3 ms·

So we need basic income collected and delivered by a government bureaucracy to prevent further growth of government bureaucracies?

by ra1n85 12y ago

ThomPete 12y ago
There will be no bureaucracy to deliver basic income. Same amount to everyone unconditional. Thats basically a large part of what the bureaucracy normally spend their time on. Further more it will always be beneficial to work since it's unconditional.
transfire 12y ago
Basic Income would reduce bureaucracy significantly b/c it is not means-based -- means testing is the source of almost all the bureaucracy in our current welfare systems (of which there are many). We can eliminate (almost) all means based systems and replace them with a single Basic Income system.
- ra1n85 12y ago
  This doesn't sound very well thought-through. Where will this income come from? Who will determine it? Who will distribute it? How will it be regulated? What if other nations don't do the same? How does that impact immigration policy? What will be done to address current outstanding national debts? Income tax is the US's primary tax revenue source. How will this account for cost of living (e.g., NY vs WV)? Do we need a basic rent, too? Who will determine that cost of living? The questions go on. On the whole, this sounds like just a more comfortable form of serfdom.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    commies don't think about consequences. They just like to dream. Everyone is equal and lived happily ever after. No connection to the real world at all. I consider it the ultimate form of narcissism. Thinking so highly of themselves that they forget that humans are nothing more than animals. The nastiest kind out there too.
  - transfire 12y ago
    > Where will this income come from? Largely where it already comes from. The U.S. currently spends around $1 trillion on welfare at the combined state and federal level. > Who will determine it? It should be pegged. I believe the best marker is minimum wage. BI can be pegged to a part-time job (between 16 and 20 hours) at minimum wage. > Who will distribute it? How will it be regulated? I have given this a great deal of thought. I believe jurisdiction of the program might be best suite to the Federal Reserve in partnership with the Treasury Department. Every citizen would become a common stake holder (1 stock per person) in the FED, entitling them to the monthly "dividend". > What if other nations don't do the same? That's their problem. But I imagine some will follow suit. > How does that impact immigration policy? It needs to be fixed, of course. Just as it needs to be fixed presently. This won't effect that much b/c illegal immigrants are not citizens and therefore will not receive BI. > What will be done to address current outstanding national debts? That's a good question regardless. It's already well known that we can never pay the debt off. Dylan Ratigan argued there is no other solution but debt restructuring. Of course our system is now based on debt, so paying it off would actually kill our economy in its current form. Short of redesigning our economy altogether we just need to keep the debt within a tolerable growth path. (Unfortunately too much money is getting tied up in finance... but I digress.) > How will this account for cost of living (e.g., NY vs WV)? It must not account for this at all. That's already a problem with cost of living raises, which only worsen the wealth divisions. > Do we need a basic rent, too? No > Who will determine that cost of living? Already asked in "Who will determine it?" It's really not a "comfortable form of serfdom". It is actually very much a capitalistic idea. Think of the economy as an engine and there are various adjustments we can make to improve its performance. BI is just another one of those adjustments. Understandably it didn't seem like an adjustment worth messing with in the hay days of industrialism. But with accelerating automation, it's going to prove essential to the future.
- zanny 12y ago
  And if people do not need to seek employment as much to survive, a lot of people do not realize the state subsidizes huge swathes of employment disciplines (obviously educational, medical, scientific, etc - but they also use tax code and tax deductions and exceptions to influence the transportation, service, agricultural, and resource extraction industries hugely, among many others - almost all of them) with the intent to either control markets or artificially prop up slow and inefficient protocols to get people jobs. That is what almost every "jobs" bill has ended up being for fifty years - creating artificial circumstance necessitating workers where naturally there would not be any. Truly, we do not know exactly how much we could save by implementing a UBI, and then realizing we can dismantle the tax hell at all levels to account for the economic freedom it provides. Suddenly price fixing corn syrup to make cheap junk food to fit on food stamps matters less when you can peg individual base income to the entire economies prosperity - ie, the redirected effort keeping coin syrup cheap could be put to whatever naturally more productive use the economy would normally move it towards, and the growth benefits just boost the UBI.

