10 ms·

As a European we are bit further down that path than the US. I assume most of the readers here are "wealthy", would not need basic guaranteed income. So let me

As a European we are bit further down that path than the US. I assume most of the readers here are "wealthy", would not need basic guaranteed income. So let me explain why this is a good idea from a rich man's perspective. You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. That's it. Behind all the nice language this is what it boils down to. It is paying off poor people to stop pestering you. Chump change for security. Europe learned it the hard way through numerous revolutions and war - keep the lower classes happy and everyone benefits. Social housing, healthcare, the lower rungs of Maslow's pyramid. The Romans called it panem et circenses. Not a new idea. Focus on the panem. Hungry people do desperate things. Want to see how society looks like that does not get that? Brazil. Mexico. Have a nice house in Sao Paulo or Mexico City? Then enjoy your 3m high wall with barbed wire around it. Sharing a bit of wealth means personal security for you. You don't get robbed. You don't get infected by shit because no one gets shots (yes, you want basic healthcare for all). You have a nice large market to sell shit to, so job security (the basic Henry Ford insight). So there you have it, even if you hate poor people there is good reason to give them some money.

carbocation 13y ago
From the optimist's view, think how many people whose lives are being spent working at Walmart or McDonald's who could instead be at home developing skills they are actually interested in (which school does a poor job of teaching), such as programming or sculpture, etc. Imagine the entrepreneurs who might feel freed to give business a chance, rather than feeling that they can't quit their day jobs? It would be a grand experiment with potentially huge benefits (and, as always, risks).
- jasonlfunk 13y ago
  From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything. Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages. Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income. It's an inflationary cycle that would be very hard to avoid.
  - MBlume 13y ago
    This is my primary concern with the proposal, but if Walmart and McDonalds were deprived of that cheap workforce, how many of those jobs would they finally figure out how to automate?
  - fiatmoney 13y ago
    You have precisely no reason for believing that the growth pattern is exponential or an open-ended cycle. In fact the cardinal rule of economics ("things go on until they can't") suggests they will arrive in a steady state. In order to figure out a likely steady state you'd have to look at the composition of spending and employment by people around or under the proposed income, and try to estimate shifts if there was an effective employer-of-last-resort in the form of a basic income. It gets complicated fast if you want to do a good job. Hand-waving about inflationary spirals is, on the other hand, easy.
  - 21echoes 13y ago
    > From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything. because, despite the myth of the lazy poor, most people enjoy being productive.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      What data (if any) would convince you that the idea of the lazy poor is not a myth?
    - jasonlfunk 13y ago
      Being lazy isn't the only reason someone would quit working at Walmart. It might just suck to flip burgers for 8 hours a day. Needing to eat is a very good incentive to do things that you wouldn't normally do.
  - zimbatm 13y ago
    But the government is already subsidizing the base salary. Everything that Walmart gives is in addition to that which would probably reduce their costs. Also not everything is in the function of pay. Once people have enough for living, the deciding factor like having an enjoyable and meaningful job also do count. It's then up to Walmart to transform themselves to become that place and attract employees.
- EpicEng 13y ago
  Because you can't better yourself while working part time at McDonald's or Wal-Mart? im self taught and I was working full time while teaching myself all things computer science in my spare time. Let's not pretend that all who are working menial jobs are oppressed and would flourish if we handed them money.
Xdes 13y ago
Or a good reason for private security.
- pinaceae 13y ago
  well yeah, the Brazilian model. But this sucks, try living behind barbed wire and being dependent on your bodyguards. I definitely prefer being able to walk the streets at night by myself and not getting robbed/stabbed/hijacked.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Security don't helps when the poor are motivated. There are a lot of kidnappings in Mexico City.
  - jedmeyers 13y ago
    By drug/criminal cartels, not by poor.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      Who do you think the cartels recruit from? its not gap year kids doing it for kicks.
      - jedmeyers 13y ago
        Do you think cartels will have trouble recruiting people once everyone have 20k a year to spend? They gonna have even more money since a big chunk of those 20k will be spent on the drugs they are selling.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  This has been tried. Brazil. South Africa. China. India. The list goes on. These are countries where the wealthy can't walk around freely on the streets without substantial protections, where quality of life is simultaneously high and low. Instead of enjoying your wealth on your own terms, now you're in a cycle of vetting your drivers, your nannies, and anyone else who comes within physical vicinity of you. Your physical movements are restricted to routes and destinations that are vetted and secured. And as the wealth gap increases, the threat to your life increases also. Kidnapping a millionaire may not be worth risking your life - but what about kidnapping a billionaire? As inequality rises the lengths people will go to to harm you increases also, resulting in ever-higher fences, ever more advanced security, and a non-stop arms race between you and the poor. This is already reality in a lot of places. I for one don't want it to become the reality here.
venomsnake 13y ago
Especially in demand deprived economics times this is one of the best ways to boost both demand and inflation.
ctdonath 13y ago
You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. Once you've established a "protection money" system, establishing their "right" to your money & property, they are now incentivized to demand - and take - more. Panem et circenses is the last stage of polite society; the cost eventually becomes unbearable as fewer work and more expect comfort & leisure for nothing. You give poor people money because it's generosity, kindness and help - freely given as your choice. The recipient receives knowing the charity is out of goodness, and is coupled to an expectation that the recipient will make a respectable effort to overcome poverty. As an American, we ensure people don't climb over the fence and kill us in our sleep because (A) the firepower many have within 3 steps of bed will give potential attackers pause, and (B) the local police will apprehend surviving thugs. We also strive to reduce legal barriers to productivity, promoting liberty to earn an honest wage for honest work (rather than creating high cost of entry with a flurry of stifling regulations). Between severe disincentives to crime, coupled with easy access to rewarding opportunity, we don't have to pay people to not kill us.
