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Berk Berkly posted:You are already generating income in excess of what you need to function and continue providing labor. If anything you need to be paid less to motivate you to work harder. You have not yet reached your maximum efficiency. This guy gets capitalism, gently caress I started a business just so I could be the rear end in a top hat who gets to exploit people, I don't like the game, but if we have to play monopoly, im going to play monopoly. TP probably doesn't understand the friction that makes it hard for a poor person to just quit their job and move to another state with higher employment, but most people who haven't been poor ever don't know so all your words wont sway them, in this country we view poverty as lack of virtue, and thats why he doesn't want you to have money, he knows deep down you just want to do literally nothing with your life but collect a paycheck and not contribute to society.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:39
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GunnerJ posted:Good thing I wasn't talking about budgets, then. Yes you were. The subject was paying for minimum income. You pretended reduced labor [and resulting inflation] wouldn't be a problem because food waste exists. It was a really bad argument for the reasons stated.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:48
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You can't gaslight me about my own words, dude.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:52
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GunnerJ posted:You can't gaslight me about my own words, dude. Oh well it's right here: GunnerJ posted:If a product is thrown away without being used, then all the labor that went into putting it up for sale is wasted and never had to be done. So if the marginal number of people we can expect to be permanent dropouts from the workforce results in less stuff being made, so loving what? Here you talk about waste and about how it means reduced production wouldn't matter ("so loving what"). You don't provide any insight as to how we might reduce waste in the future, just note its existence. It's brain-dead stuff that's really common in bad budget/cost analysis arguments and notable on the right in the form "government waste"
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Jan 10, 2016 05:14
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> Why on Earth would it benefit people of color less than white people? I We are talking about the united states, right? Do you genuinely believe that a multi-trillion reallocation of income from low wealth to middle and high wealth individuals would not, under the current circumstances, massively disproportionately penalise non-whites? If so, the usual 101 on this would be http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/. I can't see that the biggest priority of social welfare or reform is to subsidize that fraction of middle class white dudes who have the money and entitlement to play video games all day. Instead, why not set up a system of minimal _capital_? On your 18th birthday, or on declaring bankruptcy, if you would have 0, you instead have say 20,000. Enough to take a course, quit a job and wait out a better one, buy a set of household goods, etc. Assume sensible rules on how often you can declare bankruptcy, and several books worth of details to handle edge cases. Would cost a fraction of a universal mincome; could probably be entirely paid for by a not-especially-high inheritance tax. And it would have most of it's good features, and crucially wouldn't lead to a two-caste society where those with even modest inherited wealth didn't need to work. But then maybe that's a feature, not a bug, of mincome? All that stuff about 'anglo saxon work ethic' does look rather like some kind of code for 'I want to own a plantation, sit on a porch sipping mint juleps, and look down on the laborers in the fields'.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:18
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radmonger posted:> Why on Earth would it benefit people of color less than white people? I Sorry how does giving everyone money by taxing the upper earners mean transfer of wealth from poor to rich?
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Jan 10, 2016 05:20
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asdf32 posted:Here you talk about waste and about how it means reduced production wouldn't matter ("so loving what"). You don't provide any insight as to how we might reduce waste in the future, You know, there might just be a reason for that.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:23
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GunnerJ posted:You know, there might just be a reason for that. Ok, explain it.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:25
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radmonger posted:> Why on Earth would it benefit people of color less than white people? I This is not actually something I genuinely believe I am even discussing so I'm not really sure how to answer this. I'm general terms, though, I am sympathetic to concerns about the implementation of social welfare programs being structured in racially discriminatory ways, but the context was pretty clearly a claim about what happens when it's working as intended ideally.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:32
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asdf32 posted:Ok, explain it. The fact that your intervention on this topic began with some weird stuff about conservatives, government waste, and budgeting gives me the impression that you weren't even paying as much attention to what I was saying as the person I was actually talking to... which, now that I'm thinking about it, would usually be unremarkable but in this case is pretty amazing. Everything since has looked like trying to spin your fuckup into something that resembles relevant, so sorry, but there's basically no incentive for me to clear up your confusion about something I said in a discussion you weren't even a part of.
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Jan 10, 2016 05:44
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GunnerJ posted:Haha, holy poo poo I didn't even notice that. I guess I just subconsciously assumed that was a typo...? Help me to understand where you're coming from. Are you of the belief that supply is not related to demand? That corporations just produce because they can with no regard for whether or not people will actually buy their poo poo? Is this some sort of bizzaro-leftist supply side economics?
