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I think their disagreement stems from the difference in how they define "poor". Gates is certainly right (it just takes a bit of traveling to agree with him) th

I think their disagreement stems from the difference in how they define "poor". Gates is certainly right (it just takes a bit of traveling to agree with him) that hungry-and-dying type of poor is rapidly disappearing all over the world. But if you look at living-hand-to-mouth poor, I can understand John's reasoning. Yes, average incomes (productivity) have gone up but you also see how prices on commodities are rapidly raising in the developed countries to make up for that. [1] This makes me wonder if the universal basic income is ever going to work. Look at insane costs of healthcare/education in the US - no doubt caused, in part, by "free money" either through government-assisted programs or employer-sponsored insurance. Perhaps it's an inherent property of capitalism: some things always end up barely within reach of a lower class. [1] Hence the need for things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

bsbechtel 13y ago
>Perhaps it's an inherent property of capitalism: some things always end up barely within reach of a lower class. I wouldn't say that's true, we just need to figure out ways to produce those things cheaply enough (through automation, other technologies) that everyone can enjoy them. Take a look at agriculture in the US...even the poorest people here have access to (not very healthy) food whereas just under 100 years ago many were starving in the Great Depression. This is because agricultural technology has led us to an abundance of cheap food that everyone can afford at some level or another.
- old-gregg 13y ago
  Very true, that's why I say "perhaps... some things". While technology may have worked well for food, I just don't see how this can be applied to housing, education, healthcare, legal expenses and taxes [1]: these tend to expand/shrink based on how much money you have and "pin" the poor to a certain "ceiling" of disposable income leading to the perpetual hand-to-mouth cycle despite encouraging growth of metrics like GDP/capita. [1] This BTW may explain why new middle class in emerging economies tends to consist of real estate people, doctors, lawyers and (true in ex-USSR countries) government bureaucrats: they get to benefit from growing GDP first.
  - bsbechtel 13y ago
    I'd say you're just not thinking creatively enough. Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The same goes for the other things you mentioned....flood the market with doctors and healthcare costs would go down, we just need med schools to accept more people instead of limiting their enrollment to drive up tuition fees because they want their school to be prestigious and 'the best'. The poorest people can and deserve access to the many goods the wealthy enjoy, we just haven't figured out the technology and economics in each of these areas yet to do it :-)
    - kiba 13y ago
      Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The problem is the cost of land, not the manufacturing of homes, per se.
      - bsbechtel 13y ago
        That's a fair point.
      - kamaal 13y ago
        Its both actually. Land cost is largely addressed these days by large rising apartment housing complexes.
  - belorn 13y ago
    > housing, education, healthcare, legal expenses and taxes Interesting grouping, as each is more or less fully depended on government to limit supply and create scarcity. The only really exception looks to be housing. Education is information, and information is only held limited thanks to copyright. Health care seem to spend most of its money to pay for patents. Legal expenses differ strongly between countries and different legal system. Some demand the loosing party to pay for both sides, some demand that both side pay their own costs, and lastly some ask government to provide/pay for legal aid. In system where looser pay (or government), there tend to be limits on how much a lawyer can demand.
- Domenic_S 13y ago
  > even the poorest people here have access to (not very healthy) food I saw just a story yesterday (?) on I think KPIX news of a family bringing in less than $1700 a month (living in San Jose mind you) and they filmed her going to the food bank. Her grocery bags were filled with fresh produce! I thought that was pretty neat. Maybe staged for the cameras or a lucky break.
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    Food banks and their volunteers try to provide the healthiest food they can, but often-times are dependent on donations. I am lucky to volunteer with some folks at one and it's like Christmas morning for us when we've got fresh fruits and vegetables to handout to folks! Most food banks are barely scraping by on whatever hard-work and good-will the volunteers and their community are able to muster. I would prefer to see this family (probably working pretty hard right now) to make a living income, with their children seeing the rewards that their parent's hard work and discipline has brought them. Maybe not spending $75,000 on artisanal strippers in one night, but a fulfilling life of self-agency.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  >we just need to figure out ways to produce those things cheaply enough (through automation, other technologies) that everyone can enjoy them But, therein lies a paradox, right? I mean, when you seek to lower the cost of production through automation, technology, etc. you wind up displacing human workers, reducing labor demand, and putting downward pressure on wages. BTW, I'll add that lower wages are another significant way that companies reduce costs/prices. The net result is that profits increase, which benefits a relative few rich, while the quality of life for many is reduced or stagnant at best. In other words, this "race-to-the-bottom" walmart-ization of our economy seems to be, in large part, responsible for the income disparity we see today. Perhaps the poorest who would otherwise starve are benefited (even if through entitlements or aid which can now go further), and of course that's a very good thing. But, on balance, the world's wealth is accumulating to a very small number of people at an accelerating pace.