- calibraxis 13y ago
  Enlightened wealthy elites read from authors like like Adam Smith, who said, "Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor." (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=196&Itemid=27 http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=s...) Pretty much what the previous poster explained. After all, "your money & property" are purely social relations requiring a state. The state literally prints money, and enforces "rights to property" using people with sticks.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  If you think about it though, you're absolutely right. Not killing me is just something you should do by default. I shouldn't have to pay you to do that. If I do pay to not kill me, does that mean you can justify killing me if I stop paying you? After all, you're desperate and hungry. Oh wait, what if you waste your stipend on drugs or "loose it" or someone steals it from you because you weren't being responsible with what was basically free money? Do you get more money to waste, or do you get to kill me now for food?
nimble 13y ago
Basic income is a good idea but you have the rationale wrong. The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources. As general advancement accelerates and allows for greater production with less labor, a greater percentage of that wealth ought to be shared with everyone. So in the thought experiment where no one really needs to work and the robots take care of all of our basic needs, eventually distribution of resources should be more or less uniform. If you view basic income as handouts then you have to answer all of the objections that you'll find in this thread: you're stealing from someone else to pay for them, you're disincentivizing work, etc. Basic income should instead be viewed as arising from principles of fairness.
- dnautics 13y ago
  The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind This is, actually, the argument for why we shouldn't have an inflationary monetary system. Normally technological improvement is deflationary (witness lowering prices for tech goods in spite of inflation - healthcare is different because it's highly regulated). Yet what we do by inflating the currency "to keep prices stable" is to steal the marginal improvement in livelihood created by technology and throw it at the financial sector.... At best. In reality we steal more than the marginal value; hence increasing income inequality, overenriched financial sector, decreased real wages in spite of increased productivity...
  - rtpg 13y ago
    but with fractional banking and the like the amount of money actually in the system is always increasing, so the inflation isn't actually "destroying" anything, it's basically just the equivalent to a flat tax that goes out to banks to help fund loans At one point I had the impression that inflation is supposed to encourage spending, but thinking about it, it probably punishes the poor (who have pretty much no savings) more than anything
    - 13y ago
ExpiredLink 13y ago
Actually, the European model isn't "free money" but subsidized education, healthcare and housing. Actually, the European model is the opposite of "free money". People here are not paid to leave the rich alone but to enhance their prospects using their own resources. The libertarian dream - free money and free dope - would be a nightmare for the target groups: expelled from society with an apanage without hope to ever come back.
bubbleRefuge 13y ago
Also, the income boots aggregate demand in the economy by that much which benefits the wealthy as that income is used to pay rent and buy goods and services from entities that wealth people own; some folks may call this trickle up economics.
- judk 13y ago
  Aka Keynesianism, before Congress bastardized it to mean printing money and handing it to bank owners.
dnautics 13y ago
You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. You don't think that this is a poor model of crime? There are plenty of empirical counterexamples. During the great depression in the US, crime rates went to an all-time low. The gap between the rich and the poor in the US is at an all-time high; yet the crime rate is again at a low.
- swalkergibson 13y ago
  > During the great depression in the US, crime rates went to an all-time low. Citation, please. The examples below suggest that this is not at all the case. http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp http://depts.washington.edu/depress/crime_seattle_great_depression.shtml http://depts.washington.edu/depress/crime_seattle_great_depr... http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?s=902192a69c3d655bfdc25799cb5e5e88&p=2171181&postcount=7 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?s=902192a69...
  - dnautics 13y ago
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97234406 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9723440... http://kondratiefflongwave.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ushomicide20101.jpg http://kondratiefflongwave.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ushom... OK, perhaps I was incorrect to say "all-time low", and should have said "trended towards a local minimum over the course of the depression"
    - swalkergibson 13y ago
      The articles you cited refute your point. > It was a period of booming economic prosperity, the roaring '20s, and very high crime (emphasis mine) The time period before the Great Depression != the time period during the Great Depression. The chart provided suggests that there was a sharp increase in homicide rates beginning around 1920, then a slight upward trend toward 1929, and then another sharp increase through the 1930s, towards the beginning of WWII. Do you have any other examples? I am really skeptical that crime rates went down on the whole during the least economically productive period in the history of the United States.
bananacurve 13y ago
"Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it." Self reliance is not to be underestimated. The state and the individual are both empowered. Being reliant on the state should be a last resort not a goal, as Europe is discovering.
goggles99 13y ago
Being poor is all relative, in many countries, poor means you will likely starve to death, in the wealthiest countries, the poor eat relatively well, are educated (if they choose to be), have housing, electricity, running water and Cable Television. My point? how long till those getting the stipend are whining again about how poor they are because they make the same amount as today relative to the general population. Now we are back to square one.

