'We Could Fund a Universal Basic Income With the Data We Give Away To Facebook and Google' (thenextweb.com) 588
Tristan Greene reports via The Next Web:
A universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities, is something experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployment and poverty, and possibly even eliminate hundreds of other welfare programs. It may also be the only real solution to the impending automation bonanza. According to AI expert Steve Fuller, the problem is, giving people money when they lose jobs won't fix the issue, it's a temporary solution and we need permanent ones. Sounds fair, and he even has some ideas on how to accomplish this end: "We could hold Google and Facebook and all those big multinationals accountable; we could make sure that people, like those who are currently 'voluntarily' contributing their data to pump up companies' profits, are given something that is adequate to support their livelihoods in exchange."
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
It's an interesting idea, but difficult to imagine it's implementation. If the government isn't assigning a specific stipend value, we'll have to be compensated individually by companies. One way to do this, is by emulating the old coal mining company scrip scams of early last century. Employees working for companies would be paid in currency only redeemable at the company store. This basically created a system where a company could tax its own workers for profit. Google, for example, could use a system like that and say "opt-in for $10 worth of Google Play music for free," if they wanted to. Which doesn't help pay the bills when machines replace you at work, but at least you'll be able to voice search for your favorite songs. Another idea is to charge companies an automation tax, but again there's concerns as to how this would be implemented. A solution that combines government oversight with a tax on AI companies -- a UBI funded by the dividends of our data -- may be the best option. To be blunt: we should make Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other such AI companies pay for it with a simple data tax.
Then they should pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
Send Google and Facebook the bill, NOT the taxpayers.
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_Voting_ shares.
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Send Google and Facebook the bill, NOT the taxpayers.
Allow me to remind you of a quote that applies here:
Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher
Rich corporations and people will simply move their wealth out of reach. We've already seen this phenomenon with Apple and MS and how they structure their international holdings and with individuals with what was revealed in the Panama Papers.
A US UBI would eventually result in the US following Greece down the toilet.
And if *that* happens, the entire world will dissolve into
Re:Then they should pay for it (Score:4, Insightful)
Allow me to remind you of a quote that applies here:
Here's a better quote for you:
An aphorism is a jumble of words designed to make you feel better about the stupid things you believe. Often, you’ll affix a famous person to the end of your dumb word jumble to give it more authority.
Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher
In reality, of course, the only people relying on other people's money are the Ponzi scheme operators like Bernie Madoff, who was no socialist at all.
Sorry, BlueStrat, but your tendency to rely on such pithy quotations represents a deeply flawed aspect of your argumentation. You fail to comprehend and understand the situation, leading to a faulty perception of reality and a mistaken approach.
Rich corporations and people will simply move their wealth out of reach.
Oh? Will they? Where to, and what will they do with it? Especially when it's often contained in mere documents that rely on the force of governance to enforce? Remember, we don't live in a world where those particular rich corporations and people carry their wealth in the form of bars of gold to any great extent. That sort of thing only remains in a few isolated sections, not the majority.
In reality, those rich corporations and people are desperate to keep what they have, and what they enjoy, and they won't be moving off to an orbital paradise in the sky.
We've already seen this phenomenon with Apple and MS and how they structure their international holdings and with individuals with what was revealed in the Panama Papers.
You mean things they were allowed to do, and not thwarted? That's like saying you can't stop crime when the police never even bother to leave the coffee shop.
A US UBI would eventually result in the US following Greece down the toilet.
I'm pretty sure the issues with Greece turned out to be a manufactured hysteria that was driven by a bunch of bankers concocting a story elsewhere in Europe. Of course, people never understood that and instead believed a false narrative about how the Greek people somehow did something wrong, when in reality, it was all a con game, and they were working and producing as hard as ever, while the actually lazy criminal thieves were disparaging them.
And if *that* happens, the entire world will dissolve into chaos and violence.
The leadership of the US is currently taking actions that are inducing chaos and violence in the world, in case you didn't know.
I think you need a course on actual world politics and economics instead.
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When a country runs OUT of money, and has nothing but debt tha
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It also comes down to the fact of people looking at UBI through today's perspective. Pretty much every western country is looking into it and how to implement. Buddy's wife works for Canada's Privy Council and this is something they are already talking about. Automation is going to put a lot of people out of work, they are even saying that one of the first will be truckers and that automated semis are already out there.
Things are going to have to change, otherwise you will have the rabble at the gates with
Re:Then they should pay for it (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of going down the toilet like Greece, what do you think a GOP corporate/super wealthy tax cut that will add $1.414 trillion to the deficit by 2027 is going to do? Remember kids, deficits only matter when talking about Social Programs
Re: Government is a coercive organization (Score:5, Insightful)
In america, at least according to the constitution, the people *are* the government.
Re: Government is a coercive organization (Score:4, Interesting)
No we're not.
The US Federal government is given its power by the individual States, not the people. It's State government which gets its power from the people.
Your Government outlawed BEER. (Score:4, Interesting)
The People may collectively delegate their individual authorities to an organization called "government"; the American philosophy is that rights existed before government (they were "endowed by their Creator"), and that government can merely act as a delegate for the attendant authorities of those rights.
However, no individual ever had the right to walk into his neighbor's pub, smash his beer bottles, and declare that his 100-year-old family business may no longer operate.
Yet, that's precisely what the United States Government did during Prohibition.
They promised to protect "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", but they have done nothing of the sort. Your government is a fraud; your government is a bait and switch.
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Beer is just an obsolete form of water purification.
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Beer is just an obsolete form of water purification.
Neither you nor the government get to make that call.
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You're talking about abstract concepts and declaring them to be more real than violent force. In this world, it probably does not make sense to define rights separately from enforcement. But if you cared about the difference between fantasy and reality, you wouldn't be a Rightwing Nutjob, eh?
Yes, it is "open season" on cripples, unless there is someone to stop that. "red in tooth and claw", "nasty, brutish, and short", and something about intraspecific competition spring to mind. That humans have sufficient
Re: Government is a coercive organization (Score:5, Insightful)
According to reality, the "people" who make less than $200,000 a year "are" less than 10% of the government. The other 90% is made up of a comparatively few corporations, PACs, and people who work for those corporations and make over $200,000 a year. That's about how campaign money falls out. It costs around $11,000,000 to run for Senate, on average. Well over $100,000,000 to run for president. It costs a bit less than $2,000,000 to run for the House of Representatives. The oligarchs who own and manage (at a high level) the large, often multinational corporations that contribute tha vast bulk of this money have de facto veto power over who gets to run in the first place. By the time the "choice" is presented to the voters, it is reduced to the Whore of Babylon vs the Antichrist -- we the actual people are a loser either way, and no matter who wins, their soul will be owned by the people that bought and paid for their campaign an who they KNOW will have to continue their support for them to hold on to power.
That's the interesting thing. You see, the Constitution doesn't identify "the corporation" as a political entity at all. Unsurprisingly, as "corporations" in the modern sense almost didn't exist in America at the time and there wasn't that much by way of "old money" oligarchy in a country that had just thrown OFF the overseas monarch and his oligarchs that ran it immediately before. They also had no concept of the modern "political campaign" with its ever shifting base of paid advertisement, rumor, fake news, sly innuendo, attack ads, sound bites, billboards, and massively printed and distributed posters. They would have been shocked by the idea that someone running for president would target just a handful of "battleground" states for the bulk of their campaign activity and spending on the basis of pre-election "elections" by a tiny fraction of the people plus statistical extrapolations, neglecting to even show their face in dozens of other states full of the very people they would represent but that were supposedly "solidly" behind one candidate or the other.
Unless and until we muzzle the oligarchy that effectively controls the US electoral process from the ground up by the simple expedient of contributing money equally to BOTH candidates in many races -- if they avoid vocalizing things like the need to muzzle the non-constitutional oligarchy itself, if they both appear equally compliant and smart enough to understand what will happen if they ever vote to alter the situation -- we'll continue to have politicians effectively sell their votes on things like net neutrality for the contributions from the big telecoms and their executives. In North Carolina (where I live) for example, Burr got around $600,000 of his last election budget from households that make under $200,000. He got around $1,200,000 from communications companies and their top executives. Hmmm, you can talk about "votes" all you want, but money talks, bullshit walks, and telecommunications paid for almost 10% of his campaign, twice as much as he raised from the ordinary voters in the state combined.
Plutocracy, oligarchy, the recreation of a de facto feudal "nobility" in the form of the very rich (Koch Brothers, Bill Gates, etc) who control the jobs and livelihood of millions of voters with their billions of dollars -- they are not our forefather's democracy. Either we the people wake up and smell the shit in our Starbucks (metaphorically speaking) and alter from the ground up the way elections are funded and run -- banning outright ALL forms of corporate support for candidates, eliminating lobbying (all forms, the good, the bad, the ugly), eliminating PACs, maybe eliminating the need to obtain campaign contributions altogether -- something that is ENTIRELY within our capabilities in the Internet age -- or we will continue to yield complete control over who emerges as candidates to be voted on in the first place as well as the length and strength of the campaigns they run to the wealthy few at the expense of the ordinary American.
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Monopolies are also coercive.
Re:That's a straw man argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice straw man. The other poster said nothing of the sort.
What he said was, "Fundamentally, there is no difference between... a dictator, and a representative democracy." That's very much "of the sort."
Even if you're a well-dressed, well-fed slave in the Big House, you're still a slave.
Yes, yes, taxation is theft and we're all slaves... Why don't you move to that country that provides everything you need without charging anyone taxes and doesn't require anyone to work "for the Man." That's the only way we'll be "free" of this terrible American oppression.
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Why don't you move to that country that provides everything you need without charging anyone taxes
Where would that be? Somalia was tax free for a while, but the violence has subsided and things are improving there (or getting worse, depending on your perspective).
Re:" country that provides everything you need" (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you really equating feeding the hungry with tying their shoes for them? And equating being poor with being in kindergarten? You're a fucking idiot.
So, you thing the "country" should provide you with everything you need...
Yes. I "thing" that we as tax payers should ensure that every last person in America has food, shelter, and healthcare. Civilized societies shouldn't leave the weak to die.
Re:That's a straw man argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said, sir! No mod points today, though, sorry, as I'm already commenting and don't do the AC swaparoo to do both.
I always liked it as a sound bite "Taxes buy me civilization", much as the liberty I give up -- such as the freedom to kill my neighbor, steal his sheep, and rape his daughter if I'm stronger than he is and can get away with it -- buys me freedom from murdering, raping, sheep rustlers in turn who just happen to be stronger than I am or who have a few more friends.
It is surprising how quickly the religious principles of the rabid libertarian evaporate, though, when confronted with the plain old bad luck of life that nobody ever insures against. Having any sort of public health care system is an insult to democracy and the freedom to die a pauper if you actually get sick -- right up to the day they have a single "accident" and find out the hard way that the emergency room, surgery, and two weeks in the ICU plus two weeks on the wards of the neighborhood hospital has left them backrupt and -- if it were not for the corrupt bankruptcy laws and social support network -- would leave them living under an overpass somewhere and panhandling on corners. Then you have things like Ayn Rand, the poster child for libertarianism, using medicare/medicaid when (after a lifetime of smoking and NOT buying insurance or saving money) she gets cancer.
What it really comes down to is a mix of spite and the kind of world you want to live in. If you want to live in a world dominated by the wealthy, the strong, and the ambitious, where the poor, the weak, the sickly, and the stupid are left to struggle, starve, and die young, by all means, rant on about the evils of taxes and the virtue of selfishness. Just remember that the real Midas Mulligans of the world, when confronted with an upstart who tries to start a bank to compete, hire some unemployed layabouts and have them pitch bottles of gasoline in through your new bank's windows, kidnap your children, and leave you notes pinned to your gutted Alsatian suggesting that you might want to sell out at 10 cents on the dollar to Mr. Mulligan. Or, in the case of the energy oligarchs, lean on the government so that they send in the army to take by force the right of way of a long oil pipeline.
Taxes do indeed buy me civilization, but the real problem with our current system is that "democracy" has been completely undermined by the absurdly wealthy who own the very restaurant where the menu of "column A and column B" is presented to the voters. It doesn't matter. Vote for either side. They all belong to the rich and powerful either way, or they wouldn't be on the menu in the first place.
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It's interesting. In the US, people generally trust corporations rather than their government. In Europe on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite, people rather trust their governments than corporations.
I say we should take this as an opportunity to find out which system works better. Let's compare!
Re:Government is a coercive organization (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting. In the US, people generally trust corporations rather than their government. In Europe on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite, people rather trust their governments than corporations.
I don't trust either, but there's a distinct difference between the two. I can decide to opt out of dealing with any corporation. If I want to opt out of the government, eventually men with guns will come to force me to deal with the government.
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Mind telling me how you are accessing the internet. In most of the U.S your only viable choice for access is dealing with the Cable corporation operating in your area.
In my area, we have 6 different options for internet (AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Frontier, and a local cable provider). I could also just get internet via my cell phone. If I don't like what I'm getting, I can always change without too much of a problem. I had Comcast cable (no contract), and was able to drop television and phone to switch to PlayStation View, which saved me about $80 a month.
Sure you can opt out of dealing with them by cutting off your own access but you could also opt out of government by moving to the Bush.
Even if you live in "the bush", you're still going to have to pay income taxes & property taxes.
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Take Facebook or Google. Making sure you are not tracked by them is no easy task today. Everything on the internet has some script from some of the big internet companies.
Another difference is that there is a small chance the government actually has your best interest in mind. With a big corporation that chance is exactly zero, unless it happens to align with their own interests. With small businesses you have a better ch
Re:Government is a coercive organization (Score:5, Informative)
You can opt out of every government. Unless you're in North Korea or something like it. At the very least you can vote what government you prefer, and if that doesn't work out, move to a place where the government is more to your liking.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? Your last example provides a great illustration of my point. If I don't like Coca Cola, or Comcast or any other corporation, I don't have to move. I just don't give them my money. If I don't give the government my money, they will send men with guns to put me in a cage.
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That is a little bit an exaggeration.
Especially considering countries that still has a relatively high rate of corruption or where you have "politics as job" and on top of that lobbying.
However true is that our governments, especially the EU, constructs laws that protect the consumers and citizens and workers/employees from corporations. In so far we can trust the governments.
In other words: we don't have to sue after we feel abused to get a ruling defining "law" telling the company: you did wrong.
The big d
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I wouldn't say anarchy, it's rather got a lot in common with what a corporate state must look like. The elections are basically a joke, with two nearly indistinguishable parties (I affectionately call them The Party) fully entrenched to ensure that even if the odd third party or independent candidate should win once in a blue moon will have no impact on their politics. They have their rights explicitly enumerated (personally, I prefer our system of "what's not explicitly forbidden is ok"), those rights get
Re:Government is a coercive organization (Score:5, Interesting)
The crime rate isn't that great in the larger cites but the UK, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain aren't in the top 100 lowest crime rates either. ... most certainly not a gun)? It is December 6th now ... definitely not this year. And I can not remember a case last year.
Obviously I talk about violent crime. Not about shoplifting.
When was the last robbery in Germany that involved a weapon (knife or a stick
I'm not really sure what education situation you are talking
Weapon controls at the school entrance.
Low level education.
Long ways to school.
No way for kids to walk to school (because of laws that directly forbid it - or to long distances)
No free universities.
On top of that absurd "tenures" for universities. Or call it colleges.
