Jump to content

Basic Income


Pong Messiah
 Share

Recommended Posts

Guest El Chalupacabra

Don't we already have that? The last time I checked, it was called welfare, food stamps and minimum wage.

 

The thing advocates for basic income neglect to explain is this: who the hell pays for it, and where does the money come from? We are raiding social security and medicare as it is! This is the same idiocy that advocates for high school drop out burger flippers to make $15/hour at McDonald's.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know quite enough, mainly because I think it has slightly less chance of happening in my lifetime than me being named Emperor of the World, so maybe 50/50?

 

I've seen estimates that it would cost no more than current welfare, though, so if that's true, the question is would it work or would it just cause inflation as whatever amount is the Basic Income becomes the new zero?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't recall the numbers, but I think it's something like 40% of adults getting money from the government with only 60% paying taxes. That's a problem. Time to bring back the bubonic plague, because a massive culling is the only thing that can fix it. Without it we'll just become China.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't recall the numbers, but I think it's something like 40% of adults getting money from the government with only 60% paying taxes. That's a problem. Time to bring back the bubonic plague, because a massive culling is the only thing that can fix it. Without it we'll just become China.

Speaking of China, what we could do is discuss with their leaders the prospect of a good, old fashioned, knock-down, drag-out war. Both China and the U.S have a lot of surplus population, lagging economies and an overall sense of malaise and angst. The answer to all of the above is the kind of national project we can all get behind, the kind we haven't really had since Hitler was still around. Or to a lesser extent the USSR. Now's our chance to have the good old days back once again.

 

Mr. Obama should seriously consider picking up that phone, giving Mr. Jinping a call, and making it happen. Maybe see if Mr. Putin wants in on it also. He seems like the kind of guy that would be. We're all awfully angry now-a-days ... if our so called leaders actually played their cards right for a change, our navies could be blowing one another up by the end of the week. Why pay all these people to be on the dole when we could be paying them to blow up that new air craft carrier China's been boasting about, and to rebuilt the ships that the Chinese manage to blow up in turn. Plus it'll stop us bitching about how stupid the guys on the other side of the isle in congress are for a little while. We can bitch about how awful the Chinese and the Ruskies are for a while instead. We'll take a bit of a break from shooting ourselves, and get back to the proper way of things, which is shooting people from other countries.

 

So how about it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Problem with that is that you kill off the younger generation, which means older folks will hog the money and the big jobs, thus hindering the progress of mankind.

 

We've totally missed our chance to fix the problem. Many of them post here today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Can't recall the numbers, but I think it's something like 40% of adults getting money from the government with only 60% paying taxes. That's a problem. Time to bring back the bubonic plague, because a massive culling is the only thing that can fix it. Without it we'll just become China.

Speaking of China, what we could do is discuss with their leaders the prospect of a good, old fashioned, knock-down, drag-out war.

 

Way ahead of you LK.

 

http://nightly.net/topic/67295-its-about-time-to-have-another-world-war/

 

Now, world wars have been sorta out of vogue since the 40s. One could say, in fact, that war in general is no longer fashionable, at least wars that aren't police actions, internationalist anti-terrorist operations, small skirmishes, and so forth. But the good old fashioned, I'm gonna go to war to bomb the f-ck out of you and take all your sh-t... well, we haven't seen one of those since WW2 unfortunately. I think it's about time to have another world war, especially while the US is still in a relatively good position to win one. This will be the first thread in a series of mine called "Slow days at work." Next up will be my idea that we should re-colonize Africa, and then after that, I will present a scathing criticism of private property and capitalism.

 

Ok then. Let's first look at the current recession, which one could say is technically over, since the US hasn't had negative GDP growth since 2009. However, unemployment levels continue to be high, a factor that is not necessarily a future indicator of growth since it lags investment, but continues to be startling nonetheless. About 8.5 million jobs have been lost, and unemployment currently sits around 9.5%, a rate that is misleading since it doesn't account for those that have given up looking for work, college grads that can't find work, etc. The real rate is probably closer to about 15-18%.

