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Slightly drunk offtopic: I'd rather just nuke my passport and head to some other less-insane country than try to fight for basic income in this country. Fans of

Slightly drunk offtopic: I'd rather just nuke my passport and head to some other less-insane country than try to fight for basic income in this country. Fans of basic income have some very optimistic hopes.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Social security is a essentially an age-tested basic income. With enough software, robotics, and clean energy, its easily done (from a technical perspective). Keywords for more research: "post scarcity", "historical productivity to wages"
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Social security is a essentially an age-tested basic income. No, its not. Benefit eligibility is driven primarily by previous contributions (either yours or, if you are relying on survivors benefits, someone else's), with various qualifying events. Its not (even leaving out the "age test") anything like BI, except in the extremely distant way any way that the government gives you money is "like" BI.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Can you exhaust your social security? Is it an account? Or is it an entitlement that you have to qualify for (credits over a number of years) and then can continue to draw until death?
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Can you exhaust your social security? No, no more than you can exhaust a purchased annuity. Which is also not like an age-tested BI. > Or is it an entitlement that you have to qualify for (credits over a number of years) and then can continue to draw until death? Right, so, exactly not like BI, which is equal and unconditional (even excluding consideration of the influence of age, since its specifically based on the amount of contributions, adjusted by the the wage index from the time they were earned, and then adjusted by the CPI from the time benefits started being drawn. In a sense, its more of a retrospective reverse-means-tested benefit program, which makes it about as far from BI as you can be and still be a government benefit program at all.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  "Social security is a essentially an age-tested basic income." Kind of irrelevant to the point regardless of whether the statement is correct because social security, if it did not already exist (but all other things were somehow still the same) would (incredibly unfortunately, IMO) have absolutely no hope of being instituted in this country either. The US of 2014 is not the US of 1935.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Agreed.
  - curun1r 12y ago
    The US of 2014 doesn't have 25% unemployment. When we get back to that point, I think we'll develop more tolerance for socialist policies. And just in case anyone doesn't think our unemployment will get that high, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

toomuchtodo 12y ago

Social security is a essentially an age-tested basic income. With enough software, robotics, and clean energy, its easily done (from a technical perspective). Keywords for more research: "post scarcity", "historical productivity to wages"

dragonwriter 12y ago
> Social security is a essentially an age-tested basic income. No, its not. Benefit eligibility is driven primarily by previous contributions (either yours or, if you are relying on survivors benefits, someone else's), with various qualifying events. Its not (even leaving out the "age test") anything like BI, except in the extremely distant way any way that the government gives you money is "like" BI.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Can you exhaust your social security? Is it an account? Or is it an entitlement that you have to qualify for (credits over a number of years) and then can continue to draw until death?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Can you exhaust your social security? No, no more than you can exhaust a purchased annuity. Which is also not like an age-tested BI. > Or is it an entitlement that you have to qualify for (credits over a number of years) and then can continue to draw until death? Right, so, exactly not like BI, which is equal and unconditional (even excluding consideration of the influence of age, since its specifically based on the amount of contributions, adjusted by the the wage index from the time they were earned, and then adjusted by the CPI from the time benefits started being drawn. In a sense, its more of a retrospective reverse-means-tested benefit program, which makes it about as far from BI as you can be and still be a government benefit program at all.
georgemcbay 12y ago
"Social security is a essentially an age-tested basic income." Kind of irrelevant to the point regardless of whether the statement is correct because social security, if it did not already exist (but all other things were somehow still the same) would (incredibly unfortunately, IMO) have absolutely no hope of being instituted in this country either. The US of 2014 is not the US of 1935.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Agreed.
- curun1r 12y ago
  The US of 2014 doesn't have 25% unemployment. When we get back to that point, I think we'll develop more tolerance for socialist policies. And just in case anyone doesn't think our unemployment will get that high, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU