Alaska's Universal Basic Income Doesn't Increase Unemployment (businessinsider.com) 342
With Alaska's gubernatorial election coming up, Business Insider brings up a report from earlier this year which finds that the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend -- the only large-scale universal basic income program in the U.S. -- doesn't increase unemployment like many feared. An anonymous reader shares the report: The vast majority of Alaska's roughly 740,000 citizens support the dividend, which gives virtually every citizen an annual check of about $1,000 to $2,000 (that's $4,000 to $8,000 for a family of four), and both political parties in the state are in favor. Alaskans' feelings about this universal cash transfer are supported by the findings of a working paper published in February that was written by University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy professor Damon Jones and University of Pennsylvania School of Public Policy and Practice professor Ioana Marinescu -- the annual dividend does not realize fears that such a program would lead people to quit their jobs, lowering employment.
An additional $8,000 for a family is certainly not going to replace a livable income, but, as Jones and Marinescu noted in their paper, studies around a cash assistance experiment in the 1970s, lottery winnings, and a permanent fund dividend for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians reduced earned income, and critics of any universal basic income programs have pointed to such findings as proof that anything on a larger scale would be a disaster. But Jones and Marinescu found instead that the larger scale of the program is what allows it to work, and not dissuade people out of the work force. More specifically, Jones and Marinescu determined that part-time employment increased by 17% only in the non-tradable sector (jobs whose output isn't traded internationally), and that overall employment wasn't affected because more spending money results in more demand, and thus more jobs.
An additional $8,000 for a family is certainly not going to replace a livable income, but, as Jones and Marinescu noted in their paper, studies around a cash assistance experiment in the 1970s, lottery winnings, and a permanent fund dividend for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians reduced earned income, and critics of any universal basic income programs have pointed to such findings as proof that anything on a larger scale would be a disaster. But Jones and Marinescu found instead that the larger scale of the program is what allows it to work, and not dissuade people out of the work force. More specifically, Jones and Marinescu determined that part-time employment increased by 17% only in the non-tradable sector (jobs whose output isn't traded internationally), and that overall employment wasn't affected because more spending money results in more demand, and thus more jobs.
How are they claiming to show that? (Score:2, Insightful)
No control group, no before/after, just a bold assertion. No doubt, sociologists.
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"People trying to manipulate the job market find that manipulating the job market is good!" The full story at 11.
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And additionally:
"People who advocate manipulating the job market find that their policies do not reduce job opportunitys - during the biggest labor boom in 50 years!"
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, people who argue that UBI would increase unemployment aren't arguing that $2,000 a year will do this. They argue that giving someone $2K a month would increase unemployment. $2K a year could net you a nice holiday But I don't even think you could live off that in a tent.
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$2k/month is completely implausible. There is no way that is affordable.
Most UBI proposals are for about $500/month, and even that requires dismantling Social Security, which would deprive tens of millions of people of their retirement income, generating a firestorm of political opposition.
The problem with UBI is that the "losers" (elderly and people above median income) are WAY more politically organized than the "winners" (the young and poor). I can't see it happening in our political system.
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I don't know that it would dismantle Social Security as much as reinvent it. Consider that Social Security is already doomed to reduce benefits in a few years; people are starting to put less and less trust in it anyway.
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Most UBI proposals are for about $500/month,
[citation needed]
and even that requires dismantling Social Security
If you had a working UBI, you wouldn't need social security. Now back up your figure.
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Most UBI proposals are for about $500/month, and even that requires dismantling Social Security, which would deprive tens of millions of people of their retirement income, generating a firestorm of political opposition.
I drew up a Universal Dividend proposal that pays $500/month to each adult while making social security permanently-solvent. I dismantled nothing, raised no taxes, and created no additional deficit.
There's a $900 billion increase in Federal outlay (I restructured $1.1 billion into $2 billion). When you remove the amount of the benefit offsetting its own funding from this, you find a $1,200 billion reduction. That's net $300 billion reduced taxes.
