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I'll try this in D&D since I spent about an hour writing and researching it and it was gassed in GBS in about 30 seconds. ++++++++ Finland is considering giving all of their citizens a "minimum income," no matter whether or not they currently have a job. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33977636 This is an interesting concept. Make the benefit available to EVERYONE in the USA regardless of income, on their 18th birthday. Have the same 10 people who keep Selective Service records keep these records, too. They are already requiring males to register at age 18, just expand it to women and the form just lets us know where to mail the check/deposit the funds. They can take 1% of the people from the Social Security Administration who just lost their jobs to shuffle the extra paperwork. Current federal welfare spending looks like $2.5 trillion, give or take. (including SS, medicaid/medicare/etc). All states combined only $128B. When social security goes away, working peeps can stop paying the tax, the cost of running the Social Security Administration could go away, and the SS benefit is replaced by the "minimum income." No more welfare. No more food stamps. No more SS. Almost four trillion dollars would probably be saved right there, and divided up, when you add in the cost of running those departments and overpaying tens of thousands of paper shufflers their $75k/year+pension. You wouldn't even need to worry about all those unemployed peeps from those departments.... they now get the minimum income. No more unemployment checks needed... minimum income. *does some guesstimate math* 2,500,000,000,000 / 246,000,000 (population over 18) = $10,162. per person, per year. 2015 poverty level for a single person is $11,770... just shy of our projections... but for 2 people it's $16k, so get a roommate or a girlfriend and split costs and suddenly you're doing slightly better. I submit that the poverty level will become lower when it becomes less expensive to live. Which may or may not be enough to get by for a year. Would be a little better for families when everyone gets it. The people who will hate this idea the most are the clerks making $75k a year slowly shuffling paperwork in the social security offices. Isn't that interesting. All that extra money in the economy, too. I bet GPD would go up, and we can tie the "Minimum Income" increases and decreases to the GDP. As people get more successful and make more money, the money they get from "Minimum Income" just returns as income tax dollars. The only big wildcard in selling this plan is, we just eliminated medicare and Medicaid... what are these people going to do for health care? The only thing I can think of is that it needs to be truly free for everyone, and who is going to pay for it? Here's where it gets unpopular for a few people: we'll probably need to cap maximum incomes at, say 1000x the minimum income. So, at $10k per person, maximum income would be about a million dollars per year, which would affect about 1% of the population. I bet we could get it voted in in spite of that. Would be easier if most of the legislators were not in that 1%. So we set the system so that if there is a budget surplus, the minimum salary goes up, which means rich peeps also get to make and keep more money. Incentivises them to keep improving things. The important thing is that the salary cap will always be tied to the minimum salary to keep a runaway top 1% situation from happening the way it is now. +++ People can still work and make more money on top of their minimum. People can flip burgers at McD's to keep themselves busy, and make minimum wage and have an extra $15k per year for the new xbox and weed and whatever, on top of their minimum income. But they'll have fewer taxes, and free health care, and the size of the bloated government will shrink significantly, resulting in less money needed to keep it running, and more people will have their fate back in their own hands. It's hard to find a real down-side. Let's try to shoot holes in the plan and if we can't we can make the idea go viral all over facebook and be successful in changing the country for the better in the exact same way the Occupy! movement wasn't. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 02:58 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 17:18 |
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I dunno why you're so fixated on civil servants with good salaries and benefits. I'm in favor of basic income for reasons that have nothing to do with putting civil servants out of work so it seems a little weird.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 04:13 |
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GunnerJ posted:I dunno why you're so fixated on civil servants with good salaries and benefits. I'm in favor of basic income for reasons that have nothing to do with putting civil servants out of work so it seems a little weird. If their jobs don't need to exist, then they won't have jobs. It isn't about putting them out of work, it's about helping everyone and making a better system.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 04:29 |
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GORDON posted:It isn't about putting them out of work, it's about helping everyone and making a better system. OK, so if that's the case, why even talk about how hypothetically some bureaucrats would be out of a job? Who cares, unless someone brings it up as a consequence to consider?
