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This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng n

This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and-motivation into delusion-and-economic-compromise. And that's blocking people from growing and fully apply their capabilities to reach higher achivements

daodedickinson 11y ago
Look, I think the robots are gonna take over, but you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum, because no one will want to produce the boring things everyone wants to consume on the other end. Therefore, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER agitate for a basic income in terms of whatever brand-name of money (dollar, euro, nyancoin or some abstract non-existent Platonic form of "money"), but instead say something like "Everyone will be given a X by Y square foot dwelling, allowed Z gallons of water a year, given 20 fresh tomatoes, etc." and THEN reason about how those can be provided (do we force [enslave] people to provide this to others? what do we do if no one coughs up the goods?). If you agitate for a minimum wage or minimum income, it will always be worthless at the whim of the currency's authority(ies). More realistically, just reason instead what the least you need as an individual is, work to get it from within whatever economy you find yourself in, and then begin the REAL work of life, developing your happiness for and from what you have. See: Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does A Man Need?"
- michaelchisari 11y ago
  The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum The word for that is inflation, and so far economists have not seen evidence that a basic income would effect inflation. developing your happiness for and from what you have. That's a good goal for microeconomics. But this is about macroeconomics.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  >you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. Really? First off, any basic income that is provided is not going to come close to what a 'highly technically skilled' individual makes. Secondly, if those individuals do find some activity or undertaking valuable enough to trade the relative income for, it probably has unrecognized value. I would bet they these individuals will acquire expertise, develop new knowledge, and create new things that will be highly benificial to society. This is very similar we what do with grants to scientists conducting general research. Following your logic, we have too many important problems to bother wasting scientists time on anything that isn't an immediate problem. Thirdly, there is no way that these individuals would be operating 'without any sort of economic integration whatsoever'. They would still be consuming in our society and their non-consumptive actions would still have economic effects. That said, I don't think we are at the point we can realistically provide a basic income capable of supporting a reasonable standard of living. I do think we can start providing a basic supplementary income and I think that if paired with reductions in the minimum wage, it could be very successful at stimulating economic growth during the next downturn or slow down.
sien 11y ago
There is a major problem with a basic income. This Economist article called 'Basically unaffordable' describes it. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651897-replacing-welfare-payments-basic-income-all-alluring http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651897...
- michaelchisari 11y ago
  The Swiss proposal is a very generous proposal that still comes at a time when saying "people can just get jobs" is not entirely laughable. You could say they're ahead of their time. And yet, current government spending is 21% of GDP, and that amounts to $12,000 per man, woman and child. Remember, not everyone will hold on to their $12,000. Many will pay back a portion in taxes, and some will pay all of it back. And children will probably not receive the full amount, their parents instead getting a growing percentage until the child is 18. That's about 25% of the population. People in prison would not receive their basic income while serving their sentence, I'd assume. That's about 1% of the population, although I'd hope a basic income would decrease that. The Swiss proposal would be $32,400 per person, for 74% of the US population, which would come to 7.7 trillion, or around 46% of the GDP. Sounds outrageous, yes, but consider the fact that we are continually increasing the amount of wealth we create, while drastically reducing the labor necessary to create it. GDP will continue to increase and wages will continue to stagnate and fall. And at some point, certain disruptive technologies (such as self-driving cars) will decimate whole industries almost overnight. What that means is that the basic income amount won't be increasing nearly as quickly as the GDP, which means that balking at a current-day percentage of GDP will make less and less sense. Especially when you're facing massive discontent and the prospect of a near freeze on consumer spending.
aaron-lebo 11y ago
Ideally, ideally basic income would pay for basic needs and let people be creative, more realistically it would be impossible to get passed into law, if it was passed into law it would be turned into something unrecognizable relative to what proponents of basic income expect or want, and because it would be the largest social program in history, there would be a lot of unintended consequences. I don't see how you can look at how dysfunctional US politics is and think there is any way in hell that the two parties would work together on something like it. Democrats would get trashed for removing existing social programs and Republicans would get trashed for creating a new social program. Maybe in another country... Basic income is a great idea, but something that is actually politically workable and a lot smaller in scope is needed. It is constantly advocated around here with no real evidence that it is workable at scale.
tolmasky 11y ago
Basic income will probably result in even more antagonism towards immigrants. As Milton Friedman said, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state". I feel immigration to the US is too restrictive as it is, let alone what it would become if it meant giving everyone a paycheck. You basically have these options: 1. Restrict immigration (perhaps you are OK with this, I am not. I feel immigration is one of the fundamental things that helped this country succeed, and that we should be moving to make it MORE open, not less). 2. Allow immigration but not offer basic income until you are a citizen. Now you have a classist system. If you were born in the US you are part of the citizen caste, that is guaranteed income from taxes (a nobility if you will), if you were born outside the borders you must work for your income here. Sure, eventually you could be "admitted", but it seems weird that an 18 year old would be allowed to do whatever he wants but someone just entering the country with three kids would be forced to work. 3. Offer basic income to everyone that comes in, have no restriction, and default immediately. If you think Americans are xenophobic now, just wait to see their attitudes if basic income ever passes.
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  Good points there. I feel this is a bit too early for basic income. That change will come to pass naturally when society will be able to continue to exist and function normally even if almost nobody will work. That would require some pretty hefty advancements in AI and robotics. Basically, I don't see struggle-free basic income without the robots doing all the work for us.
  - digikata 11y ago
    Basic Income won't come naturally, look at how difficult a 40 hour week / 8hr day was to bring into existence. Basically, widespread strikes were required. The baseline productivity of the world is already sufficient for basic income, and/or increased leisure vs work weeks - the only thing that advanced automation might to in the future is make the disconnect between historical economic assumptions and modern productivity unavoidable from a political standpoint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- 11y ago