For example, if you pay $4,000 into the FICA and receiv
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you expect anybody to approve increased spending and cuts in the future, you are crazy.
This actually reduces tax burdens without cutting programs. It's revenue- and deficit-neutral. Yes, it sounds like black magic; it's an accounting trick. There are further reductions in the future because of downstream effects; I don't account for them first-pass.
Also fund the SS trust with good assets _first_.
The Trust has good assets. It holds Federal Treasuries and they perform their function quite well. The problem is its FICA source is broken. The amount of income available per retiree has increased year after year much faster than inflation, yet the proportion of income exposed to FICA taxation has decreased. In other words: 2x as much income is being made, and 40% of that is exposed to FICA taxation (=80% as much being taxed, thus falling revenue).
Increase taxes now for spending cuts in the future should NEVER be believed.
The actual proposal in 2016 was a 33.5% CIT (vs 35% at the time) and a blunt 3.2% reduction in the top personal tax rate. I don't have the data to tweak personal income brackets further or I'd have set it back up to 39.6%.
Under the 2016 rough model as such, a 2-adult household making $400,000 would have taken home an extra $1,674/year. At $50,000 of income, that household is taking home $8,070/year additional after taxes and Dividend. Meanwhile a household with $25,000,000 of income is taking home an additional $841,117 after taxes.
The proposal is actually to restructure programs now to pay out cash to a lot of people, offsetting tax burdens and acting as an effective tax cut in order to reduce costs, increase revenues at current tax rates, and lead to further tax cuts later while we roll out even bigger government services and pay off our debts.
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Wait, people who argue that UBI would increase unemployment aren't arguing that $2,000 a year will do this. They argue that giving someone $2K a month would increase unemployment. $2K a year could net you a nice holiday But I don't even think you could live off that in a tent.
Indeed. Another "UBI" test falls short on one of the three characters. In this case the "B". You can't survive on $2000 a year so this isn't "basic" income. It's a small boost.
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But I don't even think you could live off that in a tent.
Wrong.
However, since this is Alaska, you'd have to also spend on something that'll keep you warm. So maybe two year's worth of allowance to pull this off. But a decent 4 season tent, self inflatable mattress, decently warm sleeping bag and a pillow is all you really need. (I'll assume you already have clothes...)
After that, you just need food and water. Oh and a place to go eum.... well, you know.
If you don't NEED to have chips and ice cream, you can easily split your allowance into 52 slices, you'll get ab
Keeping resource wealth within the local economy.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I say this because one need only look no further than West Virginia for a look at what happens when the wealth of ~150 years of mining activity is exported out of the state and into the hands of a few. As far I can tell, it's pretty much the same basic after-effects as of colonialism in Africa.
Being an Alaska Resident in Anchorage, the article (Score:5, Insightful)
is full of holes. A large majority of Alaskans (I see this as well as the local stores - you should see the sales gimmicks at dividend time) simply use the money as disposable income and often blow it quickly on toys (Large Screen TVs, Vacations (my wife and I often use it to fund an out-of-state vacation). Sure, some use it to help offset the necessities at the start of School season (school clothes for your kids, etc), but most folks who are use to paycheck-to-paycheck living simply blow it. The malls are swimming with folks at dividend time. THIS IS NOT BASIC INCOME.
Re:Being an Alaska Resident in Anchorage, the arti (Score:5, Interesting)
So, the money drives the economy, you say?
Mission accomplished, I'd say.
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That's their problem.
You can't spend 2000$ on a flat screen TV then complain you have nothing to eat. I have zero compassion for those people.
UBI, regressive flavor (Score:5, Interesting)
8000 USD per year is the regressive UBI flavor. Of course nobody quits its job, since it is impossible to live on such a low income.
On the other hand, employers will have a good reason to refuse raises: you already had 8000 USD. It will also be possible to hire with salary lower than before but still acceptable by workers, because of UBI help.
In other word, an UBI that is not enough to live on it is just taxpayer money subsiding employers.