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 04:33 |
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I've read many different point of views on this , and some papers bring up interesting points: Given that Medicaid and the like are now just rolled into a flat payment, how do we handle those who cannot work? Disabled people who cannot work have no additional income to live ($10,000 isn't going to cut it)have no options. Make special exception for disabled people? This adds another layer of bureaucracy, which is the whole point of simplyfying the welfare system. What about their medical expenses? Universal healthcare? There is also the issue of regionality. $10,000 in Alabama goes way further than in NYC. Would housing prices shift in high cost areas to still leave out a large segment of population? What will the amount be 5 or 10 years from now? We start at $10,000, and surely there will be pressure to raise it as $10,000 is simply not enough. One such paper I have read uses the Alaskan oil pay,nets as an example of this. The payment has had pressure to be increased numerous times , with the state caving in. These payments have sometimes surpassed the very fund the oil companies use to payout these payments. I'm not a economist, but I'd be interested to hear about how cost of goods and weath distribution changes should a whole country see a same increase in income. There's also the likelihood that this would ever gain widespread acceptance in the United states, but that's a whole other thing entirely.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 04:50 |
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Giving everyone a basic income, by itself, won't stop poverty. For instance, without market controls in place, essential goods (housing, food, etc.) can still increase in price through artificial scarcity, price collusion, or straight up monopoly / duopoly, and then people on basic income will still be in poverty. Solving poverty reduces the (power/wealth/power of wealth) of the powerful, and governments, for all their democratic decorations, are run by the powerful. If minimum income -would- solve poverty, it wouldn't be implemented. Poverty increases the power of the powerful. The threat of being fired is more effective if being fired makes you homeless. People will take terrible degrading jobs to put food, but not weed, on the table. Worthless jobs are useful for the powerful, they waste people's time that could instead be used to participate in democracy, or compete with the powerful in the managed market. Those 'paper pushers' would love to be doing something useful, but given the artificial scarcity of jobs, they are pushed into pushing paper. Occupy wasn't a movement, it was a tactic used by a coalition of movements that had existed decades before occupy. A rather effective tactic.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 05:13 |
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Rob Filter posted:Solving poverty reduces the (power/wealth/power of wealth) of the powerful, and governments, for all their democratic decorations, are run by the powerful. If minimum income -would- solve poverty, it wouldn't be implemented. Poverty increases the power of the powerful. The threat of being fired is more effective if being fired makes you homeless. People will take terrible degrading jobs to put food, but not weed, on the table. This requires an exceptional amount of coordination and self-sacrifice on the part of "the powerful". Suppose I run GM. Most of my employees, particularly the hard-to-replace ones, are making at least $60k / year. A $10k/year minimum income isn't going to hurt my leverage all that much. That's less than unemployement insurance, and certainly not enough to maintain most employee's lifestyle. If anything, it's an excuse for me to cut my retirement package by $10k/year. That leverage only really matters for a small slice of corporations that hire people near minimum wage in areas that someone can survive on $10k/year. Why should I, as a profit-motivated GM CEO, be willing to spend my company's money lobbying for something that won't help my business? If I was into spending money for 'solidarity' I wouldn't be a heartless CEO in the first place. Rob Filter posted:Worthless jobs are useful for the powerful, they waste people's time that could instead be used to participate in democracy, or compete with the powerful in the managed market. Those 'paper pushers' would love to be doing something useful, but given the artificial scarcity of jobs, they are pushed into pushing paper. Again, even if we accept that 'worthless jobs' would help powerful people as a whole, why would I, as a GM CEO, be willing to pay for it? Maybe I'd see a little money by pulling people off the market. But common sense says that I'd see significantly more money by NOT hiring these people. Then their salaries become profit. All the other powerful CEOs should be able to do pretty much the same calculation.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 05:39 |
Huh, if only there were an enormous business sector, perhaps called something like "business consultancy", which revolved around selling procedure packages and elaborate training exercises to high-level executives.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 05:45 |
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falcon2424 posted:Again, even if we accept that 'worthless jobs' would help powerful people as a whole, why would I, as a GM CEO, be willing to pay for it? By working together with other powerful people, you can as a class implement things that are in your collective, but not individual, interests Say, by taxing yourselves through a government and having that government implement those policies. Or by forming industry wide lobbying groups, where members are motivated to contribute so they can make sure industry regulations aren't formed against their specific companies interest. quote:
It does require coordination, but not self sacrifice. If you collectively decide to raise money through a tax, and enforce that tax through the legal system, it doesn't matter that individual actors don't want to pay money, they have too. It's also not really the CEO's who decide things, but the people who own massive quantities of shares, the billion dollar plus club. If working together with other wealthy people produces benefits for you, and as a side effect them, its still in your self interest to coperate.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 06:26 |
