
My own private basic income - deegles
https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/karl-widerquist/my-own-private-basic-income
======
maerF0x0
> I lucked into money.

The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For
those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see
inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement).

Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work
in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a
developed city is worthless and thus free. A glass of water provided at the
right time in a desert is invaluable and thus expensive.

My takeaway is this: Always meet the highest value need you can, and as well
create additional value by helping others to meet higher values than they
current do. Low placed people may not be able to "work" their way to upper
echelons, but they can invent, intuit or otherwise create high value leverage
of their's and others' work. I dont see it as unfair that a person making $1 a
day is unlikely to become a deca-billionaire in their lifetime (total
mobility); instead I want to ensure they have some mobility so that they can
always better their situation, maybe by an arbitrarily selected 2x multiplier.

~~~
opportune
I couldn't disagree more. As a society (and this goes from a community to a
global scale) we should make it a priority to give everyone the resources to
meet their maximum potential. I don't mean that we should give everyone a
million dollars to invest of their own. What I mean is that we should ensure
that everyone gets provided with a good education and food/water/shelter, etc.

The author specifically mentions the people making about $7 a day doing manual
labor in Qatar, and that they were a lot shorter than he was primarily due to
lack of nutrition. Do you believe that these people should only be able to
aspire to making $14 a day? Maybe not all of these individuals are hard
workers (by nature. I'm sure they are essentially forced to be hard workers to
survive) or smart, but a lot probably are, and it's because of an unfair
system that didn't give them access to food and education that they have to
work in Qatar to make a living.

You may see this is simple economics, but I see this as a modern form of
slavery: keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always
be a cheap source of grunt labor.

~~~
drewcon
> keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a
> cheap source of grunt labor.

Poor, underfed, and uneducated is the default position for human beings. We
were born into this world, as a species, with nothing.

There is no conspiracy to "enslave" anyone, nearly all public health and
wealth measures over the last 100 years are overwhelming up and to the right.
That growth did not happened through magic or luck and certainly not from some
misapplication of noble intentions (see communism), but through the slow
accumulation of societal benefits, over time, across an open market economy.

It is not and will never be "fair", there will never be equality of outcomes,
but jesus, we've faired a lot better under this system than by the whims of
kings and politburos trying to distribute "fairness" with a clumsy iron fist.

~~~
xxSparkleSxx
>We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing.

Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything.
Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not
feasible.

It is nigh impossible to live in this world like the birds do, flying from one
food source to the next, roosting wherever you find comfort. Those with means
have entire departments to police the underclass off of their property and
setup obstacles to make sure riff-raff does not even get on the public
property next to their private property (just look at how public transport is
set up in big cities).

We protect those with means, ensuring those without cannot even live without
selling their labor. Die or work. It's a little like slavery (I KNOW there are
large differences between traditional slavery), you must be able to see that?

>but through the slow accumulation of societal benefits, over time, across an
open market economy.

Pretty sure most of the improvements we have made for the common man, at least
in the US, have come at the behest of those born with nothing standing up and
saying "we won't work unless the rewards are distributed better/we get a 40
hour work week/we get cleaner and less dangerous work conditions/etc."

>It is not and will never be "fair", there will never be equality of outcomes,

No one wants equality of outcomes, equality of outcomes would not seem fair to
most people. Instead we want equality of opportunity.

We can improve, most of us know it, and even though most improvement will only
effect our kids or grandkids, I will still keep bitching that we need to
improve until we're AS GREAT AS WE CAN BE.

~~~
closeparen
>Pretty sure most of the improvements we have made for the common man, at
least in the US, have come at the behest of those born with nothing standing
up and saying "we won't work unless the rewards are distributed better/we get
a 40 hour work week/we get cleaner and less dangerous work conditions/etc."

Yes. These improvements were won through the most thoroughly and deeply
_market_ behavior possible: raising the price on what you're selling.

Labor price-gouging capital is a beautiful sight to see. Usually only capital
remembers it can do that.

~~~
mojoe
> Labor price-gouging capital is a beautiful sight to see. Usually only
> capital remembers it can do that.

This was a pleasure to read, although it made me wonder what the optimal unit
of labor is to still have a functioning competitive market. If all capital was
controlled by one entity, no market could exist -- that's basically why the US
has anti-trust laws. The same is true for labor. Seems like for each market
there must be an optimal unit of labor (number of workers in a union, for
example), to balance well-being of an individual worker with functioning of
the market. Hard problem, though.

