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Guaranteed basic income
Pi-r8
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Whenever there is a problem or inefficiency in the system -- you know what? Spend fucking more. First of all, I don't care about the inefficiency really, because at the end of the day it means the government is routing wealth through the lower class, which I approve of regardless of how it's used. I would happily have the government dole out a $10,000 check every year to anyone making less than $30,000/year. I don't even give a shit how they use it (I can bet you that food, education, and shelter end up being high on that list for 90% of them though) -- better than some rich prick investing it with Goldman Sachs (or, frankly, even some moderately-wealthy suburban prick putting a down payment on his BMW).
That whole rant is pretty great, but this especially is something I agree with.
I broadly endorse the notion, although I suspect Fart doesn't worry enough about the excess burden in terms of revenue. Very high rates of income redistribution resolves a wide variety of social ills - I agree with Fartacus that the poor are likely to spend benefits-in-cash somewhat well - but raising the necessary revenue is something the right hates and the left is simply bad at, especially since it is the rich are very good at simply adjusting their behavior in the face of high rates. And the political situation has so evolved that taxes that effectively extract revenue from the rich, also extract revenue from the middle class, which has generated the political resistance against such taxes - the middle doesn't believe it will see its tax returned to it in cash.
Still, the money is there- it's something that we can afford, as a country. It's just a matter of finding the political willpower and a clever taxation plan to make it happen. Which is of course not going to happen any time soon, but it's something to think about.
The way I've been thinking about it lately is this- instead of money, think about objects. We easily produce enough food and shelter in the USA to feed and house every American (maybe even everyone in the world, if we really tried). The fact that some Americans can't afford food or shelter is just because of gross inequality. Giving everyone a small allowance that's just enough for food and shelter would effectively remove that inequality.
(split from the entitlements/medicaid thread because it seemed off topic)
This is something I've been thinking about since I read this article on Dkos the other day:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/3/925265/-Work-Sucks,-and-Theres-Not-Enough-of-It
After months and months of hoping to find a job, many will come face to face with the sad reality that those of us with jobs know all too well: work sucks.
Work sucks, and there’s not enough of it to go around. It’s like the Woody Allen joke: the old lady at a restaurant complains "the food here is terrible," and her friend says "yeah, and such small portions."
Even stronger are the words of The Abolition of Work
No one should ever work.
Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.
I can think of three arguments for why all citizens deserve a guaranteed basic income. A moral argument, an economic argument, and a philosophical argument. I'll address the moral argument first, since it's the most straightforward.
Everyone has a right to life. It says so right in the declaration of independance, which we Americans usually think of as a pretty important document. Specifically, it says that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". A right is supposed to be something which must not be taken away from you, and should always be honored. You don't need to prove yourself worthy of a right to vote, or bear arms, or free speech- you just get it, no matter how bad of a person you are.
However, in our modern society, we need money to live, and we must work in order to get money. Most people spend about half their waking hours working, which then also infringes on their rights to liberty and the persuit of happiness. That's not a right- that's a privilege! You have to prove yourself worthy to some corporation if you want to survive! Or at the very least, prove to the government that you deserve welfare. I say that everyone deserves to live, even if it costs us money- you'd give up some money if you knew that it would save the life of someone you know, right? And not just good people- even lazy, stupid, immoral people deserve to live.
I also don't think that it would cost an impossable amount of money. A guaranteed income of $10,000 is only about 1/5 of the USA GDP/capita, and it would allow us to scale back the food stamp and welfare programs too. That will eliminate the need for arcane government beauracracy which decides who lives and who dies. And we wouldn't have to give it to everyone, only to people with low incomes. Since they have a low income, they won't be saving it- they'll spend it immediately, and it will go right back to the economy, and come back to the government as taxes. Right now, our economy is in a crisis of demand, not supply- we've got plenty of stuff to sell, but no one will buy it because no one has any money except for the super-rich. Because of that, there's no point for a business to hire more workers, and we're stuck with high unemployment. Giving the poor and unemployed an income would sharply increase the demand in the economy, and allow businesses to start hiring again.
This last argument might seem strange, but I still think it's compelling. How many of the jobs that we do are really necessary? Every job that I've worked is about 1/3 real work, 1/3 stuff that I do just to make myself look busy in front of the boss, and 1/3 stuff that my boss makes me do just to stroke his ego, and make HIM look busy in front of HIS boss. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have started to realize this, and find ways to reduce the amount of slack- which is why companies have laid off so many employees, but productivity and corporate profits have not decreased.