So we need basic income collected and delivered by a government bureaucracy to prevent further growth of government bureaucracies?

by ra1n85 12y ago

So we need basic income collected and delivered by a government bureaucracy to prevent further growth of government bureaucracies?

ThomPete 12y ago

There will be no bureaucracy to deliver basic income. Same amount to everyone unconditional. Thats basically a large part of what the bureaucracy normally spend their time on. Further more it will always be beneficial to work since it's unconditional.

transfire 12y ago

Basic Income would reduce bureaucracy significantly b/c it is not means-based -- means testing is the source of almost all the bureaucracy in our current welfare systems (of which there are many). We can eliminate (almost) all means based systems and replace them with a single Basic Income system.

ra1n85 12y ago
This doesn't sound very well thought-through. Where will this income come from? Who will determine it? Who will distribute it? How will it be regulated? What if other nations don't do the same? How does that impact immigration policy? What will be done to address current outstanding national debts? Income tax is the US's primary tax revenue source. How will this account for cost of living (e.g., NY vs WV)? Do we need a basic rent, too? Who will determine that cost of living? The questions go on. On the whole, this sounds like just a more comfortable form of serfdom.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  commies don't think about consequences. They just like to dream. Everyone is equal and lived happily ever after. No connection to the real world at all. I consider it the ultimate form of narcissism. Thinking so highly of themselves that they forget that humans are nothing more than animals. The nastiest kind out there too.
- transfire 12y ago
  > Where will this income come from? Largely where it already comes from. The U.S. currently spends around $1 trillion on welfare at the combined state and federal level. > Who will determine it? It should be pegged. I believe the best marker is minimum wage. BI can be pegged to a part-time job (between 16 and 20 hours) at minimum wage. > Who will distribute it? How will it be regulated? I have given this a great deal of thought. I believe jurisdiction of the program might be best suite to the Federal Reserve in partnership with the Treasury Department. Every citizen would become a common stake holder (1 stock per person) in the FED, entitling them to the monthly "dividend". > What if other nations don't do the same? That's their problem. But I imagine some will follow suit. > How does that impact immigration policy? It needs to be fixed, of course. Just as it needs to be fixed presently. This won't effect that much b/c illegal immigrants are not citizens and therefore will not receive BI. > What will be done to address current outstanding national debts? That's a good question regardless. It's already well known that we can never pay the debt off. Dylan Ratigan argued there is no other solution but debt restructuring. Of course our system is now based on debt, so paying it off would actually kill our economy in its current form. Short of redesigning our economy altogether we just need to keep the debt within a tolerable growth path. (Unfortunately too much money is getting tied up in finance... but I digress.) > How will this account for cost of living (e.g., NY vs WV)? It must not account for this at all. That's already a problem with cost of living raises, which only worsen the wealth divisions. > Do we need a basic rent, too? No > Who will determine that cost of living? Already asked in "Who will determine it?" It's really not a "comfortable form of serfdom". It is actually very much a capitalistic idea. Think of the economy as an engine and there are various adjustments we can make to improve its performance. BI is just another one of those adjustments. Understandably it didn't seem like an adjustment worth messing with in the hay days of industrialism. But with accelerating automation, it's going to prove essential to the future.
zanny 12y ago
And if people do not need to seek employment as much to survive, a lot of people do not realize the state subsidizes huge swathes of employment disciplines (obviously educational, medical, scientific, etc - but they also use tax code and tax deductions and exceptions to influence the transportation, service, agricultural, and resource extraction industries hugely, among many others - almost all of them) with the intent to either control markets or artificially prop up slow and inefficient protocols to get people jobs. That is what almost every "jobs" bill has ended up being for fifty years - creating artificial circumstance necessitating workers where naturally there would not be any. Truly, we do not know exactly how much we could save by implementing a UBI, and then realizing we can dismantle the tax hell at all levels to account for the economic freedom it provides. Suddenly price fixing corn syrup to make cheap junk food to fit on food stamps matters less when you can peg individual base income to the entire economies prosperity - ie, the redirected effort keeping coin syrup cheap could be put to whatever naturally more productive use the economy would normally move it towards, and the growth benefits just boost the UBI.