Dutch City To Experiment With Paying Citizens a "Basic Income" (theguardian.com) 474
BarbaraHudson writes: The Guardian is the latest to report about experiments with a basic income, in this case in Utrecht. The idea has been around for more than 2 centuries, and has become a bit of a hot-button topic on slashdot. It seems to be gaining political support now that job insecurity has become the new normal. "To those who say it is an unaffordable pipedream, Westerveld points out the huge costs that come with the increasingly tough benefits regimes being set up by western states, including policies that make people do community service to justify their handouts. 'In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,' Westerveld said, 'but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a "basic income."' Horst adds: 'If you receive benefits from the government [in Holland] now you have to do something in return. But most municipalities don't have the people to manage that. We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.'"
Here's an idea... (Score:2)
if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.
How about if they have to be the people who see to that. Seems obvious to me.
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That goes only so far. You can employ capos, but you also need a few real wardens at the top of the chain gang.
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True, but you can also assign those people to all the menial task jobs, street cleaners, park and rec workers, road work crews, politicians, secretaries etc
The types of jobs where intelligence doesn't matter.
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It's not about intelligence, it's about working itself. What kind of incentive does your capo have to do his job right? Worse, what incentive do the others have to follow his orders? Or to keep the tools you gave them in order? Accidents happen, you know, and whoopsie, we hit the gas pipe, awwww, can't dig any more 'til that is fixed...
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What incentive does the average minimum wage worker have to not screw up? The answer is none. $0.10 an hour raise isn't a huge incentive to make burgers faster.
What incentive does anyone earning less than 50k a year have to do a good job. Answe nothing. Their bonus? Is maybe $200 a year.
Most people don't get a bonus equal to 20% of their paycheck. Or like banks they don't get bonuses even if the company declares bankruptcy.
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True, but you can also assign those people to all the menial task jobs, street cleaners, park and rec workers, road work crews, politicians, secretaries etc
The types of jobs where intelligence doesn't matter.
With an attitude like that, maybe you'll eventually figure out why you don't seem to be able to get past the receptionist and secretary to see the boss. When I was working as one, one of my jobs was to make sure you never got any further. When a boss really wants to know what's going on elsewhere in the business, he doesn't ask the yes-men around him - he asks the people whose "intelligence doesn't matter."
It will fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Since they admit to not having the people to manage a system where you have to do something in return for the money, you are going to just give it away? No questions asked? And is there a system that requires you to be a resident for a minimum time before you are eligible? If not, you will attract a lot of people who want free money. That can not be sustained. You will run out of "other people's money". Either because people move away because they don't want to keep paying for a perpetual welfare machine, or because you've raised taxes to pay for it to a point that it destroys your local economy. Or a combination of the two.
Re:It will fail (Score:4)
Actually I'd expect the opposite to happen.
I agree that it would depend on people having to have been residents for a while, but I'm pretty sure they have thought of a system that takes care of it. But even if not, let's ponder for a moment how it would work, shall we?
First, I don't know of a single such "free money" idea that could make you rich in the short or long run. We're talking a few 100 bucks a month, barely enough to sustain yourself. In that way, it is by no means different than the unemployment money already in existence. Just without the bureaucratic overhead behind it. You're still way better off having a job. Be honest, would you WANT to live on a few 100 a month just so you don't have to work? If so, get another job.
The more important aspect is, though, that these people who now have money also need to exist. They need housing, they need food, they need clothing, they need various other things, and all of them have to be provided locally. You need to live there (for obvious reasons, or you won't get no money). And it's fairly unlikely that people who barely have enough money to get by would drive around in fancy cars to go shopping abroad. That creates jobs. Someone has to build those houses and keep them in repair (not to mention that property value would probably go up with increased demand), someone has to work in those grocery stores to sell them food. And that entails a whole lot of other services that are simply required, and then also requested because there are people who can actually pay for these services.
It is in the end the customer that creates jobs. No shop owner "creates" a job because he feels so generous and wants company. The job is created out of the necessity because more customers demand goods and services, and only then the shop owner has to employ someone to meet that demand. Without demand, no jobs will come into existence.
And demand depends on money being available on the side of demand. Consumers need money to consume. And without consumption our economy will not thrive.
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you are going to just give it away? No questions asked?
The money is already assigned. The only difference is now people don't need to do meaningless busywork to qualify and less resources need to go into managing the situation. End result more money to the people and slightly more garbage in the parks and streets.
This alone is not something that will determine if it will succeed or fail. (I personally think it will fail too, but for other reasons)
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Since they admit to not having the people to manage a system where you have to do something in return for the money, you are going to just give it away? No questions asked? And is there a system that requires you to be a resident for a minimum time before you are eligible?
First I will point out that I am a huge free market fan. Free To Choose and all that.
A mistake made by armchair economists and even some professional ones is a mistaken focus on money instead of goods and services. Currency is just a proxy for goods and services. All governments that I know of provide some basic level of goods and services, and yes its often through the violence of taxation (but thats another debate.)
The important factors are which goods and services, and how much to provide. The first
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FYI (Score:5, Informative)
Famous right-wing rag The Guardian had a piece not so long ago on why basic income doesn't work:
http://www.theguardian.com/com... [theguardian.com]
Re:FYI (Score:4, Insightful)
Their main argument being "the sky is falling if people get into long term unemployment". Newsflash, Guardian: There ain't enough work for everyone anyway. Yes, I can understand that we all like to have more people fighting over the few jobs available so the race to the bottom continues, but somehow I cannot sympathize.