Even the "productive" part of our jobs isn't really that productive, for most people. If you work for McDonald's, for example, what are you really accomplishing? You're poisoning people with unhealthy food, causing the destruction of the environment with unhealthy farming practices, and running the small independant farms and restaurants out of business. Meanwhile, you suffer at an extremely unpleasant job, for minimal pay. Where's the sense in that? Why should you get paid for being part of something so destructive? Wouldn't it be better for everyone if you just stayed home, instead? And better yet, if you stayed home you'd have time to something that really does benefit people, like write a novel or teach children. The same applies even to a lot of high-level jobs, like a director of marketing who devotes his life to convincing people to drink pepsi instead of coke. Most famous, these days, are the finance execs who manipulate the whole global economy for their own personal gain. Do we really need those guys, at all?
Some people think that, without the profit motive, we'd all just do nothing. For one thing, research suggests that money isn't all that great an incentive. In fact, for creative work, it can actually be an impedement. Besides, we have more than enough social incentives to make people go to work- someone with a big job is considered a valuable member of society, whereas those without jobs are considered losers. That's why so many people commit suicide when they lose their jobs, even if they're not actually having trouble with money.
Basically I think that, as a society, we need to rethink our basic value system, which encourages us to live to work, instead of working to live. Giving everyone enough money to live on, whether or not they work, will allow us to do that, as well as saving a lot of lives. It's moral, it will stimulate the economy, and it will make us all a lot happier.
Pi-r8 on
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I wouldn't be too upset to see credit cards go away either. Or, at least put heavy restrictions on what the card companies can do (which it looks like they're already doing). Student debt is another huge thing, being the only industrial empire that still forces students to get in such high debt for basically what amounts to what should be a high school diploma.
Like I said in the other program, I am in big favor of "work for the government and get some neat benefits" type programs. Like military basically getting free school. There needs to be more of those.
I am too. In particular, I'd like to see a massive government jobs program devoted to green jobs- put all the unemployed to work in a massive crash program to clean up nation's economy. However, that's still just a short term solution- at some point, all the jobs that need to be done get finished, and then what happens to the person that did that job? We only employ a small percentage of people in doing the work that needs to be constantly done, and everyone else is basically making luxuries of some sort or another. I'd like people to realize that most jobs just aren't necessary in the grand scheme of things.
I find it very interesting that people consider work to be a kind of enslavement. You don't have to work for someone to earn money, you can also start your own business.
There's nothing more noble then going to your neighbour's house, seeing they have a need which you can fill, filling that need, and being paid with money for your effort. That's what work is. It's filling human needs for money.
A wild Swede appears!
I'll be back later tonight and make poast about Glorious Socialism.
Well the big problem I see is that all of the real, literal, needs have already been filled. What do you need, exactly? You need food, shelter, medicine, and some clothes to stay warm. That's it. You don't need anything else. All of those things are produced by huge, multi-national organisations, which an independant startup can't possibly compete with. And the same problem exists with the indirect needs- stuff like cars, and computers, stuff which isn't strictly necessary but helps a lot with everything in modern society- you can't do that yourself. There's a small number of people who produce enough to go around, for everyone. We don't need anyone else producing those things.
When people go in to business for themselves, what they do is produce luxuries. Stuff like handmade crafts, or paintings, or computer games, or a coffee shop, or a restaurant- all that stuff is fun, and I enjoy it, but we don't really need it. And they're all competing with each other- people only have a small amount of excess income to spend on luxuries like that. In order for a new startup like that to succeed, another small business has to lose money. Those small businesses would be more pleasant if they weren't trying to cut each others' throat to stay alive.
edit- there is another way to run the economy. There's a small group of people with effectively infinite income to spend on luxuries- the super rich. We can all start small businesses that service their every desire. That's pretty much the way the US economy is headed right now- a small group of oligarchs, and their servants. I just really don't want to go down that road.
I'm all for progressive tax structures and creating policies geared towards empowering low income people, but straight up using tax dollars to pay low income people would just be another subsidy to McPloyers.
Work is a lot of things, but I can see how it can be considered enslavement by some views. Even starting your own business and being in charge, you're still in need of money to survive, and thus enslaved to the system.
Personally? I like work. I go a little batty when I have a three day weekend. But I'm not going to pretend that a large portion of what we deem to be work in this country isn't completely silly. Hell, half of my job is to take that silly useless work and make a computer do it. In prior jobs, I've had a lot of "move X to Y.. wait nevermind, go get Y and move it back to X, wait, let me think if it should be in Z..." type silly waste as well.