carbocation 13y ago

From the optimist's view, think how many people whose lives are being spent working at Walmart or McDonald's who could instead be at home developing skills they are actually interested in (which school does a poor job of teaching), such as programming or sculpture, etc. Imagine the entrepreneurs who might feel freed to give business a chance, rather than feeling that they can't quit their day jobs? It would be a grand experiment with potentially huge benefits (and, as always, risks).

jasonlfunk 13y ago
From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything. Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages. Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income. It's an inflationary cycle that would be very hard to avoid.
- MBlume 13y ago
  This is my primary concern with the proposal, but if Walmart and McDonalds were deprived of that cheap workforce, how many of those jobs would they finally figure out how to automate?
- fiatmoney 13y ago
  You have precisely no reason for believing that the growth pattern is exponential or an open-ended cycle. In fact the cardinal rule of economics ("things go on until they can't") suggests they will arrive in a steady state. In order to figure out a likely steady state you'd have to look at the composition of spending and employment by people around or under the proposed income, and try to estimate shifts if there was an effective employer-of-last-resort in the form of a basic income. It gets complicated fast if you want to do a good job. Hand-waving about inflationary spirals is, on the other hand, easy.
- 21echoes 13y ago
  > From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything. because, despite the myth of the lazy poor, most people enjoy being productive.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    What data (if any) would convince you that the idea of the lazy poor is not a myth?
  - jasonlfunk 13y ago
    Being lazy isn't the only reason someone would quit working at Walmart. It might just suck to flip burgers for 8 hours a day. Needing to eat is a very good incentive to do things that you wouldn't normally do.
- zimbatm 13y ago
  But the government is already subsidizing the base salary. Everything that Walmart gives is in addition to that which would probably reduce their costs. Also not everything is in the function of pay. Once people have enough for living, the deciding factor like having an enjoyable and meaningful job also do count. It's then up to Walmart to transform themselves to become that place and attract employees.
EpicEng 13y ago
Because you can't better yourself while working part time at McDonald's or Wal-Mart? im self taught and I was working full time while teaching myself all things computer science in my spare time. Let's not pretend that all who are working menial jobs are oppressed and would flourish if we handed them money.