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True but if minimum wage part time jobs make up the difference, people no longer have to improve themselves enough to earn a living wage. Did that sound too pessimistic about human nature (can't seem to find the appropriate term for this)?
Re:UBI, regressive flavor (Score:4, Insightful)
True but if minimum wage part time jobs make up the difference, people no longer have to improve themselves enough to earn a living wage.
You do realize I hope that when the minimum wage was instituted, it was a living wage? And that was in fact the expressed purpose?
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8000 USD per year is the regressive UBI flavor. Of course nobody quits its job, since it is impossible to live on such a low income.
On the other hand, employers will have a good reason to refuse raises: you already had 8000 USD. It will also be possible to hire with salary lower than before but still acceptable by workers, because of UBI help.
Here you are making the assumption that employers would raise wages by 8000 USD per year if the Dividend payment did not exist. This depends on a lot of factors and cannot be asserted in some blanket, universal way. Perhaps wihout the payment, employers would still pay the same wages they do now, simply due to the state of supply and demand in the labour market, and people would just have 8000 dollars less per year.
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employers will have a good reason to refuse raises: you already had 8000 USD.
Here you are making the assumption that employers would raise wages by 8000 USD per year if the Dividend payment did not exist.
Here you are making the assumption that the GP made the assumption that the difference in raises is the full amount received from the permanent fund. But they could still give raises of only 2000 USD because you are making that 8000 USD and it would still be regressive.
Wages in Alaska seem to be higher than in other places for the same jobs, in fact, but that can be chalked up to the fact that those jobs are in Alaska and you have to pay more to attract people. I'm open to the possibility that someone has s
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That is all correct, however it isn't a negative. Currently we only subsidize employers that pay their workers at the lowest end of the payscale. With UBI everyone gets the same allotment and so all employers are subsidized to the same degree.
If we adopted a nationwide UBI I would expect a few things to go along with it. Although some of the changes would probably happen gradually until UBI was enough to cover all the expenses of maintaining some minimal standard of living. I would expect all social welfare
Life of Poverty By Initial Conditions Must End (Score:2)
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That's just so funny, and so stupid. First, the planet is not a living thing, it can't be in jeopardy. Second, overpopulation isn't going to send the Earth hurtling into the sun. It is currently beyond the capability of even a determinedly evil and self-destructive humanity to destroy the Earth.
That is pretty much the same as Manitoba (Score:2)
Ontario was trying one, but Mr Ford II canceled it before we had collected any real data. It was being run for the province by a former candidate for head of the Federal Conservative party, Hugh Siegel. who was very interested in the numbers.
--dave
[Full disclosure: I campaigned for Hugh in the leadership campaign]
What UBI? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no UBI program in Alaska.
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An additional $8,000 for a family is certainly not going to replace a livable income
Sounds good to me (Score:2)
When do we start drilling for oil in Washington State?
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wait ... (Score:2)
... I thought Alaska was just some weird place that barely counted as a state and just had weirdos who elected some idiot woman as governor.
That's what I heard around here anyway.
How can we use that as an example?
Universal Health Care and UBI is coming ... (Score:2, Insightful)
We all know that we need universal health care and UBI.
Yet, a small powerful segment of society will always fight it and postpone it.
As a result of advertising and disinformation, we actually end up fighting ideas that should be very beneficial for us individually and as a society.
We are beyond the talk of why to implement it. We should be talking about how.
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California and Vermont started exploring universal health care and stopped. Why do you think? The machinations of a few or because they couldn't get it to work.
Prove to me that UBI and universal health care works in your state before spreading this sh!t around.
And this foolishness really doesn't work with open borders no does it?
Take a look at the German left. They're for closing borders because they were faced with too options - renege on the promise of cont
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Is British Socialized medicine what you would recommend? Where soon, patients who've been diagnosed and have long term illnesses will need to visit with their doctors in groups with 14 other patients in order to ration the amount of time patients get? (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/05/gps-see-patients-groups-15/) If that's what people want, I don't suppose I'll be allowed to object?
