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It's not a silly idea at all but I like to think of myself as progressive and I think it is a very bad idea in reality vs on paper. Just look at how college co

• jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Presumably a lot of the potential profit would be taxed to fund this basic income guarantee. In any case, it seems like your argument boils down to "Better not let poor people buy food, in case the price of food rises," which I think fails without significant deeper examination.
  • ck2 13y ago
    Nope, I say make sure poor people have that basic income. You don't have to give it to everyone. I live in a low income neighborhood - you can clearly see the difference in generational poverty and how help is needed. You also can fix the problem by making sure that corporations like Walmart do not rely on their employees getting foodstamps as part of their income as a business model. It is a very unlevel playing field when entire cities are funding the "low prices".
    • drcube 13y ago
      Means testing is a lot of bureaucracy for less effectiveness. Giving everyone a basic income eliminates those issues.
    • brazzy 13y ago
      > Nope, I say make sure poor people have that basic income. > You don't have to give it to everyone. Then it's not a basic income. Giving it to everyone, period, is the defining characteristic of a basic income, and what makes it different than welfare. Proponents believe it to be a superior model because it eliminates a lot of beaurocracy, bad incentives and paternalistic structures that communicate to poor people that they're inferior and might as well not even try to improve themselves.
      • maxk42 13y ago
        Yes, but once you give everybody $X,000 dollars per month you'll spur inflation and in a couple years $X,000 will no longer be enough to live on. So then you've got to adjust your basic income to $(X+Y),000 per month to make sure everybody has enough, but that will spur more inflation and you'll be right back where you started. Meanwhile, that money has to come from somewhere and it will come out in the form of taxes. Remember, that only about one in three people in the US is employed. So now every working American has to be taxed enough to pay for three basic incomes plus their own incomes on top of that. The rich will complain about the added taxes, but it's the middle-class that really suffers, since they will NOT escape the added tax burden and their extra taxes combined with rising inflation mean they now make just barely enough to get by, effectively placing them in the lower-class. Now you've got a gigantic lower-class, a tiny middle class, and an upper class that only gets richer because they can accelerate the rate at which they siphon off income from the lower classes through price increases. It's a nice idea, but it's not a good idea.
        • brazzy 13y ago
          > once you give everybody $X,000 dollars per month you'll spur inflation > Meanwhile, that money has to come from somewhere and it will come out in the form of taxes. These two statements are contradictory. If it comes from taxes, it's not "printed" money and thus does not directly lead to inflation - unless it's through increased spending, in which case it means increased consumption and thus a growing economy.
          • maxk42 13y ago
            They're not contradictory: Prices for basic necessities such as food and housing would rise, causing an increase in inflation. Meanwhile, spending for luxuries would see a contraction as additional tax burdens shrink discretionary spending. The net effect is to shrink the middle class, as I explained.
            • brazzy 13y ago
              > Prices for basic necessities such as food and housing would rise, causing an increase in inflation. Only if previously a significant portion of people could not afford basic necessities at all and/or it's impossible to produce more of those basic necessities. Both of these seem rather dubious. > The net effect is to shrink the middle class, as I explained. You didn't explain anything, you made a bunch of predictions.
    • dllthomas 13y ago
      You increase taxes to provide the basic income, so on net you're not providing it to everyone. On gross you provide it to everyone so that there's no sharp drop off at any point.
• amerika_blog 13y ago
  "Just look at how college costs magically rise to the availability of loans and grants. " That's the universal problem with subsidies. That, and reward for non-performance.
• agilebyte 13y ago
  Is it silly to assume that competition in a free market will produce startups trying to upset this situation in markets that do not have a high barrier to entry?
• polymatter 13y ago
  You assume that those minimum wage shelf stackers will work the same hours for the same pay in the same conditions. Prices rise. But costs rise too. The wealthy would be no more or less wealthy than they were before.
• yummyfajitas 13y ago
  The Walton family alone has more wealth then the lower 42% rest of the USA. So do I, and so does almost anyone with a positive net worth.
  • woofyman 13y ago
    That's 42% combined. They have more wealth than 42% of the rest of the population combined.
    • yummyfajitas 13y ago
      120 million people at, say, -$1000 in net worth == big negative number. Anyone with $1 of net worth is wealthier than them.
      • moocowduckquack 13y ago
        It is ridiculous to suggest that someone with a dollar but no access to credit is weathier than someone who is able to borrow the cost of a house.
        • yummyfajitas 13y ago
          Don't take it up with me, take it up with ck2. That's what his statistic (yummyfajitas and the Walton's have more wealth than the bottom 42%) is measuring.
        • clarky07 13y ago
          Actually, while I do see what you are saying, I don't think it's that ridiculous. If they have a house with lots of equity they aren't included in this. If you have a negative net worth you aren't doing that great. If you happen to lose your job (like lots of people have over the last few years) now you are in an even worse situation than the guy with a dollar. Now you have no money, and lots of debt. Having debt ("able to borrow the cost of a house") does not mean you have a negative net worth. It just means you have debt. Having 30k in credit card debt on the other hand...