~~~
aoeusnth1
Yes, the problems that monopoly creates are analogous problems to the problems
with large unions. The union management seeks to increase their own power, and
the larger the union, the more possibility to abuse that power. However, the
upside of having an institutional way to apply political pressure for the
benefit of the worker can definitely outweigh whatever abuses and
inefficiencies most unions create.

------
erentz
Wow I am astounded that all the comments so far are trying to tear down this
person and what he is saying, and very transparently because there seems to be
something threatening about this idea that he got where he has through luck.
Why do people find this idea so threatening?

I got where I am today due to luck. I did work hard. But I know other people
who work hard too. Who are just as capable. They just didn't get assigned to
the class with the really awesome, motivating teacher. Or randomly picked out
of the pile by a recruiter for a call. Or happen to wind up working somewhere
where they made friends with a guy who was well connected. Etc.

To discount luck's role in how people get successful is a huge blind spot.

~~~
harrumph
>To discount luck's role in how people get successful is a huge blind spot.

That's the fantasy of meritocracy, fulfilling itself. When someone thinks that
gold coins spray from their asshole every time they update a Git repo, they
can comfortably presume their role is paramount in the value created. Of
course, every library linked, every bit of infrastructure required, every
calorie of energy delivered, every man-year of education needed by users -
this all disappears in a cloud of self-regard.

------
rrggrr
Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis.

"1\. For owners, work is optional."

... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is
mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no
safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have
no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a
suffering contest" a lot of the time.

"2\. ...your stuff will keep on making money forever."

... Again, I wish this were true. Lifetime income producing investments are
hard to find where volatility, fees, inflation, taxes and life's circumstances
don't erode value. Sure, the truly wealthy are set. But most business owners
are not truly wealthy, and the exit strategies just aren't there in many
industries.

"3\. We can get entrepreneurship without the enormous rewards to ownership we
have today"

... Anyone whose dealt with the day-to-day grind of owning a business would be
especially offended by this comment. A firehose of pain, suffering and risk
flows to the owner in the form of litigation, regulators, employees, vendors,
customers, bank officers, etc., etc. I've equated it to a "lazy susan"
dispensing aggravation in every conceivable form. Its the reward - if you can
get it - that makes it worthwhile. Try just getting divorced as an owner and
you become an instant convert to rewarding ownership.

Yes, rent-seeking monopolies are bad. Yes, more needs to be done to create
opportunities for wealth creation by employees - to give them the freedom to
say "no". No, punishing ownership isn't the answer.

UPDATE x2: I'm really not confusing types of owners. The author's thesis is
broad not only in the article, but in his works in general. Access to passive
income investments (eg. REIT's) is among the few places small business owners
can go to rent-seek. Rent seeking is bad under a few sets of conditions but
doesn't deserve author's indictment.

~~~
rayiner
You're conflating two different roles: owner and operator. While many owners,
particularly of smaller businesses, wear both hats, your responses to points
(1) and (3) arise out of wearing the operator hat, not the owner hat.

For the companies that comprise most of the economy (less than half of U.S.
GDP is attributable to small businesses), ownership and operatorship are
distinct roles. The CEO of GE is not the company's owner; the shareholders who
own GE don't face the travails of operating it.

~~~
rrggrr
US small businesses, collectively, are the largest employer of US citizens,
especially at the margins of society where the author's "right to say no" is
at its weakest. Its these small businesses, trying to accumulate wealth
through property rights and rent-seeking, that would be disproportionately
impacted were the author's philosophy to be adopted.

~~~
int_19h
The author's philosophy is not to prohibit rent-seeking, but to tax it
appropriately.

Given that it's currently taxed less than income from labor, I don't see
what's so controversial about that notion.

------
jacknews
Owning land is certainly a private basic income.

Consider that land prices (and therefore rents) basically reflect the
surrounding economy. By buying land you are essentially profiting from the
work of everyone else in that economy, forever, and only taxed minuscule
property taxes.

IMHO
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George)
had the correct solution; tax land (though not the structures developed on it)
at it's full market rental value. And the concept should apply to ownership in
all resources.

------
matt_wulfeck
> _My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired
> me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar_

Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and
being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university
is just luck.

Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve
our circumstances and our lives?

This is like a new age of economic predestination, where everything has been
predecided for you by God and there's nothing you can do. Calvinist and BI
proponents apparently have a lot in common.

~~~
vilmosi
> Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and
> being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university
> is just luck.

I genuinely thought you were sarcastic. Being born in circumstances that allow
you to do that is luck, even in the developed world.

