Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in His Harvard Commencement Speech (fortune.com) 747
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest major tech figure to call for universal basic income as a solution for inequality, joining a growing chorus from Silicon Valley. From a report: "Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech at Harvard University. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on.
Social parties are collapsing (Score:2, Interesting)
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Europe is swinging back to the left. Okay, that means it is now near the centre again, but compared to the US that's still pretty far to the left. Macron's victory in France, and Merkel's likely victory in Germany being two examples.
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Macron isn't really left-wing, he's a centrist at best.
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If thats the case, we need more of it.
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In what way are social parties collapsing? Scandinavia uses very socialist policies and they're some of the most prosperous and happy countries in the world. France just went for the more socialist choice, England looks set to do the same (if you ignore right wing polls).
Norway is not nearly so happy. (Score:2)
Scandinavia uses very socialist policies and they're some of the most prosperous and happy countries in the world.
Norway is not nearly so happy.
At least not since the bottom dropped out from under the oil market that was propping up its national infrastructure. It was a non-fungible resource for a very long time, but it always had a timer on how long it's going to last. Any resource export based economic system always does.
The refugee problem has not helped; Scandinavian countries were among the first to begin refugee deportations, since they simply can't handle the influx, and absorb them into the existing social fa
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THe problem is exactly what you described.
The economy of a country tied to just one or two primary exports will always collapse whether it is socialist, capitalist, or any other kind of government. When the mrket changes and that one export is less powerful that country will collapse whether it is Norway or Venezuela.
That is why the goverent shouldn't be in control of a given product but only get paid with tax dollars. I also find it funny that republiacans keep pushing to drill more oil and to sell the st
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UBI solves entirely the wrong problem.
It might be better welfare than welfare but its not a solution to the more basic problems of employment and human behavior.
Once you have a class of folks who subsist on basic income they will be jealous of the things those who have profitable work have, and resentful they have no path the get them. One of two outcomes follows:
1) They vote themselves more income. Eventually walls are run up against. Maybe its the limits of productivity by the still productive + autom
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Your error is in picturing a class of "UBI people" apart from "everyone else". The point of an UBI is it is UNIVERSAL. Everyone gets it. Everyone pays to fund it out of any income they make on top of it. All it does in the end is adjust everyone's incomes to be closer to the mean income.
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Yeah, yeah. "Everybody knows".
People like your alleged relatives are also pretty useless as workers and tend to bounce in and out of jobs even without welfare. That's assuming that they are actually deadbeats and not simply people who for one reason or another cannot work a decent job and think you're an asshole for sitting on your high horse like God's Own Favored.
Of course, if you make people be "worthy" of welfare by yanking it the minute they try to get ahead, that's not much incentive to do anything BU
Isn't this just welfare for the rich? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this just welfare for the rich? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I would rather people be campaigning for Universal Basic Employment. That is, a system where everyone would always have access to a job that paid basic living expenses, a job built around each person's particular skill set.
Of course the CEO's of the world would never campaign for THAT, because it might threaten their cheap labor supply (who would then always have an alternative job to go to).
Re:Isn't this just welfare for the rich? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we want universal employment, you have to either limit the amount of work you want from any given person by a lot (20 hour work weeks?) or you need to make up projects for tons of people.
I don't disagree that it would be nice for everyone to be productive, but the truth is, we don't have enough work for that, like as a species... and we aren't willing to take on more work (exploration, conservation, sustainability, etc), as a society.
Full employment requires a radical change to world societies. Universal Basic Income is actually a very small change by comparison.
It is the difference between taxing a little more, expanding entitlements a little more... and changing the goals and focus of the entire human race.
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Part of what UBI can solve is homelessness, flexibility to take care of kids or other dependents, unstable or seasonal jobs, etc. Universal Employment wouldn't necessarily solve a lot of those problems.
I agree with you that UBI is much smaller change, and it allows for a lot more flexibility in the workforce. You're not going to solve homelessness for people with drug and alcohol problems or mental health issues if you force them to work to get paid. They're just not going to want or be able to do
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or you need to make up projects for tons of people.
Exactly. There are a ton of projects that need doing and it just takes the funding and wherewithal to make it happen. Just look at all the infrastructure repair projects that need doing in the U.S. And think about how much new infrastructure we could even ADD with these projects. Think fiber-optics to every house in the country, new light rails systems, giant solar plants, maybe even a revitalized space program.
They did it in the New Deal. They built the entire Tennessee Valley Authority dam system, got ele
UBI opens up real free market of jobs (Score:3)
Yes, I would rather people be campaigning for Universal Basic Employment. That is, a system where everyone would always have access to a job that paid basic living expenses, a job built around each person's particular skill set.
