Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

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Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Elvis » Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:31 am

Lately (particularly on NPR) I've been hearing more and more serious talk about the idea of a "Universal Basic Income," whereby everyone is simply given a monthly "salary" to live on, the figures ranging from US$10,000 per year to US$24,000 per year—enough to pay food & shelter basics. It would ideally replace many or most of the existing band-aid social services and assistance programs that carry expensive bureaucracies and cumbersome needs-testing.

Under the U.S. capitalist regime at least, a universal basic income would itself be one big band-aid, essentially compensation, "hush money" for tolerating the continuing mass rake-off of the country's wealth by the miniscule percent at the tippy-top. One could look at it as a dividend.

A common objection is "inflationary!" but as I understand it, universal income wouldn't add dollars to the economy, it would replace existing expentitures. Further, what are most people going to do with the money? They're going to spend it, mostly locally. When they spend the money, other people get that money and spend it again, and so on. Most people would keep their jobs, but they'd spend that money. The "job creators" couldn't get their factories going fast enough to supply all the stuff people will demand. (Right?)

So I dunno, it seems like Universal Basic Income could be a recipe for...a thriving economy! — with what I assume would be close to zero homelessness, and things like losing a job would no longer have to mean a crisis for workers and families.

On NPR, a European economist (sorry, forgot his name, accent sounded French) addressed the inflation question from a different angle: he said that national governments could issue the money and then simply write it off. He chuckled and said 'governments can do this' and that a UBI would generate such economic activity to make the money creation a moot issue. It's a novel approach because there's no interest, no repayment, no lenders or middlemen; the payoff is a busy economy.

Universal Basic income has support from some curious quarters. I'm surprised that billionaire "Trump advisor" Peter Thiel is not on Wikipedia's list below, he's an advocate. My guess is that Thiel figures a UBI would, if nothing else, create a bigger market, and I think that's right: more people spending money. (Will everyone get a free PayPal account as the repository of their $2000 monthly "dividend"?)

Thiel and others predict that a UBI would unleash a lot of untapped genius that would otherwise be lost to the daily grind. I assume that it's also a subtle bribe: "okay, is $2,000 a month enough to stop whining and leave us billionaires alone for once?"

My understanding of economics is pretty dim, my level is along the lines of the popular books of John Kenneth Galbraith, and calculus makes my eyes glaze over. I'm convinced, however, that "supply side"/"trickle down" is a lie, and I can't believe it's still being flogged as a solution.

I heard that Finland is now experimenting with a UBI for unemployed persons in selected regions. To begin here's the Wikipedia primer link & excerpts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Basic income

A basic income (also called unconditional basic income, Citizen's Income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income or universal demogrant[2]) is a form of social security[3] in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.

An unconditional income transfer of less than the poverty line is sometimes referred to as a partial basic income.

Basic income systems that are financed by the profits of publicly owned enterprises (often called social dividend or citizen's dividend) are major components in many proposed models of market socialism.[4] Basic income schemes have also been promoted within the context of capitalist systems, where they would be financed through various forms of taxation.[5]

Similar proposals for "capital grants provided at the age of majority" date to Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice of 1795, there paired with asset-based egalitarianism. The phrase "social dividend" was commonly used as a synonym for basic income in the English-speaking world before 1986, after which the phrase "basic income" gained widespread currency.[6] Prominent advocates of the concept include Philippe Van Parijs, Ailsa McKay,[7] André Gorz, Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, and Guy Standing.

...

Policy aspects


Transparency


Basic income, it is argued,[8] is a much more transparent and simple welfare system than the one existing in the welfare states around the world today. Instead of numerous welfare programs it would be one universal unconditional income.


Administrative efficiency

The lack of means test or similar administration would allow for some saving on social welfare which could be put towards the grant. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) describes one of the benefits of a basic income as having a lower overall cost than that of the current means-tested social welfare benefits,[9] and they have put forth proposals for implementation they claim to be financially viable.[10]


Poverty Reduction

Basic income is often argued for because of its potential to reduce poverty, and even eradicate poverty.