~~~
nql
Its only luck if you consider every person independent of their ancestors,
rather than a product of their ancestors.

~~~
vilmosi
Well yes, I consider who your ancestors are as part of being lucky, as you
don't do anything to deserve who your ancestors are. What would you call it?

~~~
nql
Context and motivation. Being able to provide an experience for your
descendents motivates you to act. Without that ability, there is no reason to
do anything.

------
OJFord
> [in the US] people who don’t need their income are taxed less than people
> who do

I'm not American; I don't know the tax structure. But I can't even imagine
that this could possibly be true, or what is true that is meant.

Without looking it up, I would assume that the USA subscribes to progressive
taxation, under which the richer pay _more_ tax in both absolute and relative
terms.

Even if it has a flat _rate_ of tax, (a structure, incidentally, that makes
far more _intuitive_ sense to me) the richer are still paying more tax in
absolute terms, and equal in relative terms.

What Earthly metric is the author using?

~~~
omegaham
Let's look at Person A vs Person B.

Person A is a football player and makes $1 million in salary per year. This is
all taxed progressively, meaning that Uncle Sam takes off 39.6% of most of his
income. As a result, he pays close to $400k in taxes.

Person B is an investor. He invests in Applied Materials, and they have a very
good year. His stock is now worth $1 million more than it was at the beginning
of the year. Some of it, he sells - he's gotta eat, after all. That sold stock
is taxed like income. Note that as long as he isn't living like a rockstar, he
probably didn't sell enough to put him into the top tax bracket; he's just
paying his expenses.

The remainder is taxed at about 20% - capital gains is taxed at a lower rate.
Thus, because he can control how much of the stock he sells, Person B ends up
paying somewhere around 60% of the tax that Person A pays.

This system screws over people who make most of their income through salary
and benefits those who make most of their "income" through investments.

~~~
pg314
It's even worse than you describe. For the part he doesn't sell, no taxes are
owed on the capital gains. Only when capital gains are realised, are taxes
owed. If he holds onto that stock forever he can keep compounding forever,
without every being taxed.

~~~
xienze
Well you also can't spend paper gains, you have to sell and therefore pay
taxes.

And you could, you know, lose money in the stock market.

~~~
dude01
Not always true about paying taxes - inherited assets are "bullet-vested" to
the time of inheritance, with taxes only on increase in value after death.

------
bigtunacan
Can someone clarify this piece for me? I don't understand how the author is
able to completely avoid taxation on the rents.

>My wife and I don’t need the money we make from owning most of the business.
We live off the salaries of our jobs, and reinvest virtually our entire share
of the business. These reinvestments count as “losses,” and so officially we
have never made any income or paid income taxes on our share of the business.

~~~
aerovistae
If they took any sort of money from their business, it would be taxed as
income. But if the money just stays inside the business and is used to buy
more rental buildings-- what's there to tax? So the business keeps growing and
growing.

Case A: the owners take a paycheck of $100,000. It gets taxed at 30%, they get
$70k.

Case B: the owners take no paycheck but instead buy a $100,000 property
through the business with the business's earnings. They pay no tax but now own
a $100,000 property which will now augment the business's earnings further.
Down the road years later, they finally take a paycheck at $300,000, which is
taxed down to like $180,000 or something. Still more than 2.5x the Case A
payout, and let's not forget they own that much more property now on top of
everything else.

~~~
erikcw
But in Case B, wouldn't they have to pay the corporate income tax on that
$100,000 before they buy the next property (39.1% in 2017)? I thought each
property is a capital expense which gets depreciated over time. So you can't
buy a second property with your profits and deduct it as an expense in the
current year. Am I missing something?

~~~
aerovistae
You're probably not missing something. I could be wrong.

------
greedo
Ignoring the logical fallacies the author makes, one thing jumped out at me.
He's not buying the average home in South Bend. If he's only paying $180/year
in property tax, the assessed value of his average home is around $9K. A quick
look at Google shows the median price (from Zillow, so a grain of salt is
recommended) of $65K. If he and his brother are buying up $9K homes, his
average mortgage is under $50/month. I'm sure that he's doing the socially
responsible job of only charging his tenants just a little over his full
costs...

~~~
lazerpants
Keep in mind, this piece is based on an older one. Looks like it dates to
2010. He probably bought up mediocre places during the end of the housing
bubble for very little money.

------
Mz
TLDR

Guy in financially comfortable position feels guilty, decides his education,
willingness to live in Qatar, etc shouldn't really be worth this much,
completely discounts the idea that anything actually matters, it is all merely
"luck" and that's it.