 

So the question is whether those jobs are actually coming back. Well, let's look at what caused this recession: specifically over-leveraged banks investing in different asset-backed securities, such as collateralized debt obligations and what not. To some extent credit default swaps and so on, those probably had less of an impact. Now Obama hasn't really done anything about this- he spent about a year jerking around with health care, and the recent financial reform package is garbage.. establishes yet another agency that will probably do nothing, and does very little in terms of regulating credit rating agencies, which were a large root of the problem (i.e. Moody's and the like giving AAA ratings to bundles of collateralized debt obligations that were rightfully garbage).

 

But let's say Obama did everything he could. Well, I don't think the jobs would come back. This recession was more of a spark that lit the powder keg; i.e. if it wasn't banking practices, it would've been something else. The market was due for a correction, and the fat was gonna be trimmed. Will the fat re-emerge? Well, let's look at the Great Depression- a decent analogy since we might be closer to 1930 than some people think, i.e. on the cusp of a prolonged period of low to no growth, and general volatility. Now, economists are still not in agreement of what brought us out of the Great Depression. FDR or no FDR, Smoot-Hawley, or no Smoot-Hawley. We can debate those all day, but what is true is that unemployment did not fall below 10% again until 1941, which coincidentally lines up with the date that Japan attacked us.

 

Many people seem to remember the 1950s as the streets being paved with gold, but people should also remember that it's pretty easy to be king when we nuked the major industrial power of Asia and firebombed the sh-t out of the major industrial power of Europe. As a convenient side effect, Germany had the kind heart to drive the nail in the coffin of the British Empire, and the financial capital of the world re-located from London to NYC.

 

The inevitability of globalization and free flow of capital will serve to decrease the US' primacy in the long run, but perhaps another 50 years or so of manufacturing and export primacy can perhaps be established by the one, true, and only way to eliminate economic competition: war. If we're gonna do it, we might as well go ahead and do it while we still got the upper hand.

 

Here are a few potential targets:

 

Japan.

Tantalizing, but perhaps not worth it. Japan is the second richest country in the world behind the US, and was quick to re-establish themselves after WW2 as the big kid on the block in Asia. However, a few things to note. First, in many ways, Japan has already shifted into a service economy. While their primary exports continue to be machinery and electronics, a lot of the pure manufacturing of such is not even done in Japan anymore, but China. Second, it's not clear that a blow to Japan companies would benefit the US. While there are established US electronics companies, chip-makers, and so forth, all that manufacturing is done in China, Thailand, and other countries- not Japan. The automobile industry would likely recover at the top in US (and in terms of outright share price), but would be unlikely to translate to US jobs, since globalization would mean that GM, Ford, and so forth would be unlikely to expand their manufacturing in the US, but rather build plants in Mexico and so on. If anything, more US jobs would be lost since Japan auto companies build a lot of their plants in the American South. Other industries that were once huge in Japan (and the US), such as heavy industry, have now shifted more to Korea (Hyundai Heavy Industry is the world's largest ship-maker).

 

Germany

Ah, an oldie but a goodie. Germany ranks 4th in the world in GDP, and we have a long history of generally kicking Germany's ass. Germany is also the world's second largest exporter after China, and those exports are in several fields that have long left the US, such as heavy machinery, automobiles. Also Germany has a large market share of pharmaceuticals and chemical goods, a market the US could potentially steal. Finally, Germany has no nuclear weapons, and better yet- a general war in Germany could likely draw in other countries and trigger a larger EU war that could fracture that union. There's a lot of potential there, since the EU, collectively, is the world's largest exporter and "country" by GDP. General chaos and devastation in Europe could only help the US. I say it's time to give the Krauts a third helping of Uncle Sam's bizness.

 

Russia

I think this one has come and gone. Russia has fallen down the 12th in GDP, behind India for god's sakes. It appears that Russia has returned to what they always were (outside of their brief flirtation with being a power in the Soviet Era). That is, a country of largely self-loathing, corrupt, vodka swilling boors. Not to mention they still have a ton of nukes, and the goal here is to win a war, not destroy the earth with an ICBM exchange.

 

Mexico

Might it be a good idea to just finish what we started in the Mexican War way back in 1846, and go ahead and annex Mexico? The southwestern US is practically Mexico already anyways, and rather than even bother with immigration reform, we could just conquer the country and suck up the entire labor force. I would think opponents of measures such as NAFTA would be particularly keen on this potential target. Of course, we'd have to then deal with all the general problems in Mexico- corruption, drug trade, and what not.

