My Imaginary GF posted:

Or, how much will higher education rates go up for individuals due to increased access? Will individuals be able to more afford to live the basics of life, while resulting in an overall reduction of tax revenues, or will they live a better life while increasing everyone's profit margins and reducing the deficit and need for entitlement programs?

Helsing posted:

If a bunch of elderly Wal Mart greeters and single moms waiting tables suddenly withdraw their labour from the economy while simultaneously a bunch of car dealerships, construction firms, marketers and factories get new customers then do you really think the final effect on the economy will be nil?

Helsing posted:

As demand increases more idle workers are hired. Also people currently performing low productivity work may be attracted by better wages to move into higher productivity occupations. In addition to this you'll have people who can now afford to do things like hire a nanny (creating one job) and then enter the labour force (increasing hours worked). It also raises the price of labour, which puts pressure on companies to automoate, which in turn raises productivity (and thanks to the GMI job killing automation presumably won't carry the risk of sucking aggregate demand out of the middle class).

So I see no reason to assume that productivity or hours worked are guaranteed to decline, and even if they do decline there's seemingly no reason to think they'd just happen to decline the exactly right amount to eliminate any gains from increasing aggregate demand.


No doubt some of the money would end up going to places like China but roughly %70 of America's GDP is still domestic consumption, and in particular a lot of the goods and services consumed by lower income individuals are local based (i.e. lunch at the local deli, somebody to take care of your kids, etc).

Helsing posted:

If a bunch of elderly Wal Mart greeters and single moms waiting tables suddenly withdraw their labour from the economy while simultaneously a bunch of car dealerships, construction firms, marketers and factories get new customers then do you really think the final effect on the economy will be nil?


If you want to argue that GDP isn't an ideal tool for measuring human welfare or even economic development I'm not going to disagree with you.

archangelwar posted:

Minimum wage policy supposedly has the exact same effect of pushing out certain sections of the labor force, yet somehow increased unemployment is not a guaranteed consequence of raising minimum wage.

Additionally, you are talking about removing the most vulnerable and often least productive elements of the labor force, and offsetting it with increased consumption.

MadMattH posted:

I don't think that higher education costs would go up at all. The people who feel like they 'need' a degree to find decent work now would not feel that need if they had a guaranteed income. Those people wouldn't go and pay more for an unnecessary education. I'd guess that there would be less demand for it, and therefore if they wanted to stay in business they'd have to either offer more value for what is currently being paid or lower prices to attract the people who only require that kind of education to advance to something that actually needs it.

down with slavery posted:

Woah woah woah, giving people enough money to survive comfortably?

"I'm going to need a comprehensive impact report before I sign up for this" said the rear end in a top hat

My Imaginary GF posted:

"I could draft a serious policy brief with a moderate chance for implementation," said the rear end in a top hat who knows his audience and their concerns.

Tiberius Thyben posted:

As was already said, we need one now. But even that is only part of a solution, as it simply creates a basic income underclass, and an ultra rich overclass. It does little to fix social mobility.

quote:

As noted above, we found several examples of new economic activities linked to the BIG. Most notable were several new small business activities that emerged, including retailing, brick-making and the manufacture of clothing. Thus the BIG was not spent only on immediate consumption needs but also provided a basis for income-generating activity. This is supported by the following remarks from residents of Otjivero:

“Since we get the BIG I bought materials and I am making three dresses that I sell for N$ 150” (Emilia Garises).

“I started my business of making ice lollies right after the BIG started.... The demand for ice lollies is big because I make the biggest ice lollies in the settlement. I sell one ice lolly for 50 cents and I make 50 a day... With the BIG, people have money to spend, that is why I make the ice lollies” (Belinda Beukes).

“After the introduction of the BIG I started my business. I bake traditional bread every day. I bake 100 rolls per day and sell each for one dollar... I make a profit of about N$400 per month. My business is good and I believe that it will grow. The only problem that I have is the lack of fire wood. It is often hard to get wood. But
I made an application for additional help to the government in order to expand my business” (Frieda Nembwaya – her house is shown on the outside cover of this book).

