JeffersonClay posted:You are saying that every dollar the government spends creates money from nowhere, and every dollar it collects in taxes and fees is destroyed. How is that conceptualization functionally different from one where the government creates both real and virtual currency, and funds its budgets with taxes and fees, financing shortfalls with debt or seigniorage? Well, for one thing, it explains why the money supply doesn't perpetually increase, which the orthodoxy doesn't. For another, it treats the artifacted nature of money as essential rather than sidelining it.
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Jan 7, 2016 19:09
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It would seem to be accurate, the government can simply withdraw money from the supply if it wants to. And there's no actual transfer of anything happening except numbers on a ledger being taken off in one place and added in another.
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Jan 7, 2016 19:12
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Aka the people you don't like.  They look like people who want the benefits of socialism without having to contribute their labor except when labor means "things I want to do when I want to do them."
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Jan 7, 2016 19:26
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Typical Pubbie posted:
If you want us to believe your whiny claims that you're a progressive you're going to have to stop making GBS threads out conservative talking points eventually.
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Jan 7, 2016 19:28
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Typical Pubbie posted:
Are you familiar with Marx's actual position on labor?
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Jan 7, 2016 19:28
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Effectronica posted:Are you familiar with Marx's actual position on labor? I'll take that bet. TP make sure you wash your hands before you start frantically googling or you'll never get your keyboard clean again.
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Jan 7, 2016 19:29
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Typical Pubbie posted:
How have you measured the objective correctness of your list of "things I think people should be allowed to do?" What is the total amount of overall savings you expect to generate by excluding these people vs. the bureaucratic overhead required to administer the system? Precisely how many welfare queens do you personally know, and can you please supply us with your masturbatory anecdotes concerning their morally distressing behavior? What is the inherent value of wage labor, measured in dollars?
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Jan 7, 2016 20:16
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Effectronica posted:Well, for one thing, it explains why the money supply doesn't perpetually increase, which the orthodoxy doesn't. For another, it treats the artifacted nature of money as essential rather than sidelining it. Why do you think the money supply would perpetually increase? Your model sounds suspiciously like an MMO economy. Money is abstract but when we're talking about poverty we're talking about physical stuff and people who lack it. So this observation and tangent is irrelevant.
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Jan 7, 2016 22:04
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What does money supply have to do with anything? Hopefully minimum income proponents are defending $30,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. If so, the number is short hand for, "the money to buy a bunch of stuff that would cost about $30k, given current prices." Why would printing money change anything relevant?
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Jan 7, 2016 22:36
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Typical Pubbie posted:
I'm fine with them not contributing labor. There won't be enough jobs for everyone in 20 years when automation technologies mature (as if there isn't enough now). It's more important they be given the means to participate in the economy than to utilize their labor.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:15
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Effectronica posted:Well, for one thing, it explains why the money supply doesn't perpetually increase, which the orthodoxy doesn't. For another, it treats the artifacted nature of money as essential rather than sidelining it. No I mean does this have any actual implications for policy? If I think the dollars collected in taxes are then used to fund government expenditures, and you think the dollars collected in taxes disappear and then government expenditures create new dollars, is there any functional difference in terms of how we should run the economy?
