As a European we are bit further down that path than the US.
I assume most of the readers here are "wealthy", would not need basic guaranteed income. So let me explain why this is a good idea from a rich man's perspective.
You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep.
That's it.
Behind all the nice language this is what it boils down to. It is paying off poor people to stop pestering you. Chump change for security. Europe learned it the hard way through numerous revolutions and war - keep the lower classes happy and everyone benefits. Social housing, healthcare, the lower rungs of Maslow's pyramid.
The Romans called it panem et circenses. Not a new idea. Focus on the panem. Hungry people do desperate things.
Want to see how society looks like that does not get that? Brazil. Mexico. Have a nice house in Sao Paulo or Mexico City? Then enjoy your 3m high wall with barbed wire around it.
Sharing a bit of wealth means personal security for you. You don't get robbed. You don't get infected by shit because no one gets shots (yes, you want basic healthcare for all). You have a nice large market to sell shit to, so job security (the basic Henry Ford insight).
So there you have it, even if you hate poor people there is good reason to give them some money.
You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep.
Once you've established a "protection money" system, establishing their "right" to your money & property, they are now incentivized to demand - and take - more. Panem et circenses is the last stage of polite society; the cost eventually becomes unbearable as fewer work and more expect comfort & leisure for nothing.
You give poor people money because it's generosity, kindness and help - freely given as your choice. The recipient receives knowing the charity is out of goodness, and is coupled to an expectation that the recipient will make a respectable effort to overcome poverty.
As an American, we ensure people don't climb over the fence and kill us in our sleep because (A) the firepower many have within 3 steps of bed will give potential attackers pause, and (B) the local police will apprehend surviving thugs. We also strive to reduce legal barriers to productivity, promoting liberty to earn an honest wage for honest work (rather than creating high cost of entry with a flurry of stifling regulations). Between severe disincentives to crime, coupled with easy access to rewarding opportunity, we don't have to pay people to not kill us.
Oakland & Philly, for most practical purposes, ban carry of guns outright. Outside of official "gun-free zones", where armed citizens are legal, crime is very low.
Getting a concealed carry permit in Philadelphia is not that difficult. They also honor CCW permits from many other states. Crime is not "low" in the neighborhoods where it's perfectly OK to carry a concealed weapon. I don't know who told you this.
More guns is not the solution to stop crime. It's jobs, it's income, it's opportunity. People commit these petty crimes, join gangs, and so on - simply because there are no other options open to them - there are no jobs they can get to - beyond that our broken education system didn't give them the skills to hold a job.
so, in Vienna I can walk around unarmed, with zero risk of getting into a firefight and being hurt/killed. walk around as in drunk, with earbuds in, at 2am.
in your gun-zones i need to carry concealed, know how to properly shoot and kill and have the risk of hurting/killing innocents. everyone loses in a real firefight. plus if i am drunk and carry stupid things happen.
but the US model is clearly better. i need to arm myself to not get robbed.
Proper policing lowers crime, not welfare. Many Eastern Europe countries have very generous welfare systems (for example, Romania's welfare is modeled somewhat on Sweden's), but we still have plenty of crime (you can get beaten/stabbed if walking through the wrong parts of town at night).
Even if the state gives you free money, you can always use some more. The solution to crime is an efficient and honest police force (or at least 2nd Amendment-style self defense), not more welfare.
Ideological response: Police are the thugs that rich people buy to defend themselves from the poor.
Actually, basic income / negative income tax is a very good idea, much better than welfare schemes of almost all kinds - it has almost no administration overhead. Charity, like you advocate, has huge amounts of overhead. Milton Friedman was an advocate, for example, and he was hardly a socialist.
And the idea that charity comes from goodness? That is utter bullshit. It's 95% social signalling. Altruism doesn't exist.
Police are assigned to serve all, protecting poor as well.
If welfare is going to be provided to such a large scale as we do, then yes I'd rather the BI approach just to keep things simple and efficient - and to reveal the veiled problems a complex welfare system conceals.
And no, charity is not utter bullshit. What I do isn't signaling anything to anyone, as I keep it as low-profile & anonymous as possible. Altruism exists, and the nature of it means you don't know much about that of others precisely because its nature is to be low-profile & anonymous.
Come to Houston, where most of the departments operating here earn lots of income from neighborhoods. Your HOA pays the departments to guarantee periodic patrols or even guarantee an officer present somewhere inside 24/7.
This is not the same as off-duty police being hired; they pay the department toward officer salaries. Just because they're sworn to protect doesn't mean they can't prefer to protect certain areas.
