h a l f b a k e r y
Bite me.
idea:
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, best, random
meta:
news, help, about, links, report a problem
account:
Browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
Login
Create account.
|
|
|
Please log in.
If you're not logged in,
you can see what this page
looks like, but you will
not be able to add anything.
Why don't they stop all social security benefits, old age pensions, council tax benefits etc. and just give everyone a basic income instead?
The Quest for a Guaranteed Income
http://www.lalabor.org/GAI.html
A left-leaning account of the history of MAGI proposals. Still, it cedes Nixon his role. [Uncle Nutsy, Mar 24 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Where We are Going
http://www.progress...ividend/cdking.html
Martin Luther King's support for the MAGI. [Uncle Nutsy, Mar 24 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Quebec looks at guaranteed annual income
http://www.scar.uto...d/20/14/quebec.html
Don't hold your breath, Quebec. [Uncle Nutsy, Mar 24 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Nixon's Guaranteed Income Proposal
http://www.nybooks....iew?article_id=9918
It is amazing that Nixon would be called a liberal in the US today... [dbsousa, Oct 04 2004]
Annotation:
|
| |
The Duke of Edinburgh?! Since when did he have to count the pennies? I don't see him queuing up outside his local post office clutching his pension book. |
|
| |
The idea has also been suggested on this side of the pond, usually called "Minimum Annual Guaranteed Income" or MAGI, though the links I've found on Google call it GAI (U.S.A.) or minicome (Canada).
It was a not-unseriously-considered idea in the 60s and 70s, but went nowhere. U.S. proponents included Richard Nixon, Daniel Moynihan and Martin Luther King. |
|
| |
Problem is unemployed people would still blow it all on booze and fags, whatever you call it. How about a Minimum Annual Guaranteed 9-to-5 Job, and people who don't like it can join the army - it's up to the individual to choose of their own free will. |
|
| |
What's to say the employed people, the ones with the Minimum Garuanteed Jobs, wouldn't blow it all on booze and cigarettes anyway? I'm thinking a Minimum Garuanteed Job would prolly drive me to drink pretty fast. |
|
| |
Drove the bulk of the good proletariat in the USSR to drink. They have resiled from their position since then. China is also allowing the Iron Rice Bowl to rust through. |
|
| |
RodsTiger: Many legal traditions include the concept that stealing small amounts of food, enough to avoid starvation or (e.g.) little enough that one man can carry it, is a lesser sort of crime than stealing other things (which was sometimes a capital offiense). |
|
| |
lubbit: This would just stimulate the booze & fags portion of the economy, benefiting everyone! (somehow.) |
|
| |
It's a sad commentary that the five most popular items sold at supermarkets usually include these 4: |
|
| |
Coca-Cola products
Cigarettes
Potato Crisps
Dog & Pet Food
|
|
| |
A goodly proportion of these products are purchased by the down-at-heel if you ever take the time to watch who takes what through the checkout lanes. I'm not sure we want to encourage that with this marvellously socialist idea. |
|
| |
We have been trying to arrange a manageable work-for-the-dole scheme for some time in Australia. That might drag people out from under the bottom of the pile? |
|
| |
Popular with the older set. |
|
| |
That's a good idea anyway... |
|
| |
I'm not so sure you would want losers with no idea of how to accumulate a personal fortune in government. |
|
| |
The current crop may seem self-interested and probably are, but the poor salt-of-the-earth alternative is Joe Lunchbucket, who blew all of his savings on a 15' aluminium runabout that he takes out on the bay crabbing on the weekend. Even the current US Prez was born with a silver spoon... well, up his nose, but you get my point. |
|
| |
I don't see how anyone can actually take this idea seriously, much less vote for it. |
|
| |
Unabubba: On the other hand do we really need more
people who think that money and the ability to
accumulate it are the only valid measure of human worth
in government?