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Jan 7, 2016 23:17
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JeffersonClay posted:No I mean does this have any actual implications for policy? If I think the dollars collected in taxes are then used to fund government expenditures, and you think the dollars collected in taxes disappear and then government expenditures create new dollars, is there any functional difference in terms of how we should run the economy? The person who believes that money is arbitrary would probably have different views about using the printing press to fund things than the person who believes money has to be collected before it can be spent. As they would probably think that you should print money to finance projects and recoup the initial loss through the expanded production capacity. Sort of like a loan except you can give yourself as much money as you can convince everyone else is okay.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:35
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OwlFancier posted:It's probably more likely that your government doesn't like the socialized medicine so they're deliberately underfunding it.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:43
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Cicero posted:"If the socialism doesn't work the way I think it should, you just need to socialize harder." Socialized medicine does work, the NHS is one of the best medical institutions in the world. The problem with it is that recent governments hate the idea of not being able to profit from it so they keep cutting its funding and selling parts it off to increase its running costs. This isn't a myth, it's official policy and has been for a while.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:47
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Typical Pubbie posted:I used to support a basic income until I was shown this problem. To make a basic income into a living income for everyone you would end up paying able bodied adults multiple tens of thousands of dollars a year. But that would be ridiculous, so you would have to include certain requirements be met to receive the full benefit. Now you're back to square one with means testing and most of your savings on bureaucracy (that were pretty negligible to begin with) go out the window. So you pretty much have to accept that you're advocating paying able bodied people not to work. Which may become necessary in the not too far future or during an economic downturn but I don't think it is necessary or good now. So no, I don't find the idea of paying able bodied adults ridiculous, because I know they're not being paid to live like kings, they're being paid to live. I also know that able bodied adults probably want a social life, they will probably enjoy recreational drugs like alcohol or other such poo poo, all of which doesn't come cheap and cannot be used to subsist yourself. So, there's your incentive. So the system as a whole will work, the socially necessary labor time will still be completed, and the sky won't fall down.
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Jan 8, 2016 00:12
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Even if you pegged mincome to GDP or something, so if everyone quits their job their mincome goes down so they have to get jobs again. But broadly, yes you should absolutely be able to pay people to do nothing unless we have failed to improve our productivity so much in the last ten thousand years that we cannot produce, by means of modern production methods, enough stuff to sustain many people by the labour of only one.
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Jan 8, 2016 00:21
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Anyone who thinks previously-poor people don't rush out and dump money into the economy the minute they get some cash doesn't know human psychology or American history. Turning the 46.7 million Americans living below the poverty line into active consumers will create an economic boom we haven't seen since the 50s.OwlFancier posted:Even if you pegged mincome to GDP or something, so if everyone quits their job their mincome goes down so they have to get jobs again. People keep voicing opinions like this that stem from misconceptions about how big America, its economy, and its wealth disparity is. Those 46.7m poor people I mentioned up there? They barely exist as far as our economy is concerned. Even if every single one of them who has a job quit it (a lot of them are children, elderly, or chronically unemployed, so this isn't that big of a percentage), they earn so little and are considered so replaceable by their employers that the economy would barely twitch. Leaving aside that mincome is likely to increase consumer spending among the very poor, as I said above, their jobs are likely to be filled either by those same workers returning after employers increase wages and benefits, or immigrants willing to take the existing wages (after enacting mincome I'd spend my second genie wish on vastly expediting and broadening paths to citizenship, but that's another conversation). Or employers would offshore the work, like they're already doing, which is a double-edged sword as far as those foreign workers are concerned, but it wouldn't hurt our GDP. I mean do I fantasize about Day Without A Mexican-style work stoppages that bring the country to its knees and force it to recognize the value of our lowest-paid labor? Sure. But the reality of mincome-land is that most people would still work, and even people who don't work would still spend, and things would be okay. Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 00:26
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Typical Pubbie posted:
Thanks to huge technical improvements in the last 200 years, yeah, a society could actually run on only doing things when you want to do them. There are 22 empty homes for every homeless person in the US, a 140x increase in agricultural productivity, closets full of clothing, libraries of scientific knowledge, guides to build, repair, and improve everything we've ever invented, and enough movies, music, and games for multiple lifetimes. Yeah, I'd do my 4 month turn on your socialism strawman tractor if it meant a lifetime of freedom, that sounds loving awesome to me.
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Jan 8, 2016 00:44
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Sounds like a good idea on paper, but I bet rich fucktards would find a way to poo poo it all up like they do everything.
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Jan 8, 2016 00:54
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Also, I just thought of 2 things that might be important to people who aren't on board:
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Jan 8, 2016 00:56
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rudatron posted:Also, I just thought of 2 things that might be important to people who aren't on board: I've already pointed this out. I'm beginning to wonder if people in this thread actually read dissenting viewpoints or if they see what looks like a negative critique of mincome and instantly default to "poor hating neocon puritan who is also probably a racist."