All you have to do is ask yourself, if you were getting this basic sum, would you be content to do nothing? The answer is probably no. I would do something, some kind of job, as would many people. If only for their sense of self worth / self esteem. I believe that almost everyone would get a job even though a basic income means they don't have to. Also keep in mind, that no matter what you do, there will ALWAYS be people who refuse to work. You could make unemployment punishable by death, you still wouldn't be able to force those people who don't want to work to do something. That's just the way it is. So the only thing you can really do is pay them to stay out of the way and not cause any problems. This is cheaper than buying a gun and being eternally vigilant, or paying for security measures.
Severe disincentives to crime aren't as useful as you think, because those committing the crimes do so because they don't think they will be caught. Look at some of the absolutely medieval penalties they have in the middle east for various crimes, and yet they still have criminals.
You might be surprised. A friend of mine who is a very smart guy got laid of from his job with a bunch of redundancy money. All he did was sit and play WoW until the money started to run out and then went out and got another job.
If you can do whatever you want, you will probably want to do stuff that makes you happy. One of those things will probably not be reporting to a boss or person to whom you are accountable but that accountability is an essential part of the economic feedback loop that tells you that what you are doing is a good use of time.
This. I am an engineer and work hard because I enjoy the feeling of success as well as the wealth, but for many people (I believe most) this is not the case. On both sides of my family most heavily use government aid when they can and don't care about being successful but simply about getting by. My brother is obsessed with WoW and doesn't care about his future and my mother is perfectly content to just watch TV all day every day while my dad takes care of them both. Enjoying hard work is something you learn and is a feeling that the HN community seems to believe everyone has when really we are in the minority.
No... I'm saying that while we on the HN community like to believe that everyone makes honest effort to do great things with their careers most people work to make a living, and if given the option of not having to work and still make a living that they would choose not to work. I myself might consider from time to time not working if I could do so with a decent livable income and I think the majority of people would be OK with the basics if it meant they had all of their time to themselves.
A LOT of kids finishing school would be quite content getting cheap housing, eating junk, and playing video games or hanging out all day every day. The longer they do, the less incentive to be productive.
I wouldn't "do nothing", but before meeting my wife I was on track to reducing my expenses to near zero with intention of "going off the grid" with vanishingly little interaction with & contribution to society.
BTW, a suitable gun is about US$500 - a lot cheaper than paying people enough to not hurt you.
A weapon for self defense as a last resort is fine, but I'd also want a good social net as well. The problem with self-reliance for security is that eventually, you must sleep.
The Latin American states where the elites lives on hill-side housing, protected by guards and fences, all have fairly strict gun laws. They aren't going to let the poor arm themselves! While European gun laws are usually stricter than those in the "red states" of US, there are many places that have more lax laws than New York, Connecticut, and California (Czech Republic and Italy two examples that popped to my head; New Zealand and some Canadian provinces -- while not in Europe -- are also more lax than NY/CT/CA/MD afaik).
The reason you have the firepower is because those left behind by the knowledge work revolution and living in the inland US still have sufficient political power to counter the Manhattanites and San Franciscans eager to take that firepower away ("oh no, we can't let the peons be seen carrying their icky icky AR-15s, ewww!").
The biggest pusher of gun control in the United States is Mike Bloomberg -- he also happens to be a fairly enthusiastic defender of Wall Street. In his mind it makes perfect sense: why would the elites arm themselves directly, if they can just isolate themselves in Manhattan and Pacific Heights, protected by an armed police state. His gun control support (which seems to be back firing so far) is a great way for him to score brownie points many liberals (who would otherwise be diametrically opposed to most of his positions) without actually proposing any laws that would inconvenience the top 1-0.1% of the population.
I'd imagine the Swiss voters (who are voting for this) are laughing extra hard; upon completion of their militia service, they're able buy their service rifle (SIG 552) for $35 (the cost of converting it to a semi-automatic) -- the US-export equivalent (SIG 556) costs in excess of $1800 and cannot be purchased by those in New York or CT (and without significant alterations, in California), the states where quasi-technocratic elites dominate politics: they "know" what's best for the lowest classes (hence support of paternalistic programs like SNAP as well as individual mandates like social security and ACA), they also "know" what's the best for you to defend yourself.
No, I don't think there are low crime rates for this reason. I have never implied this or stated this. In any case a comparison between Switzerland and US is bizarre -- there are far too many differences to idly (without multivariate analysis on data that is likely not even available) claim that any one variable explains lower crime rate in one vs. the other.
I do happen to think that it's better for individuals to decide on their own whether the risks of keeping a firearm are outweighed by any protection it offers. My firearms are stored unloaded, under lock, with ammo in a separate location: I live in a safe neighbourhood -- which I can finally afford to do after winning the IPO lottery (to be blunt) -- so for me the risks outweigh the benefits; I don't, however, claim to be able to make this choice for others. I would much rather see housing prices go down (even though I will be hurt personally by this) and for the (scary) trend of growing education-based stratification of US society to end -- stratification which is largely manifested in ways American families live.
