Why the world should adopt a basic income

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by LafayetteBis, Jul 10, 2018.

  1. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    From the Economist: Why the world should adopt a basic income

    Excerpt:
    In an era of rentier capitalism… [a basic income] would provide an anchor for a fairer income-distribution system. And, in countries with high crime-rates it could have a profound effect upon criminal activity. From a Pew Report here:
    Rentier-capitalism, is "franglais" - that is rentier in French means (in English) "a person living on income from property or investments". You know, uh ... people like Donald Dork and his entire family.

    Though, of course, they like to call themselves working "businessmen and businesswomen". So, pray tell, what's in a name? (Fecal-matter smells like fecal-matter. ;^)

    NB: Note that in the definition of Basic Income, the key criterion is "legal resident in the community". Meaning one was born with national citizenship or acquired it legally. It does not mean the guy/gal who just made it through the fence from some foreign country (who probably deserves asylum but not necessarily citizenship) ...
     
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  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So is this a global basic income, or adopted by individual country?

    And an amount of money in Nepal is going to be a lot less than it is in England. Assuming that amounts paid out in different countries vary widely, how is this all going to work in the context of immigration? (Sounds to me a serious question that needs to be considered before you try to implement it)
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2018
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  3. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, of course. "Global Basic Income" is the product of typical Looney-Left's passion for exaggeration. Nobody's perfect, both sides exaggerate. (Which is why I try to stay in the center.)

    It would become "worldwide" simply because individual countries adopt it. There is no way of forcing the mechanism on other countries who may not want it ...
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2018
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  4. james M

    james M Banned

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    and provide a great great reason not to have to earn a basic income since it could be stolen at gun point from those who struggled to earn a basic income and then some!!!
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2018
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  5. vman12

    vman12 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We already have that, it's called getting a job.
     
  6. james M

    james M Banned

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    and thanks to capitalism its only 8 hours a day, 5 days week and its usually air conditioned. Plus it comes with extras like free education, infrastructure, national defense, and health care if needed for an extra $70/K a year. We suffer from too much basic income not too little
     
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  7. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Saudi Arabia effectively has a form of universal basic income for all its citizens. And they still bring in foreigners to do all the menial jobs and treat them like slaves.
     
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  8. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We are moving to a mostly electric-car society.

    The handwriting is on the wall in Saudi Arabia - it's over, the BigOilTimes.

    And its new leader is showing that he understands that SA's future will not be at all like the past. It will be far more modest ...

    NB: The historic split between Chiite and Sunnite sects has to end in the Middle-east. Enough of the mutual killing. Allah would frown on it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2018
  9. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You're not up-to-date with what is happening there.

    The money-line has tightened and the country is trying to rid itself of the foreign helpers.

    They've realized that 20-years down the road both America and Europe will be running on electric cars and heating their houses by means of cheap photo-electric cells...
     
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  10. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    I'm perfectly fine with a few countries (not my own of course) adopting it so it could be studied for several years to see how it goes.
     
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  11. Battle3

    Battle3 Well-Known Member

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    BS. Arabs hire foreigners (mainly from North Africa) to do their menial labor, and its not changing. I've had friends there for years, some are there now, all your post is wrong.
     
  12. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    GUARANTEED MINIMUM WAGE

    First let's get the nomenclature straight. An explanation from BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network):
    The basic income in France, for instance, is about 575€ a month, but there are a good number of conditions attached that can expand or even diminish that amount. For the moment, only Finland has a Guaranteed Minimum Wage being practiced under study.

    What the above BIEN proposal is getting at is to enlarge the canvas to all those who might be in need of a basic-income regardless of any particular situation. This was at the heart of a pilot-program in Finland when an assortment of unemployed were were allowed to participate.

    The result is that (firstly) all those participating in Finland want very much to have the program continue and displace the present system of government allotments (no surprise there) but also to expand the program to the entire nation.

    The next step is, given the above, to get other countries to participate in a similar manner. That is, test the system to find/correct its flaws and pronounce good-points, and then implement it throughout the country over a period of time.

    Country accounts are still suffering from the Great Recession years, so it will be a slow take-up on any program. But as GDPs expand, so do tax-revenues and once it works in northern-Europe, the rest of the EU countries will give it more serious attention. Throwing away existing plans for the unemployed and replacing them with this one will be godsend. Because the Basic Income does not go away just because you've found a job.

    It adds to the net-revenue, which induces people to spend further. And, in the EU, the more one spends the more taxation-revenues accrue to the country - since all employ a VAT-system, which is around 20% for most countries. It is THE major revenue source, unlike the US that has Income Taxation as the principle tax-payment.

    The hodge-podge of state sales taxes is just a bad excuse for getting high-tax shoppers to cross a state line to shop more cheaply. Which is kinda-sorta stoopid.

    The current federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour, which works out to $15,080 a year for a full-time worker. That's almost $4,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.

    Methinks its time for the US to adopt a Guaranteed* Minimum Wage. Then let's all watch in satisfaction as both crime-rates and the proportion of inmates criminally incarcerated reduce amazingly like magic ...