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Effectronica posted:Huh, if only there were an enormous business sector, perhaps called something like "business consultancy", which revolved around selling procedure packages and elaborate training exercises to high-level executives. The definition of a bullshit job
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 07:38 |
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Just want to say that an absolute cap on income will never happen and should never happen. Just make increasing tax brackets up to like 90% on the absurdly wealthy, including all forms of income rather than just wages.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 08:11 |
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You could save some money implementing a GMT if you only paid those who were not working, working part time, or otherwise not meeting the minimum. You don't need to give everyone 10k, just the ones not making enough to hit the minimum. While it's a good idea, it will take another decade or two before it's ever considered in the US. Good news is, automation technology is coming that will likely usher in systemic unemployment. Ok that's bad news, but will probably get people talking about solutions, including minimum income.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 08:57 |
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Freakazoid_ posted:You could save some money implementing a GMT if you only paid those who were not working, working part time, or otherwise not meeting the minimum. You don't need to give everyone 10k, just the ones not making enough to hit the minimum. The only problem I'd see with this is that the "people wouldn't work!" response might actually become true for a small section of people, mainly those who would only be able to attain low-wage jobs that are just above the GMI cutoff. What if I'm someone who would only be able to find a $14k/yr full-time job? I'd basically be working full-time for only a $4k/yr pay increase, which to some people may not be worth it. Better, in my opinion, to just offer the $10k/yr to everyone making that much or less, then slowly phase it out as your income increases, to where it disappears completely at a wage of, say, $50k/year. That way, there is still a reward for choosing to work, while not diminishing the original goals of that $10k/yr GMI.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 09:08 |
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Freakazoid_ posted:You could save some money implementing a GMT if you only paid those who were not working, working part time, or otherwise not meeting the minimum. You don't need to give everyone 10k, just the ones not making enough to hit the minimum. Kinda like the system half of Europe already has.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 09:42 |
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The Maroon Hawk posted:The only problem I'd see with this is that the "people wouldn't work!" response might actually become true for a small section of people, mainly those who would only be able to attain low-wage jobs that are just above the GMI cutoff. What if I'm someone who would only be able to find a $14k/yr full-time job? I'd basically be working full-time for only a $4k/yr pay increase, which to some people may not be worth it. This is how I've generally imagined a basic income system would work. I believe it's called a 'clawback' system; money you've been given by the government is paid back at a rate which still incentivizes people to work. Jobs at the absolute bottom of the economic ladder (low-paying lovely jobs) would have to be re-evaluated and salaries negotiated so that people take them because they feel they are being fairly compensated for their work, not because they HAVE to take them or they'll starve. Lots of people would be able to live off basic income, maybe supplementing it with odd jobs and part-time or temporary full-time work instead of being tied down into a fulltime job living paycheck to paycheck. Of course, a certain percentage of people would choose to not get any type of conventional job at all. I like to think the kind of person that would do this would also be the kind of person you don't actually want to hire or work with - unmotivated, detached workers who simply do it for the paycheck and can be more harmful to an organization or team that if they weren't there at all. The US has a long, long way to go (economically, legally, socially) before this concept gains any real traction, but I'm curious to see what the results will be in the first couple of countries to give it a shot.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 09:46 |
One fringe advantage of this - which I think would be a powerful selling point - is that now, particularly down at the lower levels, all the people who are only working because they absolutely have to will get the gently caress out of the job market, which, yes, would have some upward wage pressure, but would also (in theory) greatly increase motivation and efficiency.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 10:10 |
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Basic income could alleviate some of human suffering, therefore conservatives will never let it happen.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 10:36 |
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Minimum income is also a fairly elegant solution to the welfare 'trap', so you could probably get some conservative support behind it for that. But what would absolutely kill support for it isn't necessarily the business sector (getting fired is still good leverage, even if you're only threatening despondency instead of starvation). All they'll care about is taxation. What'll kill it 1) immigrant bullshit or 2) Healthcare costs go up the less able you are to work, so while you're giving low wage workers a much better deal, the elderly are going to be in real trouble. They'll recognize that and vote accordingly. You'll have to take that account into your math. Also, just loving make healthcare public, and give medicare some real bargaining power, to stop price gouging pharmaceutical companies. That'll give you a massive drop in expenditure, and place healthcare-per-capita costs in line with other industrialized nations.
