Cryptocurrency Based Basic Income Program Started In Finland 109
jovius writes: Krypto Fin ry, the association behind Fimkrypto cryptocurrency (FIMK), has started to provide each registered Finnish citizen a payment of 1000 FIMK per month in December. 1000 FIMK equals few dimes at the moment, and a bit over 100 people have registered so far. (The registration is free.)
FIMK is based on NXT 2nd generation crypto system; the add-ons and development making it into 2.5G. The roadmap includes payment cards and other technology to enable easier exchange between fiat currencies — FIMK, Bitcoins and others. Krypto Fin ry received 533 BTC in initial donations last Summer. FIMK can be traded for example on DGEX, and it's also a valid payment method in few stores in Finland.
FIMK is based on NXT 2nd generation crypto system; the add-ons and development making it into 2.5G. The roadmap includes payment cards and other technology to enable easier exchange between fiat currencies — FIMK, Bitcoins and others. Krypto Fin ry received 533 BTC in initial donations last Summer. FIMK can be traded for example on DGEX, and it's also a valid payment method in few stores in Finland.
It's a con... (Score:5, Insightful)
Con artists try to encourage entire nation to fall victim to their con by promising to pay them money every month.
Seriously, if it looks too good to be true (they're paying you for doing nothing), it probably is.
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Any economic system is artificially created and inherently unfair as it profits some at the expense of others. Capitalism is one of the extreme examples - it creates a snowball effect due to intentionally leveraging the possession of wealth into a means to accumulate more wealth. And it gets far worse when you add corporations - a mechanism specifically created to further concentrate wealth through collaboration, while shielding individuals from personal consequences of their wealth-generating activities.
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Welfare looks nothing like this.
This is literally "I'll give you something for nothing"
Welfare involves people actually paying taxes. That is, it is not something for nothing, it is simply amortising the average person's income a bit to allow them to get through difficult times.
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You don't pay taxes for money you get via "welfare", except VAT for the money you spend.
So it is exactly the same as with this crypto currency.
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I'm currently unemployed in Finland, and my unemployment benefit is taxed at 20%. I don't understand why they don't just reduce the benefit amount by 20% instead.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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When these crypto-currencies are added to the currency pool, doesn't it reduce the overall value of all currencies, at least a bit.
So if there are $100B paper dollars, and $10B worth bitcoins plus $100 million fubar crypto-currency is added to the circulation, does the USD fall in value or can we keep "printing" new crypto-currencies without affecting other currencies?
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... or can we keep "printing" new crypto-currencies without affecting other currencies?
If you don't believe that another currency has any value, either intrinsically or for your needs, then it doesn't matter if they keep "printing" it.
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When these crypto-currencies are added to the currency pool, doesn't it reduce the overall value of all currencies, at least a bit.
So if there are $100B paper dollars, and $10B worth bitcoins plus $100 million fubar crypto-currency is added to the circulation, does the USD fall in value or can we keep "printing" new crypto-currencies without affecting other currencies?
Check out this image [google.com].
That's for the US, but it echoes the situation in industrialized countries, which is that production of goods and services rises over time. The value of money is the amount in circulation divided by the amount of goods and services produced.
If the money pool were fixed (discounting replacements as bills wear out &c), fixed money supply divided by greater production would make your money more and more valuable over time - year over year the same amount of money is available to purcha
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Governments realize this and put more money into circulation by printing and then spending it. Governments don't print and spent the printed money.
Money is issued by "central banks" (actually by any bank) and goes into circulation via credits.
Re: It's a con... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but don't tell the government that. They really like thinking they're in control.
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They really like the public thinking they're in control. Government itself knows better.
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Not just government central banks.
Ordinary counterfeiters also put money into circulation. And also, extraordinary counterfeiters. Like North Korea.
Perhaps North Korea could update the Fed about its operations, so the Fed could make appropriate adjustments to its own operations.
It would be in NKor's best interest to do this, so the home-made money it spends won't degrade in value on the world market.