That said, I'm of the personal opinion that everyone needs something in their lives to occupy their time. People just go peculiar when given infinite free time. And with a minimum income, we'd still need to find people willing to happily do all the bullshit required to run modern civilization, like trash pickups, farming, etc etc. But I like the idea of a better system to keep people who are unable to find a job from being totally fucked.
In many cases it's impossible for people to do because of larger corporations. There's only so much a guy can do for his neighbor. Assuming he can make more than a few hundred dollars off it. I remember there used to be 5-6 little convenience stores in my area. Then Wal-mart came in. The upside? Wegmans followed them and we actually got good produce and stuff. Our local supermarket was terrible. Food was often spoiled. Put them right out of business. The downside? All those little mom and pop stores went out of business. I think they're greeters now. I'm sure that came with a huge pay hit.
The reason we have welfare programs is to make sure that people who can't find work or are unable to work don't die in the gutter. That's fine and necessary in a humane society. But what you seem to be proposing is simply giving everyone a handout, whether or not they're capable of working.
Rigorous Scholarship
I agree completely. This is part of the reason that I think my suggestion would be feasable- almost everyone would still do some productive work, even if they didn't really have to. Everyone is happier if they can do something useful. Unfortunately, most of the jobs that pay aren't very useful, and a lot of the most useful jobs don't pay at all.
Are you a gigolo?
Also -- I'm pretty sure money is a societal need, not a human need.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
That's not true at all.
The reason why the video game industry is so big, vibrant, dynamic, fun and employs so many people is because there are so many companies making games on so many different platforms.
And they even employ people in side-related fields. 15 years ago it'd be insane to get a hot-shot music composer to score the games. Now it's common. It's common for them to employ videographers and voice actors now too.
The industry is big (and fun and high-quality) because there are lots of people making them.
1. Does everyone get the basic income, or do you phase it out?
2. Where do you raise the funds?
You are talking about $3T or so in additional annual entitlement spending. However you raise those funds will put a serious dent into growth. In other words, redistributing 20% of our economic pie will make that pie smaller.
Rigorous Scholarship
That's exactly what I'm proposing. What is your objection? Do you just feel a basic instinct that everyone should have to suffer if they want to live?
300MM people * $10K/year is closer to $3T.
Yeah you're right. Damn you for being faster than my planned stealth edit.
"You don't need to prove yourself worthy of a right to vote, or bear arms, or free speech- you just get it, no matter how bad of a person you are. "
Absolutely not true. You have to prove that you're at least 18, an American citizen living in the area you're trying to vote in, and not a felon to be allowed to vote. Free speech is a little easier...unless you're trying free speech in a school, your workplace, government property, in a military uniform, or any speech at all that could potentially hold someone (other than a public figure) up to ridicule or other forms of defemation. And if you think that you don't have to prove yourself worthy of the right to bear arms, then you have never attempted to actually bear arms. Depending on where you live, the paperwork to get approval can take months.
As far as a free hand out, there is another concern: If you give a flat 10,000 to everyone who makes less than 30,000 and nothing to those who make more, there is an obvious problem. The guy who makes 29,999.99 now makes 39,999.99...while the guy who makes 30,000.01 still makes 30,000.01. It should be worded more towards everyone is guarenteed to get at least 40,000 dollars total, or whatever sum is agreeable.
Also realize that some people would spend the money poorly. An alcoholic will spend a good deal of the 10k on more booze. A smoker will spend it on cigarettes. A druggie will spend it on drugs. Give an alcoholic an extra 10k dollars worth of more alcohol, and there is going to be a serious strain on our medical faciliites in due time. Likewise, a gambler will take it to the casino (as I did with the economic stimulus check back when I was employed full-time)...and then spend his "real" money trying to win it back.
I like the idea, but there are kinks that still have to be worked out.
I think this would also go towards my idea of everyone on a level playing field. People think I'm nuts but electricity, water, and internet should be free to everyone. How would it become free I have no idea. But in this day in age electricity and running water are pretty much a necessity to normal living. Also everyone should have access to the same data pool. Yes you can go to the library but we all know it's not the same as having a PC in the home. Instead of my stupid 400.00 rebate check I got go by net books for people. Maybe I'm just a loon.
So maybe instead of guaranteed income per month you work in a government program for however long and get a free education and laptop. Maybe in that government program you work towards making energy and water free for all. That's going to be way better than what, 1500 a month.
If everyone suddenly got 10,000 dollars, the costs of rent and food would go up to compensate (if you print it). Or you take that money from productive people and you shrink they pie because they don't want to create businesses in your community anymore...