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Jan 10, 2016 06:18
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Turtle Sandbox posted:TP probably doesn't understand the friction that makes it hard for a poor person to just quit their job and move to another state with higher employment, but most people who haven't been poor ever don't know so all your words wont sway them, in this country we view poverty as lack of virtue, and thats why he doesn't want you to have money, he knows deep down you just want to do literally nothing with your life but collect a paycheck and not contribute to society. Hey, look, you started to make an actual decent point about the positive effects a basic income would have on worker mobility. Then you veered off into accusations of INSUFFICIENT EMPATHY TO POORS. Well I grew up poor, and have been poor at various stages of my adult life. Your condescending, ignorant judgment is way off the mark. But I said I wouldn't respond to bullshit like this anymore. Oh well.
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Jan 10, 2016 06:30
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Given the extent to which poor people vote against their self interests, and the fact that people in general like to look for someone to poo poo on, is "I'm poor therefore I can't hate the poor" the new "i have black friends"?
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Jan 10, 2016 08:39
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Nevvy Z posted:Given the extent to which poor people vote against their self interests, and the fact that people in general like to look for someone to poo poo on, is "I'm poor therefore I can't hate the poor" the new "i have black friends"? What kind of broken brain interprets "give money specifically to the poor" as "gently caress the poor!"
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Jan 10, 2016 08:40
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Typical Pubbie posted:What kind of broken brain interprets "give money specifically to the poor" as "gently caress the poor!" Typical Pubbie posted:then you veered off into accusations of INSUFFICIENT EMPATHY TO POORS. Well I grew up poor, and have been poor at various stages of my adult life.
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Jan 10, 2016 08:51
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I'm decidedly pro-mincome, but it's hard for me to reconcile an implementation with modern finance. Someone brought up the matter of borrowing against your mincome, which I thought was interesting and don't think anyone responded to: what's going to stop people from borrowing against their mincome and ending up in a poverty trap? People are going to do it and statistically that move is going to fail for some of those people, so without an additional mechanism to recover from the trap, you'd end up with a growing segment of people being fleeced for their mincome in perpetuity (and an increasingly wealthy class of mincome fleecers). Bankruptcy is an option, but it's a cumbersome process and would only select for squeezing just hard enough. Outlawing or directly regulating mincome borrowing seems like it would end up as means testing with an extra step. I'm no statesman, though. Maybe the answer is just that it's not perfect, but it's better than what we've got now. 
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Jan 10, 2016 12:57
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OwlFancier posted:Sorry how does giving everyone money by taxing the upper earners mean transfer of wealth from poor to rich? Current welfare/minimum wages/EITC goes only to the poor. Mincome goes to the poor, the middle class and even the rich (though to an irrelevant degree). There are political reasons for doing that, like building support for the program amongst white dudes who hate the idea of black people getting something they don't get, but might tolerate it if it was universal. Or in people who have the belief that the middle class has a better work ethic so won't be 'corrupted' by welfare in the same way the poors supposedly are. But you can't deny that mincome fundamentally is, by definition, about moving money from the poor to the middle class. In particular there is an asset-rich/income-poor sector of the middle class whose lives will be transformed by it in a way that will inevitably lead to the formation of a rentier class with it's own internal ideological justification for it's privileged status.
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Jan 10, 2016 14:38
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GunnerJ posted:The fact that your intervention on this topic began with some weird stuff about conservatives, government waste, and budgeting gives me the impression that you weren't even paying as much attention to what I was saying as the person I was actually talking to... which, now that I'm thinking about it, would usually be unremarkable but in this case is pretty amazing. Everything since has looked like trying to spin your fuckup into something that resembles relevant, so sorry, but there's basically no incentive for me to clear up your confusion about something I said in a discussion you weren't even a part of. Well dodging is information too and its another clue when someone takes the "you weren't part of this conversation' route in reference to a public forum post. radmonger posted:Current welfare/minimum wages/EITC goes only to the poor. Mincome goes to the poor, the middle class and even the rich (though to an irrelevant degree). Sorry but this makes zero sense. Are you getting sidetracked by implementation details? Yes a check goes to everyone but the people who 'get' min income are the people whose check is larger than their tax burden which correlates very highly with poverty (and no, the finances don't work if the middle class is a significant beneficiary of this program). Ok there is a small corner case of people who have large assets and low income but it's not that large (and FWIW, wherever their pile of money came from it got taxed as income originally). Zodium posted:I'm decidedly pro-mincome, but it's hard for me to reconcile an implementation with modern finance. Someone brought up the matter of borrowing against your mincome, which I thought was interesting and don't think anyone responded to: what's going to stop people from borrowing against their mincome and ending up in a poverty trap? People are going to do it and statistically that move is going to fail for some of those people, so without an additional mechanism to recover from the trap, you'd end up with a growing segment of people being fleeced for their mincome in perpetuity (and an increasingly wealthy class of mincome fleecers). It's true that you hear those adds on the radio for people to cash out any fixed income stream but this could be dealt with by some regulation probably. But in general it touches on the problem with a solution to poverty that's essentially a math formula: it's not that simple. This is one way people might fall through the cracks but there are many others.