Basic income and growth

Basic income and growth (or BIG) allows for potential economic growth: people may decide to invest in themselves to earn higher degrees and get interesting and well-paid jobs that, in turn, could trigger growth.[11][12] As Jason Burke Murphy argues, a substantial discussion has grown over recent years about whether basic income could be a part of a degrowth-agenda.[13]


Freedom

Supporters commonly make three very different arguments that Basic Income promotes freedom. First, although most Basic Income supporters tend to be politically left, right-leaning supporters at least since the 1970s, have argued that policies like Basic Income free welfare recipients from the paternalistic oversight of conditional welfare-state policies.[14] Second, Philippe Van Parijs has argued that basic income at the highest sustainable level is needed to support real freedom, or the freedom to do whatever one "might want to do."[15] By this, Van Paris means that all people should be free to use the resources of the Earth and the "external assets" people make out of them to do whatever they might want to do. Money is like an access ticket to use those resources, and so to make people equally free to do what they might want to do with the external assets of the world, the government should give each of individual as many such access tickets as possible—that is, the highest sustainable Basic Income.

Third, at least since Thomas Paine, some supporters have argued that Basic Income is needed to protect the power to say no, which these supporters argue is essential to an individual's status of as a free person. If some other group of people controls resources necessary to an individual's survival, that individual has no reasonable choice other than to do whatever the resource-controlling group demands. Before the establishment of governments and landlords, individuals had direct access to the resources they needed to survive. But today, resources necessary to the production of food, shelter, and clothing have been privatized in such a way that some have gotten a share and others have not. Therefore, this argument goes, the owners of those resources owe compensation back to non-owners, sufficient at least for them to purchase the resources or goods necessary to sustain their basic needs. This redistribution must be unconditional because people can consider themselves free only if they are not forced to spend all their time doing the bidding of others simply to provide basic necessities to themselves and their families.[12] Under this argument, personal, political and religious freedom are worth little without the power to say no. In this view, basic income provides an economic freedom which, combined with political freedom, freedom of belief, and personal freedom establish each individual's status as a free person.


How will people behave? (Will they work less?)

There is also a belief among critics that if people have free and unconditional money they will not work (as much) and get lazy.[16][17][18] Less work means less tax revenue and hence less money for the state and cities to fund public projects. There are also concerns that some people will spend their basic income on alcohol and drugs.[12][19]

If there is a disincentive to employment because of basic income, it is however expected that the magnitude of such a disincentive would depend on how generous the basic income were to be. Some campaigners in Switzerland have suggested a level that would only just be liveable, arguing that people would want to supplement it.[20]

Tim Worstall, a writer and blogger, has argued that traditional welfare schemes create a disincentive to work, because such schemes typically cause people to lose benefits at around the same rate that their income rises (a form of welfare trap where the marginal tax rate is 100 percent). He has asserted that this particular disincentive is not a property shared by basic income as the rate of increase is positive at all incomes.[21]

In one study, even when the benefits are not permanent, the hours worked—by the recipients of the benefit—are observed to decline by 5 percent, a decrease of two hours in a typical 40-hour work week:

While experiments have been conducted in the United States and Canada, those participating knew that their benefits were not permanent and, consequently, they were not likely to change their behaviour as much or in the same manner had the GAI been ongoing. As a result, total hours worked fell by about five percent on average. The work reduction was largest for second earners in two-earner households and weakest for the main earner. Further, the negative work effect was higher the more generous the benefit level.[17]

However, in studies of the Mincome experiment in rural Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, the only two groups who worked significantly less were new mothers and teenagers working to support their families. New mothers spent this time with their infant children, and working teenagers put significant additional time into their schooling.[22] Under Mincome, "the reduction of work effort was modest: about one per cent for men, three per cent for wives, and five per cent for unmarried women."[23]

Another study that contradicted such decline in work incentive was a pilot project implemented in 2008 and 2009 in the Namibian village of Omitara; the assessment of the project after its conclusion found that economic activity actually increased, particularly through the launch of small businesses, and reinforcement of the local market by increasing households' buying power.[24] However the residents of Omitara were described as suffering "dehumanising levels of poverty" before the introduction of the pilot,[25] and as such the project's relevance to potential implementations in developed economies is not known.


Affordability

The affordability of a basic income proposal relies on many factors such as the costs of any public services it replaces, tax increases required, and less tangible auxiliary effects on government revenue and/or spending (for example a successful basic income scheme may reduce crime, thereby reducing required expenditure on policing and justice.)