 

China

Ahh, now here we go. The world's largest exporter, the world's 3rd largest country by GDP, and the country who replaced the US as the world's manufacturer. China is only posed for even more future growth, and we are unlikely to see China meaningfully change certain trade policies (such as currency valuation, enforcement of IP law, and so forth). Additionally, it's worthwhile to note that while China is no longer communist, it's not really a liberal democracy either. It's perhaps best described as a capitalist dictatorship. Along those lines, it might be a really long time before they have certain labor and union movements that preclude their ability to produce massive amounts of goods for extremely cheap prices. Here's the thing though, if we're gonna strike China, we gotta do it soon. We still have a massive advantage in terms of nuclear weapons, about 2,500 or so active warheads to their 180. Also, there are questions of their delivery systems, that is to say, whether they can even effectively deliver a second or retaliatory strike. Even without nuclear weapons, a war right now is probably winnable, as long as we get it going before the aircraft carrier becomes obsolete and they perfect carrier-killing missiles. There are other ancillary advantages to eliminating China- such as capturing Hong Kong and turning it into a territory of the US. That would have incredible benefits.

 

 

Any others? No one else I can think of in Latin America, though Brazil might be worth looking at soon. Africa is worthless. The Mid-East only has oil, which will be irrelevant pretty soon. Anyone else?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah, LK, war on a WW2 casualty scale is likely not going to happen for the foreseeable future, and certainly not between the US and China, since they are too closely tied economically. Besides, if you totaled all the WW2-era deaths, related (directly or indirectly) to combat, civilian deaths, disease, collateral damage, and starvation in all countries worldwide from 1931 (Japanese invasion of China), WW2 itself, and to include the Chinese communist take over and the Korean War...Hell, scrap that... let's just throw WW1 and the whole cold war, deaths under tin pot dictators, and all the other petty wars in the 20th century in there too, and you are looking at around 200 million dead, give or take a few million. The 20th Century was the deadliest century when it came to war, but also saw the largest population explosion in history. Today, we are looking at 7 billion people. So through all that war and death, 200 million is a drop in the bucket compared to 7 billion people!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More than a drop. We need it again. Sometimes peace creates more problems than war.

 

I don't know who you are or what you do, but if you have children you can't be cool with their chances. It's just not out there. For THEM.

 

People gotta go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

You've watched Soylent Green one too many times. The entire world population can fit inside the state of Texas, with the population density of NYC. I don't think too many people is the issue, at least on this topic. It's lazy asses looking for an excuse not to work, or not wanting to spend the time and money on their education to make more than minimum wage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It costs a lot to be poor. Monthly fees, interest fees, etc. And to get medicaid, you really have to have pretty much nothing. I finally got my mom qualified but it was an exercise in frustration. Doing her bills drives me crazy. Once you have dug yourself in that hole, it's impossible to get out unless you are healthy and truly able to get a job. Now, my mom is one of the people who the "system" should be taking care of. I don't know what it would be like to be a single mom on welfare making minimum wage. Some mistakes are probably made to get there, but we need to do something to make it less deep of a hole to climb out of.

 

I lean towards education being the key to solving a lot of poverty issues. Free community college/trade school as long as you maintain a 2.5 GPA? There's a lot that a AA qualifies you for that won't make you rich, but it will keep you out of the hole.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What we need is a predator. Some kind of vampire or werewolf type, that can hunt and prey on humans. It'll drive the population towards an equilibrium, and raise demand for courses on how to avoid predators. That's what we need.

 

Now we just need a mad scientist or two to start working on breeding these human-predators...I'll be in my lab.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

It costs a lot to be poor. Monthly fees, interest fees, etc. And to get medicaid, you really have to have pretty much nothing. I finally got my mom qualified but it was an exercise in frustration. Doing her bills drives me crazy. Once you have dug yourself in that hole, it's impossible to get out unless you are healthy and truly able to get a job. Now, my mom is one of the people who the "system" should be taking care of. I don't know what it would be like to be a single mom on welfare making minimum wage. Some mistakes are probably made to get there, but we need to do something to make it less deep of a hole to climb out of.

 

I lean towards education being the key to solving a lot of poverty issues. Free community college/trade school as long as you maintain a 2.5 GPA? There's a lot that a AA qualifies you for that won't make you rich, but it will keep you out of the hole.