Is there enough work for each skill set? Can we mandate that work? What if someone wants to change careers later in life and doesn't *want* to keep that skill set? What about people with little technical skills in a computer-dominated world?
My fear is that mandating employment will reduce down to people being assigned to unnecessary jobs just to fulfill the requirement. Extra secretaries, building extra housing beyond our population needs, etc. Plus, this assumes that people are happy working these types of
Re:Isn't this just welfare for the rich? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was always confused by how the Section 8 housing in my hometown was always the most trashed out place in the city, while the people (especially the able bodied men) that lived there just walked around it, ignoring it. Every few years the city would come in to clean them up and renovate the place. A year later, the place would be trashed out again. I always wondered why the people who benefitted from the free or nearly free housing were not required to spend time cleaning the place. With so much free time, why wouldn't they want to.
Welfare is a de-motivating force.
Re:Isn't this just welfare for the rich? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this just welfare for the rich? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Clearly everyone living there has plenty of free time since when you drive by in your car you see people outside. A lot of assumptions going on here.
Is it possible that the place is trashed because the people living there don't have time to clean it up, and the minority of people that do simply don't want to clean up after everyone else? What about the possibility that renters in general don't care as much about the property they liv
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Welfare is a de-motivating force.
It could also be that the unmotivated are on welfare. It's probably a sin to think such things. Please forgive my transgression.
Perhaps apocryphal but Friedman had a comment (Score:3)
At one of our dinners, Milton [Friedman] recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you
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For those who don't have the need, UBI simply translates to a tax discount. Sensible UBI setup mandates high *progressive* taxes. Meaning for people below UBI threshold, they net UBI as they pay no taxes. Rich people well above UBI threshold pay high taxes, and UBI they receive is merely a small discount in the end.
The beauty of this is all you need to worry about is only taxes, while dismantling the overhead of social net bureaucracy.
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A well-designed UBI wouldn't prevent you from having something to do. In fact, it would encourage it. Right now, welfare systems encourage you to not do anything, because every extra dollar you make gets partially clawed back when they reduce your welfare benefit. For example, you make $25k a year sitting on your ass, or you can make $35k a year working a low-skill job. Basically you now work 40 hours a week for a marginal gain of $10k a year. That's just not worth it to most people.
If done right, UBI would
So long as we seem unwilling as a society... (Score:5, Insightful)
... to let people starve in the streets, why not?
We run these patchworks of programmes to try to approximate the effects of universal basic income. Lost your job? Unemployment insurance. Chronically unemployed? Food assistance, welfare, etc. Homeless? Housing assistance / public housing / shelters. Too old to work? Pensions / social security, and in the US, Medicare. Too poor for health insurance in the US? Medicaid. Physically can't work? Disability. Job wouldn't pay enough to afford basic expenses? Minimum wage. On and on.
Isn't it about time that we just simply accept what we're trying to approximate, and just do it directly? Then scrap the patchwork of programmes that try to approximate it, and all of their overhead (ex: all of them), market distortion (ex: minimum wage), and perverse incentives (ex: trying not to earn too much to avoid losing benefits). People can reasonably differ about the amount that defines "basic needs", how much if any to boost people who "permanently can't work" vs. those who simply don't have a job for whatever reason, how to deal with dependents, etc. But it certainly simplifies the debate versus having a whole complex and inefficient patchwork to argue over.
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I support a mostly revenue-neutral transition to UBI. As UBI gets ramped up, all other existing benefits (including minimum wage) get deducted against UBI payouts. Whenever ~90% of a programme's former recipients are no longer getting a benefit from that programme due to UBI benefits, it is eliminated entirely - so as UBI goes up, overhead from other programmes goes down. Businesses become more efficient and markets less distorted as minimum wage ramps down and ultimately disappears, boosting tax revenue; e
Re:So long as we seem unwilling as a society... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even with credits, (and now fines for not doing so), many people don't buy medical insurance. People starve because they buy TV's instead of food. To most successful (where success is having a job, a house, and can afford food) people this seems unthinkable. But it is real.
Even then there will be some people who manage to trade, or barter away these credits/items so that they can do things like buy drugs, or simply out of mental impairment. Our society will still have to have safety nets to stop them from starving to death on the streets.
Ultimately I see this meaning it might be better to have a "really good" safety net that any one could use with no questions asked providing: food, housing, and medical treatment but not basic income.
Re:So long as we seem unwilling as a society... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, at some point then, you have to just say fuck'em...I mean at some point, you have to make people be adults, and live with and deal with the consequences of their choices.
Re:So long as we seem unwilling as a society... (Score:4, Informative)
People starve because they buy TV's instead of food.
Citation needed. I would like to know about people who literally starved to death because they spent their money on televisions instead of food.