A 2012 affordability study done in the Republic of Ireland by Social Justice Ireland found that basic income would be affordable with a 45 percent income tax rate. This would lead to an improvement in income for the majority of the population.[26] Charles M.A. Clark estimates that the United States could support a Basic Income large enough to eliminate poverty and continue to fund all current government spending (except that which would be made redundant by the Basic Income) with a flat income tax of just under 39 percent.[27]

Paul Mason stated that universal basic income would increase social security costs, but that it would also reduce the high medical costs associated with diseases of poverty, by reducing stress, diseases like high blood pressure, type II diabetes etc. would become less common.[28]

C. H. Douglas called for financing a basic income with created money. In a 1935 speech,[29] Douglas said:

We believe that the most pressing needs of the moment could be met by means of what we call a National Dividend. This would be provided by the creation of new money - by exactly the same methods as are now used by the banking system to create new money - and its distribution as purchasing power to the whole population. Let me emphasise the fact that this is not collection-by-taxation, because in my opinion the reduction of taxation, the very rapid and drastic reduction of taxation, is vitally important.


...

Advocates


Europe

European advocates of basic income system are for example Philippe Van Parijs,[55] Ailsa McKay (until 2004),[56] Götz Werner, Saar Boerlage,[57] André Gorz,[58] Antonio Negri,[59] Osmo Soininvaara,[60] Guy Standing.[61][62]

Some individuals who support introduction of basic income in Germany include activist Susanne Wiest, Green politician Sabine Niels, CDU politician Dieter Althaus, businessman Götz Werner, CDU politician Thoma Dörflinger,[63] leader of the Left Party Katja Kipping.

In 2015 the London-based RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) launched its own proposal for Basic Income entitled "Creative Citizens, Creative State"[64] which advocated replacing a swathe of UK means-tested benefits with a single universal payment as a response to the changing landscape of work and an ageing population.

In 2016, former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis declared the basic income approach was "absolutely essential."[65]

Other advocates include World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee,[66] Nobel Prize economists Christopher Pissarides[67] and Angus Deaton,[68] Finnish billionaire Björn Wahlroos,[69] Deutsch Telekom CEO Tim Höttges,[70] dm-drogerie markt founder Götz Werner,[71] UK member of parliament Jonathan Reynolds,[72] and President of the European Economic and Social Committee Georges Dassis.[73]


The United States and Canada

Advocates of basic income in the United States approach the issue from a wide variety of ideological and career backgrounds, and include former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich,[74] Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright,[75] feminists Carole Pateman and Ann Withorn,[76][77] journalist Scott Santens,[78] Marxist philosopher and chair of the USBIG Network Michael Howard,[79] venture capitalists Albert Wegner,[80] Tim Draper,[81] and Roy Bahat,[82] Y Combinator president Sam Altman,[83] LGBT activist Dan Savage,[84] artificial intelligence expert Jeremy Howard,[85] HowStuffWorks founder Marshall Brain,[86] conservative writer Charles Murray,[87] computer science professor Moshe Vardi,[88] Niskanen Center CEO Jerry Taylor,[89] financial manager Bill Gross,[90] Zipcar cofounder Robin Chase,[91] Singularity University CEO Rob Nail,[92] Cato Institute senior fellow Michael Tanner,[93] entrepreneur and environmentalist Peter Barnes,[94] and former Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern.[95] Historical advocates in the United States include founding father Thomas Paine,[96] civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.,[97] and Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.[98]

Canadian advocates include politician Hugh Segal, Minister for Families, Children and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos,[99] journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer,[100] economist Jim Mulvale,[101] Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes[102] and Pythian Group CEO Paul Vallée.[103]

...

Political initiatives

In 1976, the Alaska Permanent Fund was created, a constitutionally established permanent fund managed by a state-owned corporation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. The Fund pays a partial basic income to all its residents.[114]

In 2008 an official petition for basic income was started in Germany by Susanne Wiest.[115] The petition was accepted and Susanne Wiest was invited for a hearing at the German parliament's Commission of Petitions. After the hearing, the petition was closed as "unrealizable".[48]

In 2015, a citizen's initiative in Spain received 185,000 signatures, short of the required amount for the proposal to be discussed in parliament.[116]

The world's first universal basic income referendum in Switzerland on 5 June 2016 was rejected with a 76.9 percent majority.[1][117]


See also

Bleeding-heart libertarianism




I think I'm for it.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jan 06, 2017 12:44 pm

I'm not. I'm interested to see it play out, it's an important experiment and I'd even vote for it. Don't see it working, though.