  - kiba 13y ago
    In other words, this "race-to-the-bottom" walmart-ization of our economy seems to be, in large part, responsible for the income disparity we see today. It does the poor no good if they can't even afford the cheapest good.
    - bsbechtel 13y ago
      You guys are opening up a whole other can of worms getting into labor. We tend to think of labor as a cost of production and something to be minimized. Maybe we need to start thinking of labor as a (actually, the main) party responsible for creating the value the firm produces for society. Anytime value is created, it can go to 4 parties - the consumer (lower prices), the government (taxes), the shareholders (through profits), and the employees (labor wages). Maybe the reason our economy is so screwed up right now is because employees are getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, not because technology is displacing jobs. If more people are out of work because of technology, great! That means we have more people who can go work on things like curing cancer and colonizing space :-)
      - 13y ago
- saalweachter 13y ago
  Well, sort of. In the US, about 85% of households are "food secure". Non-capitalist sources -- eg, charities or government assistance -- close the gap for about 9% of households, and in the remaining 6% of households one or more people are missing meals. I don't really think that's a success.
  - JumpCrisscross 13y ago
    Being able to complain about 94% food security is something of a social miracle, in the grand arc of history.
    - pistle 13y ago
      Which is good enough... let us be judged against hunter gatherers. We kick ass.
    - 1stop 13y ago
      Well sure if you limit your sample size to "The richest country in the world" then yeah you are doing great! 5 Stars! The world is perfect. Go Team America! Meanwhile there are more people than the entire population of the US starving else where. I'd hazard the guess that that's worse than at any other time in history.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        > Meanwhile there are more people than the entire population of the US starving else where. I'd hazard the guess that that's worse than at any other time in history. Considering that there are more people now than at any other time in history, this almost always a safe and lazy guess to make (that their are more people in situation X than at any other time in history).
        1stop 13y ago
        Right, which is why I made it. But to use that as an excuse is to say: "An individual Human life is worth less now than before", which is at the very least controversial.
specialist 13y ago
"Look at insane costs of healthcare/education in the US - no doubt caused, in part, by "free money" either through government-assisted programs or employer-sponsored insurance." Huh? Even with the modest ACA reforms implemented to date, the growth of healthcare costs has already slowed down. First time since the 90s. Medicare, which is most akin to single payer in other countries, is the most efficient guarantor (highest medical loss ratio). Long term cost reduction requires extending Medicare to all and embracing the capitation model. Bonus points for resuming prior levels government funded basic R&D. Tuition costs are rising as subsidies have been removed and student loans have been privatized. The combination created a bubble. Which happens often enough when deregulation and privatization co-occurs, that my hunch is it's casual. So while universal basic income may prove to lead to inflation, your two examples do not support that argument.
- mattmcknight 13y ago
  "Even with the modest ACA reforms implemented to date, the growth of healthcare costs has already slowed down." It's sort of hard to parse what you are saying, but the growth in spending (not costs) went down before the enacting of PPACA. This is likely due to the recession, and something of a counterpoint to those that claim healthcare is subject to inelastic demand. Having the highest medical loss ratio is not equivalent to being the most efficient, as many services do not warrant claims. Capitation is inferior to market pricing in many ways and not "required" to reduce costs. Another solution is to force providers to charge a single posted price to all consumers, instead of practicing price discrimination. This achieves the purported benefit of single payer, while still allowing for people to choose how much they want to spend on medical services. Tuition costs rose as subsidies increased. Without subsidies, they couldn't have risen. This created a bubble, which often happens when the government provides price insensitive support to markets. I am not saying that these are the only answers, but you seem awfully sure of some counterfactuals...
  - specialist 13y ago
    "Capitation is inferior to market pricing in many ways and not "required" to reduce costs." Don't confuse markets with incentives. "Another solution is to force providers to charge a single posted price to all consumers, instead of practicing price discrimination." Not mutually exclusive. "This achieves the purported benefit of single payer, while still allowing for people to choose how much they want to spend on medical services." Until there's price collusion, an oligarchy, natural monopoly. In other words, the exact situation we had with the "free market". (The healthcare exchanges have introduced competition.) "Tuition costs rose as subsidies increased." What subsidies? State funding for higher ed has fallen thru the floor. Given the current trend, most public universities will be 100% tuition funded in a few years. "you seem awfully sure of some counterfactuals" You mean reality? I worked in healthcare and now higher ed. I'm reasonably sure I know the score.