"Not giving a shit about legality" is far worse than even outright (but enforced) bans -- it means the criminals are able to get away with it, but individuals citizens who want to actually use it for self-defense or sport cannot.
You're also confusing two aspects of Swiss laws: militia members can keep their service rifle at home while it's a fully automatic (i.e., an actual assault rifle) with restricted ammo (I think the restrictions, however, are to prevent the military issued ammo to be used for non-military purpose; you can still take it to the range and use it with civilian purchased ammo).
Separately from this, after the end of their militia service, they have the option of paying to have it permanently converted it to semi-automatic and keeping it under the same laws as other civilian firearms.
On the other hand, fully automatic/select fire weapons are essentially illegal in the United States, military members can't keep their automatic rifles with them at home, and so on. Like in Switzerland, most US states do permit ownership of semi-auto versions of those rifles (however, afaik in the United States, they must have been manufactured as semi-automatics -- there's murky case law that can land you into trouble for having cerrain M16 parts in an AR-15, for example). However, some states (e.g., NY) ban them completely..
You are perfectly able to own an automatic rifle manufactured before 1986. The only thing preventing such ownership is simply that the number of rifles that fit this criteria is becoming less and less by the day, which means that the price for a weapon like this is high. Granted, this means that a member of the US armed forces cannot keep his M4.
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The key point here is "well regulated." Do you believe that any person, simply because they live in the United States, should be allowed to own a hand grenade? I personally think not. Is there really a difference between hand grenades and automatic rifles? Again, I personally think not.
You are perfectly able to own an automatic rifle manufactured before 1986.
Owning nothing newer than a quarter-century old (most likely much older and significantly used), at about a 25x markup, and submitting to strict licensing & monitoring, IF you can find anything close to what you actually want amid dwindling supply in a market more akin to "great art" investment than home defense ... hardly "perfectly able".
As an upstanding citizen, who may be called up for military duty at any time (i.e.: draft), I have a right to buy/make an M4 of my own without legal harassment & undue cost.
well regulated
Read that enumerated right as: "considering that a nation needs a standing army to remain secure, the fact that such a standing army exists does not in any way justify limiting the right of individual citizens from owning and appropriately using all the terrible instruments of the soldier, including cannons and battleships." Think about that long and hard, from the Founding Fathers' point of view (they had just overthrown domination by the world's superpower and wanted to enumerate key rights of the individual), before responding.
I've used automatic rifles. The fearful power most people impute on them doesn't exist; they're overrated (useful, but overrated). And yes, individuals should be allowed to own hand grenades, precisely because it is nobody else's right to "allow" such ownership so long as nobody is unduly threatened thereby. The "right" to restrict ownership only comes from situations where innocents are at genuine demonstrable risk of harm, at which point it's just a matter of self-defense by those innocents and their delegates (gov't/police); machine-guns & grenades do not inherently cross that line, while (yes) nukes do.
All this tangential arguing about weapons comes back to the basic argument against the thread's premise: you do NOT have the right to take my money without my permission and give it blindly to everyone else. Doing so on the pretext of "give poor people money so they don't kill me" violates my right to keep what is mine (and use it as I see fit), which is backed by my consequential right to use whatever tools necessary to enforce that right. Leave me be, and I'll be quite charitable; take what's mine by threat of force, with no more justification than mob rule, and equal force in response is justified - not because of what's taken, but because of the threat.
Problem is that a 5.56 automatic rifle isn't going to be helpful when the enemy is also coming with 5.56, 5.45, 7.62x39 automatic rifles (the choice of plutocracies), but in greater quantities and aided by helicopters, tanks, etc...
A bolt action or semi-auto 7.62x51 or .30-06 is a lot more useful -- especially if your goal isn't to assume the role (i.e., overthrow) whoever is coming from you but to get yourself, your family, and ideally your property away. (I've got a 5.56 semi-auto as well, but it's mostly for the purpose of being able to use cheaper and more readily available ammunition for recreational shooting and not bruising my shoulder after a range trip, while using a calibre that's still more fun/practical than .22lr)
As for taking money without your permission -- no matter how you look at it, it's going to happen (whether via income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, taxes on investment income, etc...). Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and company aren't exactly socialists: when they advocate these programs, their goals are to increase individual liberty and decrease state intervention in our lifetimes (rather than pine for a utopian anarcho-capitalist future). I'd rather that money go directly to the poor than to bureaucratic middlemen and rent-seeking corporations (most of the existing welfare programs) or middle classes who don't believe they (or perhaps their neighbours) are sufficiently competent to make their own retirement investments or choose the right health insurance plan for themselves (ACA, medicare, SS, etc...). I find the various paternalistic mandates (SS, ACA) to be more onerous than payments for the truly poor (some of whom as result of structural unemployment).