VeXaR: To understand other people's thoughts on the
subject all you have to do is read their notes. |
|
| |
"On the other hand do we really need more people who think that money and the ability to accumulate it are the only valid measure of human worth in government?" |
|
| |
Actually, it would be a refreshing change to have someone in office who is actually a net wealth creator. (eg, a successful businessman) Many if not most politicians do not know the meaning of the word "productive." |
|
| |
"VeXaR: To understand other people's thoughts on the subject all you have to do is read their notes." |
|
| |
I do. I still can't get past the fact that to have a guaranteed income, you must forcibly extract wealth from some (the productive) to subsidize others (the non-productive.) Where is the morality in that? Also, what makes one think that such a system wouldn't ultimately collapse, as the productive move to a more favorable climate (witness Great Britain's brain drain of the 20th century) and the unproductive spend the money that the producers would have used to create more wealth? Remember, nobody "owes" anyone else anything! Rights apply to actions, not things. There is a distinction between the right to work and the right to a job, for instance. |
|
| |
VeXaR: On the other hand, society benefits from the invention of new ideas and technologies, and the post-WWII explosion of technological progress can be credited in part to the fact that entrepreneurs knew they could take risks without facing starving to death if they failed, or, if risk-averse, being forced to sell their ideas to a few rich investors for a pittance. |
|
| |
The more pragmatic supporters of MAGI programs argue that, while thousands of people will essentially waste what they're given, it only takes one person freed from wage slavery to become the next Picasso or Beethoven or Linus Torvalds to balance them all out. |
|
| |
I'm not advocating this, you understand- like you, I'd imagine that capital would flee any society that tried it, since it would be hard to demonstrate that *my* payment of the MAGI tax is what freed some entrepreneur to risk bankruptcy to later manufacture my new Film Noir Home (whose net utility far exceeds the net tax payments I put into the program). But I think it's an interesting proposition and, in the abstract, economically defensible. |
|
| |
VeXaR: Which is better: a system where people get paid specifically not to work or otherwise produce income, and any income they produce results in a comparable deduction in their government 'allowance', or one in which people get paid for being human beings and any earnings only reduce government benefits to the extent necessary to pay a flat-rate tax on said earnings? |
|
| |
I support neither, but if I actually had to choose the lesser of two evils I would pick the latter. However, it would be prohibitively expensive. And taxes are pretty much through the roof as it is, even if you factor in Bush's modest tax cut. |
|
| |
Where does the Federal and/or State/Province and/or County cap end/begin? Each of the 50 States has a different median income and actual cost of living.
Example: What is a basic income in Mississippi is different than that of California for example. And within California there is a discrepancy between Tulare County and Los Angeles County. (I've lived in both for extended periods) |
|
| |
People from Bertrand Russel to Milton Freedman take this idea very seriously. A conference about it will take place in March, organized by the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (http://www.usbig.net). |
|
| |
ENOUGH with the lets-try-communism-one-more-time ideas! |
|
| |
The nice thing about more complex concepts like social security and pensions is that they require people to at least think a little bit, whereas the basic income idea would tend to squelch thought among the unintelligent altogether. 'Course then again, that might be a handy thing... |
|
| |
Vexar:
>There is a distinction
>between the right to work
>and the right to a job,
>for instance. |
|
| |
There is also a distinction between the right to work and the right not to join a union. |
|
| |
>ENOUGH
>with the
>lets-try-communism-one-more-time
>ideas! |
|
| |
So eliminate the market for them. The market for communism is created by "weed out the weakling" policies, which requires few if any policies, since WOTW is a very strong attractor in the absence of policies. Replace it with "kill all the weaklings", and communism (and maybe leftism in general) might find itself permanently affixed to the trash heap! |
|
| |
Until then, like uncertainty and tanstaafl and the fact that life ain't fair is something we have to deal with, the only thing I can say re. leftism and you is DEAL WITH IT. |