Sounds like an existential crisis, not really a good commentary on the concept
of basic income.

~~~
jhall1468
TLDR

Guy reads an interesting article that threatens his idea of success,
incorrectly summarizes the article and resorts to personal attacks against the
author.

Sounds like threatening core beliefs makes you defensive, not really a good
commentary on the article itself.

~~~
Mz
FYI: I am a woman. I am homeless. I get a lot of flak from people because I am
not pro UBI when people seem to think I should be simply because I am
homeless. Instead, I believe we need to view our current situation as The
Second Industrial Revolution and do whatever the next evolutionary step is to
make paid work a lighter burden while raising quality of living for the
masses. I am pro gig work done right.

Also, your comment is basically a personal attack.

~~~
mod
> Also, your comment is basically a personal attack.

Isn't yours? (The first one)

He used your comment as a framework.

~~~
Mz
Mine is a criticism of the actual article. The reply to mine is a personal
attack against me, a member of this site. This is generally understood to be a
violation of the site guidelines, though they don't explicitly say "no ad
hominems."

 _In Comments

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation.
Avoid gratuitous negativity.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g.
"That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
jhall1468
> Mine is a criticism of the actual article.

No it wasn't. You literally claimed the author had a mental break down. That's
not an attack on the article, it was a direct attack on him. I literally
formed my comment _exactly_ as you did to relay that point.

You seemed to have taken such issue with the idea that the guy is lucky, you
attacked him personally rather than attack his point. I don't _entirely_ agree
with the author. I don't entirely disagree with him. But if you want to make a
point, attack his conclusions, not him.

~~~
Mz
_Existential crisis_ and _mental break down_ are not remotely the same thing.
And noting that he seems to simply feel he somehow doesn't deserve this or
feels guilty and his article is also not really well backed is a valid
criticism. This piece looks to me like someone venting emotionally about their
guilt at feeling they don't really deserve more than others. This is not
really a good argument for creating basic income. Many people feel guilty for
being born into wealth and privilege. That guilt is not some kind of objective
evidence that basic income will solve the problems we currently face where we
generally expect automation to eliminate certain jobs.

It's fine for people to think basic income will be a good solution to the
situation before us. I don't happen to agree with that position. But personal
guilt and appealing to some just world fallacy is not a substantive argument
for why we should try to make this happen.

~~~
jhall1468
> And noting that he seems to simply feel he somehow doesn't deserve this

At no point in the article does he say that. He simply stated he was lucky. He
was born in a country that made it such that he would NEVER be able to end up
like the workers he encountered. Thats absolutely true. That makes him (and
you) lucky and certainly more successful relative to them.

> his article is also not really well backed is a valid criticism

This is a story about something personal, its not a scientific piece. His
"backing" is simply that being born where he was, in part, is the reason he is
where he is. That's not subjective, that's an absolute fact.

> This piece looks to me like someone venting emotionally about their guilt at
> feeling they don't really deserve more than others.

You are free to interpret it that way, but he never actually _indicated_
anything you took from it. It seems your own perspective on basic income
highly skewed your perspective before you started to read it, and everything
he said was used to justify your preconceived notion.

> Many people feel guilty for being born into wealth and privilege.

I would imagine the majority don't.

> That guilt is not some kind of objective evidence that basic income will
> solve the problems we currently face

No, studies (some of which have recently began) will indicate whether or not
basic income will work. This is an article about someones personal experience,
once again, not a scholarly article or study.

> It's fine for people to think basic income will be a good solution to the
> situation before us. I don't happen to agree with that position.