Yeah, I am definitely not saying people shouldn't be given help that are trying to better themselves, but I think the safety nets in place work as they are, or can work with modifications. I am all for helping single parents make ends meet, should they be in dire financial situations. I am for helping people go to college or trade school or even just went into a job with an apprenticeship of some sort, and yeah, the price of college is getting ridiculous. I am for helping older people afford something beyond just a fixed income; my own dad is in that boat and was forced to change health insurances that may cover less, which is scary for him, considering he has a lot of health issues. But the criteria should be that those that ask for and receive the help, should actually show they are trying to better themselves and have tangible progress, or that they have already worked all their lives paying into the system. The important thing is people who are receiving help aren't just sponging off the system.

 

The idea that some 40 something burger flipper should demand $15/hour because his crappy McJob works around his World of Warcraft gaming schedule, or somebody that basically doesn't want to better themselves and expects a monthly check because they are stuck at minimum wage and don't want to take simple steps to improve their life, when there are a lot of college and trade school grad who may not even make $15/hr for their first job or two out of school, pretty much disgusts me. The very principle of this is as if these burger flippers feel like they are somehow more deserving than the people who played by the rules and went to school is outrageous. If all you want to do is flip burgers, or spin signs on a street corner for a job, or some other low skill, very replaceable job, you deserve the low wage you get.

 

I'm by no means rich ( I am squarely middle class, perhaps by some standards maybe lower middle), but I worked hard to get what I do have. I didn't have money to go to college, so I took steps to earn the money to put me through. I knew I couldn't afford a kid, so I made sure I didn't have any. And yeah, I'm not an Ivy leaguer but a community college graduate who transferred to a state university for my undergrad degree. I went that route because it stretched my college money further than if I went all 4 years to a university, and I chose the places I did because it was within my financial means. So, I am far from the elite. But everything I did was NOT impossible, nor something I should be patted on the back for. It was what a responsible grown up does, nothing more, and nothing less.

 

Nowadays, you have people, usually younger 20 somethings, complaining how bad things are, and how dim their future is. Maybe things are more competitive, but the solution definitely is NOT to throw your arms up and demand the government supplement your McJob income. The solution is to learn a job skill, be it college, trade school, apprenticeship, your own talent, or whatever, and be as marketable as you can.

 

Sorry for the long rant, but the idea of basic income government handouts going to those who haven't earned it really piss me off. These non-starter idiots with poor personal and financial management skills complaining they don't make enough don't need to go very far to see how well they really have it. Chances are they have a car, a black Friday TV, an xbox, and probably somehow have the money for an iPhone to facebook their asses off. It smacks of contradiction and hypocrisy. Compared to someone in true poverty, like on a Native American reservation, or just south of the border in Mexico, or even a mud hut in Africa, they live like kings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The notion-- a distressingly common notion -- that one is owed something just for breathing, as if they deserve unconditional wub from society whether or not they do anything useful with themselves disgusts me, too.

 

That said, so long as you haven't committed a serious crime, I think it is in society's best interests to help people help themselves. If somebody wants to get a better-paying job with better long-term prospects where there is actual demand (e.g RN), it just makes sense to offer free or reduced education, trade school, etc., though it should be pointed out that a lot of these in-demand jobs will already pay for your schooling and license if you are willing to do the work (e.g. truck driver).

 

If somebody wants to stop working in their minimum-wage service industry job to become a poet or get in to some other oversaturated profession nobody cares about, well... they can take out a loan and go to college then go back to their minimum-wage job (now burdened with massive debt!) just like everybody else.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

I agree Pong. I am all for a social safety net of some type. In fact, I think the current one could be improved upon. Like I said, I have no problem with people who genuinely need help getting it, and getting them back on their feet.

 

My problem is when people start thinking that the minimum wage should pay not just for the roof over your head and food on your table, but the car you want (the new sweet ass Scion FR-S Coupe you had your eye on, not just the 10 year old Hyundai Accent that is in your economic means to take you too/from work), your iPhone, the 50" HDTV, gaming console, and entertainment center you lugged your happy ass to get a the Best Buy that you plop yourself in front of for 8 or more hours a day 7 days a week, after working your 4-6 hour McShift, 3 days a week, and the government needs to step in and make sure you get a check from them so that you can live the equivalent of a lifestyle of a $35K or more per year job.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm really not disagreeing with you much, here, but I'll admittedly be a little harsher on underemployed milennials when all the greedy ass baby boomers finally start retiring or dropping like flies. Right now they are hogging a lot of jobs that should've been vacated by now because they treated their retirement accounts like a Vegas trip.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The notion-- a distressingly common notion -- that one is owed something just for breathing, as if they deserve unconditional wub from society whether or not they do anything useful with themselves disgusts me, too.