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Jan 8, 2016 01:23
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No I think everyone actually reads your posts, when you talk to them, but you'll forgive me if I skipped a post where you're talking to someone else directly, in the quote-respond-quote-respond fashion. I in principle don't disagree - collective bargaining is essential. Mincome isn't a replacement for that, but neither is minimum wage, they're both policies to ensure people can at least get by. Neither can solve broader economic inequality issues, because inequality isn't strictly about wages, but about capital ownership. You see that as a downside, I just think it's a different policy objective. Mincome won't mean everything will be powered by (renewable) unicorn farts, but I think it has advantages.
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Jan 8, 2016 01:37
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You've yet to make a convincing argument about why mincome is bad at all.
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Jan 8, 2016 01:40
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Astrofig posted:Sounds like a good idea on paper, but I bet rich fucktards would find a way to poo poo it all up like they do everything. Well yeah. Maybe we could kill them and take their stuff? Typical Pubbie posted:I've already pointed this out. Shut up you big whiny baby. You've gotten more attention than anyone in this thread. You just don't like that people recognize your conservative talking points for what they are. You'll get a reasoned debate when you give one.
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Jan 8, 2016 01:52
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I think there are really two conversations here: whether wealth distribution in some form is a good or bad thing versus if mincome is actually the best way to accomplish redistribution. Then there is the second issue, how much in specifics of costs do you want to get (and this is where a argument for a mincome starts to fall apart). One thing is simply cost, and what you will sacrifice versus you get. If you want mincome to be both universal and livable, then you are going to spend a lot of money (possibly up to 6 trillion a year (300 million times $20,000)) and certainly far more than we do on social programs now. Furthermore, once you start talking about health care and subtracting those costs, it becomes far trickier simply because Medicare/Medicaid and other government health care programs that up the majority of current spending. In that sense, it is also a nice idea in very loose theory but the actual mechanics require basically reworking how the federal government if not how our economy works.Furthermore, I am very doubtful "efficiency savings" will actually save enough money to be meaningful, federal administrative costs in general are already quite low. Ultimately, I would prefer we would take the spending we have now and as much extra revenue as possible to provide universal health care, low cost-no cost tuition and an expanded EITC. You need to be able to crawl before you start thinking about trying to try out for the Olympics. I will be interest to see how everything works out in Finland, because spending was cut from other programs to build it. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 02:06
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Typical Pubbie posted:I'm beginning to wonder if people in this thread actually read dissenting viewpoints or if they see what looks like a negative critique of mincome and instantly default to "poor hating neocon puritan who is also probably a racist." I haven't done any of this kind of thing, but you've been strangely reluctant to address my points. So I kind of think you might be full of poo poo with your whining about this. Seems like that's what you're actually looking for.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:11
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Ardennes posted:I think there are really two conversations here: whether wealth distribution in some form is a good or bad thing versus if mincome is actually the best way to accomplish redistribution. Then there is the second issue, how much in specifics of costs do you want to get (and this is where a argument for a mincome starts to fall apart). Your maths are a bit dodgy because you're counting what healthcare costs currently cost the government vs what they'd eventually cost the government when nationalized rather than what they cost the economy currently vs what they'd cost the economy when nationalized. Consistently the latter is far lower. Similarly that $6T figure looks mathed up as "this is all additional spending" when most people's paid salary for working will almost certainly be adjusted factoring in the guaranteed income everyone's getting.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:15
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asdf32 posted:Why do you think the money supply would perpetually increase? Your model sounds suspiciously like an MMO economy. Because there is no mechanism to destroy virtual money. Physical money (or physical capital) is destroyed through wear and tear, but park that sucker in a bank account and it lasts as long as the bank does. Thus, in order for the money supply to remain stable, money has to be perpetually destroyed, removed from the system, to keep things balanced. Since this occurs at a roughly fixed rate through taxation, government debt, and fees, the money supply is manipulated through interest rates. It's no less relevant than many of the things you've spit out, so if we're playing control-the-conversation, how often do you masturbate with celery, asdf? JeffersonClay posted:No I mean does this have any actual implications for policy? If I think the dollars collected in taxes are then used to fund government expenditures, and you think the dollars collected in taxes disappear and then government expenditures create new dollars, is there any functional difference in terms of how we should run the economy? Sure, because the chartalist position shuts down nonsense about "balancing the budget". There is no such thing as balancing the budget, there is merely a matter of determining how the money supply should expand or contract. Government debt is a way to withdraw money from the supply without actively destroying it, meaning that all the nonsense about "debt ceilings" can be shut down. There are some real advantages to eliminating the religious mindset of money as existing independent of its creators.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:16