Then their example of how new moms got back into work as soon as they were forced to. Well, duh. And duh again that mothers valued staying with their children in the earliest moments of their lives higher than money. Who would have thought that? They really want to tell us that this is comparable to ANY other situation? Seriously? Are they so detached from any kind of human emotion to seriously consider this a sensible example?
Oh, wait, they even admit it. Quote: "It is hard to see why this lesson would not apply equally to a basic income scheme." Yup. Sums up pretty well how much they know about human nature.
Sorry, but to take this drivel serious, I first have to have a sizable portion of my brain removed. It should include the areas for emotion and logic at least.
Re:FYI (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Low- and medium-qualification jobs are vanishing. High-qualification ones continue to do well, but they are a small sub-set. In the end a lot of people have to be able to get enough money to be able to live decently and many of them will not be able to do it via a job. Of course, you can say "tough luck". What you get in addition with that stupid, egotistical attitude is social unrest and crime, both major cost factors for an economy. Hence the "tough luck" attitude does not even qualify as capitalist, it is just unmitigated stupid.
My take is that there is just a type of small-minded human being that cannot stand that anybody gets something for "free", no matter how beneficial that is overall. These people believe everything needs to be earned the hard way and that everybody has to constantly struggle to make ends meet. This is basically fundamentally misanthropic, and anti-society. This is the "if everybody cares only for themselves, everybody is taken care of" crowd. Unfortunately, there are many of those people and if they determine where society is going, it can only go to full collapse sooner or later.
Re:FYI (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Janitorial jobs are going away? Retail jobs are going away? Supermarket jobs are going away? Restaurant jobs are going away?
Better floor waxes means fewer waxings
So fewer janitors polishing floors
Robot window washing systems
Means fewer washers entering your doors.
Automatic checkouts mean fewer cashiers
At grocery stores, and soon at Sears.
Your fast food will be faster than ever, you'll say
Because robots are handling it all the way.
Robots now harvest a lot of crops
Migrant workers will just get the slops
You say make them work for jobs they don't know
Hope you're not not in the nursing home where they go.
Basic income is coming your way
Just in time as the robots hold sway.
Burma shave
Re:FYI (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, even as a 'right winger' myself, I wonder if you realise just how silted and contrived that 'article' is.
What is basically boils down to is the story you will hear from both sides of the political fence these days -
'For your own good, we know best - and we need more control! trust us! fear each other!'
People have forgotten that there are two axis to politics, left/right, and Totalitarian/libertarian.
Do we so quickly forget the second axis because the labels are 'harder'?
You can certainly have left and/or right totalitarian regimes, and we seem to be busy constructing quite a few at present.
You can also have left and/or right Libertarian regimes.
(For the Americans in the audience, Libertarianism is confusing to you I know, it has very little to do with your liberal party, or
your odd view of political/religious matters, so try and allow for that).
That article is a pretty simple attack in support of the new Totalitarianism - what a surprise. The message is 'You need us, your
government, to force the nogoods to do the right thing, or they will take advantage of you! give us more power!' Because apparently
society itself is incapable of social pressure - oh how times have changed, apparently.
On the idea of basic income? why not, the transition would be the problem - but I doubt we will see it in any major implementation for
a long long time, because governments worldwide are on a power trip right now, and giving up an area of control of their people is not
part of that playbook now, is it.
One of the more interesting parts however of a solid basic income package, which hardly ever gets mentioned, is removal of minimum
wage. This frees up a whole pile of minor jobs which are simply not economic (looking after the neighbors kids after school, mowing lawns,
etc) and are often now done under the table.. minimum wage becomes much less needed, as there is less 'force' for people to have a job
at any cost.
But hey, it doesnt help grow state control, so good luck with that. We are better worrying terribly about the reds under the bed - oh sorry, I
mean ISIS, or whomever they choose in another year or so.
Re:FYI (Score:5, Insightful)
a whole pile of minor jobs which are simply not economic
Why are they not economic? I challenge the base assumption. Why should a simple job such as mowing lawns be paid a starvation salary? Why can't someone who mows lawns for a living not make enough money for a simple life?
I will tell you why, the real reason: Because then the minimum-wage jobs would need to move upwards in salary. Someone who does something a little more qualified than mowing lawns would have to be paid slightly more. But that means the tier above that also needs to move up.
In other words: If you would cut out starvation salary jobs, and enforce minimum wage, all salaries would have to increase.
And now magic happens: People who couldn't afford to pay the cleaning lady or the lawnmower man a decent salary now can. Because they are making more money as well.
All this additional income will, of course, have to come from somewhere. There are two possible sources. One is inflation - which would create a self-reinforcing cycle because then you would have to raise wages to compensate for inflation. The other is less profits for those who own the companies, i.e. who make their money not out of salaries.
Guess who has in the past, is currently and will in the future spend millions and millions to both politicians and media to ensure that real minimum wage with no loopholes and exceptions doesn't happen.
Re:FYI (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good example, actually. In the limit, the activity of mowing a lawn does not generate enough production of real wealth to fund its own existence.
Specifically, I mean this: the increased production of food, tools, etc. from the landscaped lawn combined with the reduction in costs of dealing with rodents, bugs, difficulty of travel, etc. you'd have if the lawn wasn't landscaped is not enough to pay a person "well" for that landscaping.
Now, you might argue that people may be willing to pay a landscaper excessively to maintain an image, etc. This may be possible for a time, but if you're paying them more than their efforts generate, you're going to deplete your savings and eventually have an issue.