Replacing programs like SNAP and medicaid with a cash handout aren't going to increase existing tax rates, which seem to be the equilibrium as far as taxation goes -- higher taxes on the upper brackets (or on investment income) won't be accepted by the elites with political power, while increasing taxes in the lower brackets won't gather sufficient votes. They might actually decrease the tax rates by reducing bureaucracy.
I don't think "pay enormous cost for a 20 year old firearm, get permission from the local law enforcement (which won't be granted to anyone in California who isn't a Hollywood producer), wait for the federal paper work for several months, pay additional fees" is "perfectly".
Even prior to 1986 FOPA amendment, the number of people who actually owned such firearms was low -- but then again, they were only used in two crimes, in both cases by police officers. Most people who take advantage of this are collectors and movie makers.
As for me, I'll pass on jumping through enormous hoops only to buy a machine that turns money into noise: ask a member of the US armed forces how many times he's actually used the M4 or M16 in fully auto or even burst as opposed to semi-auto. This is reflected in the M16/AR-15 design: they aren't designed for "spray and pray", they're designed for carefully aimed and disciplined fire in semi-auto mode (with occasional full-auto bursts for supressive fire or against metal armour).
> I personally think not. Is there really a difference between hand grenades and automatic rifles? Again, I personally think not.
Well for starters, go to a range that rents automatics (like one in Las Vegas), shoot a fully automatic rifle, and then put it down. Then, pull the pin on a hand-grenade, drop the hand-grenade next you, and then stand in place :-) [No, I don't actually encourage you to do this]. Or you may want to consider why police cruisers have rifles (albeit semi-automatics) but not (explosive) grenades -- rifles are person-to-person weapons, grenades are effectively area/anti-materiel weapons. (Random note: When I lived in USSR, my school PE classes actually included "grenade toss" -- you'd toss a stick grenade filled with inert substance -- as a sport; it's quite challenging.)
I think the difference is immense, they're completely different kinds of weapons -- first of all hand grenades, aren't technically arms if you use the definition of arms used when the constitution was written.
They would not be protected by the second amendment even if fully automatic weapons were. Fully automatic weapons on the other hand aren't protected for the same reason "shouting fire in a crowded theater" (as much as I hate this phrase...) isn't protected, grenades are not protected for the same reason that setting fire to a theater isn't protected.
While this isn't tested, semi-auto rifles, are almost certainly protected -- as they're owned by civilians in great numbers (unlike hand grenades or automatic rifles) and compare to pistols (demonstrated per case law to be protected by second amendment) are far less frequently used in homicides (despite there being more rifles/shotguns in circulation than pistols). This certainly passes the "unusual and dangerous test" used in Heller to rule out automatic rifles, hand-grenades, missiles, nukes, etc... and all the other frequently asserted strawmen.
I'll point you at an excellent book that offers a far more nuanced reading of the second amendment than either side wants to admit -- http://www.amazon.com/Gunfight-Battle-Over-Right-America/dp/... -- including the discussion of what militia means (which is different from what it means in Switzerland, although not entirely unrelated)
> [F]irst of all hand grenades, aren't technically arms if you use the definition of arms used when the constitution was written
This is the crux of the entire argument to me. The spirit of the second amendment is to allow the citizenry to violently overthrow the federal government if they become too powerful, as a last-resort measure. The weapons that the colonists were fighting against were 3 rounds per minute muskets and single-shot cannons, not Apache attack helicopters. Is there a really a regulatory framework that could conceivably exist that would allow for ordinary, private citizens to overthrow the full might of the US military while protecting society from wanton gun violence?
> This is the crux of the entire argument to me. The spirit of the second amendment is to allow the citizenry to violently overthrow the federal government if they become too powerful, as a last-resort measure.
That's actually not the case. Militia meant "every able bodied white male and sometimes freed blacks" (a more expansive definition than eligible voters -- as there were still property qualifications for voting), who are meant to be armed with common civilian firearms they would purchase themselves. They could be asked to show up at a "muster" by the government, but the second amendment explicitly protected the individual right of militia members originally from federal government (later on, via 14th amendment, this was extended to the states as well as well as to anyone who is not a felon, mentally ill, etc...).
It certainly recognized the right to use these firearms for hunting and self-defense. The common musket at the time -- The Brown Bess -- was smooth bore with a 0.75" caliber and a bead sight, i.e., a 12 gauge shotgun. It could be loaded with buck shoot, with a musket ball, or (as very common) "buck and ball". So it served both the purposes of militia service weapon, for hunting many kinds of game (which wasn't a luxury, but often a necessity), and self-defence (against both humans and wild animals).
Ancestors of modern hand grenades ("bombs"), artillery, and so on all existed at the time -- but were not commonly owned by civilians.