rudatron fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Dec 29, 2015 |
# ? Dec 29, 2015 13:33 |
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Rob Filter posted:Worthless jobs are useful for the powerful, they waste people's time that could instead be used to participate in democracy, or compete with the powerful in the managed market. Those 'paper pushers' would love to be doing something useful, but given the artificial scarcity of jobs, they are pushed into pushing paper. I'm curious what you mean by "artificial" job scarcity. Job scarcity isn't really artificial in any sense, unless you want to redefine "job" away from its modern usage of selling one's labor to a party who will, presumably, benefit in some way from the transaction.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 13:39 |
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GunnerJ posted:OK, so if that's the case, why even talk about how hypothetically some bureaucrats would be out of a job? Who cares, unless someone brings it up as a consequence to consider? Because reducing the cost of the bureaucracy of redundant programs directly affects the benefit of the MI program. You are firmly in the "protectionism of unneeded civil servant jobs is priority." Noted. Let's move on. ++++ Someone else mentioned, "Getting a job that makes $14k only gives you a $4k net benefit." That's not what I am saying. I am saying EVERYONE gets their minimum income, and it never gets taken away, no matter what, no matter how much other money you make. This may seem crazy that a person making $350k/year would also get a minimum income, but that person pays so much in taxes it is negligible, anyway. Social pressure can be used for these people to donate their MI back into the government. The person doing the poo poo job full time for $14k/year still gets their MI, so they are grossing $24k(ish)/year. A poo poo, minimum wage job is a lot easier to swallow at that point. People struggle less. People are generally more content. ++++ As to the disabled... good question. Not sure. It sounds facetious, but maybe people would think about the regions they can afford to live in, a bit more.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 14:42 |
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"Basic Income" is nothing more than taking the table scraps fed to you, in order to placate you, by the capitalist class. Why live off their largesse?
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 14:56 |
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GORDON posted:You are firmly in the "protectionism of unneeded civil servant jobs is priority." Noted. Let's move on. You're bad at this. I know you seem to think you're being cleverly pithy with that statement, but you just look like an idiot and it weakens your point.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 16:19 |
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high six posted:"Basic Income" is nothing more than taking the table scraps fed to you, in order to placate you, by the capitalist class. Why live off their largesse? Because a mass uprising of the working class in which the proletariat seize the means of production from the burgeoisie, would, in the miraculous event that it ever got off the ground in the first place, be instantly crushed in a hail of automatic gunfire and drone strikes?