But this example also shows an artifact of the political methods of assigning people wealth in conflicting ways: "the landscaper should only get paid based on the economic value they directly produce" but "property owners should be compensated for people using their land, even though property owners don't necessarily do any direct work." Or said slightly differently: risking capital is physically different than performing labor, but many systems don't account for those differences.
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Ah actually, I see I misread the original quote, which was "a simple life." Are you saying that landscapers don't currently lead "simple" lives?
I know a fair number of landscapers, and they live pretty reasonable middle-class lives. But not luxurious ones. (Excepting the owner of the landscaping company, they live upper-middle-class.)
Guardian critique (Score:2)
But markets aren’t perfect: most risks are not insurable in private markets – that’s why we have social security systems.
Uh, say what? They are writing from England, where Lloyd's of London is located, the insurance firm notorious for being willing to insure anything?*
Of course you can have a separate system that pays for long term disability.
*Though you might not like the premium.
Dear Barbara (Score:2)
This is not basic income. This is about getting social benefits without validating the receivers on a regular basis.
A basic income would also be issued to working inhabitants of Utrecht, this is not the case.
Also, this is a lousy experiment even if all inhabitants of Utrecht would be paid basic income,
because it is *locally* and not country-wide: the rest of the country simply supports Utrecht in this case
one way or the other, this is social "dampening" the same way, *without* safeguards.
It is simply impo
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Doesn't work locally (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, guys? I'm politically liberal and in favor of a basic income, but it really doesn't work on a small local scale with open borders. Utrecht says it's cheaper to pay their 10,000 unemployed people a basic income than to administer a draconian welfare bureaucracy, but if you're handing out money with no strings attached, a lot of unemployed people from around the EU are going to move in to take you up on the deal. How does the cost/benefit look when you're trying to support ten times as many unemployed people as you had before? Sure, the idea is that some of them will get back on their feet and start contributing to the tax base, but that's not going to happen if you can only afford to pay them 1/10th of a basic income, or if you up the taxes on their potential employers by a factor of 10.
To keep this from happening, you need to either restrict immigration into the basic income zone -- which you can't do in the EU -- or implement it on a large enough scale that the tax base can handle the immigration spike, and national, cultural, and language barriers limit the size of the influx.
You can do this across the EU or US. Doing it for one small European city is just madness.
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To keep this from happening, you need to either restrict immigration into the basic income zone -- which you can't do in the EU -- or implement it on a large enough scale that the tax base can handle the immigration spike, and national, cultural, and language barriers limit the size of the
Or you only give the benefits to Dutch nationals who've lived in the city longer than X years.
Re:Doesn't work locally (Score:4, Interesting)
Or you only give the benefits to Dutch nationals who've lived in the city longer than X years.
Just like the David Cameron wants to do in the UK... but cannot because it is against the EU rules.
After as little as 3 months (I believe), they have to treat any migrant from within the EU _exactly_ the same as a Dutch national resident for 50 (or whatever) yrs. The EU migrant can also claim local benefits for non-resident family back home, we know this because they already do it with UK benefits and it cannot be stopped because "EU rules".
Re:Doesn't work locally (Score:4, Informative)
Except that it's not true. You have to have the same _rules_ regardless of nationality. But old age pension for instance can be a "saving scheme" where each year of paying tax contributes to the pension. Or have unemployment benefits linked to the length of the previous employment.
And yes, you can't discriminate on the nationality of family either. If you pay for children, you pay for them. Lack of creativity really. Pay for (local) daycare instead, pay for schools etcetera. Plenty of methods to keep money local.
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AFAIK, you only get benefits if you are a registered citizen in the town where you apply for benefits. To be a registered citizen, you need to live in the town. No address, no benefits. There's a separate arrangement for homeless people.
Utrecht suffers from a lack of affordable housing and has long waiting lists, so that will limit the number of people moving in.
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What's the "special arrangement for homeless people", and does it lock out the economic migrants I'm talking about?
Re:Doesn't work locally (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't just physically move there, live in a cardboard box and claim a basic income. It's not allowed and you wouldn't get the basic income anyway.
EU migration is already restricted. You can migrate for work, not for benefits. If you become unemployed you can claim benefits for a while as you look for a new job, but there is a time limit set by each member state.
Also, it's not "no strings attached". It's "live a very basic life in crappy accommodation or look for work", and experience has shown that when not constantly pressured most people will actually try to better themselves. Those that don't often have other issues that need attending to, such as mental health problems.
Doesn't work at all (Score:3)
Money doesn't have a fixed value. Its value is the sum total of all the productivity of your citizens, divided by (roughly speaking) the sum total of how much everyone is paid. Consequently, an increase in real income (amount of stuff you can buy with your income, not the amount of money you're paid) depends entirely on increasing the average productivity of
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Economic disparity between states is almost as bad in the U.S., but Minnesota doesn't complain that Mississippi is stealing all of its wealth -- well, not much anyway -- because we're all Americans. In the end it comes down to national identity, and where you draw the line between "us" and "them".
Levels are not sustainable (Score:4, Interesting)
In Western Europe, there are many government handouts that will replace all or part of your income. Maternity leave, unemployment benefits, retirement benefits, sick leave, disability benefits etc. These are the lion's share of the payouts that the basic income will replace... social benefits to the poor are dwarfed by these.
These are typically tied to what you have been earning, either as a full compensation or partyly/capped. If all of these were to be replaced by basic income, the levels would be dramatically decreased - and losing your job, getting a child or being sick would imply severe consequences.
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That's an interesting question, compared to some other rants there. Here in France disability is shit pay so not much change, or just leave an additional pittance for disability.