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You do know that the welfare queen [theatlantic.com] was invented by Reagan, used by conservatives since then, and has never been true, right?
And who are you to tell people what they spend their UBI on? What makes your judgement better than theirs?
To most successful (where success is having a job, a house, and can afford food) people...
Aaah, got it. If you currently have a job, you're successful, but if not, you're stupid, lazy, and criminal, and zbobet2012 needs to tell you how to live your life, and police your life choices? That speaks far more poorly on you than it does on them.
What your au
Re:So long as we seem unwilling as a society... (Score:4, Insightful)
We run these patchworks of programmes to try to approximate the effects of universal basic income.
As many have said repeatedly in these discussions, the numbers spent on those programs just don't approach what you would need to implement a UBI that people would consider adequate to live on.
Medicare. Too poor for health insurance in the US? Medicaid
And this has an even more fundamental problem. Is your proposal to have people pay for healthcare out of their UBI? If not, you can't look at Medicare/Medicaid spending as an available bucket of money to reallocate for UBI.
Beyond all that, many of the current spending programs grant money in reasonably restricted categories. Section 8 dollars have to be spent on housing. Food assistance dollars have to be spent (mainlhttps://news.slashdot.org/story/17/05/26/0848216/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-universal-basic-income-in-his-harvard-commencement-speech#y) on food. The UBI proposals I've heard have none of these restrictions, so someone can burn through their UBI and end up on the sidewalk panhandling. It's just not credible to say that the same group of people that have driven the bleeding edge of social policy for the past several decades would suddenly find it within themselves to turn a blind eye to people who are "in need" because couldn't manage their UBI money. That takes even more dollars that don't exist.
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Are you sure it isn't the other way around?
The argument for UBI usually sounds like "Hey, it's complicated and expensive to figure out who needs which services, so just give a fixed amount of money to everybody and they can use it however they want." UBI is the approximation, not the ideal. Ideally, we don't want to give wealthy people a fixed check every month. It would be better to spend that money on drug treatment for addicts or therapy for the mentally handicapped, or just to give the poorer people
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Except nobody actually starves in the streets. That's just hysterical nonsense meant to drive a particular political agenda.
Treating adults as wards of the state like they can't manage their own lives should not be the DEFAULT.
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The real problem with these ideas is that our society has no core values and we don't trust each other -- with good reason. No matter how much sense it might make, I would never trust anyone in government not to abuse their authority. I wouldn't trust the beneficiaries either.
The whole thing would just become a larger and larger transfer scheme, just like government pensions, just like Social Security Disability Insurance, just like food stamps. Government officials would take a larger and larger fractio
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Who honestly believes that if we were implement UBI that we would dismantle many if any of those programs? I have little faith that UBI would reduce them by much if at all, meaning that UBI just added to the problem, not really solving things.
Also, I imagine that some someones running UBI are going to end up gaining power and money from running THAT program as well. how can they not.
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What's to prevent the elderly who are still in good enough health to work from simply living on pensions and not contributing to society greatly increasing taxes? What's to prevent people currently on existing safety net programs from avoiding working too much so as not to lose their benefits?
More to the point, the reason that people currently on existing social safety n
Great! (Score:2, Interesting)
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
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Probably FBcoins.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Informative)
Reversing Recent Tax Cuts on Wealthy (Score:3)
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
Well I can't speak for Zuck's motives, but in general advocates say it comes from restoring taxes that used to exist on the wealthy. We've had decades of reduced taxes and tax loopholes for the rich that they pay hardly nothing anymore. During the most prosperous periods in modern US history, the tax rate was as high as 90% on the top tax bracket. Plus, there's plenty of infrastructure and environmental problems that have to be paid for by the people despite the fact that private interests caused it and pro
He's worth $63 billion (Score:5, Informative)
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Story [cnn.com] explaining how Zuckerberg will never have to pay taxes again. Also include a sentence about Buffett never paying taxes on his $50 billion.
Funny how those super rich who don't pay taxes are always the first to say the middle class need to be paying more.
To be fair (or cynical), Buffett has repeatedly said it is ridiculous that he pays less in taxes than his secretary and that the tax laws should be changed, but until they are it is in his best interest and prudent to use the existing law to reduce his tax burden as much as possible.
Re:Its funny (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, the Warren Buffet canard. First of all, Mr Buffet isn't making billions. He holds assets that represent unrealized capital gains in the several tens of billions (primarily shares of Berkshire-Hathaway; if BH were to go belly up tomorrow, his holdings there become worthless). His company pays him a salary of about $100,000 each year, and he "earns" a few million dollars every year in interest and dividends. This income, plus his salary, and whatever CGs he may realize, is what he pays taxes on, much of which is taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than income tax rate. Quoting his tax rate, based on CG rates compared to his secretaries, based on income tax rates (and not at his or her *effective* income tax rate, at that) is apples and oranges.