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 16:32 |
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GORDON posted:Because reducing the cost of the bureaucracy of redundant programs directly affects the benefit of the MI program. Well I'd say that I think it might be worth doing some math about money saved, but... quote:You are firmly in the "protectionism of unneeded civil servant jobs is priority." Noted. Let's move on. ...it kinda looks like this is something you're invested in for reasons that have nothing to do with any particular policy you favor. For example: your nonsense belief that anyone questioning your odd preoccupation with paper shufflers and their lavish $75k salaries is in favor of "protectionism of unneeded civil servant jobs." Yes, it is good for you to move on from this, you sound like a moron trying to talk about it.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 16:36 |
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It seems to be the basis of support of a minimum income is that are people on the lower end actually getting more with the system than a previous system and is that commensurate with the amount of extra spending being done? I have a hard time seeing getting rid of medicaid/medicare/social security working in that regard. As for bureaucracy, most federal spending has very little administrative costs with it already and in all likelihood any savings would be minimal to none.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 16:48 |
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Ardennes posted:It seems to be the basis of support of a minimum income is that are people on the lower end actually getting more with the system than a previous system and is that commensurate with the amount of extra spending being done? I have a hard time seeing getting rid of medicaid/medicare/social security working in that regard. This is my biggest reservation about basic income. It can't come at the cost of things like universal healthcare and public education (up to and including higher ed). If the funding for those things is diverted to basic income, that's not really a benefit because it isn't clear that the payouts from basic income will allow individuals to afford healthcare and education. Social Security, though, I think would basically be replaced by a basic income?
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 17:48 |
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Trent posted:Just want to say that an absolute cap on income will never happen and should never happen. Just make increasing tax brackets up to like 90% on the absurdly wealthy, including all forms of income rather than just wages. There have been many people (usually libertarian) who claim they wouldn't bother trying to make more money once they hit the 90% bracket. I don't think any of them ever explained why making another 100k is somehow bad it was primarily garment rending over paying that much in taxes. They also tend to be the kind of people who don't understand what a tax bracket is. I'd say that would pretty much indicate this would never be an issue they'd have to face but I did once work for an old racist gently caress worth 5-10m who asked me how I felt about my taxes going from 35% to 39% under Obama and did not understand how it didn't affect me since I didn't make over 250k nor did it affect him since most of his income was from investments so wasn't affected at all.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 18:14 |
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My main issue with a minimum income is that you would still probably end up with a bunch of people starving to death or homeless. Even if people technically have enough money, they might do dumb things (due to being financially illiterate or some other reason). While those things would, indeed, be dumb, I think it would still be bad if people starved to death because they spent too much of their mincome payment. This is especially true if the mincome is as tiny as the OP proposes. Under a proper welfare system, on the other hand, services are supplied directly, rather than indirectly through just giving people cash and letting them choose how to spend it. This would prevent such a problem and still stimulate the economy (since every dollar a person earns that isn't spent on shelter/food can be spent elsewhere).
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 18:52 |
Ytlaya posted:My main issue with a minimum income is that you would still probably end up with a bunch of people starving to death or homeless. Even if people technically have enough money, they might do dumb things (due to being financially illiterate or some other reason). While those things would, indeed, be dumb, I think it would still be bad if people starved to death because they spent too much of their mincome payment. This is especially true if the mincome is as tiny as the OP proposes. On the other hand, food stamps and the like are often psychologically degrading for people to experience, and I don't think we can assume automatically that it's solely because they're administered in a humiliating way.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 18:59 |
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I feel like we've had this discussion many times over the years, and for some reason people act as though basic income could be implemented without the political climate that would also allow for comprehensive housing assistance, universal health care and free college. To think that we'd be stuck in the GOP austerity mindset of "but what programs will we cut to pay for this" seems strange.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 19:01 |
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SedanChair posted:I feel like we've had this discussion many times over the years, and for some reason people act as though basic income could be implemented without the political climate that would also allow for comprehensive housing assistance, universal health care and free college. To think that we'd be stuck in the GOP austerity mindset of "but what programs will we cut to pay for this" seems strange. This. If a basic income were able to pass, then universal healthcare, and all sorts of big public programs would almost certainly have already been put into place first since they'd be cheaper and easier to implement. Trying to hypothetically transplant minimum incomes into the current political climate is pretty pointless when we have a climate where food stamp programs are successfully being cut.