Increasing demand only works if under capacity (Score:2)
You can increase demand by cutting taxes or interest rates.
But if supply can't be ramped up, you're just going to create inflation along with the unemployment.
And yes, the UBI amount is too low to be meaningful.
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You can increase demand by cutting taxes or interest rates.
Or by handing people money, at which point they have money to buy stuff.
But if supply can't be ramped up, you're just going to create inflation along with the unemployment.
We have oversupply. Over half our food is thrown away. Billions of pounds of clothing is landfilled every year. Supply is not the problem. Demand is the problem, and it is artificially limited by low wages.
Yes, Actually, It Does. (Score:2)
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The main problem is failing to boost production (Score:3)
At the end of the day, we want people to have more essential goods and services rather than more green pieces of paper. So we want this basic impact to stimulate production of, say, diapers without cutting production of anything else important. Otherwise recepients of basic income will end up paying higher prices, encounter shortages or otherwise end up no better off. This is tricky because regular market economy is already supposed to optimize production.
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At the end of the day, we want people to have more essential goods and services rather than more green pieces of paper. So we want this basic impact to stimulate production of, say, diapers without cutting production of anything else important.
No, we don't care. Inflation is not a problem if everyone gets UBI which is tied to inflation. Instead, it's a benefit, because if your cash is constantly devaluing, you will be motivated to spend and/or invest it. This drives the economic activity which makes the entire system work.
WTH? (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously the writer of the article has a conclusion they want to justify and they are manufacturing a pathway to get there.
Garbage in, garbage out.
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Yup. I think UBI fundamentally misunderstands both economics and human psychology and think the Alaska Fund is a stupid comparison. Alaska is already constrained by other crazy non-market conditions which the fund seeks to level.
GIGO is right.
It's not a UBI (Score:5, Informative)
That makes it different from a UBI where there's no additional productivity. In a UBI, you're just redistributing money among the population - taking from the more productive citizens via taxes, and distributing it to other citizens. That makes it zero-sum (one person wins, another person loses). It can have a positive influence if the people receiving the money were underpaid (what Ford stumbled upon when he paid his workers more) or causes people not to create other costs on society (e.g. not resorting to crime). Or it can have a negative influence if it leads people to decrease their average productivity because they'll get money regardless of whether they work.
Venezuela is the perfect example of the difference between the two. When their oil exports were strong, it generated enough productivity (revenue from outside the country) to support their cushy socialist programs. But when the price of oil fell and that source of productivity dried up, they should've cut back the programs to match their decreased revenue. Instead, they tried to maintain the programs at the previous level. That doesn't work because unlike money, productivity is conserved - everything that's consumed has to be produced. If you try to create the illusion that production and consumption are not equal, the economy usually responds by altering the value of your currency to make the valuations of the two equal.
That's what's driving the tremendous inflation they're experiencing. Basically the country is creating $100 in productivity, but promising its citizens $500 in handouts to consume stuff. When you do that, the currency devalues (suffers inflation) so that it now costs $500 to buy what used to cost $100, thereby keeping production and consumption equal.
One thing I don't understand (Score:2)
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Alaska money not UBI (Score:2)
The Alaskan payments to all residents aren't a UBI program, it is a direct payment to residents by the state funded by oil production within the state of Alaska. Rather than the state keeping the money for general programs they pass the money on to every resident equally.
Every UBI scheme previously discussed here was a ponzu scheme funded by taxpayers who funded their own payment through taxes, and intended to create a financial cushion in lieu of other social welfare programs.
The Alaska program is 100% fun
This isn't UBI (Score:2)
UBI, as a concept, is to provide for an individuals basic needs. And to go further saves society money by removing existing bureaucracies.
This is a profit sharing system. The oil belongs to the people and the profits are shared by the people.