Mr Buffet takes full advantage of the tax system to minimize his taxes. He has accountants and tax lawyers. He has clearly structured his affairs to minimize his taxes, as, for example, when he established trusts for his children.
It is further worth noting that when Mr. Buffet and his friends Bill & Melinda Gates set out to figure out how to improve the world, they created the tax-exempt foundation and donated billions of dollars to the foundation, rather than simply letting the government have that money. We have to ask why? Didn't they trust to government to do the "right thing" with that money?
Finally, note that both Gates and Buffet, when they donated to the foundation, did so by giving away appreciated shares of their respective companies, thus garnering for themselves the largest tax break possible--not only did they not have to pay GC taxes on the gains (substantial they were, too), but they get to claim the *appreciated* value as a deductible charitable contribution. So, if WB had been granted one share of BH when it sold for $1000, he would owe income taxes on on the $1000. But if he held that share until BH sold for $200,000 per share, he would owe income taxes on the $1000, and CG taxes on the $199,000 difference. But by donating the share to the foundation, he still owes income taxes on the $1000, pays no CG taxes, and gets to claim $200,000 charitable donation (which can go a long way to offsetting any other income he has).
Buffett told [interviewer Charlie] Rose his 2010 adjusted gross income was $62 million. He implied that most income came from long-term capital gains and qualifying dividends currently taxed up to 15%. Only a small portion of his gross income – a few million dollars for Buffett – is ordinary income, like wages and interest income, taxed at higher ordinary income tax rates currently up to 35%.
Buffett [said] that he uses the maximum 30% charitable contribution deduction each year – for appreciated property – and he has a $10 billion carryover of charitable contributions for subsequent use too.
Buffett’s 30% charity tax deduction offsets his entire ordinary income, and next it offsets his lower long-term capital gains income. Hence, he pays approximately 15% long term capital gains tax rates only, and – as he likes to say – it’s a lower tax rate than others in his office pay.
Buffett also avoids nasty alternative minimum taxes (AMT) of 28%. Charity is a powerful tax savings tool to avoid income, AMT and estate taxes.
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Money in the bank supports a 19:1 fractional reserve loan system. That's it.
When you spend your money, you move it from one bank account (yours) to another (someone else's). That means you spend your money ($1), and your money continues to support loans ($19). That's a total $20 of money represented in the economy. If you don't spend your money, it's a total of $19.
Here's the rub: if you don't spend your money, then it only represents 95% as much active, moving money in the monetary system. The Fe
It's easy for him to demand that (Score:5, Funny)
He doesn't need unskilled workers he can make slave away for pennies, knowing that their option is to either work 20+ hours a day for you or starve to death!
The world is going to come to an end if we actually had to pay people to flip burgers, stock stores and bag your groceries enough money that any person with a sliver of self respect would do it! If we cannot press people to slave labour anymore, our way of life is going to come to an end. People will have to bag their own groceries, like those Euros where minimum wage exists and you can't afford baggers!
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What's wrong with bagging your own groceries? I don't really understand why the job of "grocery bagger" exists in the US. It's like stores treat their customers as invalids. If the customer is too disabled to be able to put their groceries in bags, how did they manage to collect them all and wheel them around in the first place? And if you're going to go so far as hire baggers to do the "difficult" job of bagging, why not also hire "shoppers" to fetch the groceries for the customers, so that they can just s
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YOU are slow. YOU are holding everyone else up. YOU creating an unnecessary mess and crowd in the store. YOU are interfering with the grocer making more money.
The bag boy is there to help speed up the entire process.
It's that whole productivity and efficiency thing Europeans are so allergic too.
Re:It's easy for him to demand that (Score:4, Insightful)
Speak for yourself. And if you had the baggers be checkers instead, you could have literally twice as many lanes open. So if you want to talk about "holding everyone up"....
And, FYI? Our checker counters have a divider where the groceries come out, and the checker can route groceries to either side. So a person doesn't need to be done bagging for them to start checking the next person's groceries.
But then again, it's that whole "rational solutions" thing that Americans are so allergic to.
He is worth $50+ billion dollars (Score:2, Interesting)
He could pay off the debt of all of the students attending his speech and not even notice, but no... Voluntary help just will not do.
He wants other people's wealth to be "spread around" at gun-point...
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Why should already super-privileged Harvard students get yet another gift?
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Why should already super-privileged Harvard students get yet another gift?
Your objection is immaterial. He could do it to graduates of any other college too. Tafts and UMass Boston are right there, for example...
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He wants other people's wealth to be "spread around" at gun-point...