Xdes 13y ago

Or a good reason for private security.

pinaceae 13y ago
well yeah, the Brazilian model. But this sucks, try living behind barbed wire and being dependent on your bodyguards. I definitely prefer being able to walk the streets at night by myself and not getting robbed/stabbed/hijacked.
venomsnake 13y ago
Security don't helps when the poor are motivated. There are a lot of kidnappings in Mexico City.
- jedmeyers 13y ago
  By drug/criminal cartels, not by poor.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    Who do you think the cartels recruit from? its not gap year kids doing it for kicks.
    - jedmeyers 13y ago
      Do you think cartels will have trouble recruiting people once everyone have 20k a year to spend? They gonna have even more money since a big chunk of those 20k will be spent on the drugs they are selling.
potatolicious 13y ago
This has been tried. Brazil. South Africa. China. India. The list goes on. These are countries where the wealthy can't walk around freely on the streets without substantial protections, where quality of life is simultaneously high and low. Instead of enjoying your wealth on your own terms, now you're in a cycle of vetting your drivers, your nannies, and anyone else who comes within physical vicinity of you. Your physical movements are restricted to routes and destinations that are vetted and secured. And as the wealth gap increases, the threat to your life increases also. Kidnapping a millionaire may not be worth risking your life - but what about kidnapping a billionaire? As inequality rises the lengths people will go to to harm you increases also, resulting in ever-higher fences, ever more advanced security, and a non-stop arms race between you and the poor. This is already reality in a lot of places. I for one don't want it to become the reality here.

venomsnake 13y ago

Especially in demand deprived economics times this is one of the best ways to boost both demand and inflation.

ctdonath 13y ago

You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. Once you've established a "protection money" system, establishing their "right" to your money & property, they are now incentivized to demand - and take - more. Panem et circenses is the last stage of polite society; the cost eventually becomes unbearable as fewer work and more expect comfort & leisure for nothing. You give poor people money because it's generosity, kindness and help - freely given as your choice. The recipient receives knowing the charity is out of goodness, and is coupled to an expectation that the recipient will make a respectable effort to overcome poverty. As an American, we ensure people don't climb over the fence and kill us in our sleep because (A) the firepower many have within 3 steps of bed will give potential attackers pause, and (B) the local police will apprehend surviving thugs. We also strive to reduce legal barriers to productivity, promoting liberty to earn an honest wage for honest work (rather than creating high cost of entry with a flurry of stifling regulations). Between severe disincentives to crime, coupled with easy access to rewarding opportunity, we don't have to pay people to not kill us.

calibraxis 13y ago
Enlightened wealthy elites read from authors like like Adam Smith, who said, "Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor." (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=196&Itemid=27 http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=s...) Pretty much what the previous poster explained. After all, "your money & property" are purely social relations requiring a state. The state literally prints money, and enforces "rights to property" using people with sticks.
AsymetricCom 13y ago
If you think about it though, you're absolutely right. Not killing me is just something you should do by default. I shouldn't have to pay you to do that. If I do pay to not kill me, does that mean you can justify killing me if I stop paying you? After all, you're desperate and hungry. Oh wait, what if you waste your stipend on drugs or "loose it" or someone steals it from you because you weren't being responsible with what was basically free money? Do you get more money to waste, or do you get to kill me now for food?