Re: But... (Score:2)
That fund is basically dividends paid to the citizens of Alaska with money raised from the extraction of minerals. Think of it as profit sharing you get for living in a place its dark half the year and you canâ(TM)t buy liquor in the winter. It isnâ(TM)t meant to âoereplaceâ income, but is meant as a âoethank you for living here so we can claim its a stateâ
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you canâ(TM)t buy liquor in the winter.
Why can't you buy liquor in the winter?
Ethanol doesn't freeze until the temp hits -173F. Even Alaska doesn't get that cold.
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"more spending money results in more demand, and thus more jobs."
There is not "more spending money". The only way a government can do this is to take money from A and give it to B. So the total spent/invested is the same, the only thing that changes is government control over the spendee increases.
Re:Capitalism bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I have 100 bucks and you have none, I buy dinner and you starve. But I buy dinner for one. Because I only need one.
If you have 50 bucks and so do I, we both buy dinner.
Ask the restaurant if there's a difference.
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I believe you are arguing in support of some form of the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org].
I'll join in support of your argument if everyone that earns something is taxed a small amount to support public infrastructure and social programs for public schools, etc.
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The broken window fallacy depends on destroying something, i.e. having to spend to retain the status quo. That's not the case here. The example I gave offers additional value to more people, and of course the shop owner, too.
Re:Capitalism bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the broken window fallacy, it's pointing out that one of the basic assumptions of modern economics - unlimited demand - does not exist. No matter how rich someone is, they can't eat 100 meals or watch 100 movies a day.
If you remove the middle class, those movies simply won't exist, because at $100 million a pop, even the richest couldn't possibly fund their development for very long. It's only when a movie will be watched millions of times that it makes sense to create them at such a high cost.
The same story gets repeated in just about every industry. Intel spent $13 billion last year in R&D. Boeing spent close to $30 billion to design the 787. Cancer research is $5 billion per year and they're not even close to being done. None of those costs would be justifiable if their entire customer base was 10,000 strong.
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at $100 million a pop, even the richest couldn't possibly fund their development for very long
They could if tickets were $1 million apiece
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What a load of crap.
If 100 bucks are spent for dinner by a single person, or 100 bucks are spent for dinner by two persons, it doesn't make any difference, it's exactly the same.
It's not that splitting the 100 dollars into two dinners will magically buy bigger dinner for anyone.
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You may not have noticed it, but we do not lack money on the supply side. We have an incredible amount of money waiting for something worthwhile to invest in. What we lack is money on the demand side that could create the demand for an endeavor to invest in.
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You may not have noticed it, but we do not lack money on the supply side. We have an incredible amount of money waiting for something worthwhile to invest in. What we lack is money on the demand side that could create the demand for an endeavor to invest in.
That’s correct, and it’s what the Right seems not to understand. Demand is what drives the economy. You can give Mr. Rich Guy more money, but he’d be an idiot to open a widget factory if no one is buying widgets. You give poor people more money and they spend it. Mr. Rich Guy can get a loan, or get some investors together, if there’s a demand. He doesn’t need more pocket money.
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You didn't zoom out to see the full picture.
This gets the money moving, which is good for the government (taxes), but it doesn't benefit the rich at all;
It does benefit the rich, but for some reason, outside essentially Warren Buffet, they don't see it. For them to enjoy the society they do, they need that society to exist. Take your hundred million dollars and move to Somalia, and I guarantee it's not going to be as pleasant as the Bay Area, Manhattan, or Miami.
For that society to exist, there needs to be a functioning economy. Trapping most of the economic potential in the stagnant wealth of the top 1% cripples
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You might notice that, and this is actually an universal truth, whoever is in power has no idea of economics and does it all wrong, and whoever isn't has the ultimate revelations of what needs to be done to fix everything.
Unfortunately when they actually come to power, they're so surprised that they instantly forget everything they learned in this epiphany.
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Guy with $0 goes out and turns raw materials into wealth creating value out of nothing increasing the amount both people have.