|
| |
VeXaR: I wonder what studies have been done to ascertain the real costs vs benefits of a shifting away from punitive welfare systems to something that supplimented the income of low-income workers. |
|
| |
If someone who would have stayed at home receiving $X/month from the government (i.e. taxpayers) is motivated to take a $Y/month job by the fact that they still receive, e.g., $X/2 of supplimental payments, the government--while still spending $X/2, will be nonetheless spending $X/2 less than without such a program in place. Additionally, I suspect very strongly that many people who would otherwise never be motivated to get a job might find that they can actually climb the "ladder of success" enough to wean themselves entirely off the government (i.e. taxpayers') teat. |
|
| |
Baked, burned to a crisp as far as I'm concerned. This is the very definition of Communism, which has destroyed every economy that ever tried it. |
|
| |
Yeah, there a some problems with Capitalism, but it has the best track record of success. It must be continually rebalanced to prevent people from becomming to powerful, but have adequate incentives for people to want to put forth the tremendous amounts of effort required to become wealthy. |
|
| |
Most governments are trying to find the balance that the votes ask for(which isn't the one which they actually want, much less the one that is best of the country as a whole, but at least they are trying...) |
|
| |
Supercat: I see no difference in your two proposals. Paying the unproductive(whether you are paying them to be human, or paying them not to work is a meaninless distenction, the latter is more honest but the first hast the exact same effect), with money that can only come from the productive. The same amount of money must be extracted from the productive, in effect penalizing those who actually go to work. |
|
| |
The only tests of this idea were done with low income families. No data has be collected about what it will do to individuals or middle income families, much less the economy as a whole. |
|
| |
Another way to phrase this is that we are extending the "Minimum Wage" to apply to non-workers. People are finally beginning to realize that the Minimum Wage laws reduce the number of low end jobs that companies can afford to hire. To extend it to everyone would completely saw off the botom few rungs of the ladder of success, effectively preventing people from finding a job should they feel altruistic enough to work and and put themselves at great inconvience to support those that feel less altrusic. |
|
| |
What is really needed is to make the job market a friendly place. |
|
| |
Would take some ingenious economics to work. But the idea is excellent. |
|
| |
This is a very good idea. Better than my bum system. I think it is fair since as a luck middle class girl I can-- at any moment go home and live with my folks for free. But I'm working. Why? Living at home SUCKS. So would some piddling government base income. I don't think it'd mean anyone would stop working, in fact more homeless people could get their lives togather and maybe get jobs and stuff. |
|
| |
God god god. You people. Hate the evil unemployed. You've all been reading far too much Ayn Rand. |
|
| |
This is not communism. Communism, at least as practised in most of the communist states, is a top-to-bottom planned economy, with ancillary social planning (ie secret police). What "killed" it in the USSR was not a guaranteed living wage, but the massive inertia of a planned system, as opposed to a responsive, mostly unplanned, market system. That and the cost of building weapons to keep the Evyil Amerikanski at bay. |
|
| |
This not a proposal to resurrect state communism. It injects one small factor into a market economy, which would have this-or-that effects. This is the point where reasoned debate about costs and benefits begins. Not with this chimp-poo-throwing communism-is-evil god-bless-the-USA rubbish. |
|
| |
It has been discussed intelligently by many economists and social theorists over the ages, and some national governments. The Republic of Eire government was investigating it recently IIRC. |
|
| |
And lubbit, who are you to tell the poor how they spend thier income? It's OK for the rich to "blow" theirs on, well, blow? And yachts and SUVs and personal trainers and catered balls and summer houses and booze and fags? |
|
| |
I'm not saying that it isn't OK, I'm parodying your position. |
|
| |
Now can we have some informed comment please? |
|
| |
//who are you to tell the poor how they spend thier income?//
Well, when it's my taxes that they're spending, I think I have a pretty good right, particularly when they come back for more to do what the initial hand-out should have done. |
|
| |