Where does the wealth come from for the people who receive more from UBI than they put into the system? It can only come from people like him who will be putting more into the system than they receive back from UBI. Mind you, that group of people will likely include many of us as well, who make more than the median income and will thus end up slightly net negative in terms of what we pay in versus what we get out, but still, it'll be those making far more than most of us who must, by necessity, bear the bru
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His entire $51 billion can only give the 150 million of Americans, who pay no income tax today, $340... Once. As you say, most of those working would be taxed extra to further comfort the idle.
Ergo, my reference to the gun point, which is how all taxes are collected...
So, of course, "UBI" and other attempts to forcibly "spread the wealth" to address the non-problem [redstate.com]
UBI is free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Ergo, my reference to the gun point, which is how all taxes are collected...
Let me ask a question. When you receive your electric bill or winter gas bill or water/sewerage bill, do you call it a forced bill "at gun point" from the utility company? Or do you just pay it because you're paying your fair share of bills for what you used?
Taxes are just our bill for our fair share of government and government services. It pays for military defense, a court system to allow you to file greviences against neighbors businesses or even the government itself, roads and bridges and other infrastructure, inspectors that ensure our buildings are constructed to code and food is safe to eat, and way more than I can list here. You use plenty of government services every day and don't even realize, so yes, you need to pay your bills for those services.
Now you could argue that our taxes are not always used wisely. I'd personally love to see our taxes go more to domestic programs rather than more middle eastern wars. And you might argue government is wasteful, and sometimes it is. But then I have a news flash for you, have you ever worked at corporate? Corporations are *at least* as wasteful as government services in many circumstances, so it's not particularly unique to government. If you'd like to see changes and waste cut, contact your representative and vote against them next election if they do nothing, that's why we're a democratic republic, we can vote and change things. At least you can do that, with private corporate control you have absolutely no say about what the CEO does.
So, of course, "UBI" and other attempts to forcibly "spread the wealth" to address the non-problem of "income inequality" [redstate.com] are foolish and oppressive.
If you've never been poor I suppose you don't understand inequality, so let me give you a brief overview. Income is a huge part of it, but not all. Neighborhoods gentrify and rent increases meaning you must leave your long time neighborhood since you can't find a better job, because you don't have free time between 60+ hours a week job at several stores or money to attend college to get new skills. You might ask why they don't just buy a house. Good question! When your income is that low, you don't have the credit necessary to buy. Except landlords need to make money off of you, so their rent is almost by definition *more* than a typical mortgage (it has to be more than the mortgage to make a profit, right?). So you have to pay a lot and need more jobs. Many jobs are not on bus routes in my area, so you need a car. You get a cheap one at a used car lot, but since your credit is low, you don't get the typical 2 or 3% interest middle class gets, you get 8 or 10% interest, again having to pay *more* than middle class. But it's used car so you can make small payments over time so you try to make it work out. Then you get to work and your boss tells you to go home. They found someone new, or just plain don't like you, and they fire you on the spot. They can do that in many states because "right to work" really means employers have the right to fire you at any moment. Or even if you're not fired, it's a slow day, so he sends you home. Now you're short a day of pay, and your bills are stretched thin, so you can't make the car payment until the next paycheck. Now you're late and have penalty interest, and they possibly come to repo your car if you wait too long and they don't want to work with you. Or, you decide to take a payday loan on your next paycheck so you can have the money now rather than waiting two more weeks, so you pay your bills, but your payday loan was at obnoxious 25%+ and has to be paid back immediately at the next paycheck, which of course you don't have, so you sink into more debt. Which means your credit score dips lower, you have to pay even higher interest rates, now you don't even qualify for car loans and even rental units star
OK, But... (Score:5, Interesting)
I get that this speech was more about marketing and PR than actually intending to do anything useful, but in the event that Mr Zuckerberg would like to make a positive start to inequality, can I respectfully suggest that he pays taxes where they are due, and makes a declaration that Facebook will no longer use "international tax vehicles" to move profits around and thereby avoid paying taxes.
If Mr Zuckerberg and/or Facebook aren't willing to do that, then can I respectfully suggest that he is full of ####.
Re:OK, But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook are one of a number of companies that have a habit of using exotic international tax vehicles to move profits from countries where corporation taxes are reasonable to countries where they are super-low.
Yeah, the existing system has some broken rules, and FB takes advantage of those rules. So what? Not taking advantage of them would be dumb, since all the competition is. That doesn't mean Zuckerberg can't call for better rules.
Note that in this case, the most sensible fix to the rules would be eliminating corporate income tax on foreign earnings (or, better yet, eliminate corporate income tax entirely), and instead making a series of changes to tax laws to increase the burden on wealthy owners of capital. Increase capital gains taxes, add some higher income tax brackets, add taxes on luxury items, remove deductions used primarily by the wealthy, etc.