bsbechtel 13y ago

>Perhaps it's an inherent property of capitalism: some things always end up barely within reach of a lower class. I wouldn't say that's true, we just need to figure out ways to produce those things cheaply enough (through automation, other technologies) that everyone can enjoy them. Take a look at agriculture in the US...even the poorest people here have access to (not very healthy) food whereas just under 100 years ago many were starving in the Great Depression. This is because agricultural technology has led us to an abundance of cheap food that everyone can afford at some level or another.

old-gregg 13y ago
Very true, that's why I say "perhaps... some things". While technology may have worked well for food, I just don't see how this can be applied to housing, education, healthcare, legal expenses and taxes [1]: these tend to expand/shrink based on how much money you have and "pin" the poor to a certain "ceiling" of disposable income leading to the perpetual hand-to-mouth cycle despite encouraging growth of metrics like GDP/capita. [1] This BTW may explain why new middle class in emerging economies tends to consist of real estate people, doctors, lawyers and (true in ex-USSR countries) government bureaucrats: they get to benefit from growing GDP first.
- bsbechtel 13y ago
  I'd say you're just not thinking creatively enough. Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The same goes for the other things you mentioned....flood the market with doctors and healthcare costs would go down, we just need med schools to accept more people instead of limiting their enrollment to drive up tuition fees because they want their school to be prestigious and 'the best'. The poorest people can and deserve access to the many goods the wealthy enjoy, we just haven't figured out the technology and economics in each of these areas yet to do it :-)
  - kiba 13y ago
    Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The problem is the cost of land, not the manufacturing of homes, per se.
    - bsbechtel 13y ago
      That's a fair point.
    - kamaal 13y ago
      Its both actually. Land cost is largely addressed these days by large rising apartment housing complexes.
- belorn 13y ago
  > housing, education, healthcare, legal expenses and taxes Interesting grouping, as each is more or less fully depended on government to limit supply and create scarcity. The only really exception looks to be housing. Education is information, and information is only held limited thanks to copyright. Health care seem to spend most of its money to pay for patents. Legal expenses differ strongly between countries and different legal system. Some demand the loosing party to pay for both sides, some demand that both side pay their own costs, and lastly some ask government to provide/pay for legal aid. In system where looser pay (or government), there tend to be limits on how much a lawyer can demand.
Domenic_S 13y ago
> even the poorest people here have access to (not very healthy) food I saw just a story yesterday (?) on I think KPIX news of a family bringing in less than $1700 a month (living in San Jose mind you) and they filmed her going to the food bank. Her grocery bags were filled with fresh produce! I thought that was pretty neat. Maybe staged for the cameras or a lucky break.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  Food banks and their volunteers try to provide the healthiest food they can, but often-times are dependent on donations. I am lucky to volunteer with some folks at one and it's like Christmas morning for us when we've got fresh fruits and vegetables to handout to folks! Most food banks are barely scraping by on whatever hard-work and good-will the volunteers and their community are able to muster. I would prefer to see this family (probably working pretty hard right now) to make a living income, with their children seeing the rewards that their parent's hard work and discipline has brought them. Maybe not spending $75,000 on artisanal strippers in one night, but a fulfilling life of self-agency.
unclebucknasty 13y ago
>we just need to figure out ways to produce those things cheaply enough (through automation, other technologies) that everyone can enjoy them But, therein lies a paradox, right? I mean, when you seek to lower the cost of production through automation, technology, etc. you wind up displacing human workers, reducing labor demand, and putting downward pressure on wages. BTW, I'll add that lower wages are another significant way that companies reduce costs/prices. The net result is that profits increase, which benefits a relative few rich, while the quality of life for many is reduced or stagnant at best. In other words, this "race-to-the-bottom" walmart-ization of our economy seems to be, in large part, responsible for the income disparity we see today. Perhaps the poorest who would otherwise starve are benefited (even if through entitlements or aid which can now go further), and of course that's a very good thing. But, on balance, the world's wealth is accumulating to a very small number of people at an accelerating pace.
- kiba 13y ago
  In other words, this "race-to-the-bottom" walmart-ization of our economy seems to be, in large part, responsible for the income disparity we see today. It does the poor no good if they can't even afford the cheapest good.
  - bsbechtel 13y ago
    You guys are opening up a whole other can of worms getting into labor. We tend to think of labor as a cost of production and something to be minimized. Maybe we need to start thinking of labor as a (actually, the main) party responsible for creating the value the firm produces for society. Anytime value is created, it can go to 4 parties - the consumer (lower prices), the government (taxes), the shareholders (through profits), and the employees (labor wages). Maybe the reason our economy is so screwed up right now is because employees are getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, not because technology is displacing jobs. If more people are out of work because of technology, great! That means we have more people who can go work on things like curing cancer and colonizing space :-)
    - 13y ago
saalweachter 13y ago
Well, sort of. In the US, about 85% of households are "food secure". Non-capitalist sources -- eg, charities or government assistance -- close the gap for about 9% of households, and in the remaining 6% of households one or more people are missing meals. I don't really think that's a success.
- JumpCrisscross 13y ago
  Being able to complain about 94% food security is something of a social miracle, in the grand arc of history.
  - pistle 13y ago
    Which is good enough... let us be judged against hunter gatherers. We kick ass.
  - 1stop 13y ago
    Well sure if you limit your sample size to "The richest country in the world" then yeah you are doing great! 5 Stars! The world is perfect. Go Team America! Meanwhile there are more people than the entire population of the US starving else where. I'd hazard the guess that that's worse than at any other time in history.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      > Meanwhile there are more people than the entire population of the US starving else where. I'd hazard the guess that that's worse than at any other time in history. Considering that there are more people now than at any other time in history, this almost always a safe and lazy guess to make (that their are more people in situation X than at any other time in history).
      - 1stop 13y ago
        Right, which is why I made it. But to use that as an excuse is to say: "An individual Human life is worth less now than before", which is at the very least controversial.