And then "rules" like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] Not sure if that is true, it sounds absurd or at least bizarre from an european point of view.
In basically all European countries education to the level where a pupil graduates and can go to an university: is free
Going to an university is free beyond a kind of $100 fee for re-registering every semester.
On top of that you can get a state given credit to pay your expenses (rent, energy etc.) in case your parents can not pay for you (in some countries, like scandinavia you get the credit regardless of your parents situation)
You are automatically in healthcare till age of 25 or 27 (or so), payed by your parents employer and your parents (and if they had no kids, they would pay the same price anyway).
Sure, if you prefer you can pay for private education in private schools and private universities. If you extend the typical study time of about 4 - 5 years it might be a fee of about $500 per semester is due (in public universities).
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When was the last robbery in Germany that involved a weapon (knife or a stick ... most certainly not a gun)? It is December 6th now ... definitely not this year.
Here's an armed (yes, with a gun) bank robbery from this year, as a bonus he got into a gunfight with police:
http://www.dw.com/en/german-po... [dw.com]
Here's an armed (yes with a gun) bank robbery from this year, this one took hostages:
https://www.express.co.uk/news... [express.co.uk]
Here's a group of armed (yes, with submachine guns) people who robbed several million euros from a bank this year:
https://www.thelocal.de/201702... [thelocal.de]
I think I have proven my point, just because you aren't aware of armed robberies happening in Germany doe
Re:Government is a coercive organization (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a Republican you trust corporations more than government. If you are a Democrat you trust government more than corporations.
If you aren't an idiot you don't trust either of them. You realize the people who occupy the high positions in both are part of the same class. Nor do you trust those people who are partisan, as they are obviously deeply flawed and compromised in their ability to dispassionately observe reality.
The system that works best is when The People know the dangers of government and corporations getting in bed together, and understand the closer government and corporations get, the more closely the collective system resembles fascism. The historical kind of fascism mind you, not the hysterical kind of fascism.
It's coming anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
All of US corporate profit is running around 1500 billion / year right now.
1500 billion ($) / 330 million (Citizens) is $4,545 per citizen per year.
Leaving aside the issue of what corporations would do if they could not keep their profits, which does not seem likely to be a good thing, it's pretty clear that all corporate profits in the current economy would not suffice to do anything useful.
However, the idea of UBI, or at least, the sane version, is that it would be implemented in an "economy of plenty" wh
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All of US corporate profit is running around 1500 billion / year right now.
1500 billion ($) / 330 million (Citizens) is $4,545 per citizen per year.
You're dividing their "profit based on a global presence" by "the number of citizens nationally". Gmail, for example, has many non-US accounts; TFA appears to be unaware that there are countries other than the US, and that they contribute to the data that google holds, hence Gmail payouts will be $TOTAL / (all account holders) and not $TOTAL / (US citizens)
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
The US government can tax US corporations. That's the tool that's presently available. And the US government is responsible for US citizens; not others.
I'm dividing all US corporate profits by all US citizens, and the reason I did that was to show that it's not enough to fund UBI in the current economic model. It doesn't matter how they earn it; it's money that could, in an apocalyptic (and tooth-clenchingly naive) tax environment, be appor
Re:It's coming anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Source: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP
Adjusting your math, that's $24,240 per person per year. This paints a fundamentally different picture than that on which you have premised your post.
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You've completely missed the point, and besides, no, it doesn't. It's still completely impractical. That's the point - you can't tax the corporations at a level that will work under the present economic system. It wouldn't work if it were double your numbers. Because you can't tax the corporations at that level, or anything even remotely close to that level.
Here's another window into how impossible this is under the
Re:It's coming anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the idea of UBI, or at least, the sane version, is that it would be implemented in an "economy of plenty" where automation was producing goods and services at much lower costs and much higher availability. Those conditions are hand-wavey; we can't quantify them yet, so it's problematic to try and predict the costs of living, etc. But that's why UBI or similar will be required; workers will be out and automation will be in. It's not today's landscape that defines the need.
Uhm, no.
UBI was not conceived, as an idea, as a response to rising automation and the prospect of large masses of unemployed people. This prospect, due to the current automation and AI hype, which I believe to be vastly overblown (as it was in the past - yes, lots of people will lose their current jobs, but most of them will find other ones), is being used currently to additionally argue in favour of some sort of UBI. That, however, is rather beside the point.
UBI was originally conceived as an idea that radically simplifies and cheapens the various types of state aid given to people, while at the same time removing the stigma attached with them. There are many potentially "sane" variants of UBI, with one being the Negative Income Tax (NIT) [wikipedia.org] proposed by Rhys-Williams and Milton Friedman. Another option is the Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) [huffingtonpost.ca] scheme proposed by the Green Party of Canada, where everyone is given a payment, but those who have jobs essentially pay this back via taxes, so in the end it ends up being a sort of welfare payment that the unemployed (and poorly paid) collect.