However, all of that really is completely separate from whether UBI is a good idea. UBI could theoretically be implemented in a way that is fully revenue neutral, just replacing all of the existing means-tested welfare systems. Everyone not currently receiving welfare benefits would see their taxes go up by roughly the same amount as the UBI check they begin to receive, leaving their situation unchanged. It's not quite that simple, of course, but a well-designed UBI should not affect the majority of wage earners significantly.
Not a problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Zuckerberg wants a universal income, he can hand over his own money to set the example.
What? He's not going to voluntarily give up his billions so others can have a basic income? How strange.
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Which has squat all to do with giving his money to other people now so they can have a basic income.
I'm glad they are all going to give their wealth to charities once they have they passed on. More people should do it. The point is Zuck says everyone else should be forced to hand over their money so others don't have to work yet is unwilling to lead by example.
If he thinks it's such a great idea then he can remove his wealth from the trust it's hiding in to avoid paying taxes and start distributing it now,
So Welfare isn't enough? (Score:3)
Don't we have welfare in this country? Isn't that what Millionaire Mark wants? You have money sir, open a shelter or hand out food... You can afford it.
It's *really* easy to spend other people's money you know, especially when you use the money to "help the poor" into the voting booth to vote for you. You sell it as "compassion" but it's really just a bribe to buy votes and build a dependency in your voting block. This country did just fine by the poor prior to FDR, even during the great depression when few had any money.
Now we have all kinds of welfare programs that give away billions and billions and are racking up Federal debt in the Trillions each year.... What more do you think we should do? You can only hand out so much money before it becomes meaningless and we all go bankrupt and EVRYBODY becomes poor...See Venezuela for an example of where this kind of thinking leads you.
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Don't we have welfare in this country?....Now we have all kinds of welfare programs that give away billions and billions and are racking up Federal debt in the Trillions each year.... What more do you think we should do? You can only hand out so much money before it becomes meaningless and we all go bankrupt and EVRYBODY becomes poor...See Venezuela for an example of where this kind of thinking leads you.
UBI is intended to replace all forms of welfare and safety nets. Of course, the reality is we will still have plenty of people blow all their money on cars, clothes, gambling, or drugs and not have anything left over for housing, food, or healthcare. So we would have to either not care about people startving in the streets but with the latest cellphone, still provide some sort of safety net, or rely on (and probably help fund) non-profits to take up the slack. UBI is a great idea and I am all for it (I w
Interns (Score:2)
So does this mean that Facebook is going to start paying their interns this summer?
Can we start funding it by confiscating all his $ (Score:3)
Otherwise STFU...
Doing a little math...
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this cost a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
Great ideas for great people (Score:4, Insightful)
Mark is describing the ends. It's a vision for a new social structure of the future. It has a lot going for it - if we ignore for a moment how we pay for it, everyone here (I hope) will agree that it would be a Great Thing if everyone had food, clothing, shelter, quality education, and good health care. That's a good basis for a great society. If we had the choice, why would we choose to have hunger and starvation, homelessness, under-education and people dying of preventable and curable problems?
But we have to pay for it. UBI was one idea to investigate (and that's pretty close to his wording). The global worth of mankind's output is growing - mathematically, the average standard of living of the world should continue to rise over time (I see no limit in sight).
Much, much more importantly - we also have to figure out a value system around it. Mark's ideal here is a safety net to let people climb higher. That's a great thing. It can also be viewed as a motivation to not climb at all. That's a terrible thing. All social programs struggle with this fundamental issue. It doesn't mean the goals are bad. It means that when society gives, some people give back, and some people take. The ideal society happens when everyone gives and everyone gives back. Society collapses when everyone takes and nobody gives back.
Giving to the poor and needy is risky. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a higher society than one that invests in the poor and needy.
Side note: I see no better way to handle the moral issues here than in our own lives and our own homes. Do we give back when we take? Do we teach our children the value of work, progress, ambition, and selflessness? Are setting the right example ourselves and teaching others?
We can't have that utopian society unless we have utopian people to put in it.
Other side note: I'm a wealthy, small-government conservative who hates paying interest, taxes, and poorly managed, poorly used social programs. I also believe I have a responsibility to meaningfully help those who have a tougher hand to play than I do. And I struggle (a lot) to find good ways to meaningfully help.
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There is such a thing as free money, rich people are proof of it. Nobody's job is worth millions every year.
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A persons job is worth exactly what someone will pay for it.
I don't myself see athletes that make multi-millions a year being worth it, really, but then again, who am I to judge?
Who are you to judge?
Who shall we place in power to place judgement on a persons worth?
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Well, if it is your businesses..then sure, you decide...what's wrong
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Someone who earns a million dollars every year is extremely rich.