There is already an actual small income given to all parents that have children (depending on number, except if you have only one, older than three years..) : allocations familiales. Basic income proposals seem to give quite more, like half an adult's basic income, per children.
Now for the rest that's a real problem, although I don'
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You could argue that today's system is just that - insurance, although a mandatory one. And when you pay more, you get more if you need it - e.g. I pay a lot of taxes, but if I get sick or an accident occurs, I get unemployed etc, I get back for in proportion to what I've paid. Insurance and health also seems to be a problematic match - the US pays a lot more in % of GDP than anyone else, despite many not being covered and getting rather poor results. The market seems to deviate too much from a perfect mark
So let me get this straight.... (Score:2)
We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that.
So let me get this straight.... On the one hand, you have people that are not employed (and thus not earning an income). On the other hand, you do not have enough employees to manage the handing out of dole. Need, let me introduce you to Opportunity. Have you ever heard about the adage of "killing two birds with one stone"?
It could of course be that said unemployed people are not suitable even to become civil servants... in which case I expect useless dole-seekers soon outnumbering tax payers in your city.
It's not basic income (Score:2)
"Basic income" is understood as paying _everyone_ the same amount each month. This scheme is only for a small, select group of claimants (and indeed, I read the article). I have a bunch of questions about it:
1. How will participants be selected? The article gives the impression that people will be selected based on how "difficult" they are; it mentions people that walk out of jobs. Wouldn't this scheme act as a reward for anti-social behaviour?
2. One of the tenets of basic income is that it's cheaper becaus
Nobody mentioned the main danger of "basic income" (Score:2)
tough benefits regimes penalize work minimum wage (Score:2)
tough benefits regimes penalize work in some case just a higher minimum wage has forced people to cut hours or lose there disability health insurance plans with a work place that can't pay for there own health insurance plans.
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nonsense. What Utrecht and Nijmegen are doing is simple welfare reform. It has absolutely nothing to do with basic income. I don't get how The Guardian failed to see that. Why these politicians keep calling it "basic income" is completely beyond me.
For real basic income, look at Finland; they're actually doing it.
Sounds like you have ignorant planners (Score:2)
I'm going to ignore the financial and resource related reasons why this won't work and simple focus on the ignorance of the politicians involved.
We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don't have the people to see to that. It costs too much.
In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,' Westerveld said, 'but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a "basic income."'
So you have 10k people that don't have a job ... and need to have a job ... and you're paying them 88m ... and then employing more people ... at 15m ... to handle paying the first group?
Why the fuck don't you make some of the people drawing your handouts work for the system by providing those services. You just employed several people and cut 15m off the top.
Of co
I'm fine with it, but are YOU? (Score:2)
I hear lots of groundswell being generated around 'basic income' systems re the OP and in Finland. I'm a very politically conservative person, so it might surprise you that I'm strongly in favor of them. For those liberal-minded folks who claim to be in favor, I suspect that you haven't REALLY thought through the consequences?
A "basic income" system is generally posited as a more humane and efficient way to deliver services to poor people, rather than a massive, expensive, Byzantine, rules-laden (and thus
Border and Import Restrictions (Score:2)
Autarky enabled by unconditional basic income (aka "citizens dividend") promotes more global socioeconomic resilience than does global interdependence. This happens because the governments distributing the funds are faced with two very practical problems: Keeping the world's population from invading their territory and keeping the economic stimulus from draining, almost immediately, out of the country to pay for cheaper goods and services offered abroad. Both of these require much stronger border control
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait and see.
People, especially those that have little, tend to spend locally. In other words, drive the local economy as long as they have money. That they don't is exactly the reason our economy is in the slump it is in: People cannot spend.
Our economy depends on consumption. Local consumption to boot because another thing that is true for our economy is that it is highly dependent on the tertiary sector, i.e. services. Services are really tough to export. But also rather hard to import. Services are also the first thing people cut down on when money gets tight. For obvious reasons, if you're running out of money, what are you going to pay for, food so you can eat another day or the plumber to fix that dripping faucet? My guess would be that the faucet has to keep dripping for a while longer.
I'm really interested to see how this works out.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
Our economy depends on consumption. Local consumption to boot because another thing that is true for our economy is that it is highly dependent on the tertiary sector, i.e. services. Services are really tough to export. But also rather hard to import. Services are also the first thing people cut down on when money gets tight. For obvious reasons, if you're running out of money, what are you going to pay for, food so you can eat another day or the plumber to fix that dripping faucet? My guess would be that the faucet has to keep dripping for a while longer.
Sure. And if you had a magic well to pour funding into the economy that would be nice, but for the most part being able to put money into the economy involves pulling the same money out of the economy through taxes. The net effect is really to encourage or discourage savings, which can temporarily affect the total flow of money. That is to say in good times you want to encourage people to save excess capital rather than spend it and in bad times you want to encourage spending rather than savings. Which is why the main control is interest rate, if you get high interest you save more and low interest you spend more. Not everybody of course, but the fraction of the population who are in a position to choose.
The problem is that many politicians think the interest rate is the ends, rather than the means. If people have been encouraged for a long time to spend, spend, spend people are already at the limit of their spending. Those with money in the bank have already given up on bank saving and the ones living on credit knows another credit crunch will come and don't want to bankrupt themselves on "free" loans. You've outplayed the temporary measures and you have go back to the basics and create long-term economic growth. And that's a slow and tedious process that can't just be willed into existence by the law, but must be nurtured like a farmer tending his crops.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot affect the rich with the interest rate, and that's where the money is concentrated today. They have various other means of stashing money available, none of them being in any way directly influenced by the interest rate. They are also not the ones to consume. They want to invest. Problem is, to make investments viable, someone has to consume.