The point being, if I just pay out EVERYONE e.g. $1500 a month (or whatever), I don't have to (as a state/government) worry about checking who qualifies for welfare, pension assistance, subsidies for their energy bills, food stamps, or whatever else I was already giving out to those in need. I can eliminate all those programs, all the costs associated with them, all the employees associated with them. I don't have to go around chasing welfare recipients to see if they're attending their retraining course, going to job fairs, applying for work, or not delivering pizza on the side without declaring their income. Furthermore, I've removed the stigma from getting welfare (since EVERYONE gets it, both the millionaire and the homeless bum on the street) which often traps people in a cycle of dependence and poverty. The end result, since the people who have a job will repay this money via taxes, is more or less the same as today: people without a job, poor people, people in need, get monetary assistance from the government. At a lower total cost to the government than today - hypothetically.
Now, there are lots of details to work out - do we still need minimum wage laws? Will companies that use low-cost labour (e.g. fast food joints) "piggy-back" on UBI and skim the profits by just paying their employees a UBI "top-up" rather than the full salary, offloading costs to the government? What exactly should the UBI amount be, per month? How do you to the "claw-back" via taxes to make it fair and still motivate people to work? How do you prevent people moving from low-UBI jurisdictions to high-UBI jurisdictions just to make more money by doing nothing? How does one qualify for UBI in the first place? Etc., etc.
Almost none of these are related to automation and mass joblessness however, and none require a futuristic economy of plenty.
It doesn't fix poverty. (Score:3, Insightful)
It just keeps everyone perpetually in poverty, debt slaves to the state, with no hope or drive to move forward. Communism doesn't work. Communism without workers would be even worse, stripping people of their meaning on top of their earnings.
The solution to automation is not to do it. "Because we can doesn't mean we should".
Re: It doesn't fix poverty. (Score:2)
Although I agree with the political sentiment, we donâ(TM)t have to stop automation because weâ(TM)re afraid. We have more, better paying and simpler/safer jobs now than we ever did before the advent of the steam engine or the computer. We have a lot more leisure time and industries have sprung up to fill that time.
The next wave of automation wonâ(TM)t change that, menial jobs will disappear, people will have more free time.
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This set of fears about Automation and technology replacing our job seems to come up every 50 years or so. Normally around a recession where people feel stressed from this technology, where it is doing jobs that use to take skilled people years to perfect. However what seems to happen is while such jobs are replaced (And these are real people, good people not worthy of getting let go) it is often replaced and added to with a new set of jobs.
Lets talk about the computer revolution during the 1970's. Compani
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Easy to say, not so easy to do. Once someone starts, everyone will need to do it to stay competitive. We've been trying (unsuccessfully) for the last 70 years to put the atomic genie back in the bottle and it's only gotten worse. Same with genetic engineering and bioweapons, and those are things that threaten life on this planet, not just the economy.
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Problem with communism (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem with communism is the efficient distribution of limited resources. It's basic information theory - you have a complicated set of interdependent production units that have varying needs for resources on each other. To make steel you need water, to move water around water you need pipes pumps, to make pipes pumps you need steel... and on and on ad infinitum.
A market system works pretty well at distributing these resources. If you make steel you don't need to know anything about demand other than the price of steel.
A planned / communist economy relies on meetings to figure out what gets made. The problem is nobody has all the information needed to plan out production, especially on a large scale. This is why you have perpetual shortages of goods in countries with planned economies.
Re:It doesn't fix poverty. (Score:4, Insightful)
The question comes down to incentive .
For our culture, does the incentive for most Americans to exceed, grow and find a way to show that they are better then their neighbor is higher then the incentive to be able to survive a mediocre comfortable life.
With Basic Income, I do see a number of people who work to live, quitting their job. These are not bad or lazy people, they are just not ambitious, they would prefer to use their time doing things they like to do. I can see also a number of people more willing to take risks to be more successful, as the cost of failure is much less. They may be more likely to stand up to their boss, when something is wrong, or take charge of an activity, because the risk of failure is much less.
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You define your "meaning" and worth by your work and the money you have?
I pity you.
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Communism doesn't work. Communism without workers would be even worse, stripping people of their meaning on top of their earnings.
Against popular believe: UBI is not communism. You still have your retarded two party system and your robber capitalism.
The solution to automation is not to do it. "Because we can doesn't mean we should".
Yeah, says the guy who is talking about "communism". What does communism mean? In the strictest sense it means: corporations should not have "control over the means of production
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It just keeps everyone perpetually in poverty, debt slaves to the state, with no hope or drive to move forward. Communism doesn't work. Communism without workers would be even worse, stripping people of their meaning on top of their earnings.
The solution to automation is not to do it. "Because we can doesn't mean we should".
Right now, this is true. I think it's way too early for UBI. However, in the future as more and more jobs go away, as automation takes over, there will be a point where UBI makes sense. When a large enough % of the people are permanently unemployed and unemployable a move towards a complex socialist state may be the way forward. I'm not talking totalitarian regimes or single-party communism; but maybe there is a time when a state-run economy is the only way forward.
We're not there yet, any move there wi
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And yet many parts of the US are much nicer places to live then many parts in Europe?
I don't get your point.
Also how do you qualify a better life? For some they prefer a metropolitan life style in a high-rise loft with fancy parties. While others may want a quite small cabin in the woods sitting in front of the fire reading a book.
UBI is ultimately pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
Economics fail (Score:2)
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Re:Economics fail (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously never tried to build something somewhere.
It's by no means simply putting a house somewhere. You need to get more permits than for owning a damn gun if you wanted to build a house somewhere, twice so if you plan to rent it out.
