qualifications are based around special needs (e.g., programs qualified by particular disabilities) that increase costs rather than simple lack of resources (e.g., income/asset-qualified poverty support programs.)
JackFr 13y ago
> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. That seems to be a conclusion without any premises, woefully short on data and implicit but imprecise definitions of 'efficient', 'helpful' and 'welfare'.

by jaibot 13y ago

KiwiCoder 13y ago

Guaranteed minimum income is based on need, basic income is based on citizenship.

sz4kerto 13y ago

I might agree. However, most people will want basic income as an extra, not as a replacement. I would bet a significant amount on that (i.e. basic income being popular only until poor people figure out what are they going to lose). The masses don't like taking care of themselves. Not even if they get 'free' money for that.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
Any proposed government program that causes the net wealth of any distinct group of people to increase or decrease is going to be supported or opposed by various people for self-interested reasons. But the point is not to to wage war over who steals money from someone else and gives it to themselves by way of government bureaucracy, the point is to do something that results in a net benefit to society, for example by reducing the disincentive to work created by the discontinuation of government benefits when one finds gainful employment. The net result of that is to reduce unemployment and underemployment, which increases the tax base and allows a given level of government services to be provided at a lower tax rate (or an increased level of government services to be provided at the same tax rate, depending on your policy preferences).

jiggy2011 13y ago

The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income. Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there. The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.

dllthomas 13y ago
"The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy." But in this case, they would be able to offer each other money for providing each other services. Congregations of people would inherently be able to realize some demand, which is not presently the case (or that demand is filtered through bureaucrats).
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil. It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "Maybe, but the same could probably be said about the favelas in Brazil." I'm not really sure what you are saying here. My understanding of the favelas is that there is a great deal of economic activity going on there, and a lot of people working actively to better their situations. Limited resources coupled with sparse, unequally applied regulation and rule of law leads to some bad situations, but those in the favelas are living in the favelas primarily to have access to the economic activity of the city. Resources go to the favelas only in proportion to the earning power of the residents, which dynamic basic income specifically changes, and it is this change specifically that I am saying is likely to produce better results. It's totally possible you were saying something I'm missing; if so, please clarify. "It probably makes some sense to subsidize people to live in the area where there is currently the most opportunity for them." Physical location matters, but it matters less than it ever has before. Ideally, we want more places with opportunity, not ever higher rents in SF and Manhattan.

SEMW 13y ago

Correct link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income. GMI is different.

berrypicker 13y ago

For those interested, a good way to implement this was proposed by Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax which indeed works out to be better than government sponsored programs. Progressive taxation has nothing to do with it though, it's not required at all.

jaibot 13y ago
Milton Friedman proposed negative income tax _in addition to_ guaranteed income. Worth noting that the US has partially implemented negative income tax (we call it EITC) - it's working really well and should probably be expanded (probably worth taking money from other welfare programs if it comes to that).
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  EITC is not a negative income tax. In a negative income tax, below a certain level, each marginal dollar of reduced income produces an additional negative amount of income tax (or, equivalently, positive amount of refundable credit.) EITC is a work incentive program that provides additional income tax credit with increasing labor income up to a certain amount -- the feature for which it is named as a tax credit for earned income -- and then tails off above a certain point. In the range from the peak to the tail off, it might be mistaken for a negative income tax, but that's true of any tax credit (or even, really, a tax deduction) that has a soft cap. But that's not really the basic design or function is, and, while the EITC may work fairly well, there's no good argument I can see that the negative-income-like portion of the top end of the EITC benefit curve is a contributor to its beneficial functioning, except perhaps if you consider it only against having a sharp cut-off where the benefit drops from the maximum to $0.

benihana 13y ago

>Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Is this empirically proven somewhere? Or is that what its proponents are saying? Forgive me if I'm a little cynical when someone tells me an idea they support is a much better form of welfare than what we currently have but doesn't back it up with proof.

MarcusVorenus 13y ago
How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? At the very least we would save a ton of money on bureaucracy and corruption.
- JackFr 13y ago
  Why? Do you think the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the social services industry would sit idly by while their jobs are eliminated? Of course not. And that is the real reason it will never be implemented. For this to be palatable to the right, it's got to credibly eliminate a large existing bureaucracy -- something which might be palatable to the left, but for the specific interest of that bureaucracy.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > How would you go about getting supporting evidence for something that hasn't been tried yet? You would get supporting evidence for each of a set of propositions, from which the efficiency (however that is operationalized in context) of the particular plan being proposed follows. The whole point of the scientific method is that it allows us to have justifiable (even if not certain) evidence-based predictions of things that haven't been tried yet.
dragonwriter 13y ago
"Efficiency" is ambiguous. In terms of (benefit dollars delivered)/(benefit dollars delivered + administrative costs) its almost true-by-definition, since the absence of means testing removes most of the source of administrative requirements in traditional welfare programs. In terms of effectiveness at achieving the goals of welfare programs, it is far less clear, though there are pretty clear arguments that certain features of basic income -- particularly the lack of disincentives to outside income -- are beneficial in that regard. OTOH, there are also pretty clear arguments that the lack of need-based focus -- which is intimately tied to the lack of disincentives -- are potentially negative, especially when replacing welfare programs whose existing qualifications are based around special needs (e.g., programs qualified by particular disabilities) that increase costs rather than simple lack of resources (e.g., income/asset-qualified poverty support programs.)

JackFr 13y ago

> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. That seems to be a conclusion without any premises, woefully short on data and implicit but imprecise definitions of 'efficient', 'helpful' and 'welfare'.