Will we need a basic income in the future?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Will we need a basic income in the future?

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

My Lil Parachute posted:

You sell Hot Dogs. The Government gives you an extra $30 a day, then ups your Taxes by $40 a day. Your suppliers all raise their prices (because they are getting taxed more and their suppliers are charging more). At the same time, your customers now have extra money and can therefore afford to pay more for hot dogs.

Do you 1) raise your prices like everyone else, 2) lose money, or 3) say "screw it, working is for chumps" and quit. Be honest.

e: no - it has never been tried in a long-term, closed-loop system. Most people won't quit work when they know the trial is going to end and they will eventually have to explain the big gap on their resume.

I think you missed the point where your hot dog seller who's going to be ruined by $10 a day wouldn't be paying any more in taxes in the first place. As has been pointed out earlier, the theory here is to fund this by increasing the top marginal tax rates so that the people in the very top income brackets are having that income redistributed to where it will make a much larger economic impact than their usual strategy of sitting on it like a dragon nesting on its horde.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2014 18:08

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:24

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

EasternBronze posted:

The reason why these entitlements exist is because some people do dumb things with their life. What about the guy who blows through all his income half-way through the year or a woman who gets it extorted out of her from an abusive boyfriend? A perfect example is people who win the lottery.

That social darwinist stuff you were saying before, was that actually serious? I literally thought it was a joke. Come on.

Are you literally mentally deficient, or do you just play a retard on the internet?

You don't pay out something like this in a lump sum for the same reason you don't pay foodstamps out in a lump sum. So even people who are terrible at financial management can't gently caress it up.

Pay it out as a bimonthly check just like a paycheck and you can't gently caress it up too much beyond a couple weeks.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 14:41

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Hell, take it a little further and roll in government-run and funded debt counselling for everyone on a mincome. One of the most productive things for our economy we could do is to get the poor financially literate as well as secure so they're not stuck in debt spirals.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 14:47

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

down with slavery posted:

Again, read about the New Deal, you are mistaken if you think it happened because business was informed enough. The only incentive the 1% will listen to is a majority of the population telling them "we do this or you don't get our vote"

More accurately : "We do this or you get put up against a wall and shot."

I am more and more of the opinion that major socioeconomic change in America is going to come due to violent conflict. Not because it is necessary, but because it will break out before the nonviolent means manage to get off the ground.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Nov 4, 2014

# ¿ Nov 4, 2014 19:39

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

My Lil Parachute posted:

business doesn't care about demand for its own sake, it cares about profit. If you take from my wallet then use it to buy some stuff from my store, I don't come out ahead. It's only a win for small business and businesses large enough to employ clever accountants.

Seems like a solid win, then, given that the highest net worth portion of the American economy both personally and corporately are sitting on huge cash reserves that should be circulating. What you describe is a feature, not a bug.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2014 10:53

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

My Lil Parachute posted:

My job pays 8k, due to GMI I end up with 13k. I work harder to find a job paying 13k, due to GMI I end up with the same amount.

Why would anyone work any job that pays less than 13k under this scheme?

A full time job at the present minimum wage pays $15080 a year.

gently caress off with your blatant concern trolling.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2014 16:00

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Bedshaped posted:

I like the idea of a UBI as a kind of temporary solution to an increasingly automated society.

What is the solution to price increases on products where a single entity already has a monopoly on the entire market? An example is probably something like telecomms as they are now in America. Can't they just increase prices and drive down purchasing power?

Harsh and unforgiving antitrust legislation. The current telecomms situation is massively overdue for a repeat of what happened to Ma Bell.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2014 18:03

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:24

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

HappyHippo posted:

Missed this part. This is the usual hyperbole I get when I ask people to back up this idea, and as usual most of it is based on a science fiction understanding of technological progress. You're discounting the cost of robotics and extrapolating far too much from your example. Advances in computing power may have been exponential over the last few decades (although there are signs that that is slowing down) but not all technology follows that curve: advances in robotics have been much less impressive. We're nowhere close to having a fully automated mine.

This is what you get when you extrapolate the efficiency of automating a static assembly line process and assume it can be just as easily applied to every other task.

In short, it's massively shortsighted.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Dec 26, 2014

# ¿ Dec 26, 2014 17:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Will we need a basic income in the future?