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the market adjusts itself to maximize profits
within available constraints, yes. Such as supply, raw materials, or even space in the case of housing. If there was an infinite supply of desirable housing, $10 would be too high. This is why we need to virtualize everything.
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If a group of people have money from which you can profit, then someone will adjust prices to undercut yours and profit from them, unless you do it first.
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Most of what our economy does these days is incompatible with a free market, but nobody seems to have a problem with that. As long as corporations benefit instead of customers, that is.
First, it was industry... (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing about this is workable (Score:5, Interesting)
Our economic system is first built on land ownership and natural resources, then on services extracting, processing, and delivering product from those resources. Everything else is just moving little green pieces of paper around when those first two groups are done with them.
You can't take something like 'mining personal data for sales and marketing' and turn it into an economy-driving primary natural resource, and any economic scheme that isn't ultimately rooted in property and natural resources is doomed to fail before it is even implemented.
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>The level of income gained from owning (and cultivating) a few acres of land would be astonishingly poor compared to the opportunities provided by the _mind_ of the smartest enterpreneurs.
Yet without those few acres of land anchoring the economy, everything else is impossible.
> No one needs to work and no one needs to witness scarcity.
Except for two things (assuming super-magical future tech like Star Trek replicators): land and energy.
People are physical entities, so they need a place to be. They r
too many taxes already (Score:2, Insightful)
When I add up income tax, Medicare/social security tax, state taxes, property, sales, hotel, gas, airport and the rest I pay, the total is at least 50% of my paycheck, and I am not by any means rich. Taxing the companies more just means that the prices will be higher - your Youtube Red subscription will be $11 and not $9, your Office subscription will be $75 a year and not $69... How about we maybe try cutting waste and abuse of the system and use that money to cut taxes so people can save more money and ne
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If your tax rate is 50% then your cost of youtube red is not $9 it is $18. You need first to pay the taxman and then have enough to pay for youtube red unless you can deduct it fro you income.The cost of what you are purchasing is the effort required to purchase it. What we need to do is make basic cost of living expenses, (rent, food, clothes) tax deductible. We can also set a limit at $10k per person or a value that is reasonable for an individual to live in a given location. This way there is motivation
Just a friendly reminder (Score:2)
People already get "paid" for their data (Score:5, Insightful)
Google and Facebook provide services in exchange for user information. Of course it's questionable as to whether or not this is a good idea - I'd say a very bad idea - but that's the deal. There is no compensation due.
The reality is that the data of a single user would be near worthless. A stipend for any given user would be near worthless assuming an even division of the money. How would you even calculate the value data down to an individual except in the extreme outliers?
It's a nonsense idea that reeks of socialism's sense of entitlement and lack of real world application in anything but cautionary tales. Universal basic income may have applications, but paying for it this way is a crazy person's idea.
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My thoughts exactly.
No. (Score:2)
People are giving away their information without fee under their own free will. It's not anyone's place to get the way of that until they begin to do so at their own detriment. The reason for this is that it will have crossed over from activity to addiction. That said, a proper tax structure is needed to keep a society from destructing. We currently have a regressive tax system which has been shown to be to the detriment of society and yet politicians keep pushing it further. The reason things are movi
What is your data worth... (Score:2)
... If you're not worth a paycheck?
I don't think people appreciate how politics and power structures interface with economic imperitives. Much of the social and political liberalization in the Western world was a direct result of economic changes that made individuals more relevant to the logistical framework of the society.
The more the society becomes a command economy with top down control... the less the individual matters and thus the less the individual will matter. Your political agency will decline.
W
Get a job (Score:2)
This makes no sense. (Score:2)
A good idea but ... (Score:2)
A Universal Basic Income is a good idea but it will never pass because both sides of the isle have made it pretty damn clear that America was, is, and always will only be about profits over people. Sadly, it is going to take an economic catastrophe that decimates everyone, not just the lower and middle classes. The wealthy need to be taught a lesson that the lower and middle classes have to be stable for a healthy society. We never learned our lessons from the Great Depression. If we had, perhaps there woul
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Everyone who says something can't be done gets nothing done. I'm going to pass a universal dividend--UBI is old tech and I built something better--and it won't cause a tax increase, either.
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Everyone who says something can't be done gets nothing done. I'm going to pass a universal dividend--UBI is old tech and I built something better--and it won't cause a tax increase, either.
Very interesting link to the congressional candidate. Worth reading.
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Yeah, that's my campaign. I had also started work on a piece of literature for the universal dividend [facebook.com], which generally follows GDP-per-capita (it follows income-per-capita, which is approximately the same thing, minus pre-tax savings such as 401(k) and IRA). I actually like that graph, because it shows the benefit's tendency to itself increase over time.
This is a completely-new approach, and has interesting properties stemming from the simple mechanism of making the poor less-poor. It takes in money a
At the end of the day, UBI will be nothing more... (Score:2)
...than Welfare 2.0, plain and simple.
If you expect to tax the worlds richest corporations to fund UBI, then expect a funding result about as good as getting them to pay taxes today.
Offshore tax havens, tax loopholes, political contributions...I can think of a dozen ways corporations weasel out of paying their fair share. What money you might manage to get from them to feed to the unemployable masses in the future will be the bare minimum, and not a penny more.