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Jan 10, 2016 15:26
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radmonger posted:But you can't deny that mincome fundamentally is, by definition, about moving money from the poor to the middle class. In particular there is an asset-rich/income-poor sector of the middle class whose lives will be transformed by it in a way that will inevitably lead to the formation of a rentier class with it's own internal ideological justification for it's privileged status. Re: "rentier class" -- this is a potential problem but is this a large group of people? And is having a group of people who have assets living off government money that bad for society compared to those people exhausting their capital and living in the current poverty that low-income individuals live in? A flat minincome would probably have the "rentier class" effect you describe , but one that scales based on income would have less of an effect: either it saves asset-holders who can't earn incomes from poverty, or it incentivizes asset-holders to take it easy rather than work to increase their wealth.
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Jan 10, 2016 15:32
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Saeku posted:
A mincome that scales with income isn't a mincome, it's an entirely different system that has more in common with current earned income tax credits. That's like saying there is nothing wrong in principle with a flat tax provided you pay a progressively higher rate the higher your income is. For one thing there is no reduction of bureaucracy, as it requires the government to know the income of every recipient to work out how much they should be paid. And you have to have a anti-fraud measure the prevent people claiming a higher income than they actually get. Really, something that scales based on current assets/capital is going to be fairer and simpler in every way. The only real argument against it is if the votes of wanna be- plantation owners are a significant enough factor to get it passed ehen a less racially biased measure would fail. Bit if that group is electorally significant, it's big enough to be economically significant, which everyone here is going around firmly denying. But if they are wrong, your society is going to end up measurably poorer, more racially divided, and generally not heading in a pleasant direction.
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Jan 10, 2016 16:58
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Typical Pubbie posted:Help me to understand where you're coming from. Are you of the belief that supply is not related to demand? No, I'm of the opinion that we can consider the "act of producing goods" and the "act of not using a produced good before it is disposed of" independently of this relationship. That someone has a problem with the sheer amount of physical goods that the economy makes does not automagically mean that they really have a problem with how much people "consume," as an economic term. Buying something and then not using it before throwing it out and buying something to use it for the rest of your life are both "consumption" in the model you're imposing, but since my issue only relates to one of these kinds of consumption, it's a poor model. A better model would consider how many goods we actually need to consume vs. how many we just "consume" without deriving any use from. That the supply of goods relates to the demand for goods to "consume" is not an excuse to ignore the substance of my argument, which is that it's nonsense to think that a social welfare policy that (for the sake of argument) results in a downturn in productive labor is automatically some crisis. You need to actually show that the lost productivity will result in shortages cutting into needed goods, because as far as I can tell, many many more goods are produced than people actually need (i.e., than actually end up getting used), and hence there is much more work done than actually needs to be done (i.e., actually results in products that actually get used (i.e., which are needed)). This in mind, let's take a peek back at your original reply to me: Typical Pubbie posted:
Do you see now why this is non-responsive? Because even if you have a point, and basic income would result in more production than I would like, you have not dealt with the point you're responding to, which is that your concern about contraction of the supply of goods is not compelling. Someone could just as easily say, "Why are you simultaneously concerned about a contraction of the supply of goods if you think that mincome will result in a huge boost to consumer demand by a direct injection of disposable income?" GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2016 17:12
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Typical Pubbie posted:Hey, look, you started to make an actual decent point about the positive effects a basic income would have on worker mobility. Then you veered off into accusations of INSUFFICIENT EMPATHY TO POORS. Well I grew up poor, and have been poor at various stages of my adult life. Your condescending, ignorant judgment is way off the mark. But I said I wouldn't respond to bullshit like this anymore. Oh well. This seems like it will be a problem since you have a habit of imagining it where it's not present.
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Jan 10, 2016 17:14
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asdf32 posted:Well dodging is information too and its another clue when someone takes the "you weren't part of this conversation' route in reference to a public forum post. Noted.