(I'm only about 99% joking, here.)
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I think you should look up the term "quantitative easing". At least a cryptocurrency has some limits on arbitrary creation of coins.
and yes, the USD does fall in value when they do this - increase the money supply and although you won't notice much difference in domestic goods, you will as the exchange rate falls. Fortunately, most other governments are also 'printing' money too so their exchange rates fall at the same time making things even out.
So the net result (currently) is that interest rates fall pro
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I am not sure what you mean by "value ", but I am going to make 3 points.
First, does money have value at all? The minority view is the "Metallist" (a.k.a. hard money or gold bugs), which believes that money has (or should) inherent value. The majority view is "Chartalists", which view money as a type of credit – chits to be used for trading and have no value in itself. But this point might be more philosophical than what you meant.
Secondly, there is inflation / (deflation), which is what you are think
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It's a scam as uch as any cryptocurrency is a scam; ie. essentially a pyramid-scheme. But then, so is the current market economy system, and the cryptocurrencies attempt to make the initial share distribution slightly more fair (Ie. providing largest share to the founders & early adopters...). As such, basic income is one of the more interesting entries to the initial share generation, and one I would fully support...
However, registration for the basic income requires social security number and bank pro
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It's a scam as uch as any cryptocurrency is a scam; ie. essentially a pyramid-scheme. But then, so is the current market economy system
Market economies are built on the hard realities of finance, trade and production. The pyramid scheme is a something-from nothing, get-rich-quick, fantasy.
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I suspect that it's easy to pay a basic income if the currency is worthless. I'm a Finn but have never heard of this before. However, at least two basic things imply that it's not a scam:
They are a registered non-profit so the authorities are fully aware:
https://www.ytj.fi/english/yritystiedot.aspx?yavain=2538077&kielikoodi=3&tarkiste=3E42299570F295421DBC4357ABDFD28715407E26&path=1704;1736;2052
They also have Internet-banking identification for social security numbers to confirm account holders.
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I would be careful about getting the income they offer. As Wincapita case showed, early adopters in pyramid schemes are liable for damages.
Tell that to Alaskans who get BI of US$1000+/year (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Also, tell that to senior citizens in the USA who almost all get a what is essentially a basic income from Social Security. Most seniors have *not* paid full value into that relative to what they expect to get out of it, so it is not like a retirement investment plan (even if people pay a tax that goes towards it when they work for wages). Social Security in the USA is essentially an income redistribution system, originally based on ten young workers to one elderly person (original recipients had not paid into the system) and now at about three young workers per elderly person. Personally, I feel it is unfair that the elderly in the USA get Medicare and Social Security when everyone else does not and these days reflects age discrimination backed by the political power of the elderly in the USA. Many young parents, for example, have a very hard lot, often caught between caring for their young children and their own elderly parents, while also needing to hold down a full-time job with increasingly worse benefits. A basic income would make it possible for more young parents to spend more time with their own young children while also caring for their own parents. I feel the resolution to the age discrimination issue there is to make the two programs of Medicare and Social Security available to every US citizen without discrimination based on age. We can then talk about eventually expanding those programs to all residents, legal or not, and then looking at doing it globally.
Arguments for a basic income include that, because governments have privatized almost all land, citizens have some right to the fruits of the land. Also, citizens have a claim to some of the fruits of the common inheritance of ideas and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.basicincome.org/bie... [basicincome.org]
http://www.usbig.net/ [usbig.net]
http://www.livableincome.org/ [livableincome.org]
See also my essay: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi... [pdfernhout.net] ..."
"One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?
Anyway, even while I'm not especially a fan of crypto currencies (good currencies need to be backed by a social constitution controlling their production IMHO), I applaud the experiment in this direction.