Ironically, large corporations are fueled by t
It's a great idea, but... (Score:2)
The problem with a universal basic income is that the sharks start circling immediately. Landlords see it as an opportunity to jack up the rent. Stores (especially in poor neighbourhoods) raise the price of semi-necessities like disposable diapers. "Hope taxes" like lotteries market their wares more aggressively.
Soon, everybody's doing better except the people a basic income was intended to help, who get picked cleaner than a squirrel carcass at a crow convention.
UBI? Are you pulling my leg? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This may sort itself out (Score:4, Insightful)
Until people realize that any kind of universal basic income scheme will never do what it's intended to do. Money isn't the endgame of what an economy does; it never has been, rather it is all about creation and allocation of resources. If you just give people money, you just give them money, and at the end of the day they'll just outbid one another for those same resources. If nobody builds anymore housing in say SF, then guess what? No amount of UBI is going to solve the shortage of available housing.
Minimum wage increases won't work either. This is such a dead simple concept that so many people seem to spectacularly fail.
better workers rights at least UBI can pe shove it (Score:2)
better workers rights at least UBI can give people some to fail back on so they can tell there boss to shove it when being asked to put in a 80 hour week or deal with some of crap at low end fast food places.
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better workers rights at least UBI can give people some to fail back on so they can tell there boss to shove it when being asked to put in a 80 hour week or deal with some of crap at low end fast food places.
Welfare, social assistance, etc already do all of this. But maybe those people should have picked a better job then majoring in the "comparative history of harry potter" or some weird-ass social major like "how blackness affect modern feminism and buffy the vampire slayer." And picked up a good trade. Oh I know, I can hear the whining already...all that hard work.
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That depends on whether the economy lacks supply or whether it lacks demand. And bluntly, currently it lacks demand. Yes, there are local shortages, in the grand scheme, though, what we lack is demand. Not for a lack of wanting, but for a lack of being able to afford.
Our economy is heavily dependent on the tertiary sector. I.e. services. Services are great for an economy. Because it sells what's usually in supply in surplus: Work force. Unlike products from agriculture or industrial production, there is no
Re:This may sort itself out (Score:4, Insightful)
We throw away enough food to feed entire countries, there are millions of properties that sit vacant,
You have unused food and unused property, and yet you think adding in "free money" will solve things. Why not start by redistributing that excess food that gets thrown away?
If you think the current system provides for efficient allocation of resources, you are well and truly mistaken.
If you need to take control of the entire government in order to make your idea work, then your idea is not workable. Start on a small bit of the problem - try giving away the free food that gets thrown away.
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there are millions of properties that sit vacant
If you don't own that vacant property then it's none of your business if its vacant. This is just another example of you wanting to spend someone else's money
not start by redistributing that excess food that gets thrown away?
Because apparently you don't understand how things actually work. Distributing that food efficiently and actually getting it to people would cost more than the value of the food. We don't throw the food away because we are stupid or wasteful (most of the time). It's literally cheaper to throw it away than distribute it.
But maybe you think we should
Re:This may sort itself out (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but people by and large are not starving to death in the US. Starvation isn't what the basic income claims to solve in the US. You also mention homelessness. While certainly a problem in the US, it is mostly a transient problem for most. The exceptions tend to be people with mental illness who eschew the kind of help that would get them off the street, and any claims that UBI would solve this type of homelessness should be met with skepticism.
The current system certainly does not meet any kind of efficiency benchmark, but it's important to note that the system is not a free market. We have deep government interference in ways that tend to reinforce the cycle of wealth: Limited liability (and corporate structure in general), IP laws (government-enforced monopolies on ideas), tax laws which favor the rich, an education system that shepherds poor kids into poor schools and rich kids into rich schools, a safety net that encourages people to stay in shitty areas with no jobs, etc.
I favor experiments with UBI - I've donated to charities experimenting with UBI. I hope it works out, because to me it represents a step back in government's ham-handed attempts to solve societal issues with over-complicated rules solutions. Someone's poor? Give them money. Simple. Unfortunately, I think we'll discover that it fails for all but the most impoverished societies. In, say, Kenya, almost everyone is poor and so dumping some money on them gives them a place to start. The overwhelming cause of poverty (same word, much different circumstance than in Kenya) in the US has much deeper roots and will not be solved by cutting a check, IMHO.
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Yes, it's minimum wage, labor unions and a strong social security system that ruined Venezuela.
Along with the other countries that have these things, like Austria, Germany, Sweden, France, Britain...
Wonder why these countries didn't spring to your mind as examples for these horrible, horrible socialist ideas.
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Money's value is in being able to store the wealth you incur selling the wood you've upgraded into furniture. The barter system, as old as it may be, was inefficient enough thousands of years ago to inspire people to look for ways to improve the exchange process.
Something else we owe to the Mongol Hordes:
Upon establishing the unified Mongol Empire, Chinggis Khan introduced gold and silver coins called Sukhes and later, in the year of 1227, introduced the world's first paper money /banknote/ into circulati
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Money is an asset the value of which is realized only at the moment when you part with it.
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The only reason for UBI is to pay useless people enough money that they can afford enough drugs to get so stoned that the don't bother going out to commit crimes, because that's cheaper than a bigger police force.