My Imaginary GF posted:

I think you're making a mistake in assuming that education is a good with elastic demand.

Why do high school seniors, even the ones who should go to trade school instead, go to college for 4 years? I guarantee its not because of a perception of future return with increased lifelong earning potential for the vast majority of individuals at non-Ivy institutions.

Hell, we're already seeing the impact of a GMI during college enrollment in the form of student loans. Take away the repayment obligation, you'll only increase demand for a limited number of slots, for which foreign competition at higher price is already exerting upward price pressures.

And all this minimum wage chat, it completely fails to look at wages as a system. If you live in a state with the bare Federal minimum and border a world-class municipality with a $15/hr wage, you're incentivizing urban blight amongst the working classes unable to afford to cross state borders to take advantage of city pay with residential administrated poverty. It provides perverse incentives unless properly enacted on a regional, multi-jurisdictional level.

MadMattH posted:

It's not elastic in the current environment, it's a false 'requirement'. It's not the perception of future return (meaning that they aren't looking at the amount they will make), it's instilled in kids these days that a college degree is a requirement for any kind of decent job beyond a minimum wage. They get told "If you don't want to work at McDonald's your whole life go to college." It's not that the jobs themselves have changed in difficulty therefore requiring a degree, it's that the competition for jobs has increased. There's a reason that diploma mills exist and it isn't to educate. The competition for the lower end jobs that 'require' degrees would end. If there were a guaranteed income, having to get a diploma from a university to get a job as a secretary would disappear. There would be no reason to get 'a degree' just to make a basic living. It's not the higher tier jobs that actually need a degree that would be affected.
The student loans wouldn't be an issue at all if marginal income students and people who really don't need a degree didn't enroll in the first place. There would be no pressure to enroll in higher education for people who can't pay for it since they wouldn't have to have the degree to get a job with which to pay student loans, etc. The only people who would bother with college would be the ones who really wanted to, the ones that really need a degree to actually do their jobs.

asdf32 posted:

You can't offset the removal or people from the workforce with increased consumption. Those things are actually contradictory.

archangelwar posted:

This is both factually incorrect as well as being somewhat irrelevant. If you are going to continue to make unsupported "just so" claims on top of being intentionally obtuse, I don't really see anything productive from responding to you. You are completely mischaracterizing even the simplistic Econ 101 arguments, much less the deeper macro discussions that move beyond.

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

But the phenomenon you're talking about doesn't really exist in the first place. A quick glance at AA jobs on my local Craigslist found exactly one with "degree preferred," and none that were required. Even in more technical fields like software development a degree isn't really required if you have enough experience. And the reason jobs aren't requiring it is because there isn't the supply that would be needed:

on the left posted:

How is it incorrect? Cutting the workforce obviously won't increase production, and if consumption is expected to rise, it's likely that the increased consumption will come at the cost of net exports.

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

But the phenomenon you're talking about doesn't really exist in the first place. A quick glance at AA jobs on my local Craigslist found exactly one with "degree preferred," and none that were required. Even in more technical fields like software development a degree isn't really required if you have enough experience. And the reason jobs aren't requiring it is because there isn't the supply that would be needed:

on the left posted:

How is it incorrect? Cutting the workforce obviously won't increase production, and if consumption is expected to rise, it's likely that the increased consumption will come at the cost of net exports.

archangelwar posted:

Just because a segment of the population voluntarily leaves the workforce does not mean that there is a permanent cut in the workforce, given that we currently have un/underemployment in other labor cohorts, nor does it necessarily mean an overall reduction in production since the displaced cohort currently holds one of the least productive positions.

on the left posted:

I didn't say production would drop, but there's no real reason why production would rise. If you predict increased consumption without corresponding increased production, there's one easy place it can originate: a decrease in net exports.

archangelwar posted:

Why are we assuming no increased production?

on the left posted:

What evidence do you have that large amounts of people dropping out of the workforce would increase productivity?

on the left posted:

What evidence do you have that large amounts of people dropping out of the workforce would increase productivity?

archangelwar posted:

Well first of all, we are talking about increased consumption, so I am not sure why you think I am tying increased production as a function of reduction of the workforce. Second, you are once again assuming overall reduction of productive labor, which is yet again a point of contention. Third, you have now introduced the scare words "large amounts" as if not only the previous point were settled, but you have fundamentally changed the argument into a total strawman.

on the left posted:

The whole point of a mincome is to drastically cut the workforce, so it makes sense to point out the effects of doing that. If your argument is that a mincome will change very little, then what's the point of enacting one?

on the left posted:

The whole point of a mincome is to drastically cut the workforce

on the left posted:

The whole point of a mincome is to drastically cut the workforce, so it makes sense to point out the effects of doing that.

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

It's not though, it's to provide everyone with a basic level of sustenance. One of the big changes caused by the basic income study I linked earlier was that self-employment income went up as people didn't have to worry about starving if starting a business didn't work out.

Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:

It's not though, it's to provide everyone with a basic level of sustenance. One of the big changes caused by the basic income study I linked earlier was that self-employment income went up as people didn't have to worry about starving if starting a business didn't work out.

on the left posted:

If this is the goal, why not just expand the food stamps program and make getting section 8 housing easier? Then we don't need to worry about the financial difficulty of mailing everyone 15k a year.

on the left posted:

Somehow I have a feeling that expanding welfare is a lot easier than getting the government to sign off on yearly checks to every citizen. The 14th amendment guarantees that any mincome would be quickly broken by birth tourism.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Food is already heavily subsidized, I don't know how people can expect it to get much lower.

on the left posted:

Somehow I have a feeling that expanding welfare is a lot easier than getting the government to sign off on yearly checks to every citizen. The 14th amendment guarantees that any mincome would be quickly broken by birth tourism.

VitalSigns posted:

Anchor babies!

How would this hurt the system? Babies don't get mincome their parents aren't going to receive it for their loving tourist visa. Presumably expats aren't going to be getting it either, so what are they going to pop out a kid in New Jersey, leave him at the orphanage, and fly home?

asdf32 posted:

Increased aggregate demand will certainly create a pull in the labor market for more production which will show up as increased wages. But whether this leads to more production or inflation depends entirely on whether it succeeds at getting more people into the workforce and/or increasing productivity.

Simultaneously every potential new employee is getting $15k from a policy that's deliberately trying to prevent some of them from feeling a need to work.

Remember that money for GMI came from someone who was also going to spend most of it. The aggregate demand increase comes from the different propensities to spend. It's not the entire GMI amount or close too it.

So yes some of what you're saying is possible, it depends on 1) how much aggregate demand increases and 2) how much less interested will people be in working.

quote:

I think the economic effects are nil unless those car dealerships, construction firms and factories get more workers!

on the left posted:

Somehow I have a feeling that expanding welfare is a lot easier than getting the government to sign off on yearly checks to every citizen. The 14th amendment guarantees that any mincome would be quickly broken by birth tourism.

on the left posted:

Why wouldn't expats get mincome if it were truly for everyone with no real restrictions?

VitalSigns posted:

No income restrictions. Presumably we'd require residency. You're arguing against something no one has proposed.

Helsing posted:

VitalSigns posted:

No income restrictions. Presumably we'd require residency. You're arguing against something no one has proposed.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Yeah. I just don't know whether they're a naive child or ideologue.

on the left posted:

It's pretty easy to switch your tax residency to the US. It's much harder to establish a tax residency outside of the US. Just rent a mailbox in the US and say you are traveling on an extended basis.

quote:

Birth tourism is a real thing that has taken off in recent times because customs has been ordered to stop asking pregnant mothers about it. It would probably be much bigger if US citizenship was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct cash benefits.

VitalSigns posted:

Just to be clear, you're worried about 3-day-old infants doing this?

VitalSigns posted:

Help someone, the freep is coming from inside SA

on the left posted:

I know couples who have done this, mainly to save on university costs in the future.