A one-time million dollars payment would set me for life, and I'm in Canada.
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Before anyone replies with "bullshit", let's do some basic math:
Assuming UBI of ~$1000 per month (which would be a lot), 1 million dollars divided by $1000 per month equals 1000 months, divided by 12 months equals 83 years and 4 months.
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Who can live on a measly $1K a month?
Ok, one might could barely 'survive' on $1K a month...living below starving college student level of life....but really, that's not much living, that is just barely getting by at best, if at all.
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And how do you do "millions of dollars worth of sales each year"? How can a single individual make so much money? There's a problem with that. Somebody in your supply chain is getting royally screwed so that you can get so much profit.
Your "hard earned" money is nothing of the sort. There's only 365 days in a year, 24 hours in each one. There's people out there working 60+ hours weeks and they'll never earn even a fraction of what you make.
That one person can earn that much is a problem. That you think it's
Re: Who will pay for it? (Score:4, Informative)
A medicore realtor could manage that.
HELL, in Silicon Valley a realtor could manage that with a single home sale.
Now home sales are a pretty trivial thing. But there are far more interesting (life saving) activities you would discourage with your communist nonsense.
You're probably sabotaging your own cubicle dweller corporate job with that kind of nonsense.
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A medicore realtor could manage that.
HELL, in Silicon Valley a realtor could manage that with a single home sale.
Now home sales are a pretty trivial thing. But there are far more interesting (life saving) activities you would discourage with your communist nonsense.
You're probably sabotaging your own cubicle dweller corporate job with that kind of nonsense.
Do you know the difference between socialist and communist? When the wealthy install robots to do your job, you will be the one that is unemployed. And when your savings run out, paying for your College/university and healthcare, I wish you the best of luck. My advice to you is to look at the cost of your toys and ask if they are worth having.
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3% to the seller's realtor, 3% to the buyer's realtor.
That is how home sales have worked for 3 generations in the US and longer in other countries. It is negotiable and might seem to a casual outsider to be exorbitant, but for a 10 million dollar property, a realtor might spend $50,000 -100,000 on staging the home and marketing it... much more if the realtor is not established, with negotiated marketing rates and a warehouse full of bullshit staging furniture (or rental agreements)
Re: Who will pay for it? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Homes people buy because they need to live somewhere and they can afford to buy this house here.
2) Homes in which nobody who could afford them would live there (rental only, think slumlord to casual investor to real-estate get-rich sucker)
and
3) Ultra premium. Houses so far above the cost of living for an area that you cannot buy it if you work for a living.
These all have wildly different real-estate agent behavior, and most people will only ever deal with #1, and maybe #2 #1 are 6% commissions with realtors who will be a realtor for an average of 5 years, any "staging" they do will be cheap or free, and mostly your commission is paying for their time. #2 are square-foot checklists, repair lists, inspections, and flat broker fees. An agent might list on MLS and coordinate with inspectors... nothing really outside of that. #3 People have no imagination, and they simply won't buy a premium/high-end house if it isn't staged. They aren't buying a house because they have to live somewhere. a 10 million dollar+ house will be staged with a half-million dollars in furniture, art, dishes, towels, etc most rented, some owned by the realtor or their group. Any drawer, closet, or cabinet that might be opened, will have items in it that convey a luxury lifestyle. Leather-bound books on the book cases, electronics, toiletries, everything.
They might even hire a chef to put freshly made food in the refrigerator to be thrown away after a showing. I am dead serious.
They might learn that a buyer likes purple and replace all the flowers in the landscaping with purple pansies.
They will definitely put fresh cut flowers, fresh fruit, etc out before every showing. Spending hundreds of dollars on disposable goods every time they unlock the front door.
I worked in risk assessment for in the real-estate industry for years. Once for a listing in Malibu I had a 6 million dollar insurance policy go through my system... covering JUST THE ITEMS USED FOR STAGING. It included a Ferrari... Used for staging a garage.
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There's people out there working 60+ hours weeks and they'll never earn even a fraction of what you make.
It turns out that society values brain surgeons higher than it values heroin addicts.
It pays each according to their value to itself.
So brain surgeons make lots of money ... and heroin addicts? No so much.
Just because someone works 60+ hours a week producing art consisting of a catholic religious icon being sealed in a jar of their own urine -- said "work" mostly being the consumption of beer, in order to manufacture the urine -- doesn't mean that they have the same value to society as, for example, the CE
Re: Who will pay for it? (Score:4, Interesting)
And how do you do "millions of dollars worth of sales each year"? How can a single individual make so much money? There's a problem with that. Somebody in your supply chain is getting royally screwed so that you can get so much profit.
At a concert, 30,000 people buy tickets to see a single entertainer. It's a good show and the fans leave happy. Who is "getting screwed" when the entertainer gets 6 figures for a few hours work?