Just curious, did this guy "go out" on public roads, protected by public police, legal system, and military? Did he have an education, perhaps from a public school? Did he survive to adulthood thanks in part to safety and health regulations?
Re:Capitalism bad. (Score:4, Interesting)
Guy with $0 goes out and turns raw materials into wealth creating value out of nothing increasing the amount both people have.
Just curious, did this guy "go out" on public roads, protected by public police, legal system, and military? Did he have an education, perhaps from a public school? Did he survive to adulthood thanks in part to safety and health regulations?
Sure he did. So did the guy who created nothing of value. Of course, all of those things were paid for by the guy who created the wealth, and others like him who came before. Where did you think they came from?
Re:Capitalism bad. (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you think they came from?
Like all things, they came from the efforts of the laborers, and were derived from the natural resources of the land.
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Yet more pedantry. When it's all you got, it's the only type of argument you can make, isn't it?
Technically correct is the best kind of correct; not only on a site for nerds, who love tech, but also when making decisions in the real world.
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Guy with $0 goes out and turns raw materials into wealth creating value out of nothing increasing the amount both people have.
Just curious, did this guy "go out" on public roads, protected by public police, legal system, and military? Did he have an education, perhaps from a public school? Did he survive to adulthood thanks in part to safety and health regulations?
Yeah, no one with zero dollars is turning anything into anything. You need tools and energy to acquire any raw material, let alone turn it into something, unless you’re an artist working with found-objects. Sounds like Ayn Rand’s fantasy.
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The point is that people's spending habits only inflexibly reflect their available purchasing power. The more you earn, the lower the percentage of your expenses compared to your income. Up to a certain level, your expenses keep up with your income, because people like to spend if they can. But at some point it becomes pretty ridiculous, since you can't "sensibly" spend 100k a month. At least without investing some of that money, which is the exact opposite of spending.
But it's spending that drives the econ
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You interpretation of economics is pretty pathetic.
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When you invest money, your goal is to have this money return more money. This can only happen if you can sell whatever you produce. Producing makes you poor, only selling makes you rich.
To sell, you have to have someone to buy your stuff. If that someone buys your stuff to sell something himself, he's essentially only making the matter worse (unless of course he buys your stuff and goes bankrupt), because that means that whoever he wants to sell to needs to recover the cost of your goods or services, too,
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To sell, you have to have someone to buy your stuff. If that someone buys your stuff to sell something himself, he's essentially only making the matter worse (unless of course he buys your stuff and goes bankrupt), because that means that whoever he wants to sell to needs to recover the cost of your goods or services, too, essentially increasing his price and putting more burden on the demand side.
People do not produce static amounts, nor do they produce identical amounts. If I produce something for $10 and sell it for $11, the next person can worker harder/smarter/longer to earn $11 to pay for it. (Inflation need not be a concern as long as the money supply matches the amount of goods and services produced, as demonstrated for 100+ years of price stability in the United States prior to the existence of the Federal Reserve.) Your concern about "making it worse" is unwarranted, if you accept that som
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You really want to argue that we are under-producing? Please tell me you're joking.
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Re: Capitalism bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
A single person doesn't HAVE $100B to spend.
I swear it's as if the commies seem to believe that reach people just keep billions of dollars under their mattress. The vast majority of "money" which billionaires have isn't money but rather control over large businesses. If CompanyX is worth $40 billion and I own half of it's stock, I "have" $20 billion ... but I am never going to see that money, let alone spend it. I don't have $20 billion in bills shoved into a piggy-bank; I have $20 billion in assets which are actively involved in actually doing things in the real world. Money at that level isn't money; it's control.
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There is not "more spending money". The only way a government can do this is to take money from A and give it to B.
You can take $100 from A and give it to B easily enough. However you can incur variable costs in doing so. You can staff an entire department require complicated processing using archaic rules that result in taking $100 from A and only having $30 left to give to B. Or you can simplify it all, have the entire department run by the night janitor and take $100 from A and give $95 to B.