A bullet is cheaper still and further encourages remaining people to be more useful
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On the other hand, if you give people money for doing nothing, and eventually everyone's doing nothing of value, then what is there of value left to buy?
You're misrepresenting or misunderstanding the point of UBI. The idea isn't that you give people so much money that they can buy anything they desire. The point is that you give them enough money that their most basic needs are met: food and shelter. Then, anybody who wants disposable income will need to work for it.
What's more, you are making the classic and completely wrong assumption that people work only for money. Linux and the entire ecosystem of open source software development disagrees with you. Pe
Re:This may sort itself out (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason for UBI is to pay useless people enough money that they can afford enough drugs to get so stoned that the don't bother going out to commit crimes, because that's cheaper than a bigger police force.
I think your attitude is pretty representative of what people think of unemployed today, if you're not working there's something wrong with you. You have physical health problems, mental health problems, alcohol problems, drug problems, attitude problems or something that keeps you from holding a job. But the reality is that in a depression you don't have to be any of those, if you don't have a stellar resume or inside connections there's a thousand people trying get the same jobs and from society's point of view it's like a giant game of musical chairs, if there's a lot fewer jobs than workers somebody's going home empty-handed. Take something like Greece with >25% unemployment and >50% youth unemployment, you think one in two are just addicts looking to get stoned?
I'm not sure the automation doomsday scenarios are correct, we have an incredible creativity in creating new services. But that's roughly what they claim, that it'll be like a global, permanent depression for workers. Burger flipper? We have a burger flipping machine for that. Taxi driver? We have a self-driving car for that. There won't be enough chairs to go around and many will be like brain surgeons and rocket scientists, jobs that'll be totally out of reach for many people. So what do you do when you've looked everywhere, tried everything but nobody wants to hire you and you can't make rent? Live in the gutter? Let your kids live in the gutter? It's no wonder that even good people turn to crime and prostitution if they get really desperate.
I don't think living on just UBI would be pretty, unless you think playing WoW all day and eating Ramen noodles is what life is all about. Maybe for total slackers but they're probably the kind of employees every employer wants to get rid of anyway, it's more like a last resort so good people don't have to hit rock bottom. Who knows, maybe it'll help the hood rat problem too but that'd just be a bonus. I have seen some documentaries where it seems seems like a shitty life peddling drugs on a street corner or doing petty crime, but they don't really have any alternatives because they got shit education and shit work history and a criminal record and probably couldn't get a job at McDonald's if they tried. If they could simply stop, maybe some more actually would.
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Are you really so lazy that you can't copy/paste your 3 simple rules? Here they are for anyone who gives a shit what Michael's on about:
1. Graduating from high school.
2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.
3. Having a full-time job.
Great. So the girl that had to drop out of high school because she got knocked up and married her baby-daddy we abandon. Good plan. Her poor planning obviously deserves a death sentence from her community. Or maybe you're expecting her to correct those decisions? Go back for a GED and kill her child? Also, has it occurred to you that some people without a full-time job woul
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One of the biggest problems I see in our political stance is the Left seem to be anti-capitalism, while the right seem to be all out Capitalism. However the real issue is much different. Is it better for a company to save money to produce cheaper stuff, or is it better to have more customers who are willing to buy the more expensive but better quality stuff.
Normally if we have the choice, and it wont hurt us in the long term, we will want to get the best, even if it isn't the best deal out there. However th
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Like what, exactly?
In the end, you will only get money the "old fashioned way" if someone else is willing to give you money for the goods and services you provide. Now, what goods or services can you provide that AI and robots don't?
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Prostitution. At least for the time being.
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Feedstock for tasty, tasty Soylent Green. . . .(evil grin)
Re: This may sort itself out (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not enough to drive an economy. Let's imagine I have 900 and you, along with 9 other people, each have 10. Our whole economy has a purchasing power of 1000.
Let's say that we could all be happy with "stuff" for 100. That's basically what someone would sensibly spend, at the most. Sure, you can somehow survive at 10, be ok with 20, feel satisfied with most your needs spending 50, but if you can spend 100, pretty much all you could sensibly want is paid for. We're talking Ferrari in your garage on the mansion on the hilltop with the private air strip and the private Learjet. The point where there's simply no more spending that could fill any kind of void.
So you spend your 10, because that's all you can spend. I spend the 100, because I can afford it and there isn't really anything left to buy. Now I sit on 800 that ... well, what do I do with it? I want to invest it of course but what should I invest in? There's nothing to invest in because there is no viable business able to open, there wouldn't be anyone to sell to. I have what I want, and you have no money.
Let's spread the money differently. You and those other 9 people now each have 50, I have 500. Our total economy still has a purchasing power of 1000, but a lot more money now changes hands. You'll probably spend 20-30 of your 50, either because you want to retain some purchasing power "in case", or simply because there is no supply to match your demand anymore, because so far there was simply no demand. I still spend my 100, with 400 sitting here, ready to be invested in the businesses that now have a potential customer, i.e. you. And those other 9 people like you.
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Exactly my thought. "Simple data tax" is absurdly naive.
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Same rule as with everything else: It's worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.
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Jaron Lanier is a crackpot who have never done any actual work in his life.