And those that would do that cannot due to a lack of funds. So either we find a way to give them the means to fulfill their role in our economy or we watch the economy grind to a halt while clinging to our money as if that shit meant anything as long as it can't move about.
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The end game for the 1% is similar to the medieval feudal system. Consumerism was great for them when they were accumulating wealth, but once your rulers are established it will no longer be needed.
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If history serves as an example, that bit about slitting throats can be arranged if they piss the people off too much. This is not some colony you're managing from a place far, far away. These people don't have to cross oceans to come to your door, kick it in, gut you and take what your took from them.
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That's why the solution won't come from Wall Street. Actually, they're just part of the problem.
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Sure. And if you had a magic well to pour funding into the economy that would be nice, but for the most part being able to put money into the economy involves pulling the same money out of the economy through taxes. The net effect is really to encourage or discourage savings, which can temporarily affect the total flow of money. That is to say in good times you want to encourage people to save excess capital rather than spend it and in bad times you want to encourage spending rather than savings. Which is why the main control is interest rate, if you get high interest you save more and low interest you spend more. Not everybody of course, but the fraction of the population who are in a position to choose.
Redistribution via taxes also have other effects - the consumption patterns are different. If you tax the upper middle class and up and redistribute to the poor, the results are likely to be less consumption of luxury goods (often imported) and services (e.g., travels abroad) and more spending on local services and shops (which these days amount to Chinese imports, I guess.).
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Excellent point. The other problem is that work as the main way to re-distribute wealth is not really cutting it anymore. Alternatives that complement that system are urgently needed. With more and more automation, things will only get worse with the old system and will eventually collapse.
Now, some (insight-less) people call a basic income "socialism" or "communism". It is not. Basic income, welfare systems, access to education, medical care, etc. are factors that prevent social unrest and create a favorab
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Call it what you want, personally I prefer to call it "paying for social peace". Because one thing is certain: People want to live. And people who think they get treated unfairly will revolt. You can either pay some of your money to pacify those that have nothing or you can easily lose everything when you dangle from the next tree.
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"Paying for social peace" is entirely fine by me and it usually is an excellent investment. The problem just arises when some think they can have other pay for it and line their own coffers instead. That does not work.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Netherlands, the marginal tax burden is enormous. In some specific cases (single earner, two child household), the difference between gross minimum wage and the "modal" income is over €16,000 a year. However the net difference is... only €1,800, because of taxes and no longer being eligible for additional benefits. Which is due to another important issue: the complexity of the Dutch benefits scheme is not in the base stipends like dole money, state pensions or workman's comp. It's in the Byzantine maze of extra measures piled on by the state or the councils: child support, health care subsidy (health care is not provided; you need insurance but low incomes get a subsidy to pay for it), rent subsidy, tax breaks for the chronically ill, waiving of certain local taxes for low incomes, transport subsidy, aid in kind, and so on. Many of these measures are not to compensate for low incomes but to account for differences in composition of households. None of this will disappear with a universal basic income.
So why work at a minimum wage or even a better-paying job? You'll be better off just taking the basic income and all it's additional benefits, perhaps doing a few odd jobs on the side, off the books, for a couple of hours a week. The rest is leisure time. And that's the real issue: even if we could make the scheme work at current levels of unemployment, some people will decide that getting up every morning to sit in traffic and work at a sucky job for 40 hours a week isn't worth it. Already economists complain that the gap between the dole and minimum wage is too small to encourage people to find a job; in some cases the gap is negative due to losing many of the aforementioned additional benefits. Opponents to this scheme argue that no one will want to work anymore; proponents argue that people will still find fulfilment in the work itself and will want the extra cash, however small the amount. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle... and that middle part will have to be paid for. It will be expensive. And it will be paid, as always, by the middle class.
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Same here in Belgium, in some cities in Wallonia you lost up to 200€ per month if you got off unemployment into a minimum-wage job...
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Actually, this step will save money and that is why they do it. So no impact on that solid gold humvee.
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Funny)
Unlike the USA, which prides itself on having a balanced budget each year, and on the rare occasion when it runs a deficit one year, it immediately runs a surplus for the following years until that debt is paid off.
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Nice one! (But I am sure there are lots of US citizens that do not realize the numbers of the US are even worse than those of Greece....)
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China (one of the BRICs) has enough foreign reserves to pay off its foreign debt twice over and still have change. The US only has enough foreign reserves to pay of 4% of its debt. It's pretty obvious that if push came to shove, China (which already on a purchasing parity basis has a larger economy than the US, and will have a larger economy than the US ignoring differences in purchasing power by 2020), can do whatever it wants, because dumping their US-denominated foreign reserves will pretty much be the s
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Sorry, was it sarcasm? US government debt is at 108% at the moment. In Netherlands it is 73.5%. Norway 29% Denmark 44%
Talking of Norway government debt being 29% is a tad inaccurate... we've also got more than ten times that amount stashed away in a fund [www.nbim.no].
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazing how often people seem to think this would be a net "money sink" by definition. Compare the following situations:
Person A is unemployed, and receives, say € 700 as benefits.
Person B has a job, and makes € 2000 per month. Versus
Person A is unemployed, but gets a basic income of € 700.
Person B gets a basic income of € 700, and has a job to earn an additional € 1300 a month.
It's simply a matter of choosing the numbers appropriately, and adjusting tax levels (and -perhaps- hourly wages etc) as necessary to compensate. Oh wait, that's not counting the large # of government bureaucrats who aren't needed anymore because the rules are simplified. So those bureaucrats can go do something that's more productive than count beans and meddle in other people's private affairs.