Unlike you I think it's something that needs to be studied _before_ I draw any
conclusions. The irony here is your just as guilty as what you accuse the
author of: you emotionally respond to something with zero evidence for (or in
your case against) it.

~~~
Mz
Look, I read the article and inferred that he feels guilty. There isn't really
any substance there and it is full of ridiculous assertions indicating that
his labor, willingness to live in Qatar and stewardship of capital all have
essentially zero real value and, thus, do not justify his cushy existence.
This is a bad path forward for how to make the world a better place. If no one
is doing any labor and no one is acting as a good steward, the world rapidly
goes to hell. Even if you posit that all our jobs will be replaced by robots,
we will need good stewards if we want good quality of life generally for all
people. Someone will have to make decisions about the robot factories, etc.
Given how widespread an impact those things would have, these would need to be
wise to a very high standard in order to not be disastrous.

Then you come in and mirror my language and start off with "guy..." I am an
active participant on HN and open about my gender. You referring to me as a
_guy_ tells me you don't actually recognize me or know who I am. It also tells
me you didn't so much as click through to my profile. It is trivially easy to
determine my gender and you didn't do that much. That means you know literally
NOTHING about me, thus all statements that follow your description of me as a
_guy_ are made up out of thin air. They aren't any kind of valid criticism
with any kind of basis in actual facts.

As for UBI, I am not closed minded about it. I am willing to consider a good
argument for it. In fact, I would love to see a good argument for it. But I
don't think an experiment like the one being done by Sam Altman tells us
anything useful. It is obvious on the face of it that if a small subset of
people get extra funds for a specified period or time, they will tend to do
better than most people around them. This is not real world conditions for
what will happen if UBI becomes a reality.

I think there are much better proxies to look at for trying to infer what will
happen with UBI and these are real world examples. This includes things like
what happens when someone wins the lottery (2/3s are bankrupt within 5 years)
and actual historical efforts to share and share alike (communism, which was
supposed to be a peasant paradise, but was a disaster). I have had pertinent
classes in things like Social Psychology for trying to gauge what is likely to
work with actual human beings in actual reality, not some experiment. I also
write about my thoughts on UBI and related matters here:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html)

------
brianwawok
Hey, South Bend made an article on the internet and it wasn't even about our
mayor!

Rental income here is a bit weird because you have in general a very poor
town, with a very expensive private university with old money funding houses
for students. I bought my house here for a fair bit less than it would cost to
rent something half the size.

~~~
kasey_junk
I live in an area where college students cause an imbalance between the cost
to rent vs buy (the purchase prices in the area are lower than you'd expect
given the rents).

I'm constantly surprised that the market doesn't arbitrage this away. I
suppose that is due to the fact that the real estate market is less efficient
than others (both due to liquidity and transaction costs) and that being a
landlord is harder than people suspect.

In either case, its always made me leery of rental real estate as an
investment vehicle.

------
stuaxo
Seems to state the obvious to me, but looking at the comments on the article,
I'm in a minority.

~~~
antisthenes
People with a solid grasp of economics are, sadly, a minority.

------
objectivistbrit
He talks about the unfairness of "our economic system" but he makes his income
from Qatar's economic system. Qatar likes to spend their oil money on western
professors to give themselves an air of legitimacy.

As for renting out property, it's never effortless or risk-free. If it was,
the rate of return would drop to that of other minimum risk assets (e.g.
treasury bonds).

~~~
zanny
Our economic system is global even if our politics are not. The salaries Qatar
pays are as influential in his life as any job he could have gotten stateside.
The prices of oil and coffee beans are set internationally. Raising the
minimum wage locally influences global capital flows away from your area,
removing regulations directs global capital towards you. Zoning laws that
restrict building and inflate property values will attract investors 5 time
zones away on the other side of the planet.

------
obstinate
On some level, this is basically "capitalism 101." If I don't need my
resources now, I can put them to work so that I can later benefit from them.
This leads to me having productive assets, which pay me some return.

If I could not acquire productive assets, there would be much less reason to
save. And it's unclear how one would save, as banks would likely not exist
either. You can solve this problem somewhat by having a centrally planned
economy. But then you have the problems that hit those.

~~~
maerF0x0
The benefit of productive assets is that people who otherwise would not be
able to produce high value outputs are stuck making lower value ones. By
working with another's assets an individual can create more value than alone,
and somehow split the difference with the asset owner. Workers maybe need to
start to fight for a better split, but that is beyond the scope of this
article.

~~~
obstinate
Yes, yes. Or governments can enforce a more equitable split through taxes. But
you still have to give some benefit to those who save, else there will be no
reason to do aught but consume all one produces.

------
RealityNow
Fantastic article.

Some takeaways:

* Our economic system claims to reward "work", but the reality is that it rewards ownership and extracting economic rents.

* Increasing value does not necessitate that being the result of one's "work". For example, land values rising are the result of other peoples' work (eg. neighboring properties, government policies, general economy). The landowner is compensated through the labor of others.

* Economic rents aren't taxed enough ("The business pays property taxes, but they average about $15 per house, per month – minuscule compared to the rent we make.")