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Jan 10, 2016 17:18
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GunnerJ posted:No, I'm of the opinion that we can consider the "act of producing goods" and the "act of not using a produced good before it is disposed of" independently of this relationship. That someone has a problem with the sheer amount of physical goods that the economy makes does not automagically mean that they really have a problem with how much people "consume," as an economic term. Buying something and then not using it before throwing it out and buying something to use it for the rest of your life are both "consumption" in the model you're imposing, but since my issue only relates to one of these kinds of consumption, it's a poor model. A better model would consider how many goods we actually need to consume vs. how many we just "consume" without deriving any use from. That the supply of goods relates to the demand for goods to "consume" is not an excuse to ignore the substance of my argument, which is that it's nonsense to think that a social welfare policy that (for the sake of argument) results in a downturn in productive labor is automatically some crisis. You need to actually show that the lost productivity will result in shortages cutting into needed goods, because as far as I can tell, many many more goods are produced than people actually need (i.e., than actually end up getting used), and hence there is much more work done than actually needs to be done (i.e., actually results in products that actually gets used (i.e., which are needed)). And all of this is a worthless smoke screen unless you're supplying the new magic method for how we identify the goods we 'need to consume' from everything else. Because until then a reduction in labor is going to cut down production of all goods, including the ones you like. Separately if you do come up with a magic 'important goods identifier' it works all the time, and has nothing to do with min income discussions. Prior to this it was an open question in my mind whether you were dodging because you regretted what you said or because you just didn't understand what your own argument was. Now I know.
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Jan 10, 2016 17:26
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Noted.
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Jan 10, 2016 17:28
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Here is a list that's as relevant to this discussion (probably more honestly) as you bringing up food waste. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste You're starting to sway me though and suddenly I want a tax cut. Wait you think a tax cut might be a problem?? That it would cut into valuable programs?? Well you need to actually show that the lost revenue will result in shortages cutting into needed programs because as far as I can tell, many more programs exist than people actually need, and hence there is much more money spent than actually needs to be. GunnerJ posted:You need to actually show that the lost productivity will result in shortages cutting into needed goods, because as far as I can tell, many many more goods are produced than people actually need (i.e., than actually end up getting used), and hence there is much more work done than actually needs to be done (i.e., actually results in products that actually gets used (i.e., which are needed)).
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Jan 10, 2016 18:32
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radmonger posted:Current welfare/minimum wages/EITC goes only to the poor. Mincome goes to the poor, the middle class and even the rich (though to an irrelevant degree). Er, yes I can deny that, because the way it works is it takes more money from the people who pay the highest taxes and redistributes it equally. It gives money to the middle class in the sense that it should eventually make everyone middle class, or at least heavily erode the extremes of wealth disparity. But you aren't taking money from the poor to do it. Where I live you don't even pay tax if you're poor enough. And again, it's not mutually exclusive with means-tested welfare. The reason I prefer mincome to only means-tested welfare is because the point of means-tested welfare is that as you start earning money, you lose the welfare, the goal is not to elevate people out of poverty, simply to stop them dying in the hopes that they can start working in poverty. Mincome is designed to return the products of the nation's labour to all the workers, so that you can work a poorly paying job but still have a decent income. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2016 18:37
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asdf32 posted:Here is a list that's as relevant to this discussion (probably more honestly) as you bringing up food waste. I'm not expressing my concerns about taxation so this is a weird thing to come at me with. Maybe you should take a little break and calm down.
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Jan 10, 2016 19:37
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OwlFancier posted:Er, yes I can deny that, because the way it works is it takes more money from the people who pay the highest taxes and redistributes it equally. It's kind of hard to have a discussion with someone who says "I am in favour of mincome, by which I mean progressive taxation paying for basic welfare backed up by a system of income tax credits to avoid any chance of a poverty traps'. Mincone as a politcalmprogram means rtransferring money from poor proplento the middle class; that is why it gets the political attention that no other radical idea gets. If you have a plan that is not about transferring money from the working poor to the low-income rich, it is not mincome, so you should probably use some other name for it.
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Jan 10, 2016 20:50
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radmonger posted:It's kind of hard to have a discussion with someone who says "I am in favour of mincome, by which I mean progressive taxation paying for basic welfare backed up by a system of income tax credits to avoid any chance of a poverty traps'. How on earth is that mincome? Mincome is when you give everyone a basic income regardless of their conditions. It is not mutually exclusive with other forms of welfare and there is nothing that suggests it would be funded by taking money from the poor. I have no idea what you are talking about when you say mincome but it's nothing to do with the concept as I've ever heard it discussed.
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Jan 10, 2016 20:57
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radmonger posted:It's kind of hard to have a discussion with someone who says "I am in favour of mincome, by which I mean progressive taxation paying for basic welfare backed up by a system of income tax credits to avoid any chance of a poverty traps'. Explain the mechanism by which a net upward redistribution occurs via minimum income in a system that's funded by progressive taxation.