• AJ007 13y ago
  I look at what happens when a geographic area experiences a blanket jump in income. Generally housing prices go up across the board. Why? Because its the one item the broad population bids against each other on. The more pessimistic will say the money will be spent on gambling, drugs, and alcohol.
• ewzimm 13y ago
  It's already worse than that. There are many products which have a smaller size of that's more expensive than the larger size because the smaller one is WIC-approved. There's targeted price-gouging for people who are forced by the government to buy specific products. There are also ridiculous loopholes. People buy soda and milk with returnable bottles, walk outside, pour it out, return the bottles for cash, and buy a beer. This happens consistently at grocery stores.
  • mistermann 13y ago
    > People buy soda and milk with returnable bottles, walk outside, pour it out, return the bottles for cash, and buy a beer. This happens consistently at grocery stores. This is a perfect example of how all people do not in fact act in a responsible manner as many people would have us believe when discussing topics such as this. Some people simply are unwilling or unable to even semi-wisely manage the life of a human being, which shouldn't be that shameful really considering how complex of a job it is nowadays. In many cases, some people really do know what is better for certain others.
    • atmosx 13y ago
      Okay, but you're talking as if this is the default behavior while it may very well not be. I'd like to see some numbers to back-up these claims as general behavior rather than "a friend of mine, saw a guy who's uncle was once in a grocery where a guy..."
      • ewzimm 13y ago
        I could show you POS records, but I'm not sure what that would prove. This us not what everyone does, but it was meant as an example of the kind of problems that arise from trying to control consumer behavior that go away if you just give cash. A more extreme example would be the economy of the former U.S.S.R., but I thought exchanging a two dollar milk bottle deposit for beer money was more relevant.
      • mistermann 13y ago
        Actually, I'm not talking as if it is the default behavior, and your comment to me is an excellent example of why these things are so difficult to solve in society. Not all people are rational actors whose behaviors are in their or societies best interest. This is a fact, and it is important to the solving of this problem in a practical manner. But your interpretation of a reported instance of this behavior is that the person pointing it out is asserting that this is common/normal/default (which is incorrect), so (implicitly) this opinion (and any related) can therefore be ignored and removed from the discussion. However, that it is the default behavior isn't in fact being asserted, and it is you who is most incorrect in this small subset of the overall conversation. In my opinion, that seemingly most participants on both sides of the issue are inclined to pick and choose their facts and have little interest in the genuine objective reality of the situation is one of the main reasons that we will never solve problem of this kind in a reasonably efficient manner.
• throwaway9848 13y ago
  Somehow this idea always comes from libertarian quarters, too(please, no 'no true scotsmen responses' replies about how nobody but a single mute hermit living on a mountaintop in South Dakota is a _real_ libertarian). This seems like an incredibly market distorting policy. Social welfare programs provide hard floors on quality of life: you don't have food? food stamps. you don't have medical care? medicaid. Some people live longer than they financially planned? universal old-age poverty insurance (social security). This has all the feel of letting the more financially/business-sophisticated citizens go hunting on one of those hunting ranches with borderline tame 'game'.
• nawitus 13y ago
  Universal income can be cost neutral, that would mean that prices wouldn't increase on average.
• JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Not true. We're not talking about some kind of inflation that hits every dollar equally. The first 10000 dollars can't be made useless without affecting all the other money. A basic income means everybody eats and has shelter. What part of the economy does that affect? Less and less. It may be time to just make that a civil right, and move on.
• lgieron 13y ago
  College is different than food. Everyone cares about going to most prestigious school they can afford (that will accept them), which creates a bidding war. This is actualy very similar to housing markets in desirable neighourhoods - everyone wants to live there while there's room for maybe one person in ten, so the market forces set the price at a level beyond the means of the bottom 90%. Food, on the other hand, is a globally traded commodity. There's no reason for the food prices in the US to go up if basic income was to be introduced there.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    For college in particular, where it is quite specifically the fact that you are (better skilled and/or better connected and/or more able to pay) than everyone else that commands a premium this is very much the case - we can't just build more prestigious schools. For housing, for most people, the bulk of what makes a neighborhood desirable is location relative to their work and social group and activities, cleanliness, and safety. Prestige is less of a component outside the very high end, where we don't care to subsidize anyway. The market (and the rest of society) can absolutely provide more "desirable neighborhoods" for the desires of the people who will be turning a net positive from BI.
• dllthomas 13y ago
  Availability of loans and grants for college that can't be used for other purposes is a very different situation, because there are fewer options competing for that money.
• scotty79 13y ago
  Did you noticed how farmers are subsidized? This is actually form of basic income in artificially lowered food prices. I think there will be some adjustments in real estate necessary for the rent not to skyrocket after introducing basic income. I'd go for tax rate on housing directly proportional to how much housing you own, reaching 100% tax when you won 50 or so times the amount of housing necessary for one family.