Honestly, I'll go on record and say that this is good: violent overthrow of the government worked well for the American colonists precisely because they were colonists. The Monarchist loyalists could simply leave, whereas in France, they could only do so sans the head. The stakes were much smaller, so the American revolution (or really "the first American civil war") did not lead to the horrible outcomes other violent revolutions have almost exclusively lead to. Today, the results would be far far worse -- rather than a blossoming of civil liberties, it would mean revolutionary terror, followed by an even longer period of counter-revolutionary terror. If this happens, I'll definitely want to be armed, however -- to defend myself and my family from any of the factions involved in either the revolution or the counter-revolution as I make my way to the nearest port of entry of a peaceful country.
Private armies (those reading the "militia" to mean militia groups as opposed to what it actually means) are an even scarier idea. Not to Godwin this, but it reminds me of Freikorps, SA, as well as KPD/SPD armed groups, and other (sometimes state sponsored, sometimes not) street thugs of Weimar Germany.
Enlightened wealthy elites read from authors like like Adam Smith, who said, "Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor." (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=s...) Pretty much what the previous poster explained.
After all, "your money & property" are purely social relations requiring a state. The state literally prints money, and enforces "rights to property" using people with sticks.
You're thinking in terms of small-step deviations from our existing society. But that's not what happens without government and civil society. A couple of guns under the bed isn't going to keep the local warlord away. There are no local police, just strongmen.
You already pay for people not to kill you: you fund a government and a military to create civil order, without which you'd be a peasant serving a warlord. Once you create government, you have to pick some way to control it. Democracy seems the most fair, but there is as you point out an incentive for people to vote themselves material comforts.
There is of course alternatives to democracy. Plutocratic libertarianism underwritten by brutal authoritarianism (I.e. Hong Kong) seems to be popular among a certain set these days. I don't think these are fundamentally stable though. Eventually people will realize that they'd be better off under democracy.
The recipient receives knowing the charity is out of goodness, and is coupled to an expectation that the recipient will make a respectable effort to overcome poverty.
This seems to imply that it's entirely within the recipients power. Do you truly believe that all it takes is hard work and perseverance to escape poverty? That there is no randomness inherent in success?
Wow, America has solved all the social issues that plagues most other countries. No wonder they 'help' so many countries become like them and become 'democratic'.
If you think about it though, you're absolutely right. Not killing me is just something you should do by default. I shouldn't have to pay you to do that. If I do pay to not kill me, does that mean you can justify killing me if I stop paying you? After all, you're desperate and hungry.
Oh wait, what if you waste your stipend on drugs or "loose it" or someone steals it from you because you weren't being responsible with what was basically free money? Do you get more money to waste, or do you get to kill me now for food?
Basic income is a good idea but you have the rationale wrong.
The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources. As general advancement accelerates and allows for greater production with less labor, a greater percentage of that wealth ought to be shared with everyone. So in the thought experiment where no one really needs to work and the robots take care of all of our basic needs, eventually distribution of resources should be more or less uniform.
If you view basic income as handouts then you have to answer all of the objections that you'll find in this thread: you're stealing from someone else to pay for them, you're disincentivizing work, etc. Basic income should instead be viewed as arising from principles of fairness.
The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind
This is, actually, the argument for why we shouldn't have an inflationary monetary system. Normally technological improvement is deflationary (witness lowering prices for tech goods in spite of inflation - healthcare is different because it's highly regulated). Yet what we do by inflating the currency "to keep prices stable" is to steal the marginal improvement in livelihood created by technology and throw it at the financial sector.... At best. In reality we steal more than the marginal value; hence increasing income inequality, overenriched financial sector, decreased real wages in spite of increased productivity...
Technological progress is exactly why we have an inflationary money system. Those who invest their money in the technological progress, has a bigger pot of money to aim for so their expected ROI isn't, on average, negative after adjusting for risk and tranasction costs. The person who works to create it can push for a pay rise that keeps pace with inflation. The person that buries their money in a whole in the ground gets a smaller share of the additional wealth they've done nothing to create. Boo hoo for them.
No. That may be a post hoc justification/apologetic for the status quo, but that is definitely not a historically correct model for why we have inflation. In the roman era, there was inflation caused by the cupidity of the emperor who debauched the gold coins by cutting them with silver. In the American revolution we had inflation because the colonies desperately needed to raise funds for the war effort and the British printed fake currency to derail the economy... Something similar happened during the civil war. During the depression FDR adjusted the gold standard to cheat laborers of their value (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUvm9UgJBtg). In the 70s Nixon went off the gold standard because the French kept recalling their portion of the dollar backing, believing the us was not going to keep its word in the face of a stalling economy.
If you want to argue that it SHOULD be the justification that's fine (and morally questionable, unless you like screwing the poor) but there is no historical evidence that you model ever has been the rationale for inflation.