Like True Communism, this will never be fully implemented, and like health "insurance" vs. single payer, it will never work unless it is fully implemented.

A logical consequence of a supplement-level UBI will be an increase in the cost of living (demand effects are real) and a reduction in the statuatory minimum wage in most states ("we don't need this any more.") The result I expect to see 10 years after implementation of UBI in the United States: millions of working class Americans working multiple low-paying jobs to get by.

That just sounds too familiar to feel like progress.

The automation / unemployment gearbox will continue to create problems and social upheaval either way, certainly. I expect to see some very interesting "national conversations," and not just here in the US, about who actually owns all this capital productivity! It's not the people. It's not even the state!

So, ultimately we -- the unwashed and non-trust funded -- are negotiating with the ruling class. This is why UBI is often smirkingly referred to as "Guillotine Insurance."

It's a terrible bargain, though, and the ruling class will demand certain concessions -- especially regarding human fertility and democratic governance -- in exchange for subsiding the eating and reproduction of billions of humans many of them no longer need, even as customers. They will be in a position to demand whatever they like.

And when you look at it on a long-term timeline, as men who run actuary tables for a living tend to do, they'll quickly recognize it's inherently inflationary. (A mob saying "give us some of your money or we'll kill you" is going to come back bigger next time. Every time.)

UBI is a great sell to the beneficiaries. The underwriters, not so much.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby NeonLX » Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:59 pm

I'd settle for universal basic healthcare. The need to keep myself (and my daughter) on an increasingly expensive and less comprehensive plan ties me to my current employment. I *cannot* make a change at my age and health status. I'm stuck at this job no matter what.

Universal healthcare would allow people to move about among different employment opportunities.

Yes, I'm "lucky" to have the plan I have, in spite of it becoming more expensive and covering less and less.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Jan 06, 2017 2:19 pm

I do recall hearing something about a guaranteed income being discussed a week ago or so, but i couldn't find anything more recent than this NPR piece from KQED:

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/24/495186758/as-our-jobs-are-automated-some-say-well-need-a-guaranteed-basic-income

Note: I didn't include the text's many embedded links.

As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need A Guaranteed Basic Income

September 24, 20165:53 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Queena Kim

Much of the anger and anxiety in the 2016 election is fueled by the sense that economic opportunity is slipping away for many Americans. This week, as part of NPR's collaborative project with member stations, A Nation Engaged, we're asking the question: What can be done to create economic opportunity for more Americans?

When we talk about the economy, we spend a lot of time talking about jobs — how to create more of them and how to replace the ones being lost. But what if we're entering an automated future where there won't be enough jobs for the people who need them? If this happens, how will people pay for food and shelter?

In Silicon Valley, a growing number of those in the tech sector believe that one solution may be the universal basic income. Simply put, the idea is that Uncle Sam will cut citizens a regular paycheck whether they work or not.

Misha Chellam is a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco and is part of the burgeoning basic income movement here. He took me to Eatsa, a healthy fast-food joint, to show me why many in tech are coming to this conclusion.

If Apple opened a fast-food place, it would look sort of like Eatsa. The space is bright and the decor is sparse in that trendy modern way. But when we enter the restaurant, I notice right away there are no cashiers to take our order.

"That's part of the magic here," Chellam says. "We're not going to order from anybody. We're going to order from computers."

Chellam and I walk up to one of the iPads mounted on the wall. The first step is to swipe your credit card, which Chellam does.

"Now what are we going to eat?" Chellam asks after his credit card is accepted.

Eatsa's thing is quinoa bowls, and you can see photos of its offerings on the screen. I go for the burrito quinoa bowl and Chellam orders the kale.

A couple of clicks later we're done. There are about 15 to 20 customers in the restaurant, but just one Eatsa employee.

"I have this gut sense from having been in the Valley for a while now that there will be a coming wave of automation that's going to get rid of a lot of jobs," Chellam says, back at his office in downtown San Francisco.