In short: there is money to pay for this, period. If only the political will exists. Especially in modern, wealthy western countries.
Personally I'm a big believer in this. For one, it could help greatly to equalize the power balance between employers and employees. In a largely capitalist society, that balance is skewed strongly towards employers. Employees are like water in the ocean, so employers can pick & chose at will. In theory employees can do the same. But in practice, they can't. If they refuse a job offer, they may be unable to put food on the table, lose the roof over their head, etc. A bureaucrat may be breathing down their neck, threatening to cut benefits if they don't take a job. So in practice, they often don't have much of a choice.
When worries about job security (and income security that comes with it) are gone, that could have huge positive effects on the mental well-being of the population. Less fighting between spouses over money, fewer troubles between low-income tenants and their landlords, drug addicts that don't have to go out stealing to pay for their habit, etc, etc, etc. And that's not even taking into account that people will have greater job satisfaction when given the freedom to pursue the jobs they want.
I think over time, the way things are currently done, simply won't work anymore and something will have to change if large-scale social unrest is to be avoided. A basic income would be a big step in the right direction, with potentially huge positive effects on society. The time is ripe for it, let's hope experiments like this will show it's a good idea and actually works.
Basic income methodology (Score:5, Interesting)
Your figures are off a bit from what I'd think.
It's more along the lines of
A: Unemployed: Paid $700 in benefits. This could be through traditional welfare programs(costing $900 because of management expenses), or through a BIG, costing approximately $0 in expenses because 'direct deposit to every citizen' is cheaper when you're not trying to means test it.
B: makes $2k/month no matter what in salary or whatever. However, in the current situation he's paying $700 of it in taxes, but for the purposes he's at the 'break even point' he's paying $1400 in taxes, but receiving a $700 BIG. Even though he's seeing no benefit from the BIG, the automatic deposit means that if he loses his job he automatically, without the need to file, still gets the BIG, so it acts like unemployment insurance.
And yes, people need to realize that the BIG payments are 'tunable'. You don't have to, and probably shouldn't, set it at a level where a person can live comfortably in his own place. Let's look at the USA: $500/month would probably 'work' if you separate out health care. A household of 4 adults(or children if they're included), would receive $2000/month, which is around poverty level for a family of 4.
Besides reducing management expense, arranged right it eliminates welfare cliffs where somebody is better off working/earning less.
I remember reading the write-up of the experiment in Canada. The results were that people really didn't work less*, did take a little longer to find a job, but generally obtained better ones as a result.
*Well, except for women staying home with newborns and teenagers staying in high school and actually graduating.
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Re: Basic income methodology (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure what strawman you're tilting at, but please try to use your noggin a bit. Let me help!
I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for an $800 per month guaranteed income for the entire USA. Granted, I didn't figure in overhead, but I'm assuming that will amount to a rounding error. I picked $800 because it's possible to get by over here in flyover country on that much. Many moons ago, I managed at that level of income, and the major prices haven't changed since then where I live (rent, electricity, phone/internet, although food has gone up in price a bit).
My result was roughly $4,100,000,000 per year to fund the thing. As big as that number is, it's still an order of magnitude less than the USA's GDP according to the CIA World Factbook. So it really is correct that we could do this today if we really wanted to.
most people will quit their jobs
This is demonstrably false and will be shown as such once more in this case. Some people do quit their jobs, however, except they do so because they have an idea and want to innovate, invent, and start a new business. Others work less but contribute to the community in other ways.
There will always be a deadbeat here and there, but there's not much you can do about that. In fact, you may already be paying for said deadbeats. If you have the right medical condition, say you had a seizure once or you can successfully make a convincing presentation of back pain, you'll get social security disability and food stamps currently. You can also get subsidized housing, too. This all happens right here in god-fearing, Puritan work ethic flyover country right now already.
My major recommendation is to get rid of minimum wage when enacting a basic guaranteed income. Some of those deadbeats are only deadbeats because they're not worth $8/hr and certainly not worth $15/hr in places where that's the minimum wage. Most everybody has an intrinsic need to feel useful.
because of course being an enterpreneuer also is no fun as all earnings are immediately taxed 100% to finance the greater good.
Oh, and fuck Pomperipossa if that's who you were thinking of. That tale makes no sense at all even if it did actually happen to somebody. The only way a 102% tax rate can happen is through bad policy (such as double-dipping income tax, but income tax for individuals at least should be repealed as well).
There are some real synergies to be had between a basic guaranteed income and the free market.
As always in the real world, socialism eventually and unconditionally produces a violent regime to keep things under control.
I'm not sure that capitalism, given a narrow reading that you seem to be giving your "socialism" demon, has a much better track record. I think you're confusing socialism as practiced in Europe with fascism elsewhere and socialism as practiced in the USA.
You do know that the USA has several socialist policies such as the aforementioned social security disability, no? The problem with pretty much all of them is that the minute you return to work (and this applies to Pomperipossa as well), you lose basically all benefits except food stamps, and those shrink away too if you prove to be a good worker worth promoting and giving raises to. What this means, getting back to the deadbeats, is that they are actively encouraging people not to work.
There are people right now living in my town in flyover country who want to return to work. They feel out the job market now and then. The problem is that the minute they become employed, the income+benefits they'd get is less than the value of the benefits they're receiving now. This is wrong. This is wrong as hell on so many levels.