Re:Tell that to Alaskans who get BI of US$1000+/ye (Score:5, Interesting)
To be clear, my comment is more directed to the implication from the poster's point that a "basic income" itself is a "con" (assuming that was part of what was intended). There could indeed be any number of specific problems with this specific cryptocurrency proposal, including privacy or identity theft issues as raised by other posters. Building in a basic income aspect is an interesting way to get publicity for a cryptocurrency, but as I said, a good currency is backed by a community constitution, which is going to imply checks and balances and various safeguards. If those are not in place here, like to prevent identity theft, than that could be a big problem.
However, as another comparison, LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems) systems have helped a lot of communities, and may treat LETS currency more as a lose account of favors owed than more what we think of as hard currency. ... just as they would from family and friends. But rather than do all this helping without any recording at all, keeping LETS accounts allows the group to keep track of the members' activities so they can balance their trading activities fairly, knowing that once their accounts are back to zero, they have given to the group just as much as they have received. Basically, it's just a matter of keeping score and nothing more."
http://www.lets-linkup.com/ [lets-linkup.com]
"Let me start by saying that the generally accepted view by all LETS people is that a LETS point is not cash, or federal currency, and I agree. However, I do not feel comfortable viewing LETS points as an alternative currency with an equivalent value in cash. I prefer to interpret LETS points as being like LETS favours. That has always made trading more enjoyable for me. I love doing favours for members and they show genuine appreciation for the favour - in LETS points. It doesn't get any better than that! I view LETS more like a voluntary self-help group where like-minded people in a local community give their time and experience to help their fellow members and feel welcomed to ask for the same in return
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Personally, I feel it is unfair that the elderly in the USA get Medicare and Social Security when everyone else does not
The most ridiculous part of this is that the elderly are the group that consumes the majority of health care services, and thus the US is bearing the majority of the brunt of an entirely public health care system anyways. I have a feeling this is why health care spending is so much higher in the US than other countries [worldbank.org].Why not just cover the generally-freak accidents of people in their youth for the small incremental cost?
Health care is one industry, much like policing or firefighting, that is makes no
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by promising to pay them money every month.
Seriously, if it looks too good to be true (they're paying you for doing nothing), it probably is.
Does that include when governments pay you money every month for doing nothing? Because check day is a time honored tradition, I'll have you know ...
Where does it derive its value from? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't just give everyone cryptocoins (effectively tokens) and expect them to get value... at the heart, a basic income is welfare, and requires wealth redistribution. The value has to come from somewhere.
I found and copied an article [kuro5hin.org] about a possible implementation that solves this issue. It's hidden in discordian bullshit, but I think the theory is sound... if somewhat dangerous.
Re:Where does it derive its value from? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think donations and currency conversion will be enough to give them the significant value they require to make it useful as a basic income source.
Bitcoin generation is difficult, it requires electricity, hardware investment and a certain amount of risk in that investment... That makes them hard to obtain, ie. scarce and because they have utility, these things combine to give them value.
If most of the coins are generated as a basic income (as opposed to mining) then they are effectively free... and the small amount of value gained by donation simply won't give them enough value when spread out across an entire country's population.. at least that's my conjecture.
So it really needs another source of value... one way would be for the government to buy them from people and burn them. Another would be for the government to decide to have taxes paid with them instead of with fiat... and another is proposed in the article I linked.
Actually... it might also be possible if they paid some as a block reward, and some as a basic income... which it appears they are... but I think there are problems.
Unfortunately, it looks like about 2/3s of all coins ever produced go to the original investors and the genesis block creator... and only a tiny portion go out as a basic income... and there is no way they can forever continue paying out a basic income, there is no recycling into some base that can pay out a basic income, and there is a finite limit to the amount of coins they can produce (this isn't a problem for bitcoin, but I believe it is for a basic income coin)... Personally I don't think this one will function as intended... but it is good people are thinking about the problem.
Fiat Currency? (Score:3)
... easier exchange between fiat currencies — FIMK, Bitcoins and others."
I think you don't understand the meaning of "Fiat". By definition, these are non-fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are those created by government decree (a.k.a. a fiat).
Re:Fiat Currency? (Score:4, Funny)
amount unclear (Score:2)
a bit over 100
So, 108?