specialist 13y ago

"Look at insane costs of healthcare/education in the US - no doubt caused, in part, by "free money" either through government-assisted programs or employer-sponsored insurance." Huh? Even with the modest ACA reforms implemented to date, the growth of healthcare costs has already slowed down. First time since the 90s. Medicare, which is most akin to single payer in other countries, is the most efficient guarantor (highest medical loss ratio). Long term cost reduction requires extending Medicare to all and embracing the capitation model. Bonus points for resuming prior levels government funded basic R&D. Tuition costs are rising as subsidies have been removed and student loans have been privatized. The combination created a bubble. Which happens often enough when deregulation and privatization co-occurs, that my hunch is it's casual. So while universal basic income may prove to lead to inflation, your two examples do not support that argument.

mattmcknight 13y ago
"Even with the modest ACA reforms implemented to date, the growth of healthcare costs has already slowed down." It's sort of hard to parse what you are saying, but the growth in spending (not costs) went down before the enacting of PPACA. This is likely due to the recession, and something of a counterpoint to those that claim healthcare is subject to inelastic demand. Having the highest medical loss ratio is not equivalent to being the most efficient, as many services do not warrant claims. Capitation is inferior to market pricing in many ways and not "required" to reduce costs. Another solution is to force providers to charge a single posted price to all consumers, instead of practicing price discrimination. This achieves the purported benefit of single payer, while still allowing for people to choose how much they want to spend on medical services. Tuition costs rose as subsidies increased. Without subsidies, they couldn't have risen. This created a bubble, which often happens when the government provides price insensitive support to markets. I am not saying that these are the only answers, but you seem awfully sure of some counterfactuals...
- specialist 13y ago
  "Capitation is inferior to market pricing in many ways and not "required" to reduce costs." Don't confuse markets with incentives. "Another solution is to force providers to charge a single posted price to all consumers, instead of practicing price discrimination." Not mutually exclusive. "This achieves the purported benefit of single payer, while still allowing for people to choose how much they want to spend on medical services." Until there's price collusion, an oligarchy, natural monopoly. In other words, the exact situation we had with the "free market". (The healthcare exchanges have introduced competition.) "Tuition costs rose as subsidies increased." What subsidies? State funding for higher ed has fallen thru the floor. Given the current trend, most public universities will be 100% tuition funded in a few years. "you seem awfully sure of some counterfactuals" You mean reality? I worked in healthcare and now higher ed. I'm reasonably sure I know the score.