A basic guaranteed income has the completely opposite effect. Everybody gets it. You, me, Bill Gates, everyone. So choose your poison: socialism that discourages work and encourages stupid angsting like the completely discredited notion that those deadbeats are "doing drugs" or socialism that encourages free market activities and frees people up who are working meaningless jobs to become innovators.
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
Your two statements have no financial differnce so where does the extra money come from?
Person A is given â 700, a net total of +â 700
Person B has his â 700 given and then taken away, for a net total of â 0
The fact Person B also pays back his â 700 has no bearing on costs.
Re:Good for them (Score:4)
Your two statements have no financial differnce so where does the extra money come from?
Ehm... that was kind of my point. Choose the numbers right, and the financial end result is the same. There is no 'extra' money needed.
But in the old situation, people might be more or less forced to take some job, and you'd need a lot of bureaucrats to keep tabs on people's affairs. Costs for the latter can be cut, and those bureaucrats can go do something more productive.
In the new situation, nobody would be forced to take some job just to have food on the table or a roof over their head. Just a very low minimum standard, not to be confused with: "enjoying the good life" @ other people's expense. Employers may enjoy a lower minimum wage, so they'll be able to get their work done for less. At the same time, they'd lose much of their power to abuse employees simply because they can.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a big believer in this too. Welfare systems are big expensive patchworks, and you can simplify or eliminate vast chunks of them. Think of all of the different things that could be partially or completely subsumed by basic income:
Welfare
Social security
Unemployment benefits
Disability benefits
Minimum wage
Healthcare support for low-wage earners (US medicaid, for example)
Food stamps
Parental leave pay
Subisidized housing
* ... and about 50 other things. Think of all of the overhead in running these programs and all of the headaches for participants and gaps that they can fall through. Think of the burden on private companies for dealing with all of this. The reality is that, for better or for worse, most societies have decided on the principle that we don't want people starving in the streets and tried to set up safety nets - one group at a time - to prevent this from happening.
It's about time we just consolidate it to a single basic payment and get rid of all of these programs and corporate requirements that effectively amount to an inefficient approximation of the same thing. And then most of the debates between the left and right will simplify down to simply whether to increase or decrease that base level of income.
The consolidation process can be simple and relatively painless.
1) Start out by baselining it at near the middle of typical Social Security payments - call it "Social Security for All" if you want. Benefits paid out should be relatively constant from person to person, but include benefits for dependents.
2) Deduct every individual's basic income payment from all other forms of government support. This will effectively eliminate the majority of people from all forms of government subsidy, while not reducing the net benefit for any citizen.
3) For any program in which a person hasn't received benefits from in several years, automatically unenroll them from it. The membership roles on most forms of subsidy will plummet, vastly reducing their overhead - many will become so devoid of enrollees that there will be no point to keeping them around, further reducing overhead. Such benefits programs should be culled automatically when their budget drops to, say, 1% of its pre-basic-income budget.
4) Eliminate minimum wage requirements, and impose a corporate tax that approximates what companies had previously been paying in terms of minimum wage baselines on everyones' salaries, with the expectation that corporations will reduce salaries correspondingly with the tax.
Steps 1-4 should be implemented in one block and be approximately revenue neutral.
5) Step by step, phase out each remaining welfare program, funneling the funds into raising the basic income payments; however...
6) Programs that were specifically "pay-in", and were paid in unevenly (such as Social Security) should ideally instead be "cashed out", so that recipients feel a sense of fairness.
The above should still be relatively "status quo, but with greater efficiency, fairness, and less headaches for everyone"
7) Conservatives should now be expected to begin trying to reduce basic income to lower taxes on the corporations and top income earners, while liberals should now be expected to begin trying to raise basic income at the expense of higher taxes on corporations and top income earners. Basically the same struggle that's always played out, but on greatly simplified terms.
Isn't this something that both liberals and conservatives could support? I mean, liberals, come on, everybody in the country having a safety net? And conservatives, isn't your dream to drown the government in a bathtub? If you want to shrink it down, here's your chance. To both: it's just the status quo, only more efficient and fair. You can then change it from there.
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Unfortunately the inertia of current system combined with the ability to score political points by tailoring the morass of regulations to benefit specific groups pretty much kills seeing BI in the near future. It's not like the power brokers want to give up their position to pick winners and losers either.
The same arguments can be used for Land Value Tax: liberals get essentially a progressive tax of the rich while conservatives get a vastly simplified tax code.
And that too will most likely never come to pa
some from of minimum wage is needed to stop abuse (Score:2)
some from of minimum wage is needed to stop worker abuse.
Workers under X wage should not be forced to pay for uniforms, or other items which are considered to be primarily for the benefit or convenience of the employer.
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i think partially the right word, as those things would probably still need to exist.
BUT, in a system that includes a GBI, they truly are once again safety net programs to catch people when they stumble and prevent them from falling down the ladder, which would dramatically reduce their size (at least on an average; in time of economic emergency they would of course inflate). but still, better than their current status quo, which is effectively an ad hoc basic income as it is.
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As you said it's the lack of political-will.. there is
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Most people will favor their own misconceptions even over solid and clearly stated facts. The bullshit statements by many on this is a good example. I mean, even the original story says clearly that they do this to save money and they give sound reasoning why they expect they will.
Some people just cannot grasp that giving something away for free can actually be a very good capitalist strategy in the right circumstances. The idea is too complicated for their tiny minds.
Another excellent (albeit small) exampl
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like the Dutch have plenty of money to spare and are taking steps to remedy this dire situation.