daodedickinson 11y ago

Look, I think the robots are gonna take over, but you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum, because no one will want to produce the boring things everyone wants to consume on the other end. Therefore, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER agitate for a basic income in terms of whatever brand-name of money (dollar, euro, nyancoin or some abstract non-existent Platonic form of "money"), but instead say something like "Everyone will be given a X by Y square foot dwelling, allowed Z gallons of water a year, given 20 fresh tomatoes, etc." and THEN reason about how those can be provided (do we force [enslave] people to provide this to others? what do we do if no one coughs up the goods?). If you agitate for a minimum wage or minimum income, it will always be worthless at the whim of the currency's authority(ies). More realistically, just reason instead what the least you need as an individual is, work to get it from within whatever economy you find yourself in, and then begin the REAL work of life, developing your happiness for and from what you have. See: Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does A Man Need?"

michaelchisari 11y ago
The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum The word for that is inflation, and so far economists have not seen evidence that a basic income would effect inflation. developing your happiness for and from what you have. That's a good goal for microeconomics. But this is about macroeconomics.
shkkmo 11y ago
>you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. Really? First off, any basic income that is provided is not going to come close to what a 'highly technically skilled' individual makes. Secondly, if those individuals do find some activity or undertaking valuable enough to trade the relative income for, it probably has unrecognized value. I would bet they these individuals will acquire expertise, develop new knowledge, and create new things that will be highly benificial to society. This is very similar we what do with grants to scientists conducting general research. Following your logic, we have too many important problems to bother wasting scientists time on anything that isn't an immediate problem. Thirdly, there is no way that these individuals would be operating 'without any sort of economic integration whatsoever'. They would still be consuming in our society and their non-consumptive actions would still have economic effects. That said, I don't think we are at the point we can realistically provide a basic income capable of supporting a reasonable standard of living. I do think we can start providing a basic supplementary income and I think that if paired with reductions in the minimum wage, it could be very successful at stimulating economic growth during the next downturn or slow down.

sien 11y ago

There is a major problem with a basic income. This Economist article called 'Basically unaffordable' describes it. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651897-replacing-welfare-payments-basic-income-all-alluring http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651897...

michaelchisari 11y ago
The Swiss proposal is a very generous proposal that still comes at a time when saying "people can just get jobs" is not entirely laughable. You could say they're ahead of their time. And yet, current government spending is 21% of GDP, and that amounts to $12,000 per man, woman and child. Remember, not everyone will hold on to their $12,000. Many will pay back a portion in taxes, and some will pay all of it back. And children will probably not receive the full amount, their parents instead getting a growing percentage until the child is 18. That's about 25% of the population. People in prison would not receive their basic income while serving their sentence, I'd assume. That's about 1% of the population, although I'd hope a basic income would decrease that. The Swiss proposal would be $32,400 per person, for 74% of the US population, which would come to 7.7 trillion, or around 46% of the GDP. Sounds outrageous, yes, but consider the fact that we are continually increasing the amount of wealth we create, while drastically reducing the labor necessary to create it. GDP will continue to increase and wages will continue to stagnate and fall. And at some point, certain disruptive technologies (such as self-driving cars) will decimate whole industries almost overnight. What that means is that the basic income amount won't be increasing nearly as quickly as the GDP, which means that balking at a current-day percentage of GDP will make less and less sense. Especially when you're facing massive discontent and the prospect of a near freeze on consumer spending.

aaron-lebo 11y ago

Ideally, ideally basic income would pay for basic needs and let people be creative, more realistically it would be impossible to get passed into law, if it was passed into law it would be turned into something unrecognizable relative to what proponents of basic income expect or want, and because it would be the largest social program in history, there would be a lot of unintended consequences. I don't see how you can look at how dysfunctional US politics is and think there is any way in hell that the two parties would work together on something like it. Democrats would get trashed for removing existing social programs and Republicans would get trashed for creating a new social program. Maybe in another country... Basic income is a great idea, but something that is actually politically workable and a lot smaller in scope is needed. It is constantly advocated around here with no real evidence that it is workable at scale.

tolmasky 11y ago

Basic income will probably result in even more antagonism towards immigrants. As Milton Friedman said, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state". I feel immigration to the US is too restrictive as it is, let alone what it would become if it meant giving everyone a paycheck. You basically have these options: 1. Restrict immigration (perhaps you are OK with this, I am not. I feel immigration is one of the fundamental things that helped this country succeed, and that we should be moving to make it MORE open, not less). 2. Allow immigration but not offer basic income until you are a citizen. Now you have a classist system. If you were born in the US you are part of the citizen caste, that is guaranteed income from taxes (a nobility if you will), if you were born outside the borders you must work for your income here. Sure, eventually you could be "admitted", but it seems weird that an 18 year old would be allowed to do whatever he wants but someone just entering the country with three kids would be forced to work. 3. Offer basic income to everyone that comes in, have no restriction, and default immediately. If you think Americans are xenophobic now, just wait to see their attitudes if basic income ever passes.

Florin_Andrei 11y ago
Good points there. I feel this is a bit too early for basic income. That change will come to pass naturally when society will be able to continue to exist and function normally even if almost nobody will work. That would require some pretty hefty advancements in AI and robotics. Basically, I don't see struggle-free basic income without the robots doing all the work for us.
- digikata 11y ago
  Basic Income won't come naturally, look at how difficult a 40 hour week / 8hr day was to bring into existence. Basically, widespread strikes were required. The baseline productivity of the world is already sufficient for basic income, and/or increased leisure vs work weeks - the only thing that advanced automation might to in the future is make the disconnect between historical economic assumptions and modern productivity unavoidable from a political standpoint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
11y ago