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OwlFancier posted:You've yet to make a convincing argument about why mincome is bad at all. For real, your arguments are basically dogshit. My favorite was the one where you declared exactly 3 possible results as though the world is anything like that simple.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:36
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The number of adults in poverty, according to the 2014 Poverty Report, is about 75 million people. 75 mil. x 20K is 1.5 trillion dollars. We spent 370 billion in welfare in 2014, so roll that budget into the new mincome plan and the new expenditure is closer to 1.1 trillion before we factor in likely decreases in healthcare costs, incarceration, and other side effects of poverty. We can also expect a good portion of that budget to immediately return to state and city coffers in the form of sales tax. It's expensive. Nobody's saying it isn't. But it's well within our reach.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:36
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A basic income or mincome would also decrease the savings rate because people's situations would be much more stable, in turn spurring consumption and investment.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:42
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Effectronica posted:Because there is no mechanism to destroy virtual money. Physical money (or physical capital) is destroyed through wear and tear, but park that sucker in a bank account and it lasts as long as the bank does. Thus, in order for the money supply to remain stable, money has to be perpetually destroyed, removed from the system, to keep things balanced. Since this occurs at a roughly fixed rate through taxation, government debt, and fees, the money supply is manipulated through interest rates. Which doesn't answer where you think these funds are constantly sprouting from. The government's primary control is either printing or interest rates. Taxation and fees don't destroy money. Lastly do you really think money was 'lost' in significant quantities in the past? Precious metals are precious precious because they don't wear out (corrode, contaminate etc). Ardennes posted:I think there are really two conversations here: whether wealth distribution in some form is a good or bad thing versus if mincome is actually the best way to accomplish redistribution. Then there is the second issue, how much in specifics of costs do you want to get (and this is where a argument for a mincome starts to fall apart). This post makes a lot of sense. Min income is good in the sense that it does exactly what it advertises - transfer wealth (which is better than minimum wage for example, which is mediocre policy at best). The problem with the proponents is that they seem to be underestimating the cost (no it probably wont' grow GDP) and overestimating the political feasibility. Minimum income in the range of 20-30k (larger than the GDP per capita of most of the planet) is politically impossible.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:42
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asdf32 posted:Which doesn't answer where you think these funds are constantly sprouting from. The vast majority of money in the past was virtual and minting was unable to develop a truly cash economy until the late 1700s in Europe and the Americas. Coins also wear as they are passed from hand to hand, you ignorant sack of poo poo, and this eventually destroys them after a couple of decades for modern zinc-alloy coinage. Precious metals would have lasted longer, but still not enough to really make them durable. Taxation and fees do destroy money. The idea that they don't is a convenient fiction. These funds are created through lending on the auspices of the Federal Reserve system, and were previously created by banks chartered under the National Banking Acts, and before that the state-chartered banks issuing against the Mint, and before that via the Banks of the United States.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:55
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ReadyToHuman posted:Your maths are a bit dodgy because you're counting what healthcare costs currently cost the government vs what they'd eventually cost the government when nationalized rather than what they cost the economy currently vs what they'd cost the economy when nationalized. Consistently the latter is far lower. It may be lower, but in all modesty nationalized health care in the US would probably look more like an expanded version of Medicare in the first place. The savings would probably be from the consumer side rather than the government. quote:Similarly that $6T figure looks mathed up as "this is all additional spending" when most people's paid salary for working will almost certainly be adjusted factoring in the guaranteed income everyone's getting. If so then changes in government revenue would be neutral or negative depending on how you want to tax mincome. Employers would have more profits, but in all likelihood I doubt the government is going to be able to get enough of that money back especially since so many US companies offshore profits as much as humanly possible. Tiny Brontosaurus posted:The number of adults in poverty, according to the 2014 Poverty Report, is about 75 million people. 75 mil. x 20K is 1.5 trillion dollars. We spent 370 billion in welfare in 2014, so roll that budget into the new mincome plan and the new expenditure is closer to 1.1 trillion before we factor in likely decreases in healthcare costs, incarceration, and other side effects of poverty. We can also expect a good portion of that budget to immediately return to state and city coffers in the form of sales tax. 1.1 Trillion is still massive gap and that is with means testing. I am not saying btw there should be more spending but I much rather target specific issues with the limited resources available. Maybe some day that type of spending would be possible but it would have to be very carefully built over time and funded without leaving other vulnerable gaps in the system in housing/health care especially.