That is the increased spending money that results from UBI. If there ever was a true UBI. Unfortunately there isn't, and all th
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There is not "more spending money". The only way a government can do this is to take money from A and give it to B.
Unless it’s the Federal government. But what Alaska is doing is taking money that would normally go into the state treasury and giving it directly to the people. While any kind of spending is good for the economy, since it always creates work for someone, giving it to the people to spend injects it into the economy much more evenly, and more effectively, than, say, spending on construction projects does. The money goes to more diverse places.
Also, the notion that a thousand bucks a year is going to ca
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There is not "more spending money". The only way a government can do this is to take money from A and give it to B.
Who told you that, and why are you repeating it? Governments can print more money and hand it to people. This does create inflation, which does devalue people's cash reserves, but they can avoid that by simply buying things (which creates jobs) or by investing the money (which creates jobs) instead of sitting on it (which doesn't create jobs) which is what they are doing now. They offshore the money, don't pay any taxes, and the money has no currency so it can't perform its function.
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There are two things countering that argument.
First, marginal opportunity cost.
Think about everything you would buy if you had unlimited money. You'd buy food, clothing, rent, car insurance, games, fast cars, rocket ships.
If we cut your money back, you start to prioritize. You must eat. Rent is pretty important. You need your car to get to work. The tighter it goes, the more you refine your priorities.
One of your priorities is savings.
Extremely-rich people will buy financial securities such as s
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This is not communism. This is an attempt to keep capitalism going under changing circumstances.
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That is not what is happening here. You just regurgitate the propaganda and you try to elevate yourself on the cheap (and in an utterly despicable fashion) by implicitly claiming you are "hard working", while others are "lazy". Incidentally, "hard work" is in the process of becoming utterly worthless from an utilitarian point-of-view and so are you. "Smart work" will live a bit longer, but eventually we are all going to the "lazy" state, with a very small number of exceptions and you will not be one of them
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Universal Basic Income is a capitalist concept, not a communist one. All universal basic income models require a market economy that can then be taxed accordingly to pay for the income. This is not viable in a centralist, communist-economy á la the USSR or others. If capitalists want to keep making money by selling goods and services they need a consumer base with disposable income. However the more automation and AI are pushed, the less jobs there will be especially for people with little to no educat
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Almost agree.
Firstly, for communism to work - someone, anyone - needs to be some sort of enforcer - completely incompatible with the whole notion in the first place.
The idea was that communism was some utopian end-state which was to be ushered in by a transitional phase of socialism (which is why no nominally 'Communist' party has ever claimed to set up anything beyond ML socialism, eg. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
Communism would come about once the state simply withered away [wikipedia.org]. The closest real-w
Re: Capitalism bad. (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with using FOSS as an example of communism is that consumption isn't limited. The method only works for "intellectual property". If I decide to code for free it doesn't matter of 1 person uses the software or half the planet does - my work was still fixed in scope.
On the other hand, if we're talking about vegetables rather than code, as each person consumes, what they consumed must be replaced, and that entails work.
I'm sure if there was some way that we could plant a field harvest it once and nobody would ever go hungry again, you'd have plenty of volunteers. Sadly, that just isn't the case.
That aside, this whole premise is laughable. This isn't UBI - $1000 per person annually is basically less than a lot of people get as a tax refund each year. It doesn't increase unemployment because IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO LIVE ON (this is also side-stepping the issue that generally unemployment is a measure of the people without jobs who are LOOKING for a job - so it's not a good metric anyways since the fear with UBI is that people wouldn't even want to look anymore, leading to them technically not be "unemployed").
Re: Capitalism bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
"We cannot say why communism didn't work."
Sure we can.
Communism ONLY works if everyone's on board with the ideology.
If you get someone dissenting, and refusing to participate in the program, you now have someone demonstrating an option.
With communism, you CANNOT have that.
This is where the guns and killing starts happening.
100+ million people later...
There's also the fact that pretty much every implementation of communism was FORCIBLY IMPOSED, rather than allowed to grow organically.