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I don't know? Everyone else who contributed to the performance, but isn't famous?
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Erm, seriously?
The entertainer is. Or do you really believe he gets those 6 digit figures?
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What would be fair then? 10x minimum wage? 100x? Should they be required to help promote the show? Should they be required to work for free at the singer's free shows in bars and coffee shops as she was building a fan base, before she got famous?
If the stadium show gets rained out and all the tickets have to be refunded, should the workers still get paid for the setup work they did? How much? 10x minimum wage? 100x?
Please answer: What would be fair?
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Why should the wealthy have to give up their money for others to not work?
Morally? Because the wealthy invariably did one of two things 1. Used state resources disproportionately to gain their wealth or, far far more often 2. Inherited it from their parents who disproportionately used state resources to gain their wealth.
They should give up some of their money because most of them simply won the birth lottery and most of the rest found a way to cheat, which don't strike most of us as good reasons to be able to have gold plated toilets while some kid in Detroit lacks running wa
Let's start with Zuck's billions (Score:3)
Then take Elon Musks and Warren Buffetts. We can work our way down the billionaires list and take it all until there are no billionaires left.
America boasts 540 billionaires, more than any other country on the planet and more than all of Europe combined. In 2016, 221 former billionaires fell off the list, though 198 newcomers joined.
If we take all their money--on average they are each worth $4.44 billion--we would be able to come up with $2.376T, which could pay off about 11% of the national debt leaving us
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Why should the wealthy have to give up their money for others to not work?
Because it would allow a truly free market for work with wages owing to nothing but supply and demand and STILL have a stable society with low tendencies for revolutions or other troubles which could easily be bad even for the rich. View it as insurance against this kind of trouble.
Myth (Score:3)
Most rich people earned their money. A lot of those are first-generation rich.
Forbes says that 30 percent of the Forbes 400 members inherited their wealth and the remaining 70 percent are entirely “self-made.”
United for a Fair Economy breaks down the Forbes list using a baseball analogy. It says 35 percent of the list was born in the “batter’s box,” with a lower-middle class or middle-class background.
That includes people like Larry Ellison of Oracle , who was born in a lower-m
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Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think he knows it all too well.
First of all, please stop confusing economy and finance. At no point in history those two were further apart then today. Economy is about people doing and making things for each other. No money is needed for economy. If you need an example, look at any parent who raises a child.
Finance, on the other hand, is all about money. That money used to involve work, but the financial sector found out long ago that automatic gambling machines yielded more than actual work. The fiat money of today can be (and is) conjured out of thin air by banks and central banks. During the recent crises, central banks have made up more money than ever before, to stabilize their "hopes and dreams".
Alas they spent it on the wrong people. The European Central Bank, for example, buys "financial products" from internationals without ever caching them, they cant: it is their way of getting money into the virtual economy and caching would take it out again. In short, multinationals already DO have a Universal Basic Income. If you know that, why on earth would it be good to give it to multinationals and bad to give it to real people? Hint: real people might be lazy and greedy, but multinationals are guaranteed to be!
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How are you going to afford all that dope on only basic income - living in tent? I'm not sure what most people picture when they think of UBI, but if it's going to replace existing "social safety net" programmes, then life on UBI alone means living like life on existing social safety net programmes. Aka, you'll survive, but it won't be a pretty life.
You seem to be picturing the simultaneous implementation with UBI and a massive downwards transfer of wealth to boost the basic UBI to far beyond existing socia
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He should have finished school. That way he might have taken a basic economics class, which would have taught him that economies of scale adjust out all imposed constants. You can, for example, add X to everyone's income, and the price of everything will simply rise to adjust out X, returning the system to peak efficiency. This will make what money low income earners do make even less valuable, increasing poverty and shrinking the middle class.
Isn't that why most proponents of UBI (beyond the proof of concept test cases) include taxes that reduce the eventual take-home of the UBI the more money you make? So that a person working in a job making minimum wage might get to keep most of their UBI, but someone making $75000 year effectively gets taxed so that they receive no net UBI. The idea behind UBI seems that instead of 1 person working 40 hours a week, 2 people can work 20 hours a week without seeing a drop in income, providing jobs for more pe
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Except much like the Soviet Union or China, that will gut incentives to do interesting/useful work. The only reason anyone will go to college is to avoid manual labor. Endeavors that require more effort will suffer.
Fine (Score:3)
Confiscate Zuker's Wealth to kick start it.
Re:Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
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If corporations could collect more money by raising their prices, they already would have. The optimum price to sell something before corporate income taxes have been raised is the optimum afterwards. Corporate income taxes shift costs onto shareholders.
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If a few inventors innovate in the woods and no one sees them, did they ever really exist?