Re:Sounds suspiciously like welfare. (Score:5, Interesting)
Basic Income is welfare, not something that sounds like it. The difference between it and normal welfare is, everyone gets a basic income whether they want it or not. It's meant to be enough to live off.
The idea of a BI is a very old one. It has nothing to do with cryptocurrency, and I'm not sure what relevance cryptocurrency has (and I say that as a Bitcoin developer, so I'm a fan of CC in general). In theory a society rich enough to afford it would have moved to the oft-fictionalised post work utopia that you sometimes see in things like Star Trek. Because everyone gets it whether they want it or not, unconditionally, the basic income would be supposedly stigma free. Thus if you want to pursue things that are not very profitable but are beneficial to society nonetheless (production of art, charity, etc) then you could do that and not have to worry about being seen as a welfare sponger.
I love the concept in theory, but a society rich enough to afford one is pretty unimaginable in today's world. Western societies are clearly incapable of even providing the current levels of welfare let alone a vastly larger level. I see a BI as a useful goal to inspire people about the future rather than something practical for today.
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Well, to be fair to the basic-income schemes people propose, they're supposed to turn the current levels of overall welfare spending into more effective levels of welfare by disintermediating the funds from the millions of government employees who are paid to manage it (and paid
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by disintermediating the funds from the millions of government employees who are paid to manage it (and paid reasonably well, at that).
There are many welfare programs where the overhead exceeds the benefit. For instance, in America nearly half the cost of the "free lunch" program for low income students in public schools goes to administration. For any school where more than half the kids benefit, it would be more cost effective to just make all the lunches free, and eliminate the overhead. You would could feed twice as many kids for the same money.
America tends to do welfare exceptionally poorly. We have more than 70 government bureau
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"For instance, in America nearly half the cost of the "free lunch" program for low income students in public schools goes to administration."
Citation needed! Here's mine:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3655&emailView=1
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I don't know the exact details of what the threshold is
According to this page [frac.org], the threshold is 75%. The school has to requalify once every four years.
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I love the concept in theory, but a society rich enough to afford one is pretty unimaginable in today's world.
The USA is more than rich enough, especially if we stop the whole war-for-profit thing.
Western societies are clearly incapable of even providing the current levels of welfare let alone a vastly larger level.
Unwilling != incapable. Some of them are managing it just fine, in fact.
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When did it become stupid to prioritize your own best interests over those of society at large?
It's in your best interest to live in a nation of healthy people.
Socialized medicine provides no incentive to my doctor to prioritize my care over the common good.
Yes, it does, but that's not what this is. This is a half-assed version of socialized medicine designed to force us to give our money to insurance companies.
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Socialized medicine calls for the greatest good to the greatest number
That number is made up of individuals, your doctor is motivated to help you so that he doesn't have to see you again, because under national health he doesn't get rich by lying to you, slapping you on the ass, and sending you on your way.
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In a single payer system, the doctor still provides and bills for services, same as in a private system, and eliminates all sorts of ridiculous problems like hospitals only treating you if you subscribe to a particular brand of insurance. In fact, I would think it gives every doctor more incentive to treat you, as they aren't focused at all on wheth
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To be fair, Obama proposed exactly that (he proposed a government option insurance so that the cost of basic insurance was effectively capped). Just the Republicans shot it down.
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> The USA is more than rich enough, especially if we stop the whole war-for-profit thing.
So eliminating a source of profit will make us richer? Instead of basic income, we should subsidize Economy 101 courses.
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Well, it is profit to some, but not to the government. So while the total income over the entire usa could become lower (no idea of the numbers), the government would probably save.
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To be fair, that's exactly what drinkypoo claimed.
No it isn't, and no amount of your cowardly bullshit will make it so. Wars make some people richer. We don't all profit, yet the wars are still motivated by profit. See how that works, coward?
Re:Sounds suspiciously like welfare. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Unwilling != incapable"
This.