nimble 13y ago

Basic income is a good idea but you have the rationale wrong. The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources. As general advancement accelerates and allows for greater production with less labor, a greater percentage of that wealth ought to be shared with everyone. So in the thought experiment where no one really needs to work and the robots take care of all of our basic needs, eventually distribution of resources should be more or less uniform. If you view basic income as handouts then you have to answer all of the objections that you'll find in this thread: you're stealing from someone else to pay for them, you're disincentivizing work, etc. Basic income should instead be viewed as arising from principles of fairness.

dnautics 13y ago
The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind This is, actually, the argument for why we shouldn't have an inflationary monetary system. Normally technological improvement is deflationary (witness lowering prices for tech goods in spite of inflation - healthcare is different because it's highly regulated). Yet what we do by inflating the currency "to keep prices stable" is to steal the marginal improvement in livelihood created by technology and throw it at the financial sector.... At best. In reality we steal more than the marginal value; hence increasing income inequality, overenriched financial sector, decreased real wages in spite of increased productivity...
- rtpg 13y ago
  but with fractional banking and the like the amount of money actually in the system is always increasing, so the inflation isn't actually "destroying" anything, it's basically just the equivalent to a flat tax that goes out to banks to help fund loans At one point I had the impression that inflation is supposed to encourage spending, but thinking about it, it probably punishes the poor (who have pretty much no savings) more than anything
  - 13y ago

ExpiredLink 13y ago

Actually, the European model isn't "free money" but subsidized education, healthcare and housing. Actually, the European model is the opposite of "free money". People here are not paid to leave the rich alone but to enhance their prospects using their own resources. The libertarian dream - free money and free dope - would be a nightmare for the target groups: expelled from society with an apanage without hope to ever come back.

bubbleRefuge 13y ago

Also, the income boots aggregate demand in the economy by that much which benefits the wealthy as that income is used to pay rent and buy goods and services from entities that wealth people own; some folks may call this trickle up economics.

judk 13y ago
Aka Keynesianism, before Congress bastardized it to mean printing money and handing it to bank owners.

dnautics 13y ago

You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep. You don't think that this is a poor model of crime? There are plenty of empirical counterexamples. During the great depression in the US, crime rates went to an all-time low. The gap between the rich and the poor in the US is at an all-time high; yet the crime rate is again at a low.

swalkergibson 13y ago
> During the great depression in the US, crime rates went to an all-time low. Citation, please. The examples below suggest that this is not at all the case. http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp http://depts.washington.edu/depress/crime_seattle_great_depression.shtml http://depts.washington.edu/depress/crime_seattle_great_depr... http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?s=902192a69c3d655bfdc25799cb5e5e88&p=2171181&postcount=7 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?s=902192a69...
- dnautics 13y ago
  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97234406 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9723440... http://kondratiefflongwave.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ushomicide20101.jpg http://kondratiefflongwave.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ushom... OK, perhaps I was incorrect to say "all-time low", and should have said "trended towards a local minimum over the course of the depression"
  - swalkergibson 13y ago
    The articles you cited refute your point. > It was a period of booming economic prosperity, the roaring '20s, and very high crime (emphasis mine) The time period before the Great Depression != the time period during the Great Depression. The chart provided suggests that there was a sharp increase in homicide rates beginning around 1920, then a slight upward trend toward 1929, and then another sharp increase through the 1930s, towards the beginning of WWII. Do you have any other examples? I am really skeptical that crime rates went down on the whole during the least economically productive period in the history of the United States.

bananacurve 13y ago

"Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it." Self reliance is not to be underestimated. The state and the individual are both empowered. Being reliant on the state should be a last resort not a goal, as Europe is discovering.

goggles99 13y ago

Being poor is all relative, in many countries, poor means you will likely starve to death, in the wealthiest countries, the poor eat relatively well, are educated (if they choose to be), have housing, electricity, running water and Cable Television. My point? how long till those getting the stipend are whining again about how poor they are because they make the same amount as today relative to the general population. Now we are back to square one.