...and the people in Bowen's neighbourhood have to eat rotten vegetables because fresh ones are no longer availible.
Although if the median income is 33k, and you make 30k the cut-off point, you will end up in the ballpark of $1.5 trillion.
The cut-off point should probably be much lower.
Well sure, I always like trying new video games. But I only have a small amount of money to spend on them. In order for me to spend more money on video games (which allows the industry to employ more people) I'd have to stop spending money on other things, like eating at restaurants or buying new clothes. That's why I'm saying that all those industries are basically luxuries, which are indirectly competing with each other.
Why is having the biggest pie (economic growth) more important than having a pie that more people get shares of (economic development)?
So we do whatever we have to do to keep the people on top happy?
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Work isn't "suffering". If work is the cause of your suffering you are doing it wrong.
My objection is that this is literally something for nothing. This is wealth redistribution for the sake of wealth redistribution.
There are tonnes of free games. And the quality of free games is getting better and better too.
And the costs of premium games is coming down too.
You seem to be worried that you can't buy ALL of the videogames. That you have to pick and choose the best one. But under your proposed plan, there would only be 1 video game company, or just a few.
But I do not see any moral or legal requirement that we, as a society, give money to people who are able to work, but are simply unwilling to do so. I think a significant percentage of people would happily sit at home watching television and doing nothing productive if you gave them a guaranteed income. If someone doesn't want to work, that's certainly their right. But they shouldn't expect the rest of us to subsidize their decision.
Yeah, maybe low-paying jobs aren't fun, in a lot of cases. But, so what?
Rigorous Scholarship
Actually, it is wealth distribution for the sake of making a happier and more equal society.
$10k/yr is not a lot of money. The vast majority of people are still going to be motivated to work.
Unfortunately the OP has addressed neither means testing nor funding. Since those two questions determine the cost of the proposal, there's no way to discuss it.
It's isn't "more important" period. There's an efficiency-euqality trade off and we have to recognize it. Than we can have a discussion on where the trade off is optimal.
I'm reasonable certain we have no one arguing that either extreme, maximum growth or maximum equality, is desirable.
There's various ways you can implement it. It seems a bit silly to give everyone a basic income, and then tax it away from them, so I'd suggest a negative income tax for people earning less than $10,000 a year, which as been studied, and estimated to cost about $1.9 trillion annually. And mind you, that's just the amount of government spending- all that money will be spent, and a lot of it will come back to the government as extra tax income.
The money is there- like I said, this is only 1/5 of our per capita GDP, and it would only be given to the adults at the very bottom of the ladder. It's just a matter of finding the right taxation scheme to pay for it it. Eliminating the bush tax cuts would be a good start, and the rest could be made up by raising taxes on the wealthy, closing loopholes, and simply waiting for the economy to recover.
It doesn't make a happier and more equal society. It makes people doing jack squat get the same pittance someone is working for, leading the person who is working for said pittance, to not want to work for the same pittance someone can get for playing wow from their bolthole poopsocking all day.
Well, you could argue that working in a common field like, say, advertising, or retail, is less useful to the common good than:
a) working in some sort of food production. Part of why we consume such utter shit (literally, if you eat cheap meat!) as a country is that food production is based around using as little manpower as possible. If we were willing to sink more money into food than retail we'd certainly be a healthier country.
b) Healthcare. I don't think I really need to explain this. More doctors means more accessible, cheaper healthcare (I'll get to the education part in a bit).
c) Education. Schools are already horrible overcrowded, and entirely unequipped to give "difficult" students the attention they need.
"But PIH!" you say. "Food production doesn't have enough positions! The industry is too automated and controlled by too few corporations. Healthcare requires more education than most people can handle/afford. And education pays like shit!"
Well, that's all true. Unfortunately, that's sort of what you get when you have a purely market economy. Nobody would argue that our food consumption, healthcare, and education are unimportant, but one of the most glorious ways in which a market economy sustains itself if by rearranging people's priorities, or making them so invisible that you can't properly allocate resources. We're taught to sink money into a new computer or car, but if we spend that money we need to buy the cheapest food available, and don't want to pay too much in taxes, etc etc etc.
you don't give it to everyone, only to adults who need it. Senior citizens are already covered by social security (which is the same damn thing) 1.5 trillion seems accurate.
Please be specific. What negative income tax rate, up to what cut-off? This has major implications for your proposal.
And from the sound of it you want to finance it through additional taxation. If you let us know how high up the ladder you want to set that tax cut-off, we can work out (roughly) how much in extra taxes you're proposing.
You have to define this, very specifically, before we can even talk.