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Jan 10, 2016 21:00
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I'm interested in this asset-rich, income-poor potential rentier class. Who actually belongs to it, even just for example? On the face of it, I think that asset-poor, income-poor people would still benefit more from a basic income than asset-rich, income-poor people in as much as the latter only need to meet daily fixed living expenses (like food) while the former need those expenses in addition to "asset" expenses (like, I don't know, a new car or house I guess). Having greater need, a regular income subsidy is of greater use. I can't really say for sure because I don't know what the actual case example is though.
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Jan 10, 2016 21:24
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I think the idea is that people might inherit a house and be able to live without paying rent or something. Which, well, you could solve by raising inheritance tax.
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Jan 10, 2016 21:47
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Is there some epidemic of middle class folks living the high life off of inherited property and minimum wage jobs that I'm not aware of? It's hard to imagine how a minimum income would be transformative for people who are apparently so asset rich that they can already live a middle class lifestyle while having no real income.
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Jan 10, 2016 22:18
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radmonger posted:Mincone as a politcalmprogram means rtransferring money from poor proplento the middle class; that is why it gets the political attention that no other radical idea gets. If you have a plan that is not about transferring money from the working poor to the low-income rich, it is not mincome, so you should probably use some other name for it. Is this the Money Mustache case? People who save 70%+ of their wages and live on the minimum wage equivalent? The same people with really low carbon footprints, who dropped out of the workforce and freed up their good jobs, who choose not to nitpick their subway sandwich artists' olive policy and instead make food themselves? Sounds good to me
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Jan 10, 2016 22:30
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OwlFancier posted:I think the idea is that people might inherit a house and be able to live without paying rent or something. I'm pretty sure they're referring to existing homeowners, particularly those who either stretched to buy (young people) or own their home but have fixed incomes (old people). People who inherit homes do fall into this as well. Housing is probably the most unpredictable part of mincome and IMO I think a lot of solutions to potential problems will be political landmines or effectively meaningless. Like, what's the intended goal of raising inheritance tax on homes?
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Jan 10, 2016 22:32
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Zachack posted:I'm pretty sure they're referring to existing homeowners, particularly those who either stretched to buy (young people) or own their home but have fixed incomes (old people). People who inherit homes do fall into this as well. Generally to break the inertia of capital, so that it doesn't matter how wealthy you are right now, your kids get the same opportunity as everyone else. Your wealth is shared among everyone. A lot harder to think FYGM when you can't pass it on. The other option is fully social housing where you don't own your house, you just have it on a lifetime lease, and it gets reassigned upon your death. You could make allowances for multiple residents and even for familial inheritance in the form of giving your next of kin first shot at the house if they want it, but you can't make money off your house and housing is more standardized, no mansions or private renting. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jan 10, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2016 22:39
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Paradoxish posted:Explain the mechanism by which a net upward redistribution occurs via minimum income in a system that's funded by progressive taxation. Every existing proposal and experiment for mincome is based on cancelling mean-tested welfare and most free services and replacing it with an income + asset-blind flat payment. So I think that is clearly what the word means, unless someone can point to a counter-example. Under no scenario can you work the math in any way other than the asset-poor lose out and the asset rich-make out like gangbusters. At least it is biblical; Mathew 25:29 'For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.' Note that only being income and asset-blind would reduce bureaucracy costs, so unless you are going round every time someone says 'mincome would cost less to administer' and correcting them, then that's the meaning you are in effect giving your support to. If you did have mincome plus a means-tested welfare system, then not only are you paying the overhead costs of two systems, obviously your mincome must be a totally token amount otherwise the means-tested part would never trigger. Consequently, it can't possibly have any of the good effects in terms of changing the bargaining position between employees and employers; it's just the equivalent of a school giving out some book tokens for good behavior. Nothing actually wrong with it, just a pretty stupid route to count as your main hope of the structural nature of society getting better.
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Jan 11, 2016 00:37
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That sure was a lot of words that didn't answer the question.
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Jan 11, 2016 01:08
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radmonger posted:Every existing proposal and experiment for mincome is based on cancelling mean-tested welfare and most free services and replacing it with an income + asset-blind flat payment. So I think that is clearly what the word means, unless someone can point to a counter-example. Under no scenario can you work the math in any way other than the asset-poor lose out and the asset rich-make out like gangbusters. Man, you were actually doing really well, why'd you tip your hand like this? 
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Jan 11, 2016 01:09
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