    *Whether one works or not.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2018
  13. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Basic income analysis is old hat stuff. Its really of little difference to Friedman's negative income tax. More radical solutions are required.
     
  14. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    As long as you guarantee the wage yourself personally, I'll take your money.
     
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  15. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Maybe the real ecomic issue to focus on is concentration of job opportunities, which drives up costs of living in those limited areas where the job opportunities exist. Imagine how much more disposable income people could have if housing was 50% cheaper because they could live somewhere else with more open space, but keep the same job.
     
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  16. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    ITS TIME WILL COME

    I'm not sure that can be managed politically "from above". That is, the cities and states have a right to progress in the manner that best suits them. (Of course, who decides what "best suits them"?)

    California has long been a state where people "come-'n-go" typically because the climate is attractive and there are jobs. When there are no jobs, people clear out. They go elsewhere.

    By the above I am showing what I call a "social dichotomy". People are free to move around in the US (far more free that in Europe with its language barriers), but it is those who remain local who determine local political policy. And, let's face, those who have the money-advantage do pretty much what they want to do. Only strong central politics (state/local) could administer a policy that was more, uh, "equitable". That is, the development becomes "uniform" and not just city-centered.

    Who would have thought that Silicon Valley would become what it is today. Well, there was a precursor. It was the Route 128 that circled Boston - where high-tech talent was available to produce companies like the Digital Equipment Corporation (out of MIT). "DEC" is long gone, absorbed by HP, itself absorbed as well. (See that full story here.)

    This sort of mutation is symbolic of high-tech industries. Low-tech industries are now undergoing the same manipulation, but this time due to the nature of work. A significant part of our workforce is being competed out of jobs. That has been happening since the Bamboo Curtain dropped in the early 1990s.

    Why did we not see that coming! What, ever, were we thinking ... !

    The first "thing" one learns (or not) in Economics is "cyclicity". We've come out of the Great Recession and we are on Bull-Run. But, the next recession is out there just waiting, waiting, waiting.

    It's time will come - and we'd better be prepared for it ...
     
  17. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    THE SACRED TRIUMVERATE

    We have what is called a republican-democracy. Ugh ... I use both words for the idiots out there that insist that the US is republic and not a democracy. Nowhere on earth does anybody confuse the two words, to my knowledge outside of the US. (Which simply means people may be taking Civics classes, but they are learning nothing.)

    But, if people decide to sit at home like couch-potatoes spectating events, then they deserve what happens to such consummate-indifference to the world around them. (That was so well portrayed in Orwell's book "1984" written just after WW2. He saw what was coming.)

    The structure of politics in the US has become decrepit, stultified, manipulated and non-democratic in nature. It has to change, and the foremost of changes is in any democracy's Sacred Triumvirate (Executive, Legislative, and JudicIal).

    We are a country that fought a civil-war revolution to free ourselves to the malignancy of an Absolute Rule (the "King"). And, in only 200 years we have established our own moneyed "democratic monarchy".

    That is, the rule of BigMoney by means of an outdated and defective voting-processes that has manipulated the politics of the nation at all levels from top-to-bottom ...

    It's time for another "revolution", boyz-'n-girlz - one in which all citizens must be taken to task to vote; which becomes a Legal Rule punishable by fines for not voting in the election of our political representatives at all levels city, state and nation ...

    PS: See here (from Pew Research): By international standards, U.S. voter turnout is low - yes, look for the US down at the bottom of voter participation-rates.
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2018
  18. james M

    james M Banned

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    seems like a good idea to me. We guarantee a basic income to all and then no one has to earn a basic income!! What a fine liberal idea!!
     
  19. jcarlilesiu

    jcarlilesiu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Where does the money come from?
     
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  20. jcarlilesiu

    jcarlilesiu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Um... the US is a Republic.
     
  21. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah right, it is also a democracy.

    It would help if you looked up the definition of both words. I tire of giving them here ...
     
  22. jcarlilesiu

    jcarlilesiu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It is. It is not mutually exclusive. Democracy simply means a system of government controlled by the people. That is true. It is democratic in that it is a Representative Republic.

    A post was made that it can't be both, or that people don't understand from a civics perspective how the country is ruled.. which was false. Because it is both.
     
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  23. One Mind

    One Mind Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Where would the money for a basic income come from?

    An economy that displaced humans, in favor of AI and robotics? Which means the owners of those businesses, right? So, they basically have to give a part of their profits, on behalf of the work being done by AI and robots? And then those humans that still are needed in the economic model contribute by taxes? Is that it?
     
  24. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Both words mean the same. Try looking for any substantial differences between them in any dictionary.

    There are none ... so why do crackpot Replicants on this forum insist that the US is a Republic correcting me when I say it is a Democracy?

    This sort of knit-picking asininity is what happens on this "debate" forum ...
     
  25. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You didn't read the post did you? The basic income guarantee is on a par with your hero Friedman and his call for a negative income tax.
     

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