The reason we have inflation in developed countries today today has literally nothing to do with the historic phenomenon of monetary authorities debasing coinage to pay for stuff, and everything to do with an economic system where "money" in circulation is largely privately created credit, with monetary authorities intervening to maintain a target level of inflation. Central banks are not run by Roman Emperors, they are run by economists - who derive no benefit from inflating a currency - and one of the few things virtually all economists agree with is that inflation can be too high, but also too low. May I suggest their beliefs about the role of inflation in the current system are better understood by reading what they have to say, just as one would better understand Chinese foreign policy without focusing on "historically correct" reference to Genghis Khan, the Opium Wars or the Cultural Revolution.
one of the few things virtually all economists agree with is that inflation can be too high, but also too low
Yeah, and that's a completely retarded model of economics. It's a consequence of the field being a giant circle-jerk of professors who cut their teeth in undergraduate classes where your merit was judged by how gnarly a formula you could come up with to prove your prowess at taking derivatives (I say this having been a math tutor at the University of Chicago, and helping econ students with their homework. There was even no concept whatsoever of dimensional analysis, much less error propagation analysis).
How can I say this model is completely retarded? Because there was deflation in the US from 1860 to 1900. And the country recovered from a civil war that decimated the population (literally, 1 in 10 were killed), built up incredible amounts of industry, made several world-changing inventions, emerged as a world power, and began closing the wealth gap.
Central banks are not run by Roman Emperors, they are run by economists - who derive no benefit from inflating a currency
Let me ask you something. Has there ever been a central banker who was part of the bottom 1%? Or have they all come from the top 5%? If it's the latter, they derive benefit from inflating a currency. In any case, this is an inapt comparison. The central banker is not like the caesar, but rather the overseer of the roman mint who instructed the slaves running the coin machine to dope it with silver.
but with fractional banking and the like the amount of money actually in the system is always increasing, so the inflation isn't actually "destroying" anything, it's basically just the equivalent to a flat tax that goes out to banks to help fund loans
At one point I had the impression that inflation is supposed to encourage spending, but thinking about it, it probably punishes the poor (who have pretty much no savings) more than anything
if you have a fixed money supply, even with fractional banking, the amount of money in the system is limited; and to push the model further, even if you had a 0% reserve requirement, in the long run defaults and amortization of loans (deflationary) would balance out new lending (inflationary).
Ever wonder why the population is overleveraged and over-stressed about loans and what not? It's because the system needs people to go into debt to continue function. It's legalized, voluntary, fractional slavery, but the system wants you hand over ownership of your labor to someone else.
> The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources.
What is their contribution to knowledge and technology, so that they "deserve" a stake? What you're saying is that they deserve something for nothing.
Back when we had slavery, many people (free or slaves) fought against it. Many slaves tried to escape (and a lot of them succeeded).
Are just as many people fighting now for technology and knowledge? My impression is that they aren't, but you're advocating that they get rewarded anyway.
From the optimist's view, think how many people whose lives are being spent working at Walmart or McDonald's who could instead be at home developing skills they are actually interested in (which school does a poor job of teaching), such as programming or sculpture, etc.
Imagine the entrepreneurs who might feel freed to give business a chance, rather than feeling that they can't quit their day jobs?
It would be a grand experiment with potentially huge benefits (and, as always, risks).
From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything.
Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages. Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income.
It's an inflationary cycle that would be very hard to avoid.
You have precisely no reason for believing that the growth pattern is exponential or an open-ended cycle. In fact the cardinal rule of economics ("things go on until they can't") suggests they will arrive in a steady state.
In order to figure out a likely steady state you'd have to look at the composition of spending and employment by people around or under the proposed income, and try to estimate shifts if there was an effective employer-of-last-resort in the form of a basic income. It gets complicated fast if you want to do a good job. Hand-waving about inflationary spirals is, on the other hand, easy.
> From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything.
Because, unlike current poverty support programs, where the having a benefit program that gives you $X and a job that gives you $X the most you can get is $X, with basic income, you can have the basic income of $X and the job of $X and have $2X.
So, given constant wages, the marginal income effect of working would be the same for anyone not getting a means-tested program now, and greater for anyone who would get a means-tested program now. (The marginal benefit might be less in the former case because of the declining marginal utility of additional income, though.)
> Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages.
Entry level wages are artificially high compared to market labor supply because of the minimum wage, so even if BI did reduce the supply of labor for minimum wage jobs, it wouldn't necessarily stop them from being able to fill positions at the existing wage levels. Many BI proposals also include eliminating the minimum wage, which would make work that is not currently economically viable (because, while it provides value, it doesn't provide enough value to warrant the minimum wage) viable.
> Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income.