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# ? Dec 29, 2015 19:46 |
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Paradoxish posted:I'm curious what you mean by "artificial" job scarcity. Job scarcity isn't really artificial in any sense, unless you want to redefine "job" away from its modern usage of selling one's labor to a party who will, presumably, benefit in some way from the transaction. Jobs are public or private. If the government so chose, it could hire anyone unemployed to work in any public sector job, like: Nurse, Teacher, Bus Driver, Train Driver, Librarian, Fire Fighter, Child Carer, Etc. If they didn't have the skills for any of these jobs, they could be paid to undertake training for one of those jobs. If there was such an abundance of employee's that none of those jobs were necessary anymore, you could lower the hours of every working person so that everyone worked 37 hours instead of 38, as low as you wanted. The fact the government could choose to do this but doesn't means that the lack of jobs is artificial scarcity.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 12:59 |
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Half those jobs aren't public sector the other half are local government jobs meaning every city/state around would have to have it's own set of rules to control all this which means it'll never happen you are super naive to even think something like that would get off the ground.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 13:48 |
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socialsecurity posted:Half those jobs aren't public sector the other half are local government jobs meaning every city/state around would have to have it's own set of rules to control all this which means it'll never happen you are super naive to even think something like that would get off the ground. Any job can be public sector if the government wants it to be, and all of those jobs are public sector in some countries. Your country isn't the only country in the world. I don't think such a policy would be implemented by any modern government, but not because the government can't, but because it won't.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 13:58 |
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Rob Filter posted:Any job can be public sector if the government wants it to be, and all of those jobs are public sector in some countries. Your country isn't the only country in the world. No it's not but this is a thread about Minimum Income in the USA in a forums based in the USA assuming every post is talking about every country everywhere doesn't get us anywhere as it's just too general a topic and there are too many local variances and pressures.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 14:05 |
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socialsecurity posted:No it's not but this is a thread about Minimum Income in the USA in a forums based in the USA assuming every post is talking about every country everywhere doesn't get us anywhere as it's just too general a topic and there are too many local variances and pressures. Alright, ill ignore non US countries from now on, and rephrase my last post to: Any job can be public sector if the people who control public policy wants it to be. I don't think full employment would be implemented by America, but not because America can't, but because it won't.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 15:03 |
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SedanChair posted:I feel like we've had this discussion many times over the years, and for some reason people act as though basic income could be implemented without the political climate that would also allow for comprehensive housing assistance, universal health care and free college. To think that we'd be stuck in the GOP austerity mindset of "but what programs will we cut to pay for this" seems strange. To clarify, my concern isn't about what's politically viable. It's about what's fiscally possible: is the money actually there to do all this stuff? But I guess it could be that thinking it's not is itself ideologically ingrained. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Dec 30, 2015 |
# ? Dec 30, 2015 16:18 |
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Toasticle posted:There have been many people (usually libertarian) who claim they wouldn't bother trying to make more money once they hit the 90% bracket. I don't think any of them ever explained why making another 100k is somehow bad it was primarily garment rending over paying that much in taxes. I don't understand what the problem is. More people making a lot of money is better than fewer people making a fucklot of money, right?
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 17:15 |
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DrSunshine posted:Because a mass uprising of the working class in which the proletariat seize the means of production from the burgeoisie, would, in the miraculous event that it ever got off the ground in the first place, be instantly crushed in a hail of automatic gunfire and drone strikes? It's funny because the U.S. military has been defeated by irregular forces in pretty much every major conflict it has taken part in, in the past half-century.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 17:20 |
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# ? May 8, 2024 17:18 |
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GunnerJ posted:To clarify, my concern isn't about what's politically viable. It's about what's fiscally possible: is the money actually there to do all this stuff? But I guess it could be that thinking it's not is itself ideologically ingrained. Do you mean "is there enough money" or "will rich people cough up enough money"? Because there is definitely enough money.
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# ? Dec 30, 2015 17:22 |