Or perhaps the Dutch have more courage? I think it is bit like how we tackle problems with drugs; we all know that drug use causes big health problems and ruins lives, and that this costs society a lot of money. However, what is more expensive - spending enormous amounts on policing drug users as well as the cost of health care because the available drugs are cut with all kinds of poisons etc, or legalising, taxing, save on policing and health care? A loaded question, I know, but it is the same with unemployment; there are always people who can't find work for very legitimate reasonsthey don't have the skills for the jobs, they can't get the training, and if they get trained, they are tainted by the fact that they have been long-time unemployed etc. What do we do about them?
- Leave them to: rot this was the situation at the time of Dickens; levels of crime and disease were miles high.
- Give them money, but administrate it tightly: this is what they do in Denmark, among others, and the fact is that the administration costs more than what society would lose if people simply got the money and we re allowed to cheat.
- Citizen salary: done right, this may be the cheapest option. There will have to be incentives to lure people out of not even trying, but it may be a lot easier than we think. Most people don't want to sit around idle, believe it or not; having a job gives you status and social contact - what people on benefits don't want, of course, is being "punished" for taking up work, and if having a job leads to you losing your social benefits, that feels like being punished for working.
It may be the Dutch are on to something. (yes, yes, I know, in a country where cannabis is legal, perhaps they are ON something as well, but that's separate matter)
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I think the main problem is that you switch one set of administration and enforcement for another:
Current situation: means tested benefit and an amalgation of special case subsidies, leading to administration/enforcement costs and inviting fraud*
New situation: basic income = zero administration/enforcement cost on top of existing citizen registry, and the ability to collapse/remove a lot of special-case benefits like housing subsidy, health care subsidy, pension, student loans, etc. However, as tax rates wi
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Really? You could get by on a couple hundred a month? For real?
Fuck no. I wanna live. Not exist.
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Realize that companies can then get away with paying WAY lower wages too since they only have to offer you an incentive to work rather than paying for your whole salary. You don't have to pay your burger flipper 800 bucks anymore because he could stay on unemployment and get 600. If he gets 600 anyway, paying him 300 would already look to him like a raise while you cut your wage more than in half.
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Don't discount the power of the left in the Netherlands. We had some computer shop trying to donate old equipment to welfare recipients not so long ago. It was rejected on account of the computers being 'too old'.
"Too Old" (Score:3)
We get that here in America where people get in a tiff because their public school or charity wont accept their "kind donation" of
an XP machine and tube monitor.
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Which is worse than no machine or monitor how?
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Re: "Too Old" (Score:2)
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So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.
I miss my old left.
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So the meaning of words change... back when I was young, the left was decidedly anti-religion.
I miss my old left.
No need to be anti-religion, just a realistic understanding of Islam. In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother
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In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother
Well, no. In general, they all have historically exterminated and killed each other (except Wiccans, which did not exist until recently.) It's only the influence of secular government that has changed that, and apparently, only temporarily. History shows us that when people run out of resources they go to war over any bullshit excuses they can use to justify grabbing everyone else's stuff. They also kill one another within their sects over their beliefs, especially Christians and Muslims. Shit, more Christi
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It's the usual apologists argument - other religions did this hundreds of years ago so present day Christians, Sikhs, atheists, etc are just as bad as present day muslims.
They are just as bad because they are making their decisions on the same bullshit basis that led to violence previously. It only leads to more violence. People are being killed over their religion somewhere in the world all the time. Politicians even in this country use religion as their excuse for bombing brown people. God wants us to do it. Refusing to think is just as bad now as it ever was, and you're claiming that to suggest otherwise is to miss something. That's an obtuse argument at best.
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No need to be anti-religion, just a realistic understanding of Islam. In general Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, atheists, Wicans, etc all get on without wanting to exterminate and kill eachother
That's exactly the sort of reasoning that ISIS uses about 'the West'. In general, the world's countries do not regularly invade other countries, perform summary executions using drones that kill a lot of innocent people at the same time, interpret a "no fly zone" mandate by the UN Security Council as a license to bomb the hell out of everything below, have a pretty bad history in terms of the regime changes they supported or instigated, ... The West is however full of countries that either do this, or virtu
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Why was this modded flamebait? (Score:2)
The poster is clearly sincere.
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Food and shelter is a basic human right (Score:2)
That's like saying "Except for a few billion people, the Earth is unpopulated." The statement makes no sense because the alleged "exception" shows that the exact opposite is true. And in the case of processes on Earth, the Sun's energy input to the planet is so colossal that it determines everything else, including all resources for human activity. As a consequence, the Earth is not a closed system.
That aside, our activities on the planet are
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>First problem is where does the money come from?
Part of the money comes from reduced cost of administration compared to welfare, unemployment, etc. For some of the rest, why not tax those who cause the problem and benefit from it? That is, tax the robots (actually the owners of the robots). The robot owners realize an enhanced profit from reduced employee expenses. Maybe a fraction of the increased profit due to each robot could go toward funding a basic income for all. The robot owner would still get a
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Sorry, giving out foodstamps, rent stamps, and other "use-assigned" benefits really is no different from giving out free money. All that happens is that a black market in stamps arises. There is no neat, tied-in-a-bow solution which allows personal choice.
One thing that WOULD work is giving out meals and housing, etc. in lieu of any kind of money or chits. Somebody with common sense would make the selections. No fine cuisine in palatial restaurants; no glitteringly expensive housing. And usage is AUTOMATIC
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The landlord doesn't "jack up the rent". One potential tenant will want it more, and offer more for it. Rents rising is a natural and inavoidable consequence of more money in the system.
You haven't ever wondered why things with the fastest increasing costs are the things with the most "free" money available? (Education and medicine, in case anyone was wondering.)
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