We throw away ~half the food we produce in this country. We burn it or bury it, but god forbid we give it away.
Likewise, we happily pay to incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other country in the world, but we'll be *damned* if we will let people have a little apartment - which would be cheaper.
A.
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"Unwilling != incapable"
This.
We throw away ~half the food we produce in this country. We burn it or bury it, but god forbid we give it away.
Likewise, we happily pay to incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other country in the world, but we'll be *damned* if we will let people have a little apartment - which would be cheaper.
A.
wow, this sinks to a new level of cognitive dissonance
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The USA is more than rich enough, especially if we stop the whole war-for-profit thing.
We are? I thought we owed more money than anyone or anything ever has, ever.
I'd be pretty "rich" too if I could borrow endlessly and never pay it back.
Oh, and if it's "war for profit", where's the profit? How would stopping a supposedly profitable activity make us richer?
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We are? I thought we owed more money than anyone or anything ever has, ever.
Our debt is arguably reasonably related to our production, as compared to other countries. It doesn't seem to have caused the economy to implode yet.
I'd be pretty "rich" too if I could borrow endlessly and never pay it back.
Hey look, England invented this shit, we're just better at it.
Oh, and if it's "war for profit", where's the profit? How would stopping a supposedly profitable activity make us richer?
It would make you richer, unless you own a big piece of Halliburton, or FMC, etc etc. Then you probably want war, like Dick Cheney did.
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I think I generally agree with what you're saying, but let me paraphrase to make sure: Basic income would work, so long as there wasn't such a thing as supply and demand for currency.
The only way I can see "basic income" working is if we also mandate that prices cannot be raised; to make (more) profit this would mean production must be increased, rather than just make profit based on increased demand for a scarce good.
Something tells me the problem thus isn't a technical one related to the existence of basi
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"Basic income" is already working in one area.
We call them "farm subsidies" - crop price support.
Somehow the nation survived.
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"Basic income" is already working in one area.
We call them "farm subsidies" - crop price support.
Somehow the nation survived.
That is nothing like a basic income. But since you mention farm subsidies, basic income would eliminate the need for farm subsidies entirely, because if a farmer didn't make enough money to survive, no big deal.
the initial value is that you can pay your taxes (Score:2)
Fiat currency has value, if for no other reason, because everyone needs it to pay their taxes. That's the unchangeable, fundamental value - ~everyone wants it because most everyone needsneeds it to pay taxes. Because the local store owner wants dollars to pay her taxes, she'll give me a box of cereal in exchange for dollars. Therefore, dollars are valuable to me even if I didn't pay taxes.
I actually pay half my income as various taxes, but even if I didn't, I could use dollars to get stuff from someone
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> Basic income would work, so long as there wasn't such a thing as supply and demand for currency.
That's not exactly true... imagine the coin is distributed to everyone in the system equally... okay... it exists, everyone has some, but it doesn't have value... there is supply, but no demand.
Now say the government buys (from the people who hold it) that coin through an exchange, like everyone else... Say, they buy $10M worth... then throw that $10M of coin away (burn it)... Well... the remaining coins wil
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I had a slight error - I shouldn't have said "supply and demand for currency" but rather "supply and demand for things purchased by currency".
That is - as long as currency is separate from actual goods and services, if you don't balance the demand for those goods and services, a "basic income" is almost futile because the value of goods and services relative to that currency is always going to be a moving target.
If all you do is give people currency, but don't actually give people more of the things that ar
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No, that's not true either... You could pay a basic income using fiat... and fiat gets its value because it is the only thing you can use to pay your taxes with. It's not a problem with basic income.
It is a problem with a cryptocurrency... bitcoins for example are relatively scarce, but there are people willing to purchase (demand) them (for many reasons that I won't go into)... but a basic income cryptocurrency, that everyone gets a small amount of at some interval, has no implicit demand.
You don't need a
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You seem to be confusing basic income with utopia. If one want more stuff than the BI provides one can try to get one or more jobs.