It's unclear whether technology will eventually reduce the total number of jobs in the country. While technological advances make some jobs obsolete, the past has shown that tech has also created new opportunities.

But advancements in artificial intelligence are intensifying this debate. In Silicon Valley, there are lots of experiments in automation. There's the robot at Lowe's home improvement store in Sunnyvale, Calif., that checks inventory. There's the "robot butler" working at a hotel in Cupertino. And then there's Uber, which is experimenting with driverless taxis and trucks.

"And that would affect 3.5 million truck drivers, another 5 million people who support the truck-driving industry," Chellam says. "And that's just one example of automation."

Chellam says software is eating white-collar jobs, too, and everyone from bookkeepers to doctors and lawyers will be affected.

Chellam criticizes politicians for not talking about this automated future. At best, he says, they talk about "retraining," which doesn't address the scope of the problem.

"Take the truck driver example," he says. "What are you going to retrain 3.5 million people to do in a short enough period of time?"

Chellam believes as technology replaces more workers, the traditional 40-hour-a-week job could become a thing of the past. If that happens, how will families get health insurance or save for retirement?

Some experts say the only answer is a government-guaranteed paycheck that would allow people to buy food and housing. That would not only help the individuals but would help keep economic wheels spinning and generate tax revenues.

"Silicon Valley's interest in the universal basic income is one part guilt and one part optimism," says Natalie Foster, a fellow at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research organization in Palo Alto.

Some technologists suggest setting the basic income at $10,000 a year. Others have proposed raising carbon emission taxes to pay for it. Foster says there hasn't been enough research on basic income to have serious policy discussions.

She said that right now tech workers are in the "inquiry and research phase." They're holding meetups and hosting panels asking what would it mean to give people money they didn't work for, Foster says.

In Oakland, they're about to find out. Y Combinator is funding a research project on basic income, where it will pay 100 people enough money for food and shelter — no strings attached. The prestigious tech accelerator helped launch companies that include Airbnb and Reddit.

Y Combinator declined requests for an interview, but in a blog post its president, Sam Altman, predicted that "at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created," some version of basic income will be rolled out nationally.

The debate about whether machines are taking our jobs is beside the point, says Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who is active in the basic income movement. He says that whether you like the idea or not, there won't be an alternative because decent-paying jobs are disappearing for millions of people.

"The reality is that work has changed. Forty percent of jobs are now contingent, meaning they're part-time, independent contractors, Uber drivers," he says.

And he says that shift has already left middle-class Americans economically insecure. A recent study by the Federal Reserve found that 46 percent of Americans surveyed didn't have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense. That feeling of insecurity is evident in this tumultuous presidential election.

"I think there is a sense that our economy is broken in many ways," Hughes says. "But rather than try to restructure our economy so it looks like the 1950s, I think we have to be honest with ourselves."

Hughes says that means basic income isn't an idea for the distant future but one we need to consider today.

Search results: https://www.google.com/search?q=Site%3A+NPR+%2B%22guaranteed+Income%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Both pro and con arguments found there.

I disagree with Mr. WRex. I earnestly believe a UBI would be a change for the better. A UBI was a part of my earliest and longest-lasting organizing experience and believe it is essential to move to a guaranteed or universal basic income. It's cheaper and economically wiser. We called it a "family allowance."

Were a UBI system approach be adopted, we would immediately eliminate a great part of the onerous and expensive welfare bureaucracy that burden all local counties, as Social Security would administer the program.

The USA was then the only western industrialized country without such a program, although I cannot be sure that is still true today.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Jan 06, 2017 2:45 pm

With Macy's, Sears, and K-Marts closing and losses of over 10,000 jobs to Amazon and their looming automation, this road will have to be crossed someday and we're just one step closer. Of course, that probably won't happen until surgeon and lawyer bots are perfected, but how many years do careers like that have?

The abolition of money is the true goal. Fully automated luxury space communism is already a chapter of future human history if we don't burn ourselves up in the next 100 years. A localized basic income experiment would have been a worthwhile pursuit like it was in Manitoba in the seventies, but under Trump that looks like an impossibility. I'm surprised to see it even on the table whatsoever. Like environmental progress, I assumed it was just over.