* Labor is taxed too high relative to capital gains

* "Luck" plays a huge factor, and luck and hard work aren't mutually exclusive. If I'm born into a poor family in a ghetto, naturally I'm going to have less opportunities than being in an upper class family with enough funds to perpetually support me (eg. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates)

* We need a Universal Basic Income, ideally funded by taxes on economic rent (eg. land value tax)

Our economic system is like a big game of monopoly where all the properties
are already owned. You start off with whatever money/property you inherit from
your parents, and have to work yourself up. Meanwhile, the rentiers are
profiting off the backs of the laborers without doing anything. Sure it's
possible to add "properties" to the board (ie. starting businesses), but that
doesn't scale.

At least Monopoly had a UBI in the form of the $200 you get every time you
pass "Go".

------
tiku
So this is the part 2 to the "how to retire at 34" article from a few years
back..

~~~
Dave_TRS
Agree - seems to be a greatest hits of personal finance ideas with current
buzzwords mixed in like "basic income" and "privilege" that aren't central to
the post. Be a saver not a spender. Invest in things with strong cash flows
relative to the purchase price. Use your personal connections, such as family
members that can make good business partners. Take lucrative boring jobs if
you can stomach them. Be lucky.

~~~
gutnor
The core of the article is luck into making way more money than you need. Use
spare luck to find a honest someone that knows what to do with that money.
Retire.

That's not really what personal finance are about. Unless Vegas Holiday
Brochure count as Personal Finance: go to a casino, win big, retire.

------
edpichler
The article is about something that should be obvious, capitalism: money goes
to the capital owner.

Of course this has a lot of problems, but it's the best we have today. On this
system, the rules of the game are: we need to work and spend less than we
earn, and use the money to accumulate more capital, an not buying more things.

~~~
harryh
In the US, the vast majority of gross national income goes to labor not
capital. FWIW.

~~~
int_19h
Of course, there's also a lot more laborers than capitalists. By orders of
magnitude.

How about per capita for each group?

~~~
harryh
BLS says about 153 million Americans are currently working(1). Gallup says 52%
of American Adults are invested in the stock market(2). There are about 235
million adult Americans. 52% of that is 122 million.

    
    
      153 million laborers vs
      122 million stockholders
    

Pretty close! And that's just stockholders. There are, of course, many other
forms of capital.

1\.
[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000)

2\. [http://www.gallup.com/poll/190883/half-americans-own-
stocks-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/190883/half-americans-own-stocks-
matching-record-low.aspx)

~~~
int_19h
If someone is deriving 90% of their income from labor, and 10% of it from
stocks, then I don't think it's meaningful to call them "capitalists". It's
technically true, yes, but in a way that doesn't make sense in the context of
this discussion.

------
DailyDreaming
I agree with the author's points. There have been, almost certainly, Einsteins
who have lived and died in poverty without ever having tasted a book. I feel
like a basic income for everyone is supportable and would give people falling
to an unknowable fate the lift they need to go beyond surviving. Less work
seems to need to be done with tech advances today, but the only thing a job
replacing robot seems to do is take the incomes of two u people and give it to
the person who owns the robot. The slippery slope is that we will eventually
do this for most jobs, if we survive long enough as a species, and I agree we
need change to evolve as our society does.

------
dlwdlw
I'm having a lot of fun lately thinking about everything in cryptotokens:

Everyone gets 3 basicMealTokens and 1 basicFun token.

However, in SF, there are only sfMealTokens which require 20 basicMealTokens.

In Vietnam, 1 vietnameseChickenPlatterToken is only half a basicMealToken.

Tech workers are paid in techWorkTokens which can be exchanged for 200
basicMealTokens each or 100 basicFunTokens, or 1/1000th of a Tesla token.

Token transfers have friction so it is advantageous to maintain a surplus of
tokens most easily transferrable (least hops) to what you want.

To ease this, SF maintains a sfBasicToken and makes the market to transfer
tokens from all over the world to sfBasicTokens. sfBasicTokens have an
advantage in that you can pay for things easily instead of paying 67.34
redditStatusTokens.

Some old geezer is willing to sell his house for a legacy usdToken, a token so
old it had a physical representation and no historical memory.

The basicFoodToken ideas doesn't pan out. SF starts giving out
sfBasicFoodTokens instead. However large numbers of people realize an
arbitrage mistake and live like kings in Thailand, taking advantage of the
buying power of sfTokens due to the Thailand people wanting to make it big
with their startup dreams in the Bay Area.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
dugluak
Its not two big lucky breaks it should be actually three big lucky breaks.
Being born as a human is the first lucky break every human being on the earth
gets. If you think about it 'merit' is man made. Nature most of the time works
on pure chance.