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"everyone gets a basic income whether they want it or not. It's meant to be enough to live off"
So, from each according to ability, to each according to need (where "need" is defined to be a uniform quantity).
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No. From each according to ability and willingness to work, to each enough to live. Most civilized countries have "according to need" under welfare and medical care though.
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So when you say "No.", you mean "Yes.".
Re:Sounds suspiciously like welfare. (Score:5, Interesting)
Every society that is currently stable is rich enough to guarantee income good enough to live by to all its members (because otherwise they're starving and the society is about to collapse). The reason they typically won't do so is because it would free people to live as they please. Wealth disparity makes the majority of people dependent on the whims of those with wealth, which is just peachy with the wealthy. But of course that can't be openly admitted, thus it's put in terms of "incentivizing".
Re: Sounds suspiciously like welfare. (Score:2)
Until they start, at which point maybe they become unstable and lose their wealth. Wealth doesn't rain down from heaven. Automation has reduced the amount of human effort required, but less is not zero.
Re:Sounds suspiciously like welfare. (Score:4, Interesting)
There were proposals to do this in the UK instead of the current mess of universal benefit or whatever it was.
They took the current budgets for all non-work incomes, benefits, welfare, pension, everything, re-arranged it across every person in Britain and it seemed to work out.
Some people even got more than what they are getting presently on benefits and/or pensions.
Adults got a certain amount, teens and younger got a little lower, and pensioners got a bit higher.
And all the values seemed to be pretty reasonable to live off of as well. I'd get more than what I get due to the Crohns and IBS craptastrophe that my body is.
My life as it is now is worrying whether or not the Department of Work and Pensions is going to decide to fuck me over this month or next.
If basic income was guaranteed, I could actually Get Things Done instead of half-dying every month from stress. If it was 5 years ago, I'd maybe actually even be independent now since I have been slowly working towards doing webdev, general programming, game dev, art & design work and a few other small things that I was doing before I ended up crapping it. (quite literally at that)
My friend who was out of work for a couple years got screwed over constantly by the job center because they said he never "done enough work to find jobs", this guy was literally searching all the time to find a solid job, but he was always turned down. And I will be totally honest here, he suffered acne problems to the extreme, he also has an odour problem, and he has a squint. So you can imagine many dickish HR types would turn him down for that alone, even non-interacting jobs with anyone outside the company, like IT or inventory or something like that. Noped the hell out.
He managed to get a temp job over the holidays there.
But sooner or later, he is going to be getting screwed over by them again. Fuck the Job Center, worst place ever, it doesn't help for shit.
I had one of the staff straight up insult me once before, and threaten me. Absolute pricks with no oversight, that is what has happened to the system.
Not only that, I've had a "doctor" straight up lie about my Work Capability assessments. Notice the S there. Twice. Record everything, no matter how innocent and honest it may look, record every single thing.
People have died because of stress due to being taken off while under long term treatment for severe illnesses that I couldn't even begin to imagine how awful they were. Cancer too. Chemo is a god-awful treatment at best, na, totally capable, you could run a marathon. Little pale are we, go get a sun-tan, stop with the laziness.
Just imagine how many people would actually be able to get things done instead of the constant worry of these people attacking them and accusing them of lies and laziness.
Not only that, all of those pricks would be out of the job as well and be put on basic income too, saving even more of the tax payers money being wasted. The DWP itself is such a stupid money-sink as it is, and they also screwed over that French company ATOS by restricting them and forcing them in to ambiguous questions to try get as many people to FAIL their tests so they'd need to appeal. (which cost MORE money to the tax payer! All so these supposed doctors could get a bonus!)
Support basic income today, down with means-testing, down with lies, down with corruption, yay for Getting Shit Done.
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In theory a society rich enough to afford it would have moved to the oft-fictionalised post work utopia that you sometimes see in things like Star Trek.
But all you ever really see in Star Trek is life as viewed through the lens of the Starfleet officer. Utopian societies always look plausible when viewed from a height --- and you can't get much higher than a starship.