This, OTOH, is a real potential issue with inflation-pegged basic income: if you set the level too high for the current economy to support initially and peg it to inflation, you'll get caught in an inflation cycle.
The solution to this, as I see it, is fairly simply; dedicate a set share of the revenue from progressive income taxes to the basic income, and set benefit levels based on the lower of the levels by equally distributing the revenue from that tax to beneficiaries or the inflation-adjusted level of the starting benefit amount.
You get better self-regulation and signalling of when you need to reexamine the assumptions in your benefit levels and revenue structure, and if you initially set it at a level that would actually pull people out of the work force in a way that would trigger run away inflation, then barring direct intervention it will regulate itself back down (in real terms) until that's not the case.
Yeah, I expect it to push toward more inflation (which should let the Fed go back to actually having an interest rate). I think the proper way to deal with that is have it grow at the inflation rate the Fed is targeting. If there's less inflation, it'll go up (in real terms) and drive a little more. If there's more, it'll go down (in real terms) and drive a little less.
Of course, I'd like to hear from someone with more serious models - this didn't even make it to a napkin...
> Because, unlike current poverty support programs, where the having a benefit program that gives you $X and a job that gives you $X the most you can get is $X, with basic income, you can have the basic income of $X and the job of $X and have $2X.
This is my primary concern with the proposal, but if Walmart and McDonalds were deprived of that cheap workforce, how many of those jobs would they finally figure out how to automate?
The central idea behind basic income is that everyone gets it. Having employment income wouldn't reduce it. So anyone who would have previously worked at McDonalds would still work there if they wanted more money than they already get from BI.
The inflationary cycle only exists if you don't do the math.
If we take a universe where there are 3 people, one guy makes $100, another makes $300 a year, another makes $1000 a year. We'll assume that everyone spends all their money every year.
Suddenly the gov't decides to give everyone basic income, a stipend of about $100 a year.
Suddenly the bottom guy gets enough money to live and quits his job at Walmart. Walmart finds out that people are willing to work for double the old salary though($200). So they multiply the price of goods by 2. The guy from before starts working again.
Guy 1 now has $300 a year, Guy 2 $400, Guy 3 $1100
but prices have doubled right? so in PPP the totals are:
Guy 1 has $150, Guy 2 $200 , Guy 3 $550
Guy 1 still ends up richer in the end.
This universe had 0% unemployment and Walmart made no profits. Basic income doesn't destroy wealth, it transfers wealth just like pretty much any gov't scheme. And richer people will end up paying for it (oh no!).
But on the bright side, people at the bottom will end up richer (because the higher wages end up going to someone), and will be able to live in respectable conditions (Which leads to all sorts of good things like being able to keep themselves and their children healthy, lowering the incentive for crime, etc). And it doesn't have the moral judgements attached to a lot of welfare.
I haven't formalised the calculation, but I'm fairly certain that by the continuity of the universe of economics, and the fact that someone with $0 revenue now will always be richer with basic income, there are winners in the system, and so it doesn't turn into some inflationary spiral.
If only economics were so simple[1]. Nobody disputes that some people will end up richer, and that people who have no income of any sort (generally those who are not employed, not disabled and not looking for work) will indisputably benefit. The rest of the winners and losers depend very heavily on the amount in question, who pays most of the increased burden, what happens to people who were previously entitled to more than the Basic Income; you can nevertheless guarantee that some of the losers will be relatively poor workers, some rich people will end up richer (including some pretty unproductive rich people, like slum landlords) and some rich people will end up broke (especially people providing jobs to relatively-unskilled US workers in competitive international markets).
That said, you can make one pretty uncontroversial prediction: if you try to set the Basic Income high enough to ensure people can actually indefinitely live "in respectable conditions" with it as their main source of income, then there will be a lot less wealth being produced in the US.
And I can't see why only people actually applying for work should be subjected to moral judgements and restrictions on their lifestyle?
[1]I'm not sure who's paying for the stipend in your example. Or why Guy 2 wouldn't push for a pay rise when faced with a 50% reduction in his real wage (presumably he has some bargaining power if he's worth 3x a Walmart worker)
> Suddenly the bottom guy gets enough money to live and quits his job at Walmart. Walmart finds out that people are willing to work for double the old salary though($200). So they multiply the price of goods by 2.
That is an extremely naive conclusion. Re-think your argument.
I'm assuming a magical world where the price of goods depends only on salary (if you actually look at a series where every aspect of the production chain gets hit by the same salary increase, then the price goes up the same amount anyways, irregardless of material costs).
But the government is already subsidizing the base salary. Everything that Walmart gives is in addition to that which would probably reduce their costs.
Also not everything is in the function of pay. Once people have enough for living, the deciding factor like having an enjoyable and meaningful job also do count. It's then up to Walmart to transform themselves to become that place and attract employees.