------
imgabe
> No one is going to give tens of thousands of dollars every year to some guy
> who owned a couple of houses and said he knew how to manage more,

Well, not no one. There are hard money lenders who will loan money to "some
guy" to do more or less that.

------
hartator
I think it's awesome to make critics about how capitalism is bad by using
Qatar where basically no freedom exists and everything is controlled by the
state. Not even mentioning actual slavery.

~~~
jonnycomputer
the homes he rents out are not in Qatar. and he gets to teach for so much
money in Qatar because he's a highly educated white westerner.

------
tunesmith
What I got out of this was the suggestion to fund Basic Income by taxing
unearned income. I'd like to read more on how the numbers would actually work
out. If that were the only funding source of BI, then how much impact would
that be on the rich, and how much benefit would that be for the people that
could use BI?

~~~
dollar
There is no such thing as "unearned income". Assets are risky.

~~~
harryh
Unearned income is a technical term. Here is the IRS definition:

[https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch31.html#en_US_2016_pu...](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch31.html#en_US_2016_publink100046613)

------
dredmorbius
Read this essay (which is, as it goes, pretty good), then go back and take a
look at, say, the first book of Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_. In
particular the prices of commodities, labour, stock, and rent, as well as the
factors influencing wages of labour (chapter 10).

[https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations)

It doesn't hurt to consider Ricardo as well.

From Ricardo, we get the Iron Law of Wages, and the Law of Rent. Key to
understand is that these move in opposite directions:

* Wages tend to the minimum subsistence level, all else equal.

* Rent rises to claim the surplus value afforded.

That is, _wages_ are based on the input _costs_ , whilst rent is based on the
output _value_ (use value). The third element, _price_ (sometimes "exchange
value"), is what's at question.

(I distinguish _cost_ , _value_ , and _price_ as three distinct concepts. This
is a long-standing question, and in my view, a grossly confused one, in
economics. They're related, but not deterministically. In the long term, C <=
P < V. Bentham's "utility" is an exceptionally red herring. More, very much in
development: [https://redd.it/48rd02](https://redd.it/48rd02))

Note that this means that _rent_ is determined by the pricing behaviour. If
you're a "business owner" but you're not capable of extracting rents, you're
either selling commodities or labour, you're not collecting rent. The term
here is in the sense of economic rent. Simply "owning a business", without the
economic circumstances which give rentier power, isn't sufficient -- don't
confuse what it is you're _doing_ with the _systemic construct_ in which
you're doing it. Weiderquist emphasises this point specifically, several
commenters here clearly haven't grasped it.

Another elided discussion: rents are associated with _access control_ , and
can be thought of as authority over some (virtual or physical) gate. They're a
natural element of any _networked structure_ , in which nodes and links exist,
most especially where some nodes have higher value, or control more flows. I
believe though can't yet show that all cases of rent involve a fundamentally
networked structure, again, virtual or real. My concern is that this may be a
reflexive definition, I'm trying to determine that it is or isn't.

Another element of this is compensation for labour. Smith lays out five
elements determining this, and I find them durable and comprehensive. In the
Widerquist's case, the combination of requisite skills, and comparative
unattractiveness, of teaching in Qatar, allow him to claim both a high wage
and favourable working conditions (including a lighter-than-typical workload).
This falls straight out of Smith. That is, he earns his salary "by doing a job
few others are both willing and able to do".

If you're looking at the macro view, realise that these don't scale. That is,
the innate and acquired capabilities to teach at University level are not
widely distributed through the workforce, and the lack of appeal of various
sorts of work is sufficient to dissuade (or prevent, or disqualify) others
from taking part in it.

There are other elements here as well: the complimentarity of time and skills,
on the one hand, with money, on the other (the classic business partnership).
Tax structures (and who they benefit). The relationship of wealth and
political power. Smith again: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." One of
the shortest and clearest sentences in WoN, incidentally.

------
astrostl
"We have a basic income – a permanently growing basic income – not just for
life, but forever."

Eh? Nobody has ever had this, and nobody ever will.

------
arwhatever
Well success is either based entirely on luck or entirely on merit, and I'm
sure we'll figure out which of the two it is real soon now.

------
pavement

      nor is there a combination of bad 
      choices that could conceivably put 
      me in their position from my starting 
      point.
    

Guess again.