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But all you ever really see in Star Trek is life as viewed through the lens of the Starfleet officer. Utopian societies always look plausible when viewed from a height --- and you can't get much higher than a starship.
Actually, Deep Space 9 showed Earth street scenes several times. But in any case, life on Earth by the time of TOS (let alone TNG) is generally considered to be great for everyone, although limited. Earth is a park. Colonists' lives are depicted throughout the series, usually as being pretty crappy (mostly depending on how far people live from Earth.) Colonies don't typically seem to get much support from home.
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Re:Sounds suspiciously like welfare. (Score:5, Insightful)
"a society rich enough to afford one is pretty unimaginable in today's world."
Have you in fact tried to imagine it?
Let's try a thought experiment on a simplified economy. Poverty level is $25k per "household" vs. median household income of $50k. 15% of household are below the poverty level, and we'll flatten out the income distribution by saying every household below the poverty level has no income and every household above the poverty level brings in ~$59k.
For a household below the poverty level to receive a basic income that after taxes gets them back to the poverty level would cost the households above the poverty level 7.5% in BI taxes.
BUT
"Western societies are clearly incapable of even providing the current levels of welfare let alone a vastly larger level."
Once you have basic income you can start eliminating other programs which have been made redundant and their taxes. For example, Social Security "payroll taxes" alone are 6.2%. We already have order-of-magnitude agreement between basic income and the redundant costs, so there will be no "vastly larger level".
you assume people aren't motivated by money (Score:2)
Your grossly simplified thought experiment is missing many things of course, but most importantly you assume that people don't change their behavior based on the rewards l. Specifically, you assume that people aren't motivated by money.
Let's take as an example a typical person currently bringing home $30,000. Under your scenario, they'd have a choice: they could continue working and bringing home $30,000, or they could stop working, play video games all day, and get $25,000. For many people, that would b
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But this is also an oversimplification. Why is staying home and working for imaginary achievements even remotely tempting over getting out a
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Generaly, they aren't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
proves my point. Did for adequate money, not more (Score:2)
The study actually proves my point nicely. The subjects did just enough to get the minimum - they didn't do better to get more. Applying that to this discussion, the results indicate people would sign up for basic income just as they signed up for the study. They would not be more productive, working all day, to make $30,000 instead of the $25,000 that's adequate.
Go visit anyone truly in need and offer them $500. You'll find that most people will do almost anything to get what they NEED - even go to wor
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All of that is irrelevant to the point that my thought experiment was responding to, which is how much would BI cost relative to current expenditures.
However, I would note that basic income keeps the *relative* returns on labor the same even while it increases the absolute returns. The actual behavior of human beings turns out to be more motivated by the relative returns, i.e. people really will accept lower wages for themselves if everyone else is doing even worse.
In addition, I would ask if someone who co
more recipients means higher cost, lower revenue (Score:2)
>. All of that is irrelevant to the point that my thought experiment was responding to, which is how much would BI cost relative to current expenditures.
Current expenditures IN ABSOLUTE TERMS is irrelevant. Here's a thought experiment for you. In the 1950s, the median income was $25k in today's dollars. Suppose EVERYONE decided that they didn't need a bigger house than their parents - not if they could get that same $25k by sitting on their butt and expecting someone else take care of them. So everyo
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Once again you have assumed that no one would be willing to work for more than a poverty wage when in *current reality* ~85% of households are both willing and able to do so.
Negative 85% (Score:2)
> heres another thought experiment for you, how many people would become more educated if they didng have to worry about working for an income to survive?
Most people go to college in order to get a better job. They show up in high school in order to get into college. Most people (not all) are essentially lazy - they will sit on their butt if they don't need to do more than that to meet their "needs". (Where needs is defined by media, etc.) If you doubt that, show up to any government office building a
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There are several concrete basic income proposals that would potentially decrease the cost of welfare while providing a basic income to everyone.
e.g. This Newsweek Article [newsweek.com]
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