You are oversimplifying. The people getting the wages aren't necessarily the same people buying the ageearners products. Minimum wage is not the entire labor force.
> From the pessimistic point of view, why would anyone choose to work a crappy job at Walmart or McDonalds when the government would give them the same money without having to do anything.
because, despite the myth of the lazy poor, most people enjoy being productive.
Being lazy isn't the only reason someone would quit working at Walmart. It might just suck to flip burgers for 8 hours a day. Needing to eat is a very good incentive to do things that you wouldn't normally do.
Because you can't better yourself while working part time at McDonald's or Wal-Mart? im self taught and I was working full time while teaching myself all things computer science in my spare time. Let's not pretend that all who are working menial jobs are oppressed and would flourish if we handed them money.
Actually, the European model isn't "free money" but subsidized education, healthcare and housing. Actually, the European model is the opposite of "free money". People here are not paid to leave the rich alone but to enhance their prospects using their own resources. The libertarian dream - free money and free dope - would be a nightmare for the target groups: expelled from society with an apanage without hope to ever come back.
Also, the income boots aggregate demand in the economy by that much which benefits the wealthy as that income is used to pay rent and buy goods and services from entities that wealth people own; some folks may call this trickle up economics.
You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep.
You don't think that this is a poor model of crime? There are plenty of empirical counterexamples. During the great depression in the US, crime rates went to an all-time low. The gap between the rich and the poor in the US is at an all-time high; yet the crime rate is again at a low.
> It was a period of booming economic prosperity, the roaring '20s, and very high crime
(emphasis mine)
The time period before the Great Depression != the time period during the Great Depression.
The chart provided suggests that there was a sharp increase in homicide rates beginning around 1920, then a slight upward trend toward 1929, and then another sharp increase through the 1930s, towards the beginning of WWII.
Do you have any other examples? I am really skeptical that crime rates went down on the whole during the least economically productive period in the history of the United States.
What? The peak is around 1931 or 1932 and during the rest of the depression, it goes down.
Also, the article directly says
"The Depression years had very little crime."
Honestly, though those crime dynamics were probably more to do with prohibition than anything else, which goes to show that crime really is likely to be dependent on factors that have very little to do with economic prosperity.
"Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it."
Self reliance is not to be underestimated. The state and the individual are both empowered. Being reliant on the state should be a last resort not a goal, as Europe is discovering.
This has been tried. Brazil. South Africa. China. India. The list goes on. These are countries where the wealthy can't walk around freely on the streets without substantial protections, where quality of life is simultaneously high and low.
Instead of enjoying your wealth on your own terms, now you're in a cycle of vetting your drivers, your nannies, and anyone else who comes within physical vicinity of you. Your physical movements are restricted to routes and destinations that are vetted and secured.
And as the wealth gap increases, the threat to your life increases also. Kidnapping a millionaire may not be worth risking your life - but what about kidnapping a billionaire? As inequality rises the lengths people will go to to harm you increases also, resulting in ever-higher fences, ever more advanced security, and a non-stop arms race between you and the poor.
This is already reality in a lot of places. I for one don't want it to become the reality here.
well yeah, the Brazilian model. But this sucks, try living behind barbed wire and being dependent on your bodyguards. I definitely prefer being able to walk the streets at night by myself and not getting robbed/stabbed/hijacked.
Do you think cartels will have trouble recruiting people once everyone have 20k a year to spend? They gonna have even more money since a big chunk of those 20k will be spent on the drugs they are selling.
Being poor is all relative, in many countries, poor means you will likely starve to death, in the wealthiest countries, the poor eat relatively well, are educated (if they choose to be), have housing, electricity, running water and Cable Television.
My point? how long till those getting the stipend are whining again about how poor they are because they make the same amount as today relative to the general population. Now we are back to square one.
I assume most of the readers here are "wealthy", would not need basic guaranteed income. So let me explain why this is a good idea from a rich man's perspective.
You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep.
That's it.
Behind all the nice language this is what it boils down to. It is paying off poor people to stop pestering you. Chump change for security. Europe learned it the hard way through numerous revolutions and war - keep the lower classes happy and everyone benefits. Social housing, healthcare, the lower rungs of Maslow's pyramid.
The Romans called it panem et circenses. Not a new idea. Focus on the panem. Hungry people do desperate things.
Want to see how society looks like that does not get that? Brazil. Mexico. Have a nice house in Sao Paulo or Mexico City? Then enjoy your 3m high wall with barbed wire around it.
Sharing a bit of wealth means personal security for you. You don't get robbed. You don't get infected by shit because no one gets shots (yes, you want basic healthcare for all). You have a nice large market to sell shit to, so job security (the basic Henry Ford insight).
So there you have it, even if you hate poor people there is good reason to give them some money.