~~~
zanny
An American born citizen will (statistically) never be an indentured servant /
migrant slave in oil rich countries.

~~~
pavement
I can conceive of a combination of bad choices that could place a person in
such a predicament. Unlikely choices, but choices, when taken, certainly
resulting in the described outcome.

It's not an inaccessible scenario, but unlikely to be anything other than a
forced outcome for someone like the author. For those in mind, who actually
face the true reality, it's usually accidental.

------
etergri
You'll all will talk and conclude absolutely nothing. IQ distribution is
cancer and you're all getting confused with one another.

------
Spooky23
This guy sounds like a real shithead.

He makes his living teaching the children of totalitarian aristocrats at a
faux university, is saving for the future on the backs of the poor back at
home, and gets a kick out of having indentured servants at his beck and call.

I wouldn't shed a tear when his little empire of dirt collapses.

------
samnwa
There can only be so many people at the top.

------
ableton
If you live in America you can do what you want. You can study hard and get a
scholarship to college even if you are really poor as a kid. I know a poor
Mexican immigrant who's kids all got college degrees for free. It doesn't
really matter if you grow up poor (in America). There are many people who are
very rich precisely because being poor as kids drove them to work hard. What
does matter is if you grew up in a stable family. If you don't have that you
get really whacked out paychologically, and it can affect people for their
whole lives. People look to the government to tax and spend to solve social
problems. However, oftentimes the government is the cause of such problems in
the first place. For example, we see a huge number of people in prison today.
Well studies show that 60% of people in prison grew up without a father in the
home. The government today actively promotes divorce and children out of
wedlock through paying single mothers. The "compassion" has raised a
generation of young people who are lost. America has more money than ever but
our families are falling apart, torn up by divorce and pornography, and our
young people are paying the price. The government should focus on supporting
strong families, and you would watch and see so many major social problems
evaporate. I know that I am where I am today because of my dads positive
influence on me. Without his support I would be nowhere right now. Every kid
needs a loving family. It's time the government starts trying to promote that.

Of course in Quatar they have serious human rights issues that need to be
resolved. I'm just talking about in America.

~~~
state_less
> I know a poor Mexican immigrant who's kids all got college degrees for free.

I know many upper middle class kids who got college degrees for free (parental
scholarship).

> It doesn't really matter if you grow up poor (in America)

Like I said above, and the author claims, it does seem to matter quite a bit
if you grow up poor or not poor.

> There are many people who are very rich precisely because being poor as kids
> drove them to work hard.

There are probably many more who are rich precisely because being rich as kids
drove them to being rich as adults.

> However, oftentimes the government is the cause of such problems in the
> first place.

Oftentimes you drive on the roads the government provisioned, visit the parks
past presidents enacted, live in the security our GI WW2 vets created, so on
and so on.

------
the_cat_kittles
for the articles description: "how [the economy] rewards people who own stuff
rather than people who do stuff"

i cant believe i never summarized my own feelings that succinctly. of course
the reality is it does both, but i think its way out of balance towards
ownership rather that doing.

~~~
dollar
Capitalism rewards value. "Doing stuff" is not inherently valuable.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
i smell tautological reasoning. people are paid what they deserve cause thats
what the market decides? ok- if that is your premise, then i have a couple
follow up q's:

1\. do thieves deserve the money they steal? 2\. are there people who profit
from things that are legal but shouldn't be?

those are abstract q's that i think point out how saying "people are paid what
they deserve" is wrong. if you reject that because you draw a distinction
between "deserve" and "value they create", then i think "value" is kind of
meaningless. in that case, it has the literal meaning you ascribe to it (i.e.
it is what you call the amount of money someone pays for something), but
nothing beyond.

i run into this view very often on here- that capitalism is fair because it
pays you what you are worth. but thats so so lazy. you may not agree with me
about how its unfair, or that its even worth worrying about, but id hope you
would grant me that that premise is just a way to _not_ think about the issue.

------
moeymo
Property tax is $15 per month in South Bend for a house? Wrong. Capital gains
is taxed lower than income? Wrong -- sometimes it is, sometimes the other way
around. Multiple factual errors.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Capital gains is taxed lower than income? Wrong -- sometimes it is,
> sometimes the other way around

Capital gains is always taxed equal (for short-term gains) or less (for long-
term gains) than "generic" income, except for a few edge cases (e.g., in the
very-low income range where additional labor income has a negative net
effective tax rate due to EITC and child tax credit and long-term gains have
merely zero taxes.)

------
moeymo
Property tax is $15 per month for a house in South Bend, IN? lol. Capital
gains is taxed lower than income? Wrong ("it depends"). I stopped reading
there.

~~~
PatentTroll
It is factually true that capital gains is taxed lower than income in the US.