The current global economic reality is a mistake, it's just an old one. This wasn't the correct path to development, which, if slower and more peaceful, would have been better.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Elvis » Fri Jan 06, 2017 4:44 pm

Luther Blissett wrote: I'm surprised to see it even on the table whatsoever.


Yes, me too!

And especially, "why now"? Could it be...

Wombaticus Rex wrote:It's a terrible bargain, though, and the ruling class will demand certain concessions -- especially regarding human fertility and democratic governance -- in exchange for subsiding the eating and reproduction of billions of humans many of them no longer need, even as customers. They will be in a position to demand whatever they like.



Wombaticus Rex wrote:I'm not. I'm interested to see it play out, it's an important experiment and I'd even vote for it. Don't see it working, though.


Anyway, thanks for the splash of cold water. Good points.


Gotta dash, more later.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Jan 06, 2017 5:58 pm

Elvis » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:44 pm wrote:
Luther Blissett wrote: I'm surprised to see it even on the table whatsoever.


Yes, me too!

And especially, "why now"? Could it be...

Wombaticus Rex wrote:It's a terrible bargain, though, and the ruling class will demand certain concessions -- especially regarding human fertility and democratic governance -- in exchange for subsiding the eating and reproduction of billions of humans many of them no longer need, even as customers. They will be in a position to demand whatever they like.



Wombaticus Rex wrote:I'm not. I'm interested to see it play out, it's an important experiment and I'd even vote for it. Don't see it working, though.


Anyway, thanks for the splash of cold water. Good points.


Gotta dash, more later.


I think the "why now" is because last spring AlphaGo beat two Go masters, who then called the AI a "god".
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby brekin » Fri Jan 06, 2017 7:35 pm

I think some of this is just realizing that the mass of voters are a bloc that is just "too big to fail".
It is becoming increasingly harder for people to pay for the basics.
Honestly, the disappointment with Obama was largely financial.
Everything else can be forgiven if you are getting rich.
Obama didn't do that for many.
Trump won't either, and the backlash will be even worse this time.
Some type of manageable money source that the government doles out will probably have to happen to subsidize the American lifestyle increasingly needed to be propped up with plastic.

US$10,000 per year to US$24,000 per year
is a start.

Debt soars as it becomes more expensive to be an American
Household income has grown by 28% in the past 13 years, but the cost of living has gone up 30% in that time period. Some of the largest expenses for consumers — like medical care, food and housing — have significantly outpaced income growth.
WHEN COST OF LIVING OUTPACES INCOME GROWTH, DEBT INCREASES
Many people assume that credit card debt is the result of reckless spending and think that to get out of debt, people need to stop buying designer clothes and eating at five-star restaurants. But many people use credit cards to cover necessities when their income just doesn’t cut it.


Total owed by average U.S. household carrying this type of debt Total debt owed by U.S. consumers
Credit cards $16,061 $747 billion
Mortgages $172,806 $8.35 trillion
Auto loans $28,535 $1.14 trillion
Student loans $49,042 $1.28 trillion
Any type of debt $132,529 $12.35 trillion

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/average ... household/

But I don't see it happening. This is something that will turn back to vapor when the next war/financial crisis happens.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby identity » Fri Jan 06, 2017 9:07 pm

Elvis, you may have missed (while you were away) the Eno Era of Abundance thread http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40128; maybe worth a look if you're interested in previous discussions around UBI, automation, etc.:

I also posted this link in the Are You Broke? thread, but worth repeating here:
http://runesoup.com/2016/10/chaeconomica-trade-winds-edition/

Excerpt (by Gordon White):

So if you are a globalist central planner in a Soros-and-friends mould, you need to solve two things:

You need to ‘solve’ a world where 50% unemployment is a reality in such a way that the peasants do not revolt all over your Martha’s Vineyard lawn.

You need to make government debt nominally shrink rather than grow as we head into the future, so that you can raise more of it to give to your corporate friends to provide services that not only used to be run as public services, but were administered more efficiently at a local government level.

You accomplish this endgame of centralisation in the following way:

Step 1. A digital currency -thus preventing hoarding and bank runs- and globally interconnected payment and taxation systems used to ‘fight terrorism’ ie – make sure the last few drops of your money can be shaken from the bottle. Despite some pushback, I’ve been banging this drum since the first trial balloons started appearing around 2012. From Jan 2017 the interconnected payment/taxation regulation comes into effect. This will allow them to dial up and down interest rates to force you to go out and spend. (ie. -5% interest on a savings account and no way of withdrawing your money. Gordon Brown suggested this during the last financial crisis.)