Communism also kills exceptionalism and achievement.
Everything is subservient to "the good of the people/party".
Combine this with the fact that no matter how well you do, the fruits of your labor aren't yours. They're taken from you and redistributed.
This murders achievement and the drive to excel.
Enlightened self interest works FAR better, but communism can't allow for that...
Top-down control of an entire society only works for social insects.
Humans are NOT social insects.
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Guns and killing are prevalent the world over.
The US has more legally owned firearms than PEOPLE. If legally owned firearms were the problem, you'd see a LOT more gun violence deaths than .004% of the population (Based off CDC numbers for 2016 (38,658 total firearm deaths, 22,983 of which were SUICIDES.)
The problem I have with the US's current social safety net is the waste. You have people opting not to work and subsisting on nothing BUT the social safety net.
You also have illegal immigrants, who aren't
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Nobody ask for communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody ask for communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Socialism taken to the extreme is certainly bad. Why work if you get the same anyway? Extreme capitalism may work, but has the downside that the unemployed starve. Thus they turn to crime, or even revolution just to survive.
But there are middle grounds. You can combine capitalism with a social safety net. As in, unemployed survive (has food, shelter, workable health plans, crime is not needed, the "honest poor" become possible). But those who works gets to have "nicer things" - even though they pay high taxes to support that 'safety net'.
Why would you work, if you had universal income? Why, to have your own house instead of some minimum flat. To have a car - or even a better car than your neighbour. To afford vacation trips to nice places. To eat food that isn't boring. All sorts of improvements over the base level, or competition with others.
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But we in the US already have social safety nets: Welfare, Unemployment Ins, Food Stamps, Medicaid/Medicare.....etc.
The problem is, we need to tighten up those programs so they aren't abused as much as they are
No, that's not the problem. The problem is that the existing system does not work for a very large number of people. The problem is that if someone wants to go to a university to get a high-level education, or if someone needs to go to the hospital, they may be looking at decades of debt from that. That's what the problem is, not that people are abusing food stamps. The problem is that we have a predatory insurance and healthcare industry which exists to make a profit first. We expect future high-contr
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Well, err..that's not really the federal government's job....
Right now, you're right. But it should be, in the most wealthy nation on the planet. That's exactly the problem. It should be their job, but it's not. Assuming we as a country want to remain competitive in the world economy over the next 50 or 100 years, anyway. If we want to remain the world's most wealthy nation then we really do need a healthy and educated workforce, it turns out that we can't get much done if our workforce is uneducated and unhealthy.
Certainly not giving out FREE college education.
For public universities? Of course, why not? I
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Communism - as defined by Marx - isn't something you make happen, it's something that has to happen on its own as society responds to pressure.
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Firstly, for communism to work - someone, anyone - needs to be some sort of enforcer - completely incompatible with the whole notion in the first place.
Security is not incompatible with each according to their needs and abilities. You still need security and some are still able to produce it. What are you on about?
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You can make exactly the same argument as to why capitalism will never work.
Firstly, for capitalism to work - someone, anyone - needs to be some sort of enforcer - completely incompatible with the whole notion in the first place. Secondly, human nature (as it stands) is still very much tied to amassing resources, and so ultimately greed will remain a thing until we are all programmed not to do so. Now, who is going to be our equal and yet do that fairly and without bias?
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A Summer.
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"Nobody will go against the will of the government "
People have gone against the will of the government since the country was founded.
The money paid out each year to Alaskan citizens is not a "Universal Basic Income". The money is the result of legislation that provides Alaskan citizens with money generated by the Alaskan oil drilling. It was an attempt to satisfy those who had environmental concerns about allowing oil companies to extract oil.
The bonehead who wrote the article plainly stated that the money
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And that is a UBI. If Hawaii had a UBI it'd probably be based on taxing their tourism industry. UBI doesn't have to come from the same source everywhere. For much of the USA UBI would be funded, sometimes more directly than others, by the extraction or use of natural resources.