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Jan 8, 2016 02:58
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I really don't think this is within the scope of the thread, and it's confusing the issue for people. It's not necessary to cover abstract ideas about currency and wealth creation here - there are much more prosaic things to discuss about mincome. Although I don't think "it's politically impossible" is one of them because duh. Ardennes posted:1.1 Trillion is still massive gap and that is with means testing. I am not saying btw there should be more spending but I much rather target specific issues with the limited resources available. Maybe some day that type of spending would be possible but it would have to be very carefully built over time and funded without leaving other vulnerable gaps in the system in housing/health care especially. Our resources are only limited because we let the wealthiest of us take a psychotically unfair share. It's not really possible to discuss something like mincome without understanding that first. Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 03:00
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Effectronica posted:A basic income or mincome would also decrease the savings rate because people's situations would be much more stable, in turn spurring consumption and investment. It would decrease the savings rate because it would transfer money from people who tend to save more (the rich) to people who tend to save less (the poor). It would increase demand for the same reason. It would also push on the inflation rate -- but that's sometimes desirable, like it is in this case, because the price of labor would increase most of all. There would be more labor demanded (because poor people consume more), and less labor supplied (because fewer people would work, or work as many hours). It's really good economic policy, to say nothing of its moral quality. But it's expensive. And how it gets paid for is relevant. Effectronica posted:Sure, because the chartalist position shuts down nonsense about "balancing the budget". There is no such thing as balancing the budget, there is merely a matter of determining how the money supply should expand or contract. Government debt is a way to withdraw money from the supply without actively destroying it, meaning that all the nonsense about "debt ceilings" can be shut down. There are some real advantages to eliminating the religious mindset of money as existing independent of its creators. I certainly see the utility of the argument as a cudgel. I'm not sure it's helpful when thinking about policy. "Balancing the budget" is actually an important thing in the long run. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 04:18
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JeffersonClay posted:I certainly see the utility of the argument as a cudgel. I'm not sure it's helpful when thinking about policy. "Balancing the budget" is actually an important thing in the long run. Has it ever been balanced?
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Jan 8, 2016 04:20
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OwlFancier posted:Has it ever been balanced? Many countries do it well enough and don't end up like Greece or Zimbabwe.
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Jan 8, 2016 04:37
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asdf32 posted:Many countries do it well enough and don't end up like Greece or Zimbabwe. Yes but there's a difference between the budget having to actually be balanced because of some inherent physical law, and the utility of presenting it as stable enough that people don't lose faith in the currency. As far as I know most countries run a consistent deficit which should be impossible if there's an actual need to balance the budget rather than a need to preserve the illusion that money is a concrete thing.
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Jan 8, 2016 04:40
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JeffersonClay posted:It would decrease the savings rate because it would transfer money from people who tend to save more (the rich) to people who tend to save less (the poor). It would increase demand for the same reason. It would also push on the inflation rate -- but that's sometimes desirable, like it is in this case, because the price of labor would increase most of all. There would be more labor demanded (because poor people consume more), and less labor supplied (because fewer people would work, or work as many hours). It's really good economic policy, to say nothing of its moral quality. It would also decrease the savings rate because the position of middle-income people is more secure against sudden job losses or family emergencies. Well, I mean, if you don't think of it as an account-book that needs to be balanced at the end of every period and think of it as an equilibrium over the long term, then you have much more room to do drastic things like pump money into the economy or do one-time capital/wealth taxes or whatever. Keynes was heavily inspired by chartalist money.
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Jan 8, 2016 04:41
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