 

That said, so long as you haven't committed a serious crime, I think it is in society's best interests to help people help themselves. If somebody wants to get a better-paying job with better long-term prospects where there is actual demand (e.g RN), it just makes sense to offer free or reduced education, trade school, etc., though it should be pointed out that a lot of these in-demand jobs will already pay for your schooling and license if you are willing to do the work (e.g. truck driver).

 

If somebody wants to stop working in their minimum-wage service industry job to become a poet or get in to some other oversaturated profession nobody cares about, well... they can take out a loan and go to college then go back to their minimum-wage job (now burdened with massive debt!) just like everybody else.

This is where I have always fallen on socialism in general. Give people more services that allow them to be better educated and trained. It's that whole teach a person to fish aphorism in real life.

 

If you are poor and work hard, and want to do better-- there should be programs, state or employer funded, within your career path to train you to do better.

 

But if you want cash money cause life is hard-- eff you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The one issue I have is that frequently people don't take into account that there are people who aren't capable of benefiting from any level of training/education.

 

When I was 16, I worked a fast food job. There was a guy I worked with, super nice, but he was barely smart enough to wash the dishes at Boston Market. We can try to train people like that all we want, but there's a point where you just have to accept that some people aren't teachable. I mean, heck, average intelligence is 100. That means for everyone you know who's above that, there's someone equally below it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed. I was once told by a mentor that I had a tendency to forget that the world is full of idiots because I'm surrounded by really smart people. Most of us on Nightly are of AT LEAST average intelligence, so when we talk about these issues, I think we assume everyone is at least close to as smart as we are. Not so much.

 

I'd like to think that if my family was better educated, they'd be better off. Most of them work manual labor jobs and their bodies just start to break down around age 40. I finally have one cousin who is supposed to graduate this spring with a college degree. The rest of them have just rushed out to get a job at 18 because "college is expensive". One of them got her CNA, which I was really pleased with, but that job is also not easy on the body. But for the most part, education is not valued in my family, and somehow money and "things" are. It's like they don't realize education is a path to that.

 

There is a purpose for labor-intensive and menial work. It's to employ people who really aren't capable of more, so that they can at least contribute to society and not sit around bored and end up getting into trouble.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

I'm really not disagreeing with you much, here, but I'll admittedly be a little harsher on underemployed milennials when all the greedy ass baby boomers finally start retiring or dropping like flies. Right now they are hogging a lot of jobs that should've been vacated by now because they treated their retirement accounts like a Vegas trip.

Some truth to that. I don't necessarily want to se anyone die, but retire? Yes. Please retire and go the F*ck away!

 

I see gaming the system all the time in higher ed. People, typically boomer age, retire from their full time positions at full retirement and benefits, then come back to work in the exact same job, just called something else, as a part timer. The way they get around it is their original position is eliminated, and their friends (other faculty or admin staff) create a new position, just for them. The job description is written in such a way to be so narrow, that only 2 or 3 people on the planet could possibly fill the requirements.

 

Also, oftentimes, their retirement check is almost as much as their salary was before retirement, being some 80%, depending on time in service, what they paid in, what other service time purchase they did from other jobs, etc. Then the part time job is often a bit more than half their original salary, so the net gain is that you have someone working half as many hours, for up to 130% of their original pay.

 

Boomers are the worst at nepotism and double dipping in the system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there any job that isn't automatable? Because "basic income" from our own labor may be something none of us can safely rely in the future. What will we humans do when software does all the white collar jobs for us, and robots do all the blue collar jobs for us?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean, heck, average intelligence is 100. That means for everyone you know who's above that, there's someone equally below it.

Agreed. I was once told by a mentor that I had a tendency to forget that the world is full of idiots because I'm surrounded by really smart people. Most of us on Nightly are of AT LEAST average intelligence.

Soo sad, but totally true. My friendly of business is full of cruel reminders of this too. heck, my biggest take-away from Making a Murderer is how dumb people, even those in professional positions, can be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.