Step 2. ‘Optimise’ government wealth transfers -food stamps, Social Security, unemployment payments- into a single wealth transfer.
Both of these steps get us 75% of the way toward what is the latest trial balloon, the so-called Universal Basic Income.

Without question, government wealth transfers could do with a huge amount of optimisation. I remember a Catherine Fitts example that seems germane: If you have a problem with your foodstamps you call up the private company that the government has contracted the programme out to and speak to someone in a call centre in Mumbai which is a job that was taken out of the country to save on cost that you yourself could have done which would mean you wouldn’t be having a discussion about foodstamps because you wouldn’t be on them, which would save the cost to the government that the eliminated job caused.

But if that were a job run by a state government then how would the private company make enough money to pay for Presidential candidates to come and give them speeches? There is no reason why government money shouldn’t provide a positive ROI in the real -and particularly local- economy. At the moment it doesn’t so that private companies can grow fat delivering a negative ROI service. This is centralisation.

The trouble with a UBI, of course, is that dumping trillions of dollars into the real economy will just mean everything goes up in price by precisely the number of trillions of dollars dumped in. That’s inflation. That’s what it will be used for. It will make their real assets skyrocket in value and make their debt payments essentially moot as they can just print up more dollars.

And in order to ‘solve’ for this inflation, more government money will be given to private food and energy producers to ‘reduce the cost to the end user’. Do you suppose these subsidies will go to your local market gardener? Or will they go to some Big Agri, GMO monster? What does the entire history of government subsidies tell you will happen?

That ‘multi-tier’ approach to a UBI will then spread out to everything else you wish to buy: See what happens to your monthly health care payments if you try to buy cigarettes. Or even if you try to buy ‘discretionary’ or ‘not from a UBI-approved vendor’ food when you have a gas bill due.
So what we will get in the medium term is multiple, non-monetary payment and barter systems on a local level, a thriving black market -already seen in the secondary market for foodstamps- which will lead to further and further restrictions from centralising authorities as they try to clamp down on these desperately-needed loopholes.
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It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby minime » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:07 pm

Let them eat bread and circuses.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Elvis » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:10 pm

identity wrote:Elvis, you may have missed (while you were away) the Eno Era of Abundance thread http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... 8&t=40128; maybe worth a look if you're interested in previous discussions around UBI, automation, etc.


Thanks, identity, I did a site search before posting and found the Are You Broke? thread but missed or skipped over the Eno Era thread. I was looking for a thread devoted to the basic income concept, and, not finding one, I started this. I will check those out.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Elvis » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:47 pm

I think a universal basic income would work best in a kind of socialist Utopia where the capitalist ethic is shunned.

In the present system, yeah, a UBI is a pay-off/sell-out on one hand, but on the other hand, it has many appeals. I reckon much would depend on how it's implemented.


Could a UBI come under Trump? If a Trump WH staff shakeout leaves Peter Thiel standing, Trump might listen to Thiel and decide to do something Big and roll out a surprise UBI proposal. Just musing.



(I've mulled over a similar idea about housing, that is: everyone is entitled to a house or apartment, period. Details, perhaps, to come at another time & place.)
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:22 pm

Thanks for mentioning the other two threads, Identity.
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby smoking since 1879 » Sat Jan 07, 2017 2:44 pm

what happens if i'm naughty? do they turn off the teat?
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Re: Universal Basic Income: gaining traction

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sat Jan 07, 2017 3:37 pm

smoking since 1879 » Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:44 pm wrote:what happens if i'm naughty? do they turn off the teat?


That's an interesting question, especially in terms of the future of Western "correctional systems."

Because of course, there will be pressure to do exactly that: make UBI conditional -- more precisely conditional every year, since regulations never get simpler and politicians always need "platforms" to talk about.

Yet at the same time, it would probably be more expensive for society to take care of the people they're cutting off from UBI.

Which doesn't mean a thing either way, of course, it's not like we make decisions on a rational basis.

Perhaps we'